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Technical vs Content SEO
I’ve been managing SEO for a national client with a large website – tons of content over 15k pages, lots of historical blog content. But ratings after initial improvement have gone static. They (and we) continue to focus on content creation, and on-page optimization. However, their SEMRush also indicates a huge number of technical issues on the site.
Are we better off focusing intensively on technical issues? Resolving any issue pages, focusing on hard-to-improve performance metrics, elements like redirect chains & structural data issues? Or is continuing a content-heavy approach the best approach?
Just seems as if we are somewhat pushing a boulder up a hill and initial good ranking improvements have become much more unmoving. Could be nature of the site, but I’d hate to focus efforts on one area when another is really more formative in impacting “crawlability & attractiveness” of a site to Goog.
Thx
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3 Replies
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Content is great, you need it to rank well – but if on-page elements, the ability for Google to crawl/render, and internal linking/site structure aren’t great then you won’t get any better. Also pay attention to your web vitals.
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Yes, technical can be HUGE — esp for large websites. Remember, google only has so much ability to give credit for every term. Rather, you have the 10 results on page 1 or whatever SERP features might pop up for the term. Over time, each term/phrase will only get more and more competitive. Just because you punch out more content and probably rank/garner traffic for the weaker terms and the traffic seems to be growing or at least it was working in the past, it doesn’t mean you’re able to get what you ultimately need which are conversions or the content translating into $$$s. I’d also work on CRO or other UI based optimizations that help create better experiences (which I think you’re alluding to technical). Like Neither said, “*pay attention to your web vitals*.” Ultimately, google (or any smart search engine) would want you to create the best experiences possible for users. In the end, that will translate so much more into SEO.
With that said, creating content or managing it is still key. So many opportunities exist to plug all the content holes that exist on the Internet. However, GREAT content should also be the focus for the medium to long term. As many of us know, there’s a lot of crap out there and also people literally just copying and pasting. Some day our great writers will catch wind of what SEO is and combine the two and when that happens, SEOs will lose their edge.
Btw, you should totally do it, document it and then write up a case study — ideally come back and post it here. I’ll bet my many years in this that if you do it right, you’ll have plenty of ammunition against all the folks out there who just say “pump out more content” for SEO.
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of optimising a website’s structure and code to make it easier for search engines to read, understand, and index its pages while also ensuring that users have the greatest possible experience while using it. Technical SEO is different from content marketing in that its elements are code-based and frequently require the testing and deployment of a skilled web developer.
SEO for content
In order to attract and bring in more search users who are interested in the content produced on your website, content SEO is a marketing approach that raises your website’s search ranking signals.
The precise content you use on pages affects which search queries each page will rank for, but obtaining backlinks from reliable external websites to your website can also help your site rank better and increase the domain’s trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
Whether it is found on or off your website, content that is substantial, distinctive, and pertinent to the keyword search intent will probably rank higher than “thin” content that is of lower quality and does not meet searcher intent or content that simply repeats what can be found elsewhere on the internet without adding any novel or helpful information.
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