Many people don’t know this, but SEO is split into really two disciplines. There’s off-page SEO which is all the link building and cold email campaigns that you’ve probably heard about. There are a ton of articles out there describing how to get links and how to create the best evergreen content that would be shared the most.
What people tend to overlook is their on-page SEO, which is optimizing the various elements of one’s site to be able to rank highly on search engines. There are a variety of typical errors that sites have because the code on the site is not compatible or search-engine friendly. Your site might look really pretty but if your code is all out of place and Google can’t crawl it correctly then it won’t show up on the first page.
One issue is that your site might not be mobile-friendly, and if that’s the case then it could negatively impact your rankings. Mobile web use comprises 30-40% of all website visits today so if your site isn’t optimized for mobile then your mobile visitors will leave as soon as they enter the site. Here’s a great way to test how mobile friendly your site is – Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Another common error is when Google can’t access your pages. Make sure that your Googlebot can access all the pages on your site, make sure that your site map is updated, and check it regularly.
The security of your site is another important factor that Google recently started ranking sites for. It’s really important that your site is secure and uses the secure HTTPS protocol. Ask your web hosting provider for a security certificate if you don’t already have one.
One of our favorite errors is broken links or 404 errors. Google checks every page on your site and will compile all the links that are broken. The more broken links you have the more negative impact this has on your rank. It’s important to check all the links regularly on the site and make sure that your website map is up to date.
Each URL should have a unique meta tag. So, if two or more pages on your site have the same meta tag Google won’t rank them separately but will only display one of the pages on the search engine. So, make sure to check all of the meta tags. You can find it in Google Console under “HTML Improvements”.
Last but not least, a site’s speed is a huge factor in its’ rank. Google wants to display all the fastest sites first, so if your site is slow then your rank will be negatively impacted. Check all the images and videos on your site and make sure that they are all compressed. To check your site speed head over to Google’s Speed Test.
Conclusion
There are a variety of issues that technical SEO fixes on your site. There could be a problem with a page on the site that prevents it from being crawlable by Google. There could be a security issue where pages are not secure. And sometimes pages are not mobile-friendly which can greatly impact their search engine rankings.
Unfortunately, a lot of sites have never had their code tested by a developer. And with technical SEO small issues tend to form into larger ones. So, it’s really important to get a technical SEO audit for your site and get a developer to look at all of your code.
That’s why every company needs some technical SEO services to check all the code and fix any issues that come up.
