Content strategy gets the attention, but technical SEO is what determines whether that content ever gets seen. Before we publish anything for a new client, we run through the same baseline checklist.
Crawlability and indexing come first: a clean robots.txt, an accurate XML sitemap submitted to Search Console, and no accidental noindex tags left over from a staging environment. We check canonical tags on every page template to prevent duplicate content issues, which are more common than most site owners realize, especially on e-commerce sites with filtered category pages.
Site speed is next, measured with real Core Web Vitals data, not just a lab score. Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift each get a target, and we treat images and unoptimized third-party scripts as the two most common causes of failure.
Structured data follows: Organization schema sitewide, plus page-specific schema for services, articles, FAQs, and local business information where relevant. This does not guarantee rich results, but it removes ambiguity for search engines trying to understand the page.
Finally, we check mobile usability directly on real devices, not just a browser's responsive mode, because rendering differences are common with third-party embeds like maps and forms.
None of this is exciting work, and none of it will show up in a case study screenshot. But skipping it is the single most common reason a content strategy underperforms.