Start Your SEO Journey with a Technically Sound Website

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of having a successful website. SEO helps your site rank higher in search engines and gives you visibility with potential customers. But before you can start optimizing your website for SEO, it must be technically sound.

Steps to Consider When Creating a Technically Sound Foundation for SEO

When developing your website, the first step is to create a technically sound foundation. A website that has fast loading pages, optimized code and good user experience will help you gain traction in organic search results. To achieve this, here are some technical things to consider:

• Use responsive web design so that your site looks great on all devices.

• Optimize your images for speed. If you’ve uploaded a lot of images already on your site without condensing the file size you may want to choose a plugin (if you have a WordPress website) that will help condense those large photo files.

• Take advantage of browser caching and minify resources like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.

• Make sure that your website is free from 404 errors. A good place to start is Google’s Search Console.

• Use a secure socket layer (SSL) on your website. This will give it the “https://” prefix and make it more secure, as well as help with search engine rankings.

In addition to these technical elements, you can also look into implementing schema markup to help search engines better understand the content of your website.

This is an Important First Step

By addressing these technical aspects of your site, you’ll be taking a huge step first step to improving both user experience on your website. Furthermore, it will give you a solid foundation for doing the other types of optimization we’ll be talking about the next couple of weeks.

It’s Easy to be Overwhelmed by Technical SEO

I’ll be honest, this is the part of SEO that’s not my strength. When talking about these things I often point out that I hire people smarter than I am about these things. And now I’m so lucky to have Danica, Sterling, Mary & others who understand this techy stuff soooo much better than I do. But I know enough to know that this is an important step to getting your website the visibility it deserves.

Ultimately, these are things I recommend you work with a website developer on before you even begin working with us. Sometimes, people are surprised when we say this. But it’s important to remember that SEO is a holistic process and begins with the foundation.

By making sure your website has been optimized for a good technical experience, you’ll be able to get more out of any SEO work that is done. So don’t forget this important step just because you’re confused when you start hearing these terms!

Already have a firm SEO foundation? Let us help you take your website SEO to the next level!

Our team offers a wide range of services to help private practice owners improve their SEO. Whether you’re looking to learn how to optimize your own website better, looking for accountability and support in optimizing your website or are ready to outsource SEO to a company that understands both SEO & mental health, we’re here to help! It all begins with scheduling a Zoom consultation with a member of our team. We’ll talk a little about your website and figure out what makes the most sense for your next steps.

About the Author

Jessica Tappana is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in the state of Missouri. She owns a group practice with 12 clinicians and loves the clinical work so much she just can’t give it up. Additionally, she founded Simplified SEO Consulting several years ago to help therapists achieve the same thing in their practice she enjoys in hers: a steady stream of calls from their idea clients. Because the techy side of things isn’t her strong point and she understands the importance of technical SEO, she’s made a point of hiring team members who are stronger than she is in this area.