Technical SEO is a series of website technical monitoring, such as site speed, sitemap,
SSL, indexing, etc., that are important from the point of view of search engines.
In the rest of this article, we will thoroughly examine the “18 Key Elements of an SEO
Technical Audit and How to Do It”.
Of course, With the help of WordPress and its plugins, technical SEO can be done without the
need for specialized knowledge. Stay with Smart Strategy leading SEO agency in Vancouver.
1. Select the main domain of the site
As the first step in technical SEO, choose the main site domain. Of course, I know you have
already decided on its name, but I mean selecting the domain along with the desired security
protocol. You may need to learn that your website can be displayed differently. For example,
with or without www, with or without HTTP, and…
Google identifies websites through URLs and not their form and content. Therefore, if you do
not choose the main domain, google may locate different addresses of your website as main sites
with duplicate content! So pay close attention to this point. If you need to learn how to redirect
all the site addresses to one address, raise this issue with the site designer or your hosting
company’s support.
2. Enable SSL
Due to the sensitivity of Google on users’ security, if there is no SSL in your site’s address, users
who enter your site will face the “unsafe site” error. This issue is highly harmful to your site’s
SEO.
Therefore, it is crucial to enable SSL at the beginning. This protocol causes your site address to
change from HTTP to HTTPS. You can pay an annual fee to a hosting company to activate it. In
addition, you can start your free SSL hosting.
Pay attention that your site address without HTTPS and with HTTPS can be recognized as two
different sites by Google. So after enabling SSL, set the original version to Google.
3. Introduce the site to Google
The third step of technical SEO is to make sure that Google can review your site. Before entering
your site and checking its content, search engine bots go to a part of the site’s code to ensure that
you have permitted them to check the site. Unfortunately, most WordPress sites do not allow
robots to index the site (checking and indexing pages in the results) by default.
So, to make sure your site can be indexed, in WordPress, go to the settings section, then “reading
settings,” and at the bottom of the page, grant permission to index the site:
It is enough to remove the checkmark in front of the sentence “Ask search engines not to check
the site’s content” and save the page.
Of course, to increase the speed of introducing the site to Google, it is better to connect it to the
search console tool. Search Console is a free Google tool that provides beneficial information
about the site’s internal, external, and technical SEO.
Note: Be careful that some WordPress templates load a series of pages, articles, and products on
your website by default. Remove them all before you allow Google to index your site.
4. Increase site speed
We have reached the critical part of the story! You probably know that the speed of the site has a
significant impact on its SEO. If you have followed all 200 SEO factors on the site, but users
cannot enter your website at a reasonable speed, Google will not give you a good ranking in the
results. Why? Because the low speed will increase the users’ dissatisfaction, they will leave the
site and continue raising the bounce rate.
But how to increase the speed of the site? This can be a bit difficult for SEO beginners. But in
any case, it is an activity that must be done.
Previously, in the smart strategy blog, I introduced and taught you 8 ways to increase site speed.
I suggest you implement solutions that are easy for you to do at the beginning of this work. To
read, refer to the article on increasing the speed of the site; Note that most of the solutions in this
article can be done with the help of WordPress plugins, and you don’t need to worry about them.
5. Activate the sitemap!
In the fifth step of technical SEO, you must activate the sitemap. The sitemap is a file containing
the links to your site’s pages. In this way, search engine robots can access all your pages in a
short time and index them with less trouble. For example, see Free Academy’s sitemap page.
Activating the sitemap increases the indexing speed of your site by robots. But how to start it?
You can install the Yoast SEO or Rank Meth SEO on your site. These two plugins automatically
create, upload, and update the sitemap. After installing one of these, go to example/sitemap.xml
(replace example with your site’s URL) and ensure the sitemap is loaded.
6. Small tips to increase technical SEO credibility
Next, to make sure that your site’s credibility does not decrease in the eyes of Google at the very
beginning of its launch, you must pay attention to a series of points:
１. Make sure that there is no content copied from other sites on the pages of your site.
２. Check the content of products and pages and make sure that their content is not copied from
each other. If you need to use copy content and descriptions in some products, get help from
Canonical. (Refer to the canonical tag article.)
３. Delete pages with little content and no value on the site.
7. Pay attention to the URLs!
Ignoring URLs is one of webmasters’ most common technical SEO mistakes. By default, your
WordPress site uses meaningless words to select the address of each page, which can reduce the
SEO of the site and the user experience.
Therefore, before creating a new page and content, go to the WordPress settings section, unique
links, activate the “post name” option and save the settings.
8. Adjust the site structure
Your website does not have a linear structure. That is, it is not like creating a separate page for
SEO of each word in Google, writing some text in it, and waiting to get to the first page.
Some words of your site should be SEO on category pages. For example, if you are a site selling
digital products, you cannot SEO the “mobile shopping” page with articles and text. Instead, this
page should be SEO’d on a category of your mobile products, precisely like what amazon or
other sites have done.
In this part of the SEO site, you must adjust the structure of your site well; Choose a category
and tag pages and build them in time. Also, it would help if you put the critical and valuable
pages of the site in the menu. Links to pages like:
● Main page
● blog page
● store page
● important store categories
● important blog categories
● and so on.
It can be placed in the site menu.
In addition, you should be obsessive about giving internal links to these pages and giving them
more importance.
Note: Make sure that the structure of a standard site is such that the user can access the desired
page with 3 clicks. This issue is also called page death and indicates that if your user is going to
reach the site’s mobile page, he should not go through several different pages. Instead, the site’s
structure should be arranged so the user can access the desired goal in a short time and with the
fewest clicks. So avoid deepening the pages.
9. Robot.txt file
The robot.txt file is a specialized file with a technical application on your site. This file is located
on your site’s host and contains essential commands issued to search robots. For example, In the
third step of this article, I told you to allow search engine bots to access your site with the help of
WordPress settings.
Activating the check site check box in the WordPress settings creates a piece of code in this file
that allows search engine bots to check the site entirely.
For a better understanding, you can see this Moz website robot file. If your website is built with
WordPress, don’t worry about ROBOT because, in most templates, this file is automatically
there. All you need to do is not enter its settings and codes!
10. Activating the site’s breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the same links that show the user on the top of each page exactly which part of
the site they are in now. You can see an example of it in the image below.
Activating breadcrumbs is also a part of the site’s technical SEO. By activating them, you help
the users experience better, and then by creating internal links, you give search engine bots better
access to different pages of your site. You can use various plugins to activate Breadcrumbs in
WordPress.
Among these plugins are the breadcrumb plugin and the Yoast SEO plugin itself. Pay attention
that there are different breadcrumbs and are not limited to just one type. In the first step, you
have to activate the breadcrumbs with the help of these plugins.
11. No-index irrelevant pages
No-index pages, such as payment, purchase invoice, login page, etc. You can do it with the help
of plugins such as Yoast and Rank, etc. When you no-index a page, you have instructed the
search engine robots not to check and index it. Of course, some pages must exist on all sites, but
it is better if they are No-index.
12. Check the responsiveness of the site.
Another essential point in technical SEO is the responsiveness of the site. Your website should
display well on all screens, including computers, mobiles, tablets, etc. Of course, most
WordPress templates are responsive by default, but to be sure of this, you can refer to Google’s
mobile-friendly tool and make sure that your site is an optimal website from Google’s point of
view.
13. Schematic of the site
First, schema setting on the site is not recognized as an essential activity in SEO, but doing it
improves SEO and user experience. But what is schema? Schemas are a series of markup codes
placed among your template’s codes. These codes explain to search engine bots the nature of
each page of your site (article, page, product, etc.). Also, other explanations will ultimately cause
better recognition of your site by robots and better SEO.
14.Pay attention to search console errors.
The new Google search console provides essential information about your website and its
internal errors. These errors are about site speed, pages whose index has problems, 404 pages,
etc. So from time to time, enter the search console, and go to the Coverage and Enhancements
section.
15. Remove 404 pages
If you have a page on your website and delete it, now its address will become a 404 page, which
is very harmful to your SEO. In this case, you should use page redirection. By redirecting an
address, after entering it, users and search engine bots are automatically transferred to the page
you want, which can be the page related to it or the main page of the site.
You can also use SEO Yoast, Rank Meth, or specialized redirect plugins to redirect pages.
16.The structure of H tags
H or heading tags are a series of HTML tags used in your pages’ content. These tags have a
significant impact on the SEO of the content of the site. All titles and headings on a site are
written using h tags.
Check all the site pages and ensure that the h1 tag is repeated only once. This tag may be deleted
or duplicated in some formats, decreasing the page’s SEO power.
17. AMP
And finally, the last step of the technical SEO of the site is to AMP the pages. Implementing this
issue, like schema, is not mandatory, but it can become a positive point for your site’s SEO.
By AMPing a page of your site (with the help of coding or WordPress plugins), you save that
page in the Google database. This way, mobile users enter the Google site and your page in less
than 1 second after seeing it in the results and clicking on it.
Amplifying site pages has a positive effect on user experience and helps SEO. For example, you
will see AMP pages with an arrow-like icon on search pages.
Note that the AMP is not applicable for all pages. For example, pages such as the shopping page,
which have JS language buttons, will lose their functionality if they are amped. So please do
your research before implementing it.
18.Beware of invalid templates.
One important note; If your site’s template is well-known and reputable, you don’t need to worry
about its codes. But if you’ve downloaded a cracked template, outsourced the template design to
a freelancer, or are using a not-so-well-known template, it’s better to show it to an SEO
professional to check its codes and ensure that your site’s SEO problem is solved.
conclusion
My best effort in writing this article on smart strategy was to be able to explain all the points
in simple language, but for sure, some things still need to be fully understood by some readers.
So, if a part of the text is not conceptually explained and you have a question about it, ask your
question in the comments section. With the help of your questions, I can find the weak points of
the article and fix them in the following updates.
Smart strategy as a leading digital marketing agency providing SEO services in Canada. For more information about our SEO services and a consultation with our SEO strategist, please contact us.
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