How do you find hidden SEO issues?

Website auditing tools, like SEMRush or even ScreamingFrog, are great ways to conduct the audit. Identify broken links, duplicate content, and missing metadata, which could be hampering your SEO efforts.

Google Chrome offers an array of easy-to-use plugins that can allow users to understand their website performance better. Plugins such as Ahrefs SEO Toolbar or Check My Links are an easy way to view meta titles, descriptions, headings (h1, h2, h3, etc), and if your internal linking is valid page by page.

SEO audit tools offer deep insights to optimize your website's performance and search rankings. - Detect broken links that affect user experience - Uncover duplicate content that can hurt SEO - Identify slow page speeds and suggest improvements - Highlight missing or incorrect meta tags - Analyze off-page factors like backlinks - Prioritize issues by severity to tackle the most critical ones first - Schedule regular audits for ongoing optimization Using tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMrush ensures a healthier, more competitive site.

In addition to Screaming Frog, another effective SEO auditing tool is Surferseo. However, it is primarily focused on content optimization and its auditing process is more geared toward identifying missing keywords, NLP terms, and other content-related factors when compared to its competitors or the top 10 ranking pages.

There aren't many platforms that can help quickly audit and visualize your website's architecture like Screaming Frog. If you're focusing on technical SEO, you can quickly identify broken links, redirect issues, blocked resources, missing metadata, and so much more. My favorite feature on the platform is the "Force-Directed Crawl Diagram" under the "Site Structure" tab. This tool creates a visual representation of your website structure which can help you understand the internal links between various parts of your website.

I personally believe that if you have a thorough understanding of Google Search Console, you can not only improve your website's performance but understand how easily it ranks the articles. Make sure there are no penalties and frequently TEST live URLs to see their performance!

Since the websites are solely optimized for Google searches, nothing best than Google search console to find out the hidden SEO issues and fix them. One can see the website pages' crawling and indexing issues, URL inspection, loading issues, backlinks, etc. Here is a brief wrap-up of SEO fixes that the search console can do: 1) Identify broken links 2) HTTPs errors 3) Website loading issues 4) Server Error (5xx) 5) Redirect Error 6) Blocked by robots.txt 7) Marked 'noindex' 8) Soft 404 9) Unauthorized request (401) 10) Not Found (404) 11) Crawl Issue 12) Sitemap issue

Google Search Console is an excellent SEO tool, providing a direct access to Google's indexing. It comes with powerful features such as requesting the indexing or re-indexing existing pages, providing reports about crawlability issues as well as insightful performance statistics: Google Search Console should be one of the most frequently studied tools for every SEO marketer. It allows deep analysis about your own site whether it be time-based comparison of page performance or complex research about significant traffic changes over time.

While submitting a sitemap on Google Search Console is critical to ensuring that your landing pages are indexed on Google, it's important to note that Google won't automatically index everything- especially for larger websites. If you notice a drop in rankings or find that your content just "isn't getting any traffic," manually check to see if your important pages are indexed. This is an easily overlooked issue that completely scuffs any SEO efforts.

Google Search Console is already full of reports regarding your website's organic performance and its issues. What might be called hidden is "Crawl Stats" report under "Settings". You can use this report if you don't have access to your server logs or to assist your log analysis. If you have a big website, check here frequently and you will eventually find some hidden issues.

Do check with chome inspect view. From there you can audit below things 1. Page speed 2. Dom request 3. Not used resources 4. Core web vitals

Since most of us tend to work on our laptops, it can be easy to only look at the desktop view of websites. You can make CTAs and forms all pretty and prominent, but did you forget to check the mobile few? No- I don't mean the backend of your website's mobile editor. I'm referring to manually checking the URL on a mobile device like a smartphone. Oftentimes elements that you believe work well on desktop don't translate to mobile. Even though we live in a mobile-first technological era, many websites are still not designed to be responsive. See if your mobile website is just as impressive as your desktop site.

You can definitely automate the process of conducting SEO audit to find hidden SEO issues, but sometimes it is necessary to manually check the website codes, mobile-friendliness, user experience, page speed, backlink profile, content quality. Moreover, manual checks help to reveal hidden SEO opportunities that boost website rankings and lead to improved website performance.

Another thing you can do is actually pay attention to the never-ending complains of the sales / customer support people. Every now and then some of those complains turn out to be valid. Users do share when something on your website annoys them and those can be clues to something which is not working as intended.

Your website will have weird quirks as you add customizations. Some of these quirks will lead to SEO issues. In the end, an error that is originally not related to SEO might lead to an SEO issue. Sometimes the only way to find these issues is educating yourself to think like a developer, being what we call a Technical SEO, or educating your developers to also think about SEO. The latter might still require you to be a Technical SEO. I suggest taking a programming course and completing a project in your spare time to learn how developers think and what challenges they face.

Figuring out which issue is hindering your SEO can be difficult. With Google's new algorithm, content takes the cake for being the most important aspect of a website. Afterward, you'll find user experience (page speed, CTAs, navigation, CRO) to be next. Are these two pivotal aspects of SEO what's holding you up? Remember, SEO historically focuses on search engines, but with recent updates, Google prioritizes content written for humans over search engines. Are you keyword stuffing? Are your headings jam-packed with your keywords? Try changing the content to reflect better what the customer or client would want to read, not the search engine.

Maybe a bit off topic but I feel the urge to mention it: if you hire someone to do SEO it is strongly recommended that you hire a web-developer, too. Often, an SEO expert can only do as much as discovering what's wrong but is not able to actually fix it. That doesn't make him a bad SEO expert. (Speaking for a friend.)

In my experience, many of the hidden SEO problems come from incorrect implementations or poor understanding of SEO by developers or website owners. It's common to see JS errors that cause important elements on pages not to be indexed. Another common mistake is mandatory elements in sitemaps not being displayed. Then there are the performance problems, which almost always go unnoticed.

I can generate lists of technical issues all day, but nothing will get done if you can't properly communicate the issues, or better yet, a potential solution to your team. There's no better way to do this than to dive in and learn some of the basics of HTML and CSS. You don't need to take it to the extreme and learn enough to become a developer, but the more you understand, the easier the communication becomes. There are plenty of in-depth YouTube videos covering both languages to get you where you need to be as an SEO professional.

Prioritize fixing hidden SEO issues based on their potential impact on your website's performance. Develop a systematic approach to address each issue, starting with critical issues that can have a significant impact on rankings and user experience. Implement best practices and recommended solutions provided by SEO audit tools or industry experts.

Not all websites have these "hidden" issues. As they will be probably custom to your site, the solution and tracking will also be custom. You will need to figure out how to get alarmed if the issue happens again. I would advise creating a custom issue in Ahrefs' Site Audit tool, creating a Google Sheet that is based on IMPORTXML function, or to create a custom extraction (or custom search) in Screaming Frog to check for that issue regularly.

Regularly monitor your website's performance metrics and search engine rankings to track the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. Use tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and third-party SEO software to monitor changes over time. Set up alerts and notifications to be informed of any sudden drops or anomalies in your website's SEO performance.

Addressing and tracking hidden SEO issues is crucial for the continual improvement of your website's search performance. To effectively monitor these corrections, it’s important to use a combination of tools and methods that provide comprehensive insights into your SEO activities. Begin by integrating Google Analytics and Google Search Console, which provide direct feedback on your site’s traffic patterns and search engine visibility. These platforms offer alerts for crawl errors, security issues, and usability problems that might not be obvious at first glance.

Implement proactive measures to prevent hidden SEO issues from occurring in the future. Stay updated on SEO best practices and algorithm changes to adapt your strategies accordingly. Conduct regular website audits and maintenance to identify and address potential issues before they impact your SEO performance.

Adhere to SEO Best Practices: Ensure that your website is built with clean, semantic HTML code, which helps search engines better understand and rank your content. Use descriptive tags and structured data to enhance visibility and crawlability. Content Excellence: Focus on creating high-quality, unique content that provides real value to your audience. This reduces the risk of duplicate content issues and increases the likelihood of earning natural backlinks. Link Building: Develop a strategy for acquiring authoritative backlinks naturally. Avoid risky techniques such as buying links or participating in link farms that can lead to penalties.

You can uncover a lot by: - surfing for an hour on different devices (mobile, desktop, tablet) trying to use it as a visitor would - how the website looks when styles are turned off - digging more into Google Index to see what's indexed from your website - try accessing different versions of your website and homepage

Algorithm updates: Did Google just drop a new algorithm? Or did you notice a massive drop in rankings for no particular reason? Check to see if there's recently been any updates on the SERP and the details of the update. This will provide insight into why you may have lost rankings. Google Analytics: If you're using tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console, periodically check to see if the code is still working on the website. Website updates, page speed plugins, website transfers, and updates within Google itself (UA to GA4) can cause you to be unable to track traffic properly.

I think this whole article was AI generated and the lured us to add original user generated content. ...and I think that's beautiful...

Consider hiring an experienced SEO professional or agency to conduct regular audits and provide ongoing optimization support. Collaborate with web developers, content creators, and other stakeholders to address technical and content-related SEO issues effectively. Continuously monitor industry trends and emerging technologies to stay ahead of potential SEO challenges.

SEO audit tools: Utilizing tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush is crucial. They identify hidden issues such as broken links, duplicate content, and missing tags. Regular audits help prioritize and address issues based on their severity and impact. Google Search Console: This free tool is invaluable for monitoring site performance in search results. It identifies issues related to visibility, crawlability, and indexability. Regularly checking for errors, warnings, and mobile usability issues ensures your site stays optimized.