Patrick Stox discusses many technical SEO issues he has encountered in his work, including duplicate international pages being folded together incorrectly, error pages being redirected with no destination, and a staging site being indexed. He provides tips for troubleshooting SEO problems, such as using the site: operator to check parameterized pages or sections not known about. Stox emphasizes getting ahead of technical problems, knowing when to push for changes and when to step back, and verifying any requested changes will make a meaningful difference.
From redirects to insecure content to duplicate content, everyone screws up https. Even top-tier developers get this wrong, and the results can be devastating.
Learn how to secure your website without losing your rankings and become more trustworthy in the eyes of your visitors.
From redirects to insecure content to duplicate content, everyone screws up https. Even top-tier developers get this wrong, and the results can be devastating.
Learn how to secure your website without losing your rankings and become more trustworthy in the eyes of your visitors.
Link reclamation for quick SEO wins. Redirects, mentions of your company, products, or people, outreach, Google alerts, images, quotes, statistics and more are great ways to reclaim lost links.
Different types of graphs and when you should use each + some random visuals I've always found useful.
Patrick Stox presenting at Digital Elite Day 2020
SearchLove London 2016 | Dom Woodman | How to Get Insight From Your LogsDistilled
In the SEO industry, we obsess on everything Google says, from John Mueller dropping a hint in a Webmaster Hangout, to the ranking data we spend £1000s to gather. Yet we ignore the data Google throws at us every day, the crawling data. For the longest time, site crawls, traffic data, and rankings have been the pillars of SEO data gathering. Log files should join them as something everyone is doing. We'll go through how to get everything set-up, look at some of the tools to make it easy and repeatable and go through the kinds of analysis you can do to get insights from the data.
Link reclamation for quick SEO wins. Redirects, mentions of your company, products, or people, outreach, Google alerts, images, quotes, statistics and more are great ways to reclaim lost links.
Different types of graphs and when you should use each + some random visuals I've always found useful.
Patrick Stox presenting at Digital Elite Day 2020
SearchLove London 2016 | Dom Woodman | How to Get Insight From Your LogsDistilled
In the SEO industry, we obsess on everything Google says, from John Mueller dropping a hint in a Webmaster Hangout, to the ranking data we spend £1000s to gather. Yet we ignore the data Google throws at us every day, the crawling data. For the longest time, site crawls, traffic data, and rankings have been the pillars of SEO data gathering. Log files should join them as something everyone is doing. We'll go through how to get everything set-up, look at some of the tools to make it easy and repeatable and go through the kinds of analysis you can do to get insights from the data.
Migration Best Practices - Search Y 2019, ParisBastian Grimm
My talk from SEARCHY 2019 in Paris covering best practices on how to successfully navigate through the various types of migrations (protocol migrations, frontend migrations, website migration, cms migration, etc.) from an SEO perspective - mainly focussing on all things technical SEO.
A Deep Dive Into SEO Tactics For Modern Javascript FrameworksHamlet Batista
Optimizing for the most popular JavaScript frameworks is a must for modern SEOs. Whether the site is built in React, Angular, or Vue, there are an increasing number of gotchas to consider. In this session, we're going to discuss everything that is required to deliver application shells that perform well in Google and Bing. Plus, we’ll take a close look at client-side hydration in all major frameworks, and the optimal configurations for SEO and page speed. Has evergreen Googlebot and Bingbot lived up to their promise? Let's find out with some cool experiments!
Migration Best Practices - SMX West 2019Bastian Grimm
My talk from SMX West 2019 in San Jose covering best practices on how to successfully navigate through the various types of migrations (protocol migrations, frontend migrations, website migration, cms migration, etc.) from an SEO perspective - mainly focussing on all things technical SEO.
Migration Best Practices - SEOkomm 2018Bastian Grimm
My talk from SEOkomm 2018 in Salzburg covering best practices on how to successfully naviate through the various types of migrations (protocal migrations, frontend migrations, etc.) from an SEO perspective - mainly focussing on all things tech.
Solving Complex JavaScript Issues and Leveraging Semantic HTML5Hamlet Batista
On this presentation we go deep on Chrome developer tools, JS debugger and breakpoints, technical optimization and capabilities of browser service workers to improve SEO and performance
Technical SEO: Crawl Space Management - SEOZone Istanbul 2014Bastian Grimm
My talk at #SEOZone 2014 in Istanbul covering various aspects of crawl space optimization such as crawler control & indexation strategies as well as site speed.
Pavimentando el Camino con Jakarta EE 9 y Apache TomEE 9.0.0César Hernández
Jakarta EE 9 introduce la migración del paquete javax a jakarta en la plataforma, lo que impacta en el ecosistema y, por lo tanto, en los usuarios finales. Esta sesión cubre antecedentes, recomendaciones y estrategias basadas en código para ayudarlo a navegar por la migración de sus aplicaciones Java Enterprise usando Apache TomEE.
Paving the way with Jakarta EE and apache TomEE at cloudconferencedayCésar Hernández
Jakarta EE 9 introduces the migration of the javax to jakarta package in the platform, impacting the ecosystem and, therefore, the end-users. This session covers background, recommendations and code driven strategies to help you navigate the migration of your Java Enterprise applications using Apache TomEE.
Similar to Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong - Tech SEO Boost 2017 - Patrick Stox (20)
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In this talk Felipe Bazon will share how him and his team at Hedgehog Digital share our journey of making C-Levels alike, specially CMOS realize that SEO is the backbone of digital marketing by showing how SEO can contribute to brand awareness, reputation and authority and above all how to use SEO to create more robust global marketing strategies.
Financial curveballs sent many American families reeling in 2023. Household budgets were squeezed by rising interest rates, surging prices on everyday goods, and a stagnating housing market. Consumers were feeling strapped. That sentiment, however, appears to be waning. The question is, to what extent?
To take the pulse of consumers’ feelings about their financial well-being ahead of a highly anticipated election, ThinkNow conducted a nationally representative quantitative survey. The survey highlights consumers’ hopes and anxieties as we move into 2024. Let's unpack the key findings to gain insights about where we stand.
Digital marketing is the art and science of promoting products or services using digital channels to reach and engage with potential customers. It encompasses a wide range of online tactics and strategies aimed at increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately, converting those leads into customers.
https://nidmindia.com/
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
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In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
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It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
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Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User Journeys
Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong - Tech SEO Boost 2017 - Patrick Stox
1. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Will Go Wrong
Everything That Can
Go Wrong
2. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Who is Patrick Stox
I write, mainly for Search Engine Land
I speak at some conferences like this one, SMX, Pubcon, etc.
Organizer for the Raleigh SEO Meetup (most successful in US)
We also run a conference, the Raleigh SEO Conference
Also Beer & SEO Meetup (because beer)
2017 US Search Awards Judge, 2017 UK Search Awards Judge
Some of you may know me from the Wix SEO Hero contest
(I was the one that got disqualified https://beanseohero.com/)
3. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
But First, The Most Important Takeaway
4. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
But First, The Most Important Takeaway
Bing processes JavaScript
5. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
The Typical Enterprise Environment
6. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Multiple Points Of Failure
Multiple infrastructures
Multiple CMS
Middleware systems
Error handling
Redirect handling
Tags in HTTP Header, <head>, Sitemap
Coming from CMS, server, CDN, JavaScript, Tags, Theme, Plugin/Module
8. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Duplicate International Pages
Hreflang correct, country targeting set in GSC.
Google folded the duplicates together. Info:domain/page for other versions
showed the canonicalized version.
This meant the wrong country-language versions showed in Google.
Solution: rework the whole strategy to have fewer, stronger pages and localize
where needed.
9. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Error Page Cleanup Project
Mapped all the redirects fine.
Put them in meta refreshes (not ideal to begin with).
Someone else had planned to put them in the HTTP Header and had a location:
tag set but with no destination.
Users ended up in the correct location but Google was redirected to nothing
before they could see the meta refreshes.
Solution: move the redirects to the HTTP Header.
10. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Robots.txt Blocking Everything
Intermittent issue, in that sometimes we were blocking everything and other
times everything was normal.
Turned out to be a shared cache.
Solution: Disabled caching of .txt files at CDN.
11. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Removing Subdomain From Index
They added noindex on the pages, but blocked crawlers with a disallow in
robots.txt.
Bots couldn’t crawl the page to see the noindex.
Solution: remove the disallow.
12. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Staging Site Indexed
There’s a canonical to the main website but then they blocked it from being
crawled in robots.txt as well.
It’s the same environment, so we are limited in what we can do.
We should use authentication or IP whitelisting, but can’t in this case until we can
split it.
Solution TBD: Wait until we can split, let it be crawled (they’re worried about
crawl budget), remove in GSC, noindex in robots.txt (unsupported and could
cause issues with the canonical), ignore it.
13. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
No Game In Robots.txt
I wanted to do this, and you can. In
fact, you can put a whole website in
there:
http://ohgm.co.uk/host-a-website-
inside-robots-txt/
14. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
JavaScript Redirect Calling JS File
Rather than use the page location, this system processed the redirect in a
referenced JavaScript file. This is the only time Ayima Redirect Path has ever
failed me.
15. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Failed To Redirect Index File
A hard coded index.php file was live after a migration and resulted in a huge drop
in rankings for an important page. This version was indexed along with the newer
version of the page, but the rankings dropped off.
Index files usually have special rules for redirecting, but of note is it’s also
important to redirect all versions.
16. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
URL Parameter Issue
One setting for a parameter in GSC was set to tell Google it just tracks usage,
when in fact each page had different content.
This knocked several hundred thousand pages out of the index.
17. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Links Followed In Redirect Chains
Looked into many long redirect chains to see if links to pages in GSC showed
any from the previous versions as “via intermediate link”. Standards recommend
no more than 5 hops.
Found one as long as 10 hops that was followed and many that cut off at 6 hops.
Working on processing each in our redirect engine to update to final location.
18. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
English Text In SERPs – Non-English Pages
Google only showed English text for what should have been other languages.
Investigation showed Google was being redirected which turned out to be based
on browser language.
Solution (temporary): chose not to redirect Googlebot. This system was going
away in 2 months and it wasn’t worth the fight for a more permanent solution.
19. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Canadian English Page – SERP In French
We were seeing French language SERPs for a Canadian English page.
Going to the page we saw English, but Google’s cache was in French.
20. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
React JS
URL: us/en-
us?technologyTopics%5B0%5D%5B0%5D=cat.topic%3AITInfrastructure
Links: href="javascript:void(0);“
So unfriendly URLs and uncrawlable links.
React-router created patterns to match /{country}/{locale}/{category}/{slug}
React JS kind of gives you full control of everything, so just help educate the
devs on what needs to be done.
21. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
HTTP To HTTPS – Content Security Policy
Everyone read https://searchengineland.com/http-https-seos-guide-securing-
website-246940?
Add Content Security Policy (CSP) which you can set to auto-upgrade-insecure-
requests and fix your mixed content issues.
Still may have issues with canonical tags and internal links.
22. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Also Referrer Policy
https://searchengineland.com/need-know-referrer-policy-276185
This lets you control how the referrer is sent and can pass it when going from
HTTPS to HTTP websites, which may be important for some websites to show
they sent traffic out.
We launched a new section set to no-referrer, which dropped the referrer even
for internal traffic. It’s now no-referrer-when-downgrade which still drops when
going to an insecure page. It’s more of a problem for us because we separate
no-referrer and direct traffic in our analytics unlike GA.
23. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Changed Links In CMS To Relative
Yep, all of them. Including the canonicals. Issue was fixed but pages need to be
re-published and this is an older CMS without much support.
24. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Why Are 404s Hard?
Throwing 200 instead of 404 on error pages.
Just blanket redirect everything that should 404.
^These are wrong, don’t do this.
25. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
What About 418?
https://www.google.com/teapot
26. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
UTF-8 Characters
Be sure to check your whole tech stack if using UTF-8 characters in the URL.
Just because a CMS supports it doesn’t mean everything does.
27. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
301s, 302s, 307s
Everyone knows about 301s, but still some people think that because they’re
called “permanent” they can be removed after a period of time. Nope.
We use a lot of 302s to keep original URLs indexed when offloading to a different
place or when doing temporary moves.
307s make it interesting. These are usually browser cached from HSTS and
there could be a 301 or 302 behind them. You can use fetch in GSC or a browser
with no history or incognito mode to see if it’s a 301 or 302 behind this. It matters.
28. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
AMP
Cable connection (70Mbps)
50 sites tested, ~1 second avg difference from the prerendering vs direct load.
Perceived speed is a lot faster.
https://searchengineland.com/the-amp-is-a-lie-278401
Why this is hard for an enterprise:
• Analytics support (IBM Digital Analytics working on it.)
• Legal requirements for hosting content.
• Could make our own cache, but wouldn’t get prerendering.
• Business/tracking reasons for scripts that would invalidate cache.
• Extending prerender spec to more than one page could kill AMP (Feature Policy could
solve the issues with bandwidth, CPU, security, etc.)
29. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Final Thoughts
30. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
You May Not Ever Fix Everything
There are lots of older systems that aren’t supported but happen to be cheaper to
keep running than to get rid of them or fix them.
31. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Get Ahead Of Problems
Look at any new system on the way.
Setup automated testing with server side scripts, selenium, chrome dev tools
extensions, etc.
Middleware to let multiple systems interact with each other.
32. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Technical SEO Isn’t Always The Answer
Pick your battles. Sometimes there’s more than one right answer or even if the
way you want is technically right, it may not be right for the business needs.
Know when to push and when to take a step back.
Look at things like page consolidation and content topics.
33. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Will What You Ask For Make A Difference?
You really need to know this ahead of time. If there’s no noticeable outcome then
everyone will be less likely to work with you in the future.
I just did a whole deck at Pubcon challenging conventional wisdom on hreflang
tags and pointing out where even tools got it wrong.
https://www.slideshare.net/patrickstox/pubcon-vegas-2017-youre-going-to-screw-
up-international-seo-patrick-stox
34. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Tips To Troubleshoot
Info: operator can help with duplicates, hijacking, folded pages.
&filter=0 to Google search URL to show more pages in consideration set.
Site: operator for parameterized pages, sections you may not know about, etc.
Site:domain.com keyword check who is eligible for featured snippets
For JS, use inspect element and fetch and render, not view source and cache.
There’s more here:
https://searchengineland.com/tips-make-better-technical-seo-285329
35. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Machine Learning + Search
Talk to me later.
Useful:
Keyword Classifier (based on ontology/taxonomy and a lot of data points)
Duplicate Content (doc2vec that looks at several levels and goes well beyond
phrase match duplicate content checkers)
Meh:
Mapping old content to current for redirects (site: + keyword was faster)
Finding cannibalization (again, a site: search was faster)
Finding internal link opportunities (again, site: search was faster)
Determining link relevance. (LDA)
36. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Want To Work On These Issues Every Day?
We’ll be hiring again soon (early 2018).
Twitter https://twitter.com/patrickstox
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickstox
Ask for email (because spam)
37. Patrick Stox | @patrickstox #TechSEOBoost
Thank You All
Special thanks to Paul Shapiro, Catalyst, and all the sponsors
like Stat, DeepCrawl, and Rio SEO