SEO Disaster Prevention & RecoveryPubCon Las Vegas 2013 – Masters Training - Allison Fabella

INTRODUCTIONSAllison Fabella (@alli12)

Director of SEO & Social Media – Primedia (RentPath) Manager SEO & Social Media – Atlanta Journal-

Constitution Sr. SEO Manager – Primedia Account Manager – Prominent Placement agency

And you are…? Your name Your company Your role/position What you hope to come away with from this session

AGENDA1. Introductions

2. Goals

3. Case study

4. Danger lurking in your organization + Breakout

5. Plugging SEO holes in your organization + Breakout

6. Disaster prevention processes + Breakout

6. Bio Break

7. DEFCON 2: Pre- and post-development release + Breakout

8. Disaster recovery + Breakout

9. SEO horror stories

10. Discussion / Q & A

GOALS1. Know how do identify areas within your

organization that may be SEO killers

2. Arm yourself with a process to ensure successful SEO initiatives from inception to completion

3. Be prepared with an action plan to quickly recover if “the worst” happens anyway

CASE STUDY

THE FALL

ACTIONS Diagnostic site audit

Reviewed Google WMT

Reviewed SEO initiatives

Reviewed Product & Dev initiatives

Focus on release dates

Reviewed backlinks

Compared to Panda & Penguin updates

Asked questions

THE RECOVERY

LEARNINGSNo one smoking gun. Just a series of

development mistakes, residual spammy SEO tactics, etc.

Contributors were: Poor communication around a major platform

change Overall poor/thin quality content Dupe titles & meta descriptions Malformed canonicals Bad URLs pulled into XML sitemap and fed to Google Accidental global NOINDEX

QUESTION:What else could have been done?

SECTION 1Danger lurking in your organization

THINGS THAT CAN MESS YOU UP Infrastructure changes

Taking servers offline Data center changes

Development initiatives Code changes Platform changes

CMS changes

Other departments’ initiatives Product Development Design Content Ad sales

Development releases

BREAK OUT - 11. Where does danger lurk in your organization2. What can trip you up?3. Who are the usual suspects?

SECTION 2Plugging SEO holes in your organization

DOCUMENTATION + COMMUNICATION Document primary SEO directives

Distribute to development, product, and QA Discuss with stake holders

Document primary SEO do’s and don’t’s Distribute to dev, product, QA, content, design Discuss with stake holders

Document primary SEO touch points Planning, requirements, wireframes, architecture, QA... Discuss with stake holders

Document status updates cc all stakeholders

PAGE TYPES + DIRECTIVES

CHECKLISTSFor development

For QA

For Content

SEO

Recommended reading: Checklist Manifesto Atul Gawande

DEV CHECKLIST

QA CHECKLIST

BREAK OUT - 21. What can you do to plug the SEO holes in

your organization?

SECTION 3Disaster-prevention processes

PROCESSESDaily / weekly meetings & check-ins

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities Including when in the process actions to be taken

SEO task list

Starting or restarting your organization’s commitment to SEO

DAILY / WEEKLY Attend daily stand-ups (or equivalent)

Create SEO task list with SEO team for status & additions Review weekly

Hold weekly SEO meetings Include all stakeholders

Development, Product, Infra, C-Suite (at least send them an invite) The higher up the food-chain, the better

Review Current initiatives & their status Completed initiatives Roadblocks Successes (everyone loves a graph)

ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES

SEO TASK LIST

SEO KICK-OFF OR RE-SET SUMMIT Review all current initiatives

Discuss roadblocks

Create an SEO “wish list” Blue sky No ideas are bad

End summit with an action plan Assign roles & responsibilities

Put follow-up meeting on calendar by Summit’s end Get stakeholder agreement on

attendance

Make it a big deal One to two days Serve food!

Invite ALL stakeholders Dev, Product, Content, Infra,

Design, Invite these depts’ supervisors tool

Ask top exec to kickoff Sets the tone Adds importance

SEO KICK-OFF OR RE-SET SUMMIT Make it a big deal

One to two days Serve food

Invite ALL stakeholders Dev, Product, Content, Infra,

Design, And their supervisors/team

leaders too Mandatory attendance (if

possible)

Ask top brass to kickoff As high up food chain as possible Sets the tone Adds importance

Review all current initiatives Discuss roadblocks Discuss solutions

Brainstorm an SEO “wish list” Blue sky No ideas are bad

End summit with an action plan Assign roles & responsibilities Put follow-up meeting on

calendar by Summit’s end Get stakeholder

commitment to attend

BREAK OUT - 31. Document your own SEO process

2. Define/assign roles & responsibilities

SECTION 4DEFCON 2: Pre & post- development release

PRE-FLIGHT CHECKDocument current meta robots

SEO team, dev team, and QA should all have this documentation

Document current title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, h-tags, size count, word count, robots.txt, etc.

Run a crawl test in QA or staging environment Ideally via an internal spider Screaming Frog will do

Check current and QA/staging directives for changes

CRAWL TEST: CURRENT IN PROD

CRAWL TEST: IN QA / STAGING

POST-FLIGHT CHECK Immediately after release run crawl test again

This time in production

Review each SEO “story” for proper execution per requirements

CRAWL TEST: PRE-RELASE IN PROD

CRAWL TEST: POST-RELASE IN PROD

BREAK OUT - 41. Where are the holes in your organization?2. What can you do to plug them up?

SECTION 5Disaster recovery: If the worst happens

INTO ACTION

1. Identify date(s) of when things went wrong Was it a sudden drop or slow decline?

Sudden drop could indicate site blockage or search engine manual action

Slow decline could indicate multiple issues that need to be identified, prioritized, and fixed

2. SEO Disaster Checklist

3. Recovery

DISASTER CHECKLIST Analytics diagnostics dashboard

Already set up & ready to go

Don’t wait to set up when disaster strikes. You need to be ready to act.

Review developer logs

Review past releases SEO, Product, Dev, Etc.

HTTP status codes Server issues

Robots.txt

Meta robots Inadvertent NOINDEX?

Bad redirects

Review Google WMT Manual actions

Crawl errors

Indexing changes

Broken/malformed sitemaps

Malformed canonicals

Review backlinks Any big changes?

Any “bad” links? Past link farming impact?

Is negative SEO as possibility?

Panda & Penguin correlations

SEO DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS Webmaster Tools*

SearchMetrics

Moz*

SEMRush

Majestic SEO

Internet Marketing Ninjas*

Link Detox (Link Research Tools)

*Free or free version available

Google analytics*

Adobe Site Catalyst

Frobee Robots.txt Checker*

Chartelligence*

Screaming Frog / Xenu Link Sleuth

Rex Swain HTTP Checker*

Favorites to add???

GETTING BACK ON TRACKPrioritize fixes

Biggest bang for the buck

If manual action required Be contrite and grovel for forgiveness from

engines Even if it’s not your fault

Manage expectations with management around recovery time It often takes a lot longer to get out of trouble than

into it

AFTER THE STORMDocument the issue in great detail

Document the fix in great detail

Share this info with stakeholders But don’t throw anyone under the bus

Keep this info on file FOREVER! How long?.... FOREVER!!!

BREAK OUT - 51. What other diagnostics can you check?2. What are your favorite diagnostic tools?

SECTION 6SEO horror stories

BREAK OUT - 61. Share your favorite SEO horror story

• What would you have done differently?2. Or tell about “a friend’s” SEO horror story

• What would you have done instead?

WHAT ELSE?Questions? Thoughts? insights?

THANK YOU.Allison Fabellaafabella@rentpath.com@alli12