--- title: "Issue priority" date: "2022-04-07T10:20:16+00:00" summary: "Understand issue prioritization methods for web errors. Learn how we calculate priority and issue severity based on impact and difficulty to improve your site's performance and accessibility." image: type: "page" url: "/web-governance/issue-priority" id: "e3efe8fe-31c0-4b37-b1ea-46d70d97fc7d" --- Table of contents will be added Introduction ------------ The Acquia Web Governance suite uses various means of prioritization within the platform. This article describes how the priority, severity, likelihood, and difficulty levels are calculated within each module. Priority of issues ------------------ This page provides information about the different prioritization methods that Acquia Web Governance uses for issues and errors. The script sends a request to our server when a page on the website loads with a JavaScript-enabled agent. The following data is used: * Page views * Error count With this data, Web Governance can calculate the number of pages that have the error and then compare it to the number of errors on each page. For example, one dead link on the busiest page of a website has a higher priority than 5 dead links on the least-visited page. Priority can be seen as below in the _Opportunities by Priority_ in the Performance module and in the Accessibility feature. The issues are sorted automatically and also rate the level of difficulty to fix them. The difficulty ratings are the following: * High impact * Medium impact * Low impact Priority is also seen in the Quality Assurance module on the page view and in the Inventory module and reports. The categories here indicate priority from high to low as determined by the number of times the error occurs and the number of page views on the page that is affected. The priority levels are the following: * High * Medium * Low. Priority rankings ----------------- This section provides information on how priority ranking is determined in the Web Governance SEO, Accessibility, and Inventory modules. Priority rankings: * **High priority alerts**: These issues are rated as high priority: * **Missing H1** The H1 header tag is typically the first header tag visible on a page. H1 tags are formatted differently from other page tags. When search engines crawl pages, H1 tags help them to accurately identify the page content. Also, visitors are able to navigate web pages that feature H1 tags more easily. Pages with no H1 tags are difficult for search engines to crawl accurately and are a negative experience for visitors, which harms your SEO. * **Title found on more than one page** Title tags allow users and search engines to quickly understand the content that they can expect to find on a page. More than one title tag on a page may confuse search engines and users as to the contents of a page, and harms your SEO. * **Missing title** Title tags allow users and search engines to quickly identify the content that they can expect to find on a page. Pages with no title tag can harm your SEO rankings and negatively impact the user click-through rate from search results. The recommendation is to always include a title tag that clearly communicates what the page is about. * **Medium Priority Alerts**: These issues are rated as medium priority: * **Images missing ALT** As search engines cannot ‘‘see’’ images on web pages the way we can, an image with a missing ALT tag can cause the site to be ranked lower due to unintended keywords, and may result in it not being ranked at all. ALT tags on images should describe the image as accurately as possible. Missing ALT tags for images can also have a negative impact on the level of ADA compliance on the website. Visitors who use assistive technologies such as screen readers rely on ALT tags to navigate and understand the website content. For more information, visit: * [Accessibility](/node/58686/) * [Accessibility checks](/node/58691/) * **Too short content on page** A page may be perceived as ‘’thin’’ by search engines if it does not contain a certain amount of content. While there is no clear rule as to the amount of content a page should have, it is advisable to have a minimum of 300 words. * **Multiple H1 on page** H1 tags allow users and search engines to quickly understand the content that they can expect to find on a page. A page with more than one title tag may confuse search engines and users as to the contents of a page, and can affect the SEO. Use only one H1 per page to increase SEO. * **Missing subheadings** Subheadings allow users and search engines to quickly identify what content they can expect to find on a page. A site with no subheadings can receive a lower search engine ranking and a low click-through rate from search results. Always include subheadings to identify specific sections of content and increase SEO. * **(Identical) H1 found on more than one page** H1 tags allow users and search engines to quickly identify the content that they can expect to find on a page. A site that has more than one page with the same H1 tag may confuse search engines, and can negatively impact your rankings and your click-through rate from search results. Make all of the H1 tags across the domain unique and relevant to the on-page content to increase SEO. * **Low Priority Alerts**: These issues are rated as low priority: * **Too short META description** Meta descriptions are important as they help users and search engines identify the content that they can expect to find on a page. A short meta description may not contain enough characters to accurately communicate the content of a page, and this can harm your SEO. * **Too many internal links** Search engines use links to determine how relevant a page is to specific search criteria. It is therefore important to ensure that all of your internal links are useful for your visitors. Web Governance recommends minimal use of internal links and advises users to ensure that all of your internal links are appropriate to the site content. * **Too long URL** URL length is listed as #46 in Google’s top 200 ranking factors. Although there is no exact rule as to how long URLs should be, shorter URLs tend to rank higher on web searches. Shorter URLs benefit users as they are clearer when copied in full. * **Too long META description** In order to display fully in search engine results, it is recommended that you keep meta description length between 150-160 characters. Meta descriptions that are longer than this may contain unnecessary text, and will negatively impact your SEO score. Web Governance recommends meta descriptions of less than 160 characters for best results. * **Technical SEO Issues**: This section provides an overview of technical issues that could harm your SEO. The issues listed in this category require manual review, the scan cannot determine if they are legitimate issues or not. * **Pages with - No index**: Pages that a _no-index_ tag are listed here for review. The Web Governance scan cannot determine if pages have the _no-index_ tag intentionally, these results must be manually reviewed to see if any remedial action is required. * **Links with - No-follow**: Pages with a _no-follow_ tag are listed here for review. The Web Governance scan cannot determine if pages have been given a _no-follow_ tag intentionally, these results must be manually reviewed to determine if any remedial action is required. For more information, visit: * [Search Engine Optimization (SEO)](/node/58841/) * [Inventory](/node/58651/) Severity of errors ------------------ The severity rating assigned to an error in the _Data Privacy_ module indicates the level of risk associated with the flagged data. This rating takes into consideration the potential negative effect on organizational assets, organizational operations, and individuals if it were disclosed without authorization. How the severity of security issues is calculated: * **Low Severity** Data with _low severity_ has a limited adverse effect on organizational assets, organizational operations, and individuals if it is disclosed without authorization. * **Medium Severity** Data with medium severity has a serious adverse effect on organizational assets, organizational operations, and individuals if it is disclosed without authorization. * **High Severity** Data with high severity has a severe or catastrophic effect on organizational assets, organizational operations, and individuals if it is disclosed without authorization. For more information, visit [How use the Data Privacy add-on](/node/58921/). Alerts in Web Governance Accessibility -------------------------------------- The results of the accessibility checks are prioritized and the issues are placed in the following categories: * **Error** The issue is in direct conflict with the standard and needs to be fixed. These are usually content issues such as HTML snippets that are not compliant. These issues can only be fixed with a change to the source code. * **Warning** The issue is most likely in conflict with the standard, do a manual review and fix the issue. * **Review** The issue cannot be programmatically determined as an error or warning and requires human review. Do a manual review of the issue to determine if any fix can be done. For more information, visit: * [Accessibility](/node/58686/) * [Accessibility checks](/node/58691/) Likelihood ---------- Likelihood is a rating given within the _Data Privacy_ module to results. This rating indicates the level of certainty that the error is in fact accurate. Likelihood ratings are divided into the three following categories: * Possible * Likely * Very Likely Note False positives can occasionally occur. Acquia recommend that users manually review the flagged data for absolute accuracy. For more information, visit [Data Privacy](/node/58911/). Score calculations ------------------ This section provides information about how the different modules and features calculate the score for issues and errors. ### Accessibility scores The compliance score for the accessibility checks is calculated by using 100 (a perfect score) minus the number of errors found. This is then divided by the total number of accessibility checks. ### Data Privacy scores The compliance score for data privacy check is calculated as follows: The scan is done on each domain for several data privacy checks. To calculate the compliance score for the domain, we calculate the average. For example: the total sum divided by the total amount of data privacy checks that the scan looks for on the domain. Note Ignored issues or checks are not counted towards the compliance scores. ### Quality Assurance scores The compliance score for the quality assurance check is calculated by dividing the total number of page errors found by the total number of page errors plus the total number of documents, multiplied by 100. ### SEO scores Sometimes also referred to as _SEO issues_ or _SEO checkpoints_. The compliance score for SEO issues is calculated as follows: The number of pages with issues divided by the number of total pages. The following Technical SEO issues are not taken into account in the domain compliance score: * Pages with no index * Links with no index * SEO issues that the user has manually ignored Difficulty of issues -------------------- This section provides information about the complexity levels for the resolution of performance issues. This breakdown of issues is found in the `Performance module > page details > Opportunities page`. This view provides some indication about the level of expertise that is needed to correct the issue. Keep in mind that some CMS systems are easier to work with than others. For more information on the difficulty level of an error, contact the [support team](mailto:webgovsupport@acquia.com). * **Easy**: This label indicates that users need basic HTML knowledge to correct the issue. * **Moderate**: This label indicates that users need strong HTML knowledge in order to correct the issue. * **Hard**: This label indicates that users need development knowledge in order to correct the issue.