This report displays the top violation types on your web site.

CardioLog identifies potential conflicts that might limit your site's reach during Search Engine Optimization. These violations may negatively affect your website and decrease the chances that it will be found and ranked well by search engines. Below is a complete list of all cataloged violations. In order to view this report, drill down on a specific page in the Pages With Most Violations report, to view the specific violations that have been identified.

 

SEO Violations table widget

 

Note: Currently, SEO Reports may be viewed from SEO Reports, under Acquisition.

 

Here is a list of important violations for SEO and how to fix each violation:

  • The page contains broken hyperlinks / The URL for the hyperlink is broken - Verify that the broken links are correct and do not contain spelling errors. Ensure that the URLs point to valid locations.

  • The title is missing - The page markup does not have a <title> tag. An inaccurate or irrelevant title can affect how the content of the page is indexed, ranked, and presented by search engines. Add the <title> tag inside of the <head> section of the page. The text in the <title> tag should be unique, descriptive and accurate. The title must be between 5 and 65 characters long. The title should be easy to read and contain keywords that reflect the page content.

  • The title is empty - The <title> tag of the page is empty. An inaccurate or irrelevant title can affect how the content of the page is indexed, ranked, and presented by search engines. Add title text inside the <title> tag of the page. The text inside of the <title> tag should be unique, descriptive and accurate. The title must be between 5 and 65 characters long. The title should be easy to read and contain keywords that reflect the page content.

  • The description is missing - The page markup is missing the <meta name="description" /> tag. The description meta tag is used to provide a short description of the page content. Search engines use the information from the description meta tag to index the page and to present the summary of the content on the search results page. An inaccurate or irrelevant description can affect the ranking of the page and reduce the number of visitors that click through from a search results page to your site. Add <meta name="description" content="description_text"> to the <head> section of the page, where the "description_text" is replaced with the actual page content description. The description must be between 25 and 150 characters long, and is meant to be read by potential visitors, so it should be well written, actionable, and rich in keywords.

  • The description is empty - The <meta name="description" /> tag does not have any content. The description meta tag is used to provide a short description of the page content. Search engines use the information from the description meta-tag to index the page and to present the summary of the content on the search results page. An inaccurate or irrelevant description can affect the ranking of the page and reduce the number of visitors that click through from a search results page to your site. Modify the <meta name="description" /> tag in the <head> section of the page to contain the actual page content description. The description must be between 25 and 150 characters long, and is meant to be read by potential visitors, so it should be well written, actionable, and rich in keywords..

  • The <h1> tag is missing - An <h1> tag is an indicator of what the page content is about. Search engine crawlers use the <h1> tag, which is almost as important as the title tag, as a major component for determining page ranking and relevancy to included keyword(s). The text in the <h1> tag must be between 25 and 150 characters long and should include keywords that accurately reflect the page content.

  • The page contains multiple title tags - The page markup has more than one <title> tag. No more than one <title> tag is allowed inside the <head> section of the page. Remove extra <title> tags from the page, and leave only a single <title> tag that best describes the page content.

  • The page contains multiple descriptions - The page markup has more than one <meta name="description" /> tag. No more than one description meta tag is allowed inside the <head> section of the page. Remove extra <meta name='description' /> tags from the page and leave only a single description meta-tag that best describes the content of the page.

  • The page contains multiple <h1> tags - An <h1> tag indicates the content of the page. Search engines diminish the value of a page that contains multiple <h1> tags. If a page overuses <h1> tags, that page could be designated a junk page and not be indexed. Use only one <h1> tag per page. The text in the <h1> tag must be between 25 and 150 characters long and should include keywords that reflect the page content. Replace all the extra <h1> tags with less important header tags, such as <h2>, <h3>, and so on.

  • The title is too short/The title is too long - The title must be between 5 and 65 characters long. It should not exceed 65 characters, including spaces. Most search engines will truncate the text in the <title> tag to fit comfortably on the results page. It must be unique, descriptive, and accurate. The title should be easy to read and contain keywords that reflect the page content.

  • The title/description begins with a brand name - Search engines often parse text so that words that appear earlier in a sentence are weighted higher than words that appear near the end of a sentence.  Page relevancy is calculated by the use of important keywords that describe the page content. A page about a specific topic should use a keyword related to that topic at the beginning of the <title> tag and the beginning of the description meta tag, instead of using a site name or brand name, because those do not describe the contents on the page and are not directly related to the keywords for a given page.

  • The description is too short / The description is too long - The description must be between 25 and 150 characters, and is meant to be read by potential visitors so it should be well written, actionable, and rich in keywords. Search engines use the information from the description meta-tag to index the page and to present the summary of the content on the search results page. A description that is too short or too long can affect the ranking of the page and reduce the number of visitors that click through from a search results page to your site.

  • The title and description are identical - The <title> and the <meta name='description'> tags of the page contain identical text. The description meta-tag is used to provide a short description of the page content and should include details about the page that are not provided in the page title. The description must be between 25 and 150 characters long, easy to read and contain keywords that reflect the page content.

  • The <img> tag does not have an ALT attribute defined - The ALT attribute provides a description of the image. Search engines are unable to interpret image files, so the ALT attribute is used to provide relevant information about the image to the search engines.

  • The page contains a large amount of script code - The page contains a large block of embedded script code. Search engines will ignore script code, but large quantities of script will force the actual text content of the page further down in the HTML. Search engines usually analyze a few megabytes of a page, so it is possible that the script block may prevent search engines from indexing the actual page content correctly. Move all inline script code to externally linked script files.

  • The page contains too many hyperlinks - Too many links in the same page may affect the indexing process used by search engine crawlers. This will likely result in poor search rankings for the page or the search engine may ignore the page entirely. Reduce the number of links on the page to fewer than 250.

  • The URL contains too many query string arguments - The URL has more than four (4) query string parameters. Most search engines will analyze up to four URL parameters and ignore any additional parameters. Consider reducing the number of query string parameters, or use a URL Rewrite Module to simplify the URL structure.

  • URL is linked using different casing - Search engines identify unique pages by using URLs. They are case sensitive, though, and treat differently cased URLs as different actual URLs. Pick a URL format for your site and then ensure that all the links in your site follow that format. (e.g. always use lowercase letters)

  • The link text is not relevant - Inaccurate or irrelevant text can affect the ranking of the page and reduce the number of visitors that click through from the search results page to your site. Search engines process the link text as a description of the content of the page to which the link points. Without link text, the target page has no associated keywords and, therefore, no relevance. Change the link text to include relevant and descriptive keywords that accurately represent the content of the page to which the link points.

  • The page contains multiple canonical formats - Search engines identify unique pages by using URLs.  When a single page can be accessed by using any one of multiple URLs, a search engine assumes that there are multiple unique pages. Use a single URL to reference a page to prevent dilution of page relevance. You can prevent dilution by following a standard URL format. Pick a canonical URL format for your site and then ensure that all the links in your site follow that format. If an external link that points to your site does not use the canonical URL format, use permanent HTTP redirection to redirect site visitors and search engines to a canonical equivalent of that URL.

  • The page contains unnecessary redirects - Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop. Using unnecessary redirects can have a negative impact on page ranking. If the intended behavior is not redirection, consider replacing the link URL to point directly to the destination URL.

  • The redirection response results in another redirection - Search engines can only pass page rankings and other relevant data through a single redirection hop. Using unnecessary redirects can have a negative impact on page ranking. Reduce the number of redirection responses by replacing the link URL to point directly to the destination.

  • The page contains invalid markups - The page contains invalid markup code. Analyze the markup for errors, especially syntax and spelling errors.

  • The content type of the resource is incorrect - The page content type does not match the content type of the HTTP response from the URL

  • The page contains a large number of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) definitions - Search engines will ignore CSS code, but large quantities of CSS code that precede the actual text content of the page will force the text content further down in the HTML. Search engines usually analyze a few megabytes of a page, so the CSS block may prevent search engines from indexing any page content. Move large blocks of CSS code to externally linked CSS files.

  • The page was excluded by a noindex attribute - The page content at this URL has not been analyzed because the page has a "noindex" meta-tag. To analyze the content on this page, select the "Ignore noindex" check box in the SEO job advanced settings, and then re-run it.

  • The page was excluded by a nofollow attribute - The URL will not be crawled because either the link to this URL has been marked with a "nofollow" attribute, or the page at this URL has a "nofollow" meta tag. To crawl the content at this URL, select the "Ignore nofollow" check box in the SEO job advanced settings, and then re-run it.

  • The request is disallowed by a Robots.txt rule - Robots.txt rules are used to tell search engines which Web site locations should not be crawled. If the blocked URL is supposed to be accessible for search engines to crawl and index, modify the rules in the Robots.txt file to allow search engines to access this URL.

Note: Using this report requires prior configuration in SEO Reports - Configuration.

 

Available Report Widgets

Table

Table Widget

The Violations table widget contains the following columns:

  • Violation Title - Violation type
  • Violation Level - Information, warning or error
  • Violation Count - Violation count is the number of violations found on the page
  • No labels