Technical SEO. A baker's dozen things to get your website to the top

Technical SEO is not only about setting up robot.txt. There are many details that result in success. Today I'm going to talk about thirteen things that you need to work on to climb to the top of the search results. Some of settings that will be discussed can be performed with the ispmanager web server console. I will also mention this point further.

Fill in meta tags and the alt attribute

It's pretty simple, but often forgotten. On the website, ‹titile›, ‹keyword›, ‹description› attribute for images must be filled in. In fact, in order for the search robot not to swear, it's enough for it to see at least a piece of content enclosed within tags, even if it is a random set of characters. But I still recommend putting relevant keywords so that the website will display higher on the search engine results page. You will be surprised how well pages will rank in queries for image search if you sweat for the alt.

Update CMS, plugins, scripts, and modules

Maintain CMS, scripts, and integration modules in good working order, update them. Google neglects outdated websites and those code-handled with errors. Besides, users don't like if something goes wrong. And the departed visitors impact the website search engine ranking in terms of user experience. In addition, outdated code accumulates vulnerabilities and prevents new features from being added to the website, generating incompatibility issues. The ispmanager console has a special Softaculous for quick installation and updating of scripts on the site. .

Hide JS scripts in a folder or import into node.js

The search robot scans the page sequentially. If somewhere in the beginning of the process it stumbles upon a large script, then it may “get tired” and finish checking. So, it is better to optimize JS, save it in a separate folder, or transfer evaluations to the server side. Node.js will help with the latter. It turns JavaScript into a server application and speeds up code handling, that is also good for SEO operations. Ispmanager supports node.js — the tool can be easily installed and used.

Use SSL certificates

Install SSL if you don't have it yet. Search robots pessimize positions of resources in search results if there is no secure HTTPS connection. In addition, browsers swear at sites without SSL and prevent users from accessing them. Ispmanager provides you an easy way to install free Let's Encrypt certificates. They are suitable for most simple sites and many browsers support them. Let's Encrypt SSL installed with ispmanager automatically renews every three months; usually auto-renewal has to be configured manually.

Create friendly URLs

Robots love friendly URLs. Use them, not abstract addresses generated in CRM. News with the address /news/php-composer is more likely to be displayed by keywords than news/news-09-11-22.

Do not write styles directly in HTML

Write styles in a separate CSS file and use the style attribute as rare as possible, as it is required to quickly set the view of a single element that is not repeated on other pages. If the design should contain all H1 headers in red 24th font, just indicate this in the CSS, and the SEO Specialist will thank you.

Make layout for popular screen resolutions

Seventy percent of commercial search queries come from mobile devices. Google checks whether the website is mobile-friendly. Flexible layout, when elements automatically adapt to the screen, does not always suit search robots: they swear at the font size, dense arrangement of elements, and other flaws. Therefore, sometimes it is better to make separate versions of pages for popular resolutions.

And make layout for different browsers

It looks like Chrome has almost killed most of its competitors, but there are still Opera, Safari, and other survivors. Do not forget to make sure that the site works well in all browsers from which it is visited.

Optimize loading time

Although cities are being built up with 5G towers, and productivity is being added to devices, there are still sites in the world that take an unacceptably long time to load. Make sure yours is not one of them. In order not to incur displeasure of robots, check the page speed in Google PageSpeed ​​and follow the recommendations of this tool. PageSpeed ​​support is available in ispmanager.

Register canonical

For Google, it is important that the same content is not duplicated within the site. But sometimes you cannot do without repetitions. For such cases, set the canonical tag for all duplicates — the robot will prioritize this page on the search results page and will not swear at duplicates.

Use micro-markup

Google focuses on the uniqueness of the text and does not like repetitive content. But what should an online store do with a couple dozen bearings that have similar properties? Use micro-markup. Thanks to this, the search engine can understand where the product description is on the site, and where its characteristics are, and will not require uniqueness where it is impossible. In addition, micro-markup will help to form an attractive snippet on the search results page.

Close extra pages from indexing

Close sections under development and pages with poor quality from indexing. It is better to put the site in order first, and then show it to robots, than to settle the matters on already indexed pages.

Make sure that error 404 occurs as rarely as possible

If visitors consistently land on page 404, the site is downgraded in search results. There should be as few such errors as possible, but often they happen due to an oversight: because of too heavy or empty pages, incorrect response code, and redirect settings.

Technical SEO memo

1. Fill in meta tags and alt.
2. Update CMS, plugins, scripts.
3. Shorten JS scripts, hide them in a folder or import into node.js.
4. Use SSL certificates.
5. Use friendly URLs.
6. Write styles in a CSS file, not in HTML.
7. Make layout adaptive for different screens.
8. Monitor cross-browser compatibility.
9. Optimize loading time.
10. Register canonical.
11. Use micro-markup.
12. Close extra pages from indexing.
13. Make sure that error 404 occurs less frequently.