An 8-Point Checklist for Debugging Technical SEO that is strange Dilemmas

An 8-Point Checklist for Debugging Technical SEO that is strange Problems

Periodically, a nagging problem will land in your desk that’s only a little unusual. One thing where you don’t have an answer that is easy. You go to the human brain and your mind returns nothing.

These issues can’t be solved with a bit of key word research and fundamental configuration that is technical. These are the types of technical Search Engine Optimization dilemmas where the rabbit gap goes deeply.

The very nature of the circumstances defies a list, but it’s useful to possess one for the reason that is same have them on planes perhaps the best of us can and will forget things, and a list will provvide you with places to dig.

Fancy some examples of strange SEO problems? Listed here are four examples to mull over while you read. We’ll solution them at the end.

1. Why wasn’t Bing showing markup that is 5-star item pages?

• The pages had server-rendered product markup and they additionally had Feefo product markup, including ranks being connected client-side.
• The Feefo ranks snippet was successfully rendered in Fetch & Render, and the t l that is mobile-friendly.
• Once you place the rendered DOM to the structured data t l that is testing both items of structured data showed up without errors.

2. Why wouldn’t Bing show 5-star markup on review pages, whenever G gle would?

• The review pages of customer & competitors all had rating rich snippets on Bing.
• All of the competitors had rating snippets that are rich Bing; nevertheless, the customer didn’t.
• The review pages had properly validating ratings schema on G gle’s structured data testing t l, but didn’t on Bing.

3. Why were pages getting indexed having a no-index label?

• Pages by having a server-side-rendered no-index label in the pinnacle were being indexed by Bing across a large template for a customer.

4. Why did any web page on a web site return a 302 about 20–50% regarding the right time, but only for crawlers?

• An internet site ended up being arbitrarily throwing 302 errors.
• This never occurred in the web browser and just in crawlers.
• Consumer agent made no difference; location or snacks also made no distinction.

Finally, a quick note. It is feasible for a number of this checklist won’t apply to every situation. That’s completely fine. It’s supposed to be a procedure for anything you could check, maybe not anything you should check always.

The check that is pre-checklist

Does it really matter?

Does this issue only affect an amount that is tiny of? Can it be just for a a small number of pages and you also curently have a big list of other actions that will assist the internet site? You almost certainly need certainly to just drop it.

I am aware, it is hated by me t . I would also like to be right and dig these things away. However in half a year’ time, when you’ve solved twenty complex SEO rabbit holes and your website has stayed flat as you didn’t re-write the name tags, you’re still going to get fired.

But hopefully that’s not the full case, in which particular case, onwards!

Where are you seeing the issue?

We don’t want to waste a complete large amount of time. Perhaps you have heard this wonderful saying? “If you hear h ves, it is probably not a zebra.”

The process we’re going to proceed through is fairly involved and it’s totally up to your discernment if you would like proceed. Just make you’re that is sure overl king something apparent that could re solve your trouble. Check out typical problems I’ve run into that were mostly horses.

1. You’re underperforming from where you should be.
   1. Whenever a site is under-performing, people love searching for excuses. Weird G gle nonsense is usually a thing that is handy blame. The truth is, it is typically some combination of an undesirable site, higher competition, and a brand that is failing. Horse.
2. You’ve suffered a traffic drop that is sudden.
   1. One thing has truly happened, but this is most likely not the list for you personally. There are lots of common-sense checklists because of this. I’ve written about diagnosing traffic drops recently — check that down first.
3. The incorrect web page is ranking for the incorrect query.
   1. If you ask me (which should probably preface this whole post), it’s usually a fundamental issue in which a web site has p r targeting or even a large amount of cannibalization. Most likely a horse.

Factors which make it more likely you to don your debugging shoes that you’ve got a more complex problem which require

• An online site which has a large amount of client-side JavaScript.
• Bigger, older internet sites with more legacy.
• Your condition relates to a new bing property or function where there clearly was less community knowledge.

1. Begin by selecting some instance pages.

Ch se a number of instance pages to work with — ones that display whatever problem seeing that is you’re. No, this won’t be representative, but we’ll return to that in a bit.

Of course, if it only affects a tiny number of pages then it could actually be representative, in which case we’re g d. It positively matters, right? You didn’t just miss out the step above? okay, c l, let’s proceed.

2. Can G gle crawl the page once?

First we’re checking whether G glebot has access to the page, which we’ll define as being a 200 status rule.

We’ll check in four different ways to interracial match reveal any typical dilemmas