Over 69% of digital experiences begin with a search engine! Most simply put, Search Engine Marketing is used to increase the visibility of websites in search engine results. Battle-proofing your technical SEO is the safest armour you can don on to optimize your rankings. Technical SEO covers all the technical requirements that a website needs to stay optimized for modern search engines.
Technical SEO includes components such as rendering, crawling, indexing, and website architecture. At UrsDigitally, one of the leading SEO Service Providers in India, we know how much first impressions matter. That is why every aspect of your technical SEO, from ideal URLs to site structure needs to be perfectly arranged to ace search engine rankings.
This 9-step master guide is here to help you fortify your technical SEO checklist:
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Cut down on Dynamic URL strings
Static URLs for the win! One of the key steps of strengthening your SEO is to use static URLs instead of dynamic ones. Static URLs contain the targeted keywords and are more user-friendly by default.
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Creating XML sitemaps for Search Engines
An XML sitemap is a list of your site’s URLs that can help search engines find your site’s pages more easily. This sitemaps also help in helping search engines choose canonical URLs on your site.
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Avoid superfluous words and characters in your URL
Using superfluous conjunctions and prepositions in your URL is a big no-no. Avoid any superfluity within your URL that can steal focus off the main point. Even repetition of keywords should be avoided.
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Use Mobile-first Indexing
With the Mobile revolution on the rise, you need to ensure that your site is fully responsive and mobile optimized. Search consoles can be used to beta-test the desktop and mobile versions of your website.
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Enable HTTPs for your website
Onboarding the HTTPs bandwagon is a crucial step in ensuring that viewers trust your website. The lock pad on your address bar reassures the viewer and provides the much-needed sense of security.
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Regularly safe check links on your site
If you want your website to fare well in Search Engine Marketing, the key step is to remove broken or dead links from your site. Ensure that your internal links are functional and redirection links are taking you to the right pages.
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Use Webmaster Tools such as Google Search Console
Search consoles help in chalking out the status of your websites. From mobile usability issues to website traffic, search consoles monitor everything to help you analyze and fix the issues.
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Optimize your Robots.txt
Want to know how the robots.txt text file is important? It is the one that directs and gives instructions to websites as to which pages of your websites to crawl and add to the index. You need to minimize the chance of false blockings that might affect your Search Engine Marketing results.
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Optimizing the Navigation and Website structure
Last but not the least, while optimizing your URL structure and link audits, you can not ignore the importance of a congruous website structure. Google ranks your website based on its structure and ease of navigation. You need to take that into account while evaluating website functionality.
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Minimize site-loading time as much as possible
It is hardly news that site-loading speed is one of the top lookouts for your Google rankings. But did you know that over 40% of users abandoned a site after it took too long to load? When users click on the ‘back’ button, your site’s bounce rate increases dramatically. From optimizing rich files to using CDN, no stone should be left unturned in order to maximize your site loading speed.
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Be creative with Microformats
Different websites have different functionalities. Whether events, products, or review snippets are being showcased – you need to use appropriate mark-ups consistently throughout your website. Using microformats such as hCard, hReview, hProduct, hCalender, etc. have immense SEO benefits.
Even apart from these major points in the checklist, SEO Service Providers also need to be mindful of practices like adding breadcrumb menus, structuring data, pagination, etc to stay on top of the technical SEO game.
Even the best content may go unnoticed until you take care of the SEO concerns of your website first. When increased visibility is the prize cake, be ready to take it away with this SEO master guide!
