What is Technical SEO?

So you’ve optimized your content, researched your keywords, configured your meta descriptions, but what more can you do in terms of your site’s SEO?

SEO can be thought of in three main concepts that work together to make your site more appealing to a search engine. These three concepts are:

On-Page – this section deals with the content that is provided by your website. This is where optimizing your content and keywords come into play.
Off-Page – These are the inbound links coming from other relevant sites giving your site a sense of authority. You can think of this as the promotion section.
Technical – This deals with everything else that the content does not cover. We will be discussing this side of SEO in this post.

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the optimization of your website in order to rank better. There are many facets of site optimization that could affect how your website is crawled and indexed by a search engine. The better your site performs, the better it will rank.

What can I do to better optimize my site?

First things first, your site needs to load quickly and efficiently. You can use tools such as Google Developer tools or Pingdom Speed test to see how your site is currently performing. These tools will not only give you metrics but also suggestions on how to improve. These suggestions include things such as compressing images, Remove render-blocking JavaScript, leverage browser caching, etc. Addressing these suggestions can increase your page performance and therefore your rankings.

Next, you want to make sure that your site is mobile friendly. In 2018 mobile devices made up 58% of site visits and 50% of the bounce rate. You can test this using the google mobile-friendly testing tool (https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly).

You then need to optimize your site architecture. You can create HTML and XML sitemaps that will list out the URLs present on your site. As robots crawl your site, these sitemaps direct the robots where to go. The simpler the sitemaps are to follow the better the ranking. This can be difficult as a site grows and get more inflated and more difficult to navigate. Essentially you want no more than 4 clicks to navigate to your content.

Finally, fix any errors that occur during the crawling phase. You don’t want to have a confused robot navigating through a tangled web of redirects and non-existent pages. This can be achieved by limiting the number of redirects and 404 errors. You want the robot to navigate through your site easily and efficiently. If a robot hits these errors, chances are so will a visitor on your site. You can see where these errors occur on your site’s search console if you navigate to “Crawl > Crawl Errors”. This will show you where the errors occur as well as the inbound links that go to the error.

Back to All Insights

Brittany Mathisen

2023-09-27

OTM has been a wonderful marketing partner for the last four years. We have shifted marketing plans over time and they are very open and explained all the details as we moved forward with new plans. They have done everything from help design and update offices, managed social media, planning marketing events, and many more things. The Hear for Holidays Event that we do each year is one of my favorite events that we work on together. Rachel and the whole OTM team have brought my marketing vision to life and I love everything they have done for my business. I look forward to what the future holds as we continue to work together.

Yvonne Myers

2023-07-30

I worked with Old Town Media (OTM) on a quick grant project that had a 6-week timeline. They were very thoughtful about whether they could meet the grant expectations and needs before accepting the work. The team at OTM then completed extensive research and facilitated focus groups to ensure the product they created met the needs of the end-users. They met all of the grant deadlines and far exceeded our expectations of the portal they created for us! I would not hesitate to use their services again and highly recommend them to others looking for a professional, high quality, and FUN team to work with.

Julie Dokoupil

2023-07-18

OTM is a locally owned firm that I have worked with for over 13 years. They are an amazing team of people who know and understand current marketing technology and strategies. My husband and I are starting a new business and they have helped us out even with small details to get our business going.

TunDesign

2023-06-20

I have seen a significant increase in community engagement which has helped bolster our brand presence, exceeding the expectations of the entire team. Carrie and her team provides consistent communication through slack and emails which has led to an effective and trusted partnership. Truly appreciate how hard-working, agile, and driven everyone on the team is. Thanks again for eveything your team has done for our company.

David Haase

2023-06-07

OTM has done a fantastic job bringing the Fort Collins Peach Festival back to the public! OTM is dealing with several volunteers on a committee and keeping everyone informed, best in business advice and a platform that will serve us for years. We didn't know what we needed and were presented with choices and educated about each before implementation. Kerrie and Brianna have done great work for us! Dave Haase Committee Chair Fort Collins Peach Festival

Dana Sednek

2023-03-15

Using their Path to Growth Model, OTM not only gave me a path forward, but they helped me clarify my strategy, direction, and actions for how to set and launch my business. I was able to launch quickly and I see the flywheel ahead that is necessary to accelerate customer intake and revenue building. Thrilled with the outcome!!!

Liza Adams

2023-01-13

As the Head of Marketing at Encompass Technologies, I considered Old Town Media an extension of our marketing team. OTM worked closely with us on rebranding and repositioning, multiple industry-first product launches, key industry events, and integrated demand generation campaigns while we grew our marketing team and acquired new companies. With the help of OTM, we grew our pipeline and bested industry benchmarks for Software as a Service (SaaS) sales and marketing efficiency metrics. We came to rely on OTM for tactical execution to augment our team but where they added the most value was in our rebranding strategy and market positioning efforts. OTM played an integral role in conducting research and deeply understanding our market dynamics, ideal customer profile, customer challenges, competitive landscape, products and innovation, key differentiators, vision, and mission. This was no easy feat with a highly complex ecosystem, multiple segments, wide variety of audiences, and a broad array of products. Armed with market insights, OTM helped us develop a compelling brand, an inspirational story reflecting our vision and strategy, a unique and defensible market position, and messaging that was relevant to our target audiences. I appreciated that the team was respectful and empathetic, intently curious, insightful with their observations and recommendations, and candid with their feedback. OTM set realistic expectations about deliverables/scope, level of effort, roles, timeline, and cost. The team was responsive, highly collaborative, and open to suggestions. OTM plugged our expertise and resource gaps which allowed us to break the compromise between doing good work and doing it quickly. On top of that, they were fun to work with. OTM was truly a partner of the business.

Eric Dengler

2023-01-11

Great team! Small company service. Big firm power and expertise.

zach fulton

2023-01-06

Simply put, OTM is a well oiled machine! Thanks for all you do

What is Technical SEO?

What is Technical SEO?

What can I do to better optimize my site?

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