I’ve run many technical SEO audits over the years, and these are the same mistakes that pop up. Sometimes it’s business owners trying to DIY their audits, using generic recommendations from popular SEO platforms.
While these recommendations do often cover the most egregious technical seo issues, other issues that require more granular review and expertise often do get skipped.
Either way, these errors can cost you. You might think you’ve fixed everything when critical issues are still lurking in the background.
Here’s what I’ve noticed goes wrong most often.
Skipping the Crawl Budget Analysis
Most people jump straight into checking page speed or broken links. That’s fine, but they completely skip looking at how search engines actually crawl their site.
I’ve worked on sites where Google was wasting 80% of its crawl budget on useless pages.
Check your server logs or use Google Search Console to see what’s actually getting crawled.
Not Testing Mobile Usability Properly
You might check if your site “looks okay” on mobile, but that’s not the same as testing actual mobile usability issues that Google cares about.
I’m talking about tap targets that are too close together or text that’s too small. These aren’t always obvious when you’re just scrolling through on your phone.
Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and check the real data in Search Console.
Missing Redirect Chains and Loops
Here’s something that happens a lot: someone checks for broken links and calls it done. But redirect chains? Those often get ignored as they not obvious if you don’t know where to look.
A redirect chain is when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C. It slows everything down and wastes crawl budget. I’ve found chains that were five or six redirects deep.
Even worse are redirect loops where URLs redirect to each other in a circle. They are just wasting your crawl budget.
Use Screaming Frog or another crawler to export all your redirects into a spreadsheet. If you see chains, fix them to go directly to the final destination.
Overlooking Duplicate Content Issues
This one’s tricky because duplicate content isn’t always obvious. I’ve seen audits that checked for exact duplicates but missed near-duplicates or thin content.
Sometimes it’s multiple URLs showing the same product with slight variations. Sometimes it’s printer-friendly versions of pages that aren’t properly handled. Maybe it’s HTTP and HTTPS versions both being indexed.
You need to check for canonical tags, look at how parameters are handled, and see if Google is actually indexing multiple versions of the same page.
Not Reviewing Structured Data Errors
Adding schema markup is great and easy. But I can’t tell you how many audits I’ve seen where someone implemented structured data and never checked if it actually works, because the plugin you have used shows all green.
Google’s Rich Results Test will show you errors and warnings. Sometimes it’s a missing required field. Sometimes the markup is in the wrong place or uses an outdated format.
Ignoring Log File Analysis
This goes back to understanding how search engines interact with your site. Most audits never look at server logs.
When you analyze logs, you can see which pages Google is actually requesting, how often, and what status codes it’s getting. I’ve found issues this way that don’t show up anywhere else.
Maybe Google’s hitting a bunch of 404 errors you didn’t know about. Maybe it’s crawling pages you thought were blocked. You won’t know unless you look.
It takes more time than running a standard crawler, but the insights are worth it, especially for larger sites.
Missing International SEO Issues
If your site targets multiple countries or languages, there’s a whole layer of potential problems. Hreflang tags are notoriously easy to mess up. Once Google spots an error with your tags, they get ignored.
I’ve audited sites where hreflang was implemented backwards, pointing to the wrong language versions. Or where they were using the wrong country codes. Sometimes the tags were just missing entirely.
Not Prioritizing Issues
Here’s something I see with DIY audits, especially: they find 300 issues and don’t know where to start.
Not all technical SEO issues have the same impact. A missing alt tag on a decorative image? Low priority. Your entire blog section being blocked from crawling? That’s urgent.
When I perform a technical SEO audit, I always categorize issues by severity and potential impact. Critical issues that affect indexing come first. Nice-to-have optimizations come later.
Forgetting to Check Page Speed Per Template
People run a quick PageSpeed Insights test on the homepage and think they’re done. But page speed varies across different page templates, devices, and (drum roll) internet connection speed.
Your homepage might load fast, but what about your product pages? Your blog posts? What happens on a slow 3G connection? What happens when connecting from different locations?
I test multiple page types and look at Core Web Vitals data in Search Console to see how real users are experiencing the site. Lab tests are useful, but field data tells you what’s actually happening.
Not Documenting Findings Clearly
This isn’t about the audit itself, but it matters. I’ve seen audit reports that just dump a list of errors without context or clear instructions for fixing them.
If you’re doing an audit for someone else (or even for yourself), document what you found, why it matters, and how to fix it. Screenshots help. Step-by-step instructions and technical documentation.
If you want to see some of these issues in action, I’d recommend checking out this video from FATJOE on YouTube
What to Do Instead
Running an effective technical SEO audit means being methodical. Start with understanding what a technical SEO audit actually involves and when you should perform one.
Then work through the important elements systematically. Don’t skip steps. Don’t assume everything’s fine without testing it.
If you’re not sure where to start or you’ve found issues you don’t know how to fix, that’s when it makes sense to bring in someone who does this regularly. I offer technical SEO audit services that cover all these areas and prioritize what needs attention first.
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