Search is evolving. Searchers are no longer using traditional Google searches as much as they are using AI search to research and find companies.This is an opportunity for businesses to optimize their presence in both traditional search and AI search, having great content on your website will not matter if search engines and search systems cannot crawl your page.
Avoiding common technical SEO mistakes is one of the leading ways businesses can ensure their websites are accessible and impactful in traditional search and AI search.
What Is Technical SEO For AI Search?
Technical SEO refers to elements of a website that contribute to search engines being able to discover, crawl, understand, and index the page. Similarly, websites need to be optimized so that they are accessible sources of information for search systems.
While technical SEO will not directly guarantee that your content will be cited by name, fixing technical SEO issues can help make sure your website is crawled and accessible.
Common Technical SEO Mistakes Affecting AI Search Visibility
There are a number of technical SEO mistakes that can affect how well sites rank in both traditional search and AI search visibility.
The Following Are The Most Common Technical SEO Mistakes:
- Preventing Search Engines From Crawling Important Pages
One of the biggest technical SEO mistakes is blocking search engines from crawling important pages. Incorrect robots.txt, robots directives, and site permissions can all lead to search engines being unable to discover and crawl your important content.
Before publishing important pages, always make sure that your site is accessible to search engines. Never block important pages with robots.txt or robots directives.
- Poor Website Architecture
Poor website architecture can prevent search engines from crawling websites correctly and discovering relationships between web pages. A website should have a logical topical structure so that search engines can understand what topics a site covers and how the different web pages relate to one another.
Websites should create helpful internal linking structures so that search engines can follow links from one page to another and understand the context of each page. An example of a topical structure for an SEO business can include the following:
Local SEO
Technical SEO
AI Search Optimization
SEO Guide
Case Studies
A topical structure will allow search engines to understand a website’s content and the relationships between different web pages.
- Poor Website Performance And Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals offer a snapshot of a website’s performance. Search engines tend to prioritize fast loading websites that offer a great performance as they enhance the searcher’s user experience.
Large media files, JavaScript, slow web hosting, unnecessary plugins and scripts, and unoptimized CSS can all lead to a poor website performance. Websites should also focus on Core Web Vitals such as Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint, and Cumulative Layout Shift.
A technically optimized website should provide a great performance and user experience on both desktop and mobile.
- Poor Mobile Optimization
A website tends to get a significant amount of traffic from mobile users.
Mobile optimization helps to improve the user experience and engagement of mobile users.
It is important to make sure that a site’s mobile version is similar to the desktop version in terms of design and functionality.
Some of the most common technical SEO issues with mobile optimization include responsive design, text size, button size, page speed, navigation, and pop-ups.
Mobile optimization should be considered a technical SEO priority, rather than just an optional enhancement.
- Missing Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup allows search engines to extract information about the content and topics covered on a webpage. Depending on the type of content published, websites can use schema.org to provide additional information to search engines about the content and topics covered on a page.
Websites should avoid using structured data markup just for the sake of it and make sure that the data provided is relevant to the information on the page.
- Duplicate And Confusing URLs
Websites should avoid having duplicate and confusing URLs as much as possible.
Websites should also make sure that URLs are pointing to the correct destination.
Common URL issues include HTTP/HTTPS, www/non-www, parameterized URLs, category URLs, and trailing slash URLs.
Websites can fix URL issues using canonical tags, redirects, and by making sure that the correct destination is selected.
- Many Broken Links And 404 Errors
Many websites have numerous broken links, both internally and externally.
These issues can have a negative effect on the user experience and the crawl budget of a website.
Websites should make sure to periodically check internal links for broken links and incorrect redirects, while also making sure that external links are working correctly.
When a user lands on a 404 error page, a 301 redirect should be used to point them in the direction of the correct page, rather than leaving them on a dead end.
- Orphan Pages
An orphan page refers to a page that is not linked to by any other pages on a website.
Many businesses fail to realize that while they may have an informative article or blog post that they want to promote, the only way for search engines to discover this content is through other pages linking to it.
Whenever a new article, blog post, or service page is published, businesses should ensure that other pages on their site are linking to it.
Additionally, whenever a new service page or article is published, this page should also link to other relevant articles and pages on the site.
- Poorly Implemented JavaScript
JavaScript can be used to provide additional functionality and interactive elements on websites.
However, search engines and search systems can have a hard time crawling sites that are highly reliant on JavaScript.
Whenever JavaScript is used to render content, menus, links, and metadata, it can present technical SEO issues for search engines and search systems that are trying to crawl and understand the page.
- Neglecting XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a file that contains a list of a website’s most important URLs.
The sitemap should contain canonical and indexable URLs and should be regularly maintained and updated whenever new content is published.
The sitemap itself will not guarantee that all web pages are crawled and indexed, but it can help search engines with the crawling process.
- Poor Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to links that point from one page on a website to another. Many businesses fail to implement internal linking correctly and randomly link to other web pages, instead of strategically planning their internal linking strategy.
An example of good internal linking would be for an article about AI Overviews to include links to technical SEO guides, content optimization guides, local SEO guides, and SEO services. This allows search engines to understand the context and topical relationships between web pages, while also allowing users to navigate between relevant pages with greater ease.
- Thinking That Technical SEO Is A One-Time Task
Technical SEO issues can arise at any time, even for websites that have had a technical SEO audit done and have had technical SEO issues fixed. Websites tend to update plugins, redirect scripts, tracking tags, structure, and CMS systems on a regular basis, which can all introduce new technical SEO issues.
As such, it is important for businesses to make sure that their technical SEO is regularly maintained. Websites should periodically undertake a technical SEO audit to fix any technical SEO issues that could begin to impact a site’s visibility in search.
How Grow Spark Digital Can Help
Grow Spark Digital understands the importance of technical SEO for a website’s visibility in search. As such, we ensure that the websites we work with are technically optimized so that search systems can easily crawl and understand a site’s content.
From a technical SEO audit to website architecture and on-page SEO, we are committed to helping our clients achieve impactful SEO strategies and techniques in traditional search and AI search. AI search is transforming how people find information, but technical SEO mistakes can prevent search systems from being able to properly crawl, render, understand, or index a website’s content.
Fixing crawlability, rendering, performance, structured data markup, and internal linking issues can all play a role in search systems being able to successfully crawl and index a website. While technical SEO often takes place behind the scenes, the right technical SEO improvements can have a major impact on a website’s overall visibility in search.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Does technical SEO affect AI search visibility?
Technical SEO allows search systems to crawl and understand the content of a website. While technical SEO fixes will not directly guarantee that search systems will cite a website, fixing technical SEO issues can help to improve a website’s chances of being crawled and indexed.
- What is the biggest technical SEO mistake?
The single biggest technical SEO mistake is preventing search engines from crawling or indexing important pages. Other technical SEO mistakes can include poor website architecture, poor performance, URL duplication, broken links, and orphan pages.
- Is structured data important for AI search?
Structured data provides additional information about the entities and content covered on a webpage. As such, websites should ensure that they are using structured data correctly and that the data provided is relevant to the topics and entities covered on a page.
- How often should I do a technical SEO audit?
A technical SEO audit should be undertaken periodically to make sure that a website does not have technical SEO issues that could negatively impact its crawlability, rendering, and overall visibility in search. A more in-depth technical SEO audit should be done whenever a website undertakes a redesign or makes major structural changes.
- Can technical SEO guarantee AI Overviews or AI search mentions?
No technical SEO technique can guarantee that a website will be mentioned by name in AI Overviews or AI search. Achieving visibility in AI Overviews and AI search requires a combination of content, technical SEO, and search engine optimization strategies.
- Can Grow Spark Digital help with technical SEO?
Grow Spark Digital provides technical SEO services and website optimization solutions to help boost a website’s overall visibility in traditional and AI search.
