How to Fix Common Technical SEO Issues
This article was first published on July 7th, 2022, and was last updated December 2023.
Web page visibility is vital in ensuring organic traffic to a website. Websites play a vital role in digital marketing strategies, which have become the new approaches to marketing in businesses. The simple act of owning a website is not enough as a marketing strategy. Increasing website visibility requires a comprehensive search engine optimization strategy.
Top ranking for your keywords relies on SEO applications to enhance your rank. Several online resources addressing SEO practice improvement exist. However, focusing on the most common mistakes and the effective ways to handle these mistakes remains unavoidable.
Below are the ten most common technical SEO issues and ways to fix them. Let’s get started!
What is Technical SEO?
Before we dive into the ten most common technical SEO issues, we should set the groundwork for what technical SEO is. Technical SEO is refers to the process of optimizing a website’s technical aspects to improve its search engine visibility and performance.
While traditional SEO involves content optimization, internal linking, and link building, technical SEO focuses on the behind-the-scenes elements that affect how search engines crawl, index, and rank a website. The goal is to ensure that search engines can easily access, interpret, and understand the content on a website.
10 Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Fix Them
1. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is among the top SEO technical concerns. It involves content that is closely related or similar to the content contained on your site. While Google has no penalties for this technical SEO issue, webpage rankings are negatively impacted. Search engines do not usually show similar versions of two types of content on the search engine results page (SERPs); the most relevant and updated information is usually selected for display.
This technical SEO issue’s fixture can ensure that any content you want to print on your site is not published elsewhere. Various tools such as Copyscape can assist you in finding copies of your website online and eliminate the possible duplicated content. You should create unique content that facilitates your audience’s accessibility to exact information about your services/products.
2. Outdated Information and Content on the Site
Your site’s authority can be affected by the old content on your website. A particular query reveals a lot of search results. When the search engine finds that your site contains old information, it undergoes filtration. This old data can cost you significant traffic leading to your site due to a higher possibility of an increased bounce rate.
Your website content should continually be updated and highly quality to eliminate this technical issue. Your website should also contain relevant information. The search engine should find your content well–optimized and useful to generate traffic to your website. Always ensure your website information is updated with current information.
3. Long and Messy URLs
A uniform resource locator (URL) specifies a web page on the internet. URLs should not have more than 2083 characters considering the required length to prevent Google from truncating them. URLs benefit SEO through enhanced search visibility and better user experience.
However, factors such as using HTTP instead of HTTPS, using special characters, too many stoppers or connectors, and having more than two folders contribute to losing interest.
The possible way to fix this technical SEO issue is by creating well-crafted URL structures that benefit the audience and the search engines. The more readable your URLs are, the higher the readability chances, especially when you post on social media platforms. The URL characters must be in lowercase to improve their attractiveness. Your URLs must contain the relevant keywords to solve this technical SEO issue.
4. Lack of Location-Specific Pages
Mobile consumers are increasingly becoming biased towards the location in their web searches. Searches with “near me” references are increasingly becoming more common. This technical SEO issue could result in traffic loss to your website due to the lack of location specificity, eliminating it from the possible search outcomes. One crucial element of local and global SEO is locally optimized content and high quality.
One fixture to this issue is ensuring your brand recognizes the local presence. Through this, your brand will probably appear in the ranking of local search results, making it more accessible. A well-optimized location specificity will likely enhance your ranking within your local search engine results page (SERPs). People using their mobile devices to search for things near them should easily access your content by ensuring your SEO is locally and globally optimized.
5. Slow Site Speed
Slow site speed can hinder people from accessing content on your website. This slow speed may adversely impact hard-earned SEO traffic. Page speed is vital for a satisfactory user experience and good search rankings. Suppose your website has several other information, including images, videos, and other content; ensuring it stays optimized for speed is vital.
One possible solution to this technical SEO issue is the image size and format with the assistance of picture editing tools. Using such tools can ensure that the images are in the correct formats and the bandwidth decreases accordingly. Another strategy is running your webpage through tools such as Google Page Speed Insights to confirm your web page load speed and find the best ways to optimize it. You can also consult your web developer for alterations regarding speed issues.
6. Unindexed Pages
Searchable pages on Google are identified through crawling and indexing. Google cannot track any page not crawled by bots. Your pages may not be indexed by Google because of 404 errors, low authority, outdated xml sitemaps, duplicate content, or improper meta tags.
With such issues, your site is likely unindexed, meaning it may not surface when relevant content is searched on Google. This factor limits the number of visits to your site.
Google search console provides the best way to solve the indexing and ranking issues. Once you submit your URL inspection, this can show you whether your page is indexed or not. You can also simulate the crawling of search engine bots on your website through the Deepcrawl tool, such as Screaming Frog, the comprehensive website crawler, and dig deep into your website indexing issues without affecting your website’s performance.
7. Too Much Flash
While Flash may not be as standard as it used to be, it still exists in today’s websites, creating a technical SEO issue. Flash hinders search engine robots trying to gain access to the content on your site. Your site remains unranked if the search engine bots cannot quickly figure out and comprehend the content. Search engine bots assist in putting your site’s content out to the audience.
One way to eliminate this technical SEO issue is to use Flash sparingly in cases where you can, avoid using it. There are new technologies that offer better than Flash.
CSS 3, JavaScript, and HTML 5 are technologies you can use to avoid using Flash. In instances where you need an animation, you can replace it with a video.
8. Improper Redirects
Based on Google requirements, a Web page may sometimes need to be shifted to a different URL. A 301 redirect facilitates this, ensuring that the search engines and the users get suitable redirection. However, when you recreate your website and fail to enlist a reputable SEO, there is a possibility of an improper connection between the new and old websites.
One solution to fix this improper connection is ensuring that your Webmaster sets up 301 redirects from the old to new pages. This solution assists in creating a page link between your old site pages and the new ones. Another possible approach would be locating any 404 not found errors on your website and redirect using 301 to the correct pages.
9. Lack of Mobile Website Optimization
Mobile devices have become more popular than computers since they are more convenient for searches and other activities. Mobile-friendly websites play a vital role in ensuring visits to your website. You will likely use viewers when your website is not optimized for mobile. Suppose your site does not have this feature; you may miss out on viewers and advanced designs for your web page.
A mobile-friendly and ready site assists you in increasing your ranking on SERPs. Your site completely reformats itself for various devices through mobile optimization, demonstrating its advanced nature. The technical SEO issue’s resolution can be by leveraging a mobile-friendly test tool to confirm your website’s mobile-friendliness. Once confirmed, if not friendly, you can select a reliable web host and optimize your site’s loading time.
10. Broken Links
A 404 error leaves a wrong impression on your users. Your crawl budget is also affected when your links are broken. This aspect also limits the number of times the Google bots can crawl your website within a specific period.
When the bots encounter several broken links, your links are skipped, and other sites are considered instead. This technical SEO issue negatively impacts the site’s domain authority.
One way to fix this is to identify the various pages that could be pushing 404 errors on your site. You can identify the pages through the crawl stats feature in the Google search console. Another strategy is using Ahrefs to search for broken links on your page, and there are strategies to use this feature. Resolving broken links earlier assists in your SEO improvement.
SEO requires a specific focus on content quality, which should be high and enhance user engagement. Some technical SEO could be prevented and solved by regularly auditing your site. This approach ensures that your site is always in a healthy condition. The healthy condition of your website increases user satisfaction and traffic to your website.
Succeeding with Technical SEO
Technical SEO has many aspects and details that are needed for it to be done correctly. Doing SEO effectively for your clients is incredibly important to help your agency’s reputation and success. Boostability offers affordable white-label local SEO services to businesses looking for a way to improve their customers’ website visibility.
Partner with our team to expand your product offering to help save valuable time and money. We can provide a free consultation and SEO analysis to get you started on the right track. Reach out to our team of professionals today to learn more about how SEO can help reach your business goals.
