What's technical SEO
Why Technical SEO Is Essential
In our experience, Google is not very forgiving if you cannot keep your house in order, especially regarding accessibility, site speed and broken links.
Our technical SEO knowledge & Execution is superior
Although many digital marketing service providers want you to believe that creating a technically perfectly SEOed website is the answer to gaining a #1 position in Google, it is NOT TRUE.
Fastest site #1?
Witchhunt
With other internet marketing companies, technical code has become a witch hunt. Get your ‘the technical’ correct; the internet will rain money down on you.
If only.
The truth is there is a balance.
It is important to remember that none of Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush etc. owns a search engine!
No amount of WC3 Validation will help you rank #1 in Google.
It is a part of optimisation; code enhances content.
Definition
Define Technical SEO
- Crawlability, Canonical URLs, Hreflang Links, Doctype, favicon, rich snippets, 301s, 404s, the list is endless.
The truth is many of these elements are not Google’s rules; there are human coders’ ideas of what Google rewards in terms of what they believe is both doable and necessary.
More and More Content
Content not code
Content is King; however, this is not true. Content is only King when you include code and images and content.
- Code can be divided into server-side, client-side, markup languages, Javascript and HTML.
- Equally, content can be divided into HTML, pdf, docs, and CSV.
Schema, JSON, telling Google what to expect
JSON
With the introduction of additional markup languages (JSON-LD is Google’s go-to schema markup), Google asks more from website owners to inform it exactly what the website is about.
So much of the changes and optimisation refer to the use of language, words synonyms, antonyms etc., on the website.
Google is clearly asking you, the website owner, to fill in any blanks its algorithms may have in clearly understanding your website.
Content wrapped in code
Code is King
The backend code includes all technical aspects of SEO and the basics of running an accessible dental website. Online content creators often see technical SEO as a necessary evil. It does not have to be.
Google is asking dental content creators to add code so that they can offer up more reliable, specific search results. Especially after the EAT Update.
Optimising Code
Header tags
Original HTML and SEO
The concept is for content creators to use their markup language (HTML) to follow a set of rules (H1, H2 etc.) that Google once identified as how an expert would code their content. After a while, this became too simplistic for Google.
Inline styles
Which Code?
<At VC, we ask you not to believe anything we say until we prove it./>
Redundant code
Myths & Timewasting
There are many myths about search engine optimisation and code. Myths arise because Google updated its algorithms, making many old coding rules redundant.
However, most SEOs don’t realise that they must also update and reboot if there are going to ensure that the SEO services they are offering their dental clients are both professional and successful.
New language
New Markup languages and SEO
Vanilla Circus enjoy coding. We enjoy using structured Data like JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa for our practice websites.
Additional markup language, like rich snippets, gives an algorithm helpful information outside HTML.
Google has a useful guide here if you are interested.
Word optimisation
Technical SEO is always popular
Technical SEO is always popular amongst some of the less creative and more technical search agencies.
It adds to the mystique and black arts of SEO, sometimes covering up the need to do any work for the client!
Technical SEO carries less weight as Google’s algorithm improves and changes to more AI-based learning, and more narrative-focused understanding.
It is less code and more words.
No shortcuts to #1
No tricks or hacks
Instead of tricks and hacks, VC employs specialist code and markup language to enhance our narrative front end.
Many informative and highly effective ways of using code to optimise your content remain.
Googlebot is, after all, a computer and not a person. Practices like internal linking and site architecture feature highly on this list.
Core Vitals
Core Web Vitals & Page Experience
Correct code optimisation reflects on how a user experiences your website. UX has always been important but now Google has defined rules to understand websites that have a good or poor “page experience”.
Loosely defined as page speed it is a little more complicated. Google’s algorithmic rules for UX include a number of core website vitals. These are Largest Contentful Paint (loading), First Input Delay (interactivity) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). You can see that Google has had some fun naming these.
However, they are important.
Technical SEO Shopping List
Vanilla Circus is an expert at technical SEO. Below is an idea of tasks we complete to concentrate on content creation.
Website Loading Speed Time
- Improve Server Response Time
- Optimise & Reduce Image Size
- Minimize Render-Blocking Javascript and CSS
- Limit the Number of Resources Requests
- Set a Browser Cache Policy in the .htaccess file
- Reduce the Number of 301 Redirects
- Host videos off site
- Optimise CMS database
Content Optimisation
- Redirect/Replace Broken Links & Resources
- Audit Internal Links to Improve Your Chances to
- Rank Higher
- Reduce Duplicate Content, including duplicated
- heading tags
- Use Structured Data to Highlight Your Content (JSON)
- Keep a Reasonable Number of Links On-Page (less than a hundred). Do this by removing large menus and adding links to sections.
Website Functionality & Usability
- Test Website Is Mobile Friendly
- Build Search Engine Friendly URLs
- Build logical site architecture
- Use the Secure Protocol – HTTPs
- Set Preferred Versions
- Remove redundant pages or 301s
- Make Sure Your Resources Are Crawlable, check for no index tags
- Test Your Robots.Txt File
- Verify Indexed Content
- Submit to Google any new pages
- Optimise Your Crawl Budget (use Plugin)
- Use Hreflang for Language and Regional URLs
- Make Sure Your GA Tracking Is Working Properly
- Add site to Google Search Console
What you need to know
Optimising code is the essence of search engine optimisation
All search engines have algorithms, and all algorithms have rules, Google included.
However, the basic principles are that your company’s website content should be accurate, easy to access, and user-friendly, free from glitches and technical surprises.
At VC, we correct and enhance all technical SEO issues to best present and optimise our dentist’s content to users and search engines.
Code Reflecting Content
Site architecture is the cleverest way to explain content to Google. It is also the most logical and trustworthy. The optimal site structure is straightforward.
Many dental websites use a ‘Team’, ‘Fees’ and ‘Treatment’ sections in WordPress. This means that not only do they seem very similar to Google, but web structure optimisation is not possible. This is one reason why we can easily beat your competitor practices within Google.
VC have mind mapped and restructured 100s of websites. It is something we enjoy and excel at.
Optimal site architect relies less on content to explain what the site is about. Instead, it focuses on internal links from parent-to-child pages. It may sound complex, but it isn’t.
Sitemaps are a popular concept and are easily understood.
- However, if you look carefully, you will see that the pages are commonly all on the first level. I.e. www.domain.co.uk/page.
- The only structure is the blog, which is www.domain.co.uk/blog/category/blogpost. Hence blog posts typically rank higher than product or service pages.
- Optimising a website’s architecture is guaranteed to improve your Google traffic.
- Myth and truth. Is your code optimisation out of date?
- Are you being wrongly advised?
There are so many myths around SEO as, quite frankly, we only know 70% of what is correct and what is not.
In the last 14 years, we have tested 100s of different ideas and concepts.
We update this list regularly, and it is a popular page.
