34 step-by-step guides

SEO & AI Fix Guides

Clear, practical fixes for the issues our audit flags — classic on-page and technical SEO, Core Web Vitals, and the newer AI answer-engine checks (AEO/GEO).

On-Page SEO

How to Fix a Missing Meta Description

A missing meta description means your page's <head> has no <meta name="description"> tag, so Google and other engines auto-generate the snippet shown under your title in search results. Writing a concise, accurate description of 150-160 characters per page gives you control over that snippet, improves click-through, and helps AI answer engines summarize your page correctly.

How to Fix a Meta Description That's Too Long

A "meta description too long" notice means your page's meta description exceeds the width Google renders in search results, so the tail gets cut with an ellipsis. It's a low-severity, cosmetic issue that won't hurt rankings, but a truncated description weakens your click-through pitch and can lop off your call to action. The fix is simple: trim the description to fit the visible window and keep the compelling part up front.

How to Fix a Title Tag That's Too Long

A "title tag too long" notice means your page's <title> is likely to be cut off in search results because it runs wider than Google's display area, roughly 600 pixels or about 50 to 60 characters on desktop. The fix is to rewrite the title so the important keyword and value sit inside that visible range, then update it in your CMS or template and confirm it in the page source.

How to Fix a Title Tag That's Too Short

A "title tag too short" warning means the <title> element on this page falls below the useful range (roughly 30-60 characters). Short titles waste prime SERP space, give Google and AI answer engines too little to work with, and get rewritten by Google far more often than well-sized titles. The fix is to rewrite the title so it clearly describes the page, leads with the primary keyword, and fills more of the ~600-pixel space Google displays on desktop.

How to Fix a Missing Title Tag (Step by Step)

Your page has no HTML title tag (the <title> element inside <head>). This is the most important on-page tag for both rankings and click-through, and its absence is critical but quick to fix. Add one unique, descriptive title per page, front-loaded with the main topic and kept to roughly 50-60 characters. On most platforms the fix takes a few minutes.

How to Fix a Missing H1 Tag

Your page has no usable H1 heading, the single clearest label that tells search engines and AI crawlers what the page is about. This guide explains what the H1 is, why a missing one hurts rankings and AI visibility, and how to add one correctly on any platform.

How to Fix Multiple H1 Tags on a Page

Your page has more than one h1 element. Google says multiple H1s won't directly hurt your rankings, but one clear H1 per page is still best practice: it states the page's primary topic for search engines, AI answer engines, and screen-reader users. This guide shows you how to find the extra H1s and fix them across common platforms.

How to Fix Missing Open Graph Tags

Your page has no Open Graph (og:) meta tags, so when someone shares its URL on LinkedIn, Slack, WhatsApp, X, or Facebook, the preview renders with no title, no description, and no image. That same head-level metadata is read by AI answer engines and their crawlers, so weak OG data also weakens how your page appears when ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews summarize or cite it. This is a notice-level issue that does not directly affect Google rankings, but it lowers click-through on shared links, where a lot of qualified traffic starts. The fix is one-time: add four required og: tags plus a couple of recommended ones to your page head, point og:image at a 1200x630 image, and re-scrape the URL in the platform debuggers.

Content

How to Fix Duplicate Title Tags

Duplicate title tags mean two or more pages share the same <title> text. This makes it harder for Google to tell your pages apart, splits their ranking signals, and produces generic, undifferentiated snippets in both search results and AI answer engines. The fix is to give every indexable page a unique, descriptive title that reflects its specific content.

How to Fix Duplicate Meta Descriptions

Duplicate meta descriptions mean two or more of your pages ship the identical <meta name="description"> text. It's a warning-level content issue: it won't block indexing, but it wastes your best shot at winning the click in search results and signals thin templating to Google. The fix is to give each meaningful page its own description that reflects that page's specific content.

How to Fix Thin Content on Your Pages

Thin content means a page doesn't offer enough substantive, useful information to satisfy the intent behind the query it targets. Fix it by expanding pages with genuinely helpful detail, consolidating overlapping weak pages, and either improving or removing low-value pages that exist only to fill a URL slot.

How to Fix Keyword Stuffing on a Page

Keyword stuffing means a target term or its close variants appears so densely that the text reads as written for search engines, not people. Google names it in its spam policies, and it also makes your content less quotable to AI answer engines. The fix is not deleting the keyword. It is rewriting so the topic is covered naturally with synonyms, entities, and real substance, then keeping the term in the right structural spots (title, H1, first paragraph, a subhead or two) instead of everywhere.

How to Fix Hard-to-Read Content

An audit flagged this page as "difficult" or "very difficult" to read, meaning its readability score fell into the lowest bands (roughly a Flesch Reading Ease under 50). That points to long sentences, dense paragraphs, and complex vocabulary that make readers work harder than they should. Fix it by shortening sentences, breaking up paragraphs, swapping jargon for plain words, and adding structure like subheadings and lists. Cleaner writing keeps readers engaged and makes your pages easier for AI answer engines to extract and cite.

Images

Links & Crawlability

Performance & Core Web Vitals

How to Fix Images That Are Too Large

Your audit flagged one or more images whose file size or pixel dimensions are far larger than the page needs. Oversized images are the most common cause of slow Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and wasted bandwidth. The fix: compress each image, resize it to the dimensions it's displayed at, serve a modern format (WebP or AVIF), and let the browser pick the right size with responsive srcset. WordPress, Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace can automate most of this; custom sites handle it with a build step.

How to Fix Images Missing Dimensions (CLS)

Your audit flagged one or more images that render without width and height attributes. Without them, the browser can't reserve space before the image downloads, so surrounding content jumps as each image loads. That jump is measured by Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), a Core Web Vital. The fix is to add explicit width and height attributes (or a CSS aspect-ratio) to every content image so the browser holds the space in advance.

How to Fix Render-Blocking Resources

Render-blocking resources are CSS and JavaScript files the browser must download and process before it can paint the page. They sit in the critical rendering path and push back First Contentful Paint (FCP) and Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). You fix them by deferring non-critical JavaScript, inlining critical CSS, loading the rest asynchronously, and trimming what the browser has to parse before first render.

How to Fix Slow Server Response Time (TTFB)

Your audit flagged a slow Time to First Byte (TTFB), the delay between the browser requesting a page and receiving the first byte of the response. A good TTFB is 800ms or less at the 75th percentile of real users; 800ms to 1,800ms needs improvement, and over 1,800ms is poor. The browser can't start rendering until that first byte arrives, so a slow TTFB directly delays Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), hurts rankings, and slows how fast crawlers (including AI crawlers) can fetch your content. Fix it with server-side page caching, a CDN, faster hosting, database and back-end optimization, and by collapsing redirect chains.

How to Improve a Poor PageSpeed Score

A poor or fair PageSpeed score means your pages load and respond slowly for real users, which drags down Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS). Google uses field data from real Chrome visits as a ranking input, so this affects search position, bounce rate, and how reliably AI crawlers can fetch and render your content. Fix it by shrinking and prioritizing the largest visible element, cutting render-blocking and unused JavaScript, compressing images, reserving space to stop layout shift, and speeding up server response.

How to Reduce Unused JavaScript

Your page ships JavaScript the browser downloads and parses but often never runs on that page. This wastes bandwidth and main-thread time, delaying LCP and interactivity. The fix is to load less JS up front: code-split, defer, tree-shake, and remove dead scripts and unused third-party tags.

How to Enable Gzip or Brotli Compression

Your audit found HTML, CSS, or JavaScript being served without HTTP compression. Enabling Gzip or Brotli on your server or CDN shrinks these text files substantially, cutting transfer size and improving load time and Core Web Vitals with no visual change to your site.

Security & HTTPS

Mobile

Indexing & Sitemaps

AI & Answer Engines

How to Fix Content Invisible to AI Crawlers

Your audit flagged js_dependent_content: the page's main text only appears after JavaScript runs in the browser. Many crawlers, including most AI answer engines, fetch the raw HTML and never execute that JavaScript, so they see an empty or skeletal page. The fix is to deliver your real content in the initial HTML response using server-side rendering, static generation, or prerendering.

How to Fix AI Crawlers Blocked in robots.txt

Your robots.txt contains rules that disallow one or more AI crawlers (like GPTBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, or OAI-SearchBot) from fetching your site. That keeps your content out of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude answers. The fix is to edit robots.txt so the AI user-agents you want are allowed, while keeping genuinely sensitive paths protected.

How to Add FAQ Structured Data (FAQPage Schema)

Your page shows questions and answers but has no FAQPage structured data telling machines how they pair. Valid FAQPage JSON-LD makes that Q&A explicit and machine-readable. The 2026 context matters: Google removed FAQ rich results from Search on May 7, 2026, so the payoff now is answer-engine visibility (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) and cleaner content parsing, not SERP dropdowns.

Add Organization sameAs for AI & Knowledge Graph

Your homepage's Organization structured data exists but has no sameAs property. That property is the array of official profile URLs (LinkedIn, X, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase, GitHub) that lets search engines and AI answer engines resolve your website to a single, known brand entity. Without it, engines see a name and a logo but cannot confirm which real-world organization you are. Fix it by adding a sameAs array to your Organization JSON-LD, leading with a Wikipedia or Wikidata link if one exists, then your authoritative social and business profiles.

How to Fix Questions Without Direct Answers

Your page asks questions in headings, FAQs, or copy but never delivers a clear, self-contained answer next to them. Search engines and AI answer engines can't extract a usable response, so you lose featured snippets and citations. The fix: put a direct 40-to-60-word answer immediately after each question, then expand below it.

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