Technical SEO and content marketing are essential for any website that wishes to rank higher in search engines. However, if you have a limited budget, you may be compelled to choose between the two.

Here’s the good news: If money is tight, you don’t have to spend on both at the same time. Simply pick the most profitable SEO pillar at the time and devote all of your resources to it.

But how can you know which is the more profitable option? Is it better to concentrate on content marketing or technical SEO? Here’s a quick answer:

• If you have speed, indexing, or crawling issues but your content is better than your competitors, focus on your technical SEO.

Let’s talk about this in detail.Here are five things you can do when deciding which SEO pillar to devote your resources on.

1.Compare the quality of your content with your competitors.

Choose 5 to 10 of your most important content pages.Chances are, you will find similar content on the websites of your competitors. See how your pages measure up.

• Do your competitors have more content?
• Do they offer more substantial answers to questions your users are asking?
• Do their pages offer better conversion paths? Easier access to related content?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, then you need to focus on producing SEO content.

2.Compare rankings.

Check your official rankings at the Google Search Console (GSC). You can also use SEMrush. Compare it with the rankings of your top five competitors.

• Are you ranking lower even though your content is better?Focus on technical SEO, because there is likely a technical problem that is keeping you from ranking higher.

3.Look at the GSC and indexing report.

Check your ‘coverage’ report at the GSC and look at the ‘excluded’ section.This is where you’ll find pages on your website that Google cannot or chooses not to index for different reasons.

• If over 20% of your URLs fall under ‘excluded,’ focus all your efforts on technical SEO.
• Stay focused on content marketing if less than 20% of your pages are in the ‘excluded’ section.

4.Check your site speed.

Site performance is one of the most essential ranking variables to emphasise in 2021, and site speed is one of the most critical variables.

Check out the GSC Core Web Vitals analysis to see how fast your site is. It will tell you which of your pages are good, which could use some work, and which are bad.

If you see speed concerns, such as a number of four-page pages and/or a Google PageSpeed score of less than 60, you should focus on technical SEO.

5.Evaluate your resources.

Ask yourself:

• How many SEO technicians and web developers do you have in your team?
• What major issues are they busy with?
• Can they take on more work?
• When it comes to marketing priorities, how high is SEO on the list?
• How is the company performing overall right now?

Your responses to these questions will help you figure out if you have adequate resources to devote to technical SEO. There’s no use in wasting time if no one is available to focus on the critical activities that make a technical SEO roadmap successful. Perhaps focusing on things you can do on your own, such as content marketing, is more practical.

You might also consider hiring a reputable search engine optimization firm like Able Media to handle your SEO plan. This will provide you with expert-level SEO at a reasonable price. For more information about our award-winning Digital Marketing Agency and our Local SEO Agency London experts , contact us today.