
The Quickest Wins in SEO - ianstormtaylor
https://segment.io/academy/the-quickest-wins-in-seo
======
andrenotgiant
> example.com/sitemap.xml should point search engines to interesting parts of
> your site.

Really, an XML Sitemap should be used to show Search Engines ALL pages on your
site, and should only be used when it can be dynamically updated via a CMS or
database that knows of all URLs. Don't even get me started about the idiocy of
using a random CRAWLER (e.g.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=xml%20sitemap%20generator>) to generate a
sitemap to be used by the best CRAWLER on the internet.

I know the tone of the post is informal, but this wouldn't be a HN comment
thread without some nit-picking.

~~~
james4k
Yeah, I think if it makes sense for the site, you should focus more on making
it fully crawlable. Generally, humans should be able to find all of your
content, too.

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joelrunyon
Also a quick win (ironically), don't use the .io extension unless you're
actively targeting the indian ocean territory because Google doesn't include
it in it's list of Generic TLDs.

See
[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922)

~~~
udfalkso
Is this actually an issue? I'm very doubtful.

~~~
walshemj
Yep and the physical location of the ip counts I had the devil of a time
getting a .ie site to rank in google uk a while back.

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butler14
The physical location of a server is increasingly less and less of an issue
(see: CDNs).

As you mention, though, ccTLD choice is another story entirely.

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martinshen
I just did a major SEO audit for our site. Changing title tags and h1 tags are
insanely important. It literally looked like we were hiding ourselves from
Google. I'll probably do a post soon about this on our/my blog.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Would love to read that when you do. I think I understand what the title tags
require, but I haven't heard about the h1. Is that just changing it to make
sure that the h1 is the title of the page instead of the site?

Also how does the HTML5 heading system (where you can have multiple h1s on a
page) affect SEO, do you know?

~~~
geargrinder
h1 is an indicator to the search engine that you consider that blurb/content
to be the most important on the page. So the h1 should be optimized for the
keywords you are trying to rank for. Also, if you have a bunch of h1 tags on a
single page, it can actually dilute the weight of your most important heading.
I recommend using just one h1 tag on a page to keep Google from having to
guess what is most important. I also recommend not using any other h tags on
the page for the same reason. Don't try to rank for a bunch of keywords on one
page. Instead, concentrate on one or related keywords per page and use h tags
to signal to the search engine what you think is most important.

Search engines are dumb. Make everything really obvious to them.

~~~
joelrunyon
Have you seen the effects of not using any other h tags on your site besides
the h1?

In my experience, I've seen the opposite. Well done h2s in fact, can really
boost a series of site's rankings.

~~~
geargrinder
Yes, I have seen the main keyword get boosted in the SERPs when other h* tags
are removed. I have seen this on multiple sites. This is not a rare technique
and other SEOs do it too.

No doubt your page also can get ranked using the normal h- hierarchy.

The point of this technique is to put as much value on the main keyword as
possible. Make it really obvious to the search engines what your page is
about. Your page may have other requirements, so use accordingly.

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viame
Probably one of the better SEO articles I have read in a while. I wish clients
could understand this.

Just want to point out that your Twitter share button should point to the
article's page (current page) not your main url.

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bennesvig
If you're looking for a free tool to analyze your site for
titles/descriptions/broken links/etc, Screaming Frog SEO is great.

~~~
halcyondaze
Second this, I actually pay for the yearly license and it's saved me far, far
more than it's cost in the first full site crawl I ever did with it :)

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lazyjones
No, healthy sites should not have 30-50% search traffic. If that's what you
have, you have too few regular users and are at high risk to lose a huge chunk
of your traffic and consequently business at the next _< random animal name>_
Google update.

Also, bear in mind that Google has acknowledged that keywords in URLs "help a
little", so this is a good SEO win that has (arguably) nothing to do with how
useful people find your content. It's much easier than putting effort into
better content, too.

~~~
joelrunyon
> No, healthy sites should not have 30-50% search traffic.

I'd argue this really depends on what type of set you're running (and what the
purpose is).

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walshemj
I agree even well know brad site say BBC NYT etc still get people searching
for brand terms "BBC" or "NYT" cos they are to lazy to type it in.

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bambax
Does PageRank mean anything?

HN apparently has a PR of only 6, while for example my blog, which doesn't get
a lot of traffic, has a PR of 5 (and even 5h on some pages).

PageRank used to be talked about a lot and now it seems it's not even
mentioned; is it still relevant?

~~~
lenazegher
It is still relevant, but in absolute terms it's a small portion of how pages
are ranked.

The PR of the HN homepage is probably pretty irrelevant as I doubt it gets
much traffic from organic search for anything other than "hacker news".

The PR of your blog homepage has to be taken in context for the type of search
terms it might rank for (and remember that PR is for pages, not domains - the
PR of your homepage will be different from the PR of each blog article).

If your blog was about vegan-friendly fondue recipes, a PR of 5 might indicate
you had a link profile which meant you ranked highly because there likely
isn't a great deal of competition in that particular niche.

If your blog was about dating tips, a PR of 5 wouldn't really indicate
anything by itself because it's a really competitive niche.

~~~
frankacter
and apparently "ryan dahl", "how to get stolen domain back" and "overhead
walks on two legs" :-p

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Theodores
This is still 'SEO 1.0' stuff. If you have something to sell, i.e. an
e-commerce site, or if you have a recipe, or if you have a large collection of
flora and fauna, the quickest win is to use semantic markup - 'SEO 2.0'. Let
The Search Engine (Google) know what is description, title, price, currency,
size, weight and so on with semantic markup tags and you are presenting The
Search Engine with information that can be made sense of. Otherwise it is just
throwing more needles in the haystack.

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TheSisb2
Micro formats are underrated and simple to achieve:
<http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page>

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junto
This is a really good point. Google actually has a really good tool for
testing this: <http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets>

Here is an example:
[http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http...](http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.simply-
watches.co.uk%2Fdeal%2Fthe-brilliant-gift-shop%2Fcitizen-eco-drive-gents-
titanium-watch-683425725&html=)

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ibudiallo
I have been looking for a way into marketing for a while and I am glad i you
posted this. I ran my website through hubspot and i found many wholes that
could increase my visibility when fixed.

Thank you for sharing

