Technical SEO

Written by: Ryan Walsh

Date: 16.09.2024

What is technical SEO?

So, we all know what blog posts are, and most of us know what a backlink is- but what about an XML sitemap? Do you know whether there’s an indexation problem on your website?

If you want to improve your business’s technical SEO, these are the sorts of questions you need to ask. So, for example, if we are going to start working on improving a client’s technical search engine optimisation, these are some of the questions we will ask:

• Is the company website fast enough?
• Is there a good page structure, i.e. clear titles on the main pages H1-H6 tags?
• Is the anchor text well written?
• Has a site map been submitted to Google Search Console?
• Is the website mobile-friendly?

How do we begin improving our website’s technical SEO?

Technical SEO is an umbrella term that describes many different SEO ranking factors. For example, can the website be crawled and indexed by Google?

Is the website fast?

Can it be used on a mobile phone? Often, you need a really good SEO consultant to just take a look and see if there are any issues. It could be that Google Search Console is showing hundreds of 404-page errors, which will cause a bad user experience, a massive bounce rate, and possibly broken links. So, all of this needs to be fixed if you want to improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

Have you invested in good quality website hosting?

It’s really important that regardless of which type of company you run—whether it’s a huge e-commerce website or a local business with a brochure website—you will need fast hosting. We can recommend different hosting companies that offer fast hosting.

It’s essential to have super-fast website hosting, as Google’s algorithm uses this as a ranking factor. If you have a super slow website, this will frustrate shoppers looking to buy something quickly. Therefore, your website will have a higher bounce rate. Google’s algorithms will pick up on this and, thus, rank your business lower in the SERPs.

 

Can the pages get indexed?

So, you could write blog posts from morning until night, and you could write, say, 3,000, offering what you believe to be top-quality advice.
Now, here’s the thing: if that page can’t get indexed, that is, if Google bot can’t index the page because there might be, let’s say, code blocking Googlebot from indexing that page, then what can happen is that the page will never appear in Google’s results.

So, you must ensure the page can be crawled and indexed by Googlebot. This is important, as otherwise, all your hard work writing that extra-long blog post will never appear in Google’s results unless it can be indexed.
Good page structure

Then, make sure that you add the page title, meta title, meta description, H1-H6 tags, alt text, and anchor text and that all of the text is written with Google E-EAT in mind.

Internal linking

You will often write the text for pages and blog posts where the topic overlaps, so you could use internal links and well-written anchor text to keep the shopper on the website for longer. For example, if somebody is reading about long-life car wax, you may want to add a link to your interior dashboard spray. These connected products will help Google algorithms understand that you are selling car care products.

Plus, it will help your business search engine optimisation in the following ways by adding internal links and well-written anchor text:

• You could be helping to increase the time on site (Google Analytics)
• You could reduce the websites bounce rate
• You may earn more good quality backlinks as more people read more of your pages/blog posts and see that it is good quality

 

You should add an XML sitemap to your company website

You should definitely add an XML sitemap. This doesn’t take long and can help Googlebot determine how many pages and blog posts you have on your website. Google then uses this list to determine which pages to index. Plus, you may wish to write no-index on the pages you don’t want to get indexed, such as the login page on your content management system. This will help you better use your business crawl budget.

For example, there is a set number of pages that Googlebot can crawl per website. The more important the business is deemed; the longer Google spends crawling and indexing it. For smaller businesses, the crawl budget is normally much lower, so you don’t want to waste your company’s crawl budget by regularly crawling, say, the login page, so your SEO agency may want to add a no-index tab to that page.

 

Do ensure that your company website and blog are friendly

So, whether someone owns an Apple iPhone or perhaps the latest Samsung Galaxy, they will want to access your company website and for it to work perfectly. For this to happen, you will need web designers who can build a responsive or accelerated mobile page for your business. This will improve the UX and ensure that your website works on smartphones and tablets.

 

How our agency can help:

We work with a large number of Welsh businesses to help them improve their on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. Our fixed-price monthly packages start from £500 PCM. To discuss how we can help your business generate more sales, why not call us?