Great Technical SEO: Your Secret to the Most Organic Traffic

Getting more visits to your website from organic searches means your search engine optimization tactics are working. But it takes more than just engaging content to rank; you also need technical SEO.

An expert San Diego technical SEO company shares the secret to higher organic traffic:

• Improve site structure.
• Include labels and add metadata.
• Boost website security.
• Enhance the website speed.
• Promote mobile-friendliness.
• Optimize internal links.
• Fix crawl errors

This article reveals the secret to achieving the highest organic traffic using technical SEO. Find out how to boost site ranking; let's go!

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

Improve Site Structure

Site structure refers to how organized the website content, pages, and navigation are. It determines how the website's pages are connected and its information hierarchy. An effective site structure allows users to easily navigate the website, find relevant content, and improve the user experience (UX).fcp

A good site structure helps search engine crawlers understand the content and relevance of each page. An organized one with clear hierarchies and internal linking distributes link equity throughout the website, increasing the authority of individual pages and boosting ranking. Use the following technical SEO strategies:

• Conduct a site audit to identify issues using Screaming Frog, SEMrush, or Ahrefs.
• Create a clear hierarchy with the homepage at the top, then categories, subcategories, and individual pages.
• Use descriptive URLs that accurately reflect the content on the page.
• Add internal links to help users navigate related pages and distribute link equity. More on this later.
• Optimize navigation using descriptive labels for categories and subcategories. Add a search bar to help users quickly find content.

Include Labels and Metadata

Labels and metadata are essential elements in technical SEO. Labels are the text descriptions or tags on various website elements such as images, videos, and other media. These provide a textual description of the content and help search engines understand the photo or video.

Metadata refers to the data added to the HTML code of a webpage. It includes information such as the page title, description, and keywords, providing context to search engines about the page's content. Well-crafted labels and metadata can improve the website's visibility in SERPs and improve technical SEO to benefit your website overall.

Here are strategies to optimize labels and metadata for technical SEO:

• Use descriptive titles, but avoid keyword stuffing.
• Write compelling descriptions, adding relevant keywords.
• Include header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to structure content and provide a clear hierarchy.
• Add alt tags for all images on your website.
• Use schema markup to provide additional information about the content of web pages.
• Keep titles and descriptions concise and to the point.

Boosting Website Security

Website security has a significant impact on the UX, search engine rankings, and overall reputation of the site. Unprotected websites are at risk of security threats such as hacking and malware. From a technical SEO standpoint, website security is crucial because search engines prioritize secure sites in their search results.

Sites with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates and HTTPS encryption rank higher. This means having a secure website is essential for UX and improving search engine visibility and rankings. Technical SEO strategies secure websites, and here are some ways to do it:

• Add SSL encryption to prevent hacking and data theft. A site has this feature when you see a padlock icon before the URL and the URL has the "https" prefix.
• Update content management systems (CMS), plugins, and scripts.
• Use strong passwords for all user accounts, and do not reuse them.
• Limit access to sensitive website areas to only those who need it.
• Protect a website with firewalls: It protects against common attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.
• Backup data to a secure location.

Enhance Website Speed

A fast-loading website provides a better UX because users can access content quickly and easily. Website speed affects a site’s overall performance, and faster-loading websites rank higher on SERPs.

Slow-loading websites may have difficulty handling high traffic, leading to downtime and lost revenue. They also consume more server resources, leading to higher hosting costs. Avoid these issues by:

• Compressing and optimizing images to reduce their file size using formats such as JPEG or WebP;
• Minimizing HTTP requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files and minimizing inline CSS and JavaScript;
• Using a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute content across multiple servers;
• Reducing redirects because each redirect adds additional page load time;
• Enabling browser caching to store static content on the user's device; and
• Using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), an open-source framework that provides a fast and streamlined mobile experience.

Fixing website speed can have amazing impacts. Take a look at our Sanctuary Clothing case study: Fixing the site speed was part of our adjustments. We also worked to correct orphan pages, alt text for images, redirect issues, HTML, and more. Add in UX adjustments and content creation and organic traffic increased by 80 percent.

Promote Mobile-Friendliness

A mobile-friendly website is easy to use on various mobile devices, regardless of screen size or resolution, thus providing excellent UX. It has become an essential aspect of technical SEO because of the increasing number of mobile users. 

In fact, Google recently introduced mobile-first indexing, which means it now indexes and ranks websites based on their mobile version rather than their desktop version. Optimizing for mobile now is a must, and these specialized SEO techniques will help: 

• Use a responsive design so sites automatically adjust their layout and content to fit the user's screen size.
• Simplify navigation using a drop-down or hamburger menu to keep navigation simple and uncluttered.
• Use legible fonts. Avoid tiny fonts or those that are difficult to read on mobile devices.
• Optimize forms using input fields that are easy to tap on a small screen.

Optimizing Your Internal Links

Internal links connect one website page to another and are essential to technical SEO. They help users navigate through the website and find relevant content. Internal links also help distribute page authority throughout the website.

Search engines can discover and index new pages on a website using internal links, which also help create topic clusters — groups of related content linked together. Topic clusters help search engines understand the structure and organization of the website and improve the ranking for related search queries. 

These strategies help optimize internal links for technical SEO.

• Use descriptive anchor text for internal links.
• Link to relevant pages together.
• Maintain a clear hierarchy with main navigation at the top, secondary navigation below, and content links.
• Include “follow” links to pass authority to the linked pages.
• Use a reasonable number of links.
• Add images and buttons to make internal links more attractive and clickable.
• Update internal links regularly.

Fix Crawl Errors

Crawl errors occur when search engine spiders try to access a web page but cannot. These errors occur because of broken links, server errors, or page redirects, and they can negatively affect the UX. Users may become frustrated and leave the site if they encounter broken links or other errors.

If search engines cannot access pages, they may view the site as less authoritative and irrelevant. Hence, fix crawl errors with these techniques:

• Identify errors using Google Search Console or other SEO tools.
• Fix broken links by updating URLs to the correct links or removing the links altogether.
• Update redirect URLs to point to the correct pages.
• Resolve server errors (e.g., 500, DNS, and SSL certificate errors) by working with your web host or IT team. 
• Update the sitemap using tools such as XML sitemap generators.

Summing Up

Promote technical SEO by improving site structure, adding labels and metadata, boosting website security, and enhancing website speed. You can optimize site indexing and rank by promoting mobile-friendliness, optimizing internal links, and fixing crawl errors. 

Partner with a San Diego technical SEO expert and improve website performance. Call Digital Authority Partners now.