Technical SEO Mistakes, Part 1: Headings & Images

You built your website. You wrote the content, picked the colors, refined the message. But when you search for your own services, your site doesn’t show up on page one.

That’s frustrating — and you’re not alone. Most small business owners wonder why their website isn’t generating leads or inquiries. Since most searchers never click past page one, visibility there is what matters.

The Hidden Power of Technical SEO

Good content and design are only part of the equation. Underneath your website is a layer called Technical SEO — the behind-the-scenes elements that help Google crawl, understand, and index your pages. Without it, even great content can go undiscovered.

Most small businesses skip technical SEO because it sounds complicated. It’s not. We see the same handful of fixable mistakes on almost every site we audit.

This guide covers two of them: heading structure and image optimization. Both are straightforward to fix, even without a technical background.

Mistake 1: Poor Heading Structure (H1, H2, H3 Misuse)

This one is easy to miss because it looks like a formatting choice. Most website builders let you change text size by picking a heading level. So people pick H2 or H3 based on how the text looks, not what it means structurally. The result: pages with multiple H1s, skipped levels (H2 jumping to H4), or no heading tags at all.

How Bad Headings Hurt Your Rankings

Think of your website content like an essay or a book. Just as an essay uses clear headings and subheadings (like “Introduction,” “Main Point 1,” “Sub-point A”) to guide the reader, search engines use heading tags to understand the hierarchy and main topics of your web page.

• Confuses Search Engines: When heading tags are used incorrectly, search engines struggle to identify the most important information. They might misunderstand your content’s focus or miss key topics entirely, making it harder for your page to rank for relevant searches.

• Impacts Readability: Beyond search engines, a poor heading structure makes your content difficult for human readers to skim and digest. Users are more likely to leave a page if they can’t quickly grasp its organization and find what they’re looking for.

• Harms Accessibility: Proper heading tags are also crucial for website accessibility. Screen readers used by visually impaired users rely on these tags to navigate and understand the structure of a page.

For long posts with multiple headings, a table of contents helps readers navigate the hierarchy — and it helps Google understand your content structure too.

Fixing Your Heading Structure

The good news is that fixing your heading structure is straightforward and can have a significant positive impact.

1. One H1 Per Page: Every page should have only one H1 tag. This H1 should represent the main title or primary topic of that specific page. Think of it as the title of your book.

2. Follow a Logical Hierarchy: Use H2s for major sections or sub-topics under your H1. Then, use H3s for sub-sections under an H2, and so on. Always follow a logical, descending order (H1 -> H2 -> H3, not H1 -> H3 -> H2). This is like your book’s chapters and sub-chapters.

3. Integrate Keywords Naturally: Where it makes sense, include your primary and secondary keywords within your H1 and H2 tags. This signals to search engines what your page is about. However, prioritize natural language over “keyword stuffing” (over-optimizing with too many keywords, which can actually hurt your rankings).

4. Ensure Clarity: Each heading should accurately describe the content that follows it, providing a clear roadmap for both users and search engine crawlers (the bots that read your website).

Tools for Auditing Headings

• Manual Review: Simply view your web page and visually check the heading structure. Does it make sense?

• Browser Developer Tools: Right-click on any text on your page, select “Inspect” (or “Inspect Element”), and look at the HTML code (the underlying code of your web page). You can easily see if text is wrapped in <h1>, <h2>, <h3> tags.

• SEO Tools: Browser extensions like SEO Minion or MozBar give you a quick glance at a page’s heading structure. For a site-wide analysis, Screaming Frog SEO Spider (desktop software) or the site audit features in Semrush or Ahrefs can crawl your entire site and report on heading issues. For a deeper dive, check out our guide on How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit.

By taking a few moments to review and correct your heading structure, you’ll make it significantly easier for search engines to understand your content and, in turn, improve your chances of ranking higher.

Mistake 2: Unoptimized Images (Large File Sizes & Missing Alt Text)

Images make your site look good, but they’re also the most common reason sites load slowly. Many businesses upload full-resolution photos straight from their camera or design tool without compressing them first. They also skip adding “alt text” — the description that tells search engines (and screen readers) what the image shows.

How Unoptimized Images Hurt Your Rankings

Unoptimized images create a double whammy for your SEO:

• Slow Page Speed: Large image files are bulky and take a long time to download, significantly slowing down your page load speed. Google explicitly states that page speed is a ranking factor, and slow sites lead to higher bounce rates (users leaving before the page loads), which signals a poor user experience to search engines.

• Missed Ranking Opportunities: Search engines can’t “see” images the way humans do. They rely on “alt text” (alternative text) to understand what an image is about. Without descriptive alt text, search engines miss crucial context, meaning your images won’t appear in image search results, and you lose an opportunity to reinforce your page’s topic.

• Accessibility Issues: Missing alt text also creates a barrier for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers to describe images. This impacts your site’s overall accessibility, which is an increasingly important factor for SEO and user experience.

Optimizing Images Step by Step

Optimizing your images is a straightforward process that can dramatically improve both your site’s speed and its SEO performance.

1. Compress Images Before Uploading: Use image compression tools (like TinyPNG, Compressor.io, or Squoosh) to reduce file size before you upload them to your website. Aim to keep image files under 250 KB for most purposes, and banner images under 500 KB. These tools reduce file size without a noticeable loss in visual quality.

2. Choose the Right File Format:

   • JPEG (.jpg): Best for photographs and images with many colors and gradients. They offer good compression for complex visuals.
   • PNG (.png): Ideal for graphics, logos, illustrations, and images that require transparency. PNGs are lossless, meaning they retain quality but can have larger file sizes than JPEGs.
   • SVG (.svg): Excellent for vector-based logos, icons, and simple graphics. They are scalable without losing quality and have tiny file sizes.
   • WebP (.webp): A modern image format developed by Google that often provides superior compression (smaller file sizes) while maintaining high quality. While highly recommended for performance, note that not all website builders or older browsers fully support WebP natively. Check your platform’s capabilities.

3. Use Appropriate Dimensions: Resize images to the maximum size they will display on your website. For example, if an image will only be 800 pixels wide on your site, don’t upload a 4000-pixel-wide image.

4. Consider Responsive Image Handling & Cropping: Modern websites need to look good on all devices. Many website builders automatically create different sizes of your uploaded images and serve the most appropriate one for the user’s screen size. However, this can sometimes lead to automatic cropping, where parts of your image are cut off on smaller screens (e.g., a desktop banner image might get cropped significantly on mobile).

• Mitigation: Be mindful of the “safe zone” in your images. Place important visual elements or text in the center, away from the edges, so they are less likely to be cropped on different screen sizes. Always preview your website on various devices (desktop, tablet, mobile) to ensure your images look as intended. Some platforms also offer “focal point” settings to guide automatic cropping. For more advanced control, if your website builder allows, you might use custom CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to dictate how images behave on different screen sizes, though this usually requires a bit more technical knowledge or developer assistance.

5. Write Descriptive Alt Text: For every image, add descriptive alt text that accurately describes the image’s content and, where natural, includes relevant keywords.

   

   • Good Example: alt="Golden retriever puppy playing with a red ball in a green park"

   • Poor Example: alt="dog" or alt="puppy dog golden retriever red ball park SEO" (keyword stuffing)

   • Purpose: The alt text should convey the image’s meaning to someone who can’t see it.

Tools for Checking Image Performance

• Google PageSpeed Insights: This free Google tool will analyze your site’s speed and specifically flag oversized images (and often recommend next-gen formats like WebP) as an opportunity for improvement.

• GTmetrix / Pingdom Tools: Similar to PageSpeed Insights, these tools provide detailed reports on page load times and identify large image files.

• Manual Inspection: On your web page, right-click on an image and select “Inspect” (or “Inspect Element”). You can see the image’s file path, dimensions, and often its file size. You can also check for the alt attribute in the HTML.

• SEO Browser Extensions: Some browser extensions can quickly highlight images with missing alt text.

• Browser Developer Tools (Responsive View): Use your browser’s developer tools (usually accessed by pressing F12 or right-clicking and selecting “Inspect”) to switch to a responsive view. This allows you to see how your images and layout adapt to different screen sizes. For a deeper dive into auditing your site, check out our guide on How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit.

By dedicating a little time to optimizing your images, you’ll not only enhance your website’s performance but also boost its visibility in search results and improve the experience for all users.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I check if my website has heading structure issues?

The quickest method is to right-click on any text and select “Inspect” to view the HTML. Look for <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> tags. You should see exactly one H1 per page and a logical hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3). For a site-wide audit, tools like Screaming Frog can crawl your entire site and flag heading issues automatically. In my experience, about 70% of small business websites have at least one heading structure problem.

What’s the ideal image file size for web pages?

For most images on a webpage, aim for under 250 KB. Hero images and full-width banners can go up to 500 KB. Anything larger will noticeably slow your page load time. I recommend using WebP format when possible—it typically reduces file sizes by 25-35% compared to JPEG with no visible quality loss. Our SEO services include image optimization as part of technical audits.

Does alt text actually affect search rankings?

Yes, but indirectly. Alt text helps search engines understand image content, which improves your relevance for image searches and reinforces your page’s topic. More importantly, it’s essential for accessibility—screen readers depend on alt text to describe images to visually impaired users. Google has increasingly emphasized accessibility as a quality signal.

How often should I audit my website’s technical SEO?

For most small business websites, a quarterly technical audit is sufficient. However, you should check immediately after any major website changes, platform updates, or if you notice a sudden drop in search traffic. Our comprehensive guide on How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit walks through the complete process.

What’s Next?

That covers heading structure and image optimization — two fixes that take an afternoon and improve every page on your site.

In Part 2, we cover page speed and broken links.

Need help with technical SEO? Book a free consultation and we’ll look at your site together.