Let’s explore the thought.
More often than not the tasks identified to be actioned under the umbrella term “Technical SEO” could be seen as a clean up job.
Sounds harsh, but if you’ve ever handed a shiny new site to an SEO Agency only to receive a multi page audit full of technobabble (admittedly necessary technobabble) and urgent fixes…you know what I mean.
What Technical SEO Means
In essence, Technical SEO is about site speed, crawlability, indexing, structured data, internal linking, and a dozen other boxes. It’s supposed to help Search Engines (and users) navigate your site more effectively.
In practice, and in my humble opinion, Technical SEO (remediation) is the price you pay for building a site without a blueprint.
By “blueprint” I mean a digital strategy.
Would you build a house without an architectural blueprint, or engineers report?
The Root of The Problem
Simply put, and again in my opinion, the problem lies in “putting the cart before the horse”-building a digital strategy around a website. Typically;
- “We need a new website.”
- Hire a designer.
- Approve some mockups.
- Launch.
- Crickets.
- Bring in an SEO agency to patch the holes.
That’s where the site audit comes in. A stack of recommendations that could’ve been built in from the start—for half the cost and none of the stress.
The Cost?
Let’s consider how this approach ends up costing you;
- Thousands in development changes identified in the site audit.
- Weeks of delay before digital strategy execution.
- Lost leads while your site sits idle in search oblivion.
- Confusion, scope creep, and duplicate efforts between marketing and dev teams.
What Happens When You Do It Right
Now flip it.
Start with a strategy. Know who you’re targeting. Map their journey. Align your offer and positioning. Identify the content pillars, keywords, site structure, and conversion points that actually move the needle.
Then—and only then—design and build the site to support it.
Result?
- The dev team builds in SEO-friendly structure from day one, it passes an audit before launch.
- Marketing has a launchpad, not a construction site.
- Campaigns can roll out weeks faster.
- The budget goes to growth, not rework.
When Technical SEO Isn’t Just Remediation
To be fair, there are situations where technical SEO plays a necessary role:
- Legacy sites with good content but poor infrastructure.
- Site migrations, platform changes, mergers.
- Sites with complex architecture (e.g. large eCommerce stores).
All of which still need underlying digital and technical strategy, and usually specialist resources involved, before implementation.
Plan Now or Fix Later?
Here’s the deal: you’re going to spend the money either way.
You can spend it upfront on a site that’s built to support your digital strategy.
Or you can spend it cleaning up after the fact—delaying results, repeating work, and retrofitting fixes that could’ve been baked in.
One moves you forward. The other just brings you back to where you should’ve started.
Which would you rather fund?
