The price of technical seo debt final

The Price of
Technical SEO Debt
You’re leaving money on the table.
Let’s stop that.

John Doherty - @dohertyjf

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

@dsottimano @adamsherk @searchmartin

@thenextcorner @brianprovost @mdsimmonds

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

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)

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)

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
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

John Doherty | @dohertyjf

Potential Traffic Was
Astronomical
This is for
their top
2100
keywords.
This doesn’t
include
longtail
either. We’re
talking
millions in
revenue per
year.

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

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
changed
to 301s

Oh hello.

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

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

Your KPI Is Your Pitch

Whatever your conversion means (revenue, profit, user signup), this is
how you achieve buy-in to fix technical problems.

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

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/

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

Execs need to hang their hat on
something.

Second
Find your largest issues
(scale) and grab as much
data as possible.

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

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

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

I do one Excel sheet with all my
data, and visualize.
Internal links

External links

DA/PA/mR

Page size

Level in architecture Rank Load time

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

Then graph it and find
anomalies.

Spot the correlations and anomalies – Excel for SEO

Third
Pitch the case with data
and your KPI. If needed,
propose a test.

Example 1: Information
Architecture

Bad Information Architecture
Kills Your Rankings/Revenue
Visualize yours vs your competitors. Show ranking and potential traffic
comparison. I used Visio here.

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

Bad Information Architecture
Kills Your Rankings/Revenue
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.

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

I showed it this way too.

Level in
architecture
was closely
correlated to
rankings. We
ranked
terribly, and
this convinced
the exec to
buy into
letting us
make changes.

Competitor comparison is powerful.

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.
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.

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

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.


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

If A did B and got us
result C
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!


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

Avg Avg
Potential
Conversion Conversion
Traffic
Rate Value

Cost to Fix

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

The price of technical seo debt final

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