Do you think that your business website is ready, but once published, days, weeks, maybe even months pass, and the results are slow to appear? In addition, you experience very poor visibility on search engines. The solution? You need to deal with technical SEO optimization!

Although most of the available themes have some default settings related to optimization, they do not cover all the necessary requirements. Therefore, it remains for you to manually check and set each of the points below. Through them, you will ensure that the website meets the requirements of the search engines, so that the pages are indexed and classified in the ranking results. Among the elements we will address are terms such as: indexing, website architecture, structuring, indicators and HTML attributes.

Website structure

Most search engine indexing problems stem from incorrect web page structure. Interdependence is a key term in the field of optimization, so the structure is closely related to other elements, such as the website map, the robots.txt file, or even the URL structure.

But what does this structure mean? Simplifying the definition, we can say that it refers to the way of organizing the pages within the website. The flat structure is preferred by search engines, because the desired pages are only a few clicks away, following a logical and well-defined direction. You can achieve such an order by opting for an easy and intuitive navigation. All pages must be linked together, with a concise direction.

URL structure

Opting for a simplified URL structure, page users will always know where they are on the website. We recommend that most pages be subordinated to a specific category. This aspect gives the crawlers a wider understanding of the structure, therefore faster indexing.

In the WordPress platform, links are titled Permalinks. To set their structure, access the settings, then the Permalinks section in the admin panel area. Select the appropriate category, depending on the domain of the website. The option that includes the post name is the most SEO friendly. On the other hand, if you have a more complex website in mind, you can use a customized structure, which can be just as SEO friendly.

Including breadcrumbs

You have certainly encountered this “trail of crumbs” at least once. As its name suggests, breadcrumbs provide a broader understanding of where users are (and not only) within the website. In our website, the bradcrumbs are visible as follows:

Breadcrumbs can be set based on: location (see the example above), attributes (eg links between similar products), and history (a substitute for the back button).

The easiest way to add them is through the Yoast plugin. To install the plugin, go to your dashboard and navigate to plugins -> Add new. After it has been installed, activate it.

În cele din urmă, accesează secţiunile: Search appearance-> Breadcrumbs -> Enabled. 

An indexing done like a book

To find out if all the website pages have been indexed, you can opt for a coverage report (Coverage Report), within the Google Search Console. This report will include critical errors that prevented indexing (such as 404 errors, noindex directives), pages that are valid but have warnings attached, successfully indexed pages, and excluded pages.

After you have found out all these aspects, you can solve the encountered errors on your own or you can pass them on to the website developer. It is not necessary to check the reports daily, because Google will notify you via email if an indexation has failed.

Correct setting of the XML map

According to Google representatives, the XML map is the second most important source through which URLs are found, which will later be indexed. To check if your XML sitemap is well designed, you can access Google Search Console, Sitemaps section. Within it, you will be able to see which maps Google considers for indexing.

If you want to know the status of the links in the map, but you don’t want to check them manually, we recommend using the iPullRank online tool. If there are broken or invalid links, you will receive a notification.

Yoast is one of the most popular plugins for improving the SEO of websites designed in WordPress. It can also help you in creating XML sitemaps. To create your own map, go to: Yoast SEO -> General -> Features.

Make sure the “XML Sitemaps” section is active. Go to “See the XML Sitemap” to generate the XML map. You will be redirected to a page containing the list of maps generated in XML format.

Poor quality and duplicate content

If you personally took care of the content of each page, you can skip this step. In short, by means of duplicate content we understand those types of content (especially text), which appear within several websites. Although Google representatives stated that it is not a penalizing factor, it can still have a negative influence on the positioning in the search engine. This happens because crawlers may have trouble identifying the more relevant version of the two pieces of content.

To identify such problems, you can use dedicated online tools, such as Ahref or Raven Tool. These tools offer various functionalities through which you can identify the quality score of the content. Attention, if other people copy the content from your website, you will not be affected in terms of ranking.

Using the “noindex” indicator

You can prevent a page from appearing in search engine results by including a “noindex” tag in the header section of the page. Once the crawlers crawl that page and see the tag, they will drop that page so it won’t be indexed. The code for adding the meta tag has the following structure:

To double check the noindex tag, go to Google Search Console, the URL Inspection section, then the “Test Live URL” button. After entering the link, you will receive a report with the indexing status of the respective page. If the page is not indexed, you will receive a notification of the type “Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag”.

Canonical URLs

A canonical URL refers to an attribute attached to an HTML tag that tells search engines which URL to prioritize if there are duplicate pages. In short, it is an alternative solution, because it avoids the negative consequences of duplicate content. We recommend using it within pages where there are still some differences, such as product pages, which have different variables (color, size, model). You can set them using the Yoast plugin. Go to this article for more information about the working steps.

Viteza paginilor

Great news, improving your page speed can positively influence your search ranking position. But the question is: how can you do this?

Reducing the size of pages

The faster the page loads, the better the user experience will be. As a result, the search engine will notice this, which positively influences the indexing. To reduce the page size, you can opt for the following:

• Keep only the plugins, themes, fonts, scripts and other resources you really need;
• Optimize images with tools like Imagify;
• Minimize CSS fonts and JavaScript scripts if possible;

Non-existent internal links

If your website suffers from dozens, maybe even hundreds of non-existent internal links, this problem can affect search engine optimization. In addition to negatively affecting the user experience, another aspect that suffers is indexing.

Our recommendation is to check these links three times a year. Two tools that can help you are SEMrush and Ahrefs.

Mobile usability issues

Taking into account the fact that most users navigate from a mobile device, it is not necessary to tell you about the importance of this criterion. The good news is that you don’t have to wait for emails full of complaints from users to report any problems. Google Search Console is the tool that will save you. By accessing the “Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability” report, Google will notify you of pages that are not well optimized.

Conclusion

Taking into account all these aspects and dealing with each one separately, you will certainly have a better visibility in the search engines. On the other hand, things can get complicated, so don’t hesitate to contact us. We can come to your aid with a full SEO audit, which will highlight possible errors or problems your site is facing.