Technical SEO for News Publishers

Technical SEO for News Publishers Barry Adams News & Editorial
SEO Summit - Oct 2021 NewsSEO.io

@badams

@badams @badams Why Technical SEO?

@badams @badams Google Processes Crawler Indexer Ranker

@badams @badams Google Processes Crawler Indexer Ranker Technical SEO

@badams @badams 1. Crawler (Googlebot) Crawler Indexer Ranker

@badams @badams 1. Crawler (Googlebot) ➢ URL discovery ➢ URL
prioritisation ➢ URL de-duplication ➢ Queue management ➢ HTTP response parsing ➢ TTFB monitoring ➢ Resource management ➢ … ? Crawler

@badams @badams Priority for News Publishers ✓ Rapid crawling of
newly published articles Crawler

@badams @badams Optimise Crawling (1) • Fast server response time

@badams @badams Load Speed Fast response time = optimal use
of Googlebot

@badams GSC Crawl Stats

@badams @badams Optimise Crawling (2) • Serve correct HTTP status
codes ➢ 200 OK ➢ 301 / 302 Redirects ➢ 304 Not Modified ➢ 401 / 403 Permission Issues ➢ 404 / 410 Not Found/Gone ➢ 5xx Error

@badams @badams Optimise Crawling (3) • ALL resources consume crawl
budget ➢ Not just HTML pages ➢ Reduce HTTP requests per page • Google AdsBot can consume crawl budget ➢ Double-check your Google Ads campaigns • Link equity (PageRank) impacts crawl budget ➢ More link equity = more crawl budget

@badams @badams 2. Indexer Crawler Indexer Ranker

@badams @badams 2. Indexer Indexer ➢ Index selection ➢ HTML
tokenisation & parsing ➢ Rendering (+++) ➢ Meta tag processing ➢ Canonicalisation ➢ Index sanitation ➢ Calculating PageRank ➢ Quality evaluations ➢ … ?

@badams @badams Priority for News Publishers Indexer ✓ Flawless indexing
of articles

@badams Indexing = Extraction + Semantics

@badams @badams Extraction Can Google easily extract an article’s content
from the DOM?

@badams @badams Optimise Extraction (1) • Clean HTML; ➢ Yes,
really! ➢ There is a max HTML size Google will parse - Speculation: ~1 MB ➢ Less clutter = easier parsing

@badams @badams Optimise Extraction (2) • Clean <head>; ➢ Critical
meta tags high in the <head> - Title & description - Open Graph - Canonical, hreflang & mobile alternate - Structured Data ➢ Internal CSS & JS lower in the <head>

@badams @badams Optimise Extraction (3) • Uninterrupted article HTML; ➢
Article to start at <h1> headline and continue in one clean block of HTML ➢ Bells & whistles can be added via CSS and client- side JS

@badams @badams Semantics Can Google understand what the article is
about?

@badams @badams Optimise Semantics • Well-written content; ➢ Easily identifiable
entities and relationships • Semantic HTML; ➢ Enables Google to separate style & boilerplate from content • Structured Data; ➢ Makes page contents explicitly clear

@badams Test Entities in Content Google NLP API: https://cloud.google.com/natural-language

@badams @badams Core Web Vitals

@badams @badams Page Experience

@badams @badams Core Web Vitals https://web.dev/vitals/

@badams

@badams @badams https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/104436075

@badams @badams Search Off The Record podcast https://pod.link/1512522198

@badams @badams Impact?

@badams @badams https://www.sistrix.com/blog/core-web-vitals-is-a-measurable-ranking-factor/

@badams @badams

@badams @badams Core Web Vitals & AMP • CWV are
measured from the page version a user interacts with; ➢ This is often the AMP version • AMP has a performance cheat advantage; ➢ Preloading & prerendering from the AMP Cache • AMP no longer required for Top Stories on mobile; ➢ Does this mean non-AMP can rank?

@badams @badams Non-AMP = ~27% https://www.newzdash.com/guide/amp-tracker

@badams @badams The Future of Tech SEO

@badams @badams IndexNow https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/october-2021/IndexNow- Instantly-Index-your-web-content-in-Search-Engines

@badams @badams Live Indexing API https://developers.google.com/search/apis/indexing-api/v3/quickstart

@badams @badams Structured Data Constantly evolving schemas New rich snippets
in SERPs https://sitebulb.com/structured-data-history/

@badams @badams Structured Data • ‘author.url’ now recommended in Article
SD

@badams @badams Edge SEO https://dantaylor.online/edge-seo/

@badams @badams https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/blog/edge-seo/

@badams @badams A/B Testing https://www.searchpilot.com/

@badams @badams Less hassle with JavaScript

@badams @badams Better GSC Reports More useful info to empower
SEOs & Devs

@badams @badams Better Google Documentation

@badams @badams My Tech SEO Tools

@badams @badams SEO Crawlers • DeepCrawl https://www.deepcrawl.com/ • Sitebulb https://sitebulb.com/
• Screaming Frog https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

@badams @badams SEO Review & Monitoring • Little Warden https://littlewarden.com/
• SEO Info https://weeblr.com/doc/products.seoinfo/current/overview/ • SEOBrowse https://seobrowse.com/

@badams @badams Performance Analysis • PageSpeed Insights https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ • WebPagetest.org
https://www.webpagetest.org/ • GTmetrix https://gtmetrix.com/

@badams https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/p/tech-optimisation-articles

@badams @badams Barry Adams ➢ Doing SEO since 1998 ➢
Specialist in News SEO & Tech SEO ➢ Newsletter: SEOforGoogleNews.com

@badams @badams I’ve Worked With…

@badams @badams Thank You! [email protected] twitter.com/badams

Technical SEO for News Publishers

Technical SEO for News Publishers

More Decks by Barry Adams

Other Decks in Marketing & SEO

Featured

Transcript