6 Important Tips for Technical
SEO in 2022

The tech environment is a constantly shifting checkerboard that necessitates talent and technique to progress. Google has recently shifted its focus on user experience when ranking content, thus effectively managing technical SEO to reflect this goal should be a top priority on every brand’s SEO checklist.

What is Technical SEO, and Why Does It Matter?

All of the information underlying your website’s technical SEO is referred to as technical SEO. To name a few, it’s your sitemaps, alt text, and data markups. Technical SEO looks at your website’s structure to see if it can easily send the necessary information to search engine spiders, in addition to your content.

Obviously, engaging with search engines is vital, but isn’t content the reason you have it? Both yes and no. Consider it this way: You’re on a trip overseas in a place where English isn’t widely spoken. You can receive the fundamental information you need from locals if you have a translator book or software. This is how search engines interact with your content. However, if you know the language, you can have more in-depth talks, interact with the locals, and learn more than you could from a tourism office. This is how search engines engage with technical SEO.

Technical SEO converts your website’s elements into a language that search engines can understand. Spiders will be able to index your site more easily as a result of this.

scan for relevant keywords or structures, and place your URL at the top of SERPs.

But optimizing is difficult, so we’ve opted to help you out. This technical SEO guide includes some of the key aspects of technically optimizing your site so it speaks fluent search engine. We’ll teach you about:

1. Making your site mobile-friendly.
2. Speeding up your site.
3. Using the right URL structure.
4. Securing your site.
5. Addressing redirect issues.
6. Working with structured data.

So if you’re ready to give your website the boost it needs to reach the top of SERPs, work your way through this technical SEO checklist.

Make your website mobile-friendly

How many times a day do you use your smartphone to look for information? I’m sure there are more than you can recall off the top of your head. You’re not alone, to be sure. In fact, more people are using their smartphones as their primary source of information these days, therefore your website must adapt to meet them there.

Google has acknowledged that it is moving toward a mobile-first indexing paradigm, which implies that its algorithms prioritise mobile versions of websites above desktop versions. As a result, being mobile-friendly is much more crucial in terms of SEO rankings. So, if your website isn’t already mobile-friendly, now is the time to get on board.

This can be accomplished in one of two ways:

Create a responsive website that transitions seamlessly from desktop to mobile.

By using responsive design features, you can create a website that works on both mobile and desktop. Your website will have a single URL and HTML, and there will be fewer chances of SEO possibilities being lost. It’s also easier to maintain because changes are automatically reflected on both versions of the site. Furthermore, the fact that this is what Google suggests doesn’t harm.

Create a distinct mobile site from your desktop site.

This method allows you to optimise content for mobile devices without having to make changes to your desktop site. It can assist you in more successfully targeting your mobile audience and optimising for mobile requirements.

However, our team would recommend creating one responsive site that can transition between mobile and desktop so that you don’t risk missing content one one version that may have been loaded on the other.

If you’re not sure how your website stacks up to this standard, check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and see where your site falls.

2. Make Your Site Fast

Last year, Google revealed a new approach to track the health of a website. It’s called Core Web Vitals, and it’s a set of measures for determining how well your website works in terms of user experience. The content loading speed is one of the three key areas that these vitals are based on.

The significance of speed in a user context is straightforward: the faster individuals can get into your page, the more likely they are to stay. What do you do if you try to access a page and it doesn’t load within a few seconds? Most likely sigh angrily, hit the back button, and try the next search result.

Don’t encourage people to press the back button on your site.

To make this a little more real, let’s look at some statistics from SEMRush to show you just how much of an edge you can get with fast load times:

• A site that loads in 5 seconds is faster than 25% of the web.
• A site that loads in 2.9 seconds is faster than 50% of the web.
• A site that loads in 1.7 seconds is faster than 75% of the web.
• A site that loads in 0.8 seconds is faster than 94% of the web.

At these rates, a fast website may be able to outperform the bulk of its competitors just by reducing load times. Here are a few options for increasing your speed:

Image Optimization:

Compress your photographs and movies as much as possible to make the file sizes as little as possible. This prevents your website from lagging when large files are being downloaded.

Use a single CSS stylesheet:

Your site won’t have to load pages of code if you use a single stylesheet.

Use Fast and Reliable Hosting:

Use quick hosting services and a fast DNS provider to increase your server response time.

One area to look for information about how your page speed is functioning is Google Analytics.

3. Make Use of the Correct URL Structure

Your URL gives search engines a lot of information about what your website is about and what kind of content it’s taking the user to. As a result, you’ll want to make sure it’s optimised for those search engines to locate value in your content. That’s how they pick you to “come on down” to the top of the search results page.

The goal is to end up with a good, clean, direct URL that contains your keyword. There are, however, a few measures you must do to get there. To begin, creating a site hierarchy can assist you in keeping material structured and your URLs simple and sensible.

4. Make Your Website Safe

Users are wary of cybercrime and cyberattacks, and the last thing they want is for an insecure site to allow someone to destroy their machine. Furthermore, you probably don’t want anyone looking at your data. Google has stepped up its game in the previous seven years to favour secure sites, and we’ve put up a list of the finest website security best practises to get you started.

Best Practices for Website Security

• Increase the security of your website by using an SSL certificate and the HTTPS protocol.

A secure sockets layer, which encrypts the link between a browser and your server, can improve the security of your site. It’ll be far more difficult for someone to get access your backend data this way.

SSL-enabled websites are easier to spot because their URLs begin with “https:/” rather than merely “http:/.” That “S” denotes that the site has been secured, which is something Google is seeking for. In fact, the business stated in 2014 that it wants the future of the web to be entirely safe sites with this prefix, which is why the “https” slug is prioritised.

• Fast, secure, and dependable website hosting.

When it comes to website hosting, there are thousands of solutions available, each with a different pricing range. In truth, there are a plethora of free hosting possibilities. However, be wary of using a free host because they are usually less secure, have less bandwidth, and take longer to load pages.

• Update your CMS software, themes, plugins and extensions.

• Update passwords regularly and limit user access.

• Backup your website regularly

5. Resolve Issues With Redirects

Redirects keep your pages up to date with all those adjustments because your website is like a living entity that develops and grows over time. A redirect is an important part of technical SEO since it informs search engines about changes to your website. It enables the search engine and users to evaluate your new material and index it in accordance with the most recent version.

Redirect Chains Must Be Recognized and Corrected

When you establish redirect chains – one URL forwarding to numerous separate pages — you have a huge problem. As you continue to divert pages, this can happen. Your original link now takes you to version 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and so on.

Because your browser will have to open and navigate through each page until it reaches the final destination, this can considerably slow down loading speeds.

Before you create a new redirect, go over your existing ones to determine which outdated links you can get rid of. This will increase the speed of your site and make it much easier for users to navigate. Screaming Frog, an SEO spider tool, may also help you uncover redirect chains so you can improve your load times and usability.

Correctly use 301 and 302 redirects

Redirects are divided into two categories: 301 and 302. The key difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect is that a 301 redirect is permanent and a 302 redirect is transitory.

A redirect, when implemented incorrectly, might result in a loss of traffic to your website. When utilising a 302 redirect, for example, Google will continue to index the original page and pass no value to the new URL. However, because a 301 redirect is considered a permanent replacement, Google will not index the original page and will instead transfer that equity to the page to which it is directed.

It is advisable to utilise a 301 redirect unless you plan on forwarding your website to another URL for a brief duration. After you’ve finished making your adjustments, double-check that you’ve resolved all of the temporary redirection.

Those redirects should be removed or replaced with 301 redirects that route visitors to new, relevant material. When relocating two web pages, moving your site to a new domain name, or switching from http to https, you should always employ a 301 redirect.

6. Add Structural Data To Your Website

Structured data aids search engines in determining the purpose of your website. It’s the equivalent of a teacher explaining the notes on the board rather than relying on students to read and comprehend for themselves. When most people think about metadata, they think of meta descriptions and alt text, both of which are significant. However, there is another form of structured data that can be extremely useful when trying to improve your site’s SERPS rankings. This is known as schema markup.

To encourage Google to display relevant information to users in the form of rich snippets, you can add Schema markup code to your site. Star ratings, thumbnail photos, product pricing, and other rich snippets are examples. Additionally, these SERP elements encourage people to interact with your link, increasing your click-through rates (CTR). Websites with greater CTRs are preferred in the SERPs, as we know from SEO.