Technical SEO Factors

@Rob Bertholf
Technical SEO __
@Rob on...

@Rob Bertholf
WiFi Access
Login:
________
Password:
________

@Rob Bertholf
@Rob
HELLOmy name is

@Rob Bertholf
@Rob’s Experience

@Rob Bertholf
@Rob’s Geek Cred
@Rob
WordPress
Plugin
Developer
<>
#IRC Operator
@Zeppo
Former
Board of
Directors
Information Management
Staff Sergeant
US Air Force
Software as a Service
Architect / Growth Hacker
CC Creative
Commons
Contributor
Wikipedia
Editor
PATENT APPLICATION
#US20060294199
Systems &
Methods for a
Standard Web
Platform

@Rob Bertholf
Search Engine Optimization Expert
Google Search Engine Optimization Expert
@Rob Bertholf | Search Engine Optimization Expert
rob.bertholf.com
Hi, I’m @Rob on Twitter. California guy living in
Honolulu, Hawaii the last 10 years. I teach at
University of Hawaii’s PNM program and I am
passionate about Development, Social Marketing
Strategy, Web Analytics & Conversion optimization.
Search engine optimization - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization
About 22,500,000 Results

@Rob Bertholf
Get Social! #UHPNM
Pacific New Media
@pacificnewmedia
Follow @PacificNewMedia
Excited to speak at #Clarity15
on #SEO #KPI’s & Reporting!
Rob Bertholf
@Rob
Follow @Rob
Excited to speak at #UHPNM
on #SEO & #ContentMarketing!

@Rob Bertholf
Introductions
:)
HELLOyour name is
1) Name
2) Industry
3) Takeaway

@Rob Bertholf
● How can we improve the search experience for
our visitors while serving up our content in the
most effective way for a search engine to
consume it
● What are the technical aspects search engines
look at
Desired Takeaways

@Rob Bertholf
Search Engine
Codependency
Meeting mutually beneficial needs

@Rob Bertholf
Google - Browser
http://www.google.com
Search Engine
Google

@Rob Bertholf
Search Engines
Query their Index for
Search Results
Google

@Rob Bertholf
The Index is the
result of Spiders
“Crawling” the Internet

@Rob Bertholf
cache:cat.html
Cat Page - Chrome
cat.html
Meow.
Cat Page - Chrome
cat.jpg
Meow.
Cat
Spiders SeeHumans See
Cached View

@Rob Bertholf
view-source:cat.html
Cat Page - Chrome
cat.html
Meow.
Cat Page - Chrome
cat.jpg
<html>
<head>
<title>Cat Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Meow.</h1>
<img src=”cat.jpg” alt=”Cat” />
</body>
</html>
Humans See Spiders See
HTML Source

@Rob Bertholf
HTML:
Hypertext
Markup
Language
<html>
<head>
<title>My Page</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
</body>
</html>
mypage.html

@Rob Bertholf
Anatomy of an HTML Document
<!DOCTYPE>
<html>
<head>
<title>Cat Page</title>
<meta />
<script></script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Meow.</h1>
<img src=”cat.jpg” />
</body>
</html>
Cat Page - Chrome
cat.html
Meow.

@Rob Bertholf
My Page - Browser
mypage.html
Hello World!
Click Here for Cats!
Hyperlinks are
fundamental
to HTML
& the web

@Rob Bertholf
cat.html
My Page - Browser
mypage.html
Hello World!
Click Here for Cats!
Meow.
Cats - Browser
cat.jpg
Hyperlink
Spiders Crawl Hyperlinks

@Rob Bertholf
Likely to be indexed
NOT likely to be indexed
About
Products
Homepage
Contact
Internal
Linking

@Rob Bertholf
NOT likely to be indexed
About
Products
Homepage
Contact
<a href=”cars.html” title=”Page about Cars”>Cars</a>
Internal Linking

@Rob Bertholf
Spiders must
see (& trust)
your content
to index it!
Avoid:
● Frames / iframes
● AJAX single page sites
● Unparsable javascript
● Flash, java or plugins
● Text in Images

@Rob Bertholf
HTML Sitemaps
Good for Humans
Great for Robots

@Rob Bertholf
Good for Humans
Great for Robots
HTML Sitemaps

@Rob Bertholf
Sitemaps and Sitemap Indexes
Sitemap files can contain up to 50,000 URLs in
each sitemap. For large sites you need to break
URLs up over several sitemaps.
If you have more than one sitemap, you will need
a sitemap index.

@Rob Bertholf
XML Sitemap (Index)
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>
http://www.domain.com/pages.xml
</loc>
<lastmod>2015-07-19</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>
http://www.domain.com/products.xml
</loc>
</sitemap>

@Rob Bertholf
XML Sitemap
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>
http://www.domain.com/some-page/
</loc>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

@Rob Bertholf
Homepage
About
Services
Hidden
Please DO
NOT INDEX
What about
intentionally
hidden pages?

@Rob Bertholf
Tells User Agents how to treat the page
<meta name="robots" content="NOINDEX">
...or manage multiple rules in the robots.txt file
Meta NoIndex

@Rob Bertholf
The Robots
Whisperer
Control crawl via robots.txt

@Rob Bertholf
Robots.txt
Tells User Agents how to treat the site.
Allow
Disallow

@Rob Bertholf
Robots.txt
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/

@Rob Bertholf
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;
+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
User Agents
User-Agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

@Rob Bertholf
Google’s User Agents
Googlebot
Googlebot-News
Googlebot-Images
Googlebot-Mobile
Mediapartners-Google
AdsBot-Google

@Rob Bertholf
International User Agents
Do we need international search engines crawling
and indexing our site?

@Rob Bertholf
Server Response
Codes

@Rob Bertholf
Server Codes
● 1xx: Information
● 2xx: Successful
● 3xx: Redirect
● 4xx: Client Error
● 5xx: Server Error

@Rob Bertholf
Server Request: OK
200 Code

@Rob Bertholf
Permanent Redirect
301 Code

@Rob Bertholf
Temporary Redirect
302 Code

@Rob Bertholf
Not Found
404 Code
?

@Rob Bertholf
Internal Server Error
500 Code
WT@#$%

@Rob Bertholf
Gateway Timeout
504 Code
?

@Rob Bertholf
Crawl Time is
Limited

@Rob Bertholf
Broken Links &
Images Slow
The Crawl
404 Error

@Rob Bertholf
Website Cleanup
Billy, clean your room!

@Rob Bertholf
1. Manually Finding Missing Pages
In Google just type “site:yourdomain.com” to
return a list of pages in your website that Google
has in their index.
Check for pages which are no longer valid or that
should not appear publicly.
site:yourdomain.comGoogle Search

@Rob Bertholf
2. Use Google Search Console
Cat Page - Chrome
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-errors
Google Search Console
URL Errors Desktop Smartphone Feature Phone
Server Error Soft 404 Not Found OtherNot Followed

@Rob Bertholf
3. Run a Crawl Report w/
URL
Long
URL
Dynamic
URL
4XX
Error
5XX
Error
301
Code
302
Code
Meta
Refresh
No
follow
Block
robots
Block
meta-
robots
/ (Homepage) FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/help/shipping FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/policies-and-programs FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/help/policy FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/tonneau-covers/10A50174.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/brakes/10A50530.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/seat-covers/10A52289.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/suspension-systems/10A504... FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

@Rob Bertholf
Redirecting Pages
Why redirect a page?

@Rob Bertholf
Fixing Broken Link on Website
/old-page.html /new-page/
404 Error
Add to your .htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /old-page.html http://yourdomain.com/new-page/

@Rob Bertholf
Redirecting to or from http://WWW.
http://mydomain.com http://www.mydomain.com
WWW.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

@Rob Bertholf
Redirecting to new domain
http://olddomain.com http://newdomain.com
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

@Rob Bertholf
WordPress Rewrites
index.php?id=2 /my-path/
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

@Rob Bertholf
Other Types of Redirects
Note: There are other ways to redirect pages using
Javascript, ASP, PHP, etc.
THESE ARE NOT RECOMMENDED!
They feel spammy to the search engines.
Use 301 Redirects in your HTACCESS file (If on
Apache).

@Rob Bertholf
Editing your
HTACCESS file

@Rob Bertholf
What is HTACCESS?
.htaccess files (or “distributed configuration files”) provide
a way to make configuration changes on a per-directory
basis. A file, containing one or more configuration
directives, is placed in a particular document directory,
and the directives apply to that directory, and all
subdirectories thereof.
- via Apache

@Rob Bertholf
What is HTACCESS?
The file you edit to manage redirects (and how page paths
are handled).

@Rob Bertholf
Find or Create the File
You will want to edit it with a plain text editor
(notepad or similar, I like “Sublime Text” editor).
If the file is not there you can create one. Just
name it: “.htaccess”

@Rob Bertholf
WordPress “Redirection” Plugin
If you are using WordPress you can use a plugin
to manage your redirects. This is not as powerful
but is easier to use.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/

@Rob Bertholf
RegEx
(Regular Expression)
Working Smarter not Harder with
Pattern Matching

@Rob Bertholf
Character Classes
. any character except newline
w d s word, digit, whitespace
W D S not word, digit, whitespace
[abc] any of a, b, or c
[^abc] not a, b, or c
[a-g] character between a & g

@Rob Bertholf
Anchors
^abc$ start / end of the string
b word boundary

@Rob Bertholf
Escaped Characters
. * escaped special characters
t n r tab, linefeed, carriage return
u00A9 unicode escaped ©

@Rob Bertholf
Groups & Lookaround
(abc) capture group
1 backreference to group #1
(?:abc) non-capturing group
(?=abc) positive lookahead
(?!abc) negative lookahead

@Rob Bertholf
Quantifiers & Alternation
a* a+ a? 0 or more, 1 or more, 0 or 1
a{5} a{2,} exactly five, two or more
a{1,3} between one & three
a+? a{2,}? match as few as possible
ab|cd match ab or cd

@Rob Bertholf
Site is clean…
now how to
determine Context &
Authority

@Rob Bertholf
The role of the
Technical SEO is to
make it easy to crawl
the site & also provide
contextual info

@Rob Bertholf
How to
determine
context?
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
Nunc viverra velit ex, nec placerat lorem suscipit et.
Pellentesque condimentum lectus at venenatis tincidunt.
Donec at ex nec ante pharetra suscipit a non nunc.
Curabitur velit quam, pharetra sed convallis non, volutpat
mattis urna. Sed et urna suscipit, sagittis libero nec, viverra
metus. Fusce congue massa in dapibus bibendum. Proin
bibendum augue et nulla iaculis, non porta lorem tempus.
Suspendisse vitae elementum nisi, vel tempus lorem. In
luctus orci sed finibus viverra. Etiam semper sit amet ante
eu ullamcorper. Sed tempus, elit ac convallis suscipit,
metus elit iaculis ante, sit amet pellentesque turpis justo sit
amet mauris. Sed fermentum condimentum turpis id
ultrices.

@Rob Bertholf
Context
applied
from
<tags>
<h1>Lorem ipsum</h1>
Dlor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc viverra velit ex,
nec placerat lorem suscipit et. Pellentesque condimentum
lectus at venenatis tincidunt. Donec at ex nec ante pharetra
suscipit a non nunc.
<h2>Curabitur velit quam</h2>
Paretra sed convallis non, volutpat mattis urna. Sed et urna
suscipit, sagittis libero nec, viverra metus. Fusce congue massa
in dapibus bibendum.
<h2>Proin bibendum augue</h2>
Et nulla iaculis, non porta lorem tempus. Suspendisse suscipit,
metus elit iaculis ante, sit amet pellentesque elementum
nisi, <strong>tempus lorem</strong> In luctus orci sed
finibus viverra. Etiam semper sit amet ante eu ullamcorper. Sed
tempus, elit ac convallis turpis justo sit amet mauris. Sed
fermentum condimentum turpis id ultrices.

@Rob Bertholf
HTML Tags
● Heading <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6>
● Bold <strong>
● Image Alternate <img alt=”value”>
● Link Title <a title=”value”>

@Rob Bertholf
Context
from
Page Title
<title>Lorem ipsum</title>
Lorem Ipsum - Chrome
cat.html
Meow.
<!DOCTYPE>
<html>
<head>

@Rob Bertholf
Page Title
● Keep the page title less than 65 characters
● Ensure the title grabs your attention
Home
domain1.com
This is a description of the page.
Search Term - Free Shipping!
domain2.com
This is a description of the page.

@Rob Bertholf
http://distraction.com/pets/cat.html
Meow.
Context
from
URL
domain.tld/sub-folder/page

@Rob Bertholf
Search Friendly URLs
Keyword in Domain Relevant Keyword
in Subfolder
Keyword in page name
separated by hyphen
www.distraction.com/pets/playful-cats.html

@Rob Bertholf
UN-Search Friendly URLs
Unnecessary
Subdomain
Dynamic URLs (especially
with more than 2 parameters)
Not readable URL string
123xyz.distr-action.com/a?q=abc&x=yxz&p=1

@Rob Bertholf
cat.html
Learn about Cats
Context
from
referring
Hypertext
<a href=”page.html”
title=”Page about
Cats”>Cats</a>

@Rob Bertholf
Hypertext
<a href=”page.html”>Click Here</a> for Cats
Click Here for <a href=”page.html”>Cats</a>

@Rob Bertholf
NOT SEO Factors
● Meta Keywords
● Meta Description
<meta name="keywords" content="Obsolete">
<meta name="keywords" content="This is only
used to customize what appears in the
search engine results page for your listing.">

@Rob Bertholf
Pruning Content
(Not all content should
be indexed)

@Rob Bertholf
Duplicate Content
Identifies Duplicate Content
Determine Original Version
<link rel=”canonical”
href=”http://site.com/url.html” />

@Rob Bertholf
rel=”canonical”
Copied Version
partnersite.com/article
Canonical Version
yoursite.com/article
Duplicate Version
yoursite.com/article?mode=print

@Rob Bertholf
rel=”prev/next”
Page 3
Page 2
yoursite.com/article?page=2
Page 1
yoursite.com/article?page=1 yoursite.com/article?page=3
<link rel="prev" href="http://yoursite.com/article?page=1" />
<link rel="next" href="http://yoursite.com/article?page=3" />

@Rob Bertholf
Link Sculpting
Website
About
Services
Privacy
Policy
External
Link

@Rob Bertholf
Link Sculpting
Overall, this is a tactic which is no longer a tactic.
Still useful on Privacy Policy / Terms of Use which
should not be followed or indexed by the search
engines.
<a href="/login" rel="nofollow">Login</a>

@Rob Bertholf
Link Sculpting: NoFollow
Google recommends Rel=NoFollow on any paid
links or external links going to untrusted sites.
<a href="http://externalsite.com"
rel="nofollow">Sponsored Link</a>

@Rob Bertholf
Other Link Directives
noarchive: Don’t show a "Cached" link in search results.
nosnippet: Don’t show a snippet in the search results for this page
noodp: Don’t use metadata from Open Directory project for titles or snippets.
notranslate: Don’t offer translation of this page in search results.
noimageindex: Don’t index images on this page.
unavailable_after: Don’t show this page after the specified date/time.

@Rob Bertholf
Let’s Get Back
to Context

@Rob Bertholf
Web 1.0
Article Person
Song Book
Portal

@Rob Bertholf
Article Person
Song
Book
Collaborate
Connect & Share
Review
Discuss
Collaboration
Web 2.0

@Rob Bertholf
Article Person
Song Book
written by
is loved by
references
inspired by
isreading
discussed
in
Context
Web 3.0

@Rob Bertholf
Semantic Web User Interface & Applications
Trust
Crypto
URI / IRI
XML
Data Interchange:RDF
Rules:
RIF
RDF-S
Unifying Logic
Ontology: OWLQuery:
SPARQL
Proof
Unicode

@Rob Bertholf
JSON Markup: Organization
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "Organization",
"url": "http://www.yourdomain.com",
"logo": "http://yourdomain.com/somelogo.png",
"contactPoint" : [
{ "@type" : "ContactPoint",
"telephone" : "+1-800-123-4567",
"contactType" : ["Sales","Customer Service"],
"contactOption" : "TollFree",
"areaServed" : "US",
"availableLanguage" : ["English", "Spanish"]
} ],

@Rob Bertholf
JSON Markup: Organization
"sameAs" : [
"https://www.facebook.com/yourbrand",
"https://twitter.com/yourbrand",
"http://plus.google.com/+yourbrand",
"https://www.youtube.com/user/yourbrand",
"https://www.pinterest.com/yourbrand/",
"https://instagram.com/yourbrand/",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/yourbrand",
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/yourbrand"
]
}
</script>

@Rob Bertholf
JSON Markup: Website
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "http://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"url": "http://www.domain.com",
“name”: “Your Brand”,
"potentialAction": {
"@type": "SearchAction",
"target": "http://www.domain.com/shop/{search_term_string}",
"query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
}
}
</script>

@Rob Bertholf
Product Schema
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<span itemprop="brand">{{Product Manufacturer}}</span>
<span itemprop="name">{{Product Name}}</span>
<img itemprop="image" src="{{Product Image Filename}}" alt="{{Product Name}}"
/>
<span itemprop="description">{{ProductDescription}}</span>
Product #: <span itemprop="mpn">{{Product ID}}</span>
<span itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope
itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
<span itemprop="ratingValue">{{Review Rating|4.4}}</span> stars,
based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">{{Review Count|89}}</span> reviews
</span>
</div>

@Rob Bertholf
Rating Schema
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Review">
<div itemprop="itemReviewed" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
<span itemprop="name">{{Product Name}}</span>
</div>
<span itemprop="reviewRating" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Rating">
<meta itemprop="bestRating" content="{{Review Rating|5}}" />
<meta itemprop="worstRating" content="{{Review Rating|1}}" />
<span itemprop="ratingValue">{{Review Rating|4}}</span>
</span> stars
<span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemprop="name">{{First L}}</span>
</span>
<b>"<span itemprop="name">{{Review Title}}</span>" </b>
<span itemprop="reviewBody">{{Review Text}}</span>
<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2015-03-31T08:06:00" />
</div>

@Rob Bertholf
Breadcrumb Markup
<ul class="breadcrumb inline clearfix">
<li itemscope itemtype="http://data-vocabulary.org/Breadcrumb">
<a title="Home" href="/" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Home</span></a>
</li>
<a href="/store" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Store</span></a>
</li>
<a href="/store/shoes" itemprop="url"><span itemprop="title">Shoes</span></a>
</li>
<span itemprop="title">Running Shoe</span>
</li>
</ul>

@Rob Bertholf
https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/

@Rob Bertholf
What I Pay For
● Currently
○ Moz (https://moz.com/)
○ AHREFs (https://ahrefs.com/)
○ Screaming Frog (http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/)
○ Link Assistant’s Rank Tracker (http://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/)
● Previously
○ seoClarity, MagesticSEO, WebCEO,
LinkResearchTools

@Rob Bertholf
Test drive… vroom.
Google Webmaster
Tools Search Console

@Rob Bertholf
+ Google Search Console Data
Google Search Console - Chrome
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/crawl-errors
Google Search Console
URL Errors Desktop Smartphone Feature Phone
Server Error Soft 404 Not Found OtherNot Followed

@Rob Bertholf
Test drive… vroom.
Bing Webmaster
Tools

@Rob Bertholf
+ Crawl Data via
URL
Long
URL
Dynamic
URL
4XX
Error
5XX
Error
301
Code
302
Code
Meta
Refresh
No
follow
Block
robots
Block
meta-
robots
/ (Homepage) FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/help/shipping FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/policies-and-programs FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/help/policy FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/tonneau-covers/10A50174.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/brakes/10A50530.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/seat-covers/10A52289.aspx FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
/suspension-systems/10A504... FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

@Rob Bertholf
Noticeably Absent
● International / Multilingual Tactics
● Mobile Sitemap & Canonical, Viewport
● Social Integration (FB: OG, etc.)

@Rob Bertholf
Questions?
@Rob
Rob@Bertholf.com

@Rob Bertholf
Thank you!
@rob
rob@bertholf.com

@Rob Bertholf
What were your thoughts?
Please tweet:
“Just finished #SEO course with @Rob.
It was _________”

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