Creating Better Websites Through Technical SEO

There’s a lot of hard work that goes into creating a website.

12:24 16 September 2019

Depending on the purpose and intended audience of the site, the way it’s coded can vary greatly. Creating a website also means it needs to not only perform the way it’s intended to, but also be made to follow a certain aesthetic that works for the audience it was built for.

More importantly, websites need to be visible. With the number of websites that are competing for the attention of a user’s screen, websites need to find a way to be seen by their target audience. This is where the search engines come in.

Search engines are like the yellow pages of the digital world. They index and catalog every single website that has been made available to the public and with one click of the search button, run algorithms to help users find a website that is most relevant to their query. Optimizing a website to be the most relevant option for a query can help a site achieve its intended purpose. This is what technical SEOs can do for any website. 

BestSEOCompanies.com recommends implementing a few things that can help a site be optimized for search engines:

Address mobile compatibility

Most people are on their mobile phones, so making sure that a website is mobile-friendly can increase the chances of it appearing in search queries made using mobile devices.

Upgrade site security

Because of the growing danger of cyber attacks, most search engines are moving away from indexing and cataloging websites that are not secure. Having the HTTPS extension on a website helps it climb up the search rankings as they get prioritized by search engines.

Improve load times

Improvements in network technology have produced faster and faster internet speeds, so it’s no surprise that people expect webpages to load quickly as well. The faster the website loads, the more traffic it can expect to see. Something as simple as resizing or compressing images in a site can help improve website load times.

Reassess the sitemap

A sitemap is an important file that search engines use to help index a website more accurately. If the website in question does not have a sitemap, or has submitted an outdated one, chances are it won’t show up on the first few pages of search results. Improving the sitemap to make it more condensed and organized will help search engines crawl it more intelligently.

Check for broken links

Broken links mean that the host server was unable to find the page the link leads to. This leads to poor user experience and loss in traffic. Too many broken links might even get the website manually flagged by search engines. Reducing the amount of broken links in a site helps keep the traffic going.

Use shorter URLs

Having long, alphanumeric URLs that direct users to different pages of a website can reduce the visibility of a site. Most sites gain visibility through their shareability, and a URL that is short and easy to memorize is more likely to be shared on social media channels. URLs can be analyzed and improved using URL delimiter tools to improve their shareability.

Following these tips can help improve the relationship of a website to search engines, which will in turn result in a site that ranks high on search engines and fulfills the function it was created for.