Technical SEO Audit
8-minute reading time
What will you read about?
WHAT IS TECHNICAL SEO?
WHY SHOULD YOU DEAL WITH THE TECHNICAL ASPECT OF SEO?
WHAT DO WE EXAMINE DURING A TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT?
TECHNICAL SEO TIPS
The technical foundations of search engine optimization help you get the most out of your website in search results. Technical SEO is like the foundation of a house. You can build walls and put a roof on them, but if there are problems with the foundation, all of your efforts will be in vain at the end of the day.
Our team of experts assists clients with technical SEO audits and custom analyses to remove technical obstacles hindering organic traffic, thereby increasing the organic traffic to their sites.
WHAT IS TECHNICAL SEO?
Technical SEO is the area of search engine optimization that deals with analyzing the structure and technical settings of a website.
Its task is to determine the causes of declining organic traffic and exclusion from search results, as well as to formulate suggestions for resolving the identified issues.
We identify the technical shortcomings and misconfigurations of a website during the technical SEO audit, and then provide recommendations for correcting the errors.
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The sole purpose of a technical SEO audit is to ensure that a website’s technical settings do not cause a decline in organic traffic from search engines.
Search engine optimization is about fulfilling the requirements set by a third party (usually Google). If we want to drive more traffic to our website from the search results, it is worth meeting the criteria set by Google.
This is especially true for technical SEO.
To achieve optimal results, it helps to familiarize ourselves with the processes that underpin how Google operates.
How does a newly published article or a recently uploaded product page appear in the search results after hitting the publish button?
HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK
We can illustrate how search engines work by comparing them to a library. Our pages are like books, but there are a million other volumes in the library.
After all, Google is nothing more than a vast library.
In three steps, Google decides whether the new content is worth putting on the shelf, and if so, which part of the shelf.
1. Crawling – Discovery
During crawling, search engine bots (crawlers) find new and updated content. Sticking with the library example, during crawling, Google places our content in a movable cabinet, the location or disposal of which will be decided later.
Crawling simply means that Google has found the content; the next steps determine its inclusion in search results.
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Common mistakes that hinder crawling: absence of a sitemap, incorrect robots.txt configuration, slow page loading.
2. Indexing – Analysis
Crawled content does not guarantee entry into search results. During indexing, algorithms analyze and categorize our content, which then enters Google’s database and gets placed on the shelf.
While errors hindering crawling point to serious deficiencies, factors that hinder indexing are common issues for most pages.
Often, these are not errors but areas for optimization.
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Common mistakes that hinder indexing: duplicate content, incorrectly set canonical tags, insufficient unique content.
3. RANKING
Once our content is included in Google’s index, the ranking in the search results depends on many more factors. Technical SEO audit elements can also help achieve better rankings (Are there broken links on the site? How quickly does the page load?), but at this point, On-Page SEO and external links are usually the most decisive.
This three-stage metaphor is actually a simplified model. The workings of Google are much more complicated under the hood. We have not discussed rendering, Javascript SEO, structured data, and many other important elements examined during a technical SEO audit, but they are not necessarily needed for an overview of the big picture.
Furthermore, not all details of the search giant’s methods and algorithms are public.
However, technical SEO strongly influences every stage of the relationship between search engines and content.
WHY FOCUS ON TECHNICAL SEO?
BETTER TECHNICAL FOUNDATIONS = MORE VISITORS
Technical decisions that take SEO principles into account accumulate over time, whether we are talking about small changes or drastic improvements. A SEO-friendly website can maximize both our organic visibility and the volume of organic traffic coming to our site.
Following technical SEO recommendations means more visitors and ultimately more conversions.
Technical SEO is a highly diverse field that requires up-to-date knowledge within search engine optimization. While the basics are relatively easy to learn and implement with the help of plugins, significant expertise is necessary to avoid elements that could escape the attention of site owners and hinder their website’s organic traffic.
THE OPPORTUNITIES IN CONTINUOUS CHANGE
At BP Digital, we have assisted our clients’ growth with hundreds of technical SEO audits over the years. Our refined processes are not only more efficient but also more effective than self-conducted technical SEO work.
We have had the privilege of working with market-leading e-commerce sites, marketplaces with hundreds of thousands of pages, blogs looking to optimize years’ worth of content, and simple portfolio sites.
We check a list of approximately one hundred items during each audit. In addition to simple mistakes, we monitor industry best practices and identify development opportunities beyond mere adjustments.
Continuous change is especially true for technical SEO.
What was a functioning tip a few years ago may now be considered a disregarded detail. Consider Google’s stance on numbered pages (rel=prev/next) or changes to robots.txt. Complying with Google’s new technical guidelines can manifest in better rankings. The increasing significance of mobile-friendly websites and loading speeds is also an example of these guidelines.
Whoever does not keep pace—especially in technical SEO—will truly fall behind.
WITHOUT FOUNDATIONS, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION IS MONEY WASTED
Certain areas of SEO support each other. Content creation and link building only yield results with proper technical foundations. Optimized content is more likely to rank well. Our results can be even more impressive when we support our pages with credible external links.
However, if those same pages are set for noindex, contain oversized images, or point to another subpage with canonical tags, then even first-class On-Page optimization and premium link building won’t help.
We will not rank in a position made possible by the invested work without correcting technical SEO mistakes, if Google even indexes our page at all.
BECAUSE TECHNICAL SEO AUDIT IS NOT A ONE-TIME TASK
Ideally, technical SEO should not be confined to a one-time audit. The oft-cited “the developer has SEO’d the site” effect does not exist. Technical SEO depends on webmasters operating the website, editors uploading content, and marketers creating new landing pages.
Having a solid foundation does not guarantee a website will remain SEO-friendly in the long term. Continuous changes, new technologies, article deletions, the discontinuation of linked external sources, and the introduction of new features significantly impact the technical side of SEO.
Therefore, it is advisable to conduct a technical SEO audit at regular intervals.
BENEFITS FOR MARKET LEADERS AND ASPIRING SITES
Technical SEO is equally beneficial for marketplaces and e-commerce sites with significant organic traffic as well as for starting websites. However, there is a significant difference in terms of the types of errors and the impact available.
For large websites, it is often not an index tag left in place or slow page loading that raises concern, but rather the unclaimed content accumulated over the years, unnecessary URLs hindering crawling, and duplicate pages that usually hold back performance.
Google carefully manages its crawling capacity, so it is often the case that not all products of a market-leading store are indexed. Optimization opportunities discovered during a technical SEO audit can result in almost free traffic gains for websites in such cases.
Starting projects and smaller sites often present technical SEO errors that nearly completely prevent the site from performing well in search results. Although a previously justified but later retained noindex tag has become increasingly rare, it still occurs. Many smaller websites can improve their page load speed, while many typical errors, such as indexed label pages preceding articles, repeatedly occur.
Are we examining a technical SEO audit?
Mapping: XML / HTML sitemaps
Indexing: Noindex and nofollow tags, Robots.txt, Canonical tags
Status codes: 3xx, 4xx, 5xx
Analytics: Integration of Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Loading speed: Caching, Lazy loading of files, Gzip compression, Compression of CSS and JavaScript files, Image compression
Content: Duplicate content, Pages with little textual content
On-Page SEO elements: Page titles, Meta descriptions, H1 headings
Site structure: Internal links, Page depth, URL structure, Use of breadcrumbs
Mobile-friendly website: Responsive design, AMP
Structured data: Rich search results, Schema markup, Microdata & JSON-LD
Migration: HTTP-HTTPS migration, Domain migration, CMS migration
TECHNICAL SEO TIPS
By avoiding common mistakes and applying best practices, you can increase your chances of being indexed by Google and having your website interpreted correctly.
Below are some practical tips to help you get your technical SEO fundamentals in order so that technical issues do not hinder your content from ranking.
1. MAPPED, NON-INDEXED URLS
Google’s algorithm has long favored content-rich websites. If you want to compete in a competitive industry, a three-page portfolio won’t be sufficient.
The same applies to URLs generated based on templates. Nowadays, it’s not enough to make the URLs of a job portal, online store, or news site indexable if it has a large database. These URLs are typically indexed at a low rate.
Google crawls them but does not display them in search results.
The low indexing rate can have numerous causes: lack of internal links, low domain authority, sitemap containing poorly formatted or erroneous pages.
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Discovery of non-indexed URLs: The easiest way to find your non-indexed pages is to navigate to the Excluded tab in the Search Console Coverage report. It’s worth analyzing the pages under crawling anomalies and Crawled – currently not indexed labels for correlations.
Comparing the number of results received from the site:domain.com search operator to the number of URLs to be indexed can also be useful.
2. SITEMAP FOR BETTER INDEXING
The sitemap not only helps with the crawling of your pages but also serves as a way to indicate to Google the URLs of the important pages, making it a good option for optimizing crawling capacity.Especially for websites with thousands of URLs, the sitemap is an effective tool. Yet in many cases, every available URL can be found in the sitemap.
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Only include indexable and eligible URLs in the sitemap! It’s advisable to exclude 404-error, canonicalized, paginated, or redirected pages from the sitemap.
3. AGAINST BROKEN LINKS AND 404 ERRORS
404 errors not only go against SEO advice but also negatively impact user experience. Every time your pages return a 404, it sends a negative signal to Google.
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Against broken links and 404 errors: Did you delete a page or modify its URL? Redirect to the new URL with a 301 redirect! This way, the traffic along with internal and external links will also be “inherited” by the new URL.