Technology companies are prone to making mistakes as it pertains to their digital marketing strategies. 

As far as cloud infrastructure or DevOps is concerned, no ambitious business owners would want to replicate what a competitor has done. Therefore, the same should apply to the world of digital marketing, and more specifically, search engine optimization (SEO), a highly technical and evolving field in itself.

SEO for Tech Brands

SEO is imperative for helping B2B and B2C businesses retain that competitive edge, grow in visibility and gain new customers. The tech sector has a unique audience, and each company in the space has to provide plenty of engaging, useful information, resources, products and services to those prospective buyers lurking in the depths of the world wide web. If these organizations address the wrong audience or don't deliver their website content appropriately, their audience will simply look elsewhere

Brands are constantly fighting for those coveted top positions in search engine results pages, with the hopes of earning increased traffic and conversions as a result. This is much easier said than done, and for technology companies to deliver a winning SEO strategy, they will need to be cognizant of a few common errors that firms often make. No two strategies are ever the same, but if you’re responsible for executing and overseeing a tech firm’s marketing strategy, pay close attention to these mistakes and how to avoid making them yourself.

5 SEO Mistakes and Remedies

SEO Mistake #1: Slow Page Load Speeds

Page load speed is a crucial ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, as evidenced by its Core Web Vitals initiative. 

Google values page load speed as correlational to a positive user experience, and rewards sites that fulfill all three Core Web Vitals metric criteria with improved rankings as a result. 

So, if your pages take a long time to load, consider taking the following preventative measures:

• Compress images and media where applicable, and minify JavaScript and CSS files.
• Enable browser and server caching to speed up load times. If you are using a CMS like WordPress, consider using plugins and solutions like Swift or NitroPack.
• Minimize the number of 301 redirects you implement and fix all broken links where possible. These both slow down page rendering.
• Consider using a CDN to speed up downloads and HTTP browser requests.

SEO Mistake #2: Lacking Reviews and Testimonials

Building up a bank of user reviews and testimonials helps to foster feelings of increased trust, authority and credibility for your audience. This is particularly important if you are just getting started and trying to branch out from your local area.

Many companies surprisingly fail to incorporate them sufficiently enough to satisfy their target market. Google also pays close attention to the reviews and ratings you’ve acquired on your Google Business Profile, and so on, when assessing your site’s suitability and expertise to satisfy the user’s search query.

To remedy this:

• Create a dedicated reviews section for your website.
• Make your best reviews from sites like Google My Business, Facebook, TrustPilot, and others instantly noticeable.
• Write and publish case studies on your site to demonstrate your results.
• Ask your satisfied clients or customers to post reviews and rate your business. Offer incentives, discounts or offers if need be.
• To establish greater feelings of trust, get third-party industry experts and sites to provide ratings and testimonials, with referring links to your site.

SEO Mistake #3: Thin, Poor Content or Content that Addresses the Wrong Audience

While your organization may sit in a specific niche within the realm of technology, and therefore have limited competitors, you still need to tap into the audience segment(s) that need to be educated, informed, or persuaded. 

Your content is what your audience - and Google -are going to be reading, and there is a fine line between delivering content that is SEO-friendly, addresses your audience’s pain points, and establishes sufficient authority for your firm.

Too many sites have content that is:

• Lacking information or purely hypothetical - Bolster content by including images, examples, statistics, research, and data.
• Poorly optimized - Thread keywords strategically in headers, titles, image alt text, meta titles and descriptions, and into the content itself.
• Over-optimized - Conversely, many sites spam their sites full of keywords and related searches, which makes for a poor reading experience. Google also doesn’t value this highly and actually penalizes sites that do this.
• Too short - Write plenty of useful, relevant content for your product or service pages, and also address topical queries or arguments in your blogs. Word count is important, and companies need to make sure there is plenty of ‘meat on the bone’ in every piece of content.
• Not updated - Adding blogs, articles or industry insights regularly (but not too often) will signal to Google that you are providing your audience with plenty of useful information (provided, of course, it is well-written, engaging and relevant). Consider reviewing and updating older posts to improve their rankings.
• Too technical - On the flipside, many organizations make the mistake of overwhelming their audience with highly technical information. Often those conversations can be saved for when they are further down the sales funnel.

SEO Mistake #4: Poor On-Page Optimization

Many sites don't properly optimize on-page elements for SEO. All of these elements have a vital part to play in helping your site’s rankings, and many companies fail to utilize each element to its fullest potential.

For optimum SEO visibility, you'll need to:

• Thread your target keyword in the URL slug (permalink), image alt text, and Page Title (which is the title that users see and click in the SERP).
• Keep the URL’s Page Title between 45 and 55 characters to avoid truncation in SERPs.
• Also, ensure that your target keyword ideally appears in the H1 header tag and throughout the page content. 
• Consider using keywords in page headings like H2s and H3s ensuring that they follow a logical page structure.
• Include image alt text to help search engines interpret images and provide a better user experience for readers with visual impairments.
• Keep a logical, optimized URL structure and length, ensuring slugs are tidy and not overly long.
• Write an engaging, unique meta description per page, keeping between 140 and 160 characters ideally to avoid truncation.
• Submit an XML sitemap to make it easier for Google to crawl your site.

SEO Mistake #5: Having a Non-Mobile-Friendly Website

Most users search via mobile devices now, and while desktop search still has a firm place, companies need to adopt a mobile-first mindset. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile devices as a priority, you are missing out on valuable rankings and traffic.

To ensure your site is optimized for mobile, take the following steps:

• Make sure your website is designed with mobile-responsive elements so that it automatically adjusts and scales to any screen size and device.
• Keep images appropriately sized for smaller screens and compress them where applicable without compromising on their quality.
• Ensure that buttons, links and CTAs are sufficiently spaced to allow for easy and unobtrusive finger clicks.
• Test your desktop and mobile sites regularly with tools like Google Search Console.
• Run security patches and updates on both desktop and mobile versions of your site, ensuring all functionality remains intact. It may be prudent to roll out updates on a local test server before pushing them live.
• Test your website on different devices and operating systems, from iOS and Android to Linux and Windows.

The above guidance only scratches the surface of what tech companies need to do to ensure they are following SEO best practices for their own niche specialisms. However, by failing to adapt and tailor their marketing approaches to suit their customer experience, they will simply fail to drive traffic or rank for anything of value, and their revenue will suffer as a result. 

Analyzing your SEO strategies and fixing mistakes will give you a vital boost as you continue to navigate the complex and competitive technology sector. Stay clued into trends and changes in the evolving SEO world to reap the full benefits of your SEO efforts.