The Technical SEO Hierarchy - Needs to Know

Use the hierarchy of your site's technical SEO needs to understand its technical growth and actualization — and uncover what to do next to improve it.

What makes a site become the best site it can be? Healthy, functional sites that have reached their full SEO potential have been optimized based on market and keyword research, E-A-T, content relevance to search intent, backlink profiles, and more. But they all have one thing in common: their technical SEO needs are met.

Your site’s technical SEO needs form a hierarchy. If needs lower in the hierarchy aren’t met, needs on the next level are difficult to fulfill.

Each level responds to a different requirement in the world of search engines: crawlability, indexability, accessibility, rankability, and clickability.

The foundations of Technical SEO:

Crawlability :

Crawlability Concerns a URL’s ability to be discovered by search engine bots. URLs that are not crawlable might still be accessible to users navigating your website, but because they are invisible to bots, they can’t appear in search results.

Indexability :

Just above crawlability in the hierarchy of technical SEO needs is indexability.

Indexable URLs are URLs that a search engine can include in a catalog of pages that are available to be presented in search results pages. Even when a URL has been crawled, various properties can prevent it from being added to the index.

Google also chooses not to index pages when a more authoritative version exists for the same content. This is the case when a bot discovers the following elements:

1) Duplicate content.

2) Canonical declarations.

Alternate versions such as printable pages or mobile pages. (In the current move to a mobile-first index, mobile versions are indexed instead of desktop versions.)

3) Redirections.

To ensure that the right pages can be indexed, technical SEO verifies that these elements are correctly set up and that they apply to the correct pages.

Accessibility :

Accessibility and website performance

An accessible URL is easy to display or render.

A URL that is both crawlable and indexable might still be inaccessible at the moment when a search engine’s bot attempts to crawl it. Pages and sites that rank but that have persistent accessibility problems are often penalized in the search results.

Accessibility for bots — and for users — covers a broad range of related topics:

1) Server performance.

2) HTTP status.

3) Load time/page size.

4) JavaScript rendering.

5) Page depth in the site architecture.

6) Orphan pages.

Website resistance to spam and hacking.

Rankability:

The role of technical SEO in improving positions

Rankability is the first of the two top levels of the pyramid that deal with optimizations. Instead of forming the foundations of SEO, they are sometimes considered advanced technical SEO.

Clearly, crawlable, indexable and accessible URLs can rank. Some can even rank well. However, the average URL will rank better with a little help.

Clickability:

The link between SEO and user behavior

The final level of technical SEO optimization concerns technical elements that make it more likely for a user to click on your results.

Because of how search engines present results, this can include earning coveted SERP locations outside of the normal organic results order and enriching your URL listings.

Content structure, such as lists, tables, and headings, help search engines understand your content and facilitate dynamic creation of featured results, carousels and more.

Similarly, formal structured data, including Schema.org markup, enhance search listings with rich elements:

1) Breadcrumbs.

2) Star ratings.

3) Product information (price, stock…).

4) Event information (date, location…).

5) Recipe information (thumbnail, rating, preparation time, calories…).

6) Site links to key pages on the same site.

7) Site search from the SERP.

Likewise, videos and images with appropriate markup have an advantage in image and video search.

Also Read :

WHY HAS GOOGLE PENALIZED MY SITE

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