Technical SEO Checklist: 10 Must-Have Steps

The technical parts of search engine optimization (SEO) are very important. If there are problems with the technical parts of SEO, it's unlikely that your work will pay off. So, it's important to understand technical SEO and how to do it right.

After you do a technical SEO audit of your website and fix any potential problems, you won't have to worry about these problems again.

Here, we explain technical SEO and the SEO Checklist with the 10 Most Important Steps −

What Does "Technical SEO" Mean?

You should do technical SEO to improve your site's performance in search engines while crawling and indexing it. Using technical SEO, you can make it easier for search engines to find, crawl, understand, and index your site.

It's "technical" because it has nothing to do with the content or marketing of the site. The main goal of technical SEO is to improve how the site. Let us look at 10-must have steps for the technical SEO checklist.

Mobile Friendly

Let's begin with the simplest technical SEO tips. One of the most important changes Google made to its algorithm in 2015 was to give more weight to mobile-friendly, responsive sites. The "Mobilegeddon" algorithm update hurt a lot of popular websites that hadn't switched to a design that works well on mobile devices. In today’s time, having a website mobile friendly is very important.

Make An XML Sitemap And Optimize It

Without a sitemap, Google can't find and list the pages on your site.

An XML sitemap is easy and quick to make. Free plugins like Yoast and Google XML Sitemaps make it easy for WordPress users to make one. Once the sitemap is done, you should send it to Google Search Console.

Make Your Site Faster

Speed is very important. Don't get me wrong. Google will lower your site's ranking if it takes too long to load and respond.

This means your website won't rank as high in SERPs as it would if page load times were faster. This is a very important part of technical SEO that you can't ignore.

Get Google Analytics Set Up

Google Analytics makes it easier than ever to analyze websites and apps. It helps you track how many people visit your site, where they come from, and what they do once they get there.

Image Compression And Optimization

Images are among the first to look at when a website takes a long time to load. Why? Because they are so big. We're not talking about screen sizes here. Instead, we're talking about disc sizes.

In addition to everything we've already discussed, an image also takes a lot of bytes to load on a page, which slows down the server. But if we optimize the page by eliminating extra content and bytes, the server will run better.

Check The Search Console For Issues

In the search console, you can find a lot of technical problems that might not be found anywhere else. With the new Google Search Console, you can see your site's performance in real-time.

The sections on Index Coverage Issues and improvements give a lot of hints about the site's hidden technical SEO mistakes. The Index Coverage issues report will show which pages have crawl errors and can't be indexed. The enhancement report will show you how well your site is optimized for speed and uses Schemas for rich snippets.

SSL Certificate

Google has carefully ranked things on its search engine results page (SERP). Over the years, Google has become more careful to only include in its index sites that are not harmful. Google confirmed in 2014 that SSL certification is a ranking factor. This shows that user privacy is becoming more important than just technical factors.

Do a quick test with any keyword, and you'll see that the top spots on the search engine results page go to sites verified as safe through HTTPS. Even though SSL is easy to set up, not all website owners have done so, which has caused a big drop in organic traffic.

Fix Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content is one of the most common reasons websites don't rank for their target keywords. Duplicate content on a website is easy to find with the help of tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs. These SEO tools can analyze a site's duplicate content in great detail. As the site's owner, it's up to you to decide which pages to keep and which to remove.

Yes. The best way to deal with pages with duplicate content is just to take them down. If you think both pages have attracted search traffic, combine the content and 301 redirect the other page.

Change The Settings For Your Browser's Cache

When a person visits a website for the first time, the browser cache stores some of the site's files on the person's computer. If a site visitor returns to the same page, the cached resources will make it easier to find what they need. This will help return visitors because it will make the page load faster.

Build SEO-Friendly URLs

You can't say enough about how important it is to keep URLs consistent. This means that you have to do things right the first time. URLs that are informative and full of keywords are good for users and search engines.

But many people forget this and build websites with dynamic URLs that aren't well-optimized. Google doesn't just ignore them. Even if they get a high page rank, it will be hard to merge them with new domains to make your site faster, better for users, and rank higher in search engines.

To Sum Up

There are a variety of checks and settings you can optimize as part of technical SEO that will make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site. Once your technical SEO is in order, you likely won't have to worry about it again except for occasional SEO audits.