This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
For your business to be found via Google, you need Search Engine Optimisation, or most commonly known as SEO.
While keyword research, quality backlinks, engaging content are vital to a successful SEO strategy – they also need to be supported by iron-clad technical foundations.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO
Technical SEO
These more complex aspects of SEO aren’t necessarily as obvious, visible, or intuitive as the likes of keyword research, but in the hands of our SEO specialists at Platform81, websites can become far easier for Google and similar search engines to crawl and index.
Or, to put it another way: your customers will struggle to find your site unless Google can get there first.
What does technical SEO look like?
Examples of technical SEO vary, and many of them aren’t necessarily day-to-day concerns. Instead, they will often be ‘baked into the crust’ of your website – either at the point of creation or through technical optimisation processes.
Though terms like crawling, robots, and HTTPS implementation can sound intimidating (or, potentially, just a tiny bit dull), it’s important not to shy away from establishing strong technical SEO optimisation – especially since the qualities that search engines like also happen to be qualities that make your site more pleasant and appealing for visitors too.
With that in mind, it’s worth taking a deep breath and braving the world of ‘crawling’: a process through which search engines like Google visit web pages by discovering their URLs and taking a look around the site.
How crawlable is your site?
Even at this early stage, it’s possible for non-optimised sites to slip up. Google’s crawling robots can be given some direction via your site’s “robots.txt” file – but it’s all too easy to mishandle the file and block the robots from their important crawling activities.
A robust technical backdrop will ensure that Google’s robots are capable of crawling the site in the first place, while creating and submitting a sitemap can help Google to find and crawl your site.
Once the robot has achieved this, it moves on to indexing – that is, it tries to work out what a given page is about by analysing text, images, and other features. When it’s finished, the site is added to Google’s index, and – assuming the site employs good technical SEO practices – used to answer search queries.
As with crawling, it’s possible to accidentally reduce the indexability of your site. According to Google, common indexing issues can include:
- Low quality site content
- Meta directives disallowing indexing
- Poor website design
That’s why our talented SEO team are keen to ensure that the content customers see is as robust as the meta data visible only to search engines.
So, how does a technically optimised site look and feel?
Optimising invisible issues
In addition to the behind-the-scenes measures described above, a site underpinned by robust technical SEO practices will be fast – after all, Google and other search engines don’t want to recommend websites with poor loading speeds.
Good technical SEO also means addressing the tricky problem of duplication. Search engines are known to penalise pages that have the same content as other pages across a given site – and, since multiple URLs can inadvertently lead to the same page, duplication can happen without your knowledge.
This kind of invisible issue, which requires a technical solution called a canonical URL, is exactly why holistic SEO specialists like our Platform81 team are so vital for companies who want a comprehensive and in-depth overhaul of their SEO practices and infrastructure alike.
Search engines are complex and demanding – but once they’ve been persuaded to recognise the quality of your site on a technical level, we can turn our attention to the more familiar (but no less vital) optimisation strategies like content, image tags, and those all-important link building opportunities.
How can Platform81 help?
As its name suggests, technical SEO is, well, technical. It’s the kind of complex task that our SEO team relish.
By enlisting Platform81, your site will benefit from a holistic examination and overhaul of its technical foundations, ensuring that every factor impacting visibility has been optimised from the ground up.
From the quality of your content to the meta directives beneath it, we’ll make sure your website is fit for the very top of the SERPs.