How Technical SEO Continues To Evolve

And why it’s increasingly important for your website ranking

Not too many years ago it used to be the case that website designers and SEO practitioners didn’t have to worry too much about the underlying technical performance of a website. As long as the website was reasonable engaging and easy enough for users to navigate, this and some decent back-links was all that was needed to get great Google rankings.

However, the picture has changed quite considerably in the last few years and now “technical SEO” is a much bigger consideration when getting dental websites to rank well in Google.

Back in 2018 we covered website performance and touched on technical SEO in this blog, but what’s changed since and why would a dentist need a reasonable working knowledge of the subject when choosing their designer and SEO provider?

Understanding technical SEO

Over the last few years Google has placed a lot more emphasis on the technical performance of a website and progressively started to give ranking advantages to those websites which perform better than others. It started with relatively simple factors such as how fast a web page loaded, but now encompasses a lot more elements including how certain features of a website display and how quickly.

So why is Google so focused on website performance in this way? It all stems from their wish to provide the best experience for a website user, whether it’s the content which answers a user’s search query best to the time a user has to wait until meaningful information is displayed in their browser.

They also penalise certain features which they consider may hamper the user experience, for example the use of intrusive interstitials (pop-ups) that obscure the useful information on a page.

So why would a dentist need to worry about this? Surely any self-respecting web design and SEO company would take all of this into account when carrying out their work? Unfortunately this is not the case; on the contrary.

What we are actually seeing is popular dental web designers completely ignoring these recent Google guidelines and getting stuck in what we call the “form over function” conundrum i.e. sacrificing technical performance for glitzy appearance. This is no longer satisfactory and you need both aesthetic and technical excellence. Without the latter websites can languish in the Google rankings and we see this more and more, indeed more often than not it’s the “glitzy” websites built on un-optimised WordPress platforms which tend to fare the worst.

How do you avoid a technically poor website development?

Now that you have a clearer understanding of the need for a technically capable website which conforms to Google guidelines, how do you ensure that your designer/SEO team deliver? This is something that you need to stipulate before the design contract is signed and you must ensure that the designer has a clear understanding of the subject.

Fortunately there are tools to demonstrate how a website performs against the various guidelines and if you mention “Core Web Vitals” to your website design team, hopefully they’ll know you’ve done your homework. Essentially they need to demonstrate that any new dental website performs adequately against these standards.

Competent design teams will accept the challenge whereas others may well shy away – it’s quite a task to get a fully-featured website to perform very well from a technical perspective. However, it will be increasingly advantageous to you if you can achieve this.

Summary

Technical SEO is a growing consideration when building new dental websites and also for older sites where SEO is being introduced. Those websites which perform well technically provide a better base for SEO and in turn, Google ranking, so it is essential that your designer and SEO team know all about it. Better still, that they undertake their work with these important guidelines firmly in mind.

If you feel that your website is falling short, it could well be that the technical underpinnings are inadequate and need work. For a no-obligation mini-audit and free advice, please call the digital marketing team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 for experienced assistance.