SEO Snack: Week of May 5th
Quick Week Summary
What I worked on this past week
This past week was sort of wrapped in with the week prior since we took a lot of the conversations we had about our monthly (and quarterly) process and started to make a few changes around how monthly week is laid out. It also consisted of taking a good chunk of time and “resetting” all of our clients’ GA4 reporting, events, and key events which I’ll talk about below.
Week Insights
What I struggled with
Archive Page Meta Data
With a lot of clients that have a good amount of pages, our web team normally puts them into post types (smart way to build out a website if you ask me). One thing I struggled with for a bit was figuring out how to make sure the meta data for this “general” archive pages was set correctly. This is where teammates come in, because I certainly would’ve been lost for a lot longer…
What was a bigger headache than it needed to be
GA4 “Automatic Set Up”
I don’t know if anyone else has had this problem but even with Google Analytics properties that we manual moved over to GA4, it seems like Google doesn’t recognize this and they’ve started to “create” pieces in these properties based on the old UAs. Not ideal when you’re tracking conversions, I mean key events, and now they’re getting counted as double.
What went well
“New” Onboarding Process
Previously when bringing on new clients, we wouldn’t include content specialists or any of the web team into these meetings. What’s happened because of this is myself and our account manager would be very prepped and decently knowledgable about a client but then we’d start work and the web team and content specialist would have no background of the client or industry.
All we’ve started doing was bringing in the content specialist to the onboarding process and meeting with the web team outside of this to prepare them for what the work/backend of the website/etc. looks like. Simple fix, so far good results.
What to look out for or tune into
Google’s Communication Around Updates
There’s been a lot of chatter this past week about updates that Google has made that weren’t transparently communicated. I’ve seen some interesting data and it seems like a lot more have as well. I have an article in the resources section that dives a bit more into this.
What weird things happened
Google’s Response
I find it a bit weird on how Google responded to the questions brought up around communication of updates (see more in that article). Yes, I understand that they’re constantly tweaking things but I do feel like more communication would be better. After reading their tweet, I also got a feeling of defensiveness, sort of like standing up for your favorite baseball team when they are pretty garbage year in and year out (that would be me, I’m a Rockies fan…)
Key Takeaways
1. Monthly Process
As I mentioned a bit last week, we’re starting to look at our monthly content & SEO process a bit differently. In the past we were very month work needs to be done in the month it was “assigned” to.
Example being, if we start a new page (or pages) in May, they need to be done in May.
Now you’re probably thinking that’s a bit odd, why does something have to be done in the same month. Well my only answer is that’s because that’s how we’ve always done it.
My main worry was always, if we don’t get stuff done in the month we “assigned” it, then we might have months where we aren’t doing enough for the client. Realistically, it was just my underestimate of how well we can track and complete projects at the same time. I was so used to being a very small team where I (or others) would play multiple pieces in the process of work completion that having multiple “pieces of work” going on at once just didn’t work.
Now as the team is growing and folks have their own part of the process, we can have multiple things going on without it impacting the other work either starting or finishing.
2. GA4 Foundation
Similar to what I mentioned earlier but I’ve noticed Google “transitioning” properties because they think it wasn’t done or I didn’t check the boxes saying I completed it (extremely frustrating in my opinion).
What this led to was going through all clients and realizing that I should just “start over”, I’ll list it out below.
Check all events set up. If there are duplicates, delete them.
Check all events marked as key events. If there are duplicates, unmark the Google suggested/created ones.
Create new events that will be marked as key events. Some might have never been set up, some might have been changed/replaced by the transition.
Check internal traffic filters and make sure they are still there, correct, and active.
Reset from a reporting standpoint. Delete reports that you don’t use and manually edit ones you do with the metrics you need.
Add in/keep any custom reporting client by client. Not every client will need every report.
What I did was set a base for clients that I’ll then use for future clients and then I can build on top from there if needed.
Much more organized, thought out, and helpful.
Resources To Look At
1. Google’s Communication Article
Like I mentioned above, here is the article talking about Google’s communication around updates.
2. Account Manager Position Open at SocialSurge
We have a position open at SocialSurge for a new Account Manager. The link will take you to the job listing on our website, if you or anyone you know is looking for a new job (at an awesome company) please reach out!
