Technical SEO Freelancer — Fix the Foundations Costing You Google Rankings and AI Visibility
You can write excellent content and earn strong backlinks and still sit on page three if the technical foundations of your site are broken. In 2026, the same technical issues that hurt your Google rankings are also blocking AI crawlers from reading your site. Crawl errors, slow page speed, duplicate content, indexation failures and misconfigured robots.txt files silently undo everything else you are investing in SEO.
Why Technical SEO Is the Foundation Everything Else Depends On in 2026
Most SEO problems that look like content problems or link problems are actually technical problems in disguise. A page that should be ranking on page one but sits on page three despite strong content and backlinks often has a technical issue at the root: a crawl budget problem limiting how often Google visits it, a canonical tag pointing authority to the wrong URL, or a render-blocking script delaying how quickly the page loads for Googlebot.
In 2026 there is a second dimension that most technical SEO work is not covering. The same robots.txt files, noindex tags and server configurations that affect Google crawling are now also affecting whether AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can read and cite your site. Many sites written before 2024 are accidentally blocking AI crawlers entirely. Your site may be ranking on Google but completely invisible to AI search at the same time.
I audit, diagnose and fix technical SEO issues across every type of site: WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, headless builds, JavaScript-heavy SPAs and custom CMS platforms. Every finding comes with a clear explanation of what the issue is, why it matters and exactly what needs to be done to resolve it, either by your developer or directly by me with CMS access.
What Technical SEO Covers
Technical SEO is not a single fix. It is a layered set of disciplines that all contribute to how well search engines and AI systems can find, crawl, render and rank your pages. Here is what the audit and implementation covers.
AI Crawler Access Audit
A dedicated check of whether AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can access and read your site. Many sites written before 2024 have robots.txt rules that block these bots entirely, making the site invisible to AI search regardless of how good the content is. This audit identifies every AI crawler access issue and provides the exact robots.txt changes needed to fix them.
Full Site Crawl Analysis
A deep crawl of your entire site using professional tools, cross-referenced with your Google Search Console data. This uncovers crawl errors, redirect chains that waste crawl budget, orphaned pages with no internal links pointing to them and pages Google is visiting but cannot properly render or index. The crawl is the starting point that every other technical finding builds on.
Indexation Audit
Not everything on your site should be indexed, and not everything that should be indexed actually is. Pages incorrectly excluded from Google’s index due to noindex tags, canonical errors or crawl blocks are identified alongside pages that should be excluded but are not, including duplicate content, thin pages and parameter URLs that waste crawl budget and dilute ranking signals.
Core Web Vitals and Page Speed
Page experience is a confirmed Google ranking factor. LCP, CLS and INP scores are measured across mobile and desktop, the specific causes of any failures are identified and you receive a prioritised list of fixes your developer can implement to bring scores within Google’s recommended thresholds. Faster pages rank better and convert better at the same time.
Redirect and Canonical Audit
Redirect chains, redirect loops and incorrect canonical tags are some of the most common and damaging technical SEO issues. They waste crawl budget, dilute the link equity passing through your site and confuse Google about which version of a page should rank. Every redirect and canonical issue across your site is identified and resolved so authority flows cleanly to the pages that need it.
Structured Data and Schema Markup
Properly implemented schema markup enables rich results in Google’s SERPs including FAQ dropdowns, breadcrumb navigation and product pricing. These rich results improve click-through rates significantly compared to standard organic listings. Schema also helps AI systems understand and extract your content more accurately. Structured data is implemented, tested and validated across your site’s most important page types.
XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
Your sitemap tells Google what you want it to crawl. Your robots.txt tells it what to avoid. Both are easy to misconfigure in ways with significant consequences: sitemaps pointing to redirected or noindexed URLs, robots.txt files accidentally blocking sections of your site or blocking AI crawlers you actually want to allow. Both are audited and corrected so crawl budget is spent exactly where you need it and AI systems can read your content.
How Technical SEO Gets Done
Technical SEO needs to be systematic. Random fixes applied without a clear picture of the full issue landscape often solve one problem while missing five others. Here is how I approach it.
Technical Crawl, Audit and AI Access Check
A comprehensive site crawl is run using professional tools alongside a review of your Google Search Console data, Core Web Vitals report and any existing analytics anomalies. An AI crawler access check is also run, reviewing your robots.txt and server headers against the known user-agent strings of GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI systems. This gives a complete picture of every technical issue affecting your site across both Google and AI search.
Prioritised Fix List
Every issue found in the audit is categorised by severity and ranked by its likely impact on your rankings. Critical issues that are actively suppressing pages or blocking AI crawlers are flagged for immediate action. Lower-priority improvements are documented separately so your team can address them in order without being overwhelmed. You always know what to fix first and why, rather than facing an undifferentiated list of issues.
Implementation
Fixes can be implemented directly within your CMS given appropriate access, or developer-ready specifications are delivered with screenshots, Loom video walkthroughs and precise technical instructions your development team can act on without needing to come back with questions. For issues that require both approaches, what can be handled directly is handled, and the rest is handed off with complete context.
Verification and Ongoing Monitoring
Once fixes are implemented each one is verified as working correctly using Search Console, crawl validation and where relevant Google’s rich result testing tools. Ongoing monitoring is also set up so that new technical issues are caught quickly rather than discovered months later after they have already suppressed rankings. Technical SEO is not a one-time task and the sites that stay technically healthy are the ones with a process for catching problems early.
Questions People Ask About Technical SEO
Do you fix AI crawler access as part of technical SEO?
Yes. In 2026, technical SEO includes making sure AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can access your site. Many sites are accidentally blocking these bots through robots.txt rules written before AI search existed. A technical audit now covers both Google crawlability and AI crawler access as standard.
Do I need a developer to fix technical SEO issues?
It depends on the specific issues found. Many fixes can be made directly in your CMS without any developer involvement: updating robots.txt, fixing canonical tags, correcting sitemap errors, adding structured data via a plugin and adjusting noindex settings. Others such as render-blocking script removal or Core Web Vitals improvements on custom-built pages do require developer time. Every finding clearly states which category it falls into, along with ready-to-use specifications for the developer work.
How do you deliver your technical recommendations?
You receive a detailed written report documenting every issue with screenshots showing exactly where the problem exists and what the correct state should look like. For developer-facing fixes, specification sheets are provided in language a developer can action without needing further clarification. Complex issues are accompanied by Loom video walkthroughs explaining the problem, the cause and the solution in plain terms.
Do you work with headless or JavaScript-heavy sites?
Yes. JavaScript rendering is one of the most misunderstood areas of technical SEO and one where a lot of sites have significant hidden problems. Single-page applications and JavaScript-rendered content can appear perfectly functional in a browser while being partially or completely invisible to Googlebot. The audit covers how your site renders for search engines specifically and identifies any content or links that are not being properly crawled or indexed as a result of JavaScript rendering issues.
How long does a technical SEO audit take?
Most sites are audited and delivered within five to seven business days from the point access is granted. Larger enterprise sites with complex architectures, thousands of pages or heavily customised technical configurations may take longer. If you have a specific timeline, let me know when you get in touch and I will confirm whether I can accommodate it before we begin.
My site seems to work fine. How do I know if I have technical SEO problems?
A site that works fine for human visitors can have significant technical SEO problems that are invisible to anyone browsing it normally. Googlebot cannot execute all JavaScript, has a limited crawl budget and processes pages differently depending on how they are served. AI crawlers have the same constraints. Many of the most damaging issues including crawl budget waste, partial indexation failures, authority dilution from redirect chains and accidental AI crawler blocks produce no visible symptoms in the browser. The only way to know for certain is to audit.
Find Out What Is Silently Holding Your Site Back on Google and in AI Search
Book a free technical SEO consultation. I will take a look at your site and give you an honest initial view of the most likely technical issues and what fixing them could mean for your rankings and AI search visibility.
Fix Your Technical SEO →