Importance of Technical SEO 2017 and Beyond [Infographic]

Is your business already on the web? Great!  Studies by BIA/Kelsey show that 97% of consumers search online for products and services they need.

It goes without saying that targeted leads are what the majority of businesses aim for, and it can be attained through effective organic SEO.

Importance of SEO: improving your organic search rankings

A report by Outbrain tells us that Google is the top traffic source to content pages, contributing on average of 68% of a website’s traffic.

The beauty of SEO is that smaller sites stand a chance against big brands in ranking on the results page. Hence, when used as a engine for growth for startups and SMEs, SEO can be extremely powerful.

We all know that Google loves quality content. In fact, you must have heard a million times that ‘content is king’. So ever since you started thinking seriously about SEO, you have been fervently producing content.

However, the focus on content completes only part of the SEO puzzle. In order to give your content ‘wings’, you must not overlook the importance of technical SEO.

Apart from getting your website ready for easy crawling by Google, technical SEO efforts give you substantial structural leverage for better visibility on search engines.

History of Technical SEO

Just a few years back, all a website needed for higher search engine ranking was a well-developed structure, images, keyword rich meta tags and keyword stuffed pages.

But now, the scenario has changed. As illustrated in the infographic below, recent years have seen a lot of new requirements on the technical SEO scene.

As part of their effort to provide users with better quality websites on the search engine, Google has been raising the bar for webmasters and becoming less tolerant of suspect practices.

For example, if you are trying to hide links or stuff your pages with keywords , Google is going to pick it up quickly. Advances in technology has also improved the spiders’ ability to pinpoint these issues.

Most recently, even interstitials has been classified as misconduct from an SEO perspective and sites using them will see declines in rankings. Needless to say, thousands of sites have been adversely affected.

Technical SEO

If you look at each of the items outlined in the infographic, it is not to hard to predict Google’s next move. Everything they roll out is in the interest of users, whether we are talking about the mobile update or the new requirement in security.

Interestingly, as a webmaster, SEO benefit aside, the implementation of the requirements is actually to the advantage of your website and its users.

For example, Reddit found that, every time they increase site speed, their page views and users increase. It is a direct relationship.

Hence, technical SEO guidelines may just be Google’s way of telling webmasters how they can serve their users better.

After all, this tech giant is about making the web a better place.  As such, you may want to seriously look into the individual items in the infographic to improve the functionality of the website.

Who knows, your income may just go up. Higher Google rankings would definitely be a sweet bonus.

What To Do Now ?

Is the term ‘technical’ making you somewhat uneasy? There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. It involves everything that is done on your website apart from the content and link building.

It takes into consideration a number of things, namely loading speed, mobile-friendliness, versions of site, and uniqueness of content, amongst others.

If some of these aspects are not taken care of, there is even a high possibility that you will be penalized by the search engines.

If you are game for some DIY work, the use of WordPress and its endless list of plugins can do wonders for you. For a start, be sure to install the Yoast SEO plugin.

So in the year 2017, go beyond keyword rich meta titles, optimized images, keyword filled pages or well-developed website structure, and start thinking ‘technical’ for increased targeted traffic.  By doing so, it is only a matter of time that floods of highly target traffic will come your way.

For more elaboration and recommendation of technical SEO best practices, see the infographic below. Click on it to see the original in a higher resolution.

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Ted Chong

Digital Marketing Director at Ice Cube Marketing

Ted runs Ice Cube Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Singapore that helps local small businesses acquire leads from channels such as Facebook and Google.

Latest posts by Ted Chong (see all)

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