There are N number of components of technical SEO, but there are some important elements that you must focus on while performing technical SEO.
It is important to know what technical issue your website is having. You can use tools like Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahref, etc., and perform a site audit to check all the issues related to your website.
Here are some important components of technical SEO you must review:
- Check for indexing and crawling
- Check for mobile usability issues
- Check for core web vitals issues
- Check XML sitemap
- Check for your website security
- Check for your website Robots.txt file
- Check for 4XX and 5XX error pages
- Check for canonical issues
- Check for redirect chain
- Check for structured data
- Check for content plagiarism
- Check for duplicate meta tags
- Check for missing meta tags
- Check for broken links
- Check for toxic links
1. Check for crawling and indexing
You must take action immediately if your website has indexing or crawling issues. You can check the coverage issue in the Google search console, also use the URL inspection tool to check indexing and crawling status.
2. Check for mobile usability issues
Your website must be mobile-friendly, one of the important components to improve technical SEO and also for search engine ranking.
You can check mobile usability by using a Google tool: Mobile-Friendly Test
3. Check for core web vitals issues
Core web vitals is another key ranking factor. It tells about 3 important measurements: Loading time, page interactivity, and visual stability. Overall it focuses on website speed.
You can check for core web vitals issues in several tools: Google Search Console and Google PageSpeed Insights.
4. Check XML sitemap
An XML sitemap serves URLs of the website to the crawler and search engine spider. Also, help your web pages get indexed and crawl on a regular basis.
You can check your XML Sitemap for issues at these tools: Google Search Console and XML Sitemap Validator.
5. Check for your website security
In today’s internet world, security is the most important thing your website must have. Also, Google gives priority to secure websites in SERP.
You must check for your website security issues and fix them as soon as possible to avoid attacks on your website. Tools to check security issues: Google Search Console and SUCURI.
6. Check for your website Robots.txt file
Robots.txt file gives you a facility to allow/block your web pages to crawl by the search engine crawler.
You can use tools like Robots.txt Tester to check whether your URL is blocked properly or not.
7. Check for 4XX and 5XX error pages
4XX errors are caused by the user; some are 401 (unauthorized), 403 (forbidden), 404 (not found), and so on.
5XX errors are caused by the server, not by the user; some are 501 (not implemented), 502 (bad gateway), etc.
Use tools like SEMRush, Ahref, etc., to check for any of these errors on your website.
8. Check for canonical issues
If your website pages use similar content, then it is important to tell the search engine which page you want to appear in search results.
You can check your duplicate pages with tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc. Also, you can easily fix them by using canonical tags.
9. Check for redirect chain
A redirect chain occurs when there is multiple URL redirection between the initial and final destination URL.
For example, URL X is redirecting to URL Y, and URL Y is again redirecting to URL Z.
So, you must remove unwanted redirection because it increases load time for both search engines and users.
You can check the redirect chain using tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.
10. Check for structured data
Structured data is also known as Schema. Google uses structured data to show additional information about a web page on the search result. For example, on a product page, the price, available colors, reviews, ratings, etc.
It is the best practice to use structured data in your web pages. You can use tools like JSON-LD Schema Generator to create structured data and the Rich Result Test tool to test your schema for issues.
11. Check for content plagiarism
Google gives higher priority to the website having unique content. Also, it penalizes the sites that use plagiarized content.
So, it is best practice to check for content plagiarism before posting it on your website.
You can use a tool like plagiarism checker to check if your web content is unique or not.
12. Check for duplicate meta tags
Don’t confuse search engines by providing similar meta tags for different pages. To rank your landing pages well on the search result page, you must find duplicate meta titles, descriptions and make them unique.
You can check for duplicate meta titles and descriptions using tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.
13. Check for missing meta tags
Meta tags explain to search engines and the searcher what this page is about. So it is best practice to add meta tags for the pages you want to appear on SERP.
You can check for missing meta tags using tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.
14. Check for broken links
A link on a website that does not work or no longer exists is known as a broken link.
Broken links provide users and search engines a bad experience of your site. So it is good practice to find broken links and fix them.
You can check broken links using tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.
15. Check for toxic links
Toxic backlinks are the links from the site which have a higher spam score; it can harm your website’s SEO.
Toxic links don’t count in white hat SEO. Also, it can even lead to penalties from search engines.
You must check and remove your toxic backlinks using tools like Google Search Console, SEMRush, Ahrefs, etc.
Conclusion:
If you really want to achieve a great technical score for your website, check and fix the above mentioned important components of technical SEO.
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