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Technical SEO FTW!
The document discusses technical SEO tips provided by Andrew Isidoro, a technical SEO expert. It begins with introductions and definitions of technical SEO as optimizations that users cannot see in source code. It then provides several tips for technical SEO including using XML sitemaps and image/video sitemaps to submit content to search engines, modeling site structures, optimizing page speed by reducing page weight, analyzing server logs to improve crawlability, using canonical tags and redirects properly, and implementing semantic markup with schemas.
Technical SEO FTW!
- 1. TECHNICAL SEO FTW! AndrewIsidoro #CardiffSEO
- 2. ■ Work forGocompare.com as SEO and Social Media Manager ■ Written for some places: ■ Tried to build some stuff: About me @Andrew_Isidoro
- 3. Quick question… Who alreadydoes SEO now? @Andrew_Isidoro
- 4. What is SEO? ■Title Tags ■ Meta descriptions ■ URLs ■ H1 headers ■ H2 headers ■ Alt tags for images ■ Digital PR ■ Anchor text ■ Do-follow link building ■ Citations/NAP ■ Link removal ■ Compelling content etc. @Andrew_Isidoro
- 5. What is SEO? ■Title Tags ■ Meta descriptions ■ URLs ■ H1 headers ■ H2 headers ■ Alt tags for images ■ Digital PR ■ Anchor text ■ Do-follow link building ■ Citations/NAP ■ Link removal ■ Compelling content etc. NOPE! @Andrew_Isidoro
- 6. What is technicalSEO? “Technical SEO involves the optimisation of webpage elements that users can't necessarily see without looking at the source code.” @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 10. Well, I thinkGoogle does… Well optimised websites are: ■ Easy to index ■ Easy to crawl ■ Give more information ■ Have less code and image bloat ■ Easier to parse ■ Require less crawl budget ■ Make it easier to classify ■ Take up less data-center space @Andrew_Isidoro
- 11. Well, I thinkGoogle does… Well optimised websites are: ■ Easy to index ■ Easy to crawl ■ Give more information ■ Have less code and page bloat ■ Easier to parse ■ Require less crawl budget ■ Make it easier to classify ■ Take up less data-center space @Andrew_Isidoro
- 12. …which means yourboss does too. Technical audit implementation for a client has led to a 48.25% increase in organic traffic and growing… @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 14. Sitemaps ■ Usually XMLbased ■ Sitemaps allow 50,000 URLs ■ Should be kept under 50MB ■ Up to 500 sitemaps per account ■ Submit to Google and Bing via webmaster tools dashboards. ■ Always submit something! @Andrew_Isidoro
- 15. Media sitemaps ■ Don’tforget your images! Utilise image sitemaps. ■ Mobile URLs? Use a mobile sitemap. ■ Newsworthy? Use a news sitemap. ■ Got video? Get a video sitemap in. More info at: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2048706/the-site-map-gateway- optimization @Andrew_Isidoro
- 16. Keep them clean! ■Clear out duplicated URLs ■ Remove 404 /broken pages ■ Remove redirecting pages ■ Remove un-canonicalised/no-indexed pages ■ Remove irrelevant pages (e.g.. tag pages or search result pages) Remember: less wastage = more efficient crawl = happy Google @Andrew_Isidoro
- 17. Pro tip! –Divide and conquer ■ Split sitemaps into different site sections or products: ■ Better site indexation ■ Can help highlight site section hierarchy ■ More accurate indexation data at a glance! More info at: https://moz.com/blog/multiple-xml-sitemaps-increased-indexation-and-traffic @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 19. Model a sitestructure ■ Make use of force directed diagrams ■ Create broad to narrow content silos ■ Stay topical ■ Keep the structure as flat as possible ■ Pro tip – Try using gephi.org to model out new structures More info: https://www.portent.com/blog/seo/seo- force-directed-diagrams.htm @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 21. Page speed ■ Pagespeed is a ranking factor. ■ Larger pages take up more of your crawl budget ■ Slow loading pages may make users bounce back to the SERPS known as pogo- sticking. Don’t make Google waste crawl on “bulky” pages @Andrew_Isidoro
- 22. Shed the (page)weight! ■ Install GZIP for server compression – around 70% savings ■ Compress HTML, CSS & JS – ■ Reduce redirects ■ Use a content distribution network ■ Optimize images Beginner tip – Use GTMetrix to get a good overview of where you can optimise Pro tip – Install sitespeed.io via NPM to run a page speed audit across multiple URLs @Andrew_Isidoro
- 23. Using a commonCMS? You’re in luck! ■ WordPress W3 total cache - https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/ ■ Drupal Advagg - https://www.drupal.org/project/advagg ■ Joomla jch-optimize - http://extensions.joomla.org/extension/jch-optimize @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 25. Log file analysis ■Server logs are analytics on acid… ■ Dive into the logs! ■ Find spider traps ■ Where is Googlebot visiting most often? ■ Where is there a crawl deficiency? ■ More info: https://builtvisible.com/log-file-analysis/ @Andrew_Isidoro
- 26. Robots.txt ■ Don’t givethem junk - Limit Googlebot/Bingbot’s diet ■ Block non-organic landing pages ■ Use noindex in robots.txt to remove blocked pages from the index - http://ohgm.co.uk/de-index-pages-blocked-robots-txt/ ■ Add your sitemap URL for indexing: Sitemap: http://www.gocompare.com/sitemap.xml @Andrew_Isidoro
- 27. Redirects Redirects can bea major cause of wasted crawl ■ Know your redirects – 301 vs 302 vs 307 ■ Use if absolutely necessary ■ Never link to an internal redirect – there’s no need! @Andrew_Isidoro
- 28. Housekeeping ■ Eliminate linksto 404 error pages - both internal and external ■ Limit links to non-ranking pages (about us, contact us etc.) ■ Eliminate excess pages ■ Manage URL parameters within GSC /Bing WMT ■ Don’t forget your HTML sitemap – Highlight your most important pages @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 30. What does thateven mean? ■ Canonicalising URLs is just a fancy way of saying: “Content should only ever be available at one URL” @Andrew_Isidoro
- 31. Canonicalise! ■ Site runover www. and non-www versions? That’s a problem! ■ Site run over http and https versions? That’s a problem! ■ Site run over uppercase and lowercase URLs? That’s a problem! ■ Site run trailing slash URLs and non-trailing slash versions? That’s a problem! ■ Make sure all of these redirect to the canonical version! ■ Use rel-canonical to catch any stragglers. @Andrew_Isidoro
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- 33. Semantic mark-up ■ Thinkabout implementing Schema.org ■ Google has great guidelines available at: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guide s/intro-structured-data ■ Google is in the process of adding JSON-LD support for all major rich snippets Pro tip – Implement Schema.org in bulk via JSON-LD through Google Tag manager. More info at: https://moz.com/blog/using-google-tag-manager-to-dynamically-generate-schema-org- json-ld-tags @Andrew_Isidoro
- 34. That should getyou started… @Andrew_Isidoro
- 35. Thanks for listening Get in touch: @Andrew_Isidoro Andrew@seofosho.com http://www.andrewisidoro.co.uk