5 Most Crucial Technical SEO Elements

When it comes to search engine optimisation, what plays into our minds are Off-page and On-page SEO.

But What about Technical SEO?

Technical SEO has been really underrated by so many SEOs particularly beginners.

It is generally understood that once the On-page SEO has been done, Technical SEO is covered.

This isn't true. This article exposes why Technical SEO is very vital and the most crucial Technical SEO Element that needs focus.

What is Technical SEO?

Technical search engine optimization refers to all of the SEO efforts (with the exception of content optimization and link building) that is done to improve the crawling and indexing of your website on search engines.

Put it like this Technical SEO lays the foundation that provides your content and links with the high-quality feasible environment to appear on search engines without any problems.

5 Most Crucial Technical SEO Elements

1. Website speed

How long does your website loads?

Speed plays a huge role in website appearance on SERP. It is expected that within the first two seconds of clicking your website links, it should have loaded.

If this is not the case here are a few hints to make your website load time faster

Use Simple Templates

Limit the activities of your website and make your templates simple. In the case of templates and designs, there is one essential thing to remember: “less is good.”.

The more element on your page, the longer your users must wait, and you higher now not cause them to wait longer than three seconds.

Remove all unnecessary widget and plugins as well as optimise codes to help reduce your website load time. Any additional elements of your layouts — plugins, widgets, monitoring codes — that causes extra load time. This also includes codes that need to be optimized

Optimize visuals

Make your images sharp by adjusting their sizes effectively. However, limit the size to the necessary minimum due to the fact that huge photos are very heavy and can strongly affect your loading time.

Limit redirects

Multiple redirects affect your page load pace negatively, too. The more redirects mounted on one web page, the longer your audience will have to wait. This is why you ought to constantly try to reduce the number of redirects and make sure you have a single redirect on a web page.

In the case of 404 error pages, while a “page no longer found” error can't be prevented, ensure that you provide you with a custom one. Design it in a user-friendly and humorous manner to at least entertain your visitors and manual drive them to your home-page or any other popular page on your website your website.

Some of the causes of 404 error can be;    The page has been moved or removed. All these eventualities call for you to make use of 301 redirects. If the page can’t be redirected to any existing or related useful resource, create a custom 404 errors page that could mitigate the situation.

Error pages may be found in Google Search Console. Go to “crawl,” then “crawl mistakes” to discover the “URL errors” report, that is divided into the computing device, telephone, and function phone categories.

Browsers cache

The browser cache store website sources robotically on a local browser when a user visits your website. This is because your browser “recollects” the first website version cashed and then is capable of loading it very fast while the website and return back to it. This considerably improves the webpage load time for returning site visitors.

Leverage the browser cache and set it in line with your wishes.

2. Mobile friendliness

Mobile friendliness is another important aspect of technical SEO, and it holds the same importance as website speed.

In April 2015 while Google rolled out the algorithm which expert popularly called “Mobilegeddon”. Mobilegeddon, derived from Armageddon, has a huge impact on the way Google ranks websites in the search outcomes. It literally ended the computer technology and started out the new technology of mobile search.

From that day ahead, being mobile friendliness has played a key component on one’s website display in mobile search, especially for local businesses.

Use tools like Pingdom and Gtmetrix to check out your mobile friendliness.

Read also: How to rank faster with Local SEO

3. Site structure

Another critical factor of technical search engine optimization is a website structure. When it comes to this aspect we focus on,

HTTPS

The right web page architecture begins with choosing an appropriate hypertext transfer protocol. In this example, there is only one SEO pleasant preference. You have to truly use the more secure protocol – HTTPS.

On the sixth August 2014, Google announced that HTTPS is blanketed on their ranking factors list. And that’s an extraordinary occasion as many of Google’s ranking factors are commonly saved secret, and all of the sources that comprise them are based totally on assumptions and the webmaster’s personal (independent) analysis.

So having your website on HTTPS:// will give you a ranking chance. Although it’s not possible to say what effect HTTPS has completely, it’s better to comply with all search engine necessities to maximise your ranking possibilities.

Additionally, HTTPS also brings some different blessings associated with web site analytics. In Google Analytics, the referrer info can most effective be viewed if you use HTTPS. Sites with the HTTP protocol could have the referrer date protected under “Direct” visitors source – without any information designated apart from numbers. This takes place because without the security protocol it’s impossible to become aware of where the site visitors come from.

Breadcrumbs

Another critical part of an SEO website structure is breadcrumbs.

A breadcrumb is a kind of navigation that helps users move around a website. The name itself comes from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale.

Breadcrumbs navigation reduces the number of movements a user has to take if he needs to head back to the homepage, or visit another unique page.

Breadcrumbs are generally used by big websites that have a comprehensive hierarchy and plenty of unique sections that demand a clear structure. They’re in particular encouraged for e-commerce websites that provide much extraordinary merchandise.

URL shape

The last on the least for site architecture is to introduce a user-friendly, clean and regular URL structure. The URL is a readable text that serves to replace IPs – the numbers that computers use to become aware of particular assets. URLs describe the web page both for users and search engines like google and yahoo.

If you optimize them properly for search engine marketing, they may also act as a ranking thing. So take into account to make them descriptive and as brief as feasible. Ideally, a person has to recognize what is included underneath a selected link before he clicks on it, just with the aid of checking the URL.

Add a focused keyword by using a given web page. If you put into effect the key-word into all of the important page links, you will give a boost to the relevancy of the complete page and assist search engines like google and yahoo to classify it on SERP.

Also, words on your URLs should be separated with hyphens. However, it’s better to minimize the amount of the words for your URLs – don't make it longer than 60 characters.

Make use of robot.Txt document and sitemap to clearly define your site architecture by submitting it to search console for crawling and indexing of your pages.

Internal links – Silo content

Finally, it's time for internal linking.

Internal hyperlinks are important for improving the visibility of your older articles which can be related to the newly published one's articles.

You should categorize the website content and continually link to the pages within one category. Doing so will make certain that users can dig in and glide among resources in your website and find out more aspect of the specific subject matter on specific pages.

Read Also: The Two Essential Elements Of SEO

4. Structured Data Markup

Another technical SEO technique is Structured Data also known as Rich Snippets.

Though Google can perceive the type of content on your website by crawling it and looking at your on-page optimisation, Rich Snippet, however, conveys the contents to search engines better.

What are rich snippets? Rich snippet gives you a wealthy information of the search query made on search engines. The information is given ranges from the ratings to the reviews made about the search query.

To get started with a structured markup, you need to add the markup to schema.org. Schema.Org will only ask that you supply the accurate description of your content to assist Google to categorize your web page extra speedily.

To do these is pretty easy.

For WordPress users,  All you need to do is add the schema.Org plugin to their CMS and activate it. It’ll be equipped help apply structured data properly.

 For those not using WordPress, see if your CMS as a plugin for it, if not use Google markup helper to manual add your structured data by adding missing tag it, then click on the red "create HTML" button and then copy the code and paste it on the page.

Once this is done to validate your code using the structured data testing device by Google. This is usually recommended whether you generate rich snippets using Google or schema.Org.

5. Canonical URL

Technical search engine optimization often helps us avoid website errors and one of these errors is Duplicate content.

This is a very big issue and I advise you should avoid it by all means.

Here is why; In 2011 Google updated its set of Panda rules and one of these rules focused on quality and unique content, thus the algorithm was set to fight website with low quality and duplicate content by penalizing them.

Use the search console to check your website if it has any issues pertaining to your content.

But in the case you have duplicated content on your website, let say to pages are alike, I advise you delete it entirely or you write the content to make it different from the original.

If you can't, this is where Canonical URL comes in.

Canonical links or tags as it is usually called help resolve duplicate issues by informing search engines what the source of the original content is.

Conclusion

Technical search engine marketing is unending. It covers a wide range of topics regarding the factors needed for optimizing in keeping with the necessities engines like Google impose. We are not capable of exhausting the subject nowadays, however, we are hoping this brief review of the foremost troubles will suffice for now.