In today’s world, a technical search engine marketing advisor and website auditor come across a number of technical search engine optimization issues each day. Some of these problems are truly more common and more serious than others.

Your information on these technical SEO issues will no longer only make a better website, it will help you in auditing.  

This article mainly focuses on 15 SEO technical issues and solving tricks.

How Do You Know If A Website Has These Frequent Technical Search Engine Issues?

To be successful to understand if these troubles are modern on the site, you will want the following search engine optimization tools:

• Google PageSpeed Insights

• Google Search Console

• Site Bulb and/or Screaming Frog net optimization Spider

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The Technical Web Optimization Problem #1

Technical web optimization problem #1: Website pages often pass Core Web Vitals in the lab (Google Lighthouse) but nevertheless have failed in field records (Chrome User Experience Report).

Only using Google Lighthouse ratings can give less experienced SEOs a false impact that the website is doing fine.

Here is a speedy reminder for you:

• Core Web Vitals is one of Google’s web page experience indicators. These include HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, and no intrusive interstitials in addition to Core Web Vitals.
• Field facts and lab facts are different. Google solely takes into account the field data, i.e. the real-world data coming from actual customers of the site.

• Optimizing the Core Web Vitals, you based on field facts (the CrUX data) which are accessible in Google PageSpeed Insights and the Google Search Console Core Web Vitals file.
• PageSpeed Insights helps in checking the performance of the particular page and GSC core web vitals help in identifying groups of pages having similar kinds of interest.

How do you solve this technical SEO issue?

 The reason for the occurrence may vary so it’s now not possible to furnish one simple fix.

• Google Search Console Core Web Vitals report and identify businesses of pages with comparable issues and analyze it.
• Use Google PageSpeed Insights to get unique hints.
• Best optimization can be done if the problematic area of the specific core web vital is found.

Each page has a specific metric that works for one and not for others.

Technical SEO Trouble #2

Robots.txt disallows internet site resource

• resources such as images, JS files, or/and CSS files are disallowed in robots.txt, then the web crawler doesn’t automatically gather information over the internet 

• Googlebot renders the pages visited and can see their content although the web page has a lot of JavaScript.

Here is an instance of such a flawed implementation:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /assets/

Disallow: /images/

• Robots.txt  restrict certain pages for certain website resources and it will also enable the bots to render the page correctly which leads to undesired consequences, such as decreasing rankings or indexing problems. 

How do you restore this technical search engine marketing issue?

• Eliminate all the disallowed directives that block the crawling of internet site resources. 
• Modify robots.txt and should set rules of file generation 
• to modify the robots.txt file by connecting to the server by using SFTP and importing the modified file.

Technical Website Positioning Issue #3

XML sitemap incorporates incorrect entries.

• An XML sitemap solely comprises the best representation of pages from a group of duplicate page URLs that you prefer to be listed and ranked in Google and having illogical listed URLs definitely a loss in crawl budget.

Here are the examples of unsuitable XML sitemap entries:

• URLs that return error codes like 5XX or 4XX, 
• URLs with a no-index tag,
• canonicalized URLs, 
• redirected URLs,
• URLs disallowed in robots.txt, 
• including the identical URL more than one time or in a couple of XML sitemaps. 

How do you restore this technical SEO issue?

Eliminate the fallacious entries solely incorporating canonical URLs. 

• In most cases, the sitemap is generated automatically, so you only want to alter the guidelines that are used for XML sitemap generation. 
• In WordPress, an XML sitemap with a plugin, such as Rank Math can be changed.
• Any website crawler will inform you if the XML sitemap carries flawed URLs.

Technical Search Engine Marketing Problem #4

Incorrect, malformed, or/and conflicting canonical URL

The search engine itself will select the canonical link issue of a given page and simply omit any fallacious canonical URLs.

Here are the examples of what can go wrong with the implementation of canonical URLs:

• Canonical link component is specific outside of the head (e.g. in the physique section).
• Canonical hyperlink factor is empty or invalid.
• Canonical URL points to the HTTP version of the URL.
• Canonical URL factors to a URL with a no-index tag.
• Canonical URL factors to a URL that returns error code 4XX or 5XX.
• Canonical URL points to a URL that is disallowed in robots.txt.
• Canonical URL is no longer determined in the supply code however only in the rendered HTML.
• Canonical hyperlink aspect points to a canonicalized URL.
• Conflicting canonical links in the HTTP header and in the head.
• Canonical tags are now not used at all.

Solving this technical SEO:

When we update the factors of the canonical links they will point to proper canonical URLs. 

Sitebulb or Screaming Frog gives an overview of which web pages need this kind of optimization.

Technical Web Optimization Difficulty #5

Conflicting nofollow and/or noindex directives in HTML and/or the HTTP header. Google will most probably choose the most restrictive directive when a web page has noindex directives in HTML and /or the HTTP header and it can be applied for multiple no follow directives in HTML or HTTP.

Here is an example of such an unsuitable implementation:

• The content material of the HTTP header says that the web page ought to be indexed and followed.

HTTP/… 200 OK

…

X-Robots-Tag: index, follow

• The content of the meta robots tag in the head says the page ought to not be indexed.

<head>

<title>SEO</title>

<meta name=”robots”content

t=”noindex,follow”>

       …

</head>

• The noindex/nofollow directives need to be referred to just once in both HTML or the HTTP header.

How do you restore this technical search engine marketing issue?

 Get rid of the more directives and leave solely the ones that you want Google and other search engines to accept.

•  Need to use a crawler to extract these challenging URLs.
• Updating manually will help if it is related to a small number of pages. On the other hand, you need to customize the rule that includes this multiple nofollow and/or noindex tags if it is about millions of web pages.

Technical Search Engine Marketing Trouble #6

 Nofollowed and/or disallowed internal links URLs.

Google will not be in a position to examine the content material of the URL and so the ranking will be affected because of the   disallowing of robots.txt) or no link fairness will be handed to the URL.

• Adding a noindex tag to it will solve the problem.
• Disallowing the URL in robots.txt will no longer forestall it from being indexed. 
• No following inner links is typically now not an excellent notion in terms of SEO. 
• SEOs used to nofollow internal links pointing to terms and conditions or privacy policy pages.

How do you fix this technical search engine marketing issue?

Remove the disallowed  URLs from the robots.txt and get rid of the “nofollow” attribute from the inner links. 

• Use Sitebulb to expose you to all the nofollowed inner URLs and their placement.
• Use the NoFollow Chrome extension that will mark nofollowed hyperlinks on any web page you visit.

Technical Website Positioning Problem #7

Low-value interior observed links

Low-value internal links elevate no search engine optimization records about the URLs to which they point. This is a massive waste of search engine marketing potential.

 SEO uses most internal linking. 

Here are examples of low-value links:

• Text hyperlinks with anchor text, such as “Read more”, “Click here”, “Learn more” and so on.
• Graphic links with no ALT attribute. The ALT attribute in graphic links acts as anchor text in textual content links.

While it is not an issue if there are two internal links pointing to a specific page and one link has relevant anchor text, others have “learn more” text.

How do you fix this technical website positioning issue?

 only have high-value textual content and graphic internal links. 

• Eliminate all the “Read more” hyperlinks and substitute them with textual content links with applicable anchor texts. 
• if you are unable to remove then add other high-value textual content hyperlinks pointing to the equal URL. 

As you can add links, one with the “Read more” textual content and the other with descriptive anchor textual content like “technical search engine marketing audit guide”. 

Technical Website Positioning Difficulty #8

No outgoing and/or incoming internal links

When a URL does not have any outgoing or incoming internal links it means it is not passing any fair link from other web pages.

The URL which does not rank in Google, simply adds a “noindex” tag to such URL.

URL is an important web page that brings organic visitors and has high rankings, then the page can also have problems being listed and/or ranked in Google. 

How do you repair this technical search engine optimization issue?

Restoration of this issue can be done by adding text hyperlinks relevant to anchor texts.

• The incoming links are related to different thematically-related pages. 

• The outgoing links are related to other similar web pages. The SEO audit page must be comparable page to my Core Web Vitals audit.

Technical Search Engine Optimization Trouble #9

Internal or/and exterior redirects with issues

Internal and external redirects can lead to a terrible consumer ride and misleading search engine robots.

As canonical URLs, there are a lot of matters that can go incorrect with redirects on the website.

Here are some of the most famous problems in this regard:

• The internal URL redirect returns error status codes like 4XX or 5XX.

• The external URL redirect returns 4XX or 5XX.

• The URL redirects back to itself (a redirect loop). 

when they are related to a large number of URLs it can have a negative impact on the site’s crawl ability and personal experience. Both users and search engine robots might also abandon the website if they come across a misguided redirect.

How do you restore this technical search engine optimization issue?

 Fortunately, any crawler will show you exactly what URLs have this issue. Here is how you fix it: 

• In the case of internal  URLs, you without a doubt want to update the target URLs so that they return fame 200 (OK). 

• For exterior redirected URLs, you have to eliminate the links pointing to these redirected URLs or exchange them with other URLs returning reputation code 200 (OK).   

Technical Search Engine Optimization Difficulty #10

Internal links to redirected URLs

When URLs are redirected to different internal URLs, then they should be redirected to target URLs. 

You don’t have control over the exterior URLs but you have full control over your inner URLs. All internal links should factor into the target URLs. 

How do you restore this technical search engine marketing issue?

 Sitebulb or Screaming Frog makes it easy for fixing and diagnosing. The tool indicates you the redirected URLs,

• Make a list of redirected URLs collectively with their target URLs and the URLs on which they are placed.

• Change all the redirected URLs with target URLs.  Can do it manually or automate it in some way according to the scale of the issue a site is having.

Technical SEO Issue #11

Invalid and/or incorrect hreflang tags 

The international website has issues with the hreflang implementation, not being able to communicate the target language and region of its URLs to Google and other search engines.  

Hreflang tags contain SEO elements which creates different issues which include:

• Hreflang annotations are invalid (either the language or region codes are invalid)
• Hreflang annotations point to noindexed, disallowed, or canonicalized URLs
• Hreflang tags point to URLs returning error codes like 4XX or 5XX
• Hreflang tags point to redirected URLs
• Hreflang tags conflict with each other
• Hreflang tags are indicated using multiple methods (in the head, in the HTTP header, and/or in the XML sitemap)
• Hreflang tags are missing in the case of a multilingual website
• Return tags are missing 
• The X-default language is not indicated

How do you fix this technical SEO issue?

Editing hreflang annotations will erase the existing issues and hreflangs are valid, the point is to correct canonical URLs that return status 200 (OK), contain return tags, and have the X-default language specified.

• Depending on the size of the site, it can be done manually or automatically.
•  The website crawler will identify issues in the hreflang implementations of the site. The International Targeting report in Google Search Console is used to check if hreflang tags work correctly.

Technical SEO Issue #12

The <head> section containing invalid HTML elements

Meta robots or canonical link elements can get unnoticed by search engine crawlers if invalid HTML elements are put in the head, it may break the head or close it too early.

Here is what to watch out for:

• If the site contains a <noscript> tag in the head, then it can only contain elements, such as <meta>, <link>, and <style>.
• Putting other elements like <h1> or <img> into the <noscrip> tag that is placed in the <head> is invalid.
• If the <noscript> tag is placed in the body, then you can put other elements like <img> into it.

How do you fix this technical SEO issue?

Modifying the <head> section of the site can remove all the invalid elements from it.

Depending on the type of the site and whether it uses a popular CMS like WordPress, editing the <head> may differ.

Technical SEO issue #13

URLs available at both HTTP and HTTPS

It can cause both the users and search engines to mistrust the site. In addition, browsers will display warnings that the site is being loaded over HTTP.

 A site has an SSL certificate and loads over HTTPS. All of the HTTP URLs should be permanently (301) redirected to the HTTPS version.  

How do you fix this technical SEO issue?

Fixing means redirecting it permanently to (301) to the HTTPS version.

Any website crawler will show you if there are URLs available at the HTTP version.

The best way to implement redirects is to add them in the .htaccess file.

Technical SEO issue #14

Mixed content and/or internal HTTP links

A site having mixed content and/or internal links to HTTP URLs, then browsers may display red warnings notifying users that the site is not fully secure.

If a site has an SSL certificate, then all of its URLs, resources, and internal links should be HTTPS and if it is not it can be distrusted by both users and search engine crawlers

How do you fix this technical SEO issue?

 All site resources and URLs are 301-redirected to the HTTPS version and replace any HTTP links with the HTTPS version.

Technical SEO Issue #15

Technical duplication of content

 Millions of URLs with identical content can be created by technical duplication of the content. The crawl budget of the site and Google’s ability to efficiently crawl and index the site can be negatively impacted.

When multiple URLs exist in which the letter case is insignificant and contains parameters that do not influence the content of the URL.

How do you fix this technical SEO issue?

Adding the canonical link element pointing to the canonical “main ” version of the URL on all the technically duplicate URLs. 

 Then the technically duplicate URLs will appear under Excluded in the GSC Coverage .