Technical SEO refers to website and server improvements that help the search engines crawl and index your website. When the search engines understand what your site is about, it can position you higher in the SERPs, driving more organic traffic to your website.
As digital marketers look for ways to grow their organic traffic, it’s important to assess technical SEO and look for ways to make improvements. Below are five technical SEO tips to implement into your digital marketing strategy in 2019.
1. Make sure your pages can be easily indexed.
In order for Google to rank your pages, they need to be able to crawl through and index them. To make sure that Google can index your pages, do the following:
- Check your index status. Use the Index Status report in Google Search Console to see how many pages Google has crawled. This number should be increasing.
- Check your robots.txt file. Make sure that your pages aren’t disallowed by adding /robots.txt to the end of your domain.
- Search your website. Do a Google search to retrieve your indexed pages.
- Review your site. In Google Search Console, locate potential problems using the Site Errors and URL Errors reports.
2. Check your meta data.
Google can be blocked from crawling your pages if a NoIndex meta tag is inserted. To optimize your meta data, check the source code on the pages you want indexed. It’s helpful to use a tool like Alexa Site Audit that optimizes your site’s performance and makes recommendations to improve your site’s usability, security and backlinks.
3. Audit your link profile.
Earning links from trusted domains improves organic search. To ensure that you have quality links pointing to your site, conduct a complete backlink audit using Google Search Console and Alexa. You can also find new linking opportunities this way.
4. Optimize your website’s speed.
People don’t have time to sit around and wait for slow web pages to load. Optimize your web pages so that they load in three seconds or less. Here are a few ways to do this.
- Test your site speed using Alexa
- Reduce image sizes
- Assess WordPress plugins
- Remove redirect chains
- Speed up Javascript
5. Remove duplicate and low-value content.
Clean up your website and remove content that can hurt your rankings. All pages indexed by Google should contain high quality content with relevant keywords and original copy. Search rankings are negatively impacted when duplicate content is published on multiple URLs.
There are always ways to make improvements to your website, so start with technical SEO to see if there are technicalities that need to be fixed. To have a full SEO audit run on your website, contact Magna Technology at 617-249-0539.
