No More Surprises: catch SEO errors before Google sees them

With experience in both development and SEO consultancy, I've encountered a variety of SEO challenges - some rewarding, others less so. My goal is to minimise these less favourable surprises in my work. By blending my expertise in SEO and development, I aim to offer insights into the solutions I've devised, ranging from highly effective to moderately successful, to help bridge the gap between SEO and development

Where it all started

Once upon a time, in the fast-paced realm of e-commerce, I found myself at the forefront of a significant website enhancement. Months of meticulous work, including adjustments to the payment provider, culminated in a seemingly flawless implementation. The acceptance environment sparkled with perfection, and we were comfortably ahead of our deadline. The much-anticipated live day arrived, and as jubilation filled the air, a quick website crawl revealed a chilling truth - the entire site was set to 'no-index.' Amidst the celebration, I couldn't help but berate myself for overlooking such a critical detail.

In the aftermath of this unexpected setback, I was haunted by a pressing question. How could we ensure that surprises like these were prevented in the future, even before a single line of code went live? The landscape of SEO tools, although formidable, proved to be more reactive than proactive. Tools like ScreamingFrog and Contentking, while excellent in catching errors post-deployment, left a gap in safeguarding against unforeseen issues before going live. Time, as we all know, is money, and every second of a page's invisibility amounts to a potential loss.

Venturing into the realm of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CICD), I discovered the challenges faced by SEO specialists. Tracking the myriad changes in code within such an environment was akin to chasing a constantly shifting target. The consequence? Unseen alterations that could have a significant impact on a website's visibility. Picture a scenario where a page, unbeknownst to anyone, adopts a 'no-index' stance or experiences a sudden change in its title. These seemingly minor alterations could wreak havoc on page rankings and subsequently affect organic traffic.

In my case, the culprit was a modified robots.txt file during the deployment to the production environment, resulting in the entire domain being tagged as 'no-index.' Fueled by this experience, a burning question lingered in my mind for a long time: What if we could eliminate surprises altogether? What if, before any code hit the live servers, we could catch these potential SEO pitfalls?

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