When Friendly Fire Strikes! True Stories from the Inside Presented by Keith Goode #Pubcon

X: @keithgoode Mastodon: mastodon.social/@keithgoode Keith Goode • Concierge SEO Consultant, Goode Search • Over 15 years In-House SEO • Vrbo • Dell • IBM • Cox Automotive Group • Various startups • Conference speaker • Podcast host/guest • Austin Otaku • Webcology • Search Engine Journal • … and many more • Certified Scrum Master • Featured in Majestic’s SEO for 2022

The Enemy Inside the Gates Why Updates Are the Least of Your Worries

Expectations vs. Reality SEOs are largely focused on the ever-evolving landscape of search. We expect challenges associated with: • Algorithm Changes • Seasonality • Market Shifts • Competitors surging in the SERPs • AI getting it absolutely wrong (follow @lilyray for examples) www.goodesearch.com

Friendly Fire Comes from Behind For In-House SEOs, the real surprises come from: • Bad deployments • Bad coding • Server changes • Stripped budget and resources • … and more

Real-World Friendly Fire Scenarios And How to Deal with Them

Developers

Canonical Tags – Story #1 • Early days of canonicals • Provided guidance: • Cleanest, renderable URL is the canonical URL • The canonical URL should have a self-referential tag • Parameterized pages all had self-referential canonicals • Lost ranking across the board www.goodesearch.com

Canonical Tags – Story #2 • CMS powering over 11,000 websites • Developer read a random forum post about preventing XSS attacks • Replaced all punctuation in canonical tag URLs with their HTML code equivalent Example: https:/ /www.roundrocktoyota.com& #47; • No new content was indexed for weeks • Google claimed this syntax wasn’t a problem • Spoiler: It was a problem.

Bad Deployment • Framework migration on WordPress • Noindex,Nofollow robot meta- tags not switched from staging to production • The company’s most important content channels were down for several hours until it was fixed.

Executive Leadership

Budget Denial • SEOs, like other departments, send their budget requests each fiscal year • Project work • Tools, Platforms, and New Hires • Estimated revenue improvements • Project work, tools, platforms and new hires are denied • Revenue estimates remain www.goodesearch.com

The Mystery of the Missing Priority • Received approval for 5 epics for the fiscal year • 6 months passed with no movement • Reached out to the Product Lead for advisement • The SVP had deprioritized SEO in February and didn’t tell the SEO Team www.goodesearch.com

Working Together to Resolve Issues How to be the Voice of Reason in a Mad World

As SEOs, it may not be our fault when technical issues happen, but it’s our responsibility to catch them as soon as possible and mitigate them. www.goodesearch.com

Continual Monitoring Some tools offer this • Content King • Ahrefs • Lumar (soon) But ultimately, you’ll have to monitor it yourself www.goodesearch.com

Other Options • GSC and GSC Emails/Alerts • Manual SERP checks • Pre-launch QA/testing • Post-launch reviews

• Democratize SEO with training sessions • Integrate with development into the testing cycle • Show the value of the work associated with SEO www.goodesearch.com

For Executives • Continually tell your story • Affirm the importance of SEO through effective reporting • Correct misunderstandings with evidence • Loop executives in early in the process

Connect with Me! • Website: https://www.goodesearch.com/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithlgoode/ • X: https://twitter.com/keithgoode • Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@keithgoode • Dot: https://dot.cards/keithgoode Images in the presentation courtesy of Amblin Entertainment www.goodesearch.com

Thank You!