Findings and recommendations of 2 the Top Design's SEO Audit of Dr Jeff Cornwall's blog. Dr Cornwall is the Chair of Belmont University's Center for Entrepreneurship. His website was redesigned 7 months before our audit and experienced a dramatic drop in traffic.
5. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Redesign 3/21/2012
6. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Reasons for Redesign
• Relieve strain on Belmont IT
• Standardize on Belmont’s preferred CMS
• Update look/design
• Generate ad revenue
Main tasks
• Move to HostMonster
• Convert Movable Type to WordPress
• New theme/design
• Add Google AdSense
15. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
16. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
SEO Problems
Massive Duplicate Content
Misuse of Hx tags
Less content above fold
No meta description
No branding in titles
Added large tag cloud
Poor pagination
Canonicalization
Tons of new low-value pages
17. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
SEO Problems
Duplicate Content issues
New low-quality pages
Canonicalization issues
Pagination issues
18. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit The $200,000,000,000 Idea
Google was the 1st search engine to use the value of links to help rank pages in their results.
PageRank (named for founder Larry Page) is assigned to each webpage.
This was a HUGE leap forward in serving more relevancy with less spam.
19. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
SEO Problems
20. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
21. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
22. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
23. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
24. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
25. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
26. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
27. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
28. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
29. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
30. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
31. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
32. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
33. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
34. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Duplicate Content
35. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
PageRank Dilution
38. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Change of URL with no 301 causes:
• 404 error
• No SEO link value
39. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Search Engine Traffic
40. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Recommendations
Install Yoast SEO Plugin
301 old pages to new
Ask linking site to update links
Optimize Homepage title
Create default title & meta description
Remove tag cloud
Implement rel=canonical
41. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Recommendations
Duplicate Content issues
New low-quality pages
Canonicalization issues
Pagination issues
meta robots: noindex, follow
•tags
•date archives
•author archives
•archive subpages
Use excerpts
43. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit DrJeffCornwall.com
Recommendations
Implement Google+ Author Highlighting
“Tests show a 30 percent increase in organic search engine
traffic for websites using Microdata”
http://searchengineland.com/how-to-get-a-30-increase-in-ctr-with-structured-markup-105830
“…clicks to the site dramatically increased by +150%”
http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/how-rich-snippets-can-improve-your-ctr
“The final number settled down around a 35% increase in
click-through rate. That's 35% more traffic from Google than
what I received before, and it was all free.”
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-author-photos
44. DrJeffCornwall
SEO
Audit Nashville SEO Group
Next Month:
Rich Snippets
& Author
Highlighting
Thursday 11/29
Belmont 6:30p
McWhorter 114
45. Call 2 the Top for:
• Website Audits
• Search Engine Optimization
• Nashville SEO Group: 11/29 6:30p
• 2theTopDesign/connect
615.715.9099 - ross@2theTopDesign.com