1. Max Prin, Head of Technical SEO, Merkle
@maxxeight
What does technical SEO look like in 2017?

2. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit2
Max Prin, Head of Technical SEO, Merkle
https://technicalseo.com

3. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit
SEO…

4. “Content is king”

5. “Links still matter”

6. “Technical SEO is more
important than ever”

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Search Engines’ Goal
Serving the
best results
 Most relevant
 Great UX

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How (Some) Search Engines Work?
1. Crawl the Web
2. (Render Pages)
3. Index URLs/Content
4. Rank URLs

9. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit9
Technical SEO’s Goal
Making sure search engines can access and understand your awesome content, and the
wonderful user experience you provide to your visitors.
Crawling
Can search
engines access
the pages?
Rendering
Can search
engines see the
content/UX?
Indexing
Are
URLs/content
indexed?

10. Crawling

11. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit11
Crawling
“Crawling is the entry point for sites
into Google's search results.
Efficient crawling of a website helps
with its indexing in Google Search.”
- Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google

12. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit12
Crawling
How to make sure search engines crawl all of your important pages?
 Provide clean URLs

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Crawling: provide clean URLs (JavaScript-based websites)
Fragment Identifier: example.com/#url
 Not supported. Ignored. URL = example.com
Hashbang: example.com/#!url
 Google and Bing will request:
example.com/?_escaped_fragment_=url
 The escaped_fragment URL should return an HTML
snapshot
Clean URL: example.com/url
 Using the pushState function of the HTML5 History API

14. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit14
Crawling
How to make sure search engines crawl all of your important pages?
 Provide clean URLs
 Lead bots to valuable pages

15. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit15
Crawling: leading bots to valuable pages
Clear/clean site navigation
Internal linking is a powerful
signal:
 Use <a href> elements
 Avoid “mega-mega” menus
Accurate/up-to-date Sitemaps
Sitemaps (XML or HTML) should
only include URLs that:
 Render a 200 OK status code
 Have a self-referencing
canonical tag (or no tag)
Properly handled duplicate
content and low-value pages
Parameterized URLs, sorts and
facet navigation, etc.
 Use canonical/noindex tags
 Non-indexable URLs are crawled
less often

16. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit16
Crawling: recommendations and tools
Analyze your log files and crawl your site to find out if:
 Search engine bots are not crawling some URLs
 Pages are not properly linked to, internally
 Sitemaps contain non-canonical URLs
 Low-value and duplicate pages are indexable

17. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit17
Crawling
How to make sure search engines crawl all of your important pages?
 Provide clean URLs
 Lead bots to valuable pages
 Make bots crawl more pages

18. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit18
Crawling: making bots crawl more pages
Decreased load time = increased crawl rate
 Fast and reliable server (no 5xx errors)
 Content Delivery Network
Rendering = requesting ALL resources
 Reduce the size of resources
(compression, minification, etc.)
 Reduce the number of requests (redirects,
icons, fonts, etc.)

19. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit19
(Fast site: better user experience)
 Optimize the critical rendering path
(perceived latency)
 Make the content above the fold appear faster
 Use HTTP/2
 Multiplexing, binary headers, header
compression, server push
Better engagement metrics: lower bounce
rate, higher time on site (short vs. long clicks)
https://raventools.com/blog/free-ssl-http2/

20. Rendering

21. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit21
Rendering
Google is leveraging a
headless browser to
fully render webpages.
Executing JavaScript/CSS
“Understanding web pages better”
Source Code DOM

22. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit22
Rendering: mobile-friendliness

23. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit23
(Mobile-First Index)
Someday, Google will primarily crawl
the web with they mobile user agent
 Make sure ALL of your
valuable content is available
on your mobile site.
http://maxpr.in/merkle-mobile-first

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Rendering: intrusive interstitials
As of January 10, 2017:
Pages with
intrusive
interstitials
may not rank
as high

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Rendering: Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

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Rendering
How to make sure Google can “understand” your pages?
 Don’t block resources

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Rendering: don’t block resources (robots.txt)

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Rendering: robots.txt testing tool

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Rendering
How to make sure Google can “understand” your pages?
 Don’t block resources
 Load content automatically

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Rendering: load content automatically (vs. based on user interaction)

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Rendering: fetch & render tool

32. Indexing

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Indexing
Part of the indexing process is to “annotate semantics” in
order to retrieve relevant pages

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Indexing
How to, technically, make your content more relevant?
 Optimize metadata
 Leverage structured data markup

35. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit35
Indexing: leverage structured data markup
Structured data markup has 2 components:
 Vocabulary: schema.org
 Format:
• Microdata
• JSON-LD

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Indexing: leverage structured data markup

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Indexing: leverage structured data markup
Google supports a ton of markups
that can enhance search results:
- Product, reviews, ratings
- Events, music, movie, recipes, etc.
Rich Snippet = Higher Click-Through Rate (CTR)

38. Max Prin @maxxeight | MnSearch Summit 2017 #MNSummit38
Wrap-up
Technical optimization can greatly
improve overall online performance
 Crawling
 More valuable pages indexed
 Unique content → more authority
 Fast side → better engagement metrics
 Rendering
 A great UX (mobile, PWA) understood by
search engines
 Indexing
 More relevance and rich snippets (better
CTR) through structured data markup

39. Thank you!