Technical SEO to Improve Page Experience

Checking the website’s security status

It’s easy to check our website’s security status. When we open the website in a browser, the lock sign to the left of the address bar says it’s secure.

If we see a warning sign accompanied by the words “not secure,” the sooner we make the switch (HTTP to HTTPS) the better. Know that our audience can see the same warning we do—not a good sign for SEO!

Switching from HTTP to HTTPS

In case our website is still HTTP, it’s about time we make the switch. Though the process is not difficult, there are a few things that need to be done to make sure the website works smoothly.

1. Choose and install an SSL certificate: According to Google, “any modern certificate that’s accepted by modern browsers is acceptable” [35]. Most hosting providers already include free SSL certificates. We can also acquire an SSL certificate for free from Let’s Encrypt.

2. Redirect to HTTPS: Set up 301 redirects for all of our website pages that start with http to their https versions. These redirects tell the search engine that the server has permanently moved to the new address. It ensures that search bots and users are always redirected to the new HTTPS pages.

3. Add HTTPS to the search console: Remember to add the new HTTPS property to our website’s Search Console. Google provides guidelines on how to add a property to the Search Console [36].

4. Update internal links: Update all internal links to direct to HTTPS instead of HTTP. We can use a site crawler, such as Screaming Frog to double check if all our internal links are pointing to HTTPS. It crawls 500 URLs for free, but we’ll need a paid subscription if we want to crawl more URLs.

5. Updates sitemap and robots.txt: Update all the URLs listed in our website’s sitemap and robots.txt files to HTTPS.

6. Update canonical and hreflang tags: Update these tags accordingly, using HTTPS instead of HTTP.

7. Update URL in Google Analytics: Update the new URL in our website’s Google Analytics account.

8. Keep certificates up to date: Make sure our website’s security certificates are always up to date. Audit certification status and other technical issues of our website using Site Audit tools by Moz, SemRush or Ahrefs.

Site speed

If a site does not load fast, visitors aren’t going to wait. They’ll hit the back button and visit the next site. According to Google [37]:

"The probability of bound increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds."

Improving our site’s speed is a very important element of technical SEO. It has a huge impact on our site’s rankings. Improving page speed enhances user experience, boosts conversion and is a ranking factor, says Google itself [38].

Test the site

Before improving our site speed, we need to find out how fast it is at the moment. Google’s PageSpeed Insights gives our website a realistic speed score straight from Google. The same tool also gives us suggestions on how to make speed improvements.

Alternatively, Site Audits from SemRush, Moz and Ahrefs also include useful speed analysis for our website.

Common speed improvements

Most page speed tools will also provide us with customized tips on improving our website speed. Nonetheless, here’s a list of the most common improvements:

1. Use a CDN: Host the website geographically close to our target audience. If our traffic is distributed across borders, we can optimize speeds for everyone by using a CDN (Content Delivery Network). With a CDN, we can host our sites at different locations across the world. Our visitors will receive content from a server situated close to them and experience optimal speeds. Popular CDN services include Cloudflare, Amazon Cloudfront, and Sucuri.

2. Implement browser caching: Implement caching to store parts of our web page into the user’s browser. Though it won’t affect the loading time for the first visit, the website will load much faster in the consecutive visits. WordPress plugins such as W3 Total Cache, WP Optimize and WP Rocket can help us do so, along with other speed optimizations.

3. Compress images: Images take up most of our page’s size. If we shoot photos with a high-quality camera and upload them directly into the CMS, that’s probably the biggest reason why our website is slow. WordPress plugins like WP Optimize and TinyPNG compress our images automatically before uploading them to our website.

4. Clean and compress the code: CSS, HTML, JavaScript and any other code that we have on our website takes up space. Messy, lengthy codes slow down our website. Audit the code. We might be able to get the same thing done with fewer lines. Eliminate lines of code for features that we might no longer be using on our website. Once we have a clean code, compress it using software such as GNU Gzip.

5. Go easy on plugins: Keep the number of plugins to a minimum and consider their size and speed before using them on our website. Avoid using JavaScript-heavy plugins since they add additional delays to our site.

Mobile-friendliness

The changing trends of user behavior over the internet has led to a new, ongoing development in Google’s algorithms called mobile-first indexing. Since the majority of users access Google from mobile devices, it’s only natural that Google will prioritize mobile experience over desktop.

Mobile-first indexing means that Google now uses the mobile version of the page for indexing and ranking. If a mobile version does not exist, it will index the desktop version. This means that though a site without a mobile-friendly version will still be indexed, it may not be able to rank as high in search results. That’s because the majority of the audience accessing the site through their mobile phone will not find the experience up to par. Zooming in to view and access the menu of a site that's not mobile-friendly can be frustrating.

We have two options to improve the experience for mobile users:
1. Choose a responsive web design where the layout automatically fits the screen size.

2. Alternatively, we can maintain different versions of the site for mobile and desktop users. For example, mobile users will be served m.yourdomain.com, while desktop users will see www.yourdomain.com.

Of the above two options, the first one, using a responsive web design, is more popular and the one recommended by Google [39]. With a responsive design, we have to maintain one version of the site, which is cheaper and simpler.

How to check if a website is mobile friendly

Before making improvements, check if our website is mobile-friendly. Google’s Mobile Friendly Test tells us how easy it is for mobile users to use our website. Here’s how the Test Report looks like:

Additionally, we can test our site’s load speed on mobile phones using Test My Site by Think With Google. Google Search Console’s Mobile Usability report gives us insights on any usability problems that mobile users might be experiencing on our site’s pages.

Best practices for mobile responsive sites

With a responsive design, much of our work is already done. All of the content that we have on the desktop site is already available and adjusted to the screen size for mobile users. The main challenge that remains is whether the page experience is optimized for a mobile user.

Here are some suggestions for improvements:

• The pages should load fast and respond quickly to user interactions.

• Buttons should be big enough to be clicked easily using a thumb.

• Space the links suitably so that the users don’t accidentally press the wrong one.

• Text should be easy to read without zooming in.

• Avoid using software, like Flash, that are typically not available on phones.

• Users should be able to complete tasks, for example, place orders on an e-commerce site, with minimum clicks.

• Optimize the placement of ads. Since mobile screens are smaller, ads on top of the page will take up too much of the visible space, contributing to a poor user experience.

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