SEO Services @ Digital Sales – Technical SEO – Whats involved???

One of the SEO Services we provide at Digital Sales is Technical SEO, people may get a little ‘scared’ of the word ‘technical’.  And when it comes to large multinational websites or e-commerce websites, ye, technical SEO can get a little ‘scary’!  For some!!!!

You can see on our SEO Agency page, the type of Technical SEO Services that we may employ when we engage with a client.  Such as:

• Load Time Analyses – Homepage and All Pages
• Website Code Analyses
• Indexing Check
• Schema markup – Rich snippets, structured data, rich cards, knowledge panels and answer boxes
• International SEO Strategies
• robot.txt
• .xml Sitemap submission and updating
• Adding a custom search engine
• ‘breadcrumbs’
• Defining canonical links
• AMP configuration
• canonicalize, 301 redirect and refer in Hreflang

But what is involved in each of the technical SEO services above, what do they all mean and what impact might they have on SEO performance?

Some Technical SEO Services @ Digital Sales – What do they mean?

• SEO Services – Load Time Analyses – Homepage and All Pages

It is said that there are about 200 SEO ranking factors, and some carry more weight than others.  And over time, some are given a higher ranking and others degraded.  Page Download is a ‘significant’ SEO factor right now, and it’s not just about the load time for your homepage, but every page you have assigned a keyword against.

It should also be noted, poor page download speed, leads to a higher bounce rate, high bounce rate equates to a poorer SEO performance.  Bounce rate is also an SEO factor!

Some handy tools to test page download:

https://gtmetrix.com/

https://tools.pingdom.com/

https://www.uptrends.com/tools/website-speed-test

https://www.webpagetest.org/

https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/intl/en-gb

The tests above will also help identify issues with your website code and what should be addressed.  Your website code should be analysed.  Customising your website regarding design and coding also gives you greater control and power to address download and performance issues.

• SEO Services – Website Code Analyses

Fixing your website code issues will invariable improve the performance of your website, removing any unnecessary code and thus improving your website performance.  Here is a very useful online tool: https://sonarwhal.com

• SEO Services – Indexing Check

If your website has not been indexed throughout, then un-indexed pages will not get found on a search engine.  You can check single pages using this online tool: http://indexchecking.com/

• SEO Services – Schema markup – Rich snippets, structured data, rich cards, knowledge panels and answer boxes.

Although the features above may not impact SEO performance directly, they will produce higher click through rates and a higher click through rate equates to better traffic figure and indirectly making your website more popular, popularity directly effects SEO performance.

• International SEO Strategies

See this blog post and case study.

• robots.txt

robots.txt files inform web crawling software which parts and pages of a website you want crawled and not.  The technical issues to consider are: User-agent, Disallow, Allow, Crawl-delay, Sitemap and do make sure your robot.txt file is here: www.example.com/robots.txt.  There are many advantages and uses for robots.txt files and the most important is Specifying the location of sitemap(s)

• .xml Sitemap submission and updating

It’s one thing submitting a .xml sitemap, but if you keep adding content to your website or make changes, you must and should update your .xml sitemap file as soon as that change is made.  So, new content, new .xml sitemap!

• Adding a custom search engine

Its debatable if a custom search engine improves SEO performance, however, if you can manage to aesthetically integrate the search box into your website, the positives are too great to ignore.  If Google have a majority market share in your target market, then look at Google Search Console.  Essentially you are indexing your entire website and building your own website search functionality, and if its endorsed by Google, and it works on your website, do it!

• ‘breadcrumbs’

There are three types of breadcrumbs, Location Breadcrumbs, Path Breadcrumbs and Attribute or Keyword Breadcrumbs.  And examples you may have seen on other websites, but took little notice, such as:

Location Breadcrumbs (see the cursor under the top main navigation)

Path or History Breadcrumbs

Attribute or Keyword Breadcrumbs

See the specific attributes under the top navigation menu and down the left-hand menu: Blue – Wool – Slim Fit

Breadcrumbs are great for usability (only required when there are more than three levels, no good for a website like www.DigitalSales.ie!!) and they help reduce bounce rate which is an important SEO factor.  Other positive ‘breadcrumbs’ SEO attributes include:

• They don’t just help users, but also tell search engines what your website is about, how many layers to your site and what keywords you are targeting
• Internal Linking is an important SEO factor and installing breadcrumbs will satisfy this requirement
• Using Schemes and Breadcrumbs will really impact the amount of display real estate you get when a user does a search.
• Defining canonical links

You should tell search engines which is the most authoritative url, which version of a url is the authoritative one?  This can be done by assigning a ‘canonical tag’.  But first you must assess and define your authoritative canonical links.  As Google states, “… you can use canonical URLs to improve link and ranking signals for content available through multiple URL structures or via syndication.”  You must make it as easy as possible for the search engines.

• AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) configuration

Depending on the sector your business is in, there can be a preference for ‘mobile first’, and AMP really impacts within the ‘publishing’ sector.  So, we will address this in a blog post on another occasion.

There are other technical SEO subjects that should be addressed, which can impact SEO performance, which will be discussed at a later date, such as: 301 redirect, Hreflang, and more….Need help with your Digital Lead Generation, Digital Marketing or looking for SEO Services????

SEO Services – Contact Digital Sales

If you are a company that wants to build a world class website or needs help with your organic search position or generate online sales……do the necessary!!!…contact the Digital Sales team direct send us a mail at: info@digitalsales.ie, see our contact us page for our office locations.

Diarmuid Haughian – Business Development Director – Digital Sales

Post Grad Dip. UX (User Experience), Dip. International Selling, Cert. Digital Marketing, MSc. BITS