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54 Comments

SEO Experts: How would you improve the technical SEO of Indie Hackers?

Context: we're going to start publishing more articles in-house and beefing up the "media organization" side of our business.

From a technical SEO standpoint:

  • What would be the best way to organize our articles?
  • What are the biggest changes we would need to make?
  • What other advice do you have for us?
  1. 1

    Optimize web page speed: Ensure quick loading instances by way of optimizing images, minimizing CSS and JavaScript files, leveraging browser caching, and the use of a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to supply content material efficiently.

    Mobile responsiveness: Enhance the cell trip by imposing responsive format strategies and making sure that the internet site features seamlessly throughout distinct gadgets and display screen sizes.

    Optimize website online structure: Improve website structure and navigation to make it less complicated for search engine crawlers to index pages and for customers to locate applicable content. This consists of organizing content material into logical categories, the use of clear and descriptive URLs, and imposing breadcrumb navigation.

    Fix crawl errors: Regularly screen and tackle crawl mistakes pronounced via search engine crawlers to make sure that all pages can be top-listed and ranked.

    Optimize meta tags: Write compelling and applicable title tags and meta descriptions for every page, incorporating goal key phrases to enhance click-through quotes and search visibility.

  2. 27

    I think the site could be much faster.

    Also, I can't see the link to the articles' index page on the nav bar anymore. If I'm not mistaken, it used to be under the "more" drop down. I think it deserves a spot beside the "interviews" link.

    1. 7

      Site performance is defintely an issue, even with a well specced desktop system and a very fast fiber connection.

      1. 1

        Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

        1. 1

          I'm not sure I'd be the most appropriate person to have a chat about SEO as I hate it. SEO is at the root of the crappy content that clogs the web and the shady marketing tactics we have to endure.

    2. 6

      Definitely page speed. Not only because of SEO but also for better user experience.

      1. 1

        Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

    3. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I also feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  3. 1

    Optimize Site Speed: Ensure fast-loading pages with the aid of compressing images, the use of environment friendly code, and leveraging browser caching. Google prioritizes quicker web sites in search results.

    Mobile Responsiveness: Confirm the web page is mobile-friendly and gives a seamless ride throughout a number devices. Google's mobile-first indexing prioritizes mobile-optimized sites.

    Structured Data Markup: Implement structured facts to assist search engines recognize and show content material higher in search results, improving visibility via prosperous snippets and different formats.

    Sitemap Optimization: Regularly replace and put up XML sitemaps to search engines. This helps them crawl and index new content material efficiently.

    Fix Crawl Errors: Regularly reveal and tackle crawl errors, damaged links, and replica content material troubles to preserve a smooth and error-free web site structure.

  4. 1

    To enhance the technical SEO of Indie Hackers, consider the following:

    Organize Articles Efficiently:

    Utilize clear and concise categories for articles.
    Implement a logical and user-friendly site structure.
    Key Changes to Implement:

    Optimize meta titles and descriptions for each article.
    Ensure mobile responsiveness for better user experience.
    Implement schema markup to enhance search result snippets.
    Additional Advice:

    Focus on quality content with relevant keywords.
    Optimize images for faster loading times.
    Regularly update and republish evergreen content.
    For personalized assistance, feel free to check out my Upwork profile: .SEO by Abdullah

  5. 1

    Improving the technical web optimization of a internet site like Indie Hackers, which is a platform for unbiased entrepreneurs and startups, is imperative for growing its visibility in search engines and attracting extra natural traffic. Here are numerous approaches to beautify the technical website positioning of Indie Hackers:

    Mobile Optimization: Ensure that the internet site is entirely responsive and optimized for cell devices. Google offers choice to mobile-friendly web sites in its search rankings.

    Page Speed Optimization: Faster-loading pages now not solely enhance consumer journey however additionally positively have an effect on SEO. Compress images, minify CSS and JavaScript, and leverage browser caching to enhance web page load times.

    HTTPS: Ensure that Indie Hackers is served over HTTPS. Google considers HTTPS a rating element and it additionally provides a layer of safety for users.

    XML Sitemap: Create an XML sitemap and publish it to Google Search Console. This helps search engines recognize the shape of your website and index it extra efficiently.

    Robots.txt: Review and optimize the robots.txt file to manage which components of the web site search engines can and can't crawl. Ensure it would not block necessary pages.

  6. 1

    Answer 1:
    Create clear and relevant categories or topics that align with the content of your articles. This allows readers to easily navigate and find relevant articles within specific areas of interest.

    Answer 2:
    Tagging or labeling: Implement a tagging system to assign specific keywords or labels to each article. This enables readers to search for articles based on specific criteria and enhances discoverability.

    Answer 3:
    Search functionality: Incorporate a search feature on your website that allows users to enter keywords and find articles related to their specific interests or queries. This enhances user experience and saves time for readers looking for specific information.

  7. 1

    Site Execution Enhancement:

    By optimizing the code, compressing the images, and making use of browser caching, you can ensure that your pages load quickly.
    Reduce the use of external plugins and scripts that can slow down the website to a minimum.
    Ensure that the website is mobile-friendly and offers a seamless user experience across all devices by implementing responsive design.

    Structure and Navigation of URLs:

    Create URLs that are clear and descriptive, contain relevant keywords, and are readable by both users and search engines.
    Carry out a legitimate and easy-to-understand site structure with a reasonable pecking order and natural route menus.
    Use the breadcrumb route to assist with looking through motors figure out the site's construction and further develop the client route.

    Sitemap XML:

    Create an XML sitemap listing all of the website's most important pages. This helps web search tools slither and record the website all the more effectively.
    Consistently update the XML sitemap to incorporate new pages and eliminate any obsolete or unessential substance.
    File Robots.txt:

    Control how search engine crawlers access and index various parts of the website by optimizing the robots.txt file.
    Make sure that important content and pages are not stopped from being crawled by accident.

    Standard URLs:

    To avoid issues with duplicate content, use canonical URLs. This helps search engines figure out which version of a page they want to show in results the most.

    Blueprint Markup:

    Carry out construction markup to furnish web crawlers with organized information about the site's substance. Rich snippet visibility in search results and comprehension of the site's context can both benefit from this.

    Safety and HTTPS:

    Guarantee that Nonmainstream Programmers are gotten with an SSL endorsement, empowering the site to be gotten to over HTTPS. Search engines favor this because it offers users a secure connection.

    Optimization for Mobile:

    Consider the responsive design, mobile-friendly layouts, and quick connection speeds when optimizing the website for mobile devices.
    Implement mobile-first indexing, which gives search engines preference to the mobile version of the website.
    Site Investigation and Observing:

  8. 1
    • Use HTTPS.
      *Make Sure Only One Version of Your Website Is Accessible to Users and Crawlers.
    • Improve Your Page Speed.
    • Ensure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly.
    • Implement Structured Data.
    • Find & Fix Duplicate Content Issues.
    • Find & Fix Broken Pages.
    • Optimize for Core Web Vitals.
  9. 1

    Well, a priori and without having real data, there are some actions that I would try to implement:

    Organize groups of conversations in the form of clusters by subject matter. That is, find what topics future new users are looking for and create specific pages optimized for those topics that compile the most relevant conversation threads on that subject.

    On the other hand, I would also analyze which threads are attracting more organic traffic and based on which keywords in order to expand the internal linking from different levels of the forum to these threads.

    Both actions give good results, as a general rule, in this type of websites with user-generated content.

    As more general issues, improve crawling and make a plan of what to index and what not.

  10. 3

    As most SEOs would say, it depends.

    It depends on your objective. What do you want to achieve? It all goes from there.

    In general, you would want to:

    • Improve core web vitals metrics.

    • Create a content plan for your blog and structure the content accordingly. Whether it's created around topics or built as a funnel. Or both. The structure is created by interlinking between related content.

    • Promote your content for link building.

    • Make sure your navigation is clear. Use taxonomies for that.

    Everything else is too specific and totally depends on your goals.

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  11. 3

    Use categories to organize content and optimize them for head, high volume keywords while using articles to go after long tail ones.

    Also, like others mentioned you should work on speed. Improving these results should be your priority.

    1. 1

      Probably a never ending feed...would do wonders.

      Like fb,..Twitter...

    2. 1

      I second that, a better pagination/menu system will help both UI and also for SEO purposes.

  12. 2

    Stop worrying about page speed for now. Whilst it's important, it's not what's going to "grow your SEO". Yes, Google is making it a ranking factor - which is fear mongering a lot of people into investing heavy in to their 'web vitals' metrics.

    Looking at this from Google's perspective - their goal is to get webmasters to improve their websites, in order to make their lives easier..

    The one thing that's going to trump anything mentioned in this thread (actually, some touched on it) is your platform infrastructure - how you organise and optimse your current content so that it's easier found (by Search Engines and People).

    (FYI - my agency does nothing bu SEO for online marketplaces and news publishers).

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  13. 2

    I run an SEO SaaS with over 100K users a month.

    There's a lot of lot of low hanging fruit & opportunity. Your content is not that well optimised.

    On the whole, you need to more closely align your content to it's current (and prospective) search terms. If you look at current rankings - there is often a decent disparity between the core search term and the actual content. You should do a wholistic exercise of identifying the core search term groupings, and better aligning existing content to those areas through updating individual article or discussion (title, meta desc, H1s).

    You should look to replicate a Quora-like long tail strategy. Ultimately you're a content site, so you want your discussions and articles to rank.

    Expand on the first step of keyword research to find relevant search areas you are not already ranking for and don't have content for, seed conversations in these areas.

    Build simple systems for encouraging links. The most obvious is a badge type system like Product Hunt - give Indie Hackers a badge that shows their real time individual rating/score/comments etc, as well as a badge for their product page that they can add to their site.

    Your URLs are too long - halve the length of your post and product URLs, remove the hash component at the end. These are just too long / messy:

    https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/building-levels-fyi-in-coffee-shops-and-growing-to-profitability-da7a4f5d63

    https://www.indiehackers.com/product/hex-colors/random-color-generator--M0HL96DcFp2jcvWDnlP

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  14. 2

    Little late to the party here... But you need to be careful with the UGC and site bloat. If you are indexing everything you are really wasting crawl budget that could be focused elsewhere. I'd recommend only indexing pages that at least have X amount of comments or X amount of upvotes to ensure there is value on that page where if someone landed on that page from Google they would get value rather than an unanswered question.

    You'd be surprised how much cleaning up bloat helps the valuable content on your site. This is coming from someone who overseas 37 social community all driven by being discovered in Google search mainly via UGC pages.

    I recently did a noindex of 1000s of thin UGC pages on said social communities and saw a 4x increase in traffic.

    @channingallen

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  15. 2

    Not sure how the the Core Web Vitals in Search Console looks, but the Lighthouse reports I get from indiehackers are not great... So improving those would definitely be on the list.

  16. 2

    I do SEO Consulting. As many have mentioned speed seem to be a noticeable issue, and I can see it on lighthouse, pingom and gtmetrix.

    Your evergreen content i feel is hard to find or get buried in the users content.

    Your Start Here button should be more prominent. The users content called my attention way before that page but for a newbie they may be better to go there before starting. On that page, start by quizzing people and ask where they are. Then move them to the proper content / building process according to their answers.

    A section above the footer for the content categories.

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  17. 2

    Please go easy on the JS, haven't dug inside the code; But are the quotes being displayed to buy time for the scripts to load?

    A poll asking whether users would like HN, old reddit like UX with minimal JS (or) Keeping current UX but optimising it thoroughly (or) Completely new UX would be helpful.

    1. 0

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  18. 2

    As a dummy technical SEO I could recommend:

    • Adding breadcrumb (which topic the post is) & consistent URL path
    • Adding automatic Structured data (JSON-LD) with # comment, author, type=@blogposting, wordcount& reading time, publisher, URL, datapublished/created/modified, description, articlebody, author, @type= Person, name, etc.

    Hope it helps

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  19. 1

    Technical SEO is about the technical aspects of your website to increase its traffic and ranking. The technical characteristics of a website are important to search engines like Google.

    When users are looking for information on the internet, they will seek it out and visit specific sites if those websites potentially meet their needs.

    Search engines have made it easier by giving websites with certain features greater preference when reviewed by their algorithms than other sites. These privileges can help websites ultimately rank higher on SERPs (search engine results pages).

    By implementing technical SEO, search engines can now easily understand your website and remove any technical problems that could deter it from being ranked.

    In other words, it’s a method of improving your search engine rankings by fixing any glitches in coding or formatting that could prevent you from being found online.

    Source: https://kasandz.com/technical-on-page-off-page-shopify-seo/

  20. 1

    To begin promoting a new brand, three primary conditions must be met: Develop a robust brand platform so that each member of the marketing team has a single, clear idea of precisely what needs to be promoted; Draw a portrait of the ideal customer for the advertised brand - it helps to represent the end consumer, which will largely determine the choice of tools for promotion; Allocate a free budget and do not wait for its mandatory payback. For brand promotion, it is not necessary to "reinvent the wheel." You can use standard advertising channels, but not to increase sales, but for press release distribution. https://presspog.com

  21. 1

    Hey Channing,

    As an agency we use lot's of tools to get the reports first. But the issue is with the platforms.

    Different platforms have different issues.

    But in my reccomandation, go with Ahrefs, SEMRush, Ubersuggest, ryte, & other audit tools.

    Hope this thing will be helpful for you

    Thanks
    Aashirvad Kumar
    Optiomize For SEO
    https://optimizeforseo.com/

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  22. 1

    Checkout backlinco.com - I've learned more there than anywhere else.

    I recommend building a "flat" seo structure so basically all the categories are accessible in some way for the user, and then ever article is in 1 or more categories. You never want articles linked from an article but not in a category, or your site structure becomes "deep" and is more confusing to Google.

    Make sure to use plenty of internal linking throughout your articles as you build as well.

    I definitely think a clearer menu should be on the agenda, and your new post categories can find their way there as well.

    Definitely focus on keyword research for your articles. My website speed is about 7seconds (baaaaad) and I'm still able to rank on page 1 of Google with a DA of 1 because I know which keywords I can actually compete for and target them properly.

    Otherwise, I honeslty love this site and am so happy I found it. I havnt noticed an issue with the site speed but maybe I'm just patient 😂😂

    Excited to see the articles in store!

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

  23. 1

    Coming in a bit late to this party. :) I haven’t been very active here lately but this one piqued my interest. I make my living as an SEO consultant, so I have a few things to add.

    I actually exchanged a couple of emails with Courtland maybe a year ago about some ranking issues you were having at the time. Anyway... on to answering your questions.

    What would be the best way to organize our articles?

    There’s not a ton of information in your post to go on here, but just make sure that section is easy to find, and has a great hub page that directs the visitor to relevant content. Don't bury it.

    By having good content and copy, explaining the categories, linking consistently (and interlinking between articles when relevant), you can help add relevance not only to your users, but to Google. Help them understand your content.

    Well-formed, semantic HTML matters here too, and structured data where relevant, more about this later.

    What are the biggest changes we would need to make?

    I’d have a prominent link in your top menu. As I said, make it prominent. Maybe even more prominent during an initial period than you will have it later. You know, the typical “New!” feature shoutout.

    I feel your site can be a bit hard to navigate sometimes since there is so much content. So give it a separate, premier space and URL.

    And well, then we come to this final info dump. I apologize in advance. :)

    What other advice do you have for us?

    Sorry to pile on, I’m sure you're tired of hearing about it, but as many here have mentioned, you have site performance issues. They’re a ranking factor already (both direct and indirect) but will become more important soon, so you might as well start working on improving that (iterate; I’m not saying rebuild the entire site).

    Don’t get too fixated on it, especially not at the expense creating of great, valuable, useful content and nurturing your existing community, but it is something that actually matters.

    Google’s ranking algorithms are increasingly trying to reward good UX (in addition to great content, of course), which is a good thing to keep in mind.

    For example, Google has flagged that the measurements that make up their Core Web Vitals will soon be a proper ranking signal (early 2021-ish?). How important of a ranking signal remains to be seen but if it improves your user experience, it’s a win in my book, regardless of the effect on your rankings.

    For general performance wins, you have a good amount of low-hanging fruit that you probably want to start addressing at some point. Like automatically optimizing the size and dimension of images for less bloat (and less spent on bandwidth ;) ).

    To give you an example, here’s a post that has a 1.2 MB PNG image in it. There’s no reason for that specific image to weigh in over 100kB if properly sized and optimized, but even just dropping it into something like TinyPNG will give you a file size of around 330 kB.

    It also has a 334 kB JPG image that is an unnecessary 3600x2016 pixels (huge!). Resize that to a more reasonable width of for example 1200 pixels and you end up with a JPG file that’s 71 kB.

    Not to mention all the other small, accumulated saving you’d get by doing this across the board.

    All of this can be automated on the backend.

    May I also suggest a free win? Add native lazy loading (it’s now part of the HTML standard) to your img tags. Google introduced it a while ago. It’s as easy as adding loading="lazy" to your image tags.

    And you use a lot of Javascript. :) It’s a performance hog, and if you dig into Lighthouse (in the Google Dev Tools Audit tab) or just check that page in Pagespeed Insights, you’ll see how many areas there are to improve.

    You want to focus on mobile performance, btw. That’s Google’s focus now.

    You’re probably aware of this stuff, but it does matter.

    A few things not related to performance:

    • Adding Article schema.org structured data won’t hurt, but I’m not sure how much it will help either. But why not, right?

    • Someone suggested breadcrumbs, which I think is great. Both visible, and the corresponding schema.org markup. Anything that helps a newly arrived site visitor to orient themselves.

    • Don't underestimate the value of search appearance. Good page titles and meta descriptions do matter quite a lot. Think of your search results as small, free search ads for your content. :) Most of your pages today don’t even have meta descriptions, so you're 100% relying on Google to auto-generate them, which can sometimes yield less than ideal results.

    • Once you start thinking about organic traffic, you realize that every page that gets traffic directly from search engines also should work to some extent as a landing page. Make sure landing directly on your article pages is not a disorienting experience, and encourage further exploration. Hence things like breadcrumbs, tips about similar articles and resources, and so on.

    • Oh, and one more thing. Don’t just set and forget your articles. At least if you want to grow organic traffic. Have a look once in a while how they are performing, what they're ranking for, complement them with additional information, update them with relevant new findings and links, and so on. Make them better, more valuable articles over time, and Google will notice.

    Honestly, without a proper audit and a more in-depth discussion about what your goals are here, it’s difficult to give truly useful advice. Hence the common response from SEO professionals, "it depends." :) But I hope I told you at least one thing you were not already aware of.

    All that said, the first thing you probably want to do is log in to Google Search Console to see what existing issues you have with Indie Hackers. It really is immensely useful. :)

    Ok, this got way long. Thank you for reading, if you got this far.

  24. 1

    What would be the best way to organize our articles?

    This is very general and would depend heavily on the types of articles you intend on ramping up. Are there a series of key categories that each piece of content will fall under?

    For example: marketing, sales, product, development, etc.

    What are the biggest changes we would need to make?

    Pushing more of the content, I find that at the moment this isn't highlighted very much on IH and most people I know didn't even know that IH is more than a forum.

    I suppose this is in large part caused by the structure/design of the site to be focused on driving people to the forum.

    What other advice do you have for us?

    In general, just keep serving the audience. Focusing on SEO once you've already built such a vibrant community is such a luxury. Use the fact that you can focus on quality content & great website design (etc.) to your advantage because that's something that very few websites on the internet have the resources/ability to do...

    Beyond this though, I would say that if you're planning to invest in SEO/marketing as a whole, you should set KPIs for what you're trying to achieve. That way a strategy can be built around your key goals because as of right now it sounds like you just want to dabble in SEO which is great but without clear direction (i.e. "our north star metric is new members" or "we want more pageviews because we want to drive up the price of our podcast sponsorship") there's not much that can be done in the way of working towards that goal without running around like a headless chicken if you know what I mean :)

  25. 1

    *Focus heavily on UX -- I can't stress the importance of this. Don't waste one sentence while writing your content. 0 fluff. Keep things concise and punchy. Use headers and sub-headers to make it easy to jump between sections.

    *Some are going to disagree with me on this one, but don't rely on the old adage "build it and they will come" as paradoxical as that is for SEO. What I mean by that is, create linkable assets and then pound the outreach to web admins / editors to get it placed. You'll thank yourself later. (I used to build a ton of links as one of the many hats I wore as an SEO)

    *Do your keyword research, especially before creating more evergreen pieces of content because unless you have a monster budget and all the time in the world, longtail keywords are likely going to be your go-to.

    *Make your website as sticky as possible. Meaning don't leave the user / visitor wondering what to do next. Leave calls to actions multiple times if it's long form content you're writing.

    *Include pictures, infographics, videos, audiophiles, gifs, outside resources / external links to high-authority websites, screenshots, etc. in your content. Content formatted this way has excellent search ranking value. Many recent studies support this, including one from Neil Patel.

    ******The reason I mentioned these 5 things specifically is because it's based on advice from a post-pandemic perspective. I started 2 websites since it happened and have had to build from scratch --- and have found focusing on these areas had the greatest return on time investment.

    This is also under assumption that you already have plans to remove duplicates, repurpose old content, clean up broken links, etc.

    Coschedule.com also has an excellent headline analyzer tool. Takes some practice, but you'll start to get the hang of it and you'll see that it's worth it. Writing great headlines is key.

    If you're ever confused as to what properly formatted content or great headlines look, the best thing about the digital age is everything is out in the open. Go to the websites or social media of big brands and try to mimic the ones that fit your company's style the best. They pay millions and millions to outside agencies and in-house employees to get these things right, so take advantage of it.

  26. 1

    I wouldn't consider myself a SEO expert, however I have been in the space for a number of projects. Overall I don't see anything technically broken SEO-wise, but i'd recommend looking into:

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

    2. 1

      I agree with some of your points, but hell not to AMP pages. If you want to know why not, keep an eye on articles in HN.

    3. 1

      I was going to say exactly the same about clustering topics

  27. 1

    Great question.
    I think that Content HUB should increase your Google rate and behavior dramatically.
    As I can see you have already Recommended posts for each post page. It works fine and I often use it. And it is also nice cross linking approach.
    But you have also different content items: interviews, podcasts, meetups, products, articles, store products. Why not connect it by some sense? Maybe by tags or if you can use AI for this algorithm it should be working even much better.
    Additional smart cross-linking approach brings you a better and more targeted traffic, decreases your Bounce rate and makes more reading pages by visitors.
    And, it it is so easy to measure as a result.
    Please read my small article about my early experiments with it and measured results for 2 months. Actually you'll be surprized with results, I'm sure.
    https://medium.com/@mr.gorin/how-content-hub-implementation-improved-the-seo-ranking-69ee16c08278

    This is just a large hypothesis, but rapid growth is always about many continuous hypotheses and sub-hypotheses set and measurement.
    Best, Alex.

  28. 1

    Developers tend to overestimate the impact of site-speed on rankings.

    Here's just one report which found that site-speed did not correlate with rankings: https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking

    While this will supposedly change once Google begins using Core Web Vitals (https://moz.com/blog/core-web-vitals), today Google penalizes extremely slow sites as opposed to rewarding super fast ones.

    I would focus heavily on interlinked content. Look at what existing, longer-form content you have, and see what you can link together in relevant places with contextual anchor text. Oh, and see which content is already ranking for great keywords and start there with your interlinking.

    I would also double-check outbound links. As far as I remember, there are still places on Indie Hackers where members can place a link without it becoming "nofollow" ;) Use the "Outbound links" report in you favorite SEO tool and go add rel="nofollow" to those spots.

    Like @benas11 said, make sure the crawl depth for your important content isn't too deep. A good rule of thumb is keeping it less than 3 if possible.

    And make sure there is nothing you want Google to crawl that is only available on interaction. Google does execute JavaScript, but it doesn't interact with the page (like scrolling or clicking buttons).

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      Maybe it does not affect much SEO, but still not very good for UX to have slow pages, and also they do not seem server rendered, as there's a "loading quote".

      I'd suggest using NextJS with incremental static site generation could benefit both SEO, perf and UX

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        Totally agree about the UX, it is slow. It's just the question was about SEO.

        Now, the slowness could affect whether IH can be effectively crawled by Google within their crawl budget, but I don't know enough about the scale of the site to say anything about that.

        But again, crawling vs. indexing vs. ranking are all kinda different things that each should be addressed. It's hard to "consult" without having more data haha.

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    1. Organisation depends on what type and how much content you are creating. Usually sorting out by categories is enough and going deeper is usually not nesesaacry, but again, really depends on the type of content you are creating.

    2. From first look - don't really see any major changes needed. However, if you want to go after SEO, your "blog" section needs to be very "Google friendly" - meaning, no hidden buttons, content needs to be easily accessible, not having any "rabbit holes" - everything needs to be max 2 clicks away. Naviagtion, internal linking between content are the things to consider as I do believe you will nail the content structure based on IH current website.

    3. Hire or consult with SEO expert (on regular basis) 🙂 having someone to guide you through the whole process and making sure you check all the little details will be crucial to your success.

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    You're asking a strange question. I thought you were supposed to understand this, but if not, then read the article about ahrefs site audit, which may help you shed some light on this mystery. Although in fact, I do not see anything unusual in this and everything is quite simple. I was surprised at how simple it was.

    1. 1

      Hi there! I'm trying to build a tool for the SEO space as I feel like it is quite frustrating. You seem like a knowledgeable person on the subject and I'd love to have a chat with you to understand where you see the space is lacking the most. If you feel like it, book a time with me here: https://calendly.com/franco-abtestingai/seo-rant

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted a year ago.

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