Welcome to Tame the Bots

Hi! I'm Dave Smart, I am a technical SEO consultant and developer from Manchester in the United Kingdom. I have been building sites for 21 years. I love working out what makes sites perform how they do in Google and other search engines.

The challenges facing larger-scale sites, e-commerce, and JavaScript framework-based sites are a big focus area for me. JavaScript SEO is rapidly becoming one of the most popular services I offer.

Sometimes sites just don't perform as well as the business behind them. This can be down to how the site presents itself to the search engines. It is important to look at which parts of your site aren't getting crawled and indexed, and which parts are that perhaps shouldn't.

That's where I come in.

I offer technical SEO consulting and can audit your site to make sure it's presenting itself in the best way possible for the search engines. An audit can discover opportunities for you to enable Google, and other search engines to find, and index your content in the best way. It can help chase down specific issues and problems you might be having with your websites too.

I'm happy to work with sites small or large, and directly with site owners or with your agency or developers.

Although I'm based in Manchester, most audits can be done remotely, without the need to visit your premises.

I can help with:

JavaScript SEO:
Are your pages being rendered?
Crawling Issues:
Are your pages being found?
Indexing:
Pages not showing up?
Canonical / Duplication Issues:
Same or similar content across your site?
General Site Health
Can't quite put your finger on it? I can take a look!

View Services

Other places to get help:

There is a wealth of information and help out there available, a lot of it free! You might like to visit some of these resources before getting in touch.

Google Search Central Help Forums
The official google help forum for issues with your site in search, where I am a Platinum Product Expert . There's some great advice given, and an amazing gang of other Product Experts and other regular posters, who between them have a formidable range of skills and experience, that even the best agency could only dream of retaining.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide
Google's guide to getting started in SEO, full of great advice and information.
Webmaster Guidelines
Staying on the right side of the guidelines is essential for long term success in search.

Latest blog posts:

Web Worker Content - Will it Index? - 11 September 2021
A quick experiment to find out if content produced by a web worker can be rendered and indexed by Google.
Logflare to NCSA (nginx) Server Log Format Nodejs Script - 3 August 2021
A simple script using nodejs to access BigQuery and write a log file from logflare.app data to NGINX's default access log format, perfect if you have tools that expect that.
My Experience of the Google Search Central Unconference - 7 July 2021
A quick write up of my experience facilitating a session at the Google Search Central Unconference, held on 21st June 2021