Technical SEO
Build a rock-solid foundation for search success.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the backbone of your website’s visibility, ensuring that search engines can efficiently crawl, interpret, and index your content. For business owners, robust technical SEO translates into increased traffic, better user engagement, and ultimately, more revenue.
Why is Technical SEO Important?
For Your Organisation
When your site’s technical foundation is optimised, it directly contributes to better search visibility and higher traffic. By eliminating technical barriers, you make it easier for search engines to understand and rank your content. This increased visibility drives more potential customers to your site, boosting your bottom line.
For Your Customers
Your customers expect fast, intuitive, and secure online experiences. Technical SEO ensures your site meets these expectations, offering quick load times, easy navigation, and improvements that both customers and search engines love.
A tested process
1. Audit
Sometimes you will already have a clear problem identified, and we can work from there. But most the time we'll need to perform an audit first to gather a list of things we need to address.
2. Resources & Planning
From the audit we'll prioritise based on resources, who is involved, the impact of the issue and how much time we have. This stage is important for managing expectations.
3. Delivery
I deliver too - either working as a project manager within your team or I'm also happy to get stuck into the work myself. Whatever is best for your business is ultimately what we will go with.
The Tools & Resources I Use for Technical SEO
What Does a Technical SEO Audit Contain?
1. Crawling and Indexing
We analyze how effectively search engines navigate your site. This includes:
Crawl Budget Optimization: Ensuring that important pages are prioritized for crawling while excluding low-value pages using robots.txt, meta tags, and sitemaps.
Indexing Accuracy: Verifying that pages intended for search results are properly indexed while duplicates or irrelevant pages are excluded.
Canonicalization: Addressing duplicate content issues with proper canonical tags to consolidate link equity.
2. Site Speed and Performance
Speed is a critical ranking factor. We evaluate:
Render-Blocking Resources: Identifying CSS or JavaScript files that delay page load and restructuring them for faster delivery.
Core Web Vitals Optimization: Ensuring metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) meet Google’s benchmarks.
Image Optimization: Compressing and serving images in next-gen formats like WebP to reduce load times.
3. Mobile Usability
Google’s mobile-first indexing demands a flawless mobile experience. We assess:
Viewport Configuration: Ensuring the site adapts to different screen sizes without breaking the layout.
Tap Target Sizing: Analyzing interactive elements to ensure they’re easy to use on touchscreens.
Page Load on Mobile Networks: Testing and optimizing performance under slower 3G/4G conditions.
4. Site Structure and Navigation
A well-structured site enhances both user experience and crawlability. Key focus areas include:
Logical Hierarchy: Creating an intuitive structure with categories, subcategories, and internal links.
Breadcrumbs: Implementing breadcrumbs to help users and crawlers understand the site hierarchy.
Orphan Pages: Identifying and addressing pages with no internal links, ensuring every page is discoverable.
5. Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data enhances search visibility through rich snippets and other features. Our audit includes:
Schema Validation: Testing structured data against schema.org guidelines to avoid errors.
Implementation Check: Ensuring key elements like products, FAQs, and reviews are correctly tagged.
Enhancement Opportunities: Recommending new schemas to improve search appearance.
6. Security and Accessibility
A secure and inclusive website builds trust. We evaluate:
HTTPS Compliance: Ensuring SSL certificates are valid and site resources are secure.
Accessibility Standards: Auditing compliance with WCAG to ensure inclusivity for all users.
How I approach Technical SEO
Technical SEO is both a one-off project and an ongoing campaign component. We begin with a comprehensive audit to identify and resolve existing issues. Once your site’s foundation is solid, we continue monitoring and optimising its technical health to adapt to changes in search engine algorithms and user behavior. This dual approach ensures immediate improvements and long-term success.
Measuring the value of Technical SEO
We measure the success of our Technical SEO efforts using meaningful metrics that directly reflect the value we bring to your business.
Site Technical Health
Purpose: Overall technical health.
Metric: Ahrefs site audit health percentage score.
Goal: Improve % over time.
Impact: A better technical foundation leads to improved rankings and increased organic traffic.
Core Web Vitals
Purpose: User experience optimization.
Metric: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Goal: Meet or exceed Google’s benchmarks.
Impact: Enhanced user experience improves engagement, reduces bounce rates, and contributes to better rankings.
Organic Traffic Growth
Purpose: Increased visibility in search engines.
Metric: Organic sessions tracked in Google Analytics.
Goal: Continuous month-over-month traffic growth.
Impact: Higher traffic brings more leads, conversions, and revenue opportunities.
Index Coverage
Purpose: Ensure all valuable pages are indexed.
Metric: Valid pages in Google Search Console’s Index Coverage Report.
Goal: Increase the % of indexed pages.
Impact: Maximizing the visibility of your content ensures it can attract search traffic.
Crawl Errors Resolved
Purpose: Eliminate technical barriers to crawling.
Metric: Reduction in 404 errors and redirect chains reported by Screaming Frog or Search Console.
Goal: Minimise crawl errors to near-zero.
Impact: Improved crawl efficiency means search engines spend more time on your valuable pages.
