SEO 

6 Most Common Website Errors That Affect SEO

Darci Patten

Be it any error, at the end of the day, your website will decrease. If it keeps occurring, you may lose your ranks on online search engine, and all your SEO efforts will enter vain.

This blog site will provide you a concept about the most typical site mistakes that impact SEO, how to repair site errors, and far more.

Broken Links: Deal With them Immediately

When clicked on, a broken link does not take users to their wanted web page.

How is it bad for SEO?

When Google web spiders or Google Bots index the website, they go to these links to gather information.

It’s an indication for bad SEO if they land on a link that’s broken. This indicates you will not be ranking high up on online search engine till you repair this broken link.

Fixing the Broken Link Problem

To repair a broken link, you will need to discover one initially. Google will not appear in your dream and inform you which link’s broken, right?
The very best method to inspect a site for errors and broken links is through Google Analytics or SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.
Make a list of all the broken links you discover. It’s now time to do something about it versus these links.

Here are ways you can fix the broken links:

  • Replace Broken Links with Live Ones: This is the best method if you don’t have several broken links on your website
  • Remove All Broken Links: If you observe that the links are pretty old (4-5 years old), just remove them
  • Reach Out to the Linking Site: If it’s a broken backlink, contact the site you linked to and ask them to fix the link
  • Redirection: In case of a broken internal link, 301 redirect the link to the live one

TLS Certificate Error: An Important One

TLS is a digital certificate released by a Certificate Authority (CA). It represents that the owner owns a specific domain, and it’s a safe and secure one.

In easy terms, if you do not have a TLS certificate, your website would have a URL beginning with HTTP instead of HTTPS.

HTTP (hypertext transfer procedure) is old innovation and disregards how the information takes a trip online from one gadget to another.

HTTPS (hypertext transfer procedure safe) secures the information and secures transmitted information from any hacks.

In 2014, Google revealed that they would focus on ranking sites with HTTPS URL above HTTP.

When you get a void TLS certificate error on your site, it could be for lots of factors:

  • Misconfiguration of Certificate: If you don’t follow all the steps correctly, manual installation of the certificate can give you this error.
  • Domain Mismatch: In case of a mismatch between the bought domain name and domain name you’ve issued a TLS certificate to, you will get an error.
  • Identity Verifying Issues: If the certificate authority can’t verify your identity, you can’t install the certificate
  • Incorrect Date or Time On Your Desktop: TLS certificate are issued on a timely basis, so if the date and time on your desktop isn’t correct, you won’t be able to issue it
  • Old Version Certificate: If your certificate leverages Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1), it might be flagged as invalid as SHA-1 is outdated

Resolving TLS Certificate Issues

  • Check date and time on your desktop
  • Check for configuration errors and vulnerabilities with online SSL tools
  • Check domain mismatch
  • Get the certificate from a trustworthy and established CA

Website Load Speed: Don’t Keep Your Visitors Waiting

According to Think With Google, with a boost in load time by simply 2 seconds, the bounce rate can increase by 32%.

Google has actually likewise made it apparent that page load speed is among the important ranking elements that it utilizes to rank a website.

There might be a great deal of factors for bad site filling speed, such as:

  • Unoptimized images
  • Javascript issues
  • Excessive HTTP requests
  • Your website doesn’t leverage any caching tool
  • Lack of gZIP compression
  • Too many ads
  • Lack of CDN service
  • Bad hosting

How to Reduce Page Load Speed to Improve SEO?

  • Choose a hosting that’s performance-focused
  • Compress and optimize all website images
  • Try reducing redirects
  • Enable browser caching
  • Minify CSS, Javascript, and HTML files
  • Eliminate unnecessary plugins and keep everything updated

Mobile Compatibility: Don’t Miss It

It’s obvious that a badly enhanced site for mobile will not rank on Google. In 2013, Google revealed that it would punish sites with a bad mobile experience.
So when you release a site, make certain the mobile optimization remains in location.
How do you do it?
Here are some suggestions:

  • Test your website with the Google page speed insight tool and see what’s wrong
  • If WordPress powers your site, use a mobile-responsive theme
  • Redesign pop-ups for mobile devices

Duplicate Content: Time to Revamp Your Content Plan

Duplicate content doesn’t affect your SEO too much, but it results in poor search engine rankings.

When you have a lot of similar content throughout your website, it’s called canonicalization.

Duplicate content raises three major issues for Google crawlers and bots:

  • The bots get confused between which page to include/exclude from their indices
  • The bots don’t know if they’re supposed to direct the link metrics to one page or keep it separate
  • They get confused between which version should rank for the targeted keyword

Some of the reasons why your website generates duplicate content unknowingly are:

  • URL variations for the same page
  • Your site has different versions www.site.com & site.com
  • Targeting the same keyword number of times with writing almost similar content

Resolving Duplicate Content Issue As A Webmaster

  • 301 redirect is the best method to get rid of duplicate content
  • Use Rel= canonical to give search engine bots a hint of treating the page as a copy of the specified URL
  • Leverage the code <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”> to tell search engine bots not to crawl the page

Website Errors Codes that Might Affect Your SEO

Site error codes do not straight affect your SEO, however there’s a possibility of losing traffic due to these errors. Let’s go over a few of the typical errors you may come across as a web designer.

404 Not Found

It’s said that ~73% of visitors who reach the 404 error pages leave the website and won’t be returning to it ever. Fixing 404 errors isn’t hard, but people ignore it now and then.

A 404 error is a standard HTTP status code. It’s displayed when a user tries to access a URL that doesn’t exist. It can also pop up if the server can’t find the requested resource at that moment.

You must be wondering how to find 404 errors on the website? The best way to do it is via Google Search Console. Another way of doing this is by using a website error checker tool like Screaming Frog.

400 Bad Request

A 400 Bad Request error pops up when the request made by the client is wrong, corrupt, or the server can’t understand it.

Note that this is a client-side error. So there’s not much you can do about it.

The error can occur due to the following reasons:

  • Wrongly written URL or the URL contains unrecognizable characters
  • Invalid or expired cookie
  • You try to upload a file to your website that’s too large

To fix 400 Bad Request errors:

  • Clear browser cache and cookies
  • Flush your DNS
  • Restart your device and try again

500 Internal Server Error

When you see a 500 error page, this means your web server is facing problems, but it can’t pinpoint the root cause of the error.

This error can be caused by:

  • Broken .htaccess file
  • Some permission error
  • Broken third-party theme or plugin
  • PHP memory limit might’ve exceeded

To tackle this error:

  • Try refreshing the page
  • Wait for some time and come back later
  • Leverage the tool down for everyone or just me to see if the website is down for you or everyone
  • Delete your browser cookies

403 Forbidden

You see a 403 error when someone tries accessing a webpage that they’re not allowed to.

There are only two possible reasons why your visitors see this error:

  • You, as a webmaster, have set up proper access permissions and decided to keep the website private
  • You have set up permission improperly, and the visitors getting denied when they really shouldn’t be

As a webmaster, you only have one option to overcome this error. Check if you accidentally enabled access permission on the webpage.

503 Service Unavailable

When your webserver can’t handle a request at that moment, it displays a 503 error.

There are five things you can do to rectify this error:

  • You can reboot your server to release the congestion in the server chains
  • Ensure if there’s any maintenance going on with your webserver
  • Check your firewall configuration and see if that’s down – try fixing it
  • Check application logs and server logs
  • Check your website’s code for any bugs