seo disaster prevention & recovery
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SEO Disaster Prevention & RecoveryPubCon Las Vegas 2013 – Masters Training - Allison Fabella
INTRODUCTIONSAllison Fabella (@alli12)
Director of SEO & Social Media – Primedia (RentPath) Manager SEO & Social Media – Atlanta Journal-
Constitution Sr. SEO Manager – Primedia Account Manager – Prominent Placement agency
And you are…? Your name Your company Your role/position What you hope to come away with from this session
AGENDA1. Introductions
2. Goals
3. Case study
4. Danger lurking in your organization + Breakout
5. Plugging SEO holes in your organization + Breakout
6. Disaster prevention processes + Breakout
6. Bio Break
7. DEFCON 2: Pre- and post-development release + Breakout
8. Disaster recovery + Breakout
9. SEO horror stories
10. Discussion / Q & A
GOALS1. Know how do identify areas within your
organization that may be SEO killers
2. Arm yourself with a process to ensure successful SEO initiatives from inception to completion
3. Be prepared with an action plan to quickly recover if “the worst” happens anyway
CASE STUDY
THE FALL
ACTIONS Diagnostic site audit
Reviewed Google WMT
Reviewed SEO initiatives
Reviewed Product & Dev initiatives
Focus on release dates
Reviewed backlinks
Compared to Panda & Penguin updates
Asked questions
THE RECOVERY
LEARNINGSNo one smoking gun. Just a series of
development mistakes, residual spammy SEO tactics, etc.
Contributors were: Poor communication around a major platform
change Overall poor/thin quality content Dupe titles & meta descriptions Malformed canonicals Bad URLs pulled into XML sitemap and fed to Google Accidental global NOINDEX
QUESTION:What else could have been done?
SECTION 1Danger lurking in your organization
THINGS THAT CAN MESS YOU UP Infrastructure changes
Taking servers offline Data center changes
Development initiatives Code changes Platform changes
CMS changes
Other departments’ initiatives Product Development Design Content Ad sales
Development releases
BREAK OUT - 11. Where does danger lurk in your organization2. What can trip you up?3. Who are the usual suspects?
SECTION 2Plugging SEO holes in your organization
DOCUMENTATION + COMMUNICATION Document primary SEO directives
Distribute to development, product, and QA Discuss with stake holders
Document primary SEO do’s and don’t’s Distribute to dev, product, QA, content, design Discuss with stake holders
Document primary SEO touch points Planning, requirements, wireframes, architecture, QA... Discuss with stake holders
Document status updates cc all stakeholders
PAGE TYPES + DIRECTIVES
CHECKLISTSFor development
For QA
For Content
SEO
Recommended reading: Checklist Manifesto Atul Gawande
DEV CHECKLIST
QA CHECKLIST
BREAK OUT - 21. What can you do to plug the SEO holes in
your organization?
SECTION 3Disaster-prevention processes
PROCESSESDaily / weekly meetings & check-ins
Clearly defined roles and responsibilities Including when in the process actions to be taken
SEO task list
Starting or restarting your organization’s commitment to SEO
DAILY / WEEKLY Attend daily stand-ups (or equivalent)
Create SEO task list with SEO team for status & additions Review weekly
Hold weekly SEO meetings Include all stakeholders
Development, Product, Infra, C-Suite (at least send them an invite) The higher up the food-chain, the better
Review Current initiatives & their status Completed initiatives Roadblocks Successes (everyone loves a graph)
ROLES & RESPONSIBILITIES
SEO TASK LIST
SEO KICK-OFF OR RE-SET SUMMIT Review all current initiatives
Discuss roadblocks
Create an SEO “wish list” Blue sky No ideas are bad
End summit with an action plan Assign roles & responsibilities
Put follow-up meeting on calendar by Summit’s end Get stakeholder agreement on
attendance
Make it a big deal One to two days Serve food!
Invite ALL stakeholders Dev, Product, Content, Infra,
Design, Invite these depts’ supervisors tool
Ask top exec to kickoff Sets the tone Adds importance
SEO KICK-OFF OR RE-SET SUMMIT Make it a big deal
One to two days Serve food
Invite ALL stakeholders Dev, Product, Content, Infra,
Design, And their supervisors/team
leaders too Mandatory attendance (if
possible)
Ask top brass to kickoff As high up food chain as possible Sets the tone Adds importance
Review all current initiatives Discuss roadblocks Discuss solutions
Brainstorm an SEO “wish list” Blue sky No ideas are bad
End summit with an action plan Assign roles & responsibilities Put follow-up meeting on
calendar by Summit’s end Get stakeholder
commitment to attend
BREAK OUT - 31. Document your own SEO process
2. Define/assign roles & responsibilities
SECTION 4DEFCON 2: Pre & post- development release
PRE-FLIGHT CHECKDocument current meta robots
SEO team, dev team, and QA should all have this documentation
Document current title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, h-tags, size count, word count, robots.txt, etc.
Run a crawl test in QA or staging environment Ideally via an internal spider Screaming Frog will do
Check current and QA/staging directives for changes
CRAWL TEST: CURRENT IN PROD
CRAWL TEST: IN QA / STAGING
POST-FLIGHT CHECK Immediately after release run crawl test again
This time in production
Review each SEO “story” for proper execution per requirements
CRAWL TEST: PRE-RELASE IN PROD
CRAWL TEST: POST-RELASE IN PROD
BREAK OUT - 41. Where are the holes in your organization?2. What can you do to plug them up?
SECTION 5Disaster recovery: If the worst happens
INTO ACTION
1. Identify date(s) of when things went wrong Was it a sudden drop or slow decline?
Sudden drop could indicate site blockage or search engine manual action
Slow decline could indicate multiple issues that need to be identified, prioritized, and fixed
2. SEO Disaster Checklist
3. Recovery
DISASTER CHECKLIST Analytics diagnostics dashboard
Already set up & ready to go
Don’t wait to set up when disaster strikes. You need to be ready to act.
Review developer logs
Review past releases SEO, Product, Dev, Etc.
HTTP status codes Server issues
Robots.txt
Meta robots Inadvertent NOINDEX?
Bad redirects
Review Google WMT Manual actions
Crawl errors
Indexing changes
Broken/malformed sitemaps
Malformed canonicals
Review backlinks Any big changes?
Any “bad” links? Past link farming impact?
Is negative SEO as possibility?
Panda & Penguin correlations
SEO DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS Webmaster Tools*
SearchMetrics
Moz*
SEMRush
Majestic SEO
Internet Marketing Ninjas*
Link Detox (Link Research Tools)
*Free or free version available
Google analytics*
Adobe Site Catalyst
Frobee Robots.txt Checker*
Chartelligence*
Screaming Frog / Xenu Link Sleuth
Rex Swain HTTP Checker*
Favorites to add???
GETTING BACK ON TRACKPrioritize fixes
Biggest bang for the buck
If manual action required Be contrite and grovel for forgiveness from
engines Even if it’s not your fault
Manage expectations with management around recovery time It often takes a lot longer to get out of trouble than
into it
AFTER THE STORMDocument the issue in great detail
Document the fix in great detail
Share this info with stakeholders But don’t throw anyone under the bus
Keep this info on file FOREVER! How long?.... FOREVER!!!
BREAK OUT - 51. What other diagnostics can you check?2. What are your favorite diagnostic tools?
SECTION 6SEO horror stories
BREAK OUT - 61. Share your favorite SEO horror story
• What would you have done differently?2. Or tell about “a friend’s” SEO horror story
• What would you have done instead?
WHAT ELSE?Questions? Thoughts? insights?
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