Optimization 2020 | Using Edge SEO For Technical Issues ft. Dan Taylor

Дэн Тэйлор // SALT.agency
Using Edge SEO to overcome
technical issues.

OPTIMIZATION
2020
Здравствуйте! меня зовут Дэн.
• Head of Research & Development @
SALT.agency
• 2018 TechSEO Boost Innovation Award
• Search Engine Journal Author
• Search Engine Journal Top 140
• SEMrush Top Author
Websites
• https://salt.agency
• https://hreflangchecker.com
• https://sloth.cloud
Slides & Links To Further Reading
• https://dantaylor.online/optimization2020
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
2
Getting technical fixes
implemented can be hard.
• Congested development queues // long lead times
• Lack of “business buy in” to action SEO fixes as a priority
• Platforms with restrictions
• Custom builds, not scoped properly
• Random Google/Yandex support changes
• Builds not scoped properly
• Code freezes
All of these create barriers to performance, and performance (improvements) is
what we’re judged by.

OPTIMIZATION
2020
A lot of websites make use of CDNs such as Cloudflare, Akamai, or Fastly for
security and load-balancing.
This allows us to perform SEO implementations on the edge, serverlessly.
Edge SEO means using edge computing technologies to create new SEO
implementation methods, testing, and research processes.
Developers should always be a part of the conversation.
We can use the CDN to overcome
these issues.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
4
CDNs are good anyway.
● Speed optimization of content delivery
● Including payload optimization & compressions
● Bandwidth savings
● Content accessibility / uptime reliability
● Security benefits, i.e. WAF / DDoS Mitigation
● Reverse proxy other platforms to subfolders, e.g. a Wordpress blog to a
Magento store
● “Edge SEO” stuff

OPTIMIZATION
2020
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• Implementing redirects, agnostic of platform level restrictions
• AB testing
• Overwrite hardcoded meta data/HTML elements
• Dynamic JavaScript rendering
• Implementing <head> Hreflang tags
• Pseudo server log file collection
• Generating dynamic meta data based on page level information
• Implementing user-friendly solutions dynamically for out of stock product
pages
As we’re not touching the origin source code, and only modifying either the
request or response, the possibilities are relatively endless.
SEO “things” we can do on the edge.

OPTIMIZATION
2020
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Hreflang example

OPTIMIZATION
2020
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Implementing redirects Yes Yes Yes Yes
AB Testing Yes Yes Yes Yes
Hreflang Injection Yes Yes Limited Yes
Security Headers Yes Yes Yes Yes
Log File Collection Yes Yes No Need Yes
Dynamic JS Rendering Yes Yes Yes Yes
(Dynamic) Meta Data Yes Yes Yes Yes

OPTIMIZATION
2020
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CDNs Enablers/Suites
sloth.cloud

OPTIMIZATION
2020
Dynamic meta title rendering.
Injection of modifiers into the title
tag based on information readily
available on the webpage.
Improves click-through rate, click
awareness and conversions.
Example use cases
Impactful ways we can drive performance through Edge SEO.
Pseudo server log file
collection.
Server log files can often be very
hard to get a hold of, and a lot of
platforms restrict access to them
(Salesforce, Shopify), so being
able to collect the same data at
the “request” stage can be
powerful.
Dynamic JS Rendering.
JavaScript websites, and
webpages heavy with JavaScript
elements can be slow to load and
sometimes cause rendering
problems within Google and
Yandex.
The edge can provide a cost
effective, scalable solution.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
Dynamically generate title tags
based on page content.
Increasing CTR.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
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Dynamic <title> tags
● Travel websites
● Ecommerce stores
Page elements:
● Pull through the lowest price option into the title tag
● Alert the presence of an offer or free shipping
● Alert the urgency of delivery dates (in the run up to Christmas, sales events
etc)

OPTIMIZATION
2020
HTML declared title tag:
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Worker Script:
Result in SERPs:

OPTIMIZATION
2020
Dynamically rendering JavaScript
based on caches.
Resolving JavaScript Issues.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
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“Request” log file collection
Server log files can be very useful in identifying crawl issues.
They’re not always obtainable, and can be a pain to get a hold of.
We take server logs, as it is an imprint of the request, but with the CDN, we can
take a copy of the initial request - meaning we don’t need to request the logs!

OPTIMIZATION
2020
Dynamically rendering JavaScript
based on caches.
Resolving JaveScript Issues.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
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Dynamic JavaScript Rendering
Prerender JavaScript by rendering cached versions of the site periodically, rather
than on a per request basis.
It can reduce costs for prerendering JS server side, and complies with Google’s
recommended implementation of dynamic rendering, by switching between
client-side and pre-rendered content for specific user-agents.

OPTIMIZATION
2020
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Source: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/dynamic-rendering

OPTIMIZATION
2020
первый
We need to identify the User
Agent making the request.
Specifically, we want to cater for
Google (and it’s various bots),
and Yandexbot.
Regular user agents and tools
will bypass the rendering;
including 3rd party tools.
The Process
Dynamically rendering websites through Edge Workers on the CDN.
второй
Now we’ve identified the UA as a
search engine, we need to check
the cache for the pre-rendered
page.
If the URL exists in the cache, we
return it as normal, if it doesn’t
exist, we go to the third step.
третий
If the page doesn’t exist in the
cache, we have two options:
Return a 503 status code, with
retry-after 10 seconds and pre-
render it there and then.
Or
Return the page as normal, and
let the bots render it.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
New Technologies require process
development.
Adopting the processes.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
Using CDNs and serverless for SEO.
Benefits
● Workers can be written in almost every
development language
● Enabler tools, such as Sloth.cloud, make it so
you don’t need to write any code
● One-click deployment/pullback
● Next to zero DevOps required
● Can be verified and monitoring through existing
tools/methods
● Testing shows Google & Yandex treat the
workarounds as they would regular
development
● CDNs are common components of modern
website infrastructure
● Cloudflare, and Workers, are free for small
websites
Potential Issues
• Potential to affect and impact all requests
between client and server
• Potential to add latency and slow page load
times, depending on how much you implement,
although with recent developments this is next
to zero
• Potential to introduce front-end bugs that are
difficult to debug when it is unclear what is
being modified/injected through stream
transformation
Internal policies and deployment needs to be
respected.
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OPTIMIZATION
2020
Дэн Тэйлор
Руководитель отдела исследований ,
SALT.agency
+44 113 460 5671
dan@salt.agency
НАЗВАНИЕ ПРЕЗЕНТАЦИИ
Спасибо!
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Optimization 2020 | Using Edge SEO For Technical Issues ft. Dan Taylor

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