Content strategy without a technical foundation is like advertising a shop with no door. Before we write a single headline for a client, we run the same technical pass — the same one outlined here.
1. Crawlability and indexation
We start by confirming search engines can actually reach and understand the pages that matter. That means checking robots.txt for accidental blocks, auditing the XML sitemap for orphaned or missing URLs, and reviewing canonical tags for silent duplication issues.
2. Core Web Vitals
Speed is no longer a nice-to-have signal — it directly affects both rankings and conversion rate. We measure Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift on real mobile connections, not just lab data.
Common culprits we find
- Unoptimised hero images served at full resolution to mobile devices
- Render-blocking third-party scripts loaded before first paint
- Web fonts causing visible layout shift on load
3. Site architecture
Every important page should be reachable within three clicks of the homepage, and internal links should flow authority toward the pages that actually generate revenue — not bury them under generic category pages.
4. Structured data
Schema markup won't rank a page on its own, but it earns richer search results and clearer signals for what a page is actually about. We implement Organization, Article, and Service schema as a baseline on every project.
5. Content gaps against real search intent
Finally, we map the client's existing content against the questions their buyers are actually typing into Google — not the keywords a tool suggests, but the ones tied to a genuine purchase decision.
Skip any one of these five and content work starts from a weaker foundation than it should. Do all five properly, and content becomes the accelerant, not the entire engine.