Technical and Non-Technical SEO: what’s the difference? This may be a question you ask if you’re new to the SEO game. But if you’ve been around awhile, you’re aware that at one point, there was just technical SEO: the behind-the-scenes tools that tricked search engines into promoting a website higher in the ranks. Non-technical SEO—the content you create and the tactics you use to show the search engines the value of a webpage—is also important.

Previously, technical SEO was used exclusively. Unfortunately, it got out of hand—and search engines started to notice. Black hat tactics resulted in the eventual favoring of non-technical SEO. And while search engines are looking for valuable web pages to service their customers, non-technical SEO is favored. In fact, most content marketers are blogging about how content is king. And while this may be true, neither technical or non-technical SEO should be left out.

In fact, to have a successful website, you’ll need a combination of both. Not sure how to find a balance between the two? I’m here to help you. Here are a few steps to help you balance technical and non-technical SEO.

Understand Technical SEOs in Your Organization

The first step to balancing technical and non-technical SEO is to understand who within your organization takes care of the technical. You probably have a creative team taking care of the non-technical, but who handles things like site accessibility and sitemaps? SEOs are mostly their own entity. They’re able to tell you (and other teams they work with) how certain actions will stay compliant with search engines’ algorithms. They’re also able to keep up with the ever-changing world of search engine standards. They’ll be the first ones to be notified when your website is facing a search engine penalty—whether that be from the poor quality content or poorly optimized sitemaps.

And it’s worth noting that technical SEOs should be included in the planning process. They’re not to be used after a problem occurs, but during the planning stages to prevent issues from occurring. All issues can be prevented. Think of technical SEO as the foundation or the road for your content to go on. Make sure that creative teams and technical teams are working together as a unit towards shared goals.

Remember On-Page & Off-Page Optimization

One of the easiest ways to balance technical and non-technical SEO is by looking at your on-page and off-page optimizations. By listing these out into two groups, you’re able to assess what needs to be done—and then group them into another set of groups: technical and non-technical. For example, these are considered on-page SEO techniques:

  • Site’s structure
  • Title tags
  • Meta descriptions
  • Internal Linking
  • Sitemaps
  • Page content

These are just a few of the techniques used to optimize on-page SEO. Examples of off-page SEO would include:

  • Social content/sharing
  • Articles and guest blogs (outside of your website!)
  • Inbound links
  • Influencer’s content

Look at those two lists. Which of those stand out immediately as technical and non-technical SEO? For me, I look at the list and see a website’s structure. It’s both on-page SEO, but it’s also technical. Once you whittle these down, it’s much easier to understand where your website needs work.

Incorporate SEO into Content Guidelines

All companies have guidelines (often called a style guide) that their content follows. This creates a consistent brand tone across all pieces of content. The in-house style guide ensures that all pieces of content get the same treatment with SEO. For example, all images used on the website are optimized the same way—making everything consistent.

Some things that style guides consider:

  • Are images optimized a specific way?
  • Are there any sources that aren’t used?
  •    Are there specific sources to use as external links?
  • What’s the in-house standard on H1, H2, and H3 headers?
  • What are the rules around title tags?
  • Who’s your audience?

Once all the framework is built for your website (the technical SEO), and there’s absolutely nothing else that can be done, that’s where the content (non-technical SEO) comes into play. You’ll need to make sure you’re creating quality content to put on your hypothetical road (technical SEO).

The guidelines force content creators to create search engine optimized content. This is a great addition to the technical aspect of the SEO strategy.

Don’t Forget the Human Element

Now that search engines are focusing on the value of a website versus how well they can play the SEO game, the human element is more important than ever. The more you incorporate human elements into your website, the better your rankings. Search engines and audiences are looking for web pages that are good for the overall user experience. Easily navigable pages, fewer ads, and readable content are just a few examples of user-friendly websites.

With those examples, you’ll notice both non-technical and technical SEO tactics are used to create a website for human viewing—unlike the old way of creating websites for search engines and bots.

Create websites that are framed for the human experience combined with human-friendly content and you’ll climb the rankings in no time.

The Takeaway

There’s no doubt that technical and non-technical SEO are approached differently. There are different teams that handle each of these pieces of your SEO—and for good reason. But it’s also important that the two work together to create a cohesive strategy. Smart content wins in the SEO world—but it also helps to have the proper framework to stand on.

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