Advanced SEO Issues

1. ADVANCED
SEO ISSUES
STATE OF SEARCH 2018
ROB WOODS

2. WHO AM I?

3. ROB WOODS
SEO CONSULTANT
Technical Editor of The Art of SEO
Technical Editor of Social eCommerce
Inhouse SEO – 12 Years
Independent SEO Consultant – 6
Years
Conference Speaker – Pubcon, SMX
Advanced, State of Search, etc.

5. TOOLS

9. INTERNAL LINKING

10. INTERNAL LINK STRUCTURE
Is Google able to crawl the links on your site?
For crawlability, crawl resources, and flow of link
equity
HTML is best
JS can be bad

11. LINKS PER PAGE

12. LINKS PER PAGE

13. LINK SCUPLTING

14. REL=NOFOLLOW

15. 10 LINK EQUITY / 10 LINKS =1 POINT PER LINK
PASSED
NOFOLLOW 5 LINKS
10 LINK EQUITY / 5 FOLLOWED LINKS = 2
POINTS PER LINK PASSED
10 LINK EQUITY / 10 LINKS =1 POINT PASSED
PER FOLLOWED LINK

16. EVAPORATES
WORKS FOR CRAWL
CONTROL FOR VERY
LARGE SITES?
USE FOR PAID LINKS
ONLY!!!

17. Javascript:void(0);
Hat Tip: Grant Simmons
https://www.w3resource.com/javascript/operators/void.php

18. LINK DECAY
DEPTH MATTERS
e.g. 15% DECAY RATE =
1 > 0.85 > 0.72 > 0.61 > 0.52 …

19. ANCHOR TEXT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m-cd8XXovQ&feature=youtu.be&t=3790

20. INTERNAL LINK TOOLS
Screaming Frog Directory
Tree Graph

21. INTERNAL LINK TOOLS
Screaming Frog Force Directed Directory Tree
Diagram

22. INTERNAL LINK TOOLS

23. INTERNAL LINK TOOLS

24. CANONICAL URLS /
DUPLICATE
CONTENT

25. CANONICAL VS
301
REDIRECTS

26. CANONICALS ARE FOR
DUPLICATES (OR NEAR
DUPLICATES)

27. CANONICALS
- DUPLICATE CONTENT
- CANONICAL AND SITEMAP DISAGREE
- INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL LINKS
- PARAMETERIZED URLS
- GOOGLE FAVORS CLEANER URLS
MAKE ALL YOUR CANONICAL SIGNALS
AGREE

28. OTHER CANONICAL/DUPLICATE
ISSUES
-Subdomain VS Raw Domain
-Alternate versions of home page (index.php,
default.aspx, /home/, etc.)
-Trailing slashes*
- Capitalization
- Issues caused by incorrect canonicalization
- Cross domain canonicals

29. OTHER TYPES OF DUPLICATE
CONTENT
FACETED NAVIGATION
PRODUCT VARIATIONS
MUTIPLE CATEGORIES
PARAMETERS

30. FACETED NAVIGATION
WHICH VARIABLES MATTER?
(size, price, color, brand, rating, etc.)
ORDER OF PARAMETERS MATTERS
(/pants/womens/black/small
/pants/womens/small/black)
SORT ORDERS, FILTERS, RESULTS PER PAGE

31. FACETED NAVIGATION
WHICH VARIABLES AFFECT THE URL
BLOCKING VIA ROBOTS.TXT VS META ROBOTS
VS CANONICAL

32. FACETED
NAVIGATION

33. PRODUCT VARIATIONS

34. MULTIPLE CATEGORIES
https://domain/product.html
https://domain/category/product.html
https://domain/category/subcategory/product.html
https://domain/category/subcategory/subsubcategory/product.html
https://domain/catalog/product/view/id/number
https://domain/review/product/list/id/number/
https://domain/product.html?___SID=U
https://domain/category/product.html?___SID=U
https://domain/category/subcategory/product.html?___SID=U
https://domain/category/subcategory/subsubcategory/product.html?___SID
=U

35. PARAMETERS
https://www.site.com/ccrz__ProductDetails?viewState=DetailView&cartID=&
sku=sp1_869494&isCSRFlow=&portalUser=&store=&cclcl=en_US
https://www.site.com/ccrz__ProductDetails?viewState=DetailView&cartID=&
sku=sp1_869494&isCSRFlow=true&portalUser=&store=&cclcl=en_US
https://www.site.com/ccrz__ProductDetails?&sku=sp1_869494
https://www.site.com/emergency-exit-label-qs3035.html

36. GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE – EXCLUDED
URLS

37. GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE – EXCLUDED
URLS

38. GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE – EXCLUDED
URLS

39. GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE – EXCLUDED
URLS

40. CRAWLABILITY /
RENDERING

41. CLOAKING

43. DYNAMIC RENDERING
- Javascript
- Single Page JS sites
- Prerender / Precache
(https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/dynamic-rendering)

44. • https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/dynamic-rendering

45. ISSUES
- Can cause slow response times
- Don’t fix on page JS issues
- Test page speeds
(webpagetest.org)
)

46. DYNAMIC RENDERING
/ PRERENDERING
SERVICES

47. HOW DOES GOOGLE SEE YOUR
SITE?

48. GOOGLE FETCH & RENDER

49. GOOGLE WEB CACHE

50. GOOGLE TEXT CACHE

51. SCREAMING FROG JS RENDERING

52. SCREAMING FROG – CRAWL AS
GOOGLEBOT

53. CHROME DEVELOPER TOOLS -
ELEMENTS

54. USER AGENT SWITCHER - CHROME

55. USER AGENT SWITCHER - CHROME

56. GOOD OLD EXACT PHRASE SEARCH

57. CRAWL CONTROL

58. META ROBOTS
PREVENT INDEXING NOT CRAWLING
NOINDEX,FOLLOW PROBABLY DOESN’T
WORK LIKE YOU THINK

59. ROBOTS.TXT
USE WILDCARDS (Disallow: /*cart$)
NOINDEX (maybe)
MOST RESTRICTIVE INSTRUCTION WINS
PREVENTS GOOGLE SEEING META ROBOTS
TEST USING GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

60. PAGINATION /
INFINITE SCROLL

61. PAGINATION

62. PAGINATION
link rel="canonical" href="http://flypatterns.org/page/2/" />
<link rel="prev" href="http://flypatterns.org/" />
<link rel=“next" href="http://flypatterns.org/3/" />
• Don’t just use the canonical (often ignored)
• When not to use pagination markup
• Make sure pagination links are crawlable
• Google may ignore it and index pages
anyway

63. INFINITE SCROLL

64. INFINITE SCROLL
• Used as a substitute for pagination.
• Good or bad for users and engines? How
do you choose which group to serve? It’s
trendy but do your users really want/need
it?
• Solutions to work around uncrawlable
infinite scroll for both crawling and link
equity flow

65. BONUS ROUND
301 VS 301
SUBDOMAIN VS SUBFOLDER

66. Q&A

67. THANK YOU!
ROB@ROBWOODS.ORG
@ROBDWOODS
(604) 374-5312