Decoding Semrush Site Audit - Super Fast Crawling Tips

What Problems Can a Site Audit Spot?

Semrush Site Audit makes your website audit process simple and effective by checking over 140+ website issues. The complete list of errors, warnings, and notices can be found below. Here are some of the categories of issues that Semrush Site Audit looks for:

1. Architecture and Crawlability

Your website needs to be crawlable before you can consider SEO. Therefore, the website's structure should be clean and well-organized to facilitate more straightforward navigation for search crawlers. The main focus areas for making your structure as clean as possible will be your sitemap, robots.txt file, internal links, and URL structure. 

Site Audit addresses over 20 of the most common issues in this area.

2. On-Page SEO

Title tags, h1 tags, meta descriptions, and images all contribute to the on-page SEO of your website. You should avoid using duplicate content, titles, descriptions, or h1 tags to optimize. You must also ensure that your content, titles, and descriptions are all of an appropriate length. 

Site Audit checks for over a dozen of the most common on-page SEO issues, allowing you to identify all of the errors on your site that may be harming you.

3. Technical SEO 

The technical aspects of a website, such as proper HTML, page load speed, and mobile optimization, play a significant role in SEO.

Site Audit will notify you if any of your pages have an oversized HTML file or slow load speeds. It will also highlight the use of flash, frames, or other out-of-date technology that should be avoided for SEO purposes.

4. Implementation of HTTPS

Numerous common errors can occur when migrating a website from HTTP to HTTPS, such as internal links that are broken, pages only having one internal link, etc.

Site Audit checks for every possible issue that may arise when a website transitions to HTTPS, from proper certificates to redirects and canonicals, encryption, and more. You can quickly access a dedicated report that shows all of your HTTPS-related issues by following the widget from the Overview report.

5. International Search Engine Optimization

International SEO can be difficult for larger companies and global websites. The proper use of the hreflang tag will be critical to your success in gaining search visibility across the regions and languages you desire.

Site Audit looks for issues such as the correct use of language and country codes, conflicts with page source code, incorrect hreflang links, and more.

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6. AMP

Site Audit checks more than 40 of the most common AMP-related issues for you. This by far is the greatest number of AMP-related issues caught by any other software on the market.

7. Performance

Performance-related Site Audit checks will look for issues with a website's page loading speed and user experience. Page load speed is quickly becoming one of the most important SEO factors - if your site takes too long to load, users will leave and go to another website. To improve performance, keep your site's HTML, CSS, and Javascript lightweight and easy for crawlers to read.

8. Internal Connectivity

The Internal Linking report provides a comprehensive look at all of the internal links on a website. You will also notice four different widgets that can aid in the identification of specific issues: Link Distribution, Incoming Internal Links, Pages to Add Outgoing Links, and Internal Links Issues.

The Entire List of Issues Site Audit Can Identify 

The list of errors, warnings, and notices that Semrush Site Audit can detect on a website is provided below. To improve your Site Audit score and website health, all issues should be addressed. The priority list is as follows: Errors (most harmful to a website) - Caution (harmful) - Notifications (least harmful).

Errors

• Conflicts with hreflang in page source code
• Pages that return the 5XX status code
• Title tags do not exist on pages.
• Duplicate title tag issues
• Issues with duplicate content on pages
• Internal links that have broken
• Pages were unable to be crawled.
• Pages were unable to be crawled (DNS resolution issues)
• Pages were unable to be crawled (incorrect URL formats)
• Internal image corruption
• Pages with redundant meta descriptions
• Formatting mistakes in the Robots.txt file
• Errors in the format of sitemap.xml files
• Incorrect pages were discovered in sitemap.xml.
• Issues are resolved on pages with a WWW.
• Pages that lack a viewport tag
• The HTML size on a page is excessive.
• AMP pages that lack a canonical tag
• Problems with hreflang values
• Pages that return the 4XX status code
• Problems with invalid hreflang links
• Pages that aren't secure
• Problems with expired or expiring certificates Problems with an old security protocol
• Problems caused by an incorrect certificate name
• Issues with mixed content There is no redirect or canonical link from the HTTP version to the HTTPS homepage
• Chains and loops should be redirected
• AMP HTML problems
• AMP design and layout issues
• AMP templating problems
• Canonical links that have broken
• Pages with several canonical URLs
• Pages that have a meta refresh tag
• Internal JavaScript and CSS files are broken
• Secure encryption algorithms are not supported by subdomains
• Sitemap.xml files that are excessively large
• Pages that take a long time to load
• Invalid Structured data items
• Links that are broken
• The missing viewport width value

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Warnings

• Pages with excessive text in the title tags
• Pages with insufficient text in the title tags
• Pages with a high text-to-HTML ratio
• Pages that lack meta descriptions
• Pages with redundant H1 and title tags
• Pages without an h1 heading
• URLs that contain an underscore
• Sitemap.xml is not listed in robots.txt.
• Pages with a small number of words
• Pages that use temporary redirects
• Images with no alternative text
• External images are broken.
• URLs with an excessive number of parameters
• Pages that lack the hreflang and lang attributes
• Declared pages with no character encoding
• Pages with no declared doctype
• Plugin content that is incompatible
• Frame-containing pages
• External links that have broken
• Internal links with the nofollow attribute
• Pages with an excessive number of on-page links
• Sitemap.xml could not be found
• SNI is not supported by subdomains
• HTTP URLs in sitemap.xml for HTTPS site do not use HTTPS encryption
• Links on HTTPS pages that lead to HTTP pages
• Pages uncompressed
• Problems with internal resources in robots.txt
• Uncompressed JavaScript and CSS files cause problems
• Uncached JavaScript and CSS files cause problems
• Pages have an excessively large JavaScript and CSS total size
• Pages make excessive use of JavaScript and CSS files
• Unminified JavaScript and CSS files cause problems
• Link URLs that are too long

Notices

• Pages with a single incoming internal link source that is formatted as a page link
• External links or resources returned a 403 HTTP status code
• Non-descriptive anchor text links
• Pages that require more than three clicks to reach Outgoing external links with no follow attributes
• Subdomains do not support HSTS URLs that are more than 200 characters long.
• Pages with multiple H1 tags
• Robots.txt could not be found
• Issues with hreflang language mismatch
• Pages that were barred from being crawled Orphaned pages (from Google Analytics)
• Orphaned web pages (in sitemap)
• Pages that require more than one second to become interactive
• X-Robots-Tag-Blocked Pages: noindex The HTTP header
• Problems with external resources in robots.txt
• External JavaScript and CSS files are broken
• URLs that are permanently redirected
• Without anchor text links
• Page link formatted resources

Semrush Site Audit tool helps you improve your online visibility and discover marketing insights. It is designed to assist marketers who work in many types of industries, including SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, Public Relations, Content Marketing, Marketing Insights, Campaign Management.

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