"This year, only 30% of the SEO roadmap has been deployed on my site by my technical team", the quote we hear too often in SEO teams. But today, the sites in first position on Google are those that deploy 100% of their roadmap andadapt quickly to the updates of the Mountain View engine. You are frustrated to see that the strategy adopted by your competitors is the one you wanted to deploy. Unfortunately, your technical team does not have the resources to handle your SEO tickets. In addition, your CMS has many technical limitations that prevent you, for example, from simply adding a canonical tag to your site. As a result, you watch helplessly as your competitors take over the top spots in the SERPs.

We have good news for you. The development of cloud solutions has allowed the emergence of new concepts, such as the possibility of executing code directly through a CDN. A concept that has allowed the birth of a simple idea: modify and correct the code of pages to apply SEO best practices directly in the cloud.

In this article, we will explore the key concepts of EdgeSEO which is based on CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). We will also present the benefits of this approach as well as the challenges associated with its integration. Finally, we will introduce you to EdgeSEO by Fasterize, a unique solution that will allow you to use the full power of EdgeSEO with ease.

What is the EdgeSEO?

The term "Edge SEO" was popularized by Dan Taylor, Head of Technical SEO at SALT agency, at the TechSEO Boost conference conference in 2018. The concept of Edge SEO relies on a CDN infrastructure and its ability to run code directly on the CDN server. As a reminder, a Content Delivery Networks (CDN), is a network of servers distributed around the world that allow content to be distributed quickly to users regardless of their location in the world.

In concrete terms, you can deploy code directly on the CDN to modify the source code of the page that a user of your site consults, before it is displayed to the Internet user or to the Google bot. This is a unique opportunity to modify the source code of pages and technically optimize them for SEO.

Edge SEO is a great opportunity to explore a new playing field for optimizing the deployment of your SEO recommendations.
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Very important point, the Edge SEO is a "webperf friendly" solution. Unlike tools that run JavaScript on the client side, the Edge SEO is executed on the server side (on the Edge side more precisely since it is not your servers that make the changes but the CDN servers). This prevents any slowdown or flickering/layout shift effect on your pages related to the execution of JavaScript. Given the increasing importance given to the subject of web performance by Google, it is crucial to take this point into account.

Opportunities related to Edge SEO

Let's take a look at the opportunities related to the implementation of an Edge SEO solution to help companies deploy their SEO roadmap more efficiently.

Technical limitations of your CMS

The technical limitations of your CMS may not allow you to directly modify the source code of your pages. By deploying an Edge SEO solution, you will remove the barriers to implementing your SEO recommendations. You will be able to add, modify or delete any element, text content or HTML tags, in your pages and this, in the cloud.

Below are some interesting examples for SEO that you can easily implement:

• Vous devez implémenter des balises <hreflang> mais vous ne pouvez pas modifier facilement le code source de votre CMS ? Quelques lignes de code JavaScript depuis le « Worker » du CDN vous permettront de les ajouter.
• You want to obfuscate the links to the legal notices of your site. A problem for your technical team linked to the complexity of your CMS or simply to the lack of time and which can be circumvented by applying the modification directly on the CDN.
• Vous voulez modifier une balise <h2> en <span> car le template que vous utilisez n’est pas optimisé pour le référencement naturel ? Vous serez en mesure de réaliser ce type de modification aussi, très facilement
• You want to add structured data on your site, it will also be possible with a few lines of code.

Our goal is not to draw up an exhaustive list of all the recommendations you can deploy because they are (very) numerous. It is important to understand that with this type of solution, you have a tool that allows you to regain control of your SEO strategies by directly modifying the source code of your site via the CDN, without being limited by the technical constraints of your CMS.

Redirections

Managing redirects from your CMS should no longer be an issue in 2023. However, we have to admit that it is not always that simple. It can become very complicated to set up without mobilizing your network administration teams. What should take a few minutes can quickly turn into a few days or even weeks. If you have ever experienced this kind of situation where a marketing email was sent to several thousand users with an error in a link, you will easily understand the usefulness of having a tool such as Edge SEO that allows you to set up a 301 (or 302, 308, etc..) redirect in a few minutes directly on the CDN layer.

AB Tests SEO

SEO AB testing is an effective way to maximize your SEO strategy. By testing the impact of a recommendation before deploying it across your entire site, you can prove its ROI and make more informed decisions. With an Edge SEO solution, you have the ideal solution to implement your server-side AB tests. In addition, you can ensure that the source code of your pages, with the applied changes, will be crawled by Google's bot.

You will also be able to modify your robots.txt file to optimize your crawling strategies without spending hours to find the right contact, but also return HTTP 410 codes on pages to indicate that resources are no longer available. The SEO Edge offers you new opportunities to deploy your SEO strategies. We are confident that the SEO community will be curious to fully explore the possibilities offered by this concept.

As we saw above, the SEO Edge allows you to bypass the technical limitations of your CMS to apply your SEO recommendations more quickly directly in the cloud. In addition, it will also allow you to configure redirects, set up server-side SEO AB testing, and a host of other things. However, setting up an Edge SEO solution will require the support and expertise of your IT team. Deploying a CDN and configuring a worker is a technical skill. Then, the developers can write the code to implement the changes on your site. In this configuration, you have a tool that will be able to bypass the blockages of your CMS but the SEO teams will still be dependent on the bandwidth of the developers. If you have an "SEO tech" profile in your team who has the necessary skills to write code, IT may be able to delegate this part but what about the responsibility in case of a problem? There is a governance challenge to be solved here because giving access to the CDN to marketing teams is not without risk. By nature, this type of tool is very permissive and offers many features that must be handled by technical profiles.

The EdgeSEO by Fasterize

Edge SEO as presented above is an eminently technical subject. It does not solve the problem of resource shortages in technical teams and the lack of autonomy faced by in-house SEO teams or agencies to deploy SEO actions. What is missing is a tool that allows marketing teams to implement their SEO recommendations securely and autonomously. At Fasterize, we have created a SaaS solution, EdgeSEO by Fasterize, based on the concept of Edge SEO, that is to say the ability to modify your code on the server side. Butwe have added "user friendly" interfaces that guide non-technical profiles step by step to deploy their SEO recommendations simply and safely.

We have a strong ambition with our EdgeSEO solution:

• We want to permanently remove the implementation barriers of your SEO recommendations. By 2023, there should not be a single unimplemented SEO recommendation on your site due to technical limitations of your CMS.
• We want to increase theautonomy and agility of your SEO teams. An SEO ticket that doesn't make it to production because of a lack of resources in the development teams will no longer be relevant.
• We want to give you the opportunity to implement a "Test & Learn" approach in your teams. The SEO teams will have a solution that will FINALLY allow them to test their SEO strategies without soliciting already busy developers. Once the test is positive, the SEO teams will be able to make a ticket to their technical team to deploy the evolutions on the whole site. This way, teams ensure they are requesting changes that add value to your site.
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You will have understood, our solution EdgeSEO, will allow you to consider your job as a SEO with new perspectives. If you want to know more, do not hesitate to click on this link to request a demo. We will be very happy to discuss this exciting topic with you.

As we have seen in this article, the concept of Edge SEO is an opportunity for companies that want to deploy 100% of their SEO roadmap. The worker concept and the ability to run code directly on a CDN has allowed the emergence of new solutions to deploy your SEO recommendations in the cloud. With a SaaS tool such as EdgeSEO by Fasterize, we offer a unique solution to marketing teams to deploy 100% of their SEO roadmap in full autonomy.

As you know, SEO is a query, a result page and competitors who have only one objective: to be in first position. The one who will dominate the SERP is the one who will be able to deploy his roadmap and adapt quickly to the many updates of Google.

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