How do you conduct a technical SEO analysis?
Senior SEO-specialist
A technical SEO analysis is an important part of search engine optimization. A technical SEO analysis actually serves two purposes: optimizing the website for search engines (in other words, improving organic visibility) and improving the user experience. In this article, I tell you more about it.
What are the components of a technical SEO analysis?
A technical SEO analysis can consist of more than 200 factors; I like to break them down as follows:
- Components that affect website infrastructure (think sitemaps, Robots.txt and HTTPS).
- Items that affect crawling and indexing (think internal links, duplicate content and 404 pages).
- Components that affect on-page optimization (think website speed, structured data and the meta tags).
Of course, these components also affect the other parts. Thus, a faster website will also be crawled more easily and sometimes more often by Google, but this is a great starting point to group all the components together.
Read more about conducting a competitor analysis for SEO
- How do I perform an SEO check for a website?
- How do I perform predictive analysis in SEO?
- How do I perform a complete SEO analysis?
- How do I perform an SEO content analysis?
- How do I conduct a competitor analysis for SEO?
What is a technical website analysis for SEO?
So a technical website analysis for SEO is a process in which you assess the technical aspects of a website. Its purpose is to improve search engine optimization and user experience.
This analysis for SEO is an important part of search engine optimization and should be done regularly (think every 3 to 12 months, depending on how much is changing on the website).
Read more on this topic
- SEO analysis preparation (complete)
- SEO content analysis
- Creating SEO strategy
- Analyze backlink profile
A technical SEO analysis checklist
Especially when you have little knowledge of performing a technical SEO analysis, it can be difficult to determine where to start and what priorities to set. That’s why I created a technical SEO analysis checklist that provides guidance for your technical SEO strategy.
| Aspect | Checklist items |
|---|---|
| Loading speed | – Analyze your website’s loading speed using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix or Pingdom. |
| Mobile user experience | – Is the web design reponsive? – Minimize website size on mobile devices (for both user experience and load time). |
| URL structure | – Provide a clear and logical URL structure that search engines can easily understand. – Avoid unnecessary parameters and IDs in the URL structure. – Provide a consistent URL structure across the site. – Incorporate the keyword into the URL whenever possible.(2) |
| Metadata | – Check that the metadata is relevant to the content of the page. – Make sure the meta titles and descriptions are unique to each page. – Use appropriate keywords in the metadata.(3) |
| Internal links | – Check that the internal links on the website are logically structured and interesting to visitors.(4) – Minimize the number of clicks required to reach important pages. – Use clear and descriptive anchor text for internal links. |
| Images | – Make sure all images on the website are relevant to the content of the page. – Use alt text to help search engines understand what is in the images. – Reduce images to improve website loading speed.(5) |
| Crawl errors | – Regularly check the crawl errors in Google Search Console to see if there are any technical problems with the website. – Check that all pages of the website are search engine accessible. |
| Structured Data | – Analyze whether the website uses structured data and whether it is implemented correctly.(6) – Make sure the structured data is relevant to the content of the page and helps in understanding the context. – Use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to test structured data and identify errors. |
| Security | – Provide a secure connection on the website using an SSL certificate (HTTPS). |
| Sitemap | – Create and implement an XML sitemap on the website so that search engines can find the pages more easily. – Make sure the sitemap is up-to-date and includes all pages on the website.(7) |
| Robots.txt | – Check if a Robots.txt file is present on the website.(8) – Make sure the Robots.txt file is configured correctly and does not block important pages. |
| Pagination | – Check that the pagination on the website is configured correctly and is not causing duplicate content. – Minimize the number of clicks required to reach pages by using proper pagination. |
| Canonical URLs | – Use canonical URLs to help search engines understand the relationship between pages.(9) – Make sure every page contains a canonical (most are self-referring). |
| Status codes | – Regularly check the status codes of the pages on the website to see if there are any accessibility issues. |
| Redirects | – Check that there are no unnecessary redirects (or redirect chains) on the website. – Use proper redirect types, such as 301 or 302, so that search engines better understand the relationship between pages. |
| website architecture | – Check the website architecture and make sure it is logical and easy for search engines to understand. – Make sure that the most important pages are accessible through the main menu or footer of the website. – Use breadcrumbs to help users and search engines understand page architecture. |
| Javascript and CSS | – Make sure the website functions properly without Javascript and CSS. – Minimize the use of Javascript and CSS on pages to ensure high loading speed. – Use compression to reduce the size of JavaScript and CSS files and improve page load speed. |
| Measurability | – Has Google Analytics 4 been implemented correctly? – Has the Google Search Console been implemented correctly? |
Is technical SEO the most important part of SEO?
Technical SEO is a crucial component of SEO, but I would not call this component the most important component. Search engine optimization contains three aspects that work together to make a website perform better and provide a successful SEO strategy.
In fact, in addition to technical SEO, SEO also includes content and link building. Especially for many (smaller) websites, these components will be more influential. With larger websites, technology becomes more and more important. Consider:
When you have a website with 100k pages. What has more influence? A technical change that you make to all 100k pages at once or write one more page of content to go with it?
In short, for many websites, the combination matters.
Conclusion
A technical SEO analysis provides a good insight into the current state of a website’s technical status. Not just for SEO, it maps out the entire well-being. Feel free to use my checklist for your technical analysis. Good luck!
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/mobile/mobile-sites-mobile-first-indexing
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/url-structure
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable#internal-links
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/consolidate-duplicate-urls
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/overview
