By Joshua Nite

Search engines are getting far better at figuring out and matching a searcher’s intent. That means that a big part of search engine optimization (SEO) is writing great content that meets the search intent for specific terms.

Great content isn’t the only factor, though. Search algorithms are still algorithms, not people. If your stellar content doesn’t meet the technical specifications the algorithm is looking for, it will get outranked (yes, even by less impressive content with impeccable technical optimization).

Technical SEO is the key to ensure your website is making a good first impression with Google, Bing and the rest of the pack. 

How to conduct a technical SEO audit

We’ve already covered why a general SEO audit is so valuable to content marketing. Now let’s focus on how to fine-tune your site on the technical side. 

What is technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the practice of optimizing a website for search engine crawlers. It means making sure the site is both visible and comprehensible to the algorithms that determine rankings.

1. Crawl your site to identify issues

A manual, page-by-page audit might work if your site only has a few pages. For most sites, however, you’ll want to start with a crawling tool. These software tools give your site a thorough check-up, examining every page to identify common problems. 

Choose a crawling tool:

Start by selecting the tool that feels most intuitive and best suits your needs. Some common options include Semrush, Moz, and Google Search Console (which has less functionality but is free to use). 

Initiate the crawling process:

When you run the site crawler on your site, it will systematically navigate through your pages to uncover details about your site’s architecture, URLs, metadata and more. Look for any error or warning messages that may surface during this crawl.

Review the data:

Once the scan is complete, review the data. Most tools will give you an overall SEO health rating, as well as identify issues like broken links, duplicate content, or missing meta tags. These insights serve as a roadmap for addressing and improving your site’s overall health.

By crawling your site, you’re shining a light on areas that might need attention. In the next few sections, we’ll look at some specific common problems and fixes.

2. Optimize URLs

Your web addresses help guide users and bots alike through your site. Here’s how to make sure your pages are hitting the basic requirements to appear and rank in the search engine results page (SERP).

Indexing:

Confirm that your important pages are indexable. This means that search engines have permission to include it in their databases and are actively crawling the content. Use meta tags or directives to control which pages should be indexed and which should not.

Robots.txt:

Robots.txt …read more

Source:: Top Rank Blog

Author: Aaron