A well-optimized website is essential for higher search rankings, user experience, and overall digital success. SEMrush Site Audit is a powerful tool that helps identify various technical and on-page SEO issues that may hinder your website’s performance. However, knowing how to fix those errors and what they are about is what is important to make your site’s health better.
In this article, we will explore the top 10 types of errors commonly found in SEMrush Site Audit, their impact, and how to resolve them effectively.
1. Broken Links (4xx and 5xx Errors)
Broken links refer to a webpage that links to a non-existent or inaccessible page, which means it is an error of type 4xx (client-side errors) or 5xx (server-side errors). It affects the user experience crawlability and indexability of the search engine. To solve this problem, SEMrush’s Broken Pages report helps identify dead links, and one should set up 301 redirects for pages that have moved, and the server should be correctly configured to prevent 5xx errors.
2. Duplicate Content
It refers to the condition whereby the same content or almost the same content exists on various pages of a site or across multiple sites. The search engine is confused and usually penalizes by ranking it down. A good way of combating this problem is by applying canonical tags (rel=”canonical”) to specify which is the primary version, rewriting the content for uniqueness, and using 301 redirects to bring together all duplicate pages.
3. Missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions enhance click-through rate (CTR), as they contain a brief description of the page’s content that appears in the search results. If meta descriptions are missing or duplicated, no user engagement occurs on the respective pages. Thus, each page should have an exclusive and informative meta-description comprising 150 to 160 characters that describes what is on that page. A Meta Tags report in SEMrush can identify if meta descriptions are missing or duplicates.
4. Slow Page Speed
A slow website affects user experience and search engine rankings. Google views Core Web Vitals as a significant ranking factor; such that websites that have worse page loading speeds are unlikely to rank well.
To improve page speed, website owners should compress images, minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files, use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and enable browser caching to load less slowly for returning visitors.
5. Unoptimised Images
Very large, uncompressed images will make your website considerably slow. Images that don’t have alt text decrease accessibility and image search visibility as well. To solve this, website owners will compress the images using TinyPNG and add really descriptive alt text while using next-gen formats such as WebP for compression and quality.
6. HTTP vs. HTTPS Issues
Google favors HTTPS websites due to their security. If a website has mixed content with both HTTP and HTTPS URLs, users may encounter warning messages when accessing that website, hence gradually losing trust and rankings. So, the first step to correcting the problem is installing an SSL certificate, updating all internal links to HTTPS, and using SEMrush’s Site Audit to find and replace mixed content. It is also recommended that the HTTP pages be redirected to their HTTPS versions using 301 redirects.
7. Orphaned pages (Pages Without Internal Links)
Since these pages are not linked to/from other pages within the website, orphaned pages are really hard to discover and index for search engines. This usually happens because of a bad site architecture or accidental disconnections from the navigation menus. The best fix for this would be to utilize SEMrush’s Crawlability report to determine orphaned pages, add internal links from relevant high-ranking pages, and include orphaned pages in the XML sitemap for proper indexing.
8. Incorrect Use of Robots.txt and Noindex Tags
A misconfigured robots.txt file or noindex tags can block critical pages from being indexed by search engines, leading to significant traffic losses. To avoid this issue, website owners should regularly check their robots.txt file to ensure important pages are not accidentally blocked. Google Search Console’s Coverage report can help identify pages that have been mistakenly noindexed, allowing for necessary corrections.
9. Mobile Usability Issues
Websites that are not mobile-friendly might face difficulty ranking in search results due to Google’s mobile-first indexing. The text is too small, the clickable elements are too close together, and improper viewport settings are common mobile usability issues. The fixes would be the use of Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, implementing a responsive design, optimizing touch elements, and making sure the font sizes are readable on a mobile device.
10. Missing or Incorrect Schema Markup
Schema Markup aids in the search engine’s ability to understand the content better, thereby improving the rich snippets on search results. If schema markup is missing or improperly implemented, search visibility decreases, and so do click-through rates. To fix this, the website owner must use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to validate the schema markup and apply the necessary schema types such as Article, Product, FAQ, and Review and correct schema formatting errors as per Schema.org guidelines.
Final Thoughts
A SEMrush Site Audit is an indispensable tool to identify and correct SEO problems affecting the performance of a website. The ones mentioned above are among the most common issues with rankings, user experience, and crawlability. If website owners can address such issues proactively, they improve their site’s search engine visibility, organic traffic, and general online presence.
Regular audits and constant optimisation are how you keep a healthy website. If you haven’t started, begin running SEMrush audits regularly and implement any necessary fixes to stay ahead of the curve in this competitive digital landscape.
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