5 Reasons Why a Technical SEO Partner Benefits All Companies

Technical search engine optimization (SEO) ensures pages are effectively indexed and ranked by search engines. Through technical SEO, web pages become more visible and help promote relevance and authority.

A Chicago technical SEO agency can address website technical issues and optimize them. An expert technical partner can do all these because they

• Start with a thorough technical audit
• Understanding technical issues affect customer experience
• Knowing website security is critical
• Recognize content issues
• Perceive a reduction in SEO costs

If this is your first time hiring a technical SEO partner, let this guide help you decide. Let's go!

Watch this video to learn how Digital Authority Partners tackles Technical SEO!

Start With a Thorough Technical SEO Site Audit

An experienced technical SEO agency starts every campaign with a thorough technical audit. An audit helps identify technical issues that could impact a website's search engine visibility, including broken links, duplicate content, missing or incorrect tags, and slow page load speed. These issues can lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement.

Also, a technical audit helps businesses stay ahead of the competition by identifying areas where they can improve their site’s technical performance.

Typically, a technical SEO expert conducts site audits before and after campaigns. A large website with many pages requires frequent audits. Also, an expert audits a site after each update to ensure everything works as intended. A technical SEO audit involves the following:

• identifying technical issues, crawling the website using a web crawling tool such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl.
• Analyzing website structure to ensure it is easy to navigate and that search engines can crawl and index all pages.
• Reviewing site speed using tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, or Pingdom.
• Examining site architecture to ensure it is logical, consistent, and helps users easily navigate the site.
• Assessing mobile-friendliness with tools such as Google's Mobile-Friendly Test.
• Checking for indexing issues to ensure that search engines index all necessary pages.
• Analyzing internal linking. Internal links help search engines understand the relationships between pages on a website.
• Reviewing XML sitemaps helps search engines understand the structure of a website and identify essential pages.

Understand Technical Issues Can Affect Customer Experience

Issues such as slow page speeds and broken links can negatively affect the customer experience. A website that takes too long to load and links that do not take users where they want to go can be frustrating. These are only some of over 200 possible technical issues that need tracking. 

Customers expect websites to load quickly and work seamlessly.  An experienced technical SEO agency understands how technical SEO can boost the customer experience.  

By hiring professional technical partners, businesses can guarantee a fine-tuned focus on all the potential problems to improve their websites and provide the best customer experience. Here are some ways an SEO partner fixes technical issues to improve the customer experience.

• Improve website speed by compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript files, using a content delivery network (CDN), and reducing the number of HTTP requests.
• Fix broken links by redirecting them to appropriate pages or removing them altogether.
• Optimize website design, making it consistent, easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly.
• Ensure content is easy to read and scannable, use whitespace, and employ good typography.
• Fix website navigation, making it clear, easy to use, and consistent across all pages.
• Organize content into logical categories to make it easy to find what customers are seeking.
• Use responsive design to ensure the website works well on all devices, including desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.
• Minimize pop-ups and interstitials to avoid annoying customers. Use them only when necessary.
• Format content properly using headings, subheadings, bullet points, and numbered lists to make pages easy to read and understand.

Know Website Security Is Critical

A Chicago technical SEO agency is very particular about site security. They know the importance of handling sensitive customer information, such as personal and payment information. Without proper security measures, this information can be stolen by hackers and used for malicious purposes.

A customer data breach damages a business's reputation and often leads to legal repercussions, which is why a technical SEO partner prioritizes website security over other strategies. By optimizing site security, websites can also prevent downtimes that cost businesses money and negatively affect the customer experience.

A secure website also ensures compliance with security regulations, preventing fines and other legal issues. With their knowledge of the latest security trends and content strategies, technical SEO experts protect your site by:

• Using HTTPS, a secure version of the HTTP protocol that encrypts data transmitted between a website and a user's browser.
• Installing SSL/TLS certificates to provide additional security for website data transmission. It encrypts all data between the website and the user's browser, ensuring that sensitive data, such as passwords and credit card information, is protected from hackers.
• Using strong passwords for all website logins, including admin and user accounts. Passwords should be at least eight characters long and include a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special symbols.
• Regularly updating software and plugins to the latest versions to address security vulnerabilities.
• Implementing two-factor authentication to provide an extra layer of security for website logins.
• Backing up website data to prevent data loss in a security breach. Store backups in a secure location and regularly test backups.

Recognize Content Issues and Fix Them ASAP

Supporting the best of content doesn’t matter if it is impossible to find.  To make finding your website and information an easy process, your website should be technically optimized. Technical SEO experts use various tools and techniques to locate and fix website content issues. Some of the most common methods they use include the following:

• Conduct crawl analysis to identify broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and other technical issues.
• Perform keyword research to identify the keywords the website should target to drive traffic and improve rankings. This includes analyzing keyword search volume, competition, and relevance.
• Start on-page optimization to make content and HTML codes more search-engine friendly. This also includes optimizing meta tags, headings, images, and internal linking.
• After technical SEO experts identify issues with the website, they develop a plan to fix them. This may involve changing the website's code, content, or structure.

Perceive Reduction in SEO Costs

An expert knows that fixing technical website issues can reduce the cost of SEO. As mentioned, website performance issues such as slow loading speeds, broken links, and other errors can negatively affect the user experience and increase bounce rates.

By fixing these issues, website performance improves, resulting in higher user engagement and a better user experience. Observing technical SEO leads to higher rankings and increased organic traffic. Removing technical website issues prevents search engine penalties, which harm search engine rankings and result in additional costs associated with recovery efforts.

For a company with a local store or office, especially in Chicago, hiring a local SEO company that knows the local market better and provides a holistic optimization approach would be best. In that case, a Chicago technical SEO firm would be a smart choice.

Summing Up

Hiring a technical SEO partner benefits every business because they possess the right skills and mindset to help their clients achieve their marketing goals. They start with a thorough technical audit, understand how technical issues affect customer experience, and know site security is critical to every business.

A good agency can quickly recognize and fix content issues. They also know that applying technical SEO reduces overall SEO costs. You need a Chicago technical SEO agency to help you reach your digital marketing goals. Contact Digital Authority Partners today, and let's talk SEO.