Technical SEO Optimization is often considered the most difficult part in SEO. This is especially because of its ever growing nature.

My recent studies have shown that the Technical SEO Optimization is more crucial factor that Google takes into account when compared with Backlinks.

As of 2018, I have compiled the list of all Technical factors; one must optimise their Website for. I have also provided in-depth explanation, so someone at the beginner level, can also understand easily.

1. Title Tag

Every Page must have a Title Tag. Title Tag tells Google what The Content is about. It is imperative to mention the Keyword (or the term you are targeting) early in the Title Tag.

It is Important that every page must be optimized for only one Keyword. So never put in your title more than one keyword and similarly don’t optimize your Page for more than one keyword. It creates the issue of Duplicacy which is described later in this section.

Also various studies have shown, putting numbers (wherever relevant) in the title tag, improves the rank of the Page on search results.

For e.g. if you want to write about “Diabetes”, then your Title could be:- “20 ways to Combat Diabetes in 2018”

When a visitor sees this title, “20” will show that the content has many ways and “2018” will show that the content is up to date.

Further Title Optimization techniques are described later.

2. Meta Description

Like Title tag, it is necessary that each and every page must have a Meta Description.

Meta Description describes more to the user of what the Content is about. One should place 2-3 times the Keyword Targeted for the page in the Meta Description.

3. Title & Meta Description Length

Title and Meta Description tags are must for every page you are going to indexed. Title & Meta Description must be in certain character range for best performance.

It is a good SEO practice to keep the tile length between characters 30 -65. Google can’t show Title greater than 65 words in its Search results and if Title Length is less than 30 characters, we are missing the chance to add more keywords as we are not completely utilizing the space give to us.

Similarly Meta Description length must be around 150 characters.

4. IMAGES ALT TAG

Nearly 2/3rd of the websites out there, don’t put Image Tag on their images, and this is the biggest crime one can commit in SEO Field.

1/3rd of Google Images come from Image. Like text, Google as of now can’t understand Images and for that purpose we use Alt Tag. We must not miss this functionality in any image.

If you are using WordPress, then there are many such plugins to ease the work for you. If you have a custom web application, you just need to add Image Alt Tag in your HTML code.

5. WEBSITE SPEED

You might know that Google will now show organic rankings according to mobile first index, instead of desktop first index.

Google Give so much Weightage to Website loading Speed, because if your website is failing to upload quickly, visitors will frustrate and hit back, and a general layman will think that it is the Google Fault’s and not the respective Website.

On mobile results specially, Google consider Speed as the most Important Factor, when it comes to Organic Ranking.

Also please note, that the website speed is different on Mobile and different on Desktop.

So, how to know what’s your Website Speed is and How to improve your performance for the same?

Well there are two tools which I use extensively and I believe are sufficient to get the work done.

First is, Google own Tool called “PageSpeed Insights“. Second one is, “GTMETRIX“

Both Tools don’t only mention the website speed, but also list out all the factors behind the slow speed of your website and how to Optimize for the same.

6. Invalid Plain Text Rate

Readability is important. For every web page, the ratio between plaintext size and page size must be between 0.1 to 0.9. (At the end I have mentioned some tools so that you can check this factor)

7. DUPLICACY

The most common Technical SEO error which nearly 51% websites all over the world commit, is DUPLICACY.

See, If two pages Titles / Meta Description / Content are Duplicate, it confuses the bot to show which result when user type the keyword we are trying to rank for. So Google don’t know which page to show as both are indicating or targeting to the same Keyword.

Many times it happens, that bot gives some other results of our website which might be not rightly optimized for the search query , or worse, it don’t show any result from our website as it is confused. So, every single page must target to single keyword only, with unique Title, Meta Description and Content.

8. Absent H1 Tags

H1 tags are considered to be the main heading of a page and are used to help define the topic of the page. Creating a descriptive heading is an effective way to improve your search engine presence and make it easier for a user to navigate your page.

It is crucial that every page must have only ONE header.

9. Deprecated HTML Tags

Deprecated HTML Tags are those tags which are outdated but the browsers still support them. But it is soon predicted that Browsers will no longer going to support these tags as they already have been replaced by their much better version.

Deprecated Tags with their Description and Replacement:-

10. Page Size

Page size must be kept between 1024 Bytes to 500k Bytes. Larger than this range, will increase the Website Loading and Website Waiting time, and hence, decrease Website Speed.

Lower than this range, might lead to very less content on your web page, to help to Google to know anything.

11. Language Not Declared

It is always a good idea to declare the language of a page to avoid any confusion. If a search engine has to determine this automatically then there is a chance they get it wrong.

An example of a declaration would be <html lang=’en’> for language English.

12. Too Many On-page Links

Just don’t have more than 100 Internal links on your page (Difference between Internal Links and External/Backlinks are described later).

Having too many links on a page can overwhelm the user and offer too many exit options. Furthermore, a search engine isn’t likely to crawl more than 100 links since they begin to lose their relevance. You can also get penalized for too many links since the page will look very spam-like.

13. Missing Viewport Tag

This is a meta tag which allows you to control the scale in which the page appears on a mobile device. This will ensure that the page is not too small or large and is easily legible on a user’s device.

It is a Must Have Tag on every page.

14. Broken External Images

An external image is one that links to another image hosted on another website and is considered broken when it will not load. Generally it is bad practice to reference external images since it limits your control. A simple solution is to download the image and host it internally.

So, if you have an external Broken Image, either remove it or ask for its replacement.

15. 5XX Errors

These are fatal errors that will prevent anyone, including search engines, from accessing your website. They are normally caused from a programming bug or a server misconfiguration.

This group of HTTP status codes indicates that the server is aware that it is on error or is incapable of performing the request. The server response usually includes an explanation of the error situation and if it is a temporary or permanent condition. These response codes in this group are applicable to any request method.

• 500 – Internal Server Error: The web server responds with this status code when it has encountered an unexpected condition, which prevented it from fulfilling the request by the client.
• 501 – Not Implemented: The web server responds with this status code when it does not support the functionality required to process the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.
• 502 – Bad Gateway: The server responds with this status code when, while acting as a gateway or proxy, it received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to process the request.
• 503 – Service Unavailable: The web server responds with this status code when it is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server. The implication is that this is a temporary condition, which will be alleviated after some delay. If known, the length of the delay may be indicated in a Retry-After header. If no Retry-After is given, the client should handle the response as it would for a 500 response.
• 504 – Gateway Timeout: The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server specified by the request URL (e.g. HTTP, FTP, LDAP) or some other auxiliary server (e.g. DNS) it needed to access in attempting to complete the request.
• 505 – HTTP Version Not Supported: The web server responds with this status code when it does not support, or refuses to support, the HTTP protocol version that was used in the request message. The server is indicating that it is unable or unwilling to complete the request using the same major version as the client. The response should contain an entity describing why that version is not supported and what other protocols that server supports.

All these errors are self Explanatory and must be resolved if occurs.

16. Non-SEO Friendly URLs

All pages must have SEO-Friendly URL.

Try not to include any #. To separate words always use ‘-‘and not ‘_’.

Make sure there is no same version of single URL, one in small case and other on Capital. Make sure we don’t have any two URL’s one with https and other with http. The length must be within 512 pixels.

17. Broken Internal Links

An internal link is one that points to another page that exists on your server and is considered broken when the page cannot be accessed. This could be because it does not exist or there is an error trying to connect to it.

Make sure the URL is inputted correctly and that you clear up any issues with the page. Excessive broken links will not only impact your visitors experience, it may also cause search engines to diminish the importance of your website.

18. Broken External Links

An external link is one that links to another website and is considered broken when the page cannot be accessed. Since the linking website is not under your control, your best option is to remove the link. Otherwise this will diminish the reliability of your website according to a search engine or visitor.

19. Irrelevant Title

This happens when there are less than 30% of words from Title are present on Page. Please be always sure we are not committing this issue.

20. Irrelevant Meta Description

This happens when there are less than 20% of words from Meta Description are present on Page.

21. Low Word Count

Every page must have at least 200 Words.

If a page does not have this much content, it is hard for a search engine to properly assign a topic to it and may not bother indexing it. Try to make use of relevant content while using as many keywords as possible.

22. Rating / Votes Parameter

Wherever possible we must show the rating / votes parameter in our search results. These shiny yellow big stars definitely create trust and entice the users to click the search results.

How to Add Rating / Votes Parameter:-

First, copy the code listed below:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
  <img itemprop="image" src="image-link.jpg" alt="Product Name" />
  <span itemprop="name">Product Name</span>
  <div itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
    <span itemprop="ratingValue">4.5</span>
    out of <span itemprop="bestRating">5</span>
    based on <span itemprop="ratingCount">301</span> user ratings.
  </div>
</div>

Paste the code onto the product page you’d like to show stars in search results. Don’t forget to customize the bolded part of the code to display the language and data you desire!

Once you’re done, make sure you:

1. Check your work with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. Google will let you know if there are any mistakes in your code.
2. Resubmit your XML sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools to ensure that Google indexes your changes as soon as possible!

23. INDEXATION

It is often useful to keep in check whether the Google is Indexing all our webpage or not. You can check the same from your Google Web Console.

One Important thing which I wish to mention in last:-

If you are unable to resolve on your own above Technical Issues or can’t afford to hire anyone, or if you are WordPress User, I recommend you to go for Landing Pages Provider.

There are bunch of free Landing Pages out there. Just See which one suits you best.

Why I am recommending the same, is that these Landing Page Builders, already take account of all these Technical Factors, so you can relax and have one less thing to worry for.

With this I am done with Technical SEO Optimization.

Two Tools which I will like to recommend via which you can found above issues for free are:- AgencyAnalytics and Seocrawler.