HA-Tech has audited hundreds of sites over the years, and one thing we’ve seen time and time again is how frustrated customers become when they keep running into the same technical SEO problems.

These frequent technical SEO problems may have an adverse effect on a site’s performance and search visibility by being persistent and disruptive.

We’ll highlight the most common technical SEO problems we’ve seen in this piece, along with practical fixes to take care of them.

The following are the main technical SEO problems that this essay will address:

1. Absence of HTTPS Security
2. Not Correctly Indexed Website
3. Not one XML sitemap
4. Robots.txt is missing or incorrect.
5. Set of Meta Robots NOINDEX
6. Slow page speed
7. Different Iterations of the Homepage
8. Rel=Canonical is incorrect.
9. Identical Content
10. Incomplete Alt Tags
11. Broken Connections
12. Inadequate Use of Structured Information
13. Optimization of Mobile Devices
14. Incomplete or Inadequate Meta Descriptions
15. Users Forwarded to Inaccurate Language Pages

What Is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO refers to any changes you make to a website and/or server that affect the crawlability, indexation, and search engine rankings of your web pages directly (or indirectly, depending on the situation).

This includes elements like metadata, XML sitemaps, 301 redirects, HTTP header replies, page names, and title tags.

Analytics, keyword research, building backlink profiles, and social media strategy are not included in technical SEO.

Technical SEO is the initial step towards improving the search experience according to our methodology for search experience optimisation.

After you’ve established that your website is properly usable, you should go on to further SEO improvements.

Most Ignored Technical SEO Problems & Their Simple Solutions

These typical technical SEO problems are easy to ignore, yet they are essential to improving your search exposure and SEO performance.

1. Absence of HTTPS Security

Out of 15 technical SEO problems, with HTTPS, site security is more crucial than ever.

When you enter your domain name into Google Chrome, if your website is not safe, a grey backdrop or, worse, a red background with a “not secure” notice will appear.

Users may quickly leave your website and return to the search engine results page as a result of this.

To begin this fast remedy, make sure your website is HTTPS. Just enter your domain name into Google Chrome to do this. Your website is safe if you see the “secure” notice.

How to Correct It:

An SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority is required in order to switch your website to HTTPS.

Your website will be secure as soon as you install and buy your certificate.

2. Not Correctly Indexed Website

Does your website appear in the search results when you type in your brand name on Google? If the response is negative, there may be a problem with your indexation.

Regarding Google, your pages are nonexistent if they aren’t indexed, and search engines won’t see them either.

How to Verify:

Enter “site:yoursitename.com” into Google’s search box to see the number of indexed pages for your website right away.

How to Correct It:

Add your URL to Google to start if your site isn’t indexed at all.

Look more closely for either site-hacking spam or outdated versions of your website that are indexed rather than the proper redirects pointing to your current site if your site is indexed but appears in much MORE results than you would have anticipated.

If you notice a lot more LESS material on your indexed site than you anticipated, do an audit of the indexed content and compare it to the pages you want to rank. Verify that the material on your website complies with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines if you’re unsure of the reason why the content isn’t ranking.

Make sure your critical website pages are not blocked by your robots.txt file if the outcomes aren’t what you intended in any manner. Additionally, make sure you haven’t accidentally included a NOINDEX meta tag.

3. Not one XML sitemap

Google search spiders can more efficiently and intelligently explore your website by having a better understanding of the pages on your site thanks to XML sitemaps.

How to Correct It:

You may either design a sitemap yourself or pay a web developer to do so if your website is missing one and you find yourself on a 404 page.

Using an XML sitemap generating tool is the most straightforward method. The Yoast SEO plugin can automatically create XML sitemaps for your WordPress website.

4. Robots.txt Is Missing Or Incorrect.

Although a missing robots.txt file should raise warning flags, you may be surprised to learn that a badly set robots.txt file actually reduces organic site traffic. Out of these 15 technical SEO problems, this is a crucial one and easily ignored.

How to Verify:

Enter your website’s URL into your browser with the “/robots.txt” suffix to see whether the robots.txt file is having problems. You have a problem if the result says “User-agent: * Disallow: /”.

How to Correct It:

Speak with your developer right away if you encounter “Disallow: /.” That configuration could be intentional, or it might be the result of a mistake.

Many e-commerce sites have complicated robots.txt files, so you should go over it line-by-line with your developer to make sure everything is proper.

5. Set of Meta Robots NOINDEX

When the NOINDEX tag is set up correctly, it indicates to search spiders which sites are less important. (For instance, multi-page blog categories.)

On the other hand, NOINDEX may severely harm your search visibility if it is implemented wrong, since it would remove any sites with a certain configuration from Google’s index. This is a serious problem for SEO.

While a website is being developed, it is normal to NOINDEX a significant number of pages; however, once the website is live, the NOINDEX tag must be removed.

The removal of the content shouldn’t be taken at face value since it might seriously harm your website’s search engine ranking.

How to Verify:

Utilise the “Find” tool (Ctrl + F) to look for lines in the source code that say “NOINDEX” or “NOFOLLOW,” such as the following: Right-click on the major pages of your website and choose “View Page Source.”

Robots with the name “robots” and content “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW.”

Use the Site Audits technology to scan your complete website instead of doing spot checks.

How to Correct It:

Consult your web developer if you see any “NOINDEX” or “NOFOLLOW” in your source code; they could have included it for particular purposes.

Have your developer modify it to read if the cause is unknown, or delete the tag entirely.

6. Slow page speed

If it takes more than three seconds for your website to load, people will go.

Both Google’s algorithm and the user experience are impacted by page speed. Google said in the summer of 2021 that a new Page Experience report in Search Console has been released as part of the page experience upgrade, which incorporates metrics from Core Web Vitals.

How to Verify:

Utilise Google PageSpeed Insights to identify certain issues related to your website’s performance. (Don’t forget to assess both desktop and mobile performance.)

How to Correct It:

Page load times may be fixed in a variety of ways, from easy to difficult. Image optimisation and compression, better browser caching, faster server response times, and JavaScript minification are common ways to speed up pages.

To find the best answer for the specific page performance problems on your site, consult with your web developer.

7. Different Iterations of the Homepage

When you realised that “yourwebsite.com” and “www.yourwebsite.com” point to the same location, do you recall? Although this is handy, it also implies that Google could be indexing several variations of the URL, which makes your site less visible in search results.

Even worse, having several versions of an active website might confuse Google’s indexing system as well as users.

How to Correct It:

First, see whether several URL variations can be properly routed to a single standard URL.

Using your “site:yoursitename.com” is an additional method to find out which pages are indexed and if they originate from different URL versions.

You will need to put up 301 redirects or have your developer set them up if you see numerous indexed versions. In Google Search Console, you must also configure your canonical domain.

8. Rel=Canonical is incorrect

For any website that has duplicate or very similar content, rel=canonical is crucial (especially e-commerce sites). Google search bots may see sites that are dynamically produced (such as a category page including blog entries or merchandise) as duplicates.

Similar to URL canonicalization, the rel=canonical tag informs search engines which “original” page is of fundamental significance (hence: canonical).

How to Correct It:

You’ll also need to spot-check your source code for this one. Fixes differ based on the site platform and content format you choose. (Google’s Guide to Rel=Canonical is available here.)

9. Identical Content

Duplicate content is an issue that many websites face as more and more companies use content management systems, dynamically built websites, and worldwide SEO.

It could “confuse” search engine crawlers and make it impossible for your target audience to get the right material.

Unlike content problems such as having insufficient or “thin” material on a page (less than 300 words), duplicate content may arise for a variety of reasons:

Items from an e-commerce website shop appear on many URL variations.

Content on printer-only web pages is duplicated from the main page.

On a global website, the same material is displayed in many languages.

How to Correct It:

These three problems may each be handled in turn with:

Canonical is proper rel (as said earlier).

Additional suggestions for reducing duplicate content are provided on Google’s support page, which includes eliminating boilerplate text, using top-level domains, and 301 redirects.

10. Incomplete Alt Tags

Neglected alt tags and broken photos are lost SEO opportunities. By informing the bot about the subject matter of the picture, the image alt tag property aids in search engines indexing a website.

It’s an easy method to improve your page’s SEO value with picture content that improves user experience.

How to Correct It:

Broken and missing alt tag pictures are often found during SEO site audits. It is simpler to maintain and keep up with image alt tags throughout your website when you do regular site audits to check on your image content as part of your SEO standard operating procedures.

11. Broken Connections

High-quality content is shown to consumers and search engines alike via well-crafted internal and external linking. Links that were previously excellent break and content changes over time.

Broken links detract from the searcher’s experience and indicate information of lesser quality, which may have an impact on page ranking.

How to Correct It:

Conducting regular site audits is the most effective and scalable method of addressing broken links.

Digital marketers and SEOs may remedy broken links by replacing them with new or accurate sites by using an internal link analysis to identify the pages on which these links are present.

To identify all broken external connections, use our backlinks tool. You may then contact the websites that have broken links and provide them with a fresh page or the right link.

12. Inadequate Use of Structured Information

An easy technique to aid Google search crawlers in comprehending the information and material on a page is to provide structured data. An ingredient list, for instance, would be the perfect kind of material to provide in a structured data format on a page that has a recipe.

Address data is another sort of data that works well in a structured data format. Take this example from Google.

“application/ld+json” script type

~

“@context” : “https://schema.org” ,

“@type” : “Organisation” ,

“url” : “http://www.example.com” ,

“name”: “Unlimited Ball Bearings Corp.” ,

“contactPoint”: {

“@type”: “ContactPoint” ,

“telephone” : “+1-401-555-1212”,

“contact type” : “Customer service”

~

~

The rich snippet that results from this structured data may subsequently appear on the SERPs, giving your SERP listing a more eye-catching appearance.

How to Correct It:

Look for ways to include structured data into pages when you release new material, and work with your SEO team to coordinate the process with content producers. Using structured data more effectively might increase CTR and even enhance SERP rank.

After you start using structured data, ensure there are no problems with your structured data markup that Google is reporting by routinely reviewing your GSC report.

Build, test, and distribute structured data using a simple point-and-click interface by using Schema Builder.

13. Optimisation of Mobile Devices

Google said in December 2018 that over half of the webpages that appeared in search results were mobile-first indexed. Should your site have undergone a transformation, Google would have notified you by email.

You may also use Google URL Inspection Tool to determine if your website has completed the transfer if you’re unsure.

Make sure your website is mobile-friendly to guarantee a great mobile user experience, regardless of whether Google has switched you to mobile-first indexing yet. Anyone with a responsive website design is most likely doing well.

In a world where mobile traffic is king, you must ensure that your m-dot site is properly implemented if you manage a “.m” mobile site in order to maintain search exposure.

How to Correct It:

You must do the following actions for every “.m” web page because your mobile site will be the one indexed:

Ensure that the links and hreflang code are accurate and suitable.

Make all of your mobile site’s meta data updates. The meta descriptions for desktop and mobile websites need to be the same.

Make sure the URLs are updated to mobile URLs and include structured data on your mobile sites.

14. Incomplete Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions are those brief summaries of material, no more than 160 characters, that explain the topic of the website. These brief descriptions aid in search engine indexing, and a well-crafted meta description may pique readers’ curiosity.

It’s a basic SEO component many sites overlook this crucial information. Although this text may not be visible on your website, it is a crucial component that aids the user in determining whether or not to click on your result after submitting their query.

Similar to the content of your website, meta descriptions need to be tailored to the user’s experience; endeavour to include relevant keywords within the description.

How to Correct It:

Conduct a search engine optimisation site audit to identify any pages that lack meta descriptions. Establish the page’s worth and order the items properly.

When assessing pages with meta descriptions, consider their effectiveness and organisational value. Any pages with incorrect meta descriptions may be found via an audit.

Optimising high-value sites that are virtually ranking where you want them to should come first.

Every time a page is edited, updated, or otherwise changed, the meta description should likewise be updated. Ensuring that meta descriptions are specific to a page is crucial.

15. Users Forwarded to Inaccurate Language Pages

In an effort to enhance user experience, Google introduced the hreflang tag for companies using worldwide SEO in 2011. Hreflang tags tell Google which website to show a user depending on their language or region when they search. A other name for it is rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”.

This is how the code appears:

“http://example.com” hreflang=”en-us”

Among the many foreign SEO recommended practices are hreflang, local search engine optimisation, and hosting websites on local IP addresses. But the advantages of providing people with regionally tailored material in their mother tongue are indescribable.

Employing hreflang tags requires a considerable amount of meticulous labour to guarantee that every page has the proper code and connections, with mistakes often occurring.

How to Correct It:

Digital marketers have access to a range of third-party solutions in addition to Google’s free International Targeting Tool.

Contact For Free Site Audit & Proven SEO Strategies

The greatest method to rapidly increase your SERP exposure is to look into the top technical SEO problems in this blog article, along with the solutions that address them. Doing so may also greatly enhance the way search engines perceive your website.

The foundation of any long-term SEO strategy should be content. Being a top SEO content firm, HA-tech can guarantee that your website is optimised and created to rank well for relevant keywords and draw in interested people, which will raise conversion rates all around.

Starting with SEO audits, we’ll assess your site’s existing performance after that, we’ll collaborate with you to create an all-encompassing SEO content plan that not only draws in the correct audience at the appropriate times but also yields a profitable return on investment.