Technical SEO problems can stop search engines from ranking your pages, and they can also potentially wreck the user experience on your website. These issues can be as small as the meta tags that you set up on each webpage, and sometimes, technical SEO problems are even caused by default settings on your website that you never touched.
Finding these problems and deciding which ones to fix first is a core part of maintaining a healthy website. However, to make the most of your time and energy, you’ll need to know how to prioritize the severe problems over the ones that you may be able to wait a while to fix.
Here are some simple best practices to follow for prioritizing and fixing common technical SEO issues.
How To Fix Technical SEO Issues: What Do You Do First?
Technical SEO issues are any problems with your site’s setup that keep search engines from crawling and indexing your pages. Like we discussed in this post’s introduction, these problems can also affect the user experience on your website, but they tend to hide in the backend.
Some of the most common technical SEO issues are broken links, duplicate pages, slow load speeds, and pages that are blocked from search (noindexed) by accident. Here’s a brief breakdown of these:
- Broken links are any clickable elements of your site that lead to a page that doesn’t load properly. Links that lead to a live page but land on the wrong page could also be considered broken.
- Duplicate pages are multiple instances of the same content published at different places on your site. This gaffe can confuse search engines and make it harder for your content to rank.
- Slow load speeds are often caused by bulky and uncompressed content on your site’s pages. This is the main technical SEO issue that will affect UX, not just crawlability.
- Metadata issues like wrongly placed noindex tags can direct search engine crawlers away from your pages, which means they may not get seen in search results at all.
In addition, one of the most common metadata issues is missing title tags and meta descriptions. These are fields that you fill in manually while publishing pages, and they give readers and crawlers clear information about your content.
To fix any of these issues, you’ll need to work with someone who can confidently navigate the backend of your website. If you don’t feel comfortable with doing that yourself, it may be time to pull in an expert digital marketing or web design specialist.
Fixing Technical SEO Issues: Where To Look?
An SEO audit is the best way to diagnose problems with your site that may be limiting traffic and conversions. You can run an audit using web-based programs like SEMRush or Ahrefs, which crawl your sitemap and give you back a detailed report on necessary fixes. You can also audit your site on a flyover level using Google Search Console.
Using Google Search Console To Check Your Site Health
Search Console is free, and its data comes straight from Google. You can use its Page Indexing report to see all of the URLs on your site that Google left out of its index, along with the reasons why. Any pages listed as unindexed here have no chances of being served in search results until they are indexed.
When looking in Google Search Console, check for core pages on your site that are listed as “Crawled, currently not indexed” or “Discovered, currently not indexed.” These pages may not have technical issues, but Google has not yet started serving them in search results. You can leave them be for now, but you might want to consider updating their content if they have sat unindexed for several months.
On the other hand, URLs in Google Search Console that are listed as unindexed because of a redirect or a noindex tag should be addressed right away. You can improve these pages’ visibility to Google’s crawlers by changing their metadata and adjusting their canonical URLs if needed.
When Should You Run a Full Site Audit?
A crawler like SEMRush’s Site Audit tool will follow every link on your site the way a search engine bot would and find any technical issues. This process can catch problems that Search Console can’t, like internal links that point to redirects, orphan pages, and pages that don’t have title tags or meta descriptions.
It’s best to run an audit like this at least once every few months for your site. It’s a more in-depth process that can leave you with greater insight than Google Search Console, but not everything listed as an issue will necessarily stop your pages from being crawled, indexed, or ranked.
Which Technical SEO Fixes Should You Make First?
After you run an audit, sort the issues on the report based on two questions: how much does it hurt your visibility, and how much work will it take to fix?
Crawling and Indexing Problems Come First
Crawling and indexing issues hurt visibility and are quick and easy to fix, so they should be prioritized first. To resolve these, you’ll need to go to the affected pages and remove any barriers to indexing in the metadata (most often, this would be a noindex tag). From there, the next step is to manually submit the pages for indexing via Google Search Console.
Other metadata fixes are also a high priority here. Fill in missing title tags and meta descriptions, remove duplicate metadata, and set canonical URLs when there are multiple versions of a page on your site.
Focus on Your Homepage and Other Key Pages First
If you have limited time and resources, prioritize making technical fixes to your homepage, service pages, and other core pages on your site. In addition, make any fixes you can to content templates that affect multiple pages at once.
On these pages, prioritize speeding up load speeds by compressing your images and making other small lifts that can shave seconds off of the wait. If your homepage loads slowly, it will affect user experience more than just about any other issue we’ve discussed here.
Need Help With Your Technical SEO?
Our team runs technical audits, arranges our findings based on their impact, and makes the fixes as part of our SEO services for businesses. We go through this process regularly for all of our clients, proactively spotting and resolving issues before they can hurt your rankings.
If your traffic has slowed down or you’re overwhelmed by a long list of technical fixes, reach out to our team, and we’d be happy to talk about a solution.