15 Major  Technical SEO Checklist to Instantly To Boost Your Traffic

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1

HTTPS Version 

- A secure site is everything

In 2014, Google announced that all websites would have to adopt the technology if they wanted a higher organic search ranking on its SERPs and thus it began one of the most important Google ranking factors.

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2

Mobile-Friendly Website

In 2018, Google announced that it was going mobile-first for indexing sites. This means that the search engine looks at web-pages from a mobile device perspective and assesses how responsive it is. Remember that your mobile site should have the same content as its desktop counterpart.

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3

Implement Structured Data Markup

Structured data mark-up helps search engines understand and read your web-page better, for e.g. whether your content is a recipe, book, a how-to tutorial, etc. Simply use the Structured Data Markup Helper by Google to set it up and then test it using its Structured Data Testing Tool.

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4

Site Speed Matters

Google has always considered desktop site speed an important ranking factor. In 2018, it announced that the speed at which your mobile site loads is also a top-ranking priority. Although you can simply use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to see how you fare in this category.

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5

Optimize Your Crawl Budget

A crawl budget is the number of times Google bot visits your site during a specific period to crawl and index it. As a website owner, you must ensure that no crawl cycle/unit of your crawl budget ever goes to waste. Websites employ a standard called robots.txt to talk to search engine crawlers. You must go through your site’s robots.txt file and see that it does not unnecessarily block out any critical resources. If it does, then your site will be incompletely crawled.

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Optimum XML sitemap

As the name suggests, an XML sitemap gives a web crawler a blueprint of your site and tells it how to navigate it. While you can use a sitemap generator to create one for your site, is also important that you submit your XML sitemap in the Google Search Console so that it can crawl and index it properly.

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7

AMP Implementation

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a special, bare-bones version of HTML used to boost the speed and functionality of a mobile website. AMP works by deactivating scripts, forms, comments & likes. If used correctly, AMP can inflate your CTR (click-through rate) and the number of back-links to your site. Google even displays AMP pages in important search result carousels, leading to increased user attention.

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8

Avoid 404 Pages

If a page does not exist anymore or if a URL was modified by you, a 404 status code is your best bet. If you are using WordPress or a similar content publishing platform, ensure that your 404 page is search engine optimised by having a structure similar to your site, giving users options of other similar pages they can visit instead, and making it easy to navigate back to where they came from, etc.

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9

Canonicalization

Duplicate site content is a big no-no when it comes to maintaining good site hygiene. A canonical URL signals to Google which version of a web-page it must crawl and index. Simply using a rel=”canonical” command in your page code will help you achieve this. It is recommended that you specify a preferred canonical URL for all the pages of your site.

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10

Avoid duplicate or thin content

Thin content is one of the dominating factors in understanding what technical SEO is. It can be discovered by the ranking signals that are uncovered from the data sent by Google. To avoid instances of thin content, websites are recommended to have higher quality content written by the experts instead of using mass-produced content.

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11

Noindex Tag and Category Pages

Adding a ‘noindex’ tag to a page will instruct search engines to stop indexing and tracking the content and links on it. This is often used by developers to direct Google crawlers to their more important and prioritized pages.

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12

Name your preferred domain

A site can be accessed by typing in either https://www.abc.com or https://abc.com (sans the www). While users may do this on a whim, without giving it much thought, it might confuse search engines and lead to indexing and page rank issues. Hence, you must indicate to Google the version you prefer. Note that there is no advantage of choosing one over the other but once you make a decision, you must stick to it, or else there will be problems during site migration using a 301 redirect.

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13

Breadcrumb Menus

Breadcrumbs are an essential architectural part of the technical SEO checklist. Also known as a “breadcrumb trail”, it is a type of navigation that discloses the location of the user. It is a form of website navigation that vastly improves the orientational awareness of a visitor. Breadcrumbs clearly show the website hierarchy and point out where one user currently is.

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14

JavaScript

A part of the technical SEO basics aims to make JavaScript-heavy websites search-friendly.Google tools like the Mobile-Friendly Test, URL Inspection Tool inside Google Search Console, and the Rich Results Test are essential for troubleshooting JavaScript SEO issues. JavaScript web apps process occurs in three main phases: crawling, rendering, indexing.

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15

Pagination

It is a process in which content is divided across a series of pages. Pagination, a crucial aspect of technical SEO, is used to segregate a list of products or articles into a consumable format. News publishers, eCommerce, blogs, and forums, are the type of websites where pagination is used. Duplicate content issues could be encountered while using pagination.

Learn More on To avoid such instances

Check Out Extra Technical SEO Tips

Investing precious time into getting the technical SEO of your site right is a must for any business or brand owner as its benefits far outweigh the initial difficulty that they may face while understanding its concepts and executing its techniques.

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