Search engine optimization might just seem to be a bunch of few strategies that move a website upwards in the fight of search engine ranking, but there is seriously a lot more to it. Just like any other web based strategy, SEO also includes a lot of technicalities such as building URL’s and adding query parameters to the end of URL’s. With the technicalities, come some frustrating errors and bloopers that you keep encountering again and again. If you work as a SEO exec in a website development company, you will be very well-aware of these common fallacies that can be frustrating at times. This post aims at listing down some commonly encountered technical SEO faults and providing quick-fix solutions for the same.
1. Various Versions of the Landing Page:
This problem usually occurs during ASP.NET web development. .NET platforms usually generate duplicate copies of homepage- www.example.com/default.aspx. The search engine can easily locate these pages while navigating and this adversely affects the optimization process.
Solution:
A very simple way to encounter this problem is to add a 301 redirect to this duplicate page and redirect it to the original version of the landing page. Using rel=canonical tag is another solution.
2. 301 Redirects Replaced by 302 Redirects:
This is a very common mistake for developers to this mistake especially when at the receiving end the user is unaware about the potential difference between the two redirects. Search engines, however, are aware of the difference and act accordingly. 301 redirect is permanent while 302 redirect is temporary and search engine treats them accordingly.
Solution:
The easiest and most effective solution to this fault is to use deep crawlers such as IIS SEO Toolkit or Screaming Frog. These crawlers will filter all 302 redirects and then you can check if these should be actually 302’s or you want to replace them with 301’s.
3. Lowercase URLs vs Uppercase URLs:
Again, this error is most commonly encountered during ASP.NET web development. The fact that severs respond to uppercase URL’s is the root cause of this problem. Though search engines have become mature enough to ignore the duplicate versions and detect the original versions of URL’s, but at times its not this way. You have to be very obvious and not only rely on search engines to figure out things themselves.
Solution:
Using a URL rewrite module can solve this problem instantly. This module comes with a feature that allows you to establish lowercase URL’s.
These were some of the technical fallacies that are encountered during the search engine optimization process. Hopefully, these solutions can pave for a smoother optimization process.
