Grow · Pillar 04
Technical SEO: the half of search that is engineering.
Content cannot rank on a page a crawler never reaches, cannot render, or abandons because it took nine seconds. Technical SEO is the part that decides whether anything else you do counts.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the work of making a website reliably crawlable, renderable and indexable by search engines, and fast enough that users do not abandon it. It covers crawl budget, indexation control, JavaScript rendering, site architecture, internal linking, Core Web Vitals, structured data and migration safety — the infrastructure that determines whether content can rank at all.
- Diagnoses why pages are not indexed, rather than guessing.
- Treats rendering as a first-class problem on JavaScript sites.
- Prioritised by revenue and traffic at risk, not by issue count.
Why it matters
Most technical SEO audits are a list, not a diagnosis.
The standard deliverable is a crawler export with four hundred issues sorted by severity, which is a list of symptoms produced by a tool. It tells you that six hundred pages have a duplicate title; it does not tell you that the reason your category pages vanished in March is a canonical pointing at a parameter URL.
We work the other way round: find what is actually costing traffic, prove it in the logs and in Search Console, fix that, and ignore the rest until it matters. A site with a genuine indexation problem does not need its image alt text reviewing first.
What we diagnose first
Symptoms worth chasing
These are the findings that actually move traffic. Everything else on a standard audit waits until these are resolved:
- Search Console reports pages as discovered or crawled but not indexed.
- Organic traffic dropped at a specific date nobody can account for.
- Important content only appears after JavaScript runs.
- The same page is reachable at several URLs with no canonical.
- Core Web Vitals fail on mobile for your highest-value templates.
- A redesign or migration lost rankings that never came back.
Scope
What technical SEO covers.
A first engagement is usually diagnosis plus the fixes that recover traffic already lost. Growth work comes after the leaks are closed.
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Crawl & index diagnosis
Full crawl reconciled against Search Console and server logs, so we can tell the difference between pages Google cannot reach, will not index, and has chosen to ignore.
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Rendering & JavaScript
What a crawler actually sees versus what a browser shows. On JavaScript-heavy sites this is routinely the single largest cause of missing pages.
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Architecture & internal linking
URL structure, hierarchy, pagination, facets and the internal links that distribute authority to the pages that earn revenue.
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Core Web Vitals & performance
LCP, INP and CLS measured on real user data per template, with fixes in the code rather than a caching plugin over the top.
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Structured data
Valid, non-deceptive schema.org markup that matches the visible page — Organisation, Service, Product, FAQ, Breadcrumb — and earns eligibility rather than a penalty.
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Migration & redirect safety
Pre-launch crawl comparison, a complete redirect map tested before cutover, and monitoring afterwards. This is where most organic traffic is lost permanently.
Deliverables
What technical work delivers.
Reported against indexation, ranking and click data, not against how many audit items were ticked off.
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Pages that are actually indexed
The gap between pages you published and pages Google holds, closed and then monitored. Nothing else in search matters until this is true.
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Recovered traffic, with a cause
Where a drop happened, we identify what caused it rather than describing it. A named cause is also what stops it happening again at the next release.
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Templates that pass on mobile
Core Web Vitals addressed in the templates that drive revenue, measured on field data from real users rather than a lab score.
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Migrations that do not cost rankings
A tested redirect map and a pre-launch crawl comparison. Unglamorous, and the single highest-value technical SEO deliverable there is.
Is this the right answer?
When technical seo is worth doing — and when it is not.
We would rather lose a project at this stage than six weeks in. If the right-hand column describes you, say so and we will tell you what we would do instead.
Worth doing when
- Search Console reports pages as discovered or crawled but not indexed.
- Organic traffic dropped at a date nobody can account for.
- You are about to migrate or replatform.
- You publish a large catalogue and crawl budget is being wasted.
Probably not when
- The site is technically sound and the real gap is that nothing is written.
- You have no organic traffic yet and no content to rank.
- You want rankings guaranteed by a date.
- Nobody can deploy changes, so findings would sit unactioned.
How we deliver
How a technical engagement runs.
Diagnosis first, and we will tell you if the answer is that your technical SEO is fine and the problem is the content.
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Phase one
Diagnose
Crawl, logs, Search Console and field performance data, reconciled. Output is a short list of findings ranked by traffic at risk, each with evidence.
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Phase two
Fix what is costing traffic
Indexation, rendering and redirect problems first, implemented by us or specified tightly enough for your own developers to action.
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Phase three
Architecture & performance
Internal linking, hierarchy and Core Web Vitals on the revenue templates, once the leaks are closed.
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Phase four
Monitor & protect
Automated crawl and indexation monitoring, plus a pre-release checklist so the next deployment cannot quietly reintroduce what we just fixed.
What you receive
The things that actually land.
Artefacts, not adjectives. Everything below is listed in the scope document before a phase starts, so “done” is a defined state rather than an opinion.
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A diagnosis, not an issue list
Findings ranked by traffic at risk, each with evidence from logs and Search Console. Short enough to act on.
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A crawl and log analysis
What Googlebot actually requests and gets, reconciled against what you published and what is indexed.
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A rendering comparison
What a crawler sees versus what a browser shows. On JavaScript sites this is routinely the largest single cause of missing pages.
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Core Web Vitals on field data
Measured on real users per template, with fixes specified in the code rather than a caching plugin over the top.
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A tested redirect map
For a migration: every URL with traffic or links mapped and verified before cutover, with a pre-launch crawl comparison.
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Monitoring and a release checklist
Automated crawl and indexation monitoring, plus the checks that stop the next deployment reintroducing what was fixed.
Golden Triangle
Search in a B2B industrial market.
Technical SEO for a Midlands manufacturer looks nothing like technical SEO for a consumer brand, and the standard playbooks assume the latter.
- Low volume, high value Specific queries A query with thirty searches a month can be worth more than one with thirty thousand. That changes which pages deserve engineering attention entirely.
- Large technical catalogues Faceted navigation Distributors here often publish tens of thousands of product and specification pages. Crawl budget, facet handling and indexation control become the dominant issues.
- Local plus national Found in both Businesses in this corridor sell nationally but win locally on trust. The site has to rank for both without the location pages cannibalising the service pages.
We do technical SEO for manufacturers, distributors and professional firms across Birmingham, Nottingham, Northampton, Leicester, Coventry, Derby and Milton Keynes.
Technology
How we diagnose.
Tools confirm a hypothesis; they do not produce one. The log files and Search Console settle most arguments.
- Screaming Frog
- Google Search Console
- Server log analysis
- CrUX field data
- Lighthouse / PageSpeed
- Schema validation
- Rendering comparison
- Crawl monitoring
- Rank & click tracking
- Redirect testing
Where we deliver this
Technical SEO across the Golden Triangle.
35 locations, each with a page written for it — the sectors it is actually built on, and what that means for this work. See all areas we serve.
Northamptonshire 10
Warwickshire 5
West Midlands 5
Buckinghamshire 4
Leicestershire 4
Staffordshire 4
Derbyshire 1
Greater London 1
Nottinghamshire 1
Questions
Technical SEO, answered plainly.
The questions that come up when organic traffic has moved and nobody knows why.
What is the difference between technical SEO and content SEO?
Technical SEO determines whether a search engine can reach, render, understand and index your pages at acceptable speed. Content SEO determines whether those pages deserve to rank once it can. They are sequential rather than alternative: excellent content on a page that is not indexed earns nothing, and a technically flawless site with nothing worth reading ranks for nothing.
Why are our pages not being indexed?
The common causes are a noindex or canonical pointing somewhere unintended, content that only exists after JavaScript runs, thin or near-duplicate pages Google has chosen not to keep, crawl budget consumed by faceted or parameter URLs, or pages with no internal links pointing at them. We distinguish between these using logs and Search Console rather than guessing, because the fixes are completely different.
How long does technical SEO take to show results?
Indexation fixes can show within days to a few weeks, because they remove a blocker rather than compete for a ranking. Architecture, internal linking and performance work typically shows over two to three months. Recovery from a bad migration depends on how long the redirects were wrong, which is why we treat migration safety as urgent.
Do Core Web Vitals actually affect rankings?
They are a genuine but modest ranking input, and their larger effect is on conversion — a slow page loses users before search ever becomes relevant. We prioritise them on the templates that carry revenue, using field data from real visitors rather than a lab score, and we do not pretend a perfect score will outrank better content.
We are replatforming our website. What do we need to do?
Get the technical SEO involved before the build is finished, not at launch. The essentials are a complete URL inventory with a tested redirect for every page that has traffic or links, a pre-launch crawl of staging compared against production, structured data and canonicals carried across, and daily monitoring for the first month. Most permanent organic losses we are asked to investigate are migrations where this was done afterwards.
Can you work with our existing developers?
Yes, and that is often the most efficient arrangement. We produce findings specified precisely enough to be implemented without further interpretation — the exact change, the affected templates, the expected result and how to verify it — and we verify afterwards. Where it is faster, we implement directly.
Can you work with our existing developers?
Yes, and it is often the most efficient arrangement. Findings are specified precisely enough to implement without further interpretation — the exact change, the templates affected, the expected result and how to verify it — and we verify afterwards. Where it is faster we implement directly.
How much traffic will this recover?
We will tell you what is at risk and what is recoverable, with evidence, and we will not promise a percentage. Indexation fixes often show within weeks because they remove a blocker rather than win a competition. Recovery from a bad migration depends on how long the redirects were wrong.
Do we need this if we are already ranking well?
Possibly not, and we will say so after the diagnosis. The cases where it still pays are an upcoming migration, a large catalogue where crawl budget is being wasted, or a site where the templates carrying revenue fail Core Web Vitals on mobile.
What is the single most valuable thing you do?
Migration safety, by a distance. Most of the permanent organic losses we are asked to investigate are relaunches where redirects were treated as a launch-day task. A tested redirect map and a pre-launch crawl comparison are unglamorous and worth more than months of optimisation.
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Part of the same programme.
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Measuring what happens after the click, then fixing where it leaks.
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Next step
Start with a diagnosis, not an audit.
We will crawl the site, read the logs and Search Console, and come back with the findings that are actually costing you traffic — ranked, with evidence, and short enough to act on.