How to Fix Common Technical SEO Issues That Are Killing Your Rankings

How to Fix Common Technical SEO Issues That Are Killing Your Rankings

If your website isn’t ranking as high as it should—even with quality content and backlinks—chances are you’re facing technical SEO issues that are silently holding you back. These backend errors often go unnoticed, but they can have a massive impact on search visibility, site speed, crawlability, and ultimately, your bottom line.

As the best SEO company UK businesses trust, Perfect Digitals has helped hundreds of clients uncover and fix these silent SEO killers. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the most common technical SEO issues and show you exactly how to fix them for better rankings and performance.

1. ❌ Poor Site Speed & Core Web Vitals

Issue: Slow-loading pages lead to high bounce rates and poor user experience. In 2025, Core Web Vitals are a confirmed Google ranking factor.

Fix:

• Compress images using WebP format.

• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).

• Minify CSS, JS, and HTML.

• Enable lazy loading for offscreen elements.

• Improve server response time (TTFB under 200ms).

Tool Tip: Use Google PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse to identify exact issues. Perfect Digitals offers performance audits tailored to UK hosting environments.

2. 🧭 Broken Internal Links & Redirect Chains

Issue: Internal 404s and endless redirect chains waste crawl budget and frustrate both users and search engines.

Fix:

• Use Screaming Frog to scan for broken links and excessive redirects.

• Implement clean, direct 301 redirects for any moved content.

• Regularly audit and fix 404 pages or redirect them to relevant content.

Pro Insight: At Perfect Digitals, we perform quarterly internal link audits to ensure clean architecture and maximum crawl efficiency.

3. 🔒 Non-Secure Website (Missing HTTPS)

Issue: Google flags non-HTTPS websites as insecure, which negatively affects trust and rankings.

Fix:

• Install an SSL certificate across your entire site.

• Redirect all HTTP versions to HTTPS.

• Fix any mixed content issues (non-secure images, scripts).

Stat: Over 90% of the top-ranking UK websites now run on HTTPS. As the best SEO company UK brands rely on, we make sure your migration is seamless and secure.

4. 🤖 Misconfigured Robots.txt or Meta Tags

Issue: Accidentally blocking important pages or resources (like CSS or JS) through robots.txt or meta tags can deindex your content.

Fix:

• Check robots.txt for “Disallow” directives that might block Googlebot.

• Ensure meta robots tags are not set to “noindex” on key pages.

• Use Google Search Console's URL Inspection Tool to see how Googlebot views your content.

Tip from Perfect Digitals: Always test robots.txt changes using the built-in testing tool in GSC before pushing live.

5. 📉 Duplicate Content & Canonicalisation Issues

Issue: Multiple versions of the same page confuse search engines and split ranking signals.

Fix:

• Implement canonical tags to point to the main version of the page.

• Consolidate www vs non-www and HTTP vs HTTPS versions.

• Avoid duplicate content across product filters, printer-friendly pages, and language versions.

Case Study: A Perfect Digitals client recovered over 60% lost traffic after fixing duplicate parameterised URLs across their UK e-commerce site.

6. 🧹 Poor URL Structure

Issue: Long, cryptic URLs hurt crawlability and user trust.

Fix:

• Keep URLs short, keyword-rich, and readable.

• Use hyphens, not underscores.

• Avoid using session IDs or unnecessary parameters.

Best Practice: /seo-services-uk/ is better than /productid=12345&ref=seo_uk.

As the best SEO company UK businesses turn to, we help you restructure URLs for both clarity and performance—without losing rankings.

7. 🧭 Incomplete XML Sitemap

Issue: An outdated or missing sitemap makes it harder for Google to find and index your pages.

Fix:

• Generate a dynamic XML sitemap that updates with new content.

• Include only indexable, canonical URLs.

• Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Expert Help: Perfect Digitals creates and maintains clean sitemaps as part of our ongoing SEO management packages.

8. 🚫 Missing Structured Data (Schema Markup)

Issue: Without structured data, your site misses out on rich snippets like ratings, FAQs, and event previews.

Fix:

• Add schema types relevant to your business (e.g., LocalBusiness, Product, FAQ, Article).

• Use tools like Schema.org and Google’s Rich Results Test to validate.

• Monitor enhancements in Google Search Console.

Bonus Tip: Local businesses in the UK can gain a serious edge with accurate LocalBusiness schema—another standard implementation from Perfect Digitals.

9. 🗺️ No Hreflang Tags for International or Regional Content

Issue: If you target multiple countries or languages, Google might serve the wrong version of a page to the wrong audience.

Fix:

• Use hreflang tags to define regional versions (e.g., en-gb for UK).

• Avoid auto-redirecting users based on IP without fallback.

• Use canonical + hreflang in tandem to avoid conflicts.

For UK sites expanding into Europe, Perfect Digitals ensures proper international SEO setup from day one.

10. 🔁 Inconsistent Crawl Depth & Site Architecture

Issue: Pages buried too deep in your architecture won’t be crawled or ranked efficiently.

Fix:

• Flatten your hierarchy—important content should be within 3 clicks of the homepage.

• Use internal linking to surface high-value pages.

• Avoid unnecessary subfolders.

Real Result: One Perfect Digitals client boosted organic traffic by 48% by simply restructuring their internal navigation and category depth.

Final Thoughts

Technical SEO is not glamorous—but it’s crucial. You could have the best content in your niche, but if your site is slow, insecure, or difficult to crawl, you’ll never see the rankings you deserve.

That’s where we come in.

As the best SEO company UK businesses recommend, Perfect Digitals offers full-service technical SEO audits, implementation, and monitoring—so you can focus on growing your business while we fix what’s holding you back.