Have you wondered why your website seems to just hear crickets, even with the amazing products and services and content you offer?
It’s probably because of a tricky little thing called SEO. Specifically, technical SEO.
SEO can be the life or death of your business. I know you know SEO is vital to your website’s visibility and success! But I also know once you get past the normal keywords and optimisation of SEO and you move into technical SEO, it can be a little overwhelming. Looking at all the technical aspects of SEO can make you feel like you might as well just leave it be and hope for the best.
Please don’t do that! I’m here to help you!
Let’s start off with a better understanding of what technical SEO is so that you can see just how important it is for your business health and growth.
WHAT IS TECHNICAL SEO?
When you think of SEO, what is the first thing that comes into your mind? Probably keyword optimisation. That is the most basic form of SEO. And it is extremely important! But technical SEO goes beyond that. Technical SEO is all about improving the behind the scenes, technical aspects of your website to increase search engine rankings. This includes things like how fast your website loads, how easily bots can crawl it, and how easy it is for people and bots to use your website. “Bots? What the!” Yes Bots! Search engines use bots to crawl your website to see if it is a good website to recommend to someone when they search for your specific keywords, which is why keyword optimisation and technical SEO work hand in hand.
Let’s start off with the easiest thing to check for, SPEED.
You know from your own personal user experience that if a website loads too slowly, people are just going to click away from it. Search engines look for how fast your website will load before they recommend your website to somebody so that the search engine user does not get frustrated.
If your website loads slowly, the people who land on your website will click away from it before seeing your amazing content and offers. And you will get less people coming to your website because search engines will not recommend it to them.
The next thing you need to worry about with technical SEO IS YOUR WEBSITE CRAWLABLE BY BOTS?
Search engine bots, or robots, crawl or essentially read, your website to discover what the most important information is that you offer. This allows search engines to see just exactly what your website is about, how you can help people, and if they should display your website to the person who searched for a specific keyword.
You don’t have to be at the mercy of the bots, though! There are ways to guide bots to show them the most vital information on your website. You can do this through using the robots.txt file. You can use this bit of code to block bots from crawling specific pages on your website and to also direct them to specific pages that contain your key core content and offers.
It can be tricky to deal with the code that directs bots, so you definitely want to do plenty of research before you attempt it! Or, of course, have someone help you!
The third thing search engines look for is DUPLICATE CONTENT?
You might not even know that you have duplicate content on your website! Maybe you have blog posts that cover the same topic, or your home page and about page have very similar information on them. This is going to confuse search engines because they won’t know which page of your website to show to someone. As a result, they will probably show none of them. A technical SEO audit will show you which pages you should change, delete, or set up with a canonical URL.
The fourth thing bots look for is BROKEN LINKS!
You’ve encountered broken links before when you’ve clicked a link in a blog or on a web page and encountered a 404 error page or a blank page. It’s very annoying, especially when you really wanted the information or offer that was promised. Search engines know just how annoying broken links are, so they rank websites with more broken links lower than those with fewer broken links. The search engine bots will discover even more broken links than the general user because they follow ALL of the links on your website.
Broken links happen when you delete a webpage or anything that you have linked to on your website. Even if you keep a page and just change the URL, you will create broken links. Almost every website, at some point in time, has at least a few broken links. This happens because websites are a work in progress and are always being adjusted. One of the best ways you can prevent as many broken links as possible is to redirect your page’s URL before you change the URL or delete the page.
The fifth and final thing bots look for is A SECURE SITE!
Search engines try to make sure that your information isn’t going to get stolen from a website and your computer isn’t going to get hacked. So search engine bots look for an SSL certificate and an implemented HTTPS. If your website has a lock on the left side of the search bar, then your site is already secure! And if not, your technical SEO advisor can advise you on how you can get an SSL certificate and implement HTTPS on your site.
Now that you know what technical SEO is, and how it can help people find your website, it is time to implement it on your website. I know that it probably still sounds rather daunting to find all your website’s technical SEO weaknesses. Which is why I suggest getting a professional, technical SEO audit as soon as possible! A technical SEO audit will show you the weaknesses of your site and point out how you can fix them.
If you are ready to please the Google gods, then let’s get started! I can help you both identify your website’s weaknesses AND help you fix them so you don’t have to worry about all the technical issues. Here is to growing your website’s visibility and your business’s traffic! Make sure you check out how I can help you.
