How Small Companies Use Technical SEO To Smash Competition

Small companies should add technical search engine optimization (SEO) to their digital marketing strategies. Technical SEO can help small businesses overtake rival companies, especially in a competitive Chicago market, by:

• Improving visibility in search results
• Enhancing user experience
• Creating a competitive advantage
• Developing a better site architecture
• Promoting mobile-friendly site
• Securing their website

By partnering with a trusted Chicago technical SEO agency, small companies can also optimize their websites before they start a campaign. Let’s go!

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

Improving Visibility in Search Results

Chicago's highly competitive market makes it challenging for small businesses to gain brand recognition. Small companies must be visible in local searches to establish credibility and authority. With a higher rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), businesses develop customer trust and loyalty, leading to repeat business and positive recommendations.

A technical SEO partner can improve visibility for small businesses by optimizing the technical aspects of their site. With technical SEO, search engines can better crawl, index, and show pages relevant to a search query. Here are ways technical SEO can enhance visibility:

• Improving the loading speed of a website impacts search engine rankings.
• Promoting mobile responsiveness ensures that a website is mobile-friendly for easy navigation and interaction.
• Ensuring a website's structure optimizes for search engines by enhancing page titles, headings, and meta descriptions.

Enhancing User Experience

A website that is easy to navigate, visually appealing, and provides a seamless user experience likely keeps visitors engaged for a longer period. Satisfied customers browse more pages and consume more content, hence spending more time on the site.

These customers are more likely to recommend a business to others, which can help increase brand awareness and drive new business. Additionally, a website optimized for a positive user experience can increase conversion rates, sales, and revenue.

Search engines prioritize websites that provide a positive user experience. Therefore, a website optimized for a positive user experience is more likely to rank higher and attract more visitors.

Technical SEO can help enhance the customer experience on a website by improving the technical aspects of the website that affect the user experience. A Chicago technical SEO agency enhances the customer experience by:

• Optimizing page layouts, font sizes, and button placement to ensure that they are easy to navigate on a mobile device screen.
• Improve navigation, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. This can include enhanced internal linking and menu layout.
• Adding schema markup to a website can provide additional information about the content on each page to search engines.
• Ensure that a website is secure and protected against hacking, creating a safer browsing experience.

Creating a Competitive Advantage

A competitive advantage allows a small business to differentiate itself from its competitors and stand out in a crowded marketplace. A small business can attract and retain customers looking for something better or different by offering unique products, services, or value propositions.

Small businesses can adapt to changes in the market, including new technologies, trends, or customer preferences. They can adjust their strategy to stay relevant and competitive.

With technical SEO, small businesses can create a competitive advantage by optimizing their website to improve their rankings, user experience, and overall online visibility. Here are some technical SEO strategies that help small businesses create a competitive advantage:

• Enhancing mobile optimization can improve user experience and also promote a competitive advantage. With more and more users accessing websites from mobile devices, small businesses must provide a seamless and intuitive mobile experience.
• Optimizing for local search by incorporating location-based keywords, creating local business listings, and optimizing Google Business Profile (GBP).
• Using structured data also enhances user experience and gives small businesses an advantage over others not using this strategy. Schema markup improves website appearance on search engine results.

Developing a Better Site Architecture

A website with excellent architecture is easy to navigate, making it simple for visitors to find the information that they need. This enhances the overall user experience, builds customer trust, and increases engagement.

Good site architecture makes it scalable, so small businesses can add new pages and features as they grow. It builds a small business's brand image by providing a professional and polished appearance. Finally, a well-designed site architecture improves conversion rates by making it easier for visitors to take the desired action, such as purchasing or filling out a contact form.

Avoid technical SEO mistakes and improve site architecture with these strategies:

• Optimizing a website's URL structure makes it easier for search engines and users to understand its hierarchy and content.
• Add internal links to show how different pages are connected.
• Create an intuitive navigation menu for easy movement from one page to another.
• Remove keyword cannibalization by restructuring pages, creating new landing pages, and consolidating content.

Promoting Mobile-Friendliness

Mobile searches now account for over half of all internet traffic. Businesses must have a mobile-friendly website to ensure that users can access and navigate their website quickly, which improves the user experience and engagement.

Google and other search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in their search results. Therefore, a mobile-friendly website can improve the website's search engine rankings. Customers are also more likely to engage with a business that provides a seamless and intuitive mobile experience, which can lead to increased loyalty and revenue.

Businesses can use technical SEO strategies to fix websites and improve mobile friendliness. Here are the top techniques:

• Use a responsive design, where the website adapts to the screen size and orientation of the user's device.
• Improve site mobile loading speed by compressing images and minimizing the use of large files that may slow down the website.
• Create mobile-friendly content by making them readable and navigable on small screens.
• Optimizing a website's navigation for mobile devices by simplifying the menu, using clear and concise labels, and providing a search function.
• Adapt mobile-friendly metadata by ensuring title tags and meta descriptions work for mobile devices.

Securing Small Business Websites

A secure website protects customer data, including personal information, credit card numbers, and login credentials. This avoids website downtime, loss of data, and damage to the business's reputation. Securing a site builds customer trust and loyalty and avoids costly data breaches.

Google and other search engines also prioritize secure websites in their search results, making them more visible to potential customers and increasing traffic. There may also be regulations and standards that require websites to be secure.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is for businesses that handle credit card transactions, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is for companies and organizations that handle personal health information.

A secure website ensures the protection of critical customer data. Small businesses can protect their customers and reputation by applying technical SEO strategies such as the following:

• Ensuring that a website has an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate encrypts data transmitted between the website and its users.
• The HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protocol is a more secure version of HTTP. HTTPS encrypts transmitted data and verifies that the website is authentic.
• Hosting on a secure server to protect from hacking attacks and malware.
• Providing regular backups to protect against data loss and damage caused by hacking attacks or other technical issues.
• Auditing site security regularly to identify and fix vulnerabilities and prevent cyber-attacks.

Summing Up

Technical SEO can help small businesses become more visible, enhance the user experience, create a competitive advantage, and develop a better site architecture. With technical optimization, websites become mobile-friendly and secure.

Partner with a Chicago technical SEO agency and promote your web presence effectively. Call Digital Authority Partners (DAP) for expert technical SEO help.