Technical Optimisation; All You Need To Know

If getting ranked online is a key priority for you there are lots of different factors to take into account where your website is concerned – and one of those is technical optimisation. In fact, it would be fair to say that technical optimisation is the foundation that everything else can be built on top of so it’s pretty crucial to ensure that you get this first step right.

How do search engines actually work?

This can be a useful process to get to grips with when you’re looking to improve your website rankings. Understanding how search engines work means that you can optimise your online presence more effectively. Generally, most search engines will go through three steps when it comes to ranking your website:

• Crawling. Using bots or spiders to find any online information, such as URLs and external links.
• Indexing. This is the process that search engines use to store the information they collect on your website – take a look at site:YourDomain.com to see what Google has on you, for example.
• Ranking. This step is based on criteria such as site speed, website quality, content relevancy, website security and backlinks.

Technical optimisation is all about making it easy for search engines to complete these processes – and for your website to come out with the best possible ranking at the end of it.

Technical optimisation tips

• Make sure you register your sitemap with at least one of the webmasters, e.g. Google Console. The sitemap will enable search engines to crawl your site more easily and index it more quickly.
• Get used to using tools that can help you get more insight into how well you’re already using SEO on your website. Yoast is a great example of this.
• Set up Google Analytics. This will give you a wealth of insight into how well your website performs for SEO and where you could potentially make changes that make a difference.
• Check the responsiveness of your website. Many people today are likely to access your website on different devices, so it’s important to ensure that your online presence is going to be responsive to each one. It’s especially key to ensure your site works on mobile, as if the site isn’t user-friendly, you’ll likely be penalised by Google and other search engines.
• Ensure the best possible uptime. A reliable hosting provider is essential to ensure your web presence is always up and running and you’re not struggling with downtime.
• Make sure you have an SSL certificate. This is what will make your site secure.
• Test page speed. Google now prioritises page speed when it comes to website ranking – the pages on your website should be loading in under three seconds.
• Cover all your bases. How does your website perform in terms of image and video optimisation, for example?

Technical optimisation is crucial if you’re keen to improve the ranking your website achieves – covering all the above will ensure that you get off to a great start.

Using SEO to expand your audience can be a powerful tool to start with. To find out how Iconic Digital can help you with your local SEO, get in touch today and call us on 020 7100 0726. Find out more about our Search Engine Optimisation Agency in London.