Tips and insights from auditing over 1,000,000 domains.

1. Panel: Technical SEO
Patrick Stox
Product Advisor,
Technical SEO, & Brand
Ambassador at Ahrefs
What I learned from
auditing over
1,000,000 websites

2. Who Is Patrick Stox?
Product Advisor & Technical SEO @ Ahrefs
Writing
•Ahrefs SEO book
•Ahrefs blog, SEL
•SEO Chapter of the Web Almanac 2021
•Technical Review Editor of the Art of SEO
4th edition
Community
•Founded a Technical SEO slack group
•/r/TechSEO moderator on Reddit
•Organize Raleigh SEO Meetup, Raleigh
SEO Conference, Beer & SEO
•Defined the role of SEO for the US
Department of Labor

6. Entire deck on Hreflang
issues with insights.
https://speakerdeck.com/pa
trickstox/hreflang-study-
and-interesting-issues-
brighton-seo-2023-patrick-

7. Full Data
http://bit.ly/ahrefs-site-audit-
study

9. Broken Pages
4XX page 44.082
404 page 40.555

11. How many hits?
How many links?

12. Redirect if you can

13. Free full-text matching
redirect script
https://colab.research.googl
e.com/drive/18lMkaRHK__e
NM6m5FpoyhGDlDAYr3a6P
?usp=sharing

14. Server Issues
● 5XX page 8.482%
● 500 page 5.001%
● Timed out 12.579%

15. Did traffic drop?
Are pages still indexed?

16. Redirects
● 3XX redirect 95.183%
● 302 redirect 25.576%
● Meta refresh redirect 1.763%

17. Meta refresh redirects are more
common than I thought.

18. Permanent Redirects
● HTTP 301
● HTTP 308
● Meta refresh 0
● HTTP refresh 0
● JavaScript location
● Crypto redirect

19. Temporary Redirects (weak signal
forward)
● HTTP 302
● HTTP 303
● HTTP 307 (server side, not the
browser cached one)
● Meta refresh >0
● HTTP refresh >0

20. Temporary Redirects (at some point)

21. Keep redirects at
least 1 year

22. Redirects
● HTTP to HTTPS redirect
88.001%
● HTTPS to HTTP redirect
6.153%

23. >6% is crazy high for people
redirecting HTTPS to HTTP

24. Redirects
● Broken redirect12.662%

25. Redirects
● Redirect chain 45.193%
● Redirect chain too long 0.114%

26. Google will follow up to 10 hops.
I don’t worry til >5 hops.

27. Redirects
● Redirect loop 2.162%

28. Wastes a lot of resources.

29. Mixed Content
● HTTPS/HTTP mixed
content 13.342%

30. Content Security Policy
(CSP)
upgrade-insecure-requests

31. In .htaccess:
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Content-Security-
Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests;"
</IfModule>

32. Indexability
● Noindex 49.719%
Noindex in HTML and HTTP
header 5.776%

33. Intentional = fine
Unintentional = bad

34. Nofollow
● Nofollow page 26.34%
● Nofollow in HTML and
HTTP header 0.096%

35. Nofollows all links, including
internal links.
I’d rarely use this. Maybe on
UGC pages.

36. Canonicals
● Canonical from HTTP
to HTTPS 3.464%
● Canonical from HTTPS
to HTTP 2.079%

37. Canonicals
● Canonical points to
redirect 5.877%

38. These will likely get
followed.
Look at what version is
indexed.

39. Canonicals
● Canonical points to
4XX 2.598%

40. Likely ignored.

41. Canonicals
● Non-canonical page
specified as canonical
one 1.362%

42. Links (Indexable)
● Page has links to
redirect 62.719%

43. As long as they resolve, it’s
okay.
Clean up when you get a
chance, but not a big deal.

44. Links (Indexable)
● Orphan page (has no incoming
internal links) 49.905%
● Page has only one dofollow
incoming internal link
44.397%

45. These pages aren’t likely
important.
If you didn’t link to them,
how much do you really
care?

46. Links (Indexable)
● Page has links to
broken page
36.195%

47. Clean up for UX.

48. Links (Indexable)
● Page has nofollow outgoing
internal links 26.69%
● Page has nofollow incoming
internal links only 6.218%

49. Don’t nofollow internal links.

50. Links (Indexable)
● HTTPS page has internal
links to HTTP 20.536%

51. Okay-ish if they redirect.

52. Links (Indexable)
● HTTP page has internal
links to HTTPS 3.427%

53. Redirect to HTTPS.

54. Links Not Indexable
● Page has links to redirect
62.719%
● Orphan page (has no incoming
internal links) 49.905%
● +more

55. Impact is really more on UX.
Shouldn’t have any impact
on traffic or rankings.

56. Content Indexable
● Meta description tag missing
or empty 72.926%
● Title tag missing or empty
5.545%

57. Content Indexable
● Title too long 63.193%
● Meta description too short
59.242%
● Meta description too long
54.455%
● Title too short 32.758%

58. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Google will write titles and
descriptions for you.
Only worry if the pages get
lots of traffic or you think
they’re important.

61. Content Indexable
● Page and SERP titles
do not match
68.537%

62. Script to see which titles
were the most changed.
https://colab.research.googl
e.com/drive/1mg3DTWVkgX
0KHD3Hx2Y3WyMAUDjdm3
cB?usp=sharing

63. Content Indexable
● H1 tag missing or empty59.503%

64. Usually a quick fix so I’d do
it, but not that important.
Text size is likely more
important.

65. Content Indexable
● Multiple H1 tags 51.254%

66. Allowed in HTML5.

67. Content Indexable
● Low word count 18.208%

68. Who is the president of
Bulgaria?
You don’t need 1500 words
to answer that!

69. Content Indexable
● Multiple meta description tags
3.562%
● Multiple title tags 3.036%

70. Combined into 1 for
indexing in Google.

71. Content Not
Indexable
● Meta description tag missing
or empty 72.926%
● Title too long 63.193%
● +More

72. It’s not indexable, don’t
worry about it.

73. Duplicates
● Duplicate pages without
canonical 15.698%

75. Google is pretty good at
figuring this out.

76. Performance
● Pages with poor CLS
0.292%
● Pages with poor LCP
0.249%
● Pages with poor FID 0.018%

77. Add PageSpeed Insights to
your audits to get CWV (field
data) and Lighthouse (lab
data) at scale

79. Images
● Missing alt text80.401%

80. Accessibility issue.
Potential legal issue.
Alt text counts as normal
text on the page.

81. Images
● Image file size too large
27.25%

82. Compress your images.

83. Images
● Image broken 15.42%
● Page has broken image
15.42%

84. Fix broken ones on
important pages.

85. Images
● Page has redirected image
9.142%
● Image redirects 8.961%

86. Low priority as long as they
work.

87. Images
● HTTPS page links to
HTTP image
12.328%

88. Content Security Policy
(CSP)
upgrade-insecure-requests

89. JavaScript
● JavaScript broken 4.823%
● Page has broken JavaScript
4.822%

90. Potential UX and
functionality issues.
It may even prevent your
content from being seen.

91. JavaScript
● Page has redirected JavaScript
2.644%
● JavaScript redirects2.626%

92. Fine as long as it still works.
Clean up if you can, but I
wouldn’t prioritize this.

93. JavaScript
● HTTPS page links to HTTP
JavaScript 1.663%

94. Content Security Policy
(CSP)
upgrade-insecure-requests

95. CSS
● CSS broken 4.25%
● Page has broken CSS 4.25%

96. Potential UX issues.

97. CSS
● CSS redirects 1.276%

98. CSS
● HTTPS page links to
HTTP CSS 1.063%

99. Content Security Policy
(CSP)
upgrade-insecure-requests

100. Sitemaps
● 3XX redirect in sitemap
22.838%
● Non-canonical page in sitemap
12.107%
● Noindex page in sitemap
11.602%

101. Pages in sitemaps are a
canonicalization signal.
They should all be 200s and
the canonical.

102. Automate your sitemaps.
If manual, I don’t bother.

103. Sitemaps
Sitemap larger 50MB #N/A
Sitemap with over 50K URLs
#N/A
Sitemap in the wrong format
#N/A

104. These can keep your
sitemap from being
processed.

105. IndexNow is better imo.
● Faster
● More than just 200s
● Data protection
● <lastmod> is unreliable
● Broader distribution

106. Real-time monitoring
coming to Ahrefs, w/
IndexNow

107. External Pages
● External 3XX redirect
17.252%

108. Helping another site. I
wouldn’t prioritize this.

109. External Pages
● External 4XX 9.2%
● External 5XX 4.988%
● External time out 3.688%

110. Potential UX issue.

111. Other
● Double slash in URL11.078%

112. Lots more sites than
expected.
Ignored by browsers and
search engines.

113. Other
● More than three parameters
in URL8.067%

114. May indicate bloat.

115. Other
● Non-canonical page receives
organic traffic 6.55%
● 3XX page receives organic
traffic 6.139%

116. One page or the other will
rank.
Don’t worry about it unless
you have a specific
preference.

117. Other
● 4XX page receives
organic traffic 2.141%
● Noindex page receives
organic traffic 0.636%

118. Recent?
Blocked by robots.txt?

119. Do Care About
● Not indexed but should be
● Redirect 404 pages w/ links
● Internal linking
● Anything else that’s important
but not working

120. Thank You!
Try Ahrefs Site Auditor Free
ahrefs.com/awt