008 – The Importance of Technical SEO

00:00.00
Jeff
Hello and welcome to the wp seo show pete hit start recording a little bit before I was ready I am your co-host Jeff I’m here with with with Pete we’re not going to do as goofy if an intro today. We’ve already gotten that out of the way. How’s it going pete.

00:13.94
peteeveritt
Hey humble, good. Thanks Mate! How are you.

00:18.25
Jeff
Ah, we’re still ah we’re still having fun with with all this awkwardness of recording and all that but I am good actually I’ve been a little under the weather this week so hopefully I don’t look or sound too bad but we’re here we are. We’ve been chatting a little bit about what we’re recording this week and I’m looking forward to it.

00:32.83
peteeveritt
Yeah, it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be fun. It’s been.. It’s been an odd week this Week. You’ve been.. You’ve been a bit down. We’ve got like a bogie coldy thing going through our house So one of our sons wasn’t too great with it. They they they were still all right to go at school but they weren’t like they weren’t 100% And ah my wife’s been um, my wife’s been struggling with it the last couple of days So it’s it’s something that’s going around. It’s obviously international.

00:57.97
Jeff
It’s yess obviously you you guys sent it to me through Zoom or something I guess well oh I thought you thought that what you managed, let’s going around internationally so ah.

01:01.46
peteeveritt
Ah, hey yours is an are fault. That’s not where I was going with this.

01:13.24
Jeff
It’s I don’t know about you but it’s like anytime I talk about being sick I instantly feel like I’m like oh I’ve got Covid like I don’t have covid but I feel like I’m sounding like I’ve got Covid or ever and that’s just what everyone’s going to think now for anytime, someone’s like oh I’m not feeling good before like years ago. It was like. Ah, they’re probably lie or they’re probably they just dont want to. They don’t want to hang out tonight or whatever it is just look for an excuse Now. It’s like okay, cool like that’s the instant like I totally accept that if somebody says oh sorry I’m not feeling good I My butt Cool talk to you later like I’m done I don’t want to see you. Ah.

01:34.76
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah.

01:39.98
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:44.00
Jeff
I Love you I Hope you’re doing good I Hope you feel better, but that’s that’s cool see next time.

01:48.39
peteeveritt
Ah, you know, covered covered was is a horrible horrible horrible thing. My um, my first my eldest son got it when when we were well it was in the November so what. Covered started in the March it was like six or seven months and it was before vaccine vaccines were a thing and um, he got it. It was kid in his class. Got it the whole class isolated and three days later he he tested positive for it and.

02:04.18
Jeff
In.

02:16.84
peteeveritt
They were doing because the class was isolating. They were just figuring out how Zoom school worked so we’d given him a computer I mean he was only like 9 at the time so he didn’t have a computer in his room so he gave him a computer with a little webcam so he could do that in his bedroom and and. Yeah, we he had. He had a desk in there already for doing his homework and that kind of thing and he just had these like bouts where he just went really weak like it just like he he almost like shut down a bit like he sort of fainted or passed out and he he would go so weak. He couldn’t get from his. From his chair in his at his desk to his bed. He was he literally couldn’t move and um, you know we just hear him like collapse and he couldn’t talk. He just sort of like gazed out of his face and yeah, we that this happened for about.

02:53.73
Jeff
Wow.

03:11.40
peteeveritt
On and off for about 12 or 14 hours he just kept on having these episodes so the first but they’d last about maybe 30 or 40 seconds and then he’d kind of come around but he was quite confused and a bit woolly and and whatever and then we could get him to his bed and then about 20 minutes later he was back to his normal self so it happened the first time and he seemed to get better. The second time it happened we rang. Ah, we rang the ambulance but they didn’t want to come because we had active covered in the house and by the time we were like off or by the time where we were sort of on the phone with them. He’d then come round again. So they’d said right? Well, we’re gonna stand the um the crew down ring us back if it happens again and that happened 2 more times. And they never they never came because he’d always sort of come around and then then we got to a nighttime and he did go to sleep. We didn’t sleep a lot that night just checking on him and the following day. Thankfully I mean he still wasn’t very well but he was that didn’t happen again and then he sort of started to pick up day on day from there. So covid was a vile vile thing.

04:06.75
Jeff
Oh man that is that’s terrifying I remember when he when he got it but you did not share that much info with me at design.

04:08.93
peteeveritt
And um, yeah.

04:17.86
Jeff
I Just thought he was up there with the sniffles. He’s like yeah you he’s doing a couple of days. He’ll be all right? You know that’s that’s the extent of I knew how bad things got in your house. So thanks. Ah.

04:22.12
peteeveritt
Well well, but but but blessing me had he did get it. He had it 4 times over like like over a period of like eight or eight months to a year I guess he had it 4 times he had it more than anybody else in the house. Um.

04:27.72
Jeff
Oh my gosh.

04:38.17
peteeveritt
And you know is it right? Okay, so um, as a as a family like gabs and I we just decided you know what he’s our son. he’s he’s 9 likewise the younger 1 he would have been 6 at the time you know there are children. We’re not going to treat them any differently. We’re not going to stop touching them. We’re not going to shut them in the room.

04:38.36
Jeff
That’s more than my whole family combined.

04:53.90
Jeff
Yeah.

04:56.35
peteeveritt
You know what? if if we get it so be it. We’re we’re gonna be with him and um, that was yeah so so that was the decision. We made that that particular instance when Isaac got it. That was the first time he had it and he. You could tell he was getting sort of when we first tested him you could tell he wasn’t very well but it was just like just like a cold you know, just nothing nothing to sort of write home about and the thing they sort of didn’t tell you was that you were going to have like a really bad like 48 hour window and right in the middle of that was this like 12 or 14 hour window where he had these collapsing episodes. And then as I say then he started to get a little bit better. He still wasn’t great, but he was a little bit better then kind of the the day after that he was kind of back to just having a coldie fluy thing like everybody else. So it was just this window that was really really sort of manky. But anyway welcome to the covid podcast with Pete and Jeff.

05:42.44
Jeff
Oh man, hey yeah yeah, welcome to the Co W P covid show ah ah no we got lucky we we’ve managed to dodge it pretty well I I think that if not all of us I had it in january.

05:54.15
peteeveritt
Um.

06:01.10
Jeff
Before the pandemic started because I remember um I really offended my partner by telling her the food didn’t taste like anything for a couple days. It was like before we you know I was even being talked about and but I remember there was like ah 3 or 4 days where everything that I ate I just was like.

06:12.95
peteeveritt
Ah.

06:20.58
Jeff
But it doesn’t taste like anything like I wouldn’t say I didn’t have any sense of taste for smell but food just was so bland and everything So I don’t know I kind of unscientifically think ahead it then but ever since then we’ve been super lucky. We just we dodged it? Um I mean we’re kind of hermits anyway. So that makes it easier but.

06:22.57
peteeveritt
Um.

06:38.87
peteeveritt
What we were just talking about that earlier and like yeah we were talking. We’re talking about things being filmed in your city and I’m like well I don’t know I don’t leave the garden. Um I mean you don’t even leave the house. Ah so.

06:48.96
Jeff
Ah, not not enough, not enough, not enough. But anyway all right, We’ll stop. We’ll stop reminiscing about the the years of Covid that we’ve all been enjoying because I’m sure everybody everybody listening also went through the same thing if not worse so thankfully thankfully you’re here and listening.

07:03.60
peteeveritt
M.

07:07.95
Jeff
Um, hope you’re all well and everything so today Peter I I’m pretending I’m your mother that was the best at british accent plus try to do um today I think we we want to talk about technical Seo and.

07:08.70
peteeveritt
Absolutely.

07:17.37
peteeveritt
Hi mom.

07:26.15
Jeff
Not necessarily getting into the nuts and bolts of it. But how important it is because it’s really kind of first things first right when you’re launching a new site or you’re taken over a site when you’re when you’re preparing a website to start ranking for search on the search engines first things First you got to get that technical health set up.

07:44.53
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely and you know it’s it’s not very fun. It’s not a sexy part of Seo doing onsite onsite optimizations to an existing website code isn’t an interesting read. Um I think that’s that’s the honest truth of it.

07:58.19
Jeff
No I think a newer a newer site would probably be a little less daunting. Probably.

08:01.43
peteeveritt
Um, probably probably um, but yeah and and you know it it can be. It can be quite good fun I’m not I don’t want to be too down on it. But the the reality is the reality is that you need to you look.

08:17.60
Jeff
Is it.

08:19.88
peteeveritt
The onsite technical Seo ah score of a website taints. Everything else you do with it. that’s the that’s the honest truth. So if you if you don’t understand that if you don’t know what that is and you haven’t done the best to. Remedy particularly the errors and I know we’ll get into errors and warnings and stuff in a minute. But if you haven’t done your best to remedy that as best you can then it doesn’t matter what else you do with this website you can write the best copy that the world has ever seen and if Google reads that and sees it. And then says yeah, but it’s on a site with a health of 62%. It’s never going to be any better than a site that’s got a health of 62 so by by making sure you’ve gone through a process of auditing and rectifying as many of the ah issues as you can you are. Not only providing a very good quick win through to your client so that you can demonstrate. You know what? you’re talking about and that you you’re actually going to demonstrate some results to them. But you’re almost like unleashing the potential in anything else that you do after it and you do have to keep on top of site health site. It isn’t the sort of thing you can just do once and then forget about. But it is the kind of thing you can do once and then review once every four to six months you don’t need to be It doesn’t need to be constantly in your mind and you can concentrate with getting on with the other cooler stuff like writing good copy and you know finding links and doing local Seo or whatever it might be and whatever floats you boat.

09:52.79
peteeveritt
Yeah, you’d really need to worry about getting that technical piece done first.

09:54.55
Jeff
Yet and it’s like you said it starts out and that’s one of the most important things when you’re when you’re growing it and adding to it that becomes a different conversation. It’s usually a lot of work at the beginning and then maintenance mode basically maintenance mode. If the if the site’s growing if it’s expanding if maybe algorithms or software whatever is changing. There could be some work done. But for the most part you’re doing a bunch of the work upfront you’re getting everything in order and that’s why I said it’s more daunting when the site’s already live. It’s already in existence. It’s already had who knows what done to it when it’s fresh. You know. It’s easier to start at 0 than at negative. Ah.

10:31.80
peteeveritt
Yeah, oh absolutely. Absolutely absolutely although I I’ll try not to get on my soapbox with the next bit I’m about to say but I run an seo audit on every website I launch so I did I did launched a website the other day I actually put this out on Linkedin.

10:41.62
Jeff
Ah.

10:51.70
peteeveritt
Um, oh I put the speed test out on Linkedin. So when we when I launch a website I run ah an seo health check on it and I run a speed test on it and if I’m if I’m launching if I’m replacing a site the site I’d put on Linkedin was a brand new site for a new company so that they didn’t have anything to that it was replacing. But if I’m replacing something I will also run a speed test on their old site and I will I will probably run a health check on their old site because what’s the point in them having a site which has a health of 84% and me launching a new one. That’s got a site health of 62. That’s not going to help them. Um.

11:23.69
Jeff
Yeah, don’t want to go backwards.

11:27.34
peteeveritt
And if if I’m not hosting the site I will also run a speed test on our dev server and on the live server so I can demonstrate if our dev server is faster than their hosting that they’ve arranged so I’ll do a few of these things. And it maybe sounds like overkill and somebody did message me to my post on Linkedin and said you know what What’s the point you know clients don’t care I stop doing these clients. Don’t care i’s just wasting my time here’s the soapbox bit I believe wholeheartedly that clients come to us. As web professionals you wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic and expect him to send it back to you with some issues you would expect to buy a new car from a dealership. And expect it to have issues. In fact in the United States you even have a thing called the lemon law where if it has too many issues you can get rid of it and give it back. So why would somebody come to you as a web professional and you think it’s acceptable to deliver a website to them. Where you don’t know how well or not it’s performing. You know how how good it is out the gate essentially right? That’s the end of the run. Um, but yeah, the.

12:41.50
Jeff
As yet real quick before I forget I Have to say my my father just actually lemonlawed his truck and yes.

12:52.14
peteeveritt
Um, ah, really.

12:53.61
Jeff
And this is something we’ve we’ve lemon law that’s a thing I don’t know if it’s in other countries or not but I don’t hear to say it’s it’s something I’ve grown up with knowing about the lemon law I’ve never actually seen it go into effect I’ve never known anybody It’s like oh yeah I lemon love my car. You know went to effect on that my dad had tracked It had so many problems and they couldn’t fix it up that he had it for like four or five years paid you know, maybe I’m sorry, maybe three or four years paid monthly monthly. All that stuff they gave him back 100% of the money that he paid towards that they took it back so he doesn’t have the drug anymore. But I mean he basically had I think for free he got every penny paid back on it and you know, just yeah, that was that was pretty interesting but.

13:18.93
peteeveritt
Yeah.

13:26.57
peteeveritt
Yeah.

13:33.20
Jeff
Actually it’s kind of a good comparison because that was exactly what what happened he would take the truck to the mechanic for a transmission problem and it would come back with two more and and and they would give him oh do this for a little while and he’s just like no I didn’t fix it.

13:39.86
peteeveritt
Yeah, exactly.

13:47.83
Jeff
I Don’t want you to give me a checklist of things you want I want to do or you want me to do every time I drive like.

13:51.50
peteeveritt
Yeah, you know this is this is yeah, you’re dead right? This is it just frustrates me that that people think that they can build websites and. Run an agency and be a developer and and this that newer and have no idea really whether you know just because you can use a page builder and get assets to look pretty on a page doesn’t mean you can build a website that’s going to perform and I don’t mean that disrespectfully to anybody but you.

14:21.46
Jeff
No.

14:24.93
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, look and I don’t mean it disrespectfully to anybody. That’s why services like ours exist so we can help you with it if you can’t do it but you you almost have a duty of care when somebody that money that a client is paying. You isn’t just a fee that. That you deserve you know, ah to to be paid that fee is them investing in their company for a better result. So. Therefore it’s our job to to do our part to deliver that better result now. Okay, you know thousands other things can go wrong with their business that means that the results don’t come I get that but you need to be able to sort of cross your heart and hope to die that you have done the best you can for the money that they have given you and.

15:13.94
Jeff
I know.

15:14.10
peteeveritt
Ah wow, This has got heavy quite quick but I I and I don’t really mean it to we want to get onto the cool stuff. But it’s there is a a duty that we have and it’s something that we just need to take we all need to take quite seriously that that is you know what is a. A job or a project to each of Us. We get used to using websites every day is an investment for the company owner in themselves. So.

15:35.74
Jeff
Yeah, you said a couple things in there I want to touch on and it’s funny. You know the whole purpose of this topic or this chat was supposed to be about technical seo and putting those steps in place first. But if we segue the cool thing about recording a podcast is we can change the title afterwards. Before we launch it so this this might be called. You know, looking at what some web professionals do all the time we’ll see we’ll get there. But anyway.

15:57.41
peteeveritt
Ah, we’ve never done that I don’t know what you’re talking about Jeffrey. Um.

16:10.11
Jeff
You said you said something that I thought was was pretty smart and as as web professionals our clients are trusting us to make these decisions or to know and now something I see I have I feel like I’m in a little bit of a unique situation right? because on on.

16:15.57
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah.

16:22.88
Jeff
1 part of the day I run a white label s seo company with you. The other part of the day I run a white label website maintenance or wordpress maintenance and and support company by myself or with my team over there and we work with a bunch of different agencies. They all have their own processes. You know we’re there to help we we we can help. But that sometimes they do a lot of things internally and you know we have different kind of situation or relationships with everybody in a sense. Some some love to have a website built by a freelancer and there’s nothing wrong with a freelancer I don’t want to put this you know create some sort of like. Artificial fight between freelancers and agency owners or is nothing like that. You know what? I mean that’s not the kiss at all. Let’s just say web professional, right? Whether it’s 1 person or somebody with a team I’ve seen plenty of agencies screw this up too. But I see so many like just solo freelancers or who not that go in in and do exactly what you said.

17:02.20
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, absolutely.

17:16.40
Jeff
They can make a great looking site. They can use the page builder. They could make the 5 or 6 pages and then they they launch it and it looks fantastic. The client reviewed it looks wonderful, but what nobody did was look behind the scenes. What nobody did was consider what was on the old website were there pages that just got deleted. Where there pages that maybe weren’t in their menu I’ve seen I’ve seen freelancers go oh well I just I just looked at the website saw there were you know 5 pages in the menu. That’s all I did like that was that was the scope. No no, no if what you should do is if if you realize that it isn’t a full job. You need to have that conversation like don’t just take the job and say well that’s what you paid before it’s like well I should have given you the advice and so and I see this old time I see sites launched right? and they have. 50 orphaned pages that didn’t get designed or built out or something like that or or deleted. Maybe they didn’t even get brought over you know sometimes they’ll clone the site and not touch it that doesn’t make any sense other times they’ll start a new site and not import it over anything and that’s just for practice. So. You know, can’t tell you how many times this is just our experience right? I know you’ve seen stuff like this I’ve seen this a few times. This is just what we see too frequently I can’t imagine people out there that aren’t on top of this and looking for it how many times these things slip through the cracks and how many clients get sites launched and they’re up there for years and years and years and you know they finally.

18:43.79
Jeff
Consult with somebody for seo and realize yeah we have nine months worth of work to do that could have been you know five months or 5 minutes worth of work at the get go six months ago

18:53.47
peteeveritt
Yeah I yeah, it’s you have a it is it is a responsibility and it’s It’s something you agree to take on look I look I have it in my agency. So like you I do 2 things I have seo hive that I run with you for half the day and then I I have an agency that’s here in the uk now we have I have 3 developers on my team that. Ah, that that work with us. Occasionally we work on big projects and they budy up or they work on something as a threesome and and and that’s that’s how they do it but the vast majority of the time when we get open quotes regular websites come in. It will only be 1 of 1 person will build that site and that’s. You know they they take the design from the art worker and and they build it out. Um, and they are responsible for it from start to finish so in a sense. They’re no different to a freelancer or a single agency owner or whatever because it’s 1 person responsible for building 1 website. Um, so this isn’t to do with. Size or scale or or anything like that. It’s ah I think there’s just is to do with that acknowledging that that responsibility for what you should deliver and what you’re really being paid for. Um.

20:15.79
peteeveritt
And I know both of us have been part of groups that I’m not going to name um on this on on live on. Ah but you and I have been part of groups where the whole idea of the fee that you’re paid is kind of like you’re right? and um. Ah, you know you should you? You should always aim to get the 5 sig 5 figure 5 page website and and this that new that I don’t have a problem with people being paid 5 figures for 5 pages of a website. Don’t get me wrong. But if you’re being paid significant money for something that. Isn’t really a technically tap challenging job then you’ve got to make sure it’s like the best 5 page website that there is out there on the internet and that involves the design the copy the the codebase the the Seo the hierarchy of it. The.

20:59.10
Jeff
Yeah.

21:09.64
peteeveritt
Ah, you know that you you need to be ticking all the boxes if you want to charge that kind of that kind of high dollar I don’t charge 5 figures for a 5 page website. Let me put it that way. Um, but that’s ah I know people that do and again I’ve not got a problem with that. But it’s not.

21:26.54
peteeveritt
The problem I have with these coaching groups where I’ve seen these discussions happen is that the money has almost been flipped over to be well, you’re the developer you name your price. It’s your right to get to charge charge what you’re worth or however they decide to to phrase it. Um. Yes, by all means set your own pricing but you’ve got to understand that with that comes the expectation of having the proper delivery and if you can’t deliver it properly then really focus on that before you worry about whacking your pricing up to 5 figures.

22:02.17
Jeff
Yeah, that’s that’s a good point. So ah, what’s what’s the. Ah, what’s the saying crawl before you walk or.

22:06.38
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, don’t don’t um yeah, and don’t run before you can walk so right? So so well I was going to bring this round I was going to bring us round so where this.

22:12.12
Jeff
Don’t yeah I Avoid oh boy Boy boy and I you know I I feel like we’re ranting a bit here but you know, ah.

22:26.21
peteeveritt
This conversation started. Ah yeah, your bill will be in the post and the ah just to bring this background to to where we started was a couple of days ago you and I were on a call together and you showed me a website. It was.

22:27.41
Jeff
Um, it’s just our professional therapy session for the week

22:44.78
peteeveritt
It was kind of an ecommerce site wasn’t it. It was it was a website that had had a catalog added to it and they built out some product pages in this catalog and the pages weren’t optimized at all. They didn’t have the the key thing that we noticed immediately. Was they didn’t have an h one tag on the page and you asked me the question hey how important is it that this page doesn’t have an h one tag on it and yeah, ah I kind of came back with the very Seo e type answer of well it depends. And we we then had the discussion about it and that’s where that was kind of what fed into the thought of of this show and talking about how important in certain aspects of technical seo are to your to each website. Um.

23:32.68
Jeff
Yeah to to me from from the outsider’s perspective reviewing what had been done. It looked to me it was that somebody was okay, not to go back to that euphemism but somebody was running before they even tied their shoes.

23:36.90
peteeveritt
So.

23:48.41
peteeveritt
Yeah.

23:50.21
Jeff
It was like building all kinds of I don’t even want to say context it wasn’t really content. They were building a lot of pages but then like the simple things like the homepage didn’t have an h one tag and and to me that’s just one of those givens like it has to happen. It has to be there. It should always be there and so I was kind of looking for some confirmation right? because the way I look at it is that. Is is that h one tag going to make or break this website. You know if it’s there is it going to all of a sudden increase its rankings is it probably not but the fact that it’s not there is ah is it’s a checkmark. It’s a red flag. It’s a error.

24:23.62
peteeveritt
Yep.

24:25.11
Jeff
And so we’re going back to that to what we’re talking about at first if all things are equal the one without the errors is going to win right? So if if they’re if they’re fighting with a website if there’s another website that they’re you know, neck and neck with and a ranking for and and their competitor doesn’t have all these errors they have an h one something as simple as an h one tag on their homepage. Who’s going to win the one with the h what day and that’s the same concept for a believe speed test too I look the same thing you know people get caught up in speed tests. It’s important. Absolutely I love making a website nice and fast when possible but you know what? if it’s going to require stupid example but rebuilding the slider and. Let’s just say 10 hours of development work to come up with some solution right? and so it’s going to cost this company a few hundred bucks a thousand dollars. Whatever is it worth it to do that and get it from 97 to 98 probably not unless they’re going neck and neck with another competitor that’s already at ninety seven or ninety eight or whatever um so you know that is kind of the way I always look at it go like it’s it’s a race and so if it’s going to be that close. You definitely want to have those things in place but at the same time make sure you can run fast that’s important run. Well.

25:26.14
peteeveritt
Absolutely.

25:32.83
peteeveritt
Yeah that’s and and that’s that’s yeah, that’s that’s really all it is and we we said in a previous episode you know Seo is 2 things 1 is it’s a revenue generating thing for Google it means it can charge the most for the ads at the top I won’t go back into that yet. But the the second thing is. Is the seo is a game of displacement so in order for you to appear on page one if you’re not there already. You have to be better than the people that are currently on page one and you’ll knock all of them down a position and eventually the person that’s in position 10 will drop on to page 2 position 11 So Seo is a game of displacement. Which is why it’s not that easy to say oh well is this h one tag going to make life different life better for this website. Um because it it depends on what the competition is like that are already on page one if the if the the current page 1 rankings are all are all terrible then guess what. Your site only has to be slightly less terrible to beat them which is fine. Um, but if the Serps are if the page one serps are full of you know, excellent websites then and you rock up with some mediocre thing. You. You’ve brought a knife to a gunf fight. You’re not, you’re not going to compete so it it does depend but what it depends on is who it is that’s already ranking there and what their strategy is and what their site is like and their health and their content and their backlink profile and that toxicity of that bat move and we can go on and on.

27:06.64
peteeveritt
So It’s a game of displacement and that’s you know, right? So now if we tie these 2 things together that we’ve just been talking about you have this responsibility as a web developer to deliver the best website that you can because somebody is investing in you as a web professional to help their business. And you’ve got this list of stuff that you know should be right on every website like H one tags like um like chain redirect loops like minification of certain things. That’s a hot topic. Ah but you know there’s a whole.. There’s a whole host of stuff that should be right. Making sure there’s metatitles and meta descriptions and you name it all that kind of stuff and the vast majority of that Stuff. You only have to set once if you put an h one tag in the theme file or the the thema layout or the the template that you’ve built in your page builder or whatever it is. To pull in the page title or a custom field or whatever it is then guess what all of the pages have h one. It’s done you you finished you? That’s ah, that’s a green Tick. You’d never have to worry about that ever again and you know that that is something you’ve done right for the client. Um, so that’s.

28:06.47
Jeff
You’re done. Yeah.

28:19.59
peteeveritt
That’s how you you know? that’s kind of why I went off in the tangent with the the responsibility of agency owners because some of this stuff you literally you just have to do it once and you can forget all about it and and it can make the difference.

28:28.80
Jeff
Yeah.

28:33.44
peteeveritt
And unless you’re going to go and do all the research and the Gap analysis and all that kind of stuff to figure out whether it’s worth it or not. It’s just far easier to do it. A lot of the time if I’m being honest.

28:43.40
Jeff
Ah, it definitely is I mean that’s kind of a whole another rant that we could go on right there but you mentioned you make sure the h one isn’t the theme wordpress uses most websites. But let’s wordpress. Okay, they use a theme for this specific reason so that it is cohesive so that. Things work right? You know I love page builder all the page builders out. There are great even the bad ones are still great for what you know I mean but we’ve been. We’ve been doing this long enough to we remember I remember having the ty hall the html in the in the body of a post or whatnot. You know what? I mean like things have come a long way. Even the worst page builders are better than how we used to design things ten fifteen years ago or whatever that said page builders as a whole have just made it so easy for people to start building wordpress websites and same thing with the Wix or whatever that there’s nobody cares about the themes anymore. Like or so many people I should say aren’t caring about the theme aspects of it. They don’t you know I’ve I’ve seen websites launched without blog functionality and it’s like it’s built in. You know how hard it is to ruin something that’s built in like it and it happens all the time all the time.

29:39.11
peteeveritt
Um, yeah.

29:52.89
peteeveritt
When when I started building WordPress websites you had to put you had to know the function you had to actually code it into the theme functions file to create the post type for pages.

30:08.28
Jeff
Um, is it.

30:11.34
peteeveritt
Pages wasn’t in the native left hand sidebar of wordpress when I started building it that that was that’s that’s how far back it was you know in time.

30:22.17
Jeff
You’re dating yourself because I can’t say I remember that but but I remember being really intimidated by by custom post types and all that stuff you know and once once you realize that it’s just a post. You know what? I mean once you’ve realized once I understood the concept of that my whole wordpress like everything. Just. Blew up. It was just like oh my goodness mind blown I can do anything now I totally understand it and as soon as you figure out the structure there you go but but that’s my weird kind of analytical brain and and it’s you know you were if we were saying um you know getting all this stuff right. Most of this stuff. It’s it’s Binary. It’s true or false. You can’t really argue most of these technical things like it’s either there or it’s not.. It’s either turned on or it’s not the the data is there. You know a website design and stuff and that’s something that I personally struggle with just I’m not an artsy person that is something that’s you know.

31:01.19
peteeveritt
Um.

31:16.24
Jeff
Debatable right? So but you know by having these things in place. It’s just you run an audit and you’ll see the wrong, right? off the bat and actually on that note before I forget I know you have something you want to say we’re going to interrupt this thought with a quick ad from seohive you would like to accomplish this without getting into an nitgritty just check out our seoscoat reports or our technical health audit. We would be happy to run these things for you and give you a fantastic. What is it one hundred and twenty five point checklist beat I believe hundred and twenty five points and if you don’t want to do that by all means just.

31:42.60
peteeveritt
A hundred and twenty five point checklist you are dead right.

31:50.95
Jeff
Subscribe to something sem brush or se ranking or just any tool out there. There’s so many tools you can audit websites and they will give you this information. Do it before you launch your website. Please.

31:58.33
peteeveritt
But absolutely and that will run the report and then if you can’t action or you don’t want to action or you’ve not got the time to action the report. We also have our technical booster product. Ah, we also have our technical booster product where we will apply these changes to your website for you? um.

32:08.85
Jeff
Um, oh we’re still on the ad. Ah.

32:17.30
peteeveritt
And right and keep getting back to it the so the the thing I was going to add to this was that the next thing to understand is that there are different classes different classifications to the issues that you can have with the website now the software that we use. Classifies them as errors and warnings now. Um, you don’t Ah, you don’t really, you don’t have an mot tested I’m carried on with the car analogy here. You don’t have an mot test in the states. Do you like an annual checkup for your car annual.

32:48.85
Jeff
Um, I’m I’m guessing that that’s what we would refer to as a smog test and I think they’re bianually here if your car is past a certain age.

32:53.81
peteeveritt
Okay, right? Yeah so so here in the Uk if you buy a car if it’s more than three years old. It has to have an annual ministry of transport test mo t test and that is basically a check check of your car to make sure it is roadworthy every year and you can’t tax the car to be on the road if you don’t have one of these tests. You also can’t get insurance. So you’re very.

33:14.96
Jeff
So sorry to get caught up on this but by roadworthy, do you mean like safe to drive like it’s not going to fall a bar. The tires are there.

33:20.24
peteeveritt
Yeah, yeah, so so they so so they they check that all the tires are above the minimum tread depth. They make sure the brakes work They make sure the headlights are aligned properly. They make sure the speedometer is accurate. They make sure that the seatbelts ah have the right tension in them so that they’re safe. It’s It’s a safety test.

33:37.25
Jeff
We we don’t do idiot of that. The only thing that they care about is how much pollution it’s making ah which is ah admittedly important absolutely important but they don’t care if it’s going to kill you on the road. Ah.

33:43.85
peteeveritt
Ah, okay, oh yeah, well let they check em missions as well. It needs to be it needs to be. Yeah, absolutely yeah, so so we we we go into all of these things. So um. Ah, so yeah, so it’s an mo test and basically the mo comes back that the form has the you get back that you have to keep in the history of your car has ah 2 sections on it one is failures and the next is advisories so failures are things that it has failed on. And normally if it’s failed on something the mechanical ring you during the day saying it’s failed on these three things I’m going to fix them. The cost is this and then we’ll retest it. So when you get the car back at the end of each day. It’s always passed and but unless it’s got real major problems and the advisories they’re the things that they ah. They predict will be failures on the next test. So if you don’t rectify these within the next twelve months then you you know that it’s going to fail on them next time. So why am I talking about this. The. The Seo reports that we run are a bit like these mot tests so we have errors and they are like the failures you need to make sure your websites are always running error free. Um, now that can be anything from um, ah.

35:03.58
peteeveritt
Broken links for ah for Xx pages. Um, you know broke codes missing tags missing h one tags that is a failure all that kind of stuff that’s that’s all an error and needs to be fixed. The website shouldn’t go live or.

35:08.91
Jeff
Missing H one tags.

35:21.46
peteeveritt
You shouldn’t start even trying to optimize something else on it while this stuff is happening. We then have warnings and they’re like the advisories. So now. Ok, it’s not going to come around in twelve months and these warnings will become failures but instead well. Ideally, what we want to do with the warnings is keep them as low as possible. However, if for certain reasons there are certain things that we um, we can’t address then we can live with a few of them a standard one that we get here is um, low text to html ratio. You know what. Somebody’s contact page is never going to have a lot of text on it therefore it will always have a low text to html ratio and guess what I’m not going to send a copywriter in to try and fix that that warning it is just not. We’ll just live with that one. That’s absolutely fine. Yeah, not important.

36:09.67
Jeff
It non boring non boring.

36:15.50
peteeveritt
So Like like I say some of them Some of them aren’t as you know you can live with them. But it’s really important that you understand what is an error or a warning or whatever it is that the software that you’re using calls them. Um, but yeah, that’s that’s how I like to explain it to British ah clients is it’s a bit like an mot. Test for your website.

36:35.34
Jeff
It makes sense. It makes sense. Um, yeah I’m feeling Ah I’m feeling very kind of like invigorated but also like stressed out by this a little little sweaty. My Palm girl is sweaty like just kind of getting all heated about and watching people. Do things wrong, but then it made me realize that because we said something earlier and it was like you know as a professional you owe your clients you expect to do this and I was kind of I’m kind of picking on freelancers or soloprenes a little bit with that and I don’t mean to do that at All. It’s I shouldn’t I don’t expect a. Freelancer or somebody who’s brought in to say build a website like that to do all this but I do expect them to kind of go hey is anybody doing this is it. You know if they see some they should understand this they you know or ah or something like that and so you know maybe if you’re the you know the person above Them. You’re the agency owner or something This is.

37:16.45
peteeveritt
Yeah.

37:28.17
Jeff
Stuff you need to keep an eye on the stuff you need to make and make sure is happening because if you do I know a lot of a lot of our clients. They have multiple contractors we have contractors we work with all the time and they might have their own way of doing things and they might think they’re doing everything correctly because they’re used to working with people that. Do have say an Seo team or a I don’t know you know’t I mean insert job title here. You know every freelance and everything is going to have a much different way of doing things and a much different experience or you know they’re going to have different experiences working with different folks. So there’s no real like. Right? wrong or way to do things and you know I mean there’s a million different ways to do things in wordpress like that’s one of the great things about wordpress is you can do anything one of the worst things about wordpress is you can do anything and you can do it differently and in every which way. So ah.

38:16.90
peteeveritt
Well I think my final thing to say on this is that is that sometimes that the final thing to be aware of with this stuff is that you also need to have the best intention of the client. Sort of in your mind as you’re fixing them So a good some of these things are technical. Yeah and and you’re like Black. You’re right black or white is there an h one tag there Yes on it now from the technical point of view putting AnHOne tag on a template so that there’s only one on each page will pass. The test and you’ll you’ll increase the site health. However, that the test isn’t looking for what you’re putting in TheHOne tag on each page which can also have an ah you know, ah a ah. It can also have a consequence as to what the page is going to rank for and where it’s going to appear in the search engines so that the real important thing here is that sometimes you don’t try you. You need to try and fix this Stuff. You need to try and make sure that it is done properly but you you’re doing it so that you’re. Building a better platform for the client. So some some of this Stuff. You need to be aware of what it is. You’re fixing it with rather than just fixing it. Um, now if you’re working with the client on an ongoing basis.

39:41.42
peteeveritt
Then you might want to you know? Yeah, it may be that you know what you you just want to get this stuff fixed as fast as you can show them the report because you’re going to review all of the content that’s on the page in a future iteration of your process. That’s absolutely fine. But if you’re just doing this as a one off. Well then. You kind of need to take it on yourself and say right? Okay so I need to I need to fix this I’ve got 5 pages here with missing h one. Okay I can put the age one tag in but let’s just for for the sake of another 30 seconds work on each page. What should I actually put in. These h one tags and just to go and do a quick Google and say right? So it’s a page about this Google that see what the h one tags are like um you know, go go and ask go and ask an ai go and ask chat gp to to collate the ah well don’t ask chat gp because it doesn’t have an upto-date database. Go ask bared for a ah for. To collate the the title taxs for the top 10 results about this and it’ll give you the list so you don’t have to put a lot of effort in but actually sometimes it’s better to fix it properly rather than just fix it for the report if as you I mean.

40:51.27
Jeff
Um, I mean if you’re good to go through the trouble you may as well do it right? Like you know if you’re not going to do it right? Why do it at all sometimes you would argue but I was going to joke earlier. That’s that’s that’s a good tip and good way to look at it I was going to joke earlier. It’s It’s kind of say. You know if if the H one tag was missing. For example, that’s the one we’re just using and not sorry to beat that one into death but it almost would be better to literally just put an h one tag and just put like blah blah blah in there like because that would fix the error Obviously that’s terrible I know I’m not recommending you do that but in a sense. Ah. It would be better to have that and have irrelevant content than it would to just be had to have none I think so I know that’s a humorous way to look at it. But.

41:27.87
peteeveritt
Yeah, that is a humorous way to look at it. Yeah, but please don’t do that. We are not condoning that from Seo hive that we will go and put blah blah blah on your website.

41:36.40
Jeff
Ah, blah blah blah no but okay I I’m obviously being silly here but at the same time if let’s say you’re building out a page or a site kind of. Kind of just ad hoc and I mean you don’t really have a design or plan you’re just doing it based off whatever the client’s given you or something if you don’t if you if you can’t figure out what that h one should be for example, like people was saying you know, go ask Ai or whatnot for some reason you can’t figure it out you put that h one there and you put title should go here.

42:05.78
peteeveritt
Absolutely.

42:08.63
Jeff
You know what? I mean I mean because at the same time. Ah you know like I build a lot of sites and that’s that’s what I’ve done.. That’s my my big history less the writing so you know most of those situations you’re not. You know you’re not um, being paid I don’t want to say you’re not being paid to but you know I mean that’s not part of what your scope to do. You’re not writing and I mean that’s not your expertise. So at the very least you could use a placeholder or something that says we need something to put here. You know what I mean.

42:31.94
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely that that that’s that that is a very good tip and um to give Kyle Van duzen his ah weekly shout out on the show he does he did set up website ipsum. So if you do need. Ah. Laura Ipsum type website text to go in these things go and visit website ipsum.com I think it is and yeah, you can just absolutely. And yeah, you can just go and copy and paste these things out. You know, don’t don’t stress. This is a heading it will be replaced or whatever it says. Um.

42:56.64
Jeff
We’ll put it in a show notes if neither way.

43:07.40
peteeveritt
So yeah, that that is ah that is very good tip when you’re building and also you know this is another good shout out for having some kind of startup setup for However, you want to? However, you build sites if you have a starter theme or a starter install or whatever it might be that you are cloning to start your sites. But you know what have have some of the base templates. You know you’re going to need a single dot php file you know you’re going to need an indexed dot php file you know you’re going to need a um, a page dot Ph Hp file. You know you’re going to need a header. You know you’re gonna need a footer just go and get those things set up so that they’re right because again, if you’ve got that in your starter theme then. You don’t even need to think about it before you don’t need to think about it if you see what I mean.

43:47.59
Jeff
You want to know, totally unrelated to this topic but you want to know something I have in our starter site that I just I always pat myself on the back for every time we need it transactional email already set up.

43:57.99
peteeveritt
Gone.

44:04.46
peteeveritt
Ah, oh yes, oh yes.

44:06.34
Jeff
We’ve got it connected to sendgrid. It uses our company domain. So it’s ready to go. So basically anytime during the development process. We could have those emails and they just come from like our staging domain. We’ve already got it approved and whatnot then we just of course have to convert it to the client when we launch it. But at least it’s there for the Getco. We will never forget about. The worst case scenario their website will send emails from our domain like right? No it’ll still send them perfectly. So let’s say they get a contact they have a contact form. That’s the only sort of thing that they’re ever getting. They’ll just get them sent from our domain rather than their own domain.

44:26.64
peteeveritt
Yeah, not their website won’t send email.

44:41.93
Jeff
So like I mean that’s the worst case scenario which is a really good place to be.

44:43.46
peteeveritt
Yeah, because you know what we’ve all done it. We’ve all sent a website live and then three weeks later the clients from us back in I’ve forgotten my password I’ve hit password reset and I’m not getting an email.

44:55.58
Jeff
Emails and never work That’s ah that’s a whole nother topic because that’s literally every fourth post in every website developinger.

45:02.74
peteeveritt
Yeah, it really is it really really is um, but yeah, so look I this this has been another kind of roundabout the houses. But I think I think we’ve kind of covered why worrying about your technical seo is important particularly if you then worry about your. Technical seo errors first.

45:23.10
Jeff
Yeah I mean I really hope so and 1 thing I’m I’m proud to say that even before getting into seo hive with you that was something that we always took pretty seriously like launching with I don’t know bare minimum is the right term to use or not but you know I mean launching with just with the basics there. They got to be there. Um, and at least the path is set to for the website to continue to grow and evolve and um, you know does that stuff make an instant difference right? off the bat probably not because you’ve also got to have the content and everything has to mesh together. But when those things do all come together. You don’t want to have forgotten about a big piece and probably one of the. Biggest things that I have I noticed when we started doing is years ago was when we would go in and clean up a site we would kind of I’m kind of scared to to quote these numbers so please understand that these are you know no no sort of guarantees or anything like that. But we would very frequently see a website’s traffic double. The next month after fixing a lot of this stuff and now that’s relative you know, maybe they only had a few hundred anyway. But you know what? then we had some massive sites that had little problems like these that that had literally tens of thousands of yeah urls and we’d fix things on the theme so you know theme level which of course meant they applied to all.

46:20.31
peteeveritt
Are yeah.

46:38.49
Jeff
Twenty Five Thousand Urls on the website and and we would just see their traffic just go through the roof that didn’t go up 100 % but there was already so it was already in the tens of thousands that it went up like 30 or 40% and it just went like wow look at what just a couple hours of work. You can do you know I mean it’s it’s relative and it scales but but. It scales. So it’s very important to bigger the project to bigger the website to bigger the company. It’s very very very very important.

47:04.13
peteeveritt
We We have Um, we regularly see notable increases in search position and therefore in traffic simply by improving a site health the site health now it might not be brilliant traffic because. You know, just if the if the website content wasn’t brilliant to begin. Great to begin with and it’s not structured properly and you’re just kind of ranking for these incidental terms then guess what you’re just going to get more incidental term traffic but you can see a measurable increase just by getting this stuff right? and it.

47:23.65
Jeff
Yeah.

47:38.22
peteeveritt
It is one of the reasons why running an seohealth check is a gated product that I use in my agency when I’m selling Seo I don’t sell Seo retainers to people I’ve never worked with before I will sell an seohealth check which is this process. Um, as a 1 ne-off product project and then I’ll sell another process as another one off project. So at least by the time I start working on a monthly basis with somebody I know that I like the client they like me I can genuinely know that I’m going to make a difference to them before I start taking money off them and. That’s just that’s just a way I decided to structure it up out. But that’s exactly the reason why this is one of the gated products so that you know what? if if we never if this doesn’t work if this all falls apart and we fall out or I don’t want to work with you anymore or you don’t want to work on me anymore then look. I’ve given a positive benefit to your business because you’re going to leave me with a cleaner website than when you arrive and if that’s as far as it goes I’ve been paid for that. You’ve got something out of it deals done.

48:32.28
Jeff
Yeah, oh.

48:39.37
Jeff
Well I mean with any type of audit and you know it’s setting those expectations and getting a mutual idea of what to expect is very very very valuable. You know you don’t want to get sucked into something and you don’t want to you don’t want to sell a client on ah like a $99 a month plan and find out they really need. You know this much work and 10 times amount of work and then now you’re are I committed to it or do I have to ups are you either way? bad place to be.

49:04.44
peteeveritt
Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely and you know the the other thing that can happen is and I used to do this is why I separated it out I used to sell an seo retainer and then in month one add in a health check. And what that meant was I had so much work to do in month one because I didn’t understand the health of the website before I signed the website that I’d often not hit month. 1 ne’s goals. So then my very first monthly call with a client I was then explained it to people why I hadn’t done what they’d only signed up for me to do. Four weeks ago and all because I’d given myself too much to do so again. Just take take a chunk of it out of the process. Get this stuff done before there is a month one before that kind of clock is ticking and then when you enter month one yes okay you might still have to do a bit of keyword research and finalize a plan here or there. But you’ve actually got an achievable amount of work that sits far more succinctly with what you’re going to be delivering monthly. The other thing that would happen is I would get all this work done in month one and that would set the expectation to the client that that’s how much work they were going to get every month so then. You know month two. They’d be a little sort of standoffish because oh well at least you’ve at least you’ve now delivered what you said you were going to deliver and then month three. They’d think oh hell that really is all you’re going to deliver and but you did all this in month one why aren’t you doing that now. Um, so you know it’s just yeah, yeah.

50:36.30
peteeveritt
There’s a psychology to this stuff which ah you know I I really want people to pick up from Aric are mistakes so that they don’t have to make the same ones again.

50:43.62
Jeff
I was I was good to say we might know a thing or 2 about this topic. Ah, in fact, that example I was using a minute ago was the one that always sticks in my head because I’d never been more proud of anything we’ve accomplished and they they canceled. Ah.

50:49.47
peteeveritt
Ah, so.

50:57.19
peteeveritt
Ah, yeah, yeah, this happens this happens this happens but look.

51:02.72
Jeff
It’s like what.

51:05.18
peteeveritt
But look in all seriousness if you do need help with this stuff I this this episode was never intended to scare monger anybody and but if you do feel a bit overwhelmed or you’re not sure where to start we do have audits they start from $47 they’re not expensive. Um, we do have.

51:12.32
Jeff
No no.

51:23.53
peteeveritt
The ability to help you on a white label basis if we can help you? Um, we’re here to to help you. We’re not going to try and sell to you. We’re not going to try and force force anything on you. But if you need some help please reach out hello at seohive.co or hit me and Jeff up on social media somewhere and. You know we’ll more than happily talk to you about it.

51:42.60
Jeff
Should we share the big secret about our audit products. The real big secret that they’re cut. They’re actually sort of free in a sense because all of our audits.

51:47.53
peteeveritt
Go on then it’s so much of a secret I don’t know what you’re gonna say next.

51:56.88
Jeff
We actually will give you a coupon assuming the site wants to sign up afterwards. You will get all that money back so you’ll take it off when you sign up. So if you have a hot lead all of our audit products are kind of no brainers for you.

52:07.64
peteeveritt
Absolutely absolutely and if if you’re not sure whether they’re going to sign up and you can bake it into a project price then you can do it at the end of a a project. You can you can also cover it that way. So honestly. I know we’ve done a lot of preachy stuff I’ve done a lot of preachy stuff on this show. Um Jeff’s been leveling me on it and but ah, but seriously don’t don’t get stuck with it. Um, you know we are a white label provider to help our clients.

52:23.85
Jeff
She.

52:41.11
peteeveritt
Build recurring revenue and ultimately have lasting relationships with your with their clients with your clients. So um, you know if we can help you do that through delivering better technical Seo just reach out. We’re more than happy to chat.

52:53.58
Jeff
We’re here and we can’t wait to talk to you and with that I think we are winding this episode down.

52:59.61
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely well look. It’s been fun again I Hope you’ve enjoyed it I’ve enjoyed it. Um that great well in which case.

53:02.75
Jeff
I Have very much very much So I love in in all seriousness I mean I know we rant a bit but we’ve we’ve had a lot of experience with this stuff and so some of it is just fun to kind of talk and get off your chest and the other is kind of it’s just Useful. It’s helpful and if. Our experiences help just by sharing them inventing and laughing a little bit then I hope I hope it you know helps somebody I Hope people take something away from it.

53:26.88
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely absolutely couldn’t couldn’t agree more well with that if we don’t see you in our inbox. We’ll see you in the next show.

53:34.51
Jeff
See ya.