Technical SEO Overview - Speaker Deck

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TECHNICAL SEO March 28, 2014

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2 | 23.08.2022 Agenda • Update on latest in SEO • Cover all of the technical issues that impact search ranking & traffic. • Highlight tools used to assess SEO tech issues. • Outline how quality content and a good user experience impact rankings. • Highlight how to leverage social signals for SEO • Review tech mistakes that could get you banned from Google.

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3 | 23.08.2022 Google and Bing1 create their listings automatically. They use “spiders” or “bots” to "crawl" links (or social shares) to web pages and social profiles and add those web pages & profiles to their index. When a human visitor to the search engine puts in a keyword phrase, the search engine is focused on serving relevant, fresh, quality content that the engines think is matched to the searcher’s intent & personalized for the user. Keyword Phrases LET’S COVER THE BASICS

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4 | 23.08.2022 RECENT GOOGLE ALGORITHMS

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5 | 23.08.2022 GOOGLE’S RULES: CONTENT QUALITY

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6 | 23.08.2022 GOOGLE’S RULES: CONTENT QUALITY • Would you trust the information presented in this article? • Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature? • Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations? • Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines? • Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis? • Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? • How much quality control is done on content? • Does the article describe both sides of a story? • Is the site a recognized authority on its topic? • Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name? • Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic? • Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious? • Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? • Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book? • Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?

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8 | 23.08.2022

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9 | 23.08.2022 Google Hummingbird • Google’s move from keywords to understanding what real world things are. They are doing this by building a database of things. • Ability to start to understand mobile/voice queries and return relevant results. • Matching the meanings of phrases with concepts rather than just to text with keywords. Impact on online copy: • You need to understand your potential visitors possible intents • Address content to specific wants and needs. • Create in depth content that answers comprehensive questions.

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10 | 23.08.2022 Paid Ads Knowledge Graph My brother Geo Local results Images from Google+ All personalized to me. Direct answers are now displayed in search. GOOGLE SEARCH – 2012

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11 | 23.08.2022 BING’S SOCIALIZED SEARCH

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12 | 23.08.2022 Personalized to you: • Facebook • Twitter • Google+ • YouTube • LinkedIn • SlideShare • Pinterest

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13 | 23.08.2022 TECH ISSUES SEO Ranking Factors

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14 | 23.08.2022 PAGE/SITE/SERVER ISSUES

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15 | 23.08.2022 CAN SEARCH ENGINES SEE THE SITE?

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16 | 23.08.2022 Why: Robots.txt • Robots.txt files provide the parameters for search engines to crawl or not to crawl certain pages on a site. • This file can block search engines to crawl certain duplicate contents or content you do not want indexed.

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17 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Robots.txt • To find the robots.txt file use: http://www.frobee.com/robots-txt-check • A great resource on robots.txt: http://tools.seobook.com/robots-txt/

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18 | 23.08.2022 FLASH IS NOT AWESOME

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19 | 23.08.2022 Why Eliminate Flash? • Search engines can not read flash unless it has been heavily modified. It often looks like a blank page.

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20 | 23.08.2022 Check: Use of Flash • Use a search engine spider simulator:

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21 | 23.08.2022 Tool: FeedtheBot http://www.feedthebot.com/tools/spider/index.php

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22 | 23.08.2022

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23 | 23.08.2022

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24 | 23.08.2022 Why Server Errors? • The search engines need to access and read every page to put them into their index, if the page throws a server error that will result in the page not being indexed, or a decrease in ranking.

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25 | 23.08.2022 Check: Server Errors • If you are not the Webmaster, use the Moz crawl test. • It will create a report of all server errors on the site. • If you are the Webmaster, check for errors using: • Google Webmaster Tools • Bing Webmaster Tools

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26 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google Server Errors GWT: Health > Crawl errors >Web

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27 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google Mobile Server Errors GWT: Health > Crawl errors > Mobile tab

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28 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Bing Server Errors BWT: Reports & Data > Crawl Information

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29 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Moz Crawl Test http://pro.moz.com/tools/crawl-test

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30 | 23.08.2022 IS THE SITE INDEXED?

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31 | 23.08.2022 Why Indexing Issues? • Each search engine indexes pages differently, and even though a page is published, that does not mean it is in the search engine index/database. • A page that is not in the index will not be shown when someone searches. • It’s important to know if all pages are in Bing and Google’s index.

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32 | 23.08.2022 Check: Indexing Issues? • Find the total number of pages the engine has indexed by looking for your domain in each search engine. • Compare the # of pages in each index to how many pages you know you have on your site. • Find the number of mobile pages in search via GWT.

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33 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google & Bing Search using [site:yoursite.com] in Google and Bing

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34 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Mobile Pages in Search • Check Mobile Pages in Search via GWT. • Upload Mobile Sitemaps: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34648?hl=en

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35 | 23.08.2022 SITEMAPS

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36 | 23.08.2022 Why XML Sitemaps? • XML and HTML sitemaps provide a “table of contents” for search engines to get a better idea of the layout of your site. • All search engines request that you create an xml sitemap and upload that file to their webmaster accounts.

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37 | 23.08.2022 Check: Do XML Sitemaps Exist? Four quick ways exist to diagnose if an XML sitemap exists: • Check the robots.txt file (located at http://domain.com/robots.txt). • Do a site:domain.com inurl:sitemap.xml search in Google. If nothing is returned, then no sitemap exists. • Look at /sitemap.xml or use the SEO Site Tools Chrome extension. • Paid: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap- generator.html

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38 | 23.08.2022 Check: Are the XML Sitemaps Clean? • Run through Screaming Frog: Mode > List > File Format: SiteMap (*.xml) • Sitemaps should only have URLs that resolve to 200 status code and shouldn't contain low-quality pages, like paginated content, search results pages, etc. • Or check Google Webmaster Tools errors. • Bing: “Your Sitemaps need to be clean. We have a 1% allowance for dirt in a Sitemap. Examples of dirt are if we click on a URL and we see a redirect, a 404 or a 500 code. If we see more than a 1% level of dirt, we begin losing trust in the Sitemap.”

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39 | 23.08.2022 Tool: GWT XML Sitemap Errors

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40 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Bing Sitemaps • # of URLS submitted = # of URLs on your site.

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41 | 23.08.2022 OBSESS ABOUT SPEED

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42 | 23.08.2022 Why Page Speed? • PageSpeed is a Google ranking factor. • According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds.

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43 | 23.08.2022 These Elements Impact Page Speed: • Slow web server. • Inefficient coding. • Heavy image sizes. • CSS and Javascript on the page (not externalized). • Not using CSS sprites to combine them into a single image download.

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44 | 23.08.2022 Check: Page Speed Search engines have indicated that the speed in which a page loads is used for ranking particularly in mobile ranking How • If you are the webmaster, use page speed report in Google Analytics. • If you are not the webmaster, the YSLOW plugin will help measure or https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights or • http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

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45 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google Analytics Site Speed Tool

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46 | 23.08.2022 Why Externalize Javascript and CSS? • Having CSS and javascript on the page (vs. externalized or minimized) can increase the amount of time takes to display your page. You should: • Avoid inline and embedded CSS as much as possible. • Minify JavaScript and CSS to reduce load times. • Combine Javascript files.

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47 | 23.08.2022 Check: Javascript and CSS Issues • Enter the URL into Google PageSpeed Insights. • Apply fixes based on what the tool tells you to prioritize.

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48 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google Page Speed

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49 | 23.08.2022 ARE YOU CONFUSING THE SEARCH ENGINE?

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50 | 23.08.2022 Mantra: One Piece of Content per URL

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51 | 23.08.2022 Why Eliminate Duplicate Content? Each URL is a unique location on the internet. • Often more than one page (from the same site with the same content) is created with different URLs. • Sometimes content from the site is stolen. The impact: Ultimately this is a ranking and quality factor. • Often this results in one of those pages not being indexed in Google. • It divides link equity. • It causes Google Analytics data collection issues.

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52 | 23.08.2022 Check: Duplicate Content Checking for duplicate content: • Take a piece of text from the body copy of a page, put in in quotes (“) then put that text into the Google search bar. • Look at the content report in Google Analytics – does the same page title appear from 2 different URLs. • Check GWT and BWT for duplicate titles/descriptions.

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53 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Duplicate Content • Look for different versions (www.domain.com, domain.com, www.domain.com/index, domain.com/index) of the site in Google. • If one version sends you to another version, the webmaster has correctly addressed the issue. If the URL does not change, then there is an issue. • There are 5 copies of this website:

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54 | 23.08.2022 Check: Printing & Duplicate Content • If the site has a button to print the page, this often creates duplicate pages because it will often create a non–unique URL. • If the site offers print pages with unique URLs are these pages blocked by the search engines? • Pull up a couple and look at MozBar: Analyze Page > Page Attributes.

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55 | 23.08.2022 Check: Printing & Duplicate Content

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56 | 23.08.2022 Check: If Blog Tags Are Creating Duplicate Content? • Tags and categories on blogs often create duplicate content.

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57 | 23.08.2022 Tool/Fix: Canonical Tag • A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content. • If Google sees that two pages have the same content, it may index only one version for its search results. • Users can specify a canonical page to search engines by adding the canonical tag to a page. • How to add a canonical tag: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139394?hl=en From the search engines: • Bing: Rel=canonical is not your savior. It’s intention is to use it 5 or 10 times across your site. • Google: for Google you can use it as many times as necessary.

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58 | 23.08.2022 URL FORMATS MATTER

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59 | 23.08.2022 Why: URL Structure • Proper URL structures provide search engines with additional data to understand the meaning of a webpage. • URLs with a high number of strange characters or other issues can result in indexing problems. • Google Analytics lets you segment data based on the words in the URL, so proper parent-to-child structure is also critical for website analytics.

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60 | 23.08.2022 Check: URL Structure • Check that pages have a proper parent-to-child category structure and are optimized for a keyword. This should be reflected in the URL. • Are the URLs overly confusing and/or do not contain the keyword?

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61 | 23.08.2022 BROKEN LINKS

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62 | 23.08.2022 Why Broken Links (404s)? Errors occur when search engine cannot find page(s) due to broken links. This often results in a loss of ranking for that page if the 404 is accidental and a loss of PageRank.

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63 | 23.08.2022 Check: Are any of the 404 errors significant? 1. Check to see if you have 404 errors. 2. Check to see if the 404 pages are: • Indexed highly in organic search. • Have significant amount of inbound links to them. • What is the user experience for the 404? Are they getting a helpful message that keeps them on the site?

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64 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Check 404 Errors • GWT > Crawl > Crawl Errors

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65 | 23.08.2022 Check Significance: Inbound Links to the 404 Page • GWT ->Site Errors >Not Found >select page > “linked from”

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66 | 23.08.2022 REDIRECTS

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67 | 23.08.2022 Why 301 redirects? • 301 redirects tells the search engine that the page they are vising is permanently redirected to a new location. • This redirect transfers all search equity. • If set up incorrectly, it could create an infinite loop that the search engine spider can get lost in.

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68 | 23.08.2022 Check: 301 Redirects • Put URL in the browser, if it changes to the new URL, the redirect is set up properly. • Use URL Re-direct Checker. • Best practices: http://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

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69 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Check 301 redirects http://www.seologic.com/webmaster-tools/url-redirect

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70 | 23.08.2022 Chained 301 redirects • Even single 301 redirects should be used sparingly, but if required Google will follow chained redirects • Every additional redirect will make it more likely that Google won’t follow the redirects and pass PageRank • For Google keep it to 2 redirects – 3 max • More about chained 301 redirects from Matt Cutts at Google: • More from Bing: • “As a closing thought, be sure not to stack redirects. Doing so almost ensures we won’t pass the value through to the end.”

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71 | 23.08.2022 Also SEO Friendly – 302 redirects • Server signal that tells the search engines that the page is temporarily moved. • More from Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo- advice-discussing-302-redirects/

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72 | 23.08.2022 Why Breadcrumbs? Breadcrumbs provide users with a sense of place and provide search engines with context.

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73 | 23.08.2022 Check: Breadcrumbs • They are usually located on the top left right before the content of the page using the “>” signs.

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74 | 23.08.2022 Why Pagination? Paginated content includes: • An article divided into several component pages • Product category with items spread across several pages • Forum thread divided into a sequence of URLs Affects two critical elements of search engine accessibility: 1. Crawl Depth 2. Duplicate Content

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75 | 23.08.2022 Tools to Fix: Pagination Implement coding rel=“next” and rel=“prev”. • How to implement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with- relnext-and-relprev.html Implement Canonical tags • To match on-site dynamically generated navigation. • All pages on site. • Created uniform URL formats. • Improve analytics data.

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76 | 23.08.2022 Pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“prev” Indicates the relationship between component URLs in a paginated series. Tells Google to: • Consolidate indexing properties, such as links, from the component pages/URLs to the series as a whole. • Send users to the most relevant page/URL—typically the first page of the series.

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77 | 23.08.2022 ON PAGE RANKING FACTORS

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78 | 23.08.2022 Why Optimize Web Content? • Number 1 reason why you appear in search for anything. • Number 1 reason why you might not appear in Google or Bing at all. • Well written online copy leads to conversions (sales, users taking the action you want them to). • Good copy encourages users to share. Good copy = critical to “going viral”. • Each page needs to be optimized for a keyword to appear in search for that word.

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79 | 23.08.2022 Check: Page Optimization

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80 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Bing SEO Reports BWT>Reports & Data >SEO Reports

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81 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google SEO Reports

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82 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Moz on Page Report Card

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83 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Moz Keyword Ranking

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84 | 23.08.2022 Check: Enough Text? • Eyeball the text. • Moz test on Page Grader.

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85 | 23.08.2022 Check: Quality Content Search engines are using human raters to ask quality questions to determine if a page should rank. o: Ask these questions: 1. Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results? 2. Would you trust information from this site? 3. Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend? 4. Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

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86 | 23.08.2022 Check: Meta Titles & Meta Descriptions • Pick a page, and use the Moz toolbar or look at the code to see if it has an unique meta title and description that looks optimized. • Use Moz crawl test. • Check GWT or BWT. • Are there missing title or meta description tags? Duplicate ones?

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87 | 23.08.2022 Check: Image Alt Text Image alt text provides descriptive text to the image for the search engine to read. Alt text provides another placement for keyword phrases and should be optimized for search. • Use the Moz toolbar. Are there missing alt tags? Missing image names in the file name? • Or use Moz PageGrader, GWT or BWT.

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88 | 23.08.2022 Check: H1 Tags H1 tags is one of the signals used by the search engines to determine the keyword target of the page. • Pick a page, and use the Moz toolbar or SEO page grader. Is the H1 being used strategically? • Or check Moz PageGrader, BWT or GWT.

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89 | 23.08.2022 Check: Are Other File Types Optimized? For PDF files: • The document properties should have the “description” tab filled out with keyword optimized labels. • Each .pdf should also have an introductory page which has a header and an abstract (using those labels) with a target of 140 to 160 characters per paragraph. Then the file should be saved with a keyword relevant filename. PDF: Acrobat > Document > Properties For Word files: • Documents should use Header 1 through 6 styles and have keyword optimization. Microsoft Office: Prepare > Properties > Document Properties For Excel files: • Documents should have optimized thumbnail image, file name, title and description. File > Properties

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90 | 23.08.2022 Check: Are Your Videos Optimized? • Videos on a site are not crawlable by search engines. • For a video to be optimized, keyword text should be present on the same page for the search engine to read. • Each site should have a video sitemap if there are many videos. Videos should also be made shareable on the page. More Google resources about the five different sitemaps: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=209 86&parent=8476&ctx=topic

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91 | 23.08.2022 OFF PAGE RANKING FACTORS

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92 | 23.08.2022 BACKLINKS

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93 | 23.08.2022 Check: Number of Links & Are They Good? • The number of back links to the site and the domain rank of the entire site impact ranking. • Penguin update means that having links from places that look suspicious could impact your ranking. How: • Use Moz’s Open Site Explorer tool. • Compare the links to the other websites that are ranking for the same keyword. • Check GWT and BWT link counts and links over time. • Check any backlinks that look suspicious. If you own the site, use Bing or Google Webmaster Tools, or Moz Open Site Explorer.

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94 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Moz Open Site Explorer

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95 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google’s Link Details GWT >Search Traffic >Links to Your Site

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96 | 23.08.2022 Tool: BWT BWT >Reports & Data >Inbound Links

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97 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Bing’s Link Details As the webmaster, you can get deep link information in Bing Webmaster Tools.

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98 | 23.08.2022 SOCIAL SIGNALS

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99 | 23.08.2022 Why Social Signals and Optimize Social Content? • Social media signals are a factor in search ranking. • When ranking pages, search engines now count links to those pages from shares on social networks, blogs, and social bookmarking sites. • Along with links, social actions (i.e. “Likes”, retweets, or +1’s of a web page) are now affecting search results. • Each social media asset can rank (and get traffic) from search.

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100 | 23.08.2022 Check: Social Signals • Check to make sure social sharing buttons are used on the site. • To see how much social signal activity a URL receives, use Moz’s Open Site Explorer tool. • To easily find all the social media tools a competitor’s site is using, in Firefox use: FOXY SEO Toolbar > Social Media or Moz Open Site Explorer.

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101 | 23.08.2022 GOOGLE+ SOCIAL SIGNALS

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102 | 23.08.2022 Connect Google to your Website 1. On your site: 2. Add website link to Google+ brand page on “about” page.

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103 | 23.08.2022 Google+ Website Connections

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104 | 23.08.2022 Google+ Follow Button on Website • When clicked, lets the user add you to their circles on Google+ from your webpage. Personalizes the search experience for that user. • Has custom code that links to your Google+ page that is generated from here: https://developers.google.com/+/web/follow/ • Button is adjustable.

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105 | 23.08.2022 Why Google Authorship? • Rel=author is the key to building Author Rank and the development of a Knowledge Box in Google.

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106 | 23.08.2022 Tool: Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool • Link from bio to Google+ profile with rel=author • List website as contributor in Google+ profile: • Use this tool to ensure rel=author is set up properly: • http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

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107 | 23.08.2022 Measuring Your Author Influence

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108 | 23.08.2022 OPTIMIZING SOCIAL MEDIA BUTTONS

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109 | 23.08.2022 Check: The Correct Social Sharing Buttons? • Each site should use the social sharing buttons from each social site, as that allows each social site to track the sharing activity. • Especially for “follow” buttons – they should all contain IDs from the client's social media presence. • This allows the user to have a personalized experience on social that is impacted by their website visit. • All of the above sends signals to the search engines that ShareThis/AddThis do not • Now tracked automatically in Google Analytics' social media reports.

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110 | 23.08.2022 SCHEMA AND STRUCTURED DATA

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111 | 23.08.2022 Why Structured Data? • Makes it easier for search engines to recognize what your content is about and provide high quality results. Higher rankings and click through. • Supported by all major search engines: http://schema.org/docs/schemas.html

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112 | 23.08.2022 Setting up a Brand’s Knowledge Box • Google wants to recognize entities on web pages or web documents and mapping them back to specific entities in their Knowledge Graph. Powered by Freebase & Wikipedia

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113 | 23.08.2022 Linking Schema to Freebase • This means websites should now be marked up to indicate what “entities” they’re talking about in their content — telling search engines that these entities are the “sameAs” those on other sites or entity databases like Freebase. By using schema, you can also tell the search engines which logo you’d like them to use in search and the Knowledge box:

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114 | 23.08.2022 Check/Tool: Schema • You can use this tool: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets to check to see if you’ve set up schema correctly.

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115 | 23.08.2022 MOBILE SEO

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116 | 23.08.2022 Why Mobile Optimization • As of June 2013, Mobile landing pages are needed to appear in mobile search. Question for Matt Cutts at Google (March 2014): Do you adjust rankings for sites based on having a mobile version of a site for people searching on mobile devices? Matt: Over time we might explore in that way. We do penalize sites that don’t perform well in mobile — it’s the boost for having a mobile experience that we’re moving toward.

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117 | 23.08.2022 Solution: Allow Google to Find your Mobile Site Solution 1: • Upload a mobile sitemap via webmaster tools. Solution 2: • Allow any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your site. • Check whether the User-agent header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile". • You can also use DNS Lookups to verify Googlebot. • Google’s mobile guidelines: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.googl e.com/en/us/webmasters/docs/search-engine- optimization-starter-guide.pdf • Google’s mobile resources: http://www.google.com/think/multiscreen/resources.ht ml

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118 | 23.08.2022 Check: Are your URLs Mobile Friendly? Are your URLs viewable on mobile? • Pages Google determines aren't viewable on a mobile phone will not be included in our mobile site index. Check: • Each mobile-friendly URLs' DTD declaration should be in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML (3) More info: Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.

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119 | 23.08.2022 Check: Mobile Optimization • Load time should be fast on a mobile device. • Research shows that 50% of mobile users will abandon a site after 5 seconds of load time. • Links and buttons should be clickable by a thumb. • Should be easy to navigate without needing to pinch and zoom. • All images should load and look great in the mobile browser. • Google’s list: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone- sites/website-improvement-checklist • Google Webmaster Tools:

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120 | 23.08.2022 Check: Redirecting Mobile Users If you are running mobile and desktop versions of your site, be careful about how you serve up the different content to desktop or mobile users to avoid confusion for users and search engines. • When a mobile user or crawler (like Googlebot-Mobile) accesses the desktop version of a URL, you can redirect them to the corresponding mobile version of the same page. • The redirect needs to display very similar content on the mobile site, otherwise you will potentially run into a Google penalty.

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121 | 23.08.2022 Check: Redirecting Mobile Users • If you have the same URL for mobile and desktop content, but are your site changes the format based on the User-agent, you do not need to redirect users. • However, if you site is on configured properly, Google might think you are cloaking, which will cause your site to fall off of Google. Google Example: • If your site returns a message like "Please access from mobile phones" to desktop browsers, but then returns a full mobile version to both crawlers (so Googlebot receives the mobile version). • In this case, the page which web search users see (e.g. "Please access from mobile phones") is different from the page which Googlebot crawls (e.g. "Welcome to my site")

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122 | 23.08.2022 Check: Bing Mobile Friendly One URL to rule them all. Directly from Bing: • At Bing, we want to keep things simple by proposing the "one URL per content item" strategy. • For each website, instead of having different URLs per platform (one URL for desktop, another for mobile devices, etc.), our feedback is that producing fewer variations of URLs will benefit you by avoiding sub-optimal and underperforming results. • Our real concern is the hundreds of millions of additional URLs that are created on mobile-only domains, which for most of them will never accrue any value and rarely, if ever, rank in any form of search, yet still consume resources on both your servers and ours.

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123 | 23.08.2022 DROPPED FROM GOOGLE Tactics that could get you

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124 | 23.08.2022 All out Spam Email you will receive: • “Site appears to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking, scraping content from other websites, and/or repeated or egregious violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.” What this means: • Google has labeled your site or parts of it straight out spam. Prognosis: • Chances of recovery are pretty slim. Audit your entire site. Fix everything you find. Submit reconsideration request.

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125 | 23.08.2022 Cloaking Email you will receive: • Site appears to be cloaking (displaying different content to human users than is shown to search engines) or redirecting users to a different page than Google saw. What this means: • Check your redirects. Are you only using 301s and 302s? Are you redirect the user to appropriate content? Do you have chained redirects? Prognosis: • Fix redirects, submit reconsideration request. and wait for recovery.

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126 | 23.08.2022 Hacking Email you will receive: • Some pages on this site may have been hacked by a third party to display spammy content or links. Website owners should take immediate action to clean their sites and fix any security vulnerabilities. What this means: • Try to find the malware and remove it. Pull the page in as Google sees it in your Webmaster Tools. Check your analytics for patterns. Do a backlink check to see if there is anything suspicious. Make sure security software is up to date, and plugins are up to date. • More in Google’s malware and spam help center. Prognosis: • Fix and submit a malware review. Google should return the site to it’s former ranking once fixed.

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127 | 23.08.2022 Hidden Text/Keyword Stuffing Email you will receive: • Some of the pages may contain hidden text and/or keyword stuffing. What this means: • Does your site: have multiple keywords in the alt tags, write out full sentences in the title tag, add multiple keywords to descriptions, hide content on your pages using CSS? Prognosis: • Fix text issues, submit reconsideration request and wait for recovery.

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128 | 23.08.2022 Thin Content Email you will receive: • Site appears to consist of low-quality or shallow pages which do not provide users with much added value (such as thin affiliate pages, doorway pages, cookie-cutter sites, automatically generated content, or copied content). What this means: • You’ve been hit by Panda. Check that your site has quality content? Prognosis: • Add depth and breadth to your content, make sure it has value, substance and relevancy and is at least between 700-900 words.

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129 | 23.08.2022 Page Layout is Top Heavy What happens: • You notice a decrease in rankings across your entire site. What this means: • You’ve been hit by the age Layout Algorithm More from Google: • We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

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130 | 23.08.2022 Unnatural Links Email you will receive: • Google detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive or manipulative inbound links on your site. What this means: • You’ve been hit by Penguin. Run a link analysis determine your good vs. bad links and then start emailing webmasters trying to get the bad links removed. Prognosis: • Once you have proof that you’ve tried to remove the links by emailing webmasters, you can then use the disavow tool.

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131 | 23.08.2022 A Penalty Notice that is Confusing • If you get a penalty notice that you don’t understand, check out Google’s Webmaster Help forum. • Keep in mind that those forums are run by volunteers. • The volunteers don’t actually know what’s wrong with these sites. • They’re not Google employees. • They don’t have access to why exactly a site received a manual action notice. • They’re effectively guessing at what might be a problem. • They might make excellent, educated guesses. They might be off-the-mark.

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132 | 23.08.2022 ADDITIONAL TIPS

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133 | 23.08.2022 Google & Javascript • Google and Bing can execute JavaScript and discover links via this method. • Don’t use Javascript to hide anything.

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134 | 23.08.2022 Coding for International Sites

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135 | 23.08.2022 International SEO FAQs • https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq- internationalisation • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en Q: What can I do if a user reaches the “wrong language” version of my pages? A: We recommend letting users access all language versions (without automatic redirection), regardless of their location or browser settings. Also keep in mind that Googlebot must be able to crawl all versions in order to index them properly and remember to make it easy for users to switch to their preferred language using links or a drop-down menu for the different language versions of a page. Redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site.

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136 | 23.08.2022 Search in 2014: From the Search Engines Bing: Duane Forrester’s priorities for search marketing: • Content • Usability and user experience • Social media (driver of conversation and customer satisfaction) • Links (for traffic, not for rankings boost) • Basic SEO on-page best practices Google: Matt Cutt’s priorities for search marketing: Ask how to make something make compelling or excellent. Ideas for “great content”: • Original research • Perspective (exploratory or explanatory, putting info into context) • Scoops • Interviews • Unique service • Doing things better than anyone else does

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137 | 23.08.2022

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138 | 23.08.2022 Tools: Bonus • Google snippet optimizer; http://www.seomofo.com/snippet- optimizer.html. • Create a video comparing your site’s page load speed to competitors: http://www.webpagetest.org. • List of server error codes: http://webmaster.iu.edu/tools-and- guides/maintenance/error-codes.phtml. • Technical SEO, a community to discuss the technical issues around building sites aimed at performing really well - for Google and users: https://plus.google.com/communities/115406093786292678263. Google Webmaster Tools:

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139 | 23.08.2022 Bing Support • When you want to talk to Bing for support, there’s direct email support from Bing. • Go to Bing.com/webmaster and you’ll find a link called email support and fill out the form (and then, evidence suggests, complain to Duane on Twitter).

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140 | 23.08.2022 SEO/Social Audit Template Critical Elements: • Set Target Goals for Site. • Outline online competitors. • Details of each issue with grade. • Specific recommendations per section with priority order.

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141 | 23.08.2022 Additional Reading Google’s Webmaster Academy for Beginner Webmasters Google’s Webmaster Academy for Advanced Webmasters http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition Google+ Technical SEO Community Google Partners North America Community Visualization of how penalties might impact your website’s traffic: • http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/16-google-penalty-update-filter-visualisations-by-seo-visibility/ Search Engine Watch, “How to Conduct an On Page SEO Audit,” • http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2196496/How-to-Conduct-an-On-Page-SEO-Site-Audit. Search Engine Watch, “How to Conduct a Technical SEO Audit,” • http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2200756/How-to-Conduct-a-Technical-SEO-Site-Audit.

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142 | 23.08.2022 QUESTIONS?

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Katherine Watier Ong Ketchum 202-729-8355 @kwatier www.linkedin.com/in/katherinewatier gplus.to/katherinewatier Katherine.watier@ketchum.com www.ketchum.com CONTACT