On Thursday 28th November the group of search experts and business owners, who blog together as "the SEO Chicks" conducted a panel discussion at The Digital Marketing Show at Londons' Excel. The presentation outlines each of the main considerations each of the presenters discussed; including critical concerns, best practise and common mistakes. The SEO Chicks are Lisa Myers, Jackie Hole, Julie Joyce, Judith Lewis, Annabel Hodges, Hannah Smith, Bridget Randolph and Nichola Stott

1. Technical SEO
with
#DigitalMarketingShow

2. Who dat SEO Chicks?
Lisa Myers:
Founder & CEO of Verve Search + Founder SEOChicks.com
Nichola Stott
Founder & MD of TheMediaFlow + SEO Chicks blogger
Hannah Smith
Principal Consultant, Distilled + SEO Chicks Blogger
Jackie Hole
SEO & PPC Consultant /Owner 22M + SEO Chicks Blogger
Judith Lewis
Head of Search, Beyond + SEO Chicks Blogger
Bridget Randolph
Consultant , Distilled + SEO Chicks Blogger

3. Technical SEO Elements
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Crawling and indexing
Common but “lethal” Technical issues
International Domain Strategy
Mobile SEO
Large Site Migration
Structured Data mark-up
Tools we love
@SEOChicks
#DigitalMarketingShow

4. Crawling & Indexing
Hannah Smith
@hannah_bo_banna

5. crawling
how search engines discover content
image credit

6. indexing
how search engines store content
image credit

7. if your content is
not crawled
it will
not be indexed

8. if your content is
not indexed
it will
not rank

9. image credit

10. do you have
indexation
issues?

13. common
issues

14. crawl errors
image credit

17. poor architecture
image credit

18. aim for just 3 to 4
navigation levels

19. so any given page is
just 4 or 5 clicks
from the
homepage

20. duplicate content
(or substantially similar content)
image credit

21. every page
should have
unique content

22. or rel=canonical

23. Lisa
will explain
how…

24. Common but
“lethal” Technical
Issues
Lisa Myers
@LisaDMyers

25. Canonicalisation
Canonicalisation is the process of
choosing
one URL when there are several choices!
Canonical URL = Preferred URL

26. Multiple URLs – Same Content

27. Potential Link Dilution

28. Transferring “Link Juice”
http://vervesearch.com
http://www.vervesearch.com
http://vervesearch.com/index.php

29. Increased Link Authority
Canonical URL
=
http://www.vervesearch.com
982 Links

30. How to fix it
You have options:
- Use 301 (permanent) redirect
- Canonical meta tag

31. 301 redirects
This is a permanent redirect that:
spiders
Redirects human visitors
Redirects search engine
302 redirects (temporary redirects) on the
other
hand will ONLY redirect human visitors and
not
carry “link juice”.

32. Canonical Meta Tag
In the HTML of all duplicate URLs insert a
code
like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.canonicalURLhere.com/” />
This code tells the search engine spiders
that all
link authority should be allocated to the
canonical URL. Does not redirect VISITORS!

33. Nike
clucking bell
- JUST DO IT!

34. Tools to diagnose
• Manually check non www
• 301 redirect checker
• Use Open Site Explorer to check link
values www.opensiteexplorer.com or
• MajesticSEO www.majesticseo.com

35. pagination
- when 1 becomes 100s

36. Pagination Issues
The system of which pages are
numbered:
An article divided into several pages
Forum thread
Category/group of products

38. Solutions for Pagination Issues
Rel=“next” or Rel=“prev”
(Google’s official guide to these)
Or
“View all” page option

39. International Domain Strategy
Jackie Hole @JackieHole

40. International Domain Strategy
Considerations to International SEO
Strategy.
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Domain Structure
Server Location
Countries or Languages?
Local / Global Content
Translation / Native Input
Link Building
Regional Design /
Usability

41. Domain Names
Top Level Domains (TLDs)
• www.mywebsite.com gTLD
• www.mywebsite.is ccTLD

42. Domain Structure
Domain Directories
• www.mywebsite.com/en
• www.mywebsite.com/jp
• www.mywebsite.com/es
Pros: One Domain, Link Authority, Cost
Cons: Load Speeds, Geolocalisation signals,
Complex

43. Domain Structure
Separate TLD’s
• www.brandsite.co.uk
• www.brandsite.fr
• www.brandsite.ca
Pros: Local IP, SERP Recognition,
Relevancy, Localised branding
Cons: Diluted Authority,
Increased SEO Costs, Brand
Consistency

44. Domain Structure
Subdomains
• en.brandsite.com
• de.brandsite.com
• es.brandsite.com
Pros: …
Cons: Authority does not flow between
subdomains, more work

45. Domain Variations
Prevent Future Headaches
• Purchase ALL of
them
• www.brandsite.in taken?
• Other variations can hurt
your brand and confuse
customers
www.brand-site.in

46. Markup for Multilingual Content
hreflang element
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•
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Multilingual / Multi-regional
Different Country – Same Language
Duplicate Content Issues
Serve Appropriate Landing Pages

47. Markup for Multilingual Content
rel="alternate" hreflang="x“
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/en-gb"
hreflang="en-gb" /> <link rel="alternate"
href="http://example.com/en-us" hreflang="en-us" /> <link
rel="alternate" href="http://example.com/" hreflang="x-default"
/>
• http://example.com/en-gb: For English-speaking users in the UK
• http://example.com/en-us: For English-speaking users in the USA
• http://example.com/: The homepage shows users a country
selector and is the default page for users worldwide

48. Hreflang Tools
www.themediaflow.com/resources/tools/href-lang-tool/
www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/

49. International Domain Tips
• Make things obvious – one language
nav/content
• Use robots.txt to block crawling/auto translate
• Different Language Content on Separate URL
• Avoid auto re-direct for language versions
• Use Geo-Location Settings in Webmaster Tools
• Buy ALL Domains
• Tie up Local Info
• Server Location

50. Mobile Strategy –
Bridget Randolph
@BridgetRandolph

51. Mobile isn’t separate.
• 77% of mobile searches happen near a PC.
– Source: Google Databoard
• People use devices interchangeably.
• Your website needs to be mobile-friendly.

52. 3 approaches:
•
responsive
–
•
dynamic serving
–
•
rearranges the layout
serves different HTML on same URL
separate mobile subdomain
–
e.g. m.domain.com

53. SEO considerations for mobile sites
• Responsive design:
– you don’t need to do anything extra.
• Dynamic serving:
– use a vary HTTP header

54. Separate mobile site?

55. 5 common pitfalls (and solutions)
• Duplicate content issues: use ‘switchboard tags’ on pages which
duplicate desktop content
• Slow site speed: use Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool to check your
site
• Irrelevant redirects: redirect to the most relevant mobile page,
don’t redirect everything to the mobile homepage
• One-way redirects: use two-way redirects by user agent
– but make sure users can override it (if links are used, they should point
to most relevant version, rather than homepage)
• Interstitial pop-up ads: instead, use a banner at the top of the page

56. Large Site Migration
Judith Lewis
@JudithLewis

57. How do you migrate something like this…

58. …to something like this…

59. …without lots of this?

60. PLANNING
http://landp-ifa.co.uk.gridhosted.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/services_planning-e1361898902182.jpg

61. Migrating - What We Did First…
• Mapped the old site
• Determined the IA of the new site
• Set rules on what URLs could and could not change and
why based on MOZ page strength analysis
• Mapped the inbound links on the old site for contacting
• Mapped the dozens of domains bought to prevent others
buying/using them or which had been used in the past
• Determined what wasn’t moving to new site and the
impact of loss of content
• Created a .htaccess file in preparation for the move
• Set Screaming Frog against the old site & site on staging
• Set up Webmaster Tools on Google

62. Migrating - What We Did Then…
• All content uploaded on to new CMS using new tagging
rules
• All images uploaded to new CMS with new naming
rules
• Stopped auto-population of meta description
• New analytics account launched along side old one
• Set Screaming Frog against new site to check 404, 301,
302, 500 response codes
• Fixed 404s mainly resulting from typos
• Automated sitemap
• Blocked crawling undesirable pages

64. Structured Data MarkUp – Nichola Stott
@NicholaStott

66. Why?
• Semantic learning & understanding
• Often generates a rich snippet (in
SERPs)
• Much more real-estate (in-SERP)
• Much higher CTR

68. How?
• Schema (convention and protocol)
• Alone or in combination with other
micro-data (microformats, RDFa)

69. prepTime
cookTime

70. Help
• http://Schema.org
• http://Microformats.org
• https://developers.google.com/webmasters/richsnippets/
• http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
• http://schema-creator.org/
• http://www.microdatagenerator.com/

71. Tools We Love

72. Technical SEO Tools We Love
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Screaming Frog (software, free & paid)
Ayima Redirect Path (chrome plugin)
WooRank (chrome plugin)
DeepCrawl (Web, paid)
OpenSiteExplorer and/or MajesticSEO