We’ve audited hundreds of websites at Relevance over the past decade, and one pattern keeps showing up: teams that treat SEO as a single tactic instead of three distinct disciplines almost always hit a ceiling. They’ll nail their content strategy but ignore crawl errors, or they’ll obsess over backlinks while their page speed tanks.
After running SEO programs across B2B SaaS, healthcare, ecommerce, and professional services, we’ve found that the most reliable path to organic growth comes down to three core search engine optimization techniques: technical SEO, on-page optimization, and off-page authority building. Here’s how we approach each one — and what we’ve learned the hard way about getting them right.
The three search engine optimization techniques
Every SEO engagement we run at Relevance starts with the same framework. We break the work into three buckets:
- Technical SEO — making sure search engines can crawl, render, and index your site efficiently
- On-page SEO — creating and optimizing content that matches search intent and demonstrates expertise
- Off-page SEO — building the external signals (primarily backlinks) that establish your site’s authority
These aren’t sequential steps you check off and move past. They’re ongoing, overlapping workstreams. A holistic SEO strategy keeps all three in motion simultaneously.
1. Technical SEO: the foundation everything else sits on
We always start here. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if Google can’t properly crawl and index it. We’ve seen sites with genuinely excellent articles sitting in Google’s “crawled — currently not indexed” bucket simply because of technical debt nobody was monitoring.
Here’s what a technical SEO audit looks like in practice at our agency:
Crawlability and indexation
The first thing we check is whether Google can actually find and process your pages. That means reviewing your XML sitemap, robots.txt directives, canonical tags, and internal linking structure. On a recent engagement with a B2B SaaS client, we discovered that a misconfigured canonical tag was pointing 40+ blog posts to the homepage — effectively telling Google to ignore all of that content. Fixing that single issue recovered indexation for pages that had been invisible for months.
Site speed and Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift) are confirmed ranking factors. We use a combination of Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and Ahrefs site audit tools to benchmark performance.
The most common speed killers we see across client sites: unoptimized images, render-blocking JavaScript, excessive third-party scripts (especially chat widgets and analytics tags stacked on top of each other), and bloated CSS. Fixing these typically requires collaboration with a dev team, which is why we build technical SEO into project timelines rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Mobile experience and accessibility
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily evaluates the mobile version of your site for ranking decisions. We test every client site across device sizes and flag issues like tap targets that are too small, horizontal scrolling, and text that requires zooming. These aren’t just SEO issues — they directly impact conversion rates.
Structured data
Schema markup helps search engines understand what your content is about and can unlock rich results (FAQ dropdowns, review stars, how-to steps) that dramatically improve click-through rates. We implement structured data as a standard part of every technical audit. For one client in the healthcare space, adding FAQ schema to their top 20 pages increased organic CTR by 18% within six weeks.
2. On-page SEO: where content quality meets search intent
On-page SEO is about creating content that earns its ranking. This is where most teams focus their energy, and for good reason — content is what users actually interact with. But there’s a massive difference between “content that exists” and “content that ranks.”
Keyword research that goes beyond volume
We don’t chase high-volume keywords for the sake of it. Our keyword research process starts with understanding the client’s actual business goals and customer journey, then works backward to identify the search queries that map to each stage.
For example, a marketing automation platform doesn’t just need to rank for “marketing automation” (impossibly competitive for most companies). They need content targeting queries like “how to set up lead scoring workflows” or “email drip campaign best practices” — terms with clear intent that attract people who are actually in-market.
We use tools like Ahrefs and Google Search Console to identify keyword opportunities, but the real skill is in understanding search intent. Is the searcher looking for a definition, a comparison, a tutorial, or a product? Matching your content format to intent is the single biggest lever in on-page SEO.
Content that demonstrates E-E-A-T
Google’s E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) isn’t just a set of guidelines — it’s the lens through which Google’s quality raters evaluate content. After working through multiple Google algorithm updates, including the Helpful Content updates that devastated sites relying on generic, AI-generated content, we’ve seen firsthand how critical genuine expertise is.
What does E-E-A-T look like in practice? At Relevance, it means:
Experience: Writing from actual practitioner experience. We don’t publish theoretical SEO advice — we write about techniques we’ve tested across real client engagements. When we say a tactic works, it’s because we’ve measured the results.
Expertise: Having qualified authors with real credentials. Every article we publish has a named author with relevant professional experience, not a generic brand byline.
Authoritativeness: Building topical depth. We don’t publish one article on a topic and move on. We build comprehensive content hubs — like our content marketing strategy guide — that demonstrate deep knowledge across the subject.
Trustworthiness: Citing sources, being transparent about limitations, and keeping content updated. Outdated statistics and broken links erode trust with both users and search engines.
On-page optimization fundamentals
Beyond content quality, the mechanical aspects of on-page SEO still matter. For every piece of content we publish, we optimize:
Title tags and meta descriptions — written to include the target keyword naturally while compelling clicks from the SERP. We A/B test title formats across client sites and consistently find that titles with specific numbers or clear value propositions outperform generic alternatives.
Header structure — using H2s and H3s to create a logical hierarchy that both users and search engines can follow. This also improves your chances of appearing in featured snippets.
Internal linking — connecting related content to distribute page authority and help users navigate deeper into your site. We typically aim for 10-15 contextual internal links per long-form article, pointing both to pillar pages and to related supporting content.
Image optimization — descriptive alt text, compressed file sizes, and modern formats like WebP. This is one of the most commonly overlooked on-page factors we encounter in audits.
3. Off-page SEO: building authority through backlinks and digital PR
Off-page SEO is the discipline most companies either ignore entirely or approach with outdated tactics that can actually hurt their rankings. At Relevance, we’ve built our off-page strategy around digital PR and genuine relationship building rather than transactional link exchanges.
Why backlinks still matter
Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals. Each quality backlink acts as a vote of confidence from another site, telling Google your content is worth referencing. But the operative word is quality. A single link from an authoritative, relevant publication is worth more than hundreds of links from low-quality directories or link farms.
We track backlink profiles using Ahrefs and focus on Domain Rating (DR) and topical relevance as our primary quality indicators. For clients in competitive verticals, building a strong backlink profile is often the differentiator between ranking on page one and being stuck on page two.
How we build backlinks at Relevance
Our link building approach is grounded in creating content that naturally attracts links and then amplifying it through targeted outreach. Here’s what that looks like:
Original research and data: Content that contains proprietary data, original surveys, or unique analysis earns links because it gives other writers something to cite. We help clients develop data-driven content assets specifically designed for link acquisition.
Digital PR campaigns: We identify newsworthy angles from client data and pitch them to journalists and industry publications. This earns high-authority backlinks while also building brand awareness — a win on two fronts.
Strategic guest contributions: We place expert bylines in relevant industry publications. These aren’t generic guest posts — they’re substantive pieces that demonstrate the client’s expertise and include contextual links back to their site.
Broken link reclamation: We find broken links on relevant sites that previously pointed to content similar to what our client offers, then reach out with a replacement suggestion. It’s a value-add for the linking site and a quality backlink for our client.
What to avoid in off-page SEO
We’ve cleaned up the damage from bad link building more times than we can count. Tactics to steer clear of: paid link schemes, private blog networks (PBNs), mass directory submissions, and any service promising hundreds of backlinks for a flat fee. Google’s spam detection has gotten remarkably sophisticated, and the short-term gains from manipulative link building almost always result in penalties down the road.
How to prioritize these three techniques
When a new client comes to us, we don’t try to do everything at once. Here’s the general sequencing we follow:
Month 1-2: Technical foundation. Audit the site, fix critical crawl and indexation issues, optimize page speed, and implement structured data. This ensures everything you build afterward has the best chance of being discovered and indexed.
Month 2-4: Content strategy and on-page optimization. Develop a keyword strategy based on business goals, audit existing content for optimization opportunities, and begin creating new content that targets high-value keywords with clear search intent.
Month 3+: Off-page authority building. Once you have strong content assets in place, begin promoting them through digital PR, outreach, and strategic partnerships. Off-page efforts compound over time, so starting early and staying consistent is key.
This timeline overlaps intentionally. By month three, all three workstreams should be running in parallel. The clients who see the strongest results are the ones who maintain this cadence for 6-12 months without pulling back — SEO is a compounding investment, not a quick fix.
The bottom line
Search engine optimization isn’t a single technique — it’s three interconnected disciplines that need to work together. In our experience running SEO programs for companies across industries, the teams that invest in all three pillars — technical health, content quality, and off-page authority — consistently outperform those that focus on just one or two.
If you’re evaluating where your own SEO program stands, start with a technical audit. It will reveal the foundation-level issues that might be silently undermining everything else you’re doing. From there, assess whether your content genuinely demonstrates expertise and matches search intent, and whether your backlink profile reflects the authority you want to project.
Need help figuring out where to start? See how we’ve helped other companies build SEO programs that deliver measurable organic growth, or reach out to our team to discuss your situation.
