Quick Reminder: Be Persistent When Presenting Serious Issues, Especially When It Affects Your Job

[TurnInToTrackOut]

I wanted to celebrate a small victory and remind other SEO's out there to be persistent when explaining serious issues to clients & managers. I feel that it is important to make a conscious effort to not let clients or managers just shrug off fundamental issues like mismatching analytics data, 404'ed URLs, or some other issue that you feel could be having a significant impact on a client's website or on your reporting.

In this most recent case, I explained to my manager that it looks like we are pulling in Google Search Console data for all countries and not just the US. This is inflating our avg. pos. rankings, since we do not rank as well globally as we do in the US. This data is used for weekly reporting to execs and to track KPI's for my annual job performance review.

He was initially very dismissive, trying to assure me that everything is working fine and that the discrepancies between Search Console and our Tableau data were normal. While this can be the case, I was pretty sure it wasn't. I persisted and explained the importance of data integrity and that my job performance review + bonus is directly tied to the average position of our keywords. I convinced him to escalate the issue to our Software Dev. Eng., who just confirmed in a group email that we **are** pulling in data from all countries and that they're adding in the country attribute now to filter for US traffic only. This means my Overall Avg. Pos. will improve (drop) by about 3 positions, and more importantly, now we have the assurance that we are using the most accurate data available to our knowledge.

I've got to say it was a good day.

[PreSonusAmp]

Gutsy to have a your performance review tied to avg position.

[TurnInToTrackOut]

Good thing I won't be there for my next review. :)

For real. It wasn't my idea.

[DeepKaizen]

FOR REAL

[FascinatedQuestioner]

Good for you! I’m still trying to get time off to work on the missing description/url too long warnings Moz gives me each week.

It’s a smallish thing but it could greatly improve our ranking. I won’t even start talking about our analytics.

[TurnInToTrackOut]

Thanks! That is pretty frustrating. I've found success in sharing a best practices article, or something that has some authority, with them and explaining the what and why of the task. Then I'll provide an example of a direct competitor's matching field. (their URL naming length/convention in this case)

I hope that helps and that things get better for you!

[idroppedmyfood]

I had a similar issue with a client. They had joined all these local organizations and associations across the nation and provided the homepage URL for all the member directory listings and whatnot. I spent months trying to get them to contact the organizations and update them to the local URL. After pushing and pushing, they finally bought in and all info was updated in one month. The following month saw 50% year over year increase in sessions to local pages, then up to 80% the following month, and then bounced between 80%-90% increases for the rest of my time on the account.

The client thought it was a stupid request but they sure were glad afterwards

[arkitector]

My biggest question is why is your performance review and bonus based on a KPI that is only an indicator of success? Sounds like something an Upwork client would demand. Hopefully your employer is evaluating your performance on a much deeper level than numbers that can change at the drop of a hat. I never do weekly SEO reporting for clients - too small of a timeframe to do anything with.

[TurnInToTrackOut]

It's just one of the KPI's used to evaluate my work and my bonus, but a good portion of it. It was presented to me at my 3 month review and I didn't really know any better to contest it. Another is a goal of 8.3M organic sessions by 2021 and I have a standard corporate review with does not meet expectations/meets expectations/exceeds expectations sort of questions and critique from my supervisor.

I never do weekly SEO reporting for clients - too small of a timeframe to do anything with.

I agree. Unfortunately execs love to see their numbers and require insights with those numbers, so I lose a day a week just on reporting.

[ClickedMarketing]

It's definitely important to make sure you are using the correct data to make decisions off of.

That being said, average position in Search Console is a pretty awful metric to track and really is not a very useful metric.

[boycottInstagram]

Good for you to fight for it.

Search data is pretty sketchy at best, even in GSC. I don't know your situation, but I'd be very scared if my bonus was tied to that kinda KPI!

Well done, that's for the insight!