Technical SEO that fixes what Google actually sees
Technical SEO is everything that decides whether Google can find, render, understand and trust your pages before a single word of content is judged. It is the least visible part of search and, on most sites we audit, the part with the most value locked up in it.
✗ 312 URLs indexable but canonicalised elsewhere
✗ 48 redirect chains (3+ hops)
✗ staging.example.co.uk indexed
✗ LCP 4.8s on product template
✓ robots.txt valid
✓ sitemap: 1,102 URLs, 0 errors
# priorities: fix canonicals, noindex staging, defer JS
Where most sites are quietly losing
Digital Mountain is a technical SEO agency first. The founder's background is in the technical side of search, and every strategy we build starts from the crawl, the index and the server, not from a keyword list.
The output of every audit is a prioritised list your developer can act on, with the fix, the owner and the expected impact for each item, not a 200-page PDF nobody reads.
Get an initial crawl, freeA site can have perfect content and still be invisible. Technical SEO is the difference between a page that exists and a page that ranks.Get a free technical review
What a technical SEO audit from Digital Mountain covers
Every audit is delivered as a prioritised, ticketed list your developer can act on, or that we implement ourselves.
- Crawlability, indexing and robots directives
- Site architecture, URL structure and internal linking
- Core Web Vitals, page speed and render blocking resources
- Duplicate content, canonicals and parameter handling
- Structured data validation and rich result eligibility
- Mobile rendering and JavaScript dependency
- Redirect chains, broken links and status code hygiene
- Hreflang, pagination and faceted navigation where relevant
How technical work is delivered
Diagnosis is cheap. Implementation is where technical SEO succeeds or dies, so we plan for it from day one.
- Week 1
Crawl and diagnose
Full crawl with Screaming Frog and Sitebulb, log file analysis where available, Search Console coverage review. Findings ranked by impact and effort.
- Week 2
Prioritised backlog
A ticketed list with severity, affected URLs, the fix and the expected outcome. Written for a developer, not for a slide deck.
- Weeks 3 to 8
Implementation
We deploy fixes on WordPress and Shopify directly. On other platforms we work alongside your developers and verify each change in staging and production.
- Ongoing
Monitor and retest
Indexing, speed and error monitoring. Quarterly re-crawl to catch regressions before they cost rankings.
Technical SEO services
Audits, migrations, speed, architecture, indexing and structured data. Specified for your developer or implemented by ours.
Technical SEO audit
A full crawl with Sitebulb and Screaming Frog, Search Console index coverage analysis, log file review where access allows, rendering checks, and a prioritised issue list with the fix, the owner and the expected impact for each item. Not a 200-page PDF nobody reads. A working document your developer can act on.
Site migrations
Platform changes, redesigns, domain moves and URL restructures are where businesses lose years of rankings in one afternoon. We plan the redirect map, benchmark before, monitor during and audit after, so the migration is a non-event for Google.
Core Web Vitals and speed
LCP, INP and CLS diagnosed at template level, with fixes specified for the actual cause (render-blocking assets, unoptimised images, layout shifts, slow server response) rather than a generic plugin recommendation.
Architecture and internal linking
URL structure, navigation, category hierarchy, pagination, faceted navigation on ecommerce sites, and internal link distribution so that authority flows to the pages that make money.
Indexing and crawl control
Robots directives, canonicals, sitemaps, noindex hygiene, parameter handling and crawl budget. The aim is simple: every page you want ranked is indexed, and nothing you do not want ranked is.
Structured data
Schema markup for organisations, local businesses, products, services, FAQs and articles, validated and monitored, so your pages qualify for rich results and are understood by AI-driven search features.
Why technical problems are so often missed
Most agencies run a crawler, export the errors and send you the list. That catches broken links and missing titles. It does not catch a JavaScript framework hiding half your content from Googlebot, a canonical tag pointing every product variant at the wrong URL, a staging site indexed alongside the live one, or a CDN configuration that serves a different page to crawlers than to users.
Those problems need someone who understands how servers, rendering and crawling actually work. That is the difference between a technical SEO consultant and a report generator.
Platforms we work on
WordPress and WooCommerce, Shopify, Laravel and custom PHP builds, headless and JavaScript-rendered sites. We provide developer-ready specifications for every change, or implement directly where we have access. Working alongside your existing developer is the norm, not a complication.
The technical areas that decide rankings
Six systems, each with its own failure modes. This is what an audit actually examines.
Crawling
Whether Googlebot can reach every page you want ranked, how much budget it spends on pages you do not, and what robots.txt, redirects and internal links are doing to that.
Indexing
Canonicals, noindex directives, sitemap accuracy and index bloat. The aim is simple: everything valuable indexed, nothing else.
Rendering
JavaScript frameworks can hide content from Google entirely. We compare the raw HTML to the rendered DOM and check what the crawler actually sees.
Performance
Core Web Vitals by template: LCP, INP and CLS. Fixes specified against the real cause, whether that is a slow server, render-blocking scripts or unoptimised images.
Architecture
URL structure, click depth, category hierarchy and internal link equity. Authority should flow to the pages that make money.
Hosting and security
HTTPS, mixed content, staging exposure, CDN configuration and server response. The plumbing that most audits never look at.
What we find on most first crawls
The recurring problems, in rough order of how much damage they do.
Staging or duplicate domains indexed
A dev site, an http version or a www and non-www split competing with the live site for the same rankings.
Canonical tags pointing the wrong way
Product variants, filtered category pages and paginated lists canonicalised to URLs that do not exist or should not rank.
Redirect chains and loops
Three or four hops between an old URL and its destination, leaking authority at each step and slowing the crawl.
JavaScript-dependent content
Key text, links or navigation rendered client-side and invisible to the initial crawl.
Orphaned pages
Pages with no internal links pointing at them. Google finds them rarely and ranks them worse.
Slow templates
A single heavy template, usually product or category, dragging Core Web Vitals down across thousands of URLs.
What a technical fix produces
Technical work is unglamorous. Its results are not.
- Rankings without new contentFixing indexing and canonical problems regularly lifts rankings on pages that were already good but never being read properly.
- Content that finally performsEvery article and service page you have published works harder once the foundations are sound.
- Faster site, better conversionSpeed improvements help every visitor, not just Googlebot. Faster pages convert better.
- Safe migrationsA planned migration keeps the rankings you have spent years earning. An unplanned one loses them in a weekend.
- Lower crawl wasteLarge sites waste crawl budget on junk URLs. Controlling it means new content gets indexed in days rather than weeks.
- A developer who knows what to doEvery fix specified with the cause, the change and the expected impact. No guesswork on either side.
A PDF audit versus a working technical programme
Most technical audits are sold as a document. Documents do not change rankings.
| Typical agency | Digital Mountain | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | A 60-page PDF with a traffic light score | A ticketed backlog your developer can start on tomorrow |
| Prioritisation | Everything marked high | Ranked by impact and effort, with the ten fixes that matter most first |
| Implementation | Your problem | Ours on WordPress and Shopify. Paired with your team elsewhere |
| Verification | None | Every fix checked in staging, in production and in Search Console |
| Migrations | A redirect list emailed the night before | Mapped, tested and monitored for a month after launch |
| Follow-up | Another audit next year | Quarterly re-crawl and continuous monitoring |
A site Google cannot crawl efficiently does not rank, however good the content. Fix the foundations first.Book a technical audit
Frequently asked questions
Is a one-off technical audit enough?
For a site that is otherwise well run, an audit plus implementation support can be enough for a year or more. Sites that change frequently, or that sit on complex platforms, benefit from ongoing monitoring inside a managed campaign.
Will you implement the fixes or just tell us what to do?
Either. We specify every fix in enough detail for any competent developer, and we can implement on WordPress and Shopify ourselves through our web development team.
How do you price a technical audit?
By site size and platform complexity. A small brochure site and a 40,000 SKU ecommerce store are very different jobs. See our SEO costs guide for how we scope work.
We are about to relaunch our site. When should we involve you?
Before the design is signed off. Migration problems are cheap to prevent and expensive to fix after launch.
Find out what Google sees when it crawls your site
Request a free technical review. We run an initial crawl and tell you the three biggest technical issues holding your site back, with no obligation.