Technical SEO Case Study of an E-commerce Website
| TL;DR: This technical SEO case study shows how Concurate helped its client raise its site health score from 73 to 89. Key challenges included pagination errors, hreflang conflicts, URL inconsistencies, duplicate metadata, and broken links. The team resolved them through structured technical fixes, metadata cleanup, URL standardization, sitemap repair, and asset optimization. |
Did you know that poor website health can block your key pages from ever reaching page one of Google?
That was exactly what happened with one of our clients (a premium corporate gifting company).
Most of their brand and category pages were stuck on pages 8, 9, and 10, not because the business lacked demand, but because the site lacked the technical foundations Google expects.
Yes, there were other issues: thin content, duplicate metadata, and missing structural signals. However, one major culprit stood out. Poor site health.
Concurate helped them lift their overall site score from 73 to 89, unlocking rankings that were previously out of reach.
In this technical seo case study, we break down exactly how we did it.
| The Client A premium corporate gifting and co-branded merchandise agency that helps businesses create memorable brand experiences through customizable, high-quality products. They offer white-glove service and retail-grade merchandise. They are rated 4.9/5 on Google and trusted by leading brands for their reliability and exceptional service quality. |
What Problem Did Poor Technical SEO Create
According to SemRush, our client’s website had a technical site health score of just 73, while their top competitors maintained scores above 90 on average.
The site health also showed eight glaring errors, including hreflang conflicts, mixed content, and a lot more.
While SemRush gave us a comprehensive view of the technical site issues, it had limited crawl capacity. For a complete technical audit, we used Screaming Frog to conduct a deep-dive analysis and identify the root causes behind the poor site health.
Here’s the list of issues that surfaced during multiple rounds of site audits:
- Pagination Sequencing Errors
- Hreflang Return Link Errors
- Mixed HTTP/HTTPS and Uppercase URL Variants
- Duplicate Meta Descriptions, Misaligned Titles, and Missing H1 Tags
- Internal 4xx Errors
- Redirect Chains
- Canonical Conflicts on Paginated Pages
- Incorrect URLs in the Sitemap
- Unminified JavaScript and CSS Files
Let’s see how we resolved these technical SEO issues.
What were the Recommended Technical SEO Fixes?
We took a look at the issues and prioritized the ones that have a deeper impact on SEO. In this section, we are breaking it all down on
Pagination Sequencing Errors
We found 871 pages that simply didn’t connect to each other. Some had a “next” link but no “previous.” Some skipped pages. Google had no clean path to follow, so it crawled things randomly and sometimes indexed thin pages that were never meant to rank.
We fixed the chain so every page connected properly. Then we told Google to only index Page 1 as we wanted it to have all the ranking power. Additionally, we applied “noindex, follow” tags to pages 2, 3, 4, and beyond to ensure Google does not rank them. Fixing pagination was an important part of the technical SEO cleanup.
Hreflang Return Link Errors
We spotted 4,700+ pages throwing hreflang errors. Basically, Google couldn’t match the language tags. The site serves only English users, so these tags weren’t helping anyone. They were just clutter, so we removed them.
We also found another issue: the canonical URLs didn’t match the case of the URLs in the hreflang tags. One used title case, the other lowercase, which confuses Google.
So we cleaned everything up.
We made all URLs lowercase and added redirects like:
/Custom-Logo-Jackets → /custom-logo-jackets
to keep the site consistent and avoid broken links.
Mixed HTTP/HTTPS Usage
Several pages on the site were still using http:// instead of https://, which confused Google and created extra redirects. Some links pointed to the secure version, others to the old one, so the site was sending mixed signals about which version was correct.
We switched every link, button, and template reference to https:// only. This made all pages consistent, removed unnecessary redirects, and helped Google understand the right version of each page.
Duplicate Meta Descriptions, Misaligned Titles, and Missing H1 Tags
Some category and product pages were using the same meta description and even the same page title, so Google couldn’t tell them apart. A few pages didn’t even have an H1, which meant they had no clear main heading.
All of this made it harder for Google to understand what each page was actually about.
We wrote unique titles and descriptions for every page and added proper H1s wherever they were missing. This gave each page its own identity and made it much easier for Google to read the site and show the right pages in search.
Internal 4xx Errors
Many links across the website were taking visitors to pages that no longer existed. This created sudden dead ends that hurt the browsing experience. These broken links came from old products, outdated images, and retired category pages that were still linked inside the site.
We went through every broken link and replaced it with a working one. This fixed the dead ends, made navigation smoother, and helped Google crawl the site without wasting time on pages that no longer exist.
Redirect Chains
Some links on the site were taking a long, roundabout path before reaching the right page. Instead of going straight to the final URL, they jumped through one or more redirects. These extra steps came from older pages, outdated product links, and older versions of category URLs.
To fix this, we updated every link to point directly to its final destination. This removed the unnecessary hops, made pages load faster, and helped Google crawl the site more efficiently.
Incorrect URLs in the Sitemap
The website’s sitemap included many links that were either old, redirected, or no longer in use. Some even pointed to pages that didn’t open directly and instead jumped through redirects.
Since Google depends on the sitemap to understand which pages are essential, this caused confusion and made crawling much less efficient.
We cleaned the sitemap by removing every outdated or redirecting link and keeping only the correct, live URLs. This gave Google a clear list of active pages to crawl, helped it focus on the right content, and made the entire site easier for search engines to understand.
Unminified JavaScript and CSS Files
Our technical audit showed that several JavaScript and CSS files were unminified, which made them larger and slowed down the overall site. These files included older codes, unnecessary formatting, and outdated styles that weren’t SEO optimized.
Because of this, the web pages took much longer to load, and the site felt heavier than it needed to be.
To resolve this, we turned on minification in the theme settings so all JS and CSS files would be automatically compressed. We made sure that these files were smaller in size, had an optimized format, and did not contain old or duplicate CSS. As a result, the website loads faster, reduces unnecessary file weight, and creates a smoother browsing experience for website visitors.
What Results Did the Technical Fixes Deliver?
All the fixes we made finally moved the site’s health in the right direction.
The long list of errors that once filled the reports dropped almost instantly. What used to be thousands of problems turned into only a few. Google could crawl more pages, understand the site better, and move through it without getting stuck.
The numbers tell the story clearly.
| Highlights: # Total errors dropped from 5,988 to just 4 (99.9% decrease). # Nearly a 90% reduction in technical issues. # Site health score improved from 73 to 89 (22% improvement). # Warnings reduced from 47,586 to 31,314 (34% decrease). # Crawled pages increased from 13,932 to 15,000 (8% increase). |
Here’s what the site health score looks like now:
And the issues:
The site became cleaner, faster, and far easier for Google to read, exactly what we wanted.
Tired of 404 Results? Let Concurate Return a 200!
Fixing technical SEO isn’t a one-time task. It’s a commitment. And it’s one we take seriously.
One thing that is clear from this technical SEO case study is how we work at Concurate. Obsessively detailed, relentlessly thorough, and fully invested in your success.
We don’t believe in patching problems for quick fixes. We stay until your website becomes an organic growth engine. That’s why even after pushing our client’s site health score to 89, we’re still working with them. Clearing the last remaining errors, reducing warnings, building more internal links, and strengthening the foundation month after month.
And we don’t stop at technical SEO fixes. We build content that brings revenue. As we create new content for this client, every piece is crafted with one goal: to land on the first page of Google for the target keywords.
Our client noticed the difference. Here’s what they had to say:
If you want the same level of care, consistency, and technical precision for your website, let’s talk.
Book a free discovery call with Concurate, and let’s fix your technical SEO the right way.
Technical SEO FAQs
When your site struggles with crawling, indexing, or site-health issues, even simple problems can feel confusing. And you may have gotten a couple of queries reading this technical SEO case study. This FAQ section breaks down the most common technical SEO questions in clear, easy-to-understand terms so you know exactly what to fix, why it matters, and how to move your website toward stronger rankings.
How to Improve Website Performance?
To see quick improvements in your website performance, start by fixing the issues that are easiest to resolve. Broken internal links, missing titles, descriptions, or H1s, and duplicate metadata can be cleaned up fast and make an immediate difference.
Once those are handled, move to larger issues like mixed HTTP/HTTPS links, redirect chains, unminified assets, and incorrect sitemap URLs. These steps help your site load faster and make it easier for Google to crawl, as we saw in this technical seo case study.
Why Is My Website Not Ranking on Google?
Your website may struggle to rank when technical issues block Google from understanding or crawling it properly. In this case study, problems like duplicate metadata, missing H1s, broken internal links, redirect chains, mixed HTTP/HTTPS URLs, incorrect sitemap entries, unminified assets, and pagination errors held pages back. These issues sent mixed signals to Google and made it harder for the site to be indexed correctly. Fixing them helped the site become clearer, faster, and easier for Google to read.
If you want to learn how you can rank high on Google, read our SaaS SEO case study for more details.
How to Rank in ChatGPT Search?
AI tools like ChatGPT pull answers from content that is clear, well-structured, and written in a way that directly matches how people naturally ask questions. Content that uses simple language, clean formatting, strong topical focus, and question-based headings is easier for AI models to understand and retrieve. When your pages follow these patterns, they become far more likely to surface in AI-driven search results.
To help you with this, we’ve created a 13-point checklist that you can follow to optimise your blogs and dominate AI searches. To download it, simply fill in the form below.
How Long Does It Take for Google to Rank a Website?
New websites usually take around three to six months to start showing up on Google. If the keywords are competitive, it can take even longer, sometimes six months to a year. But websites that already have some authority and backlinks move much faster and can start ranking within a few weeks. In short, the stronger your foundation and the fewer issues your site has, the sooner Google starts rewarding your work.
How Do I Interlink My Blog Posts?
The best way to interlink your blog posts is to look for natural places where one page can genuinely support another. In our case study, fixing broken links and improving internal link structure helped Google crawl the site more effectively.
To make this easier for you, here’s a prompt you can use to automatically find smart, relevant interlinking opportunities across your own website:
Notes
- When you use this prompt, keep the “Deep Research” feature on in your ChatGPT window
- You can copy the sitemap from here – https://[domain-name]/sitemap.xml
- You can pull the traffic data from Google Search Console
The Prompt for Blog Interlinking
| You are an SEO expert specializing in internal linking strategies for local business websites. Your task is to analyze the internal pages of this website: [your website link] and recommend new, contextually relevant internal links pointing to this target page: Target URL: [target page link] Instructions: Crawl all internal pages of the website, excluding navigation, footer, and sidebar content. Find content where it would be natural and helpful to link to the target page. Exclude any pages that already contain an in-content link to the target URL. For each suggested internal link: 1. Identify the source page URL. 2. Suggest anchor text that feels natural and is topically relevant. 3. Provide the exact sentence where the link can be added, or suggest a new sentence that could be inserted smoothly into the existing content. 4. Provide at least 20 internal link opportunities. Output Format: Present your suggestions in a table with these columns: # Source Page URL # Anchor Text # Sentence with Link Placement # Exactly where in the text the sentence with the Link should be placed. Make sure your recommendations follow best practices for internal linking: improve user navigation, reinforce topical authority, and support SEO for the target page. |
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