In the race to rank on search engine results pages such as Google’s, technical SEO plays a vital role. We talk a lot about keywords and content strategy when it comes to optimising your organic search, but bots first have to be able to index your website, and to make that reading easier, the first step is optimising the site’s technical side.
Of course, technical SEO work is always more effective when it is part of a fuller strategy:
A technical SEO analysis is the cornerstone for finding the different ways to improve a site technically. The job of SEO experts is therefore to run an in-depth SEO analysis across a wide range of technical criteria, from loading times to indexing problems, including the quality of the hosting, domain redirects and site structure.
A good technical SEO audit takes tools and, above all, solid knowledge of the algorithm and what it requires. And remember, the technical SEO audit must cover both the desktop and the mobile version of your website! Mobile optimisation is an integral part of technical SEO criteria.
Once the technical SEO audit is done, comes the phase of applying the recommendations to bring the website back in line with SEO best practice.
Although the technical SEO audit is the first step, a website’s technical optimisation should not be seen as a one-off job. Algorithm updates keep coming, technical requirements keep evolving, and problems can crop up at any time.
So the quality of technical SEO relies not only on SEO analysis, but also on tracking the site’s technical performance and monitoring its SEO compliance through regular technical SEO audits.
This technical compliance follow-up should be an integral part of your overall SEO strategy, alongside your content strategy and your backlink strategy.
Technical SEO criteria are always changing, which means your technical SEO strategy has to be reviewed continuously. Staying on top of best practice and carrying out technical SEO audits properly are therefore major strengths to stay at the top of SEO compliance, and they help you keep good rankings for the searches people make.
With dozens of updates a year, keeping track means constant training, which is exactly what digital agencies do.
Sitemap, robots.txt, site speed, tag placement, the right image formats or structured data (microdata) are all things that deserve attention in a technical SEO audit. There are so many points to check to find what needs optimising that theoretical knowledge alone is not enough.
The quality of a technical SEO audit therefore comes down to experience, having faced plenty of possible problems, to know how best to handle URL optimisation. Having already worked on a multilingual website, for example, to know how to handle hreflang or avoid duplicate content.
Knowing the power of internal linking on an ecommerce website to make the most of it. All this comes from hands-on work, and only in an agency do SEO experts face such a variety of problems, which helps them solve yours.
Optimising a website starts with being able to pass on the right technical SEO recommendations. A detailed, precise technical SEO report lets you prioritise tasks and actions.
Opening up indexing by working first on noindex URLs, making sure every page is served over HTTPS, that each title tag is in the right place, that bots move around the site properly: all this must be set out in a clear report with the data and the URLs concerned.
Being able to explain that technical report is just as essential, or you risk drowning in information. An agency’s quality lies not only in its SEO analysis but also in its ability to explain it to you. It’s teamwork!
As we said, technical SEO is not a one-shot job. Tracking how the site and its pages perform matters just as much to keep the site where it belongs in the SERPs. Monitoring SEO compliance with regular technical audits and comparing the site’s performance throughout the SEO engagement is essential.
Tools like Google Search Console help, but you also need to crawl the website.
Tracking technical SEO KPIs takes structured data and specific tools (often with paid licences) that agencies have. What’s more, SEO agencies can set up technical performance reports if you ask them. We certainly do!
Technical SEO is, as its name suggests, about purely technical criteria, but some of them relate to the technical side of content and links. When you work with an agency, the SEO expert carries out a cross-cutting SEO analysis and makes sure nothing gets in the way of the website’s overall optimisation.
User experience (UX/UI) is perhaps the optimisation pillar most closely tied to a website’s technical SEO. Making sure navigation works well for users also means making sure it works well for bots. On top of that, UX criteria are part of what search engines take into account.
Combining the two is called SXO (SEO + UX), and it usually brings a real jump in SERP rankings!
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Tracking and reporting on technical SEO performance is essential, of course, but overall rank tracking and broader traffic analysis help you work on the whole site. So we strongly recommend a proper SEO data analytics tool to follow the most important SEO KPIs and steer your entire digital strategy.
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Bringing in a developer when you want to optimise your technical SEO is always a good idea. The SEO expert’s recommendations from the technical audit have to be implemented, and that often means a webmaster stepping in (maintenance or an ongoing support contract).
If you don’t have the resources in-house, ask our agency about a maintenance service (or support contract) to make your life easier.
Likewise, the SEO audit sometimes reveals that the site has far too many technical SEO issues, and the only way to optimise it is a website redesign. In that case, it may be simpler to work with the same team for the whole project.
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Quite simply because technical SEO determines whether search engine bots can read your site properly. You can have the most consistent content, the most relevant content semantics or the best backlink profile: if your URLs don’t respond successfully and can’t be indexed for technical reasons, the site will never rank.
Of course! If your website was built with certain CMSs, you may hit limits when changing technical SEO criteria. Some platforms, for example, won’t let you make the changes needed to speed up the site, or won’t let you change the markup structure.
The technical SEO audit will show whether these blocking factors are too significant, and you may be advised to move to another technology through a website redesign.
Clearly not! Optimising a website cannot rest on technical SEO alone, even if it is the first step.
Working on the content and link building pillars is a must for a site that performs in the SERPs. Keyword research and a content audit (to check consistency and, above all, that your content is unique) help define the right editorial strategy and choose the right keywords to target. Checking keyword density in an article helps it perform better.
Reviewing your page tags lets you work in the main keywords and help search engines understand what each page is about.
Likewise, a backlink analysis shows whether a clean-up campaign is needed and what kinds of links your site needs to boost its authority.
Beyond the technical side, the three pillars of SEO have to be worked on together. It can be reassuring to have an SEO agency on your side for all-round SEO support.
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