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What is technical SEO?

We talk about technical SEO when we act on very specific elements, linked to the technique of a website, with the aim of improving its SEO. Technical SEO encompasses several topics such as loading time or security.

Certain technical elements directly affect the ability of search engines to crawl and interpret a website. Working on this facet of SEO is therefore an important building block of the positioning process. It is also not uncommon for errors made linked to technical elements to seriously penalize SEO.

Conversely, a website whose technique has been worked on will more easily benefit from good visibility. This is all the more valid for websites which operate in particularly competitive themes, and which face other very well optimized competing sites. In this scenario, technical SEO clearly cannot be neglected. Carrying out a technical SEO audit makes it possible to identify problems or optimization deficits on a site, then to establish an appropriate action plan. This is a key step within any SEO approach.

What are the main technical SEO criteria?

Crawlability

Before offering some of their pages in their results, search engines crawl websites through their internal links. But they benefit from limited resources for this. One of the main challenges of technical SEO therefore consists of ensuring that the pages explored are those which are interesting for SEO. This involves organizing internal links and developing a tree structure that encourages the exploration of the pages to be positioned.

It is also important to ensure that the indexing robots do not encounter any problems during their passage (404 responses, pages that cannot be indexed by mistake, etc.).

Other levers allow you to act on the exploration of engines: the robots.txt file will allow them to prohibit access to certain directories or types of pages. This is with the aim of limiting the exploration of content which is of no interest for SEO, or which poses a problem, and to favor the exploration of those which must position themselves.

Duplicate content icon

The presence of duplicate content within a site is a bad point for SEO. When faced with identical content, search engines must identify for themselves which version should be taken into account for SEO. In the end, it is possible that none of the versions are actually positioned.

However, it is possible to guide search engines by indicating on duplicate pages, via the addition of specific HTML tags, the reference version (called “canonical”) to be positioned. These tags take the following form:

Note that a page can indicate its own URL in a canonical tag.

Managing duplicate content by adding canonical tags is an important point in technical SEO.

web performance illustration

Web performance (loading time and process) has been a positioning criterion for search engines, particularly Google, for many years. The latter has also recently evolved its algorithm to better evaluate the loading process of the analyzed pages.

The expectations of engines (and before them, users) on this subject are increasingly high. Today, a page that is very slow to load, and not very stable for the user, has less chance of being well positioned than an equivalent competing page, which offers an optimized experience.

Auditing your web performance and implementing optimization actions when necessary is therefore part of the technical SEO optimization process.

HTTPS secure site icon

Website security is also important in SEO. Today, and for several years now, the implementation of HTTPS is part of the standards. Obtaining an SSL certificate, among other things, gives users confidence that their data is secure. It is precisely for this reason that search engines have made it a ranking criterion.

Different Types of SEO Tools

What Is Website Health?

Technical SEO Checklist

What is technical SEO?

We talk about technical SEO when we act on very specific elements, linked to the technique of a website, with the aim of improving its SEO. Technical SEO encompasses several topics such as loading time or security.

Certain technical elements directly affect the ability of search engines to crawl and interpret a website. Working on this facet of SEO is therefore an important building block of the positioning process. It is also not uncommon for errors made linked to technical elements to seriously penalize SEO.

Conversely, a website whose technique has been worked on will more easily benefit from good visibility. This is all the more valid for websites which operate in particularly competitive themes, and which face other very well optimized competing sites. In this scenario, technical SEO clearly cannot be neglected. Carrying out a technical SEO audit makes it possible to identify problems or optimization deficits on a site, then to establish an appropriate action plan. This is a key step within any SEO approach.

What are the main technical SEO criteria?

Crawlability

Before offering some of their pages in their results, search engines crawl websites through their internal links. But they benefit from limited resources for this. One of the main challenges of technical SEO therefore consists of ensuring that the pages explored are those which are interesting for SEO. This involves organizing internal links and developing a tree structure that encourages the exploration of the pages to be positioned.

It is also important to ensure that the indexing robots do not encounter any problems during their passage (404 responses, pages that cannot be indexed by mistake, etc.).

Other levers allow you to act on the exploration of engines: the robots.txt file will allow them to prohibit access to certain directories or types of pages. This is with the aim of limiting the exploration of content which is of no interest for SEO, or which poses a problem, and to favor the exploration of those which must position themselves.

Duplicate content icon

The presence of duplicate content within a site is a bad point for SEO. When faced with identical content, search engines must identify for themselves which version should be taken into account for SEO. In the end, it is possible that none of the versions are actually positioned.

However, it is possible to guide search engines by indicating on duplicate pages, via the addition of specific HTML tags, the reference version (called “canonical”) to be positioned. These tags take the following form:

Note that a page can indicate its own URL in a canonical tag.

Managing duplicate content by adding canonical tags is an important point in technical SEO.

web performance illustration

Web performance (loading time and process) has been a positioning criterion for search engines, particularly Google, for many years. The latter has also recently evolved its algorithm to better evaluate the loading process of the analyzed pages.

The expectations of engines (and before them, users) on this subject are increasingly high. Today, a page that is very slow to load, and not very stable for the user, has less chance of being well positioned than an equivalent competing page, which offers an optimized experience.

Auditing your web performance and implementing optimization actions when necessary is therefore part of the technical SEO optimization process.

HTTPS secure site icon

Website security is also important in SEO. Today, and for several years now, the implementation of HTTPS is part of the standards. Obtaining an SSL certificate, among other things, gives users confidence that their data is secure. It is precisely for this reason that search engines have made it a ranking criterion.

Different Types of SEO Tools

What Is Website Health?

Technical SEO Checklist