7 Things You Didn’t Know Are Blocking Your Website from Ranking

Search engines consider a wide range of ranking factors to assess website credibility. Since there are so many, some ranking factors are bound to be missed by business owners.

Most business owners will be familiar with ranking factors like content quality, keyword optimisation, and mobile friendliness. Even some technical ranking factors, such as internal linking and URL structure, are well-known. Addressing these important aspects of SEO will certainly go a long way to help SEO performance, but also addressing those ranking factors that fly under the radar will take you further.

These additional signals that influence website SEO performance aren’t always obvious and may not have a significant impact on your human website visitors. However, they can be glaringly obvious to the search engine bots that crawl your website and block your ranking ability. 

By addressing lesser-known ranking factors, you can bring your authority and crawlability up to the next level. However, you may need expert support to address the aspects you’re not super comfortable with. This article will explore these ideas further, identifying the ranking factors many people forget.

Let’s dive in.

7 things you didn’t know are blocking your website from ranking

1. Unresolved crawl errors

Crawling errors happen when Google tries to visit pages on your website but can’t access them properly. These errors stop search engines from fully understanding and ranking your site fairly because Google bots can’t index your pages without accessing them first.

Unresolved crawling issues can also signal that you don’t make consistent efforts to maintain your website, reducing trust and reliability. These issues may be caused by things like broken links (pages that lead to 404 “Not Found” errors), pages blocked by “robots.txt”, or URL changes that haven’t been properly redirected.

Business owners can spot unresolved crawling and indexing issues through Google Search Console. Here, you can identify which pages aren’t being indexed and may spot 404 errors or pages that have been blocked by “robots.txt”. 

When fixing unresolved crawl issues, you may have to:

• Repair or remove broken links (replace or redirect)
• Use proper 301 redirects when changing a URL or deleting pages
• Review robots.txt rules so important pages aren’t blocked
• Ensure your hosting can handle traffic and isn’t timing out
• Make pages accessible without login or scripts (where possible)

2. Slow server response time 

While the importance of page speed is quite well known among businesses wishing to improve their SEO rankings, less attention is paid to server response time. These issues are linked, but they’re not the same. While page loading speed is the total time it takes for a webpage to load, server response time is how quickly your server responds to a request.

Usually, the advice for increasing page speed is to reduce the file size of things like images. This is helpful, but page speed is also influenced by your server. If it’s sluggish, this can frustrate both customers and Google’s crawl bots. 

A slow server response time can lead to:

• Fewer pages being crawled and discovered
• Users abandoning your site before it loads
• Lower rankings because the experience of your site feels unreliable

Slow servers can drag down your performance, even if you’ve compressed images and leveraged browser caching. You may be having this issue if:

• Google PageSpeed Insights flags “Reduce server response times”
• Your hosting provider shows frequent downtime or reduced performance
• Google Search Console shows problems in its Crawl Stats report

Crucially, if you’re noticing a delay before anything loads, it usually points to a problem with your server, not your content. You can also ask some of the following questions to diagnose this problem:

• Is my hosting plan powerful enough for the amount of traffic I get?
• Am I sharing a server with too many other websites?
• Would a CDN improve speed for customers outside my region?
• Has my developer checked for heavy plugins slowing server processing?
• Could caching or performance plugins help lighten the load?

In many cases, switching to higher-quality hosting immediately improves SEO performance across the whole site. If you have a WordPress site, read about the best hosting providers here.

3. Cannibalisation from similar pages

When many of your website’s webpages are targeting the same or similar keywords, it’s known as keyword cannibalisation. These pages end up competing with each other and Google won’t be able to identify the ‘main’ page, causing them all to underperform.

When this occurs, Google may index the wrong page, or pages may fluctuate in ranking position more frequently. In either case, keyword cannibalisation prevents a single page from building enough authority to rank consistently. You can check for this issue by:

• Search for your brand and a target keyword in Google and see if multiple URLs from your website appear
• Look in Google Search Console to see if two of your webpages are gaining impressions for the same search queries
• Review your whole catalogue of content to identify topics that you’ve repeated or those that overlap heavily

If you think that two of your blog posts or category pages could satisfy the same search intent, it’s likely that they’re competing. Fortunately, keyword cannibalisation is quite an easy fix. You may decide to merge your overlapping content into one comprehensive page or adjust one to differentiate it more firmly. Alternatively, you could use a 301 redirect to steer bots and users to your preferred page.

4. Missing internal linking strategy

Internal linking is somewhat well-known, but it tends to be a higher-level strategy. Most businesses that are new to SEO won’t have begun an internal linking strategy yet. These strategies involve linking your own webpages together according to topic or category. They can be linked in certain ways to indicate the importance of different content or how different topics relate.

Internal linking helps Google crawl your website in an organised way; when it’s weak, important pages may be harder to access. This results in search engines finding it harder to interpret your website’s hierarchy and decide which pages should rank above others for certain topics. 

Your SEO performance may be being impacted by weak internal linking if you’ve noticed:

• New or important pages receiving very little organic traffic
• That some of your pages are only reachable from your menus, not through contextual links
• Analytics show high bounce rates (indicating that users are clicking on internal links that turn out to be irrelevant to them)
• Google Search Console shows indexing gaps for deeper pages

You can fix these issues by:

• Prioritising linking to key commercial or high-value pages
• Using clear, descriptive anchor text that reflects the target topic
• Ensuring every page has at least one relevant internal link pointing to it
• Creating content clusters, where related pages link to a core “pillar” page
• Maintaining logical navigation with minimal clicks to reach essential content

Learn more about internal linking structure from this article.

5. Outdated or thin content

Most businesses working to improve their SEO performance know the importance of consistently publishing high-quality written content. However, that content can eventually become outdated overtime and what does “high-quality” really entail?

Search engines assess the quality and usefulness of content when determining rankings. So, if webpages contain information that is no longer accurate or relevant, they’re unlikely to be prioritised. Plus, if the content lacks depth and fails to fully answer a search query, it isn’t going to stand out as authoritative. 

Outdated pages may signify your business isn’t very active and thin content indicates your business doesn’t offer much value. This may be happening for you if:

• You’ve seen a gradual decline in rankings or impressions for webpages that used to be strong
• You have articles or landing pages that contain minimal unique information
• Your business sits in a fast-changing industry, but your blog hasn’t been updated recently

Efforts for improving your content will depend on what’s wrong with them. You may:

• Begin updating your content more regularly to include recent data, insights, and examples
• Add supporting elements such as visuals, internal links, and structured formatting
• Ensure each page targets a distinct, meaningful keyword intent
• Expand any thin content to provide complete answers and clearer guidance
• Remove or consolidate duplicate or near-duplicate pages

6. Low topical authority

Another tricky aspect of SEO is topical authority. Many businesses will know that SEO performance improves when you demonstrate expertise, but most will not realise how important it is to be niche.

Topical authority is about how much expertise your website demonstrates on a specific subject. This tends to be high when a website produces high-quality content that covers its specific subject at great depth. Equally, it tends to be low if a website only publishes a handful of surface-level pieces of content inconsistently. 

Failing to demonstrate topical authority means that search engines don’t have enough evidence to trust you as an authoritative source, understand what your business is about, and which keywords you should rank for. This may be happening for your website if:

• Your content is broad but shallow, without deeper guides or supporting resources
• Competitors dominate the search results with multiple content types on the same topic
• Your site ranks for only a small number of keywords in your core focus area

Building topical authority is an ongoing process, but it includes activities such as:

• Demonstrating expertise with case studies, FAQs, data, or practical insights
• Creating a clear content plan focused on service or product themes
• Developing pillar pages on key subjects supported by detailed sub-topics and ensuring internal linking connects related pages into strong content clusters
• Consistently expanding your content to address user questions and needs

7. No real EEAT signals

Most businesses know they should build trust with their websites and have come across Google’s EAT (Expertise, Authority, and Trust) principles. EAT became EEAT a couple of years ago, with the addition of Experience. While this is relatively well-known in the SEO community, many businesses don’t realise what signals Google is asking for. 

Usually, SEO advice about EEAT mentions content quality and referencing sources, which are certainly important. However, EEAT also calls for credibility signals that indicate who authored the content, why they are qualified to speak on the topic, and what real-world experience supports the information they’ve provided.

Even if a business is credible overall, a single page can struggle if it doesn’t demonstrate these signals and Google may hesitate to rank the content highly. This is particularly true for content that Google places in the “Your Money or Your Life” category, such as finance, health, or legal services. These are especially sensitive areas that could mislead users, making them a priority for Google.

Your content may be lacking real EEAT signals if it doesn’t have:

• Author names, roles, or qualifications
• Information about your business’s background or expertise
• Contact details or customer support information
• Third-party trust signals, such as reviews or mentions on external sites

Fortunately, improving EEAT often involves updates that are quite straightforward. You should add:

• Author names, bios, and credentials
• Detailed About and Contact information
• Reviews, case studies, awards, or media mentions
• Secure site protocols (HTTPS) and clear privacy policies
• Practical examples, testimonials, or portfolio work demonstrating your experience

Addressing lesser-known ranking factors

SEO isn’t always straightforward because addressing ranking factors requires a diverse set of skills. While creative writing skills are essential for producing high-quality content, data analysis is crucial for understanding keyword research and performance metrics. Business owners also need to understand website development and website security to implement technical strategies, not to mention project management skills to pull it all together.

Most websites will have a combination of technical, content, and authority-related gaps that collectively limit their ranking potential. The most effective approach is to treat SEO as an ongoing operational process, instead of a one-time task, and outsource the help you need.

A strong starting point is to carry out a structured review of your site using tools such as Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Your first priority should be to remove barriers to crawling and indexing; without this foundation, improvements in content or links will produce limited results. 

From there, focus on enhancing content quality, strengthening internal linking, and building authority signals. 

And finally, monitoring changes in rankings, click-through rates, and organic traffic over time ensures you can see which actions are working and adjust accordingly. 

Final thoughts

SEO can be a vast and convoluted beast, sprouting new demands for businesses once they’ve completed one strategy. Therefore, it’s most sustainable to approach SEO as an ongoing business operation with many layers. It’s not going to be perfected in a few days, but you can see the results you want from consistent efforts across technical and on-page ranking factors.

If you’d like practical support with any aspect of your SEO strategy, reach out to us here at purpleplanet. Check out our dedicated SEO service or arrange a no-cost call with us today.