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What if your SEO efforts aren't yielding the results you expected? If you ponder, "Why is my SEO not working?" the answer may be technical SEO issues.
Indeed, you've invested time and resources into creating a stunning website, crafted compelling content, and embarked on the SEO journey, so you want your efforts to be worthwhile.
Join seobase as we explore the mysteries behind technical SEO and delve into ten common technical SEO issues that may hamper your website's performance.
Before we dive into the common technical SEO issues, let's start by clarifying what technical SEO is.
Technical SEO optimizes your website to help search engines crawl, index, and rank your content effectively. It focuses on improving your site's infrastructure and technical aspects to enhance its visibility and user experience.
While on-page SEO concerns content and keywords, technical SEO deals with your website's underlying structure and coding.
It ensures that search engines can easily access and understand your content, leading to higher rankings and better user engagement.
Now that we've established technical SEO, let's explore why your SEO might not work as expected and identify the common technical SEO issues.
Read: What Is Technical SEO: The Backbone of a Successful SEO Strategy
Technical SEO issues might be obscure, but they are pivotal for your SEO results. So, let's explore in detail ten of the most common technical SEO issues:
Website speed is a critical aspect of user experience and SEO. Search engines, especially Google, prioritize faster-loading websites because they provide a better user experience.
Slow-loading pages can result in high bounce rates, negatively impacting your search engine rankings. Visitors will likely bounce away from your site if it takes too long to load.
To address these technical SEO issues:
Image Optimization: Large image files can significantly slow down your website. Compress and optimize images to reduce their file size while maintaining quality.
Leveraging Browser Caching: Implement browser caching to store certain website elements locally on a user's device, reducing load times for returning visitors.
Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): CDNs distribute your website's content across various servers worldwide, ensuring faster delivery to users based on their geographic location.
In an era where mobile devices dominate internet usage, ensuring your website is mobile-friendly is crucial. A non-responsive or mobile-unfriendly website can deter both users and search engines.
To enhance your website's mobile-friendliness:
Responsive Design: Ensure your website is responsive and adapts to various screen sizes and orientations. This guarantees a seamless user experience on mobile devices.
Mobile Optimization: Optimize images and videos for mobile viewing. Keep the content concise, and use mobile-friendly navigation menus.
Duplicate content issues can arise when the same or similar content appears on multiple website pages. This can confuse search engines and dilute your SEO efforts.
To address these technical SEO issues:
Canonical Tags: Use canonical tags to specify the preferred version of a page. Search engines will then consider this page the original and rank it accordingly. Canonical tags can benefit product pages, blogs, or content in multiple locations.
Read: What is Canonicalization in SEO and How it Works?
Broken links are not only frustrating for users but also negatively impact SEO. Users encountering broken links may leave your site, resulting in higher bounce rates.
To maintain a smooth user journey and address technical SEO issues in a time:
Regularly Audit Links: Periodically check for broken links on your website. You can use tools like Google Search Console or third-party link-checking software to identify and fix broken links.
Utilize tools like Site Profiler: To get a complete SEO audit for your website, tools like Site Profiler are a must. Among other features like page speed issues and hidden content, it will also provide you with information about broken links.
A clear and well-organized site structure is essential for user experience and SEO. A logical hierarchy with easily accessible categories and pages helps search engine crawlers navigate your site efficiently.
To improve your site structure and address these technical SEO issues:
Create a Logical Hierarchy: Organize your content into a logical hierarchy with categories and subcategories. Make sure there is a clear path for users to navigate from the homepage to deeper content.
User-Friendly Navigation Menus: Implement user-friendly navigation menus to help visitors quickly find the information they want.
A clean and SEO-friendly URL structure is vital for search engine understanding and user experience. Long, non-descriptive URLs can hinder search engines' ability to interpret your content.
To optimize your URL structure:
Use Descriptive Keywords: Craft concise, keyword-rich URLs that provide insight into the page's content. Avoid generic or cryptic URL structures.
An XML sitemap is a roadmap for search engines, helping them understand the structure of your website and the priority of different pages. If you're missing a sitemap or it contains errors, it can impact your indexing and ranking.
To address these technical SEO issues:
Generate an Accurate XML Sitemap: Ensure your XML sitemap is current and accurately reflects your site's structure. Keep it error-free and submit it to Google Search Console for indexing.
Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are essential for structuring your content and signaling its importance to search engines.
Ensure that you use them appropriately while addressing technical SEO issues:
Use Header Tags for Structure: Utilize header tags to structure your content logically. The H1 tag should represent the page's main topic, followed by H2 and H3 tags for subheadings.
Keywords in Headers: Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your header tags to improve the SEO of your content.
Large, unoptimized images can slow down your website and negatively affect user experience.
To prevent technical SEO issues and improve accessibility:
Image Compression: Compress and optimize images to reduce their file size while maintaining visual quality. Use tools like TinyPNG to compress images.
Descriptive Alt Text: Add descriptive alt text to images to improve SEO and accessibility for visually impaired users. Alt text should accurately describe the content of the picture.
Both users and search engines prefer a secure website using HTTPS. If your site is still using HTTP, consider migrating to HTTPS to enhance security and SEO rankings:
SSL Certificate: Acquire an SSL certificate for your website to enable HTTPS. This provides a secure connection for users and is a ranking factor for search engines.
Update Internal and External Links: Ensure your website's internal and external links point to the HTTPS version to maintain a consistent, secure browsing experience.
By addressing these ten common technical SEO issues, you'll take significant steps toward improving your website's performance, search engine rankings, and user experience.
While conventional methods are crucial in managing technical SEO issues, there exist some unconventional yet highly effective techniques that can provide you with a competitive advantage.
Here are some distinct strategies to tackle technical SEO issues:
Log file analysis entails scrutinizing server log files to understand how search engine crawlers interact with your website.
By delving into these logs, you can uncover invaluable data regarding frequently crawled pages, the frequency of bot visits, and their content prioritization. This information lets you fine-tune your SEO strategy and prevent technical SEO issues by aligning it closely with search engine behaviors.
Dynamic rendering is an unconventional approach that serves your website's different versions to search engines and users.
This method can be particularly beneficial for websites heavily reliant on JavaScript. Providing search engines with a rendered version of your content ensures improved indexability and prevents technical SEO issues.
Structured data, typically in the form of schema markup, aids search engines in comprehending the context of your content.
While not an obscure practice, the key to differentiation lies in going above and beyond. Implement intricately structured data for specific content types or niche elements.
This might encompass the detailed marking of job listings, events, products, or local business information, contingent upon your website's specialization.
Voice search is gaining prominence, and optimizing for it can confer a strategic advantage in the ever-evolving realm of inquiry.
Construct content that responds to natural language queries and conversational searches: craft FAQ-style content and snippets to amplify your chances of appearing in voice search results and prevent technical SEO issues.
JSON-LD is an uncommon structured data format that can be embedded in your web pages to furnish rich information to search engines.
It is less prevalent than other structured data markup types such as Microdata or RDFa. Nevertheless, it is highly recommended by Google. Embracing JSON-LD can distinguish you in terms of SEO-friendliness and future-proofing your structured data initiatives.
Google's rich results continue to evolve, proffering distinctive possibilities for websites. Delve into emerging forms of rich results, extending beyond the conventional featured snippets, and optimize your content to align with them. This could entail the creation of recipe cards, job listings, carousels, and more.
While user experience metrics are clear, the specific emphasis on Google's Core Web Vitals is less widespread. These metrics assess your web pages' loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.
Prioritizing these aspects can significantly influence your rankings and prevent technical SEO issues.
Content pruning, while not a widely known approach, is a highly effective technique. It entails evaluating your content and removing or combining underperforming or outdated pieces.
On the other hand, historical optimization involves updating and improving existing content to make it more relevant and competitive. Both of these strategies can significantly enhance the overall health of your website's SEO and prevent technical SEO issues.
The Google BERT algorithm and the progress in Natural Language Processing (NLP) have dramatically improved our ability to grasp what users intend when they search.
By experimenting with these technologies, you can create content that better matches the nuances of search queries, providing users with exactly what they're looking for.
Incorporating these unconventional best practices into your approach to handling technical SEO issues can differentiate your website from the competition.
Technical SEO issues can be significant roadblocks to your website's success. However, with the proper knowledge and a primary technical SEO strategy, you can address these issues effectively and set your website on a path to SEO success.
Remember that SEO is an evolving field; staying up-to-date with best practices and search engine algorithms is crucial. Regular maintenance and optimization are vital in maintaining a healthy and high-performing website.
By addressing these technical SEO issues, you'll be well on your way to achieving better search engine rankings and providing an improved user experience.
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