<\/p>
Technical SEO is full of recommendations, but not all of them deserve the same priority. A task that\u2019s critical for one website may not be worth the effort on another.<\/p>
Instead of chasing green audit scores or clearing every warning in your SEO tool, focus on the activities that will have the greatest impact. The best technical SEOs prioritize what\u2019s needed over what\u2019s most obvious.<\/p>
When you\u2019re considering a technical SEO task, it\u2019s important to prioritize it against the other work competing for your time.\u00a0<\/p>
You have limited time and resources. It isn\u2019t possible to tackle every task on your to-do list, so you need to identify which activities deserve the highest priority.<\/p>
Focus on the activities that will deliver the biggest results for the time you invest.\u00a0<\/p>
Technical SEO tasks often require help from your development team. That means you\u2019ll need to secure time in their sprint to implement them. Anyone who\u2019s worked in SEO for any length of time knows how valuable that resource is.<\/p>
Make sure every request is worth your developers\u2019 time and the tradeoff of other work they won\u2019t be able to complete.<\/p>
Every technical SEO task you take on should have a clear expected ROI. That isn\u2019t always easy to quantify, but you should be able to explain why you\u2019re doing it and how you expect it to move the needle.<\/p>
Once you can answer those questions, you can start prioritizing technical SEO tasks against one another.<\/p>
Dig deeper: Where to focus technical SEO when you can\u2019t do it all<\/em><\/strong><\/p> Be the brand customers find first<\/span>. <\/p> Track, grow, and measure your visibility across Google, AI search, social, local, and every channel that influences buying decisions. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start your free trial<\/span> <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Rather than labeling specific tasks as time-wasters, consider how to determine whether a task is worth your time on your website.<\/p> If your only reason for carrying out a technical SEO activity is to clear alerts in your SEO tool or because you saw it recommended on LinkedIn, stop. Very few, if any, technical SEO activities should be a top priority for every website.<\/p> If you don\u2019t have a reason for doing it beyond \u201cSEO best practice,\u201d I\u2019d argue it isn\u2019t something you should dive into. Focus instead on activities that will improve your website\u2019s performance for users and search bots.\u00a0<\/p> This is perhaps the most important reason to park a technical SEO task: You don\u2019t know what impact it will have.<\/p> If you want people to buy into your SEO plans, you need to show why they\u2019re financially worthwhile.<\/p> That might mean improving revenue, reducing churn, or increasing qualified traffic.<\/p> For example, if you\u2019re considering improving a page\u2019s load speed, don\u2019t make \u201creduce page load time\u201d the goal. Instead, consider what faster load times could achieve for your organic performance and business goals.<\/p> If you work on an ecommerce site, you may know that faster load times can improve conversion rates. That\u2019s a much stronger reason to take on the work than simply achieving a \u201cgood\u201d page speed score.\u00a0<\/p> By making conversion rate improvement the goal, you can estimate the potential financial impact. For example, if a page converts at an average rate of X% and generates $X in annual revenue, increasing the conversion rate to X+1% could generate up to $Y in additional revenue.<\/p> If you aren\u2019t sure how you\u2019ll measure the impact of an activity, that may be a sign it shouldn\u2019t be a priority.<\/p> Any technical SEO activity can be a time-waster. Technical SEO is about optimizing your website to provide the best possible experience for users and search bots. That means what is a waste of time for one website may be a necessary activity for another.<\/p> That said, there are several technical SEO activities I\u2019ve seen appear on countless checklists despite offering little discernible benefit. That doesn\u2019t mean you should remove them from your to-do list. It means they should only be there if they\u2019ll solve a problem your website actually has.<\/p> Yes, I know Core Web Vitals scores are important. I just don\u2019t think they\u2019re so important that you should continually optimize them. As long as your CWVs are in the \u201cgood\u201d range, pushing them further into that range is likely to deliver diminishing returns.\u00a0<\/p> I doubt spending developer time to shave a few milliseconds off your Largest Contentful Paint score will have much impact on rankings or user behavior.<\/p> Reserve Core Web Vitals optimization for pages that genuinely aren\u2019t meeting targets. These are the pages users struggle to load or that negatively affect usability.\u00a0<\/p> Get your scores into the \u201cgood\u201d range before investing time chasing incremental improvements.<\/p> I understand the perfectionist approach to redirects. No one likes running a crawl and seeing 301 status codes reported. However, the real concern with redirects is how they affect search bots\u2019 ability to crawl your website.<\/p> If you aren\u2019t seeing redirect loops, chains with more than five hops, redirects to irrelevant pages, or enough redirects to affect bots\u2019 ability to crawl most of your website, you can probably leave them alone.\u00a0<\/p> Sure, if you have a few spare minutes and you\u2019re already in your CMS, you can update links so they point directly to the final destination instead of a redirecting URL. Realistically, though, there are only a few situations where this belongs near the top of your to-do list.<\/p> Leave redirect cleanup until it has a measurable impact on your site\u2019s performance.<\/p> <\/p> Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.<\/p> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <\/p> There\u2019s a lot of misinformation about crawl budget. For most websites, it isn\u2019t an issue. Large enterprise websites often need to optimize crawl paths, but smaller websites usually don\u2019t.<\/p> If your website has developed spider traps or is allowing bots to crawl pages you don\u2019t want indexed, that\u2019s worth addressing. Otherwise, if Google Search Console shows Google is crawling your important pages, you can probably move crawl budget optimization lower on your priority list.<\/p> Like fixing every 301 redirect, eliminating every link to a 404 page is often more about tidying up than solving a meaningful problem.<\/p> 404s are a normal and expected part of a website. If they\u2019re hurting the user experience, absolutely fix them. If you\u2019re simply trying to clear the list of 404s in your crawling tool, it can probably wait until you have time.\u00a0<\/p> I know no one is adding meta keywords anymore. That\u2019s good. It also doesn\u2019t mean you need to spend precious time removing them. Just leave them.\u00a0<\/p> Chances are they\u2019re so old they aren\u2019t even giving your competitors useful hints about the keywords you\u2019re targeting. We\u2019ve all moved on from meta keywords, so you can, too.<\/p> Many SEOs will tell you they don\u2019t use disavow files at all. I agree their usefulness has diminished significantly. There may be times when you want to submit or update one.\u00a0<\/p> You may also want to audit it to make sure nothing inappropriate was submitted in the past. However, I struggle to think of a reason why routinely updating a disavow file on a scheduled basis would be productive.<\/p> Not every issue your SEO tool flags is an emergency. Remember that SEO tools lack the context of your broader strategy and your website\u2019s foundation.\u00a0<\/p> You may have intentionally blocked pages in your robots.txt file or returned 404 status codes for some pages. That doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re problems or that you need to fix them.<\/p> Your auditing tools should support your technical SEO work, not dictate it. You don\u2019t need to clear every issue they report to have a technically healthy website. Don\u2019t let the red lights and warnings distract you from more meaningful technical SEO work.\u00a0<\/p> Dig deeper: How to make your SEO strategy more commercially aware<\/em><\/strong><\/p> Instead of working through a technical SEO checklist, spend that time on projects that will have a greater impact.<\/p> How do you know which tasks are worth doing? Any technical SEO work should meet at least one of these three criteria.<\/p> It\u2019s much easier to get buy-in and recognition for your technical SEO work when you can tie it directly to revenue or business goals.<\/p> That means drawing a clear line between the work you\u2019re doing and a business outcome. For example, if you\u2019re improving slow-loading pages, you can connect that work to higher conversion rates. That\u2019s a much stronger indicator of business value than simply making a page load faster.\u00a0<\/p> Technical SEO is worth the investment when it enables other work that will move the needle.\u00a0<\/p> For example, it may be difficult to show how optimizing crawl paths on an enterprise website directly affects business goals. However, you can connect improved crawl paths to revenue-driving pages being discovered and crawled, ensuring SEO tests on those pages are found and processed.<\/p> Without crawl optimization, search bots may never see those SEO tests, making the work ineffective. Activities that enable other important SEO initiatives are valuable in their own right.<\/p> A final criterion for meaningful technical SEO work is whether it prepares your website for future changes. Some work may not deliver immediate returns but could pay off over time. Preparing your website for AI-powered search experiences is one example.<\/p> You may not be getting much traffic or many conversions from AI agents yet, but there\u2019s a strong possibility that this is where the web is heading. Preparing for that shift can feel risky because it\u2019s speculative. However, when done well, this work is also likely to improve your website for today\u2019s search bots and users.<\/p> Own the conversation before your competitors<\/span>. <\/p> See where your brand appears, where it doesn\u2019t, and exactly how to win more visibility across search, AI, local, social, and every channel that matters. <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Start your free trial<\/span> <\/p> <\/p><\/div> Technical SEO work can be time-consuming, involve multiple teams and stakeholders, and ultimately make the difference between a well-performing website and a poor one.<\/p> The key is making sure your time and energy are spent on activities that produce meaningful results. Treat technical SEO like any other business investment: prioritize the work that\u2019s most likely to produce meaningful results.<\/p> Dig deeper: Why proving technical SEO ROI is so difficult<\/em><\/strong><\/p> <\/div> Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. Contributor was not asked to make any direct or indirect mentions of Semrush. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em> <\/p> Opinion#biggest #technical #SEO #timewasters #avoid1784653706<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Technical SEO is full of recommendations, but not all of them deserve the same priority. A task that\u2019s critical for one website may not be worth the effort on another. Instead of chasing green audit scores or clearing every warning in your SEO tool, focus on the activities that will have the greatest impact. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[844,2377,155,97,341,47836],"class_list":["post-12158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-avoid","tag-biggest","tag-opinion","tag-seo","tag-technical","tag-timewasters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How to tell if you might be wasting time<\/h2>
If you\u2019re doing it to check a box<\/h3>
You can\u2019t quantify the impact<\/h3>
You don\u2019t know how to measure success<\/h3>
Examples of work that can be a waste of time<\/h2>
Core Web Vitals work when they aren\u2019t that bad<\/h3>
Removing redirects when you don\u2019t have chains<\/h3>
Optimizing bot crawling when your content is already crawlable<\/h3>
Fixing every 404 status<\/h3>
Removing obsolete metadata like \u2018meta keywords\u2019<\/h3>
Routine disavow file maintenance<\/h3>
Clearing audit tool issues<\/h3>
What to do instead<\/h2>
It directly impacts revenue or business goals<\/h3>
It creates a foundation for work that supports business goals<\/h3>
It prepares your website for AI-driven search<\/h3>
Avoid busywork, prioritize impact<\/h2>