A Hands-On Guide to Fixing the Technical SEO Issues that Hold Your Website Back
Technical SEO is a straightforward and essential part of SEO and GEO. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward, as you just need to make sure your website is fast, crawlable and well organized. However, I won’t kid you, that it can also be one of the most frustrating things an SEO specialist has to deal with. In this Advanced Guide to Technical SEO for Small Business Websites, I will go over the main aspects of it and how to fix common technical SEO issues.
Imagine this, you finally got your website up and running and it looks great. You already setup your Google Business page profile and are constantly adding new content to your business website. However, Google is not indexing your content or your product/service pages.
When you check, it says your website is crawled but does not give you any real reason as to why it is not indexing your pages. Pretty frustrating right? So let’s take a look at the basics of Technical SEO and what can be done about it.
What is Technical SEO and Why It Matters
Even the best content won’t rank if your website is hard to crawl, slow to load, or not mobile-friendly. Technical SEO is the foundation of search visibility. It ensures that search engines can understand, index, and rank your content properly. Just think of technical SEO as making sure your website speaks the same language as Google and other search engines.
For small businesses, this often means fixing basic infrastructure issues that go unnoticed but have a big impact on traffic.
What Basic Technical SEO Involves
Website Speed and Performance
- Website Crawlability
- Website Structure and Organization
- Mobile-Friendly Design
- Fixing Broken Links and Errors
- Security and Trust Signals
Technical SEO refers to optimizing the technical elements of your website and server that impact your performance and user experience. The key thing to understand is that you can have amazing content, but if search engines can’t properly access, understand, or recommend your website due to technical issues, people won’t find you when they search online.
What is the Difference Between Content SEO and Technical SEO
Content SEO is like having great products in your store, while technical SEO is like having a store that’s easy to find, has working doors, good lighting, and clear signs pointing customers to what they need.
Technical SEO for Small Business Websites Checklist
Whenever you encounter an issue with robots not crawling or indexing your pages or posts on Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, it is always best to go back to the basics. Hence, here is what small business owners should go over:
1. Audit Your Site Like a Pro
What You’re Checking For:
- Crawlability: Can Googlebot access all your pages?
- Indexability: Are your valuable pages showing up in search results?
- Redirects: Are you using 301 redirects correctly?
- Broken Links: Dead internal or external links hurt UX and SEO.
- Duplicate Content: Causes cannibalization and confusion.
How to Do It:
Use Google Search Console to find indexing errors, mobile usability issues, and submit your sitemap.
- Use Screaming Frog to crawl up to 500 URLs for free. It shows:
- Meta tags
- Broken links
- Redirect chains
- Duplicate content
- Use Ahrefs/Semrush Site Audit for a complete health report and SEO score.
Key Fixes:
- Redirect broken URLs or update them
- Remove or canonicalize duplicate pages
- Unblock accidentally disallowed pages in robots.txt
2. Optimize for Core Web Vitals
What Are Core Web Vitals?
These are performance metrics that Google uses to evaluate UX:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Should be under 2.5 seconds.
- FID (First Input Delay): Should be less than 100ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Should be below 0.1.
Tools to Use:
- PageSpeed Insights: Offers field data and lab data for performance.
- Lighthouse (Chrome DevTools): For diagnosing issues in real time.
- GTmetrix: Gives waterfall view of load behavior.
- Cloudflare + CDN: Reduce load time by serving cached assets.
Practical Fixes:
- Compress and lazy-load images (use WebP or AVIF format)
- Minify JavaScript and CSS
- Host fonts locally
- Use a lightweight theme (especially for WordPress)
- Upgrade to faster hosting or use a CDN
3. Make Your Site Crawlable and Indexable
Crawlability Must-Haves:
- Clean robots.txt: Allows bots to crawl important pages
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
- Updated XML sitemap: Submit via Google Search Console
- Canonical URLs to prevent duplicate content issues
Internal Linking Audit:
- Make sure important pages are no more than 3 clicks deep
- Link from blogs to services/products
- Use breadcrumbs for better navigation
Avoid:
- Orphan pages (no internal links pointing to them)
- Noindex tags on pages that should be public
- Overusing JavaScript for critical content
4. Fix Internal Linking and Site Architecture
Why It Matters:
- Helps users and bots understand your website structure
- Passes link equity (ranking power) from high-authority pages
- Boosts relevance and topical authority
How to Implement internal Linking and Site Architecture:
- Group your site into content silos as such:
Services
├── Digital Marketing
│ ├── SEO
│ ├── PPC
- Link from blog posts to relevant service pages
- Use descriptive anchor text, not “click here”. For example, link “Learn more about our dog training programs.” and not “Click here to read more.”
5. Use Schema Markup to Win Rich Snippets
What Is Schema?
Schema.org markup is a structured data language added to your site’s HTML that helps Google understand your content better. It enables rich snippets like stars, FAQs, prices, and more.
Types of Schema to Use:
- LocalBusiness: Add name, address, phone, business hours
- Product: Add price, availability, and ratings
- FAQPage: Mark up common questions and answers
- Review: Show customer reviews and ratings
- Breadcrumb: Helps Google display page hierarchy
Tools to Use for Creating Schema Markups
- Schema Markup Generator (Merkle)
- Google’s Rich Results Test
- WordPress Plugins: Rank Math, Yoast SEO, Schema Pro
Where to Add It:
- Directly into the page’s <head> or inline via JSON-LD
- WordPress users can automate with plugins
Technical SEO Summary Checklist
| Task | Tool | Frequency |
| Crawl Audit | Screaming Frog | Monthly |
| Page Speed | PageSpeed Insights | Monthly or after updates |
| Mobile Usability | Google Search Console | Ongoing |
| Schema Validation | Rich Results Test | Per update |
| Sitemap/Robots Update | Manual | As needed |
| Internal Link Audit | Screaming Frog | Quarterly |
| Hosting/CDN Check | GTmetrix | Quarterly |
Finding SEO Technical Issues on a WordPress Site
As someone who often deals with clients that use WordPress for their website, I will be ending this tutorial with my last tip on fixing Technical Issues on a WordPress Site. This is because Technical SEO, can often but frustrating and very time consuming due to the use WordPress plugins and setting can often counteract each other.
Therefore, when that happens, you will often need to go over every plugin and settings to make sure they do not inject any “noindex” info and such in the robot.txt file.
Of course, finding those errors can be frustrating which is why it is worth considering using an SEO Service Company like Blind Monkey Media in Gainesville, GA to take care of it for you.
