The Importance of Technical SEO for Local SEO

SEO refers to tactics and strategies marketers use to optimize a brand's exposure in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. With that, the brand's site and webpages will organically appear when users search for something related to their product or services.

For example, Amazon would want its business shows up on the search result for the keyword "buy shoes online." Similarly, SEMrush would wish for its business to appear on the first page of Google when someone searches "best tool for SEO."

A brand that sells products and offers services worldwide need its sites to be visible across the globe. However, local brick-and-mortar and service-based businesses have different requirements. They only need people from a specific part of a city or state. They don't need the whole world to see their business, primarily where they don't serve.

What Do You Mean By Local SEO?

Local SEO is a unique tactic and strategy that marketers use to help a brand rank higher in nearby searches. For instance, Anna's Bakery would want its business displayed on search results when someone searches "best bakery in herald square." Alternatively, when someone from herald square searches "best bakery near me."

What Are Technical SEO And Its Importance In Local SEO?

Technical SEO is a subcategory of SEO. It involves optimizing the overall structure of a website. The infrastructure or website build plays a crucial role in SEO.

Most website owners and marketers focus only on on-page SEO and content. Some even overlook entirely technical SEO. Of course, it's complicated, but your site cannot rank in search engines without it.

It allows search engines to scan (crawl) your site and organize (index) the information on a page. Crawling and indexing are incredibly crucial in SEO. Without it, search engines cannot find your site. As a result, your site will never rank in Google, Bing, or other search engines.

Technical SEO also deals with other vital aspects of search engine optimization. It involves sitemaps, page speed, URL structure, navigation structure, Schema, and more.

Optimizing your website technically is critical to attracting organic traffic from search engines. This is because Google considers your site useless if users cannot navigate it properly.

Benefits Of Technical SEO For Local Business

Technical SEO aims to optimize your site for users and search engines. The end benefit of technical SEO is that it can get you to generate more organic traffic organically. Let's understand it in more detail.

How Technical SEO Boosts Your Local SEO Effectiveness?

It Makes Your Site Indexable

It doesn't matter how good your content and site architecture is unless Google index them. Googlebot sometimes fails to index your site due to coding errors. To see if Google has indexed your site, use the following keyword in Google search.

Site − yourdomainname.com

For example, if your domain name is xyz.com

Search − site:xyz.com

Check the number of results displayed on the result page. If the number is close to the number of pages on your site, your site is well-indexed.

For example, if your site has 100 web pages, you would have 100 links displayed in search results.

Also, check the title tag and Meta description of each link displayed in search results. Your title and Meta descriptions must match the content inside the page. Tags and descriptions irrelevant to the content inside the page will not be ranked in Google.

You can insert location-based keywords in the title and meta descriptions. This will help in local SEO.

For example − Buy affordable fashionwear in NYC.

It Makes Your Site Crawlable

Crawling comes before indexing. Google cannot index your page unless it can crawl into it. Google can crawl your site if they can understand the content on those pages. 

cache − yourdomainadress/pagename

example − cache:xyz.com/abc/

A page will appear in your browser window with options on the top.

Click "text-only version" in the option

This will display your page in the way search engines see them.

It also shows the last time and date Google has crawled in it.

You cannot see these options above if your page is not crawlable. In this case, you must use technical SEO to fix the issue.

It Allows You To Understand User Behavior

In technical SEO, you can implement two tools, Google Analytics and Google webmaster central, to optimize your local SEO. Google Analytics allows you to automatically track where your visitors come from. It also shows what your visitor do once they land on your site.

Google webmaster central notifies you of major technical issues in your website. It allows you to upload a sitemap of your site. A sitemap includes the list of pages on a website. This is a boon for websites with a large number of pages. When Google crawls your site, it checks the sitemap.

So, even if some pages are crawlable, google may crawl them. However, you shouldn't entirely depend on the sitemap. It is just a temporary fix. This is because sometimes google skips the sitemap while crawling and indexing.

You Need Technical SEO To Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

You can use Google's Page Speed tool to access your site's performance. This tool informs you about the elements slowing down your site. It also gives suggestions on how to fix these issues.

Faster accessibility is the key to Local SEO. Customers will move to your competitor's site if your site doesn't load within 2-3 seconds. Besides, it also showcases a bad reputation for your business. People will assume your products and services are inferior if you cannot run a website.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, technical SEO is a crucial part of successful local SEO campaigns. It ensures that your website is properly indexed, accessible and running smoothly so you can get in front of potential customers in the local market. Meanwhile, with the right optimization techniques, you can improve the visibility of both your website and business to give it a competitive edge. By making sure your technical SEO elements are optimized and up-to-date, you’ll be able to create an effective local marketing strategy that stands out from the competition. From examining analytics to boosting page speed, there are plenty of ways to refine your presence for improved search engine optimization—and hence increased leads and sales—in no time. The proper use of technical SEO should be implemented by any business looking to maximize its success in local SEO efforts.