Giving technical SEO just a simple definition does not give it justice. It is more appropriate to define it by what it does. It optimizes a website for crawling and indexing and includes the various technical processes to improve a site’s search visibility. It is not something that can be done by someone without experience because of the steps and requirements of the process. Thus, it is better to hire a technical SEO services company.
Technical SEO pertains to every search engine optimization activity except link building and content optimization. It is an active and complex process that keeps changing as refinements on website development continue to evolve.
Optimizing technical SEO provides the right foundation for your links and content to improve the marketing environment to ensure that your ranking in the search engine results becomes more than just favorable.
Technical SEO needs to be optimized to make the necessary foundation that provides your content and links with the best possible marketing environment to perform better in the search engine results. The process covers many facets, from meta tags, sitemaps, keyword research, linking, JavaScript indexing, and several others.
Importance of technical SEO
Technical SEO is not something that you can do correctly. However, that are several things you can do to make a significant improvement to the technical SEO requirements of your website and make you stand out against the competition. Technical SEO allows search engines to find your site. Its combined processes help ensure that search engines show your website among those that will be useful and informative to people searching for related information.
It is important to focus on the process because it is the one that lets search engines recognize that your site is valuable. Letting the search engines know and understand your website gives you a better chance to rank higher. With technical SEO concerned with using the right keywords, it is one way to make sure that your site conforms to the requirements.
If you want to compare technical SEO to a business process, you can liken it to a small business’s accounting needs. When things become complicated, it is better to hire a professional Technical SEO Services company.
Out of the many website features technical SEO takes care of, some of the most essential are:
- Performance: How fast your page loads, for example (typically under three seconds).
- Crawlability: The ability of the search engine’s bot (spider, crawler) to access a site page’s content, follow all the URLs in the content.
- Indexability: The search engine can analyze and add a web page to the engine’s index, meaning that your website’s pages can show up in the search results.
Elements of technical SEO
While the technical details must be in order, it is likewise critical for a website to be easy to use, clear, and fast for all users.
However, you should acknowledge that it is probable for a website to have some technical issues. It is essential to understand that there will always be dead ends, duplicate content, and broken links.
Technical SEO is primarily concerned with fixing the errors to ensure that your website will rank higher, gain more web traffic and convert those visitors into loyal visitors, and in the case of e-commerce sites, loyal customers.
Here are the elements you should focus, when you’re implementing technical SEO.
The page load speed is what it takes for a web page’s entire content to display fully. And would you believe that this feature is one of the important factors contributing to the top ten SEO rankings? Moreover, for e-commerce sites, a slow page loading time can mean some sales loss. Amazon discovered that every 100 microseconds it takes for a page to load could equate to a one percent decrease in sales.
What are the things you can do to make your pages load faster?
See to it that you have simple templates with minimal components. Every element that you add to the page layout, such as tracking codes, widgets, and plugins, will add to the page loading time.
- Optimize the visuals. Make sure that the images are in the correct size so they appear sharp. Use the most recommended size so they will load faster. Likewise, when using photographs, use the .jpg format since the color tones are better. For graphics, use the .png format.
- Reduce redirects. Several redirects also slow down page load speed. You do not want your user to wait. In fact, most of them are impatient, and if the page does not load quickly enough, they will leave your site. The ideal is to only have one redirect for every page.
- Improve browser caching. The first time a user visits your website, the browser cache stores the important resources onto the user’s computer. This helps your pages load faster the next time the user visits your website. Increase the browser cache if you have to, so your server can handle all the assets.
- Friendliness to mobile devices
With the variety of electronic devices people use to connect to the internet, websites need to be friendly to these smaller mobile devices. Like desktop computers, your website load speed should also be optimized for mobile devices, as mobile search is becoming more popular.
- Site architecture that is SEO friendly
In this element, you should be concerned with the importance of secure browsing, consistency, and clarity of URL structure, a sitemap, and a robot.txt file. Today, it is vital to use a secure protocol, so use HTTPS instead of the usual HTTP, another factor search engines, such as Google, consider when it does the site ranking.
Likewise, improve your breadcrumbs, as these are valuable navigation tools. Breadcrumb trails help users to navigate a website easily. Moreover, breadcrumbs help search engines understand how your site is structured.
Your URL structure should be consistent, clear, and friendly to search engines and users. Give it a brief but descriptive name that will help users know where they will be directed. Better yet, include a keyword that is relevant to a particular page.
Another essential thing is providing internal links, which improve older content’s visibility related to new ones. When you categorize your site’s content, you can easily link various pages belonging to a category. This method allows users to follow and see other related resources within your website and give them more relevant information from older posts.
- Structured data markup (rich snippets)
In technical SEO, it is critical to have structured data or rich snippets. You see them when you search for something, and the search engine gives you the relevant websites, each one showing a part of the content that provides the user with an idea of what the site contains. There are plugins to help you add snippets to your site.
- Removing duplicate content
Hiring a professional technical SEO services company will ensure that your website is free from duplicate content, which is a serious issue, particularly with Google. Duplicate content confuses the search engine because they do not know which version to include or exclude from the indexes, direct the link, and which version they should rank when they show the query results.
You can either remove duplicate content, which is the easiest step or rephrases it, which can take time.
You must audit your site before going live to ensure that you have covered all the elements under technical SEO. The process continues to evolve, covering a wide range of subjects to ensure that your webpage is optimized for the search engines.
