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Technical SEO Audit
The document outlines the importance of conducting a technical SEO audit to enhance website performance and visibility. Key factors include managing URL structure, handling duplicate content, and ensuring mobile-friendliness, with recommendations for tools and best practices. Continuous optimization and user-focused strategies are emphasized as essential for long-term success in SEO.
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Technical SEO Audit
- 2. THE COMPLETE SEO TECHNICALAUDIT @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 3. Hannah Thorpe Head ofSEO @hannahjthorpe hthorpe@white.net Technical SEO Content Marketing Social Strategy I improve websites for customers, which helps brands sell more @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 4. Our expertise Technical SEOContent Marketing Digital PR/ Social Media Paid Media @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 5. There are approximately 54,261searches on Google every second http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-‐second/#google-‐band @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 6. In 2016, globalB2C ecommerce sales are predicted to reach 1.92 trillion US dollars http://www.statista.com/statistics/261245/b2c-‐e-‐commerce-‐sales-‐worldwide/ @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 7. TL;DR The internet isimportant. Take your website performance seriously. @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 8. Sometimes blue skythinking just isn’t enough. Let’s get practical. @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 9. One technical audit,fully implemented = 105.2% increase in number of organic sessions last month @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 10. There are approximately 54,261different ways to do a technical audit* *This is probably not true @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 12. C R AW L Y O U R W E B S I T E @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 13. WHEN BOTS CRAWLA PAGE, THEY "READ" THE CONTENT ON THE PAGE AND ASSOCIATE IT WITH A URL. THIS INFORMATION IS THEN PUT IN GOOGLE'S INDEX (DATABASE OF CONTENT AND URLS) AND IT BECOMES ACCESSIBLE VIA SEARCH. THIS PROCESS IS CALLED INDEXING. I N D E X I N G @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 14. HOW TO SEE LEVELS OF INDEXATION Check for disparity between all measures of indexed pages Numberof html pages foundby ScreamingFrog
- 15. Does this numbermake sense for your business? @hannahjthorpe @ODGlobal
- 16. Robots.txt Meta RobotsX Robots Prevent crawling Yes No No Prevent Indexing Yes Yes Yes Prevent URL from showing up in index No Yes Yes Remove content from index No Yes Yes Easily implement on specific pages No Yes Yes CONTROLLING YOUR CRAWLING & INDEXING
- 17. WHEN GOOGLEBOT, BINGBOT,OR THE OTHER SEARCH CRAWLERS ACCESS A PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE, THE SERVER HEADER INFORMATION IS SERVED TO THEM. THE WRONG STATUS CODE CAN SEND THE WRONG SIGNAL TO A SEARCH CRAWLER AND NEGATIVELY AFFECT CRAWLABILITY AND RANKABILITY OF A WEBSITE PAGE. S T A T U S C O D E S @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 18. 200. Everythingis finewith the page and the crawler should crawl, cache, and index the page. 301. The page has been moved permanently to another page, so the crawler should instead crawl, cache, and index the new final page. 302. The page has been moved temporarily. The page should not be removed from the index and link equity is not passed, but both crawlers and visitorsare redirected. 404. The page is no longer in existence or accessible to the search crawlers. Crawlers will eventually drop the page from the index and users will usually receive a 404 page from the website. 410. Page is gone, and is not expected to be back. Remove page from the index. 500. A server error exists and no content is accessible to either crawlers or search engines. 503. A “temporarily unavailable”status code that informs the crawlers and users to return later. The 503 is the best choice for site maintenance, as it is crawler friendly. MOST COMMON STATUS CODES
- 19. Ayima Redirect Path Chrome Extension @hannahjthorpe@outreachdigit
- 20. The cause? Atrailing slash http://www.outreachdigital.org/our-team-2016/ @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 21. 500 SERVER PROBLEMS Thisneeds to go to your developers. 500 status codes are necessary at certain times so don’t eliminate them! HOW TO FIX UNWANTED STATUS CODES 403 & 404 PAGES Remove all internal references to these. Getting these response codes to display when needed can be done with a plugin/developer 301 & 302 REDIRECTS Update the internal links; usually these are templated ones and are due to a change in site architecture
- 22. YOUR URL STRUCTURE& SITE ARCHITECTURE IS KEY TO HELPING GOOGLEBOT UNDERSTANDYOUR WEBSITE. FOLDERS ARE YOUR FRIEND FOR ORGANISING PAGES AND BEING ABLE TO MAKE BIG EDITS TO THE SITE. U R L S T R U C T U R E @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
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- 24. 1. Protocol –HTTP or HTTPs 2. Subdomain – www or custom 3. Domain 4. Top Level Domain (TLD) - .com, .org 5. Category 6. Slug http://www.domain.com/category/slug URL COMPONENTS
- 25. DUPLICATE CONTENT ISSOMETHING THAT HAPPENS TO MANY SITES. MANY TIMES THE DUPLICATE CONTENT IS NOT INTENTIONAL AND CREATED BY THE WEBSITES CMS OR HOSTING SERVER. THERE ARE OTHER TYPES OF DUPLICATE CONTENT THAT ARE INTENTIONAL AND HAVE THE POSSIBILITY OF HURTING THE PERFORMANCE OF AN ENTIRE SITE. D U P L I C A T E C O N T E N T @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 26. PANDA First hit: Feb2011 The Panda algorithm update affected up to 12% of search results. Panda cracked down on websites with thin content, content farms and high ad-to- content ratio. @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 27. CHECK FOR COMMONLYFOUND PROBLEMS • http://www.outreachdigital.org • http://outreachdigital.org • https://www.outreachdigital.org • https://outreachdigital.org • www.outreachdigital.org • outreachdigital.org • http://www.outreachdigital.org/ • http://outreachdigital.org/ • https://www.outreachdigital.org/ • https://outreachdigital.org/ • outreachdigital.org/ • www.outreachdigital.org/ To a robot crawling a site, every different way of typing a URL can be seen as a unique page. E.g. Use 301 redirects to point to one single version of each page, consistently across the site. Implement self-referencing canonical tags on the core URLs to safeguard the site
- 28. TOOLS TO FINDINTERNAL DUPLICATE CONTENT http://www.siteliner.com/ Other types of duplicate content may be found from a user perspective, or by utilising a tool such as Siteliner:
- 29. EXTERNAL DUPLICATE CONTENT http://www.copyscape.com/ Externalduplicate content is a higher risk for websites, as it can trigger an algorithmic filter more severe than internal duplication. Common Causes: • Stockists using similar product descriptions • Affiliate sites using the same content • Legacy SEO tactics • Low quality sites stealing your content
- 30. IF YOU FINDYOUR PAGES ARE OFTEN TOO SIMILAR OR FLAGGED FOR DUPLICATE CONTENT THEN YOU CAN USE CANONICALS OR PAGINATION TO HANDLE THE ISSUE. THESE ARE WAYS OF TALKING DIRECTLY TO THE SEARCH ENGINE BOTS TO EXPLAIN WHY YOUR SITE IS SET UP IN THAT WAY C A N O N I C A L S & P A G I N A T I O N @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 31. CANONICALS HELP TOADD CONTEXT A canonicalindicates which version of the contentyou’d prefer to be indexed, however it does not stop the user accessing the other page, or it being indexed on specific queries https://econsultancy.com/blog/67811-how-canonical-tags-helped- waterstones-solve-a-product-ranking-nightmare/
- 32. PAGINATION IS GOODFOR LISTS OF CONTENT Use paginationto mark-up that a list of blog posts, page 1, 2, 3 etc will all be similar and follow on from one another
- 33. THE SPEED ATWHICH YOUR WEBSITE LOADS AND CAN BE USED BY ITS VISITORS IS IMPORTANT FROM A USER PERSPECTIVE. IT IS ALSO A KNOWN PART OF GOOGLE’S RANKING ALGORITHM SO KEEP AN EYE ON THE SIZE OF YOUR PAGES & OPTIMISETHEIR LOADING. S I T E S P E E D @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 34. TEST, TEST &TEST AGAIN
- 35. IT’S THOUGHT THATCLICK-THROUGH RATE IS A RANKING FACTOR; WITH THIS IN MIND MAKING YOUR ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS STAND OUT AND ADD EXTRA VALUE TO THE USER IS CRUCIAL TO YOUR SEO AUDIT. S T R U C T U R E D M A R K - U P @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 36. Structured mark-up isthe way you make your results have those yellow stars in them… … you can also mark-up your products, events, brand, phone number, etc. @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 37. • Nested Values– allows lots of information in one place • Quicker & simpler – both learning JSON-LD and editing it WHAT IS JSON-LD?
- 38. JSON- LD INREAL LIFE
- 39.
- 40. YOU’VE PROBABLY ALLHEARD OF ‘MOBILEGEDON’ AS GOOGLE PUTS MORE OF AN EMPHASIS ON MOBILE-FRIENDLY WEBSITES IN THE SEARCH RESULTS ITS KEY THAT WE THINK ABOUT MOBILE AS PART OF OUR STRATEGIES. M O B I L E @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 41. EARLY MORNING Mobilesbrighten thecommute DAYTIME EVENING PCsdominate working hours Tablets are popular at night DEVICE PREFERENCES THROUGHOUT THE DAY
- 42. •Is the textsize legible? •How close together are the links? •Is the content wider than the screen? Tool: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ mobile-friendly/ @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 43.
- 44. OUR ADVICE FORWEBMASTERS IS TO FOCUS ON CREATING HIGH QUALITY SITES THAT CREATE A GOOD USER EXPERIENCE AND EMPLOY WHITE HAT SEO METHODS INSTEAD OF ENGAGING IN AGGRESSIVE WEBSPAM TACTICS… @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 45. The Core Takeaways Rememberit’s humans who use your sites not robots, so make sure all changes make sense to users too1 2 3 There’s no such thing as a quick win; but prioritise getting full tasks completed quickly You will never be done optimising your site; keep on top of it and constantly re-audit @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
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- 47. Tools… Crawling Screaming Frog,Deep Crawl, Xenu Redirect Monitoring Ayima Redirect Path, Check My Links Duplicate Content Detection Siteliner, Copyscape Site Speed tools.pingdom.com, WebPageTest @hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
- 48. Thanks for listening! @hannahjthorpe@outreachdigit