Content SEO vs Technical SEO – Differences, Pros and Cons

Need help with choosing between content SEO vs technical SEO implementation?

You’re not alone.

The vast landscape of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be confusing at first. But because it has the potential to improve visibility, establish credibility, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic, you must get familiar with its many approaches. Content SEO focuses on optimizing the actual content of a website to enhance its relevance and appeal to search engines, while technical SEO involves optimizing the website’s infrastructure and technical elements to improve its overall performance and accessibility to search engines.

Both of them are essential.

So, instead of pitting content SEO against technical SEO, combine the two to ensure your website is indexed and ranked well in search engine result pages (SERPs).

In this article, we will provide in-depth insights into the two strategies and how they can help you get an edge over your rivals, with expert advice on implementing them in your website design and development for maximum impact.  

Pros and Cons of Content SEO

Content SEO is critical for making your website content more visible on search engines. While high-quality content is king, it has little value if it’s not paired with a simple site structure and specific keywords that prospects are actively searching for.

It sounds simple, but the processes behind it are quite complex. It’s not enough to just conduct keyword research, implement it in the meta descriptions, titles, subtitles, and body copy of your blog posts, and call it a day.

You also have to make sure it matches user search intent, or it will lead to an increased bounce rate.

Pros	Cons
Increased organic traffic	Time-consuming
Better search engine rankings	Constant algorithm updates
Improved user experience (UX)	Fierce competition
Enhanced brand visibility	Uncertain results
Long-term results
Cost-effective marketing strategy

So, while a solid content marketing strategy can make you stand out, it can take a lot of trial and testing to deliver the desired long-term results. Plus, there’s a bit of a learning curve involved.

That’s why it’s best to leave it to the pros at Mediaboom. Schedule your free consultation to learn how to use content SEO vs technical SEO to your advantage.

Pros and Cons of Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing site performance. It can be implemented by improving the behind-the-scenes elements that affect the user experience:

• Improving the website page speed to reduce bounce rates
• Ensuring accessibility by making the website mobile-friendly
• Working on your site structure to ensure it’s SEO- and user-friendly
• Creating and submitting a valid sitemap for search engines to crawl your website more efficiently

All of these steps are critical for improving your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs). Without them, you won’t be able to generate substantial revenue—even if you offer quality products, as only 0.63% of people click on the second page.

Pros	Cons
Improved website performance	May require financial investment
Better search engine crawlability	Limited control over search engines
Increased page load speed	Potential for misconfigurations
Mobile-friendliness	Complex and challenging for individuals with limited tech knowledge
Error identification and correction
Improved security

Want to tap into its potential? Experts at our digital marketing agency can help.

Our team of experienced professionals will ensure your site has every technical advantage possible. We use conversion-oriented marketing and sales strategies, so you can expect to perform well, even in a saturated market.

How to create an effective SEO Strategy?

If you want your pages to rank higher and drive organic traffic by leveraging website content SEO and optimizing technical SEO, you must level up all the elements that render your site valuable for search engines.

Here are some content SEO and technical SEO strategies that will aid your cause:

1. Perform an SEO Audit of the Website

An SEO audit is a diagnosing process that digs deep into how your website is performing, identifying elements that could negatively and positively affect your ranking on search engines.

Perform audits regularly to spot and fix issues with on-page elements, enhance the quality of your content, and make adjustments for algorithm changes.

A website optimization audit will help you determine what you need: content SEO vs technical SEO. Get started with Mediaboom today to achieve online success.

2. Use a Clean and Organized URL Structure

A URL is a unique address that allows visitors to access specific pages on a website.

Here’s what’s included in a good URL:

• Hyphens
• Descriptive words
• Relevant keywords
• Lowercase characters

It is short, uses common English words, and does not include stop words or dates.

That said, if you’re fishing for better click-through rates, use static URLs. They’re easier to crawl and index, so Google search prioritizes them.

3. Implement 301 Redirects for Broken Links

A 404 error can be very annoying for any person. To ensure it doesn’t tank the user experience, you should implement 301 redirects to permanently send traffic from the broken links to a new page. It’s an SEO-friendly way to notify search engines that a page has been moved or removed.

But don’t overdo it!

An accidental SEO test at Wayfair.com has found a consistent traffic loss of about 15% for 301-redirected URLs.  It can also slow page speeds because the browser has to jump through all the extra hoops in https:// cycle.

4. Ensure Proper HTML Markup

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) makes websites more accessible and more search-engine friendly. This set of symbols or codes defines the structure and presentation of content on a web page, from headings to sections to paragraphs.

But that’s not all it does. HTML also:

• Embeds images and videos into a web page.
• Makes room for internal linking using the href attribute.
• Tells a browser how images and texts will be displayed to the user.

That’s why it’s important to write proper HTML markup, focusing on keeping the syntax organized, using semantic elements and lower characters in code, and employing consistent spacing and indentation. In addition, you must avoid using more than one H1 tag, as it could lead search engines to classify the page as spam.

5. Optimize Image and Multimedia Elements

Large visual elements comprise a staggering 75% of the total page weight, meaning they can affect the performance of your website by taking longer to load.

But because multimedia provides a more enjoyable and satisfying user experience and improves your chances of showing up on search engines, you can’t do away with it.

However, you can optimize the elements to increase the site’s loading speed. As such, to enhance your website’s content SEO and technical SEO:

• Take original photos
• Compress images without compromising quality
• Use the right file format (png, jpeg, etc.)
• Define the image’s dimension (height and width)
• Add descriptive alt tags that will be stand-ins if your image fails to load

Do not infringe on anyone’s copyright. This “strict liability” offense can lead to your page getting de-indexed, which can seriously hurt your SEO game.

6. Set Up Structured Data Markup

Adding structured data, or schema markups, provides explicit cues about your business. For example, this is where you can say, “I am a recipe website,” “I sell fashion products,” you get the drift.

It helps search engines better understand the pages on your site and guide users to what you offer. It places your business in context and makes your content eligible for rich results (think snippets) to boost your click-through rate.

So, when you set it up with clearly defined attributes in a standardized format, you put your site on the path to better visibility and further improve the user experience.

7. Implement a Mobile-friendly Design

Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means that it will crawl your site using the mobile version of the website for Google ranking and indexing. And that over 55% of website traffic comes from mobile devices, you must ensure your website looks great no matter what type of phone or tablet is used.

Run Chrome Lighthouse to see how your website is performing and get valuable insights on how to improve the page.

Some non-negotiables should include:

• Avoiding intrusive pop-ups
• Utilizing a responsive theme
• Optimizing images without risking loss of quality
• Turning off the autocorrect feature for mobile devices
• Avoiding Flash Player, as it can make your website slower
• Focusing on button size and placement for easy navigation
• Keeping the design simple, with easy-to-read fonts and layman language
• Using the viewport meta tag to control the width and scaling for any screen

Implementing a mobile-first web design could bring numerous benefits for content SEO vs technical SEO. It can improve your brand’s credibility, decrease bounce rate, boost content marketing, emphasize customer service, and keep users engaged.

8. Optimize Website Speed and Performance

More than 50% of mobile visitors will click away from a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. It is critical to ensure your website loads as quickly as possible. Users have a reason to stay and interact with your business for longer, increasing your chances of conversions.

Use these steps to improve your site speed and performance:

• Limit the number of HTTP requests
• Audit and reduce redirects regularly
• Optimize your code, keeping it short and simple
• Enable compression to reduce file sizes for website elements
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce bandwidth consumption by locating copies of your website nearer to the end user

Remember, page speed is a ranking factor. So, this due diligence is vital for a user experience that keeps prospects coming back to you.

9. Enhance Internal Linking

A robust internal linking strategy can spell your SEO UX success. By linking to other pages on the same domain, you establish an information hierarchy. This can improve navigation, helping users discover even more valuable content, more in-depth than the landing page.

As such, it can:

• Build link equity
• Improve engagement
• Enhance the user experience
• Drive prospects further down the sales funnel

It also sends a clear message to search engines about which pages are important to improve crawl depth and efficiency and make them easier to rank.

10. Implement Canonical Tags

A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is part of an HTML code that prevents identical or duplicate content, which affects ranking ability. They help search engines define the original version of the page, ensuring the correct one is indexed on search results. This establishes authority and drives more traffic to the site.

To implement it, use:

• Self-referential tags
• Only 1 canonical tag per page
• Lowercase absolute URLs — no relative paths
• The right version of a secure domain

Does making a choice between technical SEO vs content SEO sound complicated? It can be.

But don’t worry; Mediaboom can put things into perspective.

Our full-service digital marketing agency can upgrade everything from email and content marketing to SEO, like we did for Luxo Italia. So, you can focus on perfecting your products or services while we showcase them in their best light.

Content SEO Strategy Example

Mediaboom partnered with Aspen Luxury Concierge to boost its brand and authority via a tailored strategy. It consisted of SEO and content marketing with targeted keywords, Google ads, and a branded newsletter for email outreach, focusing on organic and targeted traffic.

Our digital marketing agency’s efforts were a success, resulting in the following:

• +54% conversions
• +50% average open rate
• +118.42% new organic users 
• +69,650% increase in new user traffic

So, if you want to do a 180 on your SEO, you know where to find us!

Technical SEO Example

Technical SEO can be difficult to understand. So, we’ll explain by an example to make it easier to remember. Let’s consider Paving Finder’s performance on PageSpeed Insights:

	Mobile	Desktop
Accessibility	95	100
Best Practices	95	95
Performance	90	96
SEO	86	83

The desktop seems to reign supreme in all categories, but it has failed the Core Web Vitals Assessment — even with good Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Interaction to Next Paint.

This is because it was lacking in the following metrics:

• Time to First Byte (TTFB) – measures the server’s responsiveness, particularly the time it takes for the browser to receive the first byte of the page.
• Largest Contentful Paint – measures the time it takes for the main content to load.
• First Contentful Paint – tied to the page load speed and measures how long a browser renders the first element of the page.

Good scores on these metrics indicate a good user experience. This leads to a positive brand reputation, top-tier customer loyalty, better user engagement, and increased conversion, sales, and ROI.

But don’t worry; we’ve helped the Arizona Beverage Company with eye-catching designs and technical elements—and we can do the same for your biz.

In Conclusion: Hire a Digital Marketing Agency Now

98% of people use the internet to find info about a local business, so if you don’t have an established online presence, best believe your competitors are getting your slice of the money pie. We can’t have that!

So, if you can’t make sense of the content SEO vs technical SEO debate, let our experienced digital marketing agency take the reins. We cater to a wide range of industries, with glowing results to show for it.

Contact us today to take your business to the next level with a well-designed website.