Welcome to the fifth chapter of IMG’s SEO 101 course! In the fifth part of our series, we’re teaching you everything you need to know about technical SEO — from what it is to site architecture and the elements of great website content. Keep reading to find out more!
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index, with the end-goal being to improve your site’s organic ranking. Some examples of technical SEO elements include structured data, site speed, and mobile readiness. Search engines like Google use three main factors to rank your website: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO.
- On-page SEO Elements: Content that tells search engines what your page is all about. Examples mage alt text, keywords, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and more.
- Off page SEO Elements: Informs to search engines how popular and valuable your page is.
- Technical SEO: Refers to elements that optimize how well search engines can crawl and index your site.
However, it’s important to note that these three categories often overlap. Technical SEO works in tandem with other forms of SEO in addition to link building strategies to help increase your site’s ranking so that you appear higher up on search engine result pages (SERP).
Here’s an SEO inspired rendition of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to help you visually understand the hierarchy of the 5 categories of technical SEO.
Source
Why is on-page SEO important?
57% of marketing executives say on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic. Meaning that crafting relevant, well-written content is only half of the process. Getting your content in front of the eyes of audience members requires optimizing various page elements so bots can easily crawl and index your site.
Break Down of On-Page SEO Elements
Content elements
This refers to the content on your website. Crafting high-quality page content such as blogs demonstrates your site’s value to search engines and visitors.
Selecting high-performing keywords is paramount to increasing your content’s visibility in search engines. Research shows that searches for long-tail keywords have a click-through rate of 3% to 5% higher than generic searches.
Here are a few best practices for writing high-quality page content:
- Include short and long-tail keywords (without resorting to black hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing)
- Incorporate engaging and relevant visual content.
- Cover trending and relevant topics hitting your industry
- Write for your target audience
- Answer the most pressing questions your audience might have.
- Create digestible content people will want to share and link to.
- Increase conversions with visible CTAs to offers and product pages.
HTML elements
Page Titles
Page titles reign take the top spot on our list for on-page SEO. When creating page titles, try adhering to these best practices:
- Keep it under 70 characters.
- Avoid stuffing keywords into the title (search engines can intuitively pick up on disingenuous content).
- Keep it relevant to the page.
- Don’t use all caps.
- Include your brand name in the title
Headers
Headers or body tags keep content organized for readers, and they let search engines know what parts of your content are the most relevant based on a users’ search intent. Ensure that you include keywords in your headers, incorporating the most critical keywords in the <h1> and <h2>.
Tags help organize content to ensure ideas flow seamlessly, making it easy for readers to follow along. They also help search engines distinguish which parts of your content are the most important and relevant based on search intent.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are short descriptions that appear under the title in search results. They provide a quick synopsis of what your content is about. Meta descriptions can influence whether a user clicks on your page and can also be copied over to social media to boost click-through rates from various platforms.
Best Practices when writing meta description:
- Keep it under 160 characters, although Google allows you to go up to 220 characters. When optimizing for mobile devices, the cut of is at 120 characters.
- Include your entire keyword
- Avoid alphanumeric characters like —, &, or +
- Stick with one or two concise sentences
Image Alt-text
Image Alt-text is short captions used to describe images in your content on webpages, blogs, and more. These descriptions inform search engines what your images are about—which is becoming exceedingly critical now that 27.9% of results on search queries on Google are images (Source: Moz).
Best Practices to keep in mind when adding image alt-text:
- Make it descriptive and specific.
- Make relevant to your page’s content.
- Keep it shorter than 125 characters.
- Don’t go overboard on keywords.
Structured Markup
Structured data or structured markup is any data set that’s structured and tagged with specific text groups on a website. Structured data helps Google easily find and read different elements of your content. Although invisible to the human eye, structured data influences how Google SERPs displays data. Carousels, videos, featured snippets, and knowledge panels rely on structured markup.
Cultivate an award-winning on-page experience and increase click-through rates by optimizing the following:
- Articles
- Videos
- Reviews
- Events
- How-Tos
- FAQs (“People Also Ask” boxes)
- Images
- Local Business Listings
- Products
- Sitelinks
Site architecture elements
Refer to the elements that make up your website and site pages. How you structure your website can help Google and other search engines easily crawl the pages and page content.
Page Speed
Site loading time is one of the most significant determiners Google uses when ranking your website. Google values user experience and users don’t have the attention span or time to wait around for a painfully slow website to load. For brands, load times equates to their load time Research shows that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t open within three seconds.
Your site’s speed not only impacts whether or not customers will stay and browse but whether they decide to buy from your brand. According to Unbounce, nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to purchase from an online retailer. Follow these quick tips to improve your page’s loading time:
- Compress files: This includes images and CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
- Cut down on Code: Long, unorganized code can slow down your site. Code written concisely equals a faster loading time.
- Use a content distribution network (CDN): Or distributed web servers, refers to a geographically distributed network of proxy servers that stores and delivers copies of your website based on a user’s location. It optimizes your site’s loading time because information between servers has a shorter distance to travel.
- Limit the number of Plugins: Outdated 3rd-party plugins can jeopardize site security. To minimize your risk, make sure plugins stay updated or opt for a custom-made theme and avoid the unnecessary code that comes with pre-made website themes.
Page URLs
A page URL should be short and digestible since these on-page elements work to organize your site. Not only that, they ensure your site hierarchy stays consistent as you continue adding internal pages like subpages, blog posts, and more.
Try these quick tips when writing SEO-friendly URLs:
- Trim unnecessary words.
- Limit it to one or two keywords.
- Use HTTPS if possible.
Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to the process of hyperlinking to other relevant or helpful pages that exist on your site. Internal linking drives traffic to different areas while increasing users’ time on your website. The longer bots spend on your website, the more insight they gain, ultimately improving your site’s ranking on search engines.
Mobile Responsiveness
According to CNBC, by 2025, nearly 73% of internet users will access the internet solely via mobile devices—a significant incentive for brands to choose a mobile-friendly website hosting service, site design, and layout. If you’re unsure how efficient your site is on mobile, you can try Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to find out.
HTTP Status Codes
An HTTP status code is a server’s response to a browser’s request. A website’s browser sends a request to the site’s server and later responds to the browser’s request with a three-digit HTTP status code.
Understanding different status codes allow you to quickly diagnose site errors and minimize any downtime on your site.
- HTTP Status Code 200 – OK: This ideal code indicates that everything is properly working and requires you to take no action.
- HTTP Status Code 301 – Permanent Redirect: Used when a URL needs to be permanently redirected to another. Visitors and bots who land on that page will then be passed to the new URL
- HTTP Status Code 302 – Temporary Redirect: Similar to a 301, a 302 passes visitors along to a new page except. However, we don’t recommend this as link equity might not be passed along.
- HTTP Status Code 404 – Not Found: This code indicates that the server didn’t find the file or page a browser requested.
XML Sitemaps
A sitemap is a blueprint of your website that helps search engines find, crawl, and index all of your website’s content. Sitemaps also tell search engines which pages on your site are most important.
There are four main types of sitemaps:
- Normal XML Sitemap: The most common type of sitemap usually comes in the form of an XML sitemap that links to the various pages on your website.
- Video Sitemap: Used to help Google understand your page’s video content.
- News Sitemap: Assists Google in finding website content approved for Google News.
- Image Sitemap: Helps Google find all of the images hosted on your website.
6 Quick Tips to Improve Your Site’s Technical SEO
1. Implement SSL
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) ensures your site is secure by providing a layer of protection between the web server and a browser. SSL encryption protects user data, such as credit card information, submitted on your site. Search engines prioritize site security, with SSL being one of the many factors contributing to your SERP ranking. For that reason, make sure to set the SSL variant of your homepage as your preferred domain. To check if your site has an SSL certificate, check if the domain begins with an “https://” instead of “http://” and includes a lock symbol in the URL bar. If not, follow the steps below:
- Redirect all http://yourwebsite.com pages to https://yourwebsite.com.
- Update your site’s canonical and hreflang tags
- Make sure URLs on your sitemap are updated (located at yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml) as well as your robot.txt (located at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt).
- Establish a new instance of Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for your HTTPS website and make sure 100% of traffic migrates over.
2. Give orphan pages a home
Orphan pages are existing pages on your site that have no internal links. Each page on your site should link to at least one other page. Like a joke with no punchline, these pages lack the context necessary for bots to understand and index pages.
3. Use quality backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites that redirect traffic back to your webpage. Think of them as a vote of confidence, helping to establish a site’s credibility by letting search engines know your page is high-quality. Although, this all depends on the quality of the backlink. Links that come from low quality can lower your ranking. However, getting quality links from relevant publications or providing helpful content other sites want to link to will improve your online visibility.
4. Pack an SEO punch with content clusters
Content clusters link to other relevant content on your website, allowing bots to easily find, crawl and index all your pages on a particular topic. Content clusters inform search engines of your knowledge on any given subject, letting you rank an authority for a related search query.
5. Take advantage of Robots.txt file
Robots.txt is a text file created to provide instructions for search engine robots. They have two main functions: Crawl the web to discover content and index that content so that it can be served up to searchers looking for information. However, it’s essential to have some basic developer experience as rookie users have unintentionally blocked their site’s CSS and JS files in the robot.txt file.
6. Simplify Site Architecture
Website Architecture is how a website’s pages are structured and linked together. An ideal Website Architecture helps users and search engine crawlers easily access what they’re looking for on a website.
7. Audit your redirects.
Audit your site to make sure redirects are set up correctly. By regularly checking for redirect loops, broken URLs, or improper redirects, you can avoid potential issues.
Next Steps
We hope you enjoyed our 5-part series on SEO and (highly) encourage you to bookmark this blog series in case you should ever need an in-depth breakdown of how SEO works, and the best practices we employ to help our clients grow.
If you have any questions about SEO that you need answers to now or are considering bringing in some expert help, please reach out! The IMG team is always here to help you and your business grow.
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