Learning How to Be Little Again Barry Adams #5
I've been actually lucky to have some phenomenal speakers come and present their ideas, communication and more than at the Optimisey SEO events.
I won't list them all hither because, by accidental omission I'll offend someone and they've all been terrific. You tin bank check out videos, slides and more from past smashing SEO event speakers here.
What's been amazing for me, as the organiser, is as the events have grown people I idea I would never exist able to tempt to come and speak at my lil' erstwhile outcome in Cambridge, people who are used to speaking to rooms of hundreds or thousands of people, usually people that have paid several hundreds of pounds to hear them speak… accept said "yes" when I asked them to come and speak.
Barry Adams definitely falls into that category.
Barry's worked on the SEO for the websites of household names, with traffic numbers that'd make most people'south eyes water – and likewise with technical issues (and often budgets, blockers and hurdles) that'd make even more people baulk.
A picayune while after I booked him in to come up speak (in, I hope, an unrelated development!) Barry posted this on Twitter:
A personal annotation from me on why, from the middle of 2019 onwards, yous'll exist seeing my name on the speakers list at significantly fewer events:https://t.co/hrL3Ic0uYo
— Barry Adams (@badams) March 11, 2019
announcing he's going to be doing much less speaking at events – which made information technology even more of a privilege to have him come up and speak at Optimisey.
How do you do a technical SEO audit?
Barry delivered a fact-packed talk on how to do a technical SEO inspect and – importantly – hownot to do 1.
Fifty-fifty every bit someone who has washed an audit or two in my time, there's loads to acquire. Barry litters his talk with examples, suggestions and the usual smattering of swearing (maybe a 'headphones on' moment if you lot're watching in an open programme office!).
If, having watched that, you're feeling the burn down of having not seen this live make sure you don't miss the next Optimisey event! Y'all tin book your free identify now:
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At present, on to the video of Barry'due south talk, slides and a full transcript are all below – with the usual caveat – whatsoever errors are almost certainly mine or my typos, not Barry's) and an additional alarm: there is a lot of swearing. If you're offended by that sort of language, stop reading at present.
Video & Slides
- Download the slides to back-trail Barry's talk (8MB PDF)
Transcript
Thank you for coming out this night.
First usual disclaimers: I swear. I apologise to the people watching this on YouTube this is eighteen+ video.
I'm gonna talk about technical SEO. I do a lot of technical SEO, probably too much, and because I don't like people and I still have to explain my recommendations to people sometimes people say things similar this near me:
This was actually typed in a Slack channel by a lead dev as I was talking through an SEO audit but the pb dev hadn't realised that his CTO – who was likewise on the telephone call – was sharing his screen with me while he had Slack open.
I wish I was fast plenty to take a screenshot just the CTO very apace switched tabs.
I'll come up dorsum to this later on by the way simply yeah I rub people the wrong way sometimes but I run across that every bit that's part and parcel of what I do.
As you know my job equally an SEO consultant – I'chiliad gonna talk almost SEO audits, how I do them and the kind of thinking that goes into crafting audits and audit reports.
Who hither is agency side by the way? Who hither does SEO audits regularly specifically technical SEO audits? And then yeah I might non be able to teach you much but you know at least you go a glimpse into what goes on in this warped encephalon of mine.
How search engines work
Web search engines are data retrieval systems information retrieval is a sub-subject field of computer science. It's interesting reading textile if y'all're ever feeling so inclined.
Stanford University, where the ii Google founders were studying before they founded Google, take their unabridged information retrieval book for free to read online.
The mathematics in it become complicated quite quickly but information technology is still worthwhile reading through at least the first few chapters just to get a bit of an idea of how they call up near building search engine applied science and information retrieval technology because it will help you get a flake more enlightened of how search engines piece of work, what they are capable of and what they are not capable of and why they need help from u.s.a. webmasters and SEOs nevertheless to become that shit in order.
And so yeah all search engines – perchance nosotros'll get back to that slide – take three master components: a crawler and indexer and a ranker and in Google terminology the crawler's Googlebot, the indexer is the Caffeine infrastructure the ranker is Google'south front end stop where you type stuff in and you become the results this is how Google describes it themselves.
This is a fairly former slide, fairly sometime diagram from them engineering science wise so it's probably non entirely authentic anymore just it shows you, you lot know, you got the crawling infrastructure, the indexing infrastructure and then this is the search front-end.
When I do SEO I accept a three pillars of SEO model… I see that my fonts didn't properly download lamentable Andy that's my fault – Jesus that's really fucked up! – you lot volition observe that there's not a coincidence that my three pillars of SEO aligned with the three main processes of a search engine.
What technical SEO is primarily well-nigh the crawler; the relevancy, on-page optimisation is primarily about the indexer; and say-so, link building is almost ranking beginning in Google.
Then there's a bit of overlap between the dissimilar tactics but generally speaking when nosotros do one affair to optimise our websites we tend to optimise for ane particular component of Google'south search.
So, for me, technical SEO is primarily most crawl optimisation – making sure things get crawled very fast, very efficiently by the crawler and fairly quickly go parsed by the crawler. Mobile SEO signals, javascript and international SEO signposting is also part of that detail remit.
On page optimisation – that'southward archetype old-school SEO – that's simply title tags, meta descriptions, good content, internal linking etc. etc.
Structured data is function of relevancy, not necessarily role of technical SEO, but I always nevertheless embrace it as part of technical SEO because it's code and code is icky for people with a marketing groundwork and therefore all the icky stuff falls on the technical SEO.
And authority and ranking that'south just most making sure that yous were ranked start in Google – you know spamming the shit out of Google basically before yous get caught.
Technical SEO audits for me – like I said – focus primarily on the crawler with quite a hefty chunk also looking at the relevancy aspect.
I don't really practice much a link analysis equally part of my technical audits. In the all the bells and whistles total range audits yes I do just in technical SEO how other websites link to that website is not actually my trouble – it'due south more near making sure that the website itself is fully optimised and it can be crawled and indexed as efficiently as possible with as little obstacles as possible.
What is an SEO Audit?
Then what is an SEO audit?
What do we mean when we employ this terminology of an 'SEO audit'? Is it a a report that you've done from Screaming Frog or Deep Crawl and you lot slap your own make on it? Fuck no.
I detest it that people do this and call it an inspect that really pisses me off.
Everyone can run a clamber report from a tool similar Screaming Frog or Sitebulb or whatever and slap their own brand on it and say 'Hey we've audited your website!' and I cannot begin to limited how annoyed that makes me feel because that'due south non an audit.
That that has no analysis, no context aught to it. That'southward just an automated system. And automated systems, no matter how good they are, lack any sort of context, any sort of awareness, any sort of depth.
Google is ane of the smartest automatic systems in the fucking world and they get shit wrong all the time so don't pretend that an SEO audit tool can can do your job for you.
What is not an SEO audit
It'south likewise not a stack of papers that sits on somebody's desk gathering grit.
If your audit is that and then sorry.
Unfortunately this is non something you lot tend to have a lot of control over in one case yous've delivered an inspect.
You lot have a certain level of influence with how y'all phrase the actions coming out of the audit and try to brand them as actionable and implementable as possible but in the cease information technology is up to the client, upwards to the person, the people y'all deliver the audit to to actually make shit happen. And that doesn't always happen and that can be real hurting in the ass.
I remember if I'grand lucky, when I evangelize an inspect, half of my recommendations will go implemented. The other one-half just never happens no matter how of import they may or may not be.
If it's more half I'm working with what I call a good customer.
For me an audit is the start of a process. Information technology is identifying the opportunities, using SEO theory to find opportunities, to make a website improve its organic search visibility.
And information technology'southward always the start of a procedure, the audit is the beginning never the cease. The audit – for me audits are primarily an finish product information technology'southward mainly what I do as a service – simply I e'er realise that it's e'er the beginning of a process for the client.
The audit needs to initiate something, it needs to begin a certain process on the cease of the recipient the people who commissioned the audit, to make shit happen to make stuff improve on the website so that they see graphs go upwards. That's what they all care about. They want the graphs to become up. Traffic, sales everything that comes with it.
I beloved this item diagram this is not mine some guy called James Clear I was commencement pointed this by Richard Baxter from Builtvisible and I've started including it in the introduction text of every single audit that I ever practice.
It's the aggregation of marginal gains. Where a little improvement here and in that location over a long period of time volition yield massive results.
Anybody hither follow Formula I racing? A piddling chip? That's what Formula Ane does. They outset with a car at the commencement of the flavor – at the stop of the season their motorcar was 3 seconds, a lot faster than when they started because they make tiny trivial improvements every single race. Making information technology slightly faster, slightly better and the end of the flavour it's three, four seconds faster each lap.
Which, for an Formula One team, can make the difference between ending up with twenty one thousand thousand dollars pay off or one hundred one thousand thousand dollars pay off at the end of the season – depending on where they finish upwards in the Constructors Championship.
And I run into audits and websites in general websites are the same.
If you do non constantly improve a website you lot're on the ruddy line. You didn't even have to do anything to make information technology worse but let it sit there. Statistically you're already making a worse website. It's going to go worse. Doing nothing is walking backwards.
If y'all do not constantly amend a website you're on the red line. You didn't even have to do anything to make it worse just permit information technology sit down there. Doing zilch is walking backwards.
You take to constantly improve. You have to put the effort in, make small tweaks, get in faster, brand it better, optimise every unmarried office of information technology. Constantly. All the time.
If the website just sits at that place doing its matter you're going to lose and quite painfully so.
What you demand for an SEO audit
So before I even first an inspect, earlier anything (later on the paperwork usually sorted) I inquire for Search Console access.
I do not touch on the website earlier I have access to Google Search Console. I tin't.
Merely this is the single most of import source of I have for SEO to analyse the website.
This is the old Google Search Panel. We volition be saying good day to this in less than 2 weeks and in typical Google manner they've made it worse and phone call it an improvement. Fuck y'all Google.
Then very shortly we'll only have this. Yay(!). So we'll accept to piece of work with what nosotros're given. We don't really have a pick.
Even then, knowing this is not an comeback, information technology is still the best data source you have.
You know the crawl errors report used to be my get-to for mainly technical SEO scenarios, now we accept to piece of work with index coverage the next couple of weeks – we'll live with it. You lot know y'all don't necessarily get the aforementioned granular data but yous know yous can make it piece of work.
If y'all don't get Search Console access you lot tin't properly audit a website in my opinion. Yous tin can practice it without a lot of data, I mean I similar getting Google Analytics data, I similar getting server log files but if I don't get them I'm fine.
I can't do an audit without Search Console. I'yard just – you lot know a man sitting in a cavern watching shadows walk by if I don't accept Search Console.
So yeah the must haves are Search Console. Analytics and log files are nice to accept. And I don't really need more data than that considering in the end information technology is about – y'all know you don't demand dorsum-end access to websites you know. It'south sometimes nice there but you don't really need information technology because the back-stop, Google never sees the back-finish. Search engines don't encounter it, they meet the front end.
And the front end terminate you can wait at yourself. You can open your browser and you can expect at the forepart end of the website. Y'all can have tools – similar Deep Clamber, Screaming Frog whatever y'all use – look at the forepart end, that'due south what Google sees and then that's what you analyse, that's what you base your audit'south recommendations on.
It helps to know what the back end is so you can codify the right recommendations and put them in the right context because if you know what sort of platform a website is built on you know, or learn from feel, that that can be piece of cake to fix and that – because it's congenital on that platform – can be a real fucking hurting in the donkey.
For example y'all tin exercise an analysis on a Magento website – which has like 200 different CSS and JavaScript files that it calls in loading a single page – and y'all requite the recommendation: 'reduce that' simply y'all know, considering it'south Magento, it's not going to be reduced. It'south… you might as well re-lawmaking the entire website and start from scratch. That's just Magento. It'southward a animate being of a arrangement y ou end up with certain weaknesses inherent in information technology.
SEO inspect tools
The tools that I use to audit – I like Little Warden.
Little Warden is intended initially just to keep an eye on when shit goes wrong on websites and send you a warning.
It'due south an hourly or daily monitoring of websites it triggers things like checking if it has robots, meta tags, checking canonicals, checking for all that stuff.
Merely even just launching it and doing a first scan of a website you'll tend to get pointed in certain directions that stuff might go incorrect, might be incorrect with the website.
For example Piffling Warden will check if a 404 non found, if a non-existent URL actually gives a 404 HTTP status lawmaking or if something else happens. It'll bank check if y'all redirect from HTTP to HTTPS, is it 301 or not? It'll check if the XML sitemap is valid.
So off the bat you already have a few starting points for your audit for your analysis.
I'm a huge fan of Deep Clamber. Disclaimer I am a member of the customer advisory board so I get a free account (yay!) but I was a paid subscriber for multiple years before they asked me to be a member of the customer advisory board.
I actually, actually similar it too. Information technology's a cloud-based crawler – you take to exist a flake careful with the credit systems that start with a small express quote earlier you do a full core otherwise you run out of credit before y'all know it – but its built-in reporting information technology's second to none.
And stuff y'all can find with Deep Crawl is astonishing also because you lot tin can plug it into Search Console, plug information technology into Analytics, plug it into Regal'due south inspect link tools, plug information technology into server log files even and exercise comparisons between the unlike information sources so it's an incredibly powerful platform that combines everything.
And of form Screaming Frog is my get-to desktop-based crawler. I use this primarily for express crawls calling sitemaps, calling lists of files etc. etc. because I don't know about you but annihilation over by 10,000 URL and my laptop starts smoking and getting a life of its own and just, you know, trying to melt through my desk.
Search Console – like I said – you can't do proper analysis without Search Panel both old and new.
I like GTmetrix as a performance and an assay tool, how fast a website loads, primarily because the people behind GTmetrix have a commercial incentive to requite you shit scores. They sell load speed optimisation services – so if you go a skillful score on GTmetrix you're really shit hot.
Information technology's very piece of cake to get a bad score in GTmetrix.
I mean you've got Lighthouse and then PageSpeed Insights, which is based on Lighthouse, and y'all got Webpagetest which has swell waterfall charts which are always really useful to include likewise in an audit report simply GTmetrix for me is the go-to.
Bit also considering things like that – y'all know how many actual requests does it have to build a page? That'southward a very piece of useful slice of information to accept. How many kilobytes is the bodily folio?
Anybody here really know what the boilerplate size is of a web folio on the internet nowadays? Accept a estimate?
Oh, you're naïve. It's ii and a half megabytes. Two and a half megabytes is the average page weight of web pages on the web nowadays.
I'thousand old plenty to you've played a figurer game chosen Doom. Remember Doom? That was two megabytes. The entirety of Doom is smaller than the average web page on the internet nowadays.
What the fuck.
I use plugins also. By the way I switched to Firefox in January. You should all switch to Firefox because – I don't know about yous but I don't think Chrome needs 7.9 of my viii gigabytes of RAM. It actually doesn't.
One time you switch to Firefox it'southward like the whole new world will open up upwardly to you: 'Holy it's actually fast!' information technology'southward amazing. Also because the extension ecosystem of Firefox has now moved on to such an extent y'all don't need Chrome anymore to get all the data. You lot need Firefox.
I dear the SEO Info plugin which is basically most the only plugin yous need for SEO, on Firefox. There'due south also a Chrome version – you lot can try it on Chrome. It's got lots and lots and lots of info in there directly in that ane plug-in.
I as well take the Wapelizer plugin which is similar to the BuiltWith plugin and tells you the kind of technologies that are used on that detail webpage. It'll give you lot a strong indication of the kind of platform that'southward built on, all the plugins that they might use etcetera, etcetera.
And the Link Redirect Trace is similar as the Ayima Redirect Path your redirect hops, HTTP status codes and all of that which is really useful for analysis besides.
Beyond that I don't really employ an awful lot of tools. That's pretty much it. And some times I have other tools depending on the context if information technology was necessary but more often than not this is my unabridged tool stack for most of my technical SEO audits.
You don't need to hide yourself behind tools. The best tool you have is correct there in your skull.
SEO audit checklist
The actual inspect then.
I take a checklist.
The checklist, I always assume clients eventually will share that with other parties.
I transport it to the client, complete with color codings and everything y'all know.
Green is become, and yellow is where 'we might need to look at that'; orange is 'hither you definitely need to await at that'. Red is stop the fucking presses you need to look at this right now – similar you know robots.txt disallow's gone rogue or something.
But because I know this is going to be shared if I send information technology to a client I always assume a competitor at some stage is going to come across this – or people who think they compete with me.
Then I… they're fairly inscrutable. They're merely little, not only for me to look at sure aspects of a site, little hints to go in certain directions for devs diving into a rabbit pigsty. I'm not giving away the entirety of my SEO audit process with my checklist. I'm just, you lot know, showing that yep I am checking your website for all these different types of elements or highlight what I've checked and how problematic I feel that it is.
The checklist is non a report. It's just the initial affair and it keeps me on rail. It makes sure I do actually check the website for all the things I should exist checking the website for then it keeps me on track, keeps me engaged, keeps me making certain that you know I don't just exercise a half-assed endeavor basically.
The key to a really, actually good seo audit
A cardinal to a really, really good SEO audit is e'er to look at the patterns. Take a step back and look at the patterns that brand up the website itself.
It'south all about the context in which an issue exists and the recommendations that you brand.
I have seen audits that other people accept done – I'yard not going to proper noun them although sometimes I'm tempted to – well there'due south like a hundred thousand page spider web site and one of the recommendations is 'There are vii title tags on your website that are a little flake too long, you need to shorten them'.
And I'm similar: 'Get the fuck out. I tin't believe you lot paid money for that shit.' That's not a proper recommendation.
You lot need to put everything in the right context. If information technology's a 20 page website and 7 championship tags are fucked upward, yeah okay. If it's a hundred yard page website now come on. Don't put that in your audit report. That'due south just useless. Put information technology in the right context.
Context e'er matters. And yous demand to understand the purpose of a website earlier you can make those recommendations.
I think there'southward a real risk in the SEO industry that we only expect at websites through the lens of a tool or multiple tools, multiple reports.
We look at a website through Search Console through Deep Clamber, through Screaming Frog to a Majestic link analysis.
Go, before you even get-go an inspect, simply go and use the website.
Swoop into it. Go very familiar with it how information technology works, how information technology ticks over. What you like well-nigh it or what yous dislike about it. Just become a user of the website starting time earlier you become a critic of the website.
And that for me e'er helps place the recommendations in the correct context considering it'south very easy to make recommendations based on what comes out of a study – like you might be making recommendations for pages that are not actually that of import in the context of the wider website that are actually deeply hidden for example.
Yes they might be absolutely terrible pages and they probably exercise demand to meliorate them but there'south so much other stuff on the central pages that actually people wait at all the fourth dimension and the search engine should exist focusing on.
And so if you're non a user of the website you tin can't make that evaluation, y'all can't make that judgement – so become a user before y'all get an accountant of the website.
Websites will run off dissimilar templates. Yous'll have the dwelling house folio, y'all'll have category pages, you'll have production or service pages etc. etc. and y'all need to make sure you lot keep that in mind when you make those recommendations because issues on websites tend to appear across all types all templates of pages.
And sometimes, y'all know, you have some odd pages floating around here and there just mostly speaking if there's something incorrect on i production page it tends to be wrong on virtually, if not all product pages.
So place which templates a website has and make sure you analyse every single ane of those. Even if your crawl report from DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog doesn't necessarily highlight the problem make sure you double check every single template on the website on the code level as well to make sure that 'okay this page is functioning as intended' or maybe there's zilch they tin can improve most that.
On to the actual writing of the report.
And if you have your checklist completed – and ten points by the way and a gratis beer if anybody knows what picture that's from… good human being! The original, the real Ghost in the Trounce.
The writing of the report is of course when yous create your deliverable. That'southward the product that you have been paid or get paid money from your employer to deliver – then don't skimp on that.
I know for me writing the SEO audit report information technology'south probably nigh half the work of the audit report itself – perhaps not, maybe.
It depends on the size of the website merely at least a third of my time goes into writing the study because that determines if anything is really going to happen with that output – if someone is actually going to accept that upwardly and brand stuff improve on the website.
Over again always assume information technology will be shared across the confines of the system you transport it to – no affair how many NDAs you lot sell. I know this because I go audit reports from other agencies all the fucking time.
And sometimes I wondered to myself if the people who wrote that report realised that I'grand going to exist reading them?
And it think might be practiced to go on in listen when you write an audit report – pretend that I'm non going to exist the one reading it!
Really. Because probably I will at some stage! And I might go angry with you.
Brand your recommendations actionable
Make information technology actionable. By the way Activity Jackson is a massively underrated 1980s early 1990s action film. Carl Weathers is one of my favourite action motion picture stars of all fourth dimension and I think he should have deserved an Oscar for his acting talent. He's fantastic. Beside the point.
Make it actionable. Once more information technology comes downwards to context.
It's very easy to make a very generic official recommendation and just shoot information technology over to the client and forget near it.
But you accept to put information technology in the right context.
You take to make sure they can actually practice something with that.
Now, I have had a few cases where I made a recommendation knowing that information technology is very easy for me to make and very difficult for the client to implement.
For example I audited a website a year and a half ago which was entirely server-side JavaScript. Entirely. From start to finish.
And then my recommendation to them was actually just a elementary email. So they were customer-side rendering and I told them go do server-side rendering because the client shouldn't be seeing any fucking JavaScript.
And after you lot've done that then I can audit the rest of the website – because up until that is fixed there's no signal in me spending any fucking endeavour on me auditing the rest of your website.
Fortunately for them they know they decided to test stuff out with prerender.io and and then we moved on to the second phase of the audit.
But sometimes it can be very hard for for clients to action a certain recommendation – no matter how much yous want them to.
Up until today I was one of those people who told clients to put pagination meta tags in paginated pages. Anybody been post-obit the Twitter drama on that today? Yep. John Mueller came out I said: 'Oh no we haven't paid attending to that for years.'
How much development fourth dimension is wasted on that correct? Once again that can be a very like shooting fish in a barrel recommendation to brand not necessarily easy to implement.
If you are familiar with the systems that the website runs on it becomes easier to modify that a little but what I do find is helpful – I'll bear on upon this a bit later on too is – if you don't necessarily tell a customer how to practise something but you requite them some signposts.
Then if at that place'due south a WordPress website and yous know at that place's a plug-in that helps with that possibly indicate him towards that or point them towards an online tool that tin help them find out certain bug merely don't necessarily tell themhow to do it – just give them hints.
Because people who end up implementing information technology – the developers – don't tend to like beingness told what to do. If y'all do that they call yous a dick in the Slack aqueduct to their CTO.
What to include in an SEO inspect
Simply includes what really needs improved.
In my colour coding system grey, green and yellow never go far to the final study. Orange and red are the simply ones that do. Stuff that actually needs to be fixed. And needs to be fixed urgently.
Stuff that might be nice to prepare – the yellow – I don't even bother to put it in the written report. No point in that. And again, with feel, you tend to find out what the biggest bang for your cadet is going to be and I'll talk near that a little fleck when I talk nearly prioritisation.
Only I see massively loaded audit reports sometimes where every tiny niggling possible comeback point is listed. And I'm like 'Nobody's gonna read that'. Nobody'south gonna do anything with that.
Make information technology concise. Make information technology short. Include only the stuff that really needs to be improved and will have a meaningful impact.
Once again: 'There's seven championship tags that are slightly over 70 characters' don't put that in your inspect report. No. Nobody's gonna do anything with that shit.
That's not useful. The trivial stuff needs to stay the fuck out.
If information technology'south not gonna take a big bang, a meaningful impact, don't put information technology in the written report.
Maybe put information technology in the Excel sail. Like I said in the actual checklist that yous can send to a customer and so that perhaps they will enquire you: 'Or what about this?' yous might practice that just information technology won't really move the needle – put stuff in there that's actually going to move the needle.
Prioritise prioritisation
And prioritise properly.
It is important to make the client sympathise what the biggest bang is going to be o nce they get-go making those recommendations.
And in that regard I tend to do what I call reverse prioritisation. Nosotros talked about the three main components of a search engine: crawling, indexing and ranking? I prioritize the other mode effectually.
Ranking comes first considering that's that's the depression-hanging fruit. That'south the blindside for your cadet.
If it'south crawled and indexed but it's not ranking, why is that? Let'south prepare that first.
If information technology'southward existence crawled only it's not beingness indexed, why? Why non? That's the 2nd footstep.
So the last pace: if it's non beingness crawled at all, why not?
Once again sometimes y'all have to mix things upwardly a little flake. If the unabridged website isn't being crawled that's a fairly important issue! Simply that won't happen very often.
You know in the part of a sales procedure of an SEO audit that I always emphasise to my clients there are no silver bullets anymore.
Yous're not going to find, I'k not going to observe ane major alter that's gonna massively reverse your fortunes and that cliff up is going to magically appear.
That's not going to happen.
Information technology'south going to exist small-scale incremental improvements. Small little things. If they can very chop-chop come across a result from what they implement from your inspect – it'due south stuff that starts to rank and earn traffic straight away – then they have that internal momentum, they will get that internal buy-in to implement more of your recommendations, and then that'south the loftier-priority stuff.
That's the quick payoff.
And then the stuff that takes a scrap more fourth dimension and lastly the stuff that might need a complete redesign of the website's information architecture for case – that can be hard to sell – but if they've seen the improvements from the showtime few recommendations and they have that internal buy-in and internal momentum to become it washed.
What non to put in an SEO Inspect
Try to make it concise and calorie-free on jargon.
I am a huge fan of who was it that that said that: 'If you tin can't explained it only you don't understand it properly'?
I retrieve it was Einstein…? At least information technology'south attributed to him a lot of the time. If you can't explain information technology simply you don't sympathize it. I really do believe that.
The same is truthful in SEO.
If yous hide all this stuff behind heavy jargon and acronyms and all that cruft and you're not actually sure about it yourself – you know and sometimes that's okay.
I don't know everything there is to know about websites either and I'm honest with my clients. I simply know when something goes wrong and I tell them: 'You might desire to have to look at information technology' but I practice attempt to explain it simply.
Try to explain information technology to somebody who comes from a not-technical background so they tin at least get a general gist of it – only also don't impaired it downwardly so much that y'all lose some of the dash in it. Because nuance is quite of import.
The context always matters but y'all accept to be concise.
Don't write 5,000 words about i single consequence. Nobody'due south going to read that yous know.
Keep it every bit curtailed equally you perchance tin. Give examples. E'er provide example screenshots or source code snippets whatever it is because it likewise makes the document come up alive a little fleck.
Information technology'due south information technology easier for people to read and if you provide direct examples of pages where a problem occurs then developers can directly look at those pages and see the problem for themselves and and so hopefully discover a good way to fix it.
Always explain the why. Don't just say: 'Google likes this'. Say why you call back Google likes that.
And yes of course you know we don't always know why ourselves considering Google tells us 'Make great content' simply we, equally SEO specialists accept at least the nuts of how search engines work.
I can at least explain that this is function of its itch system – if they tin't follow links and they can't clamber pages; or this is office of the indexing ecosystem and if you do clean upwardly the lawmaking with the H1 tags and at least Google have very articulate signals about what the headline on the page is etc.
So provide a bit of context. Explain the why behind it. And if you do that you volition very quickly realise that delivering all that in the form of PowerPoint slides simply isn't going to work because you can't exercise any of what I but said in PowerPoint. At that place'southward not plenty room on PowerPoint slides.
I hate audit reports that are delivered in PowerPoint. Information technology is so lazy.
And y'all just know that's just a template. That's a copy/paste job with the new website and the new screenshots thrown in and which standard content in it.
No. I write my reports in Word. And try not to make them likewise long.
They're about 20 to 30 pages and that's almost it. And I do write them nearly entirely from scratch every single time.
Considering I made a copy and paste error from the aforementioned issue once and I forgot to alter the website name… That shit'due south gonna haunt you besides. Don't do that. You only make that mistake once.
No write it down properly. You know I tend to brand information technology an easily readable, digestible document likewise. So one outcome per page and sometimes information technology's merely one or two paragraphs. Sometimes it's a bit longer, so screen shots in.
The next issue with: this is the problem; this is why it's a problem; and this is just a recommended solution. Next trouble: this is a problem; this is why it'south a problem; this is the recommended solution. One after the other.
And twenty-thirty pages max. That should be it. Unless it's a real cluster-fuck awful website – just if that'due south the case y'all can do it with just a i-page: you're saying 'Kickoff over' right?
So I don't like using PowerPoint. I like old-fashioned Word documents that I relieve every bit PDF – and then they can't fuck around with it – and then I send them to the client.
Understand your audit audience
And always sympathise your audience. There will exist multiple types of people in an organization who will be reading that certificate.
They tend to come in i of three forms. You lot've got the c-suite, the executives the CEOs, CMOs, CTOs; we've got the marketers and you got the tech, the dev people.
The C-Suite
The CEOs will never read the whole affair – they're just non going to. So y'all have to take an executive summary. And exercise telephone call it an 'executive summary' or something like that. Highlight that. That'south what the heart is gonna go towards. And that'south it, all they're gonna read.
Keep that as jargon complimentary every bit possible. Don't blame anybody. Don't say 'Your developers really fucked upwardly' because the aforementioned developers are gonna have to implement your recommendations.
And so don't apportion blame. Just describe, very briefly, what the issues are, and the kind of solution that would be required.
And show them the money.
It can be very hard to estimate how much traffic is going to better but you lot sorta get a bit of a estimate sometimes.
And I get these questions – probably style too often – and I always, over again, put them in the correct context saying: 'Well nosotros don't know. It's a moving target but I look if yous do that you might see one or two percent up lift, if you lot do that you lot might encounter fifteen-20 percent of that in 10 corporeality of time, in my experience' etc.
You lot know the more you do the better y'all get at information technology. And it becomes of import to do that – at least provide a bit of context and meaning.
And again it will help build internal momentum. Build that internal mandate that the marketers and the tech team need to actually make shit happen.
The marketers
Then the marketers: they tend to be the ones who hire y'all most of the time so you lot accept to make them wait good, even if they fucked upwardly, make sure that they look good.
Your entire job is to make marketing look good, to make them await smart, to make them await like they make the correct decision in hiring you to do that audit, for you to brand that study and to make stuff happen.
Sometimes I work with marketers – and I pity them to a certain extent when we piece of work in-firm – who know exactly what the fuck is wrong with their website. They know.
There will be no surprises in my inspect written report. None. Merely they need that because otherwise nobody else is going to listen to them.
So you make certain you align what you say with the marketers.
All right: 'What exercise you think the master problems are? I'll make sure to highlight them in my report' and sometimes you can surprise them. Most of the fourth dimension y'all know they tend to already accept a bit of an thought: 'Aye this is what the problem is' and then you need to pay someone else several thou pounds to actually get shit done in the organisation correct?
I used to exist that person. I spent 15 years of my career in-house and it'due south also why I will never become dorsum in-house.
Marketers sometimes have an unhealthy obsession with their competitors.
I sometimes get asked: 'Why do nosotros need to do this we're doing that because I looked at our competitors and our competitors are out-ranking usa.'
Yep… but that's not why they are out-ranking you lot.
You shouldn't e'er try to imitate what everybody else is doing.
Invest in them and attempt to educate them a little scrap as well – you know if you accept a Screaming Frog or the typical output for them, show them the tool and maybe get them to use it as well. Brand information technology part of their processes.
The Developers
The developers then.
They can be the hardest to win over but in one case you've got them on side it actually moves, it really gets washed. It helps if yous have some basic development awareness yourself. If you don't at least try to understand some of the lingo.
I don't remember y'all need to exist able to lawmaking to be a skillful SEO. I do call up y'all need to know HTML.
HTML is non a coding language it'due south a markup language and information technology's more or less man readable. If you want to exist actually, really good at SEO you need to be able to look at the source code of a spider web page, the HTML source code and sort of have an idea of what each component does.
I don't think that's really optional if I'm entirely honest.
Simply knowing JavaScript or Python or PHP now you don't need to do that.
I call back I'k a fairly competent technical SEO and I haven't coded in anger for the improve function of 17 years now.
So when you lot talk to developers that helps to actually print, some of the really bones concepts, that they sometimes don't necessarily realise can be a problem. Like, for example, that URLs are how search engines crawl, index and rank content.
You guys don't crawl or index and rank websites nor exercise you rank web pages in fact they rank URLs, individual web addresses.
And once you cram that into a web developer'southward caput for example they'll never make problems with single page apps anymore because they know every unmarried slice of content needs its own URL for search engines.
You know, secretly, all spider web developers desire to work for Google. Deep down they'll all admit they'd beloved to work for Google. Then if this lifts a scrap of that veil yous tell them a trivial scrap 'This is how Google actually works, this is how they collaborate with your website' they tend to become excited about the prospect.
Y'all can bespeak them to certain documentation on the Google Developers website that tends to help besides because they take them as gospel.
And then see it actually starts to happen.
And always make sure that you emphasise that by building good SEO into their website. It'll make them look practiced as well.
Because they're the ones who're building websites that are faster, that are better, that rank meliorate and get more than traffic and earn more money and pay you a salary i n the end.
Be Results Focused
And I want to be outcome focused.
I never want to tell a developer how to do their job. I sometimes point them to certain tools and sure platforms but I'g not religiously telling them to do it one sure way but I tell them what the platonic outcome is going to be: 'This is the platonic outcome of this particular recommendation. How you lot get in that location is upwardly to you but keep as close to that as you mayhap can' – and they figure it out themselves.
Yous don't need to tell them how to do their own jobs most of the fourth dimension. If you practice that you tend to get them onside.
That guy, I have a really good working relationship with him now. And the visitor he worked for, in fact they deputed me to practice a second inspect one time they updated the entire code base of their website.
And he actually is based in Portugal and he'southward got an open invitation for me to come and potable beers with him when I'm in that location because afterward that initial hurdle he realised that I wasn't his enemy. That I could make his chore easier if he just did what the I told him to… but actually that's all I have.
If that talk wasn't impressive enough I hope those logos print you. Thank y'all very much.
[Applause]
Update
2 years later this talk, Barry was asked if he'd felt time had changed his communication at all. Here was his response:
Basically very much the aforementioned, with maybe some pocket-size tweaks and shifts as Google's algos alter. Simply I reckon 90% or more of what I say in that talk is nevertheless exactly how I practise my audits today.
Only affair I've really refined is my prioritisation matrix. moving picture.twitter.com/Y7R3yP4hpC
— Barry Adams 📰 (@badams) June 23, 2021
So, even if you've but discovered this talk, you're even so on the correct track if you follow Barry'south advice!
Told you information technology was good.
Now, check out when the adjacent complimentary Optimisey SEO result is and take hold of your spot now:
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Source: https://optimisey.com/seo-advice/how-to-do-a-technical-seo-audit-barry-adams/
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