Technical SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a tactic that optimizes a website to better allow search engines like Google to index and render it. It is one of the most important and impactful ways to drive website traffic, yet it’s still something many people overlook.
If you aren’t very tech-savvy this can sound intimidating, but don’t worry— this article will cover all of the basics of technical SEO.
Why is technical SEO so important?
All modern search engines have technical requirements that, when met, allow the search engine to include your site in search results. SEO of the technical variety is written just for the search engine to read, and it adheres to the engine’s technical requirements.
Technical SEO is the magic ingredient that allows search engines to find and index your website and its content. Without technical SEO, you could be producing some of the best content the world has ever seen but it still wouldn’t drive traffic to your website.
Users who search for certain topics and keywords on websites like Google will typically skim through the first few pages (or even just the first few links) and decide the rest of the search results aren’t relevant or good.
Technical SEO helps search engines bump your content and your website up the queue of search results so that your link is one of the first choices people see.
What does technical SEO look like?
Technical SEO is hidden in your website’s code. This way, the search engines can read it (in the language they prefer) and your users won’t know it’s there. Even if the text is identical to what you have written on your website, including technical SEO will drive even more traffic to your site and content.
It’s usually written in JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, which is a coding language specifically used to transmit data in web apps. There are a lot of elements to successful technical SEO, including crawling, indexing, and rendering, all of which are done behind the scenes.
As stated, with good technical SEO search engines can index and return your site in search results, but even that isn’t enough to truly optimize your technical SEO. You also need to make sure your website doesn’t have duplicate content, loads quickly is secure, is mobile-optimized, etc., etc., etc. (seriously, the list is seemingly endless).
That being said, you can still get search result rank with imperfect technical SEO, but you could be limiting your potential.
How can you improve your technical SEO?
In addition to adding a JSON technical SEO schema to your website’s HTML file, there are a few ways you can improve your technical SEO.
Add a site map
Site maps let search engines crawl over your website pages and gain an understanding of the layout and content. Good site maps are logical, simple, and tree-like.
Eliminate dead links
A dead link is a link that leads to a page that either doesn’t exist or isn’t live. This can slow down servers and frustrate users, so it’s best to eliminate them altogether.
Consult an expert
This is a lot to digest and is overwhelming for many people. Consider consulting an expert, like the team at Online Marketing Gurus, if you’re not confident in carrying out technical SEO. This is an especially helpful course of action if you don’t have any coding experience and are unsure how to implement technical SEO into your website’s HTML file.
