In mid-2024, we adjusted our focus and the priorities of our agency activities. Through our intensive work on our own project TutKit.com, we have immersed ourselves deeply in the topics of Technical SEO, PageSpeed and Code Analysis. We will therefore be publishing some news so that you, dear readers, can better understand what our strengths are and what motivates and drives us every day. Let's start with this article on Technical SEO.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is an essential part of any successful SEO strategy. It focuses on optimizing technical aspects of a website to improve its visibility in search engines and user-friendliness. This article gives you an overview of the basics of technical SEO, explains why it is so important and goes into detail about why some sites have crawlability issues and what measures can be taken to resolve them.
Technical SEO refers to the measures taken to make a website accessible and understandable to search engine crawlers. In contrast to on-page SEO, which focuses on the content and structure of pages, and off-page SEO, which focuses on external factors such as backlinks, technical SEO deals with the infrastructure and technical framework of the website.
Goals of technical SEO
The main starting points for technical SEO are crawlability, indexability and the user-friendliness of your website. And this results in the three primary goals:
- Improve crawlability: Ensure that search engines can crawl all pages of the website.
- Ensure indexability: Ensure that the pages crawled are actually included in the search index.
- Increase user-friendliness: Optimizing website speed and mobile usability.
Important components of technical SEO
Six components are particularly important for technical SEO.
1. crawlability
This is about ensuring that search engines can crawl all pages of the website and capture the content. Content that is delivered via JavaScript in particular can sometimes cause difficulties when crawling. Starting points for improving crawlability are
- XML sitemaps: These files help search engines to understand the structure of your website and find all relevant pages.
- Robots.txt: This file gives search engines instructions on which pages or files they may and may not crawl.
- URL structure and hierarchy: A clear and logical URL structure makes it easier for search engines to understand the relationships between different pages.
One tool that gives you information about your crawl status is the Google Search Console. It is basically the most important tool of all for you if you do SEO professionally. It is an indispensable tool for monitoring and analyzing the crawlability and indexing of your website as well as the performance of your pages in Google search.
The screenshot below clearly shows that the server connection is responsible for up to 23 percent of failed crawl requests by Google robots. It's a problem that needs to be addressed.
For example, here is the view of TutKit.com's submitted sitemaps split by language output:
2. indexability
Crawled is not yet indexed, i.e. a crawled page may not yet appear in Google's index. This can have various causes. And perhaps sometimes pages should not appear in the index at all. One way of controlling this is through
- Noindex tags: These tags can be used to instruct search engines not to index certain pages.
- Canonical tags: These tags help to avoid problems with duplicate content by pointing search engines to the main version of a page.
Here is an example of a project where there are 126 indexed pages against 96 non-indexed pages, mainly based on pages with parameter URLs referencing the correct pages via a canonical tag.
3. website architecture
Website architecture refers to the structural design and organization of a website. It includes the arrangement of pages and content as well as the way in which they are linked together. A well-planned website architecture is crucial for usability and search engine optimization (SEO), as it helps both visitors and search engines to easily find and navigate content. This is where we focus our attention:
- Internal linking: well-structured internal linking helps search engines understand the connection between different pages.
- Hierarchy and categorization: The content of the website should be organized in a logical hierarchy that includes main categories, subcategories and individual pages.
- Breadcrumbs: These navigational aids make it easier for users and search engines to find their way around the website.
In the following screenshot - an evaluation by Audisto.com, a tool specializing in technical SEO - you can see that the content is located on hierarchy levels that are too deep. Accessibility to the content should be made easier, both for users and bots.
Audisto is a tool that focuses primarily on the technical aspects of very large websites. We have an account because we manage over 50,000 pages with TutKit.com. The evaluations are very specific. It is probably most comparable to Screaming Frog.
If your site is much smaller, another powerful tool is certainly recommended to perform comprehensive SEO audits, including identifying crawl errors, duplicate content and other technical issues. We also use Performance Suite and Seobility to identify technical, content and structural SEO issues and monitor website health.
4 PageSpeed
One of my favorite topics of all! Increasing PageSpeed or performance optimization is one of the SEO measures that work holistically for the entire website. If there is already enough relevant content on a website, performance optimization is the best investment from an SEO perspective in my opinion. The optimization of loading times and thus the speed of the website are crucial for the user experience and an important ranking factor for Google. Google has summarized various metrics for this as Core Web Vitals, which deal with loading times and response times for interactivity, such as: First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Time to Interactive (TTI), Total Blocking Time (TBT), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Meeting these metrics is essential for a high technical user experience.
You can easily test the PageSpeed of your website using Google's PageSpeed Insights. Google gives you a result for mobile use and for computer resolution. The mobile result is decisive. For computers, you will almost always get green results. Google mainly uses the mobile version of the website content that was crawled with the smartphone agent for indexing and ranking. This is known as mobile-first indexing. Therefore, put a focus on the mobile result. Here is an example of one of our client projects, a hotel website with lots of images on the homepage:
Other testing tools you should know about is Lighthouse directly via the dev tools of your Chrome browser (F12 => Lighthouse) and the website Webpagetest.org, which provides very detailed analysis of website speed and helps to identify performance bottlenecks.
5. mobile-friendliness
As already mentioned, Google evaluates websites based on their mobile version first (mobile-first indexing). This is precisely why responsive design is essential to ensure that websites work well and look appealing on all devices. You can do the tests yourself with your mobile devices. But you can also use free or commercial services.
One free option is to use the dev tools in your Chrome browser. To do this, click on F12 in the Chrome browser. At the top right, you can switch to the mobile module. And then you can simulate different mobile devices and check the website display.
A commercial service that makes the tests even more user-friendly for you is LAMBDATEST, for example:
6. security
Websites should use an SSL certificate to ensure a secure connection. Website operators should also be aware of security vulnerabilities, which includes regular checks and the elimination of security vulnerabilities.
Perhaps a quick test to get you started: Enter the URL of your website here: Security Headers
Even with such hip and popular companies as OMR, there is still no awareness of this important aspect - the range goes from A+ to F.
The all-in-one SEO tool Performance Suite already offers a dashboard with security checks. There is a free account that can crawl up to 50 pages. Such a check and long-term monitoring are certainly worthwhile for you too. The initial check will already show you how well your website is positioned from a security perspective. And the risks are weighted from high risks to medium risks to low risks.
As these tests only run on the front-end side, I also recommend Symfony Insights and Sentry.io for back-end security tests, which we also use here.
Why is technical SEO important?
Technical SEO plays a crucial role in the overall strategy of your search engine optimization, as it forms the basis for search engines to effectively crawl, index and evaluate the content of a website. Without a solid technical foundation, even the best content and the strongest backlinks cannot reach their full potential.
A well-optimized website is better crawled and indexed by search engines, which leads to a higher ranking in search results. This increases the likelihood of potential customers finding your website.
Technical SEO not only improves visibility for search engines, but also the user experience. A fast, secure and mobile-friendly website makes for happier visitors and lower bounce rates, which are important user signals for Google.
In a highly competitive environment, technical SEO can make all the difference. Websites that are technically sound have a better chance of beating the competition.
Fixing technical issues and optimizing website structure increases the efficiency of the entire SEO process. This makes it easier to implement future SEO measures and make the website scalable.
Technical SEO lays the foundation for sustainable SEO success. A solid technical basis ensures that the website remains robust even with future updates to search engine algorithms.
Overall, Technical SEO is essential to ensure that a website reaches its full potential, both in terms of search engine rankings and usability. It is an essential part of any comprehensive SEO strategy that promotes long-term success and sustainable growth.
Conclusion on technical SEO and the next steps
Technical SEO is a complex but essential field that forms the foundation of a successful SEO strategy. By improving crawlability, indexability and usability, you can increase your website's visibility on Google and other search engines, while also improving the user experience. Technical SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and adjustment. But that's how you stay competitive!
It is my firm belief that relevant content is the most important thing for websites. But today, with the help of AI, it is easier than ever to produce lots of good content and place it on websites. If websites with equally strong content compete with each other for the better ranking, technical ranking factors and positive user signals will decide who comes out on top. Technical SEO is therefore one of the most effective measures you can take to sustainably improve your rankings.
So what are the steps you should be taking right now to get into action? Here are a few suggestions:
- Conduct a technical SEO audit: Use the tools mentioned to conduct a comprehensive SEO audit of your website and identify potential issues.
- Optimize your website for better crawlability: Check the robots.txt file and XML sitemaps, improve internal linking and make sure your URL structure is logical and clear.
- Improve the loading speed of your website: During the performance audit, don't just check the homepage, but every page type! Implement caching, use images in modern formats such as AVIF and implement other recommendations from PageSpeed Insights.
Drive mobile optimization:
- Make sure your website works well on all devices and use tools like the dev tools to check Android and iOs.
- Monitor and adjust regularly: Use Google Search Console and another tool like Seobility to continuously monitor your website's performance and make adjustments as needed.
By implementing these steps, you can strengthen the technical, structural and content foundations of your website and create a solid foundation for long-term SEO success.
If you need help with technical SEO, please get in touch with us. We are very competent and experienced and will also find solutions to your current problems.