Want a website that’s easy to access, quick and optimised for users? It all starts with successful technical search engine optimisation (SEO). Not only is this the foundation that supports great content and promotion, but it also impacts user experience and search visibility. All of these have a massive part to play in your site’s ability to rank higher in search engines.

In this blog, we’re guiding you through the fundamentals of technical SEO and how you can optimise your site to reach its maximum potential.

Quick links:

• What is technical SEO?
• How does technical SEO work?
• Technical SEO basics
• How technical SEO can improve your website
• How to get started with technical SEO

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO involves optimising the backend and infrastructure of a website so search engines can crawl, index and rank content effectively. This lets search engines find, understand and keep track of your site’s content, in turn improving search visibility of your pages. This also matters when trying to improve AI search visibility, since it works the same way.

Key user experience factors, such as page speed and mobile optimisation, can be impacted by technical SEO implementations to, so carrying it out is something that’s an absolute essential – especially when all it takes for someone to click off a page is a matter of seconds.

Technical SEO can be implemented on-page and off-page. On-page optimisations are actioned directly on a site, which is usually achieved through organic content marketing efforts. Meanwhile, off-page technical SEO refers to actions taken outside of the website to improve search visibility, which could come from digital PR activity, for example.

How does technical SEO work?

For a website to continuously reach its peak performance, it requires regular maintenance. And since technical SEO focuses on the technical aspects of websites to ensure they’re crawlable, fast, mobile-friendly, secure and structured correctly, it’s essentially a method of maintaining your site.

Technical SEO involves audits to discover where improvements can be made, and implementations where the improvements are actioned. It should work alongside other marketing efforts, such as content marketing and digital PR. Even the best content won’t perform well if search engines can’t access it, so this is vital to the success of a content marketing strategy. And if you’re working on digital PR, a technically sound site that’s fast, crawlable and features zero broken links will allow your campaigns to deliver greater value from high-quality backlinks.

Technical SEO basics

Now let’s talk through the technical SEO fundamentals you need to know.

Website speed & performance

Quick page speed and performance are must-haves for ranking, regardless of which device a user accesses your site from. So, how do you test yours? Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool can provide you with a performance score from 0 to 100 for each of your site’s pages, with 100 being the best.

Once you have this data, you might want to look at ways you could optimise your page speed. Compressing images, using a content distribution network (CDN), and minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are just some of the ways to keep page loading times to a minimum.

Overall site speed can also be monitored by taking a sample of several pages from your site and working out the average performance.

Mobile optimisation

In today’s digital landscape, mobile-first compatibility for your website is crucial.

Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it looks at mobile versions of webpages to index and rank content. You can use free SEO tools to check whether your site has mobile-friendly elements, including accessible font sizes, adequate spacing, and meta viewport tags (these tell browsers how to control sizing on a page).

HTTPS and security

Believe it or not, a secure site has long been a ranking signal. Because of this, it’s important to use Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to protect sensitive user information like passwords and addresses. This is a secure version of the standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

To check whether your site uses HTTPS, simply type it into your browser and look for the ‘lock’ icon. If you see a ‘not secure’ warning, your site isn’t using HTTPS. A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) certification will need to be installed to authenticate the identity of the website and establish a secure connection when users access it.

Site architecture & internal linking

Your site’s pages should link together to create a site structure. And within an effectively structured site, pages should be organised in a way that makes sense logically, since this helps crawlers find your content quickly and easily.

The larger your site, the more complex your site architecture will be by nature. So, as a general rule, you should keep an eye on the structure and ensure all pages are no more than a few clicks from the homepage.  

Internal linking between your site’s pages is also a critical piece of the technical SEO puzzle. Not only does it allow search engines to locate your pages, but it also helps them rank better by building page authority. Tools can be used to identify contextual linking opportunities from keywords your site already ranks for in the content.

XML sitemaps & robots.txt

An XML sitemap, which is a file containing a list of important pages on your site, helps Google know exactly which pages you have and how to find them. This can be especially important when your site has lots of pages or your pages aren’t linked together well.

Unsure of where to find yours? It should sit under one of these two URLs:

• yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml

Once you’ve located your sitemap, it should be submitted to Google via Google Search Console.

Another useful file is robots.txt, which tells search engine crawlers how to navigate your site. Your robots.txt settings can be manually set, meaning that if you disallow them, search engines will listen and avoid crawling your content or using it in training. However, it’s worth noting that if you block search engines, you limit your site’s visibility.

Fixing broken links and crawl errors

Not only do broken links interrupt the user experience, but they also prevent web crawlers from doing their job and result in page errors. Any backlinks gained from these pages will go to waste, since they don’t lead to valuable content.

Before you can get started on fixing these issues, you’ll first need to find all the broken links on your site using tools like SEMrush. And when it comes to fixing these, you can either reinstate pages that were accidentally deleted or implement redirects from old pages to relevant ones. Remember to remove or update internal links leading to your old pages, too.

Structured data and schema markup

Coding, referred to as structured data or schema markup, can be added to help Google understand your page’s content.

You need to choose schema markup that’s relevant to the nature of the pages you’re adding it to. Using the right structured data helps you win rich snippets, which are more appealing search results with additional information that appears under the meta title and description.

The main benefit of rich snippets is that they help your page stand out, which boosts click-through rate (CTR).

How technical SEO can improve your website

Investing in various technical SEO implementations can be crucial for optimising your site. Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Improved search engine rankings: When your pages are crawlable and indexed, they’re more likely to rank highly in search results and reach your audience when they search for related terms.
• Enhanced user experience: Technical SEO improvements mean your site will befaster, more mobile-friendly, and reliable, providing users with a seamless experience when browsing.  
• Maximised impact of content marketing and digital PR: Without broken links and a slow page speed, your content on and off-page can be more impactful and valuable.  
• Long-term growth and scalability: Whether the goal is attracting new users or retaining existing ones, a site that’s quick and easy for users to navigate – thanks to technical SEO implementations – will give you the growth results you’re after.

A well-structured site also supports scalability since you can easily see how your pages link together and build out new pages seamlessly.

How to get started with technical SEO

What tasks should you focus on first? How can content pruning help? What tools can you use to support your technical SEO audit? Here, we’re sharing our top tips and advice that’ll improve your website in no time.

Carry out content pruning

We recommend starting with a content audit before you dive into your technical SEO audit. This will allow you to analyse the existing site content and decide where pages can be noindexed, deleted, consolidated or enhanced from a content perspective.

Noindexing and deleting pages that are no longer needed on the site will help ensure that the technical SEO audit is only concentrated on valuable pages.

Download your free Content & SEO Audit guide

Need some support with content pruning? We’ve created a free downloadable Content & SEO Audit guide to help steer you in the right direction.  

Conduct a site audit 

Using free SEO tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog and SEMrush, you can carry out a site audit of each URL. For large sites, you might want to split this up. For example, you might audit the blog landing page and all your blog posts in one audit and then move on to your product landing page and the individual product pages.

Within your audit, you should essentially be looking at anything we’ve listed as a technical SEO basic. That includes broken links, page speed, security, mobile optimisation, XML sitemaps, site infrastructure and structured data.

Prioritise and implement fixes 

Your audit will reveal areas requiring improvement or fixes, such as page speed, mobile-friendliness and indexing. The next task is to organise these based on what you’d like to prioritise.

It’s usually best to prioritise anything that’s impacting your site the most, but quick wins that provide value without taking up too much time can also be added to the task list. How you prioritise technical SEO implementations will likely depend on the size of your team and the available resource.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that collaboration between your technical SEO team and site developers might be needed to carry out some implementations.

Create a schedule of regular monitoring and optimisation

If you don’t stay on top of your site’s technical SEO, you might be more likely to see a drop in performance. You need to keep all your plates spinning to pick up on potential errors, spot optimisation opportunities and monitor website changes. So, we recommend creating a schedule for auditing and pruning the site, since this will help you make consistent improvements. 

Technical SEO shouldn’t work in a silo, either. You need to maximise the potential of other marketing efforts, while also optimising user experience from a speed and function perspective.

Whether you’re a startup brand or a multinational business, your site’s performance can be improved with targeted technical SEO efforts. Looking for support in this area? Get in touch with our digital marketing expert today.