Given the wide spectrum of types of websites we can find in the wild, it is somewhat difficult to pinpoint and profile the exact types and sizes of websites that would benefit from employing a technical SEO service. While being tempted to say every website needs it, this might not really be the case (even though somewhat true).
As a rule of thumb, websites that only have a few presentational pages, have no intention in investing in content and organic search is not driving any customers, don’t need help with technical SEO.
No - In most cases you likely need a more general SEO approach to help you with overall strategy, keyword research and increasing the content velocity and not specifically a tailored Technical SEO service.
Yes - This is a soft “yes” given that it’s based on very few factors that could lead to realizing that you need help with Technical SEO. If you arrived here, the next step is to schedule a discovery call with a freelancer or an agency so that they could assess your website situation.
On the other hand, here are a couple of cases where you most certainly need it.
You’ve seen a drop in rankings
Whether there have been some changes to the website and the traffic dropped or it has been going downwards for a longer period of time, it’s worth checking whether everything is functional in technical terms. As the website grows and it becomes more complex, technical issues arise and these can vary from introducing a ‘bug’ in the code to issues that happen due to natural growth such as content is becoming less interlinked, pages are moving deeper in the site architecture, pages are loading slower and more.
The SEO Audit tool is showing a lot of errors
If someone from your team ran an audit on some of the popular tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush and got plenty of errors and you’re unsure what needs to be resolved and how, you likely need a specialized person to do this for you. Not all errors need fixing and not everything that needs fixing will show up in the audit report. Do note that some consultants or freelancers do give you an audit in the form of an export from a tool so before you commit to paying anything ask them how they would prioritize the issues that the tool flagged.
You have a JavaScript powered website
With modern JavaScript frameworks such as React, Vue and more together with their derivatives such as Next.js, Gatsby, Vue.js and many others making development processes better, more businesses are deciding to go this route. However, without pure server-side rendering it leaves many puzzled with whether search engines can read their content properly or not.
Site Migration
Whether you did a migration and the traffic dropped, you are in the middle of a site migration or you are planning a site migration you most definitely need help from a Technical SEO. Site migrations are a major cause of technical issues that eventually cause drop in rankings and traffic and carrying them out is a tedious job that requires an expert if you were to maintain your organic traffic.
You have a large and complex website with no in-house SEO expertise
Large and complex websites often lead to difficulties in maintenance also in terms of SEO and usually require not only a dedicated person, but sometimes a team. Those can include, but are not limited to:
- Forums
- Large publishing websites
- eCommerce
- Product review / comparison websites
- Complex SaaS websites
- All of the above with multiple languages
Organic traffic is a major revenue driver
This one can be in pair with all the others already mentioned, but if the majority of your website traffic is coming from organic search and those represent a great deal of your business revenue, needless to say, your website should be spotless.
I’ve made a flowchart that you can find above this article for general guidelines on whether you need a technical SEO service or not. While it might be very opinionated and there are edge cases, it should set a good foundation for understanding your current SEO needs.