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DistilledODN allows you to test exactly which changes to your website would
result in an uplift in traffic from Google.
Elevator pitch…
What is DistilledODN?
Make changes to your website that may not be possible currently; it doesn’t matter how your site is built or what CMS it uses.
A/B test these changes to see how they benefit you in organic search before you roll them out more widely.
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An Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) is a cloud platform that sits in front of your web server (in the same way a CDN does) and allows you to:
Contents
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User Stories & Case Studies Examples of how sites & teams might use DistilledODN.
SEO Split Testing How A/B testing for SEO works. Example test results.
How does DistilledODN work? Deployment and technical details.
Questions & Answers Compliance, Speed, Security & other FAQs.
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User Stories What might you use DistilledODN for?
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User Stories
Sandra the Head of Ecommerce B2C Online Shoe Store Competitive space, needs data to prove & prioritize
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Rob the Digital Marketer Online Cooking & Recipe Site Old CMS, Long Dev Queue, Needs to be more agile
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Simon the Technical SEO Flights, Hotel & Rental Car Site Needs many small wins (no silver bullet), previous penalty.
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Rob the Digital Marketer
Online Cooking & Recipe Site
Rob’s Problems
Built on a bespoke CMS which is now 6 years old, which doesn’t allow him to make any significant on-page changes.
The dev queue for changes is 3 months long (on a good day).
He needs to be able to be get SEO changes made more quickly to compete better with competitors.
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Add Structured Markup
There are 7,342 recipes on the site that all share the same template and Rob wants to test whether adding structured markup to them will help Google better understand his content.
Rob uses DistilledODN to add schema.org ‘Recipe’ markup to individual recipe pages.
Rob is able to extract, from each page, the introductory description, ingredients list, the step by step instructions and the images and add them to the page as JSON/LD.
Google picks these up and shows enhanced snippets in the search results.
AJAX Site Crawlability
The development team built AJAX functionality into a new area of the site but that had not been communicated well to Rob and his team.
Unfortunately, some of the AJAX links got to #! style URLs which are damaging indexation on the site, even though there are canonical URLs for the same pages.
Using DistilledODN Rob’s team is able to add HREF attributes to these links in order to improve crawlability whilst now impacting users.
Test Category Titles
Category pages are a prime set of landing pages for the site, and Rob wants to ensure CTRs are as high as possible.
However, with other teams making changes to the site it has been hard to test what format to titles works best.
DistilledODN allows robust SEO split-testing, allowing Rob to try alternative title formats and be sure which are the best performing.
Pizza - All Recipes | YummyTummy
23 Unique Pizza Recipes | YummyTummy••
DistilledODN Impact
Structured Markup increased SERP CTRs and improved rankings.
Being able to quickly address the problems with AJAX crawlability avoided an negative impact to traffic and rankings.
The ability to confidently detect small improvements on titles across 50,000 recipes led to an uplift in traffic.
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Sandra the Head of Ecommerce
B2C Online Shoe Store
Sandra’s Requirements
Perform in an extremely active competitor landscape where there is no silver bullet.
Enable her team to use a test & learn methodology for SEO, as they do for CRO.
Assess the impact of different SEO recommendations so they can be prioritized.
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Test Tabbed vs Flat Layout
Sandra has long suspected that the tabbed layout the site uses for additional product details (reviews, care details, sizing info etc.) has been having a small negative effect on rankings. However, with no robust way to test, Sandra hasn’t been able to confirm this.
DistilledODN allows Sandra to try a small set of pages with a flat layout. It is the type of change nobody would have recommended without a way to measure it.
Test Product Descriptions
With many thousands of products on the site the product descriptions are those from the retailer, which are shared with competing sites.
It hasn’t been possible to make an internal business case for writing custom product descriptions, but Sandra has done her own small tests and is sure, but can’t prove it.
Now she can run a robust test; she has unique content written for a few hundred pages, and tests those for an uplift.
She can then forecast the impact on revenue, and get internal buy-in to write unique descriptions for all products
Test Catalog Descriptions
Sandra’s team had ensured there were at least a few hundred words of supplementary content on catalog pages to help search engines understand the content.
However, due to concerns around user experience, it was placed below the product listings and it was hard to know what effect it was having on search performance.
Using ODN Sandra’s team were able to remove the content from some pages and rigorously measure any impact.
DistilledODN Impact
Changing tabbed to flat layouts saw a small, but appreciable, difference in traffic and didn’t impact conversions.
Testing custom product descriptions allowed Sandra to prove the revenue impact and get budget to roll out bespoke snippets for all products.
Removing catalog snippets did cause a drop in traffic, but Sandra had tested only 10% of pages and was able to roll back without impact.
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Simon the Technical SEO
Flights, Hotel & Rental Car Site
Simon’s Aims
Roll changes out quickly to small sections of the site to be sure no negative impact.
Respond quickly to changes in best practice or latest methodology from Google, to maximize the value from them.
Aggregate lots of quick small wins.
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Test Breadcrumbs
The site has many different types of section that all cross-link and integrate with one another. As the site has grown it has become sometimes difficult to navigate the site and understand exactly what section you are in.
DistilledODN allows Simon to add breadcrumb navigation to pages, which Simon decides to test in the Hotels in Spain pages first.
Furthermore, Simon uses DistilledODN to add a custom dimension tracking the dwell time and conversion statistics for users landing on pages that have the breadcrumb navigation, allowing him to also understand the impact on users as well as Google.
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Remove Interstitials
Simon reads that Google will start penalizing interstitial adverts on mobile pages.
The development team are backlogged and this isn’t a priority for them, but he knows waiting will mean an impact on search traffic.
Using DistilledODN Simon is able to remove the Javascript from the page that launches the interstitial adverts.
Test rel-canonicals over no-index
Connection:keep-aliveContent-Type:text/html; charset=utf-8Date:Wed, 10 May 2016 11:34:48 GMTServer:nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu)Transfer-Encoding:chunkedVary:CookieX-Robots-Tag: noindex
Simon has millions of pages on the site, and as the site has grown there has been various URL parameters added. Simon has ensured these pages have the no-index directive, but wants to understand whether rel-canonical may be a better solution.
Until now it hasn’t been possible for Simon to test this but DistilledODN allows him to remove the no-index directive (which was in the HTTP headers) and add a rel-canonical to the source code of the pages.
Simon tests the change on the Car Rentals in Germany pages to understand the impact on organic traffic.
<!DOCTYPE html><head>
<meta charset=“UTF-8">
<title>Autovermietung Berlin | GreatTrips</title>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href=“/favicon.ico"><link rel="canonical" href=“/de/cars/berlin/“ />
DistilledODN Impact
Simon shows that breadcrumbs on the hotels pages help the category pages above them to rank better, and also improved conversions.
Responding to the new Google interstitial guidelines quicker than other sites improved performance relative to competitors.
Testing rel-canonical improved Google’s crawl efficiency, which in turn helped improve general SEO health across the site.
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Case Studies
Case Studies
For the latest Case Studies, please check https://www.distilledodn.com/
There you will find details of a variety of companies of different sizes who have been having success using DstilledODN to move to a data-driven approach for SEO.
How does SEO Split Testing work?
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A/B Testing
Many larger companies are now using an A/B Testing methodology for SEO. Being able to measure the impact
of changes, and iterate, is giving big pay-offs.
Not viable for most platforms to be able to integrate the necessary changes.
A/B Testing: Problems
Designing a methodology is difficult.
Requires SEO knowledge - cannot simply try outlandish ideas as you might with CRO tests.
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Make SEO related to some percentage of the pages in a section of the site, without needing to use valuable developer time.
DistilledODN: A/B Testing Platform
Identify and select the most beneficial SEO changes for the development team to work on.
DistilledODN can then actually apply those changes to the whole site whilst developers build it out.
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‘Traditional’ CRO A/B Testing is User Oriented
Each user sees different variations of the same page. Broadly speaking, the page which converts the higher percentage of users is the winner. Googlebot is usually unaware of CRO tests.
SEO A/B Testing is Page Oriented
Pages are split into two groups, with one group being altered to include an SEO-focused recommendation. A user looking at any specific page sees the same page as all other users.
SEO A/B Testing includes Googlebot
Googlebot is part of an SEO A/B test, and sees the same version of any page as a user would. Broadly speaking, if the variant group sees an uplift in traffic, that indicates a successful change.
Case Studies
Enter Text
For the latest Case Studies, please check https://www.distilledodn.com/
There you will find details of a variety of companies of different sizes who have been having success using DstilledODN to move to a data-driven approach for SEO.
What happens if Google rolls out algo updates?
Because we have a set of control pages we are also monitoring we can use those pages to understand changes in traffic patterns.
When traffic patterns for control pages change those changes can be mapped back to our expectation for the test pages too.
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Mathematical Framework
Using research that came out of Google.
Based on Bayesian Inference.
Accounts for seasonality & fluctuations.
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How does DistilledODN do all this?
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Deploying DistilledODN
The ODN sits between users and your servers, making changes to the content returned by your server (according to rules you create).
Deploying DistilledODN is very similar to deploying a CDN, and the platform is designed to work in alongside any existing CDN you may have.
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Your Server & Your Website
Users & Bots fetch pages directly from your server.
Your Server Your Home Page
Lots of sites use a CDN
Users & Bots fetch pages from a CDN network which, in turn, fetches pages from your server. It may cache pages and images. It will likely serve from the nearest data center.
Your Server Your Home Page
CDN
Your Cached Home Page
Server Layout with an ODN
Users & Bots fetch pages from a CDN network which fetches pages from the ODN. The ODN then fetches the page from your servers, applying any rules to change the content it returns.
Your Server Your Home Page
CDN
Distilled ODN
Your Optimized Home Page
Effect on users & Google
Nothing changes from a user perspective, everything works exactly as it does now.
Google sees at most a change to the server address, but nothing else. This is a standard situation for Google, as with CDN deployments.
Questions & Answers
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Preview Mode
DistilledODN includes a ‘preview’ mode that lets you test rules out on a mirror of your live site. This allows you to show others changes before you make them and allows testing and UA processes.
The preview mode is also usable even before you deploy DistilledODN properly on your site, so you can use it to see how the platform may work for you.
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DistilledODN Technology Platform
Squid
Best in class proxy software, which runs in front of sites
such as Wikipedia.
A protocol established 2 years after HTTP 1.1. Used widely
for filtering, virus detection & translation.
ICAP
DistilledODN is built atop of two established, and battle tested platforms, which have been used widely across many large sites.
DistilledODN Infrastructure
ReadyScale
•Automated server provisioning.
•Automated configuration management.
•Version control of all automation scripts for change management.
•Continuous Delivery model for configuration and software artifacts.
•Zero-downtime software deployment strategies.
DistilledODN runs in AWS, and is built upon ReadyScale, which ensures a robust infrastructure.
•Central user identity and password management with two factor authentication.
•Centralized log aggregation and reporting.
•Server and service availability monitoring.
•Automated backups.
•Secure network design, with admin access via authenticated VPN.
Deployment
If you already have a CDN provider then we’ll work to deploy behind your CDN so your current configuration is preserved.
If you currently have no CDN provider then we’ll deploy behind Fastly (our CDN partner); by default we will not cache HTML pages.
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DoS
DistilledODN is deployed behind your CDN or behind Fastly meaning you get DoS protection.
In DoS scenarios CDNs can go direct to origin to maximize throughput.
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Removing DistilledODN
You can remove DistilledODN from your site at any time by changing the setup in your CDN.
Removing DistilledODN means all changes it is applying to the site revert to the original version.
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Impact on Site Speed
We typically add between 15-70ms to a request, which is imperceptible to most users. Google recommends pages are returned in less than 200ms total.
On many sites some pages can be cached by the CDN, meaning that many requests are offloaded and processed without hitting the ODN.
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Traffic & Load Testing
DistilledODN has been load tested to 70,000 concurrent users hitting the platform at a sustained rate of over 1500 page requests per second to a single data centre (we have three), with peaks of over 3,500 r/s.
The graph above shows a load test of sustained 1500 requests per second to a 25kb page. The response time to return the page to the end user was 80ms (including fetching the page from the origin server).
Traffic & Load Testing
The graph above shows a load test of sustained 400 r/s, maintaining a response time (to the user) of under 200ms for a 200kb page, with every page being adapted.
You can run load tests via DistilledODN to your origin servers in order to test peak traffic, even before you deploy the platform.
DistilledODN is PCI Compliant as a service provider. We can provide Attestation of Compliance on request.
Compliance
DistilledODN never stores or caches any credit card data, personally identifiable information or any other data sent by your users.
Distilled can provide a SIG Lite document on request, detailing our information security policies.
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Security Considerations
The log- in mechan ism uses ‘ two factor authentication’, ensuring that weak, lost or stolen passwords wouldn’t compromise the system.
A penetration test has been performed by an independent agency. We can provide the final report on request.
If you are running an HTTPS site then all network traffic, even in the DistilledODN private network, is encrypted.
Permissions
Different team members can have different permissions, such that they may only be able to push to your staging or UAT platforms, or the preview function of ODN.
You may configure ODN such that team members can test rules in that preview functionality, but that they cannot publish those rules to the live site without a senior staff member or team.
Staging, UAT & Testing
Staging and UAT servers can be configured in your DistilledODN account, and each can have different sets of rules/tests.
These configurations can optionally use HTTP Basic Auth passwords to prevent them from being accessed or crawled by Google.
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HTTPS & SSL
DistilledODN is fully capable of operating on HTTPS websites; all transmissions over public and private networks will be encrypted.
You need not provide us with your SSL certificate - you can configure that on your CDN then use our certificate for the connection between your CDN and DistilledODN.
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Operating from multiple AWS regions, each in multiple availability regions and with redundant server instances in case of failure.
Failover
Squid is able to route around ICAP nodes that are unresponsive, ensuring the site stays up even if our codebase fails.
CDNs can be configured to conduct health checks on DistilledODN and route around in case of widespread failure. We can also provide failover DNS.
DistilledODN has three levels of failover:
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