SEO Basics: 5 Most Important Technical Elements to Improve Your Ranking

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims to improve the visibility of your website in the search engine results pages *SERPs). Generally, there are two main areas to be tackled when talking about search engine optimization — On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

Since we are mainly concerned with the effects of technical factors on websites, today On-Page SEO will be addressed, since this is also where the so-called technical SEO is located. And there we are at the question: Which technical parameters / influencing factors are there in the ranking?

1. The Title Tag and Meta-Description

One of the most important factors is the page title, which is in the <title> tag. This should, if possible, contain relevant terms from the keyword cluster for which the page should be found on Google or another search engine. It should be noted, however, that there is no point in placing only a list of keywords in the <title> tag, because one principle always applies when optimizing for search engines — content for the user comes first! Google, for example, recognizes when a page is only “for the search engine” and then punishes such pages, which will bring your ranking down.

The title should, as with a book for example, give an impression of what the visitor can expect. If your site is now listed on Google, its title is the most important marketing tool. Because the searcher only clicks on pages that look interesting and promising to him.

The so-called meta-description has a further influence on the number of clicks and the ranking of your page. It is a description of the website which is not displayed on your website. However, it is read out by search engines and later displayed in the SERPs under the title of your page. It would be perfect if the meta-description would also contain relevant keywords of the selected keyword cluster. This might improve the ranking.

2. URL

The URL, i.e. the address of the page to be optimized, plays a major role in the question of where it will be located in the SRPs. In general, it is recommended that it is as “speaking” as possible, i.e. that it already contains keywords of the page. In most cases, this is solved by adding a so-called “slugs” (a slightly modified version of the title) to the domain name. In the meantime, however, it has also been found that it can sometimes be an advantage if even the domain of your site already contains relevant keywords.

3. Page Speed

Search engines measure the loading time of your website when crawling. Since it is in the interest of your site visitors to get a page delivered as fast as possible, e.g. Google sorts in the SERPs according to loading time. A faster page with similar other ranking factors is higher in the search results than slow pages. To check the loading time of your website from Google’s point of view, the PageSpeed Insights can be used.

4. Breadcrumbs and structured data

Breadcrumbs are a secondary navigation aid for the visitor of a website. They do not replace the menu, but show the user his position within the website structure. This is because most websites are hierarchically structured. So breadcrumbs guide the visitor through this structure.

If you now combine breadcrumbs with structured data, i.e. data that is evaluated by search engines to better understand the page content and structure, the page hierarchy even becomes visible in the search results. This makes the website more conspicuous and thus more frequently clicked. And Google can also display the hierarchy of different pages in the appropriate place.

There are some more data points that can be inserted into your website with the help of structured data:

• Information about your company (e.g. phone number, address, opening hours)
• Prices of products and reviews, thus ★ ratings
• Information for so-called rich snippets, for example, for recipes
• Video information on your video blog

5. Mobile First Indexing

Since 2018, Google has been indexing websites from the perspective of a mobile device rather than a desktop PC. This is to ensure that indexing captures how a page behaves and looks on mobile devices. The reason for this is that more than 50% of today’s Internet use is on cell phones or tablets. Google wants to encourage website operators to make their sites mobile device friendly and possibly even apply the Mobile First scheme — first build the site for the cell phone and then see how the content is displayed on other devices.