Prioritising Technical SEO Fixes

Prioritising Tech SEO Fixes The Biggest Bang for the Smallest
Buck Barry Adams SEO Consultant Organized by

@badams www.smxl.it My SEO Audit Model

@badams www.smxl.it Web Search Engines Crawling Indexing Ranking

@badams www.smxl.it The Three Pillars of SEO Technology Relevancy Authority

@badams www.smxl.it Technology Crawling Relevancy Indexing Authority Ranking Relation to
Web Search

@badams www.smxl.it Technology Crawling Relevancy Indexing Authority Ranking ‘Technical’ SEO
Audit

@badams www.smxl.it What is an SEO Audit?

@badams www.smxl.it

@badams www.smxl.it Analysis of a website using applied SEO theory
to initiate a process towards improved organic search visibility. Start of an Improvement Process SEO Audit

@badams www.smxl.it https://jamesclear.com/marginal-gains

@badams www.smxl.it The Actual Audit

@badams www.smxl.it Checklist

@badams www.smxl.it The Key to a Good Audit

@badams www.smxl.it The Key to a Good Audit Pattern Recognition

@badams www.smxl.it 1. Homepage 2. Category page 3. Product/Service page
4. Blog/News overview page 5. Post/Article page 6. Static Content page 7. … ? Identify Page Templates

@badams www.smxl.it Writing The Report

@badams www.smxl.it It will be shared

@badams www.smxl.it Make it Actionable

@badams www.smxl.it Only Include What Needs The checklist should be
provided as an attachment

@badams www.smxl.it Omit The Trivial Stuff .

@badams www.smxl.it Concise and Light on Jargon If you can’t
explain it simply, you don’t understand it yourself

@badams www.smxl.it

@badams www.smxl.it Three Main Audiences: 1. Management 2. Marketers 3.
Tech

@badams www.smxl.it • Summary of key points; • No jargon
• Don’t Apportion Blame; • You need to keep marketing & tech on side • Show Them The Money; • Estimate the positive impact of your recommendations 1. Management

@badams www.smxl.it • Your Job = Make Marketing Look Good
• SEO is a process; • Not a one-off activity • Competitors aren’t doing everything right either; • Don’t imitate, innovate • Give them the tools; • Teach a man how to fish… 2. Marketing

@badams www.smxl.it • Speak Their Language; • Understand their paradigm
• Basic Concepts You Need To Get Across: • How search engines work • URLs are sacred • SEO benefits Tech • Don’t Tell Them How, Tell Them Why; • Outcome focused – they can find their own path 3. Tech

@badams www.smxl.it

@badams www.smxl.it • Impact: ➢ How much impact will this
change have on the site’s traffic? • Effort: ➢ How much effort will this change require? Impact vs Effort

@badams www.smxl.it Prioritisation Matrix

@badams www.smxl.it Quick Wins Worth Doing Worth Doing Maybe Implement
Maybe Implement Maybe Implement Probably Not Probably Not Definitely Not Prioritisation Matrix

@badams www.smxl.it Prioritisation Matrix

@badams www.smxl.it • Missing Structured Data that can enable Rich
Results Issue

Results • WordPress CMS, easy to implement with a plugin

@badams www.smxl.it

@badams www.smxl.it A

Results • CMS is bespoke, no easy way to implement Structured Data • Manual implementation? ,

@badams www.smxl.it C

@badams www.smxl.it More Examples

@badams www.smxl.it • Website uses client-side JavaScript rendering for primary
content

content. • The JS framework has a SSR solution, it needs to be installed, configured, and tested. ,

content. • The JS framework has no SSR solution • Can plug the site into a provider like PreRender.io to enable some measure of SSR ,

@badams www.smxl.it • Site has no meta descriptions on any
page ➢ Google uses its own snippet text when ranking pages

page ➢ Google uses its own snippet text when ranking pages • CMS has description field, it’s not being used • Manual effort to input meta descriptions ,

page ➢ Google uses its own snippet text when ranking pages • CMS can be configured to auto-populate meta descriptions ,

@badams www.smxl.it • Ecommerce site uses fully crawlable Faceted Navigation
• Enormous amounts of crawl waste

• Enormous amounts of crawl waste • Facet URLs have unique URL parameters • Example: /category/?filter=[facet] • Simple robots.txt disallow rule will solve ,

• Enormous amounts of crawl waste • Facet URLs are folders and have no unique patterns • Facet names match some category names • Example: /category/facet-name/facet-name/ • So… robots.txt blocking is not possible • Alternative solutions required… , ??? Effort

• Enormous amounts of crawl waste • Facet URLs are folders and have no unique patterns • Facet names match some category names • Example: /category/facet-name/facet-name/ • So… robots.txt blocking is not possible • Alternative solutions required ,

@badams www.smxl.it What if you have multiple issues in the
same priority category? Multiple Category Issues

@badams www.smxl.it Three Types of Issues: Crawl Issues Indexing Issues
Ranking Issues

@badams www.smxl.it

@badams www.smxl.it Prioritise Backwards 1. Ranking Issues 2. Indexing Issues
3. Crawl Issues

@badams www.smxl.it • Ranking issues tend to yield quick results
• Gets buy-in from the company • Crawling issues tend to be more technically complex • Hard to fix and slow to improve Backwards Prioritisation

@badams www.smxl.it Prioritisation of Issues

@badams www.smxl.it Summarised

@badams www.smxl.it • Use a Priority Matrix ➢ Estimate Impact
➢ Understand Effort • Ranking > Indexing > Crawling • Quick results > Long-term activity • When in doubt… Guess. Prioritising Tech SEO

@badams www.smxl.it Barry Adams ➢ Doing SEO since 1998 ➢
Specialist in Technical SEO & News SEO ➢ Chief Editor at State of Digital

@badams www.smxl.it Grazie!

Prioritising Technical SEO Fixes

Prioritising Technical SEO Fixes

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