Is Your Website Geek Strong? The Importance of Technical Search Engine Optimization
Maybe it is because we are a little biased, but marketing can absolutely be an exciting and fulfilling endeavor. In the same way you are naturally driven to provide the ultimate in service and your end product for a homeowner's construction or service needs, getting your marketing and advertising to work at peak performance is what we love to do. But not all of online marketing is glamorous. Sometimes, there are not-so-fun tasks that are incredibly vital for a well-established marketing presence. Often times, those types of important tasks fall in the realm of technical SEO.
What is Technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Without trying to put you to sleep, there are many parts of search engine optimization that are up for debate. Different SEOs representing different industries may have conflicting views on what really works, what doesn't work, what is "white hat" strategy, and what is a "black hat" tactic.
But what most everyone can agree upon is technical optimization. It is at the core of what goes into strong website development when you have search engine optimization and the user's experience in mind.
Examples of Good Technical SEO Opportunities That Many Websites Miss Out On
Menu Structure – Providing Information About Page Importance
Your menu structure helps people and search engines to better understand your website. The menu structure is one way that search engines can determine the importance of pages. Having the right shape of structure / internal linking / distance from the home page can help to better inform search engines of that information.
Schema – Expressing Data Directly To Search Engines
Structured Data, sometimes call "schema" code, helps to provide specific information regarding your website content directly to search engines. While there is a large library of possible structured data applications, there are some specific components that make the most sense for contractors.
- Company Type - To help search engines to better understand your website, you can identify yourself as a particular type of business, including a generic "HomeAndConstructionBusiness" type and more specific types including "Electrician", "GeneralContractor", "HVACBusiness", "HousePainter", "Locksmith", "Plumber", and "RoofingContractor".
- Review - Search engines can better understand your testimonials when you use specific schema code to identify reviewer names, star ratings, review counts, and more. When implemented correctly, Google sometimes add stars next to your website name within the ten blue links of the search engine results page.
- Logo / Social - To help develop your "Google Knowledge Panel", you can link information about your logo and your social media accounts with some specific schema implementations on your website.
- Postal Address & Phone Number - For the sake of local optimization, it makes sense to help connect-the-dots for Google and properly "mark up" references to your physical mailing address and phone number.
SSL – The New Gold Standard for Websites
It almost goes without saying today, but having a secure website is just standard operating procedure at this point. It is a technical matter that can be implemented with relative ease so long as you have the appropriate hosting plan and control of a website.
Redirects – Preserving Your Optimization History
If your business moves to a new building (aside from the NAP concerns), one of the first things you'll likely do is set up a forwarding address so that people can still connect with your business via your previous mailing address. The same process must happen with your website. When your website gets redesigned or moved to a different marketing service provider, you don't want to waste all of the optimization efforts from all of the previous page success. There are appropriate ways to "redirect" that traffic, just the same as a forwarding address for your snail mail. 301 Redirects help search engines to understand that the page "address" has been updated and that it can be found at a new location. In the end, it should help previous customers as well as any previous optimization efforts to be pushed over to the right place.
Sitemap – A Basic Roadmap Submitted to Search Engines
A sitemap is one of the original ways that webmasters presented the full website structure to search engines. It is basically a roadmap of the pages that should be "considered" for the sake of ranking. It is a simple tool that help search engines to better understand a website – and should be standard technical optimization practice.
PageSpeed – Meeting Current Speed Standards
We know that both people and search engines like fast loading website content. Using a variety of tools, including Google's own PageSpeed Testing program, you can find the specific parts of your website set up that need improvement – whether that is image compression, compressing code, or server related problems.
Why Should I Care About Good Technical SEO?
Technical SEO has very specific rules, especially when compared to the range of possible "best practices" when it comes to traditional organic or local optimization.
Clear rules = clear goals for improvement
While technical SEO goals always grow and change, they are also extremely measurable. That is to say, we can review something very specific like a Google PageSpeed test – analyze the results – and make specific tactical changes to improve page speed.
When we have that specific a rule set, we can have a better plan of attack. It is one of the few areas of optimization where we can make specific adjustments that we know can only positively and qualitatively improve the likelihood of success for your online marketing presence. That's why it makes so much sense to nail your technical optimization, where we have the most direct control of the situation. A solid technical SEO basis is the framework for a strong organic and local optimization effort.
About Chris Lonergan
Chris Lonergan has over 12 years of contractor marketing experience with Footbridge Media. With a background in web design, print design, content creation, and online marketing, Chris is focused on providing quality marketing and business solutions in the construction and service industries - helping small business owners to more efficiently manage their companies and grow their operations.
Chris Lonergan has previously contributed to and/or been featured in PM Magazine (Plumbing & Mechanical | Contractors x Engineers), theNEWS (ACHR - Air Conditioning | Heating | Refrigeration), Service Roundtable's blog, inPAINT Magazine, the SMB Marketing Agency Show, and the Green Industry Podcast. Chris is also a past SGI/CertainPath breakout session presenter.
