I ran audits on a bunch of client sites this month. Almost every single one had the same handful of mistakes. Here’s what I found and how to fix it.
Missing Image Alt Text
Most sites I audited had missing or half-finished alt text on their images. Alt text isn’t just an SEO checkbox. It’s what screen readers use to describe images to visually impaired visitors, and it’s what shows up if an image fails to load.
Google also uses alt text to understand what an image is about, so vague or missing tags are a wasted opportunity. Every image should have alt text that actually describes what’s in it, not just a keyword stuffed in for the sake of it.
Site Speed
Site speed was a problem on almost every site I checked. Pages loaded slow, images weren’t compressed, and nobody had caching set up.
Speed is a ranking factor now, not just a nice-to-have. If your site takes too long to load, you lose visitors before they even see your content, and Google notices that too.
The fix usually comes down to three things: enable caching, compress your images, and clean up unused code. Most of the time these three alone fix 80% of the speed problems I find.
Indexing and Crawlability Concerns
One site I audited had over 5,000 scraped pages that had nothing to do with the business. The owner thought more pages meant more authority. It’s the opposite.
Google has a limited crawl budget for every site. When you fill it with junk pages, you’re burning that budget on content that doesn’t help you rank, instead of the pages that actually matter.
Keep your site focused on relevant, high-quality content. Fewer pages that actually serve your audience will outperform thousands of scraped or low-value pages every time.
Duplicate Versions of Sites
Google needs to know there’s only one real version of your site. Depending on “www” and HTTPS, you can end up with multiple URLs that all technically work, and that confuses search engines.
To Google, these are four different sites:
http://www.yoursite.com
https://www.yoursite.com
http://yoursite.com
https://yoursite.com
If all four load without redirecting to one version, you’re splitting your ranking signals across duplicates instead of consolidating them into one strong page. Set up a canonical version of your domain and redirect the other three to it. This is usually a quick fix in your hosting or CMS settings, and it stops Google from treating your own site as competition for itself.
Find The Growth Opportunities Your Competitors Are Missing
Before we speak, I'll review your website, Google Business Profile, and search visibility to find what's actually holding you back.
Missing or Overused H1 Tags
Some sites had no H1 tag at all. Others went the opposite direction. One SEO agency’s own website had 16 H1 tags on a single page. An agency that sells SEO services.
Your H1 tells Google what the page is actually about. It should be one per page, and it should match the main topic. Zero H1s means Google has to guess. Sixteen H1s means Google doesn’t know which one to trust.
Check your pages and make sure each one has exactly one H1 that describes what the page covers.
Meta Description Woes
Plenty of sites had no meta description at all, and some had the exact same one copy-pasted across multiple pages. Google will write its own snippet if yours is missing or duplicated, and it’s usually not the one you’d choose.
Every page needs its own meta description that actually describes what’s on it. If you’re not sure how to write one that gets clicks, I put together a full guide on meta descriptions that walks through it.
Site Map Optimization
A clean sitemap tells Google exactly which pages you want crawled and indexed. If your sitemap is full of old pages, thin content, or stuff you don’t actually want ranking, you’re pointing crawlers at the wrong things.
Go through your sitemap and strip out anything that isn’t a real, useful page. Only include what you want Google to find.
Valid SSL Certificate
SSL isn’t optional anymore. It’s a ranking factor, and browsers will flag your site as “not secure” if it’s missing, which kills trust before a visitor even reads a word of your content.
Check that your certificate is active and covers all versions of your domain. Most hosts offer free SSL now, so there’s rarely a reason not to have it.
Link Maintenance
Redirect every variation of your domain (http, https, www, non-www) to one preferred version. Then go through your site and find broken internal and external links.
Broken links waste crawl budget and make for a bad experience if a visitor clicks through and hits a dead page. A quick link audit catches most of these in one pass.
Internal Linking
Internal links do three things: they help visitors find more of your content, they show Google how your pages relate to each other, and they spread ranking power from your strongest pages to the ones that need it.
If you’re publishing content but not linking between related pages, you’re leaving ranking power sitting on the table. Check out my Local SEO Checklist if you want to see internal linking alongside everything else worth auditing on your site.
User Experience Analysis
Google pays attention to how people actually use your site. Slow load times, confusing navigation, unreadable fonts, and unclear calls-to-action all send signals that your site isn’t giving visitors what they came for.
Walk through your own site like a first-time visitor. If something feels clunky or unclear to you, it’s affecting your rankings too.
These aren’t rare mistakes. I find at least a few of them on almost every site I audit, including ones run by people who should know better.
Fixing them isn’t complicated. Most of it is cleanup: alt text, one H1 per page, a real meta description, a sitemap that isn’t bloated, links that actually work. None of it requires a redesign, just attention.
Want to know which of these are hurting your site?
That's exactly what I check in a full site audit. You'll get a breakdown of what's working, what's broken, and what to fix first.
- Alt text, H1s, and meta tags checked page by page
- Crawlability and indexing issues flagged
- A prioritized fix-it list, not just a list of problems
