Technical SEO in the AI Era: Someone Still Has to Fix the Plumbing

AI search has given SEO a vocabulary. Underneath, websites still need working doors, readable signs and plumbing that does not leak 500 errors. Technical SEO remains the infrastructure that helps content get discovered, understood and accessed.

Crawling and indexing still hold the keys

Google says pages need to be indexed and eligible for a search snippet to appear as supporting links in AI Overviews or AI Mode. There is no special AI schema required.

Crawlability lets a system fetch a page; indexability concerns whether that page can enter a search index. Neither guarantees inclusion or citation, and other AI services use different retrieval systems.

Check robots.txt, accidental noindex directives, canonicals, internal links and server responses. Keep important information available as text, and inspect rendered pages rather than assuming every crawler handles JavaScript identically.

For a property website, apartment listings are wasted if navigation hides them behind interactions or filters generate endless duplicate URLs. Your listing should not require a treasure map.

Logs are the guestbook worth reading

Search crawlers now share the doorstep with training crawlers, retrieval bots and user-triggered agents. That broader mix makes log analysis increasingly useful for understanding who reaches which pages.

Combine server logs with CDN or firewall logs: blocked requests and cached responses may never reach your origin server.

Look for:

• Which bots fetch your important pages, and how often.
• Repeated errors, redirects, rate limits or security challenges.
• Excessive requests to filters, parameters and obsolete URLs.
• Changes after deployments or bot-access rule updates.

Do not trust a user-agent name alone. Google documents verification using published IP ranges or DNS checks; use each provider's supported verification method.

A bot fetching your pricing page proves a request happened. It does not prove indexing, model training, a citation or a sale. The guestbook is useful; it is not a crystal ball.

Accessibility deserves a bigger seat

Accessibility enables people with disabilities to use the web. That remains its central purpose as automated visitors become more common.

Semantic headings, descriptive links, labelled forms, keyboard navigation and meaningful image alternatives make interfaces easier to understand and operate.

There is a practical overlap with automation: tools such as Playwright can represent pages through accessible roles and names. My inference is that clear semantics can also help agents using those representations. This is not a universal agent requirement or a guaranteed ranking boost.

For example, a labelled “Book a viewing” button provides more useful information than an anonymous clickable square. Test the booking journey with a keyboard, too. A beautiful dead end is still a dead end.

Keep the foundations good

Prioritise important pages, monitor verified bot activity and fix barriers that prevent useful journeys. Check structured data against visible content, keep responses reliable and review access rules deliberately.

Measure technical improvements alongside search visibility, AI citations and completed enquiries. AI search may change the route people take to your website. They still need to arrive somewhere that works.