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The Diagnosis Most SEO
Engagements Skip

A technical audit that identifies what's actually holding your rankings back — not a 200-item checklist of issues that don't matter.

Every site has technical SEO issues. The question isn't whether you have problems — you do. The question is whether the issues you're spending time fixing are the ones actually moving rankings.

Most "audits" generate a 200-line CSV from Screaming Frog and call it a deliverable. That's not an audit — that's a crawl report. A real audit prioritizes which 10–15 issues, fixed in the right order, will produce measurable ranking and visibility gains.

My audits are diagnostic, not exhaustive. We find the issues that matter, fix them in priority order, and verify impact. Everything else gets documented but de-prioritized.

What technical SEO covers

Technical SEO is the foundation that determines whether your content can rank — and whether AI engines can read it. A complete technical audit covers:

  • On-page SEO — title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, internal linking, image optimization
  • Crawl budget optimization — making sure Google & AI bots spend time on revenue pages, not duplicates
  • Indexing & canonical strategy — solving duplicate content, faceted nav, and crawl waste at scale
  • Core Web Vitals optimization — improving LCP, INP, CLS for better rankings and user experience
  • Site speed & performance — page load optimization, lazy loading, CDN setup, server response time
  • JavaScript SEO — testing how Google renders React, Vue, Next.js sites; fixing rendering failures
  • Schema markup & structured data — JSON-LD implementation for rich results and AI extraction
  • Site architecture & internal linking — hub-and-spoke structures, link equity flow, orphan page rescue
  • Mobile SEO — mobile-first indexing, responsive design issues, mobile UX problems
  • Site migration SEO — protecting rankings during platform moves, redesigns, or domain changes

The technical issues actually killing rankings in 2026

JavaScript rendering failures

Modern JS frameworks often serve content Google can't render. Pages look perfect to humans but appear empty to crawlers. We test what Google actually sees — not what your browser shows.

Indexing & crawl waste

Filter URLs, faceted navigation, duplicate parameters, and thin tag pages eating up crawl budget. We identify which URLs should be indexed, which shouldn't, and what's silently bleeding ranking signal.

Core Web Vitals failures

LCP, INP, CLS — slow pages don't rank, especially on mobile. We diagnose where the bottlenecks actually are (hint: it's rarely image compression) and what fixes will move the metrics.

Schema gaps & AEO blockers

Missing or broken structured data prevents rich results, AI Overview citations, and featured snippet wins. We audit every schema type your site needs and identify what's missing or invalid.

Internal linking architecture

Most sites bury their best content 5+ clicks from the homepage. We map your link graph, identify orphan pages, and design an architecture that flows authority to revenue pages.

Canonicalization & duplicate content

Duplicate URLs from session IDs, tracking parameters, http/https confusion, www vs non-www, trailing slashes — all silently splitting authority. We consolidate everything to canonical URLs.

Mobile rendering & UX issues

Mobile-first indexing has been the default for years, but most sites still have mobile rendering issues — viewport problems, tap target failures, content shifts. These directly hurt rankings.

Sitemaps & robots.txt errors

Outdated sitemaps with dead URLs, misconfigured robots.txt blocking critical pages, missing AI bot allow-rules — basic issues that silently prevent rankings and AI citations.

My technical audit process

01

Full crawl & baseline

Comprehensive site crawl using Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, and custom scripts. Plus pulling Google Search Console, GA4, Bing Webmaster, and AI search visibility data to establish a real baseline.

02

Render & performance testing

Test how Google, ChatGPT, and other AI crawlers actually render your pages. Run Core Web Vitals across your highest-traffic templates. Identify mobile-first indexing issues.

03

Issue prioritization

Every issue ranked by impact, effort, and dependency. Critical (must-fix), high-impact, low-effort wins, and de-prioritized items. No 200-item shopping list — a clear roadmap.

04

Implementation specs

For each priority issue, a specific implementation spec — what changes, what it fixes, expected impact, and how to verify. Built to hand directly to your dev team or my specialist team.

05

Verification & monitoring

After fixes ship, we verify each one actually solved the underlying issue — not just shipped code. We track impact on indexation, rankings, and AI search visibility for 30–60 days post-implementation.

What you'll receive

📄 Audit document

A focused, prioritized audit document — not a 100-page PDF nobody reads. Each issue has impact, effort, fix spec, and verification method.

🗺️ Prioritized roadmap

A clear sequencing of what to fix in week 1, week 2, week 4 — based on impact, dependencies, and your team's bandwidth.

⚙️ Developer-ready specs

Each priority issue documented as an implementation ticket your dev team can execute without back-and-forth clarification.

📞 Walkthrough call

A 90-minute call walking through every finding — so the document isn't just a deliverable, but actually understood and actionable by your team.

Real outcome from technical work

B2B Window Manufacturer

Started with a deep technical audit that uncovered indexing waste, schema gaps, and Core Web Vitals failures. Six months after fixes shipped, the brand had grown to 1.6M+ organic impressions, 6× click growth, and 1,500+ keywords ranked.

Read the full case study →

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Technical SEO FAQs

How long does a technical SEO audit take? +
For most sites, the full audit takes 2–3 weeks from kickoff to walkthrough call. Smaller sites (under 1,000 URLs) can be completed in 7–10 days. Large enterprise sites or complex platforms (Shopify Plus, Magento, custom CMS) may take 4 weeks. The walkthrough is always live so questions get answered in real time.
Do you fix the issues yourself or just identify them? +
Both options exist. Many clients have in-house dev teams and only need the diagnosis + specs — they execute internally. Other clients want execution handled too — my specialist team can implement most fixes (schema, content-side issues, internal linking, redirects) directly. Server-level fixes typically need your dev team or hosting provider.
What does a technical audit cost? +
Audit pricing depends on site size, complexity, and platform. Quoted custom for every engagement after a 15-minute discovery WhatsApp call. Generally, technical audits represent strong ROI because the issues found typically deliver compounding returns once fixed.
Will you audit a site that's been hit by a Google penalty? +
Yes. Manual penalty recovery and algorithmic recovery work (Helpful Content System, Spam updates, etc.) are some of the most rewarding audits to do. We diagnose what likely triggered the issue, build a remediation plan, and execute the work needed to file a successful reconsideration request — or, for algorithmic issues, fix the underlying signals.
Can technical SEO alone fix my rankings? +
Sometimes — if the issue is genuinely technical (indexing problems, render failures, severe Core Web Vitals issues). More often, technical SEO removes the blockers preventing your existing content from ranking. Once those are fixed, content quality and authority signals become the next levers. A site with clean technical foundations and weak content won't rank — but a great content strategy with broken technical foundations also won't rank.
Do you handle technical SEO for JavaScript-heavy sites (React, Vue, Next.js)? +
Yes — JS rendering is one of the most common audit findings. We test what Google actually renders, identify content that fails to load in the rendered DOM, and recommend SSR (server-side rendering), pre-rendering, or static generation patterns based on your stack. JS framework SEO is a specific subset of technical SEO and one where most agencies struggle.
Will the audit cover AI search visibility? +
Yes — by default. Modern audits include checking how AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) access your content, schema implementation for AEO and GEO, content extractability, and current visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for your target queries.
Do you provide ongoing technical monitoring after the audit? +
Yes — for retainer clients, technical monitoring is included. We track indexation, Core Web Vitals, crawl errors, structured data validation, and AI bot accessibility on an ongoing basis. Issues get caught and resolved within days, not months. For audit-only clients, monitoring can be added as a separate service or handled by your team using the dashboards we set up.

Ready to Find What's Actually Holding You Back?

Send a WhatsApp message — we can scope an audit in 15 minutes.