Redirects
When talking about technical SEO basics, it’s impossible not to mention different types of redirects. In a nutshell, they’re introduced to prevent 404 errors, and situations when users (and search engine robots) aren’t able to access the page.
Moreover, redirects are a great way to ensure that a specific website can be entered using various URL combinations, with or without www, or https.
As you may guess, b>redirects have a significant impact on SEO and website positions in the search results. Thanks to them, you can decrease the bounce rate, keep users on the page for longer and prevent situations when you lose valuable page traffic.
Mobile-Friendliness
More and more people use mobile devices not only to browse the net but also to finalize transactions. This means that if you want to rank high in the SERPs, you have to develop a website that is displayed well on smartphones and tablets.
Otherwise, you’ll deter potential customers and lose valuable page traffic. Focusing on mobile SEO and responsive web design should be an important element of your strategy.
Breadcrumbs
If you want to cover all the technical SEO basics, you should use breadcrumbs to improve your website navigation and help users find their location on your website.
Thanks to breadcrumbs, people visiting your website will be able to easily access specific pages, or find content that is of interest to them.
Apart from UX aspects, breadcrumbs have a positive impact on SEO, as they support proper indexation, by building an effective internal link structure.
Correct Indexing
Are you wondering what is correct website indexing?
It happens when search engine robots access, crawl, analyze, scan, and organize your website content.
Thanks to proper indexing, your page can appear in the search results when users enter a relevant query, which has a positive impact on your website traffic, and visibility.
How to affect website indexing?
As it’s been already mentioned your page should have a sitemap and robots.txt file. Apart from that, you can use available tools such as Google Search Console to detect any potential crawl issues and take action well in advance.
Duplicate Content
Google values websites with quality, unique content.
That’s why it introduced the Panda algorithm in 2011. It penalized pages with internal and external duplicate content, preventing them from reaching top positions in the search results.
So, if you want to improve your rankings, you should get rid of duplicate content. Instead, write unique product or page descriptions, prepare meta descriptions and titles for each page, and forget about using the same texts on various pages within your website or copying descriptions from manufacturers’ sites.
It all has a tremendous impact on SEO.
Crawl Errors
Although there are certain steps you can take to help Google index your website, there is no guarantee the search engine robots will be able to do it effortlessly.
This is why you should use available tools such as Google Search Console to track your website indexing process on an ongoing basis, and fix issues such as 404, 500, or redirect errors.
By keeping your finger on the pulse, you can sleep soundly knowing that Google can easily access all necessary resources on your website.
Canonical URLs
There are no professional technical SEO services without canonical tags. They’re introduced to the <head> section of a website to inform the search engine robots which URL version should be treated as the main one.
Canonicals can be applied in various situations, for example when your website is accessible at both www.yourpage.com, yourpage.com, http://www.yourpage.com, and https://www.yourpage.com.
Why should you use canonicals?
Because if you don’t do it, copies of your page can increase internal duplicate content levels and have a negative impact on the SEO process.
Hreflangs
Hreflangs are one of the most important technical SEO basics for multilingual websites.
What are they?
These tags tell search engine robots that your page has a few language versions and guarantee that users from specific countries access the right content.
They have a positive impact on SEO and bounce rate.
Why?
As a user, you probably wouldn’t like to stay long on a website in a foreign language that sounds all Greek to you, would you?
AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a term used to describe an Open Source Framework devised to develop simple mobile website versions that can be loaded immediately.
As it’s been already stated, both users and Google value pages that load fast. Therefore, if you want to rank high in the search results, you should benefit from AMP.
This way, your website will meet the expectations of potential customers, who won’t leave it after getting impatient.
Noindex Tag
When doing technical SEO, you should also remember about smaller elements such as noindex tags.
What are they?
They signalize to Google that it shouldn’t index specific website elements or pages.
In this case, search engine robots are still able to access and crawl these elements, however, they won’t add them to the index. This means that such elements won’t be displayed in the SERPs.
So, if you know that your website has pages with low quality or duplicate content and you don’t want to show them to users, you should apply noindex tags.
Menu Structure
Similarly to URLs and content, menu structure on your page should also be user-friendly.
To reach TOP10, you need to keep your layout and menu transparent, clickable and intuitive.
Remember that moderation is the key to success, but at the same time don’t forget about any important elements that should be easily accessible.
Want to learn more? Check out: Website menu design essentials!
Website Rendering
Website rendering is the last element on our list of technical SEO service basics.
In a nutshell, it’s when Google robots visit your website, analyze its content, and check the code to evaluate the quality of your site and make sure it complies with all the Google ranking factors and standards.
Why should you pay attention to website rendering?
Because pages that can’t be rendered aren’t taken into account by Google robots. This means that they don’t contribute to the ranking.
So, if you want to improve your page traffic and visibility, you should do everything in your power to give Google content that is easy to access and render.
