Did you know Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been a rising demand for small and big businesses around the globe?
Not only can it help with brand awareness, but the level of search intent also determines how likely a searcher would transact with a business.
As the costs of many digital advertising platforms increase, SEO still has the highest ROI out of all options. Due to this, a business owner must be properly trained on all aspects of SEO, including Technical SEO.
If you find it difficult to optimize your website, fret not! Here are the 5 best ways to improve your Technical SEO.
1. Perfect Your SEO-Friendly URL Structure
TheURL structure is one important aspect in optimizing your website properly. Not just your website visitors, Google’s bots are also able to see your URL structure and determine if it passes their SEO guidelines.
Ensure that you include keywords in your URL For a generic example: if your page is all about selling women boots, be specific. Your URL should be example.com/women-boots.
This helps visitors and Google to understand what the page is about. If your keyword has variations or spellings, check with your favorite SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to see which variation has more search volume.
It’s also worth the effort to build a good structure as you start optimizing for more keywords. For example, if your website has a product that sits on a deeper page category, ensure the URL structure reflects the structure.
Here’s a generic example:
https://example.com/women/footwear/boots
https://example.com/boots
The one with footwear example is better for users and SEO.
2. Know the HTTP Status Codes
While doing an SEO audit, you may come across HTTP status codes on your website like 1xx to 5xx codes. If you’re confused, don’t be! Here’s a quick cheat sheet:
- 1xx codes are informational codes, usually has no significant effect on SEO
- 2xx codes are success codes. Only for the server-side which visitors will never see this code
- 3xx codes are redirection codes. Can be temporary or permanent redirects
- 4xx codes are client error status codes that tell something is not loading at all. Should be the first thing to check.
- 5xx codes are server error status codes. Need to check with your server-side.
3. Fix Your 404 Errors
While browsing the web, you should have seen pages with certain 404 error pages. These pages usually show an error without any relevant content that you expected.
But have you seen a soft 404 error before? A soft 404 error is when Google places a label on a page in their index. Sometimes, the web servers are not configured properly and the missing page shows a 200 ok status instead of a 404 error. This is a waste of resources for Google’s bots and should be rectified as soon as possible.
To find missing pages on your website, there are few ways. You may use Google Search Console to check the error URLs and Google Analytics to see the page title that shows 404 error. You can also use the operator search command to see if the page is indexed properly (site:example.com/xxxxx).
To fix these 404 errors, you consider consolidating pages with thin or duplicate content. You may merge pages that you think are similar and thin into one single page.
You can also find more technical issues using crawl tools such as ScreamingFrog to see a summary of duplicate issues and fix them.
A good website would likely have excellent website navigation or internal link architecture. In addition to sitemaps, search engines also use your website navigation to find and index new pages.
It is worth noting that product pages should link back to your content pages such as FAQs, product manuals, and blog.
If you maintain good website navigation for search engines and users, you will see an improvement in your rankings soon.
5. Optimize Page Speed
Page speed has usually been neglected by many business websites and even SEO professionals. With Google’s emphasis on the latest Core Web Vital, it’s essential to consider improving your page speed as much as you can.
To start, use Google insights or Lighthouse to check your page speed. You may also use GTMetrix to see a detailed breakdown of how your page loads.
Once done, you’ll start to see many issues and opportunities that you can work on immediately. A good load speed would be below 2 to 3 seconds.
Here are some common fixes to improve your page speed:
- Ensure you are using CDN to improve your files’ loading speed. Cloudflare offers a free CDN for your website, it’s easy to set up as well.
- If you’re using WordPress, you can download Short Pixel to optimize and compress your images. You can also use TinyPNG to bulk compress your files.
- Install Autoptimize (WordPress plugin) to optimize JavaScript and CSS.
- Be sure to get a high-quality server hosting such as SiteGround. Some hosting platforms provide Gzip compression and free SSL which are important in improving your page speed.
- Use lightweight theme such as Astra Theme to avoid over-bloating your website
If you’re new to all these and don’t mind spending some bucks, simply install WP rocket to quickly fix all of the problems I just mentioned with just a click.
Leave the work to an SEO Agency
Conquering Technical SEO is just one piece of the puzzle. Many optimization opportunities need a great deal of knowledge to execute. If you’re not experienced in this field, you may risk messing up your website and even being penalized by Google.
Fortunately, Miron Digital is a data-driven digital marketing agency that has years of experience in driving profitable traffic. If you are looking for outsourced SEO services, be sure to check them out.
