Contrary to popular belief, technical SEO isn’t too challenging once you get the basics down; you may even be using a few of these tactics and not know it.
However, it is important to know that your site probably has some type of technical issue. “There are no perfect websites without any room for improvement,” Elena Terenteva of SEMrush[1] explained. “Hundreds and even thousands of issues might appear on your website.”
For example, over 80% of websites examined had 4xx broken link errors, according to a 2017 SEMrush study[2], and more than 65% of sites had duplicate content.
Ultimately, you want your website to rank better, get better traffic, and net more conversions. Technical SEO is all about fixing errors to make that happen. Here are 12 technical SEO elements to check for maximum site optimization.
1. Identify crawl errors with a crawl report
One of the first things to do is run a crawl report for your site. A crawl report, or site audit, will provide insight into some of your site’s errors.
You will see your most pressing technical SEO issues, such as duplicate content, low page speed, or missing H1/H2 tags.
You can automate site audits using a variety of tools and work through the list of errors or warnings created by the crawl. This is a task you should work through on a monthly basis to keep your site clean of errors and as optimized as possible.
2. Check HTTPS status codes
Switching to HTTPS is a must[3] because search engines and users will not have access to your site if you still have HTTP URLs. They