Tim Hartung gives a presentation on common mistakes in SEO and how to avoid them. Some of the key points he discusses are: - Using Google Webmaster Tools to find 404 errors on your site and submit your XML sitemap. - Ensuring your XML sitemap is up-to-date and checking it for broken links to improve your crawl rate. - Being careful with your robots.txt file as incorrectly blocking bots can prevent them from crawling your site. - Optimizing for site speed as it is one of Google's ranking factors and users prefer faster sites. - Implementing Schema.org structured data and Rel=Author to increase click through rates on search results.

1. source: http://www.communityelf.com/blog/fun/the-3-biggest-social-media-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/attachment/mistake-bridge/ 1
10 Things Web Designers tend to forget
when doing SEO
by Timon Hartung @ SMX Munich 2014

2. Timon Hartung
• Managing Director @DNTX.com
• Master of Business Informatics
• 10 years SEO & online marketing
experience
• Former Head of Online Marketing
at amiando
• Consulting cooperations on
international SEO
• 15 years coding experience Java,
PHP, MySQL
• Previously spoken at SMX Munich
and Social Media Economy Days
2

3. source: http://businesswebcoach.com/beating-google-webmaster-tools-into-utter-submission/
Use Google Webmaster Tools
3

4. • Setting GWMT up takes 5 minutes!
• GMWT gives you a lot of information on how google sees your site
• Find 404 pages on your website with external links pointing to it
• So use Google Webmaster Tools! Just do it!
4
Google Webmaster Tools

5. source: http://www.linetoweb.com/google-xml-sitemap-wordpress-plugin/
Good site maps
5

6. Site map
• Auto generate a site map! So that it‘s allways up to date
• Submit your site map to google in the GWMTs
• Check your site map for broken links with
Screamingfrog to find and fix the 404 errors
• A good clean site map will increase your crawl rate
6

7. 7
Good site maps increase
your crawl rate

8. 8
A good site map and a good website will have most of its content in the
site map indexed if not check the content and why (GWMT)

9. source: http://awesome-design.com/stati/seo/seo-optimizacziya-sajta-robotstxt-poobshhaemsya-s-poiskovymi-robotami.html
Careful with Robots.txt
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10. Robots.txt
• Check your Robots.txt right now!
• You probably don‘t need a robots.txt and it does more
harm wrongly configured than having one
• Use noindex, follow as a meta tag instead to steer the
crawler
10

11. Robots.txt
11
Robots.
txtWhat if your developers
forget to take out the
disallow all in the
robots.txt from the
development server
when deploying.
When do you notice!?

12. Great website about actors
12

13. SERPs for this website
13

14. The robots.txt is blocking all
crawler access
14

15. source: http://www.briandanielboyd.com/
Speaking URLs
15

16. 16
Speaking URLs
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/apple-expecting-ipad-mini-to-sell-big-
report-says/2012/10/08/72ea60f4-1144-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html
http://www.jbl.com/estore/jbl/us/shop/speaker-docks/
cat70007;jsessionid=CDDF2BAD1EEE175356846240358FF160.node3
http://www.apple.com/ipad/accessories/

17. source: http://www.linetoweb.com/google-xml-sitemap-wordpress-plugin/
Be careful with AJAX & JS
17

18. • The google crawler might not see content loaded by
Javascript and Ajax because it is loaded after the page
has been loaded.
18
Ajax and Javascript
Ajax can really improve
UX but check that you SEO
content is not loaded via
Javascript
Normal HTML
Ajax loaded content
invisible for the crawler

19. Ajax and Javascript
• To check if your content is seen by the google bot go
into GWMT and check your page with the function:
„Fetch page as google bot“
19

20. Fetch as google bot
20

21. source: http://www.freegreatpicture.com/animal-collection/running-leopard-15978
Site speed
21

22. Site speed
22Source:http://www.strangeloopnetworks.com/assets/images/infographic2.jpg

23. Site speed
• Amazon: increased revenue by 1% for every 100
milliseconds load time improvement
• AOL: the top 10% in site speed viewed 50% more
pages than the bottom 10%
• Yahoo: increased traffic by 9% for every 400
milliseconds of load time improvement
• Conclusion: Users love fast websites!
23

24. Site speed
24Source: http://bit.ly/QWoGmp

25. Site speed - what about google
• Site speed is one of the over 200 signals used by
google to determine search rankings.
• Site speed is NOT the most critical ranking factor
• But Remember: Search engines like fast sites that don‘t
waste their resources.
25

26. Site speed - some tips how to optimise
• Check your site speed with: tools.pingdom.com
26

27. Site speed - Analyse your site
• Analyse your site with google and yahoo
• Google: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/
• Yahoo: http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/
• Site speed optimisation guideline
• Yahoo: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
27

28. Site speed -
Check your site speed in Google Analytics
28

29. source: http://www.theyenvy.us/photo/html5
Schema.org & Rel Author
29

30. 30
Schema.org = Rich Snippets
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Movie">
<h1 itemprop="name">Avatar</h1>
<span>Director: <span itemprop="director">James Cameron</span></span>
<span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span>
<a href="../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html" itemprop="trailer">Trailer</a>
</div>

31. More Rich Snippets
31
Events
Ratings
Check out the schema.org specification
and increase your snippet CTRs
dramatically

32. Rel=Author
32
Which snippet would you click?

33. Rel=Author
• Rel=Author is huge and easy to get.
• Rel=Author will dramatically increase you SERP snippet CTRs
• How to:
• Get a google+ profile
• Get circled a lot by others
• Link to your domain from your google+ profile
• Link to your google+ profile from your domain with ?rel=author
• Done!
33

34. Schema.org and Rel=author
• Check your markup with googles Rich Snippet Testing
Tool:
• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
34

35. source: http://www.icangiveyouhouse.com/2010/09/04/world-in-our-hands/
International IP Redirects
35

36. • Sometimes you might think redirecting all of your
visitors based on their IP to the dedicated country and
language page might be a good idea.
36
International IP Redirects

37. International IP Redirects
37
Country
redirection
page
US
DE
FR
ES
DE
FR
Users get redirected correctly

38. • But where does the google bot come from? The US!
• Thats a serious problem for SEO
38
International IP Redirects

39. International IP Redirects
39
US
DE
FR
ES
US
Country
redirection
page
Google bot from the US will also get directed
„correctly“ ALWAYS to the US version but NEVER
see any other language or country version!

40. International IP Redirects
• Solution:
• If you want IP redirects just do them on the home page nowhere else
• Don‘t forget about the users:
• What if a user from Germany follows a US link from a forum. That user will
not get the desired and expected result and thats bad.
40

41. A great way to do it is to give
the user a notification that there
is a dedicated country page 41

42. source: http://onlineitallmatters.blogspot.de/2012/08/is-your-mobile-content-strategy-working.html
Mobile Strategy
42

43. • There are a few mobile web design strategies out there
1.Subdomain strategy m.domain.com
2.Different domain strategy domain.mobi
3.Subdirectory strategy domain.com/mobile
4.Responsive design or template strategy on same URL
43
Mobile Strategy

44. Responsive Design
• Responsive web design (often abbreviated to RWD) is an approach to web
design in which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience—
easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and
scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer
monitors to mobile phones).
44Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boston_Globe_responsive_website.jpg

45. Live example: http://www.olevmedia.com/themes/
preview/?item=metro
45

46. Desktop & IPad 1024x 768
46source: http://themeforest.net/item/metrostyle-responsive-all-purpose-wordpress-theme/2921313

47. 47

48. 48

49. 49

50. Mobile Strategy
• Best thing about responsive design for SEO
• All links go to the same URL
• No duplicate content
• Other benefits
• No problems displaying content on different devices following a mobile or
not mobile link, better conversion rates
• Easier to manage content
50

51. source: http://www2.tbo.com/news/outdoors/2012/oct/09/skydiver-begins-prep-for-supersonic-jump-ar-526778/
Relaunch SEO
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52. • Don‘t change your URLs
• Redirect changed URLs by 301 or canonical
• Short downtimes
• Check your titles and descriptions
• Do a crawl before and after with Screamingfrog or XENU to
find missing pages
• Use GWMT to solve 404 problems
52
Relaunch SEO Tips

53. Thank you!
get in touch:
• facebook.timonhartung.com
• @timondeluxe
• linkedin.timonhartung.com
• googleplus.timonhartung.com
• www.timonhartung.com
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