Articles & Guides

Blog

Technical SEO Checklist: Prepare Your Site for Search Engines

Digital Marketing BUZ Yazılım 12 September 2024

What Is Technical SEO and Why Is It Important?

Technical SEO covers optimizations that enable search engines to crawl, understand, and index your site. Even if you have the best content, you cannot rank high in search engines if your technical infrastructure is not solid. At BUZ Yazılım, we perform technical SEO optimization on sites for over 100 clients.

Site Speed Optimization

Google uses page speed as an important ranking factor. Core Web Vitals metrics are particularly critical:

Core Web Vitals

  • LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Loading of the largest content element — target: under 2.5 seconds
  • INP (Interaction to Next Paint): Interaction response time — target: under 200ms
  • CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Visual stability — target: under 0.1

Speed Improvement Steps

  • Optimize images: WebP format, proper sizing, lazy loading
  • CSS/JS minification: Minification and bundling
  • Reduce server response time: TTFB optimization
  • Use CDN: Serve content from the server closest to the user
  • Browser caching: Configure Cache-Control headers
  • Critical CSS: Serve above-the-fold styles inline
  • Font optimization: font-display: swap and preload

Mobile-First Indexing

Google now indexes your site based on its mobile version.

Checklist

  • Responsive design: Proper display across all devices
  • Mobile-friendly content: Same content available on mobile as desktop
  • Touch targets: Sufficient size and spacing (minimum 44x44px)
  • Viewport meta tag: Properly configured viewport
  • Font size: Readable text on mobile (minimum 16px)
  • Pop-ups: Avoid intrusive pop-ups that block content

Crawlability and Indexing

Ensure search engines can efficiently crawl your site.

Robots.txt

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /api/
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml

XML Sitemap

  • Should include all important pages
  • Keep lastmod dates updated
  • Use sitemap index for large sites
  • Maximum 50,000 URLs per sitemap
  • Submit to Google Search Console

Canonicalization

  • Resolve duplicate content issues with canonical tags
  • Determine HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www preference
  • Specify canonical version of parameterized URLs
  • Define language alternatives with hreflang

Page Status Codes

  • 200: Successful page
  • 301: Permanent redirect (SEO value transferred)
  • 302: Temporary redirect
  • 404: Page not found (create a custom 404 page)
  • 410: Permanently removed
  • 503: Temporary maintenance

Schema Markup (Structured Data)

Schema markup is structured data that helps search engines better understand your content.

Important Schema Types

  • Organization: Company information, logo, contact
  • LocalBusiness: Local business information
  • BreadcrumbList: Breadcrumb navigation
  • Article: Blog posts and articles
  • Product: Product information, price, stock status
  • FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
  • HowTo: Step-by-step guides
  • Review: Customer reviews

Schema Implementation

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "BUZ Yazılım",
  "url": "https://www.buzyazilim.com",
  "logo": "https://www.buzyazilim.com/image/logo/og-image.png",
  "foundingDate": "2007"
}
</script>

HTTPS and Security

  • SSL certificate is mandatory (SEO ranking factor)
  • Resolve mixed content issues
  • Enforce secure connection with HSTS header
  • 301 redirect old HTTP URLs to HTTPS

URL Structure

  • Use short and descriptive URLs
  • Prefer Latin equivalents instead of Turkish characters
  • Use hyphens (-) for word separation
  • Keep URL depth under 3 levels
  • Avoid unnecessary parameters

Technical SEO Tools

  • Google Search Console: Index status, error reports, performance
  • Google PageSpeed Insights: Page speed analysis
  • Screaming Frog: Comprehensive site crawling
  • Ahrefs Site Audit: Technical SEO issue detection
  • Schema.org Validator: Structured data validation

Conclusion

Technical SEO is the foundational infrastructure of your search engine success. At BUZ Yazılım, we apply technical SEO standards from the very beginning of our projects.

Contact us for a technical SEO audit of your site.

Looking for professional support for your project?

Get a Free Quote