The average marketing budget for small and medium businesses in Australia is quite low. Therefore, every dollar must work hard when SEO is on the agenda. A common question is about whether technical SEO or content SEO are the first areas where you should invest.
It depends on your website (and how you approach the content of it). Great content won’t cut it all the time. A site with serious technical problems may not be able to rank well, even if good quality contents are present there. However, a well-structured website alone does not fetch you customers in any niche.
What is Technical SEO?
SEO technical is everything that helps search engines to crawl, understand, and index the pages of a website. This will also ensure that visitors have a smoother experience.
Key areas consist of:
- Speed if the page
- Mobile usability
- Broken links
- Structure of the website
- Indexing issues
- Redirects
- Duplicate content
These additions may seem minor to your average onlooker, but often times they have an impact on the speed at which search engines crawl your site.
What is Content SEO?
The primary goal of content SEO is to make valuable information about users’ queries. These can be service pages, product guides, FAQs, location pages, and blog articles.
A good content always answers the questions asked by the users. It also needs to be in line with search intent rather than just repeating keywords.
A local trades business might have pages, e.g., describing the practicalities of their services, factors impacting pricing, and questions customers often ask.
Which Should Come First?
For the vast majority of SMBs, technical fixes need major focus beforehand. Having dozens of pages and making them crawlable will not achieve anything if search engines cannot crawl or index the pages properly.
But you do not have to wait until your website is technically perfect before publishing content.
A practical approach is to:
- Be serious to detect any technical issues on the site.
- Resolve crawlability, indexation, or usability issues.
- Identify important customer searches.
- Build helpful content about those searches.
- Track rankings, traffic, and conversions.
Situations That Call for Technical SEO First
If your website is very slow, has wide-spread technical SEO problems, or poor mobile performance, you should treat this issue as urgent.
Technical issues can also arise during website migrations and redesigns.
An SEO service in Melbourne can perform a website audit and discover any issues that could be hindering your organic performance.
When Content Should Come First?
Content may be more successful when your websites are technically healthy but consists of little only useful content.
Ask the questions that your customers are likely to ask you before they contact or purchase from you. Write clear pages that respond to those inquiries.
A business that is local by nature could do Service and Location page-based content. An eCommerce store may write purchase guides and comparisons of other products.
Do Australian SMBs Need Both?
Yes. Technical SEO and content SEO are two sides of the same coin.
Technical SEO provides the foundation. Content provides valuable information to search engines and a reason for the customer to visit your site!
The best SEO company in Melbourne should be able to assess both aspects of this rather than apply the same one-size-fit-all model for all businesses.
Make Your Budget Work Harder
The ideal investment has to come in place based on the existing weaknesses of your website.
First, resolve critical technical issues if they exist. If your technical groundwork is already strong, devote more thought to useful content that aligns with customer searches.
A professional SEO service in Melbourne knows exactly which enhancements to focus on rather than spending your entire budget on improvements.
Final Verdict
Technical SEO and content SEO are not competitors. Both of them are the two sides of the same coin.
Focus on solving significant technical challenges, and then create relevant content addressing those challenges which add real customer value. It means Australian SMBs have a more solid foundation to enable sustainable organic growth.
A lot of people measure the success of an SEO strategy based on technical fixes, number of articles produced, etc., but that is not what the best SEO company in Melbourne will want to focus on.
