Why you need technical SEO for a great online strategy - bSEO April 2023

By looking at concrete examples of how real people address real issues through technical SEO today, Rebecca will show that SEOs from key industries and diverse companies have built technical SEO into their strategy — and why they've done it. You'll walk away with an overview of the world of technical SEO today, and a demonstration of how it is a critical part of solutions implemented as part of an organic growth or acquisition strategy.

Talk given at BrightonSEO in April 2023
https://www.oncrawl.com

Transcript

1. Why you need
   technical SEO to build
   a great online strategy
   https://speakerdeck.com/rebberbel
   @RebBerbel
   Rebecca Berbel
   ONCRAWL
   

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2. @RebBerbel
   “Technical SEO doesn't always
   occupy the place it should in our
   priorities. It's what I end up
   spending the largest portion of
   my time on.”
   — Rémi Nestasio
   

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3. @RebBerbel
   Perspective
   

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4. @RebBerbel
   technical stuff
   The
   that we do to the technical parts
   of a website, for SEO purposes
   

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5. @RebBerbel
   technical stuff
   The
   that we do to the technical parts
   of a website, for SEO purposes
   

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6. @RebBerbel
   technical stuff
   The
   that we do to the technical parts
   of a website, for SEO purposes
   

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7. @RebBerbel
   E-com
   m
   erce
   Classifieds &
   Catalogs New
   s
   O
   ther
   Technical SEO
   projects
   

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8. @RebBerbel
   E-com
   m
   erce
   Classifieds &
   Catalogs New
   s
   O
   ther
   Technical SEO
   projects
   Internal links
   Evangelization
   Crawl /Indexing
   Testing, Monitoring, QA
   Migrations
   Internationalization
   Speed / CWV
   Keywords & Entities
   UX & Accessibility
   Other
   

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9. @RebBerbel
   53,620,097
   Sites with LOTS of pages
   

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10. @RebBerbel
    "You have to think technical SEO when
    you have high volumes of pages: your
    site relies on automated solutions
    and everything needs to be handled
    algorithmically."
    — Hervé Le Turdu
    

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11. @RebBerbel
    Tech stacks
    …if they are a little complex.
    

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12. @RebBerbel
    "The technology behind this site
    is 15 years old, and it can take [a
    drawn-out procedure] to change
    any element."
    — Natalia Witczyk
    

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13. @RebBerbel
    Structure
    Here's what I mean by structure.
    

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14. @RebBerbel
    "It brings enormous SEO value to a
    website to create a structure and
    ensure it stays in place. New pages
    need to also be incorporated with
    links to and from other pages."
    — Omi Sido
    

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15. @RebBerbel
    E-commerce
    Oh, yeah, of course!
    

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16. @RebBerbel
    Automation
    Often to address scalability
    issues
    

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17. @RebBerbel
    Collaboration
    Cross-team work is a core
    component of tech SEO.
    

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18. @RebBerbel
    “We have a multidisciplinary
    team — our SEO team is
    actually part of our product IT
    team.”
    — Antonio Lasaga
    

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19. @RebBerbel
    “I feel like I'm pitching a
    project, not a ticket.”
    — Anett Pohl
    

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20. @RebBerbel
    Evangelization
    Spreading awareness,
    gaining buy-in,
    and sharing ownership
    

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21. @RebBerbel
    "You as a technical SEO can
    help in defining focus topics
    and contribute in a
    cross-functional team."
    — Nicolas Bergmann
    

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22. @RebBerbel
    “Technical SEO looks really
    simple until you get into it, and
    then in practice it's another
    story. [...] It's never critical until
    it really is.”
    — Antoine Eripret
    

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23. @RebBerbel
    Address the
    effects of core
    updates
    Some types of sites
    are more susceptible
    than others
    

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24. @RebBerbel
    Crawl
    Index
    Rank
    (Is this another
    definition of tech SEO?
    Or of how search
    works?
    

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25. @RebBerbel
    "A lot of this is about crawling.
    Obviously linking and navigation is
    going to play a big part in
    how Google crawls our sites and
    understands our content.
    — Simon Glanville
    

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26. @RebBerbel
    Assessing and shaping what is indexed
    

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27. @RebBerbel
    Crawlability and crawl management
    

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28. @RebBerbel
    "We're really interested in using logs
    to find points of user friction and
    study both performance and UX. [Our
    technical SEO team] balances
    perfecting the site's UX and
    perfecting it for Google.
    — Melissa Wong
    

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29. @RebBerbel
    New website
    technologies
    Don't let them break
    your SEO
    

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30. @RebBerbel
    Monitoring
    

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31. @RebBerbel
    New search
    capabilities
    Leverage them
    (before your
    competitors do)
    

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32. @RebBerbel
    From keywords
    to entities
    Semantic search:
    I talked about this last
    BrightonSEO ;)
    

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33. @RebBerbel
    "We've found that Discover is powered
    by links and entities more than
    keywords; [our performance improves]
    when we reinforce the correlation
    between links and recognized
    entities."
    — Nicolas Bergmann
    

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34. @RebBerbel
    Internationalization
    

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35. @RebBerbel
    "We measured a fast and
    positive impact with hreflang
    tagging."
    — Damien Robert
    

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36. @RebBerbel
    "Must-have"
    projects
    

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37. @RebBerbel
    “The subjects I'd say are
    "must haves"
    can change over time.”
    — Can Menteş
    

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38. @RebBerbel
    Integrating non-SEO metrics
    Content
    Business
    UX
    

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39. @RebBerbel
    Internal Linking
    

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40. @RebBerbel
    Page performance
    

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41. @RebBerbel
    "My dev team is obsessed with
    page speed."
    — Can Menteş
    

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42. @RebBerbel
    "Developers believe [CWV]
    are important, so it offers
    an access to their
    backlog."
    — Hervé Le Turdu
    

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43. @RebBerbel
    What do these projects
    in common
    have ?
    

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44. @RebBerbel
    "You need a strong foundation to
    be able to build on it. Technical
    SEO is the core of SEO."
    — Mustafa Elnager
    

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45. @RebBerbel
    This is all beginning to
    strategy
    sound like
    

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46. @RebBerbel
    “Corona seemed to make technical
    SEO more important: sites wanted
    generalist SEO but they realized the
    benefits they needed were from
    technical SEO.”
    — Emilia Gjorgjevska
    

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47. @RebBerbel
    So what should we
    do about it ?
    

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48. @RebBerbel
    Dedicate dev
    time to SEO
    Allocate the right
    resources
    (Prioritize)
    Get the basics
    right
    Use the right
    tools
    

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49. @RebBerbel
    Allocate the right
    resources
    (Prioritize)
    

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50. @RebBerbel
    Dedicate dev
    time to SEO
    Dedicate dev
    time to SEO
    

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51. @RebBerbel
    "There's a technical element to SEO
    in general, but it can get way more
    complicated: we might not be
    talking about just inserting JSON
    code for an entity, but maybe
    recognizing entities with AI first."
    — Roxana Stingu
    

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52. @RebBerbel
    Get the basics
    right
    

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53. @RebBerbel
    Use the right
    tools
    

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54. @RebBerbel
    "Manual monitoring at scale is
    impossible. I need crawl alerting
    and dashboards that allow me to
    be proactive and vigilant."
    — Madeline Pinthon
    

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55. @RebBerbel
    "Sometimes we spend more time fixing
    regressions than creating progress
    through pure technical SEO. A tool like
    Oncrawl with its crawl comparison
    features helps a lot with
    non-regression checks."
    — Rémi Nestasio
    

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56. @RebBerbel
    Drive increased ROI and business success with your website
    Scale your audits, investigations,
    monitoring, and evangelization
    Capture complete search engine
    and organic session behavior
    Blend data across diverse data
    sources for deep and revealing
    analyses
    Automatiser, personnaliser et
    connecter avec d'autres briques de
    votre workflow SEO ou BI
    Industry-leading Technical SEO Data
    for Competitive Websites
    www.oncrawl.com
    

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57. @RebBerbel
    Anett Pohl Antoine Eripret Antonio Lasaga Can Menteş Damien Robert
    Emilia Gjorgjevska Hervé Le Turdu Madeline Pinthon Melissa Wong Mustafa Elnager Natalia Witczyk
    Nicolas Bergmann Omi Sido Roxana Stingu Rémi Nestasio Simon Glanville
    

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58. @RebBerbel
    Come see me at the Oncrawl booth
    to talk about technical SEO!
    Thank you!
    

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