Technical SEO or Content: Where Should You Focus Your Efforts?

You might have an eye-catching website but without proper SEO and content you give your competition the edge to push you lower in Google's rankings. But when it comes to SEO vs. Content, is there one you should put your primary focus on?

Technical SEO and content marketing are often spoken of as two separate areas of marketing however, that is not really the case.

For a website to successfully rank organically, both of these elements must work together. Two distinct skill sets are needed to provide content and technical SEO work. Finding one individual who is equally talented in both technical and content work is rare when a brand looks to hire SEO services. This results in the need to prioritize which of these two elements are most important to the brand.

It doesn't have to be one or the other when it comes to technical SEO vs. content!

The most important element depends on a combination of factors such as how your website is currently performing, performance of the website, how quickly you want to see results, and how much has already been done on the website.

Here is a closer look at each of these factors to help you determine whether technical SEO or content is the best solution for you:

CURRENT WEBSITE PERFORMANCE

The answer to whether content or technical is the answer greatly depends on which parts of the site performance you are attempting to target. By taking a look at the following areas you can assess where your website is performing well and narrow down the areas that are under-performing, and focus initial SEO efforts on the latter:

• Site-wide rankings are low: In this case, an underlying technical issue is usually the culprit. So, the priority area for the SEO services to focus on is technical SEO.
• Too many pages targeting the same keyword: Multiple pages attempting to rank with the same keyword is effectively sabotaging your own effort. Inspect and edit the content located in these pages and consider reorganizing the structure of your website. Consolidate content where possible and add new pages when appropriate to target a different variation of a keyword.
• Product pages with stockists/affiliates do not rank: Oftentimes, duplicate content issues are to blame if you work with stockists or affiliates of your products, or sell products from another brand. The ideal solution, in this case, is to revise your content as well as optimize what you currently have on your site.
• Product pages with numerous configurations do not rank: For a product page that does not rank and features numerous options controlled by the user, such as size/shape/color/style, a technical issue is a likely culprit for inefficient indexing or crawling of these products.

HOW QUICKLY YOU’D LIKE TO SEE RESULTS

It is difficult to know which aspect will provide the fastest results because it is dependent on your actual website.

A vital key to speedy results is to have technical SEO in place that will allow Google to crawl and index your website. Without that foundation other technical improvements will go unnoticed and new content could be slow to take off because your website will not be crawled efficiently or frequently.

You can expect that content will get quicker results than further technical work when a minimum standard of technical SEO is already in place, and vice versa. Still, this is site dependent and has limitations.

The advantage of content is that it can gain fast results without the reliance on SEO. This is due to content’s ability to support the branding of the business and gain traction across additional channels, such as social media. Even though content marketing may be deducted from your SEO services budget, there is nothing to prevent you from utilizing email marketing or promoting your content on paid social media, which gives added value to content that may not be performing organically. Directing clients to your business’ online resources can also be effective.

EXISTING SEO AND CONTENT

When making your first investment into either content or technical, the greatest results can be obtained in areas you have never touched in the past. If there is

If technical SEO work is completely lacking on your website, it may take a little time before Google detects any new changes you make; nevertheless, when compared to a small adjustment on a more established site, the impact will be enormous.

This also applies to content. On a website with very little content or appropriate information for consumers, the greatest impact will come from adding relevant content.

SO THE ANSWER IS...

While technical SEO should form the foundation of your investment, SEO alone will not necessarily be the most important element in the long-run. But with the technical foundation of SEO in place paired with content delivery you’ll be on your way to better rankings. Then as the website changes over time, the focus and time spent on different aspects of SEO will change as well - and then Google will update their algorithm you'll get to start all over again!

YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF!

You've probably got enough on your plate running a successful business, so let the team at Alt Media Studios work behind the scenes to ensure that your website has the technical foundations to succeed in search. We are a certified Google Partner, so you can trust that you're in the best hands. If it's content your website lacks, our on-staff content writer is here for you.

Learn more about our SEO work here and check out our video: