This is the third post in a series about all of the factors that affect your ranking in Google. If you want to start at the beginning, click here. If you want to know about other Google ranking factors, scroll to the bottom for links to the rest of the series. This post is about Technical SEO.
Technical SEO and other On-Page SEO are what I consider to be the most important for helping you rank better in Google. Part one of the On-Page SEO portion of this series includes technical SEO and coding issues, title tags, descriptions, navigation or site architecture and more.
We want to help you, as a business owner, understand the job your professional SEO agency is doing or what they are supposed to be doing. This post cover technical SEO factors that affect your rankings in Google.
First, I want to address the big on-page SEO priorities.
How fast does your website load? Click here to find that out. (The speed tester will also suggest how to improve the speed or load time of your website) (It opens a new window so you won’t lose your place)
How much time did your visitors stay on your page? Did your visitors interact with your content (did they click links, fill out a form, etc.?) That’s why conversion optimization is just as important as SEO. Using Google analytics and Google Search Console will help you answer those questions.
I want you to keep those things in mind as you do SEO for your website. Don’t only focus on SEO when optimizing your website. Make sure it’s user-friendly and that your content is written for your visitors, not just for SEO. We’ll address that more in the next post.
Remember EAT! “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness”. Your content should have those three principles, unless you are just entertaining your audience.
There are a lot of technical SEO factors that Google considers in their algorithm
Google assigns different priorities to each factor and they change those priorities often, so I recommend that you pay attention to all of them. That keeps you from “chasing” the latest updates to “fix” something you could have already done. You don’t have to have all of them done, but the more you do, the better the outcome.
I’m going to combine some of the other factors into groups. Bookmark it to make sure you always have it as a resource.
Technical SEO includes Coding, Navigation and Analytics
This part includes coding; title tags and description tags, and navigation. Technical SEO includes all of that and more. If you aren’t familiar with any type of coding or the Google Search Console or Google analytics, you made need some help from an SEO professional to do this.
There are SEO tools that will help you with the search terms people use most. (Link will open a new window so you don’t lose your place) I recommend you research that before creating these links or the navigation and hierarchy of your pages and posts.
The biggest thing to consider when creating your website is structure. Architecture is important. Ease of navigation is important. Create a “flow” to get your visitors where you want them to go and help them find what they are looking for. An example: Don’t make them look for the buy now button. A properly structured website will rank better than one poorly constructed. The same goes for well-coded websites vs poorly coded ones.
- Include a sitemap . If you are using WordPress, I recommend the Yoast SEO plugin. (This will open a new tab soi you can come back and pick up where you left off.) It does a lot more than just create and update your sitemap. It helps you optimize your website, points out problems and even corrects some of them for you. It helps you structure the content of your pages and posts as well. I’m using it right now.
- Make sure you have unique titles and descriptions for each page of your website. If you don’t, it will negatively affect your rankings in Google.
- Of course make sure you have an SSL certificate. Most hosting companies provide that for you. Google wants every site to have an SSL certificate. You will not do well without it.
- Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console! This is extremely important. It may help you rank better. The most important thing is the data it collects so you know things like what is your biggest source of traffic, which source of traffic brings in customers who actually buy something, what pages in your website have the highest bounceback rate or which pages people spend the most time on, etc.
Technical SEO also includes Title Tags and Descriptions
The <Title> tag is at the top of the code in your web-pages.. <Title>Your Title</Title>. In your WordPress dashboard, go to settings>>general and add your title and tagline/description there. If you have the Yoast SEO plugin I mentioned above, then you can go to Yoast>>Tools>>Bulk Editor and create both unique titles and unique descriptions for each page and post.
Using WP alone, putting the title tag and description in header.php, that same title tag and description will be the same for every page and would negatively affect your rankings in Google as well as other search engines like Bing.
Descriptions do not directly help you with SEO, but they are important. It should contain the targeted key phrase at the beginning. Remember, the text you write here will affect how many people will click-through to your website from the search engine results. So, in an indirect way, it could affect your rankings due to more people clicking through.
Example; Search for anything. Look at the results. At the top of each result is your title tag. The text below that is your description, or sometimes the description Google decided would be best for that result.
Are Categories Important in SEO?
As far as categories is concerned, it’s all about the hierarchy of your pages and posts and the structure of your URLs. You can call it your site architecture. In WordPress you set up your permalink structure under settings>>permalinks.
Let’s use this example; You sell bicycles and bicycle parts. (I’m going to use Schwinn as an example). Your link structure should be “YourDomainName/Schwinn/bicyles” and “YourDomainName/Schwinn/bicyleparts/handlebars” and/or “YourDomainName/Schwinn/bicyleparts/bicylewheels” and “YourDomainName/Schwinn/bicyleparts/headlamps”, etc.
You’re telling Google and your visitors both that the actual part falls under “bicycle parts” and that falls under “Schwinn”. Someone searches for Schwinn bicycles, you have a chance to rank for that term. If they search for “Schwinn bicycle parts” and you’re covered. If they search for Schwinn wheels or Schwinn handlebars, you’re link structure still works to your advantage.
Helping both your potential customers and Google understand your website is crucial to how your site ranks for specific phrases. Try not to have impossibly long URLs that are full of numbers. Don’t make it more complicated than it has to be.
Which Types of Errors hurt my SEO efforts?
Google considers a well-coded site without errors as more important or more relevant than a poorly-coded website. Broken links, php errors, css errors, html errors and improper use of redirects are all examples of errors that can affect your website rankings in Google negatively. When it comes to technical SEO, I recommend you let a professional SEO do it.
- Google Ranking Factors having to do with your domain name.
- Google Ranking Factors in regards to content.
- Google Ranking Factors having to do with Off-page SEO.
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