What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO (eng. technical SEO) refers to all measures in search engine optimization that contribute to the ranking and must be taken technically.

Definition

Technical SEO is a subarea of search engine optimization. These are measures that can have a positive or negative effect on your Google ranking and have nothing to do with the content, but relate to load times, ads & Co. These include:

– server configuration
– software
– Source codes, etc.

The speed of the page (Page Speed) is a recognized ranking factor and counts to the Technical SEO.

Background

In the beginning it was very easy to rank in the Google index for certain keywords. For this, it was usually enough to target the content on the website to certain keywords and set a few backlinks.

Criteria like Domain Popularity and Domain Trust were not important, but mainly the link popularity. Due to the enormously fast growing number of websites, the search engines had to include better evaluation criteria, so that really good and for the user relevant websites rank in the index. This resulted in the area of Technical SEO, which takes into account, for example, the accessibility of a page and 404 errors.

Technical optimization is a must these days. Thereby a clean source code can already make the difference in the ranking.

Due to the increase in mobile use, the demands on technical optimisation are also rising.

Tools to help

Google Search Console (or Bing Webmaster Tool) can be used to analyze some important factors. The Page Speed Tool, for example, can be used to determine the speed of a web page. Mobile-friendliness can also be tested via Search Console.

Optimization areas

Technical SEO can be categorized as follows:

1. Switching to https (security)
2. Mobile optimisation (usability, presentation)
3. Optimization of metadata for rich snippets
4. Avoiding Broken Links
5. Optimize loading speed (server problems)
6. Removal of unnecessary code snippets in the source code
7. Control of the Google Bot(Crawler)
8. Avoidance of duplicate content (303 redirection)
9. Flat page structure (URL optimization)

Optimization possibilities

Page speed can be improved by certain optimization measures:

1. Reduceserverresponse times
2. Remove unnecessary social plugins
3. Using the Content Delivery Network
4. Bundle CSS files (to CSS sprites)
5. Compress web page with gzip
6. Use of asynchronous JavaScript
7. Reduction of http requests
8. Removal of superfluous characters from the source code
9. Compress images

Relevance of Technical SEO

The technical optimization for search engines serves above all the user friendliness of a web page.

One of the most important parts is the loading times. These have a great influence and can affect your ranking positively as well as negatively.

Technical SEO is therefore a topic for every webmaster and should not be neglected when optimizing for search engines.