SEO is arguably one of the most complicated digital marketing methods and for those who are less tech-savvy than others, it can be quite difficult to wrap your head around – not to mention when someone starts talking to you about technical SEO.
(That’s right; as if SEO wasn’t technical enough already – there’s a whole other level of technicality to get to grips with). *Shudders*
But don’t feel bad about that! You see, SEO has gone through a multitude of changes over the years and even the most seasoned of SEO experts are forever learning new things.
Whether you are struggling to understand the fundamentals of technical SEO or you’d like to try and convince your boss of how important it is, give this article a read. We’re going to share a simple analogy that can help anyone understand the fundamentals of technical SEO with ease.
Technical SEO is Like Preparing Your Body for a Marathon
SEO in general is frequently referred to as being like a marathon for a number of reasons:
- “You’ve got to be in it to win it!”
- And because it takes time for SEO to take off. On average, you could be looking at anywhere between 4 and 12-months of investment before you start seeing an ROI via organic traffic through your website.
Of course, not just anyone can run a marathon! If you want to take part, you’re going to have to prepare your body for the extended exertion. This means getting healthy and in good shape.
What is technical SEO? Well it’s not so dissimilar to the kind of work involved with preparing the body for a marathon:
- You have to improve your diet and start eating healthy food to fuel your body.
- You must learn how to stretch properly before exercise in order for you to be able to run without damaging your muscles.
- You should give up smoking and improve your lung capacity.
- You have to train regularly with frequent “performance updates” to ensure that you are in good shape.
- And so on…
Ultimately, it’s all about optimizing your body for peak performance. This is exactly what technical SEO does for your website, and here’s what it looks like:
- Improving page load speed (tuning server response time, compressing images, minimising redirects, and avoiding filling your website with too much ‘stuff’, etc.).
- Optimize for mobile use.
- Write ‘search-engine-friendly’ URLs.
- Make all resources crawlable.
- Use secure protocol (HTTPs).
- Test Robot.Txt files.
- Get rid of duplicate content.
- Add intuitive internal linking structure.
- Add breadcrumb navigation.
- And so much more…
The above examples are merely scraping the surface of the technical SEO activities you need to do in order to perfect your website. However, in doing so, you will be creating a healthy, hygienic, and secure website that is ready for a long-term search engine optimization strategy (or ‘marathon’).
Conclusion: “Fitness for your business.”
And that about sums it up; if you struggle to understand technical SEO, or you need to sell the idea to your boss, simply refer to it as “fitness for your business”; the process of getting your website in peak performance shape so that it can join the marathon that is search engine optimization, maintain a healthy pace, and ultimately outshine the competition!
We hope you’ve found this article helpful. If you feel even more lost than you were to begin with, we highly recommend that you shop around and hire a reputable digital marketing agency to assist you. The fact is, you don’t need to fully understand technical SEO to recognise the immense value it can bring to your business.
