SEO Technical Factors

Technical factors in SEO as a whole deals with the on page optimization of a website. They are not so crucial factors to achieve higher rankings in search engine results but are crucial to get to the search engine results. No doubt on content is the king in SEO but just having a good content alone won't be enough to get better search engine rankings. Technical factors and the quality of content are both essential to get higher search engine rankings.

Importance of Meta Description in SEO

Meta description is the short description that appears in search result pages below the page title and URL as shown below.

If a page doesn't contain a meta description, search engine takes up the first 150 - 155 characters from the post content which might be a technical disadvantage if those first few characters don't contain the keywords or the phrases most used in search queries as these pages might be overlooked by search engines and display posts from other websites instead that have those keywords in their meta descriptions. Surveys show that almost 99% of the top 30 results in search result pages use meta description tags in their pages while the rest 1% are up there because of higher domain authority or brand factor. Having keywords on meta description induces the users to click on those search results and increases the click through rate (CTR). To reduce the bounce rate i.e. visitors instantly going back to the search result pages or closing the website tab or browser, only the related and optimized keywords should be used in meta description tags. That's why a meta description is a must for each of the webpages.

Importance of H1 and H2 tags in SEO

<h1> and <h2> are simply HTML heading tags that denote the most important titles within a post content. Around 85% of the top 30 results in search result pages use these <h1> and <h2> tags and the percentage is gradually increasing. These are the prerequisites to get higher in the search result pages. These headings add more readability and user experience to the posts. A standard post should contain only one <h1> tag whereas multiple <h2> are allowed. Most of the SEO tools state that the count of <h1> tags within a post must not exceed 5 while the limit for <h2> tag is stated as 10. Huge count of <h1> and <h2> tags might create a confusion to web crawlers on assesing the most important titles. So, it's better to keep the count minimum but still existent in each posts. If multiple paragraphs in a post are segregated by the use of <h1> and <h2> tags, the post becomes easier for the reader to read. It also structures the post so that the readers can navigate to the information they want to read easily and effectively. This way, the user experience can be increased and that'll propel the website higher in search result pages.

Domain SEO Visibilty

Let's have a look at a google search result when a keyword laravel is searched.

The first result on the search result page is from laravel.com while other results are below it. Even if the websites appearing below it optimize their post or page related to laravel to full extent, the chances are very low that they appear in the first result. Domain SEO visbilty score or the Domain authority is the reason for it. The domain visibilty of any domain name can be measured and a lot of free tools are available for it such as Search metrics Suite. So, the importance of domain seo visibilty is much higher than the optimization of keywords from any post.

Since, most of the keywords are already taken, there's no point on thinking much about it. Instead, we can focus on choosing a good name and developing it into a brand name so that more and more people search for the domain name in the search engines. There are two important factors that need to be considered in order to increase a domain's seo visibilty.

• Huge Number of Backlinks - Huge number of backlinks from high authority domains. These can be social sites like facebook, pinterest or google plus or other websites with similar contents. A website's domain authority can be checked using Open Site Explorer from moz.com. Higher domain authority means a huge number of inbound links that takes much longer to achieve.
• Direct Domain Name Searches - The number of direct domain name searches in search engines also improves a domain's authority gradually.

Keyword in Domain Name

There are two different terms that appear in the fore when anybody talks about the keyword in domain name which are stated below.

• EMD - Exact Match Domain are those domain names with single word or phrases or geographical locations that appear in the search result pages when a keyword or a phrase or a geographical location is searched.
• PMD - Partial match domain are those domain names that partically match with the keyword or a phrase or a geographical location being searched by a user.

The percentage of keywords in domain name have considerably decreased since the change in google algorithm in 2012 when it started reducing low quality EMDs and PMDs from search result pages. So, instead of chasing domain names with preferred keywords, it's better to choose a good name and develop it into a brand and attain higher domain seo visibility.

HTTPS

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol whereas HTTPS stands for a secured HTTP. From the year 2014, google has started using HTTPS as a ranking signal. Though it's a must for sites using users' sensitive information and not much of a importance for blog sites, more and more site owners are adopting HTTPS as it has some significance on search ranking.

Ratio of Home Pages in Search Results

Whenever a search query is sent via search engines, few results appear with a direct link to the home pages of some domain names which is termed as home pages in search result. That's the result of being a brand and identify itself as a source of knowledge with relevant information and high user experience.

Flash Content in Websites

The use of flash contents is gradually reducing these days. Use of flash contents increases the file size of a webpage which leads to slower page loading. This ultimately adverselt affects the search ranking of a website.

URL Length

Though the average length of URL has increased significantly in recent years, google recommends to avoid unnecessary parameters and add keywords, proof terms or related terms instead of symbols or unnecessary characters to make it SEO friendly.

File Size

Larger the file size of a webpage is, lower will be its ranking as it affects the page loading time. But, analysis of the top search results in search engines show the opposite because the top sites have their pages better optimized to load quickly than the average ones with lower file size.

Site Speed

Site speed is one of the most important search ranking factor. MObile first approach has come into action and websites are using mobile optimized themes for mobiles which are lesser in file size and load comparatively faster. The average loading speed of top 10 sites is around 1.16s for desktop and 1.1s for mobiles. This concludes to sites with higher site speed perform better in search results.

Taking account of all these technical factors, a website can perform better in a short time span than it takes normally.

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