Technology is the first of the “three pillars of SEO”. While content and backlinks are crucial for SEO success, Technical SEO focuses on the underlying infrastructure and technical aspects that affect a website’s performance.
Building a website is similar to building a house: without a good foundation, you can’t build a firm construction. Therefore, it is important that the technical foundation of a website is in order. If the foundation is flawed, the content on the site will not perform as well as it might otherwise, and the link value built up for the domain will remain partially ‘stuck’.
Technical Audit
To ensure that your website will meet the quality criteria of search engines, our specialists can perform a Technical Audit in which they analyze your website’s underlying infrastructure and the various technical aspects that influence its online findability; for example, the site’s URL structure, navigational elements, loading speed, and HTML elements such as the header tags. Additionally, the Technical Audit analyses the way web crawlers crawl and index your site.
Implementing the advice given in the Technical Audit will ensure that the site will be perceived as being qualitatively stronger by search engines and will be positioned higher within the organic search results on relevant search terms.
Why is Technical SEO important?
Technical SEO plays a critical role in how search engines such as Google evaluate and rank your website. Without a strong, healthy technical foundation, it is often of no use to attempt to boost your website through content optimization or link building. Here are a few more reasons why Technical SEO matters:
Improved Crawling and Indexing
Search engine bots crawl websites to gather information and add webpages to their index. Technical SEO helps optimize a website’s structure, meta tags, internal linking, and XML sitemaps to ensure efficient crawling and indexing. By making it easier for search engines to navigate and understand your website, you increase the chances of your pages being indexed and displayed in relevant search results.
Enhanced User Experience
Amongst other things, Technical SEO focuses on optimizing website speed, mobile-friendliness, and user-friendly navigation. A fast-loading website that is compatible with different devices and provides a seamless user experience not only pleases visitors but also improves search engine rankings. When users have a positive experience on your website, they are more likely to engage with your content, stay longer, and potentially convert into customers.
Better Visibility in Search Results
Search engines prioritize websites that are secure and have a solid technical foundation. When your website meets its Technical SEO quality criteria, it can rank higher in the search engine results pages, and gain more organic traffic.
Fixing Issues and Avoiding Penalties
A Technical SEO Audit will help identify and resolve issues that may hinder a website’s performance. These issues can include broken links, duplicate content, improper redirects, and more. By addressing and fixing these issues, you not only improve the user experience, but also avoid penalties from search engines that may negatively impact your rankings and visibility.
What are important aspects of Technical SEO?
- Site Structure and Navigation: a well-organized site structure and intuitive navigation help search engines understand the hierarchy of your website’s content, and make it easier for users to navigate through your site.
- Crawl Budget and Indexation: a site’s crawl budget refers to the number of pages search engines are willing to crawl on your site. Optimizing the use of your site’s crawl budget and ensuring proper indexation helps search engines discover and index your important pages efficiently.
- Indexation Status: monitoring the indexation status of your website’s pages ensures that search engines have successfully indexed your content and that it is accessible in search results.
- Header Tags: proper usage of header tags (H1, H2, etc.) helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your content, enhancing its readability and SEO.
- Page Speed: optimizing your site’s page speed improves user experience and helps search engines crawl and index your pages more efficiently, leading to better rankings.
- Multilingual and Multi-Regional Settings: implementing proper hreflang tags and regional settings signals to search engines the language and targeted regions for your content, ensuring it is displayed correctly to the intended audience.
- Structured Data: adding structured data markup to your website provides search engines with additional context about your content, enabling rich snippets and enhancing visibility in search results.
- Social Media: while not directly a Technical SEO aspect, social media signals can indirectly influence search rankings by increasing brand visibility, driving traffic, and generating backlinks to your website.
