What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of ensuring your website is compatible with search engine guidelines by optimizing a website’s technical aspects so that it can be ranked and indexed without any problems. The primary purpose of a technical SEO audit is to evaluate your website’s existing SEO and identify which parts need to be improved for a smooth online experience.

User preferences have shifted drastically over time, and search engines have evolved. According to Statista, there are currently around 3.5 billion smartphone users worldwide. This significant growth in smartphone usage has forced Google to release an algorithm change that prioritizes site performance and mobile experience when ranking web pages.

Google can now punish websites with poor structure, slow page load times, and strange redirections. Without correct intervention, these technical SEO difficulties can cause a significant reduction in search ranks and organic visitors. Given that the top organic search results receive approximately 35% of hits, a drop in ranking might harm your business.

Technical SEO vs. on-page SEO vs. off-page SEO

• Technical SEO is a method of maintaining your website’s technical health.
• On-page SEO focuses more on keyword research and content creation.
• Off-page SEO includes actions like link building and digital PR that try to increase the external authority signals pointing to your website.
• Technical SEO focuses primarily on your website’s code-level implementation to increase crawlability, allowing for faster and more comprehensive content indexing.
• On-page SEO involves reviewing web pages and modifying metadata elements based on keyword analysis.
• Technical SEO focuses on code problems in metadata, including excessively long page names and a lack of meta descriptions.
• On-page SEO focuses on placing internal links to improve link equity, while technical SEO focuses on code issues and overall site link architecture.
• Technical SEO conducts a thorough site crawl to identify broken links and provide resolution recommendations.
• Link auditing has shifted from assessing backlink profiles for harmful links to evaluating links and competitors for “best in class” examples.

Why is Technical SEO Important?

Search engines like Google scan and assess website pages for relevance and quality. Criteria include user experience, loading speed, and local search results. Technical SEO improves user experience and website accessibility. It makes websites faster, clearer, and easier to explore. Particularly important for e-commerce websites, attracting customers with correct strategies. Small e-commerce websites can attract a fair number of customers with the right technical SEO strategies.

How can You improve the Technical SEO of a Business Website

Best practices for appearing in organic search results include the use of keywords, internal links, external links, long-tail keywords, and link building. While these tactics will help with your SEO efforts, there is still much more work to be done.

The architecture of your website is an important aspect of SEO. This refers to the structure of your website, which must be rationally arranged. If your site simply has a few pages, it won’t make much of a difference; but, if you have an e-commerce site with numerous pages, you should make sure it’s as easy to browse as feasible. Let’s go further into the many aspects of technical SEO.

Site map

Sitemaps are important for SEO. A sitemap is a roadmap for your website that helps search engines identify, crawl, and index all your material. Sitemaps inform Google which pages on your website are the most significant, when they were last updated, and how frequently they change.

They also assist search engines to find new pages, even if they are not connected to the main site.

Google mostly finds website pages through links. Therefore, if you want Google to identify pages on your site, especially if it’s a newer site with few external backlinks, a sitemap will be quite helpful.

URL

When you encounter a URL with a bunch of strange characters and numbers that don’t tell you anything, you should avoid it since it’s bad for SEO in general. When linking to your site, the greatest URL is one that is easy to read and provides the user with a clear knowledge of what the page is about.

Here are examples of the different formulas:

• Category pages

yourwebsite.com/category-name (category page)

• Subcategory pages

yourwebsite.com/category-name/subcategory-name

• Sub-subcategory pages

yourwebsite.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name

• Product pages

yourwebsite.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name/product

Meta tags

Metadata denotes data about data. In terms of websites, a meta tag provides information about the site and has a direct impact on how search engines evaluate it. Structured data is vital since most meta tag features aid search engines such as Google and other site crawlers.

They are also used to rank articles or pages. Title tags and meta descriptions appear on the SERP. Here’s an overview of the many meta tags:

• Meta title: These inform the engine what title you want to be shown on the SERP. It might be a reduced version of the headline that appears on the website. Including a meta title tag on your web pages helps engine crawlers scan, classify, and rank your content.
• Meta description: A meta description provides a summary of the web page’s content for search engine crawlers and internet users. On the search engine results page, it displays just below the title tag.
• Robot meta tags: Robot tags are requirements in HTML tags that tell search engines whether to crawl or index certain areas of your website.
• Viewport meta tag: These tags depict how the visitor interprets certain portions of your website. These viewports might alter based on the device used to view your content, such as a smartphone or laptop. Web developers utilize it to handle the size and scale of information, allowing them to create mobile-friendly websites. The viewport meta element instructs the browser to display a webpage on various screen sizes, such as desktop, tablet, and mobile.

To ensure that metadata is properly optimized, some keyword research is required. Using the proper keywords in your content, as well as technical specs, may help your small business gain recognition online. Small company SEO, both technical and on-page, should prioritize keyword research to guarantee the most relevant information.

Redirects

If a page is deleted from a website or the domain name changes, the visitor and engine will be routed to a new address or an error page if no redirect has been created. Redirects are vital for both human users and search engines since no one wants to get on a website that no longer exists. There are several reasons why someone might utilize a redirect, as well as several techniques for correctly redirecting.

As a small business attempting to do its best for SEO, you want to ensure that you are redirecting visitors properly. Improper redirection might result in dissatisfied or disappointed clients and worse search engine ranks.  

Load times

Making sure your pages load quickly is one of the most important aspects of technical search engine optimization. If a person waits too long for a page to load, they are likely to grow irritated and move on to the next site that loads faster. Research done by Geoff Kenyon can help you determine how quickly your site should load.

• If your website loads in 5 seconds, it is quicker than around 25% of the worldwide web.
• If your website loads in 2.9 seconds, it is quicker than almost half of the web.
• If your website loads in 1.7 seconds, it is quicker than around 75% of the world’s websites.
• If your website loads in 0.8 seconds, it is quicker than around 94% of the web.

Responsive web design

Google uses “time spent on a page” as one of its indicators to determine if a website provides useful information in response to inquiries. Responsive web design makes your website simpler to read and navigate, which increases the amount of time users spend on it.

Responsive web design optimizes websites for mobile search, increasing functionality and design by scaling content to user devices, resulting in a uniform experience across all devices.

Google will encourage websites that provide a positive user experience, utilizing content, design, and functionality data as benchmarks for evaluation. If your site is not optimized for these parameters, you will lose ranking and hence visitors to your website. As a result, a loss of track translates into a decrease in sales.

Everyone is on their phones, thus having a clumsy website on a mobile device will result in missed opportunities to acquire clients.

Why Hire a Technical SEO Consultant?

Technical SEO is a sophisticated process that necessitates a unique combination of talents, as well as technical and networking understanding. Business owners cannot be experts in all parts of marketing; thus, they require someone with this skill set to assist with their company’s marketing and optimization requirements. Hiring a technical SEO professional allows you to maintain your website optimized despite a busy schedule.

Why Should You Hire a Technical SEO Expert?

One of the key benefits of employing SEO consultants is the ability to establish genuine connections.

SEO specialists can assist you in making the most of inbound marketing. Every firm strives to get its products in front of the appropriate people and build consumer loyalty. With the correct inbound marketing strategies, you can engage with these valued consumers while making them feel understood and empowered.

This is especially true in technical SEO, where even the smallest details can have a significant cumulative influence. If a website takes more than a second or two to load, it might lose thousands of dollars in visits per month.

Every marketing strategy relies on three pillars. Getting yours properly can help you make the most of your marketing strategies. Marketing has three pillars, which are:

1. Attract – With the aid of a competent SEO expert, you will not only be able to attract consumers, but the appropriate ones.
2. Engage – SEO experts utilize their skills to generate tailored material that increases user engagement and encourages them to purchase from your company. For a technical SEO specialist, this involves ensuring that your website is well-organized and that everything on it is and does what it is supposed to do.
3. Retain – The ultimate phase in any marketing plan is to satisfy clients and earn their loyalty. Websites that provide a positive user experience and are optimized to meet the highest website management standards will attract repeat clients.

So, technical SEO is very crucial and at Pittsburgh SEO Services, we are dedicated to delivering exceptional Technical SEO solutions customized specifically to your business requirements.

Reach out to us now and witness your online platform being transformed while you remain top in the online world.