Technical SEO is no different than other SEO terminology however the purpose of the name is because of all the complex details that we will be discussing on this page. For the everyday SEO guru this may make sense but for the average business person or owner, there is really no need to understand these techniques and concepts at the granular level that we do for you.In this section, we will be discussing the many different aspects that we work on a daily basis in the effort to promote your website to the top of Google.The main purpose of Technical SEO is to establish a sound website foundation that allows search engines like Google to easily crawl and index your website. We look at all the factors below when working with your website.
Page speed, also known as page load time or time to the first byte is the speed at which it takes the browser to load the page and render it to the user from the first query to the host server. Basically how fast can the page load from when you clicked on a link to the site or somewhere within the website?Regardless of how this is measured, faster is always better when it comes to the internet. Google in solely focused on the experience they provide their customers which is why they only want websites that are quick to response mainly because of the lack of patience users have these days.There are many things that can be done to optimize the speed of a website. We would suggest that you first look at your hosting company to see if the plan that you are on provides the best response times out there. We would look to enable compression (reducing the size of your CSS, HTML and Javascript files), minify the CSS, HTML and Javascript files to remove spaces, commas, and unnecessary characters, reduce redirects, possibly utilize content distribution networks and optimize images to keep them small.
First off Bounce Rate is the number of times a user clicks on a link from another site like Google, see the home page briefly and clicks back to leave the website. What this tells us is that the user did not find the information they were looking for when they landed on this page on your website. Google has come out and said that Bounce Rates are one of their factors when ranking websites.Many different factors go into ensuring that there is a reduction of bounce rates for our client’s sites. We have found that with an aesthetically pleasing website design coupled with relevant content the bounce rates go down. What we mean for example is that when someone searches for a service you provide, they will be landing on your website with an expectation of certain content and imagery based on what they are looking for. If your site doesn’t somewhat match that expectation of the user, they will simply leave and go somewhere else.We work with all our clients to ensure that they know the demographic they are after and when writing and designing their website, that demographic is in their mind. By doing this the site will be custom tailored to the people that you want to attract to your website.
Basically, this issue is when there are multiple URL’s that spawn the same page. It comes down to the configuration of your website but the main reasons for it’s importance is to fix the following:
The main ways to combat this within your website is through 301 redirects and link tag using Rel Canonical.
What is Time To First Byte (TTFB)? It is the measurement of the responsiveness from a web server (hosting server). TTFB measures the amount of time it takes a user spawning an HTTP request to the initial byte of the page being received by the end users browser. As discussed a bit more in detail above in the Page Speed section, there are multiple ways to ensure that this is not an issue.
Ensuring that your website follows all the right configurations and processes is quite cumbersome as there is always a better way to do something. Having the right tools to tell you what the problems are is even better, but what is even better than that is a free tool that Google provides so that your website follows all the right ways are to optimizing your website. Google Webmaster Tools allows for you to scan the site and provides feedback for the issues that you need to fix. We leverage these tools on behalf of our clients so their site is always optimized to the standards that Google puts out.
This is one of the more difficult issues to repair since most websites on the internet are built through configuration rather than coding and because of that our clients inherit potential coding issues from CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, Squarespace and much more. For main issues that we know of we look to address them however we have found that this isn’t a major factor in Google’s ranking.
The purpose of schema markup is to provide search engines like Google the ability to provide its user’s more informative information about your website. For example, when a user searches for your services and Google’s search results pop up, you want the user to click on your link rather than your competitors. How to do that is to provide them a little more about the page that they will land on based upon the page title but also the content snippet that is directly beneath the link on Google. This is one of the main pieces we look at in order to grab the attention of potential customers getting them from Google to your website.
The purpose of this is to let Google know which page of content is the original set of content as sometimes you may require the same content on other pages and do not want to be penalized because of that. Cross-domain rel canonicals takes it to the next level and allows for duplicate content across multiple domains which keeping your site as the originator. The reason this is a big thing is that content is duplicated all over the internet such as blogs and we don’t want you to suffer because Google can’t figure out if you copied the content or created it. Unique content is a significant factor in Google’s ranking and we want to ensure Google knows that we are the originator.
There is such a thing as too much of something can be a bad thing. Over optimization is just that. Google wants to provide the best possible content to its customers at any point in time and in doing that they have determined that their algorithm needs to reflect that in it’s ranking of sites. What Google has learned over the years is that websites that are completely geared to trying to win the top spot or more focused on the technical side of optimization rather than providing good content and delivering it in a manner that customers like. For example, keyword stuffing is a big no-no when it comes to Google optimization. Google is super smart and picks up on all of it, so be smart about it and let us figure this out for you.
In order to ensure that your website keeps all the link juice and doesn’t lose it anywhere, we look for any broken links along with any pages that have been created that aren’t be crawled. We leverage a broken link checker so that we can determine if there is any link juice that your website is losing.
Now we are getting in the weeds on this one. When search engines like Google crawl and index your website they have predetermined the amount of text versus the code to render that text. The purpose of this is that they have an idea about how much content should be written naturally and how much code should be behind that. When we are building our clients websites, we try to ensure that it is as clean as possible.
If you are intersted in exactly how we do this, we can show you.
