1.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Technical Check???
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

2.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Quick Wins??
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

3.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Your Go-To Tools
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

4.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
301
REDIRECTS
ROBOTS.TXT
FILE
OPTIMISATION SITEMAPS
Top Technical SEO Quick Wins
CANONICAL
TAGS
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

5.
+1,010%
Organic transactions YOY
What Results To Expect?
● Amount of keywords ranking has
increased by 90% over last 6 months
● This lead to a massive jump in
transactions from organic traffic.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

6.
+138%
Increase in organic goal
completions
What Results To Expect?
● Page 1 rankings for local terms.
● Organic traffic is up 49% year on year
● Goal conversion rate increased 60%
YoY
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

7.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
301 Redirects
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

8.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● New site?
● Older domains?
● URL structure changes?
● Https migrations?
● Relative links?
When Could You Have Issues?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

9.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Missing 301s
● Redirect chains
● Broken 301s
● 302s
● Unnecessary Redirects
What To Look For?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

10.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Analyse & Fix the issues.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

11.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

12.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Site migration
rushed - resulted
in lots of redirect
chains/broken
redirects
Redirect chains
and broken
redirects fixed
301s Case Study

13.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Set up 301s from old & 404 pages to new ones
● Prevent redirect chains - URLs should 301 redirect straight to the final
version.
● Update all internal links to point to the final destination URL to prevent
unnecessary redirects
● Ensure site-wide 301 redirects are set up from non-preferred to
preferred versions (www, https & trailing slashes)
● Ensure all redirects are permanent 301s and not temporary 302s
UNLESS the move is temporary
Redirection Tips
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

14.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Don’t just check and fix the redirects in your web crawl!
Look way back…
● Gather backlink URLs via tools such as Majestic
● Gather previous domain URLs
● Gather top landing page URLs from Analytics
● If you’re not sure of the old URLs, check websites like Wayback
Machine which store domain website snapshots.
● Gather 404s from Search Console
Consider old website versions too
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

15.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Use Screaming Frogs List Mode to
crawl your list of URLs.
Make sure ‘Always Follow Redirects’ is ticked in Settings.
(Configuration > Spider > Advanced)
● Update Redirects which have multiple Redirect Chains
● Create Redirects for key 404s (esp. Backlink or Landing Page 404s)
● Fix broken/incorrect Redirects
Crawl your URLs
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

16.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Robots.txt
File
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

17.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
User-agent: *
Disallow:
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite/sitemap.xml
“Make use of the robots.txt file
on your web server.”
Google Webmaster Guidelines
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

18.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Analyse & Fix the issues.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

19.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Disallowing full site post migration
● Disallowing CSS/JS files
● Disallowing unexpected URLs
● Not disallowing staging site
What Issues Could You Have?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

20.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Site Disallow
● Unexpected URLs Disallow
● Disallowing CSS/JS files
What To Look For?
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
User-agent: *
Disallow: /index.php/
User-agent: *
Disallow: */js/
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

21.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Category page!!!

22.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Robots sorted
Technical actions implemented
Robots.txt File Case Study

23.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Improve your crawl
budget.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

24.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
What is a Crawl Budget?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

25.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
How to optimise your crawl budget?
1. Crawl your website.
2. Excessive URLs for users rather than search engines being
crawled? i.e Add to Basket / Wish List / Parameterised URLs
Eg: /claim/?action=claim_listing&listing_id=33910
/claim/?action=claim_listing&listing_id=33911
/book-an-appointment/997
/book-an-appointment/223
3. Disallow these via robots.txt (after testing!)
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

26.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Add pages irrelevant to search or that you
don’t want crawled!
How to Fix It?
User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/tag/
Disallow: /whishlist/
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

27.
Option 1:
Use the robots.txt tester in Search
Console - this requires the robots.txt file
to be actually updated.
Option 2:
Use the custom robots.txt tool in
Screaming Frog to test then and there.
Check the commands you are adding will
work for the URLS you want to block.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
How to test your robots?

28.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
For more info check out
Liam’s blog on
How to Improve Your Crawl
Budget !

29.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Optimisation
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

30.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Optimisation Quick Wins?
● Page titles
● H1s
● Meta descriptions for CTR.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

31.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Missing page titles/meta descriptions/ H1s
● Duplicate page titles/meta descriptions/ H1s
● Lack of keyword targeting
● Meta tags improvement potential
● Internal cannibalisation
What To Look For?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

32.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
How to check?
● Crawl your site
● Look at overview report tab
● Download the SERP Summary report which you
can then filter:
MISSING, DUPLICATED & LENGTH
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

33.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
How to check?
● Main phrase at beginning
of Page title?
● Main phrase/ variation in
the H1?
● H2s semantically
relevant?
● Close rankings for
different pages?
● Organic traffic drop to
one page & increase for
a similar one?
KEYWORDS
TARGETING
INTERNAL
CANNIBALISATION
● Use SC Search Analytics
report
● Check CTR - is rank high
and CTR low?
● Do you have KW ranking
on top of page 2?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
METAS OPTIMISATION

34.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Analyse & Fix the issues.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

35.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Search Console Search Analytics Report

36.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Page Titles, H1s & Meta
descriptions Updated
+46% increase in
organic traffic
since!
Optimisation Case Study

37.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Ensure ALL pages have a unique Page title, meta description and H1s.
○ Targeted keyword should be at the start of the page title & in the H1
○ Look at top rankers !!
○ Seize improvement opportunities from SC
○ Make meta descriptions engaging & with a CTA.
○ Include KW & semantic variations in H2s
● Ensure page titles & meta descriptions are within recommended length (up to 61-63
characters now)
● Ensure each page targets a different phrase to avoid internal cannibalisation
● Push pages ranking on top of page 2 to page 1
Optimisation Quick Wins
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

38.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Be a Flamingo in a flock
of Pigeons.

39.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Canonical
Tags
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

40.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Relative URLS
● 404s and 301s
● Non-preferred domain
● Listing URLs canonicalised to the first page
Issues To Look For?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

41.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Tech changes made and canonicals set to non
preferred (http) version
Canonicals updated to
avoid 301s and point
to preferred version
(https)
Canonical Tags Case Study

42.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
How to check?
Run a DeepCrawl Canonical Report to highlight:
● canonical errors,
● orphaned canonical URLs
● pages without a valid canonical tag
Use Screaming Frog to:
● Identify canonicalised URLs
● Check for errors by exporting the Canonical Errors report
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

43.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Analyse & Fix the issues.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

44.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Use absolute rather than relative URLs
● Make sure your canonical matches your preferred domain (http or
https)
● Update canonical tags if you migrate.
● Don’t canonicalise listing URLs to the first page - they are not
duplicate content, use rel=”prev” & rel=”next” tags
● Canonical tags should not point to a 404 or 301 redirect
● Add self-referencing canonical tags to non canonicalised pages
Implementing Canonical Tags
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

45.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Sitemaps
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

46.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset
A standard sitemap as shown within Sitemaps.org looks like this:
● Does not improve rankings
● Does provide a key list of your important pages to Google.
● There can be lots of hidden issues within your sitemap.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

47.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Errors in your sitemap, such as 404, 301s or canonicalised
URLs
● Orphaned URLs that you may / may not want to be indexed
● Missing/inaccurate Last Modified Date
● Missing key pages
● Noindex pages & URLs blocked by robots.txt file
Issues To Look For?
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

48.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
How to check?
Use DeepCrawl to analyse your sitemap. Sitemap report will:
● Highlight any orphaned URLs to be linked
● Pages missing from your sitemap to be added
● Errors within its pages to be fixed
Use Search console to submit it & check for errors:
● Check for warnings & follow recommendations
● Look at number of URLs submitted vs indexed
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

49.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

50.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Analyse & Fix the issues.
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

51.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
● Best type of Sitemap is dynamic - automatically updates!
● Check for errors in your sitemap, don’t include 404, 301s or
canonicalised URLs
● Beware of orphaned URLs that you may not want to be indexed
● Include an accurate Last Modified Date
● Make sure your key pages are in there & use child sitemaps to
separate sections/large list of URLs.
● If multiple types of content, use additional sitemap types (image,
video & mobile )
Sitemap.xml Guidelines & Quick Wins
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

52.
Choose Yoast for beautiful dynamic sitemaps, but...
Default settings include EVERYTHING that isn’t set to noindex!
● URLs you never knew existed like layout & slider sections? Likely to be in the
sitemap.
● PPC pages that you’ve created but not linked internally? Likely to be in the sitemap.
● Old pages you’ve used but haven’t redirected? Likely to be in the sitemap
● Test pages you’ve made for fun? Likely to be in the sitemap
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Using Wordpress?

53.
● Always check your sitemap settings, crawl your
sitemap for the list of URLs that you’ll be submitting to
Google.
● Any URLs you don’t agree with?
Remove via settings or noindex them (will remove
them from Yoast).
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Optimising Yoast Sitemaps

54.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo
Check out Michelle’s
AWESOME
Sitemap Guide!
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

55.
BRAUMGroup 56
301 Redirects
● Don’t forget about 301s for
migrations & preferred version
site-wide rules
● Eliminate redirect chains, check
for redirects from internal links
● Don’t forget about old domains!!
Key Takeaways
Top Technical SEO Quick Wins (Part 1)
Robots.txt File
● Check & test your robots.txt
file
● Optimise your crawl budget
Optimisation
● Optimisation should be unique,
strategic, user friendly &
tailored to competition
● Overuse SC’s search analytics
report
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo

56.
BRAUMGroup 57
Canonical Tags
● Use absolute links for canonical
tags
● Beware of canonicalising
pagination links
Key Takeaways
Top Technical SEO Quick Wins (Part 2)
@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Sitemaps
● Beware of hidden errors within
your sitemap(s)
● Ensure all important pages are
included in the sitemap, that there
are no orphaned pages, nor
unwanted pages
● Use Last Modified date to notify
Google of page updates

57.
@chloebodard | #brightonseo@chloebodard | #BrightonSeo
Thank You!