Technical SEO : Backend Optimization
Technical Search Engine Optimization creates a friendly search engine environment that is cleanly coded and properly themed. Search Engines pay as much attention to what’s behind a website – its technical proficiencies – as much as it does what’s on the page. Technical SEO best practices include keeping current with search engine algorithm updates. It also improves site visitor experience because hyperlinks work and any missing images have text that can be read. The happy a User is with the experience, the more likely they are to come away a customer instead of a critic.
Focussing Inward to Improve SEO
Technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is also known as On-Page SEO. Technical SEO looks inward to get a website ready for the traffic that marketing SEO is designed to cultivate. This type of SEO is perhaps better called “Marketing” SEO. Most website owners are more familiar with marketing SEO which is actively and aggressively practiced. Technical SEO is familiar to web designers and programmers who routinely facilitate the latest knowledge especially in a new website build situation. Webmasters too know that certain processes and procedures are to be periodically monitored in their role as site caretaker.
There is a large group of websites that because of age or perhaps even because they have no webmaster are missing critical files, updates and minor fixes that improve search rank and user experience. Most website owners are more familiar with marketing SEO which they actively and aggressively practiced while being totally ignorant about how Technical SEO is affecting their website.
Technical Search Engine Optimization Compliance
Marketing SEO has its checklist of tasks. A very long checklist that begins and ends with content generation. Marketing SEO is a relentless quest to build awareness and engage an audience. Technical SEO on the other hand is a defined list of short-term activities designed to bring a website into compliance with search engine mandates. Technical SEO is a utility task. It’s not fancy, it’s not creative. Much of what is done for Technical SEO is never seen by the naked eye of a site visitor. But it’s necessary and necessarily important. These activities should be attended to routinely in the course of webmastering. They are a technical tonic to improve a slow, sluggish or poorly performing website.
Technical SEO is done for the most part to be in compliance with search engine best practices. Search spiders crawl a site’s backend looking for certain items that help them “read” what the site is about so to classify, categorize and ultimately call up as a search result page. Technical SEO helps search engine’s perform that primary function as efficiently and effectively as possible. Search Engines have billions of global websites to read both what’s on the page and what’s behind them. Sites that assist search engines in that quest are rewarded with higher search rank.
Common Technical SEO issues
The most common type of technical SEO issue is unoptimized images. Serving content without HTTP compression was also a common problem. Too many CSS image requests was also commonly found. CSS is Cascading Style Sheets, code in one file that determines the look of some content on all site pages such as top navigation and footer text. Finally, no caching of information which affects site speed.
Just as a car needs periodic oil changes, websites need periodic technical backend maintenance. SEO Tuneup is a technical SEO service.
