The talk I gave at the Digital Marketing Show on 19th November 2015. The starting point of any SEO effort is helping the search engines crawl, understand and index your site. Even with the furore around ever-changing link & content signals, technical SEO's increasing sophistication of options, plus continued importance of fundamentals, means it should kick off every campaign. At this talk we'll cover technical SEO mistakes we see affiliate sites make, under-the-bonnet checks all sites should have & tools to do the job that will suit every affiliate marketers budget. Google might be getting more clever, but we still need to give them a guiding hand…

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A guide for affiliates;
Navigating the technical SEO minefield
Digital Marketing Show
19th November 2015

2. 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 recognition
Engagement
(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 ranking
Is the prerequisite to play SEO:
Technical SEO

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It supports other marketing/SEO work
doing 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 like
a shop…
Your content is your staff, site
design the shop building
& technical SEO the layout & signage

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

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15 technical fundamentals
That you can check on your site

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15 technical fundamentals
That you can check on your site
& 2 bonus proactive optimisations

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Tools
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
Webmaster & crawler

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1. Technical SEO right now
How successful are you right
now? What does Google think
of 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 tag
Remove 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.txt
Showing 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.txt
2. See if warnings
appear
3. 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 your
URLs are noindexed

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5. XML sitemaps
A 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 errors
Issues search engines, &
users, have crawling your
site

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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 errors
If 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 linking
Showing 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 1
So many ways to reach one page

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URL Parameters
test.com/vs.
test.com/sort=price
Trailing Slash
test.com/vs.
test.com
Index variation
test.com/index.html
www vs non-www
test.com/vs.
www.test.com/
test.com/
responsetester.appspot.com

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10. Duplicate content part 2
Products in many
categories

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What do I mean?

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An example

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Say hello to
this guy

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11. Duplicate content part 3
Manufacturer descriptions

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

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<link rel="canonical"
href="http://example.com/blog" />
https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

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Rel=canonical tags
Ian Lurie
Portent 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 pages
Created to rank highly for
specific search queries
- make you click again to
get what you actually need

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Mentions affiliate traffic
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.
co.uk/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-
pages.html
https://support.google.com/webma
sters/answer/2721311

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14. Page speed
Nobody likes a slow website
47% of consumers
• 40% abandon a website that
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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14. Page speed
Nobody likes a slow website
• 40% abandon a website that

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47% of consumers
• 40% abandon a website that
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 users
audience searches
15. Mobile
Being 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.html
https://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. Schema
Semantic 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-231077
http://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 testing
Eye-opening insight into what
your audience wants from your

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https://www.usertesting.com/product/videos-and-metrics
Audio, visual & written feedback
Starts @ $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 SLIDES
http://whdot.net/dms-2015

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THANK YOU
Questions?
charlie (at) white.net
@pagesauce