In digital marketing people often remain confused between content and technical SEO. Which should be given more importance and which is more important for ranking. Website owners have to choose the most efficient digital marketing practices to imply their effort.
Small businesses have a limited budget, therefore, they have to make the best strategies to utilize their budget most efficiently and effectively.
How both content and technical SEO are important for ranking
70% of marketers believe that both content and technical SEO are important. Both works together and it is a proven fact that they work parallel with each other.
Content is useful for ranking in the way that it helps to provide information, helping google crawlers to know about the website niche, etc. Whereas technical SEO is important for ranking in the way that it optimizes your website and its structure, manage sitemaps, page speed, data, etc which are important for ranking.
Still, marketers have to choose between content and technical SEO.
- Which is important for rankings?
- In which they should apply more effort and budget?
- Which brings more leads and conversions?
To get the clear answer first you should know in detail about content and technical SEO.
In this article, you will learn about technical SEO, content marketing, and which one is more important.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a marketing technique that involves writing, editing, and distributing valuable and relevant content to attract visitors and to provide them valuable information.
In digital marketing, you may have heard the phrase “ content is king” which is 100% true as the content is the backbone of digital marketing.
Content is the main reason for which people visit your website. Content includes valuable information about products, services, news, sports, and other topics.
Content includes keywords for which a webpage ranks in the search engine. Digital marketing is actually impossible without valuable content.
Why content marketing important?
The importance of content is unmeasurable as everything is actually related to content on the website. The main advantages of content marketing are the implementation of SEO and leads and conversions.
Natural backlinks
Great content with valuable information helps a website to get natural backlinks from high authority websites. If your content is good then various websites automatically provide you a backlink without even approaching them.
On-page
Good content is also useful for on-page SEO. With quality content, you can easily optimize your website for on-page SEO. You will get a chance to add keywords at appropriate places like headings, title, description.
Along with that good content also gives you the opportunity to follow keyword proximity, keyword prominence, and keyword density.
Higher rankings
Quality content is liked by everyone. When the content is appreciable then you will forever get backlinks and traffic. These two things increase rankings and help you to stay on top of search engine results.
For example- you may have noticed that the content you have written one year ago still remain on the top of SERP result when you search for it.
The image below is of content added a year ago still shown on the top. This is due to the good quality of the content.
Provide information to your audience
People visit your website to gain some information or to get an answer to their particular question or query. Therefore it is your basic responsibility to provide them with the answer.
Content is the medium to do so and you can build a good relationship with your audience. If good articles are present on your website then visitors continue to return back to your website to get information.
Generate leads
The ultimate goal of digital marketing is lead generation. Content marketing helps a business to get leads and conversions. It helps users to engage with your website and spending time on it.
People love to get more and more information before making a decision about the purchase. If they will get satisfied with the content you provide they lead to make a conversion also.
Content set you apart from others
Every marketer uses the same digital marketing techniques like SEO, social media, PPC, email marketing, etc. However, there is something that sets you apart is the quality of your content.
If your content quality is better than others then your visitors also choose you over others. This means you will get more traffic, leads, and conversions than others.
Technical SEO
Basically technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website for proper crawling and indexing in the search engine. Technical SEO has become the need of the present digital marketing system.
Filling your website with content without using proper technical SEO tactics is like driving a car without a reliable engine.
Technical SEO helps to optimize your website and its structure which further leads to higher rankings.
The most common features of technical SEO are
Robot.txt
Robot.txt is a file that instructs search engine crawlers about which pages to be crawled and indexed and which not. With this, you can restrict crawlers to crawl low value or duplicate pages which can degrade the value of your website.
XML Sitemap
XML Sitemap contains all the pages of your website also some important details about the topic of those pages. A sitemap is used by a search engine to find the pages on your website and crawl them.
Your sitemap should contain all the pages which should be ranked on the search engine. Moreover, you can find out how often the search engine crawls your pages.
Page Speed
Page speed is an important factor for user experience and SEO. Page loading speed plays a crucial role in the ranking of a website. Fast loading websites get more traffic compared to slow websites.
Mobile-friendliness
At present, 80% of traffic came from mobile devices. This means that you have to optimize your website for mobile also. If you don’t do so then your rankings will affect adversely. Moreover, you will lose your customers if you don’t optimize your website for mobile.
Optimize 404 pages
A 404 page is a page that is shown if the URL is either deleted or the URL typed is incorrect. Modern themes include 404 pages to inform users about the absence of a particular URL.
While optimizing those pages you can add an option for related pages and if a user clicks on the link he will be moved to that page. This increases traffic, user experience, and rankings.
Why Technical SEO is important?
Technical SEO is important part of digital marketing. Without technical SEO your website will suffer from threats like low traffic, high bounce rate, low leads and conversions, and many more.
Not using technical SEO is like walking without a destination. You don’t even know-how and to whom your content reach. Whether the people it reaches really search for it r not. Basically technical SEO impacts your website rankings indirectly.
Imagine without robot.txt or sitemap how could google crawlers come to know about the addition of new pages. Without mobile-friendliness, your mobile traffic will go to your competitor which can decrease your rankings. These things ensure that technical SEO holds great importance in the rankings of a website.
Technical SEO provides users with the information they want according to the keywords used in their query. Users shift from one website to another in seconds so if your website takes time to load they may shift.
Technical SEO ensures your website’s loading speed to be fast which increases user experience. Moreover, high-speed websites are also praised by google and it boosts up their rankings.
Technical SEO or Content- Which is more important?
The simplest answer to this question is that it depends on the situation and performance of a website and the size of your business. Both are equally important for the rankings of a website. Without one other is totally pointless.
Imagine a situation where you have a very fast website that can reach the most potential customers. But what if they don’t get anything to access- no content, no images, no data, then what will be the use of such technical SEO.
Similarly what if you have good content on your website but is not reaching potential customers, neither it gets crawled nor indexed properly. What will be the use of such content?
Therefore you can conclude that both work together.
Now understand how to use both of them together.
During the initial stages focus on both technical SEO as well as the content. Make your pages found in the SERP. Set everything properly so that you don’t have to apply much effort to rank your website in the future.
After that start publishing more and more content on your website. Remember that content marketing is a continuous process. You have to spend more time and effort on content marketing as it is a creative one. You have to apply creativity, data, information, and time to gather and create such content that will be accepted and praised by readers.
The two important considerations are
- Present performance
- Speed of results
Present performance
The use of content and technical SEO depends on the present performance and position of your website. When you face various difficulties like low rankings, wrong targeting, etc it is technical SEO that helps you to combat such a situation.
If you are facing low rankings then content marketing helps to fresh and updated content on your website. Technical SEO helps to invite google crawlers to crawl and index your page properly. Ultimately you will get the highest rankings when you get higher traffic.
Speed of results
Imagine you add content on a daily basis but it does not get crawled frequently. This results in more time to get efficient results. This problem can be solved by applying technical SEO techniques.
You should have implied technical SEO from the very beginning. This means that you will get faster results and higher rankings on the search engine.
Conclusion
After reading the above content you can conclude that both technical SEO and content are incomplete without each other. Debating on the topic of which one is more important is actually pointless.
You have to work with both things at the same time. Content has its own importance while technical SEO has its own. You have to spend enough time on content as well as technical SEO.