Most Common SEO Issues We've Found Across Website Audits

we have analyzed hundreds of websites through our SEO Analyser Pro tool. We looked deeply at content strategy, technical structure, user experience, and how sites position themselves for both traditional search and AI-driven discovery.

What we found surprised us. The issues weren't about tiny technical details or formatting problems. Instead, we kept seeing the same strategic mistakes that fundamentally limit a site's ability to be found, trusted, and valued by search engines. These patterns showed up across every industry, platform, and company size we analyzed.

This article shares what we learned. Not the tired advice you've heard a thousand times, but the actual, data-backed issues that consistently hold back organic performance in 2025.

The Generic Homepage Problem

The most common issue we found wasn't technical at all. It was strategic. Homepages tried to be everything to everyone, and ended up being valuable to no one.

Here's how it typically played out. A business school homepage would list every program, every location, and every service in one flat, undifferentiated wall of links. A digital agency would present 15 services with identical two-sentence descriptions. A SaaS product would explain what it does without ever connecting to a specific problem someone actually searches for.

The core mistake is treating the homepage like a sitemap rather than a strategic hub. Search engines (and especially AI systems like Google's Search Generative Experience) need to understand what a site is primarily about. When your homepage says "We do everything for everyone," the signal becomes noise.

Here's a real example. One web design agency we analyzed had a homepage with 11 different H1 tags. Eleven. Each one represented a different value proposition or service category. From a search engine's perspective, this page had no clear primary topic. It was trying to rank for "web design," "digital marketing," "branding," "SEO consulting," and eight other distinct concepts, all from a single URL.

The pattern repeated across industries. Educational institutions would use the same meta title ("Best Business Schools in Bangalore") on both their homepage and their admissions page. The intent behind those searches is completely different (general awareness versus ready to apply), but the content treated them identically.

The fix isn't cosmetic. It requires reimagining the homepage as a distribution mechanism that quickly segments visitors to intent-specific destinations.

Content Without Context: The Thin Page Problem

We found that roughly 60% of audited sites had significant portions of their content sitting in the 100 to 400 word range. These weren't deliberately thin pages. They were service descriptions, location pages, or category archives that simply never developed depth.

The pattern was particularly obvious with location-based pages. A tutoring service would create separate pages for each city they served, but the content would be nearly identical except for swapping the city name. "We offer math tutoring in Dbayeh" became "We offer math tutoring in Hammana," with zero unique value added.

This isn't just a duplicate content issue. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what content depth means in 2025. Search engines, and particularly AI systems, reward comprehensive coverage of a topic. They want to see that you've thought through the questions someone might have, the objections they might raise, and the context they need to make an informed decision.

One hospitality marketing agency we analyzed had a "Services" page with 140 words. It listed what they offered but never explained their process, their differentiators, or what a client engagement actually looked like. Compare that to their blog, which had well-developed 2,000+ word articles demonstrating genuine expertise. The disconnect was jarring, and it signaled to search engines that the service pages weren't authoritative resources.

Depth isn't just about word count. It's about answering the questions that naturally arise when someone considers your service or product. A comprehensive page anticipates those questions and addresses them directly, in context, without requiring the user to click through three more pages or submit a contact form just to get basic information.

The Illusion of Topical Authority

Here's something we saw repeatedly. Sites would create dozens of pages on related topics but fail to connect them into a coherent structure. The content existed in isolation, like islands with no bridges between them.

A perfect example came from a PDF tools site we audited. They had created individual pages for 30+ different PDF operations: merge, split, rotate, compress, convert, embed files. Each page described what the tool did. But there was no overarching "pillar" content that explained PDF management as a concept, compared different approaches, or demonstrated deep expertise beyond tool functionality.

From a search engine's perspective, this site was a collection of utilities, not an authority on PDF workflows. That distinction matters tremendously for how AI systems evaluate and cite sources. When an AI model needs to answer a complex question about PDF handling, it's going to preferentially cite sources that demonstrate comprehensive, interconnected knowledge, not isolated tool descriptions.

The pillar-cluster model isn't new, but we found that fewer than 15% of sites implemented it properly. Most either didn't have pillar pages at all, or they created "pillars" that were just slightly longer versions of their existing content without the strategic internal linking that makes the model work.

We analyzed one business school that had created location-specific pages for 8 different cities, all with duplicate content. A better approach would have been a single, authoritative "Areas We Serve" pillar page that provided unique insights about the local education landscape in each region, then linked out to detailed case studies or testimonial pages from students in those areas. Instead of 8 weak pages competing with each other, you'd have one strong hub supported by genuinely valuable content.

Expertise Signals: Present but Invisible

Google's emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust isn't theoretical. It's the framework by which content quality is evaluated, especially for topics that impact people's decisions about money, health, or major life choices.

Yet across our audits, we found that sites would have the raw materials to demonstrate expertise but would fail to surface those signals in a way search engines could recognize.

A tutoring service would mention that their lead instructor had "7+ years of experience" and "two teaching degrees," but this information lived in a generic "About" page with no structured data markup, no author attribution on blog posts, and no detailed bio page that could be linked to from relevant content.

An interview coaching service featured powerful client testimonials like "100% of my clients successfully landed the jobs they prepared for," but presented them as generic quotes without context. No mention of which roles, which companies, or what specific outcomes the coaching produced.

We found that almost no sites properly implemented Person schema markup for their authors or experts. This is straightforward to implement. It's structured data that explicitly tells search engines "This person has X credentials, Y experience, and Z affiliations." Yet it was absent from 95% of the audits we conducted.

The same pattern appeared with reviews and testimonials. Sites would feature client feedback prominently but wouldn't use Review or AggregateRating schema to make that social proof machine-readable. In an AI-driven search environment where systems are trained to prioritize verifiable expertise, this is a massive missed opportunity.

The FAQ Gap

Here's a simple test. When someone lands on your service page, can they get answers to their most common questions without leaving that page or opening a contact form?

Most sites failed this test. They would describe what they offered but wouldn't address the obvious concerns. How much does it cost? How long does it take? What's your process? What makes you different? Is this right for my situation?

These questions weren't hypothetical. We saw them surface repeatedly in the sparse FAQ sections that did exist, and we know from search query data that people actively search for these answers before engaging with a service provider.

The missed opportunity was twofold. First, unanswered questions create friction in the user journey. People leave to find answers elsewhere and may not return. Second, comprehensive FAQ content is precisely what AI search systems are trained to extract and feature in direct answers.

We analyzed one AI voice agent platform that had great product-focused content but no FAQ addressing practical implementation concerns. Questions like "How does this integrate with my existing phone system?" or "What happens if the AI can't answer a customer's question?" weren't addressed anywhere on the site. These aren't edge cases. They're the first things a decision-maker thinks about.

Implementing FAQPage schema markup on these sections is baseline. But the real value is in genuinely comprehensive coverage that treats user questions as primary content, not afterthoughts.

Internal Linking: Present but Pointless

Almost every site we audited had internal links. But having links and having a strategic internal linking architecture are entirely different things.

The most common pattern was navigational linking: top menu, footer, sidebar. These links existed to help users navigate the site, but they did nothing to establish topical relationships or guide search engine crawlers through content hierarchies.

We'd see a detailed blog post about "how to prepare for technical interviews" that mentioned "mock interviews" 15 times but never actually linked to the site's mock interview service page.

This is the difference between links as navigation and links as semantic connectors. When you contextually link from content about a problem to content about your solution, or from a high-level overview to detailed sub-topics, you're telling search engines how concepts relate to each other.

We also found widespread broken internal links and redirect chains, symptoms of poor site maintenance. One site had links that went through two redirects before reaching the final destination. Every hop in a redirect chain dilutes the value passed through that link and wastes crawl budget.

The fix requires auditing internal links not just for technical correctness but for strategic value. Ask yourself: Does this link reinforce a topical relationship? Does it guide users deeper into valuable content? Does it support the semantic structure we're trying to build?

Schema Markup: Half-Implemented

Structured data was present on many of the sites we audited, but it was often incomplete, incorrect, or strategically misapplied.

A common pattern was implementing basic Organization and WebSite schema on the homepage but never extending structured data to content pages where it would have the most impact. Service pages lacked Service or Product schema. Educational content had no Course schema.

We also found numerous technical errors. BreadcrumbList schema would be missing required properties. FAQPage markup would be present but malformed. Local business pages would have schema with placeholder social media URLs (literally "yourhandle" as the profile name) instead of actual links.

The same logic applies to FAQ content, product specifications, reviews, and author credentials. If you want your content to be featured in AI-generated answers and rich results, structured data is important. It's the mechanism by which you communicate meaning to machines.

The fix isn't just implementing more schema. It's implementing the right schema for each content type and ensuring it's complete and accurate. A service page should use Service schema with detailed properties for pricing, service area, and provider information. An author bio should use Person schema with credentials, affiliations, and expertise signals.

The Homepage as Blog Roll

Multiple sites structured their homepage as a reverse-chronological feed of recent blog posts. This is a pattern borrowed from traditional blogging platforms, and it's deeply suboptimal for sites trying to establish topical authority or serve commercial intent.

When your homepage is dominated by recent posts, you're telling search engines "our primary value is recency" rather than "our primary value is comprehensive expertise on [topic]." This might work for news sites, but it's a poor fit for service businesses, SaaS products, or educational resources.

One equipment review site had a homepage with 30+ H2 tags, one for each recent article. The semantic focus of the page was completely diffused. A new visitor had no clear path to the most important content. Search engines couldn't determine what the site was primarily about because the homepage presented every topic as equally important.

Location Pages: Duplicate Content at Scale

For businesses serving multiple geographic areas, the temptation to create individual pages for each location is strong. But we found this consistently backfired when executed with duplicate content.

The pattern was predictable. A web design agency would create /detroit-web-design/, /ferndale-web-design/, and /royal-oak-web-design/, then populate each with 90% identical content, swapping only the city name. This created three weak pages competing against each other instead of one strong page consolidating authority.

Search engines see through this immediately. It's a doorway page strategy that hasn't worked for a decade, yet it persists because it feels logical from an organizational perspective. "We serve five cities, so we need five pages."

One tutoring service we analyzed created separate pages for two cities with nearly identical content. A better approach would have been a single service area page with detailed information about local schools, academic challenges specific to each region, and testimonials from local families. This provides genuine local value rather than thin, duplicative content.

The Overlooked About Us Page

"About Us" pages consistently ranked among the thinnest, most generic content we encountered. Yet these pages are critical for building trust and establishing expertise, especially for service businesses where the decision to engage is based largely on confidence in the people behind the brand.

The pattern was boilerplate language about being "a team of dynamic young professionals" or "committed to delivering result-oriented solutions." No specific credentials. No personal stories. No evidence of expertise beyond claims.

One interview coaching site had a detailed "About" page that spent three paragraphs explaining the history of business partnerships and departures. This was information that was confusing and potentially alarming to prospects rather than trust-building. It focused on internal organizational history instead of answering the visitor's question: "Why should I trust you to help me?"

Content Structure for AI: Still Mostly Ignored

As AI-driven search becomes more prominent, content structure matters in new ways. AI systems need to parse, understand, and extract information efficiently. Dense paragraphs of undifferentiated text make this hard. Clear structure with logical headings, concise summaries, and direct answers to questions makes it easy.

Yet we found that most content was still written primarily for human reading, with little consideration for machine parsing. Long introductions buried the lead. Key information was scattered throughout the text rather than summarized upfront. Headings were stylistic rather than semantic.

A comprehensive guide about increasing website traffic contained 40+ tactics but lacked a table of contents, a summary box, or any prioritization framework. It was a wall of valuable information that was difficult for both humans and AI to parse efficiently.

We saw this done well in some of the blog content we analyzed: detailed guides with clear structure, FAQ sections, and step-by-step instructions. But it was rarely carried through to service pages or core site content, where it matters just as much.

The Broken Canonical Trap

On a more technical note, we found a recurring issue with incorrectly implemented canonical tags. Many pages either pointed to themselves redundantly or, worse, to unrelated URLs such as the homepage.

This might seem like a harmless oversight, but it can quietly erode your site’s crawl efficiency and ranking signals. When search engines receive mixed canonical signals, they may index the wrong version of a page or drop valuable variants altogether. These small technical inconsistencies compound over time and signal poor site hygiene, reducing trust in the website’s structure.

Moving Forward:

The issues we've outlined aren't fundamentally about algorithms or ranking factors. They're about strategic thinking: understanding what search engines actually need to evaluate your content's quality, relevance, and trustworthiness.

With rise of AI powered search, SEO success isn't about keyword optimization or link building. Those are baseline requirements. It's about building genuine topical authority through comprehensive, well-structured content. It's about making your expertise visible and verifiable through proper attribution and structured data. It's about creating clear content hierarchies that guide both users and search engines to your most valuable resources.

The sites that excel are the ones that approach SEO as information architecture, not marketing tactics. They think systematically about how content relates, how expertise is demonstrated, and how user questions are answered. They build for both human understanding and machine parsing.

If you're running a website and wondering why organic traffic isn't growing, the answer probably isn't in your meta descriptions or H1 tags. It's in these deeper strategic issues: content depth, topical structure, trust signals, and user intent alignment.

The good news is that these are solvable problems. They require investment in content strategy and thoughtful architecture, but they don't require technical wizardry or algorithm manipulation. They require thinking clearly about what makes your site genuinely valuable and ensuring that value is communicated effectively to the systems that determine whether people find you.

Want to see how your site stacks up? Run a comprehensive audit with SEO Analyser Pro to identify strategic opportunities others miss.