SEO Funnel & Website Health — Ashley Berman Hale // Deepcrawl

Ashley Berman Hale, Deepcrawl VP of Professional Services, discusses how to optimize the health of your digital properties. If a web page is inaccessible to search engines, it cannot be crawled. If that page cannot be crawled, it won’t be indexed by search engines, and users won’t come across it during searches. Today, Ashley talks about why the SEO funnel matters for website health.

Show Notes

  • 02:02
    Website health and the SEO funnel
    Your websites structure and how things are linked internally is very important. Essentially, your website should be planned for future growth and be able to accommodate those changes easily.
  • 04:01
    Website availability for bots and humans
    In addition to building a site thats crawlable by Googlebots, the way users access it should also be considered. Especially, the ways users will get to and navigate your site.
  • 06:03
    Crawlability and the right signals
    Can Google and users get to all the pages on your website? You have to account for the different devices users will access your website with and how they use the web in general.
  • 07:45
    Availability versus crawlability
    Availability is about whether the page responds and is live. However, some live pages may be inaccessible to SEOs or Google, which causes crawlability issues.
  • 08:24
    Website indexability
    Indexing indicates to Google the pages that youve identified as valuable on your website. Duplicate and low value pages will affect how your websites pages are indexed.
  • 09:43
    Building domain authority
    Site authority is based on your brands credibility, how it is perceived, and engaged with by the public. Essentially, the content you produce should legitimize your business.
  • 11:09
    Content and user impact
    Content needs to not only engage users, but anticipate their needs, and delight them. So, content should be created around user experiences and desired outcomes.
  • 13:30
    How technical SEO impacts user
    Once the content is on the website, the site needs to move quickly for users and keep their attention. For example, fonts that may be difficult to read will negatively impact user experience.
  • 14:50
    Sustainable approaches to technical SEO
    SEO cant exist within a vacuum in an organization. Instead, it must be done in a way that removes the departmental silos, and gets everyone working towards the same goal.

Quotes

  • "Your website should be intentional and thoughtful. Plan for growth because it is harder than hell to update a website after years and then do it regularly." -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

  • "Make sure that you understand which pages are accessible, how they respond, and how that either encourages or prevents crawling." -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

  • "I like to give folks three ways to get to any page. Users will always surprise you and take paths that you did not expect." -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

  • "Indexability means you've told Google, this is a valid page. This is a page I prefer. This talks about stuff I love. And this is where I want users to go." -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

  • "Think of content in a way that will anticipate users' needs. Why are they there, what's their experience before they arrive there, and what do they want to do next?" -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

  • "You have to be able to create a SEO in a way that it reaches across departments and you're all working toward the same goal." -Ashely Berman Hale, VP of Professional Services, Deepcrawl

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