This presentation covers the what, why, and how of monitoring your SEO activities and data to help you make better decisions. Tools mentioned: Moz SEMrush Ahrefs Screaming Frog Deep Crawl Google Analytics Google Search Console

1. SEO Monitoring:
What, Why, and How
John Doherty
Founder, GetCredo.com
@dohertyjf

2. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
The SEO world has changed
@dohertyjf

3. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
Clicks are harder to come by
@dohertyjf

4. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
And people are trying to steal our budgets using
bunk data
@dohertyjf

5. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
The industry keeps growing
@dohertyjf
Source: SEL and Borrell Associates

6. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
(Good) SEO isn’t cheap
@dohertyjf
Source: Credo

7. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
SEO is becoming more complex as the web grows
@dohertyjf
Source: Moz.com

8. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
The internet is exploding in size
@dohertyjf
Source: MicroFocus

9. According to HostingFacts.com, “Over 3 million blog posts are
published on the Internet every day.”
I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
The internet is exploding in size
@dohertyjf

10. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
SEOs are paid well
@dohertyjf
Source:
Glassdoor

11. I was browsing the internet the other day
@dohertyjf
We’re expected to do a lot of things
@dohertyjf
Source:
Workable

12. But when I searched the beer…
@dohertyjf
How do we keep on top of our growth…
@dohertyjf

13. But when I searched the beer…
@dohertyjf
And know when something goes wrong?
@dohertyjf
💩

14. But when I searched the beer…
- Multiple product teams shipping new content
- Content teams creating new content
- Users updating things on the site (profile names, etc)
- Servers going up and down
- New links being built and going away
- Routine maintenance
- Google changing its algorithms
- New SERP features
- And the list goes on…
@dohertyjf
Especially when all of this is happening
@dohertyjf

15. But when I searched the beer…
@dohertyjf
It could drive you nuts
@dohertyjf

16. I see these sorts of issues all the time
Even when you’re inhouse, it can be easy to want to check
dashboards all the time.
“What if something changes in the next 30 minutes?”
“What if traffic drops and I lose my job?”
“What if our client gets a penalty and I’m not there to see the
notification??”
@dohertyjf
I used to feel frantic about SEO
@dohertyjf

17. I see these sorts of issues all the time
Even when you’re inhouse, it can be easy to want to check
dashboards all the time.
“What if something changes in the next 30 minutes?”
“What if traffic drops and I lose my job?”
“What if our client gets a penalty and I’m not there to see the
notification??”
@dohertyjf
I used to feel frantic about SEO
@dohertyjf

18. Today that ends.
@dohertyjf

19. Image via Yoga and
Spa Magazine

20. A marketer or agency is expensive to hire
• The Senior Director of Marketing at a very large international hotel
chain calling me at 8am EST frantic that they were no longer ranking
for their main branded term (six figures of searches per month)
• A publicly traded B2B brand that pushed a new website live without
telling us. That site was noindexed, all URLs changed, nothing
redirected.
@dohertyjf
I’ve experienced some crazy times with SEO
@dohertyjf

21. A marketer or agency is expensive to hire
Setting up your processes to give you consistent reporting to
understand what has changed on your site and when an issue becomes
a high priority won’t save you from these sorts of fires happening, but
they can help you put them out and stay ahead of the curve on things
becoming a larger issue.
@dohertyjf
What SEO monitoring does and does not do
@dohertyjf

22. Who I am
Founder, GetCredo.com
Digital marketing/SEO consultant
10 years of SEO/digital experience in-
house and agency
Built marketing and growth teams at
Zillow in USA
Live in Colorado with my wife
Courtney and dog Butterbean
@dohertyjf@dohertyjf

23. Personally seen $17M+ in digital
marketing work come through Credo
since October 2015.
Personally sold over $600k of SEO
work in the last 3 years.
Work exclusively on Credo and very
large brands/websites.
@dohertyjf@dohertyjf

24. What is “SEO monitoring”?
@dohertyjf
SEO monitoring is using tools, both free and paid, to help you:
• Keep track of changes made on your site so that you can:
• measure their effectiveness to your business;
• Diagnose when something may have negatively affected your traffic;
• Keep on top of movements across the site made by teams that you
are not involved with;
• Spot broader trends of rankings that you can capitalize on to see
growth across your company.

25. SEO is not rocket scienceThere’s a process that worksIt’s actually kind of awesome
@dohertyjf

26. SEO monitoring lets you do the following
@dohertyjf
1. Focus on the big efforts instead of manually checking to see if
things are ok;
2. Know ahead of time when something is becoming an issue;
3. Track everything that is happening so that when an issue arises, you
can take action more quickly.

27. You can also
@dohertyjf
• Keep on top of movements across the site made by teams that you
are not involved with, because these can affect the rankings you have
worked so hard to get;
• Spot broader trends of rankings that you can capitalize on to see
growth across your company.

28. What to monitor
@dohertyjf
What to monitor

29. Traffic
@dohertyjf

30. Rankings
@dohertyjf

31. Technical Issues
@dohertyjf

32. Major site changes
@dohertyjf

33. Diagnose other business challenges
@dohertyjf

34. Traffic monitoring
@dohertyjf

35. No traffic no dollars
Your job as an SEO is to drive traffic.
@dohertyjf

36. No traffic no dollars
Your job as an SEO is to drive traffic acquire visitors to your site
who become customers (whatever that means). That starts with
traffic.
@dohertyjf

37. Know when traffic drops (or increases!)
Admin > Custom Alerts (under View) > Alerts
@dohertyjf

38. Traffic to site sections
@dohertyjf

39. Traffic by platform (desktop vs mobile)
@dohertyjf
Source: Merkle

40. Rankings monitoring
@dohertyjf

41. You need to be tracking your keyword buckets
The SEO industry has been saying for a long time that “rank
tracking is dead” and that something else is replacing it.
@dohertyjf

42. You need to be tracking your keyword buckets
Protip: when someone says something is dead that means that it
is very much alive and still being done for a reason.
@dohertyjf

43. Notice I said keyword buckets
As the SEO, your job is to track the data and interpret it for your
boss/clients. Keyword tracking helps you show broader moves as
you optimize towards specific goals. We are not optimizing
toward a few main keywords because that puts the business at
risk, though there are keywords we care about most.
@dohertyjf

44. SEOs rarely talk about SEO in terms of $$$
Everything you do at your job should map back to revenue.
Links = audience (more potential customers)
Canonicals = better user experience and conversions
Blog posts = more potential customers and better conversions
That’s what executives care about ultimately!
@dohertyjf

45. Use a tool to track rankings
@dohertyjf

46. Get weekly email reporting from your tool
@dohertyjf

47. Build up a history of rankings to build cases
@dohertyjf

48. Technical Issues
@dohertyjf

49. Site issues always slowly grow
@dohertyjf

50. Are you tracking these consistently?
@dohertyjf

51. Keep a list of prioritized fixes
@dohertyjf

52. Get a weekly crawl/report with changes
@dohertyjf

53. Think like a product person
@dohertyjf
What are the changes you can make that take the least effort but have
the highest impact?
Conversely, what are the changes that will take more focused effort but
also have an outsized return for the business?

54. As the issues grow, reprioritize
@dohertyjf
Source: SEMrush

55. Be prepared for exec answers
@dohertyjf

56. Execs love to ask this question
@dohertyjf
“What is the thing that we could do that would show the biggest
growth for us?”

57. Do you have an answer for your site?
@dohertyjf
Most don’t. We fail to think strategically about the things that could be
tackled.
If you’ve been monitoring, then you’ll have an answer.

58. Answer like this…
@dohertyjf
“Well, I’ve been tracking our site for the last six months and we’ve been
seeing an increase in errors on our site, but I haven’t had the people to
get them fixed.
If I had two developers for two weeks, I could knock them out and
gauge that we would see a lift of XX% of organic sales.”

59. Let’s talk tools
@dohertyjf

60. The tools you need for monitoring are:
1. Keyword tracker
2. Crawling tool (at least one that you can automate)
3. Google Analytics
4. A tool like LittleWarden or SanityCheck.io
@dohertyjf

61. Rank tracking tools
1. Moz (if you have a Pro campaign, they do well)
2. SEMrush (if you subscribe here, their keyword tracking is also
quite good and updated daily)
3. STAT (if you’re enterprise and can afford to price per keyword)
@dohertyjf

62. On-demand crawling tools
1. Screaming Frog (you likely already have a license, and if you
do not you should) or Sitebulb
2. Moz (if you have a Pro subscription, you can do on-demand
crawls)
@dohertyjf

63. Automated crawling tools
DeepCrawl is my tool of choice here! Set it up within your
Campaign with these settings and to email you results weekly.
Many other tools now also offer their version of “Campaigns” or
“Projects” that will also give you insight.
I recommend using multiple because each will flag different
issues and thus you can get a full picture with multiple.
@dohertyjf

64. Automated crawling tools
@dohertyjf

65. Popular use cases
@dohertyjf

66. Technical “We’re not ranking for our brand name!”
@dohertyjf
• Did we roll out any major changes in the last few days? (GA
annotations)
• Do keyword tools show the same? (tool of choice)
• If so, how long has this been the case?
• Is organic traffic down to homepage/etc? (GA dashboard)
• If so, when did this happen?

67. Technical “Leads dropped!”
@dohertyjf
• From which channels? (GA dashboard)
• Were they specific pages or sections that lost traffic? (GA dashboard)
• If so, why?
• Algorithm change? (industry sites)
• Manual penalty? (alerts for traffic being down and GSC emails)

68. Go next level
@dohertyjf

69. Technical Don’t just audit your site
@dohertyjf
Set up monitoring for your main competitors as well so you know when
they do something (new pages for new keywords, links, etc)

70. Thank you!
@dohertyjf

71. Connect with me online
Twitter: @dohertyjf
Instagram: @dohertyjf
Personal site: https://www.johnfdoherty.com
Credo: https://www.getcredo.com
All images used in this presentation are from Unsplash and are
used under Creative Commons.