How Technical SEO Makes Your San Diego Business Discoverable

San Diego is a vibrant and diverse city, home to thriving local business industries. The city's economy is a mix of technology, healthcare, defense, and tourism.

Local businesses have robust competition, requiring the need of expert San Diego technical SEO know-how to improve their discoverability. This article focuses on how technical SEO can effectively improve your website’s discoverability in a competitive market by:

• Removing duplicate content.
• Adding an extensible markup language (XML) sitemap.
• Using structured data.
• Optimizing the website for mobile devices.
• Redirecting web crawlers.

Find out why your local business needs technical SEO. Let’s go!

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Remove Duplicate Content

When search engines crawl and index web pages, they aim to give users unique and relevant results. Duplicate content confuses search engines, which might result in lower rankings or penalties for websites.

Removing duplicate content makes a website more discoverable. Search engines can quickly identify and index unique and relevant content. They can present that site as an authoritative source of information, resulting in higher rankings, increased traffic, and improved visibility.

Remove duplicate content ASAP. Here are the technical SEO strategies that you can apply today:

• Consolidate pages with similar content into one page to create a more comprehensive and authoritative piece of content.
• Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred URL for a particular piece of content.
• Remove duplicate pages and redirect users to the preferred page with a 301 redirect.
• Rewrite content for pages with similar content that you cannot consolidate.
• Add “no index” tags on pages you do not want search engines to index.

Add an XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap lists all the pages on a website that search engines should index. Search engine crawlers quickly read the file because it has a standardized format. Adding an XML sitemap to a website makes it more discoverable; it helps search engines understand the website's organization.

Search engines might overlook some pages or take longer to discover new or updated content without an XML sitemap. Adding an XML sitemap takes several steps:

1. Generate an XML sitemap using a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress.
2. Upload the XML sitemap to the root directory or the main folder where the website's homepage is located.
3. Verify the XML sitemap by entering the sitemap URL into a web browser.
4. Add the XML sitemap to Google Search Console to monitor the website's performance in search results. This step allows you to directly submit the XML sitemap to Google.

Use Structured Data

Structured data is a standardized format for organizing and presenting information on a website. It uses schema markup to describe the content and meaning of different types of information found on a web page.

Using structured data improves website discoverability. It provides search engines with additional information about site content, making it easier to understand and interpret. Structured data also allows search engines to display rich snippets in search results. These snippets enhance the visibility and appeal of a website.

In addition, structured data also enhances the user experience by providing more detailed and helpful information. Users can easily find what they need and interact more meaningfully with the website. Using these technical SEO best practices, you can add structured data to a website:

• Choose the correct schema markup that best describes the content. Refer to the schema.org website, which has a comprehensive list of markup types for different types of content.
• Manually add the schema to the HTML of the web page by directly adding the markup to the HTML code using JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDF formats.
• Validate the schema to ensure that it is correct and error-free using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

Mobile optimization is designing a website for optimal viewing and user experience on mobile devices. It includes creating a mobile-friendly version of the website that is easy to navigate, loads quickly, and properly displays content even on smaller screens.

Optimizing a website for mobile use improves discoverability. Statistics show an increasing number of people are using mobile devices to search the internet, a trend that will continue into the coming years. Unoptimized websites for mobile use might not properly display or load on mobile devices. This leads to poor user experience and a higher bounce rate.

Therefore, website optimization for mobile devices is an essential step in improving discoverability, user experience, and search engine rankings. Use these specialized SEO techniques to make your website mobile-optimized:

• Create a responsive web design to adapt to different screen sizes and properly display the content.
• Make navigation simple and easy to use on a mobile device. A hamburger menu is a great format to use.
• Optimize images and videos by compressing them to reduce their file size without compromising quality.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce the load time of media files.
• Prefer large fonts for easy reading even on a small screen. Use clear calls-to-action (CTAs) that are easy to find and select.

Redirect Web Crawlers

Redirecting web crawlers is directing search engine bots or spiders to a different page. This technique makes websites more discoverable.

If the website has multiple versions (i.e., www versus non-www domains or HTTP versus HTTPS versions), bots might separately index them. This can lead to duplicate content issues. Redirect bots to one version to prevent this from occurring.

Updating the URL of a page or moving content to a new URL also needs a redirect, especially if the old URL has backlinks pointing to it. Finally, redirecting search engine bots from less important to more important pages enhances traffic movement to your website, which boosts the visibility and discoverability of essential web pages.

To redirect web crawlers, use these techniques:

• Identify the URLs that need redirecting.
• Choose the correct type of redirect: 301 or 302. A 301 is for permanent redirects, while a 302 is for temporary redirects.
• Set a redirect code to the website's .htaccess or server configuration file. Here is an example of a redirect code: bashCopy code, Redirect 301 /old-url/ http://www.yourdomain.com/new-url/
• Test the redirects using a web crawler tool, such as Screaming Frog or Google Search Console.
• Remember to properly set these up and keep track of any changes.

Summing Up

By removing duplicate content, adding an XML sitemap and structured data, optimizing your website for mobile devices, and redirecting web crawlers, you can make your San Diego business discoverable in local search results. 

You can guarantee better brand recognition, higher conversion, more sales, and higher revenue if your local business is visible to customers.

Learn more about how technical SEO can improve your website for your San Diego business. Call Digital Authority Partners (DAP), an expert San Diego technical SEO agency.