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

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@badams

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@badams @badams Why Technical SEO?

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@badams @badams Google Processes Crawler Indexer Ranker

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@badams @badams Google Processes Crawler Indexer Ranker Technical SEO

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@badams @badams 1. Crawler (Googlebot) Crawler Indexer Ranker

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

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

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@badams @badams Optimise Crawling (1) • Fast server response time

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@badams @badams Load Speed Fast response time = optimal use of Googlebot

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@badams GSC Crawl Stats

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@badams @badams 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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@badams @badams 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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@badams @badams 2. Indexer Crawler Indexer Ranker

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

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@badams @badams Priority for News Publishers Indexer ✓ Flawless indexing of articles

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@badams Indexing = Extraction + Semantics

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

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@badams @badams 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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@badams @badams 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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@badams @badams 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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@badams @badams Semantics Can Google understand what the article is about?

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

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@badams @badams Core Web Vitals

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@badams @badams Page Experience

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

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@badams

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

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

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@badams @badams Impact?

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

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@badams @badams

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

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@badams @badams The Future of Tech SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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@badams @badams Less hassle with JavaScript

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@badams @badams Better GSC Reports More useful info to empower SEOs & Devs

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@badams @badams Better Google Documentation

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@badams @badams My Tech SEO Tools

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

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

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