A site the machines
cannot read
does not exist.
Before Google ranks a page, and before an AI answer engine quotes it, a crawler has to find it, fetch it, render it, and understand it. Technical SEO is everything that makes that possible: site architecture, crawl and index control, speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile, HTTPS, and structured data. It is the layer under every other kind of search work, and the one most business owners have never seen because it lives in the data, not on the screen.
the line Google draws
the response-time line
the stability line
found in a client audit
The first three are Google’s published Core Web Vitals thresholds, measured from real visitors and reported in Search Console. The fourth is what a technical audit turns up when nobody has looked in years.
Your site can look perfect on your screen and be unreadable to the crawler. Technical SEO is the difference between what you see and what Google and the AI see.
Three kinds of SEO,
one direction.
Search optimization has split into three jobs, and this one holds the other two up. Ranking work and citation work both assume the machines can get in. This page is about making sure they can.
Ranking in the results
Keyword research, on-page and off-page work, content, and links, so your pages rank when people search the classic way. It only works on pages the crawler can reach and read.
Being the cited source
Content built as direct answers, structured so an AI can lift a clean quote from it. The AI has to fetch and parse the page first, which is this page’s job.
The foundation under both
Crawlability, indexing, architecture, speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile, HTTPS, and structured data. Audited on existing sites, and built into every new one from day one.
Nothing ranks and nothing gets quoted until the crawler gets in. The other two kinds of SEO are the reason to do this one first.
Six areas,
checked in the data.
A technical audit reads your Search Console and analytics data, crawls the site the way Google does, and checks the six areas below. Most of the problems on most sites live in the first two, and nobody finds them by clicking around the front end.
Crawlability and indexing
- Robots.txt and the XML sitemap: what is allowed, what is listed, what is missing
- Search Console’s page indexing report: what Google has indexed, what it excluded, and why
- Crawl errors, server errors, soft 404s, and redirect chains
- Canonical tags, duplicate URLs, parameter pages, and the pagination nobody set up
- Orphaned pages: demo pages, old landing pages, staging leftovers the crawler still visits
Site architecture
- How many clicks from the homepage to every page that matters
- Internal linking: whether the pages that earn are linked to, and whether the junk is
- URL structure, category and tag sprawl, thin archive pages Google indexes anyway
- Navigation the crawler can follow without running scripts
Speed and Core Web Vitals
- Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift from real visitors, per page group
- Page weight: images, fonts, scripts, and the plugins that load on every page whether needed or not
- Caching, compression, and the content delivery network
- Hosting response time, and whether the server can take a traffic spike
Mobile and rendering
- Mobile-first indexing: what Google sees on the phone version, which is the only version it scores
- Content that depends on JavaScript to appear, and whether the crawler runs it
- Tap targets, viewport, font sizes, and layout shift on small screens
Security and hygiene
- HTTPS everywhere, mixed content, and certificate renewal
- Plugin and theme inventory: what is installed, what is abandoned, what is a known risk
- Open comment boxes and forms that spam bots can fill, and what they have already filled
- Backups, uptime monitoring, and what happens when the host has a bad hour
Structured data and machine readability
- Schema markup: what is present, what is invalid, what is missing for the page type
- Organization, local business, article, FAQ, product, and review markup where each belongs
- An llms.txt file and clean HTML, so AI crawlers know what the site is and can parse it
- Open Graph and share data, so links carry the right image and title everywhere
The three numbers
Google scores you on.
Core Web Vitals are Google’s page-experience measurements, taken from real visitors in Chrome and reported in Search Console. A page has to pass all three on the phone version to count as good. Most WordPress sites fail at least one, and the fix is usually weight, scripts, or a theme setting, not a rebuild.
Largest Contentful Paint
How long until the biggest thing on the screen shows up. Good is 2.5 seconds or less. Usually a hero image that is too heavy, a font that blocks rendering, or a slow server.
Interaction to Next Paint
How long the page takes to respond when someone taps or clicks. Good is 200 milliseconds or less. Usually too much JavaScript, often from plugins, running on every interaction.
Cumulative Layout Shift
How much the page jumps around while it loads. Good is 0.1 or lower. Usually images without dimensions, late-loading ads or embeds, and fonts swapping in.
What the answer engines
need from your site.
An AI answer engine has to do everything Google’s crawler does, faster, with less patience. It fetches the page, tries to parse it, and moves on if it cannot. The technical layer decides whether your content is even in the running to be quoted.
Content in the HTML, not behind scripts
If the words only appear after JavaScript runs, many AI crawlers never see them. The answer has to be in the page as delivered.
Structured data that labels the page
Schema tells the machine this is an article, this is a FAQ, this is a product, this is the business and here is its address. Labeled content gets quoted with confidence.
An llms.txt file at the root
A plain-text file that tells AI engines what the site is, who it is for, and which pages matter most. Cheap to add, and most sites do not have one.
Speed, so the crawler finishes
A page that takes too long to deliver gets abandoned mid-fetch. The same weight that fails Core Web Vitals loses the citation too.
Clean, crawlable structure
Real headings, one topic per page, a sitemap that lists what matters, and no crawl budget wasted on tag archives and orphaned junk.
What gets fixed first,
and why.
The audit produces a list. The list gets done in the order it pays, which is almost never the order it is found in.
A good fit,
and a bad one.
This is for you if
- Your site looks fine and ranks badly, and nobody can tell you why
- Search Console shows pages excluded, errors, or vitals failing and you do not know what to do about it
- Your site is slow on a phone and you have been told it is the theme
- You publish good content and the AI answers never quote it
- You are about to redesign and want to know what the old site has been telling Google
This is not for you if
- You have no site yet. Build it right instead, with the technical layer included from the start
- You want a score from a free tool and a green checkmark. The audit reads the real data, and it finds things the tools do not
- You want the report and no fixes. The list is only half the job
Want to know what Google
sees when it reads your site?
Book a call and give me read access to your Search Console and analytics. I will show you what is blocked, what is broken, what is bloated, and which fix pays first.
The thinking behind the work.
Where the technical problems hide, and how they show up in the reports.
Frequently asked questions.
What is technical SEO?
The work that lets search engines and AI crawlers find, read, render, and trust your site: crawlability, indexing, site architecture, speed, Core Web Vitals, mobile, HTTPS, and structured data. It has nothing to do with what the pages say and everything to do with whether the machines can read them.
How is it different from regular SEO?
Search SEO decides what you rank for. Technical SEO decides whether you can rank at all. A page with perfect content on a site that will not crawl, renders blank to a bot, or takes eight seconds to load is invisible. The SEO page covers the ranking work.
What are Core Web Vitals?
Google’s three page-experience measurements, taken from real visitors: Largest Contentful Paint (how fast the main content shows, 2.5 seconds or better), Interaction to Next Paint (how fast the page responds to a tap or click, 200 milliseconds or better), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the page jumps around while loading, 0.1 or lower). Google reports them in Search Console.
Does technical SEO matter for AI search?
More than ever. An AI answer engine has to fetch and parse your page before it can quote it. If the page relies on JavaScript the crawler does not run, hides the content behind scripts, or times out, the AI moves on to a competitor it can read. Structured data and an llms.txt file tell it what it is looking at. The AEO page covers the content side.
What does a technical audit produce?
A written report in plain English: what is broken, what it is costing you in the data, and the fixes in the order they pay off. Then the fixes, done, and a re-check in Search Console and analytics a month later to confirm the numbers moved.
Do you need access to my site?
For the audit, read access to Search Console and analytics is enough to find most of it. For the fixes, admin access to WordPress and the hosting account. Everything stays in your name.
Can technical SEO be a one-time job?
The audit and the fix list, yes. The monitoring is ongoing, because plugins update, themes change, hosts move servers, and Google changes the thresholds. Sites built here get it as part of hosting and maintenance. Sites built elsewhere can have the audit on its own or a monthly check.
Will you fix it or hand me a list?
Both. The report is the list, and then I fix what is on it, on WordPress sites directly and on other platforms alongside your developer. A list nobody executes is worth nothing, which is why the report and the fixes come together.