| Test tag/type |
Error |
Recommendation |
Team to Fix |
| Anchor names in URL |
Anchor name links detected on page |
Remove all instances of anchor name links, i.e. "/something.html#content". Search Engines can only follow links that are complete and anchor names not only confuse crawlers but can lead to duplicate content issues |
Technical (on-page) |
| URL Protocol |
URL contains more than 3 parameters |
Ensure that the anchor URL contains at most 3 URL parameters. eg: http://www.yourwebsite.com?var1=1&var2=2&var3=3. Most search engine crawlers analyze up to 3 URL parameters; any additional parameters are ignored. It is generally recommended that no more than 3 URL parameters are used for a given link. Be aware that not every search engine crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. |
Technical (off-page) |
| URL Parameters |
Product or Article numbers used in the URL. |
Rather than using long numbers in the URL, you should use descriptive keywords in the URL. When a new URL is generated Google visits that link to check the content and provide page-rank to that link. Before it does even Google will check the URL for SEO. If you are using some auto-generated ID or numbers like http://www.abcdefgh.com/i?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5e, will it make any sense? Reader cannot make it out easily about the content inside the article. |
| URL Parameters |
underscore (_) is used in the URL |
Prefer using hyphen (-) rather than underscore (_) when separating keywords in the URL . If you have a URL like word1_word2, Google will only return that page if the user searches for word1_word2 (which almost never happens). If you have a URL like word1-word2, that page can be returned for the searches word1, word2, and even “word1 word2″. |
| URL Parameters |
Too many keywords (more than 4) used in the URL |
Don't use more than 3-5 words in your URL.. When you have too many keywords in URL, search engine algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit. Prefer to use a few descriptive keywords in the URL. |
| URL Parameters |
No www in the URL |
Choose www vs. non-www. 301 redirect one to the other (mysite.com to www.mysite.com). Ignore this if your domain name is always used without www. Never get backlinks or use navigational links on your site if your domain is known to start with www. |
| URL Parameters |
Session or tracking IDs are used in the URL |
Test and confirm session or tracking IDs are not generated in the URL. . If the site generates session or tracking ids in the URL, strip these IDs out for all crawlers to avoid duplicate content problem or use a canonical tag to tell search engine the only URL that you want to be crawled. |