What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website’s technical infrastructure to improve its search engine visibility and ranking. This involves making changes to the website’s backend to ensure that search engines can crawl and index the site’s content effectively. Technical SEO essentially helps to ensure that your website complies with search engine algorithms and rules, so that they can confidently recommend your page as a result to individual queries.
Why is Technical SEO Important?
Mobile Friendliness
With approximately 60% of all search engine queries happening on mobile devices, you must ensure that you have a mobile friendly, and user friendly site – or face the negative consequences of lower rankings. By ensuring your site is mobile friendly, you give your site a better shot at receiving attention in the top placements of mobile searches.
If a search engine, a) can’t understand what your page is about due to poorly written/lacking content, or b) knows that your site will generate a poor user experience because it has many broken links and isn’t mobile friendly – then the search engine won’t recommend your page in the top results. Remember, the algorithm’s job is to deliver the BEST fit for an online search, so it absolutely won’t recommend a site littered with UX and technical issues.
Fortunately, Google offers their very own (and FREE!) mobile friendly checker, so you can check on this performance with ease. To scan for other technical issues outside of mobile-friendliness, we offer an in-depth site audit and a 1-hour consultation to help you get started on your SEO endeavor. Hopefully, when you test your site the result looks something like the below screenshot. If not, we can help resolve this!
Website Speed and Performance
Did you know that an increase in loading time from 1 second to 3 seconds results in an increased bounce rate by 33%?! In the digital age, our population has grown accustomed to immediate answers and immediate gratification. It’s no shocker that the search engine algorithm knows this, and favors faster loading websites for its highest result placements. For your best chance at ranking in those top 3 spots, optimized website speed must be a focus. Once again, there is another (FREE) tool out there so that you can check on your speed performance. GTMetrix offers an easy-to-use and comprehensive tool that can give a lot of insight to the loading speed and overall performance of your site. Again, hopefully your results look like the below image.
Enhancing Website Security
It helps businesses enhance their website’s security by implementing SSL certificates and securing the website’s backend. A secure website is critical for building trust with potential customers and search engines, which can ultimately improve the website’s search engine ranking.
How is Technical SEO Conducted?
1. Conducting a Website Audit
To get a genuine idea of where your website stands in the technical SEO world, you have to start with an in-depth site audit. This involves analyzing the website’s backend, including its structure, coding, and metadata. We offer a site audit and 1-hour consultation to all new clients – letting you take a peak under the hood without any big investment.
2. Optimizing Website Structure and Navigation
Once businesses have identified any technical issues, they must optimize the website’s structure and navigation to ensure that search engines can crawl and index the website’s content effectively. This involves optimizing the website’s URL structure, implementing an XML sitemap, and optimizing the website’s internal linking structure.
3. Optimizing Website Speed and Performance
Technical SEO involves optimizing a website’s speed and performance to improve its search engine ranking. This involves optimizing the website’s images, implementing caching, and minifying the website’s code to reduce its file size and improve its load time.
4. Implementing Website Security
Technical SEO involves implementing website security features such as SSL certificates, firewalls, and two-factor authentication to protect the website from cyber threats. Implementing website security features can improve a website’s search engine ranking by enhancing the website’s trustworthiness and credibility. Many websites that are built through hosting or site builders like GoDaddy, Shopify and WordPress make SSL certificates and other security features easily attainable.
SEO for Your Business
