What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the technical optimizations made to make a website perform better in search engines. These optimizations include the infrastructure, code structure and other technical elements of the website. Technical SEO works in conjunction with other SEO elements such as content and design, making it easier for search engines to understand and index the website correctly.
Here are some of the key elements of technical SEO:
Site Speed Optimization
Fast loading of the website is both important for user experience and prioritized by search engines. Speed optimizations are achieved through techniques such as caching, image compression and minification. As you know, website speed is no longer a standard but a necessity. Research shows that page transitions that take longer than 1.3 seconds are negative for visitors. In addition, website speed is a very valuable feature in services that rank websites according to many technical standards.
Mobile Compatibility
Proper display and usability of the website on mobile devices is of great importance today. Search engines can rank the site with mobile compatible websites standard higher than its competitors.
SSL Certificate
To ensure a secure internet experience, it is important that the website is encrypted with an SSL certificate. Search engines give more preference to secure sites. So much so that now, sites that do not have SSL certificates are marked as “Insecure Site” even by Google’s own web browser Chrome, the most widely used Web browser in the world.
URL Structure
Meaningful and short URLs are easier to understand for both users and search engines. Proper structuring of URLs is important for SEO. This URL structure, known as a SELF URL, refers to a page extension created in the same way as the title.
Sitemap
The XML sitemap guides search engines to index the content of the website more easily. This makes it easier to crawl and index all pages of the site. Even in the world’s most preferred open source web software such as WordPress, the sitemap, which is still known as one of the basic features, is taken care to be prepared in the smoothest and most standardized way with many plugins. Therefore, you will see in some places, “The sitemap is outdated now, it is left in the dust pages of history.” Do not pay much attention to the words.
Robot.txt File
It is a file that determines which areas of the website are allowed to be crawled by search engines. The robot.txt file prevents unnecessary pages from being indexed. Along with Google, the robot.txt file is a very effective tool for both the bots of search engines and recently AI (Artificial Intelligence) bots to crawl or exclude the site from crawling.
Canonical Tags
In cases where multiple URLs point to the same content, it is used to indicate which URL takes precedence. This prevents duplicate content problems and helps search engines index the correct page. Among many similar pages, it is an important standard for SPAM or similar ones to be added without any problem.
Dofollow and Nofollow Tags
These are important tags that indicate whether or not to follow external or internal links in the content or website.
Dofollow tag: It ensures that the link on the website is followed and incoming Google bots are directed. This is why it is important that the links are dofollow, especially in backlink purchases. It is of great importance in transferring site authority, although not directly.
Nofollow tag: a linking structure that allows the link to be on the website but commands it not to be followed. It is used for linking without directing Google bots and without transferring site authority. Links with the nofollow tag are not followed by your website and Google search engine, but may affect your site authority score depending on whether they are harmful or not.
Technical SEO helps the website achieve higher rankings in organic search results by ensuring that the website has a solid infrastructure and search engines better understand the content of the site.
What are SEO Techniques and How Do They Benefit?
SEO techniques are standards that should be applied primarily by people or teams who specialize in this field and follow the developments in the sector as well as their past experience. In other words, applying individual techniques on your website can cause some unforeseen problems.
Let’s go over these techniques in a little more detail.
Keyword Research and Usage: Identifying relevant keywords and using them correctly in the content will help search engines understand your website better. Google’s Analytics and Webmastertools (Search Console) tools, as well as many paid or free analysis services will be very useful for you in this respect.
Content Optimization: Optimizing content through the proper use of HTML elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, headings and subheadings. For example, assuming that you have heard the term SEO compatible article before; H1-H2 (Main and Subheadings), keywords (Keywords),
Site Speed Optimization: Fast loading of the website is important for user experience and search engine rankings.
Mobile Compatibility: Proper display and usability on mobile devices is an important factor that search engines take into account today.
Link Building: Backlinks from quality and relevant sites increase the authority of the website and increase its rankings.
Site Structure and Layout: A user-friendly site structure and easy navigation are appreciated by search engines.
Why Technical SEO and Crawl Budgeting Matters
Technical SEO is very important for the crawl budget, which Google has recently cut due to the increasing number of websites, to be used in the most accurate way. The crawl budget has great effects on many issues, from indexing your websites to instant changes in ranking, and you need to make the best use of this budget when Google bots visit your site.
With the website linking and mapping structures you will build with technical SEO, you can identify the most important areas that Google bots need to crawl with a low budget and get ahead of your competitors.
Web page opening speed, internal linking, the distance of the pages from each other in terms of click-through rate, and the high value of the content will ensure that the crawling budget allocated by Google is used in the most accurate way.
The website, which is constantly scanned by Google bots, can transmit new updates to Search Console faster. SERP that is Technical SEO, which also causes sudden changes in the search engine results page, allows your website to receive continuous updates in order to get better than competitors.
Why Does Click Distance Between Pages Matter?
It is useful to open a separate parenthesis for the click distance between pages. For a quality linking and page layout, it is recommended that users can make a maximum of 2 or 3 clicks between two pages. In other words, if you offer an SEO service, it is very important that users reach our services page with 2 or maximum 3 clicks.
Google cares about the end-user experience and prioritizes accessibility when it comes to ranking your websites.
Site navigation and linking is important not only for Google, but also for returning users or potential service purchasers.
When we started researching the subject throughout our article, we started with the Level2 questions that visitors who have a little knowledge on this subject are first curious about. Because you may have overcome the simplest questions for visitors who will normally start from scratch with some small research. There seems to be no need to repeat them. Therefore, in Technical SEO research, which is the higher stage, we tried to provide you with information on many subjects that you can have information about before the services you will receive by experts.
