Global Search Leveraging Infrastructure By Mellissa Jensen

#SMX #12A @MellissaJensen

Global Search Leveraging Infrastructure


About Me Global Search Strategy Infrastructure Solutions

Does It Work? Amazing Tools

Overview


Director Strategic Analytics, Global Strategies

Lead the Technical SEO Team

Practicing SEO since 2000

About Me

“SEO is not something you do, but rather it is what happens when you do everything else

right”


Global Search Strategy The goal of a strong enterprise SEO program is to provide search engines the strongest signals for local content

Goal of Global Search Increase organic search performance to local sites

Problems with Local Search Local results display the best results from anywhere on the web that matches the searcher’s language

Infrastructure Solutions Optimize the infrastructure to provide clear, strong “local signals" .


Local Infrastructure Signals

Local Hosting

Geo Designated URL Structure

Webmaster Tools Settings

Geographic Meta Data

Canonical Tags

Hreflang Annotations

Crosslinks

Standard

Advanced


Canonical Tags

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.intel.com/content/us/en/example"/>

<link rel="canonical“ href="http://www.intel.fr/content/fr/fr/example"/>

Canonical Tags Communicate the preferred URL for each local webpage

Action: Each URL populates a self-‐referencing Canonical tag

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.intel.it/content/it/it/example"/>


Hreflang Annotations

Hreflang Annotations Consolidates the equity across geo URLs so that each individual page benefits from the whole.

Communicate the local preferred URL to serve in local search results.

Action: Reference all the local corresponding Canonical URL variations in the hreflang tag set.


Hreflang Annotations Implantation Options

1. HTML Headers •  Pro: As pages are published, markup is

automatically included

•  Con: Requires CMS configuration or developers to write a script

2. XML Sitemaps •  Pro: Can be created and managed independent

of the infrastructure

•  Con: May be out of sync with live site.

-‐OR-‐


Cross Link To The Other Local Variations

Common Hreflang Annotation Mistake:

“Missing confirmation links:

If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A. If this is not the case for all pages that use hreflang annotations, those annotations may be ignored or not interpreted correctly.” ~ *Google

*Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

Cross Links Allow Google to find the corresponding local preferred URL variations naturally from each page.

Action: Provide a cross link to each local preferred URL variations on each page.


Working Together

Canonical Tags Designate the preferred URL for each Local

Hreflang Tags Communicate the preferred URL for each Local

Cross Links Link to every local preferred URL variation naturally to validate the hreflang designation

CROSS LINK

HREFLANG

Canonical


Strength In Numbers When all three signals are working together, each single URL becomes apart of a bigger ecosystem

This allows each page to leverage the power and strength of all the other pages’ equity

Circle of Trust


Why invest in all this work? When done right, it pays off.

This Is A Lot of Work!

Traffic to Local Priority Pages

+38%*

Source: Waiting for Client Approval


Awesome Tools!


Hreflang Tool Builders

WordPress Plugins Multilingual Premium: https://wpml.org/

XML Generators XML Sitemaps: https://www.xml-‐sitemaps.com/

The Media Flow: http://www.themediaflow.com/tool_hreflang.php

HrefBuilder: http://www.hrecuilder.com/

Validation DeepCrawl: https://www.deepcrawl.com/


•  Easily upload list of URLs or crawl sites

•  Designate Hreflang annotation per country

•  Export of crawl data for easy auditing

•  Easy ongoing refresh of XML Sitemaps

HrefBuilder.com


•  Identify pages with and without Hreflang tags

•  Review all Hreflang tag combinations

DeepCrawl.com

Note: Beta Example (Release coming soon)


SEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX

THANK YOU!

Marketing

Global Search Leveraging Infrastructure By Mellissa Jensen