A proper SEO campaign does not leave out Technical SEO. This article looks at what technical SEO means, how it is used in an SEO strategy, and why it is so important.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engines to improve that site’s visibility and ranking. The main focus of technical SEO is ensuring that the site is accessible to search engine crawlers and bots and that there are no hindrances or obstacles in their path. This includes ensuring that the website’s code is clean and well-structured and optimizing the website’s structure and hierarchy for easy navigation by both users and crawlers. In addition, technical SEO encompasses other aspects such as sitemaps, robots.txt files, redirects, etc., all of which are crucial in improving a website’s visibility and ranking.
Technical SEO Audit
A technical SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of your website’s technical aspects that could be affecting its search engine visibility. The audit will check your site’s architecture, code, sitemaps, robots.txt file, and more to ensure everything is set up correctly and working as it should be.
A technical SEO audit can be a valuable tool for any website owner who wants to ensure their site is optimized for search engines. It can help identify any areas that need improvement so that you can make the necessary changes to improve your site’s ranking in search results pages.
An audit is a great way to begin an SEO campaign, helping marketing teams prioritize needs to help the website get results fast.
Technical SEO Services
Technical SEO services are often purchased to increase a website’s search traffic and are included in a larger SEO marketing campaign. These services are used in collaboration with fresh content marketing strategy to improve a website’s ranking in search engine results pages and increase the site’s visibility.
Technical SEO services often improve a website’s coding and structure and require a trained web developer, whereas content marketing SEO includes on- and off-page content generation.
Technical SEO Checklist for your Website
If relation to checking the ins and outs of your website, here is a checklist of technical SEO considerations your SEO technician should address on an ongoing basis:
| Sitemap: A sitemap lists all the pages and posts on your website. It’s a helpful way to plan and organize your site’s content, making it easier for search engines and visitors to find what they’re looking for. There are two types of sitemaps: XML sitemaps, which are designed for search engines, and HTML sitemaps, which are designed for humans. Both have their benefits: XML sitemaps help search engines index your website more efficiently, while HTML sitemaps provide an easy-to-navigate overview of your website’s structure and can help boost its usability. In most cases, it’s a good idea to have both an XML and HTML sitemap for your website. |
| Robots.txt: Robots.txt is a file used to instruct web robots (often referred to as spiders) how to crawl and index a website. It is typically located in the root directory of a website. (i.e. www.[website].com/robots.txt) The file’s contents indicate whether certain parts of the website should not be accessed by the robot. For example, you may want to exclude your administrative login page from being indexed by search engines so that it doesn’t appear in search results. Alternatively, you may want to include specific pages or files on your site so that they are indexed and included in search results |
| User Experience: There are many factors that go into a good UX (user experience), but one of the most important is creating a user-friendly interface. This means designing an easy-to-use interface that is both visually appealing and functional. A well-designed UX can help improve your website’s conversion rate and search engine ranking. When it comes to technical SEO, a good UX can be the difference between success and failure. Visitors to your website will likely form their first impression within seconds, so it’s vital to ensure that your site makes a good impression. If your site is challenging to use or navigate, potential customers will likely click away without bothering to engage with your content. A good UX design considers all aspects of the user experience, from initial arrival on the site to task completion. Good UX design provides users with a seamless, satisfying experience while meeting business goals such as conversion rates and SEO rankings. |
| Page Speed: Page speed is necessary for technical SEO because it allows search engines to quickly and easily find the content they need on your website. It also allows users to navigate your website, improving the user experience and encouraging people to stay on your site longer. There are many ways to improve page speed, but some of the most effective include reducing server response time, optimizing images, and minifying CSS and JavaScript files. By reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the server and the browser, pages can load much faster. Additionally, optimizing images can help reduce file size without sacrificing quality, and minifying CSS and JavaScript can reduce file size and code complexity. |
| Google Mobile First Index: Google Mobile First Index is a tool that ranks websites based on their mobile-friendliness. This is important because more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet. If your website is not optimized for mobile, it will be at a disadvantage in the search results. The Mobile First Index can help you improve your website’s ranking and visibility. It is a part of a technical SEO strategy because it helps you make sure that your website can be found by potential customers who are using mobile devices. |
| Responsive Design: Responsive design is a method of web development and design that aims to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices, from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones. Responsive design is vital because it provides an optimal experience for users no matter what type of device they are using. By using responsive design, businesses can improve their SEO because it helps Google understand what content is on a website and how it should be displayed in search results. In addition, responsive design can help improve click-through rates from SERPs because users are more likely to stay on a website that looks good on their device. And finally, since mobile traffic continues to grow at a rapid pace , having a responsive website will ensure that businesses are doing what it takes to appease their audience. |
| AMPs: Arguably, one of SEO’s most critical technical aspects is AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is an open-source framework that allows for the creation of web pages optimized for mobile devices. The key benefit of using AMP is that it can dramatically improve the loading speed of a page, which is a critical factor in the user experience. AMP pages are built using a subset of HTML and CSS and truncate certain features that can slow down page loading times. For example, AMP pages do not allow for JavaScript or third-party plugins like Flash. However, this does not mean that AMP pages are less functional than traditional web pages; many popular sites like Twitter and Pinterest have implemented AMP versions of their mobile apps without any negative impact on user experience. If you’re interested in improving your site’s SEO performance, implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages could be a great place to start. |
| Fix Website Errors: We all know optimizing our website for search engines is essential, but what does that mean? For starters, ensure your website’s titles and meta descriptions are optimized for SEO. That means using keywords in your titles and descriptions, which will show up when potential customers search for products or services related to your company. Additionally, ensure no errors are on your website that could be causing lost traffic (or even conversions!). By fixing these mistakes before they become significant problems, you’ll ensure that chances are you’ll improve your website’s rankings and qualities which will result in more customers, internal & external, to the company. |
| Keeping Toxicity Score Low: Optimizing your website for search engines for businesses of all sizes is essential to visibility and success. One key way to do this is by keeping your site’s toxicity score low – meaning that the site does not contain inflammatory or harmful content, which could harm your credibility and rankings in search results. However, toxicity score gauging can be overwhelming for small business owners who may not have the resources or expertise to assess their website’s hygiene rating. Fortunately, several solutions are available to keep toxic content at a minimum easy peasy! |
3 Technical SEO Optimizations for your Content Marketing Strategy
Regarding optimizing your website for search, there are many little strategies to consider to help rank your site higher that don’t require a developer. Here are 3 easy to manage technical optimizations that significantly impact search algorithms to help your content rank higher organically.
#1. Add Meta Tags & Descriptions
Meta tags and descriptions are one of the most important aspects of optimizing your website for search engines. Meta tags contain keywords and phrases that help potential customers find your site when looking for a specific product or service.
These keywords must be unique to you, your business, and your marketing category so that Google can “understand” what you’re selling and rank accordingly. Meta descriptions are another essential part of SEO; it’s basically a brief description of the page that appears beneath the title in search engine results pages (SERPs).
This helps people decide whether they should click through to see more details about whatever it is you have to offer – after all, if they don’t know what kind of content they’ll be getting their hands on before clicking ‘Continue Reading,’ then chances are good they’ll bounce right off your page!
#2. Use Schema Markups
Schema markup is a language used to describe the structure and layout of a document. This can be important for things like optimizing your website for search engines, as it helps Google know exactly what information to show when someone types in your name or specific keywords into their browser.
Without schema markup, you could end up with page after page of text – not very helpful when looking for information about your business on Google! Schema markup also makes sure that all the different pages on your website use similar formatting so users can more easily navigate from one section to another.
In addition, if you ever decide to make any changes to your web content – such as adding new pages or reworking existing ones – then schemas will help ensure that all of those changes are properly reflected in search results without requiring anyone special knowledge or experience in online publishing software.
#3 Using Keywords
Keywords are one of the most essential aspects of optimizing your website for search engines. Not only do they help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), but they also help you connect with potential customers who might be searching for what you have to offer. Using keywords throughout your website, content, and even meta tags, you can ensure that your site is being found by interested users when they Google “your business name + keyword.”
There are many helpful tools to help with keyword research and define an excellent list to base your content around. We use SEMRush.
Hire a Technical SEO Agency
Many technical SEO tasks require a technician with knowledge of SEO and a developer who can implement changes directly on the website. For this reason, hiring an agency to implement your strategy is usually more cost-effective.
If you need some help with ongoing optimization, check out our marketing packages and subscribe to our newsletter!