Technical Search Engine Optimization Wilmington NC

The first step in planning your Wilmington NC Search Engine Optimization journey is to make sure your website is in the right shape to make the trip. A website that is full of issues will take vastly more work to increase authority and visibility, and may well be actually working to undermine your efforts and investment. You wouldn’t set off on a cross-country journey without making sure your car was fit for the trip. You wouldn’t climb a mountain without a physical and equipment check. Don’t spend another penny on Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization until you are sure your website measures up to the current standards that Google expects.

Our team can perform a full technical search engine optimization audit from top to bottom, tell you every issue that might impact your search engine rankings, and tell you in every case what to do to solve the problem. We can audit every page and element of your website, give you a health rating, and a detailed report on everything we find. Here are the SEO factors we look at and why they matter:

SEO Audit graphic

  • Content

  • Links

  • Mobile Optimization

  • Crawlability and Indexing

  • Titles

  • Meta Descriptions

  • Images

  • H1 Headings

  • Sitemaps

  • Robots.txt

  • Page Speed

  • Security

  • Doc Type

  • Backlinks

  • Google Penalty Check

Content

Your content is at the heart of your SEO potential. To outrank your competitors, you’ll need pages that provide information people are searching for in a clear and useful way. A winning website must have content that is detailed, unique, relevant, and well-written. We will highlight:

  • Duplicate content
  • Low text-HTML ratio
  • Low page word count

Links

Links are vitally important to Search Engine Optimization in Wilmington NC. They are how search engines measure the value of a website and judge which content is important to which keyword. Your link structure should be strong and follow best practices. We will check for:

  • Broken external links
  • Broken internal links
  • Too many links on a page
  • Internal links with “nofollow” attributes
  • External links with “nofollow” attributes

Mobile Optimization

Every website MUST be optimized for mobile usage. Google has made it absolutely clear that websites not developed for mobile use will be heavily penalized in the SEO world. Your pages should automatically size and scale to respond to the device being used to view them. If they do not, every other effort you put into digital marketing will be weakened or rendered useless. We check directly with Google for:

  • Complete Mobile-Friendly Pages

Crawlability and Indexing

We check each page for any issues which might prevent Search Engines from crawling and indexing the content. Small technical factors, invisible to the user, may block the Search bots as they try to access your page. You have worked hard to create the content, and you want the Search Engines to be able to find and read it as much as your visitors. Our software can scan every page for all these technical SEO issues and highlight them for correction. We look for:

  • 5XX errors
  • 4XX errors
  • WWW resolve issues
  • Pages with redirection or HTTP flood protection
  • Pages with DNS resolutions issues
  • Pages with incorrect URL formats

Titles

The TITLE is what appears on the tab of your browser when viewing a page, and on the top of your listing in any Search Engine Results. It is the large blue text you see first, and it is one of the most important factors in Search Indexing, as well as attracting clicks to your page. Clear and informative titles are critical to the success of your Search Engine Optimization efforts, but something many websites score poorly on. We check for:

  • Missing or empty title tags
  • Duplicate title tags
  • Too short title tags
  • Too long title tags
  • Duplicate Title and H1 tags

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are the short text that follows the title when you are listed in Search Engine results. This is defined via a tag in your HTML code that Search Engines place strong emphasis on. Your description should be clear, readable, and contain your keyword. Description tags should be written in good grammatical structure as far as possible and should be between 150 to 160 characters to make the best use of the space. We check every page on your website for:

  • Duplicate meta descriptions
  • Missing meta descriptions

Images

Images are important to the user experience of your website. They are also critical to your SEO efforts. Search Engines look at the descriptions you give your images. They also pay attention to the ALT tag for every visual element, as well as the file names you have chosen. These are all critical places to optimize for important keywords. In our audit we check for:

  • Broken internal images
  • Broken external images
  • Missing ALT attributes

H1 Heading

H1 is the main, highest-level heading that visitors see on a webpage. They help define the topic and content. Each page should have only one H1 heading, though it may have multiple H2, H3, H4, H5, or H6 headings, which define subtopics within the content. As we audit your website, we check each page for:

  • Missing H1 heading
  • Multiple H1 heading

Sitemap

A Sitemap is an XML file that indexes all the pages, posts, and other elements of your site. This helps Search Engines ensure they are locating all the content you have available. It is vital that your sitemap is properly formatted and complete. In our audit, we check for:

  • Missing sitemap
  • Sitemap not indexed in robots.txt
  • Wrong pages in sitemap
  • Format errors in sitemap

Robots.txt

A robots.txt file gives instructions to Search Engines on how to navigate your site. It can be used to avoid search robots indexing unwanted areas of your website. A well constructed robots.txt file can speed up the pace Search Engines crawl your site, and ensure it is indexed exactly as you desire. We check for:

  • Robots.txt missing
  • Format errors in robots.txt

Page Speed

The speed your pages load is important to both your Search Engine rankings and your user experience. There are many factors that can cause a page to load slowly, and we run a comprehensive check for these, with advice on how to improve your page load score on all devices. Although we often go into more detail in this section, we begin by checking for:

  • Slow page load speed
  • Too large HTML

Security

Website security is important to your visitors and now also plays an important role in the value Search Engines place on your site. If you do not have HTTPS encryption in place, we will highlight this. We can also provide you will SSL encryption installation at competitive rates that are a fraction of those you frequently see quoted online. We check for:

  • Missing HTTPS encryption
  • Incorrectly configured HTTPS encryption

Doc Type

The Doc type declaration instructs web browsers which version of HTML is being used. If this is incorrectly configured, pages may display badly or load more slowly. In our audit, we check for:

  • Doctype not declared

Backlinks

These are the links from other websites to content on your site. Not all backlinks are created equal, and some may even have a toxic effect on your Search Engine ranking. Our Wilmington NC Search Engine Optimization audit will produce a link of all your backlinks with ratings on their value to your site. We list:

  • All backlinks to your site
  • Backlink ratings by value and toxicity score

Google Penalty Check

There are a number of reasons why a website may incur Google Penalties. When these occur you may find your pages penalized in the rankings, or even removed from the Google index completely. Worse, you may have no idea this has happened or why. In our Search Engine Audit we check to see if your website has any penalties listed, as well as the reason they have been created. You will then know how to correct the situation. We:

  • Check website for Google Penalties