Technical SEO Best Practices

www.thedigitalgriff.com
A practical guide to building SEO compliant websites
PresentedBy:
NISHANTH STEPHEN
DigitalMarketing & SEO Specialist
23rd September 2015

A Bit About Me
NISHANTH STEPHEN
• SEO Manager– Fairfax Media (March 2015– Present)
• Junior SEO Manager– Razorfish Australia (November 2013– February 2015)
• Digital Performance Analyst- iProspect Australia (March 2013 – October 2013)
• Web Developer & SEO Strategist- Big Picture Group (February 2011– January 2013)
• PassionforTechnical SEO
• 4 Years Agency & Client Side Experience
• ProudMember of Online Marketing Sydney
nishanthstephen
@nishanthstephen
+NishanthStephen
nishanth@thedigitalgriff.com

`
Who Can Benefit From This Talk?
Every Persona Has A Different Goal
BUSINESS OWNERS MARKETING
CONSULTANTS
WEB DEVELOPERS
If you areresponsible for the
development of your company’s
website, this guidewill help you deal
with web developers, showing you the
right questions to ask so that you are
sure your site is built correctlyand
that you’re getting your money’s
worth.
If you arean internaldeveloper for a
company or are part of a development
agency, following this guide will help you
createsearch-engine-friendly websites for
all of your clients, potentiallysaving you
from re writing code when your client
brings in a web marketer to analyse the
website later.
Whether you areconsulting during the
development stageor picking up the
ball afterthe site is fully developed and
rolled out, focusing on the issues noted
here first will allow other optimisation
and promotion activitiesto be far more
effective.
INCREASETRAFFICGOT THE BEST IDEASMAKE MONEY

Let’s Stop Putting Money On the Table
“A metaphor referring to the eventual
consequences of poor or evolving
architecture or SEO problems &
dependencies within a website.”
…It can cost you a lot of
Technical Debt
(if paraphrased)

Let’s Stop Putting Money On the Table
Technical Debt – Why Does It Happen?
Doingthings in a quick & dirty way (“…..just ship it”)
Small technical slip-ups leadto catastrophiceffects on
a website's searchengine performance
Web developers have little experience inSEO andit is
oftengivena low priority
Too muchfocus ondesignleads to misunderstanding of
eventhe most simplistic technical SEO concepts
Size or positionof a webdevelopment agency does not
reflect quality of applicationbuild in terms of SEO
Worst offenders are usually proprietary platforms owned
by the development agency themselves

It’s All About That Base
Technical SEO Is The Foundation Of Organic Marketing

It’s All About That Base
So Stop Building Links & Fix Your Website
Technical Issues Fixed
Historical development ofa domain's visibilityin search engines.

Understandthe important aspects oftechnical SEO & show you the right questions to ask
Help you make your website Search Friendly before you hire an SEO
Agenda
What’s In Store For Today
Look at things you can do to improveyourwebsite’s organicvisibilitythrough technical SEO
Not going to showmanycode examples – “Too Boring”
Hopefullyhavetime to to run through some of your questions

Domain & Hosting

Domain & Hosting
Domain Structure
Protocol
Domain
vs Sub-
Domains
EMDs vs
Branded
TLDs &
cTLDs
http vs https
• Consider usingHTTPS encryption (its nowa Ranking Factor)
• Secure a valid SSL certificate
https://www.example.comvs https://example.com
• Choose one format &301 redirect the other to the preferredversion
• Commonly results induplicationissues if not chosencorrectly
• Decide onhaving an m. website orgo Responsive
Keyword Rich vs Branded Domains
• Strike a balance between brandfriendly domainname & having a
domainname that contains keywords
• Avoidhyphens as they detract fromcredibility &canindicate spam
• Keepdomainnames less than 15 characters &make it memorable
Domain Extensions(.com, .co.uk .com.au etc..)
• Choose TLDs to matchthe locationyouwishto target
• Avoiduncommon&low quality top-level domains (TLDs)suchas .info,.cc,.ws,.name

Domain & Hosting
Arranging Hosting for A Website
Potential hostingissues could affect your site if a wrong decision is made.
Location of the Server
Available Bandwidth Capacity& Limitations
OperatingSystem & Supported Technology
Technical Support Offered By The Provider
Provides 99.9% Uptime Minimum
Avoid Cheap & Free Hosting Providers
Ideally LocatedInThe Right Territory To MatchTLD
Should Handle a Possible Overflow of Traffic
Compatible to the Technical Specifications
Known for Their QualityServices
Offers Load BalancingFacilities
Cheap is not always the best

Website Architecture

Poor Information Architecture Affects A Site’s Organic Visibility
IA’s Goal – “Structure & Organisation of
your website which helps users achieve
their goals quickly.”
Identify yourusers’ goals andexpectations
Give visitors the informationthey're looking for
• Are theyin the right place?
• Do I have what they are lookingfor?
• Is there anythingbetterI can offer?
• What do I do if thisisn’t what theywanted?
• Provide high-qualityrelevantcontent
• Organise contentin groups & followabroad to narrow organisation
• Let visitorsknow theiroptions(linkslike “Relatedproducts”etc..)
• Create a logical site architecture that reflects userintent& behaviour
Things to Remember
• Alwaysavoidthe “In My Opinion”approach
• Do not deceive the search engines
• SEO effortsshouldneverconflictwith IA bestpractices & vice versa
• Search Enginescare a lot a about “Engagement”so don’tbreak it

Information Architecture Outcome
Group content intogroups to
buildthe website’sIA
1 2
3
Do not place high converting pages
severalclicks away fromthe homepage

Structuring URLs

Structuring URLs
URLs Are The Bridges Between A Website & A Search Engine's Crawler
Readability - The more readable byhumans, the better
- Compellingenough to visitors seekingits content
1
Including target keywords is still best practice.
- Results in keywords actingas link anchortexts
2
Avoid dynamic parameters whenpossible
- Leads to duplicates & low CTRs (more onthis later)
3
Keep URL length between60 to 115 characters
- Not a ranking factor but goodforUX&social sharing
4
Match URLs to PageTopic:
- Provides a sense of what the user might find ona web page
5

Structuring URLs
URLs Are The Bridges Between A Website & A Search Engine's Crawler
Drop stop words where necessary
- It’s ok till it makes sense
6
Use properpunctuation
- Couldbreak parsing of URLs incertainbrowsers
7
Fewerthe folders, the betterit is
- Helps searchengines to crawl webpages efficiently
8
Use hyphens & underscores as keyword separators9
Be carefulwith case sensitivity & file extensions
- Leads to duplicate content otherwise
10
Keyword stuffingandrepetition are pointless
- Makes the website look spammy to
searchengines
11
No need to repeat
keywords
It’s commonfordevelopers to charge morefor
correctingexistingplatforms & generate user
friendly URLs,so its important to decide URL
structures fromthe start & maintainconsistency.

Accessibility

Accessibility
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file tells searchengine spiders whichpages to crawl when they come across a website.
Useful for preventingcertaindirectories,files orfile types frombeingcrawledby searchengines.
Ensure the robots.txt file is correctly formatted
Ensure that the stagingwebsite is not crawledby searchengines
Tip: Use site:domain.cominurl:stage. –inurl:www
to find if the test website is being indexed
Identify pages that represent real destinations forSEO &block
all other publically available pages
Kickingyour own website outof
Search Engines is the biggest
SEO mistake you can make.

Code Optimisation

Code Optimisation
Code Optimisation - Best Practices
Use Valid HTML/CSS Code
- Not a ranking factor but helps in proper translationof source code by
browsers & searchengines
1
Separate Content from Presentation
- Do not use inline styles withinHTML code.
- Always create a separate CSS files forstyling
2
This will still work but is BAD PRACTICE
Do Not Block CSS & JS from Search Engines
- These files allow searchengines to decently render your website so don’t block them
3

Code Optimisation
Do Not Hide Content Behind JS/CSS
- Content hidden behind tabs oraccordions will be devaluedby Google
- Pages may still rank but hidden content will not show up in the SERPs
4
Product description will not appearin
search results thereby causing a drop
in click throughrates
Contentis displayedonly
whenthe user clicks on
this link

Code Optimisation
Use Absolute Links forNavigation
- Helps in mitigating duplicate versionissues
- Reduces the possibility of content beingscrapped
6
<a href=“/category/product-page” >
<a href=“http://www.example.com/category/product-page” >

Internal Links

Internal Links
Internal Link Structure
Access to search engines to a crawlable website architecture1
Help establishinformation hierarchyforthe given website2
Helps in spreadinglink juice (page rank) around a website3
These pages arenot crawled
by thesearch engines
Links Accessible via Submission-RequiredForms – Invisible to searchengines
Hidden Links Only Accessible Through InternalSearch – Crawlers don’t performsearchto findlinks
Links on pages blockedvia robots.txt
Links in Flash or OtherPlug-Ins – Embeddedlinks are invisible to searchengines
Pages with Hundreds & Thousands of Links – Dilutes Link Juice
Links with in Un-Parseable Javascript oriFrames - Devaluedbasedonthe implementation
Things To Avoid

Internal Links
Broken Links & 404 Errors
If you’re inthe process of choosinga webdeveloper
If you’re already workingwitha webdeveloper
• Mention creationof 404 pagesin your initial brief?
• Ask if it is it includedinthe budget?
• How will youstop brokenlinksfromoccurring?
• Are yousure my site has no brokenlinks?
• Do youhave a method to check for brokenlinks?
• Do youcarry out these checks as standardpractice?
• What can be done to stop brokenlinksfromoccurring?
If your site is live
• Test to see if a custom 404 page is implemented
• Try to visita URL that doesn’t exist
• You should see a 404 error page that supports your branding
Next Steps
404 Pages
Broken Links
Leadto pages that no longer exist1
Annoying for users & offer baduser UX2
Cause users to loose trust in yourbrand3
A 404 error is returned when a user tries to visit a
URL that doesn’t exist.
1
Developer shouldcreate a custom404 page to
deliver the error message
2

Page Speed

Page Speed
Why Page Speed Optimisation Important for SEO?
SlowPages KillConversions SlowPagesAffect Rankings
SlowPages Affect Crawling & Indexation
Increase in page load speedcan affectyourrevenue
Decrease intime spentdownloadinga page resultsin an increase in the numberof pages crawled
Correlationbetweendecrease insearch rankings& increasingtime to firstbyte.
If youare investinglots of time & money
into acquiring the rankings youdesire,
youshouldn't be blowingit by having a
slow website.
People Expect
the Website to
load in 2 secs

Page Speed
Ways to Improve Page Speed
Minify Code (HTML/CSS/JS)
- Eachtab,space,additional comma,line break & comment adds to the file size
- Keepan original copy forthe developers to work in&have them minify the code forthe live website
Minimise File Requests
- The more request made slower the page loadspeed
- Think about how to avoidusing JS for effects ornavigation anduse plainHTML/CSS
Hmm…Canthis menu be
built using HTML/CSS?
Leverage BrowserCaching
- Make the browserdownload& use a local copy of the files rather thanreloadingthemeach time
- Set the “expires header” to a reasonable time (1yratleast)if the website does not change frequently

Page Speed
Ways to Improve Page Speed
Minimise Redirections
Optimise Images
Enable Compression
Use a CDN
- Do not let the visitors faces additional time waitingforthe HTTPrequest-response cycle to complete
- Make sure that images are no larger than they need to be & they are in the right file format
- Use CSS sprites to combine images into one large image that loads all at once & show only what’s required
- Reduce the size of CSS,HTML, andJavaScript files that are larger than150 bytes through Gzip compression
- Distribute the loadof delivering content by using CDNs basedontarget geographical area

Keyword Targeting

KeywordTargeting
META DESCRIPTIONS PAGE HEADINGS
IMAGES ON PAGE CONTENT
PAGE TITLES
LINKS & ANCHOR TEXTS

KeywordTargeting
Page Titles & Meta Descriptions
• Ensure that theyare well versedin creatingoptimisedpage
page title tags & meta descriptions
• Requestthat theycreate unique title tags and descriptions
for everypage on your site
• Ask that they check for missing & duplicate title tags& meta
descriptions before the site goes live.
If yoursite is live
• Check how title tags and meta descriptionsappear in Google
• Use the ‘site:’modifier,followedimmediatelybythe URL you
wish to check
• For example:site:http://www.example.com/web-design-services/
Next Steps
Issuescan be corrected afterlaunch, but for the
best resultsit’simportantto ensure best-practice
title tags and descriptionsare in place before
Google indexesyoursite.
Place keywords close to the
start of the <title> tag
Separate relevant
keywords and variations
with a hyphen ( - )
Keep the <title> tag under
55 characters
Descriptions should be 512
pixels or less (approximately
150 characters) long
Include strong
call to actions
Include target keywords in
descriptions
1
2
3
4
5
6

KeywordTargeting
Headings & Sub Headings
Ask the developertonot use
Heading tags just forstyling
purposesbut follow the above
hierarchy.
Help search engines make sense of the content on a page.
Ensure all pages use relevant
keywords in H1 tags
1
2

KeywordTargeting
Images
• Ask them questionsrelatingtoimage tags and
accessibilitystandards
• Requestthemto write optimisedalttags forall images
• Make sure that there are no brokenimageson your website
If yoursite is live
• Check a fewimagesacross your website tomake sure image tags
are properly implemented
• If youdon’t see ‘alt’tags, or the associatedtextis not relevantto
or descriptive of the images, ask your webdeveloperor external
SEO expertsto properlyoptimise yourimages in line withSEO
best practices.
Next StepsGood imagescan helpimprove the user experience
especially onproduct-drivenwebsites.Butit’simportant
to think beyond the prettypictures and considersearch
engines.

KeywordTargeting
On Page Content
How Does Google define ‘quality content’?
Average text length of the top 30 pages increased by 25% since 2014 Top five ranking pages contain far fewer keywords in the body text
Make it relevant and readable - Focus onUX Think in terms of topics not keywords - Use Variations
‘Quality Content’shouldkeep the users engaged
Should be linkable & shareable
Should fulfil a demand & target single searchintent
Provides authentic value beyondself promotion
Must standapart fromthe competition
Must be uniquely available

Duplicate Content

Duplicate Content
How Do Search Engines Determine DuplicateContent
When content is
discoveredby search
engines, they compare
to everything else that
was previouslyfound
01 Discover 02 Discard
They then dissect
similarpages basedon
inbound links &
content quality
03 Dissect
Lastly,they determine
whichpage they
consider as original
content
04 Determine
Groupsimilar content
& then discardcontent
that was found
elsewhere onthe
website

Duplicate Content
DuplicateContent Causes& Examples
Product Variations
- http://www.example.com/product/iphone/gold/
- http://www.example.com/product/iphone/silver/
Sessions ID’s
- http://www.example.com/product/red-shoes
- http://www.example.com/product/red-shoes?SESSID=4567
Tracking Parameters In URLs
- http://www.example.com/product/red-shoes?source=Sidebar
Orderof Parameters
- http://www.example.com/product/?id=1&cat=2
- http://www.example.com/product/?cat=2&id=1
File Extensions
- http://www.example.com/product/red-shoes.html
URL Formats
- http://www.example.com/product/red-shoes/

Duplicate Content
Solutions
301 Redirect
Duplicate Page Actual Page
rel=“canonical”
Actual Page
Duplicate Pages
1
2
Placethis in the
<head> tag of
the actualpage
Robots.txt3
NOINDEX NOFOLLOW4
rel=“next” & rel=“prev”5
Placethis in the
<head> tag of the
duplicate page
Ask your developer to use the
right solutionaccordingto
the issues discussed before
Block Duplicate
Filesor Folders
Avoid Paginated Duplicates

Schema Markups

Schema Markups
Helps youprovide extra informationthat search
engines need to understand your content
The users are shownbetter searchresults & you
have a better experience onthe web
Making The SEPRs Richer
It’s a simple markup language understoodby
majorsearchengines
What Search Engine
Crawlers See.
What Search Engines Display
Better UXleads to increasedCTR
= More Conversions & Revenue Increase

Schema Markups
Use It To Achieve Intent Driven Search Results
Reviews & Ratings
Chef ‘s Name&
PreparationTimes
Testimonials
Upcoming Event Information
Videos
Breadcrumbs

Perfectly Optimised Page

Perfectly Optimised Page
Optimised PageTitles
& Meta Description
Target Keyword in <h1> tag
Target Keyword in imagealt attribute
Target Keyword within
on page content
Testimonial Schema Markup
N.A.PSchema Markup
Target Keyword in PageURL
Clear Call
To Actions
Links with
Optimised
Achor Texts
Ask your web
developer to build
your site like this!!

Search Engine Inclusion

Search Engine Inclusion
XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps are important because…
Consider which part of your entire site should be indexed bysearch engines
- Lists all the pages you want searchengines to find
- Helps to get the pages on the website crawled
- It’s only a suggestionbut a goodsuggestion
• Ensure the developergeneratesavalidXML
sitemapto be submittedto the search engines
Next Steps
• Ask the developertoprovide a listof all the
URLs on the website
• Findthe number of pagescurrently being
indexedbysearchengines
• If yousee far feweror many more pagesare
indexed thanthe number of URLs in your site,
then youhave a problem
• Fix any issues& submitthe XML sitemapto
search engines
If yoursite is already live

Resources

Resources
Web Developer SEO Cheat Sheet
Download it Here --> http://bit.ly/1S5fiyo

Resources
Preferred Reading
http://blog.codinghorror.com/paying-down-your-technical-debt/
https://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-the-seo-fundamentals-pyramid
https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2219759/multiple-domain-choice-seo-considerations-of-single-vs-multiple-domains
https://moz.com/learn/seo/cctlds
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-your-domain-name-will-impact-seo-social-media-marketing/
http://dailyseoblog.com/cdn-seo/
http://melissamerriam.com/hosting-and-seo/
https://moz.com/blog/information-architecture-for-seo-whiteboard-Friday
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/site-structure-enhance-seo/
http://www.coconutheadphones.com/website-architecture-for-seo-the-complete-guide/
http://searchengineland.com/seo-friendly-url-syntax-practices-134218
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
https://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt
http://www.freshegg.co.uk/blog/technical-seo/google/how-does-google-treat-hidden-content
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development
https://moz.com/blog/relative-vs-absolute-urls-whiteboard-friday
https://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
https://moz.com/ugc/why-site-speed-optimisation-should-be-part-of-your-seo-strategy
https://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking
https://moz.com/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website
https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag
https://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description
https://econsultancy.com/blog/66787-how-google-defines-quality-content/
https://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-snippets/
https://moz.com/blog/schema-examples
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2048706/the-site-map-gateway-optimization
http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/xml-sitemaps-advanced-seo/
http://www.siegemedia.com/title-tags

Technical SEO Best Practices

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