Per ✍️ » Jennifer
but the most important aspect. Check that graph I posted in this discussion

Jedediah » Per
definitely not a one off exercise. We have plenty of 6 figure technical SEO contracts. Things are constantly changing, and there is a need to often make updates to stay ahead of the curve. There's always internal linking to optimize, om page tweaks etc. From our audit comes an on page/technical roadmap that could have months of work outlined. Think about a site that comes in with 5k pages all needing optimization. Anyway, there's plenty of on-going onpage. Have you done a full audit?
Per ✍️ » Jedediah
I'm fairly new to the SEO game so really my question is an attempt to convince myself why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important on a continuing basis (other than getting backlinks).
Would you be willing to give me an example report of such an audit or roadmap?
Jedediah
Beyond actual technical implementation you should always be finding new opportunities to optimize for at the individual page level. Lots of Google page 2 terms get moved to page one without ever building links. I sent someone else from this group a free audit doc, glad to do the same for the your site if you'd like, to help paint the picture a little more.
Per ✍️ » Jedediah
that would be awesome! thank you. My own website and those of my clients are in Swedish, so perhaps they need to be in English for you to do your magic? It doesnt really matter for which site the audit doc has been made for, I am just curious to see what type of info you have in the document. do you want my email address?
Chris » Jedediah
Hi Jedediah. Would you mind sending me on as well! Thanks 🙏
Per ✍️ » Jedediah
just PM:d you
Ben Allen 🎓 » Per
– First, I don't know if that pie chart is accurate, but your conclusion from that chart is that backlinks are the most important factor at 30% and what I see is on-page broken into pieces coming in at 70%. All those elements other than linkd in the chart are on-page optimizations.
Second, you act like on-page and content are divorced from acquiring backlinks. Pardon the corny analogy but that's like saying the most important thing in baseball is hitting home runs and ignoring batting skills and technique. You can't hit many home runs without good batting skills and power, and you don't magically acquire backlinks from having bland, generic content and a one-time on-page strategy.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is holistic. Good, authoritative content is at the very least partially necessary to get good links. No one is going to link to you unless you pay them if your website is old and has no good information or resources. If I run a health and fitness blog, and you ask for a link and the last blog article you wrote was in 2017 and it was 500 words long, why would I link to you?
Third, on-page SEO, copywriting/blogging/content marketing and site structure/internal linking is almost always continuous for sites that rank in most niches. This isn't always the case in local SEO, but it sure is in competitive cities and niches.
I took a client a few months back with 75K backlinks. They had little to no on-page SEO. So those backlinks were nearly meaningless because Google didn't even know what the website was about or what its keywords were. As soon as we did their on-page they were top of page 1 for 200K worth of monthly search keywords. They had more backlinks than most of their competitors but it didn't matter.
One more thing: the second biggest ranking factor according to that pie chart is fresh content, not one-time content. Fresh content requires continuous on-page SEO.
Per ✍️ » Ben Allen
Thank you for a very exhaustive answer, much appreciated. You are right: backlinks isnt everything, but the pie chart suggests its the single most important item.
What I meant was most on-page SEO and technical SEO changes are made as a once-off, then certainly there will be incremental work.
Also: when creating new content, how do we achieve this as web designers when our clients might range from lawyers to biochemists… we dont know anything about such things. how do you create content for such clients?
Ben Allen 🎓 » Per
– Hire, outsource, or learn. Those are your options for copywriting. There are a lot of SEO users (including myself) that write as well as optimize, but it definitely isn't the norm. And even those SEO users that *can* write well often find that their time is better spent performing SEO or managing and having someone else do the writing, since SEO tends to be more expensive per hour than blogging does (content marketing being more expensive).
I also kind of lost sight of part of your original question. You asked if you need something like Ahrefs if you're only worried about links and a tool like Ahrefs is a necessity for link building. Without intel on your competitors' backlink profiles you're essentially flying completely blind. You don't know how many or what kind of links you need to outrank them, and you have no ability to take advantage of the links your competitors have. Ahrefs or SEMrush are essential for a link building campaign.