What is technical SEO? 10 Important factors for your website

Teknisk SEO handler om å optimalisere en nettside for søkemotorer, men den kan også inkludere aktiviteter som har som mål om å forbedre brukeropplevelsen.

Jobben med teknisk SEO er blant annet:

• Submitting your sitemap to Google
• Creating an SEO-friendly website structure
• Å forbedre nettsidens hastighet for best mulig resultat
• Making the website mobile-friendly
• Å finne og rette opp dupliserende innhold med riktig seo strategi

In this article, you will learn the basic principles and best practices for optimizing your website for technical SEO.

Let's take a closer look.

Why is technical SEO important?

Technical SEO can have a big impact on your website's performance on Google.

If the pages on your website are not accessible to search engines, they will not appear or rank in search results - no matter how valuable your content is.

This results in a loss of traffic and potential revenue for your business.

In addition, page speed and mobile-friendliness of the website are confirmed ranking factors by Google.

If your pages load slowly, users may become annoyed and leave your website. User behavior like this can signal that your website is not providing a positive user experience. As a result, Google may rank your website poorly.

Understanding indexing

Det første trinnet når det kommer til optimalisering av din nettside for en god teknisk SEO er å sikre at nettstedet kan indekseres av søkemotorer.

Indexing (crawling) is an essential component of how search engines work.

Indexing happens when search engines follow links they already know to find pages they haven't seen before.

For example, every time we publish new blog posts, we add them to our blog archive page.

‍

So the next time a search engine like Google indexes your blog page, it sees the newly added links to your new blog post.

And that's one of the ways Google discovers our new blog posts.

If you want your pages to appear in search results, you must first ensure that they are accessible to search engines.

There are a few ways to do this:

les mer om On-page SEO.

Create an SEO-friendly website structure

Website structure, also known as site structure, is the way in which pages are linked together.

En effektiv nettside struktur organiserer sidene på en måte som hjelper robotene med å finne innhold på nettsiden raskt og enkelt.

So when structuring your website, make sure that all pages are just a few clicks away from your homepage.

Like this:

‍

In the above website structure, all pages are organized in a logical hierarchy.

The homepage links to category pages. And then the category pages link to individual subpages on the website.

This structure also reduces the number of "abandoned pages", in other words "orphan pages" as they are also known.

"Abandoned" pages are pages that do not have internal links pointing to them, making it difficult (or sometimes impossible) for bots and users to find them.

Tip: If you're a Semrush user, you can easily find out if your website has any "abandoned" pages.

Set up a project in the Site Audit tool and index your website.

When indexing is complete, go to the "Issues" tab and search for "Orphan pages".

The tool shows if your website has any "abandoned" pages.

To solve this problem, add internal links on pages that are not "abandoned" that point to the "abandoned" pages.

This can be done by identifying relevant places on your website where it makes sense to link to the "abandoned" pages. For example, you can add links in relevant articles, blog posts or product pages.

Ved å inkludere interne lenker til de "forlatte" sidene, vil du skape en kobling mellom de ulike delene av din nettside og gjøre det lettere for crawlerne å finne og indeksere disse sidene. Dette vil også gi brukerne en bedre opplevelse ved å gi dem en enkel navigasjonssti til godt innhold.

Submit your sitemap to Google

Using a sitemap can help Google find your pages online.

A sitemap is usually an XML file that contains a list of important pages on your website. It tells search engines what pages you have and where they can find them.

This is especially important if your website contains many pages or if they are not well linked together.

Here you can see what the Reklamedia sitemap looks like:

Your sitemap is usually located at one of these two URLs:

dittnettside.no/sitemap.xml

dittnettside.no/sitemap_index.xml

Once you have found your sitemap, submit it to Google via GSC (Google Search Console).
To submit your sitemap to Google, go to GSC and click on "Indexing" -> "Sitemap" in the sidebar.

Then paste the URL that belongs to your sitemap in the "Add a new sitemap" field and click "Submit".

After Google has finished processing your submitted sitemap, you should see a confirmation message like this:

Understanding indexing

When search engines index your pages, it then tries to analyze and understand the content on those pages.

Deretter lagrer søkemotoren deler av innhold i sin søkeindeks, som er en stor database som inneholder milliarder av andre nettsider.

Pages on your website must be indexed by search engines to appear in search results.

The easiest way to check if your pages are indexed is to perform a "site:" search.

For example, if you want to check the indexing status of reklamedia.no, enter site:www.reklamedia.no in the Google search bar.

This tells you how many pages Google has indexed.

You can also check if individual pages are indexed by searching for the page URL with "site:" search.

Here you go:

site:dinnettside.no/din-side-url

This will give you information about whether the specific page is indexed by the search engine.

There are some methods that can prevent Google from indexing your pages:

Noindex tag

The "noindex" tag is an HTML snippet that keeps your pages out of Google's index.

Den plasseres innenfor <head>-seksjonen på din nettside og ser slik ut:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

Ideally, you want all important pages to be indexed. So use the "noindex" tag only when you want to exclude certain pages from indexing.

This could be, for example:

"Thank you" pages

PPC landing pages

Canonization

When Google finds similar content on multiple pages, it becomes difficult for it to know which pages to index and display in search results.

That's exactly when the canonical tag comes in.

The canonical tag (rel="canonical") identifies a link as the original version and tells Google which page to index and rank.

Taggen er plassert innenfor <head>-seksjonen på en duplisert side og ser slik ut:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://eksempel.com/opprinnelig-side/" />

Best practices for technical SEO

Ved å opprette en SEO-vennlig nettside struktur og ved innsendelve av din nettkart til Google, bør dine sider bli indeksert.

But if you want your website to be fully optimized for technical SEO, you should also consider these points:

1.Use HTTPS

HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP.

It helps protect sensitive user information, such as passwords and credit card details, from being misused.

And it has been a ranking factor since 2014.

You can check if your website uses HTTPS by visiting it.

Look for the "lock" icon in the address bar to confirm this.

If you see the warning "Not secure", you are not using HTTPS.

In this case, you need to install an SSL certificate.

An SSL certificate authenticates the identity of your website and establishes a secure connection when users access it.

You can get an SSL certificate for free from Let's Encrypt.

Important: When your website switches to HTTPS, make sure to add forward links from HTTP to the HTTPS version of your website. This will forward (redirect) all users visiting the HTTP version to the secure, HTTPS version of your website.

2. make sure that only one version of your website is available to users and robots

Users and bots should only be able to access one of these two versions of your website:

https://dittnettside.no

https://www.dittnettside.no

Having both versions available can lead to issues with duplicate content.

This also reduces the effectiveness of your backlink profile - some websites may link to the "www" version, while others link to the "non-www" version.

This can negatively affect your performance on Google.

Therefore, use only one version of your website and redirect the other version to the main page.

3. improve the speed of your website

The speed of your website is a ranking factor for both mobile and desktop.

So make sure your website loads as quickly as possible.

You can use Google tools like PageSpeed Insights to check the current speed of your website.

It gives you a performance score from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the better.

Here are some ideas that can help improve the speed of your website:

• Compress your images - Images are usually the largest files on a website. By compressing them with image optimization tools like Shortpixel, you reduce the file size so that the images download as quickly as possible.

• Use CDN (Content Delivery Network) - CDN stores copies of your pages on servers around the world. It then connects the visitor to the nearest server, so the files requested have to travel a shorter distance.

• Minimize HTML, CSS and JavaScript files - Minimization removes unnecessary characters and spaces from the code to reduce the file size. This improves website loading time.

4. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

Google uses mobile-first indexing. This means it looks at mobile versions of web pages to index and rank the content.

So make sure your website is compatible with mobile devices.

To check if it applies to your website, go to the "Mobile-friendliness" report in Google Search Console.

The report shows the number of pages that affect mobile-friendliness.

Along with specific problems.

If you don't have Google Search Console, you can use Google's mobile friendliness testing tool.

Implement structured data

Structured data helps Google better understand the content on a page.

By adding properly structured data markup code, your pages can get rich snippets.

Rich snippets are more appealing search results with extra information displayed below the title and description.

Example:

The benefit of rich snippets is that they set your pages apart from others, which can improve your click-through rate (CTR).

Google supports thousands of structured data markups, so choose one that best suits the nature of the pages you want to add structured data to.

For example, if you run an online store, it makes sense to add structured data to your product pages.

Here's what that sample code might look like for a page selling the iPhone 14 Pro:

Det finnes mange gratis seo verktøy for generering av strukturert data, som dette, slik at du ikke trenger å skrive koden for hånd.

And if you're using WordPress, you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to implement structured data.

6. Find and resolve duplicate content

Duplicate content occurs when you have exact or almost identical content on multiple pages on your website.

For example, this page from Buffer appears on two different URLs:

1. https://buffer.com/resources/social-media-manager-checklist/
2. https://buffer.com/library/social-media-manager-checklist/

Google does not penalize websites directly for having duplicate content.

But duplicate content can lead to other problems, such as

• Unwanted URLs that rank in search results
• Dilution of backlinks
• Wasted crawl budget

With the Semrush Site Audit tool, you can find out if your website has issues with duplicate content.

Start by running a full audit of your website in the Site Audit tool and then go to the"Issues" tab.

Next, search for "duplicate content". The tool will show all the errors, if you have duplicate content and give advice on how to fix it.

7. Find and fix broken pages

Having broken pages on your website negatively affects the user experience.

If these pages have backlinks, they are wasted because they link to non-existent resources.

To find broken pages on your website, use Semrush's Site Audit tool. Then go to the"Issues" tab and search for "4xx".

It will show if you have broken pages on your website. Click on the " pages" link to get a list of broken pages.

To fix broken pages, you have two options:

1. Recover pages that were accidentally deleted
2. Omdiriger eldre innlegg med tilbakekoblinger til mest relevante sider på din nettside.

After fixing the broken pages, remove or update any internal links pointing to the newly deleted or redirected pages.

To do so, go back to the"Issues" tab and search for "internal links". The tool will show if you have multiple broken internal links.

If you have, click the"internal links" button to see a full list of broken pages with links pointing to them. Click on a specific URL to learn more.

On the next page, click the"X URLs" button under "Incoming internal links" to get a list of pages pointing to the broken page.

Replace internal links to broken pages with links to those pages that have recently been fixed. 

8. Optimize for Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are speed metrics that Google uses to measure user experience.

These measurements include:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - Calculates the time it takes to load the website's largest element for a user

• First Input Delay (FID) - Measures the time it takes to respond to a user's first interaction with a website.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - Measures changes in the layout of different elements on a website

To ensure your website is optimized for Core Web Vitals, you should aim for the following scores:

• LCP - 2.5 seconds or less
• FID - 100 ms or less
• CLS - 0.1 or less

You can check the performance of your website for Core Web Vitals measurements in Google Search Console.

To do this, go to the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

You can also use Semrush to view a report specifically created for Core Web Vitals performance.

In the Site Audit tool, navigate to "Core Web Vitals" and click"View details".

This opens a report with detailed information about the website's Core Web Vitals performance and recommendations to address each issue.

9. Use Hreflang for multi-language content

If you have a website with multilingual content, you must use the hreflang tags.

Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to specify the language and geo-targeting of a website.

It helps Google display language and country-specific versions of your pages to users.

For example, there are several versions of a homepage in different languages. This is a homepage in English:

And here is a website in Turkish:

Each of these versions uses the hreflang tags to tell Google about the page's language and geo-targeting.

This tag is relatively easy to implement.

Legg bare til de riktige hreflang-taggene i <head>-seksjonen på alle versjonene av siden.

For example, if you have your homepage in English, Spanish and Portuguese, add these hreflang tags to all these pages:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://dittnettside.no" />

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="https://dittnettside.no/es/" />

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="https://dittnettside.no/pt/" />

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://dittnettside.no" />

10. Stay on top of technical SEO issues

Technical SEO is not something you do once and for all. New issues are likely to arise over time.

Therefore, it's important to monitor the health of your technical SEO regularly and address issues as they arise.

Redirect issues are bad for SEO because they contribute to negative user experience.

And you probably won't notice them by chance.

So this issue would likely have gone actively unnoticed without an end-to-end analysis.

Ved å kjøre regelmessige tekniske SEO-analyser får du handlingspunkter for å forbedre SEO-en din. Slik at du utvikler god brukeropplevelse.

‍

Trenger du hjelp med teknisk SEO? ta kontakt eller se våre SEO tjenester.