Technical SEO Checklist.

How To Boost our Website Performance the Right Way

In today’s digital era, one not only needs a website but also optimization with search engines to get it better placed and ranked. Though on-site SEO and content are very important, technical SEO forms the backbone of a well-optimized site. In this blog post, we go deep into the comprehensive technical SEO checklist that will help improve your website performance. We will go through some of the very common issues people find with the technical elements of SEO, including URL redirects and alt text, and how Digi Dervish’s services can help solve these problems.

1. Ensure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Since most of the web’s traffic comes from mobile devices, there is no getting away from this, and your website has to be mobile-friendly. Google does use mobile-first indexing, which means it takes mainly the mobile version of any website for ranking and indexing.

Checklist:

• Test: Take your site through the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google.
• Responsive web design allows the web layout to change based on the screen size.
• Make the loading time on mobile devices faster.

Common Problem: Most websites fail the mobile-friendly test because they adapt poorly to responsive design. This will necessarily drive up the bounce rate and lower search rankings.

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish offers testing and optimization of websites for responsiveness on mobile, ensuring your site works perfectly on all devices.

2. Fix URL Redirection Issues

URL redirects can considerably affect the performance of your website in the rankings of search engines. Broken links, redirect chains, and 404 errors create poor user experiences. They also confuse search engines, causing your website to drop in the rankings of search results. 

Checklist 

• Regularly audit your site for 404 errors and fix them.
•  Avoid redirect chains-meaning, more than one redirect before the final destination. For permanent URL changes, use 301 redirects to pass SEO value.

Common mistakes: They all tend to either cause redirect loops or break, thus harming SEO performance and user experience. 

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish offers professional URL redirecting services to ensure that your redirects are smooth, harmless, and Search Engine Optimization-friendly. We identify broken links, create 301 redirects, and avoid redirect loops to keep your site free from errors.

3. Optimize Website Speed

Page speed has long been a direct ranking factor. Slow-loading results frustrate users and increase bounce rates, further hurting your rankings.

Checklist:

Compress images to shrink the load time.

• Minimize the number of HTTP requests your site makes by condensing CSS and JavaScript into smaller files.
• Enable browser caching and CDNs.
• Lazy loading of images and videos.

Common Problem: Many website owners do not care to optimize images and cache in due time, which slows down the overall loading process, especially on mobile. 

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish will be helping in optimizing your website’s speed by compressing images without losing quality, enabling caching of your website, providing services for content delivery networks that enhance the performance of your website across the globe.

4. Implement SSL (HTTPS)

Moreover, Google made HTTPS a ranking signal, which means if a website is not using SSL certificates, then it could be a rank penalty for the website in the search results. SSL encrypts the data sent between the user’s browser and the server, providing better security and trust.

Checklist:

• Ensure all pages are served over HTTPS.
• Renew your SSL certificate on a regular basis.
• Update internal links to point to HTTPS URLs.

Common Problem: Non-HTTPS sites miss out on ranking boosts, and on top of that, suffer from lesser user trust.

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish offers a wide gamut of SSL setup and management services that will ensure your website is secured lock, stock, and barrel and gets the benefit of the rank boost that comes with HTTPS.

5. Optimize Alt Text for Images

They can’t “see” images, so they need alt text to tell them what the image is about. Well-optimized alt text makes the web page more accessible and allows the website to appear in image results.

Quick Checklist

• Write alt text that describes the image well and includes the keyword.
• Keep alt text below 125 characters.
• Use a unique alt text for each distinct image.

Common Mistake: The majority of website owners either don’t add alt text at all or use generic descriptions like “image123”, which severely diminishes their SEO capabilities.

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish takes the time to write clear, descriptive, and optimized alt text for all of your images so that they support your SEO strategy and make you more visible in search.

6. Fix Crawl Errors

Crawl errors: when search engine bots are unable to crawl the specific pages of your website, which means missing an opportunity to rank those pages. 

Checklist

• Monitor crawl errors with Google Search Console. 
• Check your robots.txt file is not blocking any key pages. 
• Make sure your sitemap is updated and submitted to the search engines.

Common Issue: A badly configured robots.txt file can block essential pages from crawling, which hurts your rankings.

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish investigates the crawl errors and resolves them in order to make all important web pages accessible by the search engines.

7. Structured Data and Schema Markup

Structured data tells the search engines what’s on your site. Rich snippets-like star ratings, event dates, prices, and other key elements-can all be taken to the next level with schema markup, which can, in turn, perhaps help your visibility in search results.

Key takeaways:

• Apply proper schema markup on products, reviews, articles, etc.
• Utilize Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to validate your schema.
• Keep the structured data updated according to changes in the future.

Common Mistake: Most website owners don’t use schema markup, thereby missing out on rich results that could help give your CTR a boost. 

Digi Dervish Solution: At Digi Dervish, you can get comprehensive schema implementation services so that your website stands out in search results with rich snippets to drive more traffic to your website.

8. Sitemap and Robots.txt Optimization

Your sitemap shows search engines around your site, while robots.txt tells the crawling bots where to crawl. Both of these are super important in technical SEO.

Checklist:

• Ensure your XML sitemap has listed all the significant pages.
• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
• Check robots.txt file to not block major pages.

Common Problem: A non-updated sitemap or incorrectly configured robots.txt file limits crawlability and prevents key pages from indexing. 

Solution by Digi Dervish: Digi Dervish helps in sitemap and robots.txt optimization so that full access to your site may be guaranteed to the crawling of the search engines.

9. Canonical Tags for Duplicate Content

The duplication of content can definitely create some confusion for the search engines and may lead to a dilution of your SEO effort. That’s why canonical tags help in indicating the preferred version of any page, which helps accumulate your link equity in one place.

Checklist:

• Apply canonical tags for pages containing duplicated or similar content.
• Make sure your website doesn’t have any issues concerning duplicate content.

Common Issue: If you fail to canonicalize, then the search engines will rank the wrong version of a page-or distribute ranking power across duplicates.

Digi Dervish Solution: Digi Dervish finds and fixes duplicate content with proper canonical tags that will provide search engines with the correct version of a page to rank.

10. Monitor Website Performance Regularly

Finally, technical SEO is not one-off in nature. As a matter of fact, this type of optimization necessitates continuous monitoring.

Checklist:

• Monitor performance using Google Analytics and Search Console. 
• Periodically execute SEO audits to spot new issues.
•  Page speed, crawl errors, and index status are monitored.

Digi Dervish Solution: The Digi Dervish offers ongoing SEO monitoring services for regular audits and performance reports to keep your site optimized and competitive.

Maximizing SEO Success with Digi Dervish’s Expertise

Technical SEO might feel daunting, but it usually only takes a few major adjustments to see huge improvements in search performance. Making sure your site is mobile-friendly, repairing broken URL redirects, optimizing alt text, and addressing other technical pain points will go a long way toward setting up your site for success.

Digi Dervish is here to help. From perfecting the pixels and optimizing the page speed, to taking care of the most problematic SEO issues-our professional services promise the best search engine and user optimization for your website. Reach out to Digi Dervish today and step up your game with SEO, allowing your website to perform at its very best.