This document provides an overview and agenda for a technical SEO workshop. It discusses various technical SEO topics like crawling and indexing websites, redirects, structured data, page speed, and tools for auditing sites. The agenda includes sections on technical SEO basics, a technical audit walkthrough, and a technical SEO scorecard. Attendees will learn about making their sites easy to crawl, reducing crawl errors, optimizing page speed, and using tools to improve their technical SEO.

1. What You Need To Know
About Technical SEO
WordCamp Denver
June 27th,2020

2. @nikers85
● Head of SEO
● Local SEO
● Technical SEO
● SEO Coaching/Training
● Speaking

3. Agenda
Technical SEO Basics
Technical Audit Walkthrough
Technical SEO Scorecard

4. SEO Explained

5. ● Optimization
● Keywords
● Content
● Meta Data
On-Page SEO

6. ● Google My Business
● Reviews
● Social Media
● Citations
Local SEO

7. ● Crawled
● Indexed
● Performance
Technical SEO

8. Crawling a Website
Discovery process

9. Crawling a Website
Crawl Budget

10. Crawling a Website
WP Page Bloat
● Media Attachment Pages
● Tag Pages
● Category Pages
● Archive Pages
● Author Pages

11. Crawling a Website
Robots.txt
● Allow access to some areas
● Block areas of the site
● Sitemap declaration

13. Crawling a Website
Sitemap
● Sitemap should be XML
● Submit to Google Search Console
● No redirects
● No errors

14. Crawling a Website
Log Files
● What bots are crawling
● Crawl frequency

15. Indexing Website Content

16. Indexing Website Content

17. Indexing Website Content

18. Indexing Website Content

19. Indexing Website Content

20. Make Crawling Easy

21. Crawling & Indexing
● Eliminate page bloat
● Check the robots.txt
● Have an XML sitemap
● Upload sitemap to Google Search Console
● Monitor indexation
● Make it easy for Google to crawl your site

23. Redirects
● 301 Redirects
● 302 Redirects
● Redirect Chains

24. Redirects
● Permanent
● Passes 90-99% of link equity
301 Redirects

25. Redirects
● Temporary
● Good for testing
302 Redirects

26. Redirects
● Wastes crawl budget
● Crawl issues
● Page speed
● Link equity
Redirect Chains

27. Redirects
● When a 301 won’t work
● Combine pages
○ Products or categories
● Can set this in Yoast
Canonical
http://example.com/wordpress/seo-plugin/
http://example.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

28. Crawl Errors
● Page is inaccessible
● Google will crawl occasionally
404

29. Crawl Errors

30. Crawl Errors

31. Crawl Errors

32. Redirects & Crawl Errors
● Avoid redirect chains
● Redirects should make sense
● Fix crawl errors
● Customize your 404 page

34. Links
● Navigation
● Link Equity
● Anchor text
● rel="nofollow"
Internal

35. Links
● Authority
● Relevancy
● Popularity
External

36. URL Structure
● Parameters
● Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash
● Upper/lowercase
http://www.example.com/category-keyword/subcategory-keyword/primary-keyword

37. Structured Data
● JSON-LD
● Structured Data Types
● Article/Blog
● Product
● Review
● LocalBusiness
● FAQ
● Job
● Event

38. Structured Data

39. Structured Data

40. Structured Data
● Schema Generator
● Structured Data
Testing Tool
● Yoast
● Rank Math
● SchemaApp
● Google Tag Manager

41. Links and Structured Data
● Be thoughtful about internal linking
● Backlinks = quality over quantity
● URL structure matters
● Structured data makes a difference
● Use structured data generators
● Test structured data

43. Mobile
Mobile First Index

44. Mobile Mobile Friendly

45. Page Speed

46. Page Speed
Hosting
● Managed WordPress Hosting
● CDN

47. Page Speed
Image Optimization
● Serve images in next-gen formats
● Properly size image
● Defer offscreen images

48. Page Speed
Image Optimization Plugins
● ReSmush.it
● EWWW Image Optimizer
● ShortPixel Image Optimizer

49. Page Speed
Eliminate render-blocking resources
● Deferring all non-critical JS/style
● Keep plugins in mind

50. Page Speed
Caching
● Especially helpful for sites with repeat
visitors
● GoDaddy prevents caching

51. Page Speed
Caching Plugins
● WP Rocket
● W3 Total Cache
● WP Super Cache

52. Page Speed
● Test multiple pages
● Hosting makes a difference
● Optimize images
● Caching helps

55. Technical SEO Scorecard
Make a copy of the Audit Scorecard - https://bit.ly/tech-seo-scorecard

56. Tools
● Screaming Frog
● Sitebulb
● SEMRush
● Ahrefs
● Rank Ranger
● Chrome Extensions
● Google Search Console
● Lighthouse
● Page Speed Insights
● Structured Data Testing Tool
● WebPageTest
● WordPress Plugins

57. Tools Screaming Frog
https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
● Free up to 500 URLs
● Reasonably priced
● Custom Extractions
● Scheduled Crawls
● Sitemap Crawls
● GA/GSC Integration

58. Tools Rank Ranger
https://www.rankranger.com/?m=ba&k=nmosier
● Free Trial
● Starts at $69/month
● 10 Campaigns
● 350 Daily Keyword Tracking
● 2 Search Engines Per Campaign

59. Tools Sitebulb
https://sitebulb.com/
● $25/month
● Crawl visualization
● 2,000,000 URLs
● Compare crawl data
● PDF reporting

60. Tools LightHouse
https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse/
● Free
● Open Source
● Audits:
○ Performance
○ Accessibility
○ progressive web apps

61. Tools Webpagetest
https://www.webpagetest.org/
● Free speed testing tool
● Accurate
● Test by device
● Test by location
● Detailed performance metrics

62. Tools Chrome Extensions
● SEO Minion
● Schema Builder
● SEOInfo
● Link Checker
● Keyword Surfer
● Keywords Everywhere

63. Tools WordPress Plugins
● Yoast SEO
● Rank Math
● Broken Link Checker
● WP Rocket
● Really Simple SSL
● Better Search Replace
● Redirection
● Site Kit by Google

64. Tools Additional Resources
● Google YouTube SEO Videos
● DistilledU
● SEMRush Courses
● Denver/Boulder SEO Meetup
● SearchCon
● Moz Whiteboard Friday
● Kinsta Blog

67. Technical SEO Audit
Audit Checklist - https://www.distilled.net/technical-seo-audit-checklist/

68. niki@twooctobers.com
linkedin.com/niki-mosier
twitter.com/nikers85