Alright, chaps! Technical SEO , despite its name, hasn’t got to be overly technical, in matter-of-fact, if you follow these seven easy steps, you will have easily improved your businesses technical SEO . Before you throw in the towel and head to the local for a pint, stick around. We’ve got your back – and a bit of cheeky banter – to get you through it. Ready? Steady? SEO!

Summary

• The misunderstood world of site structures.
  Internal linking: The unsung hero.
  Canonical tags: More twisty than spaghetti junction.
  Faceted navigations: Helpful, but trickier than a bus schedule.

 

1. Site Structure: More Than Just Digital Foundations

We’ve all been to visit a building where you think, “Who designed this place?” For example it might be a department store, and it simply difficult to find the items that you want to purchase in that shop. Well, websites can feel the same. The heart of it, though? Site structure that is, any good online retailer should make it as easy and as simple as possible for their customers to find the products or the services that they want to purchase.

 

A look under the hood:

Page depth:

Ever felt like you’re navigating the London Underground during a strike? Same goes for clunky websites. Tools like Screaming Frog can help you suss it out. So what we mean by this is, leading digital marketing agencies, such as ours, will often spend a lot of time split testing, to make sure that we can improve the user experience, and help customers to find the products that they want easily and quickly.

Orphan pages:

Just like that lost sock in the dryer. Where do they come from? For example, some marketing companies post a lot of blog posts, that sometimes don’t have any internal links to product pages. However this is quite simply a missed opportunity, and the reason for that it is, let’s say that you are writing about 10 products, and they are energy efficient washing machine. Well rather than just talking about the washing machines within the blog post, you could actually link to the product pages, which helps the customer and it can also help to improve your SEO as well.

Navigation navigation:

Like road signs, but for your site. Are they doing their job? So for example, is your main menu very easy to use, or perhaps doesn’t look overly cluttered and confusing, so much so that you might put off a potential customer.
So for example, let’s say that you sell car parts, well you could have a drop-down menu, and this could list all the different parts that you sell. But wouldn’t it be better to ask the customer to enter their registration plates, then for them to type in the park they want, and then you just have a drop-down box to select the different brands that you stock.

Sure, this might take your web design agency and your web developers hundreds of hours to implement, but this can be the difference between the leading business, and a website which has a super high bounce rate, and therefore the SEO eventually fails.

So you have to put yourself in your customers shoes, how can you make it easier for them, how can you redesign the main menu?
In the example above, it would simply help to narrow down potentially thousands of different car parts, just to a few different brands that the customer can choose from. For example they might be buying a new clutch for their car, if they can just enter the car’s registration number, how all the car is, and then just enter the brand of the clutch that they want, well this will make it super easy for the customer to purchase the clutch they need.

 

Internal Linking: It’s All in the connections

Think of it as having a chat down the pub. One topic leads to another. Same goes for your website. Hierarchical and contextual links guide the convo.
Internal linking is very important, as we earlier mentioned, in our example about washing machines, if you’re writing a blog post, about your most 10 energy efficient washing machines, well why not intending link to those products?

•  broken links: fix any broken links
• Anchor text: Are your links saying “Oi, over here!” or just mumbling? Make sure your anchor text is well written and written in a white hat way
• Surrounding context: Every link’s got a story, mate.

 

Conclusion:

So, there you have it! A rundown of technical SEO, sprinkled with a bit of classic banter. While we all love a bit of fun, we’ve just mentioned some of the main issues here, but in your local search engine optimisation company, will most likely have to work on hundreds of technical SEO issues, ranging from rewriting all of the meta titles, through to fixing broken links, which might be causing 404 page errors. Dive in, tweak, and test. As a wise fellow, Einstein once said, “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

F.A.Q Section:

Why’s site structure so vital?

Because, mate, without it, your site’s like a house without proper plumbing. Essential! We are just joking, what we mean by this is it’s important to consider your site structure, yes with a simple website, and this can often be completed in say 10 minutes.
However if you run a large e-commerce website, socking over 10,000 products, well your web developers and also your appointed SEO agency, has to carefully consider how to structure your website, for example how should they design the main menu to help customers to easily find the products or services that they require.

Can’t I just trust my tools for SEO?

Tools are grand, but they’re starters. Would you trust a hammer to build an entire house? What we mean by this is often a marketing agency, that is a really good digital marketing agency like our company, our often needed to interpret what the SEO tools are saying, because sometimes, if the person hasn’t got a clue about SEO then they may optimise the website in a way that’s not white hat this could actually damage the businesses SEO.
So just as a good mechanic uses a diagnostic tool, to find a problem with the car, a good SEO company like ours will use various SEO tools to see where we can improve your businesses SEO.