Introduction
SEO has persisted in being the basis of a winning digital strategy through the progression of algorithmic advancements. Over the last decade, SEO has changed beyond any other marketing channel. After all, 51% of the online traffic approaches the websites via organic search.
Although, the fact cannot be denied that SEO has gone mainstream. It should acquire new strategies and skills to compete in the succeeding world of competitors. SERP’s have been long gone now as the search is visual, vigorous, dynamic and everywhere now. It has laid a remarkable influence on the organizations as SEO is the discipline that is collaborative and demands multiple specialisms to attain favorable results.
However, the foundation upon which any thriving strategy is built lies in the domain of technical SEO.
History
It is prevalent from the history that SEO always triggers high-quality traffic through organic searches. Since the early days of SEO, the means of accomplishing this goal have been modified significantly. While setting up an SEO strategy back then, crawlability was considered the leading deliberation as it is now. Content, a medium to improve the rankings and including keywords was a secondary consideration in that aspect. However, the main goal of the marketers of attracting more traffic to be converted on their website remained constant. Consequently, the marketers started to bring on anything to gain the highest rankings. With the passage of time, SEO moved to the “right-brained” sphere of creative content from the absolute rational discipline.
Currently, Technical SEO has advanced into encompassing all the best practices of search engines and doesn’t allow any space for manipulation.
The four key areas to Technical SEO are:
Site content: effective retrieval of content elements and enabling all the major search engines to be crawled and indexed to the content.
Conversion: allowing the users to navigate through the site hassle-free by resolving any blockages.
Structure: Facilitating the internal link equity flow by creating a URL structure and a site hierarchy. It also enables the navigation of relevant content by users and search engines
Performance: all of the areas mentioned above lead to a better performance of the site through search and other channels
A new approach: Search, website and Content Optimization
The technical SEO extends its remit to include these following features to fit for its purpose:
– Optimization of sites for the users
– Creating content to grab the attention of the right audience across multiple marketing channels
– Enabling social networks and search engines to gain access to the content.
SEO & 6 thinking hats
SEO never survived in a vacuum; rather it’s all about collaboration. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats approach can provide a structured collaboration. The six different hats comprise different frameworks and functions that are required to accomplish successful outcomes. The six hats could be different mindsets of a person, various departments and individuals that contribute to the improvement of the collaborative process.
- White hat: it depends on data points, facts, and statistics and is considered to be the most objective way of approaching a condition. Analytics specialists and data analysts use this approach.
- Black hat: this approach points explicitly out dangers and obstacles for the project.
- Blue hat: it is a more organized approach. It keeps the SEO collaboration going by bringing together different strands into a cohesive whole.
- Yellow hat: focuses on potential benefits and brings optimism to the table. By maintaining its structure, it can be used by any optimist for business strategies as it generates a lot of ideas.
- Red hat: focuses on gut feelings and emotion and can be very beneficial for a digital project. It is often worthy to listen to gut instincts.
- Green hat: tackles the challenges from a new perspective and brings spontaneity and creativity to the process.