Beds.ie · E-commerce
From 672 to 7,781 organic clicks a month
672 → 7,781
Organic clicks / month
Growth · Technical SEO
Technical SEO
By SimonMeasured 4 September 2026
Crawlability, structure, index coverage, speed and structured data — the half of SEO that is engineering, and the half where the largest untouched gains usually are.
Inside a growth block
from £250 /month
A block of hours spent on whatever moves the business — this, and everything else on the growth list. No percentage of your ad spend.
No minimum term. Move up, move down or stop whenever you see fit.
How the growth blocks workWhat you get
What the hours go on.
Crawl and index coverage: what Google can reach, what it has chosen not to keep, and why
Site structure and internal linking, so authority reaches the pages that need it
Speed and Core Web Vitals, measured in the browser rather than scored by a tool
Structured data that matches what the page actually says — and removal of any that does not
Redirects, canonicals and 404 monitoring, especially through a migration
Search Console stored in a database you can query, so the work is measured not argued
Measured, not claimed
What it did for Beds.ie.
A 17,000-product furniture retailer that was effectively invisible in search. Five months of retainer work on catalogue structure, product data and technical SEO took Beds.ie from under 700 organic clicks a month to nearly 8,000 — and monthly revenue more than tripled over the same period.
672 → 7,781
Organic clicks / month
+1,058% · April vs August 2026, full calendar months
Source: Google Search Console via the client's own database
What technical SEO actually covers
Technical SEO is the work of making a site legible to a search engine. It says nothing about whether your content deserves to rank; it decides whether the question can be asked at all. On an older or larger site it is usually where the biggest untouched gains sit, and it is almost always the fastest part of search work to show a result.
- Crawlability. Whether Googlebot can reach your pages at all — robots rules, blocked assets, orphan pages, infinite parameter spaces, and a structure shallow enough that important pages are not eleven clicks deep.
- Index coverage. Which pages Google has kept, which it has crawled and discarded, and which it has never seen. The Search Console coverage report answers this and almost nobody reads it.
- Rendering. Whether the content exists for a crawler that does not execute your JavaScript the way your browser does.
- Structure and internal linking. Whether authority reaches the pages that need it, or pools on a homepage that does not.
- Duplication. The same content reachable at several URLs, variants indexed separately, parameters generating infinite near-copies.
- Speed and stability. The floor under everything, and a conversion factor before it is a ranking one.
- Structured data. Machine-readable statements of what the page is — and never a claim the page does not support.
- Redirects and migrations. The single most common way a site loses half its traffic overnight.
What it did on a 17,000-product catalogue
Beds.ie is the clearest example on this site, because at that scale technical work is the whole job. The range was the asset and the problem: 17,000-plus products that were, in search terms, largely invisible.
| Measure | April | August |
|---|---|---|
| Distinct queries ranking | 5,189 | 24,054 |
| Impressions a month | 38,608 | 282,069 |
| Organic clicks a month | 672 | 7,781 |
| Average position | 17.4 | 12.2 |
Source: Google Search Console
The line that shows this was technical rather than editorial is the first one. Distinct ranking queries went up nearly five-fold without five times the content being written — the pages already existed, and the work made them reachable, distinguishable and legible. Alongside it the Merchant Centre feed reached 94.5% approval, 16,281 of 17,233 items live, because product data and feed validity are the same problem seen from two directions.
Migrations, where this matters most
The classic disaster is a beautiful new site that immediately loses half its search traffic, and it is entirely avoidable. It happens because nobody was made responsible for the URLs.
- Inventory every existing URL before anything is designed. Export from Search Console and from the sitemap, and note which pages actually earn — it is rarely the ones anybody expects.
- Keep URLs identical wherever possible. A page that does not move needs no redirect and loses nothing. Changing URLs for tidiness is the most common self-inflicted wound in this exercise.
- Redirect everything you do change, one to one, to the closest equivalent page. Not all of them to the homepage — that is treated as a soft 404 and throws away exactly what you were protecting.
- Fix your own links so they point at the destination rather than the redirect.
- Keep the content. A redesign that halves the words on a ranking page usually halves what it ranks for.
- Watch Search Console weekly for a month afterwards. A short dip while Google re-crawls is normal; a sustained drop after a month is a fault, and it is nearly always redirects.
This is the one piece of technical work with an asymmetric payoff: done properly it is invisible, and skipped it can cost a business more than the entire build.
What you get, and what an audit is not
A technical audit is cheap to produce and worthless if nobody implements it, which is the usual outcome. The market is full of 90-page PDFs generated by a crawler with the findings sorted by the tool rather than by what they cost you.
What is useful instead: a short list of what is actually wrong, ordered by impact, with the fixes shipped rather than described. On a growth block that is simply what the first month goes on. Where a standalone audit genuinely makes sense — you have an in-house developer who will act on it — you get the same short list, and I will tell you honestly if the site does not need one.
The diagnostics that tell you most, in order: the Search Console coverage report, the time to first byte, the number of distinct queries the site appears for, and the gap between pages submitted and pages indexed. Three of those four are free and you can look at them today.
Locally
Working in Greater Manchester.
Technical SEO is the least location-dependent thing on this list, and Manchester businesses buy it for a local reason: the head terms here are genuinely contested — difficulty 75 to 85 on the city design terms — so the sites that win them have their foundations right. There is no version of competing for "web design manchester" that skips this.
The other local pattern is inherited sites. A great deal of Greater Manchester trade and retail work sits on builds that changed hands two or three times, where nobody has read the coverage report in years and there are redirects pointing at redirects. That is usually the cheapest hour available: an afternoon in Search Console finds things that have been quietly costing money since a rebuild nobody documented.
If you want to know whether your site has a technical problem before paying anybody, check the time to first byte and the coverage report. Under 200 milliseconds and the problem is in the build; over 600 and it is the server. Both are free to look at.
Written by Simon, who does the work.
Also inside the growth block
The rest of the growth list.
All of these sit under the growth block, where the pricing and the process are the same whichever you pick.
Technical, local and content SEO with the results measured in Search Console rather than a slide deck. Beds.ie went from 672 to 7,781 organic clicks a month in five months.
Catalogue structure, product data and shopping feeds — the three things that decide whether a large store is visible. Beds.ie went from 672 to 7,781 organic clicks a month in five months, with 94.5% of a 17,233-item feed approved.
The map pack sits above every other result on a local search, and getting into it is mostly not a website job. This is the work that decides it.
People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity instead of scrolling results. AI optimisation is the work of making your business the answer those systems give — and of being honest about which parts of it can be measured.
Search and Shopping campaigns managed inside your growth block — not for a percentage of your spend. Agencies commonly take 10–20% of what you spend to manage it, and up to 40% on small accounts; the hours cost the same whatever your budget.
Facebook and Instagram campaigns — creative, audiences, tracking and reporting — managed inside your growth block, with artwork done in-house rather than billed separately.
Watching what people actually do on your site and removing whatever stops them getting in touch. Vehicles 2 Lease report form conversion moving from roughly 1% to roughly 4%.
Planned, designed and posted for you — as part of the growth block, so it serves the same goals as the website and the ads instead of running as a separate hobby.
GA4, Search Console, Google Ads and Meta conversions set up properly and reconciled, so every other decision is made on real numbers.
Paid search, Shopping and paid social managed inside a growth block. The fee does not move when your budget does, which is the whole point.
A list of what is wrong, in the order it is worth fixing, with the reason each one matters. Not a 90-page PDF from a tool with the logo changed.
The only audience you actually own. Everything else is rented from a platform that can change the rules on a Tuesday.
Pages written to answer a question somebody is actually asking, in a volume the business can sustain. Not a blog nobody reads, published fortnightly forever.
A genuine performance channel for some products and an expensive way to make content for most. Which one you are depends on the product, not the budget.
The most precise B2B targeting available anywhere, at the highest cost per click of any mainstream platform. Both halves of that sentence matter.
Straight answers
Questions people actually ask.
What is technical SEO?
The work of making a site legible to a search engine: crawlability, index coverage, rendering, structure, duplication, speed, structured data and redirects. It does not decide whether your content deserves to rank; it decides whether the question can be asked.
How do I know if my site has a technical problem?
Two free checks. The Search Console coverage report tells you which pages Google has crawled and chosen not to keep. Time to first byte tells you whether the server or the build is the bottleneck — under 200ms and it is the build, over 600ms and it is the host.
Do I need a technical SEO audit?
You need the fixes; the audit is just the route to them. A 90-page PDF that nobody implements is the most common and most expensive outcome in this category. On a growth block the findings are simply shipped, which is usually cheaper than commissioning a document.
Will technical SEO alone get me ranking?
It will get you eligible. On a large site with existing content that can be transformative — Beds.ie went from 5,189 to 24,054 distinct ranking queries without five times the content being written. On a ten-page site with little to work with, it removes the obstacles and then the content has to do the job.
Can you handle a site migration?
Yes, and it is the piece of technical work with the most asymmetric payoff: done properly it is invisible, skipped it can cost more than the whole build. Every existing URL is inventoried first, kept where possible, and redirected one to one where not.
How much does it cost?
It sits inside a growth block from £250 a month with no separate management fee. For most sites the first month is largely technical, because that is where the fastest gains are.
Tell me what growth would look like.
Send me the site and what you are trying to achieve this year. I will tell you honestly which block makes sense and what the first month would go on.