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Session 1 of RankAbove's SEO workshop tailored to developers. RankAbove Senior Analyst Avromi Sommers breaks down the history of SEO, on-page search, site structure, sitemaps (including those for video and news), mobile SEO, and structure for foreign language sites.
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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
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!
[email protected]://www.linkedin.com/in/avromisommers