Technical SEO
The checks and fixes that let search engines and AI crawlers reach, read, render, and trust your pages: crawl access, indexing, speed, mobile usability, redirects, and structured data, verified on the live site and reported with evidence.
Google Search & Maps · AI Overviews & AI Mode · Gemini · ChatGPT Search · Perplexity · Copilot
Dental-only agency · Austin office, by appointment · You own every account · No guaranteed rankings or citations, only documented results
Content and reviews do not matter if Google cannot index the page, if the mobile version takes six seconds to load, if an old redirect chain loses half the link value, or if the structured data describes a provider who left in 2022. Technical SEO is the foundation under everything else we do, and it is checked against the live site, never assumed from source code.
Both traditional search and AI systems depend on the same access layer.
Google states no special AI file is required for its generative features. Access, speed, and valid HTML are what matter.
Every check is run against the live site and reported with the URLs, tools, and results.
Robots directives, status codes, canonicals, sitemaps, soft 404s, orphaned pages, and accidental noindex, with intentional exclusions kept out of the sitemap.
Core Web Vitals in field and lab data, oversized images, unused scripts, excessive DOM and CSS, font loading, and layout shift, fixed without breaking forms or tracking. Critical hero images are not lazy-loaded to satisfy a rule.
Tap targets, overflow, sticky-element overlap, heading wraps, and form behavior on real devices at several widths.
Old URLs mapped and tested, chains removed, HTTPS and preferred host enforced.
Plugin, theme, and custom markup audited; valid Organization, Dentist, provider, location, and service entities with stable IDs and no invented fields or deprecated types. Rich-result eligibility checked separately from vocabulary validity.
CDN, firewall, and security rules checked for Googlebot, Bingbot, and the AI crawlers you allow, verified with official methods rather than a spoofed user-agent, without disabling protections.
Here is the full list, so you can see exactly what is checked and compare it with what you have been told before. Each item is tested on the live site with the URL, tool, and result recorded.
The report marks each finding as observed, inferred, proposed, or not verified. A failed fetch or an empty site-search result is not reported as an outage.
Reachable → Rendered → Indexed → Fast on mobile → Correctly linked → Accurately marked up → Understood as the right practice → Cited
Technical SEO covers the first six. Content and reputation cover the last two. None of it works without the first.
Technical faults rarely announce themselves. These are the symptoms practice owners notice, what usually causes them, and what a first technical sprint fixes.
Lab and field data reported separately, always.
A perfect lab score is not proof of passing field metrics, and a new or low-traffic site may have no field data. We say which is which and we do not promise a permanent 100.
Step 1
Full crawl, Search Console review, performance measurement, markup audit, and crawler access checks.
Step 2
Issues ranked by impact: anything blocking indexing first, then speed, then markup and links.
Step 3
Changes made in batches with a backup, caches cleared carefully, forms and tracking re-tested.
Step 4
Re-crawl, re-measure, and report with the before and after evidence.
How these translate into checks we run.
Usually an indexing block or a canonical pointing elsewhere, sometimes a brand-new domain that has not been crawled, occasionally a security rule returning errors to Googlebot. We check status, robots, canonical, and sitemap for the homepage first, then Search Console coverage, and report exactly what we found.
Lab scores and field data measure different things. A tool runs one simulated load on a fast connection; real patients load the page on a mid-range phone on a weak signal. We measure real-user Core Web Vitals at the 75th percentile where they exist and fix what they show, typically image weight, scripts from abandoned plugins, and font loading.
Google retired FAQ rich results in 2026, so eligibility messages about FAQ markup are expected and not a defect. We check vocabulary validity separately with the Schema.org validator, keep helpful visible Q&A on the page, and remove any markup that conflicts with another emitter.
A stale source somewhere: old markup, a directory listing, a cached page, or a profile nobody updated. We find the origin rather than guessing, correct it there, and re-test the assistant with the same prompt so the fix is observed rather than assumed.
Pages with traffic or links are mapped individually to their best new equivalent; the rest are redirected sensibly by section. We test the whole map before and after launch, remove chains and loops, and keep the map as documentation.
For ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot access for search discovery is separate from GPTBot training preferences, and we configure each according to your choice. Google controls for Search and for other Gemini uses are checked separately rather than assuming one switch governs everything, and we verify the result with official methods.
What practice owners ask us about the technical side.
Crawl and index access, mobile usability and performance, working forms and consultation paths, consistent business and location information, and accurate structured data, each tested on the live site with synthetic data and recorded results.
Google retired FAQ rich results in 2026. Helpful visible Q&A still matters; the markup is optional and we never claim it guarantees anything.
No. DentalBusiness is not a defined Schema.org type. A dental practice uses Dentist where appropriate. ProfessionalService is deprecated and we avoid it in new markup.
No. We tune, we do not disable protections or unrelated functionality to move a score.
It does not improve Google Search visibility. We can maintain one for a system that reads it, but it is not a ranking or citation mechanism.
With official verification methods for each bot and with server logs where available. A spoofed user-agent test alone proves nothing.
They can if done carelessly. We re-test forms, calls, and tags after every batch and keep a backup to revert to.
A standalone audit and fix is quoted as a fixed project; technical work is also included in every Dental SEO engagement.
Partly. We reduce what the page asks the server to do, but if the hosting itself is the bottleneck we say so and recommend a move, with a migration plan.
Yes, with a full URL map, redirects tested before and after, and indexing and rankings monitored through the change.
A new site has no field data yet. We optimize lab metrics, launch, and report field data as it accumulates, without claiming a pass we cannot see.
Quarterly for most practices, and after any plugin, theme, or hosting change. Problems appear quietly and cost patients before anyone notices.
Talk with our team about your practice. Austin office by appointment, video consultations across the region. Call (512) 631-9606 or request a consultation.
The free audit includes crawl, index, mobile, and structured data checks with the observed results. No cost, no obligation.