Advanced Guide to SEO: Technical SEO Checklist

iv). Bookmark your new page on Reddit, Digg, and other Web 2.0 sites: Create accounts on both Digg and Reddit so that whenever you publish a new post, you can book them quickly.

Though Digg isn’t as popular as it used to be, but it’s still a delight for search bots. I personally found that my new post get indexed a few hours after bookmarking it.

v). Use “fetch as Google” option in Google Search Console to update your new pages: This is important because it tells Google to fetch the exact page you want to quickly index.

Crawl path optimization is really concerned with the sitemap, and the robot.txt file which contains information that makes the search engine robot to either index or not index your page.

3. Secure Website

A successful website consists of a website that’s functional, easy to use, valuable, and above all secured for users.

In other to secure your website, you need a Secure Certificate or SSL certificate.

SSL Certificates are small data files that bing cryptographic key to a company’s details using digital phenomenon. The moment you install them on a web server, it activates the secure padlock and the https protocol, which, in turn, enables secure connections from a web server to a browser.

Typically, you use secure certificates on your website if you accept credit cards from users, all forms of financial transactions, data transfer and logins, and today this technology is growing in popularity when it comes to securing browsing of social media sites.

As marketers, we use SSL certificates to bind:

• A domain name, server name or hostname.
• An company identity (i.e. company name) and location.

You don’t have to set up a secure certificate on your website manually, you can use the services of your web host (the majority of them will do it for you) to activate the padlock and show your web visitors that your website is secure and safe for them.

For SEO purposes, Google had announced the HTTPS is now a ranking factor.

When this announcement was made in 2014, website owners got confused. They want to know how HTTPS affects search rankings. Does having an encrypted website help you gain more organic visibility, they ask?

As little as 1.9% of the top 1 million websites redirect users to a default HTTPS/SSL version. Taking a look at the Quantcast top 10,000 websites – you will notice that a measly 4.2% have made the shift to this secure version. Overall, less than .1% of the websites on the internet are secure.

Switching to a secured website is important.

One of the major benefits of Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is that it provides a secure connection for website users and help them to secure personal data.

You’re helping users feel at home especially when they share shares precious information like credit card details and passwords. The HTTPS will add extra layers of protection for the user.

If you want to sustain your ranking this year, you need to seriously consider switching from an unsecured HTTP where data is lost to HTTPS. Essentially, Google has stated that if all other factors are equal, HTTPS can impact your search engine results. As an example, Cloudtec recorded almost double the number of top 10 search engine rankings, after switching to HTTPS.

The company also improved their page visibility in the search engine.

Given the enormous benefits of installing and using an SSL Certificate on your website, there are limitations or downsides too.

I thought you should know about them.

a). SSL Certificate can be expensive: There are several solutions that gives you an SSL certificate for free, which can be helpful. But as you know, you get what you pay for.

If you choose to invest money on premium solutions, bear in mind that the costs can add up to $1,499/year if you choose an SSL certificate from a provider like Symantec. More so, if you have a website that receives a lot of traffic and has too many pages, then the costs associated with encrypting the transferred data can be quite significant.

Such high costs for an SSL certificate may be justifiable for large companies that have huge budgets, but for small business owners with limited budgets, they can’t afford it. Even if they can, it doesn’t make business sense.

b). Duplicate content issues: One of the downsides to this is that if you activate the secure padlock the wrong way, then you might end up with duplicate content issues, such that both HTTP and HTTPS versions of your web page get indexed.

Consequently, this would result to different versions of the same web page getting indexed and showing up in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

In turn, this can be seen as a manipulative method of gaming search rankings, it will also confuse your visitors and lead to a negative user experience.

Now that we’ve had a glance at the benefits and challenges associated with HTTPS, let’s look at the data.

I decided to point out the negatives of switching from HTTP to HTTPS to help you decide exactly what you want. In the end, you should have a secure website but make sure it’s set up the proper way.

So, does HTTPS help with rankings? Is there a research to back up several claims online? Well, there is.

Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko teamed up with SimilarWeb, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and MarketMuse to analyze 1 million Google search results.

The results revealed that HTTPS is moderately correlated with higher search rankings on Google’s first page listings.

However, Brian gave two takeaways to help you maximize results with HTTPS:

He emphasized following a couple of pointers based on his analysis:

• There’s no need switching to HTTPS solely for SEO purposes. Why? Because it requires a rigorous process and there isn’t a strong correlation between the two.
• It’s always the best approach to have HTTPS in place from day 1 if you’re just starting a new website or blog. It’s a lot easier than implementing it on an existing website.

4. Check Metadata

Meta tags only exist in the head of the page, in HTML form. They don’t appear anywhere else. Meta tags are snippets of text that describe what the page’s content is about and help the user understand the information on the page from search engine results.

The “meta” stands for “metadata” which is the data on the tags that are found on website header.

Meta tags can help your SEO if you follow the right approach. Though not all the tags impact SEO, and the not all of the time too.

Let’s consider the most important meta tags that will help your search engine rankings below:

a). Meta Title or Title Tag: The title tag is the main title of a page, represented by the <title> element.

This is the most important meta tag. They’re visible to the average user, triggers click-through rate on the search engines, and helps search engine crawlers to understand the page better. If you’re a WordPress user, you can use the Yoast or All in One SEO plugins to add an optimized title tag to your page.

Here’s how the title tag looks like in the search engine results:

When writing your title tag, make sure it contains 50 characters or fewer. That way, search engines will show all the words in the title, and not dots (….). Here’s it in action:

The ideal length of your <title> will depend on the most-used device people use to access and view your website and its pages. But a rule of thumb is to keep it as short and descriptive as possible.

For example, if your website receives lots of mobile visitors, then go for a shorter title. It’s as simple as that. If you have more desktop users visiting your website, then increase length a bit. Or stick to the short titles because it will definitely appeal to users regardless of their device.

b). Meta description: The meta description is primarily the short description or summary of a particular page.

Few years ago, meta descriptions help search engines to know what the page was about. Today, Google will read the entire page and if you don’t specify the meta description, Google will use the introductory part of your content to describe what the page is about.

Thus, the meta description is a suggestion for the text displayed in Google’s search result pages. Here’s an example:

c). Image Optimization: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Images are important in your content. If you’re a blogger, a website owner, a content creator, or a digital marketer, you will find this section useful.

When you add the right images in your page, it will help readers understand your content better.

If you can illustrate a data point in a chart, graph, or data flow diagram, it will definitely increased the perceived value of your blog posts or social media posts.

Aside from the typical image optimization tips which you’ve probably come across, here are other ways to optimize your images:

i). Prepare image for speed: Page loading times play an important role in UX and SEO. If your website loads up quickly, users will enjoy visiting it, and search engine bots will enjoy crawling and indexing it.

When it comes to image compression, you have to be careful as this can impact on loading times.

An example: using a 1850×1850 pixels image and displaying it at 180×150 pixels size. Though the entire image still has to be loaded, but it will pose a problem.

The best approach is to scale the image to the size you want to display to users. WordPress serves the image in multiple sizes after you upload already. Sadly, that’s just the image size.

The file size is still the original and not optimized for search engines. Search WordPress depository for image optimization plugins. There are more than a handful that you can use to optimize your images for speed.

In addition to using responsive images that displays well on any device screen, here’s what to do next…

ii). Reduce file size: For your images to help improve your search visibility, make sure they are scaled in the smallest file size possible. There are so many tools for the trade.

Better yet, you could simply export the image and gauge the quality that’s acceptable. I recommend you use 100% quality images as standard.

To reduce the file size of these images, you can simply remove the EXIF data. We recommend using tools like ImageOptim or websites like JPEGMini, Kraken.io or , ImageResize.org or PunyPNG.

After reducing image file size, you should use tools like YSlow to check if your image optimization worked.

iii). Alt Text and Title Text: The alt text (or alt tags) is added to an image to describe the image when it’s not displayed properly to the visitor. Wikipedia has a better illustration:

“In situations where the image is not available to the reader, perhaps because they have turned off images in their web browser or are using a screen reader due to a visual impairment, the alternative text ensures that no information or functionality is lost.”

Your images need alt texts. Include your target keyword in the alt text to help describe the image better for both search engines and users. But don’t get involved in keyword stuffing.

The Title Text for images performs a similar role as the alt text. More and more people simply leave these out. If you don’t want to waste time, you could use the same text copy to optimize both sections.

The purpose of the title text is to provide non-essential information about the image, such as what the image stands for, or the context.

d). URL Optimization

Advanced Search Operators: There are several advanced search operators that help you get access to a wealth of knowledge that can help you with SEO. These operators help SEO experts’ very specific information that cannot be achieved with general queries.

Here is a list of some of the advanced search operators for SEO with their details.

Site: You can use this operator to explore any website, its indexed pages, and more.

Use the following search query:

site:domainname.com

The uses of this operator are potentially unlimited for SEO purpose. Here are some main ones:

• Use it to find indexed pages in Google.
• Use site:domainname.com keyword to find a list of posts and pages on the specific keyword on the domain.
• Find specific writers or contributors on a site by adding your desired keyword after the operator.
• Search images on a site or maybe infographics or videos.

Cache: It helps you find out the most recent cache of a website which shows you when it was last crawled.

Here is the syntax:

cache:domainname.com

The best way to use this operator is to add word cache: before the URL of the page in the address bar. This will show you the cached version of the page along with a date when it was last crawled.

Easy, right?

inurl: It helps you find websites that have a specific term or phrase in their URL. It can be used to find pretty much anything on the internet if you know how to use it.

For instance, if you’re looking for sites that accept guest posts. There are fair enough chances that the words ‘guest’ and/or ‘post’ will be used in the URL for all such websites and web pages.

Makes sense, right?

You can use inurl to find exactly these pages. Run the following query:

inurl:“guest post”

Refine the search query to find guest posting opportunities in your niche.

weight loss inurl:”guest post”

Works well. You can use guest post without commas too.

For best results, you can use multiple inurl operators in a single search query to refine your search.

inurl:weight inurl:guest inurl:submit

There are several ways you can use inurl. For instance, to find content in a specific niche, in a specific country, by a specific author, and more.

intitle: Just like inurl, intitle helps you find web pages having specific words and phrases in the title. Here is how to use it:

intitle:diet plan that works

To better refine your search, you should use quotations.

Here is a list of more operators to help you get started.

URL Optimization: Optimizing URLs is part of website’s structure. It helps both Googlebot as well as your customers to get a better understanding of what a page is about and where it is located.

Google provides three quick tips to improve URL structure:

• Use words in URLs to make them readable.
• Create a simple directory structure to organize content and pages on your website.
• Make sure that there is only one version of a URL to reach a specific page on your website.

This provides you with a decent starting point to URL optimization but there is more to it. The following infographic doesn’t just make URL optimization simple but visually pleasing.

 

5. Optimize Site Speed

The speed of a website matters. If your website is slow, you’re doing your business a disservice.

Did you know that a 1-second delay in page load time yields:

• 7% loss in conversions, according to Aberdeen Group?
• 11% fewer page views?
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction?

Sure, it does. In the real world, speed kills. But when it comes to website conversions, speed keeps alive.

Amazon, the giant shopping site increased their revenue by 1% for every 100 milliseconds improvement to their site speed.

Walmart took it a step further and recorded a 2% increase in conversions for every 1 second of improvement.

As much as possible, keep increasing your website load speed. Why? Because 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.

With all of these statistics, it makes sense to increase your page speed.

Here are 3 proven ways to speed up your website loading times:

i). Minimize HTTPS Requests: Earlier, we discussed the importance of having a secure website. Another negative attribute of an SSL certificate is that it can slow down a page.

Data from Yahoo! Revealed that 80% of a web page’s load time is spent on downloads. Given there are different parts of the page that must be downloaded:

• Images
• Stylesheets
• Scripts
• Flash, etc.

Unfortunately, each of these elements sends an HTTPS request which slows down page loading time. This equally means that the more elements a page has, the slower it will be — because there will be too many HTTPS requests going on at the same time. You can minify javascript and CSS to reduce these requests.

Having said that, you can also speed up your page speed by simplifying your design. Here are proven ways to go about it:

• Streamline the number of elements a given page has.
• Use CSS to frame your pages instead of images.
• Use multiple style sheets and combine them into one sheet.
• Use scripts but make sure they are at the bottom of the page.

ii). Reduce server response time: You want to achieve a server response time of less than 200ms (milliseconds). Don’t worry, the tips on this guide will help you achieve it.

According to Google, you should use a web application monitoring solution and check for bottlenecks in performance frequently. That’s the best way to understand how the server works, and ultimately, how you can enhance response time.

iii). Use compression: If you have been comprehensive content for a little over 6 months, then you have several large pages that are often 100kb and more. These bulky pages are responsibility for slowing down your download when a request is sent to the server.

The good news is, you can compress these pages to speed up loading time.

Compression helps to reduce your pages’ bandwidth, thereby reducing HTTP response. You can achieve this with a simple tool called Gzip.

Most of the popular web servers can compress your files in Gzip format before sending them for download. There are two options it can do this:

• Calling a third-party module or
• Using built-in routines.

According to Yahoo study, both options can reduce download time by about 70%.

Since 90% of today’s web traffic travels through browsers that support Gzip, you have to consider it an option for speeding up your website.

6. Monitor Google Search Console Stats

Are you registered with Google Search Console?

It is a free web-based tool for webmasters to help them monitor website performance in Google. Here are some of the main features:

• Search appearance information
• Search traffic
• Technical SEO status
• SEO related updates
• Crawl and indexing data
• Website performance in search engine
• Optimization tips and suggestions

The Crawl Stats and Crawl Error features are indeed helpful that can be used to see how many pages Googlebot crawls per day on your website. Any spikes or drop in the pages crawled per day needs further investigation.

Besides crawl rate, you can check index status, submit new pages for instant indexation, analyze search traffic including clicks, impressions, CTR, and average position.

There is indeed a wealth of information sitting there for you to explore. Don’t miss it.

Make the best use of it.