What is Technical SEO and Why is it Important? - 4.1. SEO Course by Ahrefs

Step-by-Step Tutorial: Basics of Technical SEO

1. Understanding Technical SEO:

   • Technical SEO involves optimizing your website to help search engines find, understand, and index your pages effectively.
   • The focus is on performing regular maintenance on your site to ensure that search engines can discover and index your pages.

2. Noindex Meta Tag:

   • Check for the presence of the noindex meta tag on your website pages.
   • Remove the noindex tag from pages that need to be indexed by search engines.
   • Consider noindexing pages that provide little value from an SEO perspective but may be useful for user experience.

3. Robots.txt File:

   • Locate and access the robots.txt file on your root domain (yourdomain.com/robots.txt).
   • Understand that the robots.txt file contains rules for search engine crawlers, specifying where they can and cannot go on your site.
   • Utilize directives like User-agent (to define the crawler) and Disallow (to restrict access to certain parts of your site).
   • Customize rules for different sections of your website, including subdomains.

4. Sitemaps:

   • Create XML sitemaps listing important URLs, such as pages, images, videos, and files on your website.
   • Use tools that automatically generate sitemaps to ensure they are up-to-date.
   • Help search engines find your sitemaps by using the Sitemap directive in your robots.txt file and submitting them in Google Search Console.

5. Redirects:

   • Implement redirects to take visitors and bots from one URL to another, consolidating signals.
   • Redirect outdated URLs to current versions to maintain relevance and avoid broken links.
   • Ensure proper redirection from the old URL to the new destination URL.

6. Canonical Tag:

   • Understand the purpose of the canonical tag in HTML, which specifies the preferred URL for a page.
   • Use canonical tags to address duplicate content issues and guide search engines to the correct version of the page.
   • Prevent duplicate content problems by setting the canonical tag to the preferred URL.

7. Conclusion:

   • These foundational elements of technical SEO are crucial for effective indexing, a vital aspect of SEO.
   • Stay vigilant for indexing issues and be prepared to troubleshoot them to maintain optimal search engine visibility.
   • Explore further resources and courses on SEO to deepen your understanding and stay updated on best practices.

By following these steps and implementing the recommendations for technical SEO outlined in the video, you can enhance your website's visibility and performance in search engine results.