Sporting Goods Technical SEO - Complete Guide

❌ Ignoring crawl errors in Search Console

Google cannot index pages that return errors, causing you to lose traffic and rankings for affected content.

✅ Weekly review of the Coverage report in Search Console. Fix 404s with proper redirects, resolve 5xx server errors, and address blocked resources.

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❌ Blocking CSS and JavaScript in robots.txt

Google cannot render your page properly, leading to poor indexing and misunderstood content.

✅ Never block CSS or JavaScript files. Ensure crawlers can access all resources needed to render your pages completely.

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❌ Neglecting page speed and Core Web Vitals

Poor user experience leads to high bounce rates, and Google now uses these metrics as direct ranking factors.

✅ Regularly test with PageSpeed Insights. Optimize images, defer non-critical JavaScript, minimize main thread work, and use modern image formats.

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❌ Duplicate content without canonicalization

Google may not index your preferred version or may choose the wrong page, diluting your ranking potential.

✅ Implement canonical tags pointing to the preferred version. Use parameter handling in Search Console for URL parameters.

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❌ Broken links and redirect chains

Wasted crawl budget, poor user experience, and lost link equity that could improve rankings.

✅ Regularly audit for broken links. Implement 301 redirects for moved content. Avoid redirect chains—link directly to the final destination.

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❌ Not optimizing for mobile-first indexing

Your mobile site is now the primary version Google uses for ranking. Poor mobile SEO equals poor overall SEO.

✅ Ensure mobile versions have full content parity. Test on real devices. Fix mobile usability issues. Ensure mobile page speed is excellent.

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❌ Missing or incomplete XML sitemap

Google may miss important pages, especially new content or pages deep in your site structure.

✅ Create a comprehensive XML sitemap containing all canonical pages. Submit to Search Console and keep it updated automatically.

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❌ Improper use of noindex and robots.txt

Pages you want indexed may be blocked, or pages you want to block may remain indexed and waste crawl budget.

✅ Use robots.txt to control crawling, not indexing. Use noindex meta tag to prevent indexing. Never use robots.txt to block pages you want removed from search results.

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❌ Ignoring structured data opportunities

Missing out on rich snippets that increase click-through rates and visibility in search results.

✅ Implement relevant schema markup for your content type. Validate with the Schema Markup Validator. Monitor for errors in Search Console.

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❌ Poor URL structure with parameters

Crawlers may waste time on unnecessary URL variations, and link equity gets diluted across duplicate URLs.

✅ Use clean, descriptive URLs with hyphens. Consolidate parameter variations. Use canonical tags for necessary parameters.

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