Screaming Frog and Sitebulb issues explained
What the common Screaming Frog issues and Sitebulb hints mean in plain English, which ones matter, and how to confirm and fix each one.
SEOSnip guides
Technical SEO guides that show you how to check it yourself
What each technical SEO problem is, why it matters, how to find it by hand and how to fix it. Every guide covers one or more of the 77 checks SEOSnip runs.
Latest guides
Alternate page with proper canonical tag and duplicate statuses, explained
What Search Console's canonical statuses mean, which ones need action, and how to check whether Google picked the right page.
Crawled and Discovered, currently not indexed: what to do
Why Search Console lists a page as crawled or discovered but not indexed, when to worry, and how to rule out page-level causes.
301 vs 302 redirects: which one to use
A 301 says a page has moved for good and a 302 says the move is temporary. How Google treats each, when to use them, and how to check yours.
Too many redirects: how to find and fix a redirect loop
What ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS means on your own site, the usual causes, how to trace the loop with curl, and how to fix it.
Largest Contentful Paint: how to find and fix a slow LCP
What LCP measures, how to find the element holding your score back, and which fix to use for each part of the delay.
Cumulative Layout Shift: how to find and fix what moves
What CLS measures, how to find the element that moved and what pushed it, and how to fix the usual causes.
Interaction to Next Paint: how to find and fix a slow INP
What INP measures, how to find the slow click or tap, and how to fix input delay, processing time and presentation delay.
Open Graph tags and og:image: how to set them up
Which Open Graph tags you need, the right og:image size, how to check them, and why a shared link can show the wrong preview.
How to check for invalid elements in the <head>
One stray <img> or <iframe> can end the head early and hide your canonical and robots tags from Google. How to find it by hand, and fix it.
How to find broken links on a page, and which ones really are broken
Check a page for broken links by hand: find 404s, server errors and redirects, learn which error codes don't mean broken, and fix them.
Noindex, meta robots and X-Robots-Tag: how to check what a page tells Google
A page can say noindex in three places, and the strictest one wins. How to check them all by hand, what each directive does, and how to fix conflicts.
JavaScript SEO: how to check the server HTML matches what renders
Google runs JavaScript, but many AI crawlers don't. How to compare a page's server HTML with the rendered page, and what's safe to set with JavaScript.
The viewport meta tag: what it does, and why zoom must stay on
The viewport meta tag decides whether phones show your page properly. How to check it by hand, fix it, and why blocking zoom fails accessibility.
Soft 404s: what they are, how to find them and how to fix them
A soft 404 is a page that says "not found" while the server says it loaded fine. How to spot one by hand, why it happens, and what each page should return.
Pagination SEO: links search engines can follow, Load more and infinite scroll
Google follows links, not buttons. How to check your pagination, Load more and infinite scroll are crawlable for SEO, and fix them without a redesign.
How to check hreflang tags, including the return links
Hreflang only works when every language version lists itself and all the others. How to check the tags by hand, spot the common mistakes and fix them.
Title tag length: why pixels matter more than characters
Google cuts titles by width, not character count. How to measure your title tag in pixels, why some 50-character titles fit and others don't, and fix them.
Canonical tags: how to check one is working
A canonical tag names the main version of a page, but it only works if it points at a real, indexable page. How to check a canonical by hand, and fix it.
Security headers and HSTS: a checklist for SEO teams
HTTPS, HSTS and four other security headers in plain English: what each one does, the value to start with, how to check them by hand, and the HSTS traps.
How to find and fix broken JSON-LD structured data
One stray comma or wrong quote breaks a whole JSON-LD block. How to find structured data syntax errors, the usual causes, and how to stop them coming back.
Image alt text: how to write it, and how to check it
Alt text describes images to people who can't see them and helps Google understand them. When to write it, when to leave it empty, and how to check it.
Meta description length, duplicates and when Google ignores yours
What a meta description does, how long it should be, why Google often shows other text instead, and how to check for missing or duplicate ones by hand.
H1 tag and heading hierarchy: what matters, and how to check
What the H1 tag is for, whether more than one is a problem, why skipped heading levels matter more to people than to Google, and how to check a page's outline.
Meta refresh redirects: what Google does with them, and what to use instead
A meta refresh redirects or reloads a page from the HTML. How Google treats instant and delayed ones, why a server redirect is better, and how to find them.
robots.txt: how to check what's blocked, and when blocking backfires
How robots.txt Disallow rules match, why a page blocked by robots.txt can still show in Google, why blocking CSS and JS backfires, and how to test a URL.
Meta charset and UTF-8: how to check a page's character encoding
Garbled characters like ’ mean the browser guessed the wrong encoding. Where to declare UTF-8, why it must come early, and how to check a page by hand.
The HTML base tag: how one line can redirect every relative link
The HTML base tag changes where every relative link, image and canonical on a page points. How it works, how it breaks, and how to check it by hand.
URL structure for SEO: capitals, underscores, parameters and other traps
URL structure for SEO: capitals, underscores, spaces, session IDs and tracking parameters create duplicate URLs. What Google advises, and how to check.
Browse by topic
Head and metadata
Titles, descriptions, encoding, viewport and everything else that has to sit in the page head to count.
6 guides · 23 checksIndexing and canonicals
Canonical links, robots rules, redirects and the server HTML vs rendered page differences that decide what search engines index.
10 guides · 17 checksInternational SEO
Language declarations and hreflang: telling search engines which version of a page belongs to which audience.
1 guide · 10 checksLinks and URLs
Broken and redirected links, crawlable pagination and clean, consistent URLs.
3 guides · 13 checksContent and structure
Headings, images, structured data and the content signals that tell search engines what a page is about.
4 guides · 9 checksSecurity
HTTPS, mixed content, insecure forms and the security headers that keep a site trustworthy.
1 guide · 5 checksSpeed and sharing
How fast and stable a page feels, and how it looks when someone shares it.
4 guidesFind these issues on any page
SEOSnip checks the page in your browser, compares the server HTML with the rendered page, and turns each issue into a ticket with the evidence attached.