How to put your website at the top of search results? The answer would probably be the technical SEO strategy. In this article, you will find out everything about technical SEO, its benefits, and special features. Moreover, GBC Time has overviewed the recent report on the state of Technical SEO in 2023 and shared hey findings in the article below.
What is Technical SEO?
Simply put, Technical SEO is the website rating increase through technical improvement. This type of optimization provides better website recognition on the top search results. In other words, the site’s pages will be faster to load, easier to scan, and clearer for the users.
One of the most important tasks for Technical SEO is upgrading the website’s technical elements, which obviously makes it a part of the on-page SEO. More significantly, this optimization type is totally different from an off-page SEO, which is focused on generating traffic on the website through other channels.
Technical SEO benefits
Let us start with the basics, technical aspect of the website directly affects how fast the search engine will identify the content of the web page. In other words, your website will never be shown in the search results without a proper technical setup. However, Technical SEO has even more benefits, making it even more effective and helpful nowadays.
1. It is fast
These days, everything online must be loaded as fast as possible. Otherwise, users will choose another web page to get the information they need without wasting any more time. That is why, if your website is slow, your choice should be technical SEO.
Moreover, such a search teach giant as Google identifies the slow-loading websites and does not show them in the search results. Slow pages are the low-performance pages.
2. Less dead links
Even more frustrating than a slow website is an error page that does not even exist. If the link to your website is dead, users will see the Error 404 page, which cannot be even more driving to click on another website on the search suggestions. And Technical SEO is the key strategy in such cases.
3. Security first
One of the most significant benefits of the technical SEO optimization is security improvement. It guarantees your website visitors total security and reliable protection of the data.
Moreover, as soon as Google identifies your website as a secured one or HTTPS-implemented, the web page will be most likely suggested as the search result.
Since it became crystal clear that technical SEO has tons of benefits and additional functions, let us review some of the main achievements and further expectations in the market. Aira media recently posted the State of Technical SEO Report 2023, which tells about teverything and even more about this technique.
Biggest risks in Technical SEO
Undoubtedly, technical SEO cannot include just the benefits. The Aira media served responders to identify the biggest fears and challenges that any SEO specialist can face while working with Technical SEO optimization:
- Organizational lack of resources – 28%;
- Technical debt – 23%;
- Lack of support/authority for the team – 17%;
- Ongoing risks i.e., site updates without technical SEO signoff – 13%;
- Large risks e.g., site migrations – 10%;
- Unclear/changing guidance from Google – 5%;
- Lack of SEO A/B testing – 4%.
In other words, the major part of SEO specialists sees the inability to make changes as the biggest challenge in Technical SEO these days. At the same time, 23% of the responders see the surface level of change as another big problem in modern Technical SEO.
Martina Zrzavá Libřická commented on this survey by adding that all these responses are not unexpected but still alarming for the whole industry. She reminded the audience:
“SEO without technical SEO is like a car with a flat tire, it can drive but not much further therefore organizational lack of resources is frustrating.”
How to track Technical SEO performance?
According to the Aira survey, the most popular measure of performance tracking is Actual organic traffic (GA). 42% of the responders focus exactly on the GA measure to monitor the actual traffic on the website.
Another popular measure for SEOs these days is Conversions. 36% of the specialists look at the leads and revenues to identify the efficiency of the methods.
Talking of less popular measures for SEO specialists:
- 14 % choose Rankings;
- 4% prefer Visibility;
- 2% take Indexability;
- 1% choose Bounce rate;
- 1% pick Time on site.
Steph Greaves, an expert SEO specialist, shared her view on the survey and assured the audience that the conversions measure is definitely in the right place. “Is the content created to convert? If so, measure organic conversions and conversion rates and work to improve,” – she said.
When the Technical SEO shows the first fruits?
Technical SEO is certainly one of the most effective ways to improve your website rating, but how long it may take to see the first results? The majority of the SEOs (46%) are sure that it may take up to three months. 30% of the responders says that it can be even up to 6 months to see the first actual upgrades.
One of the SEO experts Adriana Stein that the result generation may take up to 6 months “because that is most often how long it takes businesses to implement a small foundational strategy.”
Top 5 Technical SEO tools in 2023
Despite the fact that the most popular answer was Google Search Console when the responders were hit with the question “Which tool would you choose, if you could pick just one”, the answers varied. In such cases, SEOs would definitely choose the Screaming Frog SEO Spider (39%). But the Google Search Console tool is still on the top, 21% of the responders would pick the feature from the tech giant.
The best eCommerce platform for Technical SEO
According to the Aira survey, only 69% of the SEOs had experience working on eCommerce platforms. Talking of the top platforms for the responders, the top list includes:
- Shopify – 33%;
- Woocommerce – 32%;
- Magento – 14%;
- BigCommerce – 4%;
- PrestaShop – 2%.
However, the Magento platform, which is in the top 3, is still considered to be the most problematic to work on among the SEOs. As Luce Rawlings said:
“Magento is a great solution for businesses that have a large inventory, but it is not an SEO-first solution.”
Guide on budgets for Technical SEO
The Aira media survey SEOs about their budget plans for cases when they use external agencies, freelancers, or contractors. But firstly, it is important to mention that 24% of the responders use external resources while working on technical SEO. At the same time, 76% of the SEOs prefer not to involve freelancers.
Those SEOs who use external resources also shared their average budget plans. According to the survey, the most popular choice is from $1 000 to $5 000 (42%). 30% of the SEO specialists invest a bit more – from $5 000 to $10 000.
Talking of prediction for the Technical SEO budgets, most of the responders expect to see no change in the budget size (66%). However, 15% are sure that this sum might increase in 2023, and 19% expect conversely to see a decrease.
Top skills for Technical SEO specialist in 2024
Technical SEO is one of the most multitasking jobs in the modern labor market. But still, it is possible to identify the most demanded skills for SEOs these days. According to the responders’ answers, the list of the top skills includes:
- Data analysis – 72%;
- Reading and understanding HTML/CSS – 58%;
- Content strategy – 39%;
- Commercial awareness such as profit/loss and revenue – 34%;
- Log file analysis – 29%;
- Reading and understanding JavaScript – 24%;
- Link building – 11%;
- Regex – 11%;
- Python – 7%;
- Writing HTML/CSS – 7%.
Summing up
As it concluded, Technical SEO is one of the most important and influential factors for website rating in search results. There will never be peak quality for a site these days. While the competition in any niche is incredibly high, you can always find something to improve the website from the inside. Technical SEO will help make your site more attractive to search engines and make it a technically perfect page.
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