Technical Core Audit

The Challenge

An established e-commerce retailer with 15,000+ products approached us after their organic traffic had been declining for 8 consecutive months. Despite investing heavily in content, their rankings were dropping.

Our initial audit revealed severe technical issues:

• Abysmal site speed: 8.2 second average load time on mobile
• Core Web Vitals failures: Failed all three metrics (LCP, FID, CLS)
• Crawl budget waste: 78% of crawl budget spent on low-value pages
• Mobile UX problems: Intrusive interstitials, tiny tap targets, horizontal scrolling
• Indexation issues: 12,000+ pages indexed that shouldn't be
• JavaScript rendering problems: Critical content hidden from search engines
• Broken internal links: 340+ broken links creating crawl dead-ends

Our Technical SEO Overhaul

We executed a comprehensive 5-month technical transformation:

Month 1: Critical Issues & Quick Wins

We prioritized fixes that would have immediate impact:

• Image Optimization: Implemented WebP format, lazy loading, and proper sizing - reduced page weight by 65%
• Code Minification: Compressed CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Server Response Time: Migrated to dedicated server with CDN integration (reduced TTFB from 1.8s to 0.3s)
• Mobile Fixes: Removed intrusive interstitials, fixed tap targets, eliminated horizontal scroll

Month 2-3: Core Web Vitals Optimization

Deep performance optimization to pass Google's Core Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Reduced from 4.2s to 1.8s through image optimization and critical CSS
• First Input Delay (FID): Improved from 280ms to 45ms by removing render-blocking JavaScript
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Fixed from 0.42 to 0.05 by reserving image space and font optimization
• Implemented HTTP/2: Enabled multiplexing for faster resource loading
• Critical CSS: Inlined above-the-fold styles to eliminate render blocking

Month 3-4: Crawl Optimization & Site Architecture

Restructured the site to maximize crawl efficiency:

• Robots.txt Overhaul: Blocked low-value sections while ensuring critical pages were crawlable
• XML Sitemap Optimization: Created dynamic, priority-based sitemaps for products, categories, and content
• Canonical Tags: Implemented strategic canonicalization to eliminate duplicate content
• Internal Linking Audit: Fixed all broken links and improved link equity flow
• URL Structure: Simplified product URLs, implemented breadcrumbs
• Pagination Handling: Properly implemented rel="next/prev" for category pages

Month 4-5: JavaScript Optimization & Schema

Final touches to ensure search engines could fully understand the site:

• JavaScript SEO: Implemented server-side rendering for critical content
• Dynamic Rendering: Set up prerendering for search engine bots
• Schema Markup: Added comprehensive structured data (Product, Review, Breadcrumb, Organization)
• HTTPS Migration: Ensured full site security with proper 301 redirects
• Monitoring Setup: Configured advanced tracking in Search Console, Analytics, and PageSpeed monitoring

Performance Transformation

The technical improvements created a dramatic before/after:

Business Impact

The technical overhaul delivered exceptional ROI:

Client Testimonial

"We had no idea how much our technical issues were costing us. Epta Sky didn't just fix problems - they rebuilt our entire technical foundation. The traffic increase paid for their services 10x over in the first quarter alone."