The 7 Most Common Website Performance & SEO Issues (And How to Fix Them)

You can have the most beautiful website in the world, with the most persuasive copywriting, but if it takes 10 seconds to load, or if Google cannot read it, it is worthless.

In 2025, Core Web Vitals (Google’s metric for user experience) are a ranking factor. This means performance is SEO. If your site is slow, Google penalises you.

We run hundreds of technical audits for clients every month. The same issues pop up again and again. Here are the top 7 offenders that are likely sabotaging your growth: and how to fix them.

1. The “Megapixel” Mistake (Unoptimised Images)

The Issue: This is the single most common reason for a slow website. A business owner takes a photo on their iPhone or downloads a stock image. The file is 5MB. They upload it directly to the homepage. The user’s browser has to download that entire 5MB file just to display a small thumbnail.

The Fix:

Resize: Never upload an image wider than 1920px (for full-width banners) or 800px (for blog posts).
Compress: Run every image through tools like TinyPNG or Squoosh.
Modern Formats: Use WebP or AVIF instead of JPEG/PNG. They provide the same quality at half the file size.

2. Missing “Alt Text” (The Blindfold Effect)

The Issue: Google’s crawler is a robot. It cannot “see” images. If you upload a photo of your team without “Alt Text” (Alternative Text), Google just sees a blank space named “IMG_0023.jpg”. You are missing a massive opportunity to tell Google what your page is about.

The Fix: Add descriptive Alt Text to every image.

Bad: “Logo.”
Good: “Empower Digital Solutions team working on a react web application in Glasgow.”

3. Broken Links (The Dead End)

The Issue: You wrote a blog post three years ago linking to a partner’s site. That partner has since gone out of business. Now, when a user clicks that link, they get a “404 Not Found” error. This tells Google your site is neglected and offers a poor user experience.

The Fix: Use a free tool like “Broken Link Checker” to scan your site. Update or remove dead links. Set up 301 Redirects if you change your own URL structures.

4. Slow Server Response (Cheap Hosting)

The Issue: You get what you pay for. If you are hosting your business on a £2.99/month shared hosting plan (like GoDaddy or Bluehost), you are sharing a server with thousands of other websites. If one of them gets a traffic spike, your site slows down to a crawl. Time to First Byte (TTFB) lags, and users bounce.

The Fix: Move to a modern hosting architecture. We use Netlify or Vercel (Edge Networks). These platforms serve your site from a Content Delivery Network (CDN) meaning your site loads from a server physically close to the user, whether they are in London or New York.

5. Mobile Unfriendliness (The “Fat Finger” Problem)

The Issue: Most designers design on a desktop. But 60%+ of your traffic is on mobile. Common issues include:

Touch Targets: Buttons that are too close together.
Font Size: Text that requires zooming to read.
Overflow: Content that is wider than the screen, requiring horizontal scrolling.

The Fix: Adopt a “Mobile First” design philosophy. Test your site on an actual phone, not just a resized browser window. Google predominantly indexes the mobile version of your site, so if mobile is broken, you are invisible.

6. Duplicate Content (The “Copy-Paste” Penalty)

The Issue: To save time, you copy the same paragraph of text to your “Services”, “About”, and “Home” pages. Or worse, you copy product descriptions directly from the manufacturer’s website. Google gets confused: “Which page is the original?” It often chooses to overlook all of them.

The Fix: Write unique content for every page. If you must have duplicate content (e.g., a specific legal disclaimer), use “Canonical Tags” to tell Google which version is the master copy.

7. Missing Meta Metadata

The Issue: The “Meta Title” and “Meta Description” are what appear in the Google search results. If you leave these blank, Google grabs a random sentence from your page. It usually looks professional.

Example: “Home - Page 1 - Welcome to our site check us out…”

The Fix: Write compelling copy for every page’s meta tags. Treat them like ad copy.

Title: “Custom Web Design Glasgow | Empower Digital Solutions”
Description: “Award-winning web design agency in Glasgow. We build fast, high-converting websites for service businesses. Get a free quote today.”

Conclusion

Technical SEO isn’t about tricking the algorithm. It is about providing a fast, accessible, and clear experience for your users. If you treat your users well, Google will reward you.

Not sure if your site is guilty of these errors? Run a free healthy check with our Website Health Checker tool.