Description
Introduction o What Is Technical (tech) SEO? o Beyond SEO… o Why This Book? Chapter 1: Crawling & Indexing o Chapter goal: This chapter reviews what bots are, how bots work and how bots crawl a website. The main focus of the chapter is on how bots can be controlled and managed. o Sub-sections: What Are Search Robots? Search Robot Operations What Is Crawl Budget Optimization? What Is Mobile-First Indexing? Methods to Guide Robots Disallow: Robots.txt Noindex: Meta Robots Using Noindex and Disallow Index or Noindex? Disallow or Allow? Forbidding Access Handling Staging Environments Don’t Block JavaScript (JS), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), or Images Meta Robots Nofollow Follow or Nofollow, and Page Sculpting Link Qualifiers and Rel Nofollow X-Robots Tag Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Crawling and Indexing Chapter 2: URL & Domain Structure o Chapter goal: This chapter covers a website’s URL structure affects SEO, including the specific tactics to use to enforce URL choices on a website. o Sub-sections: What Are the Parts of a URL? What Is a Canonical URL? What Is a Canonical Domain? Selecting a Canonical Domain HTTPS Protocol and SSL Certificates Should my Domain Use WWW or Non-WWW? Enforcing a Canonical Domain Should a Website’s Pages be Located on a Subdomain? Should Individual Pages be in the Root Directory or in Folders? Should Individual Pages be a File or a Subfolder? What Is Excessive Folderization? Optimizing a Page’s URL Using a Trailing Slash Duplication Resulting from Query Strings Duplication from Multiple Query Strings Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: URL and Domain Structure Chapter 3: Content Structure o Chapter goal: This chapter summarizes the best ways to address content issues, like duplicate content or thin content. More generally, the chapter reviews the best ways to deliver content to bots. o Sub-sections: Title Meta Description Header Tags Image Alt Text SVG Alt Text Rendering Content Rendering and Robots What Is Dynamic Rendering? What Is a Noscript Tag? Pagination Infinite Scrolling and Load More What Is Duplicate Content? Why Does Duplicate Content Present a Problem? Examples of Duplicate Content What Is a Canonical URL? Other Ways to Resolve Duplicate Content… What Are Thin Content Pages / Doorway Pages / Cookie-Cutter Pages / Low-Quality Content? Low-Quality Content Problems What Are Orphaned Pages? Multilingual Websites and Pages International Page Variations Language Defaults Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Content Structure Chapter 4: Schema & Structured Data Markup o Chapter goal: This chapter discusses schema and how it can be used to help bots understand a website’s content, as well as specific questions about schema can be coded. o Sub-sections: What Is Schema Markup? How Does Schema Improve SEO Performance? Does Schema Markup Help a Page Rank? Does Google Have to Use Schema Markup? Can Schema Markup Cause Manual Actions? JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa What Schema Code to Use? What Are the Main Parts of Schema Markup Code? Example: Organization Schema Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Schema Markup Chapter 5: Sitemaps o Chapter goal: XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps are important aspects of technical SEO but often forgotten about or neglected. This chapter recaps how to keep sitemaps clean and why sitemaps matter more generally. o Sub-sections: What Is a Sitemap? What Are HTML Sitemaps and Are They Needed? What Is an XML Sitemap? XML Sitemap Size Limits What Is an XML Sitemap Index File? What Pages Should Be Included in the XML Sitemap? XML Sitemap Structure Image XML Sitemap Video XML Sitemap News XML Sitemap Multilingual XML Sitemap Additional XMLNS Attributes Submitting XML Sitemaps Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: XML Sitemaps Chapter 6: Page Experience: Core Web Vitals & More o Chapter goal: This chapter looks at Google’s requirements around speed and other page experience factors, as well as how those affect a website’s performance. o Sub-sections: What Is Core Web Vitals? What Is First Input Delay? What Is Largest Contentful Paint? What Is Cumulative Layout Shift? Other Speed Metrics How to Reduce Website’s Load Time What is Mobile Friendliness? Responsive vs. Dedicated Mobile Websites Mobile Equivalency: How to Remove Content on Certain Devices? Interstitials, Modals, Dialog Boxes, and Pop-ups Mandatory Interstitials Safe Search and Meta Rating Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Page Experience Chapter 7: 404 Not-Found Errors o Chapter goal: This chapter discusses 404 errors, including how to find and fix 404 not-found errors on a website. o Sub-sections: What Are Not-Found Errors? Defining Related Terms: “Not Found”, “404”, “Broken Link”, “Missing Page”, “Broken Page”, “Error Page” Why Do Not-Found Errors Matter? What Are Broken Backlinks? What Are Broken Internal Links? What Are Other Sources of a Not-Found Error? How to Fix a 404 Not-Found Error? 404 and 410 Response Codes What Is a Soft 404? What Is a Redirected 404? Not-Found Error Page Format Guidelines Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Not-Found Errors Chapter 8: Redirects o Chapter goal: Redirects are a simple concept but can be challenging to implement and maintain. This chapter reviews the best ways to add in redirects and the various problems that can occur with redirects. o Sub-sections: What Are Redirects? Why Use Redirects? Must the URL Change? If URLs Must Change but Cannot Be Redirected… Where to Redirect? What Are Home-Page Redirects? What Are Redirect Chains? What Are Redirect Loops? Server-Side Redirects 301 and 302 Response Codes 307 and 308 Response Codes Client-Side Redirects Client-Side Redirect Option 1: JavaScript Redirect Client-Side Redirect Option 2: Meta Refresh Redirect Map Three Benefits (Among Others) of Using a Redirect Map How Long to Keep Redirects? Measuring and Monitoring Guidelines: Redirects HTTP Response Status Codes o Chapter goal: This is a one page reference sheet about status codes that provides a quick reference and is related to the material above but isn’t part of any chapter.
