WSS

Technical Capabilities

We build to the standards we document.

Most technical documentation gets written by people who don't implement it. We hold our own work to the same public criteria as our technical library — so the result is something you can verify.

Six technical disciplines, all built against the same public standards.

Every discipline is measured against the same public criteria in our library — pick one, or let the audit tell you which you actually need.

WordPress Development

Hand-built or systematically audited themes, a deliberately small plugin stack, and hosting configured for Core Web Vitals from the start rather than tuned afterwards.

  • Custom theme development, or audit and rebuild of an existing one
  • Block editor setup with reusable patterns your editors can actually use
  • Plugin audit — anything not earning its load time comes out
  • Editorial training so content updates don't undo the engineering

Typical engagements

Marketing teams and founders already on WordPress

Custom Web Applications

Portals, internal tools, booking systems, and anything with real application logic behind it. Built in Astro, Next.js, React, Node.js, Python, or PHP, with the architecture written down before implementation starts.

  • Technical specification and architecture document up front
  • API design and integration with your existing systems
  • Automated test coverage so the application stays stable as it grows
  • Documentation your team can work from without calling us

Typical engagements

Founders and CTOs who need real application logic

Technical SEO

Rankings are constrained by architecture before they're constrained by content. Broken canonicals, an unreadable crawl path, or JavaScript-dependent content that never gets indexed will cap you regardless of how good the writing is.

  • Full technical audit: crawlability, indexation, canonicalisation, redirect chains, structured data, Core Web Vitals
  • Log file analysis — what crawlers actually did, not what Search Console summarises
  • Structured data (JSON-LD) for the content types relevant to your business
  • Site migrations with redirect mapping and pre-launch validation
  • International SEO — hreflang, regional targeting, and the reciprocity rules people miss

Typical engagements

Growth teams whose rankings have plateaued

Answer Engine Optimisation

A growing share of search now ends in an answer rather than a click. We'll be plain about the state of this: less is documented here than in traditional SEO, and anyone promising guaranteed AI visibility is selling something they can't deliver.

  • Content structure for extraction: self-contained answers, clear headings, factual density near the top
  • Entity and authority clarity — unambiguous signals about what your organisation is and what it's credible on
  • Structured data selected for citation value rather than completeness
  • llms.txt implementation where it's supported, with honest framing of its current status

Typical engagements

Teams that need visibility in AI answers, not just search results

Content

Technical content written by people who understand the subject. Most content on this subject is a rewrite of the top three search results; ours comes from implementation, with the measurements included.

  • Content strategy grounded in search intent research and gap analysis, not keyword volume alone
  • Long-form technical writing on your subject area
  • Editing and technical review of your team's existing drafts
  • Content architecture — hub structures, internal linking, and topical coverage that holds together

Typical engagements

Teams whose content needs real technical depth

DevOps

A fast, accessible site that can't be safely updated isn't finished. We set up infrastructure and deployment so releases are boring.

  • CI/CD pipelines with automated testing and performance budgets enforced in CI
  • Infrastructure-as-code — documented and reproducible, not a snowflake one person understands
  • Monitoring and alerting for uptime, performance regressions, and security
  • Staging that mirrors production so 'it worked on staging' means something

Typical engagements

Engineering leads who need releases to stop being risky

Representative Engagements

Selected engagements, anonymised

Client details have been anonymised to protect confidentiality.

Series B SaaS platform

WordPress + DevOps
SITUATION
Marketing site rebuilt twice already; Core Web Vitals still failing on mobile.
WORK
Audited the plugin stack, rebuilt on a block-based theme, added a CI pipeline with performance budgets.
RESULT
Passed Core Web Vitals across all monitored URLs within one release cycle; deploys became routine instead of risky.

Regional B2B retailer

Technical SEO
SITUATION
Strong product catalogue, flat organic traffic for 18 months despite ongoing content investment.
WORK
Full crawl audit, canonical and redirect chain cleanup, structured data across product and category pages.
RESULT
Indexed-page coverage in Search Console corrected; organic sessions moved in the right direction within two quarters.

Vertical SaaS founder

Custom App + Content
SITUATION
Booking process still running through spreadsheets, with no way to onboard customers without engineering time.
WORK
Spec'd and built a custom booking portal, documented the API, and wrote the onboarding content that ships with it.
RESULT
Manual booking admin work dropped sharply; new customers onboard without an engineer in the loop.

How engagements start

Every project opens the same way, whether you're starting from scratch or handing us something existing.

  1. 01

    Audit

    Every engagement opens with a technical audit against our published standards — fresh start or existing site.

  2. 02

    Findings, in writing

    You get the audit document itself, not a sales deck built from it. If you never hire us, you keep it.

  3. 03

    Scoped proposal

    Work is scoped against what the audit found, not a generic package — you know what's being fixed and why.

  4. 04

    Build & handoff

    Implementation follows the same criteria as the audit, with documentation your team can work from without calling us.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you take on small projects?

Yes. A single technical audit is a complete, standalone engagement — plenty of clients stop there, at least the first time.

Do you work alongside our existing in-house team?

Regularly. We're used to embedding with existing teams and specialists rather than replacing them.

What does an audit cost, roughly?

It varies by scope, but most start well below what a redesign would cost. Book a call and we'll give you a number before any work begins.

How is AEO different from Technical SEO?

SEO targets ranking in a list of links; AEO targets being the source an AI answer cites. The mechanics overlap but aren't identical, and we'll tell you plainly what's still unproven.

Will a redesign break our search rankings?

Not if it's planned as a migration. We map every redirect and validate the crawl path before anything goes live, precisely to avoid that.

Interested in applying these standards to your own project?

Every engagement begins with a fixed-scope technical audit. The resulting report is yours to keep, regardless of whether implementation continues with us.

Request a Technical Audit →