Most Common Technical SEO Issues and Ways to Resolve Them

In the age of Google algorithms like Panda, hummingbird, and panda, winning the SEO in SERP and ranking higher means publishing SEO optimized content and getting higher traffic to your website.

Well, sometimes high-quality content will not even work if your website contains structural and other website technical issues. And that’s how it creates problems in the long run. 

Just imagine if you could not find the errors on time and it didn’t get the results.

But no worries! I have a solution for that!

In this blog, I am going to talk about some common technical SEO issues that your website might have and ways to resolve them. 

But then, it creates a question here, “which technical SEO issues are most important?”

To know the answer, I would suggest you read the entire blog.

But before we move further, let’s understand the importance of technical SEO.

Why Is Technical SEO Important?

Technical SEO is important because it ensures that your website is easy to navigate and crawl by Google bots. Also, it ensures that the website is free from all the technical errors that may prevent the website from being ranked higher in SERP.

That’s why technical SEO is extremely important when it comes to attracting traffic and turning that traffic into customers.

The end benefit of technical SEO is that you are likely to generate more traffic if you have a fully optimized site.

Now, let’s move to some common technical SEO issues that your website might have and how to fix technical SEO issues

Common Website Technical SEO Issues 

The website technical issues that I am going to elaborate on below are the most common that any website might face and reduce its ranking. So, read them carefully and apply. Also, you will be able to apply if you have learned them carefully. So, make sure you read with full attention. 

Duplicate Content

Almost all the SEO professionals that we have talked to have marked duplicate content as a top technical SEO issue.

According to Google Webmaster Tools,

Duplicate content is any content that is ‘appreciably similar or exactly the same as the content that resides on your site.

Even Michael Stricker, marketing director of SEMrush says,

“Google’s crawlers must cover a lot of ground. Google can’t consume all of the data, especially when one considers that Google must revisit each page again and again to find changes or new material. Anything that slows Google’s discovery or crawling of the Web is unwelcome. Dynamically created websites that create Web pages on the fly from databases are frequently misconfigured from an SEO point of view. These sites may create lots of pages, or URLs, that contain basically the same content, over and over.”

According to Johnny Ewton, Web analyst for Delegator.com

“Duplicate content can also result from common content management system (CMS) functionalities, including sorting parameters.”

But Michael Striker gives an ultimate solution for that,

“The solution is to search your site for duplicates and use “crawl directives” to alert Google of the relative worth of numerous URLs. You may 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).”

All such duplicate content issues occur on the website which you can easily sort out.

Improper Redirects

Google says, “Sometimes a Web page, or an entire site, needs to be moved to a different URL. A 301 redirect is “the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page.”

If you have rebuilt your website without the help of an SEO expert then chances are that links and URLs from your old website are not properly connected to your new website.

Such technical SEO issues occur frequently.

You must set up 301 redirects from the old pages to the new ones to help the users find the old site pages.

Locate 404 “not found” issues on your site and use 301 redirects to lead people to the appropriate pages.

Using Google Webmaster Tools, you can quickly locate your 404s and 301-redirect them to more relevant sites. This is a difficult but necessary task for large projects.

Messy URLs

Sometimes, CMS and blog platforms create awkward URLs on their own. Now, it’s your duty to change and optimize them. You might have seen websites that have pages whose URLs ends with text like, “index.php?p=283581”

Trust me such URLs can hurt the trust and credibility of your brand with search engines and users. You should clean up those URLs to include the target keyword in your URL.

For example, there’s a blog published on my website. “11 Best SEO Reporting Tools For Agencies In 2022”

And the URL that I put in for this blog was, https://www.incrementors.com/blog/11-best-seo-reporting-tools/

As you can see the URL is very clear and gives a very clear intent about what the blog is.

“SEO-friendly URLs contain keywords and are simple to read and understand for both search engines and people”.

It’s critical to have SEO-friendly URLs since it’s necessary to make your site as easy to index and rank as feasible.

4. Slow Page Load

Users expect the websites to be fast. Slow page load sucks! Of course! Everyone wants that! It is one of the most common technical SEO issues that negatively impact the user experience..

Google itself says,

“Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.”

“If your website has many elements on it, such as images, videos, CSS style sheets, JavaScript code and the like, be sure it’s as optimized for speed as possible,”

• says Oleg Korneitchouk, director of digital marketing and development for SmartSites.

SEMRush gathered the findings of research into the following to provide you a reference on what speed you should be striving for:

• If your site loads in 5 seconds, it is quicker than around 25% of the internet.

• If your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is quicker than around half of the internet.

• If your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is quicker than almost 75% of the internet.

• If your website loads in 0.8 seconds, it is quicker than 94% of other websites.

The following are some suggestions for improving site speed:

Compression is enabled – You would have to discuss this with your web development team. It’s not something you should try on your own because it generally entails changing the settings of your web server. It will, however, increase the speed of your website.

Image optimization – Many websites feature graphics that are 500 kilobytes or larger. Some of the images might be compressed to make them smaller without compromising image quality. The page will load faster if your site has fewer bytes to load.

No HTTPS Security

When you put your domain name into Google Chrome, it will display a grey backdrop — or, even worse, a red background with a “not secure” warning — if your site is not safe.

This may force people to leave your site and return to the search engine results page.

Check to see if your site is HTTPS as the first step in this simple remedy. Simply put your domain name into Google Chrome to accomplish this. Your site is safe if you see the “secure” notice (seen below).

Now, the question that might be buzzing into your mind is, how would I do that?

Well, the answer is simple, An SSL certificate from a Certificate Authority is required to switch your site to HTTPS.

Your site will be secure once you purchase and install your certificate.

Site Isn’t Indexed

Is your website shown in Google’s search results when you search for your brand name? If you answered no, you may have a problem with your indexation which is a technical SEO issue.

If your pages aren’t indexed by Google, they don’t exist – and they won’t be found in the search engines.

You might be wondering now, how would I know if my site isn’t indexed.

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

You might be wondering now, how would I fix it if my website is not indexed?

Don’t worry!

• If your site isn’t yet indexed, start by submitting your URL to Google.

• If your site is indexed but there are a lot more results than you expected, look for site-hacking spam or outdated versions of your site that are indexed instead of proper redirection to your current site.

• Perform an audit of the indexed material and compare it to the pages you wish to rank if your site is indexed but you’re seeing a lot LESS than you expected. If you’re not sure why your material isn’t ranking, check Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to make sure it’s legal.

• If the results are different than you expected in any way, verify that your important website pages are not blocked by your robots.txt file.

Broken Links

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 once-famous connections become obsolete.

Broken links disrupt the searcher’s trip and indicate low-quality material, which might harm page ranking.

Now, the question that might be buzzing in your mind is, how would I fix that?

Don’t worry! I am here to help!

• While internal links should be double-checked whenever a page is added, altered, or redirected, the value of external links must be monitored on a frequent basis. Regular site audits are the most effective and scalable technique to repair broken links.

• Internal link analysis can assist you in locating the pages that contain these broken links, allowing you to replace the broken link with the correct/new page.

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

Read More: Learn the Effective Purpose of Screaming Frog Tool to Find Broken Links in a Website

Incorrect Rel=Canonical

For any sites with duplicate or extremely identical content, rel=canonical is highly critical (especially ecommerce sites). 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 notifies search engines which “original” page is of essential significance (hence: canonical).

But, it is also very easy to fix it.

You’ll also need to spot-check your source code for this one. Fixes differ based on the format of your content and the platform you’re using.

No XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps assist Google’s search bots learn more about your site’s pages so they can crawl it more effectively and intelligently.

You might be wondering now, how would I check if I have issue of ‘No XML Sitemaps’?

Well, the procedure is simple.

XML sitemaps assist Google’s search bots learn more about your site’s pages so they can crawl it more effectively and intelligently.

Meta Robots Noindex Set

When the NOINDEX tag is properly applied, it indicates to search spiders that particular sites are of lesser relevance. (For example, multiple-page blog categories.)

NOINDEX, on the other hand, if implemented wrong, can significantly reduce your search visibility by deleting any pages with a specified configuration from Google’s index. This is a major SEO problem.

It’s typical to NOINDEX a large number of pages while the website is being built, but once the site is online, the NOINDEX tag must be removed.

Do not assume that it has been removed since the consequences will be disastrous for your site’s search visibility.

When we know what the Meta Robots Noindex set is, now it’s time to know we check how can we fix it.

• Check with your web developer if you detect any “NOINDEX” or “NOFOLLOW” in your source code; they may have added it for a specific purpose.

• If you don’t know why have your developer replace it with meta name=”robots” content=”INDEX, FOLLOW”> or delete the tag entirely.

Conclusion

So, In this blog, we have seen some of the most common technical SEO issues that almost everyone faces. In the blog, I have described all the issues along with how can you fix that. 

If you carefully work on all the issues, it would help you in rankings. 

If you have any doubts or queries, you can just comment it down below in the comment section. I am going to reply for sure! 

For more marketing tips and services, you can schedule a free-of-cost 30-Minute Strategy session with our experts. In this call, our experts would discuss your business and provide you with the free strategies that you can use to boost your sales and revenue.