Many companies today are investing in digital marketing, but often make the mistake of neglecting basic SEO practices, such as fundamental Technical SEO, which can significantly impact their results.
This is unfortunate, but it’s a problem we need to address and solve together.
Optimizing Technical SEO with precision is not an easy task. To avoid mistakes, you must always keep an eye on industry trends and search engine algorithms, and continuously optimize your site internally. It’s also important to pay attention to basic Technical SEO from the beginning with the help of experts.
In this article, we will look at the SEO failure case of Ryanair, which suffered great losses due to mistakes in the basic areas of Technical SEO.
If you are not familiar with the definition of Technical SEO, you can refer to this guide.
Ryanair’s Neglect of Technical SEO
Ryanair is one of the most profitable airlines in Europe. In the 2010s, it served 128 million passengers.
However, its website had downsides such as difficult navigation and additional charges to book flights. Because user experience was not considered, customers gradually began to express discomfort.
In 2014, Ryanair revamped its website. It reduced the number of clicks required to book a flight to five, earning much praise from both customers and the media.
At the time, Ryanair’s landing pages dominated most of the search results for European flights. Unfortunately, this change did not lead to positive results.
The existing pages started to return 404 errors. In other words, Ryanair had forgotten to redirect the old duplicate pages to the new and simplified pages.
As a result, Google excluded Ryanair from the first page of search results, where it had previously ranked high. Due to this, Ryanair lost about 25% of its website’s organic traffic.
What is a 301 Redirection, and Why is It Important?
A 301 redirection is one of the Technical SEO practices necessary for higher visibility in search engines. Simply put, it is the permanent forwarding of a website’s URL to another URL.
Why is it important to use 301 redirection? The reason is simple: search engines can recognize when the same content is used on different URLs.
For example, “www.example.com” and “example.com” may point to the same website, but search engines may perceive the two URLs as separate.
In this case, a duplicate content issue arises that can affect the website’s ranking. However, using a 301 redirection allows search engines to recognize that the two URLs point to the same content and ensures that this does not affect the ranking.
Why Technical SEO Is Important
You’re probably already aware of the importance of SEO.
Among its various aspects, Technical SEO is particularly important because it forms the foundation of search engine optimization.
A great developer who understands the importance of SEO will build or modify websites with SEO in mind. However, if pressed by tight schedules and the need to implement requested features, there may not be time to meet all the intricate Technical SEO requirements.
Additionally, because developers are not SEO experts, they may not view websites from an SEO perspective or may not realize that their development methods are unfavorable for SEO.
For this reason, Technical SEO should be a top priority in all website projects, including migrations, rebranding, and domain changes.
If you fail to consider this when operating or managing a website, you may encounter difficulties in ranking at the top of search results.
