Technical Errors On The Website That Block SEO Optimization

Wrong setting of page responses

Remember to configure the response codes of the server correctly. Sometimes you have to choose between them - it is important to make an informed choice.

301 redirect

Indicates to search robots that the page has moved and is at a different address. It will be an error not to set a redirect on:

• Gluing the mirrors of websites
• Moving to a different domain
• Moving pages to another category
• Canonizing "/" at the end of the address
• Changing the URL endings (for example, from htm to html)
• Sometimes it makes sense to set up redirects for product pages that are no longer in stock. It is reasonable to redirect visitors to a higher category or page of similar products. In such cases, 301 redirect - an alternative to error 404, which will be described below.

302 redirect

Unlike the 301 redirect, this is a temporary call forwarding. Pages from which users are redirected to another address are not removed from the index. Possible situations that make rejection of the 302 redirect an error:

• It is necessary that the "source" continues to be indexed by the subscriber
• It is necessary to temporarily hide from visitors any page and offer them an alternative
• The old page needs to be improved
• The product is temporarily absent

Error 404

This is the server response code, meaning that the requested page is missing. The causes of the 404 error can be many. It is important to configure the page so that the visitor does not leave the site, but continues working with it. This has a direct impact on behavioral factors.

In addition, you should monitor the number of missing pages. Problems with the code or a virus attack can lead to a sharp jump in the number of elements. Instead of scanning significant pages, robots will spend a crawling budget bypassing non-existent ones.

The big mistake will be the wrong choice between 301, 302 and 404 codes. If the page is completely deleted, the 404 response is required. Sometimes a mistake is made to set up a 302 redirect to a technical page on a 404 page. As a result, the "source" is stored in the index, and the robots spend resources over and over again to bypass the empty spaces.

Error 500

500 server error is usually internal. This means that its solution depends on the owner of the Internet resource or its ISP.

If the site reports an HTTP error 500, there may be many reasons for this and it is not so easy to determine them. For example, with bug 404, everything is more or less clear: it's the changed URL of the page or broken permalinks.

The server's response code 500 can be called:

• a .htaccess file corruption
• script delay
• an incorrect update of the WordPress system
• incorrectly installed plug-ins
• outdated version of PHP

That's not all, to get to the root of it, you need to do a deep diagnosis and find out what's wrong. It's best to restore the sequence of steps from the moment you login to the moment the error occurs. You need to remember what changes were made, what exactly could have caused error 500 to appear. Finding out what caused it makes the recovery process much easier.

It is necessary to understand well in what situations this or that redirect is appropriate.

301 redirect - constant redirect, 302 - temporary redirect,

404 - for all deleted and non-existent pages, 500 - script denial for security reasons.

The task of rel="canonical" attribute is to point to the source page (canonical page). But the site can be duplicated content. Without the attribute, canonical robots can not determine which pages to give priority.

Search engines have a very negative attitude to doubles. And it does not matter if the content is copied from another resource or it is copying within one site. Sometimes SEO-specialists are saved with 301 redirects. But usually, redirection is inappropriate and it is necessary to leave the duplicates for visitors. In these cases and use canonical.

Elimination of duplicates is one of the most important optimization points.

Lack of noindex

To ensure that service information and duplicate content is not indexed within a particular page by robots, there is a noindex tag. Everything that is concluded between <noindex>...</noindex>, Yandex does not take into account when ranking a page. At the same time, the content remains visible to users.

Let's give an example when the absence of a tag can lead to optimization problems.

The site contains a through block with the advantages of the company or any other information repeating on all pages. In this case, it is appropriate to enclose this block between noindex tags so that there is no "blurring" of content relevance. For the user, the page will still be convenient, and search engines will ignore the phrase.

But you should not abuse the opportunity. Yandex already quite well distinguish service data from user-generated content. But the human factor can hurt. For example, if you forget about the closing tag. It happens that along with technical information from indexing inadvertently close useful content.

It is necessary to carefully monitor the matching of closing and opening tags.