Most Common Technical SEO Mistakes
Use a SSL
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is now an essential addition to all website hosting and technical SEO. Since 2014 Google has favoured websites that have SSL certficate (https://) installed. Make sure your website has it in place.
Broken Redirects
Broken redirects are redirects that generate errors (such as 404s) or are pointing to the wrong place. This normally happens when a business redesigns or does maintenance on their website. The old Urls still hold authority and it is essential that these are now pointed to the new Urls. If this task is not carried out, there is a good chance of a drop in rankings and traffic.
Broken Links
Broken links are not only bad for the user experience on a website but also for SEO. They send signals to search engines that the website is low quality and therefore outranked by competing websites.
Reasons for broken links can be changed URLs, deleted content or spelling mistakes. Check for broken links regularly is good technical SEO practice.
Bad Spam Signals
Not so common nowadays but there are still websites that have hidden links in their content. These are seen by search engines as spam and can have a very negative affect on their technical SEO performance. Remove all instances of hidden links and content on your site.
Site Speed
Google has indicated that site speed is one of the signals used by their algorithms to rank websites on their searches. There are a number of reasons why a website could be slow from server performance and image sizes to messy code and database issues. You can check your site speed using free tool, GT Metrix.
Is your site fully responsive?
Nearly 60% of Google searches are now from mobile devices and it is still quite common for websites not to be fully responsive. These websites are massively missing out and are also now being punished by Google in the rankings. Mobile friendly sites are a lot more successful online, so if your website is not fully responsive now is the time for a redesign.
