Technical SEO
Traditionally, the phrase Technical SEO refers to optimizing your site for crawling and indexing, but can also include any technical process meant to improve search visibility.
Technical SEO is a broad and exciting field, covering everything from sitemaps, meta tags, JavaScript indexing, linking, keyword research, and more.
If you’re new to SEO, we recommend starting with the chapter on Technical SEO in our Beginner’s Guide. Below are the latest posts on technical SEO, and we’ve included a few top articles here.
On-Site SEO : What are the technical on-page factors that influence your rankings? Our free learning center will get you started in the right direction.
The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet : This handy—and printable—cheat sheet is invaluable for anyone building websites. Contains several useful references that cover a ton of technical SEO best practices.
MozBar : This free Chrome extension is an advanced SEO toolbar that helps you to examine and diagnose several technical SEO issues.
The Technical SEO Renaissance : Is it true that technical SEO isn't necessary, because Google is smart enough to figure your website out? Mike King puts this rumor to rest, and shows you what to focus on.
Technical SEO: The One Hour Guide to SEO : Want a quick introduction to the basics of technical SEO? Our guru Rand has you covered—all in about 10 minutes.
Footer Link Optimization for Search Engines and User Experience
Site after site that I visit lately has been showing a tendency for using footer links to run their internal SEO link structure and anchor text optimization. While this practice, in years past, held value, today I rarely ever recommend it. Here's why: Footer links may be devalued by search engines automatically Footer links are often not the first link on t...
What Quantum of Solace Can Tell Us About Information Architecture
I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again: in my opinion, the number one reason for websites failing online is because they have a poor information architecture. Don't worry, I'm not going to compare myself to Bond. Instead, I'm going to use Quantum of Solace to demonstrate how something as simple as categorizing a new action movie can lead to some serious problems in your site architecture. (Just for the record, I tend to use the phrases 'site' or 'information architecture' interchangeably to cover a multitude of sins.)
Why New Content Briefly Flickers Out Of Google
A few days after new content shows up in Google, it will sometimes flicker out of the SERPS for a few hours. Apparently, this is common knowledge to some SEOs. This is not common knowledge to programmers like me, and I nearly made a tin foil hat in preparation for the googlicopters when I learned the project (Linkscape) that I'd worked on for months had disappeared from all SERPs on th...
PageRank Sculpting: Parsing the Value and Potential Benefits of Sculpting PR with Nofollow
Thanks to the SEOmoz Q+A, we get to monitor a lot of the hot button issues that hit the SEO world, and as Jane noted to me during a meeting today, they always seem to come in waves. The latest buzz (and flurry of questions) comes around the practice of PageRank Sculpting. We've discussed this topic in some detail previously on SEOmoz (...
Dynamic URLs vs. Static URLs - The Best Practice for SEO is Still Clear
Google's got a blog post out today (and SELand covers it) about how they now recommend that webmasters and site owners DO NOT rewrite their ugly dynamic URLs to be clean and static. What's the reasoning behind this? ...Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
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How to Use Robots.txt and Redirects the Wrong Way
I got inspired by Rebecca Kelley's post about Newbie Mistakes and instantly two and a half newbie mistakes came to my mind. They are a bit on the technical side of things, but not too much to be understood by all of you mozzers :-)1. Robots.txt is no security layer...
XML Sitemaps: Guidelines on Their Use
Over the past couple of days I have been putting together some internal guidelines on various aspects of our jobs. This should ensure that we are giving consistent information to our various clients. Most of these guidelines have been fairly straightforward with nothing in them to write home about. However, one of the hardest guidelines to write has been the one talking about xml sitemaps. ...
An SEOmoz PRO Tip (For Everyone) & Feedback About the PRO UI
Lots and lots of people sign up for SEOmoz's PRO membership, and I have to tell you that on a personal level, every single one makes me feel honored, humble and yes, even a bit guilty about reading comic books last night instead of working on new tools/q+a/tips/etc. One of the big frustrations PRO members have, though, is that they can't find (or don't even know about) a lot of the cool st...
Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don't Mix
I know, I know. Google's indexing Flash and Flash developers can rejoice now that their content is SEO-friendly. Sorry - I don't buy it for a second. Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make F...
How to Turn Yourself from a Great Developer to a Great SEO
The work done by developers rarely hits the headlines but can often be the difference between success and failure in an SEO project. The following list may not be groundbreaking but then SEO often isn't. I think the following all fall under the heading of advanced common sense...