Technical SEO: the problems no amount of content can fix
Technical SEO is how your site is built, crawled and rendered — indexation, site speed, mobile usability, structured data, redirects and site architecture. Great content on a site Google cannot crawl properly, or a phone cannot load in time, still loses. This is the engineering side of SEO, and it is the part most content-focused agencies leave alone.
What usually goes wrong
Pages that load in under two seconds on the office wifi and take nine seconds on a mid-range Android on 4G — which is how most of your customers are actually browsing.
Schema markup installed via a plugin once, never validated, and quietly broken by the next update nobody checked.
Indexation problems that go unnoticed for months: pages accidentally set to noindex, redirect chains, orphan pages nothing links to, and crawl budget wasted on pages that do not matter.
Redesigns and migrations that lose rankings overnight because nobody mapped the old URLs to the new ones before launch.
What you actually get
Concrete deliverables, not adjectives. Everything here is work we do, show you, and report on.
Technical crawl and fix list
Full crawl for broken links, redirect chains, duplicate content, orphan pages, indexation problems and crawl waste — prioritised by traffic impact, not by tool severity score.
Core Web Vitals work
Image compression and correct formats, render-blocking resources removed, layout shift eliminated, and mobile performance tested on real mid-range devices, not just a lab score.
Schema markup
Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, Article and Breadcrumb structured data — implemented and validated, not just installed via a plugin and left.
Site architecture and crawl depth
A deliberate structure so nothing important is more than three clicks from your homepage, with a clean XML sitemap and robots.txt Google can actually use.
Indexation control
Canonical tags, noindex directives and redirects audited and corrected, so Google is indexing the pages you want ranked and nothing else.
Mobile usability testing
Tested on real mid-range Android devices on 4G, not just a desktop browser resized smaller.
Migration and redesign safety net
A full URL redirect map built before anything goes live, so a redesign does not quietly erase years of ranking history.
The process, with real timelines
These are the timelines we actually work to. Early movement in 60–90 days, meaningful growth at four to six months — we would rather say it upfront than have you find out later.
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Full technical audit
Crawl, Search Console analysis, Core Web Vitals assessment and a prioritised list of what is costing you the most.
Weeks 1–2 -
Quick wins first
Indexation problems, broken pages and redirect chains. These are cheap to fix and move fastest.
Weeks 2–4 -
Structural work
Site architecture, schema, and performance work that needs developer time.
Weeks 4–10 -
Regression checks
Every future site change or redesign checked against the same list, so fixed problems do not quietly come back.
Ongoing -
Monitor and iterate
Track what moved, keep what worked, and revisit. Technical health is not a once-a-year check.
Monthly
Who this is for
- Sites that have been redesigned and lost traffic
- E-commerce sites with large catalogues and crawl-budget problems
- Anyone who has failed a Core Web Vitals or PageSpeed test and not known what to do about it
- Sites where an “SEO agency” has only ever touched the words, never the code
When we’d tell you not to bother
If your site is technically healthy but rankings are flat because the pages themselves are thin or off-target, this is not where the problem is — our on-page SEO work is. We would tell you that rather than sell you an audit with nothing to find.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between technical and on-page SEO?
Technical SEO means how the site is built and crawled — speed, indexation, schema, rendering. On-page SEO means content-side factors — titles, headings, copy, internal links. We sell them separately because they need genuinely different skills, but most sites need both.
Do you offer a one-off technical audit, or only ongoing work?
We used to sell audits as a standalone product. We stopped, because a one-off snapshot goes stale the moment your next update ships. Technical health is checked continuously as part of this service, with a full audit at the start so you know exactly where you stand.
Do you work with WordPress, Shopify and Wix?
Yes. WordPress and Shopify give the most control. Wix and similar builders have real limitations on technical SEO, and we will tell you honestly what cannot be fixed on your current platform.
Is page speed really a ranking factor?
It is a modest ranking factor and a very large conversion factor. A slow site loses visitors before they read anything, which is the more expensive problem.
Will you need access to my website?
Yes, or access to your developer. We can deliver a specification for your team to implement if you prefer to keep changes in-house — many clients do, and it works fine.
How long before technical fixes show results?
Indexation and crawl fixes can move within weeks once Google recrawls the site. Core Web Vitals and structural changes take longer to be fully reassessed — expect the same 60–90 day range as the rest of SEO.
Tell us about your site
Send your URL and we’ll come back with the three things costing you the most traffic — and whether technical seo is the right place to start.
Monday–Friday: 10 AM – 6 PM · We reply within one working day.
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