If you’re running an e-commerce store, a local business website, or any online platform aiming to grow and boost sales, technical SEO is not something you can ignore.
Even with the best products or services, hidden technical SEO issues on a website, like broken links, slow page load times, or missing sitemaps, can stop search engines from properly crawling and ranking your site. The result? Missed visibility, lost traffic, and fewer conversions.
Fixing these issues can help your site perform better on Google, whether you want to boost online sales, reach more local customers, or improve your search rankings.
This guide explains the most common technical SEO problems that affect business websites and how to fix them. Use a technical SEO checker or run a full SEO audit to find and solve key issues.
9 Common Technical SEO Issues and Solutions:
Common technical SEO errors, such as broken links, missing sitemaps, slow page speed, and poor mobile responsiveness, can negatively impact your site’s visibility and performance. Use technical SEO tools to identify and resolve these issues. Fixing them will boost user experience, enhance crawlability, and improve your SEO ranking.
1. No XML Sitemap Submitted:
An XML Sitemap is a file that includes the URLs of website pages and posts. It helps Google perceive your site structure and page content. This file allows Google search engine bots to crawl your site easily and show it on the SERPs.
Issue:
If the XML sitemap of the website cannot be submitted, it is incomplete or has errors. Absence or erroneous submission of the XML Sitemap makes it difficult for the crawler to crawl your website and index the pages.
You may check whether the website’s XML Sitemap is submitted by searching your domain name and at the end of the domain, add “/sitemap.xml”. Here, your XML Sitemap exists.
For your reference: “www.domain.com/sitemap.xml”
How to fix?
To fix the sitemap XML issue, follow the points below:
- If the sitemap.xml doesn’t exist for your website, generate it yourself.
- Hire a developer who can assist in generating and submitting the XML Sitemap.
- XML Sitemap generating tools can be used to create the sitemap.xml.
- Separate sitemap.xml files can be generated for URLs, images, videos, news and mobile content.
- Sitemap.xml is submitted in the Google Search Console in the Sitemap section.
2. No HTTPS Security
HTTPS is a secure connection between a user’s browser and a website. Google considers HTTPS encryption a small ranking factor for websites.
Search your domain name on Google to check whether your website is HTTPS encrypted or HTTP. It displays a “404 page” or “not secure” warning if it is.
What is its impact on Technical SEO?
- Security: This security protocol protects the integrity of user data.
- Indexing: A website using the HTTP protocol is a red flag for search bots, and it might prevent the website or its pages from being indexed.
- Redirect: If the whole website or pages redirect from HTTPS to HTTP, or vice versa, it confuses the Google bots.
Even after getting the SSL/TLS, some resources or pages may not receive the security protocol. You’ll need to find and fix them.
How to fix?
- Get the SSL/TLS certificate and install it on the website.
- After installation, if some pages or resources still use the HTTP protocol, you must find them via SEO audit and then fix them.
3. Messy URLs
Messy URLS refer to URLS with odd or ambiguous characters in the slug. This occasionally occurs with new blog posts. It distracts your users and search engines, and your reputation becomes doubtful.
“Something like this: “www.exampe.com/….. index.php//?36t482364683 “is an example of an unoptimized and messy URL.
How to fix?
You can fix the on-site technical seo problem of messy URLs by doing these tasks:
- Use the keyword in the URL.
- Compress the URL characters to fewer than 70.
- Canonicalise your URLs if they are directed to duplicate content.
4. Broken Links
Broken or dead links are hyperlinks that don’t guide the visitor or crawler to the page or resource mentioned. These links might be internal, external or backlinks. It is a poor experience for the crawler or visitor to see dozens of broken links on the website, compelling them to leave. Broken links may consume valuable traffic and crawl budget, so they must be fixed.
How to find broken links?
- Use Google Search Console to find the broken links report. Click on “Indexing”> “Pages”> “Not Found (404).”
- Other tools, such as SEMrush, Screaming Frog, Ahrefs or a link checker, identify broken links on a large scale.
- Backlinks may also be identified with the seo tools.
How to fix?
- Regularly do an SEO audit of the website.
- Route the 404 error pages to other relevant pages of the website.
- The replaced pages or those with a new URL are directed to the correct locations.
- Use a 301 redirect to redirect the user to a new location if the page has been moved.
- SEO tools can identify backlinks, and then contact the web owners or team to replace that URL with a link to your website.
5. Page Speed Load
Page Speed load (the time it takes to load a webpage’s content) is a direct and significant SEO ranking factor. A website with a slower load speed will be penalized and removed from the SERPs. Faster loading speeds improve the user experience. Page Speed load also affects the website’s crawlability, indexing, and bounce rate.
How to improve?
The page speed can be improved by fixing the following factors:
- Use technical SEO tools like PageSpeed Insights to identify website speed issues.
- Optimize the images. (Up to 100 KB is considered optimized.
- Minify the CSS and JavaScript files to reduce their size.
- Leverage the browser and server cache to improve access for returning visitors.
- Reduce the number of redirects to improve the load time.
- Utilize the CDN to distribute your server content for various geographical locations.
- Utilizing the lazy loading method is also helpful, as valuable content will load faster, and supportive elements like images and videos will load later.
- Contacting a technical seo agency or expert will be required to perform the above tasks.
6. Mobile Friendliness
Google prioritizes mobile-first indexing as a ranking factor for websites. For better ranking and indexing, the website should be mobile-optimized. The absence of mobile optimization will not be indexed and may result in a higher bounce rate, penalizing your web content. It should be mobile-responsive.
How to fix?
To improve your website’s mobile optimization in 2025, you should do the following:
- Use CSS media file queries to adjust the content according to the screen size. Content adapts to the adjustment without damaging the quality or display.
- Analyse your performance on PageSpeed Insight for mobile devices and fix the bugs mentioned in the report.
- Design the website and adjust the mobile-friendly fonts, images and navigation and boost user experience.
- Tools are available to check if your website is mobile-friendly or not.
7. Unstructured Data
Unstructured data means web page content is not organized for the convenience of the search engine and the user. The user finds it difficult to understand, and the search engine bot gets distracted because of its amorphous content. The text, images, video or audio should be symmetrical. How can the unstructured data be fixed for the search engine or user?
How to Add Schema to a Website:
- Choose the content type (e.g., Article, Product, Local Business).
- Use “Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper” to generate schema.
- Select the data type and paste your page URL or HTML code.
- Highlight and tag content elements.
- Click “Create HTML” to generate the schema.
- Copy the JSON-LD code (recommended format).
- Paste the code in the “<head>” or just before the “</body>” tag of your page.
- Use Google’s Rich Results Test to test the markup.
- Check performance in Google Search Console.
Adding schema helps SEO and search engines understand your content better.
8. Robots.txt Issue
The robots.txt file instructs search engine crawlers which pages should be crawled or indexed. The main issues in Robots.txt are improper placement, blocking of CSS and JavaScript files, Conflict directives, and blocking of redirected URLs. These issues impact the website’s SEO and performance. How can this be resolved?
How to fix Robots.txt Issues?
- Place the Robots.txt file in the root directory, not in a subfolder.
- Don’t use the directives “disallow” and “noindex” in the robots.txt, as they can confuse the search engine.
- Use tools like Google URL inspector to identify the problem and fix it.
- After changing the robots.txt file, request a recrawl in GSC.
- Check whether the CSS or JavaScript file is blocked or not.
9. Duplicate Content
Identical content or part of the content published on different pages of the same website, or similar to other websites’ content, is considered duplicate. Duplicate content confuses the search engine about which page to rank, which is a bad experience for the user and causes frustration. Google will index according to its own will, and both pages may not get indexed, and the website may get penalized as well. If the page is indexed, then it may dilute the link. Duplicate content is not much of a problem if appropriately utilized.
Solution for Duplicate Content
- 301 redirect can instruct the search engine to redirect one URL to another permanently.
- Using the Canonical tag directs the search engine to which page should be considered when duplicate content is found.
- Adjust the URL structure to avoid the similarity.
- Before publishing the content, use plagiarism checker tools to find the plagiarism score.
Conclusion
Addressing technical issues in SEO is essential for any business that wants to grow online, improve search visibility, and increase conversions. Technical SEO optimization is a core part of digital marketing success, from fixing broken links to improving mobile responsiveness and site structure. Working with a technical SEO agency or consulting a technical SEO expert ensures you can resolve these issues effectively and stay ahead in search engine performance.
