Technical SEO · In-house engineering · Netlinks
Technical SEO that unblocks the whole site.
Crawling, indexing, speed, architecture and structured data fixed by people who write code. You get the change implemented and tested, or a spec your team can ship without interpreting it.
We work in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Headquarters in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
01Overview
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the layer that decides whether your content ever gets a chance to compete. Before any keyword discussion, a search engine has to find the page, crawl it without waste, understand what it covers, index it and serve it fast. When one of those steps fails, the best copy in the market stays invisible.
It is also where most projects stall, because it needs code and agencies usually do not write code. At Netlinks the engineering is in house: the same group maintains Next.js and WordPress sites on Google Cloud, so the fix arrives implemented and tested, or as a spec stating what changes, where, why and how to validate it. No vague recommendation aging in your developer's backlog.
This work sits inside the SEO agency engagement and can also be hired as a standalone workstream, with your technology team executing and ours reviewing. The initial diagnosis is described in SEO audit.
- 97 and 99
- PageSpeed on mobile and desktop for the SP Labor homepage
- 753 → 326
- pages with errors after the SP Labor audit
- 4.0 → 1.4 GB
- of images compressed in the same project
- 24h
- of technical monitoring in the App
02Definition
What technical SEO covers
Technical SEO is the set of infrastructure, code and architecture changes that let search engines and AI models crawl, understand, index and serve your pages efficiently. It answers four linked questions:
- Does the crawler arrive? A correct sitemap, internal links, no accidental robots.txt blocking, a fast server response, and crawl budget spent on the pages that matter.
- Does the crawler understand? Semantic HTML, coherent titles and headings, content rendered without depending on heavy JavaScript, and structured data declaring what each thing is.
- Does the engine index? Canonicals pointing at the right version, no accidental noindex, no duplicate pages fighting over the same intent, pagination and filters under control.
- Does the user get a good experience? Core Web Vitals within threshold, optimized images, flawless mobile, no layout shift and no interstitial in the way.
On a small site that is one day of careful work. On a store with tens of thousands of URLs, faceted filters and three languages, it is a permanent discipline: every deploy can reintroduce a problem that was already solved. That is why our technical SEO does not end at the audit; it turns into monitoring.
03Diagnosis
What usually stops Google from reading the whole site
These are the issues that show up most often in the diagnoses we run, in order of frequency. None of them is exotic, and every one of them costs traffic on every day it stays standing.
Canonicals pointing the wrong way
A good page marked as a copy of another, or a self-referencing canonical on a parameterized URL. Google honors the markup and the right page disappears.
Redirect chains and loops
Three or four hops to the destination, inherited from old migrations. Wastes crawl budget, leaks authority and slows loading.
Orphan and thin pages
A URL that exists in the sitemap and receives no internal link, or shallow content generated by filters. It dilutes the site and eats crawl budget.
Cannibalization
Three pages competing for the same intent. The engine alternates between them, none consolidates, and rankings stay unstable.
Content trapped in JavaScript
Text and links that only exist after the browser runs a script. Several agents, AI crawlers included, receive an empty page.
Server response time
High response time from heavy queries, misconfigured caching or undersized hosting. It is the ceiling on everything that comes after.
04Performance
Core Web Vitals and the speed users actually feel
Speed has two different numbers, and confusing them costs money. The lab number, from PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse, is what you simulate. The field number, collected from real users, is what Google evaluates and what your buyer feels on a phone on an ordinary connection.
We work both, in the right order: first what moves the field number, such as modern image formats at the right dimensions, caching and CDN, less third-party JavaScript and server rendering; then lab-level refinement.
In our SP Labor case, a WooCommerce store, the audit closed in August 2026 compressed 6,433 images from 4.0 GB to 1.4 GB, reorganized the sitemap from 383 to 20 files, and took the homepage to 97 PageSpeed on mobile and 99 on desktop, alongside a migration to Google Cloud run by our engineering practice.
- LCP: hero image in a modern format, correctly sized and prioritized
- INP: less third-party JavaScript and less main-thread work
- CLS: reserved space for images, banners and fonts, with no layout jump
- TTFB: caching, database queries and infrastructure sized correctly
05Structure
Architecture, internal links and site hierarchy
Architecture is what turns a pile of pages into a site an engine understands. It governs where authority flows, which pages the crawler visits most often, and which URL Google picks when two cover the same topic.
The work has four parts:
- Topic silos. Every subject has one main page and supporting pages linked to it, with descriptive anchor text. That consolidates authority instead of scattering it.
- Stable, readable URLs. No unnecessary parameters, no duplication from casing or trailing slashes, one pattern across the whole site.
- Filters and pagination under control. In a store, faceted filters generate thousands of combinations. We define which become indexable pages, which get noindex, and which should never exist.
- Internationalization. With more than one language, reciprocal hreflang, one URL per language and coherent canonicals. Our CLM Controller case launched in August 2026 with the .com in English, Spanish and Chinese, 2,013 redirects mapped and complete hreflang.
Each of those decisions becomes a written spec, with the before, the after and the test. It is the document your technology team can execute without guessing what the SEO meant.
06Scope
What the technical audit covers
This is the protocol we run on every project. Anything that comes back with a problem enters the plan with priority calculated from impact and effort.
| Block | What we check | Tooling |
|---|---|---|
| Crawling | robots.txt, sitemaps, crawl budget, orphan pages, click depth | Screaming Frog and Search Console |
| Indexing | Coverage, accidental noindex, canonicals, duplication and cannibalization | Search Console and log analysis |
| Rendering | Content and links visible without JavaScript, HTML served by the server | Rendering tests and URL inspection |
| Performance | LCP, INP, CLS and TTFB in field and lab, per template | PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse and field data |
| Structured data | Types per template, required fields, errors and warnings | Rich Results Test and the schema.org validator |
| International | Reciprocal hreflang, one URL per language, canonicals and cross-country duplication | Screaming Frog and manual review |
| Security and availability | HTTPS, certificates, headers, uptime and behavior under traffic spikes | Continuous monitoring in the App |
07Risk
Migration, redesign and what usually breaks
Platform changes, redesigns and domain moves are where organic traffic is most often lost, and almost always for avoidable reasons: a URL that changed with no redirect, content that shrank, a new template missing the old structured data, a staging environment shipped with noindex still in place.
The protocol is simple and allows no shortcut: a full inventory of current URLs with traffic and rankings, a one-to-one destination map, 301 redirects written before launch, validation in staging, and daily monitoring in the first weeks so a drop is caught before it becomes a loss.
When the migration is the project itself, the design is in website migration. When the site has to be rebuilt, our engineering practice takes the build, through OnWeb.
08Cadence
Month 1, month 2, month 3 of technical SEO
Technical work returns fastest in SEO, because it unblocks content that already exists and already has authority.
- Month 1
Audit and critical fixes
A full crawl, a read of Search Console, and fixes on whatever is keeping pages out of the index or dragging speed down. This is the month where most of the quick win happens.
- Month 2
Architecture and semantics
Silos, internal links, filter and pagination handling, and structured data markup per template, validated before it ships.
- Month 3
Performance and consolidation
Template-level optimization focused on field Core Web Vitals, duplication review, and cleanup of whatever old migrations left behind.
- Month 4 onward
Maintenance and prevention
Every deploy gets checked. Broken schema, a speed regression or a crawl error becomes an alert before it becomes a traffic drop.
- Quarterly
Deep review
A full new audit round, compared against the previous quarter, and prioritization of what enters the next 90 days.
- Always on
A channel with your technology team
Written specs, pull request review where it makes sense, and a WhatsApp group with the team and with Alfred.
09Measurement
What you track in the App
Technical health degrades quietly. A plugin update breaks the markup, a caching plugin changes a header, one uncompressed image sinks the LCP of an entire template. Without monitoring, that only surfaces in a traffic report two months later.
So every client watches the technical state of the site in the Netlinks App, refreshed on its own, next to rankings, traffic and AI citations. When something breaks, the alert arrives before the drop.
The rest of our stack is described in technology. The content work that runs on top of this base is in SEO consulting.
- PageSpeed and Core Web Vitals per template, with history
- Crawl errors and pages outside the index
- Broken schema, with the affected page and type
- Site availability, with an alert when it goes down
- Fix queue: in production, awaiting approval, live
10The deliverable
What you receive
Finished work, approved by you in the App and shipped. Not a report that only describes the problem.
Full technical audit
A crawl of the entire site, with every finding ranked by impact and effort, presented live to your team.
Fixes implemented
Whatever is within our reach ships done and tested. The rest arrives as a complete spec, with the before, the after and the validation criteria.
Architecture plan
Silos, internal links, filter and pagination handling and a URL standard, written to outlive the project.
Structured data markup
Types per template, validated in staging before release and monitored against breakage.
Migration protocol
Inventory, redirect map, launch checklist and daily monitoring through the first weeks.
Continuous monitoring
Speed, errors, indexing and schema in the App, 24 hours a day, with an alert when something breaks.
11How it works
From the audit to the page going live
The same path on every project, with an owner and a date on each step.
- 01
Access and read
Search Console, analytics, staging, and repository or site admin access where it exists.
- 02
Full crawl
A sweep of the site in Screaming Frog, cross-referenced with Search Console coverage and performance data.
- 03
Prioritize by impact
Every finding gets an estimated gain and effort. First comes whatever unblocks traffic that already exists.
- 04
Fix and test
Implementation in staging, validation and release, or the spec handed to your team.
- 05
Post-release validation
Indexing, speed and markup checked again once the change reaches production.
- 06
Monitoring
The technical state moves into the App, with an alert on every regression.
12Who leads
Who leads your project
The three of them own the process and manage the team on every account. No senior who shows up at kickoff and disappears: they sign off on the plan, review the work and talk to your team.
Digo Garcia
Founder and CAIO
Over 20 years in digital. Built and scaled Letras.mus.br, then worked at Méliuz and in the joint venture with Globo.com. Owns AI, technical SEO and engineering inside every project.
Letras.mus.br · Méliuz · Globo.com
André Mousinho
Chief SEO Officer
Comes from Rock Content, Tray/Locaweb and LWSA. Designs the keyword mapping, the content architecture and the GEO strategy that turns a brand into the answer.
Rock Content · Tray/Locaweb · LWSA
Gabriel Raposo
Chief Authority Officer
Comes from Ambev and Agibank. Owns link building, digital PR and the authority that holds up both rankings and citations inside AI answers.
Ambev · Agibank
And the team behind them: Nathália Barcala (cofounder and COO, governance), Roberto Murta (CTO), Marcelo Ligere (senior advisor, 30+ years, formerly Grupo Globo) and Alfred, the artificial intelligence that runs the day to day: delivery queue, reporting and 24/7 support on WhatsApp.
13Who it is for
Where this work pays off the most
E-commerce with many URLs
Faceted filters, thin pages, cannibalization and speed on listing pages. This is where technical SEO pays off fastest.
A site that lost traffic with no explanation
A drop after a redesign, a migration or a platform update. The audit finds the cause and returns a recovery plan.
An operation with its own tech team
Your team ships, ours specifies and reviews. Every request states what changes, where, why and how to test it.
14Case studies
Results with a name, a number and a date
Real projects, with what was done and what changed. No generic charts and no promises of a position.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the set of infrastructure, code and architecture changes that let search engines and AI models crawl, understand, index and quickly serve your pages. It covers crawling, indexing, canonicals, URL architecture, Core Web Vitals, rendering, structured data, hreflang and migrations.
What is the difference between technical SEO and an SEO audit?
The audit is the diagnosis: what is wrong, ranked by priority and impact. Technical SEO is the ongoing workstream that fixes, validates and monitors. Plenty of companies buy only the diagnosis and the document ages in a drawer. See SEO audit.
Do you implement the fixes or only recommend them?
We implement whenever we have access, because the engineering is in house: we maintain Next.js and WordPress sites on Google Cloud. When the platform belongs to your team or a vendor, we deliver a complete spec, with what changes, where, why and how to validate it, and we review after it ships.
How long before technical SEO shows results?
It is the fastest-returning workstream, because it unblocks content that already exists. Indexing and speed fixes usually move rankings in 30 to 60 days. Restructuring the architecture of a large site is quarterly work with a compounding gain.
Does technical SEO work on WordPress?
It does, and that is where a large share of the sites we serve live. The main caution is plugins: each one adds code, and the sum drags speed down and sometimes breaks markup. We clean it up, define what stays, and monitor the effect of every update.
My site is a JavaScript application. Is that a problem?
It is a problem when content only exists after the browser runs a script, because several agents receive an empty page. The fix is server rendering for the pages that need to rank. We do that daily in Next.js, and our engineering practice takes over when the change is structural.
Is structured data part of technical SEO?
It is, and it is the item that most separates complete technical work from superficial work. The markup declares to search engines and AI models what lives on the page. The detailed practice is in structured data.
Do you handle site migrations?
We do, and it is where the most traffic is lost when there is no protocol. URL inventory, destination map, 301 redirects written before launch, staging validation and daily monitoring at the start. The design is in website migration.
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