Technical SEO covers the infrastructure layer search engines and AI systems depend on to find, crawl, and understand your site — Core Web Vitals, crawlability and indexation, schema markup, mobile performance, and site architecture. It’s the foundation every other layer of SEO, including AI search visibility, is built on. You can publish the best content in your industry and still rank nowhere if the technical layer underneath it is broken.
Sound familiar?
- You’ve written good content, but it still isn’t ranking.
- Your site is slow, and you suspect it’s costing you rankings and conversions.
- You’re not sure whether Google — or AI crawlers — can actually access your full site.
- You’ve never had a real technical audit, only content advice.
- Pages you know exist aren’t showing up in Google’s index.
The technical factors that actually move rankings
Core Web Vitals and site speed
Google measures loading performance (Largest Contentful Paint), interactivity (Interaction to Next Paint), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift) directly as ranking inputs. Slow, janky pages don’t just rank worse — they convert worse too.
Crawlability and indexation
If search engines and AI crawlers can’t efficiently crawl your site, your content might as well not exist. This includes robots.txt configuration, XML sitemaps, internal linking depth, and — increasingly — whether AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot are blocked. Many sites block these by default without anyone realizing it.
Schema markup
Structured data doesn’t guarantee rich results or AI citations, but it removes ambiguity — it tells search engines and AI systems explicitly what a page is (a product, an article, an FAQ, a local business) rather than making them infer it.
Site architecture
How pages link to each other determines how authority flows through your site and how easily both crawlers and users find your most important pages. A flat, logical structure consistently outperforms a deep, tangled one.
Mobile performance
Google indexes and ranks based primarily on the mobile version of your site. A desktop-only technical review misses the version of your site that actually determines your rankings.
What’s included
- Core Web Vitals and site speed — the performance signals Google measures directly
- Crawlability and indexation — including AI crawler access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot are blocked by default on many sites without anyone realizing it)
- Schema markup — structured data implemented for machine-readability
- Site architecture — internal linking and URL structure
- Mobile performance and rendering checks
Engagement options
Audit only — a full technical audit with a prioritized, specific fix list.
Audit + strategy — the audit plus an implementation roadmap.
Full implementation — ongoing hands-on technical work.
Our process
- Audit. A full technical crawl and review — Core Web Vitals, indexation, schema, crawlability for both search engines and AI crawlers.
- Strategy. A prioritized fix list, ordered by actual impact, not a generic checklist.
- Implementation. Fixes applied and documented, with before/after verification.
- Reporting. Technical health tracked over time, tied back to rankings and traffic movement.
Frequently asked questions
What is included in a technical SEO audit?
Core Web Vitals, crawlability and indexation, schema markup, site architecture, and mobile performance — reviewed for both traditional search engines and AI crawlers, with a prioritized list of what to fix first.
Are AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot blocked on my site?
Possibly — many sites block AI crawlers in robots.txt by default without realizing it, which means your content can’t be cited by AI systems even if it’s excellent. This is one of the first things a technical audit checks.
Does schema markup guarantee AI citations or rich results?
No, and we won’t claim it does. Schema improves machine-readability and helps search engines and AI systems understand your content more reliably, but it isn’t a guarantee of citations or rich snippets on its own.
My site looks fine — do I still need a technical audit?
Many technical issues (crawl errors, blocked resources, slow Core Web Vitals, missing schema) are invisible to a normal site visit. A real audit is the only way to know for certain.
Can you fix issues on any platform?
We work across WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce — the specific fix often depends on the platform, which is part of what the audit determines.
How often should technical SEO be reviewed?
At minimum after any major site change (redesign, platform migration, large content additions), and ideally on an ongoing basis, since technical issues can appear silently over time as a site grows.
Not sure what’s technically holding your site back? A free audit gives you a specific, prioritized answer.