Technical SEO Services – First Step to Ranking your website

So, you have a great website. It looks good, is functional, and the user interface and user experience are greatly appreciated. You spent months with the designer to get the website exactly how you wanted. You are thoroughly impressed with the outcome. But even after months, you have not seen the traffic your website and business deserve. You are wondering what went wrong.

More than 80% of all websites do not get enough traffic to convert them into business. Most websites do not convert even a single customer in a year due to a lack of traffic. The only people who visit some websites are the owners themselves and their friends and family. This is exactly when you need SEO or search engine optimization.

For a new website, the first thing an SEO professional does is analyze the website for Technical SEO. Technical SEO is the first step to Search engine optimization which is followed by onpage SEO and Offpage SEO in order. Admarkon provides a complete SEO and Digital marketing service for organizations and enterprises

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is all about optimizing your website’s technical sections. You have already done a great job with the design (user interface and user experience). To give you a simple example: you have a car that looks great. The problem with the car, though, is that it won’t start. The first thing a mechanic would do is open up the hood and check the engine. That’s exactly what Technical SEO is all about—checking under the hood of your website.

Websites need to meet certain standards for Google to rank them. There needs to be a sitemap, a robots.txt file, a proper structure of pages, and internal links that connect each of these pages. There are also certain standards that should be met when it comes to coding. Designers who focus primarily on user interface design often overlook all or some of these standard procedures, which affects Google’s ability to crawl through your website and rank it. A technical SEO audit reveals what’s missing on your website and what is wrong. Corrections made based on the audit will give your website a kickstart to rank on Google.

At Admarkon, we specialize in Technical SEO and help your website perform exceptionally well. Below are some of the key tasks we perform to improve your website’s technical SEO.

Our detailed Technical SEO Checklist

Category	Checklist Item	Details
Website Crawling & Indexing
	Ensure robots.txt is properly configured	Check for allowed/disallowed pages. Use tools like Screaming Frog.
	Verify sitemap.xml is submitted to search engines	Ensure it’s updated and accessible at /sitemap.xml.
	Check for crawl errors in Google Search Console	Fix errors like 404s or server issues.
	Use a mobile-first approach	Test site responsiveness with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
	Verify indexable pages	Ensure important pages are not accidentally marked as “noindex”.
	Check canonical tags	Avoid duplicate content issues by implementing proper canonical tags.
	Remove thin or low-quality pages from the index	Focus on quality content that adds value.
Site Architecture
	Ensure a clear and logical site hierarchy	Keep URLs and navigation simple and structured.
	Maintain a flat site structure	Aim for fewer clicks to reach any page from the homepage.
	Use breadcrumbs for navigation	Helps users and search engines understand site structure.
	Implement pagination for large content archives	Use proper rel=”prev” and rel=”next”.
	Verify internal linking	Use descriptive anchor text and link to important pages.
	Check URL structure	Use short, keyword-rich, and descriptive URLs. Avoid excessive parameters.
Performance & Speed
	Enable browser caching	Reduce load times by caching static resources.
	Optimise images	Use compressed formats (e.g., WebP), proper dimensions, and lazy loading.
	Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML	Remove unnecessary spaces and comments for faster load times.
	Implement Content Delivery Network (CDN)	Distribute content globally for faster loading.
	Monitor page speed with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights	Aim for a score above 90 for both mobile and desktop.
	Use GZIP compression	Compress files for reduced page size.
	Reduce server response time	Aim for TTFB (Time to First Byte) under 200 ms.
Security
	Install SSL certificate and use HTTPS	Ensure all pages are served securely.
	Regularly update CMS, themes, and plugins	Protect against vulnerabilities and exploits.
	Conduct vulnerability scans	Use tools like Qualys or SecurityHeaders for assessment.
	Set up a firewall	Use Web Application Firewalls (WAF) like Cloudflare.
Structured Data
	Implement schema markup	Use structured data for rich snippets (e.g., FAQs, reviews, events).
	Validate structured data with Google’s Rich Results Test	Fix any errors or warnings identified.
	Mark up key pages with relevant schema types	Include schema for products, articles, businesses, etc.
On-Page SEO
	Optimise meta titles and descriptions	Include primary keywords, limit title to 60 characters and description to 160 characters.
	Use only one H1 tag per page	Ensure headings follow a logical hierarchy (H1 > H2 > H3).
	Optimise images with alt text	Use descriptive alt attributes for accessibility and SEO.
	Check for duplicate content	Use tools like Copyscape to identify and remove duplicates.
Mobile Optimisation
	Implement responsive design	Test across multiple devices and screen sizes.
	Verify font sizes and touch elements are user-friendly	Ensure buttons and text are easily clickable on small screens.
	Avoid intrusive interstitials	Ensure pop-ups don’t obstruct content on mobile devices.
International SEO
	Set hreflang attributes correctly	Indicate language and regional targeting for international pages.
	Ensure language-specific URLs are crawlable	Use subdirectories or subdomains for different regions.
Analytics & Monitoring
	Set up Google Analytics (or alternative analytics tool)	Track website performance and user behaviour.
	Configure Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools	Monitor indexing, crawling, and search performance.
	Set up custom dashboards or reports	Track key performance indicators like traffic, bounce rate, and conversions.
	Use uptime monitoring tools	Ensure your site is available 24/7.
Technical Audits
	Conduct regular SEO audits	Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Screaming Frog.
	Fix broken links	Use tools like Broken Link Checker to identify and fix 404 errors.
	Monitor website logs	Analyse server logs for crawl stats and potential errors.
Advanced Considerations
	Implement AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) if relevant	Optimise for fast-loading mobile content.
	Use HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 protocols	Enhance website speed and performance.
	Optimise for Core Web Vitals	Focus on LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
	Set up redirect rules carefully	Avoid redirect chains and loops.

Website Speed:

Why is website speed important for SEO? There are two reasons. First, Google crawlers will crawl faster websites more frequently, reducing the bandwidth used by Google itself, which lowers the cost of crawling the website. The second reason is user experience. For every second of delay in loading a page after the third second, you lose 23% of users. The risk of users leaving your website increases with each second of delay after the third second. With more users leaving the website before it fully loads, it signals Google that the user experience is poor. You may wonder how Google knows about your users leaving the website before it loads. The fact is that more than 80% of web users use Chrome as their browser. Google owns Chrome, and like it or not, Google gathers data from Chrome! This is not fiction but data acquired from the API leak that happened in March 2024.

How do we fix the page speed of your website? The process of increasing page speed involves various steps. Optimization begins with analyzing the website and web pages. We start by understanding the code in the website and how it can be optimized. We reduce unnecessary code in HTML and CSS, minimize JavaScript where possible, and optimize every image displayed on each page. The second step we take is caching. We cache all pages for faster loading of the website. With CMS websites loading content from databases, caching reduces processing time on the server. Caching creates static pages to be served from the server for files that haven’t changed. Blogs can take advantage of caching, especially when blog posts are rarely changed. This reduces server processing time and increases the load time and performance of a web page.

We also optimize CSS and JavaScript to a minified version, which removes all comments from the files and creates a compact version by eliminating excessive spaces and line returns.

Reducing page speed itself involves more than 30 to 40 steps, which we will discuss in a separate article.

Mobile Optimization:

Google has two bots to crawl your website (apart from a bot that crawls images). The desktop bot crawls content for desktop devices, while the smartphone bot crawls content for smartphones. These bots are only used for crawling and have little to no effect on indexing and ranking. The smartphone bot crawls much faster, usually crawls more content, and is used more often. In our experience, we have found mobile crawls being done nearly 60% of the time, while desktop crawls are around 15%. This shows how important it is to optimize your content for mobile devices. The usage data on Google Search Console will also indicate that traffic coming from mobile devices is usually higher than desktop traffic for most established websites. Over 70% of web users access the internet from a mobile phone.

At Admarkon, we optimize your website to be easily accessible on mobile devices by making it responsive and mobile-friendly. You also need to consider bandwidth when a user accesses your website from a browser. You should assume that users don’t have high bandwidth when using a mobile phone or when traveling. This requires your website to load fast, and images should be optimized to load faster (resize your images to the minimum size). Other factors to keep in mind are to avoid pop-ups and optimize for touch. Smaller buttons and text should be avoided, and text and buttons should be easily visible. Buttons should be easy to click/tap on.

Structured Data and Schema Markup:

Structured data fills the gap that content alone cannot cover. A structured schema markup creates a clear relationship between the entities used in the article, links the entities with pages related to the organization, authors, and relevant services, and provides a structure to the article and the entire website. Though not visible to web users, search engines rely heavily on schema markups to understand the content. Correctly implementing a structured schema markup has been known to improve ranking in many cases to a small degree. While there may not be a significant ranking difference when looking at individual pages, there is a noticeable difference in crawling and the overall authority of the website when structured data and schema markups are implemented. At Admarkon, we use tools to some degree to create schema markup, but most of the schema markups are hand-coded. This ensures that we can link relevant articles and entities correctly without relying on automated tools that may link content incorrectly.

Create XML Sitemap and Robots.txt File:

The robots.txt file defines which pages should be crawled and which pages should be avoided on a website. A website should have a clear indication of the pages to be crawled and, importantly, the pages to be avoided. The lack of a robots.txt file has often led Google to crawl pages that should not be crawled. The robots.txt file also provides a link to the sitemap file in XML format. The sitemap.xml file lists all files, usually arranged/sorted with the latest file first. This helps search engines crawl the website easily and keep them aware of new pages or changes to existing pages. Sitemap files are generated automatically using plugins, while robots.txt files are manually created at Admarkon. Sitemap files are checked for errors, and missing files are identified manually.

SSL Certification, Security, and HTTPS:

Most websites were on HTTP until 2015, but the need to improve security gradually required websites to be on HTTPS. Today, most websites rank only if they are secure, have a valid SSL certification, and are served via HTTPS. The process of acquiring an SSL certificate is free but takes some time to set up. Some hosting companies provide SSL certification for free, while others charge a small fee. It is important to understand that SSL is a ranking factor for search engine optimization and is mandatory.

Advanced Technical SEO:

Apart from the basic SEO practices for Technical SEO, there are 30 advanced technical SEO steps involved in optimizing your website for search engines. This includes the use of hreflang for international websites, the use of snippets, checking for broken links, page redirection, and more.

When it comes to search engine optimization, Technical SEO is the first step. Optimizing your website to ensure it is technically sound, free from errors, and crawlable ensures you can move on to the second step, which is On-page SEO. Before you complete the process of Technical SEO, moving forward to On-page SEO will reduce the impact of search engine optimization.

At Admarkon, we specialize in creating robust, technically sound websites with our Technical SEO expertise. For more details and a free consultation, we recommend you email us with your website URL, and we will help you with the solutions and steps to take to rank your website higher on search engines.