The most common technical SEO problems include pages that cannot be indexed, duplicate content, broken links, slow loading speeds, poor mobile usability and messy site structure. Most build up gradually through redesigns, plugin changes and years of adding new content.
Here are the issues we see most often on small business websites, and why each one matters.
Indexing and Crawling Problems
Accidental “noindex” tags are surprisingly common. Developers often use them while building a site, then forget to remove them when it goes live. The result is a website that search engines are told to ignore.
Robots.txt mistakes can cause similar trouble. This small file tells search engines which areas they may crawl, and a single wrong line can block an entire section of a site.
Orphan pages are another issue. These are pages with no internal links pointing to them, which makes them hard for both visitors and search engines to find.
Duplicate Content, Broken Links and Messy URLs
Many websites accidentally create several versions of the same page. It might load with and without “www”, over both “http” and “https”, or with tracking codes and filter options added to the address.
Online shops are particularly prone to this, as product filters can generate thousands of near-identical URLs. Canonical tags, redirects and sensible settings help search engines focus on the main version.
When pages are deleted or renamed without redirects, links pointing to them break. Visitors see an error page, and search engines waste time crawling dead ends.
Redirect chains happen when one redirect points to another, which points to another. Each extra step slows things down and can dilute the value passed between pages.
Speed and Mobile Problems
Large images, too many scripts and slow hosting can make pages sluggish. On mobile connections, these delays are even more noticeable.
Mobile usability issues are also common, such as text that is too small to read, buttons placed too close together or content wider than the screen. Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing, so these issues deserve attention.
Other frequent problems include missing or incorrect structured data, an out-of-date XML sitemap and mixed security warnings where some page elements still load over insecure connections.
Finding the Problems on Your Site
Google Search Console reports many of these issues for free, including indexing problems and page experience data. A crawling tool can then give a fuller picture across the whole site, listing broken links, redirects and duplicate pages in one place.
The key is to prioritise. A sitewide indexing issue matters far more than a few long image file names.
Our technical SEO services focus on finding and fixing these kinds of problems in a sensible order. If you would like someone to take a look at your website, we are happy to help.
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