SEO for Technology Companies: Winning SEO Tactics and Best Practices
There are over 1.8 billion websites today. But only a tiny fraction of these billions of sites receive significant traffic. In fact the majority receive zero traffic. It’s not that the owners or managers of the unlucky websites don't try. Some might actually be working more than anyone else. So what is this that produces only a few winners while leaving the majority frustrated?
It gets even more complicated for tech companies. Because technology is exciting but also absorbing, the marketing managers and owners across many technology companies can easily underestimate the impact of inefficient SEO.
But it does not have to be this way, and this guide into the most effective SEO tactics plus best practices should get your site ranking higher in Search Engine Results Pages ( SERPs). This is a post about the most important SEO tactics for tech companies. Read on to start winning that organic traffic.
Preparation (call it planning): What you need
SEO for technology companies is a fierce battle. You're constantly pursuing visibility in a fast changing landscape, and your equally informed competitors are doing the same. The key is careful planning and this means getting the basics right. Here are the most important items you need to get ready.
1. Product website
A website is essential in this SEO journey, whether you are a tech startup or an established tech firm. It’s the foundation of any SEO strategy, so prepare to have one if you don't have it already.
2. Target audience
You need to be sure of the kind of audience you’d want to target and eventually convert. Take time to understand your buyer personas so that you can tailor your content to their specific needs.
A study by the Buyer Persona Institute shows that approximately 44 percent of marketers use buyer persona information, while 86 percent plan to use it soon. It’s a huge element that helps you define whom you want to sell to. Take time to learn their pain points and identify topics of interest.
3. Keywords
Whether your SEO strategy succeeds or fails will significantly depend on your choice of keywords. The wrong keywords will send your website to the bottom of organic search results regardless of the number of backlinks and the amount of content you publish.
We’ll get deeper into keywords when we discuss keyword research in the next section. But let’s make a quick note at this stage that for tech companies, keywords are constantly evolving. So finding the right keywords is not just a ‘one-off’ task. It’s an ongoing effort that calls for long term planning.
4. Ongoing content
You can't succeed in SEO without ongoing content. This means publishing fresh, original content on a regular basis. It also sends signals to search engines that your website is not stale, and new high-quality content suggests relevance.
If you are worried about consistently producing fresh content, you should begin with a reliable content team who produce a sizable number of posts per month. Aim for quality over quantity.
Another important aspect of ongoing content is to strategically and regularly refresh your existing content. This is vital, especially in the tech industry, where information can quickly become obsolete.
5. Tools
The right SEO tools will not only help you to save time and effort, but they also provide insights that would otherwise be unavailable. From keyword research tools to link analysis tools, competitor analysis to promotion, there are good SEO tools out here to help with every aspect of SEO.
Most importantly, tools can help you track your progress and identify areas where improvements need to be made.
6. Social media accounts
Most tech companies tend to ignore social media, just because it’s not a ranking factor. But what you may not know is that while it does not contribute directly to ranking, social media can actually have a significant impact on your SEO efforts.
How does this work? Well, when users share links to your website or mention your company in posts, you can easily earn new backlinks and improve your site's authority. Avenues such as LinkedIn Publisher, for example, can easily get your name and content to millions.
There is also the aspect of visibility that comes with highly active social media accounts, which sends a positive signal to search engines. Neglecting social media means you're missing out on a valuable opportunity to humanize your brand.
7. Consistency
In the context of SEO, consistency means applying the tactics non-stop. This is often a challenge for tech companies because of the overwhelming nature of this industry. You can overcome this challenge by engaging agencies that specialize in SEO for technology companies.
Search engines such as Google love websites that are consistent as this translates to reliability. Google in particular likes to see stability and regularity when it comes to a website's SEO.
Being consistent with your SEO efforts sends a message to both your audience and search engines that you're serious about your business. It shows that you're in it for the long haul, which is something that your target audience will appreciate.
Please note that consistency does not start and end at publishing, it also means being consistent with all the tactics that are working for you.
The engine behind the tactics: Keyword Research for Technology Companies
A major part of SEO is finding the right keywords to target, and here is why. Search engines are designed to help users find the information they need as quickly and easily as possible. To do this, they rely on keywords to understand the content. When a user types a query into a search engine, the engine scans its index of websites for pages that contain the same keywords.
The results are then ranked according to a number of factors, including relevance and popularity. This system is not perfect, but it is generally effective at helping users find the information they need.
So as you can see it's important to invest in finding and using relevant keywords throughout your content. This is the first step in ensuring that your website is properly indexed by search engines.
This concept is known as keyword research, and it can be a challenge. A challenge because there are a lot of factors to consider including search volume, competition level, and relevance.
Without performing keyword research, you'll be shooting in the dark, trying to rank for terms that no one is searching for or that are so competitive that you'll take so long to rank — or never rank at all.
The key elements that make keyword research complete include keyword research tools, seed keywords and competitor keyword research.
Keyword research tools
The good news is that there are a number of tools that help with keyword research. These tools are good at unearthing the most important keywords at any moment in your tech niche.
The purpose of these tools is to help you to get a better understanding of which keywords are most relevant and most likely to yield success. With the right keywords in hand, you can then start to develop an SEO strategy that will help your website rank higher.
Keyword research tools enable you to determine the answers to questions such as; how challenging is to rank, how much organic traffic to expect, and the type of content to create around specific keywords. Getting the answers to these queries lets you prioritize the most valuable keywords for your SEO efforts.
However, you should avoid keyword stuffing, which is the practice of cramming too many keywords into content in an attempt to improve your ranking. Not only is this considered spammy behavior by search engines, but it also makes your content difficult to read for human users.
Seed keywords
One of the best tactics behind tech-related keywords is to list your seed keywords. But what are seed keywords?
Seed keywords are short-tail keywords with one or two words. These keywords tend to attract high search volumes, and competition. Seed keywords don’t have modifiers, unlike short-tail keywords, which may or may not.
Essentially your keyword research journey should begin with seed keywords. They sprout other keywords that you can use to optimize your tech website. You can also build them up to generate long-tail keywords.
The process of identifying your seed keywords is pretty straightforward. Just research on what people usually search for when they want to find the products and services that your IT company offers.
Competitor keyword research
If there was no competition then SEO would be an easy job. But as we noted earlier, the tech industry is unforgivingly competitive. So you ought to be strategic in identifying the keywords that send traffic to your competitor. Let’s see how to go about this.
First, identify your top competitors and feed their websites into a competitive intelligence tool. Then analyze their top-ranking pages. A good competitor analysis tool will equip you with crucial information, including top keywords and traffic sources. This tactic provides you with rich intelligence on the kind of keywords that are working for your competitors.
Next is to plan a robust content strategy around the discovered keywords. Your keyword research should equip you with a complete dataset of the topics your target audience searches for. We’ll discuss content extensively under technical tactics.
One of the most prevalent SEO mistakes tech companies make while trying to incorporate keywords into their content is keyword stuffing and irrelevant keywords. Avoid this mistake by simply ensuring that each keyword naturally fits into elements like the page title, topic, meta description, sentence structure, URL titles, and alt tags for images.
The winning SEO tactics for Technology companies
We have finally come to the tactics and it’s going to be exciting. For purposes of clarity, this section is divided up into technical tactics and soft tactics.
Technical tactics
Technical SEO tactics are those that deal with the technical aspects of a website and the content therein. In other words these are tactics that require some level of advanced skills and precise technical knowledge.
These tactics aim at getting your a website where it meets most if not all the technical requirements of modern search engines. Technical tactics can be grouped further into two major categories: on-site and off-site tactics.
On-site tactics
On-site or on-page SEO tactics are the actions you execute on the website to improve the site's ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). Let’s look at the top 8.
1. Content (text & visuals)
You've probably heard the saying that «content is king». That's still true today. In fact, it’s getting bigger because Google and other search engines are constantly evolving. They are getting better and better at understanding the context and relevance of website content.
Let’s break this content aspect into text and visuals. This is important because most tech companies are putting a lot of focus on text content while forgetting visuals, a mistake you don't want to make.
Text contentText content, also known as «copy», is the text on a web page that is meant to be read by humans.
Here are five ways to make sure your text content is as search engine–friendly as possible:
- Use the right keywords and phrases throughout your content, without stuffing.
- Reference other authoritative websites with links back to your content.
- Regularly update your content with new and relevant information.
Visuals (images and videos) not only make your content more appealing to your readers, but also provide search engines with more information to rank your content higher.
Images: Images can impact your SEO ranking if you don’t optimize them correctly. Use these approaches to make sure your images are helping, not hurting, your ranking:
- Use the right keywords in the file name and alt text.
- Make sure the file size is small enough to load quickly (file sizes below 70KB are the most optimal, if they are very heavy then they should not go beyond 1MB ).
- Resize the image to the correct dimensions (between 1500 and 2500 pixels wide). If your image has an unnecessary background, consider using an image background remover. This usually preserves the main portion of the image, shrinks file size, and can enhance loading speed, which is a critical factor in SEO ranking.
- Use a compressed file format like JPEG or PNG.
- Add metadata to the image file.
Videos: Videos are increasingly becoming an important part of good content. But because it takes a lot of resources and time to produce good videos, it's generally understandable that you might not possibly include video in every piece of content that you publish. However it's a good idea to use them from time to time, especially for those pieces that bear substantial significance for your company. And whenever you do, please utilize these tips:
- Make sure your videos are properly tagged and named.
- Optimize your videos for fast loading times.
- Add transcripts or closed captions to your videos.
- Use relevant keywords in your video titles and descriptions.
2. Meta tags
Meta tags give information about a web page that is not visible to users when they visit the page. This information is used by search engines to understand what the page is about.
These are the main types of meta tags for SEO purposes;
Title tagsTitle tags tell the search engines what the page is about and help to determine how the page will appear in search results pages. It’s essentially the topic of the page and the first thing that people see in a search engine results page. So it's important to make sure that it accurately represents the content of the page. The title tag should be around 50-60 characters long, and it's important to include your target keywords in it.
Description tagThe meta description tag is a snippet of HTML code that provides a brief description of a webpage. This tag is not that essential for SEO, but we have included it here because it can be helpful for enticing people to click through to your website -which is what you want. Your meta description should be around 150-160 characters long, and it should accurately reflect the content of your page. Avoid alphanumeric characters such as &, +, or -, as well as using keywords or phrases that are already included in the title or URL of your page.
Robots meta tagsA robots meta tag is a piece of code that tells search engines if they should index or not index a page. It also lets them know whether or not they can follow links on the page.
There are four main options you can choose from:
- Index: This tells search engines to index the page and follow all of the page's links.
- Noindex: This tells search engines not to index the page, but still follow the links on it.
- Follow: This tells search engines to index the page and follow the links on it.
- Nofollow: This tells search engines not to follow links on the page.
Google has an extensive robots meta tag guide, a signal that this is a vital tactic you need to get right.
Image alt tagAn image alt tag is a short phrase that describes an image. It's used to help search engines understand the topic of an image, and it's also displayed when an image can't be loaded.
You should always include an alt tag for every image on your website, as it improves your site's SEO. The best way to think of it is as a substitute for the image if it can't be loaded..
Header tagsHeader tags, also known as heading tags, help define the structure and hierarchy of a content page. There are six levels of header tags, starting with <h1> and going down to <h6>. In this article, for example, the heading for this section about tags is “Meta tags”. In the hierarchy of this article, this is a <h5> that is under “On-site tactics'' which is a <h4>, which is under «Technical tactics», a <h3> that is under «The winning SEO tactics for tech companies», a <h2>.
If we were to present the structure of this article up to where we are right now, this is how it would look in terms of hierarchy;
Winning SEO Tactics and Best Practices for Tech Companies — <h1>
The winning SEO tactics for tech companies — <h2>
Technical tactics — <h3>
On-site tactics — <h4>
1. Content (text & visuals) — <h5>
Text content — <h6>
Visuals — <h6>
2. Meta tags — <h5>
3. URL optimization
URL optimization is the process of making your website's URLs as user-friendly and search engine friendly as possible. This makes it easier for both users and search engines to understand what your website is about. They are crucial in ensuring the consistency of your site’s hierarchy as you create blog posts, sub-pages, and other internal pages.
Here are a few tips when optimizing URLs for tech business:
- Keep URLs short and sweet: Shorter URLs are easier to remember and share, and they also take up less space on the page. That means they can be crawled and indexed more quickly by search engines. Use keywords whenever possible, remove unnecessary words and symbols, use lowercase letters, and keep the number of redirects to a minimum
- Use hyphens to separate words: This makes words easier to read and understand. It also tells search engines that those words are all part of the same phrase, and they'll be more likely to rank your page for that phrase.
- Mobile-friendly: Google now uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. So having URLs that are easy to read and navigate on smartphones and tablets is essential. First, avoid complicated URLs that are difficult to type in on a mobile. Second, use easy-to-read fonts and avoid using capital letters or special characters, which can be difficult to see on small screens.
- Use canonical tags to avoid duplicate content: When you have multiple versions of a page (for example, www.example.com and example.com), the canonical tag tells search engines which is the «real» version of the page. This helps to ensure that your site's ranking isn't affected by duplicate content, and that the right version of your page is shown in search results.
- Use 301 redirects to redirect old URLs to new ones: This redirects any traffic that previously went to the old URLs to the new ones, thus preserving your website's SEO ranking.
- Use HTTPS: HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is a communication protocol that helps protect the privacy and security of web users. It works by encrypting the connection between a user's computer and the website they're visiting, making it difficult for anyone else to spy on their activity or steal their information. Google prefers using HTTPS because it is more secure than HTTP and therefore protects people better when they're online. Google uses it as a positive ranking factor.
4. Internal links
An internal link is a hyperlink that connects pages on your website. It’s an essential on-page SEO strategy because it drives traffic to other pages on your site. Valuable internal links keep readers on your website longer, reducing bounce rate and sending a signal to search engines that your site is resourceful.
Google spends more time crawling and indexing sites where visitors spend more time. The impact of this is that Google will finally absorb more information from your website and potentially rank your site higher.
Here are some tips for effective internal linking:
- Use your target keyword as the anchor text. But please remember to vary your anchor text with different words and phrases. If you only use the same anchor text over and over again, search engines will start to see it as spammy, and may penalize your website.
- Don't use generic terms like «click here» or «read more»
- Don't overuse keywords or put them in places that don't make sense.
- Your anchor text should be related to the page you're linking to.
- Don’t link to pages with outdated information
5. Site load time
Visitors expect your website to load faster; if not, they move to the next search results.
In addition, search engine algorithms are becoming smarter and may penalize slow sites. But how do you know whether your website is fast enough to retain visitors?
Use Google's speed tools to analyze your site and identify what improvements you can make. Simple solutions such as optimizing your website's format and decreasing image sizes can significantly reduce load times.
6. Crawling & indexing
Crawling is the process that search engines use to check the internet for content, looking through the code for every URL they find. Indexing is the storage and organizing of the content they find.
So the crawlers travel the web, following links from page to page, while indexers take the information from crawlers and organize it into an index. Once a webpage is in the index, it can be displayed as a result of queries.
The purpose of crawling and indexing is to create a database of all the websites on the internet so that when a user performs a search, the search engine can release relevant results.
One of the best ways to ensure your pages are crawled and indexed by Google is to submit your sitemap. A sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website. This file helps Google find and index your pages.
7. Content clustering
A content cluster is a group of content pieces that are closely related to each other. They may be on the same topic, or they may be related in some other way.
Content clustering is a great way to organize your content and make it easier for people to find what they're looking for. It also helps you create connections between different pieces of content, which can help keep people engaged with your site.
To create a content cluster, first identify a group of related pieces of content. Next, create a long piece of content (parent article) that discusses the main topic at a deeper but overall level. Next, create smaller pieces that discuss specific subjects within the main topic. Next, create relevant links from the main piece to the smaller pieces and vice versa.
The goal is to help search engines understand what your site is all about. This increases the likelihood that your pages will show up in relevant search engine results pages, helping you to attract more website visitors. You can actually use a keyword clustering tools to group keywords according to the clusters of content that you want to create.
8. Content organization
We have already discussed header tags which are a huge part of content structure. But let’s just emphasize again that your website's content must be well-organized and easy to follow for both humans and search engine crawlers. When crawlers crawl your website, they index your content according to its structure. So a well-organized site will help them index your pages more accurately. You could have the best of content but poor organization will cost you.
Use these tips for sound content organization:
- Use headers and subheaders to break up your content and make it easier to read.
- Make use of lists and bullets to highlight important points.
- Place key information at the beginning of your article.
- Vary your sentence length and structure.
- Break your text with images and videos to add visual interest.
- Include a table of contents.
Keep in mind that users are more likely to stay on pages that are easy to navigate. A well-structured content will keep visitors engaged and help them find what they came to look for.
Off-site tactics (all about backlinks)
Off-site SEO refers to all the measures you can take outside your company website to get other websites or people to link back to your website. These measures involve creating as many high-quality backlinks as possible.
Backlinks are what Google uses to initially find your website, meaning your website will never be found without them.
This is captured succinctly by John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google.“”Links are really important for us to find content initially. So it’s like if nobody links to your website ever then we’re going to have a hard time recognizing that it even exists..”, he says.
Implement these 8 tactics:
1. Directory listings
A directory listing is simply a public listing of your tech company on a website that's dedicated to cataloging technology companies. Directory listings often show up at the top of search engine results pages. So when you list your business in a quality directory, you get an equally quality backlink to your website.
Some directories, such as Google My Business, allow you to take the initiative and keep your business listing current with regular customer reviews and updates.
Remember to update your directory listing with the latest information as your website changes, and avoid these things:
- Don't use the same copy across multiple directories. This can look spammy and can hurt your ranking.
- Don't list your site in low-quality directories. This could even get your site blacklisted.
- Don't list your site on directories that are unrelated to your niche.
- Don't use automated submission tools. Directory submission is best done manually, so that you can be sure to include all the right information about your site..
2. Guest posting
Guest posting, also known as guest blogging, involves contributing a post to high authority websites to build exposure, backlinks, and relationships.
This tactic establishes a relationship between your website and the site that is hosting your post and taps into their audience for more exposure.
Keep these things in mind when guest posting for SEO purposes:
- Choose sites that are relevant to the topic you want to write about. This will help you attract targeted readers who are more likely to be interested in what you have to say.
- Make sure your guest post is helpful. A quality post will not only help you attract attention, but it will also encourage people to visit your site.
- Pepper your post with targeted keywords. But don’t stuff it – this will only make your post difficult to read and could get you penalized by search engines.
- Choose a catchy title. An interesting title can draw readers in and persuade them to give your article a chance.
3. Social media
Social media does not contribute directly to SEO ranking, but does indirectly. The links you share across various social media platforms increase brand exposure.
Here are some of the key ways social media contributes to SEO:
- Social media promotes content and increases its reach. By sharing blog posts, articles, and other pieces of content on social media, you can significantly increase the number of people who will see it.
- Social media activity is often used as a signal by search engines when determining rankings.
- Customers often use social media to research businesses before making a purchase. So a strong presence on social media will make it easier for such customers to find you and visit your website.
4. Forum posting
There is a lot of conversation and debate that goes on in the tech industry, and forums is where these conversations mostly happen. Being part of important discussions within your niche gives prominence to your company. And when used correctly, forum posting will build links, generate traffic, and create brand awareness.
Forums are also a good way to establish your company as an expert in your technology field, which communicates to search engines that you are a credible source of information that is worth ranking higher.
Of course it takes some time and effort to build a sizable forum muscle, but it is quite an effective way to promote your tech company online.
Here are the key characteristics of high quality forums:
- High engagement levels.
- High-quality members.
- High Google PageRank.
- High Alexa Rank
Some of the most popular tech forums based on the above characteristics include, StackOverflow, Growth Hackers, and Reddit Technology
It’s a good idea to assign a dedicated team member who is always keeping your company active on forums by participating in conversations. The more helpful and engaging your business is, the more links you are likely to get from other forum members.
5. Influencer outreach
Influencer campaigns are a form of outreach that involves working with social media influencers to promote your company. Since influencers have huge followings across social media, a single mention with a backlink to your website can reach hundreds of thousands and even millions of your target audience. This might earn you backlinks and send a signal to search engines that your website is worth ranking high.
It’s important to mention that influencer campaigns can be expensive, especially if you are going to go for the big influencers with millions of followers. Have a budget in mind and be prepared to spend on exceptional content production. Remember the influencers are also keen to safeguard their brand image, so no influencer worth their salt will agree to be associated with poor quality.
6. Link exchanges
Link exchange involves two brands getting into an agreement to trade links. The brands essentially agree to link to each other.
The idea is that by exchanging links with other websites, your site will receive more traffic from both the direct link and from any search engine rankings that result from the increased number of links. You do this by contacting other webmasters and requesting a link, or automatically, through link exchange software.
Manual link exchange is generally considered to be more effective, as it allows you more control over which links you are exchanging and how they are displayed on your site. Automated link exchanges are risky and therefore not advisable. Search engines can detect them and penalize your site.
7. Review platforms
Review platforms are websites and/or apps that allow users to share their experiences with a product or service that they have used. Of course for technology companies, the reviews could include anything from SaaS platforms to Managed IT services, apps to gadgets and everything in between.
One of the benefits of using review platforms for SEO is that they have high Domain Authority (DA). This means that they are trusted sources of information by search engines, and as such, they can boost your ranking.
8. Brand mentions
A brand mention is an implied link and occurs when a website mentions another. There is a belief in the SEO community that when one site mentions another’s URL or domain name, search engines will consider it the same as a link.
Though practically search engines don’t necessarily use brand mentions for link-related purposes, it helps build awareness. A mention essentially spreads the word about your website, which is more about building popularity and not ranking.
Soft SEO tactics for Technology Companies (Authority Building)
Authority is everything in tech. And so it’s critical to deploy some soft approaches to scale your company’s authority within your space. Use these tactics to build trusted authority;
1. Write opinion pieces
A tech business can be intense, often. It’s also a fact that many tech entrepreneurs and managers are not the most enthusiastic when it comes to publicity. But you somehow need to get out of your comfort zone and take on the public stage when it matters most. Opinions can sway customer bases and you don't want your competitors to take all the spoils. Create time to write and share your expert opinion on highly debated topics.
The more your opinions stand out, the more valuable backlinks you are going to earn at no cost — of course there is the cost of time and readiness to step out of your comfort zone, but it’s worth it.
Writing opinion pieces is also a great way to generate buzz and get people talking about your brand. However, it's important to make sure that your articles are well-researched and well-written, or you risk damaging your reputation. Give it a try and build gradually.
2. Capitalize on big industry news
You might have noticed that some companies have made it their goal to get their name out there whenever some big news item breaks out in your industry? This is an incredible hack that is increasingly becoming an impactful SEO tactic. The goal here is to get featured in big industry news.
How do you achieve this? Simple: Always be on the lookout for breaking news in your niche. Then write your own version of the news, including a deeper analysis from a different angle. Then publish it while the news is still hot. It’s basically what any media house does, only that you are doing it strategically — you are not a media house remember, so you can't be releasing news every day.
How does this add to SEO? Since search engines will be rushing to serve the news to people searching, they are likely to rank high the sites that are first to publish reliable news and related comments or analysis on the subject. Think of what can happen if Google News, for example, happens to rank your newly published news at the very top of page one. People interested in such news will run to your website to get more information. And if you did a good job on the quality side, then you better be ready for high authority links from all sorts of websites including media houses and community forums in your niche.
3. Give interviews
When you grant an interview, you are effectively giving journalists and bloggers content that they can then use to write articles and blog posts. The interview content will often include links back to your company's website, which helps to increase your website's authority and improve your search engine ranking.
Giving interviews will also increase your company's visibility and name recognition, which can further boost your SEO. It's a great way to get some free publicity and build links back to your website.
4. Press releases
A press release is a powerful piece of content that can help your tech company rank. Many tech companies are already employing this tactic, and so should you. Here are some examples of what you can announce:
- New products and features.
- Partnerships and collaborations.
- New hires.
- Awards and accolades.
There are a number of ways to distribute a press release, but the most effective methods are email distribution and online newswire services. Email distribution allows you to target specific journalists, bloggers, and other publications that might be interested in your story. Online newswire services like PR Newswire and Business Wire offer extensive distribution networks that can get your release in front of millions of readers.
SEO for Technology companies: Best Practices
Ever come across businesses that complain of having deployed a ton of SEO tactics but struggling to rank? It’s probably because they are getting it wrong on best practices. There is always the risk of getting the tactics right but fail flat on best practices.
Here are the supporting elements to aid your efforts and ensure that the tactics work. Never ignore them.
1. Fresh content
Your tech website is a living and breathing entity that requires fresh content to survive, and so you need to feed it with regular fresh content. Every update you make to your site plays a part in its interaction with search engines, customers, and visitors.
Another vital factor to remember is that fresh content means frequent indexing. However, this does not necessarily imply higher indexing; it means that search engines will stop by and look at your site with every new content and web page.
2. SEO audits
An SEO audit is the process of assessing a website's search engine optimization health and performance. The goal is to identify areas where your website's SEO can be improved, and then make recommendations on how to improve it. An audit can also serve as a basis for comparing the before-and-after results of implementing those recommendations.
There are many activities that go into an SEO audit, but some common ones include examining a website's title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, images, checking broken links; analyzing a website's link profile; and assessing its content for quality.
3. Align content to search intent
Search intent is the reason why someone is typing a query into a search engine. There are three types of search intent: navigational, informational, and transactional.
Navigational intent is when one is looking for a specific website or brand. For example, «IT Companies Network» is a navigational query meaning one is looking for our platform.
Informational intent is when someone is looking for information about a specific topic. For example, «what is the best Firewall for small business?» is an informational query.
Transactional intent is when someone is looking to buy something or take some action online. For example, «best buy laptop deals» has transactional intent because the person wants to buy.
So every time you produce content, you should always know which search intent you are targeting. Think about the keyword(s) you're targeting and what someone would be looking for if they used those keywords. Then, create content that answers their question or solves their problem.
4. Responsive website design
A responsive design offers a friendly user experience, ensuring that your website looks and works well on all devices, from smartphones to desktop computers. It's important for SEO because it helps search engines understand what your website is about. It also makes it easy for users to find the information they're looking for, regardless of what device they're using.
Poor user experience is a leading factor in high bounce rates. You can have the best tech services or products but potential customers are going to drop off if they struggle to find their way around your website. Mobile is also huge these days, so don’t fall victim of getting it right on the website but falter on mobile. Take note that mobile devices have become a fixture in everyday life, with over 90 percent of people conducting online searches on their mobile devices.
5. Monitoring and optimization
The tech industry is very dynamic, so you should monitor and optimize your website frequently as a good SEO practice. Else the competition will snatch your lunch.
The purpose is to ensure that your website is visible to search engines at all times and that it is ranking highly for the relevant keywords that you have worked hard to bring over to your content. This involves tracking your website's search engine rankings and the traffic it receives from organic search results.
If you notice that your website is not performing as well as it should be, you can make changes to your marketing master plan. This may involve changing the keywords you are targeting, the content on your website, or the way you build links to your site.
Ignoring your website’s performance could result in losses, not only financially but also loss of credibility and trust. Monitoring can also help your company to avoid crashes, which are not a small matter. Even big corporations get caught up in crashes, a good example being the website crash that cost Facebook an estimated 100 million dollars.
6. Involve everyone
It would be best to allow your team to participate in some of these tactics. Not everyone is going to be receptive to this idea, and that’s okay. Start by sharing with all members, then involve those who are receptive without necessarily overwhelming them to the extent of ‘eating’ into their official work time. The aim here is to make SEO resonate within the company and nurture it to become part of company culture.
There are many ways to involve those willing in the company. Here are five ways:
- Incorporate keywords into your company's content strategy. Everyone from the marketing team to the customer service team can help by sprinkling relevant keywords throughout blog posts, social media updates, and even email correspondence.
- Encourage everyone to keep an eye out for mentions of your company on social media and review sites.
7. Utilize expert feedback
Without expert feedback, you could be missing out on key opportunities to improve your SEO. Expert feedback can save you lots of time by helping you to quickly identify and fix errors on your website that could be costing you traffic.
Experts come with the advantage of always being in the act, meaning they have a 360 degree view of all the tactics you are employing. They are likely to have encountered most of the challenges you face and fixed them successfully, elsewhere. And most importantly, they can objectively criticize your strategy and offer solutions for improvement.
SEO for Technology Companies: A quick summary of this entire guide
What You Need | Keyword Research | The Tactics | Best Practices | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Technical tactics | Soft tactics | ||||
On-site tactics | Off-site tactics | ||||
Product website Target audience Keywords Ongoing content Tools Social media accounts Consistency | Keyword research tools Seed keywords Competitor research | Content Meta tags URL optimization Internal links Site load time Crawling & indexing Content clustering Content organization | Directory listings Guest posting Social media Forum posting Influencers Link exchanges Review platforms Brand mentions | Opinion pieces News Interviews Press releases | Fresh content SEO audits Search intent Responsive design Monitoring Involve everyone Expert feedback |
SEO for Technology companies: Final remarks
Implementing all these tactics can be daunting, especially if you are new to SEO. But this is what makes the difference between the tech companies you admire and those you 'pity'. And you certainly don't want to 'pity' your own company.
Again, SEO is not an event but an ongoing battle that is best executed steadily rather than hastily. Pick the tactics that you feel best match your current status, then scale as your company grows. All the best!