How To Optimise Your Website with Technical SEO

Over 66% of backlinks are broken, and 7.4% of pages ranking in Google’s top 10 don’t even have a title tag. These technical issues are more common than expected and can quietly undermine your website’s ability to rank well.

Many businesses focus on content and backlinks to improve SEO, but without a strong technical foundation, even the best content may not perform as expected. Search engines need to access, understand, and index your site efficiently. If key technical elements are missing or broken, rankings and visibility will suffer.

Optimising your website for technical SEO is important for long-term search success. This blog outlines the key steps to improve your site’s performance, enhance search visibility, and build a strong foundation for growth.

What Is Technical SEO? 

Before diving into optimisation strategies, it’s important to define technical SEO and understand why it matters.

Technical SEO refers to the process of improving a website’s infrastructure to make it easier for search engines to discover, crawl, and index its pages. Without a strong technical foundation, even the best content and backlink strategies may fail to drive meaningful search visibility. 

Google prioritises websites that load quickly, are mobile-friendly, and follow structured data best practices. These factors all fall under technical SEO.

Key elements of technical SEO include:

• Crawling: How search engine bots discover and navigate through your website’s pages. A well-structured site with a clear internal linking strategy helps ensure all important pages are found.
• Indexing: How search engines analyse and store your pages in their database. If pages are blocked, have duplicate content issues, or lack key meta tags, they may not appear in search results.
• Rendering: How search engines process and display your content to users. Proper use of structured data, mobile optimisation, and JavaScript handling ensures that search engines interpret your pages correctly.

Creating an SEO-Friendly Website Architecture

Why Does Website Structure Matter?

A well-structured website makes navigating and understanding your content easier for both users and search engines. If your site's structure is confusing or disorganised, search engines may struggle to discover essential pages, leading to poor indexing and lower rankings. A clear and logical website architecture improves crawlability, enhances user experience, and distributes page authority more effectively.

Steps to Optimise Your Site Structure

1. Use Simple and Descriptive URLs

URLs should be concise, meaningful, and easy to read. Avoid random strings of numbers or special characters. Instead, use keyword-rich, structured URLs.

Example: yourdomain.com/services
Avoid: yourdomain.com/page12345

2. Link Related Pages Through Internal Linking

Internal links help search engines understand the relationship between different pages on your site. Linking relevant content improves discoverability and prevents important pages from being orphaned.
Best practice: Use keyword-rich anchor text that accurately describes the linked page.

3. Develop and Submit an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap acts as a guide for search engines, ensuring they find and index all your key pages.

• Generate a sitemap using tools like Screaming Frog, Yoast SEO, or Google XML Sitemaps.
• Submit it via Google Search Console to confirm search engines can access all important pages.

4. Enable Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumbs provide users with a clear path back to previous pages and help search engines understand your site's hierarchy.
Example: Home > Products > Coffee Machines

• Improves user experience by reducing confusion.
• Strengthens internal linking and page hierarchy.

5. Identify and Fix Crawl Errors

Regularly check for crawl errors that may prevent search engines from accessing your pages.

• Use tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, or Ahrefs to identify broken links, redirect issues, and blocked pages.
• Fix errors promptly to ensure all valuable pages remain accessible to search engines.

Optimising Website Security

Website security is vital for protecting user data, maintaining trust, and ensuring compliance with search engine ranking factors. Google prioritises secure websites, and failing to implement proper security measures can lead to lower rankings, data breaches, and loss of user confidence.

How to Secure Your Website

1. Install an SSL Certificate

Switching your website to HTTPS encrypts data transfers, preventing sensitive information from being intercepted. Websites with HTTPS display a padlock symbol in the browser, reassuring users that their data is secure. Search engines also prioritise HTTPS-enabled sites in rankings.

2. Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

After enabling HTTPS, ensure that all HTTP URLs automatically redirect to their HTTPS equivalents. This prevents broken links, duplicate content issues, and potential security vulnerabilities. Implement 301 redirects to ensure a smooth transition without losing search rankings.

3. Implement HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security)

HSTS forces browsers to only load your website over HTTPS, reducing the risk of security threats such as man-in-the-middle attacks. It also improves page load times by eliminating unnecessary HTTP-to-HTTPS redirects.

4. Regularly Update Software and Plugins

Outdated CMS platforms, plugins, and themes create security vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Regularly update WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other CMS you use, along with installed plugins and extensions.

5. Enable Web Application Firewall (WAF)

A Web Application Firewall protects your website by filtering out malicious traffic, preventing attacks like SQL injections and cross-site scripting (XSS). Cloud-based solutions like Cloudflare and Sucuri provide additional protection by blocking harmful requests before they reach your server.

6. Monitor and Fix Security Vulnerabilities

Use tools like Google Search Console Security Issues to identify and fix security weaknesses. Set up alerts to detect potential breaches and act quickly to resolve them.

Improving Website Performance

Website speed is another important factor for both user experience and search engine rankings. Google prioritises fast-loading websites, and slow pages can lead to higher bounce rates and lower conversions. Studies show that 57% of users abandon a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load, making performance optimisation essential for SEO and user retention.

Ways to Boost Performance

1. Select Reliable Hosting

Your hosting provider plays a key role in website speed and uptime. Choose a hosting service with:

• Fast and stable performance to minimise downtime
• Servers optimised for speed (e.g., SSD storage, caching, low-latency networks)
• Scalability options to handle traffic spikes efficiently

2. Optimise Images

Large images slow down page load times. Use compression tools to reduce file sizes while maintaining quality.

• TinyPNG, ShortPixel, or ImageOptim can automatically compress images before uploading.
• Use modern formats like WebP instead of JPEG or PNG for faster loading.
• Implement lazy loading so images load only when they appear in the user’s viewport.

3. Minify Code

Reducing unnecessary code in your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files helps improve load times.

• Use Minify tools like UglifyJS, CSSNano, or Terser to remove extra spaces, comments, and characters.
• Enable asynchronous loading for non-critical JavaScript to prevent render-blocking issues.

4. Enable Compression

Compressing website files reduces the amount of data transferred between the server and the user’s browser.

• Use Gzip or Brotli to shrink file sizes and speed up delivery.
• Ensure server-side compression is enabled via .htaccess, Nginx, or Cloudflare settings.

5. Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

A CDN stores copies of your website’s content on multiple servers worldwide, delivering data from the server closest to the user.

• Services like Cloudflare, StackPath, or Akamai reduce latency and improve load times globally.
• CDNs also protect against traffic surges and DDoS attacks, enhancing security and speed.

Achieving Mobile-Friendliness

With 62.96% of web traffic now coming from mobile devices, a website that doesn’t adapt to different screen sizes risks losing visitors and rankings. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site for ranking purposes. Ensuring a seamless mobile experience is no longer optional. It’s essential for both usability and SEO.

Steps to Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

1. Adopt a Mobile-Responsive Design

A responsive design automatically adjusts to different screen sizes, providing a consistent user experience across devices. To achieve this:

• Use flexible grids and layouts that adjust to different screen sizes.
• Implement CSS media queries to adapt styles dynamically.
• Use scalable images (SVG, WebP) that load properly on various devices.
• Prioritise touch-friendly buttons and navigation to improve usability.

2. Test Mobile Usability

Even a well-designed mobile site can have usability issues. Regular testing ensures that mobile visitors have a smooth experience.

• Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check if your site meets mobile usability standards.
• Analyse Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability Report for issues like small text, clickable elements too close together, or content wider than the screen.
• Perform real-device testing across different phones and tablets to catch design inconsistencies.

3. Optimise for Mobile Performance

Mobile users expect fast load times, and Google considers page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches. To improve mobile performance:

• Enable lazy loading to defer offscreen images until needed.
• Use AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) where applicable to deliver lightweight, fast-loading pages.
• Reduce server response time by optimising hosting and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

Eliminating Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can confuse search engines, dilute your ranking potential, and lead to lower visibility in search results. When search engines encounter multiple pages with similar or identical content, they struggle to determine which version to rank, potentially reducing the authority of all affected pages.

How to Manage Duplicate Content

1. Identify Duplicate Pages

The first step in resolving duplicate content issues is detection. Use specialised tools to scan your website for repeated content:

• Siteliner identifies duplicate content across your website and highlights areas that need attention.
• Use a tool such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider to crawl your site and detect duplicate meta descriptions, titles, and content.
• Google Search Console can flag duplicate content issues under the "Coverage" and "Enhancements" reports.

2. Add Canonical Tags

Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page should be treated as the primary source, preventing duplicate content penalties.

• Add a <link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com/preferred-page/"> tag in the <head> section of duplicate pages.
• Use canonical tags to consolidate ranking signals for pages with similar content, such as paginated blog listings or e-commerce product variations.

3. Utilise Noindex Tags for Low-Value Pages

Some pages, such as login screens, order confirmations, or duplicate category pages, don’t add SEO value and should be excluded from indexing.

• Apply the noindex meta tag (<meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">) to prevent search engines from indexing non-essential pages.
• Use robots.txt sparingly to block duplicate pages, ensuring it doesn't accidentally block important content.

4. Implement 301 Redirects Where Necessary

If duplicate content exists due to outdated or unnecessary pages, implement 301 redirects to consolidate authority and guide users to the correct page.

• Redirect near-identical pages to the most relevant, authoritative version.
• Merge similar blog posts or category pages to reduce redundancy and improve content depth.

Expanding for Global Audiences

Expanding your website for international audiences requires more than just translation. To succeed in global SEO, you must ensure that search engines and users can easily access region-specific content. 

Tips for Global SEO

1. Implement Language Tags (hreflang Attributes)

Search engines rely on hreflang tags to understand which language version of a page to show users based on their location and language preferences.

• Use <link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://yourdomain.com/uk/"> to specify English for UK users.
• Ensure proper implementation to avoid duplicate content issues across language variants.

2. Structure URLs Effectively

How you structure URLs for international websites affects search rankings and user experience. Choose one of the following approaches:

• ccTLD (country-code top-level domain): example.uk (best for country-specific targeting but requires more SEO effort).
• Subdomains: uk.example.com (can be managed separately but may dilute domain authority).
• Subdirectories: example.com/uk/ (easier to maintain and share domain authority).
• Be consistent with the chosen URL structure across all regions.

3. Localise Content Beyond Translation

Translation alone isn’t enough for global SEO success.

• Adapt currency, date formats, and measurement units based on the target country.
• Optimise for local search trends and cultural preferences to improve relevance.
• Implement local keyword research to align with how different audiences search for your products or services.

Enhancing Site Interactivity

Interactive features improve user engagement, increase time spent on your site, and enhance overall user experience. However, if not optimised appropriately, interactive elements can slow load times and create SEO challenges by making content harder for search engines to index.

Optimisation Tips for Interactive Websites

1. Use Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Server-side rendering ensures that search engines and users receive fully rendered content quickly, improving crawlability and load speed.

• Beneficial for JavaScript-heavy websites, such as those built with React, Angular, or Vue.js.
• Helps ensure that all content is accessible to search engines from the start, reducing indexing issues.

2. Implement Dynamic Rendering for Search Bots

Some interactive pages struggle with SEO because search engines can’t always process JavaScript effectively.

• Use dynamic rendering to serve pre-rendered static HTML to search bots while maintaining interactive features for users.
• Tools like Rendertron or Prerender.io can generate bot-friendly static pages.

3. Optimise AJAX for SEO

AJAX dynamically loads content without refreshing the page, but search engines may not always detect dynamically generated content.

• Use the History API to create indexable URLs for dynamically loaded pages.
• Ensure that important content loaded via AJAX is also present in the initial HTML so search engines can crawl it.

Build a Technically Sound Website Today

Technical SEO may seem complex, but it forms the backbone of a high-performing website. These optimisations are essential for long-term success, from improving site speed and ensuring mobile-friendliness to fixing crawl issues and structuring content for search engines. By implementing the strategies outlined in this blog, you can enhance visibility, improve user experience, and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

That said, SEO isn’t a one-time fix. Search engine algorithms constantly evolve, and ongoing monitoring and updates are crucial to maintaining strong rankings. Without regular optimisation, even the best websites can lose visibility over time.

This is where Simply Content can help. We provide expert-driven technical SEO and content solutions tailored to keep your website optimised and competitive. From technical audits and structured content strategies to fast turnarounds and unlimited revisions, we ensure your site is built for long-term success. 

Partner with Simply Content and take your website to the next level.