Your In-depth Guide: How To Check For Technical SEO (and Why it Matters)

So, you’re trying to figure out how to check for technical SEO? This is an absolutely vital part of any successful SEO strategy. It can feel overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. This guide will show you some tools and techniques to assess your website’s technical SEO health and pinpoint areas for improvement. Don’t have the expertise in web development or areas of understanding the technical audit, hire a digital marketing agency like SEO Locale.

What is a Technical SEO Audit?

A technical SEO audit is like giving your website a complete checkup. It examines the technical aspects that affect how search engines understand and rank your site. This includes analyzing factors like your website’s structure, how quickly pages load, mobile responsiveness, and security. If you’re looking for a free website analysis, several online SEO auditing tools are available. Consider exploring options like SEO App, or tools from companies like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or DeepCrawl.

Key Elements of a Technical SEO Audit

A thorough technical SEO check involves a multi-faceted approach. It goes beyond the surface to examine crucial elements that contribute to a search engine-friendly site.

Crawlability and Indexability

This element checks whether search engines can find and understand your site’s content. Think of it this way: if you invite guests to your house, but they can’t find the front door, they can’t visit. Crawlability refers to a search engine’s ability to access your content. Indexability means search engines can successfully store and categorize your content in their database.

A few things that can hinder crawlability and indexability include broken links and pages with incorrect HTTP response codes. Other issues include poorly structured URLs, an ineffective robots.txt file, and misplaced noindex tags in your code.

Website Structure and Navigation

A well-structured site with logical navigation is important. A confusing layout makes it difficult for search engine spiders to crawl your website. Visitors may also struggle to find what they need. This often leads to frustration, causing them to leave and potentially increasing your bounce rate.

A simple, user-friendly site architecture with organized categories is key. Using clear, concise internal links also creates a better user experience. These best practices help search engines grasp your site’s topic and understand how its content is related.

Mobile Friendliness

These days, having a website that’s easy to use on smartphones is crucial. Mobile devices accounted for over half of all internet traffic in February of 2023. With nearly 60% of global web traffic coming from smartphones and tablets, if your site doesn’t provide a positive mobile experience, it will affect rankings.

Search engines understand this shift in user behavior. Google switched to mobile-first indexing back in 2018, meaning their crawlers primarily look at the mobile version of a page. Websites need to be responsive to adapt to various screen sizes, meaning text must be readable without zooming, and buttons must be easily tappable. If Google deems your site lacking in these factors, your ranking will likely suffer.

Page Speed

Page speed is all about how quickly your website pages load. No one enjoys a slow-loading webpage. It’s like standing in a slow line at a grocery store. What if after 10 minutes of waiting to pay, there was no end in sight? Page speed is about loading content fast to improve user experience.

You can use various free online tools to check for technical SEO issues related to page speed, including PageSpeed Insights. You’ll find recommendations on image optimization, caching, server response time, and more to speed up your site. The tool provides separate data on desktop and mobile. Don’t forget about using Google Search Console for more advanced Core Web Vitals data.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap guides search engines to all your pages. Think of it as a roadmap. Submitting an XML sitemap to Google helps ensure that all important pages on your website are properly indexed.

While submitting a sitemap isn’t a guarantee for indexing, it acts as a courtesy notice to search engines. It allows them to see all your pages at once. You should review your XML sitemap regularly to check for crawl errors. Make sure it’s including your most important pages and isn’t including pages you don’t want Google to index. Google Search Console allows you to submit sitemaps and review index coverage.

HTTPS Protocol

That padlock in a website’s address bar signifies a site secured with HTTPS. It’s now more than a security best practice – HTTPS signifies a site using secure communication protocols that encrypt data. This data is transmitted between your server and users’ browsers.

Moving from HTTP to HTTPS requires installing an SSL or TLS security certificate on your site. An SSL certificate ensures your visitor data is encrypted and transmitted securely. This safeguards it from any interception.

Other Factors When Learning how to check for Technical SEO

The elements above create a strong foundation for technical SEO. However, technical SEO goes even further with other essential components to evaluate.

Duplicate Content

You want to make sure all your website pages have unique, original content. Having pages that compete with each other on the same keywords might dilute link equity. It can also diminish each page’s individual authority, ultimately lowering rankings for all competing pages.

Search engines want to showcase original, useful content. When duplicate content is present they struggle to determine which page deserves a better position in the search results.

Broken Links and Redirects

Broken links are dead ends that interrupt the user experience. Imagine enjoying a fascinating article and suddenly, upon clicking a link, you are presented with an error message.

When crawlers find a page that’s unavailable, they receive an error. This is commonly a 404 error. Implementing proper redirects, such as a 301 redirect, helps maintain the flow of link equity and takes users to updated content.

Schema Markup

Schema Markup is a type of structured data. It enhances how search engines read a page’s content, giving crawlers better clarity and context. Have you ever noticed those informative details that sometimes pop up in Google’s search results? This could be product availability, user ratings, or even recipe preparation time. This is schema markup at work.

International SEO

Do you have audiences in different countries who speak different languages? If so, International SEO is crucial. Setting up language tags (Hreflang tags) properly guides Google to show the right language versions of pages to your users. This also prevents search engines from interpreting multilingual content as duplicates. It signals that it is a unique version specific to an audience or region.

Putting It All Together

There are several SEO tools available to help you perform a technical SEO audit. Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights are great free tools to start with. There are also free SEO tools and browser extensions, such as SEO Meta in 1 Click, available to provide more in-depth information while navigating a website. Some SEO software suites also offer free versions you can use.

It’s easy to see how complex technical SEO can get. However, all of these steps, when performed consistently, can drastically improve your website’s technical SEO. Pay special attention to the elements that may be impacting your website the most. This will make sure Google sees you as a reliable resource. It also creates a smooth, enjoyable experience for your visitors.

FAQs About How to Check For Technical SEO

What falls under technical SEO?

Technical SEO involves all aspects of a website that impact how effectively search engines can crawl and index a site’s content. It focuses on crawling, rendering, and indexing your pages and assets. It also includes structural elements like your site navigation and site architecture. Some of the core issues technical SEO addresses are page speed optimization, mobile-friendliness, site security, duplicate content issues, redirects, broken links, XML sitemap setup, use of Schema Markup, and hreflang tags.

How do I run an SEO check?

To run an SEO check, start with Google’s free tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics. The Google Search Console can give you insight into indexing issues, response codes, sitemap errors, and other key metrics. There are also other SEO tools and SEO checkers on the market. For instance, Screaming Frog offers a technical SEO audit tool. Don’t forget to routinely check more obvious things like your website navigation, the readability of your content, and other visible aspects of the site.

What’s included in a technical SEO audit?

A technical SEO audit involves analyzing page speed, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, and security. It also typically includes an analysis of robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, broken links, and canonical tag urls. The audit tool you choose may have other site audit checklist items.

Is technical SEO difficult?

Technical SEO can be challenging for those who are unfamiliar with it. Start with the basics. Focus on using free SEO tools, especially those offered by Google, such as the URL inspection tool. However, diving into more complex areas of technical SEO can feel more complicated. Consider consulting with an SEO expert or web developer for these more advanced technical issues.

Conclusion: Technical SEO is Not Easy

Technical SEO is about creating a website that is easy for search engines to crawl and index. This involves creating a fast, secure, and technically sound website that provides a good user experience. You want a website that runs smoothly, ranks well in search engines, and keeps your visitors happy. Don’t get overwhelmed you can hire a digital marketing agency like us to handle your national SEO or local SEO strategies to help you rank on top of your competition.