The 10 most common technical SEO issues (and how to fix them)

Every site audit is different, but the same problems show up again and again. Here are the ten we see most often, why they matter and how to fix each one.

1. Broken internal links

What it is: links on your own site that lead to a 404 or a server error. Why it matters: visitors hit a dead end, and search engines waste crawl budget on pages that don't exist. Fix: update the link to the right URL, or redirect the old URL (301) to its closest replacement. Re-run the audit to confirm.

2. Redirect chains and loops

What it is: URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C (or back to A). Why it matters: every hop slows the page down and may lose some link value; loops make a page unreachable. Fix: point the first redirect straight at the final URL, and update internal links to the final URL so no redirect is needed at all.

3. Pages accidentally set to noindex

What it is: a <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> tag or an X-Robots-Tag header on a page you want in Google, often left over from a staging site. Fix: remove the tag from pages that should rank, then request indexing in Google Search Console.

4. Missing or wrong canonical tags

What it is: no canonical tag, or a canonical that points to another page, a redirect or a broken URL. Why it matters: Google may index the wrong version of a page or ignore it. Fix: give every indexable page a self-referencing canonical, and point duplicates (filtered or tracking URLs) to the main version.

5. Duplicate or missing titles

What it is: pages without a title tag, or many pages sharing the same one. Fix: write a unique title of about 30–60 characters for every page, with the main topic near the start.

6. Missing or duplicate meta descriptions

Why it matters: the description isn't a ranking factor, but it's your ad text in the results. Without one, Google picks a random snippet. Fix: write a unique, specific description of about 70–160 characters for important pages.

7. HTTP pages and mixed content

What it is: pages served over plain HTTP, an http:// version that doesn't redirect to https://, or secure pages loading images and scripts over HTTP. Fix: redirect all HTTP URLs to HTTPS with a single 301, and update hard-coded http:// links to resources.

8. Missing or broken XML sitemap and robots.txt

What it is: no sitemap, a sitemap listing redirected or deleted URLs, or a robots.txt that blocks important sections. Fix: generate a sitemap with only your final, indexable URLs, reference it in robots.txt, and check that robots.txt doesn't disallow pages you want ranked.

9. Images without alt text

Why it matters: alt text helps screen-reader users and tells search engines what an image shows, which counts for image search. Fix: describe meaningful images in a few words. Decorative images can have an empty alt attribute.

10. Slow server response and heavy pages

What it is: a slow time to first byte, no compression, very large HTML or dozens of scripts. Fix: enable gzip or Brotli compression, cache pages, remove unused scripts and move to faster hosting if the server itself is slow.

Make it a habit

Fixing these once isn't enough: new pages, plugins and redesigns bring problems back. Run an audit every month (or after every release), and compare it with the previous one. The list of new issues shows what just broke; the list of fixed issues is proof of your work, and it looks great in a client report.