What a technical SEO foundation is and what it is not
Technical SEO is the part of search engine optimisation that has nothing to do with content. It is about how your site is constructed: how search engines can crawl it, how pages are structured, and whether the signals Google uses to understand your site are correctly in place.
That sounds abstract. Concretely it comes down to this: does every page have a unique title tag? Does Google know which version of a page is the canonical one? Do English-speaking visitors get the correct locale served? Is there a valid structured data block on your homepage that explains who you are and what you do? These are the baseline questions. If the answer is no to more than two of them, your site has a foundation problem.
Technical SEO is not a substitute for good content. It is the layer beneath it. Without that layer, content performs worse even if it is strong in substance. With that layer in order, every content investment delivers more.
The difference between technical SEO, content SEO and off-page SEO
SEO has three layers. Content SEO is about what you write: the keywords you target, the depth of your pages, the internal structure of your texts. Off-page SEO is about what other sites say about you: backlinks, references, domain authority.
Technical SEO is the third layer. It determines whether the first two layers produce a return. A site with strong backlinks but a broken sitemap wastes crawl budget. A page with excellent content but duplicate title tags loses relevance signals. Technical SEO is the infrastructure on which everything else rests.
I deliberately position this as a separate engagement. I do not write content for you and I do not run link-building campaigns. What I do: make sure the technical foundation is correct so that your content and off-page efforts do not leak.
What I build: the complete foundation pass
A foundation pass covers the following components. For each one I deliver a working implementation, not an advisory report.
- ▸sitemap.xml: dynamically generated per locale, correctly paginated for larger sites, submitted to Google Search Console.
- ▸robots.txt: configured to ensure crawlers reach essential paths while staging environments and admin URLs remain blocked.
- ▸hreflang tags: correctly set per page for all active locales, so Google serves the right language version to the right visitor.
- ▸Canonical tags: present on every page, correctly pointing to the preferred URL, without conflicts between www/non-www or trailing slash variants.
- ▸Schema.org JSON-LD: Organization, LocalBusiness, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage and Service types depending on your site type.
- ▸Meta tags template: title tag (max 60 characters, unique per page) and meta description (max 155 characters) as a reusable pattern for all page types.
- ▸OG tags: Open Graph and Twitter Card tags for correct link previews on social media and in messaging apps.
- ▸Internal linking architecture: connections between category, service and blog pages that distribute link equity to the pages you want to rank.
- ▸llms.txt: a structured overview document that tells AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity what your site is, what you do, and which pages are most informative.
After delivery I provide documentation of what is in place and why, so you know what you have and how to maintain it.
Structured data: why Schema.org JSON-LD makes the difference
Google uses structured data to understand what a page describes, independent of the text on it. A page with a correct FAQPage schema can receive a FAQ rich snippet directly in search results, which raises click-through rate without any change in position. A LocalBusiness schema creates the connection between your site and your Google Business Profile.
The types I implement depending on your situation:
- ▸Organization: name, logo, contact details, social profiles, sameAs links to external sources.
- ▸LocalBusiness (or subtype such as ProfessionalService): address, opening hours, geo-coordinates for local search results.
- ▸WebSite: sitelinks search box, canonical URL of the homepage.
- ▸BreadcrumbList: navigation structure that Google and AI tools use as context.
- ▸FAQPage: frequently asked questions as a rich snippet, increases visibility without changing position.
- ▸Service or ProductService: description of what you offer, including price range where relevant.
Structured data is not optional for AI-citation readiness. Both ChatGPT and Perplexity draw on schema-marked content for factual answers. Without that markup your site is less citable, even if the content is strong.
AI-citation readiness: being found in ChatGPT and Perplexity
Search behaviour is changing. Alongside Google, people now retrieve information from AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Bing Copilot. Those tools crawl the web and cite sources. When your site is correctly structured, that increases the chance of those tools citing you in answer to questions relevant to your services.
llms.txt is an emerging standard: a simple text file at the root of your domain that tells AI crawlers what your site is, what you do, and which pages are most informative. It is comparable to robots.txt but aimed at LLM crawlers. I set up that file as part of the foundation pass.
Beyond that: clean HTML semantics, correct heading hierarchy (H1 unique per page, H2 structures the content), and structured data that explains the context. Those are the three pillars of AI readability. Without them your pages are neither citable nor verifiable for an LLM.
-- Client case
From 12 to 380 ranked keywords after a foundation pass
A Twente-based office furniture wholesaler had a site that looked good but was barely visible in Google. The sitemap had not been submitted to Search Console, the hreflang implementation was missing for the English product pages, and the title tags on 40 percent of pages were identical to the homepage title.
After the foundation pass the measurements were as follows:
The fixes were exclusively technical: sitemap submitted, hreflang added to all product pages, title tags made unique per page, canonical tags corrected, and an Organization plus BreadcrumbList schema added. No new content was written and no backlinks were built. The growth is entirely attributable to making what was already there work correctly.
What I typically find at an existing site
At most sites that come to me for a foundation audit, these are the recurring issues:
- ▸Identical or missing title tags: multiple pages share the same title, so Google cannot determine which to rank for which keyword.
- ▸Canonicalisation errors: www and non-www, trailing slash and no trailing slash, and HTTP and HTTPS exist as separate URLs without a canonical indicating the preferred one.
- ▸Missing or incorrect hreflang: multilingual sites without hreflang serve the wrong language version to the wrong region, resulting in lower CTR.
- ▸robots.txt blocking essential paths: staging configurations copied to production sometimes block the entire CSS or JS directory from crawlers.
- ▸Schema validation errors: structured data present but with required fields missing, so Google ignores the block.
- ▸Internal linking that leaks link equity: pages without incoming internal links are not crawled or do not rank, even if the content is strong.
Each of these problems is solvable. Together they explain why a site underperforms despite time and money having been invested in content and design.
Pricing and what you get
A foundation pass is a one-time investment. The amount depends on the size of your site, the number of locales and whether a partial implementation already exists that I need to audit and correct.
Custom engagements for larger sites or multiple domains on request. Price after initial call and scoping.