Technical SEO, a subset of Search Engine Optimization, is a crucial aspect of website optimization, encompassing a range of practices aimed at making a website more accessible and understandable to traditional search and Generative AI Engines. This can significantly improve a site’s ranking and user experience. It involves several key components, each playing a vital role in how effectively a website communicates with both traditional and generative AI search engines like Google and Bing.
Technical SEO Strategies For Attorneys
Crawling and Indexing
- Crawling: Search engines use crawlers to navigate through your site’s content. Ensuring efficient crawling means that search engines can find and process your content, discovering new pages through links on existing pages.
- Indexing: After crawling, pages are analyzed and stored in a search index. If a page isn’t indexed, it won’t appear in search results. Tools like Google Search Console can be used to monitor indexing status.
Site Architecture
- Effective site structure allows search engines and users to find content easily. A logical hierarchy, with pages a few clicks away from the homepage, is ideal. This also helps in reducing orphan pages, which are difficult for crawlers and users to find.
Sitemaps
- Sitemaps, typically XML files, list important pages on your site, aiding search engines in discovering and understanding your site’s structure. Submitting your sitemap to search engines, particularly for large or complex sites, is crucial.
Metadata
- Metadata, typically meta tags, are code snippets providing crucial information to search engines about a webpage’s display in search results and instructing web browsers on visitor display. The key meta tags for SEO: Meta title, Meta description, Meta robots, Meta refresh redirect, Meta charset, and Meta viewport.
Speed and Mobile-Friendliness
- Page speed and mobile responsiveness are confirmed ranking factors. Faster load times and a mobile-friendly interface provide a better user experience and are favored by search engines.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) / HTTPS
- SSL certificates, which enable HTTPS, ensure secure connections and protect sensitive user information. Since 2014, HTTPS has been a ranking signal, with secure sites favored in search rankings.
Duplicate Content and Canonical Tags
- Addressing duplicate content issues is essential. Canonical tags help search engines understand which page is the “master” version to index, thus avoiding potential duplicate content penalties.
Structured Data
- Structured data, through schema markup, helps search engines understand the content of a page better, potentially leading to rich snippets in search results, which can improve click-through rates. While advanced Semantic SEO Strategies are essential for success, technical SEO ensures that Structed Data Schema is marked up correctly, without errors.
Core Web Vitals
- These are Google’s user experience metrics, including Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). They measure loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.
Multilingual and Multi-Regional Optimization
- For sites targeting multiple countries or languages, hreflang tags are crucial. They specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage, helping search engines serve the correct version to users.
Regular Monitoring and Maintenance
- Technical SEO is not a one-time task. Regular audits are needed to identify and fix issues like broken links, redirect chains, and other errors that can negatively impact SEO.
Final Thoughts About Technical SEO for Law Firms
The importance of technical SEO cannot be overstated. It’s foundational to a site’s ability to rank well in search engines as well as AI Generated Search Results. In the absence of good technical SEO, even the best content may fail to achieve high rankings. It’s about ensuring that a site is compatible with search engine guidelines, can be easily crawled and indexed, and offers a good user experience. By addressing these technical aspects, a website can significantly improve its visibility and performance in search engine results pages (SERPs).
A formulated combination of Technical SEO and Semantic SEO centered around the use of large language models (LLMs) in search results are the foundation of effective Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Related Blog Post: What is the difference between GEO and SEO?