How to Fix Technical SEO on Your Website: A Practical Guide

When people think of SEO, they often jump straight to keywords, blog posts, and backlinks. But what happens under the hood — the technical SEO — is just as critical. If your site has technical issues, your content and backlinks won’t reach their full potential.

In this article, you’ll learn what technical SEO is, how to find common technical issues, and step-by-step instructions to fix them — even if you’re not a developer.

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What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to the behind-the-scenes elements of your website that help search engines crawl, index, and rank your pages efficiently. It covers areas like:

• Site speed

• Mobile-friendliness

• Crawlability

• Indexability

• Site structure

• HTTPS security

• Duplicate content

• XML sitemaps

• Structured data

When these are optimized, search engines can better understand and trust your site — giving your content the best chance to rank.

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Step 1: Audit Your Site

You can’t fix what you can’t see. Start with a technical SEO audit.

Tools you can use:

• Google Search Console (free)

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider

• Ahrefs Site Audit

• SEMrush Site Audit

• Sitebulb

Run a scan and look for:

• Broken links (404 errors)

• Duplicate title tags or meta descriptions

• Slow-loading pages

• Pages blocked by robots.txt

• Missing or incorrect canonical tags

• Missing alt text for images

• No HTTPS encryption

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Step 2: Improve Site Speed

Site speed is a direct ranking factor — and it heavily impacts user experience.

How to fix it:

• Compress images using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim.

• Use next-gen image formats (WebP).

• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML.

• Enable browser caching.

• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare.

• Upgrade to better hosting if needed.

Test your site speed with Google PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix.

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Step 3: Make Sure Your Site is Mobile-Friendly

More than half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily looks at the mobile version of your site.

How to fix it:

• Use responsive design (your site adjusts to any screen).

• Avoid intrusive pop-ups.

• Make buttons large enough to tap easily.

• Check fonts for readability.

Test your site with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

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Step 4: Fix Crawlability and Indexability Issues

If Google can’t crawl or index your pages, they won’t appear in search results.

How to fix it:

• Check your robots.txt file to ensure you’re not blocking important pages.

• Submit an XML sitemap to Google Search Console.

• Add proper canonical tags to prevent duplicate content.

• Fix broken internal links.

• Use a clear site structure with logical internal linking.

In Search Console, use the Coverage and Pages reports to see what’s blocked or excluded.

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Step 5: Implement HTTPS

Security matters. Google uses HTTPS as a ranking signal. Plus, users trust secure sites more.

How to fix it:

• Install an SSL certificate (many hosting providers offer free Let’s Encrypt SSLs).

• Redirect HTTP to HTTPS.

• Update internal links to use HTTPS.

• Fix mixed content warnings (when secure pages load insecure elements).

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Step 6: Optimize Structured Data

Structured data (Schema markup) helps search engines understand your content and can get you rich snippets.

How to fix it:

• Add Schema markup for articles, products, reviews, FAQs, etc.

• Use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to generate it.

• Test your markup with Google’s Rich Results Test.

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Step 7: Fix Duplicate Content

Duplicate content confuses search engines and can dilute rankings.

How to fix it:

• Use canonical tags to point to the original version.

• Use 301 redirects for duplicate pages.

• Avoid thin or boilerplate content.

• For e-commerce sites, handle product variations properly.

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Step 8: Monitor and Maintain

Technical SEO isn’t a one-time fix — it’s ongoing.

• Check Google Search Console regularly for new issues.

• Run site audits quarterly.

• Keep your CMS and plugins updated.

• Fix broken links as they appear.

• Monitor site speed after adding new features.

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Final Thoughts

Your website’s technical foundation is what supports everything else you do in SEO. By keeping it clean, fast, secure, and crawlable, you give your content the best chance to compete — and you’ll make things better for your visitors, too.

If you don’t have the time or expertise, consider hiring a developer or SEO professional to handle the more complex fixes. But with the right tools and a bit of persistence, many technical SEO tasks are entirely doable on your own.