Pillars of SEO, Part I: Technical Integrity

If you think search engine optimization (SEO) is just about picking the right keywords to make your business’s website come up on the top of a search results page, think again! There are three critical components of SEO, which are technical integrity, relevance, and authority. An experienced Atlanta SEO company will be well versed in each of these areas.

These three components of SEO strategy are key to increasing your business’s search engine visibility, website traffic, and customer base. Let’s explore each one in depth, starting with technical integrity.

Getting Technical with SEO Tactics for Your Business

Keyword optimization and publishing effective, engaging content are important components of SEO, but there’s also a technical side that is focused on ensuring your website is set up in a way that can easily be crawled by search engines. A sound foundation of technical integrity gives your content the best possible chance to rank higher in search engine results, driving more traffic to your website.

With that in mind, here are six technical deliverables of SEO that need to be properly implemented to increase visibility for your business.

Robots.txt Files

This is a simple text file that tells search engine crawlers what parts of your site they are and are not permitted to access. While some businesses may want to allow search bots to access and index all of their web pages, others may want to restrict access to areas like the backend of the website or employee resources.

XML Sitemap

If the robots.txt file is the invitation for crawlers to access site pages, think of the XML sitemap as the roadmap or outline of where to go within the website. This makes it easier for search engines to crawl the entirety of your website’s content. An XML sitemap also contains metadata information for every page, such as when they were last updated and their relationship to other URLs within the website.

HTML Site Map

HTML site maps can usually be found in the footer area of a web page and act as a text version of your site’s navigation menu. This is beneficial for both search engine crawlers and website visitors looking for an easy way to locate topics and information on your website.

Does Your SEO Company Take Care of These Critical Technical Deliverables?

Custom 404 Page

Have you ever found your way to a dead web page? It happens, but a custom 404 page will provide an error message with clear directions for what the user should do next. They often provide the user with an additional action step, such as a search bar, to ensure they stay on your website instead of going back to search engines and landing on competing websites.

301 Redirects

Web pages don’t live forever, but a 301 redirect will help improve user navigation if you update or move a page’s URL. Using a 301 redirect prevents search engines from having to reindex changed URLs on your website. If you move the content from an old page to a new one, a 301 redirect will give back about 80% of the original page’s equity since it’s the same content hosted on a different page. Even if the user types in the old URL, they’ll be sent to the new and correct page.

Page Speed Audit

Potential customers don’t stay on slow-loading pages. How the site was built, the size of images, the use of JavaScript components, and even server settings can affect page speed. A Google page speed audit will provide insight into how quickly pages are loading, and what factors may be slowing them down. Earning a page speed audit score of at least 85 (out of 100) will go a long way to getting and keeping users on your website.

Understanding how search engines work to crawl and index your site can make the difference between a successful SEO campaign and falling off search engine results pages completely. To ensure your business’s website has the technical integrity it needs to stay visible to customers, contact the SEO specialists at Blueprint today.