Founder & Chief Executive Officer
There are a lot of people online talking about the importance of search engine optimization, and a lot of them are handing out free, very technical SEO tools. Download my checklist to rank number one on Google. Add a header one tag to your website. Fix these forty technical things.
Here is the thing. I genuinely believe having your technical SEO down is important. But I also think most of these checklists are missing a big piece of the puzzle, and it is the most important piece of all.
Before step number one, there is a step zero. It is not even step one, it comes before that. You need to understand your audience. Understanding your audience means building your website from the perspective of the people who are actually going to use it, and it means answering the real questions they have. Writing to answer their questions matters more than any technical SEO tweak, because without that, you are still not going to rank on Google. Let me explain why.
Let me be fair to the technical SEO crowd first. Header tags, site speed, clean structure, and all the items on those checklists are real, and they do matter. I am not telling you to ignore them.
But here is the problem. So many business owners start there, treating SEO like a checklist of technical chores, and then they wonder why adding a header one tag did not magically land them on page one. Technical SEO is like tuning an engine. It is important, but it does nothing if the car is pointed in the wrong direction. The checklist is not the foundation. It sits on top of the foundation. And the foundation is something those free downloads almost never mention.
Summary: Technical SEO like header tags and site speed is real and matters, but it is not the starting point. It tunes the engine, yet does nothing if the deeper foundation underneath it is missing.
So what is the foundation that comes first? Understanding your audience. I call this step zero, because it comes before everything else, even before step one.
Before you touch a single technical setting, you need to deeply understand the people you are trying to reach. Who are they? What do they actually want? What problems are keeping them up at night? What words do they use when they describe those problems? Everything good in your SEO flows from these answers, because search engine optimization is ultimately about connecting your audience’s needs with your solution. Skip this step, and every tactic you layer on top is built on sand. This is the foundation-first thinking I bring to all of my work. Tools and tactics only reach their potential when the understanding underneath them is solid.
Summary: Before any technical tactic, step zero is understanding your audience, who they are, what they want, and the words they use. Everything in your SEO flows from this, so skipping it builds every tactic on sand.
Here is the first thing understanding your audience changes. You start building your website from the perspective of the user, not from your own.
Most websites are built from the inside out, describing the business the way the owner thinks about it. But your visitor does not think the way you do. They arrive with a specific problem and a specific question, and your site needs to meet them right there. When you truly understand your audience, your website design starts to reflect how they think, the language they use, and the journey they actually take. That is what good web design is really about, not just looking nice, but being built around the real person on the other side of the screen. A skilled web developer can make a site fast and technically clean, but only your audience understanding can make it genuinely useful to the people it is for.
Summary: Understanding your audience lets you build your website from the user’s perspective, not your own. Good website design reflects how your visitors think and what they need, which a web developer can support but audience understanding must guide.
Now here is the second half of understanding your audience, and it is the part that actually moves you up Google. You have to answer their questions.
Writing content that answers the real questions and problems your audience has is more important than any technical SEO tweak. And this is not just my opinion, it is how Google works. Semrush’s 2024 Ranking Factors Study found that text relevance is the single top ranking factor in Google, and that content quality had the second strongest correlation with top rankings, appearing in nearly 77% of the results on page one. In plain terms, Google ranks the content that best answers the searcher’s question. So worry more about writing the blogs and using the right language, the actual words your audience uses, because that is what gets you found.
I had a client in Denver who had checked every technical box and still was not ranking. The moment we started publishing blogs that genuinely answered their customers’ real questions, in their customers’ own words, the rankings finally started to climb. The technical work had been ready the whole time. It just had nothing meaningful to lift until the content showed up.
Summary: Answering your audience’s real questions is what actually ranks, since Semrush found text relevance is Google’s top ranking factor and quality appears in nearly 77% of page-one results. Write blogs in your audience’s own words, because that is what gets found.
Here is a bonus that makes this foundation matter even more. The same audience-first approach is exactly what wins in AI search.
When people ask tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google’s AI answers a question, those tools look for content that clearly and genuinely answers it. AI optimization for websites is built on the very same principle as step zero, understand the question your audience is asking, then answer it clearly and helpfully. The businesses that deeply understand their audience and answer real questions are the ones both Google and AI choose to surface. A technical checklist cannot fake that. Genuine understanding and helpful answers are what win in search and AI alike.
Summary: The same audience-first foundation wins in AI search, since AI tools surface content that clearly answers real questions. AI optimization for websites runs on the same step zero, understand the question, then answer it helpfully.
So technical SEO is not useless, it just has a place in the order. Get the foundation right first, then let the technical work amplify it.
Once you understand your audience and you are answering their questions, the technical SEO checklists finally have something worth optimizing. That is the right sequence, audience first, content second, technical polish third. A good SEO company or SEO agency will work in exactly this order, starting with who your audience is and what they need, not handing you a generic checklist and calling it strategy. If you are not sure how to map your audience or what questions to answer, that is where a marketing consultant, fractional CMO, or some marketing support comes in, and what marketing training and corporate marketing training can teach you. Whether you build this in-house or partner with a marketing agency or digital marketing agency, just make sure the work starts with your audience, not with a header tag.
Summary: Technical SEO has a place, just not first. The right order is audience, then content, then technical polish, and a good SEO company works that way. A marketing consultant or marketing agency can help you map your audience and their questions.
Technical SEO is real and it matters, but it is not step one. Step zero, the thing that comes before everything, is understanding your audience.
When you truly understand the people you serve, you build your website from their perspective and you answer the real questions they are asking. That is what Google rewards, that is what AI search rewards, and that is what those free technical checklists almost always leave out. So worry more about understanding your audience and writing content that answers their questions, because without that, all the header tags in the world will not get you ranked.
Start with your audience. Everything else in SEO is built on top of that.
Source: Semrush, Ranking Factors Study (text relevance is the top ranking factor in Google; content quality had the second strongest correlation with high rankings, appearing in roughly 76.9% of top 10 results), reported via Exposure Ninja, Google’s Ranking Factors.
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