Technical SEO is the very important part of optimizing your blog and making it more visible on search engines. Technical SEO is different from content SEO, which is based on the keyword and quality of the writing. Technical SEO means that your website will be well-structured, fast, and easy to crawl by search engine bots. Here is a very concise guide to mastering technical SEO for your blog:-
1. Page Speed Optimization- Compress images, minify CSS/JS, and enable browser caching to ensure fast loading times.
-Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to identify and fix speed issues.
2. Mobile-Friendly Design
-Implement responsive design so that the blog looks great on all devices.
- Test mobile usability with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.
3. Secure Website (HTTPS)
- Use an SSL certificate to secure the blog and provide a safe browsing experience.
4. URL Structure
- Keep URLs short, descriptive, and keyword-rich (e.g., `example.com/blog-post- title`).
- Avoid special characters and use hyphens as separators.
5. Meta Tags and Headings
Craft creative title tags (less than 60 characters), as well as meta descriptions less than 160 characters Utilize proper heading hierarchy in H1, H2, H3 format; utilize target keyword phrase for H1
6. Schema Markup
Add structured data to page elements - example: BlogPosting schema in HTML markup to enhance ranking positions with rich snippets.
7. XML Sitemap
The XML sitemap will also include all blog posts with submission to Google Search Console. know more
8. Canonical Tags
The blog post uses canonical tags as a solution for the duplicated content issues. It defines what version of the URL should be preferred for it.
9. Internal and External Linking
- Link to relevant blog posts and authoritative external sources for better navigation and context. Use descriptive anchor text.
10. Alt Text for Images
Add descriptive alt text for all images for accessibility and search engine indexing.
11. 404 and Redirections
Fixing broken links and setting 301 redirects for deleted or moved posts within the blog. Customize 404 pages to send back customers or users to relevant content.
12. Crawling and Indexing.
- Use robots.txt to control all web crawl bots, so that crawlers only crawl the pages that exist at time.
- Check whether it is indexed or not with Google Search Console.
13. Analytics and Monitoring
- Set up Google Analytics, especially to track traffic and user behavior.
- Use SEMrush or Ahrefs or other tools to track the technical SEO issues.