Technical Issues

What Are Website Technical Issues?

There are many website technical issues that can hamper your SEO progress. Technical issues with a website can affect its rankings in Google in a few ways:

1. User experience: Technical issues can result in a poor user experience, which can cause users to spend less time on the site or leave the site altogether. Google’s algorithm takes into account user behavior metrics, such as bounce rate and time on site, as signals of the quality and relevance of a website. If a website has a high bounce rate or low time on site due to technical issues, it may signal to Google that the site is not providing a good user experience and may result in lower rankings.
2. Crawlability and indexing: Technical issues can also impact a website’s crawlability and indexing. If Google’s bots are unable to crawl a website due to technical issues, such as broken links or slow loading times, it may result in certain pages or content being excluded from the search results. This can negatively impact the website’s visibility and rankings.
3. Security: Google takes website security very seriously and has indicated that it will penalize websites that are not secure or have been hacked. Technical issues that leave a website vulnerable to cyber threats, such as malware or viruses, can result in a penalty from Google, which can lower a website’s rankings.

Overall, technical issues with a website can impact its rankings in Google by impacting user experience, crawlability and indexing, and security. It is important to regularly monitor a website for technical issues and address them promptly to ensure the best possible user experience and to maintain and improve its visibility and rankings in the search results. Let’s review some of the most common technical issues that the RestoreMySEO report looks for:

Broken Images

An internal broken image is an image that can’t be displayed because it no longer exists, its URL is misspelled, or because the file path is not valid. Broken images may jeopardize your search rankings because they provide a poor user experience and signal to search engines that your page is low quality.

Invalid Structured Data

Implementing and maintaining your structured data correctly is important if you want to get an edge over your competitors in search results. If your website markup has errors, crawlers will not be able to properly understand it, and you may run the risk of losing the chance of gaining rich snippets and getting more favorable rankings.

Slow Page Speed

Page (HTML) load speed is one of the most important ranking factors. The quicker your page loads, the higher the rankings it can receive. Moreover, fast-loading pages positively affect user experience and may increase your conversion rates.

Broken or Missing Pages

5xx errors refer to problems with a server being unable to perform the request from a user or a crawler. They prevent users and search engine robots from accessing your webpages, and can negatively affect user experience and search engines’ crawlability. This will in turn lead to a drop in traffic driven to your website.

A 4xx error means that a webpage cannot be accessed. This is usually the result of broken links. These errors prevent users and search engine robots from accessing your webpages, and can negatively affect both user experience and search engine crawlability. This will in turn lead to a drop in traffic driven to your website. Please be aware that crawler may detect a working link as broken if your website blocks our crawler from accessing it. This usually happens due to the following reasons:

– DDoS protection system

– Overloaded or misconfigured server

Missing or Duplicate Tags

A <title> tag is a key on-page SEO element. It appears in browsers and search results, and helps both search engines and users understand what your page is about. If a page is missing a title, or a <title> tag is empty, Google may consider it low quality. Promoting a page with a missing title taf will miss chances to rank high and gain a higher click-through rate.

Our tools report pages that have duplicate meta descriptions only if they are exact matches.

A <meta description> tag is a short summary of a webpage’s content that helps search engines understand what the page is about and can be shown to users in search results. Duplicate meta descriptions on different pages mean a lost opportunity to use more relevant keywords. Also, duplicate meta descriptions make it difficult for search engines and users to differentiate between different webpages. It is better to have no meta description at all than to have a duplicate one.

Broken Internal Links

Broken internal links lead users from one website to another and bring them to non-existent webpages. Multiple broken links negatively affect user experience and may worsen your search engine rankings because crawlers may think that your website is poorly maintained or coded.

Please note that our tools may detect a working link as broken. Generally, this happens if the server hosting the website you’re referring to blocks our tools from accessing this website.

Sitemap Errors

If your sitemap.xml file has any errors, search engines will not be able to process the data it contains, and they will ignore it.

Robots.txt Formatting Errors

If your robots.txt file is poorly configured, it can cause you a lot of problems.

Webpages that you want to be promoted in search results may not be indexed by search engines, while some of your private content may be exposed to users. Therefore, one configuration mistake can damage your search rankings, ruining all your search engine optimization efforts.

Non-Secure Pages

This issue is triggered if our tools detects an HTTP page with a <input type=”password”> field.

Using a <input type=”password”> field on your HTTP page is harmful to user security, as there is a high risk that user login credentials can be stolen. To protect users’ sensitive information from being compromised, Google Chrome will start informing users about the dangers of submitting their passwords on HTTP pages by labeling such pages as “non-secure” starting January 2017. This could have a negative impact on your bounce rate, as users will most likely feel uncomfortable and leave your page as quickly as possible.

Mixed Content

If your website contains any elements that are not secured with HTTPS, this may lead to security issues. Moreover, browsers will warn users about loading unsecure content, and this may negatively affect user experience and reduce their confidence in your website.

Duplicate Content

Webpages are considered duplicates if their content is 85% identical. Having duplicate content may significantly affect your SEO performance.

First of all, Google will typically show only one duplicate page, filtering other instances out of its index and search results, and this page may not be the one you want to rank.

In some cases, search engines may consider duplicate pages as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings and, as a result, your website may be downgraded or even banned from search results. Additionally, duplicate pages may dilute your link profile.

Redirect Loops or Chains

Redirecting one URL to another is appropriate in many situations. However, if redirects are done incorrectly, it can lead to disastrous results. Two common examples of improper redirect usage are redirect chains and loops.

Long redirect chains and infinite loops lead to a number of problems that can damage your SEO efforts. They make it difficult for search engines to crawl your site, which affects your crawl budget usage and how well your webpages are indexed, slows down your site’s load speed, and, as a result, may have a negative impact on your rankings and user experience.

Multiple Canonical URLs

Multiple rel=”canonical” tags with different URLs specified for the same page confuse search engines and make it almost impossible for them to identify which URL is the actual canonical page. As a result, search engines will likely ignore all the canonical elements or pick the wrong one. That’s why it is recommended that you specify no more than one rel=”canonical” for a page.

Low Word Count Pages

Typically, if the number of words on your webpage is less than 200, this is considered a low word count page, also known as “thin content pages” or pages with a “low text to HTML ratio”. The amount of text placed on your webpage is a quality signal to search engines. Search engines prefer to provide as much information to users as possible, so pages with longer content tend to be placed higher in search results, as opposed to those with lower word counts.

How Important Is It To Fix Technical Issues In Order To Restore SEO Rankings?

Fixing technical issues is extremely important for restoring SEO rankings. Technical issues can have a negative impact on a website’s SEO performance, as they can affect crawlability, indexing, and user experience, which are all key factors that search engines like Google use to determine the relevance and quality of a website.

When technical issues arise, it can cause certain pages to be excluded from the search results, resulting in a decrease in organic traffic and lower rankings. In addition, technical issues can also negatively impact user experience, which can lead to higher bounce rates, lower engagement metrics, and lower rankings.

By fixing technical issues, a website can improve its crawlability, indexing, and user experience, which can result in higher rankings and increased organic traffic. Addressing technical issues can also help a website avoid penalties from search engines like Google, which can result in a dramatic drop in rankings and traffic.