Technical and on-page SEO are the foundation and framework of your digital presence. Without them, even the most brilliant content strategy is like building a house on sand – it might look good for a while, but it won’t stand the test of time or the scrutiny of search engines.
I’ve heard it countless times: “Why do we need to keep investing in technical and on-page SEO if we’ve already optimized our site?” Or even worse, “Can’t we just focus on creating new content and building links?” These are dangerous misconceptions that could be holding your business back from achieving its full potential online.
Let me be clear: technical and on-page SEO aren’t one-time tasks. They’re ongoing processes that are absolutely essential for long-term organic success. In fact, they’re some of the most powerful tools we have for driving sustainable growth in search visibility and conversions. But here’s the thing – their impact isn’t always immediately visible, and that’s where many businesses go wrong.
Now, about thinking you can skip technical and on-page optimizations – if it were that simple, every page on your website would already be dominating the search results, wouldn’t they? The truth is, effective SEO requires a holistic approach that combines technical excellence, on-page optimization, strategic content creation, and link building.
It’s not just about having a site that works; it’s about having a site that excels in every aspect that search engines and users care about. It involves constant refinement of your site’s structure, ongoing optimization of your content, and ensuring that every page on your site is working hard to contribute to your overall SEO success.
In this article, I’ll show you exactly how ongoing technical and on-page SEO contributes to your ROI throughout the lifetime of your SEO campaign.
Laying the Foundation: First Month Optimizations
Let’s start at the beginning – the crucial first month of your SEO campaign. This is where we lay the groundwork for long-term success, and it all starts with some key technical and on-page optimizations.
Headers and Footers: The Unsung Heroes of Navigation
Think about it: when someone lands on your site, where do they look to find their way around? That’s right – the header and footer. These aren’t just design elements; they’re crucial navigational tools that can make or break your user experience and, by extension, your SEO performance.
We always start by giving these areas a thorough overhaul. We’re not just making things look pretty – we’re strategically structuring your site’s navigation to improve user experience, boost click-through rates to valuable content, and enhance how your site appears in search results.
Here’s a real-world example: Dimov Tax Specialists came to us with a frustrating problem. Their website was displaying inaccurate and irrelevant sitelinks in Google search results. While sitelinks are ultimately decided by Google, we knew we could influence them through strategic on-page optimization.
We started by creating a custom footer for their website, prominently featuring their most valuable pages. We also completely overhauled their header navigation, ensuring it clearly represented their key services and resources. The results were impressive:
- A major uptick in traffic to key service pages
- The display of proper, relevant sitelinks on Google search results
- Improved user navigation, leading to longer session durations and lower bounce rates
This improvement in sitelinks doesn’t just look good – it has tangible benefits. Users can now directly access key pages from the search results, improving their experience and increasing the likelihood of conversion. Plus, the expanded search result with sitelinks takes up more real estate on the search results page, making Dimov Tax Specialists stand out from their competitors.
Mobile Responsiveness: Because Google is Mobile-First
Here’s a hard truth: if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you’re fighting an uphill battle in SEO. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking.
In that crucial first month, we prioritize mobile responsiveness, starting with the most important pages – home, about, services, contact, and key content templates. We’re not just making things look good on a smaller screen; we’re ensuring that the mobile experience is seamless, fast, and user-friendly.
For a client in the e-commerce sector, our mobile optimization efforts in the first month led to a 30% reduction in mobile bounce rates and a 20% increase in mobile conversion rates. These improvements didn’t just happen overnight – they laid the foundation for continued growth throughout the campaign.
Breathing New Life into Existing Content
Now, let’s talk about a common scenario we see at the start of many campaigns: a wealth of existing content that’s underperforming in search results.
The Hidden Potential in Your Blog Archives
You’ve invested time and resources into creating blog posts, press releases, resource documentation, case studies, and service landing pages. But here’s the kicker – most of this content isn’t ranking as well as it could. In fact, we often find that the majority of blog content isn’t ranking for anything at all.
Why? Poor optimization.
In many cases, these articles aren’t structured properly, lack proper interlinking, have incomplete meta details, or fall below the expected word count. It’s like having a sports car with a engine that’s never been tuned – all that potential, just waiting to be unleashed.
Here’s where our ongoing technical and on-page SEO efforts come into play. Month after month, we’re not just creating new content – we’re breathing new life into your existing content assets.
Let me give you a real-world example that showcases the dramatic impact of these efforts. Riverbend Wealth Management came to us with a wealth of content. However, their SEO performance was severely underperforming. When we started working with them, they were only ranking for 190 keywords, most of which were not driving any traffic. In fact, their site was only generating 27 organic visitors monthly.
In other words, their vast content library was barely making a dent in search results.
We rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Our strategy involved:
- Rewriting and restructuring existing content to better align with user intent and search engine expectations
- Implementing a robust internal linking strategy to create clear content silos and boost the authority of key pages
- Optimizing meta details to improve click-through rates from search results
- Ensuring all content met or exceeded the expected word count for their target keywords
The results were nothing short of remarkable. From March to October – just seven months – we were able to increase their keyword rankings from 190 to over 2000—that’s a staggering 1,052% increase—and their organic monthly traffic from 27 visitors to 512—a 1,896% increase!
But it doesn’t stop there. This dramatic increase in keyword rankings translated into tangible business results:
- A significant boost in monthly organic traffic volumes
- A substantial increase in leads generated from organic search
- Improved visibility across a wide range of industry-relevant topics, positioning Riverbend as a true thought leader in their space
This case demonstrates the immense potential hiding in your existing content. With the right optimization strategies, content that was once stagnant can become a powerful driver of organic traffic and leads.
The Power of Content Refreshment
But it’s not just about tweaking meta tags and adding a few internal links. Sometimes, content needs a more substantial overhaul to meet current user needs and search engine expectations.
Each month, we analyze top-ranking articles for our target queries and reverse engineer their content framework. We’re not copying – we’re understanding what search engines expect based on user intent. Then, we draft fresh, custom content that aligns with these expectations while showcasing your unique expertise.
This process of content refreshment sends powerful signals to Google. It tells search engines that your site is actively maintained and updated, encouraging more frequent crawling and indexing. The results? They start to show about a month after the initial improvements and continue to compound every month after.
But here’s where it gets really exciting. When you extrapolate this across 5, 10, or 15 pages where we’re making technical and on-page updates month after month, the results compound significantly. It’s not linear growth – it’s exponential.
In fact, we tried this on ourselves – overhauling nearly every single blog post on our website over the course of 6 months. Well, just look at the results since this undertaking back in October 2023:
The Compounding Effect of Interlinking
Now, let’s talk about one of the most underappreciated aspects of technical SEO: interlinking.
Building Content Silos for Topical Authority
As part of our content refreshment process, we’re not just updating individual pages in isolation. We’re constantly refining your site’s internal link structure, creating and strengthening content silos that demonstrate your topical authority to search engines.
Think of it like this: each piece of content on your site is a node in a vast network. By strategically connecting these nodes through internal links, we’re creating powerful content clusters that boost the visibility and authority of entire sections of your site.
By implementing a strategic interlinking strategy, we are able to create clear content silos around your key services. The result? Your organic visibility for the main service-related keywords you want to rank for will increased and that will be followed by more organic traffic and more leads entering your sales pipeline.
The Ripple Effect of Page Improvements
Here’s where the magic really happens. When we improve one page through technical and on-page optimization, it doesn’t just benefit that single page. Thanks to our interlinking strategy, the improvements ripple out to every page in the website ecosystem that it touches.
This ripple effect is why ongoing technical and on-page SEO is so crucial. Each optimization we make doesn’t just improve a single page – it strengthens your entire site’s SEO foundation.
Meta Details: Your First Impression in Search Results
Let’s shift gears and talk about something that might seem small but can have a massive impact on your SEO performance: meta details.
Crafting Compelling Titles and Descriptions
When we start an SEO campaign, we often find that many pages have generic or poorly optimized meta titles and descriptions. These are the first things users see in search results, and they play a crucial role in click-through rates.
As part of our ongoing technical and on-page SEO efforts, we’re constantly refining these meta details. We’re not just stuffing keywords – we’re crafting compelling, accurate descriptions that entice users to click while accurately representing the page’s content.
Aligning Meta Details with Fresh Content
Remember that content refreshment we talked about earlier? Well, it goes hand in hand with meta optimization. As we update and improve your content, we’re also ensuring that your meta details accurately reflect these changes.
This alignment between content and meta details is crucial. It ensures that users who click through to your site find exactly what they expected, reducing bounce rates and improving engagement metrics. These positive user behavior signals, in turn, further boost your search rankings.
Conversion Optimization: Turning Traffic into Leads
Now, let’s talk about something that ties all of our technical and on-page SEO efforts together: conversion optimization.
Strategic CTAs: Guiding Users to Conversion
While we’re not running full-fledged CRO campaigns, our technical and on-page SEO efforts always include elements designed to drive conversions. You’d be surprised how many websites we encounter that have great content but fail to include clear calls-to-action (CTAs) guiding users towards conversion points.
As part of our ongoing optimization efforts, we ensure that every page on your site includes strategic CTAs. Whether it’s directing users to a service page, encouraging them to fill out a contact form, or promoting a phone call, we’re constantly refining these elements to boost lead generation.
The SEO-CRO Feedback Loop
Here’s where things get really interesting. As we improve your site’s technical SEO and on-page elements, we’re also gathering valuable data on user behavior. This data feeds back into our optimization efforts, creating a continuous improvement loop.
For instance, we might notice that certain types of CTAs are performing better on specific types of content. We can then apply these insights across your site, constantly refining our approach to maximize conversions.
In one case, this SEO-CRO feedback loop helped us increase a client’s overall conversion rate from organic traffic by 600% in just a few weeks. That’s the power of ongoing, data-driven optimization.
The Ripple Effects: Organic Link Building and Increased Crawl Frequency
Now, let’s talk about some of the secondary benefits of ongoing technical and on-page SEO – benefits that can have a massive impact on your overall SEO performance.
Organic Link Attraction
Here’s something many businesses don’t realize: when you consistently produce high-quality, well-optimized content, you’re not just improving your search rankings – you’re also making your site more attractive for organic backlinks.
As your content starts ranking higher and driving more traffic, other sites in your industry will naturally start to take notice. They’ll see your content as a valuable resource and begin linking to it in their own articles.
Increased Crawl Frequency
Remember how we talked about content refreshment sending positive signals to Google? Well, here’s another benefit: it can significantly increase how often search engines crawl your site.
When you’re consistently updating and improving your content, you’re giving search engines a reason to come back to your site more frequently. The more often they crawl your site, the faster your new and updated content gets indexed and starts ranking.
The Synergy of Content Creation and Technical SEO
Before we wrap up, I want to address a common misconception: the idea that you can choose between focusing on content creation or technical SEO.
The truth is, these two elements of SEO don’t exist in isolation. They work in tandem, each amplifying the effects of the other.
The Power of a Holistic Approach
When we’re optimizing existing content and simultaneously producing new, high-quality content, we’re creating a powerful synergy. The newly optimized content improves the performance of your existing pages, while the fresh content gives search engines even more reasons to crawl and index your site.
This combined approach sends strong signals to search engines about your site’s relevance, authority, and value. It’s like a virtuous cycle – better optimization leads to better rankings, which leads to more traffic and backlinks, which in turn boosts your overall SEO performance.
