Technical SEO issues block Google from crawling and ranking your pages regardless of content quality.
Run these 8 checks before investing in new content.
1. Core Web Vitals — Field Data
PageSpeed Insights shows two data sets: Lab Data (simulated) and Field Data (real users).
Google ranks based on Field Data. Many sites look fine in Lab Data but fail Field Data.
Priority thresholds:
- LCP above 4 seconds: high priority fix
- CLS above 0.25: high priority fix
- INP above 500ms: high priority fix
2. Mobile Crawlability
Google indexes the mobile version of your pages.
Check Mobile Usability report in Google Search Console.
Common failures: text too small to read, clickable elements too close together, content wider than the screen.
3. Index Bloat
Compare: sitemap page count vs GSC indexed page count.
If GSC shows significantly more indexed pages than your sitemap, Google is crawling and indexing pages you do not want indexed.
This dilutes crawl budget from important pages.
4. Crawl Depth
Pages more than 3 clicks from the homepage receive minimal crawl budget.
Map your site structure. Find pages deeper than 4 clicks and add internal links or restructure navigation.
5. Duplicate Content
Check for www vs non-www, HTTP vs HTTPS, trailing slash variants.
Each creates a duplicate of every page. Canonical tags must point to the preferred version.
6. Robots.txt
A single wrong line in robots.txt can block Google from your entire site.
Test your robots.txt in Google Search Console > robots.txt Tester.
Confirm that important directories and pages are not accidentally blocked.
7. Structured Data
Validate all schema markup with Google Rich Results Test.
Errors in structured data prevent rich results even if the markup is correctly formatted.
Most common error: required fields missing (datePublished, author, image for Article schema).
8. Hreflang (Multiregional Sites)
Each hreflang URL must include all language/region variants and a self-referential tag.
Missing return tags are the most common implementation error.
Validate with hreflang testing tools before assuming it is correct.
Full SEO audit guides: yositeup.com
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