Technical<\/em> SEO<\/a> is a critical subset that addresses a website’s structure so that search engine bots can efficiently crawl and index its pages. Unlike other strategies that concentrate on content and link building, technical SEO involves behind-the-scenes work.<\/p>\n Google launched Core Web Vitals<\/a> (CWVs) in 2020 to help developers and website owners understand how it thinks about user experience. CWVs are evolving<\/em> standards for page speed, interactivity, and visual stability. Until March 2024, the CWVs included three metrics:<\/p>\n Google announced<\/a> last year that it would replace First Input Delay with Interaction to Next Paint in March 2024. Google Search Console reports CWVs, and site owners should use them as the gold standard for website performance. CWVs directly impact how Google ranks websites.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n Core Web Vitals helps developers and owners understand how Google thinks about user experience.<\/p><\/div>\n —<\/p>\n Smartphones are the dominant internet device worldwide. Hence in 2015, Google released a “mobile-friendly” update to show in search results more web pages that look and function well on mobile devices. A year later, in 2016, Google started crawling and indexing mobile-first.<\/p>\n A website should meet or exceed Google’s CWVs thresholds on a mobile device. Doing so will clear a significant ranking hurdle.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Structured data helps search engines understand and classify a web page. It also assists with voice and AI-generated search. Structured data markup can take three forms: JSN-LD, RDFa, and microdata. Schema.org<\/a> is a helpful resource.<\/p>\n Structured data markup on an ecommerce product page can identify the item’s price, image, availability, shipping options, and return information, enabling Google<\/a> and other search engines to provide relatively better and more visual results.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Here is a tip for websites with thousands of pages: Use a robots.txt file to manage the crawl budget. Google and other search engines balance indexing web pages quickly without overwhelming their (the search engines’) servers. “Crawl budget” describes the number of pages Googlebot will access on a site in a given time frame.<\/p>\n The robots.txt file tells the search bot which pages it should focus on. Thus, you can help the bot avoid duplicate content, resources like files or images, and similar issues. There is no guarantee the bot will crawl only what you want, but it can help.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Every website, large and small, should have a sitemap<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sitemaps provide search engines with a list of all indexable pages, making it easier to find and crawl and likely speed up indexing. An owner can publish sitemaps specifically for pages, images, videos,<\/a> and even news in some cases.<\/p>\n Most content management systems or related extensions will automatically generate well-formed sitemaps, but they must still be submitted to search engines. With Google, this is done in the Search Console<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n Sitemaps provide search engines with a list of all indexable pages.<\/p><\/div>\n —<\/p>\n Google Search Console is not just for Core Web Vitals and sitemaps. It’s an excellent tool for confirming a site’s pages are indexed. Common problems preventing indexing include:<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Broken links on a website provide a poor user experience and can negatively impact a site’s organic search rankings. Regular website audits can find and fix or replace broken links, ensuring both search engines and users can access content without issues. Search Console<\/a> can help, as can specialized broken link checkers in Ahrefs, Semrush, and others.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n In the SEO context, “zombies” refer to web pages that exist on a site but add little to no value. Zombie pages might be outdated, have duplicate content, or no longer align with the site’s goals. The pages can negatively impact SEO by diluting the site’s authority and wasting crawl budget \u2014 especially for sites with thousands of pages.<\/p>\n Identifying and dealing with these pages \u2014 either updating or removing them \u2014 is crucial for maintaining a healthy, SEO-friendly website.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Search engines prefer secure websites and may rank a secure site above a non-secure one when all other ranking factors are equal. The reason is simple. Search engines want to protect users.<\/p>\n “HTTPS helps prevent intruders from tampering with the communications between your websites and users’ browsers. Intruders include intentionally malicious attackers and legitimate but intrusive companies, such as ISPs or hotels that inject ads into pages,” wrote Kayce Basques<\/a> of Google’s Chrome Dev Team.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n HTTPS helps prevent tampering with the communications between websites and users’ browsers.<\/p><\/div>\n —<\/p>\n Your site’s URLs should be keyword-rich, unique, and brief. The path should also be easy for a person to read, accessible to users with disabilities<\/a>, and free of clutter. A URL consists of three parts: the domain, the sub-domain, and the slug.<\/p>\n https:\/\/subdomain.domain.tld\/slug<\/em><\/p>\n The domain is the name of the site. It can be helpful to have a keyword in the domain name. The subdomain is still part of your site, but Google and other search engines may treat a subdomain as a separate entity when considering site authority. So be careful how you use subdomains.<\/p>\n The slug is the part of the URL that describes the particular page in view. It may include the year, category, or similar, but it should also describe the specific page in view. The slug for this article, for example, is checklist.<\/em><\/p>\n Separate words in the slug with hyphens, remove articles and propositions such as “the” and “of,” and avoid using a keyword more than once. Google hates keyword stuffing.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Optimizing images offers at least three benefits for technical SEO.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Search engines such as Google treat inbound links as a measure of authority. Links are important for top rankings, but obtaining links<\/a> can be a lot of work.<\/p>\n Recently, a family member self-published a book on Amazon. She shared the link with everyone in the family. I bought the book, becoming her first customer. Marketers can do the same thing with links. New online shops can ask suppliers, top customers, and agencies to mention the business in a blog post or article and link to the site. Just be sure that the friend you ask has a clean and respected domain.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Help a Reporter Out (HARO)<\/a> connects journalists with sources for their stories. By responding to journalists’ queries, individuals and companies can get their names and expertise featured in articles and publications.<\/p>\n This exposure often includes a backlink to the source’s website. It’s a good way to get quality, authoritative backlinks from reputable news sites or industry blogs. These links can significantly boost a site’s visibility and search engine rankings.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n Cision-owned HARO connects journalists with sources for their stories.<\/p><\/div>\n —<\/p>\n A broken link points to a page that is no longer available. Sites should avoid them. Use tools such as the W3C’s Link Checker<\/a>, Dead Link Checker<\/a>, PowerMapper’s SortSite<\/a>, Ahrefs<\/a>, or Semrush<\/a> to create a list of sites with broken links. Next, create content that genuinely replaces the no-longer-available content. Then contact each publisher. Point out the broken link and ask her to consider your new and fresh content as a replacement.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Blogging and email newsletter writing are experiencing a renaissance thanks to growth in the creator economy. And every one of those creators needs something to write about. As a link-building strategy, identify top bloggers and newsletter creators in your company’s industry. Reach out to them, offering resources and topic ideas.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Positive mentions of your business on other websites or social media raise visibility and otherwise send shoppers your way. Those mentions can also be an SEO link-building opportunity. Try to find unlinked mentions using a search engine or a monitoring service such as Mention<\/a>, Ahrefs Alert<\/a>, or Awario<\/a>. Then contact the site owner with those mentions, thank him, and ask for a link.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n This is a longstanding and still effective technique. In a video (below) describing how to get the first few links for a site, Rand Fishkin \u2014 founder of Moz, SparkToro, and SnackBar Studios \u2014 explains how to search Google for the name of your business or the name of its founders to identify sites you might influence, to obtain a direct link.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/p>\n1. Improve Core Web Vitals<\/h4>\n
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2. Focus on mobile<\/h4>\n
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3. Include structured data markup<\/h4>\n
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4. Build a robots.txt file<\/h4>\n
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5. Publish a sitemap<\/h4>\n
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6. Confirm indexing<\/h4>\n
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7. Replace or update broken links<\/h4>\n
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8. Remove or resurrect zombie pages<\/h4>\n
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9. Use HTTPS<\/h4>\n
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10. Produce clean, accessible URLs<\/h4>\n
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11. Optimize images<\/h4>\n
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Link Building Strategies<\/h3>\n
12. Ask colleagues for a link<\/h4>\n
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13. Help out a reporter<\/h4>\n
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14. Create broken link alternatives<\/h4>\n
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15. Help out a blogger<\/h4>\n
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16. Unlinked mentions<\/h4>\n
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17. Link from sites you control or influence<\/h4>\n