If your site has technical SEO issues, then no matter how do you do SEO on your website or blog? This will reduce your Google ranking.
So if you want a high Google ranking, then follow this article. Here we will cover some technical SEO checklist.
Technical SEO is a very important part of the whole SEO process. It helps search engines to access, crawl, and index your website.
As I said earlier, If your site has any type of technical SEO issue then you can not get the expected results. You will need to fix them.
The best part is that if you fix these once by doing a technical SEO audit, then you don’t have to fix them again.
So, let’s get started…
Technical SEO Checklist
Fixing a technical SEO issue is not a difficult task, you can easily fix it and get a good rank in Google and other search engines.
The main goal of technical SEO is to optimize the structure of any website. You can follow the recommended SEO checklist given below to run own technical SEO audit.
1. Make Sure Your Page is Indexed
Sometimes it happens that Google does not crawl your page correctly or blocked by mistake that’s why the page does not rank in Google. You can use Google Search Console Tool to see it.
a. Check Index Status
Just log in to your Google Search Console tool and click on Google Index >> Index Status. Here you can see the Total Index, Blocked and Removable URL of your site.
b. Review Crawl Errors
To see Crawl Errors, click on Crawl >> Crawl Stats.
c. Search Your Website
To see index pages in Google, search from site:yourdomain.com. This will start showing you the list of Index pages by Google.
2. Optimize Your Robots.txt
The robots.txt file helps the search engine bot to understand which part of the site you want to index and which part you want to block. When they come to your site, they follow Robots.txt file’s configuration.
Therefore, if you misconfigure the robots.txt file, it may harm your website ranking. See our guide How to Optimize WordPress Robots.txt File properly.
3. Secure Your Website
HTTPS is known as a ranking signal. In addition, visitor trusts on your site. Therefore secure your website with HTTPS using SSL.
Also, Google announced in August 2014 – HTTPS as a ranking signal
There are many companies that provide free SSL certificate. So, If your site is on HTTP, redirect it to HTTPS.
But if you do not redirect properly from HTTP to HTTPS, it can very badly affect your site ranking and traffic.
4. Optimize Website Speed
Google gives good rank to a fast loading site. That’s why Google has created the PageSpeed Insights Tool to check page speed.
If your site loads fast in Google, it will rank better in Google.
To check your website loading speed, you can use speed checker tools like PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom and GT Matrix.
Some quick tips to improve website speed
- Upgrade to PHP 7.2
- Optimize your image’s size
- Keep only useful plugins
- Remove unwanted media
- Optimize and minify your CSS and JS Files
- Use a good cache plugin
- Minimize redirects
5. Fix Duplicate Meta Tags
Google does not like duplicate content and it also applies to the Meta tag.
To find duplicate Meta tag, log in to Google Search Console and click on the Search Appearance >> HTML Improvements.
Also, here you can know if your meta titles and descriptions are too short, too long, etc.
6. Fix Broken Links
Broken links greatly affect your website ranking and user experience.
You can find broken links on your site, you can use DrLinkCheck.com.
Furthermore, if you are a WordPress user you can find and fix it using the Broken Link Checker.
7. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly
If your site is not mobile-friendly, then your site will not rank in Google. Its main reason more than half of the searches are done by mobile.
You can use the mobile-friendly testing tool to check your site is mobile-friendly or not.
8. Fetch as Google
Sometimes Google cannot crawl your page completely and as a result, your content cannot perform better in Google search result.
That’s why log in to your Google Search Console tool and click on Crawl >> Fetch as Google option.
This helps search engine bots to crawl your page Completely.
9. Canonical Link Tag
Canonical Link Tag helps you avoid duplicate content.
Sometimes it happens that a website owner publishes the same content with different URLs, which is called duplicate content.
But canonical tag helps you get rid of this problem.
10. Redirects
After migrating your site to a new server or domain, if you do not set proper redirection, it will reduce your website ranking. See our guide on how to change or update URLs after moving your WordPress site.
Make sure that you have updated XML sitemap, canonical tags, and links correctly after 301 redirects.
11. Duplicate Content
Google does not rank duplicate content in search results.
It filters duplicate content into the search results. Because Google always provides original and quality content to the user.
To check internal duplicate content on your site you can use Siteliner.com.
This Technical SEO Checklist is really very important for any website.
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