Notices and how to fix them

Many web pages contain elements that lower the perceived quality of the page. The notices in the website audit tool help you to find the elements that should be checked:

Anchor text wasted

The anchor text that is used in links influences the search engine position of the linked website. While it's normaly that website has links with the anchor text "click here", it is usually better if the text contains a keyword that is related to the linked page, for example, "click here for high-end car audio systemshigh-quality

Solution: Use a more meaningful anchor text with these links.

H1 tag and title don't share keyword

Some webmasters think that it improves the position of a web page if the page title and the H1 headline tag share the targeted keyword.

Solution: Adjust the title or the H1 tag so that the keywords match.

H1 tag empty

When you get this error, the page uses the H1 headline tag but it's empty. You might want to add a real headline (with keywords) to the page.

Solution: Add a H1 headline to the page.

H1 tag missing

The H1 headline tag is an excellent opportunity to describe the content of the page. Include one or two keywords in that description.

Solution: Add a descriptive H1 headline to the page.

H1 tag missing

The H1 headline tag helps you to describe the contents of a web page. For best results, it should contain keywords that are related to the page and your business.

Solution: Add a descriptive H1 headline that contains keywords to the page.

Image problems

Images on your web pages should have a descriptive IMG ALT attribute. That attribute makes your web pages more accessible for people with screen readers and it also helps search engines to index your content correctly. In addition, the images should have height and width attributes to make sure that browsers render the page as quickly as possible.

Solution: Make sure that all images have a description IMG ALT attribute and width and height attributes.

Meta robots none

The meta robots none attribute means that search engines should not index a web page and that they also should not follow the links on the page.

Solution: Double check if you really want to block all robots.

Meta robots NoFollow

The meta robots nofollow attribute tells search engines that the links on a page should not be followed. That means that search engines might not follow the links to other pages on your website.

Solution: Double check if you really want to block all links on the page.

Meta robots nofollow

The meta robots noindex attribute can help you to exclude particular search engines from your web pages. If you use the tag incorrectly, you might block all search engines.

Solution: Double check if you really want to block all robots.

Meta robots nosnippet

The meta robots nosnippet attribute tells search engines that the web page should be displayed without a snippet on the search engine results page. That can have a negative influence on the number of clicks that your search result listings gets.

Solution: Double check if you really want to hide the snippet.

301 permanent redirect

A 301 redirect tells search engines that the web page URL does not exist anymore and that the page now can be found under a new URL.

Solution: Check if you really want to redirect the page. If possible, change the links that point to the redirect URL.

303 redirect

A 303 redirect is the correct way to redirect web applications to a new URI, particularly after an HTTP POST has been performed. This response indicates that the correct response can be found under a different URI and should be retrieved using a GET method. The specified URI is not a substitute reference for the original resource.

Solution: Check if you really want to redirect the page with a 303 redirect.

307 redirect

A 307 redirect is a temporary redirect. The response code means that the request should be repeated with another URI; however, future requests should still use the original URI.

In contrast to how 302 was historically implemented, the request method is not allowed to be changed when reissuing the original request. For instance, a POST request repeated using another POST request.

Solution: Check if you really want to redirect the page with a 307 redirect.

Meta refresh tag to the same page

This message is displayed if a page uses the meta refresh tag to redirect to itself. This might not be what you intended.

Solution: Check if the meta refresh tag is correct. The World Wide Web Consortium recommends to avoid this tag.

URL contains uppercase characters

This message is displayed if some of the URLs on your page use uppercase characters while the majority uses lower case characters. If you use the same URL elsewhere with only lower case characters, this can lead to duplicate content problems.

Technically, search engines treat "/my-page.html" and "/My-page.html" differently. To avoid indexing problems, it is recommended to use lower case URLs.

Solution: Make sure that you use the same capitalization in all links to the same page.

Canonical attribute used

This message is displayed if the page contains a canoncial attribute that points to another URL. That means that the page won't be indexed by search engines. They will index the page that is used in the canonical attribute instead.

Solution: Make sure that the canonical attribute on the page is correct.

Continue with 'Robots.txt and XML Sitemaps'.