SEO for developers (session 1)

The SEO Workshop -Site Structure

By Avromi SommersSenior Analyst

About Me• RankAbove Employee #2• Senior SEO Analyst / Director Training• SEO for Enterprise size sites

MusicianMarried + 4http://www.linkedin.com/in/avromisommers

Overview

• History of SEO to date• Significance of on page search• How Google works

• Site structure • Sitemaps• Mobile SEO

SEO in the 90’s

• Yahoo, Alta-Vista etc.• Meta tag spam • Keywords Stuffing• Directory Search

• Why was this bad?• NASA vs. Avromi

SEO in the 90’s

• Google in 1997• PageRank• Based on PhD

theory• Quality and

Quantity of inbound links

• SEO - now a two part (very easy) game • Off page - buying

building links• On page -

keywords stuffing

21st Century

• 2003• Florida Update - Googles first update to fight

Spam - mostly on page spam • Need better quality and relevant links • Content is king

• Yet also link importance – Google Bombs

• 2005/2006 • Google officially says do not buy links

• Starts penalizing sites for spam

21st Century

• 2007/8• Penalized a whole bunch of link sellers

• 2011 • Panda - aimed at sites with bad content

• 2012• Penguin - aimed at sites with bad back

link profile• killed the concept off bad/ easy back

links

SEO Today

• Still a combination of off page and on page

• Off page – more difficult• marketing oriented approach

• On page • Now becomes very important - also

more complicated

• You have more control of on page

SEO Today

• On page• Content• Site structure

Google needs to crawl you site

• How does Google work?• Crawling, indexing, serve results

What can Google see?

• HTML• Java Script – Not really

• Any thing Google needs to execute the lower the chance

• Google is getting better

• Test using a text only browser to see what Google can see (lynx)

• iframes are generally bad • Officially crawl-able and supported by

Google

Blocking Google?

• Blocking Google• Robots.txt• Meta no index

Blocking Google?

• Common pitfalls

• Blocking development sites• PW, IP block, robots, noindex

Internal Linking Structure

• Has direct effect on SEO - important pages gets more links• Google needs to find all pages on site

• Site Hierarchy • Pyramid• Web structure - i.e. Wikipedia

Internal Linking Structure

Do both

URL Structure

• Loosely follow hierarchy • Google will often try to understand from

URLs• But to a point - keep em’ short

• Ecommerce sites - only one product page

Duplicate Content

• Caps• HTTPS• URL Parameters

• Sorting• Referral strings

• Canonical tags

Pagination

• rel= prev & rel = next• infinite scroll - push state

• View all • Canonical tag

• Avoid Reusing content• For category pages - OK

Filters for Browsing

• Problems with filters• Infinite number of

pages• Auto generated• Stub & empty

pages

• Block to Google• AJAX

• Filters • URLS

AJAX URLs

• AJAX tabs• Make sure content on page

• When can Google see AJAX URLs• # vs. #!

• escape fragment• #! =  ?_escaped_fragment_

• bidirectional

• <meta name="fragment" content="!">

Be Careful!

• Don't hide text/links• Scrape content• Comments/ comment spam• Malware on site

• downloading things users don't really want

• Cloaking - showing different info to Google then to user

• JS redirects - looks bad• fine for login pages

Sitemaps

• Helps Google find pages on site• Different types - News, Videos, images• Guidelines

• Size limit - 50 MB & URL limit - 50,000• UTF-8 encoding• Full URLs• No parameters, redirects or non canonical

• Multiple sitemaps OK• Use sitemap Index file

Once Its Created• Submit Sitemap to Google Via Webmaster

Tools• Or list in robots.txt• Google will crawl sitemap/site• Check status in WMT• Is Google processing correctly• Errors

• Is Google actually indexing

Video Sitemaps

• What information is needed?• Title• Description • Thumbnail URL• Player page URL• Location of raw video file

• Recommended but not necessary• Duration, date published, family friendly

News Sitemaps

• What information is needed?• Publication• Publications date• Access (if blocked)• Title

• Recommended but not necessary• Meta keywords

• Only within 48 hours• 1000 URLs max

Mobile Sites

1. Responsive design• Ideal for SEO

2. Different mobile URLs• Tell Googlebot to crawl with mobile- Vary

HTTP header3. Dynamically serving different HTML on the

same URL• Annotation in HTML and Regular sitemap

• <link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"      href="http://m.example.com/page-1" >

• <xhtml:link    rel="alternate"    media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)"    href="http://m.example.com/page-1" />

• Canonical tag from mobile URL

Mobile Sites – cont.

• Speed is very important• Especially at the top of the page

• Mobile sitemaps • For mobile ready pages only

• Proper redirects to mobile site• JS pop ups, Flash • Tablet users generally prefer desktop version

Site Speed Site speed is a ranking factor • Page speed insights from Google

• https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

• Analytics

Foreign Language sites

• TLD vs. Folder vs. Sub-domain language vs. Sub-domain country

• Meta language tag <link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/" />

• Geo targeting in webmaster tools

Multi Country Non-Multi Country

Local Dependent

TLD for each country

One TLD with sub-domains per language

Non-Local Dependent

One TLD with sub-domains per language

One TLD with sub-domains or folders per language

Additional Resources• Google updates - http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change • Webmaster central support - https://support.google.com/webmasters/?hl=en • Google Webmaster Videos - https://

www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp/videos • General Google Guidelines - https://

support.google.com/webmasters/topic/6001981?hl=en&ref_topic=3309300 • Blocking Google - https://

developers.google.com/webmasters/control-crawl-index/docs/robots_txt • Pagination - http://

googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.il/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html

• Escape fragment / AJAX URLs- https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/specification

• Page speed - https://developers.google.com/speed/ • Page speed insights - http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ • Multi-regional sites - http://

googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.il/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

• Site-maps - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en • Mobile Sites - https://

developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details • Tablet usability - http://www.nngroup.com/articles/tablet-usability/

Thank You!

We are always available for questions!

Avromi@rankabove.comhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/avromisommers