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Accepting new B2B maintenance clients

High-Performance Linux VPS Infrastructure & Technical SEO Engineering

I keep production VPS environments patched, fast and available, then tune the stack so search engines crawl and index your site efficiently. One engineer covers both the server and the SERP.

  • Linux Server Administration
  • Nginx / OpenLiteSpeed Tuning
  • Core Web Vitals & TTFB
  • Crawlability & Indexing Diagnostics
Explore Services → Engagement & Billing Terms
490+sites on VPS under active management
< 4 hemergency response on retainer
6-pointhardening baseline, auto-enforced
100%remote · written report per job

Core services

Three service lines, named exactly as they appear on your invoice.

Every engagement maps to one of these services, so your finance team can match each invoice line to a documented scope.

Linux VPS Maintenance & System Updates

Scheduled upkeep that keeps production servers secure, current and predictable.

  • OS security patches, package upgrades and dependency management on Debian, Ubuntu and AlmaLinux
  • Web stack configuration and hardening: Nginx, Apache, OpenLiteSpeed, PHP-FPM pool sizing
  • Resource tuning: CPU spikes, memory leaks, swap and disk I/O bottlenecks
  • Backup verification, log rotation and monitoring alerts
  • Monthly change log and health report

Invoice lineVPS Technical Maintenance & Server Updates

VPS Troubleshooting & Emergency Recovery

Fast root-cause diagnosis when production is down or degraded.

  • Gateway and application errors: 502 Bad Gateway, 504 Gateway Timeout, 500 Internal Server Error
  • MySQL / MariaDB slow-query optimization and crash recovery
  • SSL/TLS renewal, firewall rules (UFW, iptables) and Cloudflare DNS alignment
  • Recovery from failed or half-applied CMS and core updates
  • Post-incident report with root cause and prevention steps

Invoice lineVPS Troubleshooting & Emergency Recovery (hourly)

Technical SEO & Infrastructure Optimization

Server-side work that directly affects how search engines crawl, render and rank you.

  • Time To First Byte (TTFB) reduction, FastCGI and edge caching
  • Access-log analysis of search-bot behaviour and crawl-budget optimization
  • Fixing crawl and index issues caused by latency, rate limits or faulty HTTP headers
  • Canonicals, redirects, robots.txt, XML sitemaps and structured data
  • Core Web Vitals diagnostics with before/after measurements

Invoice lineSearch Engine Infrastructure Optimization

Proof of work

Case logs

Anonymized incidents from real engagements, written up as post-mortems. Client names and hostnames are withheld under NDA.

INC-001 · High-traffic WordPress VPSSEV-1 · Downtime

Resolving 504 Gateway Timeouts & high load on a high-traffic VPS

Recurring 504s during traffic peaks took the site down and Googlebot began dropping URLs from the index.

−70%TTFB
0504s after fix
Fullindex recovery
Root cause
PHP-FPM process exhaustion: pm.max_children too low for peak concurrency, with long-running requests holding workers.
Fix
Re-sized and split process pools based on per-worker memory, added request timeouts, and put Nginx FastCGI microcaching in front of anonymous traffic.
Verification
Load-tested before and after, then watched 5xx rates in server logs and Search Console crawl stats until indexing recovered.
php-fpmnginx fastcgi_cacheload testingGSC crawl stats
INC-002 · Multi-site WordPress fleetSEV-1 · Fleet-wide 500

Recovering 259 sites after a half-applied core update

An automatic update on one site broke hundreds of sibling sites on the same VPS at once, and they all started returning HTTP 500.

259sites restored
1reusable repair tool
0repeat incidents
Root cause
Core directories were hardlinked across clones. An in-place update rewrote the shared files for every site, but new files only landed in the one site being updated.
Fix
Wrote a repair script that reconciles core files across the fleet, restored all sites, then disabled automatic updates and moved to a controlled, checked update process.
Prevention
The policy is now part of an automated baseline that is re-checked on every site every five minutes.
wordpress corepythonfilesystem forensicschange control
OPS-003 · Production VPS, ~500 vhostsHardening

Production VPS security hardening & self-healing baseline

Bot floods on login and cron endpoints were burning PHP workers. Overlong timeouts let stuck requests pile up until the whole stack slowed down.

3600→90 sFastCGI timeouts
5 mincompliance re-check
HTTP/2on all TLS vhosts
Action
Blocked login, cron, admin and scanner paths in Nginx before PHP runs. Replaced per-request WP-Cron with a batched system cron, enabled HTTP/2 and hardened SSH.
Automation
An idempotent hardening script applies the baseline to every new or restored site. It reloads Nginx only when a config changed and rolls back automatically if nginx -t fails.
nginxsshcroncertbotidempotent automation
SEO-004 · Content site, crawl declineTechnical SEO

Recovering crawl budget through server log diagnostics

Organic pages were dropping out of the index even though the content hadn't changed.

200k+log lines analyzed
5xxbot errors isolated
Diagnosis
Parsed access logs, verified real Googlebot traffic by reverse DNS, and mapped where crawl budget was going. Most of it was spent on parameter bot-traps and intermittent 5xx responses.
Fix
Closed the bot-traps with robots rules, canonicals and redirects, fixed the upstream errors, and resubmitted clean sitemaps.
access logsgooglebot rDNSrobots.txtsitemaps

Engagement models

Transparent pricing

Every engagement starts with a written scope. Prices are in USD and exclude any applicable taxes.

Most chosen

Maintenance Retainer

$249 / month

per VPS · billed monthly in advance

  • Monthly patching and package upgrades
  • Uptime, disk and certificate monitoring
  • Up to 3 h of included troubleshooting
  • < 4 h response to emergencies
  • Monthly health and change report
Request retainer

Emergency & Hourly Diagnostics

$75 / hour

2 h minimum · billed after delivery

  • 502 / 504 / 500 and downtime recovery
  • Database crash and slow-query work
  • SSL, DNS and firewall incidents
  • Time logged in 15-minute increments
  • Post-incident root-cause report
Report an incident

Technical SEO Infrastructure Audit

$490 fixed

one site · 50% upfront, 50% on delivery

  • TTFB and Core Web Vitals baseline
  • 30-day access-log crawl analysis
  • Indexing, header and redirect review
  • Prioritized fix list with effort estimates
  • Optional implementation sprint
Book an audit

Larger fleets, multi-server setups and ongoing SEO sprints are quoted per project. Each quote is a written Statement of Work, and the invoice references it.

How work is delivered

Process

Audit

Read-only access first. I baseline the OS, stack, logs and SEO signals and record what I find.

Plan & approve

A written scope with priorities, risk and cost. Nothing changes until you approve it.

Implement

Snapshot or backup first, changes in maintenance windows, and a rollback path for every step.

Report

A change log, before/after metrics and recommendations, delivered by email or PDF with your invoice.

Toolbox

Stack I work in daily

Systems

Ubuntu · Debian
AlmaLinux · Rocky
systemd · cron
Bash · Python

Web & runtime

Nginx · Apache
OpenLiteSpeed
PHP-FPM · Redis
WordPress

Data & edge

MySQL · MariaDB
Cloudflare · DNS
Let's Encrypt
UFW · iptables

SEO & perf

Search Console
Bing Webmaster
Log analysis · CrUX
Lighthouse · Schema

Questions

FAQ

How do you access my server securely?

Through a dedicated SSH key and a separate sudo user that you can revoke at any time. I never ask for root passwords over chat, and all credentials are stored encrypted and deleted when the engagement ends.

What is not included?

Hosting fees, software licences, content writing, link building and application feature development are not included. They can be quoted separately if they're needed.

How are invoices structured?

Each invoice line matches one of the three named services on this page and references the agreed scope, the retainer month, or the logged hours. A written report or change log accompanies every invoice.

Can I get a refund?

Unused prepaid hours and fixed-price work that hasn't started are refundable. Completed work is not refundable because it is an intangible service already delivered. The full terms are in the Refund & Cancellation Policy.

Which timezones do you cover?

I work primarily in European business hours (CET). Retainer clients get emergency coverage outside those hours.

Compliance

Scope of Work & Fulfillment Policy

This section explains what every invoice from this business represents.

Nature of services

All services are intangible business-to-business technical consulting and remote systems administration. No physical goods are sold or shipped.

What an invoice covers

Each invoice corresponds to one of three things: an agreed service-level retainer period, logged hourly diagnostics, or a defined infrastructure maintenance or optimization sprint under a written scope.

Proof of delivery

Delivery is evidenced by written reports, server change logs, before/after metrics and the email or ticket history for the engagement. All of these are available to the client on request.

Contact

Tell me what's breaking, or what needs to be faster.

Send your server OS, stack and a short description of the problem. You'll get a reply with next steps and a scope estimate within one business day.

Email me →