Introduction
Ok, fine. I confess, I have an uncommon name so ranking first wasn’t that difficult. To add to that I have also never worked as an SEO expert.
However, I won’t let that stop me from sharing some of the SEO work I have done on my incredibly niche blog!
One of my pet peeves is that lots of SEO “experts” would still have you believe that their industry is second only to the colonel when it comes to keeping secrets.
The truth is Google tells you how to rank well. Infact, technical SEO in particular is so well documented now that Google even built the tools you need to check you’re doing it right.
Let’s look at 5 SEO changes I have implemented on rhuaridh.co.uk.
SEO Basics
1) Use Lighthouse
There is a good chance you’re already using Chrome, and if so you already have the lighthouse tool installed.
This gives some actionable feedback on what you can do to make your site better. Unless you’re building apps that need to work offline you can probably ignore the PWA score though!
2) Use Structured Data
Back in the day Google used to eat all your data, no matter how overcooked and hard to chew you made it. But now that Google sits at the head of the table it can be picky about the content it consumes.
Sounds awful, right? Well not really - they give you the exact recipe needed to structure your data. You can learn more here.
For example, here is the structured data I have on a typical blog page:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "SNS Data Protection Example",
"description": "Automatically scan for PII by using the SNS message data protection feature",
"image": "https://rhuaridh.co.uk/img/blog/sns-data-protection-policy.png",
"author": "Rhuaridh",
"genre": "AWS Security",
"keywords": "aws security sns",
"publisher": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Rhuaridh",
"logo": {
"@type": "ImageObject",
"url": "https://rhuaridh.co.uk/img/rhu2.jpg"
}
},
"datePublished": "2022-09-24",
"dateCreated": "2022-09-24",
"dateModified": "2022-09-24"
}
You can test your site here to see the structured data.
Rich Results Test will tell you if you’re confirming to Google standards. This is what Google uses to check if you qualify for showing rich results in their search.
But, if you’re looking to conform to real standards, then use the Schema Markup Validator tool. This is a wider reaching tool from https://schema.org that helps structure your data in ways that are useful outside of the search engine too.
3) Use a CDN
Google wants fast websites! And so do I for that matter.
There are lots of CDN’s available. For years I used CloudFlare. Now that I have thrown my hat into the AWS world I use AWS Cloudfront.
Both of these services will cache your content in hundreds of edge locations around the world. That means if you’re serving a static html page (like this blog post!), then it will load much quicker than from the self-hosted server in your mums basement on the other side of the world from the person viewing your site.
However, if you’re stuck with a Wordpress or Magento website then I wish you good luck! You will be lucky to get a 2 second page load time without spending 5 figure sums of cash.
4) Use Redirects
If you’re using a www.my-domain.co.uk, my-domain.co.uk, http:// and https:// addresses, it’s important to know that Google considers these separate, and potentially competing, domains.
For example, if your domain is https://www.rhuaridh.co.uk, then make sure all variations point to that address:
http://rhuaridh.co.ukhttp://www.rhuaridh.co.ukhttps://rhuaridh.co.uk
Should all point here:
https://www.rhuaridh.co.uk
And the same goes for all your top level .org, .com, .co.uk, etc. domain variations. Pick one and redirect all traffic there!
These should all be setup using a redirect so Google know which site to rank.
5) Use Google Search Console
Once you’re done making improvements to your website then you’re going to need feedback. Luckily Google gives you the tool for that too!
Google Search Console gives you no-nonsense data on how your site is performing in Google Search.
Aside from giving cool stats on how people are searching for your site:
Google will also just let you know when your webpages can’t be scanned.
So if your font is too small for mobile, or your structured data is broken. This is where you will find out about it.
Summary
Technical SEO might have been an industry born in the shadows, but these days the most effective way to appease Google is to just do what they ask.
And this, despite never being employed as an SEO expert, is how I become the number one Rhuaridh.