Every second of every day, nearly 100,000 searches happen on Google — that adds up to about 8.5 billion Google searches per day. Ever since Google’s inception, marketers have been eager to figure out the best ways to be at the top of the search engine results page. After all, you’ve invested time and resources into creating compelling content and a visually appealing website, and you want your target audience to see your site.
While there’s no surefire way you can capture those invaluable top spots for your target keywords, there are steps you can take to boost your chances. In today’s article, we’ll cover an often-overlooked aspect that can significantly impact your site’s performance: technical SEO.
Chances are, you know SEO matters, but the technical aspects of SEO may feel daunting, especially if you haven’t focused on optimizing your site in a while or you’re responsible for maintaining a large site. Fortunately, you can take several actionable steps to improve your website’s technical SEO, even without having extensive technical knowledge.
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to optimizing your website’s infrastructure and backend elements to improve its visibility and performance in search engine results. Unlike content-focused SEO, which deals with the quality and relevance of your website’s content, technical SEO addresses the foundational aspects that make your site crawlable, indexable, and user-friendly.
Technical SEO isn’t something you tend to think about as a web browser because most technical optimization occurs on the backend of a website. While it can be tempting to solely focus on user-facing web elements, neglecting your technical SEO can significantly affect how many users access your site. A beautiful, content-rich website can’t have an impact if no one sees it, and technical optimization curries favor with search engines, boosting the chances you’re seen by your target audience.
Ways to Improve Your Website’s Technical SEO
Even if you only have a few hours a month to dedicate to technical SEO, you can significantly improve your website’s performance if you concentrate your efforts. Here are seven things you can do to optimize your site for crawlers:
Ensure each page has a meta description
Meta descriptions are summaries of your web pages that appear in search engine results. While they don’t directly impact rankings, well-written meta descriptions can improve click-through rates. Ensure each page on your site has a unique, compelling meta description that accurately describes the page’s content in about 150 characters or less.
Add alt text to each of your images
Alt text, or alternative text, describes an image when it can’t be displayed. More than anything, it’s crucial for accessibility, but alt text also helps search engines understand the content of your photos and graphics. Ensure all images on your site have descriptive, keyword-rich alt text — but make sure your alt text is accurate, above all else!
Audit and improve your internal linking structure
Internal links help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website and indicate page importance. Review your site’s internal linking strategy to ensure the architecture is logical. You’ll want to make sure none of your critical offering, service, or product pages are buried.
Use headers strategically, especially H2s and H3s
The truth is, the majority of web users skim pages — even if you spend hours perfectly crafting a page and want every word read, you need to plan for the inevitable situation when a potential customer only wants the highlights. Headers help organize your content and make it more readable for users and search engines. Use H2s and H3s to break up your content into logical sections, incorporating relevant keywords where appropriate.
Improve your site speed
Site speed is a crucial ranking factor that significantly impacts user experience. To improve your site’s loading times, optimize your images, leverage browser caching, and consider using a content delivery network (CDN). If you implement reasonable measures to improve site speed and aren’t seeing satisfactory results, it may be time for a site rebuild. As a good first step, reach out to your site developer or website host to see if they can improve load speed.
Ensure your XML sitemap is submitted
An XML sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your website and find all of its pages and posts. Create an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines through their webmaster tools. You probably have an XML sitemap on record with major search engines like Google and Bing, but it doesn’t hurt to check — the company that manages your website should be able to help with this.
434 Marketing Can Help with Your Technical SEO Efforts.
Implementing these technical SEO strategies can enhance your website’s performance in search engine results, but we get it — this isn’t exactly the most exciting task to undertake.
That’s where we come in. Our team of SEO experts can conduct a comprehensive technical SEO audit of your website, identifying areas for improvement and implementing best practices to boost your site’s performance. From optimizing your site structure to improving page speed and mobile responsiveness, we can help ensure your website is technically sound and primed for success in search engine rankings.
Don’t let technical SEO be the missing piece in your digital marketing strategy. Schedule a free consultation with 434 Marketing today, and let us help you unlock your website’s full potential.
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Brianna Arnold holds the role of Content Manager at 434 Marketing. As part of the 434 team, Brianna brings with her a career of experience in the agency world. She is responsible for ensuring client goals are achieved with measurable success. Brianna's digital marketing experience spans a myriad of skills,..
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