On Thursday 19th June 2014 I gave a talk at Unified Diff (a monthly web/software development meet-up) in FoundersHub in Cardiff. The structure of the talk allowed the audience to choose the topics of their choice. We only had time for 4 out of a possible 12, which were (in order): - URL Parameters - Canonicalisation - Titles & Metadata Best Practice - Status Codes / Redirects Best Practice However this version of the deck contains the slides for all 12 topics, so if you were there on the night and were hoping that I'd cover a particular topic, well now you can see the slides at least!

1. SEO For Web Developers
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE
YOU’RE THE STAR OF THE STORY! CHOOSE FROM 12 EXCITING TOPICS!
BY STEVE MORGAN

4. Gav

5. Gav Me

6. Gav Me

7. Gav Meso seo

8. Gav Meso seo
much optimise

9. Gav Meso seo
much optimise
wow

10. Gave Meso seo
much optimise
wow

11. Gave Mehttp://seono.co.uk/
2013/09/02/best-
compliment-ever-
received-
developer/

13. http://moz.com/blog/the-web-
developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-

14. 3 Main Areas of SEO
•1) Off-site (links)
•2) On-site – copy
•3) On-site – technical

15. 3 Main Areas of SEO
•1) Off-site (links)
•2) On-site – copy
•3) On-site – technical

16. Facebook
Open Graph
& Twitter
Cards
Titles &
Metadata
Best Practice
Webmaster
Tools
Status Codes /
Redirects
Best Practice
URLs Best
Practice
Canonica
l-isation
URL
Parameter
s
Robots
Commands
Google+
Authorship
& Publisher
hreflang
(Internationa
l SEO)
Rich
Snippets, e.g.
Schema.org
Pagination,
aka
rel="next"
Facebook
Open Graph &
Twitter Cards

17. Titles & Metadata Best Practice
• Page Title:
• Now determined by pixel width, not character limit (but still about 60-ish)
• Text is bigger following Google’s recent redesign:
• Make them unique site-wide
• [Source: http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool]

18. Titles & Metadata Best Practice
• Meta description:
• 155-160 characters – Google truncates the rest (similar to title tag)
• Google may not use it… Case in point:
• …Or Google may mix part of the meta description with a snippet from the
page:
http://seono.co.uk/2012/08/05/google-showing-combination-of-meta-description-body-snippet-in-
serps/
• Make them unique site-wide

19. EndReturn
Titles & Metadata Best Practice
• Meta keywords:
• …
• Don’t bother (seriously…!)
• Google ignores it
• If Yahoo!, Bing, etc. care, it’s not much
• Works against you – competitors can see what keywords are important to
you…

20. Webmaster Tools
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Submitting XML sitemaps
• Discovering 404 pages
• Seeing if you’re affected by
a manual penalty
• Setting URL parameters
• Demoting Sitelinks
• Requesting URL removals
• “Fetch as Google”
• Restore ‘dropped’ links
quickly
• And so much more…!

21. Webmaster Tools
• Bing Webmaster Tools
• …sucks! LOL (No, really.)
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22. Status Codes / Redirects Best Practice
• Redirects
• Put simply:
301s = GOOD
302s = BAD!
• More info here: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

23. Status Codes / Redirects Best Practice
• Soft 404s
• http://seono.co.uk/2014/04/23/4-examples-of-soft-404s-on-big-websites/
• When your Page
Not Found page
isn’t a 404…
• …So Google
indexes it.
• [Server header
checker tool link]
EndReturn

24. URLs Best Practice

25. URLs Best Practice
• Other factors:
• Dashes > Underscores
• all lowercase > Capitalisation Throughout
• Feel free to remove the file extension (e.g. .html at the end)
• Therefore…
domain.com/example-page > domain.com/Example_Page.htm

26. URLs Best Practice
• [Source: http://moz.com/learn/seo/url]
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27. Canonicalisation
<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/blog" />
• [Source: http://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization]

28. Canonicalisation
• Useful for:
• www. vs. non-www.
• http:// vs. https://
• Duplicate homepage (e.g. www.domain.com vs.
www.domain.com/index.htm)
• With and without a slash at the end (e.g. /about-us vs. /about-us/)
• Search parameters (e.g. …?color=blue)
• Referral parameters
(e.g. …?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=website)
• Be careful not to:
• Canonicalise everything into the homepage
• Canonicalise a sub-domain into the main domain
EndReturn

29. URL Parameters
• [Source: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xWy5TOkB4rwoUHXFPgwVMgl2Op9PayZOWa5wdW7ZB-o]
• Search parameters (e.g. …?color=blue)
• Referral parameters
(e.g. …?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=profile&utm_campaign=website)

30. URL Parameters
• In Google Webmaster Tools:
• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-url-parameters
EndReturn

31. Robots Commands
• Remove a page from search engines (more effective than robots.txt):
<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
• Some other robots commands:
• NOFOLLOW = prevents SE bots from following any links on the page
• NOARCHIVE = prevents SEs from showing a cached copy
• NOSNIPPET = prevents SEs from showing a description alongside
the result
• NOODP = blocks the Open Directory Project description of the
page from being used in the description
• Can be combined (e.g. "noindex,nofollow")
• [Source: http://searchengineland.com/meta-robots-tag-101-blocking-spiders-cached-pages-more-10665]
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32. Facebook Open Graph & Twitter Cards
• Facebook Open Graph meta tags:
• [Source: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/]

33. Facebook Open Graph & Twitter Cards
• Facebook Open Graph meta tags:
• [Source: http://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123]
<!-- Open Graph data -->
<meta property="og:title" content="Title Here" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content=" http://www.example.com/" />
<meta property="og:image" content=" http://example.com/image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description Here" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Site Name, i.e. Moz" />
<meta property="fb:admins" content="Facebook numeric ID" />

34. Facebook Open Graph & Twitter Cards
• Twitter Card meta tags:
• [Source: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/open-graph-meta-tags/]

35. Facebook Open Graph & Twitter Cards
• Twitter Card meta tags:
• [Source: http://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123]
<!-- Twitter Card data -->
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@publisher_handle">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="Page Title">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="Page description less than 200
characters">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@author_handle">
<-- Twitter Summary card images must be at least 200x200px -->
<meta name="twitter:image" content=" http://www.example.com/image.jpg">
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36. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Google Authorship, a.k.a. rel="author"
• Adding your face to Google’s search results:
• Benefits:
• No immediate ranking benefit* (yet), but…
• It’s eye-catching – increased click-through rate
• …Especially if you’re well-known in your industry
• * Personalisation – if you follow someone, you may see them higher(?)

37. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Google Authorship – three ways to implement (Step 1):
• 1) In the <head> (on any articles you’ve written)
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/109807087957970967076"/>
• 2) Add a parameter to an in-page link
<a href="https://plus.google.com/109807087957970967076?rel=author">Steve
Morgan</a>
• 3) Verify your email
• No longer an option…?
• Clunky as hell anyway…

38. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Google Authorship – three ways to implement (Step 2):
• Add the site to your Google+ profile’s ‘Contributor to’ section
(which is found under the Links sub-section of the About section)
My sites
Local society
Non-SEO
guest post
SEO social
media site
Old employer’s
blog
SEO guest posts

39. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Test it – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

40. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Google Publisher, a.k.a. rel="publisher"
• Equivalent for Google+ Brand pages for branded searches…

41. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Google Publisher – two ways to implement:
• 1) In the <head> (homepage only)
<link rel="publisher" href="https://plus.google.com/109733829658465862616"/>
• 2) On-page? (possibly new – only just spotted)
<a href="https://plus.google.com/112544075040456048636" rel="publisher">Google+</a>

42. Google+ Authorship & Publisher
• Want to learn more?
• My talk from April 2013:
http://seono.co.uk/2013/04/22/getting-your-face-in-google-my-cardiff-internet-talk/
or
• My upcoming talk at Port80 Localhost,
Newport, August 2014 (date TBC)
http://port80events.co.uk/localhost-events/
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43. hreflang (International SEO)
• Use Google Webmaster Tools to geo-target domain…
• If a ccTLD (e.g. .co.uk) then already designated for you (United Kingdom)
• But… If gTLD (e.g. .com), you can choose!
• Choose your target country, or:
• ‘Unlisted’ = Global
• Working with a UK-based .com that only wants/needs UK traffic?
Be sure to change it!
• You can even geo-target sub-folders via GWT (e.g. domain.com/uk/)

44. hreflang (International SEO)
• Also: consider hreflang
(full name: rel="alternate" hreflang="x")
• Useful for side-stepping duplicate content issues for multinational
sites:
• English, UK (GBP £)
• English, Australian (AUD $)
• Potentially 99% identical content
• Implement via:
• <head>
• XML sitemaps - http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php

45. hreflang (International SEO)
• hreflang example:
• Top line: Global (English)
• Middle line: UK (English)
• Bottom line: Australian (English)
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://www.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://en-gb.example.com/page.html" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-au" href="http://en-au.example.com/page.html" />
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46. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
• Rich snippets summarised in 5 words:
THEY
MAKE
GOOGLE
LOOK
PRETTY

47. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
• Examples:

48. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
• Example of implementation via Schema.org – before:
<h1>Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware</h1>
A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing to accent your stay
in Mexico Beach.
3102 Highway 98
Mexico Beach, FL
Phone: 850-648-4200

49. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
• Example of implementation via Schema.org – after:
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
<h1><span itemprop="name">Beachwalk Beachwear & Giftware</span></h1>
<span itemprop="description"> A superb collection of fine gifts and clothing
to accent your stay in Mexico Beach.</span>
<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">3102 Highway 98</span>
<span itemprop="addressLocality">Mexico Beach</span>,
<span itemprop="addressRegion">FL</span>
</div>
Phone: <span itemprop="telephone">850-648-4200</span>
</div>

50. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
• Test it – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

51. Rich Snippets (e.g. Schema.org)
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52. Pagination (a.k.a. rel="next"/"prev")
• Tags to improve Google’s understanding of paginated content
• Example for http://seono.co.uk/category/seo/page/2/
• Built into WordPress as standard (not sure about other platforms…)
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53. Your adventure ends here.
• Image credits – via Creative Commons licence:
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/notbrucelee/6305665821
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/3742991709
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/3743784604
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdrummbks/3743784398
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/ocreactive/4250593691
• http://gavd.co.uk/2013/05/announcing-wineface-a-free-android-app/
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/skipgoshannon/2412907219
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/misterjt/2878889135
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/_scypher/4776126765
• http://youchosewrong.tumblr.com/post/25438706634/from-be-an-interplanetary-spy-1-find-the
• (All the rest were screenshots or credited in-slide.)
• SEOno.co.uk (blog)
• morganonlinemarketing.co.uk (freelance)
• @steviephil (Twitter)