Technical SEO for Service-Based Businesses: A Complete Guide

Are you a service-based business looking for ways to optimize your website for search engines? In this regard, technical SEO can be an incredibly effective strategy. But it requires a considerable amount of time, effort and knowledge. To help you, we’ve created this comprehensive guide. You'll learn best practices on how to effectively optimize your website's structure and architecture so that search engines can easily crawl and index all of your key pages. With these tips in mind, you'll be able to ensure that potential customers are finding everything they need—and more—on your site!

Need of Technical SEO for Service-Based Businesses

People think SEO is all about writing content, sharing it on social media, and making a few structural tweaks to the website. However, there is more to it.

SEO is divided into three parts: On-page SEO, off-page SEO, and Technical SEO.

Most site owners ignore Technical SEO because they don't know about it or think it's not critical for ranking. Technical SEO involves strategies and steps that play a significant role in ranking a site in Google.

Generally, technical SEO bridges the gap between search engines and your website. It fixes all the issues that can hamper Google and other search engines from crawling and indexing your website. If your website has errors related to URLs, coding, navigational structure, internal links, backlinks, or onsite duplication, then you need technical SEO.

Technical SEO Practices To Improve Your Site's Ranking Factor

Create individual subpages for services and locations

Let's assume your company offers custom-made clothing. You can describe your product lines on your landing page. However, creating separate subpages for each product, such as shirts, blazers, trousers, etc., is more profitable and SEO-friendly. 

Similarly, you can create location-based subpages if your business operates at separate locations.

This enhances your user experience and provides a better structure to your website. Your users can easily find the product they have been looking for. Plus, it will be easier for search engines to classify and index your page.

This checks out two critical factors for search engine ranking: Better user experience and indexing.

Develop High-Quality Contents

Well, for starters, you need to establish a niche for yourself. If you are a business, write content about what you sell. Getting yourself featured in a local newspaper article is possible. Another thing you can do is enlist yourself in Google listing and open social media accounts. The more people engage and leave reviews, the more it tells google that your business is legitimate.

Meanwhile, don't forget you start your own blog post. Write articles about the products and services you offer. You should also give your expert advice. Publishing credible and unique content is the key to getting authoritative content. That's how you can build a strong domain authority. Remember, it is a long process, and don't expect results within a couple of months. 

Meta Description Is Important

Although Meta description doesn't carry much weight in ranking, it matters a lot in SEO for service-based businesses. This is because Google only understands your content through keywords, headlines, and Meta descriptions.

However, keyword stuffing is a thing of the past. Google will heavily penalize your site as it considers it a shady practice.

Meta description is essential for users too. They will likely click a link that includes the search query they used. An attractive headline also matters, but a Meta description still stands out.

Improve user experience

Improve the user experience of your site, and Google will follow.

Few Things You Can Do To Improve Your User Experience

• Invest in a responsive website design so your user can access it seamlessly on every device.

• Create headlines that are bold and attention-grabbing.

• Add the primary keyword in the headline, ensuring it sounds organic.

• Create data-driven content by including data, statistics, screenshots, tables, etc.

Do Competitive Analysis And Keyword Research

When preparing content for your blogs or describing your services, use keywords important to your business. You can use tools like keywordtool.io, Google Ads Keyword Planner, Moz, or SEMRush.

Tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Senuto, and Semstorm can also help you identify keywords for your competitors' SEO targets. You can also check their blogs and articles to check their content strategies. Then you develop your own strategy to offer better than them.

Optimize Your Contents

Onsite content, including blog entries and product descriptions, must be optimized per Google's requirements.

Focus on the page title. Keep it between 65-70 characters long. Try to add your main keyword in the title. This will increase its chance of getting ranked in Google and Bing.

The next thing to focus on is the h1 header, title, and body. It's better to insert the first keyword within the text's first 50-100 words. Use the less essential keywords in h2 headers and the body and Meta description.

Make sure your content, title, and Meta description sound logical, grammatically correct, and organic. Don't overstuff them with keywords. It's better if you limit to one keyword in your title and Meta descriptions. For blogs and articles, use one keyword in each 300-500 words.

Integrate SSL Certificate In Your Site

SSL certificate is a must to rank in Google. It is a certificate of safety and security. SLL certification creates a safe connection between users' devices and your site's server. It secures your users' personally identifiable information and financial information from hackers and malicious bots. If your site involves collecting persons' information or conducting financial transactions, you must integrate the SLL certificate into your website.

Conclusion

In conclusion, technical SEO is paramount for service-based businesses. With the right strategies for structuring, indexing, and optimizing your content, you can be confident that you're headed in the right direction to attract more customers and maximize website visibility. However, creating well-optimized content isn't a one-time thing. It's an ongoing process that should evolve along with search engine algorithms. Stay ahead by continuously refining keywords and titles while taking advantage of potential opportunities like voice search and structured data whenever possible. As long as you have the right foundations in place, technical SEO can be a powerful asset in your marketing tool belt!