Redefining Technical SEO - Paul Shapiro at MozCon 2019

Catalyst's Head of SEO, Paul Shapiro, presents on redefining technical SEO at MozCon 2019.

1. REDEFINING Technical SEO @ fighto

2. @ fighto

3. SEO PILLARS What is SEO? SEO RELEVANCE AUTHORITY & TRUST WEBSITE INFRASTRUCTURE (And Search Engine Accessibility)

4. IN PRACTICE SEO PILLARS SEO CONTENT STRATEGY DIGITAL PR & LINK BUILDING “TECHNICAL SEO”

5. Unlearning © akg -images / Johann Brandstetter

6. Unlearning

7. Unlearning

8. Oversimplification SEO

9. WEBSITE INFRASTRUCTURE (And Search Engine Accessibility) “TECHNICAL SEO”

10. When most people discuss technical SEO CRAWL INDEX RANK

11. When most people discuss technical SEO CRAWL INDEX RENDER RANK

12. X

13. Most of the Way There

14. CMS Usage Wordpress Wordpress

15. Technical SEO? Most modern CMSs do the heavy lifting of technical SEO. The barrier of getting technical SEO to “good enough” in some ways is much lower than getting content right in most cases.

16. @ fighto https://searchengineland.com/role-technical-seo-makeup-really-2518351

17. LET’S REDEFINE TECHNICAL SEO

18. TECHNICAL SEO? WHAT IS Any sufficiently technical action undertaken with the intent to improve search results. Russ Jones, Principle Search Scientist, Moz , at TechSEO Boost 2017 ” ”

19. Types of Technical SEO CHECKLIST TECHNICAL SEO GENERAL TECHNICAL SEO BLURRED-RESPONSIBILITY TECHNICAL SEO ADVANCED APPLIED TECHNICAL SEO

20. Types of Technical SEO CHECKLIST TECHNICAL SEO GENERAL TECHNICAL SEO BLURRED-RESPONSIBILITY TECHNICAL SEO ADVANCED APPLIED TECHNICAL SEO

21. TECHNICAL SEO CHECKLIST Does the page have a canonical tag? Is the canonical tag crawlable and correctly formatted? Is the canonical tag directed at the desired URL? If canonical tag destination is self-referencing, should it be? Does the destination URL include a parameter that it should not? Are there conflicting signals with the canonical tag? Is the destination URL crawlable and accessible? YES YES YES NO NO NO YES

22. TECHNICAL SEO CHECKLIST

23. Types of Technical SEO CHECKLIST TECHNICAL SEO GENERAL TECHNICAL SEO BLURRED-RESPONSIBILITY TECHNICAL SEO ADVANCED APPLIED TECHNICAL SEO

24. TECHNICAL SEO General Crawling, Indexing, Rendering Insights Are Difficult to Automate Higher Skill Work Examples: Finding and correcting obscure crawler traps generated by CMS bug Designing maximally crawlable , taxonomically sound site architecture Internal linking analysis SSR Design Etc.

25. Types of Technical SEO CHECKLIST TECHNICAL SEO GENERAL TECHNICAL SEO BLURRED-RESPONSIBILITY TECHNICAL SEO ADVANCED APPLIED TECHNICAL SEO

26. TECHNICAL SEO Blurry-Responsibility Examples: Web Performance Optimization Internal Site Search Design Structured Data Advanced Analytics Implementation Etc. UX? Front End Web Development? CRO?

27. Types of Technical SEO CHECKLIST TECHNICAL SEO GENERAL TECHNICAL SEO BLURRED-RESPONSIBILITY TECHNICAL SEO ADVANCED APPLIED TECHNICAL SEO

28. TECHNICAL SEO Advanced, Applied Examples: SEO testing Adoption of new technologies that effect search (potentially may be a blurry-lined item) Data science for SEO purposes NLP to enhance content development Use of ML for search data Automation

29. “All SEO can be technical SEO!”

30. Defying Traditional Technical SEO Examples

31. Link Development

32. Expired Domains What it Does Takes outlink report from Screaming Frog Distills URLs to Domains Runs Moz Linkscape API against the list for PA & DA Checks HTTP Status Code Runs WHOIS API to see if domain is available https://gist.github.com/pshapiro/a86dc340f57c38fc22d0545ddec1fc9e

33. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

34. On-Page SEO

35. Optimize On-Page with Google Entity Extraction Enable Google NLP API Input SERP data, either via CSV, or rank tracking API Download all ranking pages and remove boilerplate content Run Google API to isolate entities, count frequencies, and determine document salience https://gist.github.com/pshapiro/754ce79565f0baea702f8ada9a03c55d

36. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

37. Content Ideation

38. Reddit for Niche Content Insights Input reddit login credentials Specify output CSV Specify sorting method Specify specific or all subreddits Enter a series of keywords (e.g., “how to”, “where can I”, “board games”, etc.) Analyze https://searchwilderness.com/reddit-python-code/

39. Search Volume

40. Reddit Upvotes

41. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

42. Content Ideation Continued

43. YouTube Subtitles for Content Ideas Input YouTube Playlist URL Download all auto-generated subtitles Remove stopwords Do frequency analysis on text Analyze https ://gist.github.com/pshapiro/e9a2388a2d527c00fb66b57d429b9ed0

44. MozCon 2016 YouTube Playlist

45. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

46. Automation

47. Automatic Wayback Machine 301 Mapping Find all historic URLs from Wayback Machine API Extract text without boilerplate content from current website Extract text from Wayback Machine archives without boilerplate content Compare old and new content with spaCy’s pre-trained CNN Analyze https://gist.github.com/pshapiro/15c6733e2ff17c73f69f0b38eaaded10

48. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

49. Bulk Meta Descriptions

50. Semi-Automated Meta Descriptions Input a list of URL into source text file Specify output file Use various text summarization methods to create brief descriptions of the pages Receive CSV Edit descriptions accordingly https://gist.github.com/pshapiro/fe8b0c9cfd57481dfb8e247aacd06c18

51. https://searchwilderness.com/tools/pixel-length/

52. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

53. Keyword Research

54. Persona-Based Keyword Research Create a generic crosstab report in HitWise AudienceView with default demographic and psychographic data Input list of keywords Browser simulate with Selenium Get CSV with data compared to general online population Create personas for keyword research https ://gist.github.com/pshapiro/15c6733e2ff17c73f69f0b38eaaded10

55. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

56. Dashboard / Reporting Automation

57. Storing Search Data for Reporting Dashboards Search Console as Example Download search query data via API and store in SQL database Incorporate all data sources together and manipulate them accordingly Schedule collections Display data with dashboarding software (Tableau, Google Data Studio, Power BI, etc.) https://searchwilderness.com/gwmt-data-python/#searchanalytics

58. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

59. A/B Testing & Experimenting for SEO

60. Conducting SEO Experiments WHY: Far too often, SEOs recommend thing based on the status-quo, best practices, theory, and pre-conceived notions. Experimentation can produce huge lift. Often, some of the largest lift . Experimentation can help us better understand how the search engines work. HOW: Writing testing specs and documentation Follow scientific method Measure before, after, and attempt to isolate anomalies

61. Subject Website Example – Title Tags Test Group 1: Control – Title Tags Unchanched Amazon.com : Generic 265D Lee Goal White Butterfly Pink Flowers Pattern Lace Bamboo Handheld Folding Fans For Girls Women, Blue, One Size: Home & Kitchen Amazon.com : Microfiber Cleaning Cloths, 5 Pack, Blue, All-Purpose Reusable Dust Cloths, Machine Washable: Home & Kitchen Test Group 2: Variant A – {Product} | {Brand.com } Cnlinkco Pastoral Floral Printed Sleeveless Vintage Mini Dress: Clothing | Amazon.com 18 X 18 Inch Cotton Linen Retro Vintage Home Decorative Indoor/Outdoor Throw Cushion Cover / Pillow Sham | Amazon.com Test Group 2: Variant B – {Brand.com} Removed Amazon.com: John Lennon Inspired Sunglasses Round Hippie Shades Retro Colored Lenses (Purple Ice): Clothing Amazon.com : AMTOK Blackhead Remover Kit Curved Blackhead Tweezers Kit Pimple Comedone Extractor Tool Set Dermatologist Grade Kit Treatment for Blemish , Zit Popper (Tweezers Kit Rose Gold): Beauty Test Group 2: Variant C – {Brand} (.com removed ) Amazon .com : Apple Watch Screen Protector (42mm Series 3/2/1 Compatible)[6-Pack], DeltaShield BodyArmor Full Coverage Screen Protector for Apple Watch Military-Grade Clear HD Anti-Bubble Film: Toys & Games Amazon .com : Kate Aspen LOVE Chrome Bottle Stopper, Silver/Pink: Kitchen & Dining

62. https://codeascraft.com/2016/10/25/seo-title-tag-optimization/

63. https://gist.github.com/pshapiro/3944b7e05e9b976cb4fc991af22ad584

64. Search Engine Behavior Example – JavaScript Writing Over Navigation URL #1 = nonsenselala.html Unique KW = ‘ BagelHammersh ’ Pg. 1 Feature A Hidden Content = (Nonsense/ “unique” text) “ BlahDehBlehFoo ” Feature B Hidden Link = ‘ FooFeeFoGround ’ Pg. 2 URL #2 = madeupwordisfoo.html Unique Kw = ‘ SomethingSumthang ’

65. TECHNICAL SEO STATUS:

66. Common Thread: Coding is a Fundamental Skill for Advanced, Applied Technical SEO @ fighto

67. TECHNICAL SEO General Crawling, Indexing, Rendering Insights Are Difficult to Automate Higher Skill Work Examples: Finding and correcting obscure crawler traps generated by CMS bug Designing maximally crawlable , taxonomically sound site architecture Internal linking analysis SSR Design Etc.

68. “Invest in Technical SEOs, Not Technical SEO” @ fighto

69. Hiring Technical SEOs People adept at utilizing their technical aptitude and skills to aid, improve, and enhance both technical and non-technical SEO tasks .

70. How to Hire Techical SEOs Look for Similar Traits of Good Engineers: It’s not all about the code Strong ability to problem solve and think critically Ability to communicate about and explain complex, technical topics Creative

71. How to Train/Learn Coding Don’t fixate too much on the language, learn the logic If you need to pick a language Data Analysis Emphasis Web Development Emphasis

72. How to Train/Learn Coding Have practical goals to work toward. Don’t learn for the sake of learning. Apply. Build something. Leverage online tutorials, MOOCs, Codecademy , etc. Don’t be afraid to look to examples on GitHub, StackOverflow You don’t have to do everything yourself if you have the resources and understand the logic

73. CONTENT > TECHNICAL SEO?

74. CONTENT < TECHNICAL SEO?

75. Redfined SEO CONTENT STRATEGY DIGITAL PR & LINK BUILDING TECHNICAL SEO Technical SEO

76. TECHNICAL SEOs @ fighto

77. https://www.catalystdigital.com/techseoboost/