The world of digital marketing has seen significant transformation in the last ten years. Changing consumer needs and behaviour, evolving market trends, more stringent industry rules, and unexpected algorithm upgrades are just a few of the problems that have put digital marketers on high alert.
Since most individuals like to focus entirely on web design and on-page optimisation, technical SEO is frequently one of the most neglected areas within the industry. The importance of technical SEO is grand, as it can significantly improve website performance and offer a much improved user experience (UX). In recent years, more digital marketing agencies have realised the true potential of technical SEO, but there’s still so many that look past it.
This guide is here to help you by providing the ultimate technical SEO checklist that will give your business the best chance of becoming a success. So, whether you’re a digital marketing agency in Manchester or a startup business in London looking for technical SEO advice, you’ve come to the right place.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO in a sense is quite broad, as it covers everything from site speed to broken links to website security. All of these elements come together to boost the performance of a website through improved crawlability and indexability. You want your website to be easy to crawl so that search engines like Google can get a better understanding of the content on your website, which can help with search result rankings and boost online presence. Indexing allows Google to analyse and store your content, so you can then rank on more relevant search queries.
The key to securing high search rankings and maintaining a robust digital presence is investing in the technical SEO services that will most fit your business needs. You can help search engines identify the worth of your website by optimising its essential technical SEO features. It also protects your website from technical SEO difficulties that can prevent it from appearing and ranking in relevant search results, as well as giving a great online experience to visitors.
Technical SEO Audit Checklist
To ensure that your website is performing optimally from your technical SEO strategy, you need to analyse certain aspects and tick them off your checklist. Let’s take a look at these:
Site Speed
How quickly your website runs can make a huge difference to your website analytics, as if it takes your website a long time to load then bounce rate will increase dramatically. This could result in your losing clients or customers for your website due to them not willing to wait for your content to load. A one second delay on your mobile website could decrease your conversions by 20 percent, which shows how vital every second is for load speed.
Search Console Coverage
Tracking problems or alerts that could lower your impressions is one of the technological necessities for an SEO website. Google created Google Search Console (GSC) so that website owners could quickly monitor their online performance and collect useful information, like crawl problems and non-indexed sites.
Mobile Responsiveness
The use of mobile devices is growing quickly and has now surpassed desktop in terms of users on websites. According to statistics, mobile devices account for over 50.33 percent of all online searches. Google introduced mobile-related enhancements, such as mobile-first indexing and mobile optimisation in response to the growing number of mobile users.
Schema Markup
The title tag, meta description, and URL are shown in most search results. You can significantly improve your rankings and SEO efforts by including structured data on your website, which is exactly what Schema markup is all about. Additionally, Google structured data makes your website more visually appealing than standard search results. Reviews, product markup, recipes, and events are examples of rich search results that can help improve your website’s analytics.
Crawl Errors
Crawl errors prevent users from accessing your website and finding the information they need. Having 404 pages on your website might damage your reputation and lower the amount of traffic that is brought to your domain. For this reason, 301 redirects must be set up. When a web page’s content has been removed or is no longer relevant to the search query, 301 redirects are employed. These redirects are used to remove 404 pages and reroute visitors to the new landing page.
Meta Data
Metadata is a summary of basic information about your web page contained in the HTML document. While metadata is not visible on the page, it is incorporated in your website to help web crawlers comprehend your content and display snippets in search results. Metadata is an essential part of technical SEO for WordPress and eCommerce because they serve as relevance signals.
Content and Keywords
Keywords are what allow online consumers to find your content through search engines. Optimising your web pages with relevant, high-performing keywords is critical for search engines to connect online searchers to your site. On-page optimisation often includes keyword research and content production. However, this does not imply that you should ignore them throughout your technical SEO assessment.
Website Layout
You should want your users to have a streamlined online experience, as if they can navigate your website easier they can quickly find the information they need, make an inquiry or complete a purchase. The website layout should be user friendly and you can improve this through technical SEO hacks.
HTTPS Encryption
HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the major protocol used to transport data between a browser and a website. HTTPS encrypts a website’s data transmission to ensure security. It encrypts communications between the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This will help keep your website secure and reduce the risks of any data leaks.
Internal Links
When your content links to other reliable websites, it can help search engines find your content and place it within the right type of search queries. It’s the best way to establish hierarchy on your website and connect your web pages to reliable sources. Technical SEO can help with this, as WordPress can be used to add internal links correctly and in a way that search bots can effectively crawl.
CTAs
CTAs (Call-to-action) are important components of technical SEO. They are especially good for e-commerce websites, as CTAs can prompt users to take action on their products. For example, you can add a CTA button to your website that says “purchase now” and this can make users more inclined to complete the action. These buttons have an average of 4.23 percent click through rate across all industries.