@apiwarun

C O N Q U E R I N G T O D A Y ’ S S E O

Ensuring your site is technically sound for spiders and visitors alike.

ANTHONY PIWARUN @apiwarun

Manager, Search Engine Marketing Zeon Solutions

C H A L L E N G E S

Slides: mesr.me/SMXEast14

@apiwarun

AGENDA

ü  I n t r o d u c t i o n

ü  W a i t . . W h y d o e s t h i s m a t t e r ?

ü  O h , t h e r e a r e b e s t p r a c t i c e s ?

ü  F i n a l T h o u g h t s

ü  Q & A

@apiwarun

HELLO!

ü  Practice Lead, Search & Content @

Zeon Solutions

ü  7+ years digital marketing experience

ü  Contributing Editor / Author for Search

Engine Journal and MarketingProfs

ü  SMX East, SMX West, Outdoor Retailer &

LavaCon Speaker

@apiwarun

QUICK SURVEY!

A Little Participation Never Hurt ;)

@apiwarun

THE SURVEY SAYS…

ü Who here is responsible for “digital marketing”?

@apiwarun

THE SURVEY SAYS…

ü Who here is responsible for “digital marketing”?

ü How many of you do “search marketing”?

@apiwarun

THE SURVEY SAYS…

ü Who here is responsible for “digital marketing”?

ü How many of you do “search marketing”?

ü Who can guess the difference?

@apiwarun

We’re Technical GEEKS, duh!

@apiwarun

INTRODUCTION

So… Why Are We Here?

@apiwarun

SO… WHY ARE WE HERE?

ü  Whether we’re optimizing a lead generation or ecommerce

site, let’s face it… technical factors matter…

ü  Regardless of the server, out-of-the-box platforms just don’t cut

it when it comes to “plug and play”

ü  If we want to weather the storm, we need to first recognize

that…

@apiwarun MILLENNIALS!

@apiwarun

HOLD UP…

WINTER IS COMING?!?!

@apiwarun

HOW CAN WE WEATHER THE STORM?

ü  Utilize technical best practices to ensure search engines can

effectively crawl, index and of course rank the pages relevant to

a user’s query

ü  Taking a proactive approach to guiding search engines in the

right direction

ü  Board up the windows, lock the doors and buckle up for the ride!

@apiwarun

HOW WE’LL DO IT

ü  URL Structure

ü  Gateways & Mall Directories

ü  Mobile & International

ü  Redirects

ü  Structured Data Markup (i.e. schema.org & microformats)

ü  Rel=Canonical & Next/Prev (The never-ending battle)

@apiwarun

GATEWAYS & MALL DIRECTORIES

I.E. Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml

@apiwarun

ROBOTS.TXT

ü  Critical to managing access to content as well as indexation

ü  No one-size fits all robots.txt file

ü  Highlights ü  On-Site Search

ü  Sitemap.xml File

ü  Assets of Value Directory!

@apiwarun

SITEMAP.XML

ü  Segmented sitemaps allow for increased visibility into what bots are indexing

ü  Add index & subfiles to webmaster tools to measure crawl-to-indexation ratio

ü  Identify areas needed for improvement

@apiwarun

MOBILE OPTIMIZATIONS

Walking Through The Options

@apiwarun

MOBILE EXPERIENCE OPTIONS

ü  For mobile browsing, three primary options:

ü  Responsive – desktop view & functionality shrunk to device size. Full, desktop experience is kept intact.

ü Adaptive – experience is tailored to mobile or tablet. Focus on efficiency & navigation. Like a “new” site.

ü Hybrid Responsive – incorporates elements of both Responsive and Adaptive design

@apiwarun

MOBILE OPTIONS – THE RUNDOWN

ü  Caution – controversy ahead!

ü  Google says you should use responsive design

ü  My take? Adaptive OR Hybrid Responsive almost always

preferred…

ü  It’s about the experience… remember?

@apiwarun

Why make it harder to convert?

Source: Monetate eCommerce Quarterly 2014

@apiwarun

RESPONSIVE & HYBRID CAVEATS

ü  Since content & experience is altered dynamically, need to tell the G what’s going on

ü VARY: User-Agent HTTP header status does the trick

Image  Credit:  Google  

@apiwarun

ADAPTIVE CAVEATS

ü  Separate desktop & mobile experiences cause duplicate

content

ü  Eliminate the potential by utilizing the one-two punch of

rel=canonical and rel=alternate

ü  Implementation can be easy or complex.. It’s entirely

dependent on the platform

@apiwarun

ADAPTIVE CAVEATS (CONT.)

On the desktop page:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.DOMAIN.com/DESKTOP-VERSION-OF-PAGE.html” >

<link rel=“alternate” href=“http://m.DOMAIN.com/MOBILE-VERSION-OF-PAGE.html” >

On the mobile page:

<link rel=“canonical” href=“http://www.DOMAIN.com/DESKTOP-VERSION-OF-PAGE.html” >

@apiwarun

REDIRECTS

A Tale of Two Hosts…

@apiwarun

LINUX - APACHE

ü  301 redirects and RewriteRules handled in one of two (sometimes

three) files:

ü  HTACCESS – file used for one-off redirects if a URL changes, product is

discontinued, etc.

ü  HTTPD.conf – file used to batch process rewrite rules and redirects.

ü  Use HTTPD.conf for massive quantities of redirects / rules to

prevent hit on server performance

@apiwarun

MICROSOFT - IIS

ü  Two methods to 301 URLs:

ü  Redirects – one-to-one mapping in web.config or IIS manager

implementing client-side 301s

ü  Rewrites – server side configuration utilizing regular expressions and

patterns

ü  Rewrite rules are ideal as they are server-level and can cast a wider

net using regular expressions… plus, there’s a lot less manual work ;)

@apiwarun

REDIRECT CAVEATS

ü  Everyone knows the difference between 301’s, 302’s, 307’s etc…

BUT… redirect chains?

ü  Redirect chains occur due to rewrite rules implemented server

side that execute in order

ü  So… a non-www to www, force lower case, force trailing slash

and remove file extension could potentially amount to FOUR

redirects!

@apiwarun

REDIRECT SOLUTIONS

ü  First we need to identify chains… use one-off tools like

WhereGoes.com or a crawler like Screaming Frog to follow

redirects

ü  After they’re identified, regex wizardry must ensue to stop

execution of rewrite rules in IIS and Apache if matches are found

ü  After the call is stopped, combine rules into one to remove chains

@apiwarun

CANONICAL VS. NEXT/PREV

Let’s Do This…

@apiwarun

REL=CANONICAL VS. NEXT/PREV… FIGHT!

ü  Rel = canonical should be the standard for

eCommerce websites

ü  This is in stark contrast with Google’s suggestions

ü  Let’s think logically, however…

@apiwarun

REL=CANONICAL VS. NEXT/PREV… FIGHT!

ü  Rel=Canonical is simply a recommendation

ü  Yet, it’s critical for eCommerce sites with faceted

navigation / filterable attributes

ü  Too many sites take “recommendations” on setting

canonical to ViewAll state

ü  What suffers? Page load speed = user experience.

@apiwarun

SPEAKING OF CANONICAL…

Cross-Domain Canonicalization FTW!

@apiwarun

CROSS-DOMAIN CANONICALIZATION

ü  Cross domain canonicalization is like the standard

rel=canonical tag, but points to a page on another domain

ü  Markup is structured as so:

ü  Main Site: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.DOMAIN1.com/page-1" />

ü  Duplicate Site: <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.DOMAIN1.com/page-1" />

@apiwarun

ECOMMERCE USE CASES

ü  Brands / Distributors that have either a B2B & B2C site with the

same catalog or a separate content site with duplicate

articles on the store’s blog… that’s duplicate content, right?

ü  Identify which category/subcategory/product is most relevant

to audience of each site and implement accordingly

@apiwarun

CONTENT USE CASES

ü  Hosted Content

ü  Let’s say you’re hosting content on a site like WP.com or Tumblr and you decide to self-

host

ü  If you don’t have access to the server, you can’t 301

ü  Cross-domain canonicalization will help send those soft 301 signals to Google

ü  Original Content

ü  Say, for example, you write a post and publish it on your corporate blog or a news site.

If you own a personal blog, you want to publish your work without rewriting, right?

ü  Cross-domain canonical can help YOU get the message out without duplicating

content and impacting potential traffic for the original site

@apiwarun

HREFLANG

Saving The Best For Last!

@apiwarun

HREFLANG IN A NUTSHELL

ü  International / global websites often struggle with with

duplicate content post-translation. Even if it’s in another

language, it could still potentially be viewed as duplicate

ü  At a high-level, it tells search engines “Hey, the canonical tag says

THIS PAGE is relevant, however, there are other versions that are

language-specific so please don’t discard those.”

@apiwarun

Note: rel=alternate and ISO language call need to be ON EVERY SINGLE PAGE of EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE language option. Canonical tag should

accurately self-refer.

IMPLEMENTATION

@apiwarun

MISC. TIPS & NOTES

ü  HREFLang will NOT geotarget. That’s what GWT is for. This will

only handle duplicate content issues with localization

ü  If you have a language selector page, you can assign

hreflang=“x-default”, meaning there’s no specific language

and to consider it the default

ü  Track international indexation / implementation success in

GWT -> Search Traffic -> International Targeting report

@apiwarun

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Concluding Thoughts…

@apiwarun

C O N Q U E R I N G T O D A Y ’ S S E O

Ensuring your site is technically sound for spiders and visitors alike.

ANTHONY PIWARUN @apiwarun

Manager, Search Engine Marketing Zeon Solutions

C H A L L E N G E S

Slides: mesr.me/SMXEast14