JB Articles

Avoid Broken Links and Server Errors on Your Site

What it is

Broken links are those that result in a 404 File Not Found or 403 Forbidden Status code. In both cases, a visitor has clicked a link and been taken to a page where content is either not found or inaccessible.

Why it matters

Broken links are a usability issue and a negative quality signal. Missing content can also result in SEO value being lost from old but valuable and well-linked content

XML Sitemap, Robots.txt, and Hreflang Tags

What it is

Two key tools for helping search engines understand and properly index your website are an XML sitemap file and Robots.txt file.

• XML sitemap: An XML document that shows search engines the overall structure and inter-relationship of content on your site.
• Robots.txt: File declaring what should be excluded from indexing. 

Why it matters

In combination both files should provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of what content you want a search engine to index and how it is organized.

Structured Data and Render Checking

What is structured data?

Structured Data markup allows you to provide search engines with content level organizational information. (see examples below).

Why it matters

Making use of structured data help search engines parse content and display it inline in search engine results pages, leading to richer and more interesting results that usually see higher click through rates. 

Load Speed and Mobile Compatibility

Speed / Load Time

Good page load times are an often underrated (and increasingly important) SEO signal as well as vital for usability reasons. Recently Google made the change to ‘mobile-first’ indexing, making load times on mobile devices more important than ever. See here for how speed relates to SEO. 

Internal Duplicate Content

One of the most common technical problems we see is duplicate and near-duplicate content. Often this arises from faceted navigation systems, for example the color, size, or style selection dropdowns or tick boxes on ecommerce sites.

How to Avoid External Duplicate Content

In addition to site features and configuration issues that can generate duplicate content listings, there are additional external factors that can cause similar issues.

Review embedding

It is known that providing reviews for products and services can be a highly effective quality signal to potential customers. Leveraging things like google or amazon reviews makes good sense from a conversion standpoint.

Additional Considerations: WCAG Compliance and Downtime

What it is

The time your site spends unreachable by users due to technical issues (e.g. server crash).

Why it matters

While no one thinks having your site down is good, it’s often under-appreciated just how bad it can be for SEO. Downtime is a serious negative quality signal for search engines. As a business they specialize in sending users to high-value content. If your site is down, this represents a significant loss to their credibility and value for their customers. Downtime matters more than you might think!

Root Domains and SSL

There are several common configuration options that can lead to issues if not addressed and made consistent.

www vs. non-www

Both a www and non-www version of pages can be live and accessible. It doesn’t typically matter which version is used as long as one is selected and made canonical. 

In cases where both are/have been in use, prior to standardizing this, check to see which version holds greater domain authority and inbound links.

Keyword Phrases & Difficulty

What can keyword research tell me about target terms?

As the choices made at this stage will underpin all future on-site SEO efforts, high quality research is vital. For example, we would seek to understand the way geographical terms are used by the target market, and at what level. Do people search for ‘chocolate donuts usa’, ‘chocolate donuts new york’, ‘chocolate donuts in brooklyn’,  ‘chocolate donuts near me’, or none of those?

Competing Successfully in SEO

What is the big picture for SEO success?

Content-level SEO is the compliment to technical SEO (i.e. software level implementation and considerations for managing crawl budget and ensuring your content avoids negative quality signals).

While SEO can be complex, the three items below are the most important. They are like fruits, vegetables, and exercise. Even if the research/news in health seems like it’s changing all the time, these things are always a good idea: