SEO is changing all the time; Google now makes over 500 small changes (not always to their algorithm) every year, and large core algorithm updates are being rolled out at an accelerating rate. So when we're talking about SEO, we can only ever really talk about the situation right now.
However, there are a few things in SEO which we can talk about with some permanence. One of those is the fact that technical search engine optimisation gets routinely overlooked. Even today's leading experts regularly fail to mention technical considerations when they talk about the most important ranking factors today. Their own websites are mediocre when it comes to performance, and they often fail to include any technical SEO in their client campaigns, beyond reducing some image sizes and setting up lazy loading to make the site very slightly faster.
This isn't true of all agencies of course. We are the only SEO agency Manchester has that is currently putting technical SEO at the forefront of what we do. But the vast majority of search professionals out there are dropping technical considerations by the wayside and instead focusing exclusively on on-page factors and link building.
Never ignore technical SEO
I probably don't need to tell you what a mistake this is. Technical SEO is potentially the most important aspect of search engine optimisation. Our tests regularly confirm that poor technical performance - be it slow page load speed, missing sitemap elements, impediments to crawling, or something else - can obliterate any rankings you currently have in an instant. That isn't something you can say about LSI keywords or image alt tags (which some SEOs obsess over while ignoring site performance).
So why do so many SEOs ignore technical SEO?
Easy - they don't understand it!
Most SEO "experts" are people who started out writing content at a marketing agency, and as the youngest person in the office, they were left in charge of "SEO and all that" as well. A few years and a lot of time spent reading Search Engine Journal later, they're Head of SEO at an agency.
They usually think of a site's technical aspects as something for developers to think about.
But we know this is wrong.
The good news is that getting the basics of technical SEO right is very simple. Get in touch with a technical SEO specialist and they'll be able to walk you through getting all the most important things right. As this part of SEO is so often overlooked, even getting the basics right is usually enough to put you ahead of your competitors.
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