Perfectionism is the enemy of progress

Helen says: “When we begin as SEOs, we have a checklist of things to run through for every activity we do. A list will help you be aware of all the things you need to look at and check. This type of mentality can cause you to be too reliant on the notion of ‘best practice’.

When you very first start adding pages to your blog, you might look to get all the green ticks from the SEO CMS plugin you use. Alternatively, you might have a set number of characters you want to put into your page title to ensure it’s not truncated in the search results. There are lots of tools at your disposal, and most of them will have some sort of traffic light system to flag errors on your website. Tools identify red or amber errors, and it’ll be your responsibility to turn them green.

That’s fine when you start but, as you mature and your experience widens, rigidly following checklists become problematic. You should rely on some of the context that you know about particular websites, or look closely at what worked in the past and what didn’t. Put the checklist to one side and appreciate that ‘best SEO practices’ are becoming somewhat obsolete.

Every website, every vertical, and every industry is different. There are a few core tenants that we embrace as SEOs, i.e. ‘If you do X you can reasonably expect Y.’ These assumptions are less realistic than you’d assume. What works well on one website isn’t 100% transferable to the next. That’s why most of our answers start with ‘it depends’, because that context and nuance are really important. When you’re striving for perfection in SEO, sometimes you lose a bit of that nuance and the differences that have a big impact on a site. A lot of the things we try to fix don’t need to be perfected.

For example, most websites don’t have an issue with the crawl budget, but that doesn’t stop people from spending time going into their website and relinking every link that points to a redirecting page. That might be good for maintenance and it’s good practice for staying on top of things, but unless you’ve got lots of URLs that are redirecting, with lots of links pointing to these redirecting URLs, the chances are that this practice isn’t going to impact how much of your website Googlebot can get through.

Doing something for the sake of ticking a box won’t always drive growth. Avoid wasting time and resources that could be put to better use elsewhere.”

What are some examples of other small technical issues that SEOs spend too much time on?

“The loading speed of a page. There are wonderful tools like PageSpeed Insights that give you a score out of 100. However, if you score 95/100, will achieving those remaining five points really affect your growth? Otherwise, you’d be wasting lots of goodwill on the development team making tweaks when their expertise could be leveraged elsewhere.”

What causes conflict between SEOs and product teams?

“As I’ve already mentioned, it has a lot to do with perfectionism and the checklist attitude that can cause risks and unnecessary discussions. Product teams just want a good website - and SEOs want that too. However, when we stick to a checklist, we can get regimented in our understanding of what a good website looks like.

The fix recommended by the product or development team is often good enough. It might not be perfect in the eyes of SEO, but it’s worth it if it does what it needs to, and it’s not going to cause any issues from an SEO perspective. There’s no point going back and forth for months on end arguing over the implementation of something. If the way something has been suggested is easiest and it’s still going to work, just go with that.”

What are some SEO activities that can drive growth but often get neglected?

“Technical SEO should be prioritised more, but it often doesn’t fall into these checklists. Don’t throw it all out, because getting your technical foundation right is imperative for growth. Make sure your technical approach improves the performance of your website. From here, you can work on your content and matching user intent. It’s important to get the foundation of a technically good website first and then build the rest from there.”

What tools should you use to determine how Google sees your site?

“Crawl logs are great because you can look at how Googlebot is navigating around the website and see where it might be tripping up or where it’s visiting pages more or less often. If you can get hold of your log files and analyse them with Search Console, that’s Google’s way of telling you what they’re seeing.

Bing’s equivalent is highly useful too, especially in the insights it can provide. Using a combination approach can help you get a good understanding of what Google sees when it visits your page.”

What are some typical warning flags you see in log files and what would you do to fix them?

“Things like orphan pages. If you’re not expecting a page to be an orphan, you can identify this through log files. You can see where Google isn’t visiting pages and investigate.

There could also be pages that exist on your site that you weren’t aware of. Sometimes filtering systems can cause additional pages rather than taking you through to an existing page. Googlebot has a way of finding those pages that you might not have been aware of. Looking at your log files can help you to see where those additional pages are being created so you can identify whether they’re going to be problematic or not.”

Should every website be looking at log files or is this mostly associated with bigger websites?

“Log files are often difficult to get hold of, especially if you’re on the agency side. Ideally, we’d all have access to log files and be able to assess the information there. It’s often not as simple as just going for it, though, because getting your hands on those log files can be a challenge. That could either be for security reasons or difficulty getting hold of the right person in your client’s team.

Log files will give you lots of insight as you analyse them. Even small websites have technical issues that can create additional pages you might not be aware of. For example, tagging systems or the way you tag up a blog could cause additional category pages you hadn’t noticed. Sometimes these aren’t easily picked up through crawls. When you look at your log files you’ll be surprised by the pages Googlebot hits that haven’t been identified through a standard crawl.”

What are two things that SEOs could be doing on-site to drive some quick wins?

“There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer for this because you need to know what your strategy is. Quick wins for one company are not going to be quick wins for another. Always start with a robust strategy for achieving the on-page fixes you’re looking for. Assess whether you need additional pages to address particular search queries.

You might notice that users are starting to search differently and that you need to do things on-site to accommodate that. This should all become part of your SEO strategy, otherwise, you’re going to deviate too far and fail to get the same results you’ve committed to achieving as part of your strategy.”

How often should you be building and reviewing your SEO strategy?

“Your SEO strategy should be in line with how your company operates or whether your client strategies have been implemented. For instance, if you have a yearly marketing strategy then you probably need a yearly SEO strategy. How in-depth that strategy goes will be dependent on the format and makeup of your company. Plan at least six months in advance, and have a rough idea for the whole 12 months.

However, with changing circumstances it’s important to be flexible and willing to adjust. If you know there’s something big on the horizon, you might have to be a bit more agile with your strategy. Have a loose plan and idea of where you want things to go, but nail down the specifics, the KPIs, and the actual activity that’s happening to underpin that strategy. You might have to do this a little bit more in the short term.”

What shouldn’t SEOs be doing in 2023? What’s seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive?

“Steer clear of the siloing that happens in SEO teams. We need to neglect the viewpoint that SEO is a separate channel. We often see that when teams are collaborating to come up with campaign ideas, there is a tendency to perceive SEO as risky and sitting in its own bubble. We’re missing opportunities, we’re missing out on insight from data, and we’re missing opportunities to collaborate on ideas and create a total omnichannel approach to marketing. We need to fully integrate our teams and work together in true collaboration. SEO tends to sit off to the side because we’re often a team that struggles with development and products in creative. We really need to see ourselves integrating more and lessening those silos between SEO and other marketing channels.”

What have you done in the past to be more successful at forging greater integration with other people in the business?

“SEO can seem like a black box that’s difficult to understand. No one really knows where they should and shouldn’t be integrating with the SEO team. Education is a great place to start, by speaking to your copywriters about how SEO and copywriting work together. Talk to your CRM paid team about how paid search and organic search work together. Talk to your CRM team about how SEO can help keep customers within the tunnel. When you’re a part of training initiatives and start having those discussions, you’ll open up opportunities for collaboration with others. You’ll learn about the other disciplines and think about how SEO could benefit or hinder a given situation. Until you’re having discussions where you’re looking to educate, learn about other channels and have them learn about yours, it’ll be difficult to be successful going forward.”

Helen Pollitt is Head of SEO at Car & Classic and you can find her @HelenPollitt1 on Twitter.