Most site owners are aware of SEO and its importance, but find it difficult to get into technical details. While being an SEO expert is not a requirement for having a successful website, that doesn’t mean you can ignore search engine optimisation completely.
What happens in the background will make your site run smoothly, perform flawlessly, and please both users and the search engines. But SEO can also make your website crash, stay below its true potential, and be a general pain if there are any hidden errors or flaws you are not aware of.
Here is why it’s important to learn at least some basic notions of technical SEO or hire someone who can do it for you regularly.
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The Benefits of Technical SEO
Search engine optimisation is dedicated to making search engines prioritise your web page over others. But, ultimately, it’s about offering a good user experience to your visitors, which is what Google and its competitors aim for.
So, what makes a web page easy to navigate for a visitor?
- It’s mobile-friendly, in case visitors use a mobile device (which is highly probable;)
- It loads fast – web users don’t have the patience to wait for a page to load. Anything that takes more than a couple of seconds will make them hit the back button in frustration;
- There’s a reasonable amount of intrusive elements that might cover the main text: ads, forms, etc.
- Cohesive design and choices of fonts, scripts, and others.
- Include a search function on your website
- Provide a site map for the users who want to navigate easier through your website
- Give crawlers instructions on which content is more useful for visitors
- Clear any errors, broken links or other poorly or non-functioning elements on your page
Search Engines Rank Your Page Higher If You Did Proper Technical SEO
What SEO specialists focus on is providing the right information to search engine crawlers, so that their websites rank higher in the search results. Technical SEO audits and monitoring with the help of Google Search Console or by using other SEO tools will allow search engines to crawl and index your pages.
While content still remains the core of today’s internet marketing, if your target audience can’t find your content, then it’s practically useless. By paying attention to the technical health of your website, you are more likely to appear in SERPs, compared to websites with similar content, but poorer technical performance.
The reason why technical SEO is important is clear and quite simple. But here’s a question about optimising your website that we get all the time: how do you get it right?
What Makes Good Technical SEO?
There are many aspects to take into consideration Here are some of the basic elements to look into if you want good technical SEO.
- Let Google know your preferred domain URL (www or non-www) and use 301 redirects to guide the traffic towards your preferred domain;
- Build structured data, also known as schema markup, using Schema.org, WordPress plugins, Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper, or other tools. It tells crawlers what the raw information on your website means exactly. For example, you can mark a list of ingredients in a recipe post with the markup “recipe ingredients;”
- Find duplicate content on your website and replace or re-write it to add more variety to your content, as search engines don’t like websites offering too repetitive information;
- Add an XML sitemap to serve as blueprints for the crawlers, speeding up the process of going through your website;
- Use technical tools to improve your load time, as you really don’t want your visitors to bounce off your website because of a speed problem. The search engines will notice that and lower your rank;
- Optimise your URL structure and make your URLs simple, rich in keywords, readable, short. Targeted URLs are preferred by users and search engines;
- Optimise the robots.txt file to help crawler bots focus on the most relevant, important content on your website. Pay attention to what you edit in the robots.txt file, as it can seriously impact your SEO.
Should You Focus on Technical SEO?
The reality is that in digital marketing you should focus on everything. All the time. It’s a tough, time-consuming job to make your website run properly and keep up with algorithm updates, aggressive competitors, and a demanding audience.
This being said, technical SEO shouldn’t be something to keep you up at night or dedicate all your resources to. Keep investing in content marketing and link building, as valuable content is what users are looking for. Technical SEO is only about smoothing their path and putting up “signs” to guide them to the content.
Is Technical SEO Too Complicated or Time-Consuming? Leave It to Us!
At Australian Internet Advertising, we are proud to say that no stone is left unturned in the search for the right solutions for our clients. We like to commit to in-depth monitoring and highly technical maintenance of their websites, but we also love being part of the creative process when content is created.
Contact us to tell us more about your online business, and our Search Engine Optimisation specialists will deliver the right solutions for you.
