What is Technical SEO

Brief History Of Technical SEO

As the internet evolved in the last 2-3 decades, Google updated its search algorithms to deliver the best content and the highest performing websites to search engine users on all devices.

Historically, Google had focused mostly on on-page & off-page SEO factors only and less on Technical aspects of a website. What this meant was that when a search query is performed, Google’s algorithms checked the quality of the content and if the website was authoritative and trusted or not.

Technical SEO is intended to make it easy for Google to technically check/process a website – this includes crawl, render & index a site – and then signal the quality of a website’s performance. As user’s expectations rise, its becoming increasingly tougher for Google to show the best website to the user.

The 4 stages of Search

Many different processes are involved in bringing the content into the search results when a user puts in a search query.

There are primarily 4 stages of search and each of these also has a sub-process that can occur within them. Quiet simply, these are the step’s in Google’s process for discovering websites across the world wide web

1) Crawling: This refers to the process that search engines use to discover and index new and updated pages on the internet. When a search engine crawls a website, it sends out a team of automated robots, also known as “spiders,” to follow links on the site and retrieve the content of those pages. The search engine then process the content of the pages, extracting relevant information and adding it to its index. This process allows search engines to keep their results up-to-date and relevant to users’ queries.

2) Indexing: This refers to the process that search engines use to store and organize the content they crawl in their databases. When a search engine crawls a website and discovers new or updated pages, it processes the content of those pages and adds them to its index. The index is a massive database that contains the content of billions of web pages and is used to power search results.

3) Rendering: This refers to the process by which a web browser converts the raw HTML code of a web page into a visual display that can be viewed by users. When a user visits a website, their web browser sends a request to the web server to retrieve the HTML code for the page. The web server then sends back the HTML code, which the browser then processes and renders into a visual representation of the page.

4) Ranking: This refers to the process by which search engines determine the relevance and quality of web pages and assign them a position in the search results. When a user performs a search, the search engine retrieves a list of relevant pages from its index and ranks them based on a variety of factors, including the relevance of the page to the search query, the quality of the content on the page, the user experience provided by the page, and the credibility and authority of the website.

The better you understand these 4 stages of Search, the more you can refine your Technical SEO strategy to meet the needs of the search engines and users. This will result in a better chance of your website ranking on top of SERP’s.

Technical SEO Factors

1. XML Sitemaps: An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on a website, making it easier for search engines to discover and index them.
2. HTML Sitemap: is a web page that lists all the pages on a website in a hierarchical structure. HTML sitemaps are typically designed for users, rather than search engines, and are meant to help users navigate the website and find the content they are looking for.
3. Structured data or Schema Mark-Up: This is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. It is used to help search engines understand the content on a webpage and to display that content in a more useful and visually appealing way in the search results.
4. Site Architecture: The organization and structure of a website’s pages and content can impact how easily search engines can crawl and index the site
5. robots.txt: This is a text file that is used to instruct web robots (also known as “spiders” or “crawlers”) how to crawl a website. The file is placed in the root directory of a website and is used to prevent search engines from accessing certain pages or files on the site.
6. Page Load Time: This is a factor that can impact both the user experience and search engine rankings. Faster-loading pages tend to rank higher in the search results.
7. Mobile Friendliness: With the increasing number of users accessing the internet from mobile devices, it’s important for websites to be mobile-friendly. This means that the site should be easy to use and navigate on a smartphone or tablet.
8. No Index Tags: A “noindex” tag is an HTML tag that can be added to a web page to tell search engines not to index the page.
9. Canonical URL: This is a HTML link element with the attribute rel=”canonical” that is used to indicate the preferred version of a web page. The canonical URL is used to help search engines understand which version of a page to index when there are multiple pages with similar or identical content.
10. Optimization of JS & CSS: This is the practice of minimizing and optimizing the use of these technologies on a website in order to improve its performance and loading speed.
11. Add SSL Certification: Websites that use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) are considered more secure and may rank higher in the search results.
12. Website Speed: Its important that you optimize your images , videos, have a good hosting/server so that the site of the speed is optimal
13. Proper Redirects (404, 301, 302): This refers to the use of HTTP redirects to send users and search engines to the correct web page when a URL has changed or the content has been moved