An Ultimate Guide on Technical SEO to Help You Rank Higher

There is a lot of information out there about how to optimize your website for search engines; but, it can be hard to tell what does and doesn’t really matter. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of what we consider to be the most important factors when taking into account technical SEO ranking. We’ll walk you through image optimization, content optimization, URL optimization, heading tags and titles — so that you can see why each factor matters and how you can implement them.

Image Optimization

Before you can use images on your website, you have to optimize them. That means making sure your images are the right size. And that means making sure nothing is cropped out. Then you have to make sure the images are in the right format. PNG is a good format for images with a lot of transparency but tends to be large in size. JPG is a good format for images with solid colors and can support image meta information. Right out of the gate you can see there are a lot of choices, that all depend on what you are trying to achieve

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Next, you have to check to make sure your compressors and editors know how to best handle your images. That’s because, as you have probably guessed, optimizing images can make a big difference in how your site ranks on Google search engines. To make sure your images work the way you want them to, simply download a tool like Webflow’s Image Optimizer or WP Smush. Then upload your images to your site and make sure to optimize them. You can also use tools like Yoast and W3Techs to help you.

Search engines use a variety of signals to determine how relevant your website is to other websites and what types of content you should for your page. What these signals look like are the:
In order to get your website ranked on the first page of Google, you need to meet one of these signals. But making sure that your site is up to date with the latest signals and code that search engines will use is important, too. Getting your website ready for the current Google trends is essential, for example. Because, well, Google is always changing its algorithm.
When it comes to optimizing your site for search engines, image optimization is one of the most important factors to consider. It is used to tell search engines how they should treat images on your site, what formats they should use, what image sizes are ideal or allowed, and what should be the image’s compression options. But, images are also important for people to find your sites and navigate around.

• Use size-optimized images to improve page speed and lower load times
• Use alt tags on all non-decorative images, and have them leverage keywords or focus phrases
• Use meaningful file names, and ideally add keywords to them
• Compression images to save on overall size
• Use geotagging on jpg images and tag a location to them. This will add local SEO value to your images

Content Optimization

When you have a blog or a website, you need to get the word out about it as much as possible, while at the same time, you need to keep it updated with fresh, new content. Keeping your website updated and posting new content as often as you can is an important thing to do for your website’s SEO. When you have yourself a website, you can utilize tools such as UpWork to post work and advertise — and with tools like this one, you can optimize your website for new content and, of course, keywords.
The image serves a two-fold purpose: it’s used to present information on the page, and it’s used to serve as an incentive for the viewer to tap on the “expand” button. But why is this image so important to any image on your page?
Using this image correctly can help improve your website’s SEO not only for the image itself, but the text surrounding it, and how the image connects with the user. The image should be as clear, crisp, and elegant as possible to be utilized effectively. Clearly displaying the keyword in the image is also important to increase conversions and click-through rates.

Including keywords in the image is also important, with many people saying it is the most effective way to describe the result of your offering with keywords included. Whenever you can add something of value quickly and easily to an image without being too distracting, then that is a win.

A good headline and a neat caption connect effectively with users, and as a result, positively affect the search engine results, improving the user experience. The signature element of a good page is a good headline, perfect for setting a useful tone and direction for where the reader lands on your page. A good headline motivates users to move further within your site, while a great headline is carefully and purposefully constructed to capture attention — which is the first and most important step of any good SEO strategy.

Here are some other general on-page suggestions:

• Content on any page should be at least 300 words for eCommerce websites and 350 words for service-based sites when optimizing that page.
• Content should have only one H1 tag followed by at least 2 – 3 H2 tags.
• H1 tag should always include the focus keyword.
• At least one of the H2 tag should have the focus keyword.
• At least one of the H2 tags should have the primary keyword.
• The focus keyword should be at least 3 times in the complete copy of the page.
• All the primary keywords should be at least 1 time each in the complete copy of the page.
• All the secondary keywords should be at least 1 time each in the complete copy of the page.
• It is not MANDATORY to use exact keywords if they are not grammatically correct.
• You can always add additional content to an already existing webpage if it does not have enough space to infuse the required keywords.
• Try to add at least one call to action on the web page if they are not clearly mentioned in the header section of the website.
• Always provide at least 2 internal links to the other pages of the website wherever they make sense.
• Long pages are great for SEO
• Know that most search engines can still see hidden content

URL Optimization

As an SEO, I see a lot of shady SEO practices. One of the most common is an optimized URL. For example, instead of http://www.website.com/seo-service/ we see http://www.website.com:3396/seo (necessary, because if we look at site:3396 in the URL it points to the static SEO service page). Another example, instead of the content on a page being written in English or in a language with a large audience, the majority of the content is translated taking the focus off the business part of the page.
This tip will help cut down on the amount of spammy SEO from combining keywords in the URL.

When combining keywords, always follow the HTML tags. It makes the page title an integral part of the page’s content. This provides more information and context to readers.
Google will not necessarily agree with this, but this will help with not getting caught with keyword stacking in your URLs. This also helps keep your pages SEO friendly and easy to read. Also, this type of keyword practice can obscure the meaning of your content with keywords. No one wants to end up with a bunch of words on unnecessary websites.
Content and images are vital parts of the holistic SEO strategy. They cannot take the place of SEO content specialty and keyword research. To showcase this, let’s look at how you can set up a comprehensive good-quality content strategy.

To put it simply, good content quality lets Google know you have taken time to put effort into writing what you want to write. Quite simply, this online multilingual site is intended to help small businesses find new customers and get valuable services. Looking at the candidates for keyword density we can see that more keywords will result in a lower quality website. By less, we mean less. If you don’t even have one keyword, it probably won’t rank high.

Heading Tags and Titles

Heading tags and titles are crucial for SEO. Search engines use the content of your page, and the headings and titles in particular, to determine how relevant your page is to certain search terms. With that in mind, headings and titles are a less known subject, and a big part of any page’s technical SEO. Try to think of it in terms of the music industry. A good musician will record and release a song in a certain sequence. This sequence makes sense for the song. So, a good SEO practice is to structure your page structures in a certain way to make sense for your keywords.
Embedded videos work well for Pinterest because these videos can be played without taking up space on your webpage.
Images play a big part of you website, but The Anchor’s own Ryan Krouse goes into a lot more depth than just about anything else you can find. In particular, he talks through how search engines see images, how they count frames, and much more. His guide even includes a section discussing image compression. This is an area for you to think about — we highly recommend you not just copy Ryan’s text for your own webpage but also use the formatting as a guide.

In 2006, states have amended their Digital Services Act, which has resulted in changes to how web hosts dealing with UK domains are treated. Certain requirements for hosting websites that are hosted in the UK have changed; items such as default fonts, mouse-over text, large images, and much more. So, to not break the law as you wouldn’t be hosting your website in the UK in the first place.

Social Media and Technical SEO Ranking

Social media is a great way to connect with other professionals in your industry. It’s also a great way to build your brand and connect with people interested in your industry. It’s a free, easy way to get the word out about your business, and it can be used in a very organic way. When used effectively, social media can also be an incredible marketing tool to have; but here are some things to keep in mind to make sure you’re not turning your social presence into a marketing cost center.

A lot of freelancers interview prospective clients on social media and provide information for them to follow, follow back, and get in touch with better companies — while not providing valuable leads to the organization themselves. This isn’t a bad thing, and freelancers can sometimes be the middle-managers for organizations; it’s just important to make sure you’re not giving away your own client’s contact information along with your own; you know, for the greater good. If you’re running a small business, you’re probably more concerned with email. It can get a little overwhelming trying to remember every email that has come in over the last month or the last year, and replying to questions that have arisen during your business’ own emailing and marketing efforts.

It’s also important that there’s no indication when you’re contacting a company that they’re receiving an email from you. It’s a little bit easier for someone else to check if your client is receiving your emails by using your automated signature generator or entering their email into an online contact form. Jeff Atwood, the creator of Redirectertools, says many humans read and process information rapidly by secreting it away in memory. Web pages can usually be thought of as visual documents, being arranged in columns, and are easy for humans to navigate. When it comes to web pages, don’t create visual friction.After creating a beautiful, informative, and SEO-optimized page on your web site, it’s important to devote some time to give it an anchor in the search engine results.

Other random facts

And here are some of other suggestions that don’t quite fit into one of our other categories, but are still super important!

• Always use a favicon. Have it be consistent with your primary company logo
• Buy an SSL cert and ensure your website uses HTTPS. Force/redirect all traffic to HTTPS
• Ensure your website is responsive and passes media query checks
• Make sure you do not have noindex tags on your pages
• Canonicalize your URLs. Make sure both the core URL and WWW versions all redirect to the same place. Ideally we want to canonicalize under a non-www URL
• Always use a thank you page to track goals
• Setup a personalized robots.txt to make sure crawl bots can cleanly crawl your site structure
• Post 2-4 blogs per month
• Your website should be FAST! Use caching tools or a CDN
• Leverage rich results, wherever you can
• Research your keywords carefully. Check out our beginners guide on picking keywords for your business.
• Leverage Google Analytics where possible, and connect it to Google Search Console
• Leverage  heatmapping or user experience tool to optimize your conversion rates 
• Create your own backlink strategy and aim for guest posting. Also brush up on your knowledge of link tags.

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