Common Technical SEO Issues Found on Liverpool Business Websites

Technical SEO is one of those areas that local businesses can easily overlook. A website can look fine from the outside, load when someone visits it, and still bring in the occasional enquiry, while underneath there may be issues that make it harder for search engines to crawl, understand, and rank it properly. Not to mention that these underlying problems could affect elements on the website’s front end.

That is what made me want to look into this in more detail.

My goal was to see which technical SEO issues are most common across real local business websites, not just in theory, but using live crawl data. For this study, I reviewed a sample of various business websites from across Liverpool and Merseyside, covering a broad range of sectors.

The aim of this report is not to criticise individual businesses or point out every small warning a crawl tool can find. It is to understand the patterns. Which issues appear most often? Which ones are likely to matter for SEO? And which ones are lower-priority tasks that may not be worth major investment on their own?

That distinction is important. Not every technical SEO issue carries equal weight, and as someone running a business, you want to know your technical support budget is being spent where it will make a noticeable difference. My hope is that by the end of this report, you will have a clear sense of which technical SEO warnings should be given priority and which ones can be addressed later.

My Study Methodology

For this report, I knew I had to look beyond the raw crawl warnings and focus more closely on the issues most likely to affect crawlability, indexation, page relevance, local visibility, and user experience. To gather data, I used Screaming Frog to crawl a selection of local business websites across Liverpool and Merseyside.

The final sample included 85 suitable websites across 25 sectors, covering a mixture of trades, hospitality, healthcare, beauty, professional services, property and other local services. The aim was to gain a broad view of the types of technical SEO issues that arise across local business websites in various industries.

I would review the data from the Screaming Frog exports and exclude any unsuitable, incomplete or inconsistent crawl data from the final numbers. This was important to keep the dataset as clean and consistent as possible.

I focused more closely on the issues most likely to matter from a technical SEO perspective, such as broken internal links, indexability issues, incorrect canonicals, weak page titles, missing or unclear H1s, thin content, and large image files. Other warnings that appeared in the crawl were to be disregarded as low-impact.

It is also important to say that I did not treat every crawl warning equally. Screaming Frog is useful for finding technical issues at scale, but like any SEO tool, the findings still need human judgment. Some issues can affect how search engines crawl, index and understand a website. Others may be useful housekeeping tasks, but are unlikely to have much impact on rankings or enquiries on their own.

What the Crawl Found Overall

Across the 85 suitable websites analysed, the crawl identified more than 2,400 technical SEO issues, affecting 321,335 URLs and other website resources in total.

At first glance, that sounds like a very large number. However, this is where technical SEO data needs context. Crawl tools can flag a wide range of issues, from serious problems that may affect how a website is crawled and indexed to lower-priority warnings that may not have much impact on search performance on their own.

The data showed that technical SEO issues were common across the sample:

• 85.9% of websites had at least one high-priority issue
• 98.8% of websites had at least one medium-priority issue
• 100% of websites had at least one low-priority warning

This does not mean every website was in serious trouble from an SEO perspective. It does, however, show that most of these local business websites had technical issues worth reviewing.

One of the clearest findings was that the largest number of affected URLs was associated with low-priority warnings. These included issues such as missing security headers, long metadata and other crawl warnings that may be useful to know about, but are not always the best place to start when trying to improve organic visibility.

That is why the rest of this report focuses less on the size of the error list and more on the specific issues themselves. For local business websites, the more important findings were around crawlability, indexability, broken links, page titles, H1s, thin content, canonicals and image size.

Why the Number of Issues Does Not Tell the Whole Story

The next step was to organise the dataset to get a clearer picture of where the real problems were.

When grouped by the original crawl priority labels, most of the affected URLs came from lower-priority warnings:

This is why technical SEO reports need interpretation. If you only look at the total number of warnings, it can make a website look worse than it really is. For example, a website with fewer serious issues, such as broken internal links, incorrect canonicals, or important pages missing H1s, may need more urgent attention than a website with thousands of minor warnings on low-value pages.

By separating the total warnings into the different types and sorting by severity, you can get a far more useful view of technical SEO health. I believe taking the time to do this is far more efficient than resolving hundreds upon hundreds of small problems on a website that don’t move the needle.

The Most Common Technical SEO Issues That Mattered

After filtering out lower-value warnings, several issue areas stood out as more meaningful from an SEO perspective.

These were the areas I felt were worth focusing on in the report because they were more likely to affect how search engines crawl, index, understand, or display important pages. This includes:

Issue area	Websites affected	% of websites affected	URLs affected
Page titles over 60 characters	75	88.2%	11,263
Page titles over 561 pixels	73	85.9%	10,724
Low content pages	67	78.8%	3,233
Missing meta descriptions	63	74.1%	16,228
Large images over 100 KB	56	65.9%	5,950
Noindex directives	53	62.4%	312
Missing H1s	50	58.8%	690
Multiple H1s	49	57.6%	2,152
Duplicate page titles	47	55.3%	1,298
Images missing alt text	37	43.5%	1,575
Internal 4xx errors	21	24.7%	1,278
Canonicalised URLs	17	20.0%	252

The most common issues were not especially advanced technical SEO problems. They were mostly basic website hygiene issues: weak page titles, missing or unclear headings, thin pages, missing metadata, oversized images, missing image alt text and URLs that needed further review for indexability or crawl errors.

That is important because these are the kinds of issues that often build up over time as sites are tweaked. A local business might add new service pages, upload images, remove old pages, add and remove plugins, and change page content. Individually, these changes may not seem significant. But over time, they can leave a website with broken links, duplicated page elements, weak content, unclear crawl signals, and poorly optimised images.

For example, page titles were one of the most widespread issues in the sample. This does not mean every title over a certain character count is a serious SEO problem, but it does suggest that many local websites are not managing their page titles carefully. For service-based businesses, page titles are still one of the clearest ways to help search engines and users understand what a page is about.

H1 issues were also common. Missing H1s affected 58.8% of websites, while multiple H1s affected 57.6% of websites. I would treat these as higher-impact issues than many standard crawl warnings, especially on homepages, service pages, and location pages, where the main heading should clearly support the page’s topic.

Low-content pages were found on 78.8% of websites. This is one of the more important findings for local SEO because many businesses rely on service pages to rank for commercial searches. If the value and purpose behind those pages are not clear, they may struggle to compete with better-structured local competitors.

Image optimisation was also a common issue. Images larger than 100 KB affected 65.9% of websites, while missing alt text affected 43.5%. These are not always the highest-priority technical SEO issues, but they are still worth reviewing. Large images can affect performance, while alt text can support accessibility, image SEO, and search engines’ understanding of important visual content.

The data also showed a mix of more technical issues, including noindex directives, canonicalised URLs, and internal 4xx errors. These depend on context to be considered truly wrong. A noindex tag or canonical tag can be intentional, for instance. However, they should be reviewed carefully because, if they affect important pages, they can directly limit whether those pages are eligible to appear in search results.

Which Issues Should Local Businesses Prioritise First?

One of the biggest risks with technical SEO audits is treating every issue as equally important.

While a long list of warnings can look serious, the real question should be: which issues are most likely to affect the pages that drive traffic, calls, bookings, or enquiries?

For local business websites, I would prioritise the findings in three groups.

High-priority issues

These are the issues I would usually review first because they can affect whether important pages are crawled, indexed, understood, or used properly by visitors.

Issue	Why it matters
Indexability issues	Important pages need to be eligible to appear in search. Noindex tags and blocked URLs should be reviewed carefully.
Broken internal links and 4xx errors	These can create poor user journeys and waste crawl paths, especially when they affect service pages or navigation links.
Incorrect canonical tags	Canonicals help search engines understand which version of a page should be treated as the main version. Incorrect use can send the wrong signal.
Missing or unclear H1s	The H1 is one of the clearest on-page signals for the topic of a page, especially on homepages, service pages and location pages.
Thin or low-content pages	Local businesses often rely on service pages to rank. If those pages do not give enough useful information, they may struggle to compete.
Duplicate or weak page titles	Page titles help search engines and users understand the page. Poorly managed titles can weaken relevance and click-through.

These types of issues are more likely to have a direct impact on SEO performance, particularly if they affect the homepage, main service pages, location pages, contact pages, or high-intent landing pages.

Medium-priority issues

These issues are still worth fixing, but they usually need context.

Issue	Why it matters
Long or short page titles	These may need rewriting if they are unclear, truncated or missing important relevance signals.
Missing meta descriptions	Meta descriptions are not a direct ranking factor, but they can influence how pages appear in search and may affect click-through.
Large image files	Oversized images can affect performance and user experience, especially on mobile.
Missing image alt text	Alt text supports accessibility and can help search engines understand important images.
Weak internal linking	Important pages should be easy to find and supported by relevant internal links.

These are often good housekeeping tasks, but they should not automatically take precedence over bigger crawl, indexation, or content problems. Here is where experienced SEOs who take the time to get to know your operation and goals are invaluable.

Lower-priority issues

These are worth knowing about, but they are unlikely to be the first place I would invest time or budget.

This includes warnings such as some security header notices, minor metadata length warnings, duplicated H2s, multiple H2s, or technical alerts affecting pages that are less important for SEO.

That does not mean they should be ignored forever. It means they should be prioritised sensibly. A good technical SEO audit should explain this priority order and the pages affected, rather than just handing over a long list of problems.

What This Means for Local Business Websites

The main takeaway from the study is that many local business websites do not necessarily need more pages, more blog content or more marketing activity for better visibility.

In many cases, the technical foundations need attention first.

A local business website can have good services, strong reviews and a decent-looking design, but still remain in the background because important pages are unclear, difficult to crawl, or lacking usefulness. Issues such as weak page titles, missing H1s, thin service pages, broken links, and oversized images might seem small individually, but together they can make a website harder for search engines and users to navigate.

For local SEO, this matters because the most important pages are usually quite specific. A plumber, dentist, hairdresser, solicitor, or restaurant does not need every page on the website to rank. But they do need their homepage, core service pages, location pages, and contact pages to be technically sound.

That means making sure those pages:

• Can be crawled and indexed.
• Have clear, relevant page titles.
• Use a clear H1 that matches the page topic.
• Contain enough useful content to explain the service.
• Are not broken, redirected incorrectly or canonicalised to the wrong URL.
• Load well enough for users, especially on mobile.
• Are supported by sensible internal links.
• Use images that are not unnecessarily large.
• Include helpful alt text where images add meaning or context.

The data also shows why technical SEO should not be reduced to a simple error count. A website with thousands of low-priority warnings may not have a serious SEO problem, while another website with fewer issues could have a much bigger problem if those issues affect important commercial pages.

For local businesses, the value of a technical SEO audit is not just finding errors. It is about understanding which errors are worth fixing, which pages they affect, and whether they could be preventing the website from generating more visibility, enquiries, calls, or bookings.

Final Thoughts

The main finding from this study is not simply that local business websites have technical SEO issues. Most websites do.

The more useful finding is that the most intimidating error list is not always the biggest SEO problem.

Across the 85 suitable websites analysed, the crawl data found more than 2,400 technical SEO issues affecting 321,335 URLs. But of these URLs, just 17% were affected by serious technical issues. The rest (83%) had issues that were medium and lower-priority warnings. The issues that matter most are those affecting important pages, such as homepages, service pages, location pages, and contact pages.

For local businesses, technical SEO needs to be approached with priorities in mind. A useful audit should not just say what is wrong. It should explain what matters, what can wait and what is most likely to help the website perform better in search.

Based on this study, the areas local businesses should review most carefully are:

• Indexability of important pages.
• Page titles and H1s on core pages.
• Depth and usefulness of the service page content.
• Broken links and 4xx errors are creating dead ends.
• Canonical tags on important URLs.
• Large images that may affect performance.
• Missing alt text on meaningful images.

Improving technical SEO for local businesses does not mean rebuilding the whole website. Often, it starts with fixing the basics: cleaning up broken links, improving key pages, reviewing indexability, tightening page titles, and making sure the site is easy for both users and search engines to understand.

That is where a technical SEO audit has the most value. Not as a long list of warnings, but as a practical way to find what is holding a website back and decide what should be fixed first.