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TRUSTED BY NZ BRANDS
Join the businesses already seeing real results with Refined
Technical SEO that gets fixed, not just flagged.
Technical SEO is the work that lets Google crawl, render, index and understand your website. Our Auckland team finds what is holding yours back, fixes it with in-house web developers and tracks the result in enquiries and sales.
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WHY REFINED
The people who find the problem are the people who fix it.
Too often, technical SEO ends as a report for someone else to action. At Refined, the SEO specialists and web developers sit together in our Grey Lynn studio, so a fix goes from diagnosis to live without changing hands, and you talk to both.
SEO and development together
The specialist who spots an issue briefs the developer at the next desk, not an outside contractor.
Platforms we build on
We build Webflow, Shopify and WordPress sites, so we know where each one tends to trip up search engines.
Fixes ranked by revenue
Work is ordered by what it is worth in enquiries and sales, not by how red it looks in an audit tool.
Reported live
Organic enquiries, orders and revenue in Refined Analytics as they happen, with a weekly note on what changed.
Free strategy call
Ready to see what is holding your site back?
Book a free strategy call. We will look at how your site is built, crawled and indexed, and tell you honestly where the biggest wins are.
How we report
Every fix logged. Every result tracked.
No black box and no audit PDF left sitting in an inbox. Refined Analytics shows organic enquiries, orders and revenue as they happen, and a weekly note from the people doing the work lists what we fixed and what comes next.
Refined Analytics
One live dashboard showing what organic search brings in, next to your other channels.
Tracking checked first
Server-side tracking set up before work begins, so the before-and-after numbers can be trusted.
Direct line
The specialist who found the issue and the developer who fixed it are the people on the call.
Reporting cadence
Live
Always on
Refined Analytics dashboard
Organic traffic, enquiries, orders and revenue
Weekly
Progress note
Fixes shipped, issues found, what comes next
Monthly
Review call
Results against plan and the next priorities
Quarterly
Roadmap reset
Priorities for the next quarter, based on the data
Measured on revenue · Fixed by the people who found it
FAQ
Technical SEO questions, answered straight
What New Zealand businesses ask us before a technical SEO project starts.
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the work that makes your website easy for search engines to crawl, render, index and understand. It covers site speed, Core Web Vitals, site structure, internal links, redirects, canonical tags, structured data and mobile usability. It doesn't replace content or links, but it decides whether they can pay off.
What are some examples of technical SEO?
Fixing pages Google can't index, speeding up slow mobile pages, removing redirect chains and broken links, adding canonical tags to duplicate URLs, adding schema markup, tidying XML sitemaps and robots.txt, and making sure content loaded by JavaScript can still be read. Each one removes a barrier between your pages and the people searching for them.
How do you diagnose technical problems on a site?
We crawl the whole site, then compare it with Google Search Console, which shows what Google has indexed, excluded or struggled with. Where we can get server logs, they show which pages Googlebot actually requests. Every issue we find is then ranked by its likely effect on enquiries and sales, not by how alarming it looks.
How much does technical SEO cost in NZ?
It depends on the size of your site, the platform it runs on and how much the audit finds. A small site with a few issues is a short piece of work, while a large online store or a migration is a project. We scope it once we have looked at your site, and you see where every hour goes.
How long do technical fixes take to show results?
Fixes that unblock indexing can show up as soon as Google recrawls the affected pages. Speed and structure improvements usually build more gradually as Google reprocesses the site. We track Search Console and organic revenue throughout, so you can see what each round of fixes changed. Anyone promising instant rankings is guessing.
Do Core Web Vitals affect Google rankings?
Yes, but they are one signal among many. Core Web Vitals measure loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability, and Google uses them as part of its page experience signals. Relevance still matters more, so a fast page with weak content won't win. The bigger payoff is often conversion, because faster pages keep more visitors.
How do you protect rankings during a site migration?
We crawl the old site first, map a 301 redirect for every URL worth keeping, and carry over titles, content and internal links. After launch we recrawl, check Search Console for errors and watch rankings and traffic closely. Missed redirects do the most damage, so that map gets the most attention.
Do you work on Shopify, Webflow and WordPress sites?
Yes. Our in-house developers build on all three, so we make the fixes ourselves rather than handing you a list. Each platform has its quirks: Shopify creates extra product URLs through collections, Webflow needs care with CMS templates and redirects, and WordPress sites often slow down under too many plugins.
Can AI search tools like ChatGPT read my website?
Only if they are allowed in and the content is easy to read. Some robots.txt rules, firewalls and CDN settings block AI crawlers, sometimes by default, and content that only appears after JavaScript runs can be missed. We check access and rendering so tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can read and cite your pages.
Is technical SEO a one-off job or ongoing?
Both. The first audit and round of fixes is a project. After that, sites keep changing: new pages, apps, plugins and platform updates can quietly undo earlier work, and Google keeps changing how it crawls and ranks. Regular checks catch problems early, on their own or as part of a wider SEO programme.
Measured onRevenue impact, not audit scores
Fixed byOur in-house web developers
PlatformsWebflow, Shopify and WordPress
ReportingLive in Refined Analytics
The problem
Most technical audits end as a spreadsheet nobody acts on.
New Zealand businesses get handed long audit exports, red speed scores and a quote for someone else's developer. Here is what usually goes wrong, and how we run it differently.
Where sites usually trip up
- –Key pages missing from Google's index without anyone noticing
- –Slow mobile pages and Core Web Vitals nobody has measured
- –Duplicate URLs and stray canonicals splitting your rankings
- –Redesigns and platform moves that wipe out hard-won rankings
- –Hundreds of audit warnings and no idea which ones matter
What we do instead
- ✓Check what Google actually crawls, renders and indexes
- ✓Rank every fix by what it is worth in enquiries and sales
- ✓Have our own developers make the fixes, then test them
- ✓Map every redirect before a redesign or migration goes live
- ✓Track organic revenue live in Refined Analytics
What we cover
From the first crawl to the last redirect.
Nothing is handed to an outside developer. The specialists who diagnose your site and the developers who fix it work side by side in our Grey Lynn studio.
Technical SEO audits
A full crawl, a Search Console review and server logs where available, turned into a fix list ranked by revenue impact.
Site speed and Core Web Vitals
Images, scripts, fonts and hosting tuned so pages load fast and stay steady on mobile, measured before and after.
Crawling, indexing and site structure
Robots rules, sitemaps, canonicals, redirects and internal links sorted, so Google finds and indexes the pages that should rank.
Structured data and AI crawlers
Schema markup for products, services, articles and FAQs, plus access rules that let AI search tools read your pages.
Shopify sites
Duplicate collection URLs, app scripts that slow pages down and bloated theme code, fixed by developers who build on Shopify.
WordPress sites
Plugin bloat, heavy themes and duplicate tag and archive pages, cleaned up by developers who build on WordPress.
How it works
Six steps, from first crawl to fixed and tracked.
The same method on every site, scaled to its size and platform. Nothing gets flagged and forgotten.
01
Crawl
We crawl the whole site the way Googlebot does, including how each page renders with JavaScript.
02
Diagnose
Search Console, Core Web Vitals data and server logs where available show what Google really sees.
03
Prioritise
Every issue is ranked by its likely effect on enquiries and sales, so the biggest wins go first.
04
Fix
Our in-house developers make the changes on your Webflow, Shopify or WordPress site.
05
Verify
We recrawl, retest speed and watch Search Console to confirm Google has picked up each fix.
06
Monitor
Regular checks catch new problems early, with organic results tracked live in Refined Analytics.
What it costs
Priced on the work. Shown to the hour.
No packages and no hidden fees. The cost is set by your site's size, its platform and what the audit finds, and you see where every hour goes: diagnosis, development and checking.
Request a strategySize of the site
A small service site and a large online store need very different amounts of crawling and fixing.
Platform and build
Webflow, Shopify, WordPress and custom builds each limit what can be changed, and how.
Depth of the problems
Fixing a few broken redirects is a quick job. Rendering, indexing or migration problems take longer.
Ongoing checks
Whether you want a one-off round of fixes or regular monitoring as your site and Google change.
“Their ability to orchestrate content, performance and strategy simultaneously in one unified approach is exactly what modern marketing should look like. They’ve genuinely had a huge impact on the success of the business.”
Allen Li, Director, Proferlo Furniture
Read the case studyTechnical SEO, explained
What we check, and why each part matters.
Technical SEO covers everything about how your site is built that affects whether search engines can find, render, understand and trust it. It is the groundwork of our wider SEO service, because content and links only pay off once Google can read the pages they point to. These are the areas we check on every site.
Crawling, indexing and site architecture
If Google cannot reach a page, or decides not to keep it, nothing on that page can rank. We compare your sitemap, our crawl and Search Console's indexing report, then fix robots rules, orphaned pages, broken internal links and stray noindex tags, and shape the site so important pages sit a few clicks from the home page.
Site speed optimisation and Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's measures of how fast the main content loads, how quickly a page responds to a tap or click and how much the layout jumps while loading. We fix the usual causes, such as oversized images, render-blocking scripts, heavy apps and plugins, web fonts and slow hosting, and measure each page before and after.
Duplicate content, canonicals and hreflang
Filters, tracking parameters, product variants and print versions can create many URLs for the same content, which splits your ranking signals. Canonical tags and clean URL rules point Google to the version that should rank. If you also sell into Australia, hreflang tags tell Google which version of a page to show in each country.
Structured data, JavaScript and AI crawlers
Schema markup tells search engines what a page is, such as a product, a service, an article or a set of FAQs, and can make it eligible for rich results. We also check that key content does not depend on JavaScript to appear, and that robots.txt, firewall and CDN settings let the crawlers behind AI search tools read your site. Our guide to Google AI Overviews explains why that matters.
Redirects and site migrations
Rankings often drop after a redesign because URLs change without redirects or content goes missing. Before a new website, a move to Shopify or a domain change, we crawl the old site, map a 301 redirect for every URL worth keeping and check rankings and traffic before and after launch.
Client result
Proferlo Furniture: 7.4x organic search traffic within 12 months.
A New Zealand furniture retailer up against national chains for the searches that sell beds, storage and living room furniture. Refined rebuilt the site's structure, its product and category content and its authority, alongside the paid media work covered in the full case study.
1,128 → 8,322
organic visits a month, before Refined and now
7.4x
organic search traffic within 12 months
3x
online revenue growth after 60 days