Common Technical SEO Issues Hurting Your Website

If you want your web pages to rank well in search engines, it’s important to have some background knowledge of search engine optimisation (SEO). Without this, website owners may become stuck when they face SEO issues. That’s no surprise though, considering the average SEO checklist shows dozens of issues to address before your site can fully succeed. 

But what SEO issues should be focusing on?

Here are some of the most common technical SEO issues and how they can affect the way you rank on search engines.

Duplicated Content

Google defines duplicated content as “substantive blocks of content within or across a domain that either completely matches other content or are appreciably similar.”

One of the most common SEO issues affecting websites is duplicated content. Though Google won’t penalise you for duplicate content that doesn’t mean you can just ignore it. 

Having duplicate content on your site means you lose the opportunity to choose what page you want to rank for. Search engines won’t know which pages are your landing pages in SERPs, causing those pages to start to compete with one another. Search engines are also designed to specifically make the web a better place for its users. Meaning valuable, unique content is loved by both search engines and users. 

Missing Alt Tags and Broken Images 

Images are a big part of content marketing, but they also bring some major SEO issues. Research has shown that most websites have images with missing alt tags and another 10% with broken internal images. 

Alt tags are important for image search. Though search engines have gotten a lot smarter, alt tags help them recognise what the image is about. 

Alt tags give written descriptions of images, which help search engines categorise them. That’s one reason why your alt tag images should include your SEO keyword phrases. 

Alt tags also help visually impaired people who use screen readers. Search engines take user experience seriously, so having images without alt tags won’t be considered a website that provides value to the user. This can cause a higher bounce rate, resulting in poor search engine performance. 

Broken images have the same issues as broken links. Broken links are dead ends for both users and search engines. This can cause search engines to downgrade your site because of poor user experience. 

Title Tags

Search engines use title tags or page titles to know what each page is about. Title tags are what appear at the top of the search listing and are one of the most important elements for SEO on your page. Correctly optimising your title tags can make a positive impact on your rankings. 

There are at least 4 common SEO problems related to title tags: 

1. Duplicate title tags
2. Overly long title tags
3. Missing title tags
4. Too short title tags 

Remember that Google wants to deliver fresh unique content to users. Missing or duplicated title tags don’t provide users or search engines with any relevant information about a page’s contents. They also don’t show what value the pages offer.

The length of your title tag is important because it affects how much of the title is shown on the search results. Depending on what device is being used, Google may show 70-71 characters. Making it important to keep key information and key phrases within that range. 

Broken internal and external links

Broken links can be a big SEO problem. Having a couple of broken links might not be a problem, but if you have hundreds of them you’re in potential danger. If a user sees a 404 page instead of the information they want, this causes a traffic dropdown and makes your user think your site has low quality. 

Broken links are also wasting your crawl budget. Each time Google’s bot visits your site, they don’t crawl your entire side. If you have broken links you’re running the risk of diverting the bots’ attention from your page, causing your page to not get crawled or indexed. 

H1 Tag Problems

There should be at least one H1 tag on your pages, often they’re the title of your content. Header tags offer a useful hierarchy for both search engines and your users.

Keep in mind that title tags and header tags are different. Title tags appear in search results, header tags are what the reader sees on your page. 

Low Word Count

Word count is a fiddly SEO metric, on the one hand, there isn’t a minimum word count for a page. On the other, Google is known to favour content with more depth, which longword content has. 

You should be doing everything you can to ensure that you are giving your content depth to make it more valuable for readers. 

Outrank your competition 

At RankingCo we offer an in-depth technical audit to help identify any technical issues to ensure your website is in its best possible shape to reach your target audience. We look at your backlinks, site speed, pages titles, content layout and so much more! 

We’re a team of Google Certified Individuals who are here to give you the support you need to boost your business online. SEO is just one of our digital marketing services. 

So start investing in your business with us! Reach out to our team on 1300 247 045 today or contact us for a complimentary audit of your website.