The Latest in Technical SEO for News Publishers

Slides from my talk at the 2022 News and Editorial SEO Summit where I gave an overview of the newest developments in technical SEO for news websites.

More info: https://newsseo.io

Transcript

1. #NESS22
   The Latest in Technical SEO
   for News Publishers
   Barry Adams
   

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2. #NESS22
   

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3. #NESS22
   #NESS22
   Last Year…
   

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4. #NESS22
   #NESS22
   Crawling Indexing Serving
   Google Processes
   

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5. #NESS22
   #NESS22
   Crawling Indexing Serving
   Technical SEO
   Google Processes
   

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6. #NESS22
   NESS22
   1. Crawling (Googlebot)
   ➢ URL discovery
   ➢ URL prioritisation
   ➢ URL de-duplication
   ➢ Queue management
   ➢ HTTP response parsing
   ➢ TTFB monitoring
   ➢ Resource management
   ➢ … ?
   Crawling
   

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7. #NESS22
   NESS22
   Priority for News Publishers
   ✓ Rapid crawling of newly
   published articles
   Crawling
   

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8. #NESS22
   #NESS22
   2. Indexing
   Crawling Indexing Serving
   

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9. #NESS22
   NESS22
   2. Indexing
   Indexing
   ➢ Index selection
   ➢ HTML tokenisation & parsing
   ➢ Rendering*
   ➢ Meta tag processing
   ➢ Canonicalisation
   ➢ Index sanitation
   ➢ Calculating PageRank
   ➢ Quality evaluations
   ➢ … ?
   * Not for news articles
   

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10. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Priority for News Publishers
    Indexing
    ✓ Flawless indexing of articles
    

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11. #NESS22
    #NESS22
    What’s New in 2022?
    

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12. #NESS22
    NESS22
    

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13. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New and Updated GSC Reports
    • Simplified Coverage report
    • Improved Core Web Vitals report
    • New reports:
    ➢ HTTPS
    ➢ Video Indexing
    ➢ Merchant Listings
    

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14. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Simplified Index Coverage Report
    

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15. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Why pages aren’t indexed
    

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16. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Improved CWV Report
    • More URL-level data
    

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17. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: HTTPS
    

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18. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: HTTPS
    

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19. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: Video Pages
    

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20. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: Video Pages
    

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21. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: Merchant Listings
    

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22. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New Report: Merchant Listings
    

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23. #NESS22
    NESS22
    GSC API supports Discover & News
    https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/10/search-
    analytics-discover-gnews
    

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24. #NESS22
    NESS22
    New robots tag: indexifembedded
    https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/01/robots-
    meta-tag-indexifembedded
    

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25. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Google Confirms:
    https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-
    indexing/valid-page-metadata
    

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26. #NESS22
    #NESS22
    Edge SEO
    

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27. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
    Your
    Webserver
    Cloud CDNs
    Users
    

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28. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
    Your
    Webserver
    Cloud CDNs
    Googlebot
    

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29. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Edge SEO
    Your
    Webserver
    Cloud CDNs
    Googlebot
    Change your
    webpages here
    

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30. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Edge SEO
    • CDNs store cached versions of your webpages;
    ➢ Global coverage with edge nodes worldwide
    ➢ Usually also results in faster crawling and better CWV
    • You manipulate your CDN cached pages;
    ➢ Cloud Workers enable a range of functionality
    • Googlebot crawls & indexes the changed CDN-cached pages;
    ➢ Your ‘original’ website remains unchanged
    ➢ Google only sees the changed CDN webpages
    

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31. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Why Edge SEO?
    • Faster deployment;
    ➢ Bypass your developers’ lengthy queues
    ➢ ‘Ask forgiveness, not permission’
    ➢ No reliance on client-side JavaScript
    • No CMS constraints;
    ➢ Change pages directly regardless of your CMS capabilities
    • Testing;
    ➢ Perform narrow tests on specific site sections
    ➢ A/B testing for SEO
    

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32. #NESS22
    NESS22
    SEO A/B Split Testing
    

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33. #NESS22
    NESS22
    SEO Split Testing Case Studies
    https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/newsletter/
    

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34. #NESS22
    #NESS22
    

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35. #NESS22
    NESS22
    

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36. #NESS22
    NESS22
    The Great AMP Deletion
    

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37. #NESS22
    NESS22 https://kurtgessler.medium.com/what-happened-when-we-disabled-
    google-amp-at-tribune-publishing-2fa65a2f2a40
    

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38. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Google has removed AMP from documentation
    

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39. #NESS22
    

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40. #NESS22
    NESS22
    Caveat: You need good Core Web Vitals
    

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41. #NESS22
    NESS22 https://datastudio.google.com/s/i5xOURZw1zQ
    

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42. #NESS22
    #NESS22
    Google Giveth and Taketh Away
    

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43. #NESS22
    NESS22
    September Core Algorithm Update(s)
    

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44. #NESS22
    NESS22
    News & Media is down overall
    https://www.amsivedigital.com/insights/seo/
    winners-losers-of-the-september-2022-core-
    update-product-reviews-update/
    

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45. #NESS22
    NESS22
    The Dangers of Chasing Algorithms…
    • It’s hard to make sense of Core Algo Updates;
    ➢ Inherently inscrutable due to Google’s reliance on ML
    • Avoid wasting resources on ‘busywork’;
    ➢ Fixing those wayward 301-redirects and occasional 404s
    isn’t going to make things magically better
    • Double-down on your strengths;
    ➢ Best immunisation for Google’s whims is brand power
    

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46. #NESS22
    NESS22
    

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47. #NESS22
    Thank You
    Q&A
    

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