List Of Best Technical SEO Techniques & Methods

Website audits and the technical fix roadmap

Website audits will help you to identify and fix errors on your website. It is also vital for a company’s success to have an optimized, well-created content and technical on-page SEO strategy that works with the technical fixes from the roadmap.

A website audit based on professional expertise is the best way to ensure your site’s security and functionality. Spiders crawling and finding pages is dependent upon a sound analysis of the entire website.

Indexing and rendering also rely on best practices that are checked during a thorough technical assessment. It’s best to check for any vulnerabilities that could put visitors at risk of hacking or other online fraud and make sure you’re using the latest technologies such as PHP version and code updates.

Special attention to web server setup

How do you know your website is running smoothly without the risk of being hacked? Here are some pro tips for optimal performance when using web servers.

An excellent way to start would be checking out what type of server setup works best with Apache or Nginx – no Microsoft IIS! Use a CDN and web application firewall (WAF) and hire us for penetration testing to identify and patch vulnerabilities. Ensure that there isn’t any shared hosting available either; always go for dedicated environments or ensure the number of processing cores and memory is known to withstand organic traffic spikes.

URL Structure and website architecture

Proper URL structure and website architecture are essential components to help search engine crawlers find pages and allow users to navigate effortlessly. But what does this mean? It means that you need an organized system of storing all those words, images, or video clips into logical groups so they can be found more quickly.

Choose a flat or deep architecture based on immediate requirements and plan for future needs. In the chosen architecture, the core pages of the website are installed and every website must have at least these pages; home, about, contact, services (or main product categories page), and privacy policy.

These five pages are the bare minimum and website owners should never stop creating content and building pages. The type of landing page and their purpose define how the URLs are structured with or without keywords.

Website content organization

Website content organization is the best way to make your website easier for visitors and search engines alike. But what does this mean?

It means that you need an organized system of storing all those words, images, or video clips into logical groups so they can be found more quickly.

Flat architecture vs. deep architecture

Creating a website that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional can be challenging. A straightforward way to do this, without sacrificing crawl depth, is using flat architecture, pages close to the root index (home page).

Another way is a deep architecture with content categorized into folders and subfolders on the web server. The trick with going deep is a solid internal linking plan to connect the categories, so each page is a few clicks away, regardless of the number of sub-categories used in the site structure.

Core landing pages

Each website should contain a mix of these landing pages for ranking and conversions success; Home (index page), about, contact, services, privacy policy, terms of use, click-through pages, lead pages, and viral pages.

User-friendly URLs

The architecture type determines the path to construct URLs. If necessary, the exact terms or phrases are used but short and easy to read and scan.

Category URLs are treated differently than service or product pages. Interior site pages are different from blog or FAQ pages.

Entity Schema

The meaning and use of semantics and entity schema is a way to connect and store structured data about people, places, and things.It makes it easier for search engines to access information to find relevant pages on your website with their algorithms.

The knowledge graph helps out the SEO process because datasets display relationships between various entities, which can be used by bots as well human searchers when looking at different queries (search terms).

Semantic SEO

Semantic SEO connects information about a website’s content and structure to search engine algorithms, which helps increase traffic by providing meaningful metadata that answers specific queries. When you hear the word “semantics,” think “clustered entities.” One way would be through semantic seeding or nodes, which help cluster related keywords together.

Clustering helps to have a better chance at being found by search engines when someone types out specific queries on search pages. Semantic keyword clustering provides more information than keyword density to understand web page topics.

Latent Semantic Indexing – LSI

Search engines have been heavily invested in semantics and entities since their inception. Google’s RankBrain is built around word vectors and scales much better than using latent semantic indexing (LSI), which Google states that anyone who believes they use LSI to index and rank pages is misinformed.

LSI can be used for projects such as indexing static documents, but not billions of web pages with changing content and in dynamic near-real-time search results. Let’s be crystal clear about this; search engines do not use LSI because it’s not scalable; the processing power and time required to re-run an indexing algorithm and then the ranking algorithm, based on LSI, would not be cost effective or sustainable.

Entity-based SEO

The concept of entity-based technical on page SEO is about linking words or short phrases (person, place, thing) to other content pages. This type of optimization focuses on the individual words in your text, how they relate to one another, and the content organization within the URL structure.

Extraordinary technical knowledge leads to wrapping entities in a JSON+ld schema, so search engines learn precisely the page topic and how it relates to other onsite and offsite entities. When search engines learn what the entities are and how they connect, those will count as semantic terms for knowledge graph, indexing, and ranking purposes.

Topic modeling

Google, Bing, and Yandex all use topic modeling at incomprehensible scalability. Some may say it’s the entity datasets in massive databases that are the intended outcome.

Others argue that the knowledge graph data shown on search results pages is the intended and final outcome. We know this for sure; topic modeling is one of the hundreds of ranking signals the three most prominent search engines utilize.

Co-occurrences and co-citations combined with intelligent understanding and usage of TF-IDF will help tremendously. We have data modeling algorithms for this specific purpose, so we won’t explain much more to preserve our proprietary operations for content creation and linking.

Search intent signals related to entities

Some websites may require more landing page types that are specific to industry and purpose of the site, meaning if the site has purely informational, commercial, or transactional intent (more than 10 years ago, the intent was referred to as “know”, “go”, “do”).

1. The search user wants to “know” something; an informational page is served.
2. The search user wants to “go” to a specific brand page; a commercial page is served.
3. The search user wants to “do” and has displayed buying intent with search query; a transactional page is served.

The three intent types (directly correlated to buyers’ journey) relate to website architecture, how content is organized, URL construction, and type of landing page chosen for a specific purpose. At this point, we’re sure you notice how profoundly technical websites are and appreciate the mastery required to perform technical optimization at a very high level.

This information is scratching the surface and just getting started. Please read on.

File optimization

There are configurations that can boost speed and reduce load time by minifying and combining files, optimizing CSS to remove unused CSS or load stylesheets asynchronously. JavaScripts can be deferred or delayed to eliminate render-blocking.

Combining CSS and JavaScript files

File optimization for some scripts and style code involves the JavaScript (JS) and cascading style sheets (CSS) files primarily. Webmasters can choose to combine JS and CSS to reduce HTTP requests.

We must explain why this only works for HTTP/1.1 and not HTTP/2. Let’s begin.

HTTP/1

During the days of HTTP/1, TCP connections were always opened and then immediately closed and had to be this way for security purposes due to the keep-alive fix for the limitation of HTTP/1. Streaming audio and video were significant problems with HTTP/1; remember what seemed to be frozen video and audio streams?

The technology wasn’t ready for streaming anything at the size of video and audio files, with the amount of network congestion on the Internet at that time.

HTTP/1.1 Bit-chunked transfer encoding and pipelining

HTTP pipelining is a somewhat-new technology in HTTP/1.1 and introduced by Bit-chunked transfer encoding. Why is this important? Fewer Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections are needed, which reduces network congestion.

Last-bit chunking is not supported in HTTP/2 because it’s not required; the connection is persistent, and the server knows to queue up the next data frame to send to the browser. If you want to learn more about hypertext transfer protocol, read this HTTP guide.

HTTP/2 enhanced data frames

Let’s now progress to HTTP/2 and why keep-alive and bit-chunking are unnecessary. Data streams are handled directly with multiplexing and avoiding the head-of-blocking-issue. Since the data frames are handled much differently with HTTP pipelining, there’s no need to concatenate CSS or JavaScript.

If using HTTP/1.1, CSS and JS can be combined. If using HTTP/2, don’t combine files because it doesn’t matter anymore.

Relative vs. absolute paths

When combining files; don’t use absolute paths, only use relative paths.

Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files

Removing whitespace, and code commenting is what’s called “minification.” A slight uptick in speed and savings of 50-100 milliseconds is what you can expect to see when minifying CSS, JS, and HTML files.

That’s an easy explanation, so we will move on to optimizing delivery of CSS.

Load Asynchronously or Remove CSS

Optimize the page for speed by loading content asynchronously or removing unnecessary CSS slowing download times on the website, particularly anything that blocks a search engine crawler from rendering above-the-fold elements. If the critical path CSS is auto-generated for faster load times, a fall-back file must be provided in case a browser loads a web page while the critical CSS is still generating or when content delivery network (CDN) cache is manually flushed or automatically flushed on a schedule.

Critical CSS usually loads following the title tag.

<title>Page Title</title><style id="critical-css">critical style here</style>

Defer JavaScript

Render-blocking scripts, loaded with “src” prolong load time and affect the Core Web Vitals scoring and is achieved by waiting for other assets to load. Render-blocking scripts, loaded with “src” prolong load time and affect the Core Web Vitals scoring and is achieved by waiting for other assets to load.

Remove render-blocking JS on the website by adding the “defer” tag in each JS script tag. The JS file will be excluded from loading and there’s an option to exclude any JS files to be deferred.

defer></script>

All deferred scripts will display at end of source code immediately preceding the close body and close HTML tags. Here is an example of JS that is deferred:

<script src='https://ukrcodecorps.wpenginepowered.com/wp-includes/js/hoverIntent.min.js?ver=1.10.1' id='hoverIntent-js' defer></script>

Delay JavaScript

The JavaScript Delay will improve your site’s performance by delaying loading all scripts until a user interaction occurs. It can be anything from moving the mouse over to touching or scrolling on their screen.

Delaying JavaScript works the same as LazyLoad, but for JS. The delay configuration can cause problems with mobile usability such as having to touch links twice or opening the main navigation menu with two touches on the viewport.

If this problem occurs, there’s a possible conflict with a deferred JS and the delay configuration needs to be turned off.

Cache options

Page caching is one of the best ways to make your pages load faster, especially if you have a website with many elements on each page and high-resolution images. There are different types of page cache: mobile and desktop versions are significant accessibility and page speed factors for search engine crawler best practices.

Caching options can also be set up for less or more extended amounts of time before caches expire.

Mobile vs. Desktop

There are options to use caching for desktop and mobile devices separately. If a website is responsive, there’s no need to cache separate files for mobile.

However, when developers create independent code for device types and different websites altogether, it’s beneficial to cache web pages for desktop and mobile friendly user experience.

User and page

Caching can be created per user and per page, as well as choosing to not serve a cached URL can be done at page-level.

Cache duration

The lifespan of cache files is determined in hours, and the website’s size defines how often to rebuild the cache. We must note that caching pages on the webserver and caching via CDN are two different caches altogether.

The CDN, in most configurations, will cache the files as they’ve been configured to cache on the webserver.

Cache preloading

Caching can result in a much faster loading time for your web pages. There are several methods of preloading that you should use, including sitemap-based caching and linking from static files to reduce downtime when navigating pages.

When someone visits any given page on their browser, it goes through its set list of loadable assets like images, scripts, stylesheets, fonts, and 3rd party external files.

Preload XML Sitemaps

It may be suitable for pages with high traffic to load to preload cache based upon XML sitemaps and specified by absolute URLs. Technical SEO masters can also designate specific pages for preloading when users hover contextual links; that’s an instrumental technology to speed up pages and make the entire site faster.

Prefetch DNS Requests

Let’s now discuss using DNS to make the site faster relative to caching. Prefetching DNS requests from external hosts is a great way to load external files quickly on mobile networks and is vital to reduce DNS lookups and process DNS resolution when requested by the external resource.

Too much third-party content is unsuitable for performance, and DNS prefetching is a straightforward way to boost the load time.

Preload Fonts

Font files can also be preloaded when hosted on the domain and a viable alternative to improve speed slightly instead of fetching fonts from third-party resources.

Cache rules

Sensitive pages, user-agent strings, cookie IDS, and query strings can be cached sitewide or page-level for optimized performance.

Database cleanup and maintenance

The following actions can speedup the website databases:

• Optimize database tables
• Remove transients
• Delete spam and trash comments, post revisions, drafts, and trash content in blog

Crawling, rendering, and indexing

The importance of how JavaScript works with crawling, rendering, and indexing determines ranking success.

1. Search engine bots find URLs in a crawl queue, which is determined by the crawl budget.
2. Fetches URL from crawling queue with HTTP request
3. Reads robots.tx file or meta robots header
4. Parses response
5. Adds URL to crawl queue
6. If URL is injected with JavaScript, a headless browser renders page and executes script.
7. If links are found, the HTML is rendered and page is indexed

As a technical SEO best practice, crawlable links should be contained in anchor tag with hypertext reference attribute.

<a href="">

Server log files

Log analysis is the best way to analyze how search engines read websites. A log file documents every single request made by bots or users.

The first step you can take to understand why a page isn’t performing well is analyzing the webserver access log file.

Robots.txt and meta robots

The robots.txt file is a text file that tells search engines how to crawl your website, and is a list of directives deeply ingrained in the science of technical SEO. Sending the correct signals to search engines is critical to getting pages crawled, rendered, and indexed.

The instruction list (directives) is a web standard that regulates how robots access URLs and is part of the robot exclusion protocol (REP).

DNS configuration

Faster DNS servers can improve search engine visibility and rank in the long run by updating cached pages with new content more quickly. Faster resolution times can improve performance immediately, while slower resolution times can negatively affect rankings.

DNS providers are responsible for maintaining reachable web pages for Internet users. If the DNS provider is unreliable, slow DNS resolution can ultimately affect revenue.

XML Sitemap

The most important type of sitemap for SEO benefit is the XML sitemap, a list of the most important pages within a website containing critical information about each page. An HTML sitemap is suitable for users and navigation purposes, but the XML sitemap is for search engine crawlers, allowing them to find new pages quickly.

Different XML sitemaps are vital for large websites with extensive archives and especially helpful to a small, new website.

URL structure setup

Creating a website structure that search engine robots can easily crawl is essential. We need logical URLs with page hierarchies for human visitors and robot crawlers in some instances.

This will make your content more accessible while also improving the user experience on your site.

Improper redirects and redirect chains

A redirect is a great way to pass on some of the SEO link equity, but there are downsides. One problem that could occur is called “redirect loops,” a webmaster mistake that causes continued redirects, and the intended destination page will not resolve.

Redirect chains are, for example, page A to page B to Page C. This happens when inexperienced technical specialists neglect the process of searching for older pages that have inbound links and are not redirected correctly.

Website protection

SEO agencies and smaller companies that promote technical SEO services often neglect this critical aspect. There is a lot of pressure on website owners, who are constantly under threat of attack.

Cyber-attacks can deplete your revenue once search engine spiders repeatedly hit pages that are 502 and 504 status codes. DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service) causes page accessibility to decrease significantly.

If not appropriately handled by a DDoS expert, negative consequences will result in loss of rankings, which leaves the business website vulnerable to revenue loss. DDoS attacks, ransom attacks, and loss of revenue can be stopped by implementing a site-wide protection system.

DDoS attacks

Have you ever seen analytics and firewall metrics during a DDoS attack? We have witness and stopped pro-level, multiple vector attacks with millions of HTTP requests from botnet kits and farms.

The helpless feeling a website owner experiences from a Distributed Denial Of Service is devastating to business morale and loss of revenue. Stopping a DDoS attack is one of our specialty services that we are, without a doubt, one of the best.

The proof is in the results from our custom application built specifically for stopping and preventing long-duration attacks.

Ransom attacks

DDoS leads to intrusion attempts. When a hacker gains access to your website, there’s no doubt that data theft will occur, and the culprits will demand a ransom.

At this point, after a malicious attack and entry into the system, it’s too late. You’re now responsible for what happens to the data and user privacy.

Loss of rankings and revenue

We’ve witnessed business owners lose rankings to our clients, become very angry and pay big money to bring our clients down. One example is a difficult niche client who came to us after spending $20,000+ in four months to a so-called DDoS expert.

The revenue lost was in the thousands of dollars per day for several months. The exact dollar amount will not be provided.

However, it was a significant number, big enough to make you vomit in your mouth and feel as if you have been repeatedly punched in the face. The security contractor said he’d never seen an attack this well-orchestrated, and the only thing he could do is rate-limiting, but that would consume all of his time.

We don’t use rate-limiting.

Word-of-mouth brought the client to us, and we changed the name servers to use our application to stop the attack. Less than 10 minutes after we completed our installation, we had the attack under control with our custom application.

Most so-called “experts” will resell services of well-known companies, but that doesn’t work when the attackers are professionals. Email messages from the attackers were hilarious because they were so frustrated their professional efforts were stopped cold.

Most affected niches

• Adult products and streaming
• Cannabis products, specifically LED lighting
• Cannabis licensing for growers
• Dispensaries
• Mass tort law firms
• Birth injury websites
• Crypto exchanges
• Forex exchanges
• Weight loss
• Online casinos and gambling
• Online sports betting
• Dating, specifically international bride sites

Hiring us means a more effective and functional website

Picture getting a complete audit and analysis of your site’s health to reveal opportunities for improved crawl rate, rendering, indexing, and page speed.

The most pleasing aspect is, the benefits are noticeably impactful to revenue and return on investment!

Contact us today for a free consultation!

Our team will forensically examine your code for mistakes and opportunities missed by previous vendors, mitigate manual and algorithmic penalties, and provide a stable content management system (CMS).