Making Web 3.0 sites SEO Friendly

1. Navneet Kaushal CEO PageTraﬃc Search Engine Friendly for Web 3.0

2. Search

3. Why is SEO important? Number of Searches/Day on Google Average Daily Queries on Google 3 Billion Searches/Day (announced Aug. 2012)

4. Growth of Google Queries in Last 5 yrs Number of Searches/Day on Google 3 Billion Searches/Day (announced Aug. 2012)

5. State of Search- India Source: Netmarketshare and business-standard.com Google 97% Yahoo 1% Bing 1% Others 1% Indian Search Engine Market Share

6. Search Often Brings the Most Highly Qualiﬁed Trafﬁc

7. §  Helps you create a be=er website §  Brings in qualiﬁed traﬃc §  Helps you create be=er content §  Measurable/AcGonable SEO from a business perspecLve

8. DID YOU KNOW? Search engines cannot read FLASH and JavaScript content.

9. DID YOU KNOW? It's actually quite easy to exclude certain pages from search engine results by using a robots.txt ﬁle.

10. DID YOU KNOW? Google checks for duplicate content on your website.

11. DID YOU KNOW? The webpage names also inﬂuence the rate of opGmizaGon for certain keywords.

12. DID YOU KNOW? A common website mistake is giving each page the same Gtle.

13. DID YOU KNOW? Google moves websites down in the search results when an excessive number of keywords are used.

14. DID YOU KNOW? A page’s load Gme inﬂuences the ranking of your website in search engines.

15. DID YOU KNOW? Search engines look at how much code you use. Therefore, tables and inline styles not only make your code less synopGc but could also aﬀect search engine ranking.

16. DID YOU KNOW? It's actually quite easy to exclude certain pages from search engine results by using a robots.txt ﬁle.

17. SEARCH ENGINE RANKING SIGNALS

18. Ranking Signal - HTTPS Google considers HTTPS (SSL) ranking signal h=p://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/h=ps-as-ranking-signal.html

19. Ranking Signal – Malware Google penalizes websites that are hacked or have malware. It highlights them with labels or completely removes these sites from the index: h=ps://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-malware-and-hacked-sites

20. Ranking Signals – Security Summary •  Secure protocol SSL/TSL •  Web ApplicaGon Firewall (Securing your vulnerabiliGes using the best minds in the industry) –  Hackers can inject malware into your site and Google WILL ﬁnd it and demote your rankings •  DDOS protecGon –  If Google can't access your site, it can't index it. Let alone your customers. •  DNSSEC

21. Ranking Signal – Site Speed Google rewards faster loading websites: h=p://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/ 2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search- ranking.html

22. Ranking Signal – Site Speed Technical hacks that boost your site’s speed: •  Compression •  MiniﬁcaGon (CSS, JS, HTML) •  Response Gme •  Image OpGmizaGon •  Browser Caching •  How JS & CSS are served •  Use of Asynchronous scripts •  Use of CDNs •  Be=er headers and caching •  Latest server technology (HTTP/2, SPDY, GZIP)

23. • Comparison of Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0

24. Highlights of each phase •  1.0 •  1995-2003 •  Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape •  Infrastructure and gelng content online 2.0 2004-2009 Google, Flickr, Facebook User interface and social community 3.0 2009à Siri, Primal Fusion, Twine, WolframAlpha, Structured data, meaning and context Web Era Dates Signiﬁcant Companies Major focus

25. "Even a basic understanding of what to look for in technical SEO can get you far. So many people today focus too heavily on oﬀ- page SEO, but if a site is technically ﬂawed, it won't ma=er how many links you have or how good your content is.” Erin Everhart, SEO Manager, The Home Depot

26. SEO “101” INDEXATION + RELEVANCY + POPULARITY •  Removing any hurdle to the crawlers is key for a perfect indexaGon •  Map your site architecture in accordance with semanGc verGcals to reach ideal relevancy •  Balance the quanGty, quality, aging & regularity of your linkgraph to maximize popularity

27. 3 CORE PRINCIPLES OF SEO INDEXATION •  Technical SoluGon that respects SEO Best PracGces •  Site Architecture Mapped to SemanGc VerGcals •  Archiving that preserves content integraGon & interlinking forever RELEVANCE •  OpGmizing Keywords into Silos •  Internal linking strategy that distributes SEO & PageRank value POPULARITY •  QuanGty / Quality / Age / Frequency of links obtained •  SemanGcs aspect of backlinks (anchor text) •  DiversiﬁcaGon of backlink entry points (hub pages)

28. What are Web 3.0 sites?

65. More Pages Crawled = More Pages Indexed = More Traffic (*If site is healthy)J

66. Golden rule: “One filepath per specific content piece”

67. Duplicate (many forms), sorting, multi- category, non-existent, framed content

68. Assume that anything in the DOM is technically accessible to modern search bots, even though it may not pass juice

69. Robots.txt only works on internally

70. Don't block with both robots.txt and meta robots together

71. Best to block with meta robots & delete via GWT (*renew every 6 months)

72. X-robots tag, is in document HEAD, useful for PDFs, XML, etc…

73. Do NOT: Print session IDs/parameters on ﬁlepaths in code Pass session IDs via ﬁlepaths

74. Use cookies to pass session info

75. If no other alternative, block parameters via GWT

76. URL Structures

77. Filepaths can be flat, deep, or with several parameters if needed, all seem to work fine

78. Have a clear hierarchy in terms of directory structure, use internal links to emphasize relationships

79. Be consistent - all lower case, hyphens not underscores, avoid empty spaces

80. Avoid foreign language encoding on URLs

83. Onsite OpLmizaLon

84. The singularly most important on-site factor! The TITLE Tag

85. •  Include your chosen keywords within the TITLE tag – preferably near the start of the tag •  Try to keep it to 70 characters •  Must be relevant to the page content •  Very important - each page should have a diﬀerent TITLE tag The TITLE Tag

86. •  A textual descripGon of what the page is about •  Shows up in Google search results The DescripLon Tag

87. •  Include keywords close to the start of the tag, but don’t repeat more than 3 Gmes •  Try to keep it to 150 characters •  Must be relevant to the page content •  Each page should have a diﬀerent DESCRIPTION tag The DescripLon Tag

88. •  Google loves original, high quality textual content •  Body text is extremely important for search engine rankings because this is what human users come to see •  Keywords, synonyms and variaGons of the primary keyword combinaGon should be included in the body text, but not so that it reads ‘arGﬁcially’. It should read naturally. Body Text

89. •  URLs that contain keywords are be=er than those that don’t •  Quite easy to do if your website is staGc, a li=le more diﬃcult for database-driven sites •  Don’t make the URLs too long because this will be seen as an a=empt to manipulate the search results •  Good and bad: •  www.mysite.com/health-insurance •  www.mysite.com/search.asp? insuranceID=435&locID=32 Keywords in URLs

90. •  Heading tags – eg. <h1>, <h2> - within the HTML idenGfy headings within the page copy and break up the text •  They are used by search engines to determine page content •  Use keywords in these tags, but don’t overdo it. Heading Tags

91. •  The ‘anchor’ text contained within hyperlinks provides Google with an understanding of what the linked content is about •  Every hyperlink on your site should have descripGve anchor text, rather than ‘click here…’ •  Inline links or contextual links are best •  eg. •  Blue Train Enterprises oﬀers a free white paper on how to opGmise your website for the search engines Link Anchor Text

92. •  ALT is displayed if the image doesn’t load in the user’s browser •  The ALT tag should describe the image •  Keep it short and to the point •  It also can have a posiGve eﬀect on your website rankings •  Don’t use ALT tags as a place to stuﬀ keywords Image ALT Text

93. Three Great & Free Tools for Crawling

94. Screaming Frog http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

95. IIS SEO Toolkit http://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/search-engine-optimization- toolkit

96. Xenu http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

97. DO’S & DONT’S – ONSITE SEO To-Do • Define your IA and determine canonical URLs for hub pages across all major categories, with expansion ability • Use breadcrumb style navigaGon – Put all new content in it! o  EG: Home > Kitchen > Major Appliances > Stoves • Include relevant category-specific navigaGon at each level • Make interlinking mandatory! Include in-content links to similar pages around the site, and give links from other pages • Keep updated HTML and XML sitemaps for all new content • Learn all the (new) ways to control indexaGon and linkjuice flow

98. DO’S & DONT’S – ONSITE SEO Don’ts • Let the same content appear on more than one URL • Just throw content up without linking to it, or linking from it • Spread your linkjuice thin over pages without unique content • Leave open ended page scripts like calendars • Archive poorly (or not at all) without respect to your IA • Return server headers other than 404 for error pages • Think you can ﬁx linkjuice distribuGon issues with robots.txt

99. CANONICALIZATION ISSUES Duplicate Content • Domain.com VS www.domain.com VS www.domain.com/ VS www.domain.com/index.php Category & Product Pages • …/product.php?category=clothing&sub-category=pants&gender=mens • …/product.php?gender=mens&category=clothing&sub-category=pants • …/product.php?category=clothing&sub- category=pants&gender=mens&color=blue

100. CANONICALIZATION ISSUES Quick Checklist • No Capital le=ers, special characters, or spaces à use dashes • Parameters in URLs are ﬁne but only if variable order / useless variables are taken care of – try to also limit to up to 5 parameters • Use standard HTML tags (<H1>, <ul>, <a>) • Session ID variables should likely use the canonical tag • Avoid code-bloaGng: place visible content higher in the code

101. SITE SPEED •  Page speed ma=ers (now). So benchmark yourself against leaders. In a way, that’s fun, you can create “Page speed contests” now. •  To do so, install Google Page Speed and Yahoo’s Yslow. •  Run them on your home page and at least a few random internal pages •  Follow every recommendaGons for: image opGmizaGon, gzip compression, javascript “miniﬁcaGon”, CSS “miniﬁcaGon”. •  Once this is done, look at subtler speed improvements they recommend. •  Moving to a stable Cloud environment isn’t a bad idea either.

102. Website: www.pagetraffic.com Email: navneet@pagetraffic.com Twitter: @navneetkaushal Blog: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/pagetraffic.in THANK YOU!