ctrl+f5 ahmedabad, 2017: search engine friendly for web 3.0 – why & how? by navneet kaushal
TRANSCRIPT
Navneet KaushalCEO
PageTraffic
Search Engine Friendly for Web 3.0
Search
Why is SEO important?
Number of Searches/Day on Google
Average Daily Queries on Google
3 Billion Searches/Day (announced Aug. 2012)
Growth of Google Queries in Last few yrs
Number of Searches/Day on Google
3 Billion Searches/Day (announced Aug. 2012)
State of Search- India
Source: Netmarketshare and business-standard.com
Google97%
Yahoo1%
Bing1%
Others1%
Indian Search Engine Market Share
Search Often Brings the Most Highly Qualified Traffic
Helps you create a better website
Brings in qualified traffic
Helps you create better content
Measurable/Actionable
SEO from a business perspective
DID YOU KNOW?
Search engines cannot read FLASH and JavaScript content.
DID YOU KNOW?
It's actually quite easy to exclude certain pages from search engine results by using a robots.txt file.
DID YOU KNOW?
Google checks for duplicate content on your website.
DID YOU KNOW?
The webpage names also influence the rate of optimization for certain keywords.
DID YOU KNOW?
A common website mistake is giving each page the same title.
DID YOU KNOW?
Google moves websites down in the search results when an excessive number of keywords are used.
DID YOU KNOW?
A page’s load time influences the ranking of your website in search engines.
DID YOU KNOW?
Search engines look at how much code you use. Therefore, tables and inline styles not only make your code less synoptic but could also affect search engine ranking.
DID YOU KNOW?
It's actually quite easy to exclude certain pages from search engine results by using a robots.txt file.
SEARCH ENGINE RANKING SIGNALS
Ranking Signal - HTTPSGoogle considers HTTPS (SSL) ranking signal
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html
Ranking Signal – MalwareGoogle penalizes websites that are hacked or
have malware. It highlights them with labels or completely removes these sites from the index:
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-malware-and-hacked-sites
Ranking Signals – Security Summary
• Secure protocol SSL/TSL
• Web Application Firewall (Securing your vulnerabilities using the best minds in the industry)– Hackers can inject malware into your site and Google WILL find it and demote your
rankings
• DDOS protection– If Google can't access your site, it can't index it. Let alone your customers.
• DNSSEC
20
Ranking Signal – Site Speed
Google rewards faster loading websites:http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
Ranking Signal – Site SpeedTechnical hacks that boost your site’s speed:
• Compression
• Minification (CSS, JS, HTML)
• Response time
• Image Optimization
• Browser Caching
• How JS & CSS are served
• Use of Asynchronous scripts
• Use of CDNs
• Better headers and caching
• Latest server technology (HTTP/2, SPDY, GZIP)
•Comparison of Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
Highlights of each phase
• 1.0
• 1995-2003
• Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape
• Infrastructure and getting content online
2.0
2004-2009
Google, Flickr, Facebook
User interface and social community
3.0
2009
Siri, Primal Fusion, Twine, WolframAlpha,
Structured data, meaning and context
Web Era
Dates
Significant
Companies
Major
focus
"Even a basic understanding of what to look for in technical SEO can get you far. So many people today focus too heavily on off-
page SEO, but if a site is technically flawed, it won't matter how many links you have or how
good your content is.”
Erin Everhart, SEO Manager, The Home Depot
SEO “101”
INDEXATION + RELEVANCY + POPULARITY
• Removing any hurdle to the crawlers is key for a perfect indexation
• Map your site architecture in accordance with semantic verticals to reach ideal relevancy
• Balance the quantity, quality, aging & regularity of your linkgraph to maximize popularity
3 CORE PRINCIPLES OF SEO
INDEXATION• Technical Solution that respects SEO Best Practices• Site Architecture Mapped to Semantic Verticals• Archiving that preserves content integration & interlinking forever
RELEVANCE• Optimizing Keywords into Silos• Internal linking strategy that distributes SEO & PageRank value
POPULARITY• Quantity / Quality / Age / Frequency of links obtained• Semantics aspect of backlinks (anchor text)• Diversification of backlink entry points (hub pages)
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
What are Web 3.0 sites?
More Pages Crawled = More Pages
Indexed = More Traffic (*If site is healthy)
Golden rule: “One filepath per specific
content piece”
Duplicate (many forms), sorting, multi-
category, non-existent, framed content
Assume that anything in the
DOM is technically
accessible to modern
search bots, even though it
may not pass juice
Robots.txt only works on internally
Don't block with both robots.txt and
meta robots together
Best to block with meta robots & delete
via GWT (*renew every 6 months)
X-robots tag, is in document HEAD,
useful for PDFs, XML, etc…
Do NOT:
Print session IDs/parameters on filepaths in code
Pass session IDs via filepaths
Use cookies to pass session info
If no other alternative, block
parameters via GWT
URL
Structures
Filepaths can be flat, deep, or with
several parameters if needed, all seem
to work fine
Have a clear hierarchy in terms of
directory structure, use internal links to
emphasize relationships
Be consistent - all lower case, hyphens
not underscores, avoid empty spaces
Avoid foreign language encoding on
URLs
Copyright © www.pagetraffic.in
Copyright © www.pagetraffic.in
Onsite Optimization
The singularly
most important
on-site factor!
The TITLE Tag
• Include your chosen keywords within the TITLE tag – preferably near the start of the tag
• Try to keep it to 70 characters
• Must be relevant to the page content
• Very important - each page should have a different TITLE tag
The TITLE Tag
• A textual description of what the page is about
• Shows up in Google search results
The Description Tag
• Include keywords close to the start of the tag, but don’t repeat more than 3 times
• Try to keep it to 150 characters
• Must be relevant to the page content
• Each page should have a different DESCRIPTION tag
The Description Tag
• Google loves original, high quality textual content
• Body text is extremely important for search engine rankings because this is what human users come to see
• Keywords, synonyms and variations of the primary keyword combination should be included in the body text, but not so that it reads ‘artificially’. It should read naturally.
Body Text
• URLs that contain keywords are better than those that don’t
• Quite easy to do if your website is static, a little more difficult for database-driven sites
• Don’t make the URLs too long because this will be seen as an attempt to manipulate the search results
• Good and bad:
• www.mysite.com/health-insurance
• www.mysite.com/search.asp?insuranceID=435&locID=32
Keywords in URLs
• Heading tags – eg. <h1>, <h2> - within the HTML identify headings within the page copy and break up the text
• They are used by search engines to determine page content
• Use keywords in these tags, but don’t overdo it.
Heading Tags
• The ‘anchor’ text contained within hyperlinks provides Google with an understanding of what the linked content is about
• Every hyperlink on your site should have descriptive anchor text, rather than ‘click here…’
• Inline links or contextual links are best
• eg.
• Blue Train Enterprises offers a free white paper on how to optimise your website for the search engines
Link Anchor Text
• ALT is displayed if the image doesn’t load in the user’s browser
• The ALT tag should describe the image
• Keep it short and to the point
• It also can have a positive effect on your website rankings
• Don’t use ALT tags as a place tostuff keywords
Image ALT Text
Three Great &
Free Tools for
Crawling
Screaming Froghttp://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
IIS SEO Toolkithttp://www.iis.net/downloads/microsoft/search -engine-optimization-
toolkit
Xenuhttp://home.snafu.de/ti lman/xenulink.html
DO’S & DONT’S – ONSITE
SEO To-Do
•Define your IA and determine canonical URLs for hub pages across all
major categories, with expansion ability
•Use breadcrumb style navigation – Put all new content in it!
o EG: Home > Kitchen > Major Appliances > Stoves
•Include relevant category-specific navigation at each level
•Make interlinking mandatory! Include in-content links to similar pages
around the site, and give links from other pages
•Keep updated HTML and XML sitemaps for all new content
•Learn all the (new) ways to control indexation and linkjuice flow
DO’S & DONT’S – ONSITE
SEO Don’ts
•Let the same content appear on more than one URL
•Just throw content up without linking to it, or linking from it
•Spread your linkjuice thin over pages without unique content
•Leave open ended page scripts like calendars
•Archive poorly (or not at all) without respect to your IA
•Return server headers other than 404 for error pages
•Think you can fix linkjuice distribution issues with robots.txt
CANONICALIZATION ISSUES
Duplicate Content
•Domain.com VS www.domain.com VS www.domain.com/ VS
www.domain.com/index.php
Category & Product Pages
•…/product.php?category=clothing&sub-category=pants&gender=mens
•…/product.php?gender=mens&category=clothing&sub-category=pants
•…/product.php?category=clothing&sub-
category=pants&gender=mens&color=blue
CANONICALIZATION ISSUES
Quick Checklist
•No Capital letters, special characters, or spaces use dashes
•Parameters in URLs are fine but only if variable order / useless
variables are taken care of – try to also limit to up to 5 parameters
•Use standard HTML tags (<H1>, <ul>, <a>)
•Session ID variables should likely use the canonical tag
•Avoid code-bloating: place visible content higher in the code
SITE SPEED
• Page speed matters (now). So benchmark yourself against leaders. In a
way, that’s fun, you can create “Page speed contests” now.
• To do so, install Google Page Speed and Yahoo’s Yslow.
• Run them on your home page and at least a few random internal pages
• Follow every recommendations for: image optimization, gzip
compression, javascript “minification”, CSS “minification”.
• Once this is done, look at subtler speed improvements they recommend.
• Moving to a stable Cloud environment isn’t a bad idea either.
“Most of the right choices in SEO come from
asking: What’s the best thing for the user?”
Matt Cutts
Website: www.pagetraffic.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @navneetkaushal
Blog: www.pagetrafficbuzz.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pagetraffic.in
THANK YOU!