Patrick Stox - What I learned from auditing over 1,000,000 websites

Transcript

1. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect What I learned from auditing over 1,000,000 websites Presented by: Patrick Stox
2. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Who Is Patrick Stox? Product Advisor & Technical SEO @ Ahrefs Writing • Ahrefs SEO book • Ahrefs blog • Lead Author: SEO Chapter of the Web Almanac 2021 • Technical Review Editor of the Art of SEO 4th edition Community • Founded a Technical SEO slack group • /r/TechSEO moderator on Reddit • Organize Tech SEO Connect, Raleigh SEO Meetup, Raleigh SEO Conference, Beer & SEO Meetup • Defined the role of SEO for the US Department of Labor
3. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect
4. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Full Data http://bit.ly/ahrefs-site-audit-study
5. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect
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7. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Entire Deck on Hreflang Issues With Insights https://bit.ly/ahrefs-hreflang-study
8. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect The Most Common Issues Weren’t The Most Important Issues
9. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Prioritization is Hard Use an Impact / Effort Matrix
10. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Different Variables Impact Prioritization
11. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 1: Broken Pages Question 1: How many hits? Question 2: How many links?
12. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Business Logic For Broken Pages Question 1: How many hits? If >X Hits in 30 days, Redirect Question 2: How many links? If >Y Links or >Z RDs, Redirect
13. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Free Full-Text Matching Redirect Script https://bit.ly/ahrefs-redirect-script
14. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Did The Redirects Exist Before? Keep them at least one year
15. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 2: Multiple H1 Tags This is allowed in HTML5 The question: Are they relevant or not?
16. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 3: Broken Images How many hits to the page? Fix broken images on important pages.
17. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Some SEOs Prioritize Things Too High
18. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 1: Duplicate Content Indexed one way or another
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20. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Canonicalization Google is pretty good at figuring it out
21. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 2: Orphan Pages If you didn’t link to them, how much do you really care?
22. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 3: Whatever The Newest Thing Is • Mobile Friendliness • Core Web Vitals • Etc.
23. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Some Things You Shouldn’t Worry About
24. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 1: Redirect Chains Google will follow up to 10 hops. I don’t worry til >5 hops.
25. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 2: Double Slash in URL Ignored by browsers and search engines.
26. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 3: Hreflang • Underscore (_) instead of dash (-) • en-uk instead of en-gb
27. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Focus on ROI No major site is technically perfect To get there would be a waste of money
28. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Work At Scale & Take Easy Wins
29. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 1: Content Security Policy (CSP) upgrade-insecure-requests This will fix all your mixed content issues
30. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect In .htaccess: <ifModule mod_headers.c> Header always set Content-Security-Policy "upgrade-insecure-requests;" </IfModule>
31. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 2: Alt Attributes Counts as normal text on the page. Accessibility issue. Potential legal issue.
32. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Example 3: Fully(?) Automate Redirects Pull data for hits & RDs for pages that 404. Find the next best match. Write the redirect rules, or make it so someone can implement with a click.
33. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect What You Should Care About
34. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Pages Not Indexed That Should Be
35. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Internal Links
36. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Maybe: Page-Level Nofollow Nofollows all links, including internal links. Maybe on UGC pages. There’s a chance that Google counts these now and hasn’t told us
37. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Redirects – Reclaim Lost Links
38. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Hreflang The most expensive issue I ever worked on. It cost millions of dollars a day.
39. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Some JavaScript Issues Example: Content not DOM loaded by default
40. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect We’re in Exciting Times
41. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Everyone Can Prototype New Ideas
42. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Instant Notifications
43. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect JavaScript / Cloudflare Workers JavaScript snippets let you change things on the client side. Workers let you change content before it’s served to bots or users
44. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Edge + AI Automate all most of the things! • Titles • Meta Descriptions • Alt Attributes • Meta Robots • Redirects • Flatten Redirect Chains • Etc.
45. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect What’s Next?
46. @patrickstox @ahrefs #techseoconnect Thank You! Try Ahrefs Site Auditor Free ahrefs.com/awt