Technical SEO
A smart search engine optimization strategy requires a multi-faceted approach for increasing your company’s visibility online. The major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing place a high priority on providing the best experience possible for their users.
When one of those users is conducting a search that is relevant to your business, you want your business website to be the first one listed in their search results pages. But only those websites that offer a superior user experience are ranked high enough to warrant the top position on the first page of a user’s search results.
Technical SEO is one component of an overall optimization strategy to ensure that your website meets or even exceeds the ranking criteria of all the popular search engines and organically earns higher rankings for maximum visibility.
What’s so important about getting placement at or near the top of the first page of users’ search results? It means that your website has been deemed most valuable, offering a better and more positive user experience. The result is greater visibility when users are searching for a product or service that your business offers.
Today’s fast-paced marketplace caters to online users who want to find the product or service they need quickly. No one has the time nor the patience to scroll through page after page after page of website links to find what they want. On average, most users get halfway down the first page of their search results before clicking on the link that will satisfy their search and converting on a sale.
If the link to your business website is located on page two or three, chances are very few online users will ever see it. They’ve already found the product or retailer or contractor they need and your business is left out in the cold.
A good SEO campaign can help ensure that your business gets the visibility it deserves with higher rankings and a more advantageous position in users’ search results. If customers can’t find your business, they will be happy to give their hard-earned dollars to your competitor with a website that ranks higher and enjoys more visibility,
How Technical SEO Can Help
Technical SEO is the process through which your website is optimized for compliance with the ranking criteria of the popular search engines to ensure the best organic position in users’ search results pages. Technical SEO covers all of the technical aspects of your website with respect to functionality and design. If your website takes too long to load, doesn’t load properly, pages contain errors, or the site is improperly coded, these can have a negative impact on your website’s ranking.
Every single other aspect of your website can be perfect, from keywords to content to meta descriptions, but if it doesn’t work the way it should, the search engines will determine that it does not offer a positive user experience and ranking will suffer dramatically.
Why Technical SEO is Critical to Success
Your company website is often the first thing customers see when they interact with your business online. Search engines favor websites that offer a more positive experience for users.
These are two very important reasons why you should not ignore technical SEO when developing a well-rounded SEO strategy for online success. A website that doesn’t function properly can be more of a liability than an asset for small businesses trying to compete in a very crowded marketplace.
Working with an SEO company like JH SEO can give your business the edge by increasing search engine rankings and providing greater visibility for your website. Our team can perform an optimization audit which will identify any problems in the code and architecture of your website and offer solutions to ensure that functionality and compatibility with all of the necessary components that determine rank are met.
Technical SEO is critical to success because an optimized website is easier to discover and track, increases manageability, and offers a faster, more efficient, positive user experience. When search engines find it easier to navigate and index your website, loading speeds are fast, and pages are compatible with mobile devices, the search engines are going to give your website more favored placement for users in search results pages.
Consider all of the ways that a website audit can determine if your website has been optimized for technical SEO:
Website Design
A professional website makes all the difference when it comes to impressing new customers and keeping them as loyal customers for years to come. But if your company’s website is tough to navigate and doesn’t load quickly or properly, it’s a bad look for your business. Remember, your company website is often the first thing people see when interacting with your business. A bad first impression can be devastating.
Search engines offer higher rankings to websites that provide real value. That value is calculated in the average time a user spends navigating the site. If most users click the link and then close it after just a few seconds to a minute, the search engines’ ranking protocols are going to determine the website doesn’t have much to offer visitors.
Website Architecture
Your website’s technical SEO works to assist search engines in tracking and create a road map of sorts to help define and categorize the organization of pages and internal links on the website. When search engines can see that your site architecture has been properly defined and formatted, rankings increase.
This includes the correct URL formatting, sitemaps, and internal linkage so the search engine tracking bots can understand which pages have greater authority on the website.
Simply put, it’s all about precise organization so the site is structured for easier navigation and the search engines can better comprehend the site and analyze its contents.
Page Load Times
A website that takes too long to load will rank lower than sites with faster loading times. Technical SEO targets page loading speed as this is a crucial component of the search engines’ ranking criteria. A slow website can reduce its rankings and you’ll find your business relegated to lower positions on users’ search engine results pages.
The fastest websites load at hundredths of a second. Anything slower can negatively impact user experience and that will reduce visibility of your website. Performing an optimization audit can be extremely useful to increase page loading speeds.
Mobile Device Compatibility
Our mobile devices have become more important than ever before. We do everything on our smartphones, tablets, and laptops. More than half of all online searches are conducted on mobile devices so it stands to reason that search engines would place a greater emphasis on ensuring the best ranked websites are fully functional on our devices.
Does Your Website Need a Technical SEO Audit?
Our technical SEO experts are here to help. We have worked with a wide range of businesses both big and small to audit their websites and increase search engine rankings for wider visibility. We can work with you to create a long-term, multi-faceted SEO strategy for getting your website the most favorable placement on users’ search engine results pages.