Trying to establish a more consistent SEO structure within your organization?
Wish every SEO fire had a more standardized, easy-to-follow solution?
We know – no two days in SEO are the same.
However, finding a consistent approach that provides meaningful impact is surprisingly easy.
And – it works whether you’re in-house, an agency, or a freelance consultant.
On March 23, I moderated a sponsored webinar presented by Jamie Indigo and Michelle Race from Deepcrawl.
In describing SEO as a dance, they provided a four-step process for handling challenges head-on as they arise and preventing SEO fires before they start.
Here is a summary of the webinar.
To access the entire presentation, complete the form.
Step 1: Get More Visibility On Your SEO Issues
We cannot fix what we cannot see, so it’s vital to ask some fundamental questions when approaching SEO problems:
- What am I looking at?
- Where am I looking?
- How can I see something?
To dig deeper, you also need specific criteria and questions to ask yourself:
- Does expected site behavior match real-life behavior?
[Discover the tool that gives you visibility into behaviors] Instantly access the webinar →
- Are there new data sources available?
- Have you leveraged all URL prefix variants?
- Is some critical information is only available in a prefix or domain property?
- Can I look at data sources in new ways?
- Is there new data available in old favorites?
- Can I combine datasheets for enhanced insights?
Step 2: Start Diagnosing
Once you see the problem, you can now measure it.
To be a great partner of the dev team and other stakeholders in the dance of SEO, you’ll need to consider these:
- Don’t start on the wrong foot: Avoid only sending issue headings and exports of affected URLs.
- Learn the steps: Thoroughly investigate, identify, and understand each step to resolve.
- Make sure your partner knows the moves: Use various tools to diagnose, replicate, and demonstrate issues.
[Discover the best tools for great teamwork] Instantly access the webinar →
When you’re presenting the problem to other team members, be sure to mention these other factors and questions to consider when you’re diagnosing SEO:
- Know what causes the problem?
- What is being observed?
- Can it be measured?
- Are specific templates affected?
- Is there consistent behavior?
- Do all sections of the site behave the same?
- Have you tried using Chrome DevTools to locate the issue?
[How to use DevTools to find the exact code causing the problem] Instantly access the webinar →
- What does Pagespeed Insights report?
- Can you provide information from Console URL Inspector?
- What data does Deepcrawl Analyze provide?
Step 3: Master Iteration
Now that you’ve learned the steps, here are some factors and questions to look at to adequately demonstrate to your partner:
- Where do I look to see the issue? (data source)
- What is the element?
- How is it measured?
- How does it break? (Repo steps)
- How do you help the team understand?
- Know who to assign and alert.
- Execute best practices when creating a ticket.
[See the importance of breaking tickets into actionable items] Instantly access the webinar →
- Create user stories.
- Demonstrate how to reproduce.
- Add acceptance criteria.
- Provide testing strategies.
- Provide environment: UAT.
- Provide all device/platform information.
- Visual repo steps.
- Acceptance criteria.
- List out what is required.
- Provide conditional criteria if needed.
- Provide developer resources.
- List out how to test if successful.
- Provide testing URLs.
How to keep your SEO rehearsals focused:
- Constantly refine and improve.
- Stay updated with ticket progress.
- Understand the development cycle.
- Record when fixes are rolled out.
[Overcome SEO challenges] Instantly access the webinar →
Step 4: Monitor Your SEO Effectively
To glide effortlessly on the SEO stage, you’ll need to know how to monitor by answering these questions:
- What should be monitored?
- What has changed?
- How do you stay aware of new issues?
- How do you create regular crawls?
- Are you able to monitor multiple projects?
- How do you set up log monitoring?
- How should you report on search console coverage?
- How do you monitor CrUX data over time?
[Dig deeper into monitoring] Instantly access the webinar →
Moving your company towards an effective SEO project management process doesn’t require a complex dance.
With this simple framework, you can now deal with all types of SEO challenges, which pivots between engineering and UX, between product and the whim of search engines.
[Slides] 4-Step SEO Waltz: Tackle SEO Challenges Head-On
Here’s the presentation:
4-Step SEO Waltz: Tackle SEO Challenges Head-On from Search Engine Journal
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Image Credits
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
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