Hey there, SEO enthusiasts and digital trailblazers! At SEOJust, we’re not just a team; we’re your navigators in the vast realm of digital excellence. So, what’s the buzz about Technical SEO Specialists? Well, buckle up because we’re about to take you on a journey through the nitty-gritty of SEO mastery.
Imagine your website as a high-performance engine, and our Technical SEO Specialists? They’re the mechanics of fine-tuning every component to ensure your digital presence runs smoother than a well-oiled machine. From optimizing code structures to enhancing site speed, these experts are the backstage wizards making sure your website isn’t just visible but shines brightly in the online spotlight.
Why does it matter, you ask? Well, in a world where the digital landscape is as competitive as a game night showdown, technical SEO becomes your secret weapon. It’s not just about ranking higher; it’s about creating a seamless, user-friendly experience that keeps your audience hooked.
So, get ready to dive deep into the world of Technical SEO Specialists with SEOJust. We’re not just about results; we’re about empowering you with the knowledge and strategies to conquer the digital realm. Stick around, and let’s amplify your digital journey together!
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to optimizing a website’s architecture, code, and other behind-the-scenes elements to improve its ability to be indexed, crawled, and ranked by search engines. It differs from regular SEO in that it focuses less on creating content and more on ensuring search engines can easily access and understand your content from a technical standpoint.
While regular SEO is focused on things like keyword optimization, link building, and content creation, technical SEO deals with making sure your site follows best practices related to:
- Site architecture – This includes elements like a proper XML sitemap, well-structured URLs, proper use of header tags (H1, H2, etc), and clear website navigation. Proper site architecture ensures search engines can easily crawl your site.
- Page speed – Fast page speed is crucial for SEO, and technical SEO specialists optimize images, minify code, and implement caching to improve site speed. This helps improve user experience and search engine crawling.
- Mobile optimization – With more and more searches happening on mobile, having a mobile-friendly and responsive site is necessary. Technical SEO ensures your site works on all devices.
- Indexing issues – Technical SEO troubleshoots any crawling or indexing issues to ensure search engines can properly access your site’s pages. This includes fixing things like duplicate content, solving server errors, and eliminating crawling roadblocks.
- Technical infrastructures – Technical SEO also deals with setting up the proper technical infrastructure, like implementing efficient hosting, CDNs to improve speed, proper URL conventions, and clean site maps.
Overall, technical SEO creates the proper website environment and infrastructure for your content to be indexed and ranked efficiently in search engines through optimization of site architecture, speed, and technical factors. It complements regular SEO by making sure your site can be understood and accessed by search engines.
Also Read: Search Engine Marketing Intelligence: A Guide for Busy Entrepreneurs
What Does Technical SEO Specialists Do?
A technical SEO specialist focuses on the behind-the-scenes optimization of a website to improve rankings, site speed, accessibility, and overall technical health. Their main responsibilities include:
- Auditing Site Architecture – A technical SEO will review the information architecture and ensure the site is structured logically to make content easy to find and navigate. They identify any issues with site indexation or problems crawling the site.
- Evaluating Site Speed – Page speed is a ranking factor, so a technical SEO will analyze page load times and implement fixes like compression, caching, optimizing images, removing render-blocking JavaScript, etc.
- Checking Accessibility – Making a website accessible for all users is important for SEO. A technical SEO specialist will check for ADA compliance, alt text, headings structure, color contrast, and other accessibility best practices.
- Identifying Technical SEO Issues – By auditing the website’s code, a technical SEO can find problems that may be hurting rankings and user experience, like duplicate content, broken links, incorrect use of tags, etc.
- Implementing Fixes and Improvements – Once issues are found, the technical SEO will implement solutions like XML sitemaps, meta tags, structured data markup, clean URL structures, and other optimizations.
- Collaborating with Developers – Technical SEOs work closely with a site’s developers and IT team to implement changes to code and website architecture. Strong communication skills are required.
The focus of a technical SEO specialist is purely on the behind-the-scenes health and optimization of the website. They enable proper site crawling, indexation, and performance to create a solid SEO foundation.
Also Read: How to Find Backlinks to a Specific Page
Technical SEO Skills and Expertise
A technical SEO specialist requires a unique blend of skills, including:
- Web development skills – A technical SEO expert needs to understand web development languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in order to analyze, troubleshoot, and improve a website’s code. They collaborate closely with developers to implement SEO recommendations.
- Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – Technical SEO specialists should have an in-depth understanding of HTML semantics and best practices for structuring web pages. They need to know how to optimize CSS for faster page speeds. And they must be able to implement JavaScript fixes to improve SEO.
- Understanding of site speed and core web vitals – Optimizing for site performance and core web vitals like LCP, FID, and CLS is a crucial technical SEO skill. Improving site speed can directly impact organic rankings and traffic. Technical SEO experts analyze site speed and make recommendations for improvements.
- Analytics and data analysis skills – Strong data analysis skills allow technical SEO specialists to track key metrics, diagnose problems, and measure the impact of changes. They should be proficient with tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and third-party tracking tools.
Having this diverse skillset allows technical SEO experts to examine and enhance a website’s technical SEO foundations holistically. Their specialized expertise makes them invaluable for identifying and fixing technical issues that impact SEO and user experience.
When to Hire a Technical SEO Specialists
Most businesses can benefit from having a technical SEO specialist on hand for website upgrades, migrations, troubleshooting, and auditing. Here are some of the key times when you’ll want to bring in a technical SEO expert:
Moving to a New Site or Platform
Migrating an existing website to a new domain, CMS, or ecommerce platform introduces a range of potential technical issues that can sabotage rankings and organic traffic. An experienced technical SEO can ensure the transition goes smoothly by:
- Mapping 301 redirects to preserve link equity
- Configuring XML sitemaps and robots.txt files
- Setting up proper URL structures and canonical tags
- Facilitating data migration and integrating systems
- Performing speed optimizations and server adjustments
With their technical expertise, a technical SEO specialist can overhaul site architecture and minimize ranking disruptions when moving to a new platform.
Seeing Issues with Organic Traffic or Rankings
A sudden drop in organic traffic or rankings is often a sign of technical problems. Some common culprits include:
- Indexation issues like pages not being crawled
- Duplicate content problems
- Slow page speed and site performance
- Structured data errors
- Problems with JavaScript rendering
A technical SEO audit can uncover the source of ranking declines or traffic drops. An expert can diagnose the problems and implement fixes to restore organic visibility and traffic levels.
Making Major Site Architecture Changes
Redesigning your website or making major information architecture changes like introducing new URL structures requires expertise to avoid problems. A technical SEO specialist can:
- Create proper redirects to preserve equity after URL changes
- Adjust internal linking structures
- Update sitemaps and optimize crawling
- Identify potential duplicate content risks
- Ensure URLs and site architecture meet best practices
With large-scale site architecture changes, don’t leave things to chance. Bringing in a technical SEO ensures high rankings and organic traffic are maintained.
Also Read: Unleashing the Power of Cutting-Edge Site Optimization Software
Technical SEO vs. On-page SEO
While technical SEO and on-page SEO are related, there are some key differences between the two disciplines:
- On-page SEO focuses on optimizing the content and structure of a web page itself. This includes things like:
- Using target keywords appropriately in headings, content, URLs, alt text, etc.
- Creating optimized page titles and meta descriptions
- Structuring pages and content for maximum findability and crawlability
- Ensuring fast page load speeds and minimal barriers to access
- Technical SEO, on the other hand, focuses on optimizing the behind-the-scenes technical elements of a website. This includes things like:
- Ensuring proper URL structure and accessibility
- Fixing indexation issues
- Implementing efficient site architecture
- Optimizing code efficiency and site performance
- Improving site security
- Enabling proper crawling and indexing
- Creating XML sitemaps and robots.txt files
- Setting up analytics and search console
- Debugging site errors and fixing broken links
So, on-page SEO is focused on optimizing the content and structure of individual pages. At the same time, technical SEO looks at the wider website architecture, site performance, and behind-the-scenes elements that impact SEO. Both are important for overall search visibility and ranking.
Collaborating with Developers
A key part of a technical SEO specialist’s role is collaborating with developers to implement optimizations and fixes. This requires excellent communication skills to convey technical needs and goals in a clear, actionable way.
Developers focus primarily on building a functional, high-performance site, while SEOs aim to maximize organic traffic and rankings. A technical SEO should guide developers on best practices that balance both priorities. For example, recommending lighter web fonts or compressed image formats to improve page speed while still maintaining design integrity.
When changes are needed, a technical SEO must be able to explain the purpose and expected impact in a way that developers can understand and replicate. Providing specific examples and documentation helps ensure proper implementation. Patience is also important, as not all recommendations may be feasible on the development side.
The technical SEO should approach developers as partners working towards a common goal, not order them to make changes. Fostering this collaborative relationship allows both roles to do their best work in service of the website’s success. With constructive teamwork, technical SEOs and developers can optimize websites on both a technical and visual level.
Fixing Common Technical SEO Issues
Technical SEO specialists are equipped to diagnose and resolve a variety of technical issues that can negatively impact a website’s performance in search. Here are some of the most common technical SEO issues they can help fix:
Slow Page Speed
Page speed is a ranking factor for Google and other search engines. Users expect pages to load quickly – slow load times lead to high bounce rates, which signals low quality to search engines. Technical SEOs can optimize images, minify code, and leverage caching to improve page speed. They’ll identify resources that are slowing pages down and make recommendations on how to optimize the site’s infrastructure.
Lack of Crawlability
In order for search engines to index a website, they need to be able to crawl the site architecture efficiently. Technical SEOs can identify crawl errors in the search console and implement fixes such as improving internal linking, eliminating soft 404s, fixing broken links, and creating XML sitemaps. Making a website crawlable for search engines is a fundamental technical SEO task.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content on a website can confuse search engines in terms of relevancy and page ranking. It can also lead to thin or low-quality content. Technical SEOs are able to identify duplicate content issues through crawling and audit tools. They can then eliminate duplicate content by canonicalizing pages, removing redundant pages or content, and improving unique page titles and meta descriptions.
Structured Data Errors
Structured data enables search engines to understand page content better. However, invalid structured data can get flagged by search engines and prevent rich results. Technical SEOs will audit structured data markup for errors using testing tools. They’ll fix issues such as incorrect data types, formatting problems, and missing required markup. Applying proper structured data is key for getting rich snippets in SERPs.
By leveraging technical SEOs to diagnose and resolve these types of common issues, websites can significantly improve their SEO foundations.
Technical SEO Best Practices
Technical SEO best practices focus on optimizing a website’s architecture, speed, metadata, indexing, and more to improve search engine visibility and performance. Here are some key technical SEO best practices to follow:
Optimize Site Architecture
- Use a search engine-friendly information architecture with a silo structure that groups similar content.
- Implement clean and consistent URL structures like example.com/category/page.
- Ensure internal links use relative paths, not full URLs.
- Limit the depth of navigation hierarchies on the site.
- Make sure pages can be accessed by a maximum of 1-3 clicks from the home page.
Improve Site Speed / Core Web Vitals
- Minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images to reduce page weight.
- Enable compression like GZIP.
- Leverage browser caching for static assets.
- Defer loading of non-critical resources.
- Optimize images and media files.
- Reduce redirects.
- Upgrade to faster web hosting if needed.
- Aim for Core Web Vitals targets of LCP < 2.5s, FID < 100ms, CLS < 0.1.
Fix Indexing and Crawling Issues
- Add a sitemap.xml and submit it to search engines.
- Fix broken links and 404 errors.
- Avoid blocking parts of a site using noindex or password protections.
- Ensure the site is crawled efficiently using robots.txt.
- Canonicalize similar content to avoid duplicate versions.
Implement Metadata Best Practices
- Include a title tag, meta description, and H1s for every page.
- Write high-quality, keyword-optimized titles and metadata.
- Ensure structured data markup is valid.
- Prevent duplicate and thin content issues.
Following technical SEO best practices helps search engines better understand, crawl, and index your website for optimal visibility. A site audit and fixes by a technical SEO specialist can greatly improve performance.
The Importance of Technical SEO
Technical SEO creates the foundation for all other SEO efforts and directly impacts search engine rankings and organic traffic. By optimizing site architecture, speed, and technical factors, technical SEO improves the user experience and supports conversions.
There are several reasons why technical SEO is critically important:
- Creates Foundation for All Other SEO: Technical optimization ensures that on-page content and links can be properly crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines. Without the technical foundation, other SEO activities will be less effective.
- Directly Impacts Rankings and Organic Traffic: Search engines use technical factors like site speed as ranking signals. Faster sites tend to outperform slower ones. Technical issues can also prevent pages from being crawled and indexed, directly limiting organic visibility and traffic.
- Improves User Experience and Conversions: Slow load times, broken links, and other technical problems degrade the user experience. By optimizing site speed, stability, and mobile-friendliness, technical SEO helps create a seamless experience that supports conversions.
In summary, technical SEO establishes the infrastructure and performance needed for search visibility and traffic. It enables other SEO efforts to be more successful. With a technically sound site architecture and user experience, companies can build their organic presence and fully capitalize on their SEO investments.
The Future of Technical SEO
As search engines continue to evolve, technical SEO specialists will need to adapt to stay ahead of the curve. Here are some of the key areas technical SEO experts should keep an eye on:
- Adapting to Google Algorithm Changes – Google rolls out hundreds of algorithm updates each year. Technical SEO specialists need to analyze how these updates impact rankings and make necessary adjustments. For example, page experience has become a key ranking factor. Optimizing for Core Web Vitals and enhancing overall UX is now crucial.
- Leveraging New Technologies – The rise of JavaScript frameworks like React has created new technical SEO challenges. Similarly, the adoption of accelerated mobile pages (AMP) requires adjustments. Technical SEO specialists need to optimize these technologies to ensure crawlability and indexation.
- Focusing on Page Experience Factors – Beyond just page speed, factors like layout shifts and visual stability now impact rankings. Technical SEO specialists need to collaborate with developers to create seamless page experiences optimized for site performance and engagement.
By continuously learning about the latest trends and changes in search, technical SEO specialists can evolve their skills and provide optimum value as search algorithms advance. Adaptability and expertise will be key strengths for technical SEO roles moving forward.
FAQs
What does an SEO specialist do?
SEO specialists play a pivotal role in enhancing a website’s online presence. They meticulously analyze keywords, audit content, and strategize to boost search rankings. By staying abreast of search engine algorithms, they implement tactics to increase organic traffic, improve user experience, and maximize digital visibility.
What is the role of technical SEO?
Technical SEO zeroes in on the structural and backend elements of a website. This includes optimizing site speed, ensuring mobile responsiveness, and implementing structured data. By fine-tuning these technical aspects, technical SEO ensures that search engines can efficiently crawl and index the site, contributing significantly to improved search rankings.
Is SEO a technical skill?
Absolutely, SEO is inherently a technical skill. While it encompasses strategic and creative components, mastering SEO requires a deep understanding of search engine algorithms, data analysis, and the ability to leverage various tools for optimization. A well-rounded SEO specialist possesses a blend of technical, analytical, and creative skills.
Does technical SEO require coding?
While coding skills can be advantageous in technical SEO, they are not mandatory. Understanding HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, however, facilitates effective communication with developers during the implementation of technical optimizations. This collaboration ensures that the website meets the technical criteria set by search engines for optimal performance.
How can I learn technical SEO?
Learning technical SEO involves a multi-faceted approach. Dive into online resources, enroll in specialized courses, and regularly engage with reputable SEO communities. Focus on aspects such as website architecture, performance enhancements, and structured data implementation. Practical application, experimentation, and staying updated on industry trends are key to mastering technical SEO.
Conclusion
In the grand symphony of digital strategies, our Technical SEO Specialists at SEOJust stand as the orchestrators of success. As you embark on your digital journey, remember that it’s not just about traffic; it’s about meaningful connections and conversions. Ready to elevate your digital game? Let SEOjust be your guide. Explore the possibilities, stay ahead in the SEO game, and witness your online presence transform. Ready for digital excellence? Dive in with SEOJust – where strategies meet success. Visit us now, and let’s reshape your digital narrative together!