stop best practicing, start doing - stephen kenwright at #searchleeds 2016
TRANSCRIPT
Stop best practicing
Stephen Kenwright@stekenwright @Branded_3
Not true
Also not true
Issue Issue Frequency
The page contains broken hyperlinks. 83,539
The page contains invalid markup. 74,462
The page contains unnecessary redirects. 63,756
The link text is not relevant. 43,457
The page contains a large amount of script code. 21,536
The title is too long. 7,158
The description is missing. 6,613
The URL for the hyperlink is broken. 6,509
The title begins with a brand name. 6,495
The <img> tag does not have an ALT attribute defined. 2,551
The request is disallowed by a Robots.txt rule. 257
The <h1> tag is missing. 246
The page contains a large number of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) definitions. 212
The canonical URL is broken. 172
The page was excluded by a noindex attribute. 126
The canonical URL is linking to a resource that permanently moved. 6
The page contains multiple canonical formats. 6
The page contains multiple title tags. 5
The page contains too many hyperlinks. 5
The description is too long. 4
The description begins with a brand name. 2
The page contains multiple <h1> tags. 2
An unexpected error has occurred. 1
The description is empty. 1
The redirection response results in another redirection. 1
317,122
Prioritise
“The average SEO at a big company has been waiting over six months for their highest priority technical change.
40%+ have been waiting over a year.”
Where does best practicecome from?
Accidently implements 302 redirects
Changes title tags
Migrates subdomain
vs.
Should you spend time on link removals? branded3.com/blog/spend-time-link-removals/
Best practice changes with the web
JavaScript
Googlebot follows JavaScript redirects
Googlebot follows JavaScript links
JS taking more than 3-4 seconds to render or not rendering until an event is fired does not get indexed
w3techs.com/technologies/details/cp-javascript/all/all
When Google says “we got this”
Unblocking CSS + JS for a Panda recovery
“We recommend making sure Googlebot can access any embedded resource that meaningfully
contributes to your site’s visibility or its layout.”
yoast.com/google-panda-robots-css-js
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
eBay + AMP
eBay (and Google) are working on…
Smart buttons like “Add to Cart” and “Buy It Now” with authentication support
Input elements like search boxes and checkboxes
Advanced tracking.
A/B testing
ebaytechblog.com/browse-ebay-with-style-and-speed
Add lead capture forms to AMP
Add the AMP iframe extended component to your <head>
<script async custom-element="amp-iframe"
src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0/amp-iframe-0.1.js"></script>
Add an AMP iframe tag to the body at least 600px / 75% of first viewport from the top + add some values to the sandbox attribute of the iframe e.g.
sandbox="allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-
sandbox allow-forms"
List of attributes: w3schools.com/tags/att_iframe_sandbox.asp
Read this:
builtvisible.com/examining-traffic-amp-carousel
Get started with AMP
Download this:
pagefrog.com
Local search
50% of local searchers end up in store within a day
Search Engine Land
Local search at scale
Invest in a Location Management Platform (LMP) like
1. Update store data simultaneously across locations
2. Post content to all Facebook Locations / Google My Business pages simultaneously
3. Create store locator pages on-site / in-app with minimal input from developers
Find new ways touse old things
Paid search
Awkward
2.7m views 120k shares 6k tweets
Best practice= why, not how
Thin content
Video content
Subheadings
Internal links
Images
CTA
GOV.UK
Content length: 5,815
Links to page: 34
Ranking: 1
Questions answered: 1
When do the clocks go back?
The Mirror
Content length: 36,246
Links to page: 8,663
Ranking: 4
Questions answered: 0
Get started with a blog
Set up a site using WordPress.com
1. Add a CNAME record through your domain registrar
2. Go to WordPress.com/domains and click ‘Add Domain’ and then ‘Make Primary’
en.support.wordpress.com/map-subdomain/
Install Google Analytics
I'm not interested in stories about the past or any crap of that kind because the woods are burning, you
understand? There's a big blaze going on all around.
