Ben Johnson
Freelance SEO Consultant
First, Ben was having sleepless nights before each new tech release, worried it would break something SEO-related. And so he built himself a QA tool that automated crawls. And lo and behold - this tool became a profitable business in itself.
About Ben
Ben got his first taste of SEO with Sky's graduate programme. From then on, he immersed himself in the world of SEO, whether it was growing one of the largest history sites in the UK or managing SEO for an online start-up. These days, Ben is a freelance SEO consultant and co-founder of SiteKite.io, an automated SEO testing tool.
Reducing Risk with Automated SEO Testing
“…Searching for a better way to handle SEO testing led me to what I labelled my “Version 1” solution.
It was a Chrome extension for our developers and software testers to install in their browser. Built for our staging and QA environments, I programmed it with a number of SEO rules. It would run in the background as devs or testers navigated our site. If the extension found an SEO error on a page, it showed a warning at the bottom right of the browser and prompted the user to contact me.”
Q&A with Ben Johnson
What was your first ever job?
Excluding a paper round? Working behind the deli counter at Sainsbury’s when I was 16. Tried some amazing cheeses, but boy… that deli hat was not flattering.
How did you get into SEO?
After university, I was lucky enough to get on to one of Sky’s graduate schemes. During my final placement on the scheme, I moved to the digital marketing team and started working alongside one of their SEO agencies. The rest, as they say, is history.
What is your favourite SEO task to do?
Anything related to automation. Whether it be taking URLProfiler out for a spin or putting together data studio dashboards for clients, I love the concept of working smarter.
What inspired you to choose the topic of your chapter? Why is it important to you?
Having worked in-house for many years, I remember wasting countless hours running comparison crawls. Whether it be comparing UAT with live, or a new deployment vs a previous deployment, it was always a massive time sink.
I dropped the ball on a few occasions too - errant noindex tags flew under my radar, canonical logic broke… the list goes on.
Automated testing can help solve both of these issues, yet it’s a topic that’s rarely covered by the wider SEO community. Hopefully my chapter can help change that!
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
"Why worry about the things you can’t control?" - Dad.
What one tip would you give someone who would like to get into SEO as a career?
Build your own website first. Not only will this give you a solid foundation of HTML, CSS and JS, but it will also introduce you to tools such as Google Analytics and Search Console.
You'll also have something to call your own by the end of it. What is your favourite SEO / marketing related resource or book? (other than Mastering In-House SEO of course!)
Bill Slawski's SEO by the Sea blog. It’s a blog that isn’t afraid to go in-depth on specific topics (in particular the possible implications of Google patents), and I’ve learnt more about SEO from that website than I have from any book.
How do you relax when you aren't working?
Before the lockdown, I as attempting to work my way around the South West Coast Path one weekend at a time. Now however, I’m all about the gardening, being destroyed in Call of Duty: Warzone and trying out new recipes on the BBQ.