The Importance of Technical SEO
If you’re reading this and think that all SEO is technical, you’re not alone. Even though general SEO can be very technical, there is an actual technical side of SEO that’s important. So, we’re going beyond the content aspect of SEO and diving into the importance of technical SEO. Technical SEO is possible to understand and implement with a rock-solid strategy. So, first, let’s take on a simple definition of technical SEO and then look at the basics of an excellent technical SEO strategy.
What is Technical SEO?
In the simplest terms, technical SEO is improving the technical parts of your website so search engines can read it better. If search engines can crawl and understand your website better, it can improve rankings on search engines. Technical SEO is important to pay attention to because if search engines can’t properly read your pages, it can negatively impact your rankings. The great news is that you can take practical steps to implement a technical SEO strategy.
Basics of Implementing Technical SEO
There are several things to remember regarding technical SEO. Your website should load fast, be easy to crawl by search engines, be simple for search engines to understand, and be secure. Here are some essential components to keep in mind with each of these things.
Fast Loading Website
These days, internet users want things fast. If your website doesn’t load fast enough, they will move on to the next one. Search engines realize this, so the search engines may not prioritize web pages that are slow to load. Search engines work to provide the best experience and results to searchers, and slow websites usually frustrate searchers.
You can test your website speed with resources like WebPageTest, Google PageSpeed, and Lighthouse for Chrome. These page speed tools will help you see how your web pages load and if any issues need to be fixed. Maintaining a fast-loading website is good for search engines, but more importantly, it provides a great user experience.
Easy to Crawl
For Google to rank your website, the bots have to know what your website consists of. These bots aren’t going to spend endless amounts of time digging either. It’s essential to lay out your site and linking structure clearly, so it’s easy for bots to crawl your web pages and discover what they are.
You can make your website easy to crawl by using a good internal linking structure that guides the bots around your valuable content. This is a part of the overall site structure that’s absolutely necessary for good SEO. You can improve your site structure and internal linking by reviewing your website pages to ensure your best content is linked on your website, by making sure any old content is removed, and by keeping your articles organized with categories.
Simple to Understand
Once your website is easy to crawl for bots, make sure your website is also simple to understand. You can have a nearly perfect linking structure, but if the search engines don’t know what’s in the links they find, it doesn’t do any good. Websites with dead links and duplicate content confuse search engines and your potential customers. Review your web pages to remove anything that might throw off search engine bots or your site visitors.
One way to enhance your website and make it easier to understand is through structured data. Structured data gives you the opportunity to tell search engines exactly what product, service, or information you offer on your website and fill in details about those offerings as well. The Schema resource tells you more about the format required for structured data. By using structured data, search engines can better understand your web pages and give your content rich results on the search result page.
Safe for Users
It may seem like common knowledge, but it’s worth mentioning that a secure website is absolutely important these days. With online accounts and shopping the norm in our society, website users expect secure websites. In addition, Google and other search engines also prioritize secure websites for SEO. An easy way to make sure your website is secure and safe for site visitors is to implement HTTPS on your website.
Technical SEO is just another slice of the big pie of SEO. It may seem like a lot, but it’s necessary to achieve higher rankings on search engines. For many business owners, it isn’t easy to dedicate hours of work into implementing technical SEO. That’s where a solid SEO partner comes in to help implement and grow the SEO strategy for your business. The team at Suite Edge specializes in each aspect of SEO and is passionate about making your business shine. Contact Suite Edge today to learn more about our SEO services.
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