Prioritising Impactful SEO Tasks
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How and what SEO tasks should we prioritise? Perform initial analysis/audit Agree on business and measurable SEO objectives. Develop a strategy and execution plan. Execute standard SEO tasks. Regular analysis/auditing informs priorities. Critical issues are non-negotiable priority. Don't move goalposts mid project Foster good communication with stakeholders
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Prioritising Impactful SEO Tasks
- 2. About Peter Mead ● Began developing websites and playing with Search engines in 1997 ● Major focus on Technical SEO ● Advocate for the SEO Community ● Called the Godfather by some PeterMead.com StudioHawk.com.au SEOCollective.org Peter Mead @petermeadseo 2
- 3. Another SEO hero! You have taken on an SEO project Got some wins, yippee! You're the SEO hero!! Then it gets real… The project gets more demanding #%&! So now have battles battles to fight! How and what should we prioritise? 3
- 4. In the beginning there was a new SEO project Understand what the project objectives are What kinds of growth targets? Target audience Competition What can the SEO realistically promise Set the expectations with stakeholders 4
- 5. Planning & Strategy 1st priority 5
- 6. Initial analysis/audit ★ Brief analysis/adut, competitor research informs your strategy ★ Understand the business goals ★ Win the project 6
- 7. Planning a strategy ★ Strategy developed in conjunction with stakeholders ★ Not given, one way ★ Gives skin in the game ★ An agreed plan 7
- 8. Estimate realistic implementation time frames ★ Times based on initial analysis/audit ★ Availability & capacity to commit ★ Time requirements for success ★ Project budget constraints 8
- 9. Research and establish goals ★ Business goals inform your SEO goals ★ What does success look like? ★ Are these goals realistic? 9
- 10. Performance Benchmarking Snapshots ★ What is the current state of play? ★ How is the website currently performing? ★ Snapshot will provide benchmark to compare progress 10
- 11. Project set up 2nd priority 11
- 12. Google Analytics ★ Tracking traffic and conversions from day 1 ★ Use annotations to note the commencement ★ Annotate any project milestones and major implementations 12
- 13. Google Search Console ★ How the website is performing in Google search engine ★ This will be a critical tool for Search performance ★ Important tools for analysis & avoiding errors 13
- 14. Project management system ★ Specify your agreed targets in the project ★ Schedule & assign tasks, with due dates ★ Record project activities for record keeping 14
- 15. Set up monthly reporting ★ The projects main communications tool ★ Report on project progress & milestones ★ Report on project issues ★ Report on agreed performance metrics 15
- 16. Critical SEO issues 4th priority 16
- 17. Indexability URLs will either be Indexable or Not Indexable, depending on a range of technical considerations
- 18. <head> contains invalid HTML elements Page contains a <noscript> tag in the <head>, with invalid HTML elements. This breaks the <head>, meta robots tags etc. will be missed <head> <noscript><h1>Do not put markup here…</h1></noscript> ... </head> Fix it: ➔ Take <noscript> out of <head>, and place into <body> 18
- 19. Canonical tag placed outside of <head> Canonical tag is placed outside of the <head> This will be ignored by search engines <body> <link rel="canonical" href="https://mysite.com/" /> ... </body> Fix it: ➔ Remove from <body> and place in <head> section 19
- 20. Noindex, nofollow of canonicalized URL Canonicals consolidate and combine indexing signals Page A has a noindex, this could be passed through to canonicalised Page B <head> <link rel="canonical" href="https://mysite.com/b" /> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> ... </head> Fix it: ➔ Remove robots directives, so as not to interfere with the canonicalisation 20
- 21. Redirects Crawlers are forced to follow redirects, if excessive or misconfigured, crawl budget could be impacted, and may not complete crawling all pages
- 22. Broken Internal URL redirect (4XX or 5XX) Redirected URL was crawled but not accessible, gives 404 or 500 errors Fix it: 1. Redirect to URL with 200 OK and update all links to point to the new page 2. Remove the redirect if the page has been removed and remove all internal links to the redirected URL 22
- 23. Internal URL in a chained redirect loop URL is in a redirect chain causing a redirect loop, this cannot be crawled or indexed E.g: URL A -> URL -> B -> URL C -> URL A Fix it: 1. Remove the redirect chain to determine different redirecting URLs. 2. Determine the URL with a 200 OK HTTP response. 3. Redirect URLs directly to the URL and test all URLs from the chain. 23
- 24. Internal links Internal links are hugely important, they provide both navigation and structure, impacting user experience and search engine performance.
- 25. Broken internal URLs URL was not successfully crawled, and returned a crawl status of either Not Found, Error, or Forbidden Fix it: ➔ For HTTP Status code of 4XX - either address the 404, 410 or remove from sitemap ➔ HTTP Status code of 5XX - Investegate with server admin or developer about this error ➔ HTTP Status code 403 Forbidden - Check Firewalls, security plugins, Cloudflare, server settings if they are blocking Googlebot 25
- 26. XML Sitemaps An well configured XML Sitemap allows you to specify which URLs you want to be indexed, a very important aspect of SEO.
- 27. XML Sitemaps contains Noindex URL URL included in your XML Sitemap is noindex Gives conflicting information to search engines, which may result in noindex URLs getting indexed Fix it: ➔ If it’s meant to be noindex, remove it from your XML Sitemaps, then resubmit the sitemap to Google Search Console ➔ If it’s not be noindex, remove the noindex tag 27
- 28. XML Sitemaps contains Not Found (4XX) URL Returns a HTTP status of 4XX, yet is included in an XML Sitemap. When search engines find 404 pages in sitemaps your sitemaps crawling and indexing signals may become untrustworthy. Fix it: ➔ Simply remove any URLs returning 4XX from your XML Sitemaps 28
- 29. Security Website security is a major concern for website owners, website visitors, and of course Google, not the least.
- 30. Mixed content serving HTTP resources on HTTPS URL URL loaded over a secure HTTPS, but some resources (images, stylesheets, scripts) loaded over insecure HTTP An attacker can gain control of the page Fix it: ➔ Update the references to point to the HTTPS versions Or if the resources not available over HTTPS: 1. Include resource from a another secure host 2. Host the content on your own site 3. remove the resource from your site 30
- 31. HTTP URLs URL is loaded over an insecure HTTP connection If not yet implemented HTTPS, this should be a critical recommendation Fix it: The resolution has two stages: 1. Set redirect rules for HTTP -> HTTPS at a server level 2. Update all links to HTTP URLs to the HTTPS equivalent 31
- 32. Organic traffic Organic traffic from search engines is the aim of SEO, to drive traffic and conversions. Critical issues on target pages will be very costly if not addressed.
- 33. Organic search traffic for canonicalized URLs URL is canonicalized to another URL, has received organic search traffic Can only happen if URLs is indexed, search engines could be ignoring the canonical Fix it: ❏ Are you setting canonicals for non duplicate pages? ❏ Canonical URL has more link equity than the original URL? ❏ Canonicalised URL referenced in XML Sitemaps? ❏ Canonical points to a redirecting URL? (or any non-200 status) ❏ Canonical URL has lots of external inbound links? ❏ Conflicting robots signals, such as noindex, or disallow? 33
- 34. Organic traffic to Page Not Found (4XX) URLs HTTP status of 4XX, but received organic search traffic Users landing on 404 pages from search results, is an extremely poor result Fix it: ➔ Only index pages with a HTTP status code of 200 (OK) 34
- 35. Standard optimisation tasks 5th priority 35
- 36. Optimisation task list ❏ Keyword & Entity Research ❏ Mobile friendliness ❏ Website & internal link Structure ❏ Menus and Navigation ❏ Title Tag Optimization ❏ Meta Description Optimization ❏ Meta Keyword Optimization ❏ H1 tag Optimization ❏ Web Page Copywriting ❏ Domain Redirect Optimisation ❏ xml Sitemap optimisation ❏ Robots.txt & crawl budget optimization ❏ nofollow & noindex ❏ Duplicates, Canonical & Taxonomies ❏ Structured Data & Rich Snippets ❏ Calls to action ❏ Social media profiles optimization ❏ Email nurturing schedule 36
- 38. Content Marketing Methodology Is the primary vehicle for increasing your digital growth In general the process is: 1. Create great content 2. Promote it effectively 3. Optimize for Conversions Primary goal for Content Marketing is to build online reputation and visibility 38
- 39. Links to your site are still very important Why links are so important Google sees links as a form of endorsement What kind of links Natural links that have been earned The unhelpful links Easy or manufactured Links 39
- 40. How quality content attracts links The key to content marketing is earned link building 3 main reasons people link to your site: 1. Interesting & engaging content. 2. Valuable information and resources. 3. Relationship with the reader. Best links are the ones that we are surprised to get 40
- 41. Content suited to your buyer personas ❖ Background - What are their daily activities, careers and hobbies? ❖ Learning - What are they seeking to be able to improve? ❖ Roles & Responsibilities - Are they business owners, or staff? ❖ Challenges - Do they lack of time, are they unorganized? ❖ Goals - What are their aspirations achievements? 41
- 42. Appropriate content types In many cases we begin with Articles written for your Blog… ❏ Articles written for your Blog ❏ Articles on third party Blogs ❏ Interviews with people of interest ❏ Podcasts and or Vodcasts ❏ Slideshows and Presentations ❏ eBooks, reports & PDF files ❏ Case Studies & Whitepapers ❏ Informational Videos ❏ Social Media posts & comments ❏ Research articles & data transformation ❏ Curated or Aggregated Content ❏ Reviews for products or services ❏ News Articles and Journalism ❏ Tools and Resources ❏ Templates, Plans & Guides ❏ Mobile Apps or Tablet Apps ❏ Infographics and Diagrams ❏ Artwork, Drawings or Illustrations ❏ Memes and Animated GIF’s 42
- 43. Promotion Strategies Promote FRESH content so it brings traffic ➔ Email Lists ➔ Guest Posting ➔ Content Syndication ➔ Social Media ➔ Targeted PPC ➔ Targeted Outreach 43
- 44. Link-worthy content Content that is great: ➔ Is link-worthy ➔ Lots of people will link to it ➔ If it provides enough value 44 Content that creates: ➔ A bit of a buzz ➔ Perhaps humorous or entertaining ➔ People share and link promoted content A great way to build your brand presence
- 45. Further ways to Promote Content Outreach and Relationship building ➔ With influential website owners ➔ Offer value, they may share and link ➔ Use lists to stay organized 45 Leveraging Social Media ➔ Social media enhances content marketing ➔ Can help the virality of our content ➔ Extend the reach of our audience Paying for promotion Using targeted PPC with Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Outbrain, etc.
- 46. Optimising the Conversions ★ Clear calls to action ★ Easy to find and fill out contact form ★ Phone number prominent on the site ★ Easy checkout process for carts 46
- 47. Nurture leads with Inbound methodologies Offer lead magnet: ➔ A free download? ➔ Visitor fills out the form ➔ Give us their email address ➔ Allows us to nurture the lead ➔ Engage via scheduled emails ➔ Moves them down the funnel ➔ Until they are loyal customers (don't abuse their email address) 47
- 48. 48
- 49. Content Calendar - Develop a calendar of content - Schedule at least 4 to 6 months 49
- 50. Keeping SEO tasks prioritised 50 Top priority
- 51. Measure performance against objectives ★ Are SEO goals being achieved? ★ Are business goals being realised? ★ Does your reporting methodology describe and visualise performance? 51
- 52. Regular Analysis/Auditing ★ Critical issues picked up with regular auditing, and are a top priority ★ Determine if issues arising will affect project timelines ★ Communication of analysis with project stakeholders to stay on same page 52
- 53. Not curtailing to stakeholders changed objectives ★ Effective communication to stay focused on project objectives ★ Remind stakeholders of initial agreement ★ This is cause to renegotiate terms of project ★ This is moving the goalposts 53
- 54. To prioritise impactful SEO tasks ★ Perform initial analysis/audit ★ Agree on business and measurable SEO objectives ★ Develop a strategy and execution plan ★ Execute standard SEO tasks ★ Regular analysis/auditing informs priorities ★ Critical issues are non-negotiable priority ★ Don't move goalposts mid project ★ Foster good communication with stakeholders 54 Summary…
- 55. Resources ★ Website auditing fundamentals | Sitebulb ★ SEO Starter Guide: The Basics | Google Search Central | Documentation ★ The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 41 Best Practices ★ Daily SEO Checklist. 9 To-Do Tasks to Perform on a Daily Basis 55
- 56. You're now a prioritised SEO hero! Questions? 56 Peter Mead @petermeadseo