Search engines will not reward your business for writing good content alone. Search engines reward businesses that write good content that is also easy to discover, crawl, and read. This is the gap that a technical SEO agency fills. Your business probably invests a lot of money in writing blogs, creating landing pages, and building backlinks. But all that work goes to waste if your site has crawl errors, has long load times, and has broken indexing. All of that content is just words to a technical SEO consulting partner. They will fix the gaps that your business is relying on to rank your site fairly.
This will explain the work of a technical SEO agency, why audits are important, and help you decide if an agency, a technical SEO company, or a freelance technical SEO consultant is best for you.
What Is a Technical SEO Agency?
A technical SEO agency focuses on the health of a site’s back end and not so much on keyword research or writing content. They will look at crawlability, how a site is structured, how a site is indexed, structured data, and how the Core Web Vitals are impacted. They also look at mobile usability and JS rendering.
While a typical SEO provider will look at content and links, a technical SEO company will look at server responses, chains of redirects, canonical tags, XML sitemaps, and log files. Bots that crawl your site also need to be able to do that for every important page a site may have.
For certain businesses, such as those with extensive catalogs, having a presence on multiple marketplaces, having a SaaS platform, or having older websites that have undergone several redesigns, the untapped ranking potential of this technical layer is greater than the potential from another round of blog posts.
Importance of Technical SEO
In recent years, search engines have become more discerning about which web pages they elect to crawl and index. They have a limited budget for crawling larger websites. Any crawl activity that is wasted on broken links, duplicate pages, or slow scripts frustrates search engines, as it takes the focus away from the significant web pages.
Several factors have contributed to the increasing importance of technical SEO.
- Core Web Vitals that measure real user experiences are now part of ranking SEO.
- With mobile-first indexing, search engines will evaluate the mobile version of the webpage first.
- JavaScript-heavy frameworks can render content invisible to crawlers.
- Redesigns and migrations of websites can disrupt links, page redirects, or canonical links.
Technical SEO has the most measurable impact in this situation. It allows for the identification of issues that are buried in code, server configuration, or crawl data. These are issues that content and general-sector marketers fail to address.
Technical SEO Audit Scope
A proper technical SEO audit performed by an agency will cover much more than a cursory scan of your website with a plugin. Several layers of a website will be evaluated during this audit.
Crawlability and Indexation
To verify that search engines access and index the proper pages and determine that search engines aren’t wasting effort on low-value or duplicate URLs, the agency examines the robots.txt, XML sitemaps, crawl logs, and index coverage reports.
Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Search engines use a logical URL and internal linking pattern to determine which pages are most important to a site. Poor architecture hides important pages several clicks deep and diminishes their authority.
Core Web Vitals and Page Speed
Analysis here will determine if a site meets Google’s criteria for server response time and visual stability. Unresponsive servers and optimized images, along with render-blocking scripts, are common culprits identified.
Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data allows search engines to assess the quality of content at the level of entities, products, articles, and reviews, thereby improving a page’s eligibility for rich results in search listings.
JavaScript SEO and Rendering
For sites built on modern frameworks, the audit verifies that client-side JavaScript rendering is done correctly, since JavaScript SEO that is done improperly can render large sections of a page invisible to search engines.
Redirects, Canonicals, and Duplicate Content
Ranking signals are diminished by redirect chains that are broken, canonical tags that are inconsistent, and duplicate content across different parameters or subdomains. A comprehensive audit maps and corrects these.
Technical SEO Agency vs Technical SEO Company vs Freelance Technical SEO Consultant
Most companies choose between these three options, and each has its own tradeoffs that must be understood.
Technical SEO agency: Usually has a full team with specialties in crawling, developing, analytics, and reporting. This suits larger sites, ecommerce platforms, or companies that need ongoing technical SEO consulting and support rather than a one-off service.
Technical SEO company: Although used synonymously with agency, some technical SEO companies take a more narrow focus, working on technical audits and implementation only, as opposed to the full spectrum of marketing services.
Freelance technical SEO consultant: This option works well for smaller sites or companies that need to stick to a budget. A freelance technical SEO consultant is great for a focused audit or a specific migration, but likely has less capacity compared to a full work unit.
The size of your site, the resources you develop in-house, and whether you need a one-off audit or ongoing technical support help you decide which option works best.
What Technical SEO Consultants Typically Offer
Most technical SEO consulting projects have similar deliverables in spite of the provider being a large agency versus a sole consultant.
List of services included:
- Technical SEO audit with a list of prioritized issues
- Migration assistance
- Core Web Vitals and page speed optimization
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals optimization
- Structured data for rich results
- Hreflang and international SEO
- List of issues identified in regular crawls
- Continuous log analysis
- Required fixes implemented with a focus on correct methodology
Unlike some of our competitors, our reports do not exclusively consist of a list of problems. We rely on our experience and explain the impact of restrictions, if necessary, assisting developers during implementation.
Choosing the Right Technical SEO Consulting Partner
For technical SEO, the vast majority of consulting partners are “one-and-done” types, meaning that the sale often creates more problems than it solves. There are a few introductory questions that allow you to recognize a true technical SEO expert as opposed to a generalist.
- Can they explain the restrictions in common, everyday terms?
- Are they capable of outlining the restrictions in a way that highlights the business impact? This also requires the technical SEO consultant to have an understanding of SEO.
- Is direct interaction with your developer required? Most technical SEO consultants do this.
- Have they worked on similar site types? For example, a technical SEO company that specializes in online retail may not have the skills to work on a SaaS product or a publisher’s site that has millions of pages.
- Do they have any actual results? Real case studies that include a sampling of web crawls and rankings before and after the study are much more useful than a standard customer testimonial.
Indications that Your Website Requires a Technical SEO Audit
There are a few indicators that may suggest a page is having technical issues, which may be hindering site performance.
- Site traffic is declining or stagnant even after new content updates.
- Web pages take multiple seconds to load, especially for mobile users.
- An increasing number of pages are labeled in Google Search Console as “crawled, not indexed.”
- Site traffic decrease is noted after a recent site migration or redesign.
- Duplicate content warnings are displayed across multiple product or category pages.
- Latest Core Web Vitals show failing scores.
If any of the above are true, a technical SEO audit is the best next step before continuing to invest in building out site content or backlinks.
How Technical SEO Supports EEAT
Google’s Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness guidelines consider the quality of content, but they also account for the technical health of a page. A site that has broken pages, takes a long time to load, or blocks important resources from crawlers signals low trust. This is the case no matter how fantastic the content is. Search engines and users value clean site design and construction, secure site connections, structured data that is correct, and sites that are consistently available. Technical SEO Consulting is the foundation of EEAT and truly helps expertise and authority be acknowledged.
Final Thoughts
A technical SEO agency performs the necessary and not-so-glamorous work to make sure that the web pages they are responsible for perform as users expect and as search engines require. Site speed, structured data, clean site design and construction, and crawlability rarely make an appearance in a content calendar. These often determine if content has the opportunity to rank.
It doesn’t matter if a company works with a full-service technical SEO company, an isolated technical SEO company, or an independent freelance technical SEO consultant; the most important factor remains the same. Each of these companies should be responsible for a complete audit, clear ranking and prioritization, and then work closely with the implementers of the technical SEO changes. The goal of all of these companies and efforts is to provide a strong technical foundation on which every other SEO effort will stand to support and allow the other SEO efforts to be most fruitful.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a technical SEO agency do?
A technical SEO agency focuses on backend issues, like site speed and crawlability, and audits and improves website elements so site pages can be evaluated and ranked by search engines.
How is a technical SEO company different from a regular SEO agency?
Regular SEO agencies may work on the content side, like keywords and links, while a technical SEO company focuses on the factors that affect visibility on the search results page on the code and infrastructure side.
Is it worth hiring a freelance technical SEO consultant instead of an agency?
For a smaller site or a migration audit, going with the freelance route is more cost-effective, but for bigger and more complex sites, an agency has more resources and a wider scope that is more beneficial.
How long does a technical SEO audit take?
An initial audit can take one to four weeks, depending on site size, and the number of issues found will determine how long the implementation will take.
How often should a website have a technical SEO audit?
A full audit at least once a year is beneficial for most businesses, with lighter checks after major site changes, redesigns, or migrations.
