{"id":136073,"date":"2019-08-07T21:00:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T21:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=136073"},"modified":"2020-02-13T17:28:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T17:28:05","slug":"steps-better-technical-seo-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/08\/07\/steps-better-technical-seo-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Five steps to deliver better technical SEO services to your clients"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking control of a site\u2019s technical SEO is both an art and a science. Take it from me — a content strategist guy at heart — technical SEO<\/a> requires a balance of knowledge, diligence, and grit to be proficient. And for many, it can feel both daunting and complicated undertaking such technical matters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But as code-heavy and cumbersome as technical SEO<\/a> may seem, grasping its core concepts are closely within reach for most search marketers. Yes, it helps to have HTML chops or a developer on hand to help implement scripts and such. However the idea of delivering top-tier technical SEO<\/a> services shouldn\u2019t feel as intimidating as it is for most agencies and consultants.<\/p>\n

To help dial-in the technical side of your SEO<\/a> services, I\u2019ve shared five places to start. These steps reflect the 80\/20 of technical SEO<\/a>, and much of what I have adopted from my code-savvy colleagues over the past decade.<\/p>\n

1. Verify Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Search Console; define conversions<\/h2>\n

If you maintain any ongoing SEO<\/a> engagements, it\u2019s critical to set up Google Analytics<\/a> or an equally sufficient web analytics<\/a> platform. Additionally, establishing Google Tag Manager<\/a> and Google Search Console<\/a> will provide you with further technical SEO<\/a> capabilities and information about a site\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

Beyond just verifying a site on these platforms, you\u2019ll want to define some KPI\u2019s and points of conversion. This may be as simple as tracking organic traffic and form submissions, or as advanced as setting-up five different conversion goals, such as form submissions, store purchases, PDF downloads, Facebook follows, email<\/a> sign-ups, etc. In short, without any form of conversion tracking in place, you\u2019re essentially going in blind.<\/p>\n

\"setting<\/p>\n

Determining how you measure a site\u2019s success is essential to delivering quality SEO<\/a> services. From a technical standpoint, both Google Search Console and Analytics<\/a> can provide critical insights<\/a> to help you make ongoing improvements. These include crawl errors, duplicate meta data, toxic links, bounce pages, and drop-offs, to name a few.<\/p>\n

2. Implement structured data markup<\/h2>\n

Implementing structured data markup has become an integral element to technical SEO<\/a>. Having been a topic of focus for Google in recent years, more and more search marketers are embracing ways to employ structured data markup, or Schema<\/a>, for their clients. In turn, many CMS platforms are now equipped with simple plugins and developer capabilities to implement Schema<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In essence, Schema<\/a> is a unique form of markup that was developed to help webmasters better communicate a site\u2019s content to search engines. By tagging certain elements of page\u2019s content<\/a> with Schema<\/a> markup (i.e. Reviews, Aggregate Rating, Business Location, Person, etc.,) you help Google and other search engines better interpret and display such content<\/a> to users.<\/p>\n

\"google's<\/p>\n

With this markup in place, your site\u2019s search visibility can improve with features like rich snippets<\/a>, expanded meta descriptions, and other enhanced listings that may offer a competitive advantage. Within Google Search Console, not only can use a handy validation tool<\/a> to help assess a site\u2019s markup, but this platform will also log any errors it finds regarding structured data.<\/p>\n

3. Regularly assess link toxicity<\/h2>\n

It should be no secret by now that poor quality links pointing to a site can hinder its ability to rank. Even more so, a site that has blatantly built links manually using keyword-stuffed anchor text is at high risk of being deindexed, or removed from Google entirely.<\/p>\n

If you just flashed back 10 years to a time when you built a few (hundred?) sketchy links to your site, then consider assessing the site\u2019s link toxicity. Toxic links coming from spammy sources can really ruin your credibility as a trusted site. As such, it\u2019s important to identify and to disavow<\/a> any links that may be hindering your rankings.<\/p>\n

\"technical<\/p>\n

[Not only does the <\/em>Backlink Audit Tool<\/em> in SEMRush make it easy to pinpoint potentially toxic links, but also to take the necessary measures to have certain links removed or disavowed.]<\/em><\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one SEO<\/a> variable that\u2019s sometimes out of your control, it\u2019s backlinks<\/a>. New, spammy links can arise out of nowhere, making you ponder existential questions about the Internet. Regularly checking-in with a site\u2019s backlinks<\/a> is a critical diligence in maintaining a healthy site for your SEO<\/a> clients.<\/p>\n

4. Consistently monitor site health, speed, and performance<\/h2>\n

An industry<\/a> standard tool to efficiently pinpoint technical bottlenecks for a site is GTmetrix. With this tool, you can discover key insights about a site\u2019s speed, health, and overall performance, along with actionable recommendations on how to improve such issues.<\/p>\n

No doubt, site speed has become a noteworthy ranking factor. It reflects Google\u2019s mission to serve search users with the best experience possible. As such, fast-loading sites are rewarded, and slow-loading sites will likely fail to realize their full SEO<\/a> potential.<\/p>\n

\"pagespeed<\/p>\n

In addition to GTmetrix, a couple additional tools<\/a> that help improve a site\u2019s speed and performance are Google PageSpeed Insights and Web.Dev. Similar to the recommendations offered by GTmetrix and SEMRush, these tools deliver easy-to-digest guidance backed by in-depth analysis across a number of variables.<\/p>\n

The pagespeed improvements provided by these tools can range from compressing images to minimizing redirects and server requests. In other words, some developer experience can be helpful here.<\/p>\n

A last core aspect of maintaining optimal site health is keeping crawl errors at a bare minimum. While actually quite simple to monitor, regularly fixing 404 errors and correcting crawl optimization issues<\/a> can help level-up your technical SEO services. These capabilities are available in the Site Audit Tool from SEMRush.<\/p>\n

\"technical<\/p>\n

[The intuitive breakdown of the Site Audit Tool\u2019s crawl report makes fixing errors a seamless process. Users can easily find broken links, error pages, inadequate titles and meta data, and other specifics to improve site health and performance.]<\/em><\/p>\n

5. Canonicalize pages and audit robots.txt<\/h2>\n

If there\u2019s one issue that\u2019s virtually unavoidable, it\u2019s discovering multiple versions of the same page, or duplicate content. As a rather hysterical example, I once came across a site with five iterations of the same \u201cabout us\u201d page:<\/p>\n