What were some of Joel Herbert's recent work projects?
Joel demonstrates particular enthusiasm for assisting brands in transforming their specific business goals. Throughout these projects, he has collaborated with internal stakeholders to analyze and utilize various data sets to determine the most effective digital marketing approach, and provided innovative solutions to address their business problems. The following is a list of a few recent projects Joel has had the pleasure of working on and helping to drive success.
Under Armour
The incorporation of SEO testing into Quality Assurance Engineering facilitated a transition from costly, reactive, and manual processes to a resilient, in-house automated framework, enabling anticipatory identification of issues and resolution within hours of deployment.
What was the Challenge
As the SEO program scaled, it lacked a standardized, automated method for detecting SEO-related bugs and regressions. The absence of a formal agile testing process led to production issues, misaligned priorities between the SEO and engineering teams, and a slow, reactive approach to fixing problems that often took weeks to identify and resolve.
As the Technical SEO Manager, Joel identified the critical need for a scalable Agile framework for SEO testing and led the end-to-end design and implementation of the company's first automated SEO testing system, creating a new governance model and establishing a close partnership with QA Engineering.
Execution Highlights
- Designed and built a scalable automation framework featuring nearly 107 unique, high-impact SEO test scripts.
- Partnered with QA and Dev Engineering to integrate SEO tests directly into the CI/CD pipeline, enabling testing across Development, Staging, and Production environments.
- Established a structured agile process for the intake, prioritization, and backlog grooming of new SEO test cases.
- Introduced KPI tracking to monitor test pass/fail rates, bug discovery velocity, and resolution times.
- Created a lightweight governance model to ensure testing consistency and maintain high technical SEO standards.
See work samples:
Verizon Wireless
Targeted, Focused Areas of Website
Support, Knowledge Base, International pages, MyVerizon & Call Deflection
VZW Support and Knowledge Base teams required technical SEO consultation to help optimize their websites for higher Google rankings, enabling customers to self-resolve device issues and deflect call center volume.
What was the Challenge
Like most major companies, providing excellent support services is hugely important. Verizon Wireless (VZW) is no different.
Project 1 – Analysis of VZW's /support pages found that many top-priority pages landed between pages 2–4 of Google search results. Those pages needed optimization to reach page 1.
Project 2 – VZW's dedicated call center saw a significant increase in call volume. Step-by-step call deflection content had average visibility on page 2 of search results, limiting its effectiveness.
Project 3 – The International site had significant navigational issues and underperformed due to limited content exposure in search results.
What was the Approach & Solution
Optimization efforts included: better internal linking to related articles, hyper-focused hyperlinking within content, improved meta tags with high-volume keywords, updating content to include long-tail keywords, and cleaning up XML and HTML Sitemaps.
As a result, VZW saw a large number of its Support pages ranking on page 1 of Google SERPs, sustained for over 6 months, and a measurable reduction in call deflection rates.
Mount Sinai | Icahn School of Medicine
Health Conditions & Editorial Overhaul Projects
Ear, Eye & Throat | Dermatology | Rheumatology | Liver Diseases | OB/GYN & Reproductive Science | Gastroenterology | Allergy & Immunology
What was the Challenge
While the editorial team had done incredible work, they lacked expertise in optimizing content for search engines to compete effectively for non-branded terms in Google search results.
What was the Approach & Solution
- Redefined the editorial process to include SEO in pre- and post-stakeholder review phases.
- Optimized existing content after a thorough content analysis.
- Conducted competitive and keyword research analysis at the business level.
- Rewrote all meta tags for several thousand pages and conducted additional technical evaluations for top medical conditions.
- Conducted competitive analysis, keyword research, and meta tag rewrites for ENT, Dermatology, Urgent Care and other sites.
- Conducted ad-hoc technical audits using enterprise-level SEO tools.
Bayer Pharmaceutical
What was the Challenge
Bayer's Marketing and IT teams were receiving technical audit outputs for multiple brands from their SEO agency, but the reports lacked true recommendations and 'how-to' details. The findings were not considered by the Dev team to be "actionable recommendations."
What was the Approach & Solution
- Compiled and reviewed each of the agency's audits, working cross-functionally with internal and external teams to resolve each issue.
- Conducted additional technical audits with technically detailed 'how-to' fix recommendations for top 4 brands: Aleve, Dr. Scholl's, OneADay, and MiraLAX.
- Served as SEO Subject Matter Expert for Claritin, Aleve, and MiraLAX through website refresh and migration projects, from design through post-production.
- Authored SEO Business Requirements to hold agencies accountable for deliverable quality.