Diagnosing & Solving Technical SEO Challenges

Editor's Notes

• #3: I’ve had the opportunity to work for a couple of growing agencies and share in their successes in growing SEO and online marketing teams While I’ve had some clients in common industries, no major focus and wide variety
• #4: Voltage recently rebranded from “Voltage Creative” and we have a balance between web and marketing staff and projects We use a process that focuses on discovery and documentation that helps us work with clients of all shapes and sizes We are in the heart of the tech boom in Kansas City and love all of the excitement in our town. I’m proud to be part of a local radio show focused on the topic
• #5: Basically anyone doing SEO…don’t tune out developers! If you’re new to SEO, feel free to catch me later as I’ll be happy to go into further detail on any concepts that are new Or, if you’re seeking help in how to translate concepts to clients or other team members, I can help with that too!
• #10: If you’ve been doing SEO, you know about the problems with duplicate content and the best practices related to it In some cases, like these, we inherently have it and need to handle it somehow
• #11: No system is perfect…even if we build it from scratch, aspects will get outdated or obsolete based on changes in best practices and standard Step 1 is to know what we have and to overcome our own problems related to technology.
• #12: I hate the phrase “I know enough to be dangerous” as it is often true. Danger and risks lurk in manual and automated efforts that aren’t fully understood or comprehended. That’s what causes many of these risks and issues in addition to simple ignorance (which isn’t a bad thing as we are all hopefully continually learning and growing)
• #14: Wouldn’t it be nice if we got an email with specifics every time there was an issue…or if Google would tell us via GWT? Unfortunately, many times issues are hidden and we have to proactively seek and find them. We have to discern between drops due to company, industry, macroeconomic, seasonal, or other considerations and problems related to SEO In many cases the buck stops with us and we are the ones who have to find the issue when there’s no UX or
• #15: So we have an idea or clue…now what? We have to go track down the cause of the problem. It can be like Jeopardy, except we find the answer and have a lot of potential questions to sort through before we find the right one that fits with the indicator. We must check against best practice standards as well as competitor or comparable websites that are ranking well…where do we differ and where are we out of tolerance from the norms.
• #17: There are a lot of other great tools and I’ve limited this to my “go-to” tools for the sake of time. Additional tools for indicators: Panguin Moz’s algorithm update history Siteliner (affiliated with Copyscape)
• #19: ----- Meeting Notes (2/28/15 20:43) ----- At the end of the day, the help we can get via internal resources is huge and can solve all of the bullets above the last one.
• #20: Plot out the actual current and/or proposed sitemap on paper, in excel, etc. Keep the formulas simple and just put brackets around dynamic elements and use plain English (or language of choice) Remember that any dynamic or user generated content must be rendered or output into the HTML of a page and not be iframed in or part of a feed inside a container
• #21: Canonicals can be tricky and dangerous if implemented improperly. Plan well and test like crazy Don’t forget your root files!!! These can be overwritten by systems or people on accident or be dynamically updated with details that aren’t in line with your SEO plan Walk your teams transparently through the steps you’ve taken, what you’ve decided to do, and to get their feedback on your plan. They may have more efficient or effective ways to accomplish your plan. By cluing them into the level of effort and detail you’ve put into it they will appreciate your trade and hopefully accept any best practices education, etc.
• #23: We had the problem of being a retailer selling common parts. We needed to rank at the top near the manufacturer and beat all others selling the same parts So many pages and so little resources that we couldn’t touch each page Test, test, test…we got to a point where testing was imperative for growth alone, but also could hurt us if not done properly as we didn’t want to lose positioning
• #24: Half the stores were franchise owned and the other half were franchisees. This made for some interesting content challenges. We were limited by resources as the internal development team put SEO as a low priority for a YEAR We used pretty much every element on a page to work in our favor and to differentiate the locations from each other.
• #25: My whole deck could have been a clinic going through this example. I’m still working with this client auditing and planning for their temporary and long-term solutions. I found clues to their issue in Google Analytics by looking at changes in traffic to specific pages. I found evidence that old URLs disappeared and new ones came online. We circled back with their IT team and found that their custom feeds and queries from MOM to Magento did wipe out and rebuild category URLs on their ecommerce sites…oops. NO 301s and lots of ignorance I’m continuing to work with them, but so far have found 404s, 302s, multiple versions of home pages, duplicate product pages (on site), duplicate content (off-site), HTML formatting in meta descriptions, and several more problems. The biggest fix/recommendation is use of canonical tag (for now)
• #26: Yes, I literally went through 70 pages in the SERPs manually not knowing or thinking that I’d find the issue. Yes, from all accounts, this was the thing holding us back…we had a lot of data to show that. Yes, we seriously won in nearly all markets by removing this issue.
• #27: Fight the good fight! Don’t quit and admit defeat. Work to get ALL of the details from your team, the client, and all stakeholders. Don’t let someone hold the key to solving your problem by not understanding or thinking that any details are insignificant. We’re all in this together