Extreme Makeover: Site Architecture Edition

This document discusses internal linking strategies and techniques. It begins by explaining the benefits of connecting entities within content, rather than just words, and translating those connections into internal links. It then provides an overview of technologies like PageRank, the reasonable surfer algorithm, topical PageRank, chunking, and natural language processing that search engines use to understand contexts and how those ideas can be applied to internal linking at scale. Specific options for approaches to internal linking existing pages are also outlined.

The document discusses how content design impacts SEO and accessibility. It explains that content design means delivering information in the optimal format for users and search engines. It also discusses how users typically scan content in an "F" pattern and how to design content using headings, short paragraphs and other formatting to match this pattern. Well-designed content that provides a good user experience will be rewarded by Google through improved search rankings and user trust. Accessible content design benefits both disabled users and search engines by following best practices like using plain language and clear structuring.

This document discusses how AI and automation can revolutionize the SEO value chain. It argues that AI can enable a symbiotic relationship between SEO strategy and technical implementation by powering automated competitive analysis, strategy suggestions, and one-click fixes. This represents a new approach that can improve time-to-market and optimize implementation timescales through a no-code model.

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a site is allowed to request that Google crawls on a daily basis. It is important because exceeding the crawl budget can lead to pages not being indexed. The document provides tips on how to identify a site's current crawl rate, issues impacting crawl budget like errors and duplicate content, and strategies for optimizing demand and capacity such as improving site speed and creating fresh content regularly. The goal is identifying any crawl issues and optimizing the crawl budget to have the most important pages indexed.

The document discusses the challenges of scaling great content. It states that while scaling basic content is easy, scaling high-quality content is difficult. It recommends systematizing, standardizing, and streamlining content production processes to help overcome these challenges. This includes outlining processes, reviewing drafts, editing, and publishing content according to standardized steps.

The document discusses improving relationships between SEO and development teams. It recommends that SEOs communicate their technical priorities to developers, understand developers' workflows and limitations, and prioritize technical tasks based on their SEO impact and difficulty of implementation. The overall message is that SEOs and developers should collaborate to ensure technical optimizations are implemented effectively.

In this talk you will learn how search intent can help you benefit from the growing popularity of Google Discover. You’ll get actionable tips, a case study example and exclusive data from SEMrush.

This was a talk from BrightonSEO September 2021 and covers not only the importance of internal linking but also how to do it. It also covers a number of examples and additional tips.

Canonicalization is a process that webmasters use to tell search engines which URL is the preferred version for a page that may have duplicate content across different URLs. It helps search engines understand which version of a page should be considered the original and primary version for things like search rankings. Properly implementing canonicalization can help avoid duplicate content penalties and ensure the right URL receives credit in search results.

This document discusses how to build links that satisfy Google's E.A.T. (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines. It introduces the concepts of E.A.T. and explains why links that increase the linked page's perceived quality are more valuable. Specific linking strategies are presented such as guest blogging, Wikipedia links, and Google My Business citations. The key takeaway is that links following E.A.T. principles help pages by boosting their perceived quality in search engine algorithms.

We must have equality by now? Why unconscious bias in the agency world is holding you back. We still live in a world where your boss is more likely to be called Steve, than to be a woman. In the US, 48% of African American women report being mistaken for administrative or custodial staff, whilst in meetings women are interrupted 33 percent more often than men. Have you ever felt that your opinions and expertise are valued less that your colleagues, that you’re being talked over in meetings, or not invited to give your opinion? Sexism and discrimination has changed from being something blatant and obvious, to more of an undertone of challenge that makes life that little bit harder for certain sectors of the population. Men get more airtime in the boardroom, and women are more likely to get interrupted. It’s not always the unpleasant chauvinist who is being sexist, it can come from other women, or the man that you actually like and respect. This sort of unconscious bias leaves us experiencing self-doubt which negatively affects our performance, our confidence and chances of promotion. Yet often we can’t put our fingers on why we feel this way, because of its very nature being more discreet. Cheryl Luzet became fascinated about unconscious bias having experienced it herself running a marketing agency. From people assuming that her male staff member must be the boss, to having her opinions questioned and challenged by male clients – challenges that mysteriously disappear when a man backs them up. With real examples from agency life, Cheryl highlights the challenges that exist for anyone working in an agency, who doesn’t fit the white, male mould. This talk isn’t just for women, if you’re a man you absolutely need to attend to find out how unconscious bias has perpetuated society that we assume is now ‘equal’. Find out how you can help to support your female colleagues get an equal opportunity.

I want you to go away after this with a really clear view on why less definitely is more, what you can do to decide what actually is too much content to have on your site, and how to go about reducing the number of pages you’ve got. Ultimately, you’re here to find out how to reduce the amount of work you have to do in the long-run to get the same amount or more traffic.

The document outlines the three pillars of high performance teams: accountability, incrementality, and recognition. It discusses that accountability involves providing constructive feedback using frameworks like SBI (situation, behavior, impact). Incrementality means making many small improvements that aggregate to significantly boost performance, like improving site speed. Recognition means appreciating employees' intentions, behaviors, and results to boost engagement. Following these three pillars through the AIR framework can substantially improve team performance.

The deck presented at BrightonSEo April 2023 - Search Engines Beyond Google. An overview of the current Search Engine Landscape beyond Google, including the International search engines and some of the newly emerged web3/privacy-led Search Engines.

This document contains the transcript of a presentation about incorporating machine learning into internal linking audits. The presentation discusses analyzing a website's internal link structure using machine learning techniques like topic modeling and fuzzy matching to identify opportunities for new or improved internal links. It provides a 6-step process for discovery, analysis, clustering content by topic, identifying link opportunities, prioritizing where to link, and measuring the impact of implemented links. The goal is incremental improvements to internal linking that can boost SEO over time through better content organization and discoverability.

The slides from Tom Vaughton's talk at Brighton SEO April 2023. It focuses on how we need to rethink the traditional workspace and promote team wellbeing as well as productivity.

The document discusses applying neuroscience concepts to search engine optimization. It begins with an overview of the presenter's background in neuroscience and cognitive psychology. The presentation then covers topics like capturing attention, cognitive biases, heuristics in decision making, social proof, and the role of emotions. The goal is to optimize websites for users by understanding how the brain processes information, makes judgments and decisions. The key takeaway is that an effective SEO strategy puts the user's experience and needs at the forefront.

Information architecture is a vital component of website marketing that's often overlooked, either because it's not recognized as an issue, it's considered a "dev problem," or it's just too scary to tackle. But with a little help from AI and a healthy dose of common sense, you can give your users a more delightful experience and enable more efficient crawling without the headache. This is a repeatable process I used to audit, restructure, and significantly prune an aging content library of more than 6,000 URLs, plus a handful of practical tips to save hours of tedious work with low-lift AI tools. Presented at Pubcon in September 2023.

Learn how to overcome traditional challenges of Core Web Vitals static auditing through an interactive Data Studio report. The dashboard is a simple yet efficient approach, which enables tangible and actionable recommendations for all three metrics for a page-level, section-level, and site-level, making it suitable for large sites. The plug-and-play framework allows you to audit, communicate findings, and track progress, making stakeholder relations easier.

Things can add up over time when you migrate sites or have many legacy domains, subdomains and old code in a website. Signs of poor quality add up as incremental crawling never stops. This is akin to SEO technical debt which you need to repay to regain good site health and positive quality signals. You can't repay the debt all at once, but in iterative incremental steps over time.

People are the most important part of any system of Web Governance. Hire good people and they will generally find clever and innovative ways to get maximum bang for your buck. However, Roles and Responsibilities have not kept pace with changes in online activity. This has led to dangerous gaps in operations, as well as tension among staff due to competing claims over “who does what”. In this presentation, we explore how to restore ‘industrial peace’ by delivering the clear job descriptions your people need.