Tech SEO Fundamentals for 2023 — Matthew Edgar // Elementive

Matthew Edgar, Partner and SEO Consultant at Elementive, explores technical SEO. In 2023, the technical side of SEO remains crucial, as Google must first crawl and fetch content before applying natural language processing to understand it. Without a properly functioning technical foundation, efforts to improve SEO performance will be futile. Today, Matthew discusses technical SEO fundamentals for 2023.
About the speaker

Matthew Edgar

Elementive

is a little camera shy

Matthew is Partner and SEO Consultant at Elementive

Show Notes

  • 02:17
    The importance of technical SEO in 2023
    Technical SEO will remain critical in 2023 and beyond as Google has to crawl and fetch content before applying NLP to understand the content. Issues with crawling, accessing, and rendering content, can negatively impact a site's SEO performance and chances of ranking.
  • 04:08
    Building technical SEO skills as a beginner
    Beginners should start with Google Search Console, exploring the crawl stats and pages report. This will give a foundational understanding of how Google is crawling and indexing the site, and identify any issues such as errors or pages not being indexed.
  • 07:33
    How to approach JavaScript and third party scripts in 2023
    To comply with privacy laws, many companies are changing their third-party scripts and have the opportunity to rethink how third-party scripts are loaded into their sites. Also, companies should be mindful when using JavaScript to ensure that Google can render their content.
  • 10:29
    Recommendations for understanding Google's rendering of JavaScript on web pages
    When Google visits a webpage, it can only respond to the load event and not other events like clicking buttons or scrolling. To understand how Google renders JavaScript, consider the actions taken to display content and whether or not they can be replicated by Google's bots.
  • 12:29
    Google's emphasis on main content in search rankings
    Google divides website content into main and supplementary content, with main content being prioritized in search rankings. To optimize for this, websites should clearly separate main and supplementary content in HTML code and add internal links within the main content.
  • 15:57
    The significance of core web vitals in site speed
    While core web vitals look at two real speed metrics, there are many other speed metrics that websites should consider beyond them. In general, speed is important, and core web vitals are part of that, but not necessarily the most important factor in improving a website's speed.
  • 19:55
    Prioritizing focus on core web vitals
    The importance of core web vitals in search rankings varies depending on the industry and competition. If a website's competitors have strong content and brand authority but are slower, then focusing on core web vitals would make sense to achieve a competitive edge.
  • 21:36
    Overview of Tech SEO Guide
    Tech SEO Guide is a book written by Matthew, aimed at developers, designers, marketers, SEOs, and those who work in technical SEO. It covers different factors and processes for diagnosing and understanding issues on a website.

Quotes

  • "As we think about 2023 and where things are headed, the technical side of SEO still remains incredibly important because that's the most fundamental thing." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "If Google can't render your content, your site loads too slowly, your content is encoded and cant be understood or even seen by robots, you're not going to have any chance of ranking." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "You have to understand how Google is seeing your site right now. And, the only tool that we really have to do that with is Google Search Console." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "Yes, Google can render JavaScript. Yes, you can do things with JavaScript. But also, sometimes Google struggles with that. And it can present problems where Google can't execute it correctly." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "There are different events that interact with JavaScript. And Google can only handle one of those events. They can only respond to the load event, not click on buttons, or scroll down the page." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "Google has talked about how they divide content on a page into main and supplementary content. And they're breaking content into those two different buckets." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "Speed in general is going to continue to be very important. Core web vitals is part of that. But I don't know if it's the most important part of improving your website's speed." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

  • "Largest Contentful Paint and First Input Delay are the only two speed metrics within core web vitals. But there are a lot of other speed metrics you should be thinking about as it comes to speed." -Matthew Edgar, Partner, Elementive

About the speaker

Matthew Edgar

Elementive

is a little camera shy

Matthew is Partner and SEO Consultant at Elementive

Up Next: