It’s all in the technology: Technical SEO under the magnifying glass
Content, content, content…of course, the importance of content is increasing more and more, but even the best content can only rank with difficulty if the technology does not form the best basis. For this reason, in this blog post, we will give you a little insight into the possibilities that technical SEO offers us. Here we go!
From robots.txt, sitemap, and the canonical tag
Especially beginners in the field of search engine optimization are quickly overwhelmed by the large number of terms that are used in the context of technical search engine optimization. The jungle of terms ensures that many website operators do not like to deal with the topic of technical search engine optimization. For example, the robots.txt. The text file is an essential part of the website and controls the crawlers specifically via the website. In this way, websites can be specifically excluded from crawling via robots.txt, and thus the indexing of the pages can be controlled.
A common mistake on many websites is the stubborn non-use of robots.txt. This is accompanied by the waste of the crawling budget, which every website is entitled to. Every website is entitled to a certain number of pages that are checked by search engine robots for ranking factors . This budget is Ideally, the crawlers should only try to index websites that have tangible added value for the website visitor. For example, if the website has pages with duplicate content, you should identify the duplicate content so that the crawling budget is not wasted on these pages.
The sitemap is also an essential orientation point for search engine crawlers. The sitemap gives the crawlers an indication of which subpages they want to include in the index. Sitemaps should be kept up-to-date and have a good structure. So nothing stands in the way of the crawlers when indexing.
The problem of duplicate content
It is important to avoid duplicate content on your website, as this can damage the site’s ranking in the long term. But from a technical point of view alone, there are many ways in which duplicate content can arise unconsciously.
The most common problem is when the website can be accessed using HTTPS or HTTP. This should be avoided with a 301 redirect or by using the canonical tags and telling the search engine that the HTTPS version should be indexed.
It is just as problematic if the website can be accessed at both www.musterseite.de and musterseite.de. At this point, too, a lot of duplicate content is unintentionally generated, which should be avoided with the help of adjustments in the.htaccess file.
Duplicate content is a huge construction site, especially in online shops. Here, many online shops use the same description texts as the competition, which leads to masses of duplicate content . If producing your own content does not pay off, you should refer such pages to pages to be indexed, such as optimized category pages, using the canonical tag.
Technical SEO and load times
Especially with regard to website performance, there are many ways to make your own website faster. For example, it is recommended to compress image files to shorten the loading times. In addition, we recommend activating browser caching to keep loading times significantly shorter.
The compression of the CSS files and the Javascript files is also essential.
In addition to the well-known optimization measures such as adapting the meta data, optimizing all on-page factors, and content marketing, you should always keep an eye on the technical aspects of search engine optimization. The targeted handling of crawling and indexing budgets in combination with sustainable and useful content marketing will put your website on the fast track in the long term. We would like to help you.
