Technical SEO: Enhancing Search Engine Visibility and Page Experience

Technical SEO improves a website's visibility and performance in search results by optimizing behind-the-scenes elements. Technical SEO deals with technical aspects, such as fixing indexing problems, enhancing page speed, and implementing schema markup.

Some sources do not clearly define the terms On-Page SEO and Technical SEO. For example, page performance might be considered part of On-Page SEO. In this tutorial, we distinctly separate them. Technical SEO focuses on ensuring that search engines can easily find and understand your website's content, whereas On-Page SEO concentrates on optimizing the content itself.

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Technical SEO is crucial for ensuring that search engines can effectively crawl, interpret, and index your website's content. It plays a fundamental role in determining how well your site performs on search engine results pages (SERPs). Here's why Technical SEO is important:

• Crawlability: Search engines use automated bots called crawlers that move through websites. Technical SEO improves how search engine bots go through your website. It involves fixing broken links, resolving crawl errors, and optimizing XML sitemaps. This helps ensure that all parts of your site, even hidden content, are accessible to search engines.
• Indexation: After crawling, search engines index your web pages based on their relevance and quality. Technical SEO helps search engines understand and rank your website's content by improving its organization and information.
• Site Speed: Page speed is a critical ranking factor. Technical SEO improves site speed by optimizing server response times, image compression, and code minification. This leads to a better user experience and higher search engine rankings.
• Mobile Friendliness: It's important to make sure your website works well on mobile devices. Technical SEO involves making websites mobile-friendly by improving their design, settings, and speed for a better user experience.
• Schema Markup: Technical SEO involves adding schema markup to your website to provide search engines with more information about your content. This can result in rich snippets in search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.

In this tutorial, we'll focus on the following three primary Technical SEO approaches.

Below are summaries of each chapter. To learn the techniques in detail, go to each chapter.

Indexing Your Website – How To Fix Page Indexing Issues

In SEO, Index refers to a search engine's web page database. When a page is "indexed," it means that the search engine has visited the page, analyzed its content, and stored it in its database.

It is important for a webpage to get indexed. Indexed web pages can appear in search engine results. People can find the webpage when they search for similar terms.

Google and other search engines use bots to find new pages and updates. They check the content, relevance, and quality before adding them to the index. A page can't be found in search engines if it isn't indexed. Indexing is crucial for SEO to boost visibility and attract traffic to a website.

To index your website effectively, you need to follow specific rules and implement key actions, including creating a sitemap.xml file, using canonical tags, and managing redirections accurately. Tools like Google Search Console and the Indexing API can help speed up your website's indexing, attracting more visitors and strengthening your online presence.

To learn this topic in detail, go to Chapter 11. Indexing Your Website.

Implementing Schema Markup

Search engines are important for finding information. Websites need to ensure that their content is easy for search engines to understand.

Schema markup, also known as "schema," adds extra meanings to text data like HTML. Adding schema markup to web pages helps sites display more detailed results on SERPs. This can lead to attracting more visitors.

Schema markup provides deeper insights beyond basic HTML. It allows websites to label pages and enhance key details semantically.

As the first step of Schema Markup implementation, you can consider the following three schemas

There are other types of schemas that you can consider depending on the website content, for example:

To learn this topic in detail, go to Chapter 12. Implementing Schema Markup.

How To Improve Website Performance (Page Experience)

Page Experience includes signals Google uses to assess how users interact with a web page.

This evaluation includes Core Web Vitals, Mobile Friendliness, Security aspects, and Intrusive Interstitials. Google's Core Web Vitals focuses on factors like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) to improve website performance and user experience. These metrics gauge loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability, which are crucial for user engagement and satisfaction.

Mobile Friendliness is essential for website optimization, particularly with Google's emphasis on mobile-first indexing. Responsive design is important for making sure websites look good on all devices without needing separate designs for each of them. The security aspect is also important. HTTPS encryption and safe browsing help build trust and keep users safe while they visit websites.

Improving website performance involves several strategies focused on Core Web Vitals and overall user experience. Image optimization techniques, including lazy loading and responsive images, help reduce loading times and enhance visual content delivery. Code minimization techniques, such as removing unused code and minifying CSS and JavaScript, contribute to faster page loading.

To make a website faster, use cache and network optimization techniques like server and browser caching and CDNs. Also, optimize fonts, upgrade servers, and remove unnecessary plugins to enhance user experience. Attention to factors like server response time and minimizing redirections helps streamline content delivery and enhance user satisfaction.

To learn this topic in detail, go to Chapter 13. Optimizing Website Performance.