In part 3 of our Technical SEO series, Senior SEO Engineer Anatolii shares common technical issues we find on client websites. We highlight these issues to help IT-professionals anticipate and quickly identify problems that may hurt a website’s SEO performance.
Disclaimer: This is not a complete list of all technical SEO issues, but it includes the most common problems IT professionals can face. When we conduct a full SEO audit, we examine over 100 SEO possible SEO issues for each page template.
Website Indexing and Crawlability Issues
For search engines to display your website in search results, they need to crawl, understand, and index your pages. Pages that are not indexed will not appear in search results.
Common Indexing & Crawl issues
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Broken links and redirects Broken links & redirect loops can impact the crawling of important pages
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Blocked by Robots.txt Important pages can be unintentionally disallowed from crawling
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Orphan Pages Pages without internal and external links can't be found by crawlers
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Noindex & Nofollow Tags Pages with a noindex directive tell search engines to not index them
Duplicate & Thin Content
Duplicate content means having the same or very similar content across different pages. Thin content means that your pages lack, according to the search engines, useful or unique information.
Common causes of duplicate content include:
- Multiple URLs for the same page (www vs. non-www)
- Similar/same product descriptions on multiple pages
- Content copied from, or shared with other sites
- Automatically generated templated content
Common causes of thin content include:
JavaScript Links & Dynamically Inserted Links
Modern websites often use JavaScript for added functionality and user interactivity. However, JavaScript links and dynamic links can make it harder for search engines to crawl and understand your website.
- JavaScript Links. When links rely on JavaScript, search engines might struggle to find and crawl them, especially if not implemented correctly. This can prevent important pages from being indexed.
- Dynamically Inserted Links. Dynamically inserted links are sometimes only visible to users, and not search engines. This can affect the visibility and rankings of the pages linked to.
Poor User Experience
Poor usability makes users, and with this the search engines, don’t like your website. Web Vitals are a way to understand how easy it is for users to interact with your site.
Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures how long it takes for the main content to load. Slow LCP frustrates users and make them leave (which leads to high bounce rates).
- First Input Delay (FID): Tracks the time between a user’s first interaction and the browser’s response. A high FID means the page feels unresponsive and not working properly.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures unexpected layout shifts during loading. High CLS can cause users to accidentally click the wrong elements, creating a frustrating experience.
Mobile Website Issues
Search engines prioritize the mobile version of a website for indexing. Making Mobile-friendliness a crucial ranking factor. If your mobile site is not well optimized, it can lower your rankings in both mobile and desktop searches.
Common mobile issues include:
- Small font sizes that make text hard to read
- Oversized images that don’t fit on small screens
- Non-functional clickable elements due to touch compatibility issues
- Pop-ups or interstitials that block content
Mobile-Friendly Design vs. Responsive Layouts
While both aim to improve the mobile experience, there are differences:
- Mobile-Friendly Design. Pages are adapted for mobile but may not fully adjust to different screen sizes. Common issues include elements that don’t resize well.
- Responsive Layouts automatically adapt to various screen sizes, offering a more consistent experience across devices. Common issues can include complex elements that don’t transition smoothly.
Structured Data Markup Issues
Structured data is a way to organize webpage information for better understanding by search engines. Structured data uses schema markup, added to HTML, and can help rich snippets of your website to appear in the search results. This can provide better visibility of your brand and pages. However, if not implemented correctly, structured data can confuse search engines and to ignore your pages.
Here are a few common mistakes that you should watch out for:
- Marking up hidden content: Hiding content from users while showing it to search engines is against Google’s policies and can lead to penalties.
- Using the same markup sitewide: Structured data needs to be specific to each product, page, and element. Using a 1 for all approach will lead to issues.
- Fabricated reviews: Stick to genuine feedback to avoid any potential penalties from search engines.
- Using individual ratings instead of averages: Cherry-picking the best ratings while ignoring less favorable ones goes against Google’s policies and can lead to issues down the line.
- Inconsistent data: Your page data and markup must match. If search engines see one price and users see another, it can hurt user experience and trust.
Shameless plug: Schedule your free consultation
If you want to learn more about Technical SEO, and how SEO can improve your website’s performance, don’t hesitate to schedule a free consult. We are glad to help, no strings attached.
Content Authenticity Statement
97% of this blog post was written by Anatolii, the human, senior SEO Engineer and author of this article. AI supported the creation of the outline for this article and improved the writing by rephrasing a few sentences.
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Image credits: seobility.net, blog.hellomethod.co.uk, screenshot by the author.
