Technical SEO Guide

Date

19.12.22

Rather than just provide an automated crawl report on the errors and warnings of SEO issues that exist I can manage the technical SEO process. From investigating the causes of the errors to implementing the fixes onsite or tasking up to your tech team, the process is thorough and provides you with total control on budget/time spent.

Freelance
technical seo

This article is intended to be a Technical SEO Guide for the SME. I identify the most common types of website errors that are within the remit of Technical SEO and what audits and investigation are wise to perform prior to taking any steps.

I am a specialist SEO freelancer available to work remotely or on location to assist in finding and researching the technical problems stopping your site from ranking or achieving the visibility and site scores that it should. I also work for digital agencies and, for larger projects can provide and organise the necessary pitch, presentation and audits required for board approval or assist with the Tender process for potential new agency contracts.

What is technical SEO ?

Site speed and performance issues
Meta tags and structured data
Images and optimisation of code
Alt tags and titles
Internal links summary
Cannibalisation
Structure and logical directory architecture
Duplicate Content

Html to text ratios
Redirects
Broken Links
URL parameters
Scripting and Indexing errors
Responsive and CSS problems
Unminified Code
Security elements

There are more elements to this, however, the points above are a good starting place to identify any technical SEO issues affecting indexability and issues and if maintained in good order should help you to achieve a healthy site score.

I will also include GA4 compatibility in this list as it will cause problems if your site is not ready for GA4 for most people when it comes to site performance reporting.

What's Included
Technical SEO Audit

Enhancing Your Technical Performance

Rather than simply generating an automated crawl report highlighting SEO errors and warnings, I actively manage the technical SEO process. With experience working both within an agency and alongside clients, I possess the ability to coordinate effectively with internal teams and external contractors to navigate the complexities of technical SEO.

It’s not just about fixing errors and leaving them; technical SEO requires a detailed 2-3 month investigation to thoroughly identify and group issues into ‘batches.’ These could be collections of URL types, coding issues affecting multiple site changes, or broader structural problems. I go beyond the report to find actionable solutions, ensuring each problem is addressed effectively.

WordPress: SEO and Recent Advances

For WordPress sites, recent advances in page speed optimization, such as improved lazy loading, CSS and JavaScript minification, and efficient image handling through WebP, can make a significant difference. I have the capability to directly implement these fixes in a WordPress staging environment, allowing for thorough testing and internal sign-off. For non-WordPress platforms, I coordinate with agencies or development teams using preferred project management platforms or create detailed task lists to guide them through the process.

Initial Audit and Competitor Analysis

A new project typically begins with a comprehensive audit that goes beyond the basics. I delve into the technical setup, site architecture, and detailed findings from crawl reports. With the recent Google Helpful Content Update (HCU), technical SEO now plays a vital role in ensuring that your site meets these updated guidelines, such as providing high-quality, relevant schema markup, and maintaining an organised, user-friendly site structure.

In addition to technical factors, I conduct an in-depth content analysis to identify the keywords you currently rank for, those you should target, and those your competitors are targeting. This includes uncovering content gaps, opportunities for improvement, and aligning your SEO strategy with the most effective content practices.

Audit Findings and Recommendations

My audits encompass detailed insights into backlinks, visual traffic flow, and competitive comparisons. I provide visualizations showing where your traffic originates—whether it’s brand-related, content groups, or specific landing pages—and how these compare to your competitors. You’ll receive a breakdown of anchor text usage, identifying issues with overly generic, ‘naked,’ or ‘brand’ anchors, which often signal a need for diversification to improve your SEO health.

Furthermore, by leveraging structured data and schema markup, I ensure that your content aligns with the latest search engine expectations, enhancing your visibility and engagement in search results.

Determining Technical SEO Requirements and Fees

Based on these audits, I can accurately identify the level of technical work needed before optimising your site and its content. From URL restructuring to enhancing internal linking and implementing advanced schema, my approach ensures that your website is well-prepared to rank competitively.

Comprehensive SEO Service

Should you accept the proposed fees, I offer a full range of SEO services, including the potential involvement of additional specialists. As your technical SEO lead, I will manage the project to ensure every element—whether content, backlink strategy, page speed optimization, or schema markup—is executed to the highest standard and within the required timeframe.

Providing a Complete Digital Experience

What sets me apart is my ability to provide a holistic digital service, combining creative, data analytics, technical expertise, and campaign management into a cohesive strategy. This means I don’t just drive traffic; I offer strategic insights, implement site functionality improvements, and develop campaign strategies that align with your business objectives, ensuring long-term competitiveness and relevance in your industry.

Technical SEO Guide
And other Frequently asked Questions

When do I hire additional support?

The reasons are generally unique to the site, however, it will be to ensure the right specialist can take ownership and to ensure that there is an appropriate resource assigned to the task in question – if for example, you need specialist content writing or industry-specific link-building or perhaps you have a hard coded website that requires php specialists to work on improving the structural elements or hard coded elements, removing obsolete url parameters and similar site specific code elements.

Are your fees per project or hourly – do they include the work of other specialists?

My Quotes are provided per project and where possible are priced on the delivery of project unique deliverables, however, often, especially the case with technical SEO it is difficult to estimate the exact time when tackling this type of work for the first time, there is often much technical debt built-up over the years. Additionally, the structure of each site is so different, the true extent of what is causing an error or warning may not be identifiable until work has been spent looking into the issue – much the same as when renovating an old house, the cause may not be evident until an investigation or survey (in this case audit) has been completed. In summary – for technical SEO you should expect to have a period of 3 months of time-priced work which can be dovetailed into your existing Dev/Host set-up or completed completely remotely with the appropriate c-panel permissions provided. Any instance of additional specialists being required, these will be advised at the quoting stage or in advance of any work being completed and options provided to suit your circumstances.

Can you work with my existing Web Dev team?

Yes, I can – however, it will need to be factored into the pricing, often, web development teams are not specialists in SEO and therefore the additional time and resource they will need to put aside to action the reports and findings is often an additional cost. I can help with these negotiations and also advise on areas that are widely considered to be site-faults – ie – things that the dev team have perhaps over-looked in their management and hosting fees and packages and ensure this work is completed as part of your existing contract. I can also advise on what sort of hourly input should be required to implement the desired SEO on a retained or SLA agreement.

How to report on improvements and performance?

Generally speaking there are base metrics that are generally considered to be indicators of site health – these would include for example broken links and meta, broken backlinks, broken images, large-unoptimized images etc etc. A breakdown of the site health is easily reportable on and will be provided on a monthly on-going basis. In terms of content SEO, I generally report on these statistics in sections. But essentially you should be aiming for the majority of your site pages to be error free, that is without any warnings or issues. Additionally, grouping content into topics and keywords into pools. The performance of these key areas of content are readily reportable on from their SERPS positions and also the conversion value, I am a digital marketer and understand the importance of ensuring it isn’t just swathes of traffic coming to your site, and it is actually traffic that will and can convert. I also have tracking and tagging experience and can provide the necessary GA4 and GTM tracking solutions to allow you to monitor site performance and if you wish turn these into KPIs along-side the traffic volumes.

How Much does Technical SEO cost?

I am hoping the answers here provide you with some sort of indication of the type of work involved. If you are in a position of having completed an audit and implemented the fixes, you are generally looking for retained technical SEO to be managed and monitored then you should expect to pay £750-£2500 per month depending on how complicated the site databases and the amount of internal content generated. A SME with a turnover above a Million should expect to pay somewhere in the region of £4,000-£15,000 for an audit plus expect a 3 month period of managed technical SEO implementations, at the end of this period it would be the aim for the majority of the technical fixes be implemented and a QC process in place to ensure no spiraling errors are occurring.

What is Content SEO?

Content SEO is the process of analysing performance on topics and producing the right, topical content to advance the performance of the site in total and also to achieve and advance positions in SERPS to the 1st page. It is more of a marketing exercise, more closely related to campaigns and landing pages, profiling and competitor analysis. I have personally developed a SEO colour-wheel theory to provide visual explanation of this process and its relationship to the core business activities and real business conversions. In terms of content SEO, I generally report on these statistics in sections. Grouping content into topics and keywords into pools. The performance of these key areas of content are readily reportable on from their SERPS positions and also the conversion value, I am a specialist digital marketer and understand the importance of ensuring it isn’t just swathes of traffic coming to your site, and it is actually traffic that will and can convert. I also have tracking and tagging experience and can provide the necessary GA4 and GTM tracking solutions to allow you to monitor site performance and if you wish turn these into KPIs along-side the traffic volumes.

content SEO

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