What Exactly Is Technical SEO?
Unlike regular SEO, which we use to optimize on-page content, technical SEO includes what’s behind the scenes of your website. To earn a coveted spot at the top of the search results, your website needs both regular and technical SEO.
To better understand what technical SEO is, think of it like a house. Even with a fresh coat of paint, new windows, and gorgeous hardwood floors, everything falls apart if the house lacks a sound structure. The same goes for your website.
Part of technical SEO involves areas of your website that users will never see. But that doesn’t make it any less important than on-page SEO.
Technical SEO looks at factors affecting your website’s performance, including the following:
- How fast your website and each page loads
- The quality of your internal, external, and backlinks
- How well your website displays on mobile screens
- Your website’s core vitals
And more
A lack of good technical SEO can leave visitors so frustrated that they leave your site and choose your competitors instead. If your pages have a high bounce rate, it’s a sure sign that you need technical SEO services from Connective.
Why You Can’t Afford To Ignore Technical SEO
If your website isn’t pulling in visitors and customers, your competitors could be outranking you on Google. Most users won’t click past the first page or even bother scrolling to the bottom when looking for a solution.
Without a technical SEO strategy, your website could end up languishing at the bottom of the search results, no matter how good your content is. Too many business owners spend a ton of money on regular SEO only to find that their websites don’t budge an inch.
If you want your phone to start ringing, you must improve your website’s ranking with technical SEO. It’s as simple as that.
Technical SEO is just as important as regular SEO, but many companies ignore it or don’t even know what it entails. How can you take advantage? Our technical SEO strategies will unlock your website’s true potential and send it skyrocketing to the top of the search results.
It’s Like First Aid for Your Website
If your website is on life support, you can’t simply slap a bandage on it and hope for the best. You need a team to go beyond surface-level problems and heal your site from within. Think of Connective as a personal emergency response team. Our technical SEO specialists have what it takes to bring your site back to full health.
You’ll find many technical SEO strategies out there, but our team knows what does and doesn’t work. Here’s what you’ll get when you work with Connective.
Competitor Analysis
Wondering why your competitors are ranked so highly on Google? Do they know something you don’t?
Our web optimization agency will do a deep dive into your toughest competition to figure out what they’re doing and why it works. We look at the number of pages your competitor’s websites have, their backlinks, and their site structures.
Improving Core Web Vitals
Connective can check your Google Core Web Vitals report to look for issues that may be causing a poor user experience. These vitals measure your site’s interactivity, visual stability, and loading performance.
Rethinking Site Structure
Google has a hard time finding your pages if they lack strong meta descriptions, tags, and headings. We start by checking which of your pages Google has and hasn’t crawled and indexed. Our team looks for issues with your site’s structure and corrects them so Google will index every page of your website.
Internal, External, and Backlinks
If your website has low-quality or broken links, raising its position in the search results is tough. Sometimes, links don’t work because site owners misspell the URL or move the page.
Our technical SEO services team checks to ensure every internal and external link works properly. If we can’t fix a broken link, we’ll remove it so Google doesn’t lower your site’s position in the search results.
We also look at the quality of your backlinks. It’s better to have a handful of authoritative links than dozens of bad ones. If your site lacks good backlinks, we can build them for you. We never buy backlinks or build them using shady black-hat practices because we don’t want Google to penalize your site.
Site Speed, Performance, and Quality
Users expect websites to load in seconds. If your site loads slowly or suffers from constant errors, don’t expect visitors to stick around for long. We look for poorly written scripts, unwieldy code, and missing files that could cause 404 errors.
Our team also checks your images, videos, and other media files. Great videos and images can boost user engagement, but if the file sizes are too large, they could be slowing your site down. We can use a compression tool to reduce image sizes. We may also suggest hosting your videos on an external platform like YouTube instead of putting them directly on your site.
Structured Data Markup
Google uses structured data markup to understand the content of your pages. By editing your site’s HTML, we can help your content show up on Google as a rich result. Websites using structured data have higher click-through rates and longer visitor times than sites that don’t.
Penalty Recovery
If Google finds poor-quality backlinks, cloaked images, or keyword stuffing on your pages, it could hit them with a penalty that demotes their position in the search results. Our team can uncover problems like these and correct them to restore your site to its rightful place in the results.
Mobile Design
Did you know that about half of all web searches come from mobile devices? If your site isn’t structured well, it could load slowly or poorly for mobile users. We practice responsive design, so your site automatically adjusts to match the size of different mobile screens.
Our Winning Technical SEO Process
Wondering how our technical SEO works? We follow a seven-step process to improve your website’s technical SEO and boost its position in the search results.
First, our web optimization agency will meet with you to talk about your expectations for us. Then, we’ll research your competition and analyze your website to assemble a technical SEO plan.
Once you’ve given us the green light, our technical SEO agency will launch into action. We fix any problems we’ve found with your site so it will load quickly and properly on screens of all sizes.
And our technical SEO process doesn’t stop there. We continually improve and iterate to help your website to stay ahead of the competition.
Step #1: Onboarding
To kick off our technical SEO process, we’ll meet with you to discuss your goals for the project. We won’t start working until we completely understand what you’d like to achieve. That’s because we want you to be 100% thrilled with the results!
Step #2: Research
In phase two, we check out your competitors’ websites. We’ll analyze their layout, navigation, links, and other elements. Our goal isn’t just to copy your competitors; we take what they’re doing and do it better.
Step #3: Access and Analysis
In the access and analysis phase, we take a look at your website from behind the scenes. If you’re concerned about security, rest assured that we only ever look at the areas you give us access to.
Once we’re in, we examine the underlying structure of your website and hunt down any problems we’ll need to address.
Step #4: Brainstorming
Now that we’ve identified areas for improvement, our team brainstorms the best ideas for your SEO challenges. We have years of experience building websites for our clients, so you can feel confident that we’ll put together a plan that works.
Step #5: Presentation
Next, we’ll meet with you to present our findings. We’ll go over any problems we’ve found with your website and detail how we plan to correct them. If you’re happy with what you see, we’re ready to move on to the next step.
Step #6: Implementation
Finally, it’s time to put our technical SEO plan into action. We’ll fix your broken links, improve your site’s load time, help you recover from Google penalties, and more.
Step #7: Improve and Iterate
At Connective, we believe your website should continually evolve to keep up with competitors and algorithm changes. To our team, technical SEO isn’t just a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing process, and we’re with you every step of the way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Eager to learn more about technical SEO and how it can elevate your website in the search results? We put together answers to a few of the most common questions Connective receives about technical SEO here.
What’s the Difference Between Regular and Technical SEO?
The difference is that unlike regular SEO, which includes on-page optimization, technical SEO focuses on optimizing your website’s structure so Google can easily find and display it in the search results. In other words, technical SEO is more of a back-end strategy that ensures the integrity of your website as a whole.
What Does a Technical SEO Specialist Do?
A technical SEO specialist checks your website’s speed, XML sitemap, internal link structure, and mobile performance. Problems in any of these areas can sink your site in the search results, so it’s the technical SEO specialist’s job to fix them.
Does Technical SEO Require Coding?
To do technical SEO right, it’s good to have at least some knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Don’t have time for all that? Let us handle technical SEO services so you don’t have to!
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to optimizing the backend structure of your website, ensuring it is well-structured and easily navigable by search engines. This includes improving site speed, link quality, mobile responsiveness, core web vitals, and more.
Why is Technical SEO important for my website?
Technical SEO is crucial because it helps search engines easily crawl and index your site, which is essential for achieving higher rankings. Without it, even the best content may not perform well in search results.
How does Technical SEO differ from regular SEO?
While regular SEO focuses on optimizing content and keywords on your site, technical SEO deals with the backend aspects like site structure, page speed, and mobile responsiveness, which are vital for search engine visibility.
What services are included in Connective’s Technical SEO package?
Connective’s Technical SEO services include:
- Competitor analysis.
- Improving core web vitals.
- Rethinking site structure.
- Fixing internal and external links.
- Enhancing site speed and performance.
- Structured data markup.
- Penalty recovery.
- Mobile design optimization.
Can Technical SEO fix a slow-loading website?
Yes, part of technical SEO involves optimizing your website to load faster by addressing issues like large image files, inefficient code, and server response times.
How does Technical SEO benefit mobile users?
Technical SEO ensures that your website is responsive and loads efficiently on mobile devices, which is crucial since a significant portion of web traffic comes from mobile users.
What is structured data markup, and why is it important?
Structured data markup is a way of formatting HTML that helps search engines understand the content of your pages, potentially leading to richer search results and improved click-through rates.
How does Connective approach Technical SEO?
Connective follows a seven-step process that includes onboarding, research, analysis, brainstorming, presentation, implementation, ongoing improvement, and iteration.
Do I need technical knowledge to manage Technical SEO?
While some technical knowledge (like HTML, JavaScript, CSS) is beneficial for technical SEO, Connective’s services are designed to handle all aspects of technical SEO, so you don’t need to be an expert.
Is Technical SEO a one-time fix or an ongoing process?
Technical SEO is an ongoing process. Connective believes in continually evolving your website to keep up with competitors and algorithm changes, ensuring long-term SEO success.
