the price of technical seo debt final

The Price of

Technical SEO Debt

John Doherty - @dohertyjf

You’re leaving money on the table.

Let’s stop that.

John Doherty Director/Lead Consultant at

Distilled NYC

Blogger – johnfdoherty.com

Tweeter - @dohertyjf

Photographer –

johndohertyphotography.com

Usually wears this shirt to

speak

I also call this talk “Quit

building links and fix your

freakin’ site.”

All of these are in SEO

And Contribute to Debt

A lot of sites don’t need

more links. If links were the only factor,

these guys should dominate.

A lot of sites don’t need

more links. Link competitor analysis

would reveal this.

This talk is about advanced

technical SEO.

What can I teach you that you

won’t get here?

Not much, if I’m honest.

If you want to learn hardcore

technical SEO, follow these guys

They’re smarter than I am and are who I learn from.

@dsottimano @adamsherk @searchmartin

@thenextcorner @brianprovost @mdsimmonds

Read These Awesome Resources

How To Perform The World’s Greatest SEO Audit (SEOmoz)

Craziest Audit Checklist On The Internet (SEER via @anniecushing)

Find Your Biggest Technical Flaws in 60 Minutes (SEOmoz via @dsottimano)

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-perform-the-worlds-greatest-seo-audit

http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/craziest-internet-marketing-audit-checklist-on-the-interwebz

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/find-your-sites-biggest-technical-flaws-in-60-minutes

Technical SEO Debt defined: A metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of

poor or evolving architecture or SEO

problems/dependencies within a website.

(paraphrase of Technical Debt on Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt

Not Investing in Technical Debt

Investing in Technical Debt

This talk isn’t about tips

and tricks.

Instead, let’s talk about

something that matters.

After all, what’s more advanced than that?

Technical SEO debt can cost

you

Client 1 wasn’t ranking

John Doherty | @dohertyjf

6+ pages targeting every term (high-volume search terms) – low effort

Zero internal linking – high effort

No crawl path to speak of – high effort

Minimal content on “SEO” pages – medium effort

Tons of links - bonus

Potential Traffic Was

Astronomical

500,000+ visits per year potential, at $XXX/conversion. WOW.

This is for

their top

2100

keywords.

This doesn’t

include

longtail

either. We’re

talking

millions in

revenue per

year.

Client 2 wasn’t ranking


No crawl path – medium effort

10,000+ 302 redirects – low effort

No keyword targeting – medium effort

“SEO” content, not valuable content – high effort

Growing #s of links, but not traffic

“You could say we had

potential.”

- Abraham Lincoln

We fixed 302s iteratively and

traffic tripled.

302s fixed over a 3 week period. Traffic 3x’d.

302s

changed

to 301s

Oh hello.

Execs don’t understand

“302s” or “internal links.”

How do we make the case?

Revenue/Effort Potential revenue * Potential converting traffic/hours*hourly rate

If potential revenue is higher than the total cost to make

the change, it’s worth your time. The bigger the margin,

the easier the case.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/meaningful-seo-metrics

*Caveat* - I recommend

being conservative in your

estimates to set yourself up

for success.

I want to give you

ammunition for your

bosses/clients

Identify Your Goals

First

Your KPI Is Your Pitch

http://www.seonick.net/seo-business-model/

Whatever your conversion means (revenue, profit, user signup), this is

how you achieve buy-in to fix technical problems.

Another way to pitch it is “How much/many money/conversions are we

leaving on the table by not making this change?”

http://www.distilled.net/blog/web-analytics/are-you-leaving-mobile-

users-on-the-table/

If we do x, we can expect y. If we don’t do x, y will do z.

Execs need to hang their hat on

something.

Find your largest issues

(scale) and grab as much

data as possible.

Second

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/making-seomozs-serp-analysis-tool-more-

awesome/

http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty

http://seogadget.com/mozscape-api-extension-for-excel/

I do one Excel sheet with all my

data, and visualize.

http://www.johnfdoherty.com/making-seomozs-serp-analysis-tool-more-

awesome/

Internal links

External links

DA/PA/mR

Page size

Load time Level in architecture Rank

Then graph it and find

anomalies.

Spot the correlations and anomalies – Excel for SEO

http://www.distilled.net/excel-for-seo/

Pitch the case with data

and your KPI. If needed,

propose a test.

Third

Example 1: Information

Architecture

Bad Information Architecture

Kills Your Rankings/Revenue

http://seogadget.com/inspiring-sitemap-diagrams/

Visualize yours vs your competitors. Show ranking and potential traffic

comparison. I used Visio here.

Bad Information Architecture

Kills Your Rankings/Revenue

Pitch what they care about, not what you find interesting.

Visualize yours vs your competitors. Show ranking and potential traffic

comparison. I used Visio here.

If you show this to your VP I will fly to your office and kick you in the shins.

I showed it this way too.

Competitor comparison is powerful.

Level in

architecture

was closely

correlated to

rankings. We

ranked

terribly, and

this convinced

the exec to

buy into

letting us

make changes.

Pitch the potential $$/users.


5000 potential visitors 5% conversion rate $200 per conversion

$50,000 potential

revenue in this test.

Show how the investment will

pay off.


5000 potential visitors 5% conversion rate $200 per conversion

$50,000/(hours)*(hourly rate)

Use Story Time To Get Accurate

Numbers.

The only way to get these numbers as accurate as possible is to get

commitment from the development team about how much time *they*

think it will take.

This is true agile. Some companies call it “story time” where they sit

down, build the “story” of what they want to do, and come to a team

consensus.

Pitch a test if necessary.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday

Getting buy-in is the hardest part, so pitch a test. We did an internal

links test and these are the results we saw across the domain (30%+

increase in keywords and unique ranking URLs).

Protip – execs love these charts. Up and to the right is their language.

Be sure to report on the results

with KPIs in mind.


Here’s one keyword that we tested (10k/visits mo) and now have buy-in

for more work.

Use one success to create more

tests for success.


Here’s one keyword that we tested (10k/visits mo) and now have buy-in

for more work.

It worked. Got more buy-in.

Example 2: Thin Content

Thin Content Keeps You From

Ranking


In this case,

content on-

page was very

highly

correlated to

rankings/traffic

. This held true

across SERPs

run through

Screaming

Frog.

Thin Content Keeps You From

Ranking


Added

content to

important

pages. When

the page

already

ranked, saw

a 13.46

position

increase on

average. 5.65

was average

when URL

changed.

Built upon previous success to

get buy-in and prove worth.


Repeated Success.

Example 3: Pitch Bigger

Ideas After Test

Client Targeted A Keyword

About To Spike in Volume


We hit it here and…




Search volume spiked Months later, we still get converting

traffic from it.




You know where I’m going with this now. It’s time to do some more

modeling and show reason for doing it again.

Pitch the Internal Case Study


What we’re saying here is “let’s do it again!” If example A yielded x%

conversion and y number of users, then it’s worth trying to replicate that

success especially since the infrastructure already exists!

If A did B and got us

result C

At the end of the day, your

boss should care about

revenue, not rankings.

Technical SEO Matters For The

Bottom Line


Fixing Technical SEO Issues Sets

You Up For Future Success


This was

the 302s.

Flywheel accelerating

Remember This Formula

http://geoffkenyon.com/keyword-opportunity-tool/

Potential Traffic

Cost to Fix

Avg Conversion

Value

Avg Conversion

Rate

Profit

Questions?

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