Since technical SEO cases seem a bit specialized and difficult at first glance, many people may ignore this important part of SEO and prefer to spend their energy and resources on other types of SEO; But the fact is that without having an optimal source on the site, other parts of SEO such as backlinks and content are also affected and they cannot perform as they should.
For this reason, we will provide you with a technical SEO checklist so that you can implement the relevant items on your website in the simplest possible way.
Adhering to technical SEO can be your website’s winning card, and failure to do so can cause the failure of many SEO activities. As mentioned, technical SEO issues seem a bit difficult and specialized at first glance, but using the technical SEO checklist that we provide you with below, compliance with these issues will be as simple as possible.
1. Identify crawl errors
The first and one of the most essential items in the technical SEO checklist is finding crawl errors. This error means that Google is having trouble viewing one of your site’s pages.
You can refer to the Pages section of your site’s search console to find crawl errors. If you notice in this section that Google has a problem viewing one of your site’s pages (for example, one of the important pages is blocked by the Robots.txt file), you should immediately fix this problem.
2. Correct viewing of pages by Google
Sometimes, users may not have any problem viewing a page of the site and can see all the writings and elements on that page, but Google’s bots may not be able to check that page properly. In this case, the page in question is not indexed, or in other words, it will not be ranked in the search results.
To find these types of pages, it is recommended to use the Inspect URL feature of the search console. By entering the URL of a page in the Inspect URL section, you can view the desired page from Google’s point of view.
After completing the inspection operation, if there is a problem, you can view it and take action to fix it. If you see a report similar to the image below in the Inspect URL section, your page has been correctly read by Google.
3. Appropriate design of the site for mobile
Another thing that should be included in the technical SEO checklist is the points related to mobile-friendliness or compatibility of the site with the dimensions of the mobile screens. All statistics show that the number of website visitors who enter the site with mobile phones is much higher than the users of other devices (except in special cases).
The compatibility of the site with mobile is also one of the things that Google attaches great importance to. If your website is not optimized for mobile pages, it will not rank well in mobile search results and this will cause you to lose a lot of traffic.
To make sure whether your site is optimized for mobile or not, just take a mobile-friendly test from the Mobile-Friendly Test section of the search console.
4. Absence of broken links
One of the other important items in the technical SEO checklist that can seriously damage the site’s SEO if you don’t pay attention to it is the presence of broken links. Therefore, you should periodically check the site and if you see broken links, correct them immediately.
One of the best ways to find broken links on a site is to use the online tool drlinkcheck.com. This tool scans websites for broken links for free. Note that based on the number of links on the site (total links), the time required to scan the site by this tool varies.
After the scanning operation by this tool is completed, to view the broken links, first click on the Links With Issues option in the provided report, and then on the new page that opens, select the Broken option from the right menu to view the links See the broken one on the scanned website.
5. Using a secure protocol (HTTPS) on the website
HTTPS is a secure protocol for transferring data from the user to the server and, in short, prevents the theft of user information. The existence of this protocol is one of Google’s security criteria for SEO, and its absence can cause the website pages not to be ranked as they should be.
Therefore, if your website is still loaded with the HTTP protocol, prepare SSL and use the HTTPS protocol.
6. Ensuring proper loading speed
Another point that should be considered in the technical SEO checklist is the website loading speed. Website loading speed is essential both for SEO and for creating a good user experience. To make sure that your website loads at the right speed, using Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool is the best way.
This free tool lets you know how fast your site loads for desktop and mobile users. Even in this tool, suggestions are provided to improve technical SEO issues related to loading speed.
7. Checking the site map
XML site maps are displayed in the sitemaps section of the search console. The absence of problems in sitemaps is one of the technical SEO issues and should be included in the technical SEO checklist.
In the sitemaps section of the search console, all information about sitemaps can be seen. Try to periodically check this section and if you see an error in it, fix it. The presence of the phrase Success for sitemaps means that there is no problem with them.
8. Checking the robots.txt file
One of the most important ways to communicate with search engine crawlers is the robots.txt file. With this file, you can ask the robots which pages to check and which pages to ignore. The codes in this file are only about checking the pages or crawling them and do not have any instructions related to indexing by Google.
In the robots.txt file of small sites, there may be only one or two lines of code. In large sites, there may be complex commands and many codes, and also medium sites can have a few lines of code in their robots file. It is rare that there are changes in the codes of this file.
However, checking the codes in the robots.txt file is one of the important items of the technical SEO checklist and should be reviewed periodically so that the wrong changes are not included in the codes.
In general, almost all the technical SEO items in the technical SEO checklist can be checked by the Search Console tool, and you will rarely need other tools to check your technical SEO items.
In short, the technical SEO items that should be on the checklist are as follows:
- Checking errors related to site crawling
- Ensuring the correct display of pages to Google (through Inspect URL search console)
- Optimum pages for all devices, including mobile
- No broken links on the site
- Use HTTPS
- Optimum site loading speed
- Checking sitemaps
- Checking the text file
By using the technical or technical SEO checklist presented on this page, you can check all the problems that may appear on your website and fix them in the shortest possible time.
It is recommended to check the points in the checklist that we have provided you periodically (preferably once a week) and make sure that there are no problems with your website.
