If you’re noticing that applications are dropping, search engine positions are dropping, it’s possible that your website is suffering from technical, adaptive or even dangerous errors. In this article, we’ll look at why checking your site for errors is vital to business success, what problems are most common, and how you can (or better – should) fix them.
Users visit the site, but leave without making a purchase.
It takes too long to load, and even the most patient customers don't wait.
Competitors are outranking you despite your best SEO efforts.
Customers see the threat warning and leave.
What are some of the problems that arise?
A website is a complex ecosystem where even small errors can have huge consequences. It is necessary to determine what kind of error occurred. Do not rule out that there may be several errors.
Technical Errors
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Code Errors (HTML, CSS, JavaScript):
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Incorrect syntax, unclosed tags, script errors leading to incorrect element rendering, functionality failures, or even website inoperability.
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Outdated code that may affect security and compatibility with modern browsers.
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Server Errors:
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Errors such as 404 (page not found), 500 (internal server error), and other HTTP status errors.
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Slow server performance leading to long page loading times.
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Improper server configuration affecting site security and availability.
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Performance Issues:
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Slow website loading, which may deter visitors and negatively affect SEO.
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Large images not optimized for the web.
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Inefficient code that slows down the website.
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Mobile Adaptation:
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The website displays poorly on mobile devices (non-responsive design).
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Navigation issues on mobile devices.
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Security Issues:
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Vulnerabilities in the code that can be exploited by attackers.
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Lack of an SSL certificate (HTTPS), making data transmission insecure.
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Errors in website content
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Spelling and Grammar Errors:
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Errors in the text that make the website appear unprofessional and hinder information perception.
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Outdated Information:
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Obsolete data that may mislead visitors.
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Duplicate Content:
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Repeated text on different pages of the website that can negatively affect SEO.
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Broken Links:
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Links leading to non-existent pages or other websites that may ruin the user experience.
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SEO Errors
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Indexing Issues:
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The website is not indexed by search engines or is indexed incorrectly.
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The presence of a robots.txt file that blocks indexing.
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Unoptimized Meta Tags:
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Missing or improperly filled meta tags (title and description), which are important for SEO.
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Website Structure Issues:
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Illogical structure that makes navigation and indexing difficult.
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Missing sitemap.
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Missing Keywords:
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Insufficient use of keywords in the content.
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Link Profile Issues:
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The presence of low-quality links that can negatively affect ranking.
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How do you identify and correct errors?
Check for technical errors yourself
- Use tools like
- Google Search Console
- Screaming Frog
- Ahrefs
to look for broken links, indexing errors and other technical issues.
- Check your loading speed with
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- GTmetrix
Analyse adaptability
- Check how your website looks on different devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop).
- Use Google Mobile-Friendly Test to analyse mobile optimisation.
Security Audit
- Check if your website has an SSL certificate (HTTPS) installed.
- Scan for vulnerabilities using tools such as Sucuri SiteCheck.
If a site has security issues, don’t risk fixing them yourself after all.
This is an area for professionals..
Ongoing monitoring and support
- Set up regular site audits. It is best to entrust this to an agency or specialist so that small problems are not missed.
- Implement data backup systems in case of hacking or failures.
Technical SEO audit
What is a technical SEO audit of a website?
A website technical audit is a set of activities aimed at determining the efficiency of a website’s performance from a technical perspective. There are no unified standards, so specialists offer their own list of services and parameters for checks. This is perhaps the simplest block of work that you can try to do yourself. Wherever you conduct the check, a technical audit includes the following key aspects:
- audit of the robots.txt file and the sitemap.xml file,
- search for broken links and duplicate content,
- checking the loading speed of the resource,
- analyzing the page size of the website,
- checking the “user-friendliness” of page URLs,
- verifying the page’s encoding,
- auditing the text and code of the page,
- analyzing JavaScript and CSS, and checking other technical parameters
Regular website audits should be performed regardless of whether you make changes to the website or not. Broken links, duplicates, and other issues can arise without your involvement and at the most inconvenient times. Note that technically faulty websites do not appear in the top 10 of search engines. Only high-quality resources make it there! Therefore, if you are aiming for the top, audits must be conducted regularly.
Checking the site for errors should be done regularly as part of SEO promotion of the site in search engines if you do not want unpleasant surprises in indexing.
Even when SEO optimisation of your website is complete – SEO site audit is necessary, and regularly. Errors on the site will appear over time, regardless of the webmaster, they must be detected and eliminated in a timely manner. Otherwise, demotion in Google and Yandex search results is simply guaranteed.
Audit of robots.txt file
The robots.txt file contains instructions for robots, primarily the robots of Google, Yandex and other search engines. Before it starts crawling a website, the search engine robot analyses the instructions in this file.
The instructions in this file either allow or prohibit search engines to index certain pages or folders of the site.
Technical audit of the site search engines start with the file robots.txt
Checking the sitemap
A sitemap is a file in XML format that contains the addresses of all those pages of a website that should be scanned by search engines. There is no consensus among optimisers about the importance of this file. Nevertheless, it is better to have it.
Sometimes it happens that the webmaster has added a page to the sitemap in order for the page to be analysed by search engines, but at the same time robots.txt prohibits the indexing of this page. The site audit starts with robots.txt, then the sitemap is analysed, and only then each individual page.
Search for duplicates and broken links
Broken links and duplicates on a website are a serious problem in SEO promotion. They should be eliminated immediately and make sure that they do not reappear.
The problem of broken links is probably one of the most common. Even on reputable sites, they occur. You should try to identify and correct them in time, otherwise you can forget about the top 10.
Duplicates, as well as broken links, can greatly affect the position of the site. Duplicates are pages that have the same or very similar content.
Take advantage of a validation tool like Screaming Frog.
Checking for broken links
Broken links on the site, or in other words broken links, are very harmful to the site. They are harmful from the point of view of the user and from the point of view of search engines like Google and Yandex. If a user clicks on a broken link – he gets to the 404 error page. Such behaviour of the site does not like users. And a large number of broken links causes irritation and distrust to the site.
We’ve written above about validation tools such as:
- Google Search Console
- Screaming Frog
- Ahrefs
Search engines also do not like sites with broken links. The presence of such links indicates that the site is not engaged. Search engines demote such sites in search results. If a site has broken links, it must be fixed. Otherwise, it will inevitably affect the search position of such systems as Google and Yandex.
Checking for broken links should be done on a regular basis!
Errors on the site will appear on their own. The appearance of errors will be immediately noticed by search engines, as a result, the site may drop positions in the search engine.
Therefore, SEO analysis should be carried out regularly as an SEO specialist, as well as the owner of the site. Regular checking of the site for errors is the key to stable positions in search.
Differences between a technical site audit and other types of audits.
Search SEO audit checks the content of the site, page titles and descriptions, links, images and their attributes, etc.
Usability audit helps to understand how user-friendly and understandable the site is to the user. The clearer, simpler and more convenient the site, the higher the conversion rate of the site.
Marketing audit – checking the effectiveness from the point of view of the market.
SEO analysis of the site for errors
Website pages are analysed according to more than 40 evaluation criteria. Main parameters:
- Analysing internal links (and weights)
- Check images, attributes, dimensions
- Search for broken links and images
- Search for duplicate titles and meta tags
- Technical audit of JavaScript and CSS files
- Check HTML code and text metrics
- HML sitemap and Robots.txt analysis
Check the internal optimisation of a website, search for broken links and duplicates, analyse a competitor’s website. To simplify the work there are various online services for checking, they are convenient for auditing large and medium-sized websites, but mostly paid. Smaller sites can be easier to check manually.
SEO audit of titles and descriptions of website pages
Audit of titles and descriptions is very important for promotion and, accordingly, SEO audit of the site. It is this information that users see in search results and choose your resource to go to.
What you need to analyse:
- H1 is mandatory and H2 is desirable
- title
- descriptions
What to check for:
- duplicates
- Completeness (fill in everything “empty”)
- keyword
It is also necessary to recheck and, if necessary, adjust the number of characters to meet the requirements of the PS. We recommend using keywords at the beginning of texts for guaranteed display in the minimum, medium and maximum length of Title, Description, H1, H2. The value of titles and descriptions for SEO is of great importance, so they should be used to the maximum.
SEO image optimisation
Pay special attention to images, especially when talking about an online shop or catalogue. This is a very good way to attract and keep the user’s attention.
A well technically designed website page contains 3-5 images and more if the content requires it. You should make sure
- no broken images
- too heavy (slow to load)
- all Alt and Title attributes are filled in.
Alt attribute of an image is a description of the image, which becomes visible in case the image could not be displayed. The Alt attribute text will be shown in place of such a picture.
The Title attribute of the image is a description of the image, which becomes visible if you put the mouse cursor over the image.
From an SEO point of view, it is important not only to fill in all attributes, but also to use keywords when filling in this data.