Hannah ThorpeHead of SEO
Technical SEO
Content Marketing
Social Strategy
I improve websites for customers,
which helps brands sell more
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
Our expertise
Technical SEO Content Marketing Digital PR/ Social Media
Paid Media
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
There are approximately
54, 261searches on Google every second
http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-‐second/#google-‐band
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
In 2016, global B2C ecommerce sales are
predicted to reach 1.92 trillion US dollars
http://www.statista.com/statistics/261245/b2c-‐e-‐commerce-‐sales-‐worldwide/
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
TL;DRThe internet is important.
Take your website performance seriously.
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
One technical audit, fully implemented = 105.2% increase in number of organic sessions last
month
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
There are approximately
54, 261different ways to do a technical audit*
*This is probably not true
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
WHEN BOTS CRAWL A 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
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HOW TO SEE LEVELS OF INDEXATION
Check for disparity between all measures of indexed
pages
Number of html pages found by Screaming Frog
Robots.txt Meta Robots X 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
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
200. Everything is fine with 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 visitors are 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
The cause? A trailing slashhttp://www.outreachdigital.org/our-team-2016/
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
500 SERVER PROBLEMS
This needs 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
YOUR URL STRUCTURE & SITE ARCHITECTURE IS KEY TO HELPING GOOGLEBOT UNDERSTAND YOUR 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
1. Protocol – HTTP or HTTPs2. Subdomain – www or custom3. Domain4. Top Level Domain (TLD) - .com, .org5. Category6. Slug
http://www.domain.com/category/slug
URL COMPONENTS
DUPLICATE CONTENT IS SOMETHING 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
PANDAFirst hit: Feb 2011
The Panda algorithm update affected up to 12% of searchresults. Panda cracked down onwebsites with thin content,content farms and high ad-to-content ratio.
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
CHECK FOR COMMONLY FOUND 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
TOOLS TO FIND INTERNAL 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:
EXTERNAL DUPLICATE CONTENT
http://www.copyscape.com/
External duplicate 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
IF YOU FIND YOUR 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
CANONICALS HELP TO ADD CONTEXT
A canonical indicates which version of the content you’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/
PAGINATION IS GOOD FOR LISTS OF CONTENT
Use pagination to mark-up that a list of blog posts, page 1, 2, 3 etc will all be similar and
follow on from one another
THE SPEED AT WHICH 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 & OPTIMISE THEIR LOADING.
S I T E S P E E D
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IT’S THOUGHT THAT CLICK-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
Structured mark-up is the 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
• Nested Values – allows lots of information in one place
• Quicker & simpler – both learning JSON-LD and editing it
WHAT IS JSON-LD?
YOU’VE PROBABLY ALL HEARD 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
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EA RL Y MORNING
Mobiles brighten the commute
DAYTIME E V E NING
PCsdominate working hours Tablets are popular at night
DEVICE PREFERENCES THROUGHOUT THE DAY
•Is the text size 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
OUR ADVICE FOR WEBMASTERS IS TOFOCUS ON CREATING HIGH QUALITY SITESTHAT CREATE A GOOD USER EXPERIENCEAND EMPLOY WHITE HAT SEO METHODSINSTEAD OF ENGAGING IN AGGRESSIVEWEBSPAM TACTICS…
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
The Core TakeawaysRemember it’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
Extra Resources…http://www.themediaflow.com/technical-seo-audit-checklist
https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
https://www.distilled.net/resources/technical-audit-checklist-for-human-beings/
https://www.semrush.com/blog/my-top-8-tools-for-a-technical-seo-audit/
https://www.koozai.com/resources/whitepapers/how-to-perform-a-technical-seo-audit/
white.net@hannahjthorpe
@hannahjthorpe @outreachdigit
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
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