SEO & GEO
Technical SEO
Fix what crawlers cannot read.
(opens in a new tab) Technical SEO is what decides whether the rest of your SEO is allowed to work. It is crawling, indexing, rendering, speed, structure and the markup that tells a search engine what it is looking at. When a site with good content will not rank, this is usually where the answer is, and it is the part most agencies quote for and then subcontract.
The sites whose search we have built, moved or run.
Certified Partner We find why a site with good content will not rank, and then we fix it.
See the numbers for this siteDiagnosed from real data and fixed by the people who write the code, on Shopify or on any other stack.
Our servicesThe case for it
Why businesses bring the technical work to us
A search engine has to reach the page, read it, understand what it is, and decide it is worth keeping. Technical SEO is the work that makes each of those four things true, and it is the reason a site with better content than its competitors can sit below them for a year without anybody being able to say why. It is also the part of SEO that is genuinely checkable, which is why we like it: you can prove a fix landed rather than argue about whether the copy is better.
This is not scoped to ecommerce, and that is deliberate. The crawl and render layer does not care what a site sells, and the same diagnosis runs on a Shopify store, a lead-generation site and a platform we did not build. We do run a great deal of it on Shopify, where the platform settles some of the answers for you and quietly creates others, and our own site is the one public example we will point at rather than a client we cannot name: the numbers behind it are published at elmsagency.com/receipts.
The run of it
How we run a technical SEO engagement
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Measure First
We record where the site stands before touching it: current positions, index coverage, field performance and what the logs show being crawled. Without a baseline, any change afterwards gets credited or blamed on the basis of whatever moved next, which is how bad SEO decisions get made.
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Diagnose, Then Prioritise
Every finding gets an estimate of what fixing it is plausibly worth and what it costs to fix. The ones where we cannot honestly estimate the upside are labelled that way rather than padded into the list, because a report of forty equal-weight issues is a way of avoiding the decision.
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Implement
We do the work rather than hand it over. This is the step that separates the engagement from an audit, and it is the reason the audit is worth having: a finding nobody ships is a finding that cost you money and changed nothing.
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Re-crawl and Verify
A change is not done when it deploys, it is done when a search engine has re-read the page and the measurement has moved or has not. We check the crawl date before crediting any change with any movement, and we tell you when a result is still unproven.
Sites we moved and rebuilt
Natalie's Heating Service
Site build and organic search
Technical SEO service
Nine town pages, and a ceiling on how alike they can be
Natalie's Heating Service is a Gas Safe engineer in Bromley, not a shop. We moved her off Wix with her business email on the same DNS zone as the site, the biggest risk of the cutover, and built nine town pages off one template.
One template is how near-duplicates get made, so the similarity between those pages has a ceiling that is enforced rather than trusted.
Smart Surfacing Solutions
Site, tracking, paid media and the lead funnel
Technical SEO specialist
A WordPress site, and the same crawl layer
Smart Surfacing Solutions lay tarmac and resin for roads, driveways and car parks. We redesigned their WordPress site, and run the tracking and analytics behind it and the organic search work.
None of that is Shopify, and none of it needs to be. Crawling, rendering and status codes behave the same whatever a site runs on.
Scope
What our technical SEO service covers
Can it be found
Crawl and Index
Most sites do not have a crawling problem, they have a crawling waste problem: filters, sort orders, session parameters and old pages absorbing attention that should go to the pages that sell. We find what is being crawled, what is indexed that should not be, and what is neither.
Redirects, Canonicals and Status Codes
The unglamorous layer where rankings quietly leak. Chains, loops, soft 404s, canonicals pointing at redirected URLs, and consolidations that were set up correctly and then half reversed by a later change. It is dull and it is frequently the whole finding.
Can it be read
Rendering and JavaScript
A page can look complete in a browser and arrive at a search engine with the content missing. We compare the rendered DOM with the raw response and with what Search Console reports, because those three disagreeing is a common and well hidden cause of a page that will not rank.
Structured Data
Schema is the part of the page written for a machine, and most of it on the web is either invalid, contradicted by the visible page, or describing something the page is not. We write it against what the page actually says, validate it, and leave it in a state your team can extend.
Is it fast and joined up
Core Web Vitals
We work from field data, meaning real visitors on real devices, rather than from a lab score taken once on a fast connection. A lab run is useful for finding a cause and close to worthless for deciding whether a change worked, and we are straight about which one a number came from.
Architecture and Internal Links
Internal linking decides what a site is understood to be about, and it is the cheapest lever in technical SEO because it needs no new content and no new links from anyone else. We map what points where today before proposing anything, because the answer is often that two templates disagree.
The honest comparison
A crawler’s report, or a technical SEO service?
A crawler is quick, cheap and worth running. Here is where its report stops.
| Question | A crawler’s report | Technical SEO, done |
|---|---|---|
| What it reads | The raw HTML a crawler fetched | Logs, field data and the rendered DOM, side by side |
| How it ranks findings | Severity colours, forty equal-weight issues | What each fix is plausibly worth, with the guesses named as guesses |
| Speed | A lab score from one fast connection | Field data from real visitors on real devices |
| Who fixes it | Nobody, it is a list | The people who write the code |
| Proof it worked | The next crawl turns the row green | Checked against the date a search engine re-read the page |
| Time and cost | Instant, and often free | Takes longer, and carries a fee |
Sites we look after
Givino
Site development, SEO and testing
Tech SEO agency
Development and search on a theme we did not build
Givino is an independent wine, gin and spirit shop in Frome, with a shop and a tasting room of its own. We handle the site's ongoing development and SEO under a twelve-month agreement, with a full rebuild in progress.
The store they came to us with runs on a paid vendor theme, not one we built. That is the normal case for this work: the crawl layer behaves the same whoever wrote the code, so the diagnosis does not change.
Technical SEO UK
Tested on a store we pay for ourselves
Powerlete is our own sportswear brand, and the store every change is tested on before it reaches a client. A fix we recommend is one we have already paid for.
This site’s own numbers are measured and published on our receipts page, and every result we claim is checked against the crawl date first.
In their words
Reviews on the Shopify Partner Directory
Written by merchants, on Shopify's platform, where anyone can go and check them.
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From start to finish, they were incredibly easy to work with. They understood the brief perfectly and delivered to a very high standard. Communication was excellent throughout, with quick and clear responses to any questions I had.
Tacky And Upsetting Store build or redesign · April 2026
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The things [the team] have put in place and recommended for us have paid immediate dividend. We wish we had come in contact with [them] sooner.
ARTMARTIAL Store build or redesign · April 2026
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I can’t recommend [the team] enough, [they] helped us with everything from product design, supplier communication to website building and SEO. We were able to build a brand off the back of all [their] information and help.
Reveliér Studios Business strategy guidance · April 2026
Technical SEO companies, specialists and experts
One request, a dozen names for it
This work collects names faster than it changes. People arrive having searched for a technical seo service, for technical seo agencies in the plural, or for technical seo companies, and they mean one thing: somebody who can find why a site underperforms at the crawl and render layer, and then fix it rather than write it up. A technical seo services agency and a technical seo agency services search are the same request with the words in a different order, and a technical seo services company is a third arrangement of the same thing.
The other half of the vocabulary is about who does the work rather than what it is called. A search for a technical seo specialist, or for technical seo experts, usually means somebody wants a person rather than an account team, which is fair: this is diagnostic work, done by whoever can read a log file and a rendered DOM, not by whoever owns the relationship. Some shorten it to a tech seo agency. Where the search adds a country, technical seo uk or a technical seo agency uk, it is usually about whether the team is reachable in working hours and understands the market the site sells into.
Buying it
How we work with you
The audit on its own
The diagnosis, ranked, and nothing after unless you ask. Say so up front and we quote it that way.
Audit, then the fixes
The normal shape. We ship the fixes ourselves, then verify each one after the re-crawl.
Before a migration
Before a site moves platform, domain or theme, so the redirects protect what already ranks.
Fixes written for your team
On a stack we do not know, we write each fix precisely enough for your developers to apply.
Is this the right thing to buy from us?
Worth a conversation
Good content that is not ranking, and nobody can say why. A site you have inherited and need to understand before spending on it. Or a move coming that could cost rankings you took years to earn.
Probably not this, on its own
If we already run your SEO, this is part of it. And if traffic is healthy and the problem is after the click, conversion rate optimisation will earn more than another crawl.
Keep reading
Everything around the technical layer
The rest of our search work
Where findings usually lead
The brands behind the sites we build and run.
Questions
Straight answers
Is technical SEO not just part of SEO? Why would I buy it separately?
Usually it is part of it, and if we already run your SEO you should not be buying this on its own. It is here as its own service for the two cases where that does not apply: you have an SEO team or agency producing good content that is not ranking and nobody can say why, or you have inherited a site and need to know what you are holding before you spend anything on it. In both cases the useful thing is a diagnosis from somebody who is not defending their own previous work.
Will you work on a site you did not build, and one that is not Shopify?
Yes to both, and it is the normal case rather than the exception. Crawling, rendering, status codes and structured data behave the same way whatever the site runs on, so the diagnosis does not change. What changes is how a fix gets shipped: on a platform we know well we can usually do it ourselves, and on an unfamiliar stack we will often write the fix precisely enough for your developers to apply it, which is cheaper for you than paying us to learn your codebase.
Do you fix the problems or just hand over a report?
We fix them. An audit on its own is the most common way this work fails, because a list of forty findings with no owner and no ship date is indistinguishable from no audit at all, and we have been handed enough of them to be sure of that. If you only want the diagnosis, ask for the audit on its own and we will quote it that way, but say so up front so nobody ends up disappointed about what arrives.
How quickly will I see technical SEO work in the rankings?
Slower than anybody selling it likes to say, and the honest sequence is that the site becomes eligible before it moves. Nothing can happen until a search engine re-reads the page, which takes days to a couple of weeks, so any movement before that belongs to something else. After that it depends on whether the technical layer was the real constraint or only one of them. We check the crawl date before crediting a change with a result, and we will tell you when something is still unproven rather than claim the nearest improvement.
Send us the site and what it is not doing
The address and the pages you expected to rank is plenty. We will come back with where we would look first, and whether an audit is worth buying.
Stores we build and grow
Start a conversation
Tell us which pages should be ranking.
If the technical layer is not what is holding them back, we will say so on the call.
UK and US brands buy this from the same senior team, and the American day is covered from the start of it rather than the end. How we work with US brands.
Get in touch