A Technical SEO Case Study
As part of a case study, I built a live e-commerce site to serve as a technical testing environment for mastering crawling tools, indexation control, and structured data deployment. This technical SEO audit identified a number of issues that may impact website performance, crawlability, indexation, security, and accessibility.
SEO Tools
CMS: WordPress & WooCommerce
Crawling & Diagnostics: Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Google Rich Results Test
Analytics & Monitoring: Google Search Console (GSC), Google Analytics (GA4)
Issue 1: Directives Appearing Outside the <head> Section
Priority: High
Impact: May result in HTML validation errors and inconsistent rendering across browsers. Search engines may also be unable to correctly interpret key page directives.
Recommendation: Review page structure and ensure all directives are placed within the appropriate <head> section.
Affected Pages: 1 page
Severity: Issue
Issue 2: Soft 404 Pages Detected
Priority: High
Impact: Search engines may waste crawl budget on non-existent or low-value pages, potentially affecting indexation and overall SEO performance. Users may also encounter poor experiences when landing on pages that appear valid but provide no meaningful content.
Recommendation: Review all identified soft 404 pages and either provide relevant content, implement a proper 404 status code, or redirect obsolete pages to the most relevant live content.
Affected Pages: 1 page
Severity: Warning
Issue 3: Non-Sequential H2 Heading Structure
Priority: Low
Impact: An incorrect heading hierarchy can reduce content clarity for search engines and assistive technologies, potentially affecting accessibility and SEO performance.
Recommendation: Review the page heading structure and ensure H2 tags are used in a logical, sequential manner beneath the primary H1 heading. Where additional hierarchy is required, use H3-H6 headings appropriately.
Affected Pages: 5 pages
Severity: Warning
Issue 4: Missing X-Content-Type-Options Header
Priority: Low
Impact: The absence of the X-Content-Type-Options security header can allow browsers to perform MIME-type sniffing, which may increase the risk of files being interpreted incorrectly and reduce compliance with security best practices.
Recommendation: Configure the web server to return the X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff header for all applicable resources to help prevent MIME-type sniffing.
Affected Pages: 85 URLs
Severity: Warning
Issue 5: Internal Links with No Follow Outlinks
Priority: Low
Impact: Internal links marked as nofollow can restrict the flow of link equity across the site and may make it harder for search engines to understand which internal pages are important.
Recommendation: Review internal nofollow links and remove the nofollow attribute where links point to trusted, crawlable internal pages that should be discoverable by search engines.
Affected Pages: 9 URLs
Severity: Warning
Issue 6: Images Missing Alt Text
Priority: Low
Impact: Missing alt text can reduce accessibility for users relying on screen readers and may limit search engines’ ability to understand the context and purpose of image content.
Recommendation: Include descriptive text for images by adding concise, meaningful alt text that explains the image’s purpose or content. Decorative images should use empty alt text where appropriate so assistive technologies can ignore them.
Affected Pages: 8 URLs
Severity: Issue