When it comes to optimising your website, technical SEO performs a vital role which can be put under two broad categories.
First, it ensures that your website functions well by taking care of the following;
- Page Speed and Size
- Image optimisation
- Broken link checker
- Extra Security
Page Speed and Size for technical seo
As is already known , the size of your page directly affects how quickly the pages load and this generally tells how fast your website would be. The server response time should be in nano-seconds and this is usually fixed by hosting your website on global brands such as Bluehost and Namecheap to name a few.
Keep in mind that the amount of time people spend on your website is influenced by how long they have to wait for the site to fetch and serve the required content.
The good news is that there is a plugin that takes care of the page size by actively compressing its contents and active scripts to the barest minimum. it is the first in a list of plugins we would take a look at for technical seo
READ ALSO: Checklist for the Pages on Your Website: What should be on each page
After compressing, your website should be as light as a feather and fast as a cheetah😆. cool right? 😎
The name of that plugin in Hummingbird. On how to set it up,
Step One: Login to your WordPress back-end via yoursite.com/wp-admin
Step Two: Scroll down to ‘plugins’ and click on ‘add new’
Step Three: Search for ‘Hummingbird’ then click to install and activate.
Step Four: Scroll to the ‘Hummingbird’ Icon and click on ‘performance test’ this gives you an idea of how optimised your website is and what can be done to fix any issues.
Image Optimisation
It is agreed that the size of images on your website directly affects the size and speed. On a larger scale, these issues actually adds to or reduces the user experience of all who visit your website, hence the need to fix them.
Image optimisation is a vital aspect of technical seo. The goal remains the compression of the pictures which are upload to avoid taking space and can be done with just one plugin named smush.
To get this plugin on your website, search, then install and activate. Run the set up, then click on ‘bulk smush now’ to compress images already on your website.
READ ALSO: 7 Common SEO Mistakes To Avoid And How To Fix Them
Broken Links
Ever been on a web-page and you see the now infamous ‘Error 404, page not found?’. Did you feel the need to keep going through other pages or did you bounce off almost immediately?
This is what happens when there are links on a website that lead nowhere. It can quite frankly be embarrassing and would greatly increase the bounce rate on your website which is not a good thing at all.
To check for and fix any broken links, search for the plugin ‘Broken Link Checker’ install and activate
Once active, click on ‘settings’ on the plugin to set it up by choosing how often it runs a check and which email address any issues found should be sent to.
Extra Security
Your website can never be secure enough, this saying should make you want to do whatever is needed to add even the tiniest bit of security to what you have already.
After the SSL(Secure Socket Layer) certificate has been activated on your site, there is another plugin that can help monitor login activities and report anything suspicious.
Even better is that you get an email and you can always check the dashboard to know from which country the attempt was made and what login details the hacker was trying to use.
Having this information gives you an idea on how unique your login details are and what you can do to improve on what you have already. The plugin is called WordFence
To have the extra security the plugin provides, search for ‘wordfence’ then install and activate
The above stated are cornerstone plugins which are required on any WordPress website to make for smooth performance.
Got any questions? Do not hesitate to reach out