Technical SEO for News Publishers

Slides from my talk at the News and Editorial SEO Summit 2022, where I spoke about key aspects of technical SEO for news publishers.

More info: https://newsseo.io

Transcript

1. Technical SEO
   for News Publishers
   Barry Adams
   News & Editorial SEO Summit - Oct 2021
   NewsSEO.io
   

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2. @badams
   

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3. @badams
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   Why Technical SEO?
   

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   Google Processes
   Crawler Indexer Ranker
   

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   Google Processes
   Crawler Indexer Ranker
   Technical SEO
   

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   1. Crawler (Googlebot)
   Crawler Indexer Ranker
   

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   1. Crawler (Googlebot)
   ➢ URL discovery
   ➢ URL prioritisation
   ➢ URL de-duplication
   ➢ Queue management
   ➢ HTTP response parsing
   ➢ TTFB monitoring
   ➢ Resource management
   ➢ … ?
   Crawler
   

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   Priority for News Publishers
   ✓ Rapid crawling of newly
   published articles
   Crawler
   

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   Optimise Crawling (1)
   • Fast server response time
   

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    Load Speed
    Fast response time = optimal use of Googlebot
    

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    GSC Crawl Stats
    

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    Optimise Crawling (2)
    • Serve correct HTTP status codes
    ➢ 200 OK
    ➢ 301 / 302 Redirects
    ➢ 304 Not Modified
    ➢ 401 / 403 Permission Issues
    ➢ 404 / 410 Not Found/Gone
    ➢ 5xx Error
    

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    Optimise Crawling (3)
    • ALL resources consume crawl budget
    ➢ Not just HTML pages
    ➢ Reduce HTTP requests per page
    • Google AdsBot can consume crawl budget
    ➢ Double-check your Google Ads campaigns
    • Link equity (PageRank) impacts crawl budget
    ➢ More link equity = more crawl budget
    

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    2. Indexer
    Crawler Indexer Ranker
    

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    2. Indexer
    Indexer
    ➢ Index selection
    ➢ HTML tokenisation & parsing
    ➢ Rendering (+++)
    ➢ Meta tag processing
    ➢ Canonicalisation
    ➢ Index sanitation
    ➢ Calculating PageRank
    ➢ Quality evaluations
    ➢ … ?
    

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    Priority for News Publishers
    Indexer
    ✓ Flawless indexing of articles
    

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    Indexing
    =
    Extraction + Semantics
    

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    Extraction
    Can Google easily extract an
    article’s content from the DOM?
    

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    Optimise Extraction (1)
    • Clean HTML;
    ➢ Yes, really!
    ➢ There is a max HTML size
    Google will parse
    - Speculation: ~1 MB
    ➢ Less clutter = easier parsing
    

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    Optimise Extraction (2)
    • Clean ;
    ➢ Critical meta tags high in
    the
    - Title & description
    - Open Graph
    - Canonical, hreflang & mobile
    alternate
    - Structured Data
    ➢ Internal CSS & JS lower in
    the
    

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    Optimise Extraction (3)
    • Uninterrupted article HTML;
    ➢ Article to start at
    headline and continue in
    one clean block of HTML
    ➢ Bells & whistles can be
    added via CSS and client-
    side JS
    

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    Semantics
    Can Google understand
    what the article is about?
    

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    Optimise Semantics
    • Well-written content;
    ➢ Easily identifiable entities and relationships
    • Semantic HTML;
    ➢ Enables Google to separate style & boilerplate from content
    • Structured Data;
    ➢ Makes page contents explicitly clear
    

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    Test Entities in Content
    Google NLP API: https://cloud.google.com/natural-language
    

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    Core Web Vitals
    

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    Page Experience
    

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    Core Web Vitals
    https://web.dev/vitals/
    

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28. @badams
    

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    @badams https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075
    

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30. @badams
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    Search Off The Record podcast
    https://pod.link/1512522198
    

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    Impact?
    

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    https://www.sistrix.com/blog/core-web-vitals-is-a-measurable-ranking-factor/
    

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    Core Web Vitals & AMP
    • CWV are measured from the page version a user
    interacts with;
    ➢ This is often the AMP version
    • AMP has a performance cheat advantage;
    ➢ Preloading & prerendering from the AMP Cache
    • AMP no longer required for Top Stories on mobile;
    ➢ Does this mean non-AMP can rank?
    

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    Non-AMP = ~27%
    https://www.newzdash.com/guide/amp-tracker
    

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    The Future of Tech SEO
    

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    IndexNow
    https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/october-2021/IndexNow-
    Instantly-Index-your-web-content-in-Search-Engines
    

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    Live Indexing API
    https://developers.google.com/search/apis/indexing-api/v3/quickstart
    

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    Structured Data
    Constantly evolving schemas
    New rich snippets in SERPs
    https://sitebulb.com/structured-data-history/
    

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    Structured Data
    • ‘author.url’ now recommended in Article SD
    

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    Edge SEO
    https://dantaylor.online/edge-seo/
    

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    @badams https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/blog/edge-seo/
    

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    A/B Testing
    https://www.searchpilot.com/
    

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    Less hassle with JavaScript
    

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    Better GSC Reports
    More useful info to empower SEOs & Devs
    

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46. @badams
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    Better Google Documentation
    

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47. @badams
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    My Tech SEO Tools
    

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    SEO Crawlers
    • DeepCrawl
    https://www.deepcrawl.com/
    • Sitebulb
    https://sitebulb.com/
    • Screaming Frog
    https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
    

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    SEO Review & Monitoring
    • Little Warden
    https://littlewarden.com/
    • SEO Info
    https://weeblr.com/doc/products.seoinfo/current/overview/
    • SEOBrowse
    https://seobrowse.com/
    

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    Performance Analysis
    • PageSpeed Insights
    https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
    • WebPagetest.org
    https://www.webpagetest.org/
    • GTmetrix
    https://gtmetrix.com/
    

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51. @badams https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/p/tech-optimisation-articles
    

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52. @badams
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    Barry Adams
    ➢ Doing SEO since 1998
    ➢ Specialist in News SEO & Tech SEO
    ➢ Newsletter: SEOforGoogleNews.com
    

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53. @badams
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    I’ve Worked With…
    

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54. @badams
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    Thank You!
    barry@polemicdigital.com
    twitter.com/badams
    

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