In short: I can’t believe this tool is free.

I mean, there are paid versions – but I can’t believe the free version is free. And even though 90% of my time spent doing SEO is not on link building, I am what you’d call a “heavy user” of email.  I know a promising tool when I see it.

Meet Yesware of Boston, MA (Hola, neighbor)

I serendipitously stumbled upon Yesware from this website when I was looking up marketing / media agencies near me in Woostah.

Yesware does a few things;

• Tracks emails – you can see when someone has read your email, and more
• Custom email templates
• CRM Sync – connect email right to your CRM
• Analytics – see your email analytics right in Gmail

It’s designed and marketed for Sales. But, “Hello” link builders… meet your new best friend.

The essence of what I’ll be reviewing today, is their free Gmail Plugin for email tracking – although they do have a variety of pricing options and levels. (FYI – Yesware did not ask me to write this review.)

1. The Tour

Sooo easy. This is one of the biggest selling points. The interface is incredibly easy to use, right from within Gmail;

The Inbox

The Compose Window

Here’s what the compose window now looks like – I was testing it out on Ross;

To track when an email gets opened and/or a link gets clicked from within an email, just check off “track” right within compose. Free users can track 100 emails a month.

Pop Up Alerts When Someone Reads An Email

This alert will pop up on your desktop when someone opens an email you’ve been tracking.

Alerts / Status Above Your Inbox

Note that it tells us;

• The time it was sent
• The time it was last read
• What device it was read on
• Where it was read

But wait. There’s more. Way more.

View Lists Of “Events”, Emails and Goals

I don’t even know what you can do with “goals” (I haven’t gotten that far) but it’s crazy what you can do with just Events and Emails.

There’s tons of data in here – and I have to say the interface does a good job at packing it in, but minimizing “overwhelm”.

The email data view is out of this world…

Notice you get;

• The ability to filter/search
• Open status
• Clicked link status
• Replied status

Ready to flip out?

Map View

Yep – they went there. I’ll say it again. Vista de mapa!!  See all of your events on a map. Turn on satellite view for fun.

Reminders

Yep – add reminders to each and every email.

According to Yesware’s faq page;

“RemindMe lets you set a reminder for yourself to follow up on an email. RemindMe will bring a message back to your Gmail inbox in the future if you haven’t yet received a reply. (You can also set reminders that come back to you even if a recipient does reply.)”

#Slick

2. A Tool Like Yesware Changes The Game

Like I said at the beginning – I’m not doing intensive outreach-linkbuilding all the time. But, even as an email user – someone who also uses email to (sometimes) attempt to get a desired (re)action – I’m familiar with the process.

This process is blind. It would be like web analytics without “visits”.

I’ll say that again. In bold. Email without an “opened” metric is like a website without a “visits” metric.

The following diagram is a little in jest. But I’m willing to bet THIS is closer to how we imagine people open, read and respond to email than reality.

What REALLY Happens

We haven’t even added a time dimension to this yet. We’re just looking at open metrics. The recipient;

• Opened it once
• Opened it twice
• Opened it a third time
• THEN replied.

A Closer Look At The “Open” Metric

Let’s talk about the “open” metric (which is akin to “visits”). There’s a few dimensions to these;

• Location
• Device

And of course – “opens” being a metrics – you can have “amount of opens”. Here’s the reality.

People open emails, multiple times, on multiple devices, from multiple locations.

In the few days I was testing this tool – that’s the reality I saw more often than not. Here’s a REAL example.

Psychology Of Opening Mail – Mobile vs. Desktop

This obviously isn’t s scientific analysis – but I’m going to assume that, in general;

The key thing to realize here is - opened does NOT = read. Opened, in many cases (especially if from a mobile device) could more likely mean lost or forgotten.

3. Practical Applications

1. Make Better “Should I Follow Up?” Decisions

I think one of the key questions a tool like this can help us answer is: should I follow up? A tool like this adds a few HUGE data points to help you make that decision.

This should be a very personal and situation specific decision. But the fact is, where’re not in the dark anymore – for starters, we actually know if they even OPENED the email at all.

2. Correlate User Behavior W/ Likelihood To Get Response

I’m pretty sure once you get into it, Yesware will help you keep track of some of this stuff automatically. But automatic or manually – you should begin to correlate (even just intuitively) when you are most likely to receive a response – and you may even be able to segment this to different people.

• maybe a particular person checks their email at a certain time
• maybe a particular person responds to emails at a certain time
• maybe some people have the best intentions, intend to reply, but tend to be a little forgetful. If you see they’ve opened it already – wait a day and follow up.

3. Test Click Through Rate!

This is nothing new to email marketing. But why should the email marketers have all the fun? Email tracking for the everyday folk allows us to bring a more scientific approach to email subject writing.

Although not specifically about email, my guide on click worthy titles might help with that.

4. Time / Email Management

I LIKE that this adds a time management layer to email as well. As we all know, email can be a huge time-sink… but I think that’s ’cause in general it keeps a lot of the demand on our memory and repetitive manual processing  rather than in the email its self.

I should note: I practice inboxzero – and this Yesware seems to play very nicely with the inboxzero method. Inboxzero is all about – “touch something once”, “act on it immediately or set a reminder to deal with it later”. In other words: get it out of your mental bandwidth.

5. Apply Empathy

This new awareness *should* evoke empathy.

Have YOU ever read mail, on your iPhone, away from the office, waiting for your mocha latte?

Me too. (swap mocha latte for espresso).

When I began to actually see what was going on with the recipient’s email reading habits, it inspired empathy. Instead of thinking “why have’t they responded to me?!” – I got it.

They’re out of the office.

Or

They read the email literally two minutes after I sent it.

Or

They’ve opened it twice - maybe I need to change what I was doing. Was my email too long? Too confusing?

Or…

they haven’t opened it at all.

That’s the ultimate point I’m trying to make. Outreach is about PEOPLE. Success with people requires empathy.

Winning.

The post A Big “Yes” To Yesware: Insanely Easy Email Tracking appeared first on evolvingSEO.

I’ve seen the 80/20 Rule mentioned in passing a bunch of times lately in the SEO world, but it’s not quite being used in the fashion it was originally intended (and later explained in the book “The 80/20 Principle”).

UPDATE: Looking for 80/20 Link Building? See this.

The latest mention of this came from John Doherty’s excellent interview of Leo from Buffer which you can find here. Definitely watch it, it’s a phenomenal interview.

But I’m afraid, like a game of “telephone” people hear about this thing called “80/20″ and the true meaning and application of it changes and eventually gets diluted and transformed beyond the original intent. My post and video (at the end) is an attempt to clarify any misconceptions and show an example of how it can be used in SEO and online marketing.

I recorded a NoBoard SEO about 80/20 (which is also embedded at the very bottom of this post – this post actually started as the description to that video in YouTube and just kept growing… anyhoo…)

What 80/20 Is Not

First of all, I am definitely NOT criticizing or “calling out” Leo for using a variation on the 80/20 definition. I’ve heard it misspoken about in lots of places by lots of people, so I think there’s a morphing of the definition going around in general.

Anyhow, in the video he explains they spend 80% of their marketing time on one type of content and 20% of time on the other. Trouble with that is we only have one set of data – time spent on content.

Simply dividing up time spent (or types of content into content A / content B) is only the first set of data. It’s only an input or effort. 80/20 requires comparing this to the result or output.

What 80/20 IS.

A true 80/20 requires two sets of data.

It’s typically used to analyze “effort -> result” or “input -> output”. But the two sets of data can be anything where you can find a relationship between the two (such as where Pareto discovered the phenomena – by studying the % of population in Italy vs. wealth distribution).

I’m just gonna “borrow” an image showing a simplistic example (shh)

Perhaps Leo was insinuating the measurement of time spent on different types of marketing leading to a result (for example the 20% time leading to an 80% result). But even if so, I want to be sure people catch and understand that implication – as it’s important to getting the value out of 80/20.

There’s another, albeit slightly more complicated way, to view an 80/20 analysis. Again – two sets of data. (I’ve “borrowed” this chart as well… )

The important thing here is the addition of a 3rd data point – cumulative percentage. You use cumulative percentage to see how quickly you get to 80% (or a high percentage) of the total amount of output.

How To Use 80/20 For SEO

Hopefully that all makes sense up there. To use this principle in SEO, you just need two sets of data – an “input” and an “output”. Some examples;

• Content -> Organic Search Traffic
• Backlinks-> Referral Traffic
• Landing Pages-> Bounce Rate
• Followers -> Retweets
• Unique Visitors -> Conversions

Let’s do the first one on my personal site (this one) and hopefully it won’t take long ’cause it’s late

I want to answer the question: What 20% of my content is bringing me 80% of my traffic? Or – where is the imbalance in content effort vs. reward?

Step 1 – Create Landing Page Segment For Blog Posts

This may differ for you – but I want to look at traffic landing on blog posts.

Step 2 – View For All Time And Export To Excel / CSV

We want to view the data for as far back as possible (I do in this case anyway, I suppose you could do this annually, quarterly, monthly etc).

And we’re going to export the report to excel.

(note: you can also segment out google traffic, referral traffic etc for a deeper level of analysis – here I’m just doing all traffic).

Step 3 – Clean Up CSV Export

Simple… all you need to do is delete everything except “visits” and delete any landing pages that don’t belong (like image URLs or comment URLs etc).

Step 4 – Calculating Percentage

Here’s what your excel sheet should look like so far – before we get cumulative percentage we’re going to just get the percentage of traffic each page is generating.

We can see what pages are bringing traffic, but we need to calculate the cumulative percentage to find the 80% cutoff.

Get the total number of visits at the bottom with SUM

Now we’re going to get the percentage – you need to use the total number of visits (calculated with the SUM above) and visits per page to get your percentage. The formula happens to look like this for the first one;

The formula is =(B2/$B$54)*100 – assuming your cells are the same.

Drag down;

Step 5 – Get The Cumulative Percentage

This is the exciting part where we reveal the 80/20 effect!

The first cell in cumulative is just going to equal the cell to the left of it;

NOW we’re going to get the SUM of the first cumulative, with the second page’s “percentage”

Get the SUM of D2+C3 and drag down for all cumulative percentages.

Step 6 – Zoom Out For Results

How many posts or pieces of content did it take you to get to 80% of your traffic? Took me only about ten;

From here you can make your charts ‘n stuff – this post actually does a decent job at explaining.

My example above is almost a textbook perfect “80/20″ – but that’s also another misunderstanding… 80/20 does NOT mean exactly 80% / 20% – it can mean any imbalance which strays from 50/50.

It could be 75/35 or 90/10 or 99/1 – it’s all an 80/20 type relationship.

Step 7 – What’s Really Going On?

Everything thus far was to arrive at the data. We revealed the typical imbalance of input->output. But what’s REALLY going on, and what does this data tell us?

Well if I quickly glance across the top content, I spot some things in common;

• They are all written about something else popular already, or at least interesting – like Google, or Ben Folds, or Ifttt
• They were generally timely. I wrote the Ifttt piece right as it was coming out. The Followerwonk piece just after Moz acquired it etc… the “removal of the left sidebar from Google” I know has seen a lot of search traffic, as I posted about it with screenshots before most anyone else, as I think I was subject to an earlier test of it.
• Some pieces leverage a relationship or involved someone who went and shared it – like the Iftt piece I wrote after seeing a tweet of Rand’s

But more importantly almost;

What’s NOT Working About Posts With Less Traffic?

I see some commonalities;

• The topic is only important to a few people at most.
• The content wasn’t timed well.

I could go on, but you get the idea I hope. Find some similarities in the content that isn’t performing well.

One caveat to this, is that some content has been around longer. But conversely, other content had more of a social push since I have a lot more followers now than I used to. Deeper analysis and segmentation would have to be done to factor these influences in or out.

The Takeaway

Use 80/20 to do two things really;

1. Figure out what’s working and do MORE of it
2. Figure out what’s NOT working and do LESS.

Here’s the NoBoard!

I HIGHLY encourage everyone to check out the book too!

The post What 80/20 REALLY Is & Applying It to SEO appeared first on evolvingSEO.

Five Reasons This Post Exists

1. To Publicly Evaluate The Business – As months go by, memory blurs, details are forgotten, progress can seem stagnant - in essence, this serves as a way to collect and preserve the important aspects from the last year in Evolving SEO. And more importantly, to take a giant step back and evaluate Evolving SEO in an objective manner.

2. To Take My Own Advice - I tell clients (in applicable industries) all of the time. Share your successes, share failures, share data, speak with personality. That’s CONTENT!

3. To Answer People’s Requests - A handful of folks tell me they’d be interested in a “year in review” for Evolving SEO. They’ve been curious in what’s happened in the last 12 or so months, so this is an easy way to share that with everyone.

4. To Look Ahead - To prepare for something - and I’m not going to lie. I’m not sure what that something is …more about what could be next for Evolving SEO at the end of this post.

5. NOT to “humblebrag” at ALL – This post is hopefully an objective, honest and entertaining look at the last year.  Despite certain small achievements, there’s plenty more I could have accomplished. And there were some mistakes made. But at the same time, you have to acknowledge failures AND progress. It’s part of growing and preparing for what’s next.

Looking Back At December 23rd 2011

Evolving SEO as a viable full time business was still in it’s infancy one year ago. But a few folks encouraged me last year, and I will never forget it.

Let me be clear – I don’t actually think I came through for what they predicted. Not even close. I will NEVER think I have “arrived” at some false notion of a finish line. There’s SO much more I think I could have accomplished. SEO is NOT a popularity contest for me.

But what mattered was their encouragement. I have to say, if they know it or not, those simple 140 characters spoken over the web stuck with me all year.

And later that night my wife and I celebrated our 5th year wedding anniversary. I told her what my friends had said, and I told her I thought 2012 was going to be a great year for Evolving SEO.

Was 2012 A “great” year? Let’s take a look back!!

[hr]

Note: I know not all the following stats (thumbs up / tweets) are “important” in the grand scheme of things. Just a fun way to highlight some of my best (and worst) content from the last year and certain rough benchmarks. For example, follower count matters less than engagement, but I’ve personally seen a direct correlation between “effort” and follower count.

These stats are from December 23rd, 2011 – December 22nd, 2012

Evolving SEO Stats

Website, Unique Visitors: 16,561

I put minimal effort at best into gaining traffic to Evolving SEO, mainly because most effort is focused on client work. And I don’t publish content very often.

Website, Most Visits In A Day: 596

(October 22, 2012 – Ben Folds post)

When I do publish content though, it tends to do well in that day/week.

Active Clients December 2011

Roughly 6

Active Clients December 2012

Roughly 14

Total Number Clients Helped In 2012

About 47 (ranging from small consults to big projects)

[hr]

Dan / Personal Stats

New Twitter Followers: +2,071 (since 12/23/11)

Most Commented Post

The Ultimate List of Rank Checkers (47 comments – including my comments)

Most Tweeted Post

Analysis of Ben Fold’s Twitter Followers With FollowerWonk (106 tweets)

Least Commented/Tweeted Post

Five SEO Minutes With Noah’s Dad (0 Comments / 12 tweets)

Hours Worked On SEO

(only the last quarter of 2012 was actually full time on SEO, more on that below)

• 1,465 in the year
• 122 a month
• 6 per business day (roughly)
• Take note, I didn’t always remember to track my hours
• Also note, roughly 900 hours were spent teaching music across the year (again, more about that below).

Job Offers

Roughly 8 or 9 – ranging from casual, to actual interviews.

Job Offers I Accepted

None (obviously, duh)  ;-)

[hr]

SEOMoz Stats

• Most Thumbed Up Post – Click Worthy Titles (139 Thumbs Up)
• Most Thumbed Down Post – WordPress SEO (5 Thumbs Down)
• 136 Private Moz Questions Answered
• 81 Public Moz Questions Answered (as an associate)

[hr]

Notable Timeframes

January-August 2012 – Not tons of people may know or realize, but for the first eight months of 2012 I was essentially working two jobs. In this time, I was still teaching piano lessons roughly 20 hours a week. This quickly became quite difficult and taxing on my schedule and well-being around Feb/March and was a huge challenge to maintain, until September when it cut down to 5 hours a week.

May 2012 – My wife Sarah, graduates college (with honors), with a business degree, and can now help behind the scenes on Evolving SEO part time. (She helps with bookkeeping, administrative stuff, SEO tasks, research and is a huge help on the occasion I make a website for someone).

September 2012 – I cut down teaching music to only 5 hours a week. I was able to work out a deal with a local music school, for them to take over about 15 hours of my teaching schedule (teachers come to my studio space). This allows me to finally focus 95% of my time and effort on SEO.

December 2012 – Hire first two subcontractors to help with client work – Ted Ives helps me with some keyword research, and Anthony crafts me some incredible titles/concepts for a client project. And although technically not a subcontractor, when someone needs heavy duty link building I recommend Ross Hudgens, whom I’ve had the pleasure of teaming up with on a few projects. It takes the super-duty link stuff off my back and allows me to focus more on what I do best.

[hr]

Notable Dates / Events

December 23, 2011 - Sarah and I celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary. Evolving SEO is still only about 35% of our monthly income, with on average 3-6 active clients. I am still teaching music lessons 20 hours a week.

January 3rd – In an effort to do some local networking, I apply to BNI. My application for membership at the local BNI was initially rejected (because the “Internet Marketing” company claimed they “did SEO”).

They later accepted me, but in the 45 days that has passed, I had become too busy to commit to the weekly meetings.

February 2012 – After a series of blog posts at the beginning of 2012, finally some great referrals start coming my way from other SEO agencies. I go from twiddling my thumbs to being totally packed with SEO work in a matter of a few weeks.

March 20-22 – Attended SES NY.

Wil and I – SES NY

Spent most of the time working in the lobby of the Hilton. (In part to keep up with work, in part due to boredom. Sorry SES, but that was like the least helpful conference ever).

March 22 – Gave my first ever SEO presentation at SES NY – at a sponsored session for SEMNE (so not a “real” presentation). Kinda thought I bombed the talk (hadn’t even practiced it).

March 27th – Officially became an SEOmoz Associate

April 2nd - Attended LinkLove Boston

Tom Critchlow & Myself – LinkLove Boston 2012

May 3rd - I was a guest on the ever-loved #seochat. Despite prepping with pages of notes, I thought it didn’t go so well, but it was fun. (Alan Bleiweiss had a good time mocking me / stealing the show).

June 9th – My application  to speak at Mozcon as a community speaker is not chosen (despite a cupcake bribe!)

June 27th – Gave my second SEO Presentation at a Distilled NYC Meetup. Myself, Tom Critchlow and John Doherty Presented on “SEO For Startups”.

John Doherty presenting at the Distilled Meetup

Despite nervously pacing forward and back during my presentation, I thought it went pretty well! Ha!

July 24th – Shot my first (and only) Whiteboard Friday on Twitter Tactics. It went so long (whoops) they split it into three sections.

Prepping the board for Whiteboard Friday

July 25-27 – Attended Mozcon in Seattle.

Rand and I – MozCon 2012

August 16th - Applications to speak at SMX East AND Agents Of Change are both declined on the same day (my birthday!)

September 1st – Began working with our first “dream” client, Vosges Chocolate, as a result of this post I had written almost a year prior.

On the same day, I finally go from 20 hours/wk of teaching music to only 5. HUGE relief, and can finally focus on SEO basically full time.

September 25th - Technically, we took an extension on paying 2011 taxes, but still paid them “on time” in full for the first time… ever (I’ve always been full/part time self employed since college and have never been able to pay taxes in full due to lack of saving – I have my wife to thank for managing this so effectively).

Still got hit with fines though, for not paying quarterly.

October 1st - Began working with our second “dream” client, Nashoba Valley Winery, as a result of this post I had also written about 9 months prior. Ended up basically just migrating them to WordPress, and didn’t actually do any SEO (yet) so don’t judge it that way

October 18th – Started the NoBoard SEO Series on YouTube. A bi-weekly video series in which I spend a few minutes sharing/teaching/talking/muttering stuff about SEO.

The NoBoard SEO Series – Episode #16 “Exposing SEO Opportunity With This Custom WMT Report”

I’m tired of being rejected to speak, so with this series I hope to prove that I can engage and share SEO concepts effectively, and be an asset to any conference or event willing to have me!

October 23rd – Hosted a webinar on Twitter for Private Schools through edSocialMedia (THAT was a blast!)

November 5-6 – Attend SearchLove Boston.

Wil Reynolds at SearchLove Boston 2012

November 7th – Spoke at Mozcation Portsmouth. My third SEO presentation. Talked about “Analytics For SEOs”

Speaking at Mozcation (and that’s Rand’s ear, obviously intently listening, lol)

I thought the delivery was good, but think the content it’s self could have been better. Permanent videos have no been published, but you can see the replay of the live streaming version here.

Thanks to Dan Freund for the image!

UPDATE: MOZCATION VIDEOS!!!! Part One On YouTube // Part Two On YouTube

December 23 – I publish the first Evolving SEO annual review (this post!)

[hr]

7 Biggest Failures / Regrets

Knowing how to do SEO and do it well is one thing. But feeling like you’ve been thrown into the far deep end of deadlines, responsibilities, running a business, managing expectations… that’s a whole different beast. Here’s some things I could have done better, and at least now learned from to avoid in the future.

1. I took on some projects I was not 100% excited about - immediate recipe for depression and failure. I fear I’d taken on a few projects I honestly wasn’t 100% enthusiastic about, and it perhaps showed in the results. I’m highly self-critical to begin with, so maybe my version of a “bad job” isn’t so bad… but still. Standards are standards. I wish for everything I do to be exceptional not just “OK”.

2. I owed a few sub-contractors money for far too long - In short, I got myself into a project I should not have (note #1 mistake above!), and ended up subcontracting some of it out to complete it.

I hired two people to help me finish this project – and it took me much longer than it should have to pay them in full for the work they had done. I felt terrible about this (in fact, part of the problem is I didn’t tell immediately my wife I owed them money – whoops!).

Emails like this are NOT fun…

So, when it came time to hire some extra help this December – I paid them in full up front. I don’t want to ever have to worry about owing people money like that again.

So THIS is better!

3. I over promised on a few occasions - again, learning the hard way a bit here, but expectation setting has been something I had to work on initially (getting much better now). I’m not saying I didn’t come through, but I came through with a few lonnnggg nights powered by coffee to get the work done. Waking up still caffeinated is not fun.

4. I mistook “busy taking in leads” for “busy with paid clients” - even though you have leads coming through the pipeline, this does NOT mean you’re “booked” with actual work.

I’ve learned, I’m not “booked” until the schedule is booked with paying clients. Far too often, I’d state a 4-5 week lead time, thinking that current leads were going to turn into clients – or even more upsetting, some prospects verbally indicated a job may start, but then a check wouldn’t come, or it would come 3-4 weeks later, and I could have started someone else in the meantime.

So this happened a few more times than it should have;

I’m all about taking my time with the sales process and educating people, but there’s a fine line between that and working for free – especially as basically an independent consultant. I’ve been learning to gauge these situations more effectively.

5. I didn’t leave enough time for my wife – as a business-owner/freelancer I’m far too susceptible of falling into the “I’ll just take this one extra job and work 2 more hours each night” – but that’s a trap. And the math isn’t that simple. And I’m afraid it’s left me overbooked and without enough time to spend with Sarah. Or spend outside of just “work”. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE working. In fact, this is the happiest I have been since performing music full time.

But life has to be a balance. Work and play can mix and the lines can be blurred, but dedicated time with loved ones is so important. Even when I was physically there spending time with my wife, my mind was often elsewhere (or sadly on my iPhone). Big mistake.

6. I kept making websites for people, instead of just doing SEO - I do enjoy making websites (it’s how I got into SEO in the first place) but I still seem to stick myself in situations where I’m making websites, rather than optimizing them.

I love doing it, but it’s just not the most fun and useful way to spend my time. Especially since just about every website I’ve made has taken longer than I’d budgeted for (and technically it’s eaten away at profit per man-hours… “dan-hours”?) – These jobs typically take twice as long as you think, which eats at the bottom line, and takes away from working directly on SEO.

7. Not upgrading the Evolving SEO website – This website as it stands, was assembled by myself in a week in my spare time. It’s just a silly WordPress theme, and I can’t stand it any longer. A local designer even created a new design for me for free out of his own desire, and I did nothing with it. I think 2013 should be the year where I greatly upgrade this site its self!

[hr]

Six Goals / Plans For 2013

Man. This is the TOUGH part. It’s SO easy to get caught in a wheel that just keeps spinning. It’s easy to get trapped in that and not look far ahead at the bigger picture and try to take control of where you’re headed.

1. Keep Moving Towards “Success”

Success for me is almost a silly, too-vague word. We don’t even know what it means. But for me, I can make it concrete by defining success as the intersection between three things;

1. Fulfilling tasks/situations
2. Helping others
3. Ability to monetize

2. Speak More

Man, I got the BUG of speaking this past year. Only a few instances but I’m hooked. This is one reason I’m doing my YouTube series – to practice speaking, and because it fulfills 1, 2, 3 above.

3. Utilize Subcontractors More

There’s smart people who can do certain things WAY better, faster and with more enjoyment than I can. And I also receive great joy in seeing other people succeed and be proud of something. And my clients are getting a better value. I can’t think of a much better win-win-win. I’m not ready for employees yet, but I’m going to continuing experimenting with sub-contracting a LOT more in 2013.

4. Create More Content

I looovvvveee writing posts and putting together pieces of content for the SEO community. I would love to find ways to do this that are monetized within themselves, so it’s not “extra” time spent off the clock. Since it’s something I enjoy so much I figure that’s where you’re biggest success can come from, so might try to maximize this.

5. Relocate?

Right now, I’m in HUGE violation of the putting myself in “fulfilling situations” rule. I kinda wish Evolving SEO had an office in an inspiring town or city, with interesting things going on, like-minded businesses and people, and thus the option to grow (in terms of employees) if it wants it to. 

I find myself not wanting to “settle” into a full office here in Holden (next to Worcester, MA) simply because I do not feel this area is the best fit for Evolving SEO – and not personally inspiring.

Examples of places that come to mind are Concord, MA or Portsmouth, NH (an area I used to live). But likely somewhere in MA is the most viable option for both Sarah and I.

A relocation might take a year to get to, but it’s one of the biggest personal and business goals I have for Evolving SEO at the moment – relocate to a place more inspiring and be an important facet to a local community.

6. Take More Risks

This is the BIGGEST issue I see, looking back upon the last year. There’s some “failures” – but really? They’re not much. I’ve been playing it a little too safe.

I’m definitely not saying I’d take risk with clients, but with my own personal development – hell yeah! I haven’t failed enough.

Lastly A Thank You

I hate to pull out the “there’s too many people to thank” but (un)fortunately it’s true!  This is perhaps one the best parts about being in this industry, is ALL the wonderful and caring folks who have helped me out, and helped others out.

THANK YOU everyone who has been helpful, encouraging and selfless – and I only wish to be able to give back even a tenth of what you have given to me!

[hr]

The post 47 Clients, 217 Moz Questions. Pain, Progress. A Candid Reflection On 2012 appeared first on evolvingSEO.

Purely In Jest… the (w) thing.

How Would I Fix The New Whole Foods Website?

We’ll get to that. As well as (spoiler alert!) a demo of a new tool I haven’t seen anyone talk about. Keep reading…

It was 11:30pm and I was looking up organic food retailers in the New Hampshire and Maine area (I hope I can tell you why in about 6-12 months). I remembered there being a Whole Foods in Portland, ME. So I headed over to www.wholefoodsmarket.com. Only to find a new design. And it’s a responsive design! Way to go Whole Foods!

Let me just say, Whole Foods does ‘Wholed’ a special place in my heart. Might sound corny, but first time I ever went to one (heck, heard of one) was when my (then soon to be) wife took me to the one in Hadley, MA. One of our first dates! And together we’ve been to just about every Whole Foods in New England, and several across NY, Florida and California (I kid you not).

</memories>

Right. Back to the site.

Not being able to withhold SEO-geekery, I quickly noticed something quite wrong with their new site. And the realization settled in. I would not be going to sleep very soon. Those of you who’ve read some of my other posts know – when Shurelock finds SEO mysteries, Shurelock doesn’t sleep until he solves them.

The ugly truth is, from a technical view, this site has a number of issues.

First of all, it’s built on Drupal. ‘Nuff said. I just wrote about a site built on Drupal, with common Drupal-like issues. (Someone from Clearme.com even contacted me to clarify what should be fixed. And… I just checked. Not fixed yet. Ahh well…)

So the goal of post is to point out four of the specific issues I found.

Sit back, grab a gluten-free snack, some coconut juice, put on some soothing music and let’s check things out.

Disclaimer: I have NO idea if anyone is doing on-site “SEO” for Whole Foods. Many times new sites go up and SEO changes are not implemented right away. But this is just how I see the site in its current state, although changes could very well be in the pipeline. This post is not implying suckiness of any SEO already in an engagement with Whole Foods. Just some outside recommendations so people can learn something.

Issue #1/4 – Whole Foods Has Many Homepages

This site has a similar (although not as severe) issue as the other Drupal site I wrote about. Many possible homepage URLs all loading.

We can get even more geeky-freaky with it and run the homepage through our friend, the redirect checker tool;

That’s geeked out, right? But seriously, this heads straight towards the bottom line of the company. Here’s the problem though. The NEW site’s default homepage is;

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/whole-foods-market

What’s with the ‘whole-foods-market’ on there a second time? Check out what’s happening to your link profile. You’re basically starting over;

You’re ‘starting over’ why? Seventeen THOUSAND links point to www.wholefoodsmarket.com and now that redirects to a new homepage URL that nver existed before.

I would make the homepage go back to loading at www.wholefoodsmarket.com and all other variations should 301 to that.

Issue #2/4 – Store Locator Popup Invisible To Google

You’ve got a neat little popup box to help find a local store.

Only issue is - Google can’t see any of it’s content. This text is inside the popup

But it doesn’t not appear in the source code anywhere, which means it’s buried behind client side scripting. (That’s just geek for “The big G can’t see yo stuff).

You would need to work with the developer to get that code visible in the HTML so Google can crawl it.

Issue # 3/4 – Full List Of Stores Pagination Complication

At this URL here there sits a list of all of your stores in US. Awesome! Except because of poor pagination – only the first page is getting indexed.

What you should really do, is employ rel=prev and rel=next to hint to Google the relationship between the pages.

Issue #4/4 – Links To Individual Stores In Bad ‘Form’

Each store in the main list has a few links, although they don’t work how you’d expect.

The top two basically just select’s that store as ‘my store’. And the bottom one takes you to the info page about that store. But here’s the issue. The top two look like links but they’re really form buttons;

Not *that* huge of a deal because they don’t link anywhere, so we’re not *that* concerned about Google crawling through them. But the link at the bottom links to a /node/ URL, for example;

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/node/6542

is the same as

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/framingham

Or in screenshot view;

What I wonder, is why not link to the /store/ page URL? The /node/ canonicals to it anyway;

In one particular case, the store page for Portland, ME (the one I was originally looking for – which got me into this whole thing) is not even indexed;

And it might not get indexed with the way things are set up now. SO…

For issue #4 I would likely recommend some fashion of;

1. Use only /store/ URLs for the store pages
2. Link to the /store/ URL from the list.
3. Rework the “make this my store” buttons so they are more user friendly. And the load time for making it ‘my store’ was verrry slow.

Has This Affected Rankings? – Enter RankPanel

ANNOUNCEMENT: I am only using rankings here, because it is a metric available to the public. It is not a KPI metric by any means, should be taken with a grain of salt, and traffic would be the more appropriate metric. But since I don’t have access to that;

Enter Rank Panel - What’s Rank Panel? A historic rank checker.

That’s right, RankPanel tracks weekly rankings for paid and organic keywords, retroactively. Five hundred THOUSAND keywords. And it’s free. So let’s see if Whole Foods has experienced any turbulence in the SERPs lately. Buckle Up.

1. Drop In Rankings For Three Top Keywords

• organic food
• natural food
• organic

Kinda random, but let’s look.

• organic food – jumping around and bumped down a few notches on page #1
• natural food – totally gone from the SERPs
• organic – was bottom of page one, now page two and beyond

Again, not totally scientific, but just getting a broad idea that something is going on.

2. There’s 35% Less Total Keywords Ranking In SERPs At All

This might be my favorite report in RankPanel – the Page Distribution Report. Here’s how to set it up;

And here’s what it shows us;

That’s right. Since January 2012, less queries are ranking on page one – less on page two – in fact, less in just about everything but pages nine and ten. Let’s look at it numerically;

• 2,638 keywords were ranking last January. How many now? Only 1,707.
• 310 were on page one last January. Now? Only 237.

Yikes to both of those. If the data is accurate, that’s quite a drop in visibility. Am I saying the new website caused this? Not necessarily. But it’s not helping it either.

Let’s Review The Four Issues

There were other little issues, and I’m sure more that I didn’t spot that may need addressing.  But mainly, you’re looking at;

1. Fixing the multiple homepage URLs
2. Making the store popup visible to Google
3. Using rel=next for pagination of full store list
4. Unifying the URLs for individual store locations and fixing how they are linked to.

So. Whole Foods. You’re gonna fix them, right? I’ll be checking!

The post How I’d Plug Up (W)hole Foods New Website appeared first on evolvingSEO.

You may know Ben Folds from the ever impressive band Ben Folds Five (but if all you’ve heard is the song ‘Brick’ and you think you know what they’re about, go listen to this or this or this and come back when you’re done). And William Shatner? ‘Nuff said.

Well I’ve been a fan of BFF and Ben’s solo music since college (don’t ask when that was). In fact, I confess - I once listened to “The Last Polka” 30+ times in a row on cassette tape in my dorm room (yep, had to keep rewinding the tape). No that’s not a joke and no mind altering substances were involved.

The Myth Of Raw Follower Count

Back to the point. It sounds so good on the surface. Five hundred thousand followers. Damn! Right?! I was surprised however, to hear Ben say he didn’t feel his tweeting was helping significantly to sell albums. Check out the clip, which should begin at 28:30;

The exact quote from Ben in the interview;

“Because I tweet something it doesn’t mean many people saw, it just means people could see it if they checked it. Even though I’ve been tweeting my ass off lately, I’m still getting people sending me tweets that go ‘What?! How did I miss this new Ben Folds Five record?’. I don’t know, cause I said it over and over again but this is the way it works, so we’re figuring that out. It’s a good theory, like, wow dude’s got half a million Twitter followers, he should be able to sell some records. But we’re finding that turning that energy in the direction of getting the word out there is actually very difficult.”

500,000 followers on Twitter… doesn’t help spread the word about a new album? Or at least not to the degree you’d expect?

Well Ben I have the answer to this mystery – some data digging through FollowerWonk. I think we’ll all find the data a bit enlightening, and perhaps even surprising.

What is FollowerWonk you ask? Analytics for Twitter! Let’s look at why out of 500,000+ followers, more people aren’t seeing your tweets.

First, Run Ben’s Followers Report

Before we analyze, we have to run the report. So we’re just going to go to FollowerWonk.com and run an “analyze followers” report. Enter “benfolds” – and then wait about 10-15 minutes for it to run (since he’s such a popular guy – that’s a fair amount of data).

BTW – you can click on all photo links for bigger view.

Anyhow, since he has 500,000+ followers – FollowerWonk will run a sample size of about 100,000.

So now that we’ve run the report, we can dive in and analyze his followers and see what’s up. There seem to be five plausible reasons why more people don’t see Ben’s tweets.

1) 52% Of Followers Haven’t Tweeted In Over 30 Days

So Ben is very correct in his intuition about Twitter. If half of his followers aren’t even on Twitter more than once a month, odds are very slim they’ll see something, especially if he just tweets it a few times.

2) 78% Of Followers Have Tweeted 499 Times Or Less

Second indicator of low activity of his followers. Most people I see that are pretty active on Twitter, have at least tweeted over 500 times. Five hundred or less tweets, to me, indicates someone who is on Twitter very infrequently, or used Twitter for a while and hasn’t been back in months or years.

3) Followers Time Zones Are The Opposite Of Ben’s

Far as I recall, Ben lives in Australia (note that if I am wrong about this, this is the least concerning of metrics, BTW). And although when touring, he’ll be on US time zones, check out the most active times of his followers. 12pm – 12am NYC time. This would mean Ben needs to do most of his tweeting from 2am to 2pm Australia time for the most people to see it in their time zone. The dip is huge, but maybe he’s up past 2am or tweeting before 2pm.

UPDATE: I stand corrected, that Ben now lives in Nashville. Thanks Matt for the comment below.

You can see further in this map (which is just a small sample size of about 5,000 followers) most followers are in the US. Tweets during the day in Australia won’t get in front of many of those people sleeping in the US.

4) ‘Follow Back’ In Profile Possibly Indicates Low Quality Accounts

This is a word cloud of two word phrases from Ben’s followers bios. You can see “follow back” is the number one most used phrase. In my experience, those that put this in their Twitter profile are not likely to be high quality users. They are sometimes accounts that are just looking to try to get a bunch of followers.

5) 25% Of Ben’s Followers Follow Too Many People

I dunno about you guys. But following only about 100 people makes it hard to keep up with my stream. I can’t imagine 300 or 500 or 1,000. But approximately 25% of Ben’s followers follow over 1,000 people. I’m sure they miss a tweet or two Another likely reason why Ben’s tweets wouldn’t get noticed as much as you’d imagine.

500,000 Followers Is Not His ACTIVE Follower Count

Ben may have 500,000+ “followers”. But how many of those are actually active. How many people might actually see his tweets? When you add all five of the above factors together;

• only 48% of followers on Twitter in last 30 days
• only 22% of followers have tweeted more than 500 times
• most followers are opposite Australia time zone (if that’s where he still lives and tweets from often)
• bio word cloud indicate some low quality profiles
• 25% of followers following too many people.

I’m sure there’s a more robust way to estimate possible impression percentages. This is a REALLY rough estimate. But…

• Ben probably has more like 50,000-75,000 active followers
• Roughly 25% of people are following too many people to see every tweet.
• 75% or more are in US time zones…

Which means active follower count is more like….

• If you tweet on US time zones, about 30,000-45,000 people have an OK chance of seeing your tweet
• If you tweet on Australia time zones, about 10,000-15,000 people have an OK chance at seeing your tweet

Again. Totally not scientific with that estimate. I’m sure there’s a decent margin of error. But you get the rough idea. Raw follower count is a terrible way of estimating impressions or “klout”.  

And I hope Ben knows, I do NOT intend to make this sound critical or negative in any way   Cause none of this even questions the devotion of his fans, or the quality of his tweets. I’m assuming his fans love him, and they want to watch what he tweets.

This data goes to show – even with raving fans, and entertaining tweets – 500,000 followers is not 500,000 active followers. The two are very different.

Click Through Rate

Let’s look at one more metric – clicks. Ahhh… CLICKS! I’m glad Ben used a Bitly link on his very first tweet about the new album happening.

This tweet went out on Wednesday July 18th at 11:28am NYC time. That’s actually a great time for a tweet, Mr Ben! It got Re-Tweeted 226 times.

How did it do for clicks?

It got 7,177 clicks – the first 6,000 came from the day he tweeted it. That’s about a 1.4% click through rate. Assuming 500,000 people saw it. But that’s the catch. After the FollowerWonk data from above, I’d be willing to bet maybe 50,000 or less people actually saw that tweet.

But if you’re using active followers – you’d get a pretty healthy click through rate of about 14%. THAT is not bad at all. So for the amount of active followers, he’s moving clicks pretty well – and 14% makes a bit more sense. I don’t know what album sales are – so the final conversion metric is not handy, unfortunately.

The Best Imitation Of Yourself

So I have one tip for Ben. It’s a simple one, but for someone with even as many active followers, it could go a long way. You gotta do the Best Imitation Of Yourself and tweet more than once.

Using AllMyTweets.net (hat tip to Anthony for that) I can see after your initial tweet about the new album – it was never tweeted again!

When there’s a really important tweet – or you’re promoting something and want clicks -  tweet it three times within 24 hours.

Space your tweets about 6-7 hours apart. Load them into Buffer if you have to. Or Hootsuite. They’re both free – they function differently but you can schedule your tweets. Three tweets spaced about 6-7 hours apart will hit each area of the globe, and you could quite possibly double the amount of clicks you’re getting.

A few extra tweets could turn 7,000 clicks into 14,000 clicks, easy.

Moving Beyond “Klout” and Raw Follower Count

SEO’s – if there’s one thing even this rough study shows us: raw follower count is a terrible metric. So worthless it’s misleading.

BUT – I think FollowerWonk and the world of Twitter and social media metrics is extremely exciting and promising. We’re starting to move beyond the unreliable “metrics” of Klout and the even less reliable idea that number of followers can prove influence. With tools like FollowerWonk and True Social Metrics I think we’re finally stepping into the second generation of analytics for social media.

It’s SO new right now. Think about the calculations we have to do if we just wanted to estimate how many people saw a tweet. It’s crazy. Tools like TweetReach and CrowdBooster (which I like and use) measure “reach” but all this is, is total followers. I’d love to see a day when somehow actual impressions – actual eyeballs on a tweet is a standard metric. I think we’d all be a little surprised at who really has the  ”klout” on Twitter.

Thoughts?

I’d be really curious to hear anyone’s comments below. Including yours, Ben, if you’re reading

The post Using FollowerWonk To Reveal Why More People Don’t See Ben Folds’ Tweets appeared first on evolvingSEO.

Google Testing A Much Cleaner Looking SERP

UPDATE: I thought I remembered seeing this somewhere before last night – and in fact Barry from Search Engine Land had talked about the lack-of-left-sidebar briefly back in June. Although there a some differences between the June design and the one I see now (it’s still showing up).

Just wanted to share a few quick screencaps of a new layout Google is testing. The left sidebar is missing, and all of its options are now horizontally just above the results and just below the search box.

My first impression? I like it. I tried running a number of different types of queries – informational, ecommerce, local etc. To me, I feel an improvement across the board towards some needed de-cluttering.

Well – have a quick look at the screencaps! Not sure if they’re just doing some testing, or planning on rolling this out to everyone soon.

Make sure you get to the bottom, for one that is pretty different than anything I’ve seen in the SERPs so far…

Closer look at the new horizontal menu – the red line underneath shows which section you’re in;

Here’s a news view;

An image view;

A closer look at when you click “search tools” option;

Didn’t seem to work for shopping;

One thing I found really interesting was the absence of ads on highly local searches, like this;

Let’s have a look at a few knowledge graph results – note that the box its self resizes with the browser window;

And one other – note that what (as I recall anyway) used to be a broken display, which was all song names in band results, has been fixed. It sits inside a table with scroll bars;

Here’s what you see by clicking the “more” button;

One of the most interesting changes – a popup to select date ranges;

That’s all I got! Anyone else seen / seeing this? Do you like the layout?

The post Google Is Testing The Removal Of The Left Side Bar appeared first on evolvingSEO.

Let’s face it. CEOs care about SEO when the importance of it is obvious to them. And this might not just be about the bottom line. It can be about how their company is seen in the public eye (ie: negative Google suggest phrases). It could be about relationships with important people like journalists and PR firms.

Sometimes it just takes one compelling example to illustrate the importance of SEO. So here’s one example of how, I think, improved technical SEO could improve ALL of those things stated above for a company called Clear.

First, A Failed Attempt At Helping Clearme.com

On September 13th, 2012, Tim Ferriss tweeted this;

Cool… I had a look around the site. Being a geeky SEO, I quickly discovered a not-so-little issue and tweeted them back;

Its so obvious to anyone doing any degree of on-page SEO at all that clearme.com’s homepage(s) are messed up! Right now, multiple versions of their homepage load;

• clearme.com/index
• clearme.com/home
• clearme.com/index.php
• clearme.com/default.aspx

You’ll see it in the screencast below.

As SEO’s we know they need to have one version of their homepage load, and all other versions redirect to that. But it goes deeper than that.

How do we communicate this to Tim Ferriss or to ClearMe’s founder/owner/CEO? What do they care about? My first attempt was obviously failed. Its been over 30 days and the issue is still there. (To their credit, sometimes those things take time – Drupal devs are not easy to find. Maybe they were like “who the heck is this guy trying to help with our website?!).

But what if it was MY fault they didn’t fix it? What if I didn’t make the problem compelling enough to give them a reason WHY they should fix it?

What if I didn’t explain it in a way that matters to them?

Here’s My Second Attempt At Helping Clear

Links to resources

• Redirect Check – check your homepage redirects
• Webmaster Help On Redirects – explains homepage redirects
• Comparison Report in OSE – shows page metrics for different URLs (login may be required)

CEOs Don’t Care About Linkjuice

One thing really stuck with me from Wil Reynolds’ talk at MozCon this year (which came off of an idea by Mike King). It was this idea of going into a marketing meeting as an SEO, and talking about “linkjuice” and “do-follows”. And then we wonder why we don’t more respect and budget as SEOs.

Obviously, I couldn’t agree more with Wil’s message, and I think although sometimes SEOs are good intentioned, its the curse of knowledge. We’re so close to that stuff, and its our language. But it’s not the CEO’s language, and its not immediately apparent to them why it’s important.

What do they care about though?

They might care about users landing on an empty homepage from the Huffington Post:

Or the wrong or unintended marketing message from an old homepage design:

Or journalists not knowing what version of the homepage to link to when they do a story. Or users being confused. Or not knowing what URL to put in their press releases. But NOT Linkjuice.

This is just a subtle shift in how we can explain things – nothing earth shattering, but perhaps so obvious it’s why we skip over it. But maybe it will inspire YOU as an SEO to communicate in a way the Marketing Exec or PR Dept. cares about.

How To Get The CEO To Care About SEO?

You can get them to care (like I have hopefully done above) but you have to first figure out what they care about. No this isn’t a riddle. And I don’t think it’s about just throwing technical stuff out the window. It’s about translating it into their language.

It would be like going to the mechanic and he’s talking about the transmission and the engine valves or whatever (can you tell I’m not a car guy) but you’re like – I just want this car to drive. I don’t care about brake fluid.

You have to communicate – what the REAL problem is, that the SEO problem causes.

• Money
• How the company looks
• Beating their competitors
• Getting press coverage
• Improving their product/service
• Customer experience
• Company culture

The post Getting the CEO To Care About SEO appeared first on evolvingSEO.

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Let’s Get Real – This Is What Your WordPress Tags Are Like

Image credit

They’re like that junk drawer in your kitchen. You don’t even REMEMBER what you’ve got in there! Not very useful for the USER either I’d say.

And that’s on a good day…

For Some, WordPress Tag Archives Are More Like THIS

Image credit

What do you HAVE in there… and WHY?!

But for most of us, this is what tag archives are like… we just started throwing stuff in there years ago…

Why noindex Tag Archives?

Little while back, when I did a post on Moz all about SEO for WordPress. In it, I recommend to NOT index tag pages (in favor of indexing categories and individual posts) yet many folks had differing opinions about this. I will say that in some cases it may make sense to index tag pages – but as a default rule of thumb – I do not. Few of my reasons for this:

• It’s better to rank an individual post or category archive instead.
• Tag archives have a high probability of being thin or near duplicates of post or category pages.
• For large sites especially, tag archives can start to number in the thousands, like 10,000+ (as you will see).
• Customarily, tag archives are not customized the way category archives are. Many category archives are (and can be) customized with descriptions of the category and other content unique to that category archive at the top. Basically this never happens with tag archives.
• Some will say “well, these tag archives rank well!” – and to that I’d ask them to look at how well those rankings turn into traffic that performs once on site. I would encourage everyone to review your metrics for what happens once someone makes it to your site through a tag versus page, post or category.

Great! So we can all see that in general you don’t want to index tags?

You don’t need them anymore… it’s time to let go of the past.

Let’s Determine If Its Safe To De-Index Your Tag Archives! Here’s How.

So then a big issue I run into ALL. OF. THE. TIME. are sites that have been indexing tag archives all along. The sites have been around for quite a while, and in some cases there are literally over ten thousand tag pages indexed. Yikes!! Like in the case of the person asking about this very issue in the Moz public Q&A. My answer to him is basically the rough draft for this post. And its a resource I’ve wanted to put together for a while.

The goals of this post are to decide if you should de-index tag archives and then briefly explain how to safely remove them.

It’s gonna go like this:

1. Export a Landing Page Report from Analytics
2. Export a Top Pages Report from Webmaster Tools
3. Combine Reports With a vlookup In Excel
4. Decide if You Need Them (You Probably Won’t)
5. How To Remove Them

1. Run This Analytics Landing Page Report

We’re going to generate a report of landing pages (tag archives only), where traffic is from organic Google search.

Step one: Set date to past three months (this is to match it with what’s available in webmaster tools)

Step Two: Create an advanced segment for google organic traffic

Reminder: set for only the current profile

Step Three: Drill down into landing pages

Step Four: Filter for tag archives only

Reminder: Show more rows… you may need to increase this depending on how many tag pages are in the report

Step Five: Export the report to CSV

2. Run This Top Pages Report From Webmaster Tools

Now we’re going to get the top pages from webmaster tools. This is mostly for the impressions data. We want to see how many times the tag pages are showing in search results at all. If they’re not even showing as much as other pages, then its even further cause to remove them. Google must be telling you something when they don’t even return pages in results.

Step One: Set yo’ dates… 3 months, same as analytics

Step Two: Go to “top pages” and set filters – in this case, I like to filter out image search and the only way to do that here is to show “web” results only.

Step Three (you thought there would be more?): Export!!

3. Mashem’ Up In Excel

I’m going to assume you know how to clean up that data and stuff like that in excel (remove dashes etc).

Step One: Combine both CSVs into one file and save as an excel file. You know how to do that right?

Step Two: Prep webmaster tools URLs – in order to keep things clean and do our vlookup, we’re just going to remove the http://www.domain.com from the URLs in the analytics report:

Step Three: Make some room for analytics! You’re inviting them over – don’t make ‘em sit on the floor…

Step Four: Hookup yo’ vlookup – depending on what cells you’re using, its going to look something like this:

=VLOOKUP(A60,analytics!$A$2:$F$19,2,FALSE)

Thanks John and Mike for the assistance. Even though I’ve done these a million times in the last few months, seemed to still mess it up this one time – and then announce I messed it up publicly on Twitter. That’s a rule right? Tell everyone publicly of your ineptitude? Yeaahh. Stop talking Dan… no, stop talking…

Step Five: Sort, filter, throw ‘em around… do whatever you need to do to analyze the data

You’ll end up with a report that looks something like this:

4. Use the Data To Decide If You Need Them (You Probably Won’t)

My site isn’t the best to use as an example for analysis for a few reasons;

1. I don’t have category pages indexed at the moment (don’t ask!)
2. Its not a large site in comparison
3. Organic traffic volume isn’t huge

But with that said, when you analyze your site, some things to look for across the metrics;

Impressions – compare impressions of just tag pages to the rest of your site (you can do this right within webmaster tools… in fact… ok… I’ll give you an example)

Check out this site’s impressions of its highest performing pages (this is not my site, it has been made anonymous):

Now… check out the impressions of tag pages. There’s only 2 in the top 500! And they had only 90 impressions (compared to 27,000+)

So I de-indexed tag pages on June 20th… 9,000 of them to be exact. Did it affect traffic?

Nope…unless by “affect” you take that to mean “up and to the right”.

Ok ok.. I kid a little. Am I saying de-indexing tag pages improved traffic? Not really (although I didn’t dig that deep to determine the exact cause of this increase here). I AM saying de-indexing tag pages definitely did NOT hurt.

Impressions vs. Clicks / Visits – secondly, if your tag archives are getting a ton of impressions, but little clicks (thus visits)… why leave them in? Better to (in the long run) return pages that get clicks. These are going to be the individual posts, because they’ll naturally have better titles etc.

Avg. Position – I think this one’s obvious, but if you have a tag archive “ranking” but its consistently position 20-30 and beyond – can it. Unless (for some strange reason) you’ve been creating custom tag archive pages you’re not actively optimizing them… so they’e not going to magically start ranking better.

5. How To Safely Remove Tag Pages From the Index

aka LET’S DO THIS

Yeah, cause most SEO’s look like that guy… no image credit for YOU

Although I’ve had success doing this a bunch of times now, I would still recommend doing this just before some known slow time on your site… like the weekend etc.

Lastly, ONLY de-index tags IF you have your category pages (and the basics of the site for that matter) set up correctly. Please refer to the wordpress guide on Moz to check your category settings.

After all that, if you definitely decide to de-index tags, I would approach the removal process like this:

Before beginning: Set a benchmark and do a site: search in Google for your tag pages:

Just good practice to have a record before you go blowing things up.

Then…

1. Set tag archives to noindex with your SEO plugin (I prefer Yoast)

2. Inspect your site (source code is fine) to see the tag archives have the meta noindex tag on them.

3. Remove tag archives from the XML sitemap. Some people overlook this. You don’t need them in the XML file if they are not being indexed.

4. About 3-4 days later, run the site: search again – see if tag pages have been removed.

5. When tag pages have been removed, watch analytics and webmaster tools like a hawk for any errors or weird traffic dips. Like I said, I’ve yet to have this happen but you never know – without seeing your site, there could be an obscure setting (I doubt it)… but that’s just a friendly disclaimer.

With ANYTHING in SEO you have to use your own brain. Don’t just follow this guide blindly!

Nice Work!!!

The post Clean Sweep Yo’ WordPress Tag Archives NOW appeared first on evolvingSEO.

This post is a response to Rand’s post “The Big Picture Conversation”

Full disclosure: I just started reading Good To Great a few days ago while stuck in the Chicago airport. It immediately made me recognize some changes that need to be made. I had the thought to put these into motion (in a post) before reading Rand’s post (which I am replying to here) – but the post did seal the final deal. In it, Rand recommends doing four things:

1. Read Jim Collins’ Good to Great (or if you need to cheat, the online article on the topic)
2. Write down the problem(s) you want your company to solve on a sheet of paper
3. On that same sheet of paper, write down your goals for the company outside of the specific product/service/market focus (e.g. financial goals, personal autonomy, time management goals, etc)
4. Look at that piece of paper every day for 30 days. If, every day, you think the problem and the goals are still the right ones, you’re set. If not, change them and repeat the 30 day process until you get it.

First of all, I’m going to have a lot to say in the next month. You may read it, you may not. You may like it, you may not. It may accidently be entertaining at times. This isn’t for attention, this isn’t going to be easy. Its going to be HARD. I’m likely to show restraint (right now) and leave more details out than I plan on putting in over the next month. But the process has to happen and there’s going to be no way to really make a difference in the world if it doesn’t.

Well Damn, here we go. In this post I’m going to do the 4 things suggested above (well, start them anyway).

1. Read Good to Great

As noted above – started reading this Saturday while stuck at the airport (before I even knew it was central to Rand’s outlook – I did know Tom Critchlow praised the book). I knew immediate that it would change things dramatically.

So while not finished, I will say that there is something special about the book. It is based upon research and data. While I’m not writing off other books I’ve loved for years (like the 80/20 Principle and 7 Habits – I learned a lot from them). There’s something to be said about a book that presents findings based upon a team of people researching the exact concept its trying to explain: how good companies become great companies.

I’ve had many insights this far, but one I’ll point out right away is in the very beginning: the concept of humility yet strong will. In fact, most of the traits you’ll find in the book fall in complete paradox of one another. How do you be humble yet determined at the same time?

I think the answer falls with the single most important question. Why?

WHY are you doing that thing you do? How can you be humble yet driven? Because you are driven to serve something bigger than yourself.

I’ve taken away countless more insights from the book – but I don’t want to flood the interwebs with them all at once.

2. Write down the problem(s) you want your company to solve on a sheet of paper

Well shoot – this is going to be more ad hoc than not. I’ve THOUGHT about it, like in a daydreaming way – but I haven’t Thought about it, if you know what I mean.

1. As it stands now, on one side there’s tons of unemployment. People need jobs. I personally know of 4-5 people (including my father in law) who lost their full time jobs in the last few years.

On the other hand, you have this. SEO and search marketing and developer jobs are flourishing. They can’t find good people to help. I personally know of 7-8 SEO/Search companies hiring right now. There’s people who need work and there’s work out there. Do I have even a clue how this will be solved or even what I might start doing about it? Hell no! I’m just doing what the RandMan says!

2. Good honest companies getting taken by crap SEO services. Or good honest companies searching for resources about SEO; what it is, who to call for help, who to trust – and not falling into the hands of the right people the first time around. Seriously?! With all that we’re doing – there’s STILL people not finding the best place to go for online help. Again, I have no idea what I’m suggesting for even solving this. Just doing the exercise

3. On that same sheet of paper, write down your goals for the company outside of the specific product/service/market focus (e.g. financial goals, personal autonomy, time management goals, etc)

OOOO….KKKKKK…. this is a deceptively hard exercise. But I’ll take your exact categorical suggestions.

1. Financial Goals – to me, its NEVER about the money. Its not why I do anything. But you know, I’ve come to learn the hard way it does matter – I want to support my family (currently wife, 2 dogs and 2 cats). I’LL live for experiences over things any day. But support a family, give my wife the life she deserves, possibly help other family members in the future, and help even beyond that. You HAVE to pay attention to money. I’m terrible at managing money. Some things about that are going to need to change.

That said (I’m terribly failing at this in my head already)… financial goals. I have no idea. This, my friends, is a problem. Maybe someone can help in the comments.

2. Personal Autonomy – This is REALLY important. I can answer that way easier than the money one. You may find this odd, but by nature I’m somewhat erratic in my schedule. Perhaps a goal should be to strive for some more consistency. I’m just going to keep this real simple and break it into scheduled time, unscheduled time, biz time and family time.

• 35 hours week – Scheduled Time – this is any sort of task I have committed myself to doing. Promised time if you will. Meetings, hands on work, content I’ve promised others.
• 25 hours week – Unscheduled Time – this is time to do anything work related when inspiration strikes. Write a post, research a SERP, an impromtu business meeting. As said, my best work tends to come when there is room to also be spontaneous (like this post is totally free form written).
• 15 hours a week+ – Biz Time – time I work directly ON the business. Finances, decisions, growing (whatever that means, I don’t necessarily mean financial or people), hiring, firing – whatever it has to be. I put 15 PLUS hours because so many times the lines blur between work and play. And I’m always putting in more hours, and you do what you need to do until the job is done.
• 45 hours or so left – spend time with family, friends, making music, exercise, whatever.
• …then 2-3 weeks out the year, take time off from work and travel with Sarah.

4. Look at that piece of paper every day for 30 days. If, every day, you think the problem and the goals are still the right ones, you’re set. If not, change them and repeat the 30 day process until you get it.

Will do sir! I have a feeling I may be repeating this 30 day exercise a few times

GREAT but I didn’t fix anything…

This has been a lovely exercise – but its brought up more challenges and problems than anything so far.  As mentioned above, you’re supposed to repeat the exercise in batches of 30 days until its right. I think I have a ways to go.

…NOW Comes the Hard Work

There’s some things I know I HAVE to do. Its going to be hard.

1. Move away from doing the types of SEO work that are not exciting or fulfilling. This means there may be some clients I will need to find new homes for (sorry). But honestly, its probably mutual and I want what’s best for you.

I’ve got some projects that need to be finished up, that have gone on for too long, are past deadline and they’re just holding everyone back. I’ve learned (hopefully) to only say YES to things to really excite me and

2. Personally remove some things from my life that are hindering, not helping, the growth of a business/career. For example, many of you may know I still teach some piano lessons on the side. That’s gotta go. I have lots of STUFF accumulated – books, instruments, even subscriptions to non-essentials like Spotify (which I love) or an iPhone data plan. What do I need? Do I need a car? Did I need that book of Einstein’s Riddles (you know, the whole solving mysteries thing…). I don’t NEED a new computer yet…

3. Say no more. STILL hard. And I’ve said no a TON. More details on some of these things to come…

4. Go on a HELPING SPREE. Some people may call me helpful, but I could do more. We all get caught up in wanting attention for ourselves or doing things for sometimes selfish reasons although we try not to. I’m going to work on this.

To start – you should go read  Anthony Pensabene’s blog – NOW.  Don’t comment on this blog, comment on his. The guy has some serious writing skills, and I’m entertained and enlightened every time.  And he did more listening than talking out of anyone at mozcon. Props for that.

5. Finish reading Good to Great – not quite done with that. I think I’ll be reading it many more times than just once…

6. Pay people – I owe a few people money. Argggg… that’s hard to say, and I hate that feeling. Time to take some actions to pay you right away…

Stay Tuned

I’m supposed to look at this list every day for 30 days. I already feel like I’m not quite there. Don’t think I’ll post updates everyday on here, but I will be posting updates as important ones happen.

Alright, gotta get to work…

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