Your website must be search engine optimised if you want it to stand out and draw in more visitors! While content and keywords are essential components of SEO, your website’s technical elements can greatly impact how highly it ranks in search results.
Before we expand on ways to improve your technical SEO, let’s explore what technical SEO entails.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to optimising a website to help search engines crawl and index it more effectively. It concentrates on enhancing a website’s technical features, including speed, security, and structure, in order to improve both search engine ranking and user experience overall.
By addressing technical SEO issues, you ensure that search engines can easily access, understand, and rank your content, ultimately enhancing your site’s visibility and user experience. A well-optimised website will meet the technical requirements of modern search engines.
5 Tips to Improve Your Technical SEO
Here are our top 5 ways to improve your technical SEO:
1. Optimise Website Speed
As website speed has a significant impact on user experience, Google takes it into account when ranking websites. A fast-loading website signals to Google that it is reliable and keeps users engaged. Therefore, it is ranked higher in organic search results. This makes it essential to ensure your website pages load quickly.
Ways to Improve Page Speed:
- Compress Images: Images take the longest to load since they are typically the biggest item on a page. Keep each image under 100 KB to speed up loading.You can do this through image compressors such as Image Resizer. Also, changing your image format to JPEG is helpful as they are designed to efficiently store high-quality detailed photos while compressing large images into much smaller file sizes.
- Repair Broken Links: Use tools such as Semrush and Screaming Frog to find and fix any broken links. This is important as broken links can interfere with users’ ability to browse, signal poor site maintenance and reduce your site’s authority. All of these factors greatly impact a website’s rankings.
- Use a Better Host: The hosting of your website establishes the speed at which information is sent from the server to the user. Specifically, a hosting plan’s bandwidth determines the data transfer rate between your website and its visitors and its scalability refers to how well it can handle increased traffic without compromising performance. Choose hosts with a higher bandwidth and one that allows for scalability.
2. Clarify Titles
Titles and headings form the structure of your webpage. They are mainly discussed concerning user experience as an organised website is much more easily understood. However, site architecture is a key element of technical SEO too. There are many ways to keep your site architecture clear for Google and its users.
For instance, make sure to only include one main H1 which should consist of your title. If you include multiple H1s on a page, Google will become confused when trying to figure out which is the overall title of your page. This can lead to Google struggling to rank your website.
Differentiating your H1 and your title tag is also vital and often overlooked. Google doesn’t like it if the H1 is the same as the title tag since your title may then appear over-optimised. You should use the same keyword that you want to rank for within both, but you can differentiate the two by including your company name in the title tag.
Furthermore, it is important that you do not have multiple web pages with the same title or meta description. This is because duplicate titles make it difficult for search engines to determine which of a website’s pages is relevant for a specific search query, and which one should be prioritised in search results. Duplicate title pages have a lower chance of ranking well and are at risk of being banned. Moreover, identical title tags confuse users as to which web page they should follow.
3. Descriptive Anchor Text
Internal and external links within your content are incredibly helpful for SEO as they ensure your pages are indexed and ranked faster, as well as providing increased trustworthiness and authoritativeness to your website. However, there is an aspect of linking to watch out for.
The anchor text that you choose for your link is a key aspect of technical SEO. This refers to the visible, clickable text of a link, You can either include a non-descriptive anchor text such as linking “click here” or a descriptive anchor text such as linking “contact us”. Non-descriptive anchor text is vague and not very useful to Google or to users. Contrastingly, descriptive anchor text gives users and Google a better idea of where the link will take them and adds value to the content.
Ensure that your anchor text encompasses what the link entails such as including “blog on technical SEO” when the anchor text will take users to that blog rather than simply placing “blog” as the anchor text.
If you’re struggling with technical SEO or any part of your SEO strategy, feel free to contact us for a free audit and we will do our best to help!
4. Create an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file that tells Google which URLs on your website should be indexed. It acts as a roadmap helping search engines understand the structure of your website and find all your important pages. Ultimately, the easier it is for Google to find, crawl and index your website the more visible it will become, driving more organic traffic.
Below are 3 easy steps you should take to create your sitemap:
- Generate the Sitemap: Use tools like Yoast SEO to generate your sitemap.
- Include Important URLs: Ensure that all significant pages are included in your sitemap, but avoid adding low-quality or duplicate pages.
- Submit to Search Engines: Submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console to help search engines discover your content faster.
Remember to regularly update your sitemap to reflect any changes or additions to your website.
5. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
Since 62% of online traffic comes from mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly site is non-negotiable. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking.
Many of the points mentioned above apply to mobile optimisation such as ensuring that your website has a fast page loading speed. As well as this, focus on optimising your layout. Aim for large fonts, well-spaced paragraphs, and easily pressable features. Ensure the page-to-page navigation is easy to use, brief, and clear.
How Lumen SEO Can Help
We at Lumen SEO can take care of your whole SEO strategy, including keyword research, link building, content writing and technical SEO. You can learn more about what an SEO agency, like ours does, here.
If you like the sound of working with us, we offer free, no-obligation SEO audits on business websites. To claim yours, simply enter your details here and we’ll get a free SEO audit to you within 7 days. It will include the strengths and weaknesses of your website along with the top three aspects you should focus on improving, in order to enhance your business’ ranking.
For a friendly chat about the SEO services we provide here at Lumen SEO, contact our SEO consultants today. Alternatively, you can message us on either our LinkedIn or Instagram pages.
Written by Viktoria, for Lumen SEO.
