Technical SEO

In the vast landscape of search engine optimization (SEO), technical SEO plays a pivotal role in ensuring that your website is both accessible and attractive to search engines like Google. The right technical foundation not only boosts your rankings but also ensures a seamless user experience. However, despite its importance, many website owners neglect this aspect or aren’t aware of the technical hurdles that may be hindering their SEO efforts.

Last year, a deep dive into over a million domains revealed some of the most common technical SEO issues that continue to impact websites. While some of these problems are well-known, others are subtler but can have a significant impact on search engine visibility.

In this post, we’ll highlight common technical SEO issues that may be lurking on your site, how they affect your rankings, and most importantly, how a Technical SEO Service can fix these problems efficiently.

1. Indexability Issues: The Foundation of SEO Visibility

The first and foremost aspect of technical SEO is indexability. If search engines can’t access and index your website’s pages, your chances of ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs) plummet. Indexability issues can occur for several reasons, and often, you may not even know they’re happening unless you perform regular audits.

Common Indexability Issues

• Canonical pointing to 4XX errors: Canonical tags are used to indicate the preferred version of a page when there are multiple versions of similar content. If the canonical tag points to a page that doesn’t exist (4XX error), Google won’t index your page properly, and the wrong version could be indexed.
• Canonical points to a redirect: Sometimes, canonical tags mistakenly point to a page that redirects to another URL. This can cause confusion for search engines, leading them to index the wrong page.
• Blocked pages via robots.txt: Robots.txt files are meant to tell search engines which pages should or shouldn’t be crawled. However, misconfigured files can block important pages from being crawled, limiting your site’s exposure.

How Professional Services Can Help

A Technical SEO Service will conduct a comprehensive audit of your site’s indexability. Using tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, experts can identify which pages are being blocked, whether canonical tags are correctly implemented, and if any pages are missing from the index. With the right fixes, your pages can be indexed correctly, improving your visibility and search rankings.

2. Mobile Optimization: A Necessity in 2025

In today’s digital landscape, mobile optimization isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s an essential part of any website’s SEO strategy. Google’s mobile-first indexing means that the mobile version of your website is considered the primary version for ranking purposes.

Common Mobile Optimization Issues

• Responsive design issues: Websites that aren’t built using responsive design might display poorly on mobile devices, affecting user experience and SEO.
• Slow mobile load times: Mobile users expect fast-loading websites. If your site takes too long to load, you risk losing visitors and dropping in search rankings.
• Mobile usability errors: Sometimes, buttons or navigation menus aren’t easily clickable or viewable on smaller screens, making the site harder to use.

How Professional Services Can Help

A Technical SEO Service will perform a detailed audit of your website’s mobile performance, checking for things like responsive design, load times, and usability. They can fix issues such as optimizing images for mobile, ensuring your content is properly displayed, and improving page load times by implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) or other performance-enhancing measures.

3. Duplicate Content: A Hidden SEO Threat

Duplicate content can confuse search engines, leading them to either index the wrong version of a page or rank multiple versions of similar content against each other. This can dilute your page authority and negatively impact rankings.

Common Duplicate Content Issues

• URL variations: Multiple URLs leading to the same content, such as example.com and example.com/?id=123, can be treated as duplicate content.
• HTTP vs. HTTPS: If a website is accessible via both HTTP and HTTPS, search engines may treat these as two separate pages, creating duplicate content.
• Duplicate meta descriptions and titles: Identical or very similar meta descriptions and title tags across multiple pages can signal to search engines that the pages are too similar to each other.

How Professional Services Can Help

Professional SEO experts can use tools like Screaming Frog to find duplicate content across your site and implement canonical tags to indicate the preferred version of a page. Additionally, they can help consolidate URLs, redirect HTTP pages to HTTPS, and rewrite meta descriptions and titles to make them unique for each page.

4. Crawl Errors: Preventing Search Engines from Accessing Your Content

Crawl errors occur when search engine bots are unable to access certain pages on your site. These errors are usually related to broken links, incorrect redirects, or server problems that prevent pages from loading.

Common Crawl Errors

• 404 errors: These occur when a page has been deleted or moved without a proper redirect in place.
• 500 errors: These are server-related issues that prevent a page from loading.
• Redirect loops: When a page redirects to itself or goes through an endless loop of redirects, search engines cannot crawl the page.

How Professional Services Can Help

A Technical SEO Service will run a crawl analysis of your website to detect broken links, server errors, and incorrect redirects. They can fix broken links, set up proper 301 redirects, and ensure that all pages load without issues, ensuring that search engines can fully crawl and index your website.

5. Site Speed: A Critical Ranking Factor

Google has made it clear that site speed is an important ranking factor, especially for mobile users. Websites that load slowly not only provide a poor user experience but also risk penalization in the search rankings.

Common Site Speed Issues

• Unoptimized images and files: Large images and files that aren’t optimized for the web can significantly slow down page load times.
• Excessive JavaScript: Overuse of JavaScript can cause pages to load slowly, especially if scripts are not properly deferred or loaded asynchronously.
• Heavy use of third-party scripts: Ads, widgets, and analytics tools can slow down page loading times if not properly managed.

How Professional Services Can Help

A Technical SEO Service will evaluate your site’s load times and pinpoint specific elements that are slowing it down. They can optimize images, minify CSS and JavaScript files, and implement strategies like lazy loading to improve performance. Additionally, they can recommend server-side optimizations to ensure faster load times.

6. Structured Data: Enhancing Visibility with Rich Snippets

Structured data helps search engines understand the content of your website more effectively, potentially leading to enhanced results in the form of rich snippets.

Common Structured Data Issues

• Missing or incorrect schema markup: Websites often fail to implement or incorrectly implement schema markup, which can prevent rich snippets from appearing in search results.
• Error in structured data: Even minor errors in your structured data can prevent it from being properly understood by search engines, reducing its effectiveness.

How Professional Services Can Help

Technical SEO professionals can implement and fix schema markup to ensure that search engines can correctly interpret your site’s content. This might include adding structured data for products, reviews, events, or articles, which can result in rich snippets and improved click-through rates.

7. HTTP/HTTPS Migration Issues

Switching from HTTP to HTTPS is essential for site security, but it can also create technical SEO challenges if not done correctly.

Common HTTPS Issues

• Mixed content errors: When some elements of your page are still loaded via HTTP after migration, it can cause security warnings and hinder SEO performance.
• Redirect problems: Incorrect or missing redirects from HTTP to HTTPS can cause Google to treat your site as two separate domains.

How Professional Services Can Help

A Technical SEO Service will ensure that your HTTP-to-HTTPS migration is handled seamlessly, checking for mixed content and setting up proper 301 redirects to ensure no SEO value is lost during the transition.

Final Words

Technical SEO is a complex and ongoing task, but it’s essential for ensuring that your website ranks well and provides a great user experience. While some issues, like missing meta descriptions, may seem urgent, others—like indexability and site speed—have a far more significant impact on your SEO performance.

If you’re struggling to fix technical SEO issues on your own, hiring a Technical SEO Service is an excellent investment. Professional services can audit your site, identify issues, and implement fixes that will help you achieve better rankings and improve user experience.

By addressing these common technical SEO problems and working with the right experts, you can ensure your site is optimized for both search engines and users alike, driving traffic and improving your chances of success online.