Technical SEO Updated
Joomla! Day 2012Sofia, Bulgaria
Stanislav Dimitrov, Head of SEO, Hop Online
Today’s SEO Agenda
1) Why SEO matters2) Technical SEO problems3) Common mistakes4) Google’s Panda/Penguin updates5) Latest SEO trends6) Useful tools and resources7) 10 actionable tips for your site8) Q&A time
The Growth of Search
Number of Searches/Day on Google
Source: SEOmoz.org
The Growth of Search
75% of all clicks go to organic results
Using WordPress? You’re 80% there!
Matt Cutts, Googlehttp://goo.gl/teuUi
Let’s Talk About …
Joomla! used by more than 30 million website owners Joomla! is popular because of its features for communities
S.P.A.M = Sites Positioned Above Mine
Search Engine Friendly URLs
Dynamic URLs
Unstructured URLs
Keyword Stuffing
Spammy site
Need to 301?
Low CTR, dups
Page extensions / trailing slash don’t matter for SEO Joomla! Documentation http://bit.ly/RfqTcL IIS 7.0 and URL rewrite http://bit.ly/QocfAi
Mirror site structure?
Creates dups
DNS / Server Connectivity
Message Alerts from Google
Safe Browsing Tool
Even Joomla may get in trouble
Safe Browsing Tool: http://bit.ly/PqysBF
Report to StopBadware: http://bit.ly/SOCIdm
Reconsideration Request
Check Your Crawl Stats
What takes so long?
Site downtime?
Monitor Uptime with Pingdom
Page Speed Insights
Page Speed Tools http://goo.gl/iMfkJ
Server Density
Crawl Errors and 4xx/5xx Codes
URL fixed or not Remove from sitemaps Fetch as Google Mark as Fixed If needed: Remove URL
URL Parameter Handling
Optimize crawl budget Address dup content Robots.txt analysis in GWT Works with meta robots Help http://goo.gl/zCChz
Submit to Index Indexation in real time Useful when changing content Fetch limits update every week
Index Status/XML Sitemaps
Check indexation
http Status Codes for SEO
Mtel losing link juice
Dir.bg slightly better
Where it Can Go Wrong
Not knowing your 301s from 302s Redirecting all pages in one go to a single URL
When You Should Use a 301
Moving sites Expired content Multiple versions of the home page Pro tip: if homepage serves a unique purpose (shown to users who are logged in or have cookies dropped), rel=canonical a better option
When to Use rel=canonical
Where 301s may not be possible Multiple ways of navigating to a page (ecommerce sites)o www.phoneshop.com/smartphone/3Go www.phoneshop.com/3G/smartphone
When dynamic URLs are generated on the flyo session IDso tracking code: www.example.com/widgets/red?source=footer-nav
When NOT to Use rel=canonical
On new website On pagination (or at least with caution) Across your entire site to one page
Faceted Navigation
Faceted Navigation
Pagination/sorting can cause duplicate content – use Ajax/JavaScript to avoid Selective robots.txt
User-agent: GooglebotDisallow: /*crawl=no
No matter of the route, only one indexable URL per page How to handle faceted navigation http://mz.cm/SUHJN8
View All Page
View All Page
View All Page
View All pages must be fast Big (ecommerce) sites sometimes dislike them … but users love them! (if they are fast)
Google Prev/Next Tag
Google Prev/Next Tag
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
Page 1<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2" />
Page 2<link rel="prev" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1" /><link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3" />
Page 3<link rel="next" href="http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2" />
Google Prev/Next Tag Declare in <head> section of the page
The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup
Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”
Use absolute URLs
The chain can’t be broken
Each page can be in only one pagination chain
Use of prev/next consolidates signals across entire series
Add rel=canonical to View All page on all pages in the series
Google Prev/Next Tag
Google Algorithm Changes
Google updates’ history http://mz.cm/QZCga4 Map the dates as annotations in Google Analytics
Mozcast – Google Weather Report
Sept 14 - Panda 4.0
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Google Panda
Source: SEOmoz
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2
34
Who Gets Pandalized?
Sites with too many pages relative to the size of their brand footprint A high % of duplicate content (might apply to a page, a site or both) A low amount of original content on a page or site A high % (or number) of pages with a low amount of original content A high amount of inappropriate (they don’t match the search queries a page does well for) adverts, especially high on the page Page content (and page title tag) not matching the search queries a page does well for High bounce rate on page or site Low visit times on page or site Low % of users returning to a site Low CTR % from Google’s results (page/site) High % of boilerplate content (the same on every page) Low or no quality inbound links to a page or site
How to Recover After Panda? Take a deep breath Check the timeline in Google Analytics Double check for IT problems Decide which URLs are canonical and create strong signals (rel canonical, robot exclusion, internal link profile, XML sitemaps) Decide which URLs are your most valuable and ensure they are indexed and well optimized Add quality content to them – text, videos, photos, reviews/ratings Remove any extraneous, overhead, duplicate, low value and unnecessary URLs from the index Build internal links to canonical, high-value URLs from authority pages (strong mozRank, unique referring domains, total links) Build high-quality external links via social media efforts Use content-based link building
Great guide at WordTracker : http://goo.gl/C0zSH
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Google Penguin
Google Penguin
Google Penguin
Google Penguin
Who Gets Penguinized?
Overly aggressive anchor text (both internally and externally) Overuse of exact-match domains Low-quality article marketing & blog spam Keyword stuffing in internal/outbound links Link spikes (too many links built too fast) Links from irrelevant sources Blogroll links Comment links Sitewide links (SEO’d footer links) Too many links from one domain to a single page (GWT)
How to Recover After Penguin?
Compare Penguin dates with traffic drop in Google Analytics Investigate which keywords dropped Download all links and sort them by type, anchor text or DA
Open Site Explorer Majestic SEO Link Detective
Combine data in Excel and find the poison links Remove all unrelated links on/off your website Diversify anchor text in links to your site Social signals (DataHub) over links Links from government(.bg) sites / industry associations Reconsideration request won’t help http://goo.gl/YDFu7 Increase the brand digital footprint:
Complete contact info (Google Maps/Plus, team photos) Genuine social media accounts Branded links / branded traffic
Rich Snippets in SERPs
Events
Recipes
Restaurants
Products
Structured Data in GWT
Rich Snippet Testing ToolTest HTML code
Which result will you click?
Rel author in SERP
Google rel=author Tag
3-link verification method How to implement rel=author http://selnd.com/QUbUYy
Google rel=author Tag
2-link verification method How to implement rel=author http://selnd.com/QUbUYy
Google rel Publisher
Recent Google+ posts
Verified G+ account
Rel Publisher for Brands
Google+ and site linked
The (Google) Circle of Trust
Screaming Frog
Free download http://bit.ly/j8as0V
Custom Dashboards in GA
Segment and track
SEOmoz Guide to SEO Best SEO Guide http://mz.cm/TjZshv
10 Actionable Tips for Your Site
1. SEO friendly page titles and META descriptions 2. Proper keyword usage in the body of your pages3. Website redirects from www to non www or vice versa4. Duplicate URLs removed from your website5. All URLs are search engine friendly6. Properly configured XML sitemaps
(products/categories/video/image/geo)7. Working robots.txt file
(Pro tip: reference sitemaps, hide with .htaccess)
8. Structured data (products, location, author, events, organization)
9. Traffic/goals/events in Google Analytics (Pro tip: create custom dashboards)
10.Use rel=author and Google+ for more CTR
Thank you!Q&A Time …
Joomla! Day Bulgaria Organized by:
@SearchRocks/in/stanidlavdimitrov+StanislavDimitrov
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