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There’s a lot more to successful SEO than keyword research, back links, and smart on/off page optimization.
One of the most often overlooked – but critically important for success – components to ranking (and ranking fast) is squaring away your technical SEO. Technical SEO might not be as “sexy” as the hottest search engine optimisation fads inevitably are before they fade away, but it’s a major piece in your traffic generation puzzle.
In the rest of this detailed guide, we go through the ins and outs of technical SEO, why the best expert SEO services in Melbourne spend so much time on it, and how to confirm that your technical search engine optimisation efforts are dialled in.
Let’s get to it!
Technical SEO 101
While this definitely rubs a little of the lustre off of how people think of SEO, professionals – especially those at the top SEO company Melbourne has to offer – generally agree that good search engine optimization has a lot more in common with engineering and accounting than it does with magic and art.
When we talk about technical SEO we are talking about the cornerstones of your website that influence overall performance, the “crawlability” of your site, and the “indexability” of your site as well. Get these things taken care of and all the rest of your search engine optimization strategies and tactics work a whole lot better.
Today’s search engine spiders are more effective and more efficient than any other time in human history. Google spends a mountain of money (and who knows how much time) every single day investing in their search engine algorithm – training their spiders to get better and better.
This is why some of the “Wild West” tactics for effective SEO that worked in the past (things like link wheels, for example) no longer work, and why a lot of previously successful search engine optimizing professionals have had to go back to the fundamentals – technical SEO to get things ironed out again.
New websites that are built on a bedrock of technical SEO are going to enjoy a lot more success today but also a lot more success in the future, too. When you focus on the fundamentals, build a rock solid foundation of technical SEO that works, all of your follow-on search engine optimization efforts reap the benefits, too.
The Benefits of Technical SEO for Your Business
Though we wouldn’t describe technical SEO as a “magic bullet” for your search engine optimization – it alone isn’t going to handle all the heavy lifting to get your page rank highly – it is jet fuel for everything else you’re doing on the search engine optimization side of things.
Google (and all the other major search engines, for that matter) really love and rank highly sites that are serious about their SEO.
Dialled in technical SEO says to Google that your site:
- Is high-value and influential
- Prioritizes delivering a quality experience to your visitors
- And that your site is worthy of ranking higher for competitive keywords
You really don’t want Google thinking that your site is slow, sluggish, difficult to navigate, confusing, or otherwise off-putting to your visitors.
The last thing Google wants to do is “vouched” for a poorly optimized website. That’s a poor reflection on them.
Breaking Down Key Areas of Technical SEO
Okay, now you better understand the why behind proper technical SEO – but how does the “what” work?
Well, there are really three core areas of technical search engine optimization that you want your team to focus on:
- Overall performance optimization
- Improving the crawlability of your site and
- Improving the indexability of your site
Overall Performance
On the performance side of things there’s a lot of room for improvement on almost every single site in existence, including sites being built today that are focused on proper technical SEO.
For starters, you want to make sure that your page loads just as quickly as humanly possible. We are talking about loading in completely inside of two seconds flat – and even faster if you can make that possible. You want Google to see that your first byte, first paint, first meaningful paint, and first interactive metrics are breaking land speed records (and hopefully improving as time goes on, too).
Secondly, you also want to make sure that your site has a streamlined code running under the hood. A lot of older websites are using pretty ancient code, cluttering up the infrastructure of their website and causing load time issues, instability issues, and reliability issues. Luckily, though, with the help of developer tools (including those available directly from Google) you’ll be able to strip out unnecessary or bloated code, streamlined it pretty effectively, and get your performance numbers up. AMP from Google may even be something that you want to implement on your site just to give yourself a little jolt of “rocket fuel”, so to speak.
Lastly, it’s imperative that your site takes advantage of responsive design principles. This shows Google that you have done the heavy lifting to provide a website that is accessible and usable from a multitude of devices without negatively impacting the overall experience. As mobile internet use skyrockets you need to be building a website that is as future proof as possible. Responsive design is a big piece of that puzzle.
Crawlability
Every time Google sends spiders to “crawl” your website they are spending time, money, and valuable resources to do so – and you want to reward that investment in your site (and potential rankings) as much as possible.
First things first, try to generate as many high-value URLs as possible across your site. This involves the right amount of off page SEO (dovetail nicely with technical search engine optimization), but you want your on page optimization to be tight as well.
Have a site map that Google can find quickly, make sure that your URLs are named intelligently and clearly, and generally keep your navigation has organized and as intuitive as possible. That’ll boost the crawlability of your site big time.
Indexability
Finally, you need to make sure that Google can effortlessly index your site (and all of your pages) without any headache or hassle on their end.
- Make sure that naming protocols for all of your interior page URLs are dialled in and make sense.
- Make it easy for Google to find your website (calling for manual indexing as well as adding your site to multiple directories).
- Leverage developer tools to find “black holes” in your site that can be optimized or eliminated, creating a better user experience but also making sure that Google spiders don’t get lost somewhere along the line – and maybe never returned to index your site in the future.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, technical SEO isn’t all that challenging to pull off – but it does require a steady hand, and understanding of the core principles of search engine optimization, and a methodical approach to producing real-world results. That’s why it’s so valuable to work with legitimate search engine optimization experts when it comes to something this important.
These are the experts that understand (almost) everything there is to know about ranking your page highly, but they are also the experts that understand how to deploy the right tactics and strategies to use technical SEO to get you top spots in the organic search rankings. An easy way to find these experts is to simply ask them about their approach to technical search engine optimization and see what they have to say. If they sputter and have a tough time explaining exactly what this kind of search engine optimization is all about, you’re probably better off looking elsewhere for legitimate help.
If, on the other hand, they clearly explained to you exactly how they use technical SEO to skyrocket the results for their clients – and then they can provide you with case studies, testimonials, and real world examples of how they did just that – you know you are in the right hands. When all is said and done, your search engine optimization efforts are a huge part of whether or not you succeed or fail in the world of online business these days. We live in the middle of the most competitive business environment that’s ever existed in human history.
Everyone (and we mean EVERYONE) has the power and ability to build a global business from scratch – from their back bedroom, with no real money down – and we are all competing for top search engine results spots for handful of keywords. Take this stuff seriously – technical SEO, that is – and you’ll have a major competitive advantage over the rest of your industry. You’ll be able to skyrocket up the results, armour your positions to protect against competitors later down the line, and be able to push a flood of targeted traffic your way at the same.
That’s game changing stuff, getting technical search engine optimization right. Good luck going forward! If you need a SEO company in Melbourne, give us a call on 0420 232 154.