First Rank identified 47 critical technical issues our previous agency completely missed. They fixed our page speed from 4.2 seconds to 1.1 seconds, resolved duplicate content problems, and implemented proper schema markup. Organic traffic increased 312% in just 4 months. Their technical audit was worth every penny.
Our site was plagued with JavaScript rendering issues that prevented Google from seeing most of our content. First Rank implemented dynamic rendering, optimized our Core Web Vitals scores from red to green, and fixed thousands of broken internal links. We went from barely ranking to page one for 23 high-value keywords.
We had a massive crawl budget problem with Google wasting resources on useless pages. First Rank cleaned up our site architecture, fixed our XML sitemaps, optimized robots.txt, and eliminated redirect chains. Our important pages are now crawled daily instead of monthly. Rankings improved across the board within 90 days.
Technical SEO encompasses all the behind-the-scenes optimizations that enable search engines to effectively crawl, understand, index, and rank your website. While on-page SEO focuses on content and off-page SEO builds authority through backlinks, technical SEO ensures the foundation is solid enough to support those efforts.
Think of technical SEO as the plumbing and electrical systems of a house. You don't see them, but without them, nothing else works. A beautifully designed website with exceptional content will fail to rank if it has technical problems that prevent Google from accessing, understanding, or delivering that content to users.
Site Speed & Core Web Vitals: Google uses page experience as a ranking factor, measured through Core Web Vitals—Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Sites that load quickly and provide smooth user experiences rank higher and retain more visitors. Slow sites lose rankings and users—53% of mobile visitors abandon sites that take over 3 seconds to load.
Crawlability & Indexation: Before Google can rank your pages, it must first discover them (crawling) and add them to its index (indexation). Issues with robots.txt, XML sitemaps, internal linking, or crawl budget can prevent important pages from being indexed. We ensure every valuable page on your site can be crawled and indexed efficiently.
Site Architecture: Logical site structure with clear category hierarchies, shallow click depth, and strategic internal linking helps search engines understand your site's organization and distributes PageRank effectively. Poor architecture creates orphaned pages, crawler traps, and diluted authority.
Mobile Optimization: Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your content for indexing and ranking. If your mobile site has issues—slow loading, poor usability, hidden content—your entire site's rankings suffer regardless of how good your desktop experience is.
Structured Data: Schema markup provides explicit context about your content's meaning and relationships. It enables rich snippets (star ratings, FAQs, recipes, events) in search results, improves click-through rates, and helps search engines understand entities and concepts on your pages.
JavaScript Rendering: Modern websites often rely heavily on JavaScript frameworks like React or Angular. If not implemented properly, JavaScript can prevent search engines from seeing your content. We ensure Googlebot can render and index your JavaScript-generated content through server-side rendering, dynamic rendering, or hybrid approaches.
Our technical SEO services integrate with your broader digital strategy, including generative engine optimization to ensure AI search platforms can access and understand your content, and local SEO technical elements like LocalBusiness schema and location page optimization.
Through hundreds of technical audits, we've identified recurring patterns of issues that plague websites across industries. Here are the most common technical SEO problems we encounter and resolve:
Large sites often waste crawl budget on low-value pages—faceted navigation, session IDs, pagination parameters, or thin content pages—leaving important pages under-crawled. We analyze server logs to identify crawl waste and implement URL parameter handling, strategic noindex tags, and robots.txt rules to redirect Googlebot's attention to your most valuable content.
Every redirect adds latency and wastes crawl budget. Redirect chains (A→B→C) and loops (A→B→A) harm user experience and dilute PageRank. We audit all redirects, flatten chains to direct 301s, eliminate loops, and ensure efficient URL resolution.
Duplicate content from URL parameters, HTTP/HTTPS variants, www/non-www versions, or syndicated content dilutes rankings and confuses search engines about which version to index. We implement proper canonical tags, resolve duplicate content at the source, and consolidate ranking signals to a single authoritative URL.
Broken links waste crawl budget and harm user experience. Orphaned pages (pages with no internal links pointing to them) may never be discovered by search engines. We fix all broken links and ensure strategic internal linking connects every important page within 3 clicks of the homepage.
XML sitemaps should contain only indexable, valuable URLs—yet we frequently find sitemaps bloated with noindexed pages, redirects, 404s, or low-quality content. We clean and optimize sitemaps to guide search engines exclusively to your best content.
Missing schema markup means missed opportunities for rich snippets and enhanced SERP visibility. Incorrect implementation can trigger errors or even manual actions. We implement clean, validated JSON-LD markup that passes Google's Rich Results Test and unlocks enhanced search features.
Small fonts, touch elements too close together, content wider than the screen, and slow mobile page speed all trigger mobile usability errors that harm rankings. We audit mobile experience comprehensively and resolve every usability issue flagged by Google Search Console.
High Time to First Byte indicates server performance issues that harm Core Web Vitals. We optimize server configurations, implement caching strategies, upgrade hosting when necessary, and configure CDNs to minimize TTFB globally.
Meet the technical SEO specialists, developers, and data analysts behind First Rank's technical SEO success. Our team has audited over 800 websites, resolved thousands of critical technical issues, and helped clients recover from algorithm penalties and traffic losses caused by technical problems.
