SEO isn’t a piece of cake, and it can be costly too, not to mention that it requires persistent and time-consuming efforts. Having said that, the impact these marketing tactics have on a website’s visibility and search engine rankings is tremendous, ergo every investment is worthwhile. After business owners come to realize that SEO is a must if they want to drive traffic to their website, they face another dilemma. Namely, search engine optimization can be divided into two very broad categories, content and technical SEO, and since it’s all Greek to a layman, people usually don’t know which one to focus on, or as savvy entrepreneurs see it, which one generates a better ROI. The truth is that they’re both instrumental, and here’s why you need the prowess of a technical SEO specialist.
What is technical SEO?
To cut the long story short, technical SEO deals with technical aspects of a website. In order for search engine crawlers to scan, analyze, and index your website properly, it needs to be technically sound and optimized. A website that is technically optimized, is in compliance with the SEO rules and protects you from being penalized by Google.
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Analytics is extremely important when it comes to technical SEO, and knowing how your site performs and what its weak spots are can help you adjust your SEO strategy and improve it. Real-time access to SEO reports will give you insight into the most important KPIs and metrics and bring all the marketing data at your fingertips.
HTTP(S)
Google has decided to start flagging all non-HTTPS websites as “not secure” if they collect sensitive information such as passwords or credit card number. This means that if your website hasn’t migrated from HTTP to HTTPS, your visitors will be notified that the connection is not secure and that any data they enter can be compromised.
Needless to say, this will damage your online reputation, and affect your ratings. It’s not a secret that Google favours this secure encryption, which is why this SEO effort can score you a ranking boost.
Site architecture
A well-structured website will allow your visitors to navigate all the pages easily and intuitively. Too many choices, using terminology that your visitors can’t understand or relate to, and dead ends will alienate your target audience.
At the same time, the lack of logical website scheme will confuse Google’s crawlers and prevent them from accessing and indexing every page of your website, thus damaging your rankings.
Meta descriptions
These short snippets are essential for describing what your page is about, and although they don’t directly affect Google rankings, not having properly optimized meta descriptions can damage your click-through rates.
By including relevant keywords in these 160-character summaries, you’ll catch the eye of your target audience while they’re browsing through search results.
Broken backlinks
Websites migrate or disappear, and if you have backlinks pointing to them, your rankings will suffer. Namely, it’s almost inevitable to have a broken link or two on your website, but if there are a lot of 404 errors, your visitors will be annoyed, not to mention that for search engine spiders these incidents will be red flags that your website isn’t trustworthy and reliable.
Low word count
According to recent research, the average Google first page result has 1,890 words. Search engines prefer longer content as it’s considered more relevant and valuable.
There’s another issue called “code bloat” which refers to the production of redundant and unnecessary code that can slow down your website and hurt your SEO.
It can lead to some unusual word count patterns and hidden text, and although it’s technically the responsibility of the development team, it’s best to have such issues sorted out by an SEO specialist.
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Load speed
This parameter has become so important that Google included it in its algorithm. Almost 47% of visitors expect a web page to load within 2 seconds, which means that they leave if their expectations haven’t been fulfilled. The fact that, according to Google, more than 50% of searches come from mobile devices, additionally boosts the importance of speed.
Mobile responsive site
As we have mentioned in the previous paragraph, a lot of people use their mobile devices to browse the internet, and if your website isn’t mobile responsive, you’ll miss out on tons of organic traffic and hurt your rankings.
If you want Google to show your website in search results that are displayed to people browsing on their smartphones, your website needs to be optimized for mobile.
Canonicalization
Having multiple URLs for a single article or product description is a sign of bad canonicalization, and it can confuse search engines. For example, if your web address is https://www.example.com/ but you also use https://example.com/, it’s the same to a human eye, but to Google, these are two completely different addresses, and that misconception will bury your website in the SERPs.
As you can see, the role of a technical SEO specialist when it comes to building your online presence and growing your business is indispensable.
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About the author, Nate Vickery
Nate Vickery is a marketer and an online author mostly focused on streamlining SMB and startup marketing. Nate is the executive editor at Bizzmarkblog.com and a contributor to many other online publications.
Dan Purvis
Previously, he was Director at Comms Axis, a full service marketing agency specialising in content, social media & website services for businesses of all sizes.
Dan Purvis writes for a number of leading business, social media and marketing sites, including Smart Insights, MarketingProfs, Marketo, MarTech Advisor, Marketing Tech News, MarTech Today, MarTech Exec, and more.
Dan was also ranked by Brand Republic as one of the Top 50 UK Marketing & Social Media influencers.
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