Everyone talks about keywords. Few talk about the technical foundation that determines whether those keywords ever rank. After years of auditing sites that 'should' rank but don't, we've identified the patterns that actually matter.
Site architecture is the most underrated ranking factor. How your pages link to each other, how deep your content is buried, and how crawlers navigate your site—these structural decisions compound over time. A flat, well-linked architecture outperforms deep hierarchies every time.
Core Web Vitals aren't just a Google checkbox. They're a user experience metric that directly correlates with conversions. We've seen clients gain 15-20% more organic traffic simply by improving LCP and CLS scores, without changing a single word of content.
Structured data is free visibility. Schema markup helps search engines understand your content contextually, and it can unlock rich snippets that dramatically improve click-through rates. Yet most sites implement it poorly or not at all.
Internal linking strategy is where most SEO efforts fall apart. We build topic clusters with clear pillar pages and supporting content, connected through intentional internal links. This isn't just good for SEO—it creates better user journeys.
The technical foundation doesn't replace great content. But without it, great content sits in the dark. Get the architecture right first, then build content on top of a structure that's designed to perform.