The document discusses technical SEO best practices and common mistakes for e-commerce websites. It covers topics like site architecture, duplicate content, rich snippets, video/image search optimization, mobile optimization, and making dynamic content visible to search engines. Specific techniques are presented for each topic to improve search rankings and organic traffic. Common pitfalls are also outlined to avoid technical SEO issues.

1. Technical SEO
“Overoptimization”
Hamlet Batista

2. Career Highlights
 Inventor, granted patents for enterprise and small business
SEO technology: (RankSense®, Altruik’s Product Priority®)
 EB1 Green Card - Alien of Extraordinary Ability (Search
Engine Optimization)
 Top affiliate marketer, 1st page rankings in Google for
“Viagra”, 7 figures in commissions
 Technical Review Editor “The Art of SEO” first and second
editions

3. T E C H N I C A L S E O " O V E R O P T I M I Z AT I O N " | H A M L E T
B AT I S TA G R O U P
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B AT I S TA G R O U P
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B AT I S TA G R O U P
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Buzz
Content
Site Architecture
SEO Pyramid
General branding, and link acquisition
activities
Buzz
Authoritative, engaging content
Content
Technical issues
Site Architecture
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9. E-commerce Site Architecture
The “money pages” of an e-
commerce site are the
product pages, yet they
generally accumulate the
least link equity.
Link Equity DistributionProduct
1
Product
2
Product
3
Product
4 Product
5
Product
6
Home
Page
Category
B
Category
A
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10. Controlling Crawling and Indexing
1. Pages can be crawled by search engines and not be
indexed
2. Pages blocked by robots.txt accumulate PageRank
3. In rare cases, pages can be indexed without being crawled
4. In order to prevent indexing of a page, the search bot must
be able to crawl it
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11. Common Crawling Related Mistakes
1. Blocking pages via robots.txt to avoid duplicate content
instead of doing proper canonicalization
2. Blocking media files like JavaScript, CSS and images
3. Failing to block faceted navigations, shopping cart URLs,
and login restricted pages
4. Failing to include XML sitemap discovery directives in
robots.txt
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13. Common Indexing Related Mistakes
1. Blocking private content via robots.txt to prevent it from
showing up in Google
2. Failing to noindex sensitive non-textual files (PDF, Excel,
Word) using X-Robots-Tag
3. Removing URLs from XML sitemaps hoping to get them
removed from the index
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14. Typical Duplicate Content Scenario
1. In different colors
2. In different sizes
3. In different navigation paths
Same Product
Product A
– Color A
Product A
– Color B
Product A
– Color C
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15. Duplicate Content Consolidation
1. Duplicate URLs weaken the search rankings of the
canonical URLs of a site.
2. Search bots should see only one path/URL to content that
is the same or nearly the same.
3. Typical duplicate content in a retailer site results from
products listed in different categories and large categories
that use pagination.
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17. Common Duplicate Content Mistakes
1. Lack of canonical tags or pagination tags
2. Canonical tags not setup correctly
3. Using unchanged manufacturer descriptions
4. Category pages with no text and only product images
(without ALT text)
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18. Rich Snippets
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19. Rich Snippets
1. Rich snippets can generally improve organic CTR and
traffic by at least 30% when they include stars.
2. Relatively simple to implement
3. The biggest challenge is accumulating a large number of
reviews and keeping them “visible” in the HTML.
4. Clever trick: You can display reviews for categories by
aggregating the reviews of all their products.
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20. Common Rich Snippets Mistakes
1. Marking up “hidden” content
2. Failing to “white list” your site by asking for approval
3. Fake data can get you penalized
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22. Video Search Optimization
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23. Video Search Optimization
1. Google needs at least three pieces of information to
display your videos in natural search results: a title, a
description and a thumbnail.
2. There are two ways to accomplish this:
1. Add extra markup to the page that embeds the video. Supported markups are:
Schema.org/Video, Facebook Share, and Yahoo’s Search Monkey.
2. Create an XML video sitemap and include the proper meta data.
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25. Common Video Search Mistakes
1. Video player code is dynamically generated with
JavaScript.
2. Some video players stream the content and/or don’t
provide an http resource URL.
3. Videos are owned by a third party and shared by many
merchants.
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26. Image Search Optimization
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27. Image Search Optimization
1. Image searches can drive a good number of organic
visitors, especially potential link givers.
2. Keyword based image file names don’t help much, but ALT
text descriptions do.
3. Third party hosted images can send organic traffic to your
site, but not as much as images hosted on your site.
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29. Common Image Search Mistakes
1. Missing ALT text attributes
2. Keyword stuffed ALT texts
3. Missing or incorrect image XML sitemaps
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30. Building Mobile-Optimized Websites
Desktop Laptop Smartphone Tablet
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31. Building Mobile-Optimized Websites
1. For new sites or redesigns, the best approach is a
responsive design.
2. For large sites with complicated navigations, a separate
sub-domain is better as you can simplify the mobile user
experience.
3. If the mobile site loads in the same URLs, you don't need
to create a separate mobile xml sitemap.
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34. Common Mobile Search Mistakes
1. Missing or incorrect vary header
2. No canonical tag and/or alternate tag to avoid duplicate
content
3. Missing or incorrect mobile XML sitemaps
4. Missing or incorrect mobile DOCTYPE
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35. 1.
2.
3.
Making Dynamic Content Visible
Most search bots ignore content
that is not included directly in the
HTML.
Product reviews embedded using
iframes are not attributed to the
product page.
JavaScript Generated Content
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36. Making Dynamic Content Visible
1. Important sections of e-commerce sites are often
dynamically generated (product reviews, recommended
products, etc.) using JavaScript and invisible to search
bots.
2. There are three alternatives to make them visible:
1. Recoding them as regular HTML and CSS
2. Using Hijax techniques. Offering search engines static content and users dynamic content
3. Using Google’s AJAX Crawlable scheme !#
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38. Common Dynamic Content Mistakes
1. Main pulldown navigations implemented using JavaScript
instead of CSS. Faceted navigations are an exception.
2. Product reviews implemented as iframes and/or in
JavaScript
3. Video content implemented in JavaScript
4. Related/Recommended products implemented in
JavaScript
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40. International Content Optimization
1. There are several options to avoid
getting regional pages treated as
duplicate content:
1. Domain level geotargeting by webmaster tools, top level domain, sub-domain or
subdirectory.
2. Page level geotargeting with hreflang tags (Google)
3. Canonicalizing pages in different regions but in the same language
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41. International Content Optimization
North
America
South
America
Europe
Asia
Australia
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Africa
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42. Common International Content Mistakes
1. Incorrect or missing hreflang tags
2. Incorrect content encoding
3. No keyword research for words with and without tildes. For
example:
1. Trajes de baño vs. Trajes de bano
2. Canción vs. cancion
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43. Internet Retailer Attendees Gift #1
1. Complimentary 30-minute live technical SEO review of your e-
commerce site
2. Limited to 25 reviews, 1 site per review and during the weeks of 2/18-
2/28
3. Call to schedule: 866-882-2983 or send an e-mail to
sitereview@hamletbatista.com, include IRWD in the subject. First come,
first served.
4. No agencies
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44. Internet Retailer Attendees Gift #2
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1. Why a site redesign is the best time
to incorporate SEO best practices
2. How to avoid costly SEO mistakes
3. Checklist of common SEO redesign
mistakes
4. Setting Priorities
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