What 156 SEO audits found

The 20 most common issues

The share of websites with each issue on at least one page.

1. 1Links with no link textMedium81%
   126 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
2. 2Images without width and heightMedium81%
   126 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
3. 3Images that aren’t lazy-loadedLow81%
   126 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
4. 4No “skip to content” linkLow75%
   117 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
5. 5Thin pages (under 300 words)Medium74%
   115 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
6. 6No Permissions-Policy headerLow73%
   114 of 156 sites
7. 7Pages missing from the XML sitemapMedium73%
   114 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
8. 8Titles too long for Google’s resultsLow72%
   113 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
9. 9Skipped heading levels (e.g. H2 to H4)Low72%
   112 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
10. 10Titles too short (under 30 characters)Medium72%
    112 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
11. 11Missing Open Graph (social sharing) tagsLow68%
    106 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
12. 12No Content-Security-Policy headerMedium67%
    105 of 156 sites
13. 13No Referrer-Policy headerLow67%
    104 of 156 sites
14. 14The same title on several pagesMedium65%
    101 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
15. 15No X-Frame-Options headerMedium65%
    101 of 156 sites
16. 16No X-Content-Type-Options headerLow61%
    95 of 156 sites
17. 17Meta descriptions too longLow60%
    93 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
18. 18Pages without structured data (schema)Low59%
    92 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
19. 19No Open Graph descriptionMedium58%
    91 of 156 sitesHow to fix it
20. 20The same H1 on several pagesLow58%
    90 of 156 sites

How we counted

• Every website counts once, using its most recent complete audit, however many times it was audited.
• An issue counts once per website, however many of its pages have it.
• Some checks are left out of this list: suggestions rather than problems (for example “no AMP pages”), rules too loose to state as a fact about a website, and checks whose logic changed during this period, until every counted audit uses the new version.
• Audits that didn’t finish every check are left out, as are crawls a site blocked or cut short, and our own site.
• The overall score combines eight core checks and performance. Each audit covers up to 600 pages of a site.
• Only totals are published. No website is named, and nothing here can be traced back to a visitor.

You’re welcome to quote these figures. Please link to this page as the source.