If you have a serious idea about optimizing your website for search, then you need to have knowledge of technical SEO. Technical SEO will help in the process of making sure that search engines can discover, resolve, and also make you understand the content on your site. The better technical SEO you get, the more likely you will get a high rank.
Technical SEO is a very easy, fun-filled and complex line of work. Here are 19 common ones, and also there are tips for solving those issues.
There is no XML sitemap :
XML stands for Extensive Markup Language. XML is mainly a collection of URLs. It directs the search engine crawler to crawl your website’s most important pages. You are wrong if you believe that a website cannot rank if XML lacks a sitemap. However, you can’t dispute that the absence of XML makes it very difficult to rank a website in a search engine. The crawlers use XML as a reference for the collection of the URLs. It also assists SEO efforts in figuring out the errors on the page.
The issues that occur majorly in the XML sitemap are :
- (4XX) could not be found.
- (5XX) could not be found.
- No index URL.
- Disallowed URL.
- canonicalised URLs.
Another issue with the XML sitemap is :
- (3XX) redirect URL.
- (403) forbidden URL.
- Timeout URL.
- Presence of URL in several XML sitemaps.
This issue can be solved by using a tool that generates an XML sitemap.
Problems in robots.txt :
Robots.txt is a very important aspect of technical SEO. This informs search engine crawlers to crawl the URL on your website that can be accessed easily. This also helps SEO by blocking many WebPages on your website that you don’t need to show up in search results. For instance, if you don’t want your website’s career page to appear in search results, Robots.txt will help. It also prevents overloading of your website due to multiple access requests.
The most common issues related to Robots.txt are :
- Giving access to the site that is still under development
- txt will be absent from the root directory
Using incorrect wildcards like the asterisk and the dollar symbol
No HTTPS security :
HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, which enables us to secure the transfer of data between the server and the client. HTTPS mainly suggests to us that the site is authentic and that the transmission of the data on the site is in encrypted form. Suppose that if your site is not secure, hackers may attempt to steal sensitive information. Data tempering during transmission is also a possibility. Consideration of Google will also make the ‘HTTPS’ site insecure. Because of this, the ranks of many websites have slipped.
You can solve this technical SEO problem by taking the following steps :
- Attempting to Convert Your HTTP Site to HTTPS.
- Look for a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate. It is mainly available from the certificate authority.
- Certificate Installation
That is it. The HTTP issue is resolved.
Indexation issues :
Technical indexing issues in SEO prevent your site from having a high ranking on the internet. Specifically, search engine crawlers have difficulty traversing non-indexed pages. Finally, with these results, Google and other search engines can be able to find your page. Indexation problems mainly arise for a variety of reasons, including.
- 404 errors.
- Meta tags on pages with NOINDEX and NOFOLLOW source codes.
- Outdated Sitemap.
- Duplicate Content.
You can solve these problems through one of these methods :
- Take the help of Google Search console. Non-Indexed URLs will get displayed immediately after making yours URL inspection request.
- XML sitemap optimization should have to check.
Tags for meta robots: NOINDEX :
NOINDEX has far more severe consequences for the Technical SEO approach of your website than Robot.txt. These problems are removed from all pages from Google’s indexation. The NOINDEX configuration comes into play on your site in the development phase. The chances of making mistakes will be significant during this phase. This is because keeping track of multiple Web pages which are about to go live or which are scheduled to go live is difficult.
How to identify and solve these NOINDEX issues :
- Review the source code always of your site before making it live.
- Regular audit should have to get conducted to your site if it is regularly updated and improvised.
From many SEO tools you can use one among them for resolving the issue.
URL CONONICALISATION :
Sometimes you may end up having pages with duplicate pages or nearly duplicate pages of each other. It is also possible in the case when a single page is accessed by multiple URLs.
For example,
example.com/mypage and example2.com/myduplicate
In these cases, Google identifies these pages as duplicate versions of similar pages. One URL will be identified as a canonical URL by Google for crawling purposes. The remaining URLs will be crawled less frequently than the ones identified by Google.
You can also fix this. You can select a preferred URL and this is where Google will be able to send traffic to. In this case, it will become the canonical URL. Alternatively, issues can be fixed by implementing 301 redirects sitewide, targeting duplicate content. Use canonical tags on all the web pages. You have to be sure to follow the best practices when adding such tags.
Page speed issues :
If your website or web pages are slow, SEO will get hurt and also get triggered by user displeasure. This is inconvenient when a page takes more time to load. There are several more factors which can contribute to page speed issues.
- Your pages have many unoptimized images. You can able to fix these issues by opting for the JPEG format instead of GIF or PNG formats.
- Plenty of flash content is get used. These issues can be fixed using HTML5 replacements.
- While advertisement is get displayed will help you in earning money, they can also make the page get loaded slowly.
Speed gets slow down without any doubt if there is not any catchy approach in your SEO strategy. Trying to fix the problem by caching irrelevant database queries, pictures and HTTP request.
301 and 302 Redirections :
A 301 will redirect the response status code that redirects the search engine to a new page from the page that has been removed permanently. This redirection is used while multiple URLs can be used to visit your site. This comes in handy when you migrate to a new domain and want older search engines to point to your new site. Sometimes the 302 serves the same purpose as the 301, but only for temporarily removed web pages. Both redirects, if used incorrectly, lower your link equity and hence your search engine rankings.
These issues can be resolved by removing such pages from your sitemap. You may also look for fixes for redirect chains and redirect loops. Best SEO Company like “Vinayak Infosoft” will solve this issue very easily.
Rel = Canonical :
A rel=canonical tag informs search engines in which URL is the master copy of a page. It may overcome challenges that the Google search bot encounters by the difference between the original and the duplicate content that exists on several URLs. Web pages that have rel=canonical issues find it difficult to rank on Google.
You can easily and quickly resolve these issues by inspecting the source code on the spot. The rel=canonical fixing approach gets differs depending on the content format and web platform. If you have a problem repairing it on your own, then you have to hire a web developer.
Images with Missing ALT Tags :
An image enhances the user experience. They also help in decreasing the bounce rates and increasing traffic opportunities. The alt tags, or alternative texts, are for defining and describing the images on your web pages. It guides you in the indexation of your page by informing the bot about the structure of your page. It may help if the browser fails to render the page correctly and the image doesn’t load. Here, the alt text helps viewers to understand what the image is all about. An image-oriented page without alt tags conveys to search engines that the page is not user-friendly and can cause issues for screen readers. Regular site audits are the only way to detect and address these issues.
The Structure of Internal Links :
Internal links are hyperlinks that will connect one page to another on your website. It allows both search engines and your clients to browse through your site’s pages in search of the content that they are looking for. Internal links make search engines discover new pages on your site, which they then index and display on search engine result pages (SERP). However, if there are any errors regarding link structure, it will directly impact the visibility of your page. Your search engine ranking will suffer if the internal links to the pages are broken, orphan pages, or links to irrelevant pages.
This issue is detected by conducting timed site audits. Some other steps, which include the deep linking of important pages, adding links to orphan pages, and repairing those broken links.
Meta Refresh Tag :
This is the technique for redirecting Web users from the old page to the new one. This process will be critical in attracting traffic to websites. Also, it reloads the current page that you are seeing. However, over time, SEO experts will not recommend this strategy for a longer period of time. This is the reason why there’s a constant updating of the page that may result in a terrible user experience. Another main reason is redirection. The search engine will only index the second page, not the first page to which you were redirected. Moreover, if you are using an older browser and a redirection occurs every 2-3 seconds, you will not be able to utilize the Back button.
This problem can be resolved by using a 301 server redirect.
Failure to use structured data markup :
Structured data markup is very important for SEO. This helps search engines to understand your website’s context, such as the product that is discussed on a specific page, in which information your website wants to convey to the users, and continues. It will also have an impact on the content snippet. “If the structured data markup of your website is poor or missing, your page will find it difficult to figure in the search results”. This leads to poor page traffic, low clicks, and a sudden decrease in search rankings.
This problem will be solved by using structured data tools for testing, filling out the missing fields, and manually fixing the pages. You may also look to validate the updated markup.
Poor Mobile Experience :
Another significant factor that disturbs your technical SEO will be a poor mobile experience. Clients rarely stick with your sites where content or page structure is incompatible with different devices, which increases the bounce rate. Furthermore, a lot of companies use separate URLs for mobile and desktop users. However, this will not help SEO. This split has an impact on your link equity and diverts traffic without seeing the users. Google also suspects such sites and downgrades their search rankings. “Vinayak Infosoft” a No.1 SEO company in Ahmedabad makes a good mobile friendly website. This makes your site mobile-friendly using the following measures:
- Options for mobile friendly templates.
- Using flash content in large volumes should be avoided.
- Images should have to be used in the JPEG and minimize using GIF or PNG formats.
Readable fonts should be used always.
Low Text-to-HTML Ratio :
This ratio will be low when the content on a Web page is relatively thin in relation to the code on that page. Redundant code impacts the speed of the page, making the website very slow to load. Such pages are very difficult to get indexed in a search engine. The perfect text-to-HTML ratio is on average between 25% and 70%. Google uses this metric for evaluating the relevance of a Web page. Furthermore, if there are a lot of unnecessary tags, the search engine crawler has a tough time moving and going through the website. For such pages, indexing will also cause problems.
This problem will be resolved by placing JavaScript and CSS in different files. You must validate the HTML code and delete any unnecessary HTML tags from your web pages.
Duplicate Content :
This refers to the situations in which identical content appears across several URLs. This may make it difficult for search engine crawlers to decide which URLs to display in search results. Duplicate content will affect your search ranking. Even if your content is informative and has excellent keywords, it will fall short.
The factors that contribute to duplicate content in SEO are as follows :
- Content cloning
- Misunderstanding URL concept
- Session IDs
- Comment pagination
- Content syndication
- Content scraping
The technique which is used for resolving these issues is as follows :
- Copy-paste content should be avoided.
- Such content to the canonical URL should be redirected.
- Canonical link to the page with the clone issue will get integrated.
HTML link to the canonical page is added.
Broken Links :
This leads the visitors to the Web pages that have been removed or that will not exist any longer. This causes mainly three issues: Page name, archived content, and website closure. Such links will have a lot of disadvantages. For example, it may destroy the conversion rates, increase the bounce rate, and downgrade your position on search engines.
This issue can be resolved by using the following methods:
- Instead of deleting an out-of-date page from the website, you should consider updating the content on it. In the case of page deletion, the user looking for it will be seen on the error page.
In this case, you will get the option of deleting the page by using 301 redirection. It may lead users to the new page rather than show an error page.
Incorrect Language Declaration :
If your website has a global audience or if it is targeting the global market, the language declaration becomes significant. This makes search engines understand the language directly, especially when it comes to text-to-speech conversion. The declaration of the language ensures that translators understand the content and make it read properly in a native language. It will also be able to get help with local SEO. This will be ideal for geographical identification.
You can fix this technical issue by conducting an inspection of the page content manually. If you detect any flaws, then you have to correct them immediately on your webpage itself. You can make the changes by generating the script language tag.
Non-working Contact Forms :
According to data, there are 1.5 million visitors. Only 49% will fill out the form after viewing it. And only 16% of the 49% complete it. A broken content form will be flawed in your SEO campaign. It also prevents conversions.
A contact form that makes sure the poor user experience will be thankful for the countless fields required, a non-functioning submit button, and so on.
This issue is resolved by implementing these pointers.
- Avoid using CAPTCHA.
- Keep your form brief and limit the necessary numbers that fields to five.
- Enables the auto-fill feature in the form
- Use the Google auto complete plug-in
- Make sure about the color, text size and positioning does not look odd.
- Go through catchy call to action (CTA) buttons or text.
Thus, SEO is a very large field. It is very important in all the parameters discussed here to boost your site’s performance and improve your search rankings. Make sure that you will conduct site audits on a regular basis. Some other basic things that you have to do on your own without an SEO audit service are content updating regularly, image optimization, and updating trending keywords, among others. “Vinayak Infosoft” Best SEO Company in Ahmadabad helps you in solving all this issues very easily.