Fix Library
The issues the test finds, explained and fixed.
The Siege Test scores your site in seconds. This is the other half: 25 guides that explain what each problem means in plain English and walk you through fixing it, step by step. No jargon, no assumptions, and no need to hire anyone for most of them.
They are filed under the feature each one repairs, using the same five scores the test reports: Security, Search, Mobile, Speed, and Practices. If the test docked your Security score, the repairs that move it are the ones under Security.
These are the issues the test most often reports, and every repair it recommends now has a guide here. The test itself keeps growing, so this library will grow with it.
Not sure which apply to you? Run the free Siege Test and it will rank the repairs for your own site.
Security
the score that grades how safely the site behaves — 7 guides.
- Serve the padlock version of your site everywhereYour site answers on a plain http address, so the browser tells visitors the connection is not secure.
- Force the secure version of your siteYour site is served over HTTPS but never tells the browser to insist on it, so a visitor returning over an insecure connection is not protected.
- Stop other sites hiding your pages in a frameYour pages can be embedded inside a frame on someone else page, which lets an attacker disguise your buttons as theirs.
- Stop leaking where your visitors came fromYour site does not set a referral policy, so full addresses of where visitors came from are passed to every external site they then visit.
- Stop browsers guessing what your files areYour site does not tell browsers to trust the file type it declares, so a browser may guess at it and treat a file as something it is not.
- Switch off browser features your site does not useYour site does not declare which browser features it needs, so features like the camera, the microphone, and location stay available to any script on the page.
- Say which scripts your page is allowed to runYour site does not declare which scripts it is allowed to run, so if something unwanted ever reaches a page it will run with the same authority as your own code.
Search
the score that grades how search engines read the site — 7 guides.
- Write a page title search engines can useYour page either has no title, or its title is too short to say anything or long enough to get cut off in search results.
- Add a description that earns the clickYour page has no meta description, or the one it has is too short to be useful or so long it gets cut off.
- Tell search engines which address is the real oneYour page does not declare a preferred address, so the same content can be reached at more than one URL.
- Describe your business in a language search engines readYour page has no structured data, so search engines have to guess what your business is, where it is, and what it does.
- Publish a file that tells crawlers the rulesYour site has no reachable /robots.txt, so search engine crawlers get no guidance about what to index.
- Control how your links look when sharedYour page does not provide sharing information, so links pasted into chat apps and social media look bare or wrong.
- Get your page back into search resultsYour page carries a noindex instruction, which tells search engines to leave it out of search results completely.
Mobile
the score that grades how the site behaves on a phone — 4 guides.
- State what language your site is written inYour page never says which language it is written in, so every tool that reads it has to guess.
- Make the site fit the screen it is onYour page does not declare that it should scale to the width of the device, so phones show a shrunken desktop page.
- Describe your images for people who cannot see themSome of your images have no text description attached, so they are invisible to screen readers and to search engines.
- Give your site an icon instead of a blank tabYour site has no icon, so browsers show a blank page symbol in the tab, in bookmarks, and in open tabs.
Speed
the score that grades how long the site takes to appear — 5 guides.
- Make the server answer before visitors give upYour server takes too long to start sending the page, so visitors wait at a blank screen with no sign that anything is happening.
- Stop scripts holding up the first paintSome of your scripts load before anything is drawn on screen, so the visitor stares at white space while the browser waits for them.
- Send visitors straight to the final addressGetting to your page takes more than one redirect, so every visitor makes a series of extra round trips before they see anything.
- Fix the address that returns an errorThe address returned an error code instead of the page, so anyone following that link sees an error rather than your content.
- Work out why the test could not reach your siteThe test received no response at all from your address, so it could not read the page and could not score it.
Practices
the score that grades the site markup itself — 2 guides.
- Send your pages compressed so they arrive fasterYour server sends the page exactly as written, instead of compressing it in transit first.
- Stop your secure page loading insecure filesYour page is served over a secure connection, but some of the files it loads still use the old insecure http address, so browsers block them or load them in a downgraded state.
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