9 Must-Know Importance Of Technical SEO Practices for 2024

Discover the Importance of Technical SEO practices for 2024. Improve your website’s performance, boost rankings, and stay ahead in the digital race.

Establishing a Solid Website Structure

Imagine this. Someone types in a question in the search engine and you have the perfect answer to it. But if your site isn’t technically sound, search engines might miss it entirely.

Importance of Technical SEO is about becoming fluent in the language of the search engine so that they can easily understand your website and deliver your content to those searching for your expertise.

1. Good Website Structure

One of the ways search engines discover, crawl, and index pages is through visiting links.

If you have created a new page on your site and other pages on your site that were already indexed are linking to the new page, there is a high chance that the search engines will quickly find, crawl, and index that new page.

If you have any pages that do not have any links pointing to them, in other words, orphan pages, then it is a good idea to add links to them.

Having no orphan posts or pages is part of a good website structure. You also need to have a proper hierarchy for your overall content structure.

There are many different hierarchies and organizational structures for a website, such as the silo structure, the hub and spoke model, the content library model, the topic gateway model, the content database model, and the glossary model.

There is no right or wrong way to structure your site, but you should choose one or a combination of the models to make it easier for your site visitors to navigate through your site.

To delve deeper and learn more about Website Architecture for SEO, explore the available resources!

To create a free website from scratch, check out these resources.

2. Site Navigation

A well-designed navigation menu is crucial for helping visitors interact and navigate your site effectively. This includes having a user-friendly desktop menu, a mobile-friendly hamburger menu, and a footer menu with important pages and legal information.

One important aspect of site navigation is having a search function on your 404 pages. This can greatly improve the user experience and the site’s overall quality.

Ensuring Indexability and Crawlability

Indexability and crawling are essential in determining how search engines navigate and index pages of your site. The first step is to check your Google Search Console for any indexing issues.

3. Indexability and Crawlability

When identifying and fixing indexing issues, you should ask yourself questions like: Has Google caught the page? Is something blocking it on the robots.txt file? Is there a noindex meta tag on the page? Is the page marked as a duplicate using the canonical URL?

Once you have identified and fixed the crawling and indexing issues, always go back to Google Search Console, select the Resolved Issue, and Request for Indexing again. You can also use Rank Math’s Instant Indexing plugin to submit the page for Instant Indexing.

Understanding the importance of Technical SEO is vital for beginners in the blogging or design field. The Rank Math Plugin can be particularly beneficial for novices.

4. Find & Remove Duplicate Content

Search engines do not like duplicated content. To identify duplicate content, you can use a tool like Siteliner.com. If you find pages with more than 20% match, you should consider adding a canonical URL or 301 redirecting the poor-quality page to the better-quality page.

Leveraging XML Sitemaps and Structured Data

Regardless of what some SEO say, you should always have an XML sitemap and submit it to the search engines. Xml sitemap is a file that serves a crucial navigational guide for search engines as it provides a list of all the available URLs of a site, including the date of the last modification.

5. XML Sitemaps

If you use Rank Math on your site, an XML sitemap is automatically created for you. Rank Math automatically submits your website to Google Search Console as soon as you have connected with it.

6. Structured Data

With AI’s growing role and influence in search, it is crucial to make it easy for search engines to consume and understand your content.

And that’s where structured data or in other words, schema markups come into play. Rank Math has made it super easy for you to implement the right schema markups for your pages.

Optimizing for Mobile and Page Speed

According to Statista, mobile internet traffic accounts for almost 60% of total web traffic. Not only that, Google prioritizes the mobile version of a page for indexing as well, so neglecting mobile optimization for your site is not an option.

7. Mobile Optimization

You can use browser developer tools or the Bing Mobile Friendliness Tool to check if your pages are mobile-friendly. If not, you should optimize elements like links, buttons, and layout to ensure a seamless mobile experience.

8. Page Speed Optimization

Page speed optimization is another piece of the puzzle for technical SEO because Google uses page speed as a ranking factor in its algorithm. You should focus on optimizing for the core web vitals, such as largest contentful paint, interaction to next paint, and cumulative layout shift.

Using a plugin like WP Rocket can help you solve many of the page speed optimization issues identified by Google PageSpeed Insights.

Ensuring Website Security

In the era of data breaches and cyber attacks, ensuring that your site is secure is super important. One of the most essential site security is to have your site on the HTTPS instead of the HTTP.

SEO Optimized Titles and Keywords

9. Website Security

Rank Math’s SEO Analyzer tool can help you identify security risks, such as publicly visible plugins or themes, and provide recommendations to secure your WordPress website.

I hope with this, you will have a clear understanding of what technical SEO is and how you can optimize your site for better rankings. If you found this helpful, please leave a comment in the comment section about what you would like to know in the next blog topic.

FAQ

• Do I need a paid plugin to improve my technical SEO?

While some SEO plugins offer advanced features, many technical SEO optimizations can be done for free. Use Google Search Console to identify indexing issues and mobile-friendliness tests to check your site’s responsiveness. There are also free tools like Siteliner to find duplicate content.

• What if my website content is spread across different subdomains?

Search engines might treat subdomains as separate websites. If your content is naturally categorized, consider consolidating subdomains under a main domain for better crawlability and ranking potential.

• I updated a page on my website, how do I tell search engines to re-index it?

After fixing technical SEO issues on a page, resubmit it for indexing through Google Search Console. Some SEO plugins may also offer instant indexing features.

• How often should I be checking for technical SEO problems?

It’s a good practice to regularly monitor your technical SEO health. Use Google Search Console to stay updated on any indexing errors and consider using a free SEO audit tool periodically to identify areas for improvement.

Wrapping Up

Implementing these technical SEO best practices establishes a solid foundation for search engines to efficiently comprehend and present your website’s content. This can result in better search rankings, more organic traffic, and ultimately, an enhanced user experience for your visitors. Keep in mind that technical SEO is a continuous process; remain attentive and update your website as necessary to maintain its optimal performance.