After analyzing thousands of website audits, clear patterns emerge. The same ten problems show up repeatedly — across industries, CMS platforms, and company sizes. Fixing these ten issues alone can move a site from a D to a B.
What it means: Either pages have no meta description at all, or multiple pages share the same one. Google doesn't use meta descriptions as a ranking factor, but they control your click-through rate from search results. A compelling description means more clicks at the same ranking position.
How to fix: Write a unique 120–160 character description for every important page. Prioritize your homepage, service pages, and top blog posts. Check any page with the Meta Tag Analyzer.
What it means: The main content takes more than 4 seconds to appear. Google considers anything over 2.5 seconds "poor."
How to fix: Compress and resize images, preload the hero image, serve images in WebP format, and defer non-critical JavaScript. Run a page speed check to see specific metrics.
What it means: Images have no alternative text for screen readers and search engines. This hurts both accessibility and SEO — Google uses alt text to understand image content.
How to fix: Add descriptive alt text to every meaningful image. Decorative images (background patterns, spacers) should have empty alt="" to indicate they're intentionally non-descriptive.
What it means: No JSON-LD schema markup, which means Google can't display rich results (star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, product info) and AI search engines have less context about the site.
How to fix: Add Organization schema to the homepage, LocalBusiness schema for local businesses, and FAQ schema on any page with Q&A content. See our guide on structured data for AI search.
How common: Found on 23% of audited sites (declining but still significant).
What it means: The site either doesn't have SSL at all, or has HTTPS but loads some resources (images, scripts) over insecure HTTP. Chrome shows "Not Secure" warnings that destroy visitor trust.
How to fix: Install an SSL certificate (free via Let's Encrypt). Then find and fix all mixed content by updating insecure URLs to HTTPS. Check with the Security Headers Checker.
What it means: The server isn't sending HTTP security headers like HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, or X-Content-Type-Options. These headers protect against clickjacking, XSS, and other common web attacks.
How to fix: Add security headers in your server configuration or CDN. The five essential headers are HSTS, CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, and Referrer-Policy.
What it means: The page doesn't tell mobile browsers how to scale the viewport. The site may render at desktop width on phones, requiring users to pinch and zoom.
How to fix: Add <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> to the document head. Check with the Mobile-Friendly Tester.
What it means: Multiple H1 tags, skipped heading levels (H1 → H3 with no H2), or no H1 at all. Search engines use headings to understand content structure.
How to fix: Use exactly one H1 per page (the page title). Use H2 for major sections, H3 for subsections. Don't skip levels.
What it means: Without a sitemap, search engines discover pages only by following links — which means orphan pages may never be indexed. Without robots.txt, there's no guidance on what should or shouldn't be crawled.
How to fix: Generate a sitemap.xml listing all important pages. Create a robots.txt that allows crawling of public pages and blocks private ones. Submit the sitemap to Google Search Console.
What it means: Page elements visually shift during loading — buttons move, text jumps, images push content down. This creates a frustrating, disorienting experience.
How to fix: Set explicit width and height on all images and video elements. Reserve space for ads and dynamic content. Avoid inserting content above existing content after the page starts rendering.
