Technical SEO issues affect how search engines find and rank your website, but not all problems need fixing right away
Use a three-tier system: fix crawling and indexing issues first, then site speed and mobile problems, then on-page elements like meta descriptions
Google Search Console is your free starting point for spotting technical problems
Focus your limited time on high-impact, low-effort fixes before tackling complex changes
Know when to handle things yourself and when professional help makes more sense
Running a technical SEO audit on your website can feel like opening a can of worms. You suddenly discover dozens of errors, warnings, and notices scattered across your site.
The question that immediately follows sounds simple but turns out to be surprisingly tricky: which problems should you fix first?
The short answer:
- fix crawling and indexing issues first
- then site speed and mobile problems
- then on-page elements like meta descriptions
If you’ve ever stared at a long list of technical SEO issues and felt completely stuck, you’re not alone. Most audit tools flag everything from missing alt text to broken redirects, yet they rarely tell you what actually matters for your rankings.
Without a clear system for prioritising these fixes, you could easily spend hours on minor tweaks while genuine problems continue holding your website back.
This guide gives you a practical framework for deciding which technical SEO issues deserve your attention first. You’ll learn how to sort problems by their impact on search visibility, understand which fixes you can handle yourself, and recognise when it makes sense to call in some help.
Table of Contents
What Are Technical SEO Issues?
Technical SEO issues are problems that affect how search engines crawl, understand, and rank your website. Unlike content-related SEO (the words on your pages and how you’ve written them), technical issues happen behind the scenes in your website’s code, structure, and server setup.
Think of your website like a high street shop. Content SEO is about what products you stock and how you display them on the shelves.
Technical SEO is about whether customers can actually get through the front door, whether the lights work so they can see what’s on offer, and whether they can move around without tripping over boxes in the aisles.
You might have the best stock in town, but none of that matters if people can’t get inside.
Why Technical Problems Block Your Rankings
Google sends automated programmes called crawlers (sometimes called bots or spiders) to visit websites and understand their content. When these crawlers encounter obstacles, they might not see your pages at all.
Or they might misunderstand what your website is about and show it to the wrong people.
Common technical barriers include pages that load too slowly for crawlers to wait, content that’s accidentally blocked from being seen, broken links that lead nowhere, and duplicate content that leaves search engines unsure which version of a page to show in results.
Here’s the frustrating part.
You might have brilliant content that perfectly answers what your customers are searching for.
But if Google can’t access or understand that content because of technical problems, your pages simply won’t appear in search results. Technical issues can make even excellent content completely invisible.
How Do You Find Technical SEO Problems?
A technical SEO audit systematically checks your website for issues that might affect search performance. Tools like Google Search Console (which is free), Screaming Frog, and Semrush can search through your website and generate reports listing potential problems.
Most audit tools sort issues by severity.
You’ll typically see errors (serious problems needing immediate attention), warnings (issues worth addressing but not urgent), and notices (minor improvements to consider when you have time).
This categorisation provides a useful starting point, but it’s only the beginning of proper prioritisation.
The Three-Tier Prioritisation Framework
Not all technical SEO issues carry equal weight. Some problems will tank your rankings overnight, while others might cause a slight dip you’d never even notice.
As Google’s John Mueller stated in 2025, “Consistency is the biggest technical SEO factor” – meaning issues that create conflicting signals for Google should take priority.
Here’s a straightforward framework for sorting issues into three priority levels.
Tier 1: Crawling and Indexing Problems
These are your most urgent issues because they directly prevent Google from seeing your content.
According to Ahrefs research, 96.55% of all indexed pages receive zero traffic from Google – and many of those pages have crawling or indexing problems that prevent them ranking at all. If search engines can’t crawl your pages, nothing else you do matters. Fix these first.
What to check:
Your robots.txt file controls which parts of your website crawlers can access. A single incorrect line in this file can block your entire site from Google. It’s worth checking that you’re not accidentally telling search engines to stay away from your important pages.
Indexing errors show up in Google Search Console when Google tried to crawl a page but couldn’t add it to its index.
Common causes include noindex tags (instructions telling Google not to include a page), canonical tag confusion (conflicting signals about which page is the “main” version), and server errors (your hosting having problems).
Broken internal links create dead ends for both visitors and search engines. When a crawler hits a broken link, it stops and moves on, potentially missing important pages elsewhere on your site.
If your audit reveals any of these problems affecting multiple pages, address them before moving to anything else.
Why Is My Website Not Showing in Google?
Tier 2: Site Speed and Mobile Performance
Once Google can access your content, your next priority is making sure visitors have a decent experience.
Google’s own research shows that 53% of mobile users abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load. Google uses page experience signals as ranking factors, which means slow or mobile-unfriendly sites often rank lower than faster competitors with similar content.
Key areas to address:
Core Web Vitals measure three aspects of user experience:
- loading performance
- interactivity
- visual stability
According to industry research, only around one in three websites currently pass all Core Web Vitals thresholds, meaning there’s significant opportunity to gain an advantage by meeting these standards.
Google specifically looks at how quickly your largest content element appears (Largest Contentful Paint should be under 2.5 seconds), how fast your site responds when someone clicks or taps (Interaction to Next Paint should be under 200 milliseconds), and whether elements jump around unexpectedly as the page loads (Cumulative Layout Shift should be below 0.1).
You can check your scores in Google Search Console under the Core Web Vitals report.
Mobile-friendliness matters because Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site when deciding rankings. If your website looks great on a desktop computer but works poorly on phones, your rankings will suffer regardless of how good the desktop version is.
Image optimisation often delivers quick wins here. Oversized images are one of the most common causes of slow loading times, and compressing them usually requires minimal technical knowledge. It’s often the easiest speed improvement you can make.
How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site
Tier 3: On-Page Technical Elements
These issues affect your SEO but typically have less dramatic impact than crawling or speed problems. Address them after you’ve handled the higher-priority fixes.
Elements to review:
Missing or duplicate meta descriptions won’t stop you ranking, but they affect how your pages appear in search results. A compelling meta description can improve your click-through rate even if your ranking position stays the same.
Alt text for images helps search engines understand your visual content and also improves accessibility for visitors using screen readers. Missing alt text is extremely common but lower priority than fundamental crawling problems.
Redirect chains happen when one redirect leads to another, which leads to another. While not catastrophic, long chains waste crawl budget and slow down page loading. They’re worth tidying up once bigger issues are sorted.
Duplicate content across multiple URLs can confuse search engines about which version of a page to show. Using canonical tags correctly tells Google which page you consider the main version, so it knows where to send searchers.
How Do You Decide Which Issues to Fix First?
Within each tier, you’ll still need to decide which specific issues to tackle first. A simple impact-versus-effort assessment helps you make these decisions sensibly.
Calculating Business Impact
Consider what happens if you leave the problem unfixed.
Ask yourself whether this issue affects pages that actually generate revenue or enquiries for your business.
Think about scale: is the problem on one product page, or across your entire blog? And consider trajectory: is the problem getting worse over time, or staying stable?
Issues affecting high-traffic or high-converting pages deserve priority over problems on pages nobody visits.
A broken link on your homepage matters far more than one buried in a five-year-old blog post that gets three visitors a month.
A practical example:
Your audit finds 47 pages with missing meta descriptions and 3 pages returning 404 errors. The missing descriptions include your homepage and main service pages. The 404 errors are on old blog posts. Despite there being fewer 404s, fixing them first makes sense because they’re Tier 1 issues (crawling problems). But among the meta descriptions, prioritise your homepage and service pages over less important pages.
Estimating Required Effort
Some fixes take five minutes. Others need a web developer and several days of work. Before you start on any fix, understand what’s actually involved.
Quick wins you can likely handle yourself include fixing broken internal links (just updating or removing them), adding missing alt text to images, compressing images before uploading, and updating meta descriptions. These typically need no technical expertise beyond knowing how to log into your website’s dashboard.
More complex fixes requiring some technical knowledge include resolving redirect chains, implementing canonical tags correctly, adjusting robots.txt configuration, and addressing Core Web Vitals issues.
You might manage these yourself if you’re comfortable with WordPress settings and willing to learn some basic technical concepts.
Professional help is usually needed for server configuration issues, JavaScript rendering problems, complex site migrations, and structural changes to your website’s architecture. These are situations where a mistake could cause serious damage.
Why Quick Wins Matter
When time and budget are limited, start with high-impact, low-effort fixes. Repairing broken links to important pages typically takes minutes and can immediately improve crawlability.
Fixing a complex Core Web Vitals issue might have similar impact but require significantly more time and expertise.
Tackling quick wins first gives you visible progress and often real improvements in your audit scores. That momentum helps while you plan how to tackle the more demanding problems.
What Tools Do You Need for a Technical SEO Audit?
You don’t need expensive software to find technical problems. Start with free tools before considering paid options.
For most small business websites, free tools provide everything you need.
Google Search Console
Every website owner should have Google Search Console set up.
It’s free, it shows you exactly how Google sees your site, and the data comes directly from Google itself. You’ll find indexing errors, Core Web Vitals scores, mobile usability problems, and security issues all in one place.
Check the Pages report (previously called Coverage) for indexing issues, the Core Web Vitals report for speed problems, and the Mobile Usability report for phone-related concerns.
If Google is having trouble with your site, this is where you’ll find out.
How to Use Google Search Console: A Guide for Business Owners
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
The free version of Screaming Frog lets you crawl up to 500 URLs, which covers most small business websites comfortably. It identifies broken links, missing meta data, redirect chains, and duplicate content by actually visiting every page on your site, just like Google does.
The interface looks intimidating at first, but it becomes intuitive once you’ve used it a few times. Export results to a spreadsheet if you find that easier to work with.
PageSpeed Insights
Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool analyses any URL and provides specific recommendations for improving loading times. It shows both mobile and desktop performance scores and connects directly to Core Web Vitals metrics.
Paste in your homepage URL first, then check your most important pages. The tool tells you exactly what’s slowing things down and often suggests specific fixes.
Can You Fix Technical SEO Issues Yourself?
Understanding your limits saves time and prevents costly mistakes. Here’s how to judge when you need expert support.
What Technical SEO Issues Can You Fix Yourself?
You can likely handle these issues yourself if you have basic familiarity with your website’s admin area. Most require no coding knowledge at all.
Updating content like meta descriptions and alt text works through your content management system’s normal editing interface.
Fixing broken internal links usually means opening the page in your editor and updating or removing the problematic link. Compressing images before uploading is straightforward with free online tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh.
Submitting sitemaps to Google Search Console involves clicking a few buttons and pasting a URL.
If you can write a blog post and upload an image, you can handle these fixes.
When Should You Hire an Expert for Technical SEO?
Consider getting expert help when mistakes could cause significant damage. Server configuration issues, including problems with your robots.txt file or .htaccess settings, can accidentally block your entire site from Google if handled incorrectly.
One wrong character in the wrong place, and you’ve made things much worse.
Site migrations involving changing domains, platforms, or URL structures need careful planning to preserve your existing rankings. Get this wrong, and you could lose years of SEO progress overnight.
Complex speed optimisation, particularly issues involving your server, database, or custom code, often benefit from developer expertise.
The fixes might be quick for someone who knows what they’re doing, but trial and error from a non-expert usually creates new problems.
The cost of professional help is usually justified when the potential damage from getting it wrong outweighs the fee for getting it right.
How Do You Create a Technical SEO Fix Plan?
With your framework in place, here’s how to move from audit to action without getting overwhelmed.
Step 1: Run Your Audit and Sort the Results
Start by running your audit using Google Search Console and Screaming Frog. Export the list of issues and sort them by type.
Group problems into the three tiers:
- crawling and indexing first
- then speed and mobile
- then on-page elements
Step 2: Create Your Fix Spreadsheet
Within each tier, note the effort required and the number of pages affected. A simple spreadsheet works well here, with columns for the issue type, pages affected, estimated effort (quick, moderate, or complex), and who needs to do the work (you, your developer, or an SEO professional).
Step 3: Work Through Issues Systematically
Work through your list starting with Tier 1 issues you can fix quickly. Tackle one category of problem at a time rather than jumping between different issue types. Fixing all your broken links in one session is more efficient than fixing one link, then one redirect, then another link.
Step 4: Verify Your Fixes
After making changes, wait a few weeks for Google to recrawl your site, then run your audit again. This confirms whether your fixes actually worked and reveals any new issues that have appeared.
Step 5: Schedule Ongoing Maintenance
Remember that technical SEO isn’t a one-time task.
Search engines update their requirements, your website changes as you add content, and new issues inevitably appear. Schedule regular audits (at least quarterly for active websites) to catch problems before they accumulate into something serious.
The goal isn’t a perfect score on every audit tool. It’s a website that search engines can access easily and visitors can use comfortably. Focus on that, and the rankings tend to follow.
Frequently Asked Questions
A technical SEO audit is a systematic review of your website’s infrastructure to identify issues that might prevent search engines from crawling, indexing, or ranking your pages properly. It examines elements like site speed, mobile-friendliness, broken links, redirect chains, and indexing status. Tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog automate much of this process by crawling your site and flagging potential problems.
Read more: What to Expect from a Technical SEO Audit
Focus first on problems that prevent Google from seeing your content at all, such as crawling blocks and indexing errors. Next, address issues affecting user experience like site speed and mobile usability. Finally, tackle on-page elements like meta descriptions and alt text. Within each category, prioritise issues affecting high-value pages and those you can fix quickly with minimal effort.
Related: How to Read an SEO Audit Report: Understanding the Results
Many technical SEO issues require no coding knowledge whatsoever. You can typically fix broken internal links, update meta descriptions, add alt text to images, compress images, and submit sitemaps yourself through your website’s content management system. More complex issues involving server configuration, redirects, or site structure may need professional help to avoid accidentally causing bigger problems.
Start with free tools before investing in paid software. Google Search Console shows how Google views your site and identifies indexing, speed, and mobile issues directly from Google’s perspective. Screaming Frog’s free version crawls up to 500 URLs to find broken links and missing elements. PageSpeed Insights analyses loading performance and provides specific improvement suggestions. For most small business websites, these free tools provide everything you need.
Technical SEO determines whether search engines can actually find and understand your website. Even excellent content won’t rank if technical problems prevent Google from accessing it properly. For small businesses competing against larger companies with bigger marketing budgets, a technically sound website helps level the playing field by ensuring your content has the best possible chance of appearing in search results.
Useful: 10 Common SEO Mistakes Small Businesses Make (And How to Fix Them)
Common problems include slow page loading speeds, mobile usability issues, broken internal and external links, duplicate content appearing at multiple URLs, missing or incorrect canonical tags, indexing errors that prevent pages appearing in search results, and poorly configured redirect chains. Most websites have at least some of these issues, so finding problems in your audit is completely normal.
Related: Why Some of Your Pages Could Be Invisible to Google
Errors are serious problems that typically need immediate attention, such as pages returning server errors or completely blocking search engines. Warnings indicate issues that should be addressed but aren’t urgent emergencies, like missing meta descriptions or moderately slow-loading pages. Notices flag minor improvements worth considering when time allows, such as slightly long URLs or minor instances of duplicate content.
Time varies enormously depending on the specific issue. Fixing a broken link takes seconds. Resolving complex Core Web Vitals problems might require weeks of development work. Quick wins like updating meta descriptions or compressing images typically take minutes per page. Server configuration changes or site restructuring often require professional help and can take days or weeks to complete properly.
Ignoring crawling and indexing problems means search engines can’t see your content, so you won’t rank regardless of how good your content actually is. Speed issues frustrate visitors and can lower rankings because Google considers page experience a ranking factor. Over time, unaddressed problems tend to multiply as your website grows, making eventual fixes more complex, time-consuming, and expensive.
Not quite. WordPress errors are problems with your website’s functionality, like plugin conflicts, database issues, or the “white screen of death.” Technical SEO issues specifically affect how search engines find and understand your site. There’s some overlap – a WordPress error that breaks your sitemap or slows your site down is also a technical SEO problem. But many WordPress errors won’t affect your rankings, and many technical SEO issues have nothing to do with WordPress itself.