A technical SEO crawl is like a full site checkup. It looks for broken links, redirect chains, duplicate pages, thin pages, missing tags, crawl issues, and other technical problems that can quietly hurt search performance. For a growing site, this is useful work. But a lot of firms sell the crawl and forget the fix.
At Deep Sea Fauna, I think clients should judge this service by two things: did the crawl find real issues, and did those issues get handled in a clear order? A report that sits in a folder and gathers dust is not a win.
What we do at Deep Sea Fauna
We run a full crawl with a proper tool and review the results for patterns that matter. That can mean broken internal links, redirect loops, duplicate titles, indexable junk pages, or missing page details that make the site harder to understand. Then we sort the issues by importance. Not every warning is urgent. Some things matter now. Some can wait.
We also connect the crawl to the real site. If a crawl finds twenty issues on pages nobody uses, that is different from a crawl finding one major issue on the contact page. A good service gives the fixes in business order, not just tool order.
What you receive
You should receive a report with a priority list, not just a giant export. The report should say what the issue is, where it is, and whether it was fixed or still needs work.
- A crawl summary with the main issue groups
- A short list of highest-priority fixes
- Clear note on what was resolved and what is still open
- Enough detail that a developer can act on it
How you know it is working
You know it is working when the issue count goes down over time or at least stays under control as the site grows. You should also see that the same problems do not keep returning for no reason. If redirect chains stay broken quarter after quarter, the crawl is not leading to action.
You also know it is working when the crawl helps stop hidden problems from piling up. Many technical issues do not scream. They just quietly slow the site down in search. Good crawl work catches that early.
How people get ripped off on this service
The most common rip-off is the giant spreadsheet with no guidance. Another is billing for a crawl every quarter without ever closing the loop on the last crawl. The tool is not the service. The follow-through is the service.
I also tell clients to ask which issues were fixed after the last report. If the answer is vague, the process is weak. A real crawl service should reduce confusion, not create it.
The plain next step
If you pay for technical crawl work, ask for the top five issues from the last run and the status of each one. If nobody can answer that quickly, the crawl may be more theater than help. At Deep Sea Fauna, we believe technical audits should lead to cleaner sites, not longer spreadsheets.