Tech Tip Tuesday: How I can perform a quick fix for my site architecture?
“How do I perform a quick fix for my Site Architecture?”
First on deck this week we will be introducing you to 2 good friends, Xenu Sleuth & Screaming Frog!
Highlights of the advantages on how Xenu & Screaming can help your Site Architecture…
Xenu & Screaming both do a great job, both software’s will allow you to crawl your defined website and flag a lot of issues you normally wouldn’t notice on front end & they are completely free (Screaming Frog free contains restrictions).
Discover Broken Links
Like the majority of crawlers, Xenu will identify & highlight to you any broken links on your website.
– Simply click on ‘check URL’ button.
– Enter your website URL (un-tick ‘check external links’)
After Xenu has done its job, press [Ctrl]+[B] & it will showcase a list of all your broken links within your site. With this list you now can go to each URL & define whether any redirection will need to be put in place.
Level Page Structuring
A very useful function I found Xenu to be an advantage for is that it will highlight to you on the level of the URL within the structure through the ‘level’ tab. A lower level number will mean that the URL will be crawled first in comparison to a higher level number. A level 7 will mean a search engine spider such as Google Spider will have to crawl 7 levels before reaching that page. Pages within your site architecture that are top levels will have a higher priority within search engines. With your defined list by Xenu, you would understand which pages would need a change for priority & consider a change in the site architecture for your priority pages. Never hide a valued page.
Duplicate Page Titles
Xenu will highlight duplications of title page headings. Simply click ascending & it will arrange your titles together & display any titles that are duplicated. It is common for a WordPress run site to contain duplicated titles, a quick fix will allow you to identify & optimise back your titles.
Internal Linking
Another very good function is the ‘In Link’ tab which shows how many sites are linking to this URL within your own site architecture. URL’s with very few internal links will tell search engine bots that these pages are not a priority page because they have very few to none pages linking to them. Pages such as ‘disclaimer’ will be understandable, but you might want to reassess which pages are priorities, do keep in mind not to over optimise.
Identifying missing titles + Counter
Post entering your site URL, screaming will crawl along your site like Xenu & will report back to you vital information. A nifty function Screaming has is the identification of the length of your titles. A good practice is to keep all your title tags under 70 characters. Screaming will identify for you the length so you can efficiently change the titles which are overly long, to a comfortable size of 70 characters. Screaming will also identify for you any title pages that are missing their title.
H1’s
Screaming also has a tab which displays the amount of H1’s that are contained within a page, through this function you can effectively correct the H1’s & minimise them for a better SEO practice.
Ahoy fellow passengers! Stay tuned in every Tuesday for more technical issues reviewed by Tug.
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