Technical SEO Checklist: Issues to Audit and Fix Immediately

Technical SEO Checklist: Issues to Audit and Fix Immediately

Posted By Nitish Khanna | April 29, 2019 | No Comments | SEO

While digital marketers across the globe are immersed in managing and improving off-page and on-page SEO, they tend to forget about the technical aspect of optimisation. Technical SEO is related to the optimisation of the website and server which allows the search engine spiders to crawl and index the site successfully.

It leads to improved search engine rankings, and that is why technical SEO is termed as the foundation of a well-defined digital marketing strategy. In fact, identifying the glitches with your technical SEO and resolving them is half the battle won when you are aiming for the top spot in SERPs.

It makes search engines favour your site as it displays robust technical attributes such as faster loading time, responsive design, stable structure etc. Nothing misses the eyes of the crawlers, and that is why you cannot afford to neglect the loopholes in technical SEO which can prove damaging for your site. Our SEO specialists have collated a comprehensive checklist to help you fix these issues effectively. Let us have a look.

1. Ensure The Indexation Of Web Pages

It will be impossible for you to get traffic organically if your website’s pages are not indexed by Google. The higher the number of site pages indexed the better ranking you will get. It can be easily checked by entering the name of your site as ‘site:your sitename.com’ into the search engine.

Typically, the number you get should be proportional to the number of pages you want to get indexed. If there is a massive difference between the two, then you need to review the disallowed pages. To resolve this issue, you must check all the pages and sub-domains and ensure that they are getting indexed.

If you had an old website which is still showing in the web results, then it is possible that the old site is getting indexed rather than getting redirected. Find out the root cause of this problem and fix it to avoid losing out on potential leads.

2. Fix Crawlability Issues

You need to be aware of the crawalability potential of your site. However, do not just rely on robots.txt. Get hold of an SEO crawler to find out all the blocked pages. The next step is to make sure that all the pages, as well as resources including JavaScript and CSS, must be crawlable.

In case the resources are restricted from indexing, then the search engine won’t get the image of the web pages in the same manner as visible to the visitors. Additionally, if the JavaScript won’t be crawlable, then Google’s crawlers will not be able to index the dynamically created content. Find a crawler that can crawl and render the resource of your site.

3. Review The Structure Of The Website

Your website should have an organised structure so that the navigation becomes easier and authority is attached to significant pages. The user should not have to dig too deep to find his destination. The path should be simple and straightforward, such as home page – category – final destination. The site must have breadcrumbs so that the user is not lost and every page must have the option to go back to the home page.

The movement from one page to another should be swift, and there should be footer and site navigation present on each page. The user experience design affects SEO so keep a keen watch on this aspect. There should be no dead pages, non-canonical pages, and redirected URLs as they can lead to the sitemap being ignored by the search engines.

A user friendly structure will ensure better crawling. Thus the XML sitemap must be reorganised when new information gets added, and it should have less than 50,000 URLs to ensure the best results.

4. Get The Internal Links Audited

Internal linking is vital as it makes the users browse the site in an intended manner and creates a robust architecture that enhances crawlability and eventually the page rank. So optimising the internal links with anchor texts makes the users understand where they are going.

The internal links aid in spreading the link juice through connected content which is known as a content silo where the marketer can choose to group similar topics together with matching themes and keywords.

When you are auditing the internal links make sure that you check the depth of the links which should be shallow and there are no broken links which can bring down the page ranking. Also, the redirected pages should not take the user through a series of redirects as it increases the load time.

5. Fix Broken Links And Images

 

Broken links may take the users to pages which have been moved or do not exist while broken images are those pictures that do not show up on the web page. This rubs the viewer in the wrong way and affects the credibility of your site. However, it is easy to fix this problem.

Experts at Netvision suggest running an audit to find pages with broken links and working on repairing them. You can either replace the links or correct them if they a spelling mistake. Similarly, you can replace the image link if the picture has been removed from the server or get the link corrected if there is a typo in its URL.

6. Check And Improve The Page Loading Speed

Page speed is more important than you can ever imagine. It surely puts off a user if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load. Additionally, it plummets your ranking on SERPs as well. Google considers page speed to be a ranking criterion, and it can be tested by using one of its tools – the Page Speed Insights tool.

You can also find recommendations to fix the problems with the help of this tool. To fix this problem, you need to start with compressing of the images, minimising the code, and amalgamating certain elements like CSS and JavaScript files. Avoid using too many redirects and find the most efficient host for your site which utilises a powerful server and responds quickly.

7. Get Your Site Optimised For Mobile

Google places a lot of importance on creating user-friendly websites that have a responsive design which seamlessly fits into every screen. Since mobile friendliness is a ranking factor, you need to prepare your site accordingly. Get rid of the clutter and keep ample space between the elements appearing on the screen.

Avoid using flash as it has become obsolete and switch to HTML5 for smooth user experience. Also, do away with the in-your-face pop-ups that annoy the users and take up most of the screen space. To check your site’s mobile-friendliness, you can utilise Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and fix the problem areas to get better ranking.

Conclusion

Taking control of your website’s technical SEO and resolving all the unfavourable issues can go a long way in securing a higher rank on the SERPs. So take note of these critical elements and astound your users with a fantastic user experience which makes your website shine bright online.