The Invisible Role of Technical SEO
Technical SEO importance for Custom Web Design
You’ve likely heard of SEO before – using specific keywords, trying to rank in search results, knowing what Google “likes,” etc. However, many people aren’t aware of technical SEO, which tends to operate behind the scenes.
A website’s design and development play a critical (if understated) role in search engine optimization. Technical SEO refers to the ways in which you optimize your website to help search engines effectively crawl and index your content, thereby improving your rankings.
If you’ve never heard of this invisible side of the equation, keep reading. Trust us: you can’t ignore the technical details when optimizing websites for SEO.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical website optimization refers to the tactics used to create and streamline a website so that it’s easily crawlable for search engine spiders. Think of it as a piece of the big-picture SEO puzzle – and one that is often overlooked by small or inexperienced businesses.
Typically, technical SEO efforts include things like improving page loading speeds, cleaning up the site’s code, or clarifying a site’s hierarchy. All technical SEO strategies take place on the page, rather than off-site.
Why Does Technical SEO Matter?
At the end of the day, Google always wants to present searchers with the best possible results. To achieve this, the search engine’s robot crawlers evaluate all web pages on a multitude of factors, including on-site technical elements like loading speeds and error codes.
By focusing on technical website optimization, you’re helping search engines better find, crawl, and index your website’s content. This helps Google better understand your website, and as a result, may reward you with higher SEO rankings and more valuable traffic.
If the technical side of your website is a mess, it doesn’t matter how revolutionary or inspiring your content is – Google will make it harder for the right people to find it.
Implementing a Technical SEO Strategy for Your Website
(1) Pick the Right Domain Name
If you’re at the initial stages of SEO web designing, be picky about your domain name. Its length, keyword use, and extension are all critical components of a solid technical SEO strategy.
When choosing a website domain name, focus on:
Choosing a few powerful keywords
Keeping the name short and sweet
Evaluating its performance against competitors
If you choose a domain name that is overused, confusing, or too wordy, you could find yourself fighting an uphill SEO battle to get ranked organically.
(2) Obtain an SSL Certificate
When a user searches a query, Google wants to present them with an accurate and safe result. As privacy rights and data security become pressing issues for every searcher, Google has begun ranking secure websites higher than unsecured sites.
The best way to indicate your site’s security to Google is to obtain an SSL certificate (Secure Sockets Layer). This is a security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser, ensuring that transferred data remains confidential.
Google openly made HTTPS a ranking signal and tends to favor websites that have already secured their SSL certificate. If your website is “not secure” and is missing its HTTPS designation, it’s likely suffering in search rankings.
(3) Audit Your URL Structures
The HTTPS designation isn’t the only technical feature that matters when it comes to your website’s URL. The entire point of a URL is to set expectations – for both human searchers and search engine bots. It shows them what this page is and what it’s about, right from the get-go.
If you’re working on your site’s technical SEO, make sure that your URL structures are:
Clean and not unnecessarily clunky
Canonically tagged to your most current address
Devoid of randomly generated numbers or characters
Even better: try to ensure that all of your site’s URLs include a descriptive primary keyword that reveals its substance. The easier it is for someone to learn what each page is about, the better your technical SEO results will be.
(4) Fix 404s and Add 301 Redirects
There’s nothing more frustrating to a user than a glaring error code on your website – and Google doesn’t like it, either. If a user clicks on a link, only to find a 404 error because the page is missing, Google will take note.
If 404 error codes become increasingly common on your site, Google may even classify your site as unreliable. To avoid this, make sure you always set up 301 redirects to point to a page’s new location after you have moved it.
(5) Create Purposeful Alt Tags and Meta Titles
Search engines like Google and Bing actually can’t interpret image files unless you’ve set an alt tag. This “alternative text” conveys what the image is and how it relates to your content, which helps search engine spiders build a more accurate understanding of your website.
Similarly, meta descriptions give search engines a quick description of what your webpage is about. When correctly optimized and written, both alt tags and meta titles can paint a clear picture for crawlers and give your technical SEO a simple but effective boost.
(6) Optimize Page Speed
Optimized websites are fast – and for good reason. Since 2010, Google has been rewarding fast-loading sites over slow-loading ones, particularly if the page loads in three seconds or fewer. Furthermore, website visitors tend to bounce quickly if a page takes too long to render.
To learn if your website loads quickly enough, start with a PageSpeed Insight test. This will help you understand your site’s overall “page experience,” which influences how Google evaluates your site and how users interact with it.
(7) Improve Syntax Structure
Search engines prefer websites that are organized logically. The more streamlined and organized your site structure is, the better your user experience and SEO results become.
Improving your website’s syntax structure isn’t just about organizing things hierarchically or by popularity – it’s about removing potential stumbling blocks such as broken pages, dead links, and duplicate content.
When a web crawler or a real person visits your website, finding what they’re looking for should be simple. That’s why technical SEO experts focus heavily on creating logical, organized website syntax structures.
(8) Submit Your Sitemap to Google
Lastly, if you’re prioritizing SEO web designing strategies, you should submit your sitemap directly to the search engine giant.
Your sitemap is a file that provides information about the pages, content, and files on your website (and how they all work together). When you submit a website sitemap to Google, it can more easily crawl and catalog your content, which boosts your likelihood of ranking highly in search results.
Submitting a sitemap is especially important if your website:
Hosts a lot of rich media, such as videos or images
Has an extensive archive of content
Is brand new and has few external links
As you build and submit your website sitemap to Google, you may also want to request a Crawl Stats report. This will indicate how many crawl requests Google has made from your site, how your server responded, and any issues that occurred.
Need a Little Help With Your Technical SEO?
Technical SEO isn’t just some passing fad or trendy way to jump the line in search results – it’s a real thing, and your website needs it to thrive against competitors’ SEO rankings. If you’re ignoring the invisible side of SEO, you’re missing out on valuable organic searches.
At Yellow Comma, we’ve specialized in SEO web designing for years. We’ve seen how technical SEO has evolved, and we know how to provide realistic, measured results for both new and old sites. Our interactive standards and defined process allow us to build highly SEO-friendly websites.
To learn more about Google indexing, or to discuss your custom website needs, contact our team today. Our team is standing by to answer your questions.
Featured image credit: Pixabay/ELFMoondance