Technical SEO vs. Content SEO

Technical SEO vs. Content SEO — it’s not a battle to the death. It’s just two kinds of SEO…and a subject that creates a lot of confusion. So what should you know about technical SEO vs. content SEO?

Content SEO

Content is king. There is nothing you can do with technology that can make up for poor quality content or a lack of good content. A search engine’s job is to help people find the content that will answer their questions and provide them with an excellent experience.

Content SEO is producing that excellent experience with compelling content at your website. Some of the specific elements:

• Well organized pages and posts that make it easy for search engines and people to find the information you offer
• Pages that provide clear information about what you have to offer and how visitors can get it
• Posts that give people the information they need at every point on their path to purchase
• Well-written posts with a clear main point and factual support, using the keywords your target market uses
• For local businesses, content that makes your location clear and gives web visitors the information they need to find you
• Regular, fresh, original content posted at your site and shared via social media

Our basic goal is to have the best page on the internet for each of our clients’ keywords. We make sure that search engines as well as human visitors can see the value of these pages. That’s content SEO.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is a matter of following Google’s advice on technical best practices, and making it easy for search engines to use your website. Here are some of the items that fall under the heading of technical SEO:

• A secure website that uses https rather than the http protocol
• The www. version of your URL redirects to the non-www version, or vice versa
• A responsive website that looks good and performs well on mobile devices
• A fast website — a site that loads within a couple of seconds
• Clear, logical navigation for human and robot visitors
• Consistent, meaningful URL structure
• The simplest website that will serve your purposes
• Meta tags and other specialized markup to communicate clearly with search engines (and meta descriptions for human visitors)
• Optimized images with alt text for assistive readers and for search engines

Now let’s use a little common sense. Is anyone going to come to your website to admire your 301 redirects? Will anyone choose to buy from you because you load half a second faster than your competitor? Will Google rank your one-page site higher than your competitor’s 1,400-page compendium of valuable, relevant information on the basis of your schema markup?

No.

Technical SEO vs. content SEO? If you had to choose between the two, you should pick content. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose. A great website filled with great content is the way to go.