Building a website involves more than just writing appealing code; it also involves making it readily accessible, easy-to-find and easy-to-interpret for search engines. Technical SEO helps developers eliminate possible issues impacting website discovery and usability.
Some website issues typically occur during development and may require special attention and optimization.
Five Most Common Technical SEO Issues Developers Should be Aware Of
1. JavaScript Rendering Capabilities
Modern JS frameworks allow developers to build websites blistering-fast. However, the heavy reliance on JS may impact the ability of search engines to properly render the web page,
particularly when it comes to content delivery. To avoid JS-related issues, the website content itself (not embedded within additional scripts) should consistently be rendered without the need for user interaction. Wherever possible, pages should be crawled using server-side rendering or static HTML.
Google Search Console offers a useful URL Inspection tool that allows website owners and developers to see the contents of a web page the way Google sees them.
2. Page Performance and Core Web Vitals
Website performance is one of the most crucial aspects of technical SEO. It impacts user experience, bounce rate, overall session duration and influences a website’s ability to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Large image files, bloated JS code, long CSS load times and other performance-related issues may be detected using Core Web Vitals.
Heavy pages frustrate users, leading them to leave the site prematurely, thus raising a page’s bounce rate. Developers should optimize large images, reduce the size of JS and CSS files, enable browser caching and ensure that the code is minified wherever possible for better compression. There are a variety of online tools that help web developers identify performance issues, namely, Lighthouse and Page-Speed Insights.
3. Internal Linking Chain Issues
Internal links help search engines discover new content, and help users explore a site and its material. Link chains may break during development, redesign or rebranding processes.
If a linking chain is broken, it becomes impossible to reach the target page. Internal linking chains should also be considered for redirect chains, as website users may struggle to reach a desired page. Developers should consistently monitor their internal linking chains for dead ends, fix outdated URLs and redirect them to relevant pages that correspond to their contents. Moreover, all significant website pages should be linked-to from relevant resources.
4. Indexing Issues
Websites have pages that remain invisible to search engines. This may occur due to technical errors or incorrect indexing directives. First, the robots.txt file should be examined to ensure that no URL parameters, paths or directories are blocked from being crawled by search engine bots.
Additionally, a noindex robots meta directive should not be placed on a page, as this will prevent it from being indexed by compliant search engines. Developers should always double-check if the robots.txt file has been updated correctly before deploying updates or redesigning a website. The same applies to robots meta headers.
5. Missing Structured Data
When developing websites, it is important for developers to mark up structured data in their pages in a search engine-friendly manner so that the contents may be better understood and indexed by search engines.
It is necessary to use the correct JSON-LD code for Schema.org. It is equally important to ensure that the data markup corresponds to the visual content on a webpage. Structured data markup should not be abused, as it may raise spam flags and do little to improve a page’s SERP snippet. Google offers a special tool, Rich Results Test that allows developers to fix any incorrect data markup.
Final Remarks
Technical SEO is best practiced during development, rather than at later stages. Correctly rendered pages, fast servers and optimized content delivery bear long-term benefits for a website. Developers should ensure that the website contains no broken internal links, uses proper redirects and follows indexing best practices.
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