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With more than 3.4 million searches conducted on Google every day, businesses must set themselves apart from the competition and increase visibility. This can be most effectively accomplished through search engine optimization (SEO). SEO can help earn you a higher SERP (search engine results page) position, drive quality organic traffic to your website, and help you close sales. Technical SEO can ensure that potential customers have a positive experience and return to your site.
While keywords and meaningful content are undoubtedly crucial for SEO, today’s consumers expect a positive user experience. After all, 88% of consumers won’t return to a website after a negative experience. That’s why you must pay close attention to the technical aspect of your SEO strategy. By understanding the benefits of SEO for small businesses, you can create an optimized website that delivers results.
Technical SEO is off-site SEO that encompasses a website’s technical elements, which help boost organic search engine rankings. This is important because 75% of people don’t scroll beyond Google’s first listings page. If you don’t earn high ranking factors, you’re missing out on potential website traffic and future sales.
By focusing on your website’s technical aspects, you improve your site’s overall performance. Providing a website that loads quickly, is easily navigable, and functions as well on mobile devices as it does on desktops helps to reduce frustrations and provide a positive experience for your users.
A site that implements technical SEO makes it easier for search engines to crawl and learn what your web pages are all about. This information enables them to index your landing pages for future reference and quickly recommend you as a possible solution for your target audience’s problems. Technical SEO helps search engines understand your website and rank you higher in their results.
Conversely, if you ignore technical SEO, you could make technical mistakes that undermine your performance and undermine your rankings. A simple typo could keep search engines from even finding your website, let alone including it in their results. SEO is an effective way to reach a wider audience and generate revenue, and technical SEO enables you to provide a positive experience for users and search engines alike.
Several technical elements of your small business website impact functionality, usability, and user experience. Here are three examples of technical SEO that contribute to higher SERPs.
One of the greatest frustrations for web users is a site with a slow load time. In fact, one in four visitors will abandon a site that takes longer than four seconds to load. Compress or embed large photos, use a performance-based hosting solution, and avoid unnecessary plug-ins to increase page speed. The quicker your page speed, the higher your customer satisfaction.
A great SEO tool is link building. External and internal links connect readers to other reputable sites to provide even more valuable information on a specific topic. These strategic links help broaden your reach and give your business more credibility. However, over time, companies update or replace their web content. When you create a backlink to another site, you can’t assume it will last forever.
Constantly check your website for broken links. When a user clicks on a link that leads them nowhere, they question the accuracy of the rest of your content. This damages trust and can jeopardize customer loyalty. Ensure your links (and the information those links provide) are current in functionality and content.
Now more than ever, people are conducting business from their mobile devices. That’s why you must optimize your website for mobile. Studies show that 61% of online shoppers won’t revisit a site that isn’t mobile-friendly.
People accessing your site from their mobile device should have the same quality experience as those who use a desktop. This means you need to look at the content layout to ensure that words aren’t cut off and that paragraphs are correctly aligned. Images should be scalable and look the same on various screen sizes. A fully responsive website on mobile will increase customer satisfaction and help you earn higher SERPs.
The effects of technical SEO are far-reaching. By monitoring and maintaining the technical aspects of your website, you ensure your site is optimized for maximum performance. Here are seven benefits of technical SEO.
When someone sees the same content across multiple pages of your website, they begin to question the authenticity of your material. Duplicate content also damages your reputation as a leader in your industry. After all, a legitimate expert would have enough original content to offer that they wouldn’t need to repeat the same information throughout their site. Duplicate content impacts the overall user experience and can negatively affect your SERPs.
Additionally, duplicate content is confusing for search engines. When Google crawls your site and finds the same keywords on several pages, the search engine doesn’t know which page to prioritize in their listings. This could result in all pages ranking low in results. While duplicate content could be accidental, it comes across as deceptive and deliberate, and search engines penalize that behavior.
Technical SEO helps you identify instances of duplicate content and allows you to correct those mistakes. You ensure your content delivers a positive experience and boosts your search engine rankings for optimal results through technical optimization.
Web content that is current and accurate lets readers know they can depend on you as a valuable resource for information. As a result, they’ll keep returning for continued engagement and are more likely to share your information with their contacts. This broadens your reach, increases visibility, and drives more qualified traffic to your site.
Technical SEO helps you identify broken links and pages that are no longer working correctly. By pinpointing these issues, you can:
Websites that are current send a message to users that your business is active, and should someone need to reach you with a question or concern, they’re likely to receive a quick response. This contributes to a positive user experience and higher crawl-ability for search engines. Together, these elements can boost search traffic and help your website serve as a successful business tool for your company.
Cybersecurity is a genuine concern for today’s online consumers. So much of our personal information is stored online, and security breaches can result in financial destruction and identity theft.
People need to know they can trust the companies they interact with online. Technical SEO encourages the implementation of HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure). This is a way to send encrypted data from a website to a browser.
When information is sent online, it’s typically sent as plain text, which is highly accessible and vulnerable to interception. With HTTPS, data is encrypted to help increase the security of data transferred online. It prevents anyone snooping around on the network from easily viewing online information. If they try to decipher the data, it comes across as nonsensical characters, protecting the original content; this builds trust among customers and gives them the confidence to conduct business with you online.
An XML sitemap is essentially a list of all your website’s URLs. It serves as a road map to show search engines what content to crawl and index from your site. It typically categorizes your pages, posts, and images in a linear way that streamlines the crawling and indexing process. Rather than sifting through links and tiers of pages, search engines can see all of your content in one place. XML sitemaps provide insight into when content was most recently updated. They also help to connect your content and ensure that search engines see the most important material on your site.
This ability to index information more expeditiously is beneficial for sites that:
Through technical SEO, businesses can build a website that uses structured data. Schema markup is a coded vocabulary that helps search engines better understand your site. By following a fixed format, you provide detailed information that tells search engines more about your products and your company. Search engines can give context to your website’s content, making it easier to identify, locate, and comprehend.
Schema markups can help identify events, articles, people, organizations, and more. Once they’re added to your content, search engines can use rich snippets to showcase those details. This helps readers quickly identify close matches to their searches and find the solution that best meets their needs. Structured data is an effective way to determine relevance and boost SERPs.
When you walk into a disorganized store that lacks directional signage and doesn’t have staff nearby to answer questions, you’ll leave before making a purchase. Websites are the same way. Consumers want to visit a site that is intuitive, easy to navigate, and allows them to complete their mission quickly and pain-free.
Technical SEO forces you to take a close look at the functionality and navigability of your company’s website. You can identify whether the structure of your site makes sense and if pages lead to the right destination. If pages link too deeply, people (and search engines) can have difficulty isolating important information on your site. This hurts SEO rankings and overall website performance. Making sure your website is easily navigable will help consumers enjoy a positive experience. Search engines will also be able to find and index the pertinent information from your site.
Social media is an invaluable piece of any digital marketing strategy. More than 3.6 billion people worldwide have social media accounts, so it’s a massive pool of potential business. It’s also highly targetable, so you can ensure you’re reaching the right people with the right message. The key to a successful content strategy is consistent messaging. After all, message consistency:
It’s essential to ensure that whatever content you’re posting on your website is accurately reflected on your social media pages. Through technical SEO, you can automate the process of content posting, so you avoid publishing the wrong text snippet or incorrect image. Take the time to automate specific fields. Otherwise, social media platforms will choose that information for you, and it may not be the ideal choice. Technical SEO helps you control who sees what and ensures your content marketing efforts are aligned for optimal results.
There are various tools available to help you improve your technical SEO. Some free resources include:
While all of these tools are helpful, the most beneficial thing small business owners can do for their website is receive a technical SEO audit from an SEO professional. An expert can identify technical or local SEO issues on your site that you (or any of those free tools) may have overlooked. They can use their experience and knowledge to guide you in a strategy that will optimize your online presence and deliver the best results possible.
By relying on the SEO efforts of a professional, you can ensure your site is optimized quickly and efficiently while avoiding expensive mistakes that could cost you organic traffic, new customers, high conversion rates, increased sales, and future revenue. When it comes to technical SEO, it’s best to hire a trusted SEO services expert.
Visual Rankings understands the importance of technical SEO and its impact on overall success. We offer expert digital marketing and small business SEO consulting to help you capitalize on the benefits of technical SEO. Let us help you ensure your website provides a high-quality experience for users and search engines alike.
Contact us today for a free SEO audit.