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A guide for affiliates;Navigating the technical SEO minefieldDigital Marketing Show19th November 2015

Charlie Williams

Head of Marketing

charlie (at) white.net

@pagesauce

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Affiliate sites

Frederick Valleys, Google (then)Affiliate Summit 2010

are largely “just an unnecessary step in the sales funnel”

http://searchengineland.com/author/frederick-vallaeys

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SEMrush affiliate link

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What does

really want?https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors/correlations

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Relevancy(content)

Authority(links, citations, trust)

Brand recognitionEngagement

(user signals, SERP bounceback)

https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors/correlations

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BUT…before that can happen…

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BUT…before that can happen…

Google has to be able to crawl & understand your website

= Technical SEO

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Not having it STOPS you rankingIs the prerequisite to play SEO:Technical SEO

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It supports other marketing/SEO workdoing it Plenty of your competitors aren’t Much of this is simple to implement

Good news:Quick wins

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Think of your website likea shop…Your content is your staff, site design the shop building& technical SEO the layout & signage

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Technical SEO prevents thisDo you show what’s in your shop?

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15 technical fundamentalsThat you can check on your site

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15 technical fundamentalsThat you can check on your site

& 2 bonus proactive optimisations

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Tools

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasterhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home

Webmaster & crawler

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1. Technical SEO right nowHow successful are you right now? What does Google thinkof your site?

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How many URLs are on your site?

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How often does Google visit?

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2. Meta keywords tagRemove it, unless your CMS uses it for internal search

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU

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3. Robots.txtShowing what’s open for business

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Folders robots (search engines) are blocked from

Signpost your XML sitemap

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Select host (domain) to see URLs affected

Common issues

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1. Edit robots.txt2. See if warnings

appear3. Test URL to see if

successfully blocked

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4. Robots meta tag Can be (mis)used to stop a page from being indexed

http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html

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Know which of yourURLs are noindexed

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5. XML sitemapsA guide to your website

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Monitor indexation of submitted URLs

http://www.sitemaps.org/

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Use sitemap index & multiple maps on large sites

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6. Internal errorsIssues search engines, & users, have crawling yoursite

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Errors identified by Google, split by type & device

Not always comprehensive or current!

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Use crawler:See the broken URLs, then the pages that link to them – fix!

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6.5 External errorsIf I ran an affiliate site…

I’d be checking my external links weekly(unless I decided I liked losing money)

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7. Internal linkingShowing what’s important & where I want to direct users

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Homepage is usually most powerful URL

How many pages do you link to from it?

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8. URL structure• Lowercase• Readable• Contains

keywords• Isn’t full or

parameters (?=)https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

https://moz.com/learn/seo/url

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9. Duplicate content part 1So many ways to reach one page

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URL Parameterstest.com/ vs.

test.com/sort=price

Trailing Slashtest.com/ vs.

test.com

Index variationtest.com/index.html

www vs non-wwwtest.com/ vs.

www.test.com/

test.com/

responsetester.appspot.com

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10. Duplicate content part 2Products in many categories

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What do I mean?

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An example

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Say hello tothis guy

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11. Duplicate content part 3Manufacturer descriptions

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12. Duplicate content part 4The blessing, & curse, of rel=canonical

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<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/blog" />

https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-contenthttps://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

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Rel=canonical tags

Ian LuriePortent Interactive

“I still don’t recommend using rel=canonical. It should be your weapon of absolute last resort”

http://searchengineland.com/why-i-still-hate-relcanonical-48317

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13. Doorway pagesCreated to rank highly for specific search queries- make you click again toget what you actually need

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Mentions affiliate traffichttp://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.

co.uk/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311

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14. Page speedNobody likes a slow website

47% of consumers

• 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to

expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds

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14. Page speedNobody likes a slow website

• 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to

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47% of consumers

• 40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to

expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less

40% abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds

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https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/?hl=en

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2 billion global smartphone usersaudience searches

15. MobileBeing usable however your

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http://searchengineland.com/google-search-algorithm-adds-mobile-friendly-factors-app-indexing-ranking-215573

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/faqs-april-21st-mobile-friendly.htmlhttps://moz.com/blog/9-things-about-googles-mobile-friendly-update

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https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Get detail on what is & isn’t mobile friendly

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16. SchemaSemantic markup to help get you understood, & noticed

SERP rich snippet

Knowledge Vault

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• Person• Product• Event• Organisation• Movie• Book• Review

https://developers.google.com/structured-data

Current Schemas in the SERPs(Rich Snippets)

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http://schema-creator.org/http://schema.org/

http://searchengineland.com/schema-markup-structured-data-seo-opportunities-site-type-231077http://searchengineland.com/google-may-add-structured-markup-data-to-ranking-algorithm-230402

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https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2692911

Data Highlighter

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content

17. User testingEye-opening insight into what your audience wants from your

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https://www.usertesting.com/product/videos-and-metrics

Audio, visual & written feedbackStarts @ $49 per video

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How users interact with your site has become an important ranking consideration.

https://moz.com/blog/the-massive-ranking-factor-too-many-seos-are-ignoring-whiteboard-friday

http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

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Reading to get you started• http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide/• https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-

engine-friendly-design-and-development• https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-guide/• http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.co.uk/

en/uk/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

• https://www.softwarepromotions.com/news/how-to-carry-out-an-seo-audit-for-free/

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GET THE SLIDEShttp://whdot.net/dms-2015

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THANK YOUQuestions?

charlie (at) white.net@pagesauce