In the digital world, SEO elements are crucial for ensuring your website is technically optimized to rank well on search engines, provide an excellent user experience, and drive organic traffic. Whether you’re looking to enhance your website or seeking advice from an SEO expert Dubai, staying updated with the latest technical SEO trends is essential. In today’s blog post, we will walk you through some major technical SEO trends that are worth adopting for your website.
1. SSL Certificate: Secure Your Website
What is SSL? SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is an encoding of messages passed between a user’s browser and the site you own to safeguard confidential information. The URLs of Sites that have an SSL certificate contain “HTTPS,” while those that do not contain “HTTP. ”
Why is SSL important? Google considers SSL as a ranking factor therefore having an SSL certificate will definitely help in improving your search engine rankings. Also, on the practical level, it also fosters trust as the visitors understand that their information is shielded.
How to implement SSL:
- Purchase an SSL certificate from a trusted provider.
- Install the SSL certificate on your web server. Most hosting providers offer free SSL certificates and easy installation.
- Update your website’s URL from HTTP to HTTPS in the settings and ensure that all internal links point to the HTTPS version.
2. Website Speed: Optimize for Fast Loading
Why is speed important?It is universally appreciated that the speed at which a website loads will greatly affect its usability as well as its ranking on the search engine. Google has ranked page speed as one of the significant elements for web pages, and slow web pages result in more bounce rates.
How to improve website speed:
- Optimize images: Compress images to reduce their size without compromising quality.
- Minimize HTTP requests: Combine CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce the number of requests.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): Distribute your content across multiple servers to ensure faster delivery.
Enable browser caching: Store some data on users’ browsers to load pages faster on repeat visits.
3. Robots.txt: Guide Search Engines
What is robots.txt? The robots.txt file is a plain text file in the root of your website that describes to robots, which parts of your web site they should index and which parts they should not index.
Why is it important? Properly configured, robots.txt helps search engines efficiently crawl your site, avoiding pages that don’t need to be indexed, such as admin areas or duplicate content.
How to create and implement robots.txt:
- Create a robots.txt file in a text editor.
- Add directives like User-agent: * and Disallow: to control which parts of your site are crawled.
- Upload the robots.txt file to the root directory of your website (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt).
- Test the file using Google’s Robots Testing Tool to ensure it works correctly.
4. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Enhance Mobile Experience
What is AMP? AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages and it is an open HTML portable that develops readable web pages that are light on mobile devices. due to Google’s algorithms, the sites that are optimized for AMP are ranked first in mobile searches which makes it very important for mobile optimisation.
Why is AMP important? With the increasing use of mobile devices, AMP ensures that your content loads quickly on mobile, providing a better user experience and improving your rankings in mobile search results.
How to implement AMP:
- Install an AMP plugin if you’re using WordPress.
- For non-WordPress sites, follow Google’s AMP guidelines to create AMP versions of your pages.
- Test your AMP pages with Google’s AMP Test tool to ensure they’re valid.
5. Sitemap: Help Search Engines Understand Your Site Structure
What is a sitemap? A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the pages on your website, helping search engines crawl your site more effectively by providing a roadmap of your site’s content.
Why is it important? A sitemap ensures that all your important pages are indexed, which is crucial for SEO, especially for large sites with complex structures.
How to create and submit a sitemap:
- Use tools like Yoast SEO (for WordPress) or XML-sitemaps.com to generate a sitemap.
- Once generated, upload the sitemap to your website’s root directory.
- Submit the sitemap through Google Search Console to ensure Google can crawl and index your pages.
6.Structured Data: Enhance SERP Appearance
What is Structured Data? Organized data is basically a formal method of giving all characteristics of a certain webpage, and therefore assisting the search engine in displaying your content in a better manner.
Why is It Important? By markup, structured data may lead to the so-called rich snippets – search results that contain additional information (for example, ratings or prices) besides the link to the site.
How to Implement Structured Data
- Choose the Right Schema Type:
Visit Schema.org to find the appropriate schema for your content, like Article, Product, or Event.
- Generate JSON-LD Code:
Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to create the JSON-LD code for your content.
- Add to Your Website:
Insert the JSON-LD code in the <head> section of your page’s HTML or use a plugin if you’re on WordPress.
- Test and Monitor:
Use Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure your structured data is working correctly.
7. Mobile-Friendliness: Optimize for All Devices
What is mobile-friendliness? Mobile-friendliness is used to determine the compatibility of the website for the smart phones and tabs. Having a mobile friendly website is now very important in the current world where people are using their mobile phones more than using their laptops and desktops in making searches.
Why is it important? Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. A mobile-friendly site ensures a good user experience across all devices.
How to implement mobile-friendliness:
- Use responsive design to ensure your website adapts to different screen sizes.
- Test your website’s mobile-friendliness using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
- Optimize fonts, buttons, and navigation for easy use on small screens.
