How to Identify and Fix 24 Common Technical SEO Issues Impacting Your Website
Once you have chosen to optimize and showcase your site for SEO, you next have to become the expert of everything about common technical SEO issues. Fundamentally, specialized SEO is exactly how a website is designed and developed just as permitting search engines to get its substance and discover it. Some time earlier than you will be able to expect hitting higher, there are a number of common technical SEO issues you simply should address.
Beautiful fun as well, and lovely troublesome as substance and as SEO. On a hook to expand things some time back we dived in to locate a strong rundown of the 24 most common technical SEO issues you could manage at any given moment, sorted out according to how likely they are in any given orderly request.
1. Duplicate Content
😔 The Problem
When your content is found in various locations on the web, it is referred to as duplicate material. However, this is not acceptable for the search engines. Ensuring that your content is one-of-a-kind is therefore essential.
🙂 The Solution
While writing your blog, website copy, or social media copy, do not forget to use Copyscape and ensure that it does not go below seventy percent uniqueness, Include generic templates as well.
Do you own an e-commerce shop? Resist the temptation to simply grab text off the manufacturer’s site selling a product and paste it onto your pages.
Coming up with an original product description for each of your products may indeed come as a daunting task- especially if living with numerous product lines selling for thousands. Now, pasting and copying from an already existing site will only attract spam notification of the website due to replication of the content.
In case finding the time to produce original descriptions seems unreasonable to you, look for a cheap copywriter to perform this task for you. Considering its cost, it is sure to be worth every penny as it contributes to your page ranking.
2. Title and Description Problems
😔 The Problem
You neglected to make use of the title tag and description.
Starting with the title tag, such a tag requires to be named. A title tag has to be the title of the web page. The summary is in the source code and is only visible in the SERP.
There are a few other seo technical issues which result from title tags and/or descriptions:
✏ Wrong tags
✏ Tags or descriptions not provided
✏ Content is so long that a number of it would not necessarily show in the search results
In practice, all of these issues are typically the result of carelessness when configuring the site, or because no relevant dynamic fields were populated on the template.
🙂 The Solution
Review these tags with utmost diligence. Take care that none of them are repeated and all of them are complete. If tags are too long, make them shorter.
If there is such a group of categories, tags, or a page which do not have any rules related to title tags, blocking, redirecting or optimising the URLs are recommended.
3. Broken Internal Links- Common Technical SEO Issues
😔 The Problem
Be mindful of your internal linking! It is one of the most critical elements concerning SEO.
Unfortunately, the same can be said about broken internal links which can create havoc.
Whenever a search bot visits your website and discovers dead links, this counts against you. If sufficient accounts are accumulated, a loss of rank could become a possibility.
🙂 The Solution
For those maintaining a website that has thousands of web pages, it is likely that one might be of the opinion that any internal broken links will be few and therefore take time to find. As luck would have it, there are tools for that.
Screaming Frog or some other popular crawler like Deepcrawl or SEMRush comes in handy here. Let it chew over your website and report on all broken links it could find. After you know which links are broken, you can still fix them.
4. Too Many On-Page Links
😔 The Problem
Professionally speaking, you are overselling and overthinking links in your page.
But there is still the question of how many links should be included in a page. This appears to be one of the topics that has created some divergence among opinions.
There is a limit, Yoast puts it at 100.
🙂 The Solution
If you have more than 100 meaningful links on the same page, you require better organisation of your page. What most people will do is implement a hierarchical footer sitemap.
A hierarchical footer sitemap will reduce the number of HTML footer sitemaps that are considered excessive. This makes it possible to link to all the pages while maintaining an appropriate number of links on a single page.
5. Low Text-to-HTML Ratio
😔 The Problem
Your site has neglected to pay attention to the text-to-HTML ratio and now it is off proportion. If a website seems to have a lot more tags than the text it has, search engines tend to brand that page as thin content.
Why? The answer is simple because HTML is invisible to users. They can only see content.
HTML is the language which is used in web pages for content presentation. It goes along with Javascript codes as well.
The users go to the pages of your site so as to view the information it contains. They do not go there for any HTML. Users do not go to the page to see HTML. They come to see the content instead.
🙂 The Solution
Keeping in mind the need for search engine optimization, a general principle in this instance is that an adequate quantity of unique text should be placed on every page.
On-site optimization and content additions to the site should be tailored to ensure high user conversion rates, by providing the visitors with the information they are seeking.
6. Missing Alt Tags
😔 The Problem
Far too many strategists working on the sites’ SEO do not bother using any alt tags for their images. That’s an error.
Alt tags are quite an antique feature as they were developed almost simultaneously with the development of web browsers; they however are useful for accessibility.
In the past few years, vision-impaired people have been using alt tags that describe the image; search engines today use them to locate relevant images and incorporate their corresponding descriptions.
🙂 The Solution
Examine each image that has already been uploaded on your website. Check that each one of them has at least one alt tag description. If not, enter them.
Also, make it a point to include alt tags whenever you add new images on the website in the future.
7. Broken Images
😔 The Problem
Staying on the topic of images for a moment further, broken images not only diminish the user experience but they are also detrimental to your rank as well.
If your visitors expect to see an image but see nothing or even worse a broken image icon, they will leave the site for one of the other competitors.
🙂 The Solution
Fortunately, there are various tools available that can assist you in finding all the broken images on your website.
One great option that you have regarding this job is Screaming Frog. It will scan the website and identify any images that are not present. After you have identified the images that are not present, you can go and repair or replace them.
8. Incorrect Language Declaration
😔 The Problem
Regardless of the fact that we dwell in a global village, a large number of people tend to neglect specifying the language in the HTML tag which is quite critical to correctly indexing the page.
However, at times, you may have taken HTML code from other websites and used it on your own. The HTML tag in that content may be in a different language than you.
🙂 The Solution
Be sure that your language is listed on the HTML tag.
For any new pages or sites you develop, be sure to put this on your list.
9. Robots.txt File
😔 The Problem
Creating a robots.txt file outlining server directives for robots and web crawlers is especially useful in cases when webmasters do not want several web pages or the entire website to be indexed by Google, Bing or Yandex.
This will, in most cases, prevent duplicate content causes and other sections from links that you don’t want to be indexed.
If none of these reasons apply for certain sections of a site with high quality content that you would like to be indexed by search engines you will most likely not need one. Also, keep in mind that Google’s guidelines indicate that there is no need to use a robots.txt file for the blocking of pages from search results.
🙂 The Solution
Ensure that you are using the hose appropriately. Should you choose to use it, make sure everything that should not be blocked is not and always write your sitemap’s url in the text file.
10. Rel Canonical
😔 The Problem
Google has a resource called the rel canonical which would help to combine certain pages. It resolves the problem of duplicate content by identifying the most preferred page to use.
Amongst all the content creation and development of the page, it is very possible to overlook this step in the workflow.
🙂 The Solution
Make sure that there are no unnecessary issues in the first place by ensuring that the rel canonical in the code is on the same page which you wish Google to crawl and index.
11. Noindex
😔 The Problem
Sometimes there are mistakes for quite a number of people, that of inadvertently using the noindex on a website they just pushed into a development environment that is now live.
This option prevents Google from indexing, and thus ranking, your site.
Check the code and use Control F to check for no index.
🙂 The Solution
Before moving your site to the live version, ensure that you do not have any no index titles in the code of your website.
In case it’s unavoidable, use the instructions outlined on Google keywords.
12. Optimizing Pagination for SEO and Usability
😔 The Problem
Many times, there are issues with pagination on websites’ technical SEO.
In the past, some web developers used something called rel next rel prev. Google has since gotten rid of that process.
🙂 The Solution
Primarily, view the source code of your site and ensure that rel next rel prev is no longer being used.
If you want to achieve something that is quite the same as rel next rel prev, it is better to apply no indexing pages after the main category or apply a rel canonical page to the main page.(No index Preferably).
Alternatively, one could construct a single primary category landing page and then construct additional smaller pages that link to that main page.
13. Addressing Mobile Usability Errors for Better User Experience
😔 The Problem
Most of the time, a DIY site owner will pay attention to the desktop interface of the website but wouldn’t bother checking the mobile version of the site.
This can cause your ranking to drop and probably causes a bad user experience.
🙂 The Solution
Ensure that your website is properly designed for mobile devices in terms of appearance, loading speed and how it operates.Considering that Google now applies mobile-first indexing almost all websites have to be mobile-friendly.
If you are doing it manually, make sure that you frequently look for information in the mobile usability report or make sure you check the mobile usability report in Google Search Console. This report is designed for mobile user errors, so do not be slow in making your corrections before the errors negatively affect your rankings.
14. Dealing with Technical SEO Sitemap Errors
😔 The Problem
Submitting sitemaps to the Google Search Console often leads to an error.
It is possible that a 404 page was submitted, or perhaps an inaccurate file type was presented, or this may have been done incorrectly.
🙂 The Solution
At the very least, one should have a standard xml sitemap, an image sitemap and a video sitemap. Further ensure that you do not submit over 50000 URLs or create an index sitemap which is going to cause a lot of trouble.
15. Fixing AMP Errors for Better Performance
😔 The Problem
Accelerated mobile pages were designed to rival the instant articles by Facebook and Apple News.However, it is even more error-prone which it was supposed to overcome – the speed.
Some of the mobile applications have begun to end the use of the AMP feature altogether.
🙂 The Solution
Examine your configuration, and make sure that even in the search console There are zero error reports related to Google analytics.
In fact, Google starts to phase out AMP as a ranking factor. It is high time to abandon such configuration and focus more on the speed of loading and other improvements of the UX.
16. The Importance of Using the HTML Tag
😔 The Problem
There is a tendency for people to use a headless content management system in order to order the work of the CMS that does not serve content in any other way. The trouble with these is that they are lacking an HTML foundation.
What does that mean? This means that when one disables JavaScript, the webpage is devoid of any content . In that case, Google is not able to scrape the web page.
🙂 The Solution
Disable the JavaScript error in order not to wipe out your content and ensure that every HTML page has all the layers of content.
17. Development Websites in the Index
😔 The Problem
A development site has been indexed in Google.This is quite prevalent. Someone has failed to restrict the functionality of their development website and it has been available to other parties for search use.
🙂 The Solution
To resolve these issues, conduct a search in Google for one of the documents or pages available on your site. Blaming yourself for your development site being indexed is not appropriate, and do not forget to disable it in the future as you know all too well what needs to be changed.
18.When Lazy Loading Becomes Too Lazy
😔 The Problem
Synchronising content loading with the requirements of performance is the key here.
However, if lazy loading is used by you to save load time in contrast to the page ranks, that approach will not yield the page ranks potential.
🙂 The Solution
Should you be implementing lazy loading to optimise time, the crucial pieces of content should be guaranteed to load first for easier indexing by crawlers.
19. Multiple Page Versions Issue
😔 The Problem
It is rather surprising how frequently multiple versions of the same page exist live with different urls like, say, a .html, a .php, a forward slash, or simply no forward slash. Or maybe just one is open but the other 302 redirect or even throw a 200 OK for some unknown reason.
This is bad practice and confusing for the users but also of course it doesn’t help the page indexing algorithm. And if the algorithm has to figure out the best way to index your site, chances are great that it won’t do it at all.
🙂 The Solution
To reduce the probability of this issue occurring, it is necessary to ensure that there is only one live version of the page with the appropriate status.
20. Common H1 Tag Issues
😔 The Problem
H1 tags and title tags are both part of on-page SEO, but it’s vital to understand the differentiating factor. H1s are the tags which are a part of your page and visible to your user. Title tags are the tags that show in search results. If you add too many H1’s then you will face an indexing problem.
🙂 The Solution
Ensure that you only have one H1 tag on your site. Every page should have a unique H1 which is about 20 to 70 characters, represents the content of the page and contains the targeting keywords.
21. Meta Description Neglect Consequences
😔 The Problem
Like the plots and the characters of the story, meta descriptions have a psychological impact on visitors. Do not treat them as content of secondary importance since they have several functions.
🙂 The Solution
This fix is simple! Just remember to write a meta description that is around 150 words, containing all the useful words you wish to use.
22. Understanding the Use of Meta Refresh
😔 The Problem
Meta refresh utilised to be the technique for navigating users to another page. It is now seen as gimmicky. Using this procedure may have an adverse impact on your ranking.
🙂 The Solution
Let a 301 be the substitute for meta refresh. Google has come out and stated that a meta refresh no longer brings the same advantages as a 301 redirect. This could create problems as far as your website’s SEO is concerned. To solve any issues, remove all Meta Refresh links.
23. Value of Content-Rich Writing
😔 The Problem
The problem of low word count is pressing! Yes, that’s right – “the problem”. When composing your copy, you do want to be short and sweet. At the same time, though, try to dig a little deeper because this will give Google something to work with when it is trying to index your site.
🙂 The Solution
Increase your word count!
Evaluate your content marketing strategy and include other forms of content in addition to the short forms. Try and target articles whose numbers range from 1500 to 4000 so that your chances of getting a good rank are increased
Avoid writing just for the purpose of writing. Writing here, you want long-form to be of high quality and to be genuine.
24. Best Practices for Handling Suspicious Links
😔 The Problem
Link building is one of the life saving arts in the digital stage.
Many SEO marketers will advise you to implement one of the black hat link-building methods like link exchanges. It is when you acquire plenty of backlinks within a short time. And those are never good backlinks. Usually, they are poor quality links that will decrease rather than increase your rank.
🙂 The Solution
Do not sell or purchase backlinks to or from any websites. Do not use any automated programs or services.
Make sure to expand your content in the organic manner to the effect that effective backlinks will start coming your way.