SEO essentials – Boost your website

Last updated: August 23, 2024

1.Title element is too short

Do you have a page issue indicating that “Title element is too short”? If so, this means that your page title is shorter than 35 characters. Google indexes this as too short and therefore not indexable or difficult to index.  The solution: make sure your titles are between 35 and 60 characters long.

2.Title element is too long

In case the issue of one or multiple of your pages is indicating that your title is too long, it means that your title has more than 60 characters. Sometimes, Google even issues a title with 50 characters or more. Is this the case? Edit your title to a sentence with 35 to 60 (sometimes even 50) characters long. In doubt? Stay between the 35 and 50 characters as Google changes the rules quite often.

3.Missing meta description

The meta description is the paragraph that Google shows in search results when your landing page is displayed. If you do not fill in the meta description, your page may still be indexed by Google, but it will create the text itself, often based on the first few sentences of the page. This often does not attract readers on Google, making someone less willing to click on the link.

How do you solve this?

• Edit the page in WordPress about which an issue was reported in the report.
• Scroll all the way down until you arrive at the section called: Yoast SEO (you may also find this with control + F and searching for Yoast SEO).
• Insert your keyphrase. This is most likely your page title. In case you have conducted a comprehensive keyword analysis, make sure to choose one keyphrase (could be one word or a sentence) and insert it.
• Your SEO title is normally your keyphrase + your company name/site title, insert this.
• Meta description: insert your description here. Ideally, between 50 and 160 characters long. Normally, your description is a short summary of what people can find on this particular page, closing off with a call-to-action. Are you in need of inspiration? You may want to use the “Use AI” button. While using this button, AI will create a meta description for you.
  NOTE: this feature is still in bèta version, and therefore we recommend conducting a proper keyword analysis and write your own description.
• Make sure to update your page and you are ready to go!

4.Pages with one internal link

This issue is all about linkbuilding. Do you want to learn more about it? Read here. This in fact, the “read here” redirecting to a blog from an external website, is a perfect example of external linkbuilding. Or also called: linking to an external website. But for this particular issue, we are talking about internal linkbuilding. Which means: linking internally between pages on your own website domain.

In case this issue occurs on one of multiple of your pages, it means that you have only one internal link on this particular page. For a better indexation by Google, it is recommended to at least add two or more on your page.

Try to use specific words in text as an opportunity to link to another internal page. This can be done via a button or by inserting a link behind a piece of text (the text changes to the colour blue if you have done it correctly).

Once done, make sure to update the page.

5.Links with no anchor text

Does the report show you the issue “links with no anchor text”? If so, chances are that you have made a reference to another page or website and have not set it as a link behind a word (the text colors blue) or as a button, but you have written out the URL completely. Google gives you ‘penalty’ for this, as it would alter the readability of your text. So, if possible, place the link behind a word or in a button. Make sure you update the page when you are done.

6.Links with non-descriptive anchor text

Does your report show you this issue? Then you need to make some adjustments. These are the so-called “anchor text“. This is a selection of words and behind those words you have inserted a link (click-through). However, Google is smarter than we think and quickly figures it out if you are playing the algorithm. If you regularly use the text: “read more” or “click here”, Google indexes this as “too abstract”. So, you need to be more specific about what the link behind the text refers to. So, for example, adjust the text “read more” on a page about hydrogen solutions to: “5 innovative solutions for hydrogen”. This way Google understands that you are linking to a page in which people can read about 5 innovative solutions in hydrogen. Once you have made the changes, make sure you update the page.

7.Duplicate content

If the SEO issue indicates duplicate content, it means that the content you have used elsewhere or on the same page is duplicate. Search engines tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information.

Therefore, first check whether you have another page on your website that could potentially contain the same text. If this is the case, you can do two things:

1. You delete one of the two pages so that you only have unique pages.
2. You change the text on one page by rewriting it so that the texts are different.

Does your website use a language that another website within the TSG group also uses? Then you should consult with these website(s) to see which page should be the most important for Google, known as ‘Canonical’. Have you decided that your page is the canonical one? Then, while editing the page, scroll down until you come to Yoast SEO. Under the ‘advanced‘ tab is the canonical URL. The other websites must put your URL in their canonical within Yoast SEO so that Google knows which page to index.

8. Broken internal and external links

Broken links can impact the ability of search engines to index your site properly. Pages that are not correctly linked or are unreachable might not get indexed at all, leading to lost opportunities in search visibility.

If your website has been found to have broken internal and external links, do the following:

1. Open the page on which the issue is displayed;
2. Check all buttons and links behind the text whether they redirect to existing pages. This is best done when you are not logged into WordPress, because search engines can only index pages that have actually been published. In many cases, the link will lead to a 404 page and this should not be the case.
3. Once you have found the link(s) that are missing, make sure you complete it with a working link or remove the button or link if you have nowhere relevant to link to.

9. Broken external images

Broken images create a poor user experience by displaying blank placeholders or error messages, and they also send negative signals to the search engines. Beyond user experience, broken images contribute to slower load times as users spend time trying to load non-existent content.

If your website contains issues with broken external images, make sure you open those pages and replace the broken image with an image that is properly uploaded to your WordPress library and added to this page. Once done, make sure you update your page.

10. Duplicate meta descriptions

Having duplicate meta descriptions might be incredibly harmful to your SEO. Although your pages won’t be penalised, you shouldn’t expect a particular page to rank better than another as they both have the same meta description. This can quickly happen if, for example, you duplicate an existing pagian and edit it, but then don’t change the meta description.

The meta description can be found by editing a page on your website and scrolling all the way down. In Yoast SEO, you will then see: meta description. This is a short text that Yoast SEO pushes to search engines and then displays. This text must be unique and therefore not used on another page, yours or one of the other TSG websites.

This problem is very annoying if you have many website pages, because you can only manually solve this problem by opening other pages in your issue list that also display an issue. If you then observe the same meta description, it is important that you make sure you rewrite it so that they are all unique again. Make sure you always update your page once you’re done.

11. Multiple H1 tags

Despite not being immediately heavily penalised if you have multiple H1 tags on a page, it is advisable to avoid it. Search engines keep track of scores and if you don’t score as well in other areas, this could well have the effect of search engines giving you a poor indexing.

Sometimes, while editing a page, it can be difficult to see where the H1 tags are used. If you did manage to find them, make sure you make it an H2, H3 or an H4 as you are allowed to have several of them on a page.

If you still haven’t managed to find the H1 tags, you need to look at the page on the frontend. Then right-click on ‘inspect‘. Then click control+F and type in “H1”. Next, walk through all H1 search results to see where else on the page an H1 is used.

Note that you always use an H1 as the first title on your page and nowhere else.

12. Missing alt attributes

The issue of ‘Missing Alt Attribute’ includes images that do not have an alt attribute. Alt text provides better image context/descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index and rank an image properly in image search.

If your report indicates that you have missing alt attributes, then it’s important that you start looking at the images on this page. You do this as follows:

1. Edit the page
2. Click on the pencil on the image to edit the current image.
3. Search for “Alternative text“.
4. Is this field empty? Then make sure you add a text here that describes the image. Ideally, provided it’s also related to the image, you should also include the keyword in the alternative text, as this is good for your SEO score.
5. Check all images available on the page.

Make sure you update your page once finished.

13. Low word count

If this issue appears on a few of your pages, it means that your page consists of less than 250 words. All search engines want to provide the best answers to online searches people do. Thin content is less likely to offer a complete answer and satisfy the needs of the public. If you have less than 250 words on a page, you can do two things:

1. You can add text to the page;
2. You can delete the page in case it’s not important to your website.

14. Underscores in URL

Underscores in your URLs will not be recognized. This means that if you use an underscore in your URL, Google will read these two words together rather than as separate words. It is always advisable to include your SEO keyword in your URL. If it is then not readable as it should be, you are missing one of the most important points of SEO: incorporating your keyword in your URL/slug.

How to change it:

1. Edit the page.
2. On top of the page, you see: permalink. Edit this and make sure all underscores (_) are changed into (-).

Example how it should not be done: www.tsg-solutions.com/test_website
Example how it should be done: www.tsg-solutions.com/test-website

Make sure to update the page once you’re done.

15. Blocked from crawling

If your SEO issue report includes pages that are blocked, this has most probably been caused by Yoast SEO. You can find this out by editing the page, go all the way down to Yoast SEO and open the tab “advanced”. If the answer is ‘no‘ to this option “Allow search engines to show this content in search results?” than it’s blocked from crawling. You can easily change it to yes by the dropdown menu and update your page when you’re finished.

However, some pages are blocked for crawling on purpose as we don’t want them to be found by search engines. Those are typically the click-through pages, like your news overview page. Please leave those on the ‘no’ option as we don’t want to have these indexed by search engines.

Internal resources to learn more about SEO

We have lots of internal resources about SEO available for you. Via this map on SharePoint you have access to all internal information on this topic.