A website can open without a hitch and still lose clients: Google shows a truncated title, sees two copies of the site, and a link shared in Telegram arrives without a picture. In the owner's browser everything looks fine.
Below are ten SEO errors that our free express audit often finds, even on carefully built sites. For each one: what it is, why it hurts, where to see it in the report and how to fix it.
What the express website audit is and what it checks
The express audit at vexora.uz/en/audit checks one page for free, usually the home page. No sign-up is needed: enter the address and get a report in 20–60 seconds.
The service downloads the page, reads robots.txt and the sitemap, follows the redirects and measures mobile speed twice with Google PageSpeed Insights. There are 35 checks in seven groups: availability, indexing, content, social and markup, mobile, speed and analytics.
Each check gets a status: “Good”, “Needs attention”, “Problem”, “Info” or “Not checked”. At the top is an overall score out of 100, and in the “Conclusions” block AI suggests what to fix first. These are hints, not a diagnosis.
1. Missing title or wrong title length
What it is. The <title> tag sets the page heading in Google
results and in the browser tab. Typical errors: no tag at all, a single word like “Home”,
or every service listed with commas.
Why it hurts. Search engines use the title to understand the page topic, and people use it to decide whether to click. Without the service and the city, the page ranks worse for queries like “air conditioner repair Tashkent”.
Where in the report. The “Content” group, rows “Page title” and “Title length”. No tag: “Problem”. Shorter than 30 or longer than 65 characters: “Needs attention”. The “Conclusions” block usually adds a “Suggested title”.
How to fix. Write a separate title for each page, 30–65 characters: service, city, what sets you apart. For example: “Air Conditioner Repair in Tashkent, Visit Within an Hour”.
2. Missing or too short description
What it is. The meta description is a short summary of the page in its code. Visitors don't see it on the page, but Google may show it under the title in results.
Why it hurts. Without it, Google picks a piece of text from the page itself, sometimes a fragment of the menu. The description does not affect rankings directly, but it decides whether people click your link or the next one.
Where in the report. The “Content” group, rows “Meta description” and “Description length”. No tag: “Problem”. Under 70 characters: “Needs attention”. Over 160: “Info”, the score is not lowered.
How to fix. One or two sentences, 70–160 characters: what the client gets, a price or a timeline, what to do next. Write a separate description for each important page.
3. No H1 heading, or several
What it is. H1 is the main heading on the page. Sometimes the large headline on the first screen is an image, so there is no H1 in the code. Sometimes it is the other way round: the template turns the logo and every slide into an H1.
Why it hurts. Search engines find it harder to understand the page topic, and screen readers lose the structure. With several H1s it is unclear which one is the main one.
Where in the report. The “Content” group, row “Main H1 heading”. No H1: “Problem”, one of the five critical checks with triple weight. More than one: “Needs attention”.
How to fix. Keep one H1 with the page topic, for example “Air Conditioner Repair in Tashkent”. Turn the logo and slides into H2 or plain text: the design stays the same.
4. The site opens at several addresses
What it is. The site opens with both http:// and https://, with and without www. For a person it is one page, for a search engine up to four different addresses.
Why it hurts. The search engine decides which copy to show and splits signals between them. Browsers mark the version without https as not secure. And if the www address does not open at all, anyone who types it sees an error.
Where in the report. The “Availability” group: “HTTPS”, “Redirect from http to https”, “One address with and without www”. “Problem” in the last two rows means the second address opens a copy of the site. “Needs attention” on the redirect means it is temporary.
How to fix. Choose one main address, for example https:// without www, and send all other variants to it with a permanent 301 redirect.
5. No robots.txt or sitemap, or the site is closed to search
What it is. robots.txt sets rules for search robots, and sitemap.xml lists the pages. A common picture: the files don't exist and a regular page opens at their addresses, or there is a sitemap but robots.txt doesn't mention it.
Why it hurts. Without a sitemap, new pages get into search more slowly. Worst
of all is a Disallow: / rule or a noindex tag left over from development: the site
works, but it is not in search.
Where in the report. The “Indexing” group: “robots.txt file”, “Page allowed in robots.txt”, “Sitemap listed in robots.txt”, “Sitemap” and “No-index directive”. A blocked page gets “Problem”.
How to fix. Put robots.txt in the site root with a Sitemap: line
and the sitemap address, and submit the sitemap in Google Search Console. On launch day,
remove the blocks left over from the test version.
6. Canonical is missing or points to another address
What it is. Canonical is a tag that tells search engines the main address of a page. One page often opens in several variants: with and without a trailing slash, with utm tags from ads.
Why it hurts. Without a canonical, the search engine picks the main version itself. A wrong canonical is worse: if it points to the home page, the http version or a test domain, the wrong page may end up in results.
Where in the report. The “Indexing” group, row “Canonical URL”. “Needs attention”: there is no tag, there are several, or it points to another page. The address from the tag is shown in the report.
How to fix. Each page needs one canonical with its own main address. Check inner pages too: enter the address of a service page in the audit.
7. Page language not set, language versions not linked
What it is. The lang attribute states the page language, and hreflang tags link its versions in different languages. Many sites in Uzbekistan have Russian and Uzbek versions.
Why it hurts. An Uzbek version built from a Russian template often keeps
lang="ru". Without hreflang, Google decides on its own which version to show, and
someone who searched in Uzbek may land on the Russian page.
Where in the report. “Page language (lang)” in the “Content” group shows the value found: compare it with the language of the text. If “Language versions (hreflang)” are not set, the status is “Info”: the score is not affected, but a multilingual site needs them.
How to fix. Set the right lang on each version: ru, uz or en. On every page, list all language versions with hreflang tags, including the page itself.
8. No Open Graph: a Telegram link without a picture
What it is. The og:title, og:description and og:image tags define a link preview: the title, the description and the picture. Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook read them.
Why it hurts. Clients often share links to websites in Telegram. Without og:image the preview has no picture, and without the other tags the messenger fills in whatever it finds. Such a link gets lost among other messages.
Where in the report. The “Social and markup” group, row “Social preview (Open Graph)”. With “Needs attention”, the missing tags are listed, for example “missing: og:image”.
How to fix. Add the three tags to every page and make the image 1200 × 630 pixels. If Telegram still shows the old preview, send the link to @WebpageBot: it will refresh the preview.
9. No Schema.org structured data
What it is. Structured data is a block of data in the code written to the Schema.org standard: company name, address, phone, opening hours, and for products the price and availability. Google recommends the JSON-LD format.
Why it hurts. Without it, Google finds it harder to connect the site with the company, and products lose the chance of a snippet with the price right in the results. Structured data does not raise rankings by itself, but it makes the result stand out.
Where in the report. The “Social and markup” group, row “JSON-LD structured data”: the types found, or “Needs attention” if there is no markup or it has an error. The audit does not look for Microdata.
How to fix. For a company site, Organization or LocalBusiness on the home page is enough; a catalogue needs Product. Test the code in Google Rich Results Test.
10. The site is slow on a phone
What it is. The first screen takes long to appear, elements jump, buttons respond with a delay. The usual causes: photos of several megabytes, a slider, chats and widgets that all load at once.
Why it hurts. Google evaluates a site by its mobile version and takes speed into account. If you run ads, some of the paid clicks are lost before the first screen appears.
Where in the report. The “Performance” score among the Lighthouse scores for mobile, the “Mobile speed (Lighthouse)” row in the “Mobile” group and the LCP, CLS, TBT and FCP metrics. Below 90: “Needs attention”, below 50: “Problem”. The speed block also lists the top three Lighthouse suggestions.
How to fix. Compress images and convert them to WebP, set their dimensions, defer loading of chats and widgets. If the template itself is slow, it is sometimes easier to rebuild it.
Images without alt text and sites without analytics counters are common too: you will find them in the “Content” and “Analytics” groups.
Summary table
| Error | Effect | Time to fix |
|---|---|---|
| Title | the page ranks worse | 10–20 minutes per page |
| Description | Google picks the snippet text | 10–20 minutes per page |
| H1 | search engines understand the topic worse | up to an hour |
| Several addresses | copies of the site in search | 30–60 minutes |
| robots.txt and sitemap | slow indexing or the site is not in search | 5 minutes to 2 hours |
| Canonical | the wrong page in results | 1–2 hours |
| lang and hreflang | people land on the wrong language | 2–4 hours |
| Open Graph | a link in a messenger without a picture | 1–2 hours |
| Structured data | Google understands the company worse | 1–3 hours |
| Mobile speed | visitors leave, rankings drop | a day to a week |
The time is a rough guide for a small site with access to the code or the admin panel.
What the express audit does not check, and when you need a full audit
The express check looks at one page from the outside and will not show:
- errors on other pages: duplicates, broken links, pages without a title deep in the catalogue;
- what actually got into the index: that is visible in Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster;
- links to the site from other websites;
- rankings for search queries, competitors' sites and the quality of the texts;
- whether structured data and hreflang are filled in correctly: the audit only checks that they exist.
A full audit is needed if the site has more than a dozen pages or a catalogue, search traffic has dropped, the site has moved to a new domain, or you are starting SEO promotion. In a technical SEO audit we review the whole site and send a report with priorities: what to fix first and why.
Check your site
You can check your site right now: open the express audit, enter the address, and in a minute you will see which of these errors you have. It is free. Start with the home page, then check the service page that brings people in from search.