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01 · SEO · 01/06

Technical SEO.

Not to tick Lighthouse. Not to reassure the board. For pages Google actually indexes.

You lay the foundations that make your site readable to search engines and LLMs. Core Web Vitals held, structured schema, clean indexation, silo architecture. Without these layers, even the best content stays invisible six months longer.

By Jérôme · SEO & data

Get my setup quotedSee the AVD Revival mission

02 · OPERATION NOTE · OPS TECHNICAL SEO

Technical SEO, decoded

The field report

Your pages take more than 3 seconds to load on mobile. Your Google traffic stalls despite published content. Google Search Consolethe Google tool to monitor SEO flags pages Google sees but that are not clickable. Often the moment.

The cost of waiting

Without solid technical foundations, your content ranks poorly on Google and LLMsgenerative AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) ignore your site. You pay 100 % of the editorial budget for 30 % of the real visibility. The shortfall is invisible but measurable in lost traffic.

In black and white

Core Web VitalsGoogle’s page performance signals in the green: loading speed, visual stability, responsiveness. A schematags readable by Google properly placed. A coherent silo architecturepages organised by topic. Clean indexation, with no forgotten pages.

The manoeuvre

We start with a full crawla simulated Google robot pass, before touching code. Semrushprofessional SEO audit and keyword tool + Ahrefsprofessional SEO backlink analysis tool audit crossed with Google Search Consolethe Google tool to monitor SEO, before/after performance comparison, action plan prioritised by business impact. We work with your dev team, never replacing it. Documented handover.

The lock that breaks

Content that finally ranks on the queries that pay off. Generative AIs citing your site as a source. A clean base to plug pillar pages and AI writing behind.

03 · WHAT WE WON'T WRITE IN AN RFP

Technical SEO is a foundation tool. Not a redesign project.

Technical SEO is only useful if you publish content behind it. Otherwise, you pay full price for a fast site no one reads. The right question before signing: who on your team will feed the pillar pages and topical cluster (group of pages on the same topic) once the technical layer is in place? If the answer is fuzzy, the right order is editorial strategy first, then technical foundations. The broader agency vs freelance vs in-house debate sits here.

  • 01

    Fast and stable pages

    Your pages load fast, do not jump during loading, react to clicks under 200 ms. Lighthouse 90+ held under real traffic. Not just on the demo homepage.

  • 02

    Cited by AIs

    Your pages surface in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity when a prospect searches your craft. Schema.org (web tag standard) well placed on articles, products, local profiles, FAQ. This is tomorrow's SEO channel.

  • 03

    Organised, not chaotic site

    Your URLs tell a topic story, not a chaotic dump. Internal linking weighs 40 % of observed SEO performance. Well wired, it multiplies every published article.

  • 04

    You keep ownership

    You drop the dependency on opaque SaaS tools. You regain ownership of your Google Search Console data and your technical audits. If you change provider tomorrow, the mechanic stays documented.

04 · THE MISSIONS THAT PROVED IT

We deployed it on these grounds.

AVD Revival, 250 GTO reinterpreted by Björn Arens

AVD Revival

High-end automotive · revival

Brand built from scratch over 6 months of active SEO.

Read the AVD Revival mission
Ecostal Group, B2B photovoltaic e-commerce, 3 storefronts EBE/EFR/YMT

Ecostal Group

B2B photovoltaic e-commerce · 3 storefronts

Product schema + Core Web Vitals over 18 months.

Read the Ecostal mission
Brasero estate, corporate retreats and weddings in Liège province

Brasero Group

Hospitality & events · 2 sites in Liège

Indexation audit + LocalBusiness schema over 24 months.

Read the Brasero mission

05 · THE PLAY-BY-PLAY

Four steps. Six weeks on average. Zero production freeze.

  1. STEP 01

    We look at what bleeds.

    Full crawl (simulated Google robot pass) via Semrush (opens in a new window) and Ahrefs (opens in a new window) (professional SEO tools), crossed with Google Search Console over 12 months. We measure pages Google sees but does not judge clickable, chained redirects, performance in the red. Action plan prioritised by business impact before any code line lands.

  2. STEP 02

    We decide what we touch, what we leave.

    Scope frozen in writing, client sign-off before any deploy. If some refactors are not worth the dev effort (low query volume, low traffic potential), we tell you straight. No silent drift. Quoted roadmap by sprint.

  3. STEP 03

    We deploy the code alongside your site.

    Google performance optimisations on your templates (Next.js / WordPress / Shopify depending on your stack). Schema.org (opens in a new window) tags wired per page type. Clean sitemap (site map), coherent robots.txt, aligned canonical URLs. No production freeze, progressive batched deploy.

  4. STEP 04

    We compare 30 days before vs after.

    Google performance tracking in Google Search Console, positions and impressions monitoring on target queries. Dashboard wired directly to Search Console + crawl monitoring. Notion handover to your team or your media agency. Full documentation, total ownership.

06 · THE FLOW AT A GLANCE

The path each page takes between your CMS and the Google index.

USER-AGENTGOOGLEBOTMobile-First crawlfetch + renderPILLAR PAGE/CLUSTERsilo rootSAT.01SAT.02SAT.03SAT.04CORE WEB VITALSLCP · INP · CLS86%SCHEMA JSON-LDArticle · Product · FAQ78%INDEXATIONGSC · sitemap · robots92%ARCHITECTUREsilo · canonicals70%PRIORITISED FIXES01CWV → green02Schema set03Clean sitemap04Silo wired05Zombie pages"the foundation, not the roof" · Jérôme · SEO & data

Googlebot crawls, we measure the 4 technical pillars, we prioritise fixes by business impact before any code line lands.

07 · NOT YET FOR YOU IF

Three cases where technical SEO is not the top priority.

  • You refuse to touch the existing CMS.

    Clean technical SEO requires template access and a dev who can push changes. If the CMS stays untouchable, we lose 70 % of the leverage and cannot guarantee performance in the green.

  • Your current Google traffic is under 3,000 monthly visits.

    The dev effort of a full technical audit does not pay back below this threshold. At these volumes, the SEO gain vs project cost ratio stays debatable. Better to start by laying one solid pillar page that brings fresh traffic.

  • No one on your side will publish afterwards.

    Technical SEO opens the door. It does not fill the house. If no editorial resource is planned client-side or agency-side, the budget will not be paid back by a simple good Google performance score.

08 · THE QUESTIONS WE ACTUALLY HEAR

Questions whispered after the second meeting. Honest answers.

On the Belgian market in 2026, Semrush and Ahrefs benchmarks (professional SEO tools) converge: a site with Google performance in the red loses 25-45 % of its real SEO potential. The local data points the same way: in our study of Liège e-commerce, 1 e-shop in 4 sits in the red zone on mobile. The gap depends on your competition and sector (e-commerce more impacted than B2B services). The real cost is not the lost traffic, it is the published content that fails to rank. The broader agency vs freelance vs in-house debate sits here.

Not enough. Google Search Console shows what Google already sees on your site. Semrush and Ahrefs (professional SEO tools) show what your competitors do and what Google does not surface yet. The three combined reveal blind spots. On serious technical SEO, Search Console alone misses 40 % of indexation bugs (what Google retains from your site) and all competitive benchmarks. For traffic and conversion reading behind, framed GA4 remains the bedrock.

No direct sanction documented as of late 2026 for poorly placed schema (Google-readable tags). However, the March 2024 and 2025 algorithmic penalties hit hard on sites with inconsistent or deceptive schema (fake review ratings, generated fake FAQ). Properly placed schema remains a visibility boost on the Google side, never the opposite. AI engines, for their part, read your visible text, not your tags: to get quoted inside their answers, AI search (GEO) takes over. On the content side, briefed AI writing lays the FAQ schema without falling into the trap.

Belgian SME B2B 2026 market range over 12 months post-audit: +30 to +60 % organic SEO traffic. On e-commerce: +20 to +45 %. The real gap depends on the quality of content published behind (pillar pages and topical cluster). For your specific case, we quote after scoping.

Monitoring side: Semrush or Ahrefs licences (professional SEO tools) at 100-400 € HTVA per month depending on tracked query volume. Maintenance side: 1 dev day per quarter to keep Google performance and schema tags up to date. If we leave, you keep the Notion doc + Google Search Console access + relay procedure in 1 week. Total ownership.

Yes. We do this on 40 % of our SEO missions. The rule: who steers the technical plan writing and the human review (quality assured by a human) post-deploy. If your existing agency stays pilot, we frame scope and timeline. If they execute our plan, we accompany them. We never step on the other agency without saying so. See the AVD Revival mission, brand built from-scratch alongside an external dev.

Field note

Technical SEO is the foundation. Not the roof. Across 30 missions, we have seen the same pattern: Google performance in the red = 25-45 % of SEO potential left on the table. When wired well, rankings move in six weeks, not six months. We start there if the client already has an editorial strategy. Otherwise, we frame editorial first. Without content behind, the code does not pay back its acquisition cost.

Jérôme · Strategy & data
JérômeStrategy & data · HeySquad

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