Technical SEO Clean Up Tasks to Improve Your Website’s Visibility

In addition to on-page optimization, technical SEO plays a vital role in improving your website’s overall visibility on search engines. Technical clean-up involves optimizing various technical aspects of your website to enhance its crawlability, indexability, and overall performance. Let’s explore some essential technical SEO tactics for ecommerce websites.

Website speed is a crucial factor in both user experience and SEO. A slow-loading website can negatively impact your search rankings and user engagement. To ensure your website is fast and responsive, consider the following steps:

1. Optimize image sizes: Large image files can significantly slow down your website. Compress and resize your images to reduce their file sizes without compromising quality.
2. Enable browser caching: Browser caching allows your website’s files to be temporarily stored on a user’s device. This reduces the time it takes to load your website for returning visitors.
3. Minify CSS and JavaScript files: Minifying your CSS and JavaScript files can reduce their file sizes, leading to faster loading times. Remove unnecessary white spaces, comments, and line breaks from these files.
4. Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN can distribute your website’s content across multiple servers worldwide, reducing the physical distance between your website and your visitors. This can significantly improve your website’s loading speed.

By ensuring your website is fast and responsive, you can provide a better user experience, reduce bounce rates, and improve your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.

A well-optimized URL structure can improve your website’s crawlability and user experience. Consider the following best practices for optimizing your URL structure:

1. Use descriptive and keyword-rich URLs: Incorporate relevant keywords in your URLs to provide search engines and users with a clear understanding of your page’s content.
2. Keep URLs concise and readable: Avoid lengthy and complex URLs that are difficult for users and search engines to understand. Use hyphens to separate words and keep URLs concise and readable.
3. Remove unnecessary parameters: Eliminate unnecessary parameters from your URLs, as they can create duplicate content issues and confuse search engines.
4. Implement canonical tags: Canonical tags help search engines identify the preferred version of a webpage when multiple versions exist. Use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content and improve your website’s overall SEO.

By optimizing your URL structure, you can enhance your website’s crawlability, improve user experience, and increase your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.

Broken links and redirects can negatively impact your website’s user experience and SEO. They can lead to 404 errors and frustrate users who are trying to access specific pages. To fix broken links and redirects, consider the following steps:

1. Regularly audit your website for broken links: Use tools like Screaming Frog or Google Search Console to identify broken links on your website. Once identified, fix or remove the broken links to ensure a smooth user experience.
2. Implement 301 redirects for outdated or moved pages: If you have moved or deleted pages on your website, implement 301 redirects to redirect users and search engines to the updated URLs. This helps preserve the link equity and rankings of the original pages.
3. Monitor and fix crawl errors: Use Google Search Console to identify and fix crawl errors on your website. Crawl errors can occur due to broken links, server errors, or other technical issues. Fixing these errors ensures search engines can properly crawl and index your website.

By regularly monitoring and fixing broken links and redirects, you can provide a seamless user experience and improve your website’s overall SEO performance.

XML sitemaps help search engines discover and understand the structure of your website. By submitting an XML sitemap to search engines, you can ensure all your website’s pages are crawled and indexed. Consider the following steps to implement XML sitemaps:

1. Generate an XML sitemap: Use tools like Screaming Frog or Yoast SEO to generate an XML sitemap for your website. These tools automatically crawl your website and create a comprehensive XML sitemap.
2. Submit your XML sitemap to search engines: Submit your XML sitemap to search engines like Google and Bing through their respective webmaster tools. This helps search engines discover and index your website’s pages more efficiently.
3. Regularly update your XML sitemap: As you add or remove pages from your website, update your XML sitemap accordingly. This ensures search engines have the most up-to-date information about your website’s structure.

By implementing XML sitemaps, you can improve your website’s crawlability, indexability, and overall visibility on search engines.

The robots.txt file helps search engines understand which pages of your website should be crawled and indexed. By optimizing your robots.txt file, you can control how search engines interact with your website. Consider the following best practices for optimizing your robots.txt file:

1. Allow access to important pages: Ensure search engines can access and crawl your website’s important pages, such as product pages, category pages, and blog posts.
2. Block irrelevant or duplicate content: Use the robots.txt file to block search engines from indexing irrelevant or duplicate content on your website. This can help prevent duplicate content issues and improve your website’s overall SEO.
3. Regularly review and update your robots.txt file: As you add or remove pages from your website, review and update your robots.txt file accordingly. This ensures search engines are properly informed about the pages they should crawl and index.

By optimizing your robots.txt file, you can control how search engines interact with your website and improve your overall SEO performance..

Link building is an essential aspect of off-page SEO. By acquiring high-quality and relevant backlinks, you can improve your website’s authority and increase its chances of ranking higher on SERPs. Let’s explore some effective link-building strategies for ecommerce websites.

Creating high-quality and relevant content is the foundation of any successful link-building strategy. By producing valuable content, you increase the likelihood of other websites linking to your website. Consider the following strategies for creating link-worthy content:

1. Publish informative blog posts: Create blog posts that provide valuable information and insights relevant to your target audience. Focus on addressing common pain points, answering frequently asked questions, or sharing industry expertise.
2. Produce engaging infographics: Infographics are visually appealing and shareable content assets that can attract backlinks. Create informative and visually appealing infographics related to your industry or niche.
3. Develop comprehensive guides and tutorials: Produce comprehensive guides and tutorials that provide in-depth information on specific topics. These types of content often attract links from websites looking to provide additional resources to their readers.
4. Offer unique research and data: Conduct original research or compile relevant data related to your industry. By offering unique insights, you can attract backlinks from websites looking to cite credible sources.

By consistently producing high-quality and relevant content, you increase your chances of attracting backlinks and improving your website’s authority.

Monitor your progress: Keep track of your link-building efforts and assess their impact on your website’s backlink profile and search rankings.

Technical SEO clean-up tasks, when combined with effective link-building strategies, can significantly improve your ecommerce website’s visibility on search engines. By optimizing technical aspects, ensuring a responsive design, and implementing sound URL structures, you enhance your website’s crawlability and indexability. Additionally, addressing issues such as broken links, XML sitemaps, and robots.txt optimization helps search engines better understand and navigate your site.

Furthermore, a well-planned link-building strategy involving the creation of high-quality content, relationship-building with influencers, guest posting on relevant websites, and competitor backlink analysis can boost your website’s authority and ultimately lead to higher rankings in search engine results. Remember that both technical SEO and link building are ongoing processes that require continuous monitoring and adjustment to stay competitive in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Our team of SEO experts can help guide you through the steps. Contact MageMontreal for a consultation.