Technical SEO directly impacts your website’s ranking. If search engines can’t crawl, index, or access your pages effectively, your ranking could hurt no matter how strong your content is.
Issues like slow page speed, broken links, and mobile usability problems silently harm your performance. This guide covers the common technical SEO issues and provides solutions to address them, ensuring your site ranks higher.
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Technical SEO is essential for improving site performance and rankings.
- Common issues like slow page speed, mobile usability, duplicate content, and broken links can significantly harm your SEO.
- Regular audits and fixes are necessary to ensure your site is crawlable, indexable, and user-friendly.
- Tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, and Ahrefs help identify and resolve SEO errors efficiently.
- Optimising elements like HTTPS, XML sitemaps, and site architecture contributes to better search rankings and a smoother user experience.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO involves optimising your website’s infrastructure to help search engines crawl and index your pages more effectively. Unlike content SEO that focuses on keywords and links, technical SEO ensures that your site is accessible, fast, and secure.
Key elements include improving page speed, mobile responsiveness, site architecture, and structured data. This strong technical foundation allows search engines to easily discover and rank your content, boosting your site’s visibility and user experience.
8 Most Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Fix Them
Before diving into the specific issues, note that technical SEO problems often go unnoticed, but their effects are significant. These issues range from simple site structure flaws to complex indexing errors.
Below, we’ll explore eight common technical SEO challenges that could undermine your rankings and show you practical steps to resolve them.
1. Slow Page Speed
Page speed is a critical factor for user experience and SEO rankings. Slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates, lower engagement, and reduced visibility in search results.
Since Google favours fast websites, that makes website loading speed optimisation essential for better rankings and improved user satisfaction.
How to fix:
- Compress images to reduce load times without sacrificing quality.
- Enable browser caching to store resources locally and speed up subsequent visits.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for faster content delivery.
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to remove unnecessary characters that slow down load times.
- Leverage lazy loading to ensure that only visible content is loaded first.
2. Mobile Usability Errors
Mobile usability should be the new standard, as Google now uses mobile-first indexing. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile devices, it can result in a poor user experience, higher bounce rates, and lower rankings.
With more users browsing on smartphones, ensuring your site is mobile-friendly is key to staying competitive and enhancing search visibility.
How to fix:
- Use responsive design to adapt your site for all screen sizes.
- Test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to identify issues.
- Ensure proper spacing for buttons and links to make navigation easier.
- Adjust font sizes to improve readability on smaller screens.
- Remove or limit pop-ups that disrupt the mobile experience.
3. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content occurs when identical or very similar content appears on multiple pages of your site or across different sites. This confuses search engines, making it difficult for them to determine which version to rank.
As a result, it can split link equity, drop rankings, and impact overall SEO performance. You must ensure that each page on your site has unique content and clearly point search engines to the preferred version to avoid this occurrence.
How to fix:
- Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page.
- Avoid unnecessary URL variations that lead to duplicate content.
- Consolidate similar or thin pages into a single, comprehensive page.
- Set up 301 redirects for any old or outdated pages that may duplicate content.
- Review and clean up your content regularly to ensure originality.
4. Broken Links (404 Errors)
Broken links, or 404 errors, occur when a user tries to access a page that no longer exists or has been moved without proper redirection. They create a poor user experience, waste crawl budget, and impact site authority, leading to a declined ranking in search engines.
How to fix:
- Run regular audits using tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to identify 404 errors.
- Set up 301 redirects to guide users and search engines to the correct page.
- Update outdated links that point to non-existing pages or external resources.
- Remove or replace broken internal links with relevant, active ones.
- Monitor user reports and fix any new broken links that may arise.
5. Missing or Incorrect Robots.txt
The robots.txt file guides search engine crawlers on which pages to crawl. A missing or misconfigured robots.txt file can prevent search engines from indexing key pages or, conversely, allow access to sensitive content that should remain private.
Properly configuring this file ensures that search engines efficiently crawl your site without wasting resources on irrelevant pages.
How to fix:
- Check for a robots.txt file and ensure it’s placed in the root directory of your site.
- Use the correct directives to allow or disallow search engine crawlers from accessing specific pages.
- Test the file with Google Search Console’s Robots.txt Tester to avoid blocking important pages.
- Avoid overly restrictive settings that can prevent key pages from being crawled and indexed.
- Keep the file updated as your site structure or content evolves.
6. Poor Site Architecture
A cluttered site structure makes navigating complicated for search engines and users. Poorly organised sites can hide important pages, reduce the effectiveness of internal linking, and make it harder for search engines to crawl and index your content.
Optimising the architecture of your website ensures that all pages are easily accessible and discoverable by search engines and users.
How to fix:
- Simplify your site hierarchy to reflect page importance.
- Add breadcrumb navigation to enhance user experience.
- Use short, descriptive URLs for better understanding and crawling.
- Limit to 3 clicks to reach any page on the site.
- Boost internal linking to distribute link equity effectively.
Want to avoid deeper SEO pitfalls? Explore these website structure mistakes that could hurt your rankings today.
7. No HTTPS (Not Secure)
Websites that don’t use HTTPS are considered unsafe, and Google favours secure sites in search rankings.
Users are more likely to leave when a site doesn’t display a secure connection, especially when sensitive information like credit card details or personal data is involved. Switching to HTTPS is crucial for protecting your users and boosting your SEO performance.
How to fix:
- Install an SSL certificate to enable HTTPS on your site.
- Redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS using 301 redirects.
- Ensure all pages are accessible via HTTPS to avoid mixed content issues.
- Check for security warnings and fix any issues flagged by browsers or tools like Google Search Console.
8. XML Sitemap Errors
An unoptimised XML sitemap can prevent search engines from finding key pages on your site. When your sitemap includes unnecessary or outdated URLs, it confuses search engines and impacts how well your content is indexed.
How to fix:
- Regularly update the sitemap to reflect new or removed pages.
- Remove non-essential URLs such as duplicates or irrelevant content.
- Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for accurate indexing.
- Use tools like Screaming Frog to identify issues and clean up the sitemap.
How to Find SEO Errors on a Website
Regular SEO audits are the key to maintaining a well-optimised website. Here’s how to identify SEO errors and improve your website’s performance:
| Tool/Method | Description |
| Google Search Console | Monitor your site’s health, including crawl errors, mobile usability, and indexing issues. |
| Screaming Frog | Crawl your site to find issues like broken links, duplicate content, and missing metadata. |
| Ahrefs Site Audit | Check for technical issues, including slow pages, missing alt text, and improper redirects. |
| Semrush Site Audit | Identify technical problems and receive optimisation recommendations for site health. |
| Google PageSpeed Insights | Assess page load time and get recommendations for improvement to boost rankings. |
| Mobile-Friendly Test | Ensure your site performs well on mobile devices, which is critical for ranking. |
| Manual Audits | Regularly check for broken links, content issues, and missing alt text that tools may overlook. |
Conclusion
Technical SEO plays a vital role in your site’s performance and rankings. Issues like slow speeds, mobile errors, and broken links can prevent search engines from properly indexing your site.
Regular audits and fixes are key to ensuring better crawlability and improved user experience, ultimately boosting your SEO and site performance.
Struggling with technical SEO issues? Newnormz digital marketing provides expert audits and tailored optimisation strategies to improve your website’s performance and rankings. Contact Newnormz today and let’s grow together!
