15 Critical Technical SEO Issues You Need to Address

If you want to increase visitors to your website, you must optimize it for search engine rankings. Unfortunately, because search engine optimization is a complicated process, even minor errors may have a large impact. So that you may optimize your site for maximum profit, spend some time identifying and fixing typical SEO issues with your website.

Good search engine optimization (SEO) involves more than just having clear material and organized backlinks. If your website isn’t capable of carrying out the technical chores that search engines like Google expects it to do, you might severely limit your growth and waste your time, regardless of how much work you put into enhancing your organic SEO and increasing your traffic.

Keeping an eye on your website’s technical SEO might be the difference between ranking high and not ranking at all in search engine results pages.

We’ll look into technical SEO. We’ll discuss what it is, as well as the most frequent technical SEO issues you’re likely to encounter and how to resolve them.

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website’s technical components in order to increase its search engine exposure and performance. When we talk about technical SEO, we’re talking about changes to a website and/or the server that you have immediate control over and that have a direct (or occasionally indirect) influence on the crawlability, indexation, and, eventually, search ranks of your web pages.

This comprises elements like:

• page names
• title tags
• HTTP header replies
• XML sitemaps
• 301 redirects
• metadata.

Technical SEO does not cover analytics, keyword research, backlink profile creation, or social media techniques. Technical SEO is the initial stage in developing a better search experience in our Search Experience Optimisation architecture.

Understanding technical SEO best practices and putting them into practice regularly is an efficient approach to acquiring and retaining high SERP rankings. However, it is critical to understand what potential technical SEO issues to check for and how to resolve them.

1. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content was rated as a major technical problem by nearly all of the SEO specialists we interviewed. According to Google Webmaster Tools, duplicate content is any material that is “appreciably similar” or precisely the same as content on your site.

Sometimes the same objects or materials appear on many pages. Other times, it might be a URL problem or accidentally double-posted information.

The reason duplicate content is an SEO concern is that search engine crawl bots have a limited amount of time to analyze your site. Duplicate material might confuse them and hinder them from effectively indexing relevant stuff.

Duplicate material can also be caused by common content management system (CMS) features such as sorting parameters.

How to fix it?

• The solution is to crawl your site for duplicates and use “crawl directives” to alert Google of the relative importance of several URLs.
• You can tell Google which files and directories are not worth scanning by using “robots.txt” (a file that allows you to manage how Google’s bots crawl and index your public Web sites).
• It’s also a good idea to inform Google which of numerous URLs to index by using the rel=”canonical” link element to point to the preferred URL.
• Canonical tags can assist with duplicate content concerns by informing search engines that one page is a duplicate of another, as well as which of the duplicate pages should be considered the primary one for indexing by Google’s bots.

2. No HTTPS Security

Google’s goal is to give the finest, most accurate search results to its consumers. It does not recommend sites that provide a poor or insufficient user experience, nor does it promote sites that may constitute a security concern.  However, if your site lacks the HTTPS security protocol, Google would consider it a possible risk to its users.

Visitors will be turned off by the “not secure” statement if they visit your page nonetheless, leaving them with a negative image of your company.

How to fix it?

• An SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority is required to switch your site to HTTPS.
• Your site will be secure once you have purchased and installed your certificate.

3. Indexability Problems

The ability of a webpage to be indexed by search engines is known as indexability. Pages that cannot be indexed by search engines cannot be seen on search engine results pages and cannot receive search traffic. You can use efficient techniques to index your web pages.

A page must fulfill these three conditions in order to be indexable:

• The page must allow for crawling. You probably don’t have a problem there if you haven’t prevented Googlebot from accessing the robots.txt page or if your website has fewer than 1,000 pages.
• Noindex tags must not be present on the page (more on this in a moment).
• The page has to be the primary version or canonical.

How to fix it?

• You can start by adding your URL to Google if your website isn’t indexed.
• Look further for either site-hacking spam or outdated versions of the site that are indexed instead of the proper redirects set up to lead to your updated site if your site is indexed but there are many MORE results than planned.
• Perform an audit of the indexed material and compare it to the pages you wish to rank if your site is indexed but you notice FAR LESS than you anticipated.
• Check Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to make sure the content on your website complies if you’re not sure why it’s not ranking.
• Check to see that your robots.txt file is not blocking any of your critical website pages if the findings are in any way different from what you anticipated.
• Additionally, make sure you didn’t accidentally incorporate a NOINDEX meta tag.

4. Sitemap Issues

XML sitemaps provide Google search crawlers additional knowledge about the pages on your website, enabling them to efficiently and intelligently explore it.

A sitemap may start to display broken sites, pages that were “noindexed,” pages that were de-canonicalized, or pages that have been banned in robots.txt when it is not often updated or when an unreliable generator was used to create it.

How to fix it?

• You may design a sitemap yourself or pay a web developer to make one for you if your website lacks one (and you land on a 404 page).
• The use of an XML sitemap generator is the simplest method. The Yoast SEO plugin can create XML sitemaps for you automatically if you have a WordPress website.

5. Broken Links

Technical SEO problems like broken links inevitably spoil a user’s otherwise satisfying experience on a website. Both visitors and search crawlers can see that you have high-quality material if you have good internal and external links. Content evolves with time and linkages that were once strong break.

Broken links disrupt the user’s search process and reveal lower-quality material, which might have an impact on page ranking.

Google is aware of these problems as well and can penalize your content as a result. It’s important to keep up with things since things change over time, material deteriorates, and issues like broken connections might arise.

How to Fix it?

• While it is important to verify internal links whenever a page is added, modified, or redirected, external links need to be checked frequently to maintain their value.
• Conducting routine site audits is the most effective and scalable technique to repair broken links.
• Digital marketers and SEO specialists may replace broken links by finding the pages that include them using an internal link analysis, then replacing the broken link with the appropriate/new page.

6. Incorrect Robots.txt

Keep in mind to use your robots.txt file! This important component of your SEO campaign is what keeps Google from indexing specific parts of your website.

It’s possible that Google crawl bots won’t be able to access or correctly index your site if your robots.txt file is inaccurate or otherwise misconfigured. A missing robots.txt file is a major warning sign, but did you also know that a robots.txt file that is incorrectly configured may harm your site’s organic traffic?

How to Check?

Enter the URL of your website into your browser and add the “/robots.txt” suffix to see if there are any problems with the robots.txt file. You have a problem if the search returns “User-agent: * Disallow: /“.

How to Fix it?

• Speak to your developer right away if you notice “Disallow: /”. It may be done that way for a reason, or it might just be a mistake.
• If your robots.txt file is complicated, as they are on many e-commerce sites, you should check each line with your developer to ensure it is accurate.

7.  Slow Page Speed

Page speed is important for a positive user experience and for improving search rankings. Make sure your website is as quick-loading as possible if it has a lot of components, such as photos, videos, CSS style sheets, JavaScript code, and the like.

If your site takes more than three seconds to load, people will leave and visit another one. Both the user experience and Google’s algorithm depend on page speed. Google announced the launch of a new Page Experience reports in Search Console in the summer of 2021. This update adds metrics from Core Web Vitals.

How to check?

• To find particular speed issues with your site, use Google PageSpeed Insights.(Make sure to assess both desktop and mobile performance.)
• If you don’t want to spot-check, utilize seo Clarity’s Page performance to collect scores every month or every two weeks to track and spot issues with page performance on your whole site.

How to Fix it?

• Slow page load solutions might range from basic to sophisticated.
• Image optimization/compression, browser cache enhancement, server response time improvement, and JavaScript minification are all common strategies for increasing page performance.
• Consult your web developer to ensure the best solution for the specific page performance issues affecting your website.

8. Incorrect Rel=Canonical

Rel canonical is a signal that instructs Google to combine pages. Stating the preferred version of the page aids in avoiding any problems with duplicating material.

For any websites with duplicate or extremely identical content (especially e-commerce websites), Rel=canonical is important. Google search algorithms may see dynamically produced pages (such as a category page of blog entries or merchandise) as duplicates.

Similar to URL canonicalization, the rel=canonical element informs search engines which “original” page is of the utmost importance.

How to Fix it?

• This one also needs you to double-check your source code. Fixes differ based on your content structure and web platform. (See Google’s Rel=Canonical Guide for further information.)
• If you want assistance, please contact your site developer.

9. Missing Alt Tags

One more of the most frequent technical SEO problems is missing alt tags, as even experienced SEO specialists frequently neglect to correctly tag their photos. Keep in mind that alt tags are used to describe an image to search engines and individuals with accessibility issues.

The use of alt tags enables both the indexing and cataloging of your photos by crawler bots as well as the use of reader software by visitors who are blind to interpret the images. It might harm your rankings to leave it out.

How to Fix it?

• The majority of SEO site audits will find photos that are damaged or lack alt text.
• It is simpler to maintain and keep up with image alt tags throughout your website when you do frequent site audits to check on your image content as part of your SEO standard operating procedures.

10. Missing or Non Optimized Meta Descriptions

Metadata is important in SEO, although it is less visible than keyword research. Your meta description is a brief paragraph of up to 165 characters that describes the page; it displays beneath the site name in search results and assists people in determining if the information on the page is what they’re searching for.

Even though it’s a basic SEO component, many pages fail to include this important data. Try to add appropriate keywords in the meta descriptions since they should be optimized to fit the content of the page that users will read.

P.S: How meta description helps in driving traffic and click? Know here!

How to Fix it?

There are a few approaches to solving this problem:

• Conduct an SEO site audit to identify any pages that are lacking meta descriptions. Establish the page’s worth and set priorities based on that.
• Examine pages based on performance and usefulness to the organization for pages with meta descriptions.
• Any pages with incorrect meta descriptions can be found through an audit.
• Optimizing should start with high-value sites that are almost ranking where you want.
• Every time a page is edited, updated, or otherwise changed, the meta description should likewise be updated.
• It’s crucial to make sure that each page’s meta description is distinctive.

11. Mobile Experience Issues

Your website’s bounce rate will increase if visitors have a bad experience using it on smartphones and tablets and it takes too long to load. Your website has to be lightweight and load quickly since mobile users value this.

For SEO, a website must be responsive to mobile devices. two factors

• Google prioritizes smartphone search results. For indexing and ranking, mobile pages’ content is mostly used.
• While it is said that Google would always “promote” the page with the greatest content, page experience can be a deciding factor for pages with information of comparable quality.

How to Fix it?

• Make sure your website functions, loads quickly, and looks well on mobile devices. Being mobile-user friendly is more important than ever since Google switched to mobile-first indexing.
• This may be done manually or by often reviewing Google Search Console’s mobile usability report.
• Any mobile user mistakes will be displayed in this report. Prior to them affecting your ranking, swiftly fix problems.

12. Multiple Versions of the Homepage

Google will direct you to the same location if you enter “yourwebsite.com” instead of “www.yourwebsite.com.” Having numerous homepages might result in Google crawling many URLs, which would reduce your exposure. Make careful to verify the site’s HTTP and HTTPS versions while performing your inspection.

How to Fix it?

• First, verify that several URL variations correctly lead to a single standard URL. This can apply to HTTP, HTTPS, and variations like “www.yourwebsite.com/home.html.”
• Verify every conceivable combination. The “site:yoursitename.com” command may also be used to find out which pages are indexed and whether they have more than one URL.
• You must set up 301 redirects or have your developer set them up if you find numerous indexed versions. You should also configure Google Search Console to use your canonical domain.

13. Technical SEO Incorrect Language Declaration

Despite the fact that we operate in a worldwide market, many people neglect to specify the language in the HTML element on the website. However, in certain circumstances, you may have taken HTML text from another site and placed it into your own. The HTML tag in that material may indicate a language other than the one you’re using.

Whatever the cause, failing to include the language in the HTML element might harm your ranking.

How to Fix it?

• Check to see if your language is mentioned on the HTML tag.
• Put this on your list for any new pages or sites you create.

14. Meta Robots NOINDEX Set

The NOINDEX tag, when properly used, indicates that some sites are of lower priority to search bots. (For instance, blog categories that include several pages.)

NOINDEX, however, can severely harm your search visibility if done wrong since it will remove all pages with a certain configuration from Google’s index. This is a serious SEO problem.

While a website is being developed, it’s customary to NOINDEX a lot of pages, however after the website is up, the NOINDEX tag must be removed.

Do not rely only on the fact that it was taken down; doing so will harm your website’s search visibility.

How to Check?

• Right-click the home page of your website and choose “View Page Source“. Search for lines in the source code that say “NOINDEX” or “NOFOLLOW” using the “Find” command (Ctrl + F), for example, meta name=”robots” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
• Use the Site Audits technology to scan your complete site if you don’t want to spot-check.

How to Fix it?

• Consult your web developer if you see any “NOINDEX” or “NOFOLLOW” tags in your source code since they could have been added for a specific purpose.
• Have your developer alter it to read meta name=”robots” content=” INDEX, FOLLOW”> or delete the tag entirely if there is no known cause.

15. Suspicious Link Practices Best Practices

To survive in the digital sphere, link-building is essential.

Some SEO experts may advise you to employ “black hat link-building techniques” like link swaps. You receive a lot of backlinks rapidly at this point. These backlinks, however, are never useful. Frequently, these are bad links that will hurt rather than help your rating.

How to Fix it?

• Do not purchase or sell backlinks. Use neither automatic services nor programs.
• Concentrate on naturally developing your content to attract high-quality backlinks.

Conclusion

Technical SEO concerns are fairly widespread, and this is only a partial list of the primary issues to watch out for. On a positive note, that means there are always opportunities to improve your website and keep ahead of the competition.

On the negative side, it means that the task is never truly done, not with engines like Google constantly updating and changing the way they explore the web.

Setting these challenges as priorities will help firms succeed in the long run and maintain an advantage in the fiercely competitive digital market.