Ubersuggest's Site Audit tool is a powerful feature designed to help website owners identify and rectify SEO issues. One of the recommendations generated by the Site Audit is "Pages Don’t Have Doctype Declared." This article's goal is to help new users understand, locate, and fix this particular problem utilizing Ubersuggest.
What does "Pages Don’t Have Doctype Declared" Mean?
This refers to webpages that lack a doctype declaration, which informs the browser about the HTML or XHTML used on the site. Declaring a doctype is crucial for loading the page quickly and without error, ensuring that the HTML loads properly and the content displays correctly. If not declared, it may lead to poor user experience and slower load times, affecting SEO negatively.
Why are "Pages That Don’t Have Doctype Declared" Bad for SEO?
Pages without a declared doctype are detrimental to SEO for several reasons:
- User Experience: Improperly loaded HTML can cause content display issues, leading to a poor user experience.
- Search Engine Ranking: Slow load times and poor user experience can negatively affect search engine rankings as search engines prioritize user-friendly pages.
- Content Accessibility: Without proper HTML rendering, the content might not be accessible to all users and devices, limiting the page's reach and visibility.
How to Identify "Pages that Don’t Have Doctype Declared"?
You can verify if your pages have a doctype declared by checking URLs from Ubersuggest’s site audit report with the "Inspect Element" tool or by viewing the page source code.
How to Fix "Pages Don’t Have Doctype Declared"?
To resolve this issue, add a doctype to all your pages. This involves adding the <!DOCTYPE> element in the source code before the <html> tag at the top of each page. For those unfamiliar with HTML, seeking help from someone with experience or a web developer is advisable to avoid errors.
Pro Tip and Further Reading
Optimizing every aspect of your site's structure is crucial for SEO. For a comprehensive SEO checklist to ensure you are maximizing your SEO efforts, consider reading this article from Neil Patel's blog: The Complete SEO Checklist.