A good bill of health starts with a strong technical foundation.
You Can't Sweep Technical SEO Under the Rug
Today, investing in technical SEO services isn’t just optional, it’s necessary. If you want to be found organically by online users, technical SEO services will help you get seen. Elevato’s tech SEO team specializes in helping clients boost organic search rankings to increase traffic and conversions.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to the process of optimizing the technical aspects of a website to improve its ranking in search engine results. This facet of search engine optimization focuses on enhancing the infrastructure of a website to ensure it is accessible, efficient, and effective at communicating with search engine algorithms.
Key elements of technical SEO include optimizing site speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, implementing structured data, and improving URL structures. It also involves creating and managing an XML sitemap, optimizing robots.txt to guide search engine crawlers, and ensuring proper redirect practices.
Furthermore, technical SEO addresses server-side factors like HTTPS security protocols and the reliability of hosting services. By fine-tuning these technical details, a website can achieve better crawling and indexing, which are crucial for improving online visibility and user experience.
Why Work with a Technical SEO Agency?
Working with a technical SEO agency can dramatically enhance your website’s visibility and functionality. Technical SEO agencies like Elevato delve deep into the technical framework of your website to identify and resolve complex issues that could be hindering your site’s performance in search engine results.
By optimizing the architecture of your website, improving load speeds, and ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly, our team helps to ensure that search engines can efficiently crawl and index your content. This meticulous attention to the technical details not only boosts your rankings but also enhances user experience, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Moreover, with our expertise in the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes, Elevato can keep your website ahead of competitors and compliant with best practices, safeguarding your online presence and investment.
Our Technical SEO Audit Process
At Elevato, our technical SEO includes an 8 pillar audit approach. This ensures that we investigate every aspect of your website and online presence.
The 8 pillar SEO audit focuses on analyzing the 8 core “pillars” of SEO. Those pillars being: technical SEO, keyword analysis, on-page tagging, website content, user experience, backlinks, visibility, and reporting and strategy.
1. Technical SEO
This pillar of the audit checks for technical website issues such as broken links, slow servers, insecure content, and improper site structure. We consider this pillar to be the foundational work because we first need to ensure that all critical errors that affect keyword rankings and user experience are fixed before we can execute an effective strategy.
2. Keyword Analysis
This pillar of the audit identifies core, secondary, and long-tail keywords to target for optimum rankings and search traffic. We consider this to be the discovery phase because we not only look into what keywords all of your existing pages should be ranking for but also new keywords for additional service pages, blog posts, guides, etc. that can bring in more qualified leads.
3. On-page Tagging
This pillar of the audit focuses on important site metadata such as title tags, description tags, heading tags, and image optimization. In this pillar we assign keywords to all existing pages and then optimize the metadata for those keywords to ensure they can rank well on Google.
4. Content
This pillar of the audit ensures that your website content is unique, readable, and ready to outrank the competition. To make sure the content is optimal for any given keyword we look at the following requirements: word count, keyword density, search intent, does the content cover the same points as the competition as well as new insights to provide additional value to the reader, etc. We also focus on topical authority, where we create pillar content that serves as the cornerstone for your site’s thematic clusters. These pillar pages are strategically linked to related content clusters, creating a hierarchical structure that not only enhances the rankings of your pillar pages but also targets long-tail and informational keywords that contribute to a more comprehensive SEO strategy.
5. User Experience
Search engines take overall user experience into consideration when determining rankings. This pillar of the audit ensures that your site provides a good experience for your visitors. In this pillar, we look at usability & conversion rate, mobile responsiveness, time on site, CTR, CTAs, and the overall sales funnel. We then identify areas of improvement to help users make their way down the sales funnel as smoothly as possible.
6. Backlinks
Links to your website (aka backlinks) are incredibly important for SEO rankings. This pillar of the audit looks closely at the backlinks of both your website and your competitors. We analyze the gap in domain authority between you and your competition as well as the competition’s link velocity to make sure we can create an effective link-building strategy that drives results.
7. Visibility
SEO visibility is more important than ever. This pillar of the audit analyzes and optimizes your local SEO and business listings. This is extremely important for both local and national websites. Google trusts websites that have consistency in NAP information across the web. So in this phase we focus on adding the clients NAP information to popular directories and business listings across the internet. We also focus on creating the proper schema markup to send additional information to Google about the website, the services it offers, and the locations that the services are offered in.
8. Reporting & Strategy
We have created a cycle that systematically generates successful strategies for our clients. This system is adaptable as the SEO landscape changes. We perform this audit regularly on a revolving basis to report on and evaluate success, re-adjust goals, and continue to build the best strategies possible. In this pillar, we take all of the data that we have analyzed in pillars 1 through 7 and create an optimal strategy to drive results as quickly as possible over the next 3 months.
The 8 pillar SEO audit process occurs quarterly. This allows us to systematically and regularly identify the best strategy for a client’s campaign based on measurable data and bold innovation, even in an ever-changing environment. We execute this strategy on a monthly basis with regular deliverables.
Technical SEO Statistics
1. The top-ranking search result gets the most search traffic 49% of the time.
This statistic shares how important it is to get the top spot on the search engine results page (SERP) for keywords relevant to your business. With most people clicking on the top one or two search results, it’s vital you climb the ranks to get the best chance at organic traffic.
2. 50-65% of all number-one spots are dominated by featured snippets.
This statistic shows the significance of optimizing pages for featured snippets. Featured snippets are the short answers to a queries that appear above the organic search results. This position zero is difficult to achieve without guidance from SEO experts.
3. Only 33% of websites pass the Core Web Vitals threshold.
Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics developed by Google are used to measure a website’s performance and user experience. Only a third of websites pass the thresholds that Google has set for high website performance. Working with a technical SEO agency ensures you fall into this minority.
4. 59.5% of sites have missing H1 tags.
Don’t let you site fall into this category. H1 tags are essential for telling Google and users what a page is about. Elevato can run a quick audit to see what pages on your site are missing H1 tags and address the issue promptly.
5. 58.67% of website traffic worldwide comes from mobile users.
These days, mobile search has become more common than desktop search. With this knowledge, websites need to be mobile-friendly to get the most organic traffic and avoid users bouncing off the site. Elevato’s technical SEO services help businesses ensure their web pages are optimized for mobile website traffic.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is technical SEO and how does it differ from regular SEO?
Technical SEO focuses specifically on optimizing the infrastructure of your website to improve search engine rankings. It deals with elements like site speed, mobile responsiveness, and crawlability, whereas regular SEO also includes content optimization, keyword research, and link building.
Why is technical SEO important for my website?
Technical SEO is crucial because it ensures that search engines can effectively crawl and index your site. Without it, even the best content may not perform well in search results if search engines struggle to access and interpret your site’s structure.
Can technical SEO improve website speed?
Yes, part of technical SEO involves optimizing the speed of your website by reducing file sizes, improving server response times, and implementing modern coding practices. Faster websites provide a better user experience and are favored by search engines.
Does technical SEO include security features?
Yes, technical SEO encompasses website security measures like implementing HTTPS to ensure secure connections and protecting users’ data, which also contributes to higher search rankings.
How does technical SEO impact mobile users?
Technical SEO includes optimizing for mobile devices to ensure the site displays correctly on smaller screens, loads quickly, and provides a good user experience, which is essential as mobile traffic continues to grow.
What happens if I ignore technical SEO?
Ignoring technical SEO can lead to issues like slow site speed, poor user experience, and decreased visibility in search results, ultimately affecting your site’s ability to attract and retain visitors. Technical SEO issues can cause big problems for your website and significantly hurt organic traffic.
What is structured data markup and why is it important for SEO?
Structured data refers to specific code formats that help search engines understand the content of your website and provide rich snippets — detailed information that appears in search results, enhancing visibility and click-through rates.
Can I do technical SEO myself or should I hire an expert?
While some basic aspects of technical SEO can be handled personally if you have the expertise, it’s often beneficial to hire an expert or agency that specializes in technical SEO due to the complex and technical nature of the work involved. Top technical SEO companies provide quality services to help your website perform at its best.
Reach Out Today to the Technical SEO Experts
Elevato is a top-rated technical SEO company that provides comprehensive services to clients to promote growth and boost organic traffic. If you are seeking guidance on technical SEO, our technical SEO specialists are ready to help. Our team holds the technical SEO expertise you’re looking for and can help improve your site’s SEO performance. Elevato also provides a full suite of digital marketing services to complement technical SEO efforts.
Schedule a free consultation to see how our 8 pillar technical SEO audits can help you.