A really big misconception about search engine optimization (SEO) is that it is all about content and keywords. While these two things are really important to a solid organic SEO plan, they aren’t the only things you should pay attention to in order to ensure that coveted first page ranking position.
When it comes to optimizing your website for Google, there are multiple tasks you can do on the technical side to see a decent boost in your overall ranking. Here are a few of our best SEO secrets to get you started.
One area where many people forget to optimize their website is meta title tags. Essentially, this is the bolded text across the top of your search engine listing that tells everyone what the page is about. The same wording is also listed across the top of the tab in your browser when the page is open.
While your site automatically populates some title tags, it is important to add custom ones to each page of your site. In most cases, it is a good idea to have a separate page of your website for every need a visitor could possibly have in terms of why they would be looking for you on a search engine.
If you’re not sure what keywords to use or how to phrase your title tags, try looking up a competitor in Google. Often, you can see what they are ranking for and try to emulate them by using something similar. also has this really great guide on title tags that you can review for a more in-depth analysis of their importance.
If you offer content on your website in various languages, you’ll also want to pay close attention to hreflang. This is a special set of code on your website that alerts search engines to the fact that you have similar or exact content across multiple pages, but each page is in a different language or geared toward those who live in a specific geographic region.
The reason why this is vital is that it can help keep you from a duplicate content penalty and it also helps search engines determine which users need to see what pages based on their geographic location or language. For sites that have a large number of international visitors, this can be a really great technical SEO tool to implement.
Hreflang can be implemented as backend coding, an http header, or as part of an XML sitemap. However, you want to make sure you’re only doing one of these methods and not all three. It is also important to understand that it can sometimes take Google a short period of time to realize this method is being used, so don’t expect ranking gains right away. If you’re looking for more information on this process,
It is also important to remember structured data when optimizing your website. This is a little bit of technical data that helps give Google a firm understanding of what your site is about and why your content would be helpful to searchers.
An easy way to accomplish this is with specific markup. This technical option allows you to provide additional context to articles, recipes, products, videos, and more. It also allows you the opportunity to show star ratings and/or product reviews. Including these in your website’s coding allows you to sometimes show up in the search engine ranking position as a rich snippet or card.
It is also worth noting that if you’re utilizing accelerated mobile pages (AMP) on your website, make sure to add structured markup to both the regular and mobile versions of the page. This is an area that is often missed and can make a big impact on your rankings.
To learn more about structured data, check out this other really from the pros at Moz.
Of course, you might not realize why technical search engine optimization matters so much. It is really only referred to as technical because it doesn’t impact the context of the website like a blog post or evergreen content would. The reason why you should pay attention to this side of optimization is that it ensures search engines have easy access to find, crawl, interpret, and index your pages without any issues. Think of it as giving Google the key to finding your website quickly and easily while understanding right away what your page is all about.
If you aren’t sure how to incorporate any of these aspects into your website, don’t worry. Our team at Zero Gravity Marketing is here to help. Please contact us today to start the conversation.