A week after releasing the troubled version 6.6, WordPress has released another version that fixes seven major issues including two that caused fatal errors (website crashes), another issue that caused a security plugins to issue false warnings plus several more that created unwanted UI changes. Fatal Errors In WordPress 6.6 The one issue that got … Read more
In a recent LinkedIn post, Google Analyst Gary Illyes raised awareness about two issues plaguing web crawlers: soft 404 and other “crypto” errors. These seemingly innocuous mistakes can negatively affect SEO efforts. Understanding Soft 404s Soft 404 errors occur when a web server returns a standard “200 OK” HTTP status code for pages that don’t … Read more
In a Google Office Hours podcast, Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about 404 Page Not Found errors that coincided with a drop in rankings. Fake External 404 Errors There are probably many reasons for 404 errors created by bots. One reason for those error responses could be that they are originating from automated scanners … Read more
WordPress security scanner WPScan’s 2024 WordPress vulnerability report calls attention to WordPress vulnerability trends and suggests the kinds of things website publishers (and SEOs) should be looking out for. Some of the key findings from the report were that just over 20% of vulnerabilities were rated as high or critical level threats, with medium severity … Read more
Google’s John Mueller answered an interesting question about what actually happens after clicking the “validate a fix” link in Search Console if the 404 status still exists. John Mueller explained what’s going on with that “validate a fix” function. What Causes A 404 Status Code And How Should It Be Dealt With? When a browser … Read more
Google’s John Mueller responded to a thread in Reddit about finding and fixing inbound broken links, offering a nuanced insight that some broken links are worth finding and fixing and others are not. Reddit Question About Inbound Broken Links Someone asked on Reddit if there’s a way to find broken links for free. This is … Read more
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit about what to do about the thousands of 404 errors reported in Google Search Console. John’s answer clarified how to approach the Search Console Page Indexing report with regard to the 404 errors listed there. 404 Error Response The 404 error response is a message from a … Read more
A creative Google Search Central blog article may lift the mystery surrounding the impact of common web errors for website visitors. Google Analyst Gary Illyes illustrated – literally and figuratively – the reasons behind different types of web errors reported in Google Search Console (GSC). Where do HTTP errors come from, really? Let us our … Read more
In a Google SEO Office Hours, Google’s Martin Splitt answered a question about structured data validation and how Google’s validator can show different results than the Schema.org validator. Structured Data Validation Both Google and Schema.org offer tools for validating if structured data is correct. Google’s tool is called the Rich Results Test. Schema.org’s tool is … Read more
Today’s “Ask An SEO” question comes from Bhaumik from Mumbai, who asks: “I have a question about automatically generated URLs. My firm had previously used different tools to generate sitemaps. But recently, we started creating them manually by selecting URLs that are necessary and blocking others in robots.txt. We are facing an issue now with … Read more
What is a broken email? Marketers love email for its reliability, effectiveness, and maybe most importantly its high return on investment (ROI). But email support can change suddenly with email clients’ rendering engines make it tricky for email marketers to understand what’s going to work where. What may look fine in Apple Mail can become … Read more
