This document provides quick SEO wins that can make a difference. It suggests examining a site's domain portfolio history and technical details. Opportunities include cleaning up old subdomains, redirecting domains to use the same IP, and ensuring SSL certificates are valid for redirects. Internal links should avoid 301 redirects. External links may need realigning to updated URLs. Technical checks involve implementation of schema, canonicals, and other metadata. Reusing old content like guest posts or chopping infographics can create new pages.

1. QUICK WINS FOR SEO
(THAT MAKE A
DIFFERENCE)
Richard Baxter
Founder
richard@builtvisible.com

3. The aggregation of marginal gains
Dave Brailsford / Team SKY
Src: http://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains

4. Quick Wins
Small things that make a big difference

5. It’s all in the history.

6. What do you know about the domain
portfolio associated with this site?

10. What do you know about the technical
history of your site?
Change of domains?
Staging / dev server address?
Subdomains?

11. Change of Address vs a 301’d domain
Go here: http://builtvisible.com/change-of-address/ - date ranges aligned in charts so that’s why one is tiny!

12. Clean-up old subdomains:
Redirect or remove
− Redirect out unnecessary sub-domains
− Maybe just rel canonical them!
− Robots.txt and remove necessary (dev) domains via GWMT

13. This isn’t the
host’s fault, it’s
yours!

14. Things that are hard to test but I think
they’re important:
−Redirected domains should use
same IP as target host
−Match WHOIS records between
domains
−Deal with errors at the source

15. Address Errors on Legacy
Domains / Sub Domains
− I think managing errors at the source makes a difference
Builtvisible.com errors Caused by a subdomain redirect:

16. Remember legacy https!
− Without a valid SSL cert on an old domain, you can’t redirect 301 requests
https://seogadget.co.uk >> https://builtvisible.com/
This needs to stay
valid for the
redirect to be
possible…

17. Still not sure if there’s any
legacy stuff indexed?
− site:yourdomain.nl
“show me all pages indexed on this
domain”
− site:yourdomain.nl –inurl:www
“show me all pages indexed on this
domain without www”

18. − site:competitordomain.co.uk -inurl:www inurl:subdomain
− “show me all of this agency’s clients”
Robots.txt
doesn’t matter
if you’re linking
to your dev
server all over
the place!

19. Internal links

20. Read: http://builtvisible.com/link-equity-and-crawl-efficiency-maintenance/

21. Internal 301s are bad…

22. Internal 301 Redirects Are *BAD*
− “HTML5 Examples” – removed all tag / category links
Oops

23. Pages w/few internal links
Sort by
lowest

24. Look for redirect chains
Moz links here
Additional
redirect

26. Spot the difference
− http://seogadget.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-to-generating-rich-
snippets/
− http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-to-generating-rich-
snippets/
− http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-
snippets/

27. Spot the difference
− http://seogadget.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-to-generating-rich-
snippets/
− http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-to-generating-rich-
snippets/
− http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-
snippets/

28. Why?
− We’d migrated to the new site and a bunch of pages had their stop words removed
because of this setting:

29. − http://seogadget.co.uk/how-to-install-virtualbox/
− http://builtvisible.com/how-to-install-virtualbox/
− http://builtvisible.com/how-install-virtualbox/

30. Use Link Equity: Top Pages

32. External links

33. Links to old domains to realign

34. People linking to the wrong
subdomain: your WWW

36. Realign those links!

37. Linked to 404
This URL
redirects to
home and should
point elsewhere

38. The power of your best links
− Update with new URLs /
domains
− Realign anchors to branded
− Promote inbound links and
strengthen them with new
links

39. Fast analysis with URL Profiler

40. Fast find + disavow directory links
Get the contact details of your competitor’s inlinks

41. I wonder if the people
who link here, know
about this

45. Contacts!

46. Fast find + disavow directory
links
− Search title for “directory” sort by external links. You’re looking for no external links, on
very low DA sites with competitive anchors. Suggest for disavow.

47. aHrefs: search + sort

48. Suggest a disavow

49. “Link Intersect” done Right
− Find sites that link to your
social profiles but not your
sites
− Don’t forget your old social
account URLs
− DEFINITELY check your
Slideshare URL…

51. Find quick content opportunities
Identify content to redevelop

52. Start simple: Identify Strong Pages
Read: http://builtvisible.com/start-simple/

53. − In top 20
pages on
our site
− This
content
desperatel
y needs
updating

55. Check internal site search
− “schema cheat
sheet” was
creating a 404
page (no
results!)
− Identify
popular terms
with high exit
rate and fix by
adding terms
into correct
pages

56. Re-use old Guest Posts
I wrote this 5 years ago.
Mild rewrite an
republish, it outranks
the original

57. Chop up old infographics
− PSD to HTML
− Fiddle around with jQuery
− Dig out & republish the original research in a blog post

58. Do a survey and take the story:

59. Assorted quick wins

60. Images
http://www.imageraider.com/

61. Unlinked mentions
− Go deeper, don’t just look for brand, look for product mentions, your CEO etc
− Use talkwalker / fresh web explorer / mention / ahrefs alerts

62. Technical Checks

63. Technical Checks
− Implement article mark-up / search action schema
− Check for canonical / meta headers / href lang / robots index, follow
− OGP/ Twitter card
− Check www and trailing slash redirects and duplicates
− Do this: http://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
− Read this: http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-
generating-rich-snippets/

64. Be curious. Find it, and optimise!

65. THANK YOU
Richard Baxter
CEO
richard@builtvisible.com