How to Rank Higher On Google (Part 5b: Technical SEO & Site Performance)

Hi, Welcome back again for another part of this multipart series about How to Rank Higher On Google. Today will make the part 5b of this series. If you have not read the other parts of this series, here they are:

After reading those other parts, you can now continue with this part today. Last time we talked about the first section of part 5. In part 5 we are talking about Technical SEO & Site Performance. In the first section (5a) we talked about:

Mobile Optimization & Responsive Design.
Site Speed & Core Web Vitals.
Schema Markup for Rich Results.

Today, we will proceed with that for more points under Technical SEO & Site Performance. Without wasting any farther time, lets us go straight into it.

Read step #1 here.

Read step #2 here.

Similarly, read step #3 here.

Step #5. Technical SEO & Site Performance.

In section a of this part, i.e. part 5a, we discussed the first 3 points of technical SEO and Performance. In today’s section, we will continue with section b of this part. We will also continue with point 4 onward. Now let us continue.

4. Fixing Crawl Errors & Broken Links.

If you ever want to rank on google, google has to be able to crawl your website. How will google ever know what your website is all about if it cannot be able to crawl it. Crawling websites is how google gets to “read” your website to understand it. Not only crawling but also crawling properly. You need to fix and make it easier for google to crawl your website. But you know what? You do not have to worry too much about it. Google search console usually sends you emails if there is a problem with your website. If google bots are unable to crawl, google will send you an email informing you about it.

How to Fix Crawl Errors:

So how do you fix these errors? How do you remove the errors and make sure that google is crawling your website properly? Here are just a few things that you can do.

✅ Check Google Search Console (Coverage Report). Google search console shows you errors on your console account. Look for “Crawl Anomalies” or “Not Indexed” issues.
✅ Submit an Updated Sitemap. Ensure all important pages are listed.
✅ Use Robots.txt Correctly. Block unnecessary pages but allow essential ones. Thus save on crawl quota. Do not let google keep crawling things that are not important. Make it only crawl what is important.

How to Fix Broken Links:

Now that you know how to fix the crawl errors, its time to fix broken links. So how do you fix your broken links?

✅ Use a Broken Link Checker. Use tools like Screaming Frog and Ahrefs to get a report on all your broken links. Such tools analyze your website and tell you all the broken links you have.
✅ Redirect 404 Pages. Do not let 404 pages to cause problems with your linking. Use 301 redirects for broken URLs. The 301 redirect will tell google that the page has moved permanently.
✅ Fix Internal Links. Update or remove outdated links.

5. HTTPS & Website Security.

For those who do not know what HTTPS is or what it means, it means HTTP requests delivered through secure protocols. S in the HTTPS is the one that indicates that the page you are on loaded safely through secure protocols. The secure protocol is called an SSL certificate. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It is a certificate that you install on your server to securely encrypt your HTTP requests deliveries. This layer of security makes sure that malicious third parties cannot intercept calls to and from your server to deliver malicious contents or attacks.

So why does all this matter? It matters because of security. Why does this matter to google? It matters to google because it cares for security over the internet. If you do not deliver or serve your files or HTTP requests through secure protocols, then google will not rank your website. Yes its that serious. So you must install an SSL certificate on your website.

Security Best Practices:

✅ Use HTTPS. Use SSL Certificate to encrypt data.
✅ Enable Security Headers. Enable headers like Content-Security-Policy and X-Frame-Options for more security.
✅ Regularly Update Plugins & CMS.
✅ Prevent Spam & Attacks. Use Cloudflare, reCAPTCHA, Wordfence to prevent most common spams and attacks.

6. XML Sitemap & Robots.txt Optimization.

To get google to better understand your website, use an XML sitemap. An XML sitemap helps you let google know all the URLs on your website.

How to Optimize XML Sitemap & Robots.txt:

✅ Include Only Important URLs in Sitemap. No duplicates nor unnecessary pages.
✅ Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console.
✅ Use Robots.txt to Block Unnecessary Pages. For example, /wp-admin and cart pages.

7. Canonical Tags & Duplicate Content Issues.

Do not duplicate your content. Duplicate content confuses google and can lead to ranking drop. Usually, google ignores duplicate content and chooses a canonical page. However, if your duplicate content is for example sections of pages that are repeated throughout the website, then that’s worse. For that google will penalize your ranking.

In case you have pages that contain content that is not unique for example products pages, then use canonical tags. Canonical tags tells google that “do not rank this page, rank the ones we point to”. It passes ranking power from current page to another one. Hence avoiding penalization.

How to Fix Duplicate Content Issues:

✅ Use Canonical Tags (rel="canonical") to specify the preferred version of a page.
✅ Avoid Duplicate Meta Tags & Descriptions.
✅ Prevent URL Parameter Issues. Use Google Search Console > URL Parameters.

Conclusion.

This marks the end of the 5th part of this multipart series. This is the end of How to Rank Higher On Google (Part 5: Technical SEO & Site Performance). Today was the part 5b. Thus the second section of part 5. Come back again tomorrow for part 6 of this multipart series about How to Rank Higher On Google. From us for today, all the best in your SEO work!!