Boost Your Rankings With These Quick Technical SEO Tricks

Does your search engine rank need a quick push? The best Chicago technical SEO agency has a few solid strategies up its sleeve.

We can share five of them here:

• Perform a technical SEO audit.
• Get rid of duplicate content.
• Shift from HTTP to HTTPS.
• Optimize the site structure.
• Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.

Learn more about these technical SEO best practices by reading below!

Watch this video to learn how Digital Authority Partners tackles Technical SEO!

1. Perform a Technical SEO Audit

Doing a technical SEO audit might sound counterproductive. Imagine the many pages and codes you should examine and evaluate.

It usually takes about 40 hours to two weeks to complete an in-depth analysis. However, once you make it a part of your SEO plan, the hours you spend on it can significantly decrease over time.

You can already use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to streamline the process, provide you with the data even in real time, and offer recommendations to fix technical SEO issues.

The benefits of this audit make it well worthwhile. It answers some of the essential questions in digital marketing, such as:

• Can search engines crawl and index my pages?
• Is there any keyword cannibalization in play?
• Is my website secure?
• Are these pages properly linked with one another as well as external websites?
• Is my website optimized for mobile use?
• Are the technical optimization tactics compatible with on- and off-page SEO?

2. Get Rid of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content occurs when your website has two or more similar-looking and similar-sounding pages. They can even be 100% alike.

You can find this issue on many sites, but it is most common on local pages that serve several locations for the same products or services.

Contrary to what you might think, Google does not penalize (or punish) your site if it has duplicate content unless you deliberately plan to manipulate the algorithms and the search results.

But you should not ignore it either, for many reasons.  The two strongest ones being::

• Search engines can end up indexing and ranking you for the wrong keywords or incorrect pages. It may be content with outdated, misleading, or scant information. This article rarely converts visitors.
• Keeping duplicate content wastes your crawl budget. You can instead use it to focus on the pages that give better benefit to your website.

Fortunately, managing duplicate content is not complicated.

• Use 301 redirects or canonical URLs to redirect users to the original page.
• Remove or consolidate similar content, especially that with low-value information.
• Update the content with more relevant topics and keywords. Add unique or new information and visuals.

3. Shift from HTTP to HTTPS

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is the secure version of HTTP, which is the protocol that transfers data between a server and a website. It exists to protect the integrity and confidentiality of communication online.

It can also make your search engine rank rise faster than usual. Google gives websites with HTTPS more preference in their search results. In fact, it is a ranking factor. After all, these pages have an added layer of security, enhancing the user experience and trustworthiness.

How long does it take to change from HTTP to HTPPS? Generally, the straightforward process takes less than a few hours to a day. It usually involves:

• Buying and installing the SSL certificate
• Configuring the certificate server-side and setting up 301 redirects
• Testing and verifying HTTPS implementation

It becomes more complicated when the website is larger or has more pages. But you can always rely on a Chicago technical SEO agency to do the job, freeing you up with more time. The team also backs up your data, so nothing gets lost during the transition.

Plus, if you have been doing technical audits religiously, you can catch errors and SEO mistakes that may prevent you from moving to HTTPS properly and fix them ASAP before making the transition.

4. Optimize the Site Structure and Internal Linking

One of the primary goals of technical SEO is to improve the indexability and crawlability of your website. In other words, search engines can:

• Find your pages with ease.
• Understand the relationship of your content, from the keywords to the context, to other website pages, and your niche.
• Add these pages to their server or database. This way, if someone searches a query that matches your keywords, your website will appear on the list.

You can enhance crawlability and indexability by optimizing your website structure, “the skeleton,” that supports all your content. Here are a few ideas:

• Add a schema markup. It is a code that helps search engines understand the structure of your website. While it sounds like jargon, generating the codes is fast and easy because tools such as Google’s helper are already available.
• Include an XML sitemap. It is a type of file that lists all pages on your site. You can help them index your pages faster by submitting them to the search engine. Creating or updating a sitemap takes only a few minutes.
• Use breadcrumbs. They are a user-friendly way to navigate your website, especially for browsing deeper pages. They also help search engine bots understand the architecture of your content. You can add them in the header and footer of your pages or within the content itself.

5. Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

About 59.16% of all online traffic came from mobile devices during the last quarter of 2022. It was a sizable increase from 38.43% in 2015.

It means that if your website is not optimized for smaller screens, you can lose a large number of potential customers and sales. Fortunately, knowing your website is mobile-friendly is quick. You can take the mobile-friendly test in Google’s Search Console. It covers many vital factors, such as:

• The response time of the design across various screen sizes
• Page speed when loading content
• Ease of navigation with on-screen buttons and links

Besides spotting errors, this tool offers recommendations to enhance your website’s mobile experience, such as:

• Compressing images before loading them
• Decreasing the number of redirects on your pages
• Minimizing HTML, JavaScript, and CSS codes for faster loading speeds
• Using relative sizing for fonts instead of absolute values
• Maximizing content delivery networks (CDNs), which are distributed servers that store a cached version of your content

Summing Up Technical SEO

These technical SEO tips do not guarantee that you will see the desired results overnight. But all are simple and quick, especially when you have the right tools and professionals to help.

Digital Authority Partners (DAP) offers a full suite of SEO services, from technical audits and link building to content strategies. In every project, we ensure that your website follows the recommended protocols for crawling, indexing, and ranking better in search engine results pages (SERPs). Contact us now to get started!