If you’re building a website you’ve likely heard it more than once. But did you know SEO is more than making sure your site is at the top of the search results? So how does Technical SEO differ from a total SEO approach – and why should you care?
Technical SEO (search engine optimization) embodies a truly technical approach focusing on how well search engines can index your content. Google algorithms for example, will crawl your site based on certain parameters and from those results determine where you rank when a specific keyword is typed into the search box. Mobile friendliness, site speed, bread crumbs, a URL-friendly structure and avoiding duplicate content are all good technical SEO practices that impact your site’s indexing. It’s a great start.
But savvy marketers like yourself are taking it more than a few levels farther, implementing a truly thorough approach to SEO that seamlessly and relentlessly integrates technical SEO with on- and off-page content SEO. This is the full meal deal to the value menu; the whole enchilada to the hard-shell taco. We’re talking keyword optimization, user-centric experiential development, leveraging natural and inbound links.
And more, that content must be factual, accurate and practical, it should elicit response and emotion from the reader. Gone are the days of simply incorporating a few hot hit list keywords into your website text and calling it good. Today’s search engines deploy tech-smart spiders to crawl websites looking not just for the right words, but the right wording. They’re looking for style, conversationalism, friendliness, usefulness and resourcefulness. They’re learning and evolving as they crawl, and they’re getting smarter every day.
Thus, today’s smart SEO approach effectively leverages Google’s Hummingbird algorithm (the tool that brought down Mobilegedden in the cyber world). More than keywords, it’s about semantics – how things are said, casual phrasing, and above all else, a logical, natural-flowing question-and-answer format.
And successful SEO delves into the behind-the-scenes of the web world too, implementing Google-compliant meta descriptions and title/browser tags to raise results, and making subtle improvements that make a huge impact in browser pings, like keyword enhancement, image alt tags, crosslinking.
