Author: Trevor Mauch

  • Technical SEO Guide: Tools & Checklist for to Analyze Your Site’s SEO

    Technical SEO Guide: Tools & Checklist for to Analyze Your Site’s SEO

    Technical SEO is the foundation upon which organic search success is built. It refers to the optimization of your website’s behind-the-scenes elements that search engines use to understand and rank your content. Think of it as the invisible architecture that allows search engine crawlers to navigate your website efficiently and effectively. Technical SEO has four core pillars:

    • Crawlability
    • Indexability
    • Mobile-friendliness
    • Site speed

    Table of Contents

    1. Unveiling the Power Beneath the Surface: Your Guide to Technical SEO
    2. Why SEO?
    3. How Does Technical SEO Fit In?
    4. The Pillars of Technical SEO: Building a Strong Foundation
    5. Charting Your Course: The Technical SEO Analysis Checklist
    6. Unveiling the Landscape: Essential Tools for Technical SEO Analysis
    7. Putting it into Action: Analyzing Your Website with the Checklist & Tools
    8. Conquering the Challenges: Fixing Technical SEO Issues & Prioritization
    9. Common Technical SEO Issues & Solutions
    10. Technical SEO Best Practices
    11. Technical SEO Checklist
    12. Maintaining Your Technical SEO Advantage
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    Unveiling the Power Beneath the Surface: Your Guide to Technical SEO

    Technical SEO is the foundation upon which organic search success is built. It refers to the optimization of your website’s behind-the-scenes elements that search engines use to understand and rank your content. Think of it as the invisible architecture that allows search engine crawlers to navigate your website efficiently and effectively.

    Here’s why conducting a technical SEO analysis is crucial for your website:

    • Increased Visibility: A technically sound website is more easily crawled and indexed by search engines, leading to higher visibility in search results.
    • Improved User Experience: Technical SEO factors like mobile-friendliness and fast loading speeds directly impact user experience, which is a key ranking factor for search engines. A happy user is more likely to stay engaged and explore your offerings.
    • Enhanced Organic Traffic: By addressing technical SEO issues, you remove barriers that prevent search engines from fully understanding your website. This translates to attracting more organic traffic, the lifeblood of any successful online presence.

    Investing time in a technical SEO analysis is an investment in your website’s long-term success. It’s the first step to ensuring your website is search engine friendly and primed to attract the qualified traffic you deserve.

    Why SEO?

    As we’ve written about elsewhere on our blog, SEO is a form of evergreen marketing in many other places. That is when an SEO strategy is executed correctly, it has the potential to become a lead-generation powerhouse.

    Once you make the initial investment into an SEO campaign, as long as some routine maintenance is performed, you’ll likely have an asset that keeps sending leads your way for many years.

    This costs a fraction of the price compared to leads from PPC or social media advertising campaigns.

    How Does Technical SEO Fit In?

    Most people familiar with SEO seem to understand that content and backlinks are required to earn free traffic from Google. There are endless guides that focus on publishing more and more content or getting more and more backlinks.

    Few, however, delve into the foundation of SEO — how well the underlying website functions for users and search engine crawlers alike. In the industry, this is known as technical SEO.

    Technical SEO is a simple term, but it covers many topics. Ultimately, it comes down to a well-built website — how fast it loads, how clean the coding is, the internal linking structure, if any internal or external links are broken or run through complex redirect chains if images are broken, whether or not the design is responsive and loads in a user-friendly way when on a slow connection… really, the list could go on for days.

    We haven’t discussed this much because Carrot members don’t have to worry about it. All Carrot sites have a search-engine-optimized tech stack baked in.

    However, many people reading this article won’t be using this system, so I aim to help you by providing a technical SEO checklist and some pointers on the best tools to use in your analysis.

    The Pillars of Technical SEO: Building a Strong Foundation

    Technical SEO encompasses a variety of factors that work together to ensure search engines can easily access, understand, and present your website to users. Here are the four core pillars of technical SEO:

    • Crawlability: Imagine search engines like giant spiders crawling through the web, discovering and indexing websites. Crawlability refers to how easily these search engine spiders can navigate your website. This includes having a well-structured sitemap, optimized robots.txt file, and internal linking that allows the spiders to find all your important pages. Good crawlability ensures your website’s content gets seen by search engines.
    • Indexability: Once search engines crawl your website, they must understand your content to determine its relevance for search queries. Indexability refers to whether search engines can include your pages in their search results. Factors like proper use of meta tags, structured data markup, and fresh, high-quality content all contribute to good indexability. If a page isn’t properly indexed, it won’t appear in search results.
    • Mobile-friendliness: In today’s mobile-first world, a website that isn’t optimized for smartphones and tablets is a major disadvantage. Mobile-friendliness ensures your website displays correctly and provides a seamless user experience on all devices. Search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites in search results, giving you an edge over non-optimized competitors.
    • Site Speed: Nobody likes a slow website! Site speed refers to how quickly your website loads for users. Search engines consider page load speed as a ranking factor, as slow loading times can lead to frustrated users and high bounce rates. Optimizing images, minimizing code, and using a reliable web host all contribute to a faster website, which benefits both search engine rankings and user experience.

    By focusing on these core pillars, you create a solid technical foundation for your website. Search engines will be able to efficiently crawl and index your content, and users will have a positive experience when they visit your site. This combination is a recipe for organic search success.

    Charting Your Course: The Technical SEO Analysis Checklist

    A technical SEO analysis checklist is your roadmap to a healthy and search engine friendly website. Just like any journey, it’s important to have a plan to ensure you’re covering all the important bases. Here are the key areas to evaluate during your technical SEO analysis, each playing a crucial role in search engine visibility:

    • Crawlability:
      • Robots.txt: Is your robots.txt file configured correctly to allow search engine crawlers to access your important content?
      • Sitemap: Does your website have a well-structured sitemap that clearly communicates all your pages to search engines?
      • Internal Linking: Is your website’s internal linking structure optimized to allow search engine crawlers to navigate efficiently and discover all your content?
    • Indexability:
      • Meta Tags: Are your title tags and meta descriptions optimized with relevant keywords and clear descriptions to help search engines understand your content?
      • Structured Data Markup: Have you implemented structured data markup to provide search engines with additional context about your content, potentially leading to richer search results?
      • Noindex Directives: Are there any pages on your website that you intentionally don’t want search engines to index? Are these pages properly marked with a noindex directive?
    • Mobile-Friendliness:
      • Responsive Design: Does your website display correctly and provide a user-friendly experience on all devices, especially smartphones and tablets?
      • Mobile Speed: Does your website load quickly on mobile devices? Slow loading times can significantly hurt your mobile search ranking.
    • Site Speed:
      • Page Load Time: Are your website’s pages loading fast enough for users? Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you identify areas for improvement.
      • Image Optimization: Are your website’s images optimized for size and quality to ensure fast loading times without sacrificing visual appeal?
      • Caching: Is your website leveraging browser caching to improve repeat visitor experience and overall page load speed?

    By systematically working through this checklist, you’ll gain valuable insights into your website’s technical SEO health. The next step is to leverage SEO tools to delve deeper into each area and identify any specific issues that need to be addressed.

    Here’s an example of what your XML sitemap should look like:

    Example XML Sitemap

    If you’re a Carrot member, then this is handled for you. Carrot ensures your site is configured correctly and that Google can find and index all the pages on your site.

    Unveiling the Landscape: Essential Tools for Technical SEO Analysis

    While a technical SEO checklist provides a solid framework, SEO tools act like powerful magnifying glasses, allowing you to zoom in and identify specific technical issues impacting your website. A combination of free and paid tools can equip you to conduct a comprehensive technical SEO analysis.

    Here are some essential tools to consider for your technical SEO toolbox:

    Free Tools:

    • Google Search Console (GSC): This free powerhouse from Google offers a wealth of insights into your website’s search engine performance, including crawl errors, mobile usability issues, and sitemap status. It’s a must-have for any technical SEO analysis.
    • Google PageSpeed Insights: Focused specifically on website speed, this free tool analyzes your website and provides actionable recommendations for improvement. It’s a great way to identify areas where you can optimize page load times.
    • Mobile-Friendly Test: Another free offering from Google, this tool allows you to quickly test how your website displays on mobile devices. It’s a simple yet effective way to ensure your website provides a seamless mobile experience.

    Paid Tools:

    • Screaming Frog SEO Spider: This desktop application acts like a virtual SEO spider, crawling your website and identifying technical issues like broken links, missing meta tags, and crawl errors. It’s a powerful tool for uncovering a wide range of technical SEO problems.
    • SEMrush Site Audit: Part of the comprehensive SEMrush SEO suite, the Site Audit tool offers a deep dive into your website’s technical health. It provides detailed reports on crawl errors, mobile usability, and on-page SEO optimization, making it a valuable tool for identifying and prioritizing technical SEO issues.
    • Ahrefs Site Audit: Similar to SEMrush, Ahrefs offers a Site Audit tool that crawls your website and generates reports on technical SEO issues. It provides insights into broken links, internal linking structure, and mobile responsiveness, helping you identify areas for improvement.

    Remember, the best approach often involves a combination of free and paid tools. Free tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights offer a fantastic starting point, while paid tools can provide more in-depth analysis and reporting capabilities. Choose the tools that best suit your needs and budget to empower your technical SEO analysis.

    Putting it into Action: Analyzing Your Website with the Checklist & Tools

    Now that you’re armed with the technical SEO checklist and a toolbox of powerful tools, it’s time to delve into analyzing your website. Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough to guide you:

    Step 1: Gather Your Tools

    Start by having your chosen technical SEO checklist and tools readily available. This might include the free Google tools (Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test), and potentially a paid SEO tool like Screaming Frog or SEMrush Site Audit.

    Step 2: Work Through the Checklist

    Use the technical SEO checklist as your roadmap. Go through each section (crawlability, indexability, mobile-friendliness, site speed) and assess your website’s health in those areas.

    Step 3: Leverage the Tools

    For each section of the checklist, utilize the relevant SEO tools to gain deeper insights. Here’s how some tools can be applied:

    • Crawlability:
      • Google Search Console: Check the “Crawl Errors” report to identify any issues preventing search engines from accessing your pages.
      • Screaming Frog: Crawl your website using Screaming Frog to identify broken links and crawl errors.
    • Indexability:
      • Google Search Console: Use the “Coverage” report to see if any important pages are blocked from indexing or have indexing issues.
    • Mobile-Friendliness:
      • Google Mobile-Friendly Test: Enter your website URL and see how it renders on mobile devices.
      • Screaming Frog: Screaming Frog can also identify mobile-friendliness issues during its crawl.
    • Site Speed:
      • Google PageSpeed Insights: Analyze your website with PageSpeed Insights to identify areas for improvement regarding loading speed.

    Step 4: Interpreting the Results

    Each tool will provide reports and data that pinpoint specific technical SEO issues. Here’s a general approach to interpreting the results:

    • Free Tools:
      • Google Search Console: The reports will highlight issues with clear explanations and often suggest solutions.
      • Google PageSpeed Insights: The tool will provide a score and specific recommendations for improvement, like optimizing images or reducing page size.
    • Paid Tools:
      • Screaming Frog: The software generates a comprehensive report detailing various technical SEO issues. You’ll need some familiarity with SEO best practices to interpret the findings.
      • SEMrush/Ahrefs Site Audit: These tools offer detailed reports with explanations and prioritization of technical SEO issues, making them easier to understand and address.

    Step 5: Take Action!

    Once you’ve identified technical SEO issues through the checklist and tools, it’s time to take action! Prioritize the most critical issues that are likely to have the biggest impact on your search engine ranking and user experience. Many SEO tools offer suggestions for fixing the identified problems.

    Remember, a technical SEO analysis is an ongoing process. As you make changes and optimize your website, it’s important to revisit the checklist and tools periodically to monitor progress and identify any new issues that may arise.

    Conquering the Challenges: Fixing Technical SEO Issues & Prioritization

    The technical SEO analysis has unearthed valuable insights, but the real magic happens when you address the identified issues. Here’s where prioritization becomes crucial.

    Not all technical SEO issues are created equal. Some can significantly hinder your search engine ranking and user experience, while others might have a lesser impact. Focusing on the most critical issues first will yield the biggest return on your investment.

    Here’s how to approach fixing technical SEO issues with prioritization in mind:

    • Severity: Start by addressing the most severe issues first. These might include crawl errors that prevent search engines from accessing your pages, missing or duplicate meta tags that confuse search engines, or critical mobile usability problems that frustrate users.
    • Impact: Consider the potential impact of each issue. For example, a large number of broken links can significantly hurt your website’s ranking, while a single missing image alt tag might have a lesser effect.

    Common Technical SEO Issues & Solutions

    Here are some frequent technical SEO culprits and how to tackle them:

    Broken Links:

    Identify broken links using SEO tools and replace them with working links or remove them entirely.

    How to Find & Fix Broken Links

    Fixing broken links on your site is important for some key reasons:

    1. It creates a better experience for your visitors: nobody likes clicking on a link and getting an error message.
    2. It helps Google crawl your site more efficiently: you don’t make it hard for people to contact you, so why would you treat Google that way?
    3. It helps to pass link juice or link equity throughout your website: this helps your content rank better due to its extra authority.
    4. it shows Google that your site is well-maintained and of high quality: Google considers broken links an indication that your site is outdated and poorly maintained.

    Suppose you want to find and fix broken links on your site. Use any crawler to scan your site and identify all the broken links. Screaming Frog is an option here—it’s free for sites with up to 500 pages!

    Screaming Frog SEO Spider
    Screaming Frog Discovering Errors

    When scanning for these errors, replace all 4xx and 5xx error pages, and either remove or replace those links with updated, correct links, avoiding the use of redirects where possible. For more info, read this guide on how to fix broken internal links.

    Slow Loading Pages:

    Analyze your website with Google PageSpeed Insights and implement recommendations to improve page load speed. This could involve optimizing images, reducing page size, and enabling browser caching.

    How to Improve Your Site’s Load Speed

    Engagement 101 teaches if your site doesn’t load quickly, people won’t stay on it. 

    40% of visitors will leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.

    So if you want people to stick around (AND if you want to improve your SEO), you need a fast website. Test your website using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

    PageSpeed Insights performance test

    There’s a clear correlation between sites that load fast and rank well…

    Good news for Carrot members—out of the box, their websites are 69.8% faster than custom websites.

    How do you make your site load fast if you’re not a Carrot member? Here are some tips…

    • Use a content delivery network (CDN): a globally distributed system of servers that delivers content to visitors based on their geographic location allows visitors from all over the world to load your content quickly, no matter where they are.
    • Compress your images: images are often the heaviest elements on a page, slowing down your site’s loading speed. To avoid this, compress your images before you upload them to your site. You can use a free tool like TinyPNG to do this.
    • Optimize your code: if your website’s code is bloated or inefficient, it can slow down your site’s loading speed. To avoid this, minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. You can use a free tool like Minifier to do this.

    Crawl Errors: 

    Use Google Search Console to identify crawl errors and fix any underlying issues preventing search engines from accessing your pages. This might involve fixing robots.txt configuration or resolving server-side errors.

    How to Fix Crawl Errors

    Redirects can significantly impact user experience and crawl efficiency, particularly if they are broken, form chains, or create loops.

    Similar to broken links, they deteriorate the user experience and can confuse bots. Even functioning redirects add complexity, and my guiding principle for dealing with search engine crawlers is to maintain simplicity whenever possible.

    There’s inconsistency in statements from Google’s representatives regarding how much link equity is transferred through redirects. Commonly, this involves redirecting from old to new domains, but it’s equally applicable to page-to-page redirections. Why take the chance?

    Addressing and fixing these issues, or ideally, replacing them with straightforward, final URLs, enhances both user and crawler navigation, ensuring total PageRank value is directed to your ultimate URL.

    Review Your Content:

    Ensure all important pages have unique and relevant title tags and meta descriptions to help search engines understand your content.

    How to Review Your Content

    While this isn’t a content audit discussion, content quality is still vital in technical SEO upkeep. A site audit should evaluate content quality, pinpointing issues such as:

    • Duplicate content,
    • Broken images,
    • a high number of low word count pages, and
    • Incorrect tag usage, including duplicates or absences of:
      • H1,
      • title, and
      • meta descriptions.

    Naturally, high-quality and well-organized content tends to rank better and engage users. This isn’t a straightforward “pass/fail” situation, but during a tech audit, if the content lacks quality, it’s crucial to note that a content audit should be the next step.

    It’s also worth being aware that some themes can cause issues with your content. Incorrect tag usage can often be tied to theme configuration instead of the way in which the content itself has been formatted.

    Insecure Website (Missing SSL): Ensure your website uses HTTPS encryption by installing an SSL certificate. This improves your website’s security and gives you a slight ranking boost in search results.

    How to Ensure Your Site is Secure

    Google has stated that it prefers sites that use HTTPS, the secure version of HTTP. They’ve even started giving a slight ranking boost to sites that use HTTPS.

    Website showing it is HTTPS secure

    If you’re unfamiliar with HTTPS, it’s a more secure way of transmitting data over the internet. When you visit an HTTPS site, all the data exchanged between you and the site is encrypted. That means it’s much harder for hackers to intercept and steal that data.

    This is especially important for real estate investors and agents because you often deal with sensitive information like addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

    To use HTTPS, you need to get your SSL certificate — a digital certificate that authenticates your website’s identity and enables encryption. You can request your SSL certificate through your website host or hire someone else to help you. 

    If you’re a Carrot member, then your site is automatically HTTPS encrypted. This will result in a safer experience for your website visitors and better rankings in Google. 

    Missing Localization Configuration:

    If you target international audiences, verify your website’s hreflang tags are correctly configured. This helps search engines understand your website’s language variations and deliver the most relevant version to users in different regions.

    How to Check Your Localization Config

    Incorrect or absent hreflang or HTML lang attributes can hinder organic search performance, particularly for websites targeting diverse regions or languages.

    In my experience, multilingual sites often start as problematic whenever I begin a technical SEO audit.

    Properly implementing these attributes ensures that search engines present the correct content to the intended audience.

    If you only run your site in English and think you can forget about this type of thing, I’d caution you to think again.

    It’s still beneficial to implement this, as it aids search engines and other tools in recognizing the primary language of your page.

    This boosts accessibility, enabling screen readers to apply the correct language pronunciation rules, and it also enhances search engines’ comprehension of your site’s content.

    With content translation becoming more routine, these straightforward steps significantly enhance content accessibility to a broader audience, and Google likes it when you consider this.

    Subpar Mobile Experience:

    Even if your website uses a responsive design, conduct a mobile-specific SEO audit. This might reveal issues like slow mobile load times or usability problems on smaller screens. Prioritize fixing these issues to ensure a smooth mobile experience.

    How to Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

    It’s no secret that more and more people are using their phones to surf the web. Over 60% of all internet traffic now comes from mobile devices!

    If your site isn’t set up for mobile SEO, you’re missing out on a ton of traffic (and potential leads).

    It also means that Google is starting to penalize sites that aren’t mobile-friendly. In other words, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, you could be pushed down in the search results…

    To avoid this, you must ensure your site is “responsive.” That means it should adjust to fit any screen size, whether a phone, tablet, or desktop computer. 

    Test your site using Google’s mobile-friendly test.

    Google's Mobile-Friendly testing tool
    Carrot member website mobile-friendly test results

    If you’re a Carrot member, then your site is automatically responsive. We build all Carrot sites using responsive design, so you don’t have to worry about this!

    Poor Page Experience:

    Page experience encompasses various factors that impact user experience, including mobile-friendliness, loading speed, and visual stability. Use Google Search Console’s “Core Web Vitals” report to identify areas for improvement in page experience. Optimizing these factors can significantly enhance user experience and potentially improve your search ranking.

    How to Improve Your Page Experience

    Google is continually updating its page experience signals. Core Web Vitals combined with existing search signals, including mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines, are all factors here.

    If you need a refresher, read this guide to Core Web Vitals.

    Core Web Vitals are comprised of five factors:

    Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)How long it takes for the largest content element on the screen to become visible. A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or less to provide a good user experience.
    Interaction to Next Paint (INP)Measures a website’s overall responsiveness, grading the time a site takes to respond after a user interacts with the page. A good INP score is under 200 ms (milliseconds).
    Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)monitors unexpected content jumps as a page loads to measure its visual stability. A good CLS is 0.1 or less.
    First Content Paint (FCP)Tracks how long it takes from the instant a page starts loading until any content is visible. A good FCP is less than 1.8 seconds.
    Time to First Byte (TTFB)How long it takes a browser to receive the first byte of page data from a web server. A good TTFB is under 0.8 seconds.

    These ranking factors can be measured in a report found in Google Search Console, which shows you which URLs have potential issues:

    Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console

    Finding In-Depth Solutions:

    These are just a few examples, and the solutions can vary depending on the specific issue. For more in-depth solutions and troubleshooting steps, leverage the resources available online. Many SEO tools offer detailed guides and explanations for fixing technical SEO problems. Additionally, reputable SEO websites and blogs often publish articles and tutorials on common technical SEO issues and solutions.

    Remember, tackling technical SEO is a journey, not a destination. By prioritizing issues, implementing solutions, and monitoring progress, you can create a technically sound website that thrives in search engine results and provides a seamless user experience.

    Technical SEO Best Practices

    Performing a technical SEO audit may initially appear complex, but with a methodical approach and the correct toolkit, it transforms into a critical element of your online marketing plan.

    Here are what I consider to be the best steps for conducting this in-house:

    1. Select Your Tools: Not everyone has a big budget for software. High priced tools like Ahrefs and Semrush can make the process faster, but they aren’t mandatory. Please make use of whatever you can and simply get on with it. Action matters more than software.
    2. Develop a Routine: Acknowledge that this isn’t a one-time fix, so frequency is key. Depending on your website’s size and intricacy, a schedule will help—be it monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually—to proactively manage potential issues. At Dialed Labs, we use weekly audits to maintain and monitor our client sites.
    3. Prioritize Findings: Address issues based on their potential impact on your site’s effectiveness and user experience, and remember that not all discoveries demand immediate action. Implement the highest impact fixes first.
    4. Detail Changes and Monitor: By keeping detailed logs of your fixes, you can evaluate what techniques are fruitful and discover any fixes that may not have gone to plan. We keep a detailed “Activity Log” for client projects to transparently showcase daily updates.
    5. Stay on the Cutting Edge of SEO: Winners more or less take all in SEO, so being second best is hardly the right strategy. If you want to be at the top of the SERP, staying in the loop with the most recent official and community-driven guidelines and trends is essential.
    6. Engage with External Experts: Sometimes, external insights can make a significant difference. Consider consulting with professionals for a more in-depth and comprehensive review.

    Technical SEO Checklist

    It’s easy to get lost in the weeds as you go through a process like this. Download and print out the following checklist. It will help you stay on track and not miss anything important.

    Verify Indexability

    • Check robots.txt to ensure it’s correctly configured to allow Google to crawl your website
    • Check for noindex pages. Use tools like Google Search Console (free), Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs to identify pages with a noindex attribute
    • Verify your XML sitemap is accurate and updated
    • Check Google Search Console to make sure your site is being crawled

    Identify and Fix Broken Links

    • Use a tool like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog to find 4xx and 5xx errors
    • Fix and replace broken links to ensure all links lead to valid, relevant pages

    Optimize Redirects

    • Look for broken, chained, or looping redirects that need fixing
    • Replace complex, multi-step redirects with direct, final URLs

    Enhance Site Security

    • Ensure your site is using HTTPS (instead of HTTP) for secure data transmission
    • Verify your site’s SSL certification is valid and current

    Improve Page Experience & Core Web Vitals

    • Optimize load performance by looking for elements that commonly slow down a page (like large images)
    • Run a page or site audit to find technical SEO issues impacting your CWVs

    Review & Upgrade Content Quality

    • Check for broken images
    • Check for missing image alt text
    • Evaluate page word count
    • Verify proper use of H1, title tags, and meta descriptions

    Check Localization Settings

    • Implement correct hreflang and HTML lang attributes
    • Ensure property language and regional targeting

    Enhance Site Load Speed

    • Use CDN (Content Delivery Network)
    • Compress images
    • Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

    Ensure Mobile-Friendliness

    • Test your site’s responsive design for different screen sizes
    • Optimize for mobile user experience

    The Road Ahead: Maintaining Your Technical SEO Advantage

    Congratulations! By conducting a technical SEO analysis, you’ve taken a significant step toward improving your website’s search engine visibility and user experience. However, technical SEO is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix.

    Search engine algorithms and user expectations constantly evolve, so it’s crucial to revisit your technical SEO health regularly. Scheduling periodic technical SEO audits (every 3-6 months) allows you to identify and address any new issues that may arise.

    Remember, the technical SEO checklist and tools you explored earlier are valuable companions on this journey. Use them to monitor progress, stay up-to-date with technical SEO best practices, and ensure your website remains search engine-friendly over time.

    Ready to Take Your Technical SEO to the Next Level?

    If you’d like to delve deeper into technical SEO or need assistance implementing solutions, we’re here to help! We offer a variety of resources, including:

    • In-depth guides on specific technical SEO topics
    • SEO consultations tailored to your website’s needs
    • Ongoing technical SEO monitoring and maintenance services

    By investing in your website’s technical SEO health, you’re investing in its long-term success. Contact us today to explore how we can help you achieve your SEO goals!

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  • EP 344: How to Replace Yourself In Your Real Estate Business

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    Part 2: Agents, are you taking a random approach to follow-up? Does it feel like you’re doing all the right things but still have clients leave to work with another agent?

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    Dive in as we transform your follow-up!

    Get the free scripts at Carrot.com/follow


  • EP 340: The “Burning Money” Deal  w/ Anthony Beckham | Beyond The Deal

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    Join us live every other Thursday at Carrot.com/deal


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    Get the free scripts at Carrot.com/follow 👈


    We want to hear your thoughts on the podcast! Drop them in the comments section below or hit us up on Facebook or Instagram!

  • EP 336: Hidden Deals for Wholesalers | A Guide to Probate Leads w/ Al Nicoletti

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    Hidden Deals for Wholesalers | A Guide to Probate Leads w/ Al Nicoletti

    Besides being a professional violinist for 15 years, Al is great at solving messy problems to make lots of money. He’s an expert in probate.

    In this episode, we find out how & where to generate quality probate leads, how to work the leads faster, and pro tips for working with title companies and attorneys. Join us :)

    Mentioned in this Episode:

    Connect with Al

    Listen to Al’s Podcast

    Follow Al on Instagram

    Check out Al’s Youtube Channel


    Who’s Al Nicoletti?

    Al Nicoletti is a Florida Real Estate/Probate Attorney known throughout Florida as the “Prince of Probate” a/k/a “The Probate King.”


    As a Probate attorney extraordinaire, Al has carved out a unique niche in probate real estate issues for inherited property and is dominating the Florida market solving simple and complex probate matters that once stalled real estate deals.


    Al developed a strategy to structure probates so they are fast, efficient, and can wait to get paid at the title closing.


    Al’s law practice is strongly focused on Probate, Quiet Title, Partition, and Trust Administration (the real estate title fixer). He has a no-nonsense approach and is dedicated to positive quality results, done fast, efficiently, and the right way, working with real estate investors, real estate agents/brokers, and other real estate professionals.


    In addition to managing his law practice, Al has a live weekly podcast show, is an educational speaker, influencer, and social media content creator, and enjoys traveling the State of Florida speaking at real estate investor association meetings, boot camps, and masterminds to educate audiences on unique real estate niches.

    We want to hear your thoughts on the podcast! Drop them in the comments section below or hit us up on Facebook or Instagram!

  • EP 334: Private Money Lending Hacks: How to Get Lenders to Trust You & Fund Deals Without Banks! w/ April Crossley

    EP 334: Private Money Lending Hacks: How to Get Lenders to Trust You & Fund Deals Without Banks! w/ April Crossley

    Nobody who is wealthy is keeping their money at the bank. 

    – April Crossley

    Private Money Lending Hacks: How to Get Lenders to Trust You & Fund Deals Without Banks! w/ April Crossley

    Bank loans don’t let you build relationships OR scale your business. Not to mention all the deals they won’t even touch!

    That’s why today we’re covering: How to create a deal package that lenders want to see, what kind of terms to expect, how to network and find the right lenders when you should use your own private capital.

    Our guest is April Crossley. She started as a teenage mom with Zero financial education and dove into real estate working full time, raising a family, and with NO money.

    Fast forward to today- in 12 years of investing she’s never used a dime of her own money to buy any of her flips or rental properties.

    So whether you want to become a private lender or you just need to be able to close more deals, She’s about to teach you how.

    Read the Full Show Notes Below…


    April filmed this episode of the CarrotCast from her truck, somewhere out in Arizona. She recently sold her house in PA and hit the road in her RV with her husband.

    For April, experiences are more important than things, and she has deliberately built her business with this lifestyle in mind.

    She currently operates two flipping companies, holds about 35 rental properties, is an active private lender, and spends her days chasing good weather. 

    This Moment in Time

    We often look at people like April with her multiple properties, companies, and endeavors, and can’t imagine ever getting to where she is. But the truth is, with the right goals, planning, and willingness to learn, goals like April’s can be achieved.

    What you are seeing now is this moment in time, not the 10+ years of learning and sweat equity that got her here. Every empire starts with just one deal.

    By sticking to a budget and knowing where she wanted to be, April has not only attained financial freedom, but she has also discovered what fuels her. 

    The Perks of Private Lending

    Having a hand-off business is something that is very important to April at this stage of her life. After stumbling into private money lending a few years ago, she realized that it was much easier to review a deal and write a check than it was to chase leads and talk to sellers.

    As such, this is where April now spends much of her time. Networking and partnering with other lenders, raising money, and investing in rock-solid deals is what is driving April today, and we completely see why. 

    The Bucket Method

    In order to become a private lender, April needed the capital to do so. Since day 1 of her career in real estate, she had utilized the bucket method to keep her finances in check. Right off the top, she will take 25% of any earnings and allocate it to taxes. She takes 10% and allocates it to charity.

    Another 10% goes to a financial freedom fund which is only to be used for reinvestment or private lending. And lastly, another 10% goes to long-term savings to fund things like personal home renovations and family vacations. The rest of her earnings goes toward everyday bills.

    By being strict with her money in this way, April has been able to build her wealth over the past few years. 

    Using Private Money

    In the beginning, all of April’s deals were done with private money. Her first deal was a JV where they brought the money and she did all of the work.

    Now, several years later, April will still use private money to fund a good portion of her deals. As a lender herself, she knows the importance of a clean presentation.

    Lenders don’t analyze the properties themselves because they don’t have time. If you are seeking private money for a project, be sure to put all of the data together in one neat package. 

    All About the Relationships

    Many people think they can just search the internet and find a hard money lender. While this is completely possible, working with private lenders to partner on deals will help you form incredible relationships.

    When the right match is formed, they will be eager to lend to you time and time again. They may even refer you to other lenders who want to get in on the deals you are finding. With her strong relationships, April is able to raise cash to fund almost any real estate investment. 

    April has put in the work and built the relationships that are helping to fuel her lifestyle. She has gotten to where she is by not becoming distracted by what other people are doing. She’s kept her blinders on and built the business that gives her complete and utter freedom. 

    Follow Our Guest:

    Mentioned in This Episode: 

    We want to hear your thoughts on the podcast! Drop them in the comments section below or hit us up on Facebook or Instagram!

  • Real Estate Website Design Ideas | How to Structure Your Site for Marketing Success

    Real Estate Website Design Ideas | How to Structure Your Site for Marketing Success

    Real Estate Website Design Ideas | How to Structure Your Site for Online Marketing Success

    What’s up y’all?

    So you’re a real estate investor. You’re a wholesaler. You’re a flipper. You might be doing some cold calling, direct mail, but you’re going, “I need to get leads online now.”

    Well, you might not know how to do that, or what you put on the website, what do you say, how do you structure it so it actually performs well for you and you stop losing leads and deals. How can you finally get consistency?

    Well, we will show in this series how to do that, from start to finish. How to make your website finally perform for you, grow momentum, and get you more deals. So, let’s dive right in.

    My name is Trevor Mauch. I’m the CEO of Carrot, where we help thousands of real estate investors, and agents generate hundreds of thousands of motivated seller leads online every single year.

    There are a couple of things I want to go over first because we have a lot of misconceptions about online marketing when it comes to building your website.

    Do You Need a Website?

    The first one is, do you even need a website to be a real estate investor? Do you need a website as a wholesaler? Do you need a website as a flipper? As a land investor, do you need a website?

    I’m going to say right now the answer is no, you don’t need a website to do deals.

    Now, we have many clients who do deals before they make it over to Carrot. And you can do deals. You can drive for dollars. You can cold call. You can do all kinds of things and get deals.

    The question is…

    How many leads and deals are you losing because you don’t have a website or what we call an authority hub, as we’ll teach you in this series?

    Carrot Authority Hub

    Imagine you put out the direct mail piece. You send your nice, pretty fancy postcard or the letter out to 5,000 addresses.

    They get it in their mailbox, and they pick it up. What do they do next?

    Well, the very first thing that a lot of people do in this age of credibility, in this age of, honestly, mistrust, where people are skeptical, they pick it up, and they want to Google you to figure out if you’re legit.

    They’re going to Google your phone number. They’re going to your company name. They will Google anything identifiable to find you and see if your service is real.

    Same thing with cold calling. Same thing with text message marketing. Same thing with radio and TV advertising. All offline marketing drives online demand.

    So if you’re doing offline marketing, you can close deals without it.

    But I can guarantee you that you’re losing deals because you don’t have a website or the right structured website to win those deals, win those leads, and grow that credibility.

    All offline marketing creates online demand. Your website can actually help you get a higher ROI from all of your offline marketing.

    Quick story: Carter Steph, is one of the largest home buyers in America, the largest home buyer in Oklahoma City. And he does a lot of radio and TV advertising. He had a pretty website. It was a custom-developed WordPress website.

    Carter’s Website Before Carrot

    He was getting some leads through it, but after he switched over to what we’re going to teach you in this series, he showed that he was losing about $20,000 monthly in lost deals because his website was not structured correctly.

    Carter’s Carrot Website

    “Since switching to Carrot… the leads are converting to purchases at a MUCH higher level.”

    “We couldn’t be happier with the site so far…What we have seen is a DRAMATIC increase in web leads.  Since switching to Carrot, the leads we are getting are converting to purchases at a MUCH higher level.  

    Things have been moving so fast that we haven’t had the opportunity to accurately determine the lead-to-purchase ratio, but I would estimate it is in the 25 to 35% range, which means the leads we are getting are significantly better than our historical average.

    Thanks for everything, and we are now looking at expansion because of the success we have had in such a short time.” – Carter Steph, 18002sellhomes.com


    So, do you need a website? No, you don’t, but you are losing leads and deals every single month if you don’t have a website or have the right website structure.

    I want to ask you this question before we dive into the five real estate website design ideas…

    How much is your business losing each year because either you don’t have a website or you have an underperforming one?

    As we go through this series, I want it to be interactive. I want you to write down things.

    I want you to write down what’s your average profit per deal. In many markets, let’s say it’s $20,000. It might be $10,000 in your market, or let’s say it’s $30,000 in your market. Write down your average profit per deal.

    Keep that in mind throughout the entire series as you build the website to operate correctly and perform correctly because you want to prevent yourself from losing any of those deals. If your average profit deal is $20,000, how do you now prevent losing a $20,000 deal this year?

    How many of those leads and deals are you okay with losing from an underperforming website?

    We’re going to help you win back those deals and put that money in your pocket rather than in your competitor’s pocket.

    Real Estate Website Design Ideas

    We’re going to dive into those five points right now to ensure that you go from just a website to a high-performing website or no website to winning back more deals with the right website as a real estate investor.

    Point #1

    The first point is your website has to be structured the right way, or what we call a tech stack.

    This is all the geeky technical stuff.

    Can you use a Wix website or something built on Fivver to really get real performance? Or do you need to have something that’s built for performance rather than prettiness?

    We’ve got an entire video that walks you through performance, not prettiness, to win back more deals and structure your website correctly.

    Wholesaling Websites: Carrot vs. Wix vs. WordPress, Etc. | Real Estate Sites for Agents & Investors

    Point #2

    The second thing that we need to do is move from no website to the right website or the wrong website to a high-performing website. Honestly, I want to ensure it’s optimized to rank well on Google. One thing that we’ve been talking about for years and years and years is what we call Evergreen marketing.

    Evergreen Marketing

    Evergreen marketing is getting in front of the flow of your most motivated prospects.

    I was on a call yesterday with one of the biggest home buyers in Baltimore, CR of Maryland. They were reporting their numbers from this past year, their number one, highest profitable, most profitable marketing metric, and they’re a multiple seven-figure a year business.

    Their number one, most profitable marketing method was SEO.

    They spent about $20,000 in SEO in that year, and they brought in $700,000 in gross profits with that one channel. By far the highest, most profitable deal.

    So that’s why we need to ensure that our websites today are not just online. They don’t just look pretty, but they actually have an amazing chance to rank really, really well on Google.

    Go check it out in the series when you’re ready. It walks you through the four main points you need to focus on when setting up your website correctly for SEO.

    Now, am I qualified to talk about that? Well, if you guys were to Google, “Sell my house fast,” or “We buy houses,” or “Cash home buyers,” in any city in the country or any motivated house seller phrase, you’re likely going to find somewhere between three and eight Carrot sites controlling page one in Google in almost every city in the country.

    Carrot member websites top 3 rankings

    The number one lead generation source of the 400,000 plus leads that come into our system every single year with our clients is search engine optimization. So, we know a thing or two about this topic.

    Point #3

    The third thing that we need to focus on is once someone comes to that website, its structure is credibility. We need to build credibility massively and insanely quickly right now in this market. It’s a cluttered market. It’s a busy market. We need to build credibility.

    Check out that video on how to build credibility, start to finish, and win more deals to pre-frame the person who wants to work with you versus your competition.

    What's Your Credibility Score? Ranking Your Real Estate Website

    Point #4

    Now, number four. Number four is that once they’re there, we now need to make sure that we’re converting them into a lead.

    This is the thing that we really pioneered in this industry. And you’ll see a lot of people in the market have emulated what Carrot pioneered, and we’re going to continue to stay ahead of that game is we change the industry from just getting a website online to making it perform and convert.

    We run what’s called split tests each and every month with dozens of websites that test little elements like the size of a button or the placement of something. Or we test something, “Is this going to work better on mobile or not?”

    And it goes back to if you lose one lead every single month, and the average number of leads it takes to close a deal in SEO is about 10 to 15, which means you lost 10 to 12 leads that year. And if you lost one deal and it’s a $20,000 deal, you could be losing $20,000 or more every single year at minimum, just because the website isn’t optimized for conversion as well as it could be.

    So we’ve got an entire video to show you exactly what you need to do to put on your website to make it convert your visitors into leads at the highest rate possible.

    Ingredients For Crazy High Converting Real Estate Lead Forms

    Point #5

    Number five. This is one of the most important things that we need to focus on as real estate investors when we’re setting up our website or what we call an authority hub is when you’re doing it, just work with your cousin Eddie, who can set up a website for a couple of hundred bucks, that’s not going to cut it.

    Once again, how many leads and deals are we okay with losing every single year from an underperforming website?

    We must focus on working with people or a team that has done this before in this specific market.

    We’ve worked with agencies that have been really, really good at generating leads for plumbers or attorneys, but then they move into the investor market, and they struggle because it’s a completely different dynamic.

    It’s a high-margin service business. Motivated sellers and buyers search for different types of things than other types of prospects do.

    So, number five is we need to make sure that we’re focusing on working with people or a tool that is specifically focused on generating motivated seller and/or buyer leads for investors specifically, for you specifically as a wholesaler, a flipper of land, or houses.

    Conclusion

    All right, guys, let me run through those five real estate website design ideas really quickly again.

    1. Number one, we’ve got to make sure we nail the tech stack and the website’s structure. Check out the video on that.
    2. Number two, we have to be ranking well in Google today to win the highest, most motivated prospects. And so you show up high when people Google search your name so that you can win more deals from your offline marketing.
    3. Number three is we’ve got to build credibility the right way on that website, to stand out from your competitors so you can win more of those leads and do deals.
    4. Number four, we’ve got to structure the elements of the website to convert at a high rate, especially on a mobile device. We’ll show you how to do that in that video.
    5. And number five, work with someone who specifically does this for you, for investors, as we do here at Carrot.

    So those are the five main chunks, the five main things that we need to do to set up a website, to make it perform the right way, and to stop losing leads and deals from an underperforming website.

    Now, there are a lot of things you can do and that you should be doing in between those as well. While you’re going through that journey, you’re going to have to pick and choose where you are going to go to get the website set up.

    You can use a system like Wix or WordPress or go hire a custom web developer. They all have pros and cons. In some of them, you will make big trade-offs between speed and performance, or you might lose leads, but this will be cheaper for you.

    We work with many of the top investors in the entire country, and we work with a lot of newer investors as well. And we’d love to work with you if it’s a fit.

    The thing that I’m most passionate about here at Carrot, and it’s actually our stated mission in the business, is to help you build a business of freedom and impact. And we’ve done that with so many of our clients.

    We really think that our tool, Carrot as software, our training, our support, and the ecosystem we put you into, just like with thousands of other successful clients of ours, is the right tool to help you get there.

    But guys, don’t take our word for it. One of the biggest things I want you to do is go out there, do your research, and find information online.

    Take a demo of Carrot today!

    Also, we’ve got an amazing set of videos that can walk you through many of the most successful clients and their stories, that probably are pretty darn parallel to yours as well.

    So, do your research!

  • EP 332: $130k Net Profit & 9 Dumpsters | The “Trash House Deal” w/ Beau Hollis

    EP 332: $130k Net Profit & 9 Dumpsters | The “Trash House Deal” w/ Beau Hollis


    In this no-negotiation, no-nonsense episode of Behind the Deal we’re covering:

    • Booking appointments with confidence and closing quickly
    • Why and how hedge funds are buying a multitude of rentals in America right now
    • The future of the real estate industry

    Mentioned in this Episode: 


    Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio

    Beau’s cash buyer site:

    Beau on YouTube