Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the work that makes a site legible to search engines: crawlable, fast, correctly marked up and free of duplicate addresses. It is for businesses whose pages exist but are not being found.
What we look at
The areas we work through on every site, in this order.
Crawling and indexing
We crawl your site as a search engine would and compare it with what is indexed. That exposes blocked paths, orphaned pages, duplicate addresses and anything indexed by accident.
Speed and page weight
Image sizing and formats, the JavaScript shipped to the browser, fonts, and what the server does before the first byte. We measure real page loads rather than chasing a single score.
Structured data
Markup that tells a search engine what a page is: a service, a business with an address and opening hours, a review, a set of questions. We check what yours declares, and whether it matches the page a visitor sees.
Architecture and internal links
How pages are grouped, what links to what, and which address is canonical. The aim is that every page worth finding is reachable without hunting, and nothing competes with itself.
What technical SEO covers
Technical SEO is the part of search that has nothing to do with publishing more content. It is whether a search engine can reach your pages, render them, work out what each one is for, and pick the right one to show. When that goes wrong the symptoms look like a content problem: pages that never appear, two pages competing for the same search, a listing that shows the wrong title.
The cause is usually further down. A blocked path, a duplicate address, a template that finishes rendering after the crawler has already moved on. We start by finding out which of those is happening on your site, rather than working through a generic checklist.
What the work consists of
We crawl the site the way a search engine would, then compare that against what is indexed. The gap between the two is where the problems live: pages you believe are live that are not, pages indexed that should never have been, and content reachable at more than one address.
From there the work is unglamorous and specific:
- Canonical tags and duplicate URLs, so one address owns each piece of content.
- Internal links, so your important pages are reachable from the homepage without hunting.
- Sitemaps and robots rules that match what you want crawled.
- Redirects that point straight at the destination instead of through a chain.
- Page weight and load behaviour: image sizing and formats, what JavaScript ships to the browser, what the server does before the first byte.
- Rendering, so anything that depends on JavaScript is still present when the page is fetched.
Every item comes with a plain-English note on what is wrong, what it affects, and what changing it involves.
How this is priced
For sites we build and host, this is part of how the site is built and looked after, so it sits inside the monthly fee. If your site is on another platform, the way to get this is to move onto ours, where the technical groundwork is part of the build. How pricing works.
More information
How machines read your pages
Search engines and AI assistants read a page through its markup as much as its prose. Structured data is what tells them the page is a service, a business with an address and opening hours, a review, or a set of questions and answers. On an audit we check what is there, what it claims, and where it contradicts the page. On sites we build, it is generated from the same fields the page renders from, so the markup cannot drift out of step with what a visitor sees.
That matters more now that answers get assembled rather than simply listed. A page that states plainly what it is, in a format a machine can parse, is easier to quote correctly.
Whatever your site runs on
We audit sites on the platforms most small businesses use, and the fix list carries enough detail for your own developer to act on. Where we build and host the site, we do this work directly on our own platform rather than assembling plugins, so speed, markup, sitemaps and canonical handling are decided once and applied everywhere instead of being set per page and forgotten.
The point of technical work is that a visitor never notices it. They land, the page is there, it loads, and it says what they searched for.
If a migration or a redesign is coming, tell us before it ships. Keeping URLs and redirects intact while a site is still being planned is far simpler than reconstructing them afterwards.
From the blog
What is schema markup (and why it matters for local SEO)?
Schema markup is the shared vocabulary that labels the facts on your website for Google. Here is what it is, how it differs from structured data, and why it matters.
What is alt text (and why every image needs it)
Alt text is a short description of an image that Google and screen readers rely on. Here is what it is, why it matters, and how to write it well.
What is structured data (and why your website needs it)
Structured data is code that tells Google what your pages mean. Here is what it is, why it matters for local businesses, and how to get it right.
You might also need
SEO Audit
A hands-on audit of your site's crawling, indexing, content and search demand, written up as an ordered list of fixes.
SEO Audit→SEO Reporting
Plain-English SEO reporting built on data you own, covering search visibility, traffic and enquiries in one place.
SEO Reporting→SEO for Aesthetic Clinics
Search optimisation for aesthetic and cosmetic clinics, built around your treatment menu and your local search presence.
SEO for Aesthetic Clinics→SEO for Beauty Salons
Local SEO for salons, barbers and clinics, aimed at the searches that end in a booking.
SEO for Beauty Salons→Common questions
How is technical SEO different from the rest of SEO?
Can you work on a site you did not build?
My site is new. Do I need this yet?
How do you decide what to fix first?
Will this get me ranking at the top of Google?
Not sure what is holding your site back?
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