Technical SEO is a set of techniques that focus on fine-tuning your site’s technical aspects for optimal performance and accessibility. It also ensures that search engine bots can crawl your website content effectively and index your site correctly for better organic rankings.
Some of the effective methods to improve your ranking with technical SEO are:
- Enable HTTPS for your website to ensure security and trust
- Pay special attention to your web host and choose a reliable and fast one
- Optimize your website loading speed by compressing images, reducing file size, deleting unnecessary scripts, etc.
- Make your website mobile-friendly and responsive to different devices and screen sizes
- Implement mobile-first indexing to prioritize the mobile version of your site for ranking
- Confirm that your content is being indexed by using tools like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools
- Pay attention to your sitemap and make sure it is updated and submitted to search engines
- Audit links from your site and remove any broken or low-quality ones
- Use sitelinks to enhance your site’s navigation and visibility on SERPs
- Optimize your existing content for relevant keywords and user intent
- Create new content based on low-competition keywords and long-tail variations
- Structure your content to aim for featured snippets by using snippet bait techniques
- Repurpose your content into different formats like videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.
- Create linkable assets that attract natural backlinks from other authoritative sites
- Use broken link building to find and replace dead links with your own resources
- Target brand new keywords that have low competition but high potential
- Use concept visuals to illustrate complex ideas and concepts in a simple way
These are some of the ways you can improve your website ranking with technical SEO. However, keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring, testing, and improvement. You should also follow the best practices and guidelines of search engines to avoid any penalties or ranking drops.
Technical SEO Audit Tools
There are many tools available for technical SEO audit, but some of the most popular and recommended ones are:
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This is a desktop-based crawler that can scan your website for various technical issues such as broken links, duplicate content, missing tags, redirects, etc. It also allows you to export and visualize the data in various formats. It is best for websites with under 500 URLs, as the free version has a limit of 500 URLs per crawl. The paid version costs £149 per year and offers more features and unlimited crawls.
- Semrush Site Audit: This is a cloud-based tool that can perform a comprehensive site audit and identify over 130 technical and SEO issues such as slow loading pages, HTTPS implementation, internal linking, hreflang attributes, etc. It also provides actionable recommendations and prioritizes the issues based on their severity and impact. It is best for large-scale enterprises that need to monitor multiple domains and projects. The pricing starts from $119.95 per month and offers various other features such as keyword research, competitor analysis, rank tracking, etc.
- Google Search Console: This is a free tool from Google that can help you monitor and optimize your website’s performance on Google search. It can help you check your site’s index status, crawl errors, mobile usability, security issues, etc. It also provides insights into your site’s traffic, impressions, clicks, rankings, etc. It is best for in-depth index analysis and understanding how Google views your site. You just need to verify your site ownership to use this tool.
- Ahrefs Site Audit: This is another cloud-based tool that can crawl your website and check for over 100 technical and SEO issues such as broken links, duplicate content, orphan pages, canonical errors, etc. It also provides data on your site’s health score, performance score, crawl depth, etc. It is best for website content auditing and finding content-related issues that affect your SEO. The pricing starts from $99 per month and offers various other features such as backlink analysis, keyword research, rank tracking, etc.
- Sitechecker: This is a simple and user-friendly tool that can perform a quick site audit and provide a score based on various parameters such as meta tags, headings, images, links, usability, speed, etc. It also provides tips and guides on how to fix the issues and improve your score. It is best for entry-level business owners and in-house marketers who need a basic overview of their site’s technical SEO. The pricing starts from $29 per month and offers various other features such as rank tracking, backlink monitoring, website monitoring, etc.
- Lumar: This is a customizable tool that can create tailored reports based on your specific needs and goals. It can analyze your website for various technical SEO aspects such as site structure, page speed, mobile-friendliness, accessibility, security, etc. It also provides recommendations and benchmarks to help you improve your site’s performance. It is best for customized reporting and presenting your findings to clients or stakeholders. The pricing starts from $49 per month and offers various other features such as keyword research, competitor analysis, content optimization, etc.
These are some of the best tools for technical SEO audit that you can use to improve your website ranking with technical SEO. However, you should also keep in mind that different tools may have different methods and metrics to measure and report the issues. Therefore, you should always cross-check the results with other sources and use your own judgment to decide which issues are more important and urgent to fix.