What are some recommended tools for improving technical SEO?

Some recommended tools include Google Search Console, Google PageSpeed Insights, Screaming Frog Audit, and Ahrefs Site Audit.

What is the purpose of a technical SEO site audit?

A technical SEO site audit is used to identify and fix errors on your website.

How can I improve my site speed?

You can optimize your website's performance manually or use a site enhancement tool to help you.

What is the importance of having a device-friendly design?

Using responsive design best practices ensures your website looks and functions well on different devices.

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Technical SEO Tools

Here are Huckabuy's recommended tools that can help you improve the technical SEO for your website.

Google Search Console

Helps you identify a variety of optimization points for your website, including Page Experience and Core Web Vitals optimizations.

Google Mobile-Friendly Test

Helps you determine the mobile-friendliness of your site.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Helps to identify how well your site is performing for users and how fast your web pages are loading.

Google Rich Results Test and Schema Markup Validator

These two tools replaced the Structured Data Testing Tool, and help you test which Rich Results your site is ranking for and how well Schema markup is executed on your website.

SEO spider tool that crawls your website and provides valuable insights to help you identify technical SEO issues such as broken links, redirect issues, duplicate content, and missing meta descriptions.

Ahrefs Site Audit

Powerful tool that scans your website to identify technical SEO issues and optimization points. It helps find broken links, missing metadata, duplicate content, and other on-page issues that may be affecting your site's performance.

Technical SEO Checklist

Don't know how to approach technical SEO? Here's a series of tasks to help you improve your technical SEO!

Find Errors

Perform a technical SEO site audit and use technical SEO tools to identify and fix errors on your website.

Revise Site Structure

Organize your website's structure in a logical and hierarchical manner to make it easy for users and search engines to navigate. Use tools like a sitemap to help you plan and visualize your site structure.

Eliminate Duplicate Content

Identify and remove duplicate pages or content on your site to avoid confusing search engines and hurting your SEO. Use tools like Copyscape or Siteliner to help you identify duplicate content on your site.

Improve Site Speed

Optimize your website's performance to improve site speed. You can do this manually or use a site enhancement tool to help you.

Improve Security

Serve your website through HTTPS to improve site security. You can also use security plugins or services to protect your site against attacks.

Introduce Device-Friendly Design

Use responsive design best practices to ensure your website looks and functions well on different devices.

Use Structured Data

Implement structured data manually or automate the process via a third party software like Huckabuy to help search engines better understand and present your content.

Characteristics of a Technically Optimized Website

A technically optimized website is fast, secure, mobile-friendly, and easy for search engines to crawl.

Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals are a set of Google ranking signals that Google began to roll out in June 2021. The Core Web Vitals measure the page experience — including how a user experiences page speed and overall page performance. Read this article to learn how to fix the Core Web Vitals.

Introduction to Largest Contentful Paint for SEO

Largest contentful paint is a key metric in Google’s new set of “Core Web Vitals” that measures how long it takes for the primary piece of content above the fold to be usable by a visitor. It could be a text block, image, video, or some other element — whatever is largest. Anything that extends beyond the initial viewport is not taken into consideration. Continue reading to learn more.

What is technical SEO?

How is technical SEO different from other types of SEO?

Technical SEO Terms Glossary

API

An application programming interface (API) is a set of programming code that can be used across different software platforms and comes with a defined set of rules and conventions to follow.

Caching

The act of storing data in a caching memory. Search engines store a pre-rendered version of a page in caching to serve pages to users more quickly.

CDNs

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are globally dispersed locations where data is stored. They are often used to solve page loading issues associated with the geographical distance between a user and a host.

CLS

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a page experience metric that measures the load speed for all elements of a page. It measures visual stability.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a spam technique meant to trick a search bot. Cloaking happens when the content on the page on the user-facing side is different than the content presented to the search bot.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWV) consists of three metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS. These three metrics measure page experience and overall page speed.

Crawl Budget

The number of pages that Google will crawl on your site in a day. Crawl budget can vary from site to site.

Critical Rendering Path

The steps a browser takes to convert HTML, CSS and JavaScript into a page that can be viewed by a user.

DNS

A Domain Name System (DNS) connects URLs with their corresponding IP address. Web browsers process data in numbers and a DNS is the thing that matches a searchable domain name (like Huckabuy.com) into a string of numbers that the browser can process.

Dynamic Rendering

The process of serving a client-side version of your site for users and a separate, server-side version for Search Bots. On the server-side, javascript content is converted into a flat HTML version preferred by Search Bots. Dynamic rendering is not cloaking.

Edge SEO

The practice of utilizing CDNs to speed up the delivery of content to users.

FID

First Input Delay is a Core Web Vitals page experience metric, and it measures the page load time it takes until the first user input (whether they click, tap, or press any keys).

Google Lighthouse

One of the Google Webmaster tools that can be used to measure page performance and page experience.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language is a standardized system for tagging text files to achieve design effects on web pages.

Javascript

A programming language typically used to create interactive effects and dynamic elements on web pages.

JSON-LD

JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data (JSON-LD) is a format for structuring the data of a web page to better communicate with search engines. There are other structured formats, but JSON-LD is the one preferred by Google.

LCP

Largest Contentful Paint is a Core Web Vitals page experience metric, and it measures that measures the page load time it takes for the largest image or text block on a page to render. To a user, LCP is when the loading of a page visually appears to be complete.

PageSpeed Insights

One of the Google Webmaster tools that measure page speed.

Rich Result

Also called a rich snippet, a rich result is a snippet of information (be it an image, video, a review, etc.) that appears on the top of a SERP above the 10 blue links.

Sitemap

A file that explains the connections between various pages on your website.

Structured Data

Another way to say “organized” data (as opposed to unorganized). Schema.org is a way to structure your data, for example, by labeling it with additional information that helps the search engine understand it.

Technical SEO

Refers to optimizing your site for the crawling and indexing of search engines, but can also refer to any technical changes you make to your site to help your site appear better in search results.

URL Routing

The practice of defining URLs and their destinations.

Technical SEO Resources

Core Web Vitals

Introduction to Largest Contentful Paint for SEO

Introduction to First Input Delay for SEO

First input delay is a key metric in Google’s new set of “Core Web Vitals” that measures the delay in discrete event processing (like the click of a button) in order to capture a user’s first impression of a site’s interactivity and responsiveness. In other words, it quantifies the experience users feel when trying to interact with elements on a page. Continue reading to learn more.

Introduction to Cumulative Layout Shift for SEO

Cumulative layout shift is a key metric in Google’s new set of “Core Web Vitals” that measures the sum total of all the unexpected layout shifts that occur during the loading of a page. A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes position from one frame to the next. To illustrate, say you went to click on the menu bar of a homepage and it shifted up and you accidentally clicked on a newsletter signup button that popped up instead. That’s an example of a layout shift. Continue reading to learn more.

Mobile-friendliness: SEO for Mobile

Mobile-friendliness is a big part of page experience, and it will only become more important with the upcoming Page Experience Update. Read this article to learn about mobile SEO, how your business can benefit from it, and what to do to optimize for it.

AMP for SEO

Mobile users continue to make up a larger portion of internet users worldwide, meaning that the need for webmasters to provide a quality mobile page experience is only becoming more important. Accelerated Mobile Pages are one way webmasters can keep up with this ever-growing population of mobile users.

Introduction to Canonicalization for Technical SEO

This article provides a brief overview of canonical tags and why they are an important part of a technical SEO strategy.

Introduction to Log File Analysis for Technical SEO

This article provides an introduction to log file analysis, a task allowing marketers to study how Google interacts with their websites in order to inform changes for technical SEO.

Alternatives to the Structured Data Testing Tool

In July 2020, Google announced that the rich results testing tool was out of beta and that its structured data tool would be deprecated at the end of the year. After significant feedback from the SEO community concerning this announcement, Google changed course in December 2020, stating that the old tool will be migrated to the schema.org community in April 2021 where it will be used strictly to check syntax and compliance of any markup with schema.org standards. Continue reading to learn more.

How To Use Google's Crawl Stats Report For Technical SEO

In November 2020, Google released an improved crawl stats that gives webmasters better insight into how Google crawls their websites and what they can do to improve their site's performance for search engine optimization. Continue reading to learn more.

How To Use Google's Lighthouse Report For Technical SEO

The latest version of Google's Lighthouse Report includes the new Core Web Vitals metrics that will become ranking factors when the page experience update goes live in May 2021. Continue reading to learn how to use this report for to optimize for this update.

SEO and Accessibility: 6 SEO Practices That Improve Web Accessibility

SEO and web accessibility are linked because many SEO best practices — things like adding image alt text — also help people with disabilities access your site more easily. This article will define SEO and Web Accessibility and give 6 SEO practices that improve your website accessibility.