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1Set a proper structure for your access pages
It’s crucial for SEO that your most important website or application pages are easy to reach. Thus, in order to reach the information that is essential for your users, they should never have to take more than 3 actions to reach it. As a bonus, this structure won’t just improve your SEO score, but it will also facilitate a more pleasant user experience of your product.
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2Prevent using complex URL paths
Instead of using a random or cryptic collection of words, letters, and numbers, clearly describe a page’s content in the URL part that comes after your website name. For example, the webpage that contains information of our free SEO scan is aptly named: https://rminds.nl/en/lp/scan-your-website-seo-score-for-free. This way, not just search engines will be able to easily read your URL structures, but also the people that you share your URL links with will immediately see what you are sending to them.
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3Keep your HTML code “slim”
We understand that some pages require more code than others. However, in order to improve your SEO scores, it’s best to keep the code size of your HTML pages under 200.000. This way, your pages will load faster, which is not just preferred by search engines but basically by every internet user. If a page does get above the 200.000 mark, consider splitting it up and writing it into 2 smaller pages.
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4Use minifier frameworks to compress your code
Minifiers help you to make the size of your original codes smaller. They remove characters that are not really necessary, such as new lines, code comments, white spaces, and so on. As a result, your code will just be one long line, which generally makes code sizes between 10 and 95(!) percent smaller. Besides improving your SEO score, this will also put less workload on your server.
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5Use gzip for HTML file compression
As you might have realized by now, SEO has much to do with the loading speed of your online product. By compressing your text-based files with gzip, you can make your HTMLs up to 10% of their original size.
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6Keep your CSS and JS files as singles
It turns out that single JS and CSS files load faster than having multiple smaller ones. Thus, for the same reasons as the points above specify, it’s better to not split your CSS and JS files so your website’s loading time can effectively compete for the highest search engine rankings.
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7Always enable cache!
That temporary cache storage that devices have isn’t there to do nothing. By enabling cache for HTTP headers, webpages and documents that were visited before can be displayed without having to request this from the web server again. In effect, navigating back and forth between pages, viewing-as-source, and saving will all be sped up for your users.
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8Prevent keeping large image files on your local server
While it is smart to host your CSS and JS files locally, this does not count for your IMG files. Local images slow down your local server and hence increase the loading time of your website. In order to solve this issue, simply store your (larger) image files on a different server.
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9Keep cookies away from the server
Although it used to be common procedure to store cookie data on your own server, the constantly increasing size of cookies has turned this into a bad tendency for SEO. Thus, in order to optimize your SEO score (and facilitate a smooth user experience), simply let your cookies be saved on your users’ own devices.
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10Use social media tags, schema.org, and favicon for your website and/or app
By attaching all these things to your website and/or application, you won't appear as some random text part as a search result anymore. Rather, you'll appear as a search result that shows your logo, branding, contact data, and main purpose. Think of this like your business card, but then one that is be presented on the first page of Google’s search results.
How does Technical SEO work?
In the end, technical SEO all comes down to a clear structure that is easy to read and quick to load. This allows search engines to easily “crawl” through your website and/or application during a search request. In addition, it will please your users, for their experience of your product will be smooth with plenty of indications on what it is that you do and where on the web they're currently at.
Do you have questions about the (technical) SEO of your website or application? Request your free SEO-scan below or reach out to us so we can explain more.