Transcript of Technical SEO Beyond the Audit - Brighton SEO April 2017 - Philip Gamble
Philip GambleFOUND
Technical SEO Beyond the Initial Audit
@freeg131 http://www.slideshare.net/freeg131
Start with
an audit
Deliver the audit
If we’re lucky
everyone’s on board
to implement
Reach an
acceptable level of
technical compliance
Things Change
Our job
isn’t done
Technical SEO Beyond the Audit
challenges change brings
performance impact
how to identify quickly
importance of a swift resolution
INSTANCE 1:DE-INDEX
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">
24% drop in indexed pages
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Rls
Week
Most important pages deindexed first
21% traffic loss
80% traffic loss on top service page
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
How long until you notice?
Don’t rely on retrospective
rankings or traffic
Monitor robots.txt
Monitor meta robots key pages
Daily rankings track key pages
Identify
Check all robots
Request change
Review implementation
Fix
traffic recovered quickly
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2 days to get fix live!
6 weeks for all URLs to get re-indexed
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Request Google
re-crawl the pages!
INSTANCE 2:‘MINOR’ CHANGE
“re-organised products slightly”
Check Everything
Trailing Slash Removed
https://www.site.com/service-name/
https://www.site.com/service-name
-22% page traffic
/service-name/ /service-name
map keywords to URLs
check ranking URLs
don’t rely on aggregate data
How to identify
https://www.site.com/service-name/
https://www.site.com/service-name
https://www.site.com/service-name/
Change Reversed
instant recovery
/service-name/ /service-name
demand sign-off
get access to dev ticket system
Communicate!
How to prevent
INSTANCE 3:GOOGLE GETTING “SMARTER”
Search Engines try to be clever
Google is dumb
Behaving like a user
= new problems
Improved Code
Execution
Filtering Sliders: 1000s more URLs!
Sub-category
Location
+ every salary by year
+ every salary by day
+ every salary by hour
Normal
URLs
37%
Salary
Filtered
URLs
63%
63% of Google’s
Crawl BudgetOnly 0.1% of Visits
Massive Inefficiencies
JavaScript imported content
HTMLJS
CONTENT
Thousands of thin variants
?ids= 15/reload-slider242,10407,14310,12039
JS
CONTENT
x 100000
+25% Indexed URLs in a Month
Visibility Decrease
Visibility
IndexedURLs
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800
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1,200
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Indexed URL count
Large sites: log files
Don‘t rely on your crawler
Identify
URL parameter configuration
Robots.txt
Proactively block
Fix: Conserve Crawl Budget
URL removal tool
Force crawl
Fix: Tidy SERPs
APPROACH
Monitor
Monitor
Catch Quickly
Monitor
Catch Quickly
Retain Performance
TAKING ACTION
What to monitor?
Robots,
Uptime,
Crawl Data,
Speed,
Indexation,
Content
Google
Analytics
Google Search
Console
Thresholds:
Identify what matters
Configure Alerts
ChangeDetection.com
Build Dashboards with
Google Data Studio
Build Dashboards
Google Data Studio
Screenshot(s)
Automate reports
Make sure they are seen
Lots of Google Analytics apps
IFTTT or APIs
Slack
Slack
Slack
Google Search Console reports 3 additional crawl errors on sitename.co.uk[keyword 27] has dropped from #3 to no rankhttp://www.sitename.co.uk/landing-page-27 has dropped from Google's index
Vigilance Pays
Image Credits
Start with an audit: https://stocksnap.io/photo/JVSII4KCCKReach an acceptable level of technical compliance https://www.pexels.com/photo/mathematics-colorful-game- color-19677/Things change http://cubercritic.com/product/rubiks-cube-review/Our job isn’t done https://pixabay.com/en/tub-palio-race-river-water-remo-114349/How long https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-round-analog-wall-clock-121734/Fix: GooglebotRequest Google recrawl the pages: https://static.pexels.com/photos/262272/pexels-photo-262272.jpegCheck everything: https://pixabay.com/en/fear-fright-horror-frightened-1172407/Behaving like a user = new problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsF7enQY8uIFix – Tidy SERPs: https://pixabay.com/en/lego-legomaennchen-males-workers-568039/Google Data Studio: http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2017/02/google-data-studio-google-search-console-report.pngVigilance pays: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-hawk-on-focus-photo-162354/