If Site Auditor returned an error that you're questioning, use the steps in this article to verify that it correctly reported this error.

4XX Errors are HTTP response status codes a server returns in response to a client request. It means that the request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled. In other words, these errors typically occur when a URL is restricted or doesn't exist.

To verify that our site auditor is reporting correctly, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Site Auditor, then click 4XX Errors to view which URLs are flagged with this error.

Step 2: Copy each of these URLs from the list.

Step 3: Open https://httpstatus.io in a new browser tab, then paste each URL into the Link URL column. If that page confirms the 4XX error, Site Auditor is correctly reporting the error.

What are the most common 4XX errors?

In case of a 5XX error, a bug or server misconfiguration might be blocking the request, even though the page may actually exist on the server. This differs from a 404 error, which means the page simply doesn't exist on the server.

Step 1: If you're unsure whether Site Auditor is reporting correctly, you can manually verify the link status at https://httpstatus.io and paste the flagged URL into the tool. If this page confirms a 500 error, then Site Auditor is reporting it correctly.

Step 2: If the link checker does not show a 500 error, this indicates that the web server where the site resides is likely blocking our crawler. You'll need to whitelist the Site Auditor user agent in your web host's firewall settings.

Site Auditor will detect when HTTP requests are not redirected correctly to HTTPS. These errors typically occur when a website uses HSTS technology to handle redirects.

If a user has previously visited the HTTPS version of the website, HSTS will force the browser to use HTTPS on subsequent visits. However, if a user hasn't visited the HTTPS version, HSTS will not automatically redirect them to the HTTPS version when they arrive on the HTTP version of the site, which results in Site Auditor reporting an error.

Check for a potential issue with HSTS by following these steps:

Step 1: Open the HTTP version of the website (not the HTTPS version) in a browser that has never visited the website before. Take care not to visit the HTTPS version first, or this will not work. You should notice that you are not redirected to HTTPS.

Step 2: Next, visit the HTTPS version of the site.

Step 3: Then, try visiting the HTTP version again, and you should see that it now redirects correctly to HTTPS.

This is because HSTS automatically redirects you to HTTPS after you visit HTTPS for the first time. However, as you've seen, it did not redirect you during Step 1. This behavior is expected and not necessarily an error with your site.

Canonical tags are used to avoid duplicate issues when unique content is accessible from different URLs. You can access your page's source code to verify if pages reported by Site Auditor have missing canonical tags.

Step 1: From the Site Auditor dashboard, click Missing Canonical Tag to view the affected pages.

Step 2: Open a flagged page in a new tab, right-click, and select View Page Source.

Step 3: A new tab will open showing your page's source code. Press Ctrl+F and search for rel="canonical".

If your browser's search tool returns zero results, your page has a missing canonical tag. You'll need to add one using your CMS or directly in your website's source code.

A page with a missing meta description can harm your website's SEO. You can easily access your page's source code to confirm that Site Auditor reports this issue correctly.

Step 1: In Site Auditor, click Missing Meta Description to view the affected URLs. The slideout shows a list of pages without meta descriptions.

Step 2: Open a page from the slideout in a new tab, then right-click the page and click View Page Source.

Step 3: A new tab will open showing your page's source code. Press Ctrl+F to open the search bar and search for <meta name="description".

Step 4: Once you've found the Meta Description within your code, verify that the attribute "Content" is placed right after it and has a description of your page between quotation marks (for example, content="Careers page").

If you can't find a description, your page is missing a meta description, and you will need to add one using your CMS or directly in your website's source code.

Using your browser's developer tools, you can verify this error directly on your website. From the Test section of Site Auditor, click on Duplicate Titles.

Step 1: In Site Auditor, click Duplicate Titles. 1: The slideout displays a list of pages that Site Auditor has flagged as having duplicate titles. It will also show the title used and any matching duplicate content found on those pages.

Step 2: Open a flagged page in a new tab, right-click the page and click Inspect to open the browser developer tools.

Step 3: The developer tools will open on the right or bottom of your screen. In the Elements tab, press Ctrl+F to open the search bar, and paste the page title you previously copied to your clipboard.

You will find the count of found matches to the right of the search bar. Use the arrows next to it to find the title on your page. The title should appear between the attributes <title> and </title> tags in the code.

You can fix these errors by changing one of the duplicate page titles.

An alt attribute (often called an alt tag) provides search engines with descriptive information about an image, which impacts your on-page SEO. Site Auditor flags images where this attribute is absent.

Step 1: Navigate to Site Auditor, then click Missing Alt Attributes to view which resource URLs have been flagged for missing alt text.

Step 2: A slideout will appear showing a list of pages containing images lacking alt attributes and the corresponding resource URLs. Click a flagged URL to open a second slide-out indicating which page includes that image.

Step 3: Visit the page where the resource URL was found, then open your web browser's developer tools by right-clicking and selecting Inspect.

Step 4: The developer tools will open on the right or bottom of your screen. Select the "Elements" tab. Press Ctrl+F to open the search bar and paste the image URL. Then, delete the root domain from this URL (for example, if your image URL is "yourdomain.com/page/image.jpg", paste only "/page/image.jpg" in the search bar).

Step 5: Look for the resource URL with the image tag <img src=. Images with an alt attribute appear in your website's code along with the tag alt="descriptive text" and a descriptive text between the quotation marks:

<img src="image-url.jpg" alt="descriptive text here">

If the image tag has no alt"", the alt attribute is missing and you'll need to add one.

In the above example, you can see that the alt tag is "SEO reporting tool".

Each page should have one H1 tag to clearly signal its topic to search engines. Multiple H1 tags on the same page can hurt SEO.

Step 1: In Site Auditor, click Missing H1 (or Multiple H1) to view the affected URLs.

Step 2: To validate the page, click the URL below to open it in a new tab. Open a flagged page in a new tab, right-click, and select Inspect. The developer tools will open on the right or bottom of your screen.

Step 3: In the Elements tab, press Ctrl+F to open the search bar and type <h1>. The match count to the right of the search bar shows how many H1 tags exist on the page. Use the arrows to locate each one in the code.

Step 5: To show where each of your H1 tags appears on the page, right-click the line of code you want to reveal and select Scroll into View.

Site Auditor reports a "Missing Sitemap.xml Reference" warning when your website doesn't have a sitemap, or when yourwebsite.com/robots.txt couldn't be found.

Step 1: Verify your site has a sitemap by checking either of the following:

If you can't find a sitemap for your website, one needs to be added. Use your content management system or reach out to your web developer to create one.

Step 2: With the Sitemap URL located, open a new tab in your browser and type your domain name, adding /robots.txt at the end of your URL (for example, www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt.)

Step 3: Open the search bar with Ctrl+F then type Sitemap to find where the Sitemap URL was placed in the robots.txt file

Step 4: Check that the URL in your robots.txt file identically matches the Sitemap URL you located. It must be the complete URL (for example, http://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml, not /sitemap.xml)

If the correct URL is already present and the warning persists, contact our support team for assistance.

Each page is scored based on the type and number of issues Site Auditor finds. This is weighted so that critical issues have more influence than errors, and errors have more influence than warnings, with the highest possible score being 100%.

Issues are weighted by severity:

Page-level scores are combined to form an overall site-wide score. Page depth is taken into consideration, with deeper pages having less impact on your overall score.

When a NoFollow link is broken, it will still impact your website's SEO, even though you've set it to NoFollow. Site Auditor intentionally crawls and flags these links to ensure you're not being negatively impacted by issues like this.

Site Auditor reports a "Low Word Count" warning when a page has fewer than 200 words, the minimum recommended for proper indexation.

Site Auditor counts any text separated by a space as a word, including numbers and single-character words like "a". Hidden text such as CSS-collapsed menus is also counted. Fallback text (such as text that displays when a video fails to load) is excluded from the count.

If you have any questions, please contact our friendly support team by following these instructions! We're available 24/5 to help 😄