Technical SEO is the backbone of a well-optimized website, but small businesses often overlook crucial details that impact their rankings. In this guide, we’ll break down the top 10 technical SEO mistakes small businesses make—and how to fix them.
Table of Contents
1. Ignoring Website Speed and Performance
Site speed is a key ranking factor, and a slow website can drive visitors away. Many small businesses don’t realize that large images, excessive plugins, and poor hosting can slow down their sites.
How to Fix It:
- Use Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze your website’s performance.
- Optimize images using compression tools like TinyPNG.
- Upgrade to a faster web host.
- Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML with a caching plugin.
At Pixolv, we worked with a local real estate agency struggling with slow load times. By optimizing their images and implementing caching, their site speed improved by 60%, reducing their bounce rate significantly.
2. Not Using HTTPS (SSL Certificate Issues)
Google prioritizes secure websites, and if your site still uses HTTP instead of HTTPS, you’re losing rankings and customer trust.
How to Fix It:
- Purchase an SSL certificate from your hosting provider.
- Use tools like Why No Padlock to identify insecure elements.
- Redirect all HTTP traffic to HTTPS using 301 redirects.
3. Poor Mobile Optimization
With Google’s mobile-first indexing, your site must be mobile-friendly. Many small businesses still have unresponsive designs, leading to poor user experience.
How to Fix It:
- Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check your site.
- Choose a responsive design theme.
- Optimize images and enable AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) where necessary.
We helped a boutique e-commerce store optimize its mobile site, and within three months, their mobile traffic increased by 40%.
4. Ignoring XML Sitemaps and Robots.txt
Search engines rely on sitemaps and robots.txt files to understand your site’s structure. Missing or incorrect files can lead to indexing issues.
How to Fix It:
- Generate an XML sitemap using Yoast SEO or Screaming Frog.
- Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Use a robots.txt file to block irrelevant pages (like admin pages) from being indexed.
5. Using Duplicate Content
Duplicate content confuses search engines and can result in ranking penalties. This often happens with product pages, blogs, and category pages.
How to Fix It:
- Use canonical tags (
rel="canonical") to point to the original version of a page. - Avoid copying content from other sites.
- Regularly check for duplicate content using Copyscape.
6. Broken Links and 404 Errors
Broken links and missing pages hurt user experience and SEO rankings. Small businesses often overlook this issue, leading to a negative impact.
How to Fix It:
- Use Google Search Console to identify broken links.
- Set up 301 redirects for missing pages.
- Regularly audit your site with tools like Screaming Frog.
7. Ignoring Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Structured data helps search engines understand your content better, improving rich snippets and local SEO results.
How to Fix It:
- Use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
- Implement schema markup for reviews, products, and local businesses.
- Add schema via Yoast SEO or manual JSON-LD coding.
8. Poor Internal Linking Structure
Internal linking helps distribute authority across pages, but many businesses don’t use it effectively.
How to Fix It:
- Link to relevant pages within your blog posts and main pages.
- Use descriptive anchor text.
- Avoid excessive linking (3-5 internal links per 1,000 words is ideal).
For example, Pixolv improved a client’s blog by strategically adding internal links, increasing their average session duration by 35%.
9. Lack of Image SEO Optimization
Images contribute to search rankings, but small businesses often forget to optimize them.
How to Fix It:
- Use descriptive file names (e.g., “technical-seo-guide.jpg” instead of “IMG123.jpg”).
- Add alt text with keywords.
- Use lazy loading to improve speed.
10. Not Leveraging Google Search Console
Many small businesses set up Google Search Console but don’t use it to track SEO performance.
How to Fix It:
- Monitor crawl errors and fix them.
- Check the Coverage report to see which pages are indexed.
- Track search performance and click-through rates.
Boost Your SEO with Pixolv
If you’re struggling with technical SEO, Pixolv can help. From fixing broken links to optimizing speed, we offer expert SEO services. Learn more about our SEO services near you or contact us today.
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