What Are the Most Common Technical SEO Issues (and How to Fix Them)?
When most people think of SEO, they picture keywords, backlinks, and content. But beneath the surface lies a critical foundation: Technical SEO. Without a technically sound website, even the most compelling content can go unnoticed by search engines. For business owners, marketers, and developers, understanding technical SEO isn’t optional—it’s essential for driving visibility, performance, and growth. In this post, we’ll explore why technical SEO matters, how it affects rankings and traffic, the most common issues to watch out for, and best practices to solve them.
TABLE OF CONTENT
What Is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO refers to optimizing your website’s infrastructure to help search engines crawl, index, and understand your content effectively. While traditional SEO focuses on content relevance and backlinks, technical SEO ensures that search engines can reach and interpret that content without obstacles.
This includes optimizing key areas such as site architecture, mobile-friendliness, page speed, structured data, and secure connections (HTTPS). Imagine building a beautiful store with no roads leading to it—technical SEO paves those roads, guiding search engines and users alike. A technically optimized site increases crawl efficiency, improves indexability, and ultimately enhances user experience—all of which are critical ranking factors.
Moreover, technical SEO encompasses elements such as XML sitemaps, robots.txt directives, canonical URLs, duplicate content resolution, and schema markup. These enhancements help search engines gain context about your pages and determine their relevance to specific search queries. Without this clarity, your content risks being ignored or misinterpreted.
How Technical SEO Directly Influences Search Rankings and Traffic Growth
1. Crawlability and Indexability
Search engines use bots to crawl and index websites. If your site has blocked pages, broken links, or lacks proper internal linking, search engines may skip important content. Technical SEO ensures clean architecture, functional XML sitemaps, and a properly configured robots.txt file so that search engines can discover and index your pages without interruption.
Best Practices:
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Submit an updated XML sitemap in Google Search Console.
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Use a clean and hierarchical URL structure.
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Avoid orphaned pages and use internal linking to maintain flow.
2. Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
Page speed is a confirmed ranking signal, especially with Google’s Core Web Vitals now a major part of the algorithm. A delay of even one second can drastically increase bounce rates and lower user satisfaction. Websites optimized for speed load faster, reduce bounce, and improve engagement—direct signals for better ranking.
Tips to Improve Speed:
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Compress images using modern formats like WebP.
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Enable browser caching and minify HTML/CSS/JS.
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Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
3. Mobile-Friendliness
With mobile-first indexing, Google prioritizes the mobile version of your site for ranking. If your website isn’t responsive or delivers a poor mobile experience, it can tank your visibility, regardless of how good your desktop version is.
To Optimize for Mobile:
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Use responsive design with scalable elements.
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Avoid intrusive popups.
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Ensure clickable elements are spaced appropriately.
4. Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data helps search engines understand the context of your content. It powers rich results such as review stars, event listings, FAQs, and breadcrumbs—all of which can increase your organic CTR (click-through rate).
How to Implement:
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Use schema.org vocabulary in JSON-LD format.
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Validate your markup with Google’s Rich Results Test.
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Prioritize key areas like product info, breadcrumbs, and FAQs.
5. Secure Connection (HTTPS)
Google has confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal. Sites lacking an SSL certificate may show security warnings to users, reducing trust and traffic.
Action Steps:
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Install an SSL certificate.
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Redirect HTTP to HTTPS using 301 redirects.
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Update internal links to HTTPS.
6. Eliminating Crawl Errors and Duplicate Content
Broken links, 404 pages, and duplicate content confuse search engines and waste crawl budget. Cleaning these up ensures search engines focus on ranking the right content.
Best Practices:
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Use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content.
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Run crawl audits with tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.
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Implement 301 redirects for broken URLs.
What Are the Most Common Technical SEO Issues (and How to Fix Them)?
"If your site has Technical SEO issues, none of its SEO matters until those technical issues are resolved," notes Alexander Robinson, ST Digitals owner and Director of SEO. "It's like restoring a classic car back to its original glory, but won't start because of mechanical issues."
These have been the most common technical SEO issues web sites encounter. Though some cause major technical errors, they can be fairly easy to fix.
1. Slow Page Speed
A common technical barrier is slow-loading pages. It not only hurts rankings but also damages user experience.
Fixes:
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Compress large images
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Enable lazy loading
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Minimize server response times
2. Mobile Optimization Errors
Sites that don’t adapt to smaller screens risk exclusion from mobile-first indexing.
Fixes:
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Implement responsive design
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Test using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test
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Optimize font sizes and touch elements
3. Indexing Problems
If pages aren’t indexed, they won’t show up in search results.
Fixes:
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Check Google Search Console for indexing errors
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Submit XML sitemaps regularly
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Ensure no critical content is blocked by robots.txt
4. Duplicate Content
This can result from parameterized URLs, www vs non-www, or HTTP vs HTTPS versions.
Fixes:
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Use canonical tags
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Apply consistent URL structures
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Set preferred domain in Google Search Console
5. Broken Links (404 Errors)
These waste crawl budget and frustrate users.
Fixes:
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Use tools to scan for broken links (Ahrefs, SEMrush)
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Redirect broken URLs to relevant content
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Update internal links
6. Poor Internal Linking
Internal links help bots discover and prioritize your pages.
Fixes:
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Link to important pages from high-traffic content
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Use descriptive anchor text
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Maintain a logical site hierarchy
7. Misconfigured Robots.txt Files
Blocking key pages can cause critical pages to disappear from search engines.
Fixes:
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Audit your
robots.txtfile -
Don’t block important folders like
/wp-content/uploads/ -
Use “noindex” for specific content, not robots.txt blocks
The Impact of Technical SEO Improvements
Here's a visual example showing the estimated improvement in organic traffic when various technical SEO fixes are made:
As shown, improvements like fixing crawl errors and increasing page speed have a direct and significant effect on traffic performance. These foundational improvements often result in a 20%+ boost in organic search performance.
Conclusion: Why Technical SEO Is Worth the Investment
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes hero of your website’s success. Without it, even the best-designed content strategy can falter. From improving crawlability and boosting rankings to enhancing user experience and reducing bounce rates, technical SEO is the foundation that supports all other digital marketing efforts.
If your site is underperforming despite quality content and good backlinks, it may be time for a technical SEO audit. By addressing issues such as speed, mobile usability, crawl errors, and structured data, you pave the way for consistent organic growth and a better experience for your users.
Author of This Post
Alexander Robinson III
Founder/Director of SEO
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Technical SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s infrastructure to help search engines crawl, index, and understand your site efficiently.
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