Technical SEO
Technical SEO agency: a site that search engines and AI can read
A technical SEO agency makes sure search engines and AI crawlers can reach, render and index your pages. We find what blocks them and specify each fix so that a developer can build it.
At a glance
- What it is for
- A site that can be crawled, rendered, indexed and quoted
- You receive
- A prioritised fix list and a ticket for each fix
- Ways to work
- A one-off audit, a migration, or part of the 90-day programme
- Who specifies the fixes
- Someone who builds websites as well as optimising them
What a technical SEO agency does
Technical SEO is the work that lets a search engine do four things with a page: crawl it, render it, index it and rank it. If any of the first three fails, the page cannot appear, however good it is.
Whether you look for a technical SEO agency, technical SEO services or technical SEO consultants, the work is the same. We check each of those steps on your site, find what breaks them, and write up the fix.
What we check and what you receive
| Area | What we look at | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling | The robots.txt file, sitemaps, status codes, redirect chains and server logs where you have them | A list of what is blocked or wasted, and the fix for each |
| Rendering | Whether your content is present once JavaScript has run, and whether it needs to be | The pages affected and the change to make |
| Indexing | Canonical tags, noindex tags, duplicates, pagination and hreflang | Which pages should be indexed and are not, and why |
| Speed | Core Web Vitals on your key page types | The largest causes, ordered by effect |
| Architecture | Internal links, depth from the homepage and pages nothing links to | A linking plan for the pages that matter |
| Structured data | Whether your markup is valid and matches what is visible on the page | Corrected markup for each page type |
| Migrations | Redirect maps and checks before and after launch | A plan, a redirect file and a post-launch report |
Technical SEO for AI search
Most of what matters for AI search is ordinary technical SEO. To appear in Google's AI features a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Google says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup.1
ChatGPT is different in one respect: it has its own crawlers, and they do different jobs.2
Exhibit 1
| Crawler | Used for | What we check |
|---|---|---|
| Googlebot | Google Search and its AI features1 | That key pages are crawlable, indexed and eligible for a snippet |
| OAI-SearchBot | Showing sites in ChatGPT search2 | That robots.txt and your firewall allow it |
| GPTBot | Training OpenAI's models2 | That your choice is deliberate. Blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search |
| ChatGPT-User | Visits a user asks ChatGPT to make2 | That it is not blocked by bot protection |
Other assistants publish their own crawler names, and we check each one against your robots.txt and your firewall rules. A firewall can block a crawler that robots.txt allows, which is a fault we look for on every site.
A fix, written as a ticket
Technical recommendations fail when a developer cannot act on them. Every fix we specify is a ticket like this.
Exhibit 2
A developer ticket
- Title
- Serve product descriptions in the initial HTML
- Problem
- Descriptions load from a script after the page renders. They are missing from the HTML that crawlers receive.
- Evidence
- Raw HTML and rendered HTML compared on 12 product pages. All 12 lack the description in the raw HTML.
- Change
- Render the description on the server in the product template.
- Done when
- The description appears in the page source on all product pages, and a re-crawl confirms it.
- Effort
- Half a day
The tickets are specified by someone who builds websites, so they describe a change your developers can make.
How much a technical SEO agency costs
On Google's AI Overview for this search quoted UK retainers of £1,000 to £5,000 or more a month, and £3,000 to £15,000 for a site migration. None of the four UK technical SEO pages we read that day published a figure of its own.
We agree a fixed scope and fee in writing after a discovery call. A one-off technical audit is priced by the size of the site and the number of page types.
What we will not promise
Rankings from a technical fix alone. Technical work removes what is in the way. Content and authority still decide where you rank.
That speed gets you cited. We fix speed because it matters to people and to Google. We do not claim it changes what an AI assistant cites.
A special file for AI. Google says its AI features need no new files or markup. We will not sell you one as a result.1
How we measure it
We record the state of each fault before and after the fix: how many pages are crawlable, rendered and indexed, and your Core Web Vitals by page type. Changes show in Search Console once your pages are recrawled. Where technical work is part of a programme, the 50-prompt set is also run in five assistants each month. You can then see whether an assistant that could not read a page before now cites it.
Terms, in plain words
- First programme
- 90 days. Long enough to audit, fix the foundations and measure the first change.
- After that
- Month to month. You can stop with 30 days' notice.
- Who owns the work
- You do. Everything we produce is yours, including your prompt set and its results.
- Fee
- Agreed in writing, with the scope, before any work starts.
- Who you deal with
- Our founders, who lead the work and have more than seven years in SEO.
Questions
What does a technical SEO agency do?
It makes sure search engines and AI crawlers can crawl, render and index your pages. That covers robots.txt and sitemaps, JavaScript rendering, canonical and noindex tags, page speed, internal links, structured data and site migrations.
What is the difference between SEO and technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the part of SEO that deals with how a site is built and served. The other parts are content, meaning what your pages say, and authority, meaning who links to and mentions you.
How much does a technical SEO agency cost?
When we checked on , Google's AI Overview quoted UK retainers of £1,000 to £5,000 or more a month. We agree a fixed scope and fee in writing after a discovery call.
Does technical SEO affect AI Overviews and ChatGPT?
Yes. A page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in Google's AI features, and ChatGPT search relies on its own crawler being allowed to reach you.12
Should we block AI crawlers?
That is your decision, and the crawlers are separate. OpenAI says blocking GPTBot stops your content being used for training and does not affect ChatGPT search, which uses OAI-SearchBot. We show you what each rule does before you decide.2
Do we need an llms.txt file?
Not for Google. Google says you do not need new machine-readable files or AI text files for its AI features. It costs little to add one, but we will not present it as a result.1
Do you need access to our code?
No. We need read access to Search Console and a crawl of the public site. Your developers make the changes from our tickets, and we check each one once it is live.
Do you handle site migrations?
Yes. We build the redirect map, check the new site before launch and report on indexing and traffic afterwards.
Related guides
Sources
- Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search. Last updated . Opened .
- OpenAI. Overview of OpenAI crawlers. Opened .
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