It’s easy to blame the algorithm. But in reality, your site’s SEO and AEO problems may be closer to home. While external factors like backlinks and content quality are important, there are four major mistakes that many companies are making internally—and they’re completely fixable.
Let’s break them down:
- You Forgot to Turn on Indexing
Sounds obvious, right? But we’ve audited hundreds of sites where Google indexing is disabled by default—especially after a redesign.
If your robots.txt file or CMS settings are telling Google not to crawl your site, you won’t rank. Period. What to check:
- Is “discourage search engines from indexing this site” checked in your CMS?
- Is your robots.txt file blocking important pages?
- Are your sitemap and Search Console properly connected?
Fixing this is step one.
- Your URLs Are a Mess
SEO and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) both rely on clean, readable URL structures.
What not to do:
❌ /product1234-A1B7X
❌ /home/page1?id=44897
Google and AI-based engines like ChatGPT rely on clarity and hierarchy. Bad URLs = bad signals.
- You Didn’t Connect Your Social Platforms
Search engines increasingly factor in your digital footprint, which includes your presence on:
- YouTube
- X (Twitter)
When these platforms aren’t linked clearly from your site, or aren’t connected in your structured data, it weakens your authority.
Add clear links in the footer and use schema markup where possible.
- You’re Missing Image and Video Tags
Every image on your site should have:
- ALT text
- Descriptive file names
- Titles and captions where appropriate
These elements aren’t just accessibility best practices, they’re SEO assets.
And in the world of AEO, where image and video search are becoming more dominant, skipping this step limits your visibility dramatically.
What’s the Impact?
Let’s say your SEO campaign is solid.
- You’ve got keywords
- You’ve published great, original content!
- You’ve even built backlinks
But if the Googlebot is blocked, your URLs are unreadable, and your content lacks structure, you’ll fall behind competitors who fixed those basics.
And AI engines? They’ll skip your site entirely.
What You Can Do Today
- Run a quick technical audit.
- Fix your robots.txt and indexing settings.
- Clean up your URLs.
- Link your social platforms.
- Add image and video tags.
These aren’t big jobs, but they’re the difference between invisibility and traction.
Get Expert Help
At Pulsion, we offer full SEO and AEO audits that go beyond content.
We look at:
- Technical structure
- Indexation
- Crawlability
- On-page optimization
- Structured data
- AEO relevance for GTP and Gemini
Fixing the foundation is where true growth begins. Ready to see what you’re missing? → www.gopulsion.io