Introduction
SEO optimisation helps your website rank highly on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). However, it is an ongoing investment since technology and customer trends constantly change. Most businesses fail to understand this concept and get frustrated when they don’t get the expected results. Some businesses focus on on-page and off-page SEO and forget about technical SEO issues. However, the results of all your campaigns depend on your website’s technical soundness. Today, you will learn everything about technical SEO in Adelaide and beyond and how to optimise it to ensure your website ranks high on the SERPs.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO happens when you optimise your website for search engines and users. We have many technical SEO factors to consider when optimising your website. Some include speed, responsiveness, crawlability, and 4xx error pages. Technical SEO involves practices that will ensure search engine bots fetch and render your website without affecting your current ranking position. Failing to optimise your technical SEO can impact your website. Search engines can deindex your pages even if you create quality content and earn backlinks. As such, considering your technical, off-page, and on-page SEO simultaneously will increase your chances of ranking highly on the SERPs.
Technical SEO Best Practices
Some website owners believe technical SEO is a daunting task. However, you can do some of the fixes without waiting for an SEO expert to assist you. Here are some technical SEO best practices.
1. Audit
Every SEO strategy begins with an audit. A technical SEO audit lets you know the errors affecting your ranking power. Technical issues within your website will result in crawlers allocating a reduced crawl budget, which means that they will crawl and index fewer pages. Search engine bots may also lower your websites in the SERP, leading to a reduced clickthrough rate (CTR). You can conduct a technical SEO audit using tools from reputable sites like Screaming Frog, SEMRush, and SiteChecker Pro. These tools list every issue and highlight the ones requiring immediate attention.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
Google announced that they are now doing mobile-first indexing, meaning they will consider your website’s version when ranking on the SERP. Most people use their mobile devices to search for services and products. As such, Google wants to ensure that websites that rank highly on their SERP are mobile-friendly. Websites that are yet to optimise for mobile will be pushed to Google’s inner pages. Mobile friendliness is among the critical technical SEO factors to consider. You can use the Google Mobile-Friendly Test to check whether your site is mobile-friendly. Ensure you fix any mobile-friendliness issues you find before optimising other strategies.
3. Speed
Website loading speed is among the crucial ranking factors. However, optimising your website’s speed may require help from an SEO expert. Google says that a website should load in three seconds or less. Any time above three seconds leads to an increased bounce rate. Users have a short attention span and expect a website to load as soon as they click on it. Some things that will help you increase your website speed include reducing image file sizes, inlining CSS, and enabling lazy loading. Google has launched the Google LightHouse tool as part of the Chrome browser to help you check the page speed based on users’ experiences.
4. Optimise the Image Alt Text
Google cannot identify the context of the images within your content without the alt text. An image alt text is also a vital on-page optimisation factor. A sufficient alt text includes descriptive information about the image it represents.
5. Fix Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is something that will make your website rank low on SERPs. Similar content published on different URLs will confuse search engine bots since they cannot determine which one to rank. Fortunately, you can use tools like Ahrefs to check for duplicate content. Ensure you delete pages with duplicate content to ensure Google knows which ones to rank.
6. Create a Sitemap
A sitemap will make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index your pages. Sitemaps are XML files that enlist the vital pages you want search engine bots to crawl and index. Without a sitemap, search engine bots may spend time trying to crawl and index pages that don’t matter to you. After preparing your sitemap, ensure you add it to the search console. This will help you know whether you have followed all the accepted standards. Remember, a sitemap with errors will harm your website.
Conclusion
Identifying and fixing these technical SEO issues will ensure your website is fit for other SEO activities. A professional marketing team can help you if you find it challenging to fix technical SEO problems, and this will ultimately aid in higher rankings.
