Technical SEO Checklist FOR BEGINNERS | These 7 Things Can REALLY Help Your Website

You know how when you watch a movie, it looks super clean and polished, but then you see
a behind-the-scenes video and realize that everything is cameras and greenscreens and
cable rigging?
Well, okay, this video setup seems a lot less complex when you compare it to a multi-million-dollar
movie set.
But anyway…
Your website is kinda the same way.
There’s the nice and clean front end that people see when they visit, but then there’s
all the stuff that goes on in the back end.
That includes the work you do for search engine optimization, or SEO.
And even more specifically, technical SEO.
If you’re wondering what technical SEO is, you’ve come to the right place.
In this video, we’re gonna define technical SEO and talk about some ways to improve it.
What is technical SEO?
Let’s start by giving technical SEO a definition.
Technical SEO is a type of website optimization that aims to improve things mostly on the
back end of your site.
Basically, it makes it easier for both people and crawlers to find and use your site, which
helps it rank better in search results.
Of course, technical SEO can be difficult to master sometimes, which is why you can
likely use the help of a professional agency.
Now that we’ve explained what technical SEO is, let’s talk about how to get it going
on your site.
Without further ado, here are seven things you can do to improve your technical SEO!
Use HTTPS It gives your site a base layer of protection
against bad actors.
Google really likes HTTPS sites, so by taking this simple step, you’ll be able to give
your rankings a big boost.
Plus, it’s a good idea to do it anyway since it helps protect the information people enter
into your site — like their emails or credit card details.
2. Make a robots.txt file The next thing you’ll want to do is create
a robots.txt file.
A robots.txt file basically tells search engine crawlers where they’re allowed on your website.
A big goal is to tell the crawlers which pages they shouldn’t crawl.
You don’t want them crawling landing pages or other pages not meant for public view.
Without a robots.txt file, you could end up having crawlers overwhelm your website server,
and that would really slow it down.
You can usually see a website’s robots.txt file by just typing in the site URL and then
adding “/robots.txt” to the end of it.
Create an XML sitemap As you’d probably expect from the name,
an XML sitemap is a map of your website.
If you think of your website like a digital building, your XML sitemap is the blueprint.
Crawlers can reference your XML sitemap to more easily find their way around your website
and see how different pages relate to one another.
Bear in mind that this doesn’t replace the need for a good internal linking structure.
You should still use internal links to connect different pages to one another across your
site.
That way, search engine crawlers can go from one page to another, ensuring everything you
work so hard on is indexed for the search results.
Optimize your website’s navigation Another way you can help people find their
way around your website is to design a good navigation setup.
You know when you visit a website and there’s that navigation bar running across the top
of the page?
You want your site to have something like that, too.
And it should be easy to follow.
A navigation bar helps users quickly and easily find what they’re looking for.
That said, you can have a drop-down menu where each tab expands to show some of the pages
included in that section of your website.
You can also use breadcrumb navigation, which is where on every page, you show users exactly
where that page is located on the site and give them options to follow a little trail
back the way they came.
It usually looks something like this: [webfx-breadcrumb-navigation.png]
When you make it easier for people to navigate your site, they’re more likely to stay on
your site longer, which will cause it to rank higher in search results.
5. Make your website mobile-friendly “Kids these days are always on their dang
phones.”
Except, it’s not just the kids — everyone now is relying on their phones for Internet
searches.
More than 50% of all Internet traffic comes from mobile devices.
In fact, mobile searches are so popular now that Google uses a mobile-first index, meaning
it prioritizes the mobile versions of websites.
If your site doesn’t have a mobile-friendly version, you’re not gonna rank very high.
To fix that, you can use responsive design on your website, which restructures the page
to fit whatever screen someone views it on.
That way it will work equally well on phones, tablets, and computers.
You’ll make your site visitors happier, plus you’ll rank better in searches than
people who haven’t adapted to mobile yet.
Improve your page speed Picture this: You visit a website, and it
takes a second to load.
Wait — still loading.
Hang on a second…
nope, still loading.
You’ve already hit the “back” button, haven’t you?
Yeah… you’re not alone.
No one likes slow-loading pages.
That includes the people who visit your website.
You can compress large images so they don’t slow down your pages.
You can remove unnecessary code from your back end.
You can also limit redirects on your site.
Get rid of duplicate content One thing you definitely don’t want on your
website is duplicate content.
That’s where you have two or more pieces of content that are super similar, — like
a tool that generates different words, and each result has its own URL.
Even if they’re not identical, two pages can still count as duplicate content.
The reason this is a problem is that when Google runs into two pages that seem to be
the same, it has a hard time figuring out which one should rank in search results.
So, what often ends up happening is that neither of them rank as high as they should.
Even having two pages with similar but not identical content can be considered “duplicate”,
so keep an eye out.
You can use tools like Screaming Frog to help you find duplicate content on your site, and
then you can revise that content to make it more distinct.
Well, that’s it for this video.
Now you have the info you need to help rocket your site up in search results.
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But that’s all for now.
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see ya next time!