You have published good content, but the traffic is not coming — or worse, rankings you once had are slipping. Before you rewrite everything, check the technical foundation. Search engines cannot rank pages they cannot find, access, or understand, and technical issues are a common, fixable cause of poor visibility.
Below are ten technical issues we see most often, each with a clear explanation of how to spot it. Work through them in order; the earlier items block everything else.
1. Your Pages Are Not Indexed
A page that is not in Google’s index cannot rank, full stop. New pages can take days or weeks to be indexed, but if important pages are missing after that, something is wrong.
How to spot it: search Google for site:yourdomain.com/your-page-url. If nothing comes up, the page is not indexed. In Google Search Console, the Pages report under Indexing shows exactly which pages are indexed and which are excluded, with reasons.
2. Crawl Errors Are Blocking Googlebot
Even indexed sites can have sections Google cannot reach. Server errors, persistent redirect chains, or DNS problems can stop crawlers from accessing important pages.
How to spot it: in Search Console, check Settings and then Crawl stats for spikes in errors, and the Pages report for “server error” or “redirect error” exclusions. Your hosting provider’s error logs are the next place to look.
3. Your Site Is Too Slow
Speed is a confirmed ranking factor, and it directly affects whether visitors stay. Heavy images, render-blocking scripts, and slow hosting are the usual culprits.
How to spot it: run your key pages through Google’s PageSpeed Insights. It scores mobile and desktop separately and flags specific problems — oversized images, unused JavaScript, slow server response — in priority order. Pay special attention to the mobile score, since Google predominantly uses the mobile version of your site.
4. Mobile Usability Problems
With mobile-first indexing, Google evaluates your site primarily as a phone user sees it. Text that requires zooming, buttons too close together, or content wider than the screen all hurt.
How to spot it: Search Console’s mobile usability reporting lists affected pages and specific issues. Better yet, browse your own site on a real phone — problems are usually obvious within seconds.
5. Duplicate Content Is Splitting Your Rankings
When the same or near-identical content exists at multiple URLs — www versus non-www, HTTP versus HTTPS, trailing-slash variants, printer-friendly pages — Google may not know which version to rank, and ranking signals get split between duplicates.
How to spot it: search site:yourdomain.com for a distinctive sentence from the page. If multiple URLs appear, you have duplication. In Search Console, “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” exclusions point to the same problem. Fix it with 301 redirects to one canonical URL and consistent internal linking.
6. Broken Internal Links
Links to pages that no longer exist waste crawl budget and create dead ends for visitors. A handful are normal; dozens signal neglect.
How to spot it: crawl your site with a tool like Screaming Frog (free for small sites) and filter for 404 responses. Fix important ones with redirects to the closest live page, and update or remove the links pointing to them.
7. Your XML Sitemap Is Missing or Outdated
An XML sitemap is a simple file listing the pages you want indexed. It does not guarantee rankings, but it helps Google discover pages faster — especially on large or new sites.
How to spot it: check whether yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml exists and lists your important pages with recent modification dates. Then confirm it is submitted in Search Console under Sitemaps. If it lists deleted pages or omits new ones, regenerate it.
8. Robots.txt Is Blocking Important Pages
The robots.txt file tells crawlers which parts of your site to avoid. One wrong line — a leftover “Disallow: /” from development is the classic — can block your entire site.
How to spot it: open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and read it. Every Disallow line should be intentional. Search Console’s robots.txt tester shows you exactly what Googlebot is allowed to fetch. In the Pages report, “Blocked by robots.txt” exclusions confirm the damage.
9. HTTPS and Security Issues
Google expects secure sites. Mixed content (an HTTPS page loading HTTP resources), expired certificates, or — worst of all — an accessible HTTP version of the whole site all undermine trust and rankings.
How to spot it: look for the padlock icon in your browser’s address bar on several pages, and check for “Not secure” warnings. In Search Console, compare the HTTP and HTTPS properties — traffic on the HTTP version means the migration was never completed. Your browser’s developer console flags mixed-content resources by URL.
10. Missing or Invalid Structured Data
Structured data (schema markup) helps Google understand your content and can earn rich results — star ratings, FAQs, product info — that make your listing stand out. It is not a direct ranking factor, but pages with valid markup often earn more clicks.
How to spot it: test key pages in Google’s Rich Results Test. It shows which rich results a page is eligible for and flags markup errors. Search Console’s enhancements reports track structured data issues across your whole site.
Fix the Foundation First
Content and links get most of the attention in SEO, but they build on a technical foundation. A site with indexing problems, crawl blocks, or a broken mobile experience will underperform no matter how good its content is.
Work through the ten checks above, starting with indexation and crawl access. Most fixes are one-time tasks that pay off for years. And if you would like a professional diagnosis, our technical SEO services include a full site audit covering every issue in this guide.