How to use server logs to plan & surface content

Transcript

1. How to use server logs to plan & surface content Yvie Ansari Snaptrip Group Linkedin.com/in/yvonneansari | Speakerdeck.com/yvieansari
2. Server access logs: the best ways to analyse them WHAT WE WILL COVER
3. How to use the analysis to surface existing content WHAT WE WILL COVER
4. How to use your analysis to plan future content WHAT WE WILL COVER
5. A FEW NOTES BEFORE WE GET STARTED
6. I am not saying that you should purely look at your server logs to build a content strategy – this would not work.
7. Your content strategy should always focus on the user first and include data points based on user behaviours.
8. But… using server logs can help you improve your content plan and surface that content.
9. SERVER ACCESS LOGS: THE BEST WAY TO ANALYSE THEM
10. COVER GOOGLE AS STANDARD BUT… • Bing • ChatGPT • Perplexity • Claude
11. CATEGORISATION IS IMPORTANT /en-us/hotels/dublin-2b9a6/
12. CATEGORISING INTERNATIONAL DATA Will help you get granular on content access as well:
13. CATEGORISATION IS IMPORTANT Categorise: • Site Section • Locale • Bot
14. CONTENT CLUSTERS The more granular your categorisations are, the more helpful your data will be.
15. YOU CAN NOW HYPOTHESISE: Whether your content is likely to be performant (or not)
16. YOU CAN NOW HYPOTHESISE: Whether bots are likely to like new content
17. YOU CAN NOW HYPOTHESISE: Whether there is missing content that bots are expecting to find
18. YOU CAN ALSO DETERMINE: If there are parts of your site that LLMs / Google just can’t get to
19. A LIVE EXAMPLE… Claude likes themed content in particular
20. A LIVE EXAMPLE… Cheap, Self- Catering and Pet- friendly is interesting
21. A LIVE EXAMPLE… There isn’t much interest for with parking, swimming pool, family friendly
22. VALIDATING WITH GA WILL HELP YOU Understand if your content performs when it is accessed
23. VALIDATING WITH GA WILL HELP YOU Understand if performance is low despite high bot access
24. HOW TO USE YOUR ANALYSIS TO SURFACE CONTENT
25. The UK is the most-crawled market… IMPORTANT CONTENT, LOW ACCESS Indexed by Google & Bing
26. Content duplication and similar content is relatively common for large ecommerce or travel websites. Finding and resolving this can be done more easily with access log data. SIMILAR CONTENT & DUPLICATION
27. SIMILAR CONTENT & DUPLICATION e.g. lots of hotels with the same name
28. IF CONTENT IS ACCESSED OFTEN... …but not driving traffic, you could have issues with: • EEAT • Opportunity
29. HOW TO USE YOUR ANALYSIS TO PLAN FUTURE CONTENT
30. Property pages for this website are accessed a lot and account for a decent percentage of site traffic: HIGH ACCESS & TRAFFIC CONTENT
31. It’s no secret that bots can hallucinate information including URLs. This might sometimes highlight hidden opportunity for pages to be created. URL HALLUCINATIONS MAY SAY…
32. URL HALLUCINATIONS MAY SAY… A bot may hallucinate something within this structure that doesn’t in fact exist. You can validate if it should exist.
33. However, these hallucinations may also simply highlight an internal linking issue that needs to be resolved. URL HALLUCINATIONS MAY SAY…
34. SOMETHING TO LOOK OUT FOR
35. Using server logs is a great way of finding content or pages that Google should not be crawling, which requires a review of your robots.txt file. URLS THAT SHOULD NOT BE CRAWLED
36. Frequently used parameters which you don’t want to index URLS THAT SHOULD NOT BE CRAWLED
37. Blank pages due to temporary content forms in the checkout flow URLS THAT SHOULD NOT BE CRAWLED
38. Site sections that are only meant for the user and not for indexing URLS THAT SHOULD NOT BE CRAWLED
39. KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS SESSION
40. Categorising URLs into topic clusters will make your analysis and planning much simpler. HOPEFULLY YOU’VE LEARNED…
41. Finding important content with high or low access and low performance can be a good place to start in terms of identifying low hanging fruit for improvements. HOPEFULLY YOU’VE LEARNED…
42. URL hallucinations can help you identify potential opportunities for content creation. HOPEFULLY YOU’VE LEARNED…
43. THE END.