Technical SEO is more than just an audit. Monitoring of technical performance is critical to catch any emerging issues early on. This session will cover practical examples of how to approach technical monitoring, what to look for and examples of real world implementations which have maintained and improved performance.

1. Philip Gamble
FOUND
Technical SEO Beyond the Initial Audit
@freeg131
http://www.slideshare.net/freeg131

2. Start with
an audit

3. Deliver the audit

4. If we’re lucky
everyone’s on board
to implement

5. Reach an
acceptable level of
technical compliance

6. Things Change

7. Our job
isn’t done

8. Technical SEO Beyond the Audit

9. challenges change brings
performance impact
how to identify quickly
importance of a swift resolution

10. INSTANCE 1:
DE-INDEX

11. <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

12. 24% drop in indexed pages
250
270
290
310
330
350
370
390
410
430
450
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
IndexedURls
Week

13. Most important pages deindexed first

14. 21% traffic loss

15. 80% traffic loss on top service page
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0

16. How long until you notice?

17. Don’t rely on retrospective
rankings or traffic

18. Monitor robots.txt
Monitor meta robots key pages
Daily rankings track key pages
Identify

19. Check all robots
Request change
Review implementation
Fix

20. traffic recovered quickly
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

21. 2 days to get fix live!

22. 6 weeks for all URLs to get re-indexed
250
300
350
400
450
500
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
IndexedURls
Week

23. Request Google
re-crawl the pages!

24. INSTANCE 2:
‘MINOR’ CHANGE

25. “re-organised products slightly”

26. Check
Everything

27. Trailing Slash Removed
https://www.site.com/service-name/
https://www.site.com/service-name

28. -22% page traffic
/service-name/ /service-name

29. map keywords to URLs
check ranking URLs
don’t rely on aggregate data
How to identify

30. https://www.site.com/service-name/
https://www.site.com/service-name
https://www.site.com/service-name/
Change Reversed

31. instant recovery
/service-name/ /service-name

32. demand sign-off
get access to dev ticket system
Communicate!
How to prevent

33. INSTANCE 3:
GOOGLE GETTING “SMARTER”

34. Search Engines try to be clever

35. Google is dumb

36. Behaving like a user
= new problems

37. Improved
Code
Execution

38. Filtering Sliders: 1000s more URLs!

39. Sub-category
Location
+ every salary by year
+ every salary by day
+ every salary by hour

40. Normal
URLs
37%
Salary
Filtered
URLs
63%
63% of Google’s
Crawl Budget
Only 0.1% of Visits
Massive Inefficiencies

41. JavaScript imported content
HTMLJS
CONTENT

42. Thousands of thin variants
?ids= 15/reload-
slider242,10407,14310,1203
9
JS
CONTENT
x 100000

43. +25% Indexed URLs in a Month

44. Visibility Decrease
Visibility
Indexed
URLs
-
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
-
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
45,000

45. Indexed URL count
Large sites: log files
Don‘t rely on your crawler
Identify

46. URL parameter configuration
Robots.txt
Proactively block
Fix: Conserve Crawl Budget

47. URL removal tool
Force crawl
Fix: Tidy SERPs

48. APPROACH

49. Monitor

50. Monitor
Catch Quickly

51. Monitor
Catch Quickly
Retain Performance

52. TAKING ACTION

53. What to monitor?

54. Robots,
Uptime,
Crawl Data,
Speed,
Indexation,
Content

55. Google
Analytics
Google Search
Console

56. Thresholds:
Identify what matters

57. Configure Alerts
ChangeDetection.com

58. Build Dashboards with
Google Data Studio

59. Build Dashboards
Google Data Studio
Screenshot(s)

60. Automate reports
Make sure they are seen
Lots of Google Analytics apps
IFTTT or APIs
Slack

61. Slack

62. Slack
Google Search Console reports 3 additional crawl errors on sitename.co.uk
[keyword 27] has dropped from #3 to no rank
http://www.sitename.co.uk/landing-page-27 has dropped from Google's index

63. Vigilance Pays

64. Image Credits
Start with an audit: https://stocksnap.io/photo/JVSII4KCCK
Reach an acceptable level of technical compliance https://www.pexels.com/photo/mathematics-
colorful-game- color-19677/
Things change http://cubercritic.com/product/rubiks-cube-review/
Our job isn’t done https://pixabay.com/en/tub-palio-race-river-water-remo-114349/
How long https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-round-analog-wall-clock-121734/
Fix: Googlebot
Request Google recrawl the pages: https://static.pexels.com/photos/262272/pexels-photo-
262272.jpeg
Check everything: https://pixabay.com/en/fear-fright-horror-frightened-1172407/
Behaving like a user = new problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsF7enQY8uI
Fix – Tidy SERPs: https://pixabay.com/en/lego-legomaennchen-males-workers-568039/
Google Data Studio: http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2017/02/google-data-
studio-google-search-console-report.png
Vigilance pays: https://www.pexels.com/photo/brown-hawk-on-focus-photo-162354/