As an internet user, there will be instances when you type in a particular keyword or enter a URL to find yourself redirected somewhere else on the world wide web. In these cases, you will notice an error page displayed, which signals that something has gone wrong.

If you run your own website, whether it’s for business or pleasure, it’s important that you conduct a technical audit to identify and fix errors. To ensure users have a pleasant experience on your page, here are some of the most common website errors and what you can do to eliminate them.

HTTP Errors

When clicking on a website, we all know how frustrating it can be to come up against an HTTP error. These are messages from your web server, which suggest that a problem has occurred. The most common HTTP errors are 401 (unauthorised), 403 (forbidden), 404 (not found), and 500 (internal server error). There are several things you can do which may fix these problems, such as refreshing the page, deleting your cookies, and troubleshooting the error through your content management system.

Long Metadata

The sole purpose of a page title is to tell the visitor what the page they are about to click on is about. Should the page title exceed 70 characters, it will get cut off by most web browsers and search engines. If you write meta descriptions, you need to adhere to the 155-character limit. Otherwise, any additional text will be replaced with a “…” which won’t be very enticing for your viewers to check out your page. These SEO errors can be fixed by coming up with keyword-rich descriptions and titles that give a thorough description of your pages without exceeding the character count.

Expiring Domain Name

Most search engines prefer to provide website results that are long-standing, reputable and active. If you have a domain name that has been registered for several years, this will show that you’re dedicated to your brand, your webpage and your content. The last thing you want is for your website to be labelled as ‘spammy’, so make sure that you renew your domain name annually to avoid this from happening.

Duplicate Page Content

If you have duplicate page content throughout your website, this will cause search engines to only return results for one of your pages, rather than all of them. To stop this from occurring, it’s important that you use unique metadata descriptions and titles for each page on your website. There are online tools that can be helpful, such as Siteliner, which is designed to scan your webpage, identify any duplicate content, and help you know which areas of your site to edit. You should also consider PWD who are an SEO Perth based business that allow you to perform a free SEO audit. PWD are experts in search engine optimisation and can help boost your search engine ranking result and help with your web design.

Missing ALT Text

Whether it’s Google, Yahoo or Bing, most search engines process text easier than they do with images. If you don’t have ALT text tags on your images, these three giants and many more are likely to skip over your images. Thankfully, this is a website error that can be easily rectified, either through simply filtering the images in your content management system or adding in rich keywords and descriptive titles to all your website photos. Make sure that you name and save your photos properly before you upload, which will make the process easier.

Long Forms

If your website has conversion forms, it’s vital that they’re concise and clear enough so visitors can fill them out without too much hassle. While you may think asking lots of questions will help you find out more about your audience, you could scare potential leads away, so it’s best to stick with the basics like their name and email address, rather than going into detail about their age, gender, and occupation. The purpose of a conversion form is to gather enough data to quality leads, which companies can use to get in touch with potential leads, so it’s best to shorten your forms.

Phishing Errors

No matter how tech-savvy you are, it’s important that you stay careful on the internet and always have your guard up. There are many websites that may contain malware or impersonate other pages to steal sensitive data. If users are trying to access your page and find a phishing error message appearing, this means that Google has reviewed your page and found deceptive content. To fix this problem, you need to get in touch with Google and remove any malicious content.

All the common website errors listed above can be damaging to your business and cause users to go elsewhere for their custom. Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, most common website errors can be fixed easily as long as you know what you’re doing.