Common Technical SEO errors

Technical SEO is vital for making sure that search engines can crawl, index, and understand your website effectively. Ensuring your technical SEO is up to standard is essential before investing time in other areas of your website marketing.

Here are some glaringly obvious technical SEO errors to watch out for:

1. Insecure website: Websites without HTTPS are marked as insecure, which can affect user trust and rankings. Obtain and implement an SSL certificate.
2. Broken links (404 errors): Pages or links that return a “404 Not Found” error can negatively impact user experience and SEO.
3. Orphan pages.Pages that aren’t linked to from anywhere on your site, known as orphan pages, may not be found or indexed by Google.
4. Robots.txt issues: The `robots.txt` file on your website can prevent Google from crawling specific pages or sections of your site. If a page is disallowed in this file, it won’t be crawled or indexed. Ensure that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking important pages from being crawled
5. Noindex meta tag: A `noindex` meta tag in the HTML of a page can instruct Google not to index a page. These are easy to manage using WordPress on a page by page basis.
6. Pages set to draft: Ensure that pages aren’t accidentally set to draft or unpublished. These pages won’t be visible to search engines or users if they are not live.
7. Old pages visible: Check that old pages are not unintentionally left published. Even if these pages are not linked from your website menu or internal links, search engines may still index them, which can create confusion or dilute your SEO efforts.
8. Incorrect XML sitemap: Review your XML sitemap (usually found at `www.websitename/sitemap.xml`) to confirm it only includes the pages you want search engines to index and are happy for potential visitors to land on as their first impression.
9. Poor URL structure: Page URLs should be clean, descriptive, and include keywords when possible. Avoid long, confusing, or dynamically generated URLs.
10. Missing or incorrect meta tags: Check that all pages have unique, descriptive, and correctly formatted meta titles and descriptions. Duplicate, poorly formatted or missing titles can impact rankings and click-through rates.
11. Duplicate content: If the content on the page is very similar to other content on your site or elsewhere on the web, Google may choose not to index it.

It’s essential to run technical SEO audits regularly, typically a couple of times per year, to ensure your site remains optimised and ahead of potential issues. Regular audits help maintain and enhance your SEO efforts, keeping your website in top shape and competitive in search rankings.

In my next blog post I shall be looking at more advanced Technical SEO errors that can stop your website performing well search.