The Top 10 Technical SEO Techniques to Optimize Your Website In 2022
Technical SEO techniques are becoming more and more important in the world of SEO and these techniques will likely be of critical importance to site owners in the future. In this article, we’re going to outline the top 10 technical SEO techniques you should be using now and how they can help you improve your search traffic in the future. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
1) Site speed optimization
Site speed optimization is one of the most important aspects of technical SEO because it affects your bounce rates and conversion rates. A site that loads in five seconds or less will earn you a higher position on Google’s ranking algorithm. If your site takes more than 10 seconds to load, you’ll be penalized by Google for not providing a fast enough user experience.
The following strategies can help optimize your site’s loading time:
- Create a speedy homepage with limited links and images
- Load web fonts from an external server
- Use a CDN
- Configure your site with fewer resources per page (a lesser number of images, plugins)
- Reduce server response time with caching systems like Varnish or Memcached
- Keep CSS and JavaScript files as small as possible
- Enable browser caching to reduce the size of the content
- Eliminate render-blocking scripts with async tags
- Don’t use inline styles
- Reduce DNS lookups with domain sharding
- Use cookies instead of redirects
- Minimize round trips between client and server
- Cache Ajax requests
- Use asynchronous loading
The future holds many possibilities when it comes to how search engines rank websites. With the rapid increase in mobile users worldwide, optimizing sites for mobile devices is a must.
Responsive design techniques such as media queries should be used to keep up with trends on multiple platforms. Mobile app integration via APIs should also be considered so that users don’t have to access sites directly through their browsers when using apps like Twitter or Facebook.
These changes won’t take place overnight but should happen sooner rather than later if businesses want their sites to remain relevant among today’s changing search engine algorithms.
Site speed has been found to have an impact on conversions. Therefore, even if you have a small website, it’s worth making sure your site loads quickly. There are many ways this can be done: images should be optimized for size; CSS should use the least amount of code necessary; JavaScript should also use as little code as possible; minify CSS and JS files; optimize media content such as videos, audios, etc.; cache static assets like CSS and JavaScript files in browser storage such as IndexedDB/WebSQL (deprecated) or FileSystem API.
2) Crawling and indexation
Crawling and indexing are two important parts of search engine optimization. Crawling is the process by which a search engine identifies, locates, and indexes web pages that it finds on the internet. However, not all web pages will be indexed.
The crawler will look at how often a page is linked to, how long ago it was published, the number of backlinks to the page, and its relevance to what the user searched for. Only when the crawler deems a page relevant enough to rank for that keyword will it make it available in search results for users.
This is what we call indexation or crawling. Make sure your website can crawl your website easily! Make sure your site loads quickly and that you’re using best practices to get high-quality links from other websites.
3) Meta tags and titles
Meta tags and titles are an important part of technical SEO. By adding unique, descriptive titles and meta descriptions to each page, you can help search engines determine the relevance of your content for specific queries.
Meta tags should be written in natural language, as this will make them easier for search engine crawlers to understand.
Additionally, take advantage of Schema markup to add even more context to your pages, allowing search engines to easily parse the meaning of the content and provide extra information about your business or product.
These tools can include schema markup for events, recipes, products, TV episodes, and much more.
Lastly, we recommend implementing a site map or sitemap on your website which helps to organize all of the pages on your website in one place.
4) Heading tags
Heading tags are a great way to focus on the primary keywords that you want people to use when looking for your content. This can be anything from Businesses to personal care products. The heading tags should also include meta descriptions, which are typically 160-200 characters long and can be used in place of a title tag.
Headings tags create hierarchies and break up the page so that it is easier for visitors to find what they need. This is especially important when there is a lot of information on the same page or if you have blog posts with many images or videos.
Using headings as well as bullet points will make your site much more readable and navigable. It’s a good idea to start by writing out all the sections of your website and then going back through each one adding headings tags, subheadings, bullets, etc.
5) Anchor text
- Use schema markup to identify the subject of your web pages and provide context for search engines.
- Integrate social media buttons on your site so that visitors can like or share your content with their followers with a single click.
- Update page layouts to improve readability and make it easier for search engine crawlers to index all of your content without encountering any broken links or JavaScript errors.
- Make sure that all of your images are tagged with descriptive tags so that they can be easily found in image searches by both humans and robots alike (and also use alt tags for accessibility).
- Ensure that your videos’ embed code is set up correctly, which will allow them to play automatically when users visit the page.
- Check all website URLs for consistency, missing hyphens, double slashes, spaces after periods, etc., and update as necessary.
- Delete out-of-date or irrelevant blog posts – no matter how much traffic they generate – because this makes it harder for Google to crawl through your content efficiently.
- Track how people find you using various keywords using Google Search Console’s Search Analytics Tool. Once you know what terms are bringing organic traffic to your site, optimize the corresponding landing pages accordingly and continue monitoring them until they rank well in the SERPS.
- Check domain registrar records for expiration dates and renew domains before time expires (some services offer free auto-renewal)
- Add structured data to individual web pages that don’t have enough content yet, but do have unique titles, headings and descriptions (for instance: product descriptions) so that Google can better understand what each page is about.
6) Keyword research
- Use a site map for top-level navigation and website organization.
- Update your sitemap to reflect any changes that have occurred on your sites, such as new pages, sections, or products.
- Include the keyword phrases you want to rank for in your title tags and meta descriptions.
- Add keywords to H1 headings throughout the page, preferably once per paragraph of content so they are scattered throughout the page but not overused or redundant in one section.
- Make sure that each page has at least one image with an alt attribute containing keywords and text (in general, aim for one to two images per page).
- Enable the robots.txt file on your domain root folder to allow search engine crawlers access to certain parts of your website while blocking other areas.
- Assign the canonical tag pointing back to the original URL when there is duplicate content across different URLs within your domain.
- Keep a backup copy of your website’s HTML source code and corresponding assets, including CSS files and images stored outside of the CMS platform’s file system using an offline storage tool like Google Drive or OneDrive which can be accessed without network connectivity, should major disasters occur.
- Provide helpful resources and contact information clearly in multiple places on your site, from a clearly labeled Contact Us form to an About Us page.
- Implement SSL encryption for the entire website and enforce HTTPS connections for all incoming links by updating the .htaccess file with redirects from HTTP to HTTPS requests.
7) Image optimization
- Compress images -Images can be heavy and slow down your website. If you don’t need the quality, try compressing them to decrease the size of the file. Just make sure that you keep the image quality high enough for it to be still recognizable.
- Don’t upload images more than once -If you’re uploading an image and then deleting it, don’t upload it again after deletion-this will only end up with multiple copies of the same image on your server. Upload it once and delete it from your computer if necessary so you avoid confusion or accidental repetition in future uploads.
- Increase site speed -Site speed is one of the top three most important factors to consider when ranking in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). Make sure to invest time into making your site as fast as possible. Investing just a few hours could mean a difference between being ranked No. 4 for a term vs being ranked No. 1.
- Update plugins and themes -It’s important to update WordPress plugins and themes at least twice a year, even if you have no intention of updating any content. Old plugins and themes are full of security holes and outdated features that might not work correctly on modern browsers.
- Fix broken links -There are several tools available online that allow you to do this easily and quickly; there’s no reason why this should take up valuable time! Broken links are bad for user experience, which means they’re also bad for rankings in SERPs. You may also lose traffic by driving customers away from your site due to these pesky errors popping up every time they click something new. 6. Check everything is 301 redirecting –
This should go without saying that a website without proper redirection will likely rank lower because visitors never find their desired page location!
8) Link building
As a result, link building has become one of the most important tasks for modern SEO. Link building is not just about acquiring links to your website, but it’s also about acquiring links to other websites that you have some level of control over (e.g., guest posting on reputable sites).
In many cases, when you are doing link building, it will be in the form of natural backlinks (i.e., inbound links from other sites that have linked to your site organically).
However, there are also ways to create what’s known as artificial backlinks: these are links built through techniques like paid advertising or by manually getting people to link to your website with anchor text that is relevant to keywords you want ranked for.
Artificial backlinks can also be created through means such as using press releases, blogs, and social media posts to link out to articles on other sites. If done correctly, this type of strategy can help you rank better than if all of your links came only from organic sources.
9) Sitemaps
A sitemap is a map of your website and can help Google find your content more easily. It’s also a tool that can boost the performance of your site.
1) Create one page per category with at least two sections.
2) Each section will have at least 5-6 pages (this ensures that each page has enough content to rank).
3) Use keywords in the title of each section, as well as a keyword density of 2%.
4) Upload the sitemap to Google Search Console. Be sure to upload it once every month or so. 5) Keep images small and only use them when necessary.
6) Eliminate any unnecessary links from menus.
7) Add content tags for each post/page that corresponds to its specific topic matter – this helps search engines better understand what they’re looking at while indexing your site; be sure not to overdo it though!
8) Make sure you’re using H1, H2, and H3 tags on all posts – but don’t go overboard!
9) Add no follow attributes on any external links – this helps prevent duplicate pages from getting ranked higher than your work!
10) Use header tags like header1, header2, etc., to give yourself some styling options when editing posts/pages in WordPress.
10) Mobile optimization
Mobile optimization is one of the most important technical SEO techniques in the coming years. Google’s mobile-first indexing initiative, which will penalize websites that are not optimized for mobile devices, means that website owners must review their site and make changes to ensure it is responsive across devices.
The following checklist can help you get started on a mobile-optimized website:
- Remove excess elements from the desktop version of your site and only include what is necessary for the best user experience
- Ensure images are sized appropriately to avoid slowing load times on mobile devices
- Resize text so that it remains legible when displayed on a small screen
- Reduce page load time by compressing images and reducing redirects
- Consider how much content you want to say on a single webpage; don’t overwhelm users with too many options
- Replace Flash content with HTML5 to reduce latency
- Review any JavaScript files for potential compression
- Eliminate render-blocking CSS
- Use caching services such as Cloudflare
- Leverage server-side technologies such as Apache web servers and Nginx web servers to improve performance and scalability
- Install a Content Delivery Network (CDN) service, like Cloudflare, which has globally distributed nodes to serve content more quickly
- Utilize third-party analytics tools like Google Analytics to understand the needs of your target audience better
- Analyze broken links
- Identify if any scripts are running on pages that aren’t being used
- Create XML sitemaps
- Use schema markup
- Create social media share buttons
- Implement AMP technology
- Add Schema META data
Conclusion:
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the art and science of increasing your website’s search engine rankings to increase the number of visitors you get from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo! While not directly concerned with the content on your site, technical SEO plays an important role in the ability of search engines to properly crawl and index your site. Without good technical SEO practices in place, you run the risk of being penalized by search engines for low-quality content and duplicate or irrelevant links.
MagicByte Solutions work-round the clock to get the client’s brand recognized on a global front. We channelize the digital efforts of brands to boost relevant traffic and to increase the visibility of the business on top search engines like Google and Bing. Our spectrum of digital marketing services helps the company to reach the right hands and new heights.