Common Technical SEO Issues Identified by Audit Tools

Technical SEO refers to the method of optimizing the technical elements of a website, such as its architecture, server, coding, and other backend aspects, to bring about an improvement in the visibility as well as rankings of search engines. You can make use of any premium technical SEO checker to clearly understand the current status of your website’s technical SEO. The goal of technical SEO is to assist search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing the pages of a website, thereby leading to higher search engine rankings, along with more organic traffic. If you want to ensure the website’s technical SEO is on the right track, regular technical SEO audits are of immense importance. Conducting an audit helps recognize technical errors, security vulnerabilities, improper or poor user experience, and weaknesses in the overall website’s SEO. In this regard, audit tools play a crucial role in automating this process, offering detailed insights into the website’s health, recognizing problems such as slow loading times and broken links, and providing data-driven analysis for effective optimization of the website.

What Are Technical SEO Issues?

Let us now dive a bit deeper into technical SEO issues for a better understanding.

Definition and Importance

Technical SEO issues are the backend problems within the infrastructure of a website that obstruct search engines from appropriately crawling, indexing, and understanding the content of its pages. The importance of technical SEO issues cannot be neglected at any cost since it can directly hamper your website’s search engine rankings and visibility.

Impact on Website Performance and Rankings

Technical SEO issues can have an adverse impact on the overall performance of the website and its rankings. It is exactly the situation where any top-rated technical SEO checker comes to the rescue.

Impact of Technical SEO Issues on Website Performance

• Slow website load times
• Security vulnerabilities
• Indexability & Crawlability issues

Impact of Technical SEO Issues on Website Ranking

• Reduced search visibility
• Lower click-through rates
• Increased bounce rates
• Confused search engines

Top Technical SEO Issues Found by Audit Tools

Now, you understand the importance and impact of technical SEO issues on your website. In this regard, using a reliable technical SEO checker or any other good audit tools can be of great help. So let us take a look at some of the most common technical SEO issues found by audit tools.

Crawl Errors and Broken Links

Crawl errors refer to the issues that obstruct search engine crawlers from properly accessing and indexing the website’s pages. Broken links are non-existent links, either internal or external, that point to webpages which cannot be accessed or are no longer existent, usually resulting in a ' ‘404 Not Found’ error. 

How Audit Tools Detects Them?

Audit tools can detect crawl errors & broken links by crawling a website similar to a search engine, recognizing problems such as 404 errors, 5xx server errors, etc., and then offer detailed insights into the specific problems.

Quick Fixes and Best Practices

The best practices to fix the identified errors are updating all incorrect links, eliminating orphaned content, implementing 301 redirects for moved pages, and making sure that sitemaps & robots.txt guide the search engines correctly.

Slow Page Speed

Slow page speed refers to the slow loading times of the website to completely load, which negatively impacts user experience, increasing bounce rates, and hindering search engine rankings. A website and its pages load slowly when they contain a huge number of files that are not optimized properly, inefficient code, or are hosted on a slow server, resulting in poor user experience and a lower rate of conversions.

Tools to Measure Page Load Times

A good technical SEO checker helps measure page load times. Additionally, there are other reliable tools, such as GTmetrix, Pingdom, Google PageSpeed Insights, etc., that offer detailed performance scores and recognize bottlenecks such as slow scripts or large images.

Optimizing Images, Scripts, and Server Response

The best ways to enhance page loading speed are optimizing large images, server response, & scripts, using server cache, enabling compression, implementing a CDN, and using lazy loading for media.

Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate content issues refer to similar content on the website, such as location or city-based pages with almost similar content for similar pages.

Using Audit Tools to Identify Duplicates

It is ideal to make use of a high-quality technical SEO checker or other audit tools to identify pages with duplicate content appropriately.

Canonical Tags and Meta Adjustments

To fix issues with duplicate content, it is appropriate to implement canonical tags to properly specify the preferred version of a webpage to the search engines and make use of noindex meta tags on duplicate pages so that they do not appear in the search results.

XML Sitemap and Robots.txt Problems

XML sitemap & robots.txt are common technical SEO issues that obstruct search engines from crawling and indexing, thereby preventing webpages from ranking. Some of the most common XML sitemap issues include missing tags, incorrect URLs, and server errors. On the other hand, some common robots.txt files include accidental blocking of important content, incorrect paths to the sitemap, and improper syntax leading to server errors.

How to Check and Correct Issues?

For checking XML sitemap and robots.txt issues, it is important to monitor the sitemap’s report, conduct an inspection of the URLs to check their crawlability & indexability, and identify the specific lines in the robots.txt file that block search engine bots.  To correct robots.txt issues, first, you need to recognize the specific ‘Disallow’ directives in robots.txt files that hinder access to vital webpages. Then you need to modify or remove the blocking directives and make sure that they have the correct name & location. After modification, re-upload the file to the server and test to ensure the effectiveness of the changes made.

Mobile Usability Errors

 One of the most common technical SEO issues is mobile usability errors. These issues refer to the incorrect loading of the website on mobile, creating problems in viewing the website on a mobile device.

Mobile-Friendly Testing Tools

Make use of available testing tools to check the mobile friendliness of the website and take steps accordingly to fix it.

Fixing Responsive Design and Layout Issues

The ideal solution is to make the website completely responsive in design so that users can enjoy a superior website experience on mobile devices. In addition to this, fix the website layout issues so that it loads on mobile devices appropriately.

HTTPS and Security Issues

Another of the most common technical SEO issues is HTTPS and the security concerns of a website. Security issues with HTTPS come from its implementation, like very weak encryption, using outdated components, or misconfigurations.

SSL Certificate Problems

If there is a problem with the SSL certificate, you need to install it or renew it, and then all the URLs of the website should be switched to HTTPS from HTTP. Then you need to set up 301 redirects to the website’s secure version.

Fixing Mixed Content and Security Warnings

For any mixed content issues, you can fix them by updating all insecure resources. Moreover, look out for any security warnings as shown by a technical SEO checker and accordingly apply the fix.

How to Prioritize and Fix Technical SEO Issues?

Once you have identified the problems with the website, the biggest question that arises is how to fix technical SEO issues. Here is what you need to do.

Using Audit Tool Reports Effectively

The primary step to fix technical SEO issues is to analyze the reports obtained from a technical SEO checker or other audit tools. Go through the reports thoroughly to recognize where exactly the problems are in the website.

Creating a Fix Plan Based on Severity and Impact

When you have a clear idea about the problems, it is recommended to sort the problems based on their severity and impact on the website. Accordingly, a fix plan needs to be crafted, prioritizing the issues with a higher degree of severity and impact on the overall health & performance of the website.  

FAQ’s

What are the most common technical SEO issues?

Some of the most common technical SEO issues are listed below.

• The website is too slow to load
• The website is not secure
• Pages have broken links
• Unstructured data on the website
• The robots.txt file is broken or missing
• The website has duplicate content
• Presence of too many 301 redirect chains
• Backlinks come from insecure or spammy websites

How do I check my website for technical SEO errors?

You can make use of a premium technical SEO checker or other reliable audit tools to gain detailed insights into the technical SEO issues of your website.

How often should I perform a technical SEO audit?

It is ideal to perform a technical SEO audit quarterly for most websites. However, monthly audits or sometimes weekly audits are suitable for large and complex websites. For any significant changes in the website, like migrations, redesigns, etc., or a sudden drop in rankings & traffic, immediate audits are recommended.  

What tools can identify technical SEO issues?

Different tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, etc. are great for identifying technical SEO issues in the website.

Conclusion

After reading through the post, you have a clear idea about some of the most common technical SEO issues in a website and their impact on the overall health & performance. Thus, it is extremely important to conduct regular website audits using a high-quality technical SEO checker or other reliable audit tools to appropriately identify the technical SEO issues and opt for proactive fixes for the same without any delay. In this regard, it will be a great idea to go for Rankyfy, your one-stop AI-based technical SEO partner. Rankyfy will help you audit your website thoroughly, identify potential technical SEO issues, and go for the most appropriate fix for an unhindered website performance.