Want to succeed at SEO and increase the search rankings of your website? There are certain technical hacks you can make right away to reap the benefits of higher search rankings. Join our webinar and learn tangible tips on how to improve your SEO ranking through 1) on-page code excellency, 2) semantic markup, 3) optimal site structure, 4) web server optimization with GZIP and HTTP/2, 5) web content optimization like minification and caching, 6) site security with malware and DDoS prevention, 7) private IP addresses, and much more! Our speakers Reza Moaiandin, Martin Woods, and Patrick Stox live and breathe technical SEO. They will review the latest technical hacks on achieving and maintaining technical excellence for SEO improvements and share 3 customer vignettes.

1. Advanced Technical Hacks to Improve
Your Site’s SEO
January 2016

2. Agenda & Speakers

3. Agenda
• Introductions
• Advanced Technical Hacks for SEO
• Security
• Performance
• Customer Stories
• Questions
• Feel free to ask questions using the chat panel throughout the webinar
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4. Speakers
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Reza Moaiandin
Software Engineer
Martin Woods
Technical Digital Marketing Consultant
Patrick Stox
SEO Specialist
Peter Dumanian
Host

5. Introduction

6. What is CloudFlare?
• Enterprise grade provider of improved website performance & security
• Global CDN with 75 data centers around the world
• End-to-end SSL encryption, DDoS protection, and WAF (web application
firewall)
• Protection against traffic surges and server overload. Site visitors are more likely
to stay on a website if it appears quickly on their smart phone or computer.

7. Overview
Across CloudFlare’s 4,000,000+ websites:
• 7% of daily Internet web page views
• 300 billion page views per month — more than eBay, Twitter, Bing, Wikipedia, Amazon, and Apple combined
• 300 billion+ security threats stopped
• 140+ petabytes of bandwidth saved for customers
200GB of log data per minute
CloudFlare

8. The CloudFlare Global Network

9. CloudFlare Customers
Over 4 million websites on CloudFlare

10. Digital Agencies Use CloudFlare for SEO Boost
• We have partnered with SALT.agency in the UK to test CloudFlare’s impact
on SEO
• We are excited to have SALT talk about its results

11. Who is SALT.agency?
• Technical performance agency
• Based in England
• International client base (San Francisco to Sydney) and brands
• Work with a wide range of clients:
• Fortune 500 / FTSE 100 companies
• Ecommerce
• Successful start-ups (AKA CloudFlare)
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12. What are we talking about today?
• Edge technology is the future present of organic search optimisation
• SEO isn’t dead (despite the periodic articles proclaiming so!)
• At the core SEO is simply:
• Technical excellence
• Compelling content
• Ingenious creative marketing
• Edge technology isn’t just about being #1! It helps make the most of your
content & creative marketing through faster, more secure delivery
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13. SEO in 2016

14. Mastering SEO Through Technical Excellence
• Achieving technical excellence for SEO (off-
page/on-page)
• Harnessing the power of CloudFlare to set
yourself apart from the competition
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CloudFlare – the icing on the cake

15. Technical SEO In 2016
• What works & what doesn’t
• For example - people are still putting keywords in meta tags thinking
this will influence Google positively (no, we are not joking!)
• On-site architecture
• Ecosphere of groups of websites (if applicable)
• On-page code excellency
• Search engine algorithms & their effects
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16. And More…
• Search engine’s crawling and indexing (server logs)
• User intent/usability
• User metrics such as speed, bounce rate, CTR, dwell time
• User engagement
• User protection
• Avoiding your website being hacked and manipulated
• Your data being stolen
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17. Ideal World
Make the BEST website possible
• Researched (business intelligence)
• Planned
• Project managed
• Tested & delivered
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18. Going the Extra Mile
• Security
• Impacts trust, short and long-term
• User Brand search goes down
• Search engine trust goes down
• Malware
• Algorithms warn users
• Potentially removes/reduces organic visibility
• Speed & network
• Impacts user experience, conversions and algorithms
• Cost
• You can spend it elsewhere
All directly affect SEO & ultimately profit
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19. Solutions
Easier said than done for most companies before CloudFlare existed
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20. Search Engine Ranking Signals

21. Ranking Signal - HTTPS
Google considers HTTPS (SSL) ranking signal
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html

22. Ranking Signal – Malware
Google penalizes websites that are hacked or have malware. It highlights them
with labels or completely removes these sites from the index:
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-malware-and-hacked-sites

23. Ranking Signals – Security Summary
• Secure protocol SSL/TSL
• Web Application Firewall (Securing your vulnerabilities using the best
minds in the industry)
• Hackers can inject malware into your site and Google WILL find it and demote your rankings
• DDOS protection
• If Google can't access your site, it can't index it. Let alone your customers.
• DNSSEC
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24. Ranking Signal – Site Speed
Google rewards faster loading websites:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-
search-ranking.html

25. Ranking Signal – Site Speed
Technical hacks that boost your site’s speed:
• Compression
• Minification (CSS, JS, HTML)
• Response time
• Image Optimization
• Browser Caching
• How JS & CSS are served
• Use of Asynchronous scripts
• Use of CDNs
• Better headers and caching
• Latest server technology (HTTP/2, SPDY, GZIP)

26. Ranking Signal – Site Speed
HTTP/2 Protocol – the first major upgrade to the HTTP protocol in over 15 years
– dramatically speeds up your site.
Live demo: https://www.cloudflare.com/http2/

27. Pimp My Server & Network
• Being on the edge
• Faster DNS response time
• Faster CDN
• Better global coverage
• Lower latency
• Dedicated IP addresses
• You will be seen differently in the eyes of search engines, better neighborhood & associated
websites. (If not using private IP address)
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28. SEO Is Still A Checklist
• Algorithms are more intelligent, but are still just based on metrics, data,
and logic.
• SEO in 2016 still boils down to a list of things to check off, it’s just a lot
longer, and more complex than a few years ago.
• CloudFlare lets you tick more of that list quickly, reliably & cost
effectively
• This ultimately means you can spend more time on content, and
creative marketing.
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29. Technical Hacks Impact on SEO – Case Studies

30. CloudFlare SEO Case Study & Tests
• We've solved many SEO issues for clients using CloudFlare as part of the
solution
• Generally we've had many positive results
• On one occasion for a high traffic website we ran into a problem
• DDoS issues
• Global speed issues
• Outgrown hosting capabilities and needed quick fix without high hosts
• The client was very heavily dependent on organic search (over 80% of the
traffic)

31. The Problem
• Initial steps
• Client was put behind CloudFlare
• DDoS was no longer the problem
• Global speed issues were instantly solved by CloudFlare's CDN
• Problem arose
• SEO visibility dropped resulting in a fall in traffic (roughly 10%, in our case
1.5 million visitors per month)

32. The Dilemma
• Back to getting DDoS and serve content slowly?
• Stay on CloudFlare and find another solution
It was as simple as that…

33. The Solution
• Following extensive testing it was obvious that the problem came from the IP
address change (extremely competitive niche & privacy driven)
• The solution was to put the site on a private IP address and remove the
association given by the shared IP address completely
• Client was put on a private IP address through the CloudFlare business plan
• SEO visibility returned to normal within 5 days
• SEO visibility continued to grow based on optimization (by 5%) within a month

34. Fascination and Further Tests with CloudFlare
• Following our experience we tried to measure the SEO impact with other
clients that were not adversely affected by being on CloudFlare's shared IP
address
• Working with CloudFlare, we put three other websites on the CloudFlare
business plan. This put them on a private IP address.
• We also used CloudFlare’s dynamic content optimization product, Railgun.

35. Summary Results #1: Online Services Provider
website
• Over 30% increase in ranking positions
• 21.5% Increase in traffic as a result
• 28,000 => 34,000 users a day
Client taken onto CloudFlare Enterprise in July 2015

36. Summary Results #2: E-commerce website
• Over 8% Increase in number of first page ranking positions
• 17.4% Increase in traffic as a result
• Average 1,150 => 1,350 users a day
Client taken onto CloudFlare Enterprise in September 2015

37. Summary Results #3: Lead Generation website
• Over 13% Increase in Ranking positions
• 9% Increase in traffic as a result
• Average 1,100 => 1,200 users a day
Client taken onto CloudFlare Enterprise in September 2015

38. Questions?
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39. Advanced Technical Hacks to Improve
Your Site’s SEO
January 2016