Google uses mobile-first indexing. This means Google will index the mobile url of your web pages for their rankings. This is because the majority of search engine users, from Google to Bing, are searching on their mobile devices. There is no way to opt-out of mobile-first indexing, as Google only has one index. This means that site owners should ensure their mobile pages are being crawled successfully and have the same content and metadata as the desktop version of their website.

It’s a good idea for webmasters to test the mobile-friendliness of their websites in Google Search Console. It’s important to remember that mobile-friendliness and mobile usability are different, and mobile-first indexing is focused more on ensuring that metadata is consistent on the backend of your site for desktop and mobile versions. Structured data, meta robots tags, alt text, images and videos, should be consistent across both versions. Page speed is also a factor that is incorporated into mobile-first indexing. If your page load times and site speed are slow, that will not create a great experience for searchers.

Site structure helps Google (and users) understand your different pages and how they are related or connected to each other. Your homepage is obviously the start of your site structure, but it’s important to leverage url paths, links, navigation bar, and other elements of your site architecture for better search engine rankings. Google likes structured data elements like breadcrumbs that help searchers and bots understand your website hierarchy.

Your site structure should ultimately be shaped like a pyramid, with your homepage at the top, your category pages beneath the homepage, and your other pages (or product pages for e-commerce sites) beneath those. For large sites, site structure can get even more complicated and important, and our SEO experts will ensure that the backend of your website communicates to the Googlebot how every specific page correlates.

When websites have a large number of pages, it’s essential that Google’s web crawlers can find all of the pages quickly and easily. Let our experts ensure that your website’s structure follows technical best practices, improving your site’s crawlability, link equity, and overall visibility in the SERPs.

Internal links are clickable hyperlinks that point to some other page on your website. Search engines use your internal links to navigate through your website. Internal links not only communicate to bots your site architecture, they keep users navigating and exploring your site rather than pressing the back button to return to their web browser or the search results pages.

Internal links also distribute PageRank across your site, or what is also known as link equity. Getting your internal links right is the easiest way to elevate the most important website pages of your domain in the search engine results pages.

Our technical experts will identify the ways that your website can leverage internal links more effectively. We will also repair broken links, implement redirects where necessary, curate the links in your navigation menu and the footer of your website, improve internal linking anchor text, and ensure your links point to the right content that is most relevant for users

The technical performance of your website is also key to improving rankings and meeting the quality signals of search engine algorithms. No one likes a slow website, so if search engine crawlers see that your website load or page load speed is subpar, or you lack a responsive website, it’s unlikely Google will show your website to searchers, even if it is the best content available.

Also, your site’s speed is not just a ranking factor, it impacts your conversions. Most likely, searchers will not sit around waiting for your site to load. They will press the back button on their web browser and find another site’s page that loads faster.

If you’re not quite sure if your website currently measures up, you can utilize Google’s Pagespeed insights tool. If your score is under 80, your website is not fast enough. Google webmaster tools will suggest ways to improve your website speed, but a LinkGraph expert can work through the entire technical checklist and implement both the basics and more advanced strategies to improve your website’s performance.

In recent years, Google has implemented different types of rich results and enhancements for certain types of keyword queries. Rich snippets are those search results that make an extra impact in the SERPs, whether by including gold stars that represent your client reviews, a knowledge graph that includes your brand logo and social media accounts, or product, recipe, and event listings. Rich results help your brand stand out, but they are only possible if you have structured data markup implemented on your site’s pages.

Structured data markup, or schema.org, is a standardized HTML code that makes it easier for Google engine crawlers to crawl, organize, and display your website content. There are different types of structured data markup that you can implement on your web pages depending on the types of rich results you seek, but some of the most common are breadcrumbs, logos, local business, sitelinks, and others. Structured data will help Google’s web crawler find the specific content to include in the enhancement or rich result. More rich results help your brand look even more appealing to your target audience.

Our technical SEO services begin with a sitewide audit to identify any technical issues, crawl errors, broken pages, or other site errors. Even site owners who implement the best practices of on-page SEO can still be held back by invisible technical SEO issues and common mistakes on the backend of their websites. Our audits can unveil duplicate content, orphan pages, broken urls and more complex technical aspects that can go easily unidentified, but significantly impact your ability to show up in search results.

No matter how large your website, our SEO team will do a deep dive on all technical aspects of your landing pages and return with actionable insights on how to resolve those site issues. After your site audit is complete, we develop a technical SEO strategy that prioritizes improving the crawlability, indexing, rich snippets, and technical performance of your website. From site structure, internal links, html best practices, and breadcrumbs, we will implement all of the technical fundamentals that are most likely to elevate the pages of your site for your keyword targets.

Metadata is the backbone of search engine optimization because it comprises a series of communications that happens in the back-end between search engines and your website. While visitors will never see it, the force that drives them to your website does. Therefore, it is extremely important that your metadata is strong and effective.