Why Technical SEO Deserves a Seat at the Executive Table

Marketing leaders are juggling multiple channels and feeling the pressure of proving ROI and justifying spend, and one of those channels is SEO. Just when things seem to be running smoothly, Google moves the goalposts. 

If and when your content stops performing in search and traffic drops, a common reaction is to optimize the campaign strategy. But what if the issue is structural? 

If so, simply trying to change a campaign is like putting lipstick on a pig. 

So if you’re wondering why your SEO is not driving the results you need, the next question is: When’s the last time you did a deep dive into the technical aspects of your website? 

Technical SEO is the backbone of a well-oiled SEO strategy. Without it, your SEO will not perform as expected. It’s also the backbone of user experience on your site. A good experience means people will stay longer. 

In this article, I’ll explain why technical SEO is a strategic move that boosts the effectiveness of any SEO program.

• SEO Differentiates You From Your Competition
• SEO Performance Starts with the Foundation
• You Can’t Compete in the AIO World without Technical SEO
• Prioritizing Technical SEO at the Top Aligns Teams
• Final Thoughts
• How to Get Started
• Quick Solutions
• FAQ: What is the role of technical SEO in differentiating our company website from our competitors in the search results?

SEO Differentiates You From Your Competition  

Differentiating from your competitors is a baseline branding strategy. And this is a fundamental strategy in SEO. You attract more customers from the search results by differentiating from your competition. 

When someone searches for what you have to offer, Google’s complex algorithms have to decide which is the best content for that query — yours or your competitor’s. 

Say your SEO strategy is solid, but your competitor has done everything you’ve done and a little bit more: 

• Their core web vital scores are better, so their site is performing in a more user-friendly way. 
• Their content is siloed so that search engines and human visitors can easily access it.
• Their mobile optimization makes it effortless to view content from any device. 
• Plus, schema implementation helps Google better understand the context of their webpage.

The site that offers the better user experience wins in the search results. That can be you, or it will be competitors.

SEO Gives You an Edge 

What if your company could regularly beat the competition in the organic space? 

A site that shows its main content in a few seconds and stays visually stable on phones is a site that is more relevant than the competition that doesn’t offer the same experience. 

How do I outperform my competitors with better technical SEO?

SEO Performance Starts with the Foundation

Building SEO campaigns on a site with technical issues is like running paid ads that send people to a broken funnel. It just doesn’t work. 

Without the “technical” part of SEO, you risk losing your potential leads.  

Not only will they see your competitors first in the search results, but if they do come to your site and end up having a poor experience, you risk losing them again. 

When technical SEO is prioritized, you can: 

1. Maximize visibility across organic and paid channels. 
2. Improve landing page experience and engagement metrics. 
3. Ensure clean, reliable data for attribution and reporting.

And this is just the start. A site that prioritizes technical SEO can drive more conversions and ultimately, revenue. 

Yelp reported up to a 15% lift in conversions by simply improving user experience signals like core web vitals. And there are many other case studies like this. 

That said, technical SEO should not be relegated to the techies to “look into” or deal with. It should also not fall by the wayside when other teams are involved but not moving fast enough. 

Technical SEO should be a priority for marketing leaders who want to drive results from SEO. 

Start with a Strong Base

Imagine trying to build a tower on sand; no matter how fancy the design, the base will crumble under the lightest pressure. The same rule works for any digital property that skips technical health.

Technical SEO isn’t a side‑task or a once‑a‑year clean‑up; it’s a strategic ability that feeds organic traffic, sharpens competitive edge and lifts overall conversion rates. 

How do I improve my website’s loading speed effectively?

You Can’t Compete in the AIO World without Technical SEO

While it’s true that Google’s AI Overviews and other evolving SERP features are changing how users discover and interact with content, the fundamentals of technical SEO haven’t gone away.

Google still relies on structured data, crawlable architecture and user experience signals to understand and prioritize pages. 

As Google’s John Mueller put it:

“As long as machines read websites, technical SEO will remain an important part of making the most out of a website. It’s not going away. And as long as humans look at websites, performance and user-experience is going to remain just as important.”

Technical readiness ensures your brand can compete in any new search results feature that matters to your brand.  

Prioritizing Technical SEO at the Top Aligns Teams

Technical SEO often lives in a “no man’s land” between marketing, IT and development. No one owns the full picture. 

When CMOs elevate technical SEO to a strategic priority, something important can happen, and that’s alignment.

This is when SEO becomes a shared initiative, one that connects marketing, dev, IT, UX and product teams around a common goal: making a site more discoverable, usable and revenue-generating.

Shared Accountability

Prioritizing technical SEO at the executive level helps create shared accountability for site performance, visibility and business outcomes.

And, when technical SEO has leadership visibility, it becomes a competitive advantage; faster releases, fewer site issues and higher campaign performance, all driven by alignment.

How do I align my teams to prioritize technical SEO and enhance collaboration?

Final Thoughts 

When technical SEO is prioritized as a strategic part of the SEO program, it stops being a set of isolated tasks that never get done and becomes a push for excellence, setting you apart from your competition. 

Technical SEO ensures your site is built to attract, engage and convert, so when potential customers search, they actually find you (and stay longer).  

How to Get Started

If giving technical SEO a seat at the executive table sounds good to you, contact us for a free consultation. We turn websites into a fast, reliable catalysts for business growth. Let’s start this journey together.

Make Technical SEO a Priority Now!

Quick Solutions

• How do I outperform my competitors with better technical SEO?
• How do I identify and fix the technical SEO issues that are holding my site back?
• How do I improve my website’s loading speed effectively?
• How do I align my teams to prioritize technical SEO and enhance collaboration?

FAQ: What is the role of technical SEO in differentiating our company website from our competitors in the search results?

Getting to the first page on Google is the main goal for any brand that wants to drive traffic. Good content helps tremendously, but it doesn’t drive the success of the site 100%. 

A common myth is that great content and other authority signals alone will push sites to the top of the search results. That sounds nice, but it ignores the fact that without a sound technical base, Google can’t crawl, understand or index pages well. 

When Google evaluates pages for ranking, it decides which page – A or B — gets the top ranking. It does this by evaluating a webpage against countless signals in the algorithm. 

The webpage that gets more things right wins. This is how you differentiate yourself through technical SEO.

Technical SEO: Core Elements

Technical SEO is all the behind‑the‑scenes strategy that tells search engines how to reach, read and rank a site. 

It isn’t about keywords or how many backlinks you have; it’s about the engine’s ability to move through the site safely and fast. 

So a full technical audit and overhaul isn’t a nice extra; it’s a must for any brand that hopes to win search results.

Three big parts make up this foundation:

1. Site speed. Shrink images, use browser cache, put the most important stuff up top. Fast pages get crawled more, and users stay longer on a page that pops up right away. Core web vitals are the gold standard, and optimizing scores may prove fruitful. 
2. Mobile‑friendly design. Your site needs to have an excellent mobile user experience, and this is beyond just having a responsive design. 
3. Security. Most brands have HTTPS sites and good security, but these practices are nonnegotiable for the safety of users and ranking.  

Of course, all kinds of other technical SEO activities go into making a site that’s primed for search. This includes the following and much more:

• Canonical tags.
• Hreflang tags.
• XML and HTML sitemaps.
• Robots.txt directives.
• Clean, organized URLs. 
• Structured data.

Impact on User Experience 

Technical SEO is the driver of a great user experience. Remember, sites that load slowly, that don’t work well on mobile phones or that have poor security lose visitors and make less money. 

When pages are quick, people feel less annoyed, stay longer and spend more time on the site, which can have a direct impact on revenue. 

Responsive design also contributes to a better user experience for mobile users by eliminating weird jumps, helping avoid finger misses on touch screens and keeping the interface steady across devices. 

Together, technical SEO tactics create a positive cycle: 

1. Solid technical health = better user experience →
2. Better UX = better engagement signals →
3. Those signals tell Google the site is quality, and Google then ranks it higher →
4. The site gains more traffic, and the brand earns more trust and money. 

Because of that, putting technical SEO first is a key SEO strategy.

At the end of the day, technical SEO is the foundation every other SEO tactic is built on. 

Marketers who ignore speed issues, mobile gaps, security, crawl issues — or any other technical SEO best practice —  are basically trying to build a skyscraper on quicksand.

Only after the technical SEO audit plugs those cracks can a brand feel safe putting out strong content and launching campaigns that drive traffic to a site.  

Ignoring these basics can leave even the best content “stuck in the mud,” hidden from Google and unable to earn or keep traffic.

Bruce Clay is founder and president of Bruce Clay Inc., a global digital marketing firm providing search engine optimization, pay-per-click, social media marketing, SEO-friendly web architecture, and SEO tools and education. Connect with him on LinkedIn or through the BruceClay.com website.

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