Technical SEO – ACG Digital Marketing

Why technical SEO comes first

You can't rank a page Google can't read

Content and links don't matter if a page is blocked by robots.txt, missing from the index, weighed down by slow load times, or duplicated across broken canonical tags. We audit and fix this layer before touching anything else; it's the foundation every other SEO and AI-visibility effort sits on. Just want the audit findings without the fix work? See our standalone SEO Audit Services.

Recover Suppressed Rankings

Technical fixes don't build new authority. They release the rankings your content already earned but can't collect. That's why indexation fixes often move faster than any other kind of SEO work.

Make Every Other Investment Work

Content budgets and link campaigns spent on a site with crawl or rendering problems leak value every month. Fixing the foundation first is the cheapest multiplier in SEO.

Stay Readable to AI Engines

GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot execute JavaScript poorly or not at all. Clean HTML, working structured data, and accessible pages are the entry ticket to being cited in AI answers.

De-risk Redesigns and Replatforms

The most expensive technical SEO mistake is the one made on launch day. A migration handled with URL-level mapping and a monitoring window protects the traffic your site spent years earning.

Faster Crawling, Fresher Index

When crawl budget stops leaking into duplicate parameters and redirect chains, Google reaches new and updated pages sooner, which means price changes, new products, and fresh content show up in results faster.

Fixes That Hold, Not Patches

Template-level corrections and ongoing monitoring mean an issue fixed once stays fixed, instead of quietly returning with the next theme update and eroding rankings for months before anyone notices.

Sound familiar?

The problems site owners bring us

If any of these sound like your site, they're diagnosable, and almost always fixable. Each one maps to a specific part of the audit and process below.

"We publish content constantly but nothing ranks."

Usually a crawl or indexation problem, not a content one: noindex tags, broken canonicals, or orphan pages with no internal link path. If Google won't index a page, quality never gets evaluated.

"Traffic collapsed after our redesign."

Almost always missing or mismapped redirects. Old URLs that earned rankings for years now 404, and the new URLs start from zero. A URL-level redirect map is how this gets recovered, and prevented next time.

"Google indexed thousands of junk URLs we never meant to publish."

Faceted navigation or URL parameters generating filter combinations unchecked. Crawl budget gets spent on near-duplicates while your real pages wait: parameter handling and canonicalization fix it.

"Our JavaScript site looks fine to us but empty to crawlers."

If your content only exists after JS executes, crawlers with weak rendering (including most AI bots) see a blank container. Comparing raw HTML against the rendered DOM confirms it in minutes.

"PageSpeed says 95 but rankings say otherwise."

Lab scores aren't the ranking signal; field data from real visitors is. A synthetic homepage score can look great while your actual landing pages fail LCP or INP on mobile in CrUX.

"Search Console shows thousands of 'Crawled - currently not indexed' pages."

Google reached the pages and declined to index them, typically thin near-duplicates, weak internal linking, or crawl-budget signals saying the section isn't worth it. Triage decides which pages to fight for.

"Our star ratings and rich results disappeared."

Schema that breaks silently after a CMS or theme update is one of the most common issues we find. Validation per page type (and ongoing monitoring) brings rich results back and keeps them.

"We're about to migrate platforms and everyone says we'll lose traffic."

Migrations only lose traffic when the redirect map is incomplete or rushed. A pre-migration URL inventory, URL-level 301 mapping, and a 90-day monitoring window is how ours ship without losses.

"ChatGPT and Perplexity never cite us, even where we rank on Google."

AI crawlers are less forgiving than Googlebot: heavy JavaScript, blocked bots in robots.txt, or missing structured data can make a site invisible to them specifically. That's an auditable, fixable gap.

What we check

The technical SEO checklist

Six areas, audited in depth: each with how we find the problem and how we fix it, because a finding without a fix path is just a longer report.

Crawlability & indexation

Robots.txt errors, accidental noindex tags, broken canonical chains, and orphan pages with no internal links. This is the single most common cause behind "we publish content but nothing ranks." If Google can't crawl or won't index a page, everything downstream is wasted effort.

How we find it: we cross-reference a full Screaming Frog/Sitebulb crawl against Search Console's Index Coverage report to see exactly which URLs Google has dropped, and why. How we fix it: correct the directive, rebuild the internal link path so the page isn't orphaned, and request re-indexing.

Core Web Vitals & INP

LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1: Google's three confirmed page-experience ranking signals. Sites that fail Core Web Vitals on mobile see measurably lower rankings on competitive queries, and slow pages get crawled less often, compounding indexation problems.

How we find it: field data from CrUX and Search Console (what real visitors experienced) plus lab testing to isolate the cause: render-blocking JS, unoptimized images, or layout shift from late-loading ads and fonts. How we fix it: targeted fixes per cause, then re-tested against your actual landing pages, not a synthetic homepage score.

JavaScript rendering & indexation

Whether Googlebot (and AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot) can actually see your content, or just an empty container before your JavaScript runs. Most agencies skip this entirely, and it matters more every year as more traffic and citations come from AI answer engines with weaker JS execution.

How we find it: we compare the raw HTML response against the rendered DOM to see what's missing before JS executes. How we fix it: server-side rendering, dynamic rendering, or pre-rendering for crawler user-agents, depending on your stack.

Site architecture, URL structure & faceted navigation

Logical hierarchy and clean URLs, plus, for ecommerce and catalog sites, control over the near-infinite URL combinations that filters (size, color, price) can generate. Faceted navigation is the single biggest cause of crawl-budget waste we see on ecommerce sites: Google can spend its entire budget on near-duplicate filter URLs and never reach your actual product pages.

How we find it: log file analysis, reading your server logs to see exactly what Googlebot spends its time on, not guessing from a crawl tool alone. How we fix it: a parameter-handling and canonicalization strategy that lets useful filter combinations get indexed while blocking the rest.

Structured data & schema markup

Implementing and validating schema (Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article, Product, Review, BreadcrumbList) across your key page types. This is the same markup Google uses for rich results, and increasingly, the machine-readable signal AI Overviews and answer engines pull from when deciding what to cite.

How we find it: audit existing markup against Google's Rich Results Test and Schema.org validators, page type by page type. How we fix it: implement, validate, and monitor for markup that breaks silently after a CMS or template update.

Migrations, security & ongoing site health

HTTPS and mixed-content issues, crawl-budget waste from low-value parameter URLs, and, for sites replatforming, rebranding, or merging domains, a full URL-mapping and redirect strategy. Migrations are the highest-risk technical SEO event a site goes through; a mismapped redirect plan is the most common cause of the traffic collapses we get called in to fix after the fact.

How we find it: a full pre-migration crawl and content inventory, mapped old-URL-to-new-URL before a single redirect goes live. How we fix it: 301 mapping at the URL level (never a blanket domain-wide redirect), staged rollout, and a 90-day post-migration monitoring window.

The parts of technical SEO most agencies skip

Log file analysis, JavaScript rendering, faceted navigation, and migration mapping rarely show up in a generic SEO checklist: they take more time to diagnose properly. They're also where most of the ranking risk (and most of the AI-crawler visibility risk) actually lives, which is why we treat them as core parts of every audit, not optional add-ons. Running an ecommerce catalog with heavy filtering? See our Ecommerce SEO service for the faceted-navigation deep dive, or our AI Search Optimization Hub for more on crawler-rendering and AI visibility.

How we prioritize 200+ findings

The IER framework: Impact, Effort, Risk

A 200-point crawl can return hundreds of issues on a large site, and treating them as one flat list is how technical SEO projects stall. We score every finding on three axes before it goes on your fix list: Impact (how many URLs or how much traffic it touches), Effort (dev hours to fix), and Risk (what breaks if we get it wrong). A high-impact, low-effort, low-risk fix (like correcting a noindex tag on a template used sitewide) jumps to the top of week one. A high-impact, high-effort, high-risk fix (like a full URL migration) gets its own scoped project with a rollback plan, not squeezed into a general fix list.

Worked example (illustrative)

A 40,000-URL ecommerce catalog crawl turns up 340 issues. Applying IER scoring:

Week 1 (high impact, low effort): a sitewide canonical tag pointing every product-variant page to the wrong URL (one template fix resolves ~12,000 affected pages).

Weeks 2–4 (high impact, higher effort): faceted-navigation parameter handling, since crawl-budget waste is suppressing indexation on ~3,000 real product pages.

Ongoing (lower impact, low effort): individual broken internal links and missing alt text, batched and cleared incrementally rather than blocking the higher-impact work.

The audit-to-fix flow

From raw crawl to verified fix

Every engagement follows the same shape regardless of size: crawl everything, cross-reference what Google actually did (Search Console, server logs), score findings with IER, ship fixes in priority order, then verify against re-crawls and field data. What varies is where the weight falls. A JS-heavy SaaS site spends more time in rendering; a 100,000-URL catalog spends more in crawl budget and parameters.

You see the whole thing in a shared tracker: every finding, its IER score, its status, and the verification evidence once it ships. No black box, no "trust us" reporting.

No 90-page PDF audit that nobody implements

No flat issue list treating a sitewide canonical error the same as one missing alt text

No guessing from a crawl tool alone: log files show what Googlebot actually does

No closing an engagement on "changes made." Only on verified outcomes

Our process, end to end

The 12 steps behind a technical SEO engagement

This is the full engagement, not a highlight reel: every site moves through the same sequence, scoped to its URL count, framework, and whether a migration is on the table.

Full Crawl & Log Pull

A complete Screaming Frog/Sitebulb crawl of every reachable URL, cross-referenced with Search Console exports and, where available, raw server logs. The crawl tells us what exists; the logs tell us what Googlebot actually spends its time on. The gap between the two is where most technical problems hide.

Indexation Triage

Every URL gets bucketed: indexed and earning, indexed but shouldn't be, excluded and shouldn't be, or correctly excluded. "Crawled - currently not indexed" pages get individual verdicts (fight for the page, consolidate it, or deliberately remove it) instead of a blanket re-submission that Google ignores.

IER Prioritization

Every finding from the crawl and triage is scored on Impact, Effort, and Risk, then sequenced into a fix roadmap. Template-level fixes touching thousands of URLs ship first; single-page cleanups get batched. High-risk items like migrations are split into their own scoped projects with rollback plans.

Canonical & Redirect Fixes

Broken canonical chains, redirect loops, and 302s that should be 301s get resolved at the template level wherever possible. Redirect debt (chains of hops accumulated over years of changes) is flattened to single hops so link equity passes cleanly and crawlers stop wasting requests.

JavaScript Rendering

We diff the raw HTML response against the rendered DOM on every key template. Where critical content or links only exist post-render, we implement server-side rendering, pre-rendering, or dynamic rendering for crawler user-agents, whichever your stack supports with the least ongoing maintenance cost.

Core Web Vitals by Template

CWV work is done per template, not per page: fixing the product template fixes every product page. We work from CrUX field data to find failing templates, isolate the cause in lab testing (render-blocking JS, image weight, layout shift), fix it, and re-verify against field data.

Faceted & Parameter Strategy

For sites with filters or URL parameters, we define which combinations deserve indexation (real search demand) and which get canonicalized or blocked. Decisions come from log data and query research, then get enforced through canonicals, robots rules, and internal-link controls, not a blanket noindex.

Schema Implementation

Organization, Service, FAQPage, Article, Product, Review, and BreadcrumbList markup implemented at the template level, validated against Google's Rich Results Test and Schema.org validators, then monitored, because schema breaks silently after CMS and theme updates, and broken markup quietly forfeits rich results.

Migration Support (where applicable)

For replatforms, rebrands, or domain merges: a full pre-migration crawl and content inventory, URL-level 301 mapping (never a blanket domain redirect), staged rollout with testing on staging, and launch-day verification. This is the process our zero-traffic-loss enterprise migration was built on.

AI-Crawler Accessibility

We verify GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended can reach and parse your pages: robots.txt rules reviewed bot by bot, content confirmed present in raw HTML, structured data readable without JS execution. The same fixes that serve Googlebot usually serve AI engines, but not automatically.

Verification & Re-crawl Requests

Shipped fixes get re-crawled to confirm they behave as intended, then re-indexing is requested for affected URLs through Search Console. We track each fix until Google's own data reflects it (indexation counts, coverage status, field CWV) because a deployed change isn't a verified one.

Monthly Monitoring

Scheduled re-crawls, automated Core Web Vitals checks, and schema validation catch regressions before they cost rankings: a plugin update that reintroduces render-blocking JS, a template change that breaks canonicals. Many clients fold this into a Managed SEO retainer after the fix phase.

Proof, not promises

Technical results we've actually delivered

Featured case study

Enterprise site migration: zero organic traffic loss

A full replatform across thousands of URLs (the highest-risk technical SEO event a site can go through). Pre-migration crawl and content inventory, URL-level redirect mapping, crawl-budget planning, staged rollout, and a monitored launch meant rankings carried straight over.

Read the full case study →

0% organic traffic loss across thousands of migrated URLs

Furniture Retailer Turnaround

Crawl waste from faceted navigation fixed and category-page architecture rebuilt, part of a program that tripled organic revenue in 9 months.

Read case study →

2.4x

Piurify Hydrogen Water

Category architecture and content rebuild (on a technically sound foundation) scaled organic revenue for a DTC ecommerce brand.

Read case study →

Plans

Scoped to your site, quoted for your engagement

A 500-URL brochure site and a 100,000-URL JavaScript catalog are not the same project, so every plan below leads to a conversation anda a custom quote, not a checkout button. One-time audit-and-fix engagements typically start around $1,200; your exact quote follows the discovery call.

Foundation

For smaller sites that need the technical layer done right once

Site sizeUp to 1,000 URLs

Engagement typeOne-time audit & fix

Fix rounds1–2

Verification window30 days

Full crawl + 200-point audit
Indexation & canonical fixes
Core Web Vitals fixes by template
Core schema implementation & validation
Prioritized IER fix roadmap
Re-crawl verification report

Get a Custom Quote

Have specific needs that don't fit a tier?

A rendering-only diagnosis, a second opinion on another agency's audit, a pre-launch review for a new build, we scope custom engagements too.

Talk to Us

What's actually included

Deliverables, plan by plan

No vague "comprehensive optimization" language. This is the work, listed. Anything marked for your plan gets done, verified, and reported on.

Deliverable	Foundation	Professional
Setup & Analysis
Full technical crawlScreaming Frog/Sitebulb, every reachable URL
200-point audit across all six checklist areas
Search Console & analytics cross-reference
Server log-file analysisWhat Googlebot actually crawls, not what a tool simulates	—
IER-scored fix roadmapEvery finding ranked by Impact, Effort, and Risk
Crawl & Indexation
Robots.txt & meta directive corrections
Canonical chain & redirect-debt fixes
Orphan-page internal linking recovery
Indexation triage per URL bucketFight, consolidate, or remove, page by page
Faceted navigation & parameter strategy	—
Migration URL inventory & 301 mappingURL-level mapping, staged rollout, 90-day monitoring	—	—
Rendering & Speed
Core Web Vitals fixes by templateWorked from CrUX field data, not lab scores alone
Raw-HTML vs rendered-DOM rendering diff	—
SSR / pre-rendering implementation plan	—
Image, font & script-loading optimization
Schema & AI-Readiness
Core schema implementationOrganization, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList
Page-type schema (Article, Product, Review)	—
Ongoing schema validation & monitoring	—
AI-crawler access verificationGPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended	—
Reporting
Shared fix tracker with IER scores & status
Re-crawl verification & re-indexing requests
Developer-ready ticket handoffWhere your team implements instead of us
Monthly re-crawl & CWV monitoring report	—
Dedicated technical lead & sprint participation	—	—

Get a Custom Quote for My Site

Related services

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SEO Audit Services

Mini $399, Full $699.

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On-Page & Content SEO

Titles, structure and copy that rank.

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Ecommerce SEO Services

Category, product and Shopify SEO.

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Managed SEO Packages

$499, $999 or $1,999 a month, no setup fee.

Explore →

Common questions

Technical SEO, answered

How do I know if my ranking problem is technical, not content or links?+

Check Search Console's Index Coverage and Performance reports first: if pages are excluded from the index, stuck with impressions but near-zero clicks, or your top pages are getting flagged for CWV issues, that points to a technical cause. Content and link problems usually show up as pages that rank on page 2–3 and won't move, not pages that are invisible entirely. Our free audit flags which bucket you're in.

What's actually included in a technical SEO audit?+

A full Screaming Frog/Sitebulb crawl cross-referenced with Search Console data and server log files, covering all six areas on this page: crawlability, Core Web Vitals, JS rendering, architecture and faceted navigation, schema, and site health. You get a prioritized, ranked fix list, not just a raw issues export.

Will your fixes risk breaking anything live on our site?+

Any change carries some risk, which is why redirect and canonical changes are staged and tested before going live wherever your setup allows it, and higher-risk changes (like migrations) get a monitoring window afterward specifically to catch regressions fast.

How long until we see ranking or traffic movement?+

Indexation fixes (unblocking a noindex tag, fixing a crawl error) can show movement within days once Google recrawls. Core Web Vitals and structural fixes typically take 4–8 weeks to fully reflect in rankings, since Google needs to re-evaluate the page across enough visits and crawls.

Do you need our CMS or dev access, or just read access to Search Console?+

Read access to Search Console and analytics is enough for the audit itself. Implementation needs either CMS/dev access from us, or a developer-ready ticket list your own team can work through: your call.

What pushes the price above the $1,200 starting point?+

Scope is set after the initial crawl, not before. Sites with faceted navigation, JavaScript-rendered frameworks, tens of thousands of URLs, or a pending migration need more mapping and fixing, so they move into a larger engagement.

Can you work alongside our in-house dev team?+

Yes. This is the more common setup for enterprise and SaaS clients. We hand off prioritized, developer-ready tickets and can join sprint planning or ticket review calls if that's useful for your team.

Do you handle site migrations without losing rankings?+

Yes. This is the highest-risk technical SEO event a site goes through, so we run a full pre-migration crawl and URL-mapping exercise before a single redirect goes live, plus a 90-day post-migration monitoring window.

Is JavaScript-rendered content actually a problem for our site?+

It depends on your framework and how it's configured: not every JS site has a rendering problem, but many do without realizing it. We check by comparing the raw HTML response against the rendered DOM; if your key content or links are missing from the raw response, crawlers that don't execute JS well may never see it.

How does this affect visibility in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other AI answer engines?+

AI crawlers and answer engines depend on the same fundamentals: they need to crawl your pages, parse clean HTML (many execute JavaScript poorly or not at all), and read structured data to understand what a page is about. A technically broken site is invisible to AI search the same way it's invisible to Google, so fixing this layer is a prerequisite for both, not a separate project.

Is this a one-time project or ongoing?+

Either. Many clients start with a one-time audit and fix, then fold ongoing monitoring into a Managed SEO retainer so new issues get caught before they affect rankings. If speed is your only concern, see our dedicated Site Speed & Core Web Vitals section above.

How does the quote process work if there's no fixed price on this page?+

Every engagement starts with a discovery call and an initial crawl: the same diagnostic sequence described above. Scope is set by URL count, framework complexity, and whether a migration is involved, then quoted as a written statement of work with the deliverables table defining exactly what's covered. One-time audit-and-fix engagements typically start around $1,200; nothing is billed until you've approved the scope.

What tools do you use, and do we need to buy licenses?+

Screaming Frog or Sitebulb for crawling, Search Console and CrUX field data for what Google and real visitors actually saw, log-file analysis tooling for crawl-budget work, and Google's Rich Results Test plus Schema.org validators for markup. All tool costs are included in the engagement, so you don't need to purchase anything, just grant the access described above.

How do you verify that fixes actually worked?+

Every shipped fix is re-crawled to confirm it behaves as intended, then re-indexing is requested for the affected URLs through Search Console. We track the fix until Google's own data reflects it (indexation counts, coverage status, and field Core Web Vitals), and the engagement closes against those verified outcomes, not a list of changes made.

Fix What's Actually Blocking Your Rankings

You can't rank a page Google can't read

Recover Suppressed Rankings

Make Every Other Investment Work

Stay Readable to AI Engines

De-risk Redesigns and Replatforms

Faster Crawling, Fresher Index

Fixes That Hold, Not Patches

The problems site owners bring us

The technical SEO checklist

Crawlability & indexation

Core Web Vitals & INP

JavaScript rendering & indexation

Site architecture, URL structure & faceted navigation

Structured data & schema markup

Migrations, security & ongoing site health

The parts of technical SEO most agencies skip

The IER framework: Impact, Effort, Risk

Worked example (illustrative)

From raw crawl to verified fix

The 12 steps behind a technical SEO engagement

Full Crawl & Log Pull

Indexation Triage

IER Prioritization

Canonical & Redirect Fixes

JavaScript Rendering

Core Web Vitals by Template

Faceted & Parameter Strategy

Schema Implementation

Migration Support (where applicable)

AI-Crawler Accessibility

Verification & Re-crawl Requests

Monthly Monitoring

Technical results we've actually delivered

Enterprise site migration: zero organic traffic loss

Furniture Retailer Turnaround

Piurify Hydrogen Water

Scoped to your site, quoted for your engagement

Have specific needs that don't fit a tier?

Deliverables, plan by plan

Often paired with technical SEO

SEO Audit Services

On-Page & Content SEO

Ecommerce SEO Services

Managed SEO Packages

Technical SEO, answered

Find out what's blocking your rankings