{"id":3750,"date":"2019-09-03T16:00:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T16:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/a-beginners-guide-to-technical-seo-for-local-businesses-part-3\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:05:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:05:21","slug":"a-beginners-guide-to-technical-seo-for-local-businesses-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/a-beginners-guide-to-technical-seo-for-local-businesses-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beginner\u2019s Guide to Technical SEO For Local Businesses \u2013 Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to part three of “A Beginner\u2019s Guide to Technical SEO For Local Businesses”. In this post we’re going to cover site speed, image optimizations, crawling and indexing, broken links, redirects and more. You can review part one here<\/a> and review part two here<\/a> which discuss keyword targeting, URL structure, duplicate content and Schema.org.<\/p>\n

Site Speed (Local SEO + General SEO)<\/h2>\n

Another super important thing for local businesses is their sites mobile speed. Many times their customers and potential customers are out and about or sitting on their couch browsing their phone when looking for their services.<\/p>\n

In 2016, mobile searches officially surpassed desktop. One study<\/a> found that 56% of mobile searches done on the go have local intent.<\/p>\n

Mobile phones have a much slower download speed compared to desktop devices. Because of that, websites that are already slower will have an even harder time loading quickly on a mobile device.<\/p>\n

How does this affect local businesses?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe average bounce rate for pages loading within 2 seconds is 9%. As soon as the page load time surpasses 3 seconds, the bounce rate soars, to 38% by the time it hits 5 seconds!\u201d\u00a0This will also have a negative effect on conversion rates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference: https:\/\/royal.pingdom.com\/page-load-time-really-affect-bounce-rate\/<\/a><\/p>\n

So what to do? First you\u2019ll want to test your site\u2019s speed. Using Google\u2019s page speed tool<\/a> is a good idea since we want to make Google happy. I also use GTmetrix and WebPageTest.org to get even more helpful data.<\/p>\n

WebPageTest.org shows you a breakdown of your site content, which can help you identify which files are taking up your resources. In the example below, there are a lot of JavaScript files; I\u2019d review all the JS files to see if of them any are unnecessary and can be removed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the beautiful waterfall view that can show you which resources are taking the longest to load.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, working on site speed optimization is not for beginners. It\u2019s easy to break things on your site and is basically web development work. But here are some things you may be able to do on your own. Make sure your website is backed up before making any site speed changes.<\/p>\n

Speed Optimizations<\/h3>\n

Hosting<\/h4>\n

Something I\u2019ve noticed that has a big impact on site speed is the quality of your website hosting. If your are using the cheapest hosting you can find, then your site is probably hosted on a cheaper, slower server. I\u2019d recommend upgrading to something around $30\/mo or even VPS hosting. Review Signal<\/a> is an awesome resource for comparing web hosting companies if you don\u2019t know who to choose.<\/p>\n

WordPress Plugins<\/h4>\n

There are also many things you can do to your website to reduce file sizes and load files more efficiently. Here are some of my favorites.<\/p>\n

WP Rocket:<\/a> This plugin is great for caching, gzip compression, minifying and \/ or combining HTML, JS and CSS files, deferred JS loading, DNS prefetch and more!<\/p>\n

WP Asset Cleanup:<\/a> When you use plugins on your site, many of their assets (.CSS and .JS files) load on every page of your website instead of just the pages that they are needed on. For example, Contact Form 7\u2019s assets may load on every page but it may only be needed on your contact page since that\u2019s the only page with a Contact Form 7 form.<\/p>\n

WP Asset CleanUp allows you to choose whether or not to load individual CSS or JS files on all or only specific pages of your site.<\/p>\n

ShortPixel:<\/a> This plugin can resize all your images in bulk, compress all your images in bulk, keep the original image files, restore original image files, replace all original images on pages with the compressed versions, serve WebP image formats<\/a> and more! I have tried many image compression plugins and this one if my absolute favorites.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, you should manually resize images before uploading them to your site if possible, then use this plugin to compress your images in bulk.<\/p>\n

Images (Local SEO + General SEO)<\/h3>\n

In addition to resizing and compressing your images so that they load quickly, you can also optimize them for local search<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two important aspects are:<\/p>\n

File Name<\/h3>\n

The name of the image file is important because it helps tell search engines what your image is about. Usually, when you upload an image, the file name is something random like IMG080919.jpg<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Can you tell what this image is from reading the file name? Well Google can\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

Now take a look at skateboarder-fall-down-go-boom.jpg<\/em>. Can you tell what this image is just from reading the file name? A short but descriptive file name can help users and more importantly search engines.<\/p>\n

File Name Example:<\/h4>\n

https:\/\/domain.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ac-repair-tampa.jpg<\/p>\n

Alt Text<\/h3>\n

Alt text provides additional details about an image for both users and search engines. Alt text is used in two ways. If for some reason the image cannot be displayed, the alt text will show instead, giving users an idea of what the image is. See the example below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

More importantly, alt text is used by search engines. Google claims that they cannot read images and that they use alt text to try to understand what images are about.<\/p>\n

Alt Text Example:<\/h4>\n

<img src=”\/wp-content\/uploads\/ac-repair-tampa.jpg” alt=”ac repairman fixes broken air conditioner in tampa florida”><\/em><\/p>\n

Crawling & Indexing (General SEO)<\/h2>\n

When it comes to technical SEO, making sure that search engines can crawl and index your site is #1 in importance. If your site can\u2019t be crawled, it can\u2019t be indexed and then people will never<\/strong> find it.<\/p>\n

What Is Crawling?<\/h3>\n

There isn’t a central registry of all web pages that exist anywhere (that we know of), so Google must constantly search for new pages and add them to its list of known pages. This process of discovery is called crawling.<\/p>\n

Google uses a web crawler called Googlebot to crawl the internet. A web crawler is like a virtual robot or a spider. A web crawler is really just an automated program that crawls from one web page to the next.<\/p>\n

For example, Googlebot will crawl \/about-us\/ and if there are any links on the \/about-us\/ page to other pages, then Googlebot will crawl those next.<\/p>\n

Why does Googlebot do this? If Googlebot finds new content, it may suggest that it be indexed by Google.<\/p>\n

What Is Indexing?<\/h3>\n

After a page is discovered by Google, it tries to understand what the page is about and decides to add it to it\u2019s \u201cindex\u201d. Google\u2019s index is just Google\u2019s registry of all websites that they may want to show in their search results.<\/p>\n

When you search on Google, you are not seeing all available websites that exist, you are only seeing websites Google has decided to add to their index of websites.<\/p>\n

See If Google Can Crawl Your Site<\/h3>\n

You will need to see if Google is able to crawl your site. You can do this a few different ways.<\/p>\n

Google Search Console<\/h4>\n

Sign into Google Search Console and navigate to the \u201cURL Inspection\u201d tab. Enter the URL you want to test and then click on the \u201cTest Live URL\u201d button.<\/p>\n

See what it says besides \u201cCrawl allowed?\u201d If it says: \u201cNo: blocked by robots.txt\u201d then Google can\u2019t crawl this page.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

TechnicalSEO.com<\/h4>\n

If you don\u2019t have access to Google Search Console for some reason you can use this free Fetch & Render tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Make sure to check the \u201cObey robots.txt\u201d box and click the \u201cFetch & Render\u201d button. If the results show a \u201cno symbol\u201d like in the screenshot below, then Google is not able to crawl that page.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Check Your Robots.txt File<\/h4>\n

Many times the reason Google can\u2019t crawl your site is because it\u2019s being blocked from doing so in the robots.txt file.<\/p>\n

To view this file for your site, simply add \/robots.txt to the end of your home page URL.<\/p>\n

Example: https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/robots.txt<\/a><\/p>\n

There are a lot of ways this file can be configured but to keep it simple I\u2019ll cover the two basic ways.<\/p>\n

If your robots.txt file looks like this it\u2019s blocking all web crawlers from all content on your site.<\/p>\n

User-agent: *<\/strong><\/em>
\nDisallow: \/<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If your robots.txt file looks like this it\u2019s allowing all web crawlers access to all content on your site.<\/p>\n

User-agent: *<\/strong><\/em>
\nDisallow:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

To learn more about robots.txt files, check out this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

See If Google Can Index Your Site<\/h3>\n

After you have made sure Google can crawl your site, you\u2019ll want to see if Google has indexed it or even has the permission to do so. You can do this a few different ways.<\/p>\n

Site Search<\/h4>\n

The quickest and easiest way to see if Google has indexed any of your site is to go to google.com and type in \u201csite:domain.com\u201d into the search bar. If you see any results then that means Google has indexed some or all of your pages.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what that would look like:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Google Search Console<\/h4>\n

In Google Search Console go to the \u201cCoverage\u201d tab and select both the \u201cErrors\u201d and \u201cExcluded\u201d blocks. When you scroll down, if you see anything that says \u201cnoindex\u201d this means Google is being told not to index those pages. Either on purpose or by accident.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Check The Meta Robots Tag<\/h4>\n

You can check the meta robots tag on the page itself to see if it is allowed to be indexed by search engines.<\/p>\n

If you are using Chrome, right click on the page and select \u201cInspect\u201d. Then search for name=”robots”.<\/p>\n

\"meta-robots-tag\"<\/p>\n

If you find no tag, then the page is allowed to be indexed.<\/p>\n

If you find either of these tags, then the page in not allowed to be indexed.<\/p>\n

<meta name=\u201drobots\u201d content=\u201dnoindex, follow\u201d><\/em><\/p>\n

<meta name=\u201drobots\u201d content=\u201dnoindex, nofollow\u201d><\/em><\/p>\n

Crawling Software<\/h4>\n

Another way you can see if pages are telling Google not to index them is by using a crawling software like ScreamingFrog as I mentioned before. You can crawl your site as Googlebot and check the \u201cDirectives\u201d tab and look under the \u201cMeta Robots\u201d column. If any pages show the word \u201cnoindex\u201d in the \u201cMeta Robots\u201d column then Google is being told not to index those pages.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

X-Robots-Tag<\/h4>\n

This is probably going to happen way less often on small business websites but I\u2019ll cover it just in case. Another way you can stop Google from indexing a page is by an X-Robots-Tag<\/a>. With this you can use robot.txt directives in the header of an HTTP response.<\/p>\n

Checking With a Crawling Software<\/h5>\n

You can see if pages have an X-Robots-Tag by using a crawling software like ScreamingFrog. You can crawl your site as Googlebot and check the \u201cDirectives\u201d tab and look under the \u201cX-Robots-Tag\u201d column.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Checking in Chrome<\/h5>\n

You can see if a page has an X-Robots-Tag by looking at the HTTP headers of the page. If you are using Chrome, right click and select \u201cInspect\u201d. Then click on the \u201cNetwork\u201d tab and reload the page. Select the HTTP request of the page and look for a X-Robots-Tag.<\/p>\n

\"whitespark-http-headers-chrome-min\"<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t see one then there obviously isn\u2019t one. In the example above, there is none.<\/p>\n

If you see something like this below, then search engines won’t index this page.<\/p>\n

HTTP\/1.1 200 OK
\nDate: Tue, 31 May 2019 21:42:43 GMT
\n(\u2026)
\nX-Robots-Tag: noindex<\/strong>
\n(\u2026)<\/p>\n

HTTP\/1.1 200 OK
\nDate: Tue, 31 May 2019 21:42:43 GMT
\n(\u2026)
\nX-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow<\/strong>
\n(\u2026)<\/p>\n

Robots.txt vs Noindex<\/h3>\n

This is a very common<\/strong> mistake that I wanted to point out. Sometimes people think that if they block a page from being crawled in the robots.txt that Google won\u2019t index it. That is not true.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple of comments from Google that explain it very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe careful about disallowing search engines from crawling your pages. Using the robots.txt protocol on your site can stop Google from crawling your pages, but it may not always prevent them from being indexed. For example, Google may index your page if we discover it by following a link from someone else’s site. To display it in search results, Google will need to display a title of some kind and because we won’t have access to any of your page content, we will rely on off-page content such as anchor text from other sites. (To truly block a URL from being indexed, you can use the “noindex” directive.)\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference: https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/35624?hl=en <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cImportant! For the noindex directive to be effective, the page must not be blocked by a robots.txt file. If the page is blocked by a robots.txt file, the crawler will never see the noindex directive, and the page can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reference: https:\/\/support.google.com\/webmasters\/answer\/93710?hl=en<\/a><\/p>\n

Noindex Conversion Pages<\/h3>\n

If you have \u201cconfirmation\u201d pages that users reach only after they have completed an important action, it\u2019s a best practice to noindex these pages. Why?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say each time someone reaches the \/thank-you\/ page, you count that as a goal completion in Google Analytics. If a user finds that page in Google\u2019s search results and visits it, that visit would count as a conversion in Google Analytics. And if you multiply that by many unique searchers, these visits would now all count as conversions in Google Analytics and severely skew your conversion data.<\/p>\n

For this reason, it\u2019s recommended that you noindex pages like these:<\/p>\n