Website Technical Analysis

Website technical analysis.

1. Check website URL structure: URL is displayed in search results after page title, so website file names must be descriptive and clear to organize website URL and make it friendly to search engines.
2. Check website against dead links or broken redirects and 404 error page: during website crawling process from SE spiders, when the spiders come to broken links, it’s immediately stop crawling and leave the website which impact negatively on website indexing. In addition to that, many broken links in website domain is considered an indicator for poor website and low quality user experience which reduced its ranking in SERP. So dead links or broken redirects must be fixed. In addition to that, website must include useful 404 pages which display in case of not exist pages or broken URL. 404 pages to take the spider to available page, it also used to improve website user experience when guide visitors to useful links or can back them to home page.
3. Check website against duplicate content: Webpages are considered duplicates if their content is 85% identical. Having duplicate content may significantly affect SEO performance. First of all, Google will typically show only one duplicate page, filtering other instances out of its index and search results, and this page may not be the one wanted to rank. In some cases, search engines may consider duplicate pages as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings and, as a result, website may be downgraded or even banned from search results (Oetting, 2019).
4. Check website sitemap: A sitemap is a file contains a list of all the pages of website and present the hierarchy and content structure. Regardless if website architecture is clearly organized or not, it is always a good practice to submit a sitemap because it will strongly improve the crawl-ability of website. It contains which pages to be crawled and visible in the search results, and organize them in the proper hierarchy (Jamal & Hatab, 2015). In this phase website sitemap will be checked if available and if written correctly.
5. txt file: Arobot.txt file is instructions file in website indicates which pages allowed to crawl in SE and which prevented from crawling. It submit sitemap to SE and protect the server from being too busy by prevent crawlers from scanning unimportant or similar pages. Before spiders start crawling the website, it catch instructions from robots.txt file (Jamal & Hatab, 2015) (Özkan et al., 2019). In this stage, robot.txt will be checked if it available and if it be written correctly.
6. Crawl Depth: it’s represents how many clicks needed to reach webpages from home page. In general, crawlers and websites visitors don’t like to reach deep pages in website.For this reason, pages that contain important content should be no more than three clicks away from website homepage(ThatWare LLP, 2019).
7. HTTP Status Code: HTTP status codes refer to requests made to a web server by search engines or website visitors. Websites users experience and SE crawling can be affected negatively when website having a lot of pages return 4xx and 5xx status code. This issue could lead to traffic drop. So, HTTP status code should be monitored and managed to get better rank in SERP homepage(ThatWare LLP, 2019).

Table (1): website technical analysis checklist