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SEMrush: Do they make problems where no problems exist?

by RedWaterDub
1 replies
  • SEO
    • |
SEMrush do quite a detailed audit for your website. It's very cool, they analyze a lot of seo factors and suggest fixes. However some of what they say seems a little too fussy.

  1. they claim that having duplicate h1 and title tags is a problem that needs fixing. But as far as I'm aware every single wordpress site automatically tags the same title of a blog post or page post with a title tag and also an h1 tag. I have never had a problem with this before that I'm aware of anyway. But is this a problem, does it need fixing?
  2. they claim having outgoing external nofollow links is a problem as well. But I use social media buttons as I'm sure a lot of you do to, such as facebook share, twitter tweete etc.. these type of outbound links are usually nofollow. SEMrush says that needs fixing, but does it really?
  3. They say any less than 10% of text ratio to html code on any page is a problem which needs fixing by adding more text or removing some html code. However, I have many pages, as I'm sure many of you do too, that have far less than 10% text to code. These could be product pages where the page lists products from a shopping cart which is all mostly code, or pages that have videos and quite a few images, .. these pages still looks absolutely fine to me and to the visitors. Do these sort of pages really need to be fixed as SEMrush recommends?
  4. Duplicate content within your site. SEMrush finds pages on your site that they deem duplicate, and say they need fixing by either adding more unique content to each page, or removing the duplicate content. However, I have some products that have similar names and similar features, and they have their own pages. Is it really necessary to make these pages so different. I mean, they are not exactly the same. They just have a few similarities.. for example one could be "ce4 double zipper kit" and one could be "ce5 double zipper kit". The description would also be similar but not exactly the same.. How important is it to word these descriptions, titles, headings, and meta data differently, and how different does it need to be before it isn't a problem? What is the cut off point so to speak?
#duplicate content #exist #h1 tag #make #problems #semrush #title tag
  • Profile picture of the author hsahadath
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      1. Not a problem, but some would advocate that varying them slightly can the LSI structure of the page and help to target more related keywords. A lot of companies will append their business or site name on the end of their title tags too.

      2. Not really a problem, but there is also no reason to make those links nofollow. There is no benefit to doing so.

      3. Never have found any evidence of this mattering. Seems extremely silly to be honest. Why would Google give a shit what the text to HTML ratio is on a page? That tells them nothing useful about the value of the page or its content. One of those silly rumors someone started and idiots in the SEO community kept parroting enough until it has been accepted as real.

      4. Really a case-by-case basis. Every site is going to be a little different. There are thousands of products sold on Amazon that have duplicate content, for example. If two pages are pretty much identical, there is less of a chance that both will rank. One will likely be relegated to the supplemental SERPs.
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