Technical SEO: What’s Important In 2023
Google’s formal announcements certainly have a material impact on business and plans for technical search engine optimization (SEO), but only 53% participating in a study released Thursday said they have changed their SEO roadmap based on changes that the search engine has made.
Digital marketing agency Aira and the Women in Tech SEO community released the State of Technical SEO Report 2023 on Thursday, with about 28% of respondents citing a lack of resources as the biggest risk and challenge that companies face today. The data ranges from tools to procedures, to processes and search visibility.
Next on the list for the biggest risk and challenge, 23% of those surveyed cited technical debt, followed by lack of buy-in and authority at 17%, ongoing risk at 13%, large risks and site migration at 10, unclear guidance from Google at 5%, and lack of SEO A/B testing at 4%.
When asked to cite the one metric that is the most effective in measuring SEO performance, 42% cited organic traffic, while 37% cited conversions, and 14% cited rankings. Visibility, indexability, and bounce rate followed with very small single-digit percentages.
When setting expectations, it can take time for technical SEO changes to have an impact on traffic.
Some 46% of technical SEOs said it can take up to three months to see an impact on traffic, while some 30% said it can take up to six months, and 10% said it can take six months or more. Only 1% said less than a week.
When asked to rank the effectiveness in measuring SEO performance, experts said organic traffic, conversions or leads, ranking, indexability, search visibility, time on site, and bounce rates.
Google Search Console was the most popular tool for technical SEOs overall. Some 92% reported using it, followed by Screaming Frog with 86%, SEMrush at 63%, Aherfs at 63%, Screaming Frog Log File Analyser at 35%, YoastSEO at 30%, Big Webmaster Tools at 30%, Sitebulb at 20%, Moz at 19%, and Sistrix at 16%, among many others.
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