When it comes to bringing traffic to your website, SEO is one of the best ways. Many sites can get two-thirds of their traffic from Google and other search engines. However, for this to work, you need to be ranking high on the search engine results pages.
Studies have shown that those who are ranking in the top three results get the majority of traffic. Those not in the top three organic results receive significantly fewer visitors to their site. Yet it isn’t Google that’s restricting a brand’s ranking, it’s often simple technical SEO mistakes that can be hurting organic rankings.
Here Are 10 Technical Mistakes You Might Be Making That You Can Easily Resolve
1. Page Speed
Page speed directly hinders SEO. A user may give up on loading a webpage because of the lengthy loading time. You will find that speed also affects rankings indirectly due to an increased bounce rate and reduced dwelling time. You can alleviate this by testing your loading speed on applications such as Page Speed Insight and Webpage test on Google. In fact, in its algorithm, Google has indicated that page speed is one of the indicators used to rank pages. Some things that you can do to increase your page speed include using images that are no larger than they need to be (CSS sprites are an ideal template for recurring images such as buttons and icons). You can also cut back on the number of redirects to different pages, it will only add to the HTTP request-response cycle, and your visitors aren’t looking to play page tag. The faster the page speed, the higher the results.
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2. AMP Pages
AMP pages are a custom web-development framework that speeds up the loading time on mobile devices. The main point is to provide users with a fast experience with a page that acts as a stripped-down rendition of your primary page. Given the amount of content accessed via mobile, a bad mobile visit could put people off your site altogether. Even though the primary benefit of AMP pages is speed, there are other ways you can benefit from a solid AMP page. You get improved server performance; you have the opportunity to make your content accessible on AMP-only search engines. Also, if you’re an e-commerce site, you will attain a much higher conversion rate. They’re an ideal option if you are running a website with large quantities of content. And because they have provided your users with a more streamlined experience, you will benefit from a much higher comeback ratio.
3. Schema Structure
Schema structure is the code used to provide clear information to search engines to understand your content. For example, if you have the words’ structuringSEOforbetterbusiness’, any speaker of the English language can understand the meaning and split it into separates accordingly, each one carrying its purpose and its search results. But search engines are going to have a lot of trouble deciphering that meaning. And because it’s not precisely a recurring keyword, so you won’t come across it on any significant search engine. If your content is lacking in clarity or keywords, you’re looking at a weak schema structure.
Also, the schema isn’t just telling you what your content is, but what it means. For example, if you write the name of a person involved in your content, the schema structure won’t just highlight what it says, but associates the words with meaning, what is the person responsible and their standing in the community, which will strengthen their search results for people familiar with that individual. When writing up your SEO keywords, make sure you attach meaning in the markup, which will allow for a lot more precision when popping up in the search engine.
4. Unoptimized Images
A significant area for memory is within images on a website. Images, videos, and other rich media are essential for rankings. However, they are also memory intensive. Luckily there are ways around this. Firstly, use JPEG and PNG file types for images.
Next, ensure you’re running images through an optimizer and only uploading images at the desirable size. The smaller the size of the images, the less memory they take up.
5. Badly Optimised HTML/JavaScript/CSS Coding
The speed of your website can make a significant difference to your website’s performance. Every second it takes for your site to load will lose you 7% of your revenue. At the same time, poor loading times will result in lower ranks on Google.
One aspect that increases the load time of a website is the coding of the site. By optimizing the coding of the website, you can make it more efficient at loading code, improving user experience and your rankings. If your team does not know how to deal with javascript, you could always bring someone in to train them or get your tech team to take a few programmes.
6. SSL Certificate
Another critical aspect is making sure that you have a secure website. It is about getting an SSL certificate for your website. It’s represented on your site by the URL changing from http to https at the beginning.
You can get SSL certificates for free from some hosting providers. However, it is often more secure to get a paid one. They vary in cost from as little as £2 per month to £10 per month.
7. No Meta Title
The first, and rather obvious, is the meta title for a page. Many brands ignore this. In some cases, this can be a good idea. Especially if you have a brand where the initial search term to find you is your brand’s name. However, that is only for huge businesses.
Most businesses should be looking at what keywords are being used to find competitors or comparable products and inserting these into the meta title.
8. Content Delivery Network
If you’re looking to have your website visited by people across the world, then you’re going to need to look at a content delivery network. It is when several servers have your website available for download into the browser. When a user visits their website, the pages render from the closest server.
It speeds up delivery of the page to the user and makes your website faster and makes sense for international businesses that need speed across the world. Rankings do vary globally, so if you’ve got a slow website in one part of the world, then you will find ranker lower for that country.
However, should you be local, you could do without a CDN and have a server only in your area of operation.
9. Content Structure
Another point that other people make is not to optimize their content. Research has shown that pages with more content often perform better in search results. But this isn’t always possible for homepages. Still, you need to optimize content.
As well as ensuring you have enough keywords inserted into your homepage (but not too many), you should insert appropriate titles. It includes H1 to H4 titles. These should also include keywords in your content.
10. URL Structure
Another technical aspect you need is to ensure that you don’t have optimized URL structures for your website. URLs should be as short as possible and include keywords that are related to the content. Optimizing pages such as the about us and contact us page is challenging to do. However, service pages are easy to optimize for your website.
URLs should only be about three to five words long. Between words use dashes not underscores as the former is regarded as a space for search engines while an underscore is referencing two joined words.
Conclusion
Your SEO is important. With a good strategy, you can rank high and be sure that you can get more revenue and sales through your website. However, you and your team might need to learn some of the basic and advanced SEO techniques to ensure your website performs well.
A digital marketing and content curator at SoftwareSuggest, a software recommendation platform. I am passionate about Digital Marketing, and all things digital. Also interested in technology and innovation. In my spare time, enjoy playing cricket, and Badminton.
