We've all heard of the basics of SEO, but what about those areas that just require a bit of technical knowledge?
This is what we call technical SEO. I recognize that the phrase is pretty technical. In short, it's less about focusing on keyword optimization and more about understanding how search engines work to index your site. It's no less about making sure your images are search engine ready and more about things like rich snippets, sitemaps, and URL structure.
But wait a second. If it's so technical, why is it so common for people to implement these tips on their sites? Well, the good news is that it's not that technical. Everyone has the opportunity to use these tips, and many companies are doing their best to work on these SEO tactics. The only thing is that many people don't want to take the time to learn about these slightly more technical SEO topics, which creates a huge advantage for you.
With that in mind, let's take a look at some of the more technical areas of SEO and how to implement these tips in your online store.
Indexing of your site
To start with, we want to create something called an XML sitemap that can be submitted to multiple search engines. This sitemap is simply an outline of your website's pages and posts, making it easy for search engines like Google and Bing to crawl your website.
WordPress provides the simplest means of producing and submitting an XML sitemap. Simply install the Google XML Sitemap plugin on your WordPress site and it will automatically submit the sitemap to all search engines.
Create a sitemap here and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools if you don't use a WordPress website. Generally, search engines can automatically find your sitemap, but submitting it never hurts. Simply register your website with Google Webmaster Tools, go to the Scan tab on the left, and select Sitemap. You can then upload the sitemap file there.
Here are some other tips for getting your site indexed:
Broken Links
Use the broken link checker tool or WordPress plugin to find links that lead to non-existent pages. These pages are bad for your SEO and confuse people when they are on your site.
Use of redirects
When the URL of one of your pages changes, search engines have to re-index these URLs again. Instead of losing your previous linking power, simply redirect the page using a WordPress redirect plugin. You can also complete it manually by following the nice redirection guide compiled by WordTracker.
Robot.txt File
Robot.txt files are simple files that you can reference in Google Webmaster Tools to tell search engines which pages you don't want indexed on your site. In Google Webmaster Tools, go to the Scan tab on the left, then go to the robots.txt tester.
You can then include the pages you don't want indexed and check if other pages aren't indexed. Who knows, perhaps the lack of indexation is the reason one of your pages isn't doing properly.
Working With The Code
You really don't have to know how to code to improve SEO with code. You simply need to understand how your site works with these different types of code. The first thing to check is whether your menus use Javascript or Flash. These coding languages are often harder for search engines to crawl, which affects your SEO. The best thing you can do is research the website template you use before starting your site.
Sometimes code snippets affect your site speed which drastically hurts your SEO. Use a tool like Pingdom to evaluate your website's speed to those of other online resources in order to address issue. Take note of areas where you need improvement and talk to your site developers about moving CSS and Javascript to separate files or even optimizing images on your site.
Another area to consider is the rich snippets on your website. Rich snippets are simply the area of text that appears below the title of your website or page in a search engine. Pull content from your site while combining relevant content that matches what the person searched for. It often comes with a horrible appearance.
To check how rich snippets work, use Google's rich snippets testing tool. If the results make something ugly and useless, consider using a tool like All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets to improve the way users and search engines display search results.
Working With URLs
Editing and managing URLs is one of the simplest parts of technical SEO, but it's still important. To help you get started, consider these suggestions:
Track Your Website
A big part of SEO is checking the status of your website all the time and trying new methods. Do you know pages that do not receive many visits? Do you know the links and pages that are broken or do not bring much value to your visitors?
Are there certain keywords that most people search for, making them vital for future targeting of your marketing campaigns? All of these things are discovered when you start monitoring your website. This is especially helpful if you want to start focusing on local SEO, because you can find out where people are searching for your business and if you can take additional steps to target your marketing in a particular area.
What are your best monitoring tools?
Conclusion
Yes, there are many WordPress plugins and other tools to automate SEO on your website. Yes, you can put some keywords in your blog posts and optimize your images, but the technical areas of SEO are where your site can jump above the competition and start climbing the search engine rankings.
In general, technical SEO ensures that your site performs the way search engines want it to perform. It could get you up a few spots in the search engines and that could mean the difference between a record year of sales and a few cents.
Let us know in the comments section if you have any other technical SEO tips for ecommerce webmasters. Share your thoughts if you have any questions about how to implement these technical SEO tactics.
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