Technical SEO Checklist-The Roadmap to a Complete Technical SEO Audit

Introduction

Technical SEO is the type of SEO that refers to the optimization of a website and server that help search engine spiders to crawl and index your website effectively. It will help you to rank your website high in search engines. Technical SEO is something that can make or break your website rankings. Luckily fixing Technical SEO issues is not that difficult. 

In this article we will discuss best practices to follow if your want to improve your technical SEO.

Best Technical SEO Checklist

Check out the checklist below for steps to ensure your technical SEO is up to scratch. Follow these guidelines to ensure your site's security and structure meet the expectations of search engine algorithms and are rewarded accordingly in search results.  

Here is the list of best Technical SEO Checklist:

1- Make Sure you are using HTTPS

2- Check for Duplicate Versions of your Site

3- Find and Fix Crawl Errors

4- Improve your Site Speed

5- Fix Broken Internal and Outbound Links

6- Find and Fix HTTP Links

7- Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

8- Use an SEO-Friendly URL Structure

9- Add Structured Data

10- Check the Page Depth of your Website

11- Check Temporary Redirects

12- Find and Fix Redirect Chains and Loops

13- Consider Enabling AMP

Make Sure you are using HTTPS

Using HTTPS as a ranking factor has been around since 2014.

Using HTTPS encryption on your website is a good idea, and it's time to upgrade if you're still using HTTP.

Your browser's URL bar will confirm your site is secured with HTTPS.

A padlock indicates HTTPS to the left of the URL. In case you don't, you aren't. If you are looking for a detailed report of your technical issues, you can visit the ETTVI Site Audit Tool and see the HTTPS report. 

Check for Duplicate Versions of your Site

The important thing is to allow google only one version of your site to index. Here are different versions of your site, and all should point to a single one.

https://www.domain.com

https://domain.com

http://www.domain.com

https://domain.com

In general, https://www.domain.com is the most common version, but you can use it.

Check your browser's bar by entering each variant, and all other variations should 301 redirect to the primary.

If you've implemented redirects without issue but still find that different versions are accessible, implement redirects as soon as possible.

Find and Fix Crawl Errors

You can check the crawlability and indexability of your website using ETTVI’s Crawlability checker. ETTVI’s Crawlability Checker will check the crawlability and indexability of your site by analyzing the Robots.txt file. 

Take time to solve the errors you find through the crawlability checker and find the root cause of the error. Your website performance can adversely affect 404 errors and incorrectly canonicalized pages.

Improve your Site Speed

Slow sites are not user-friendly. 

According to Google, page experience is expected to become even more important for ranking in 2021.

Your site needs to load quickly, and you need to acknowledge that users expect more from it. 

Nowadays, no one waits around for a slow site.

You can use the website speed checker by ETTVI to check your website speed. It allows you to calculate the loading time of your website and provide you with a website speed score depending upon the site performance. You should check the loading speed if you want a high-performing website.

Fix Broken Internal and Outbound Links

Another sign of poor user experience is broken links. There's nothing worse than clicking a link and finding it doesn't take you to the page you expect. You can scan your site for broken links with ETTVI’s Broken Links Finder tool. You can identify all the internal and external broken links hurting your website. These broken links can also disturb your crawl budget. So, you need to fix these links if you find any on your site. 

Find and Fix HTTP Links

Most sites migrated from HTTP to HTTPS some time ago, but internal links still point to HTTP pages, not the current version.

Whenever a redirect is in place to direct users to the new page, these are unnecessary, and you should aim to update them as soon as possible.

Check the HTTPS Report in Site Audit to see any issues. You can update manually in your CMS if there are only a few incorrect links. However, if there are more, you need to update page templates. Ask for professional help if you don’t know how to deal with it. 

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Recently Google launched a Mobile-First Index. According to this, if your site is not mobile-friendly, it will not rank well in search engines. 

You can quickly check your website’s mobile friendliness with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool. 

Use an SEO-Friendly URL Structure

The structure of your URLs should be SEO-friendly so that search engines can crawl your pages and understand what they are about. You should also make sure that your URLs are simple and descriptive for users.

Here is how an SEO-friendly URL looks like:

https://www.domain.com/red-bag/

In order to separate words, use hyphens in your URL instead of underscores. It’s good to keep URLs as short as possible because shorter URLs tend to rank high in search engines.

Add Structured Data

Structured data markup becomes increasingly valuable as Google builds a more semantic web.

Structured data should be used if you haven't already.

Moreover, Schema.org includes formats to structure data for individuals, places, organizations, and local businesses. It helps your organic listings stand out on the SERPs.

Structured data can also add 'rich snippets' to search results, such as star ratings to reviews, product prices, or reviewer information.

These enhanced results are more visually appealing and provide searchers with more relevant information, increasing your click-through rate (CTR) and generating additional traffic. Because sites with high CTRs are usually considered to receive preference in search engines, it is worth adding structured data to your website. 

Check Page Depth of your Website

An ideal page should not be deep more than three clicks. If it is, it means you need to spend time again on your site structure to flatten it. The deeper pages on the site are difficult to find by users and search engines. You can check the crawl depth of the page using the Search Audit Tool. 

Check Temporary 302 Redirects

A 302 redirect indicates a temporary redirect, while 301s signal that it is a permanent move. You can use ETTVI’s Redirect Checker to check the redirect Status Code, and it will also trace the target URL. 

302s are often used instead of 301s, and Google has confirmed 302s pass PageRank; the fact remains that 302 redirect needs to be updated to 301 if it isn't expected to be removed at any point in the future.

Find and Fix Redirect Chains and Loops

Multiple redirects (a redirect chain) or redirects that create a loop should not be used on your site - Redirects should go from page A to page B. To fix these issues, you can update all redirects in a chain to point to the end target or remove and edit the redirect causing the loop.

Consider Enabling AMP

AMP is a google-backed project, and its main job is to speed up the content delivery on mobile phones by using special codes called AMP HTML.  

These AMP versions of your pages load quickly on phone devices. It is done by stripping your content and code to the bare bones and by leaving images and videos intact. 

Due to fast loading speed, the AMP versions of pages are more likely shared by readers, which ultimately increases backlinks to your content, which is good for the website’s SEO. 

Moreover, Google sometimes highlights AMP pages in the search engine result pages. This gives your content a necessary search bump, and you will get potential customers and readers.

Wrap Up

Technical SEO is an essential component of SEO strategy, and you need to focus on the Technical SEO of your site if you want to rank high on search engine result pages. Luckily, It is not that hard to manage and resolve the technical problems of your website. All you need to do is follow the abovementioned checklist to optimize your website for ranking. You need a constant check on your website structure and SEO if you want a smooth, productive website. ETTVI provides all the necessary tools that can help to solve technical issues. All the tools are simple and easy to use, but if you have no time to manage your website yourself, you can ask for the help of a professional.