Nowadays, the clients we get here at Buzz Starter are mostly successful sites that used to do well with
their evergreen words or what most people know as the main taxonomy, or main keywords for the other “most people” bucket. A good number of these clients still continue to suffer since the Panda update, roughly 3 years ago and have been having a difficult time implementing changes to their site, mostly because the lack of in-house expertise of implementing the latest SEO best practices. The indecision has cost their business greatly when it comes to monetization of their traffic, especially for sites who’s bread and butter rely on Google Adsense or selling display adspace.
404 Thoughts & Rule of Thumb
When it comes to the list of things we normally fix for these clients and bring them up to best practices, one from the list is how to handle and fix their 404s. Every SEO company out there has and idea on how to do this, in our side of the fence, we do as well. In retrospect, 404s are normal and they are common, especially when running a huge website. Worrying on how search engines, such as Google or Yahoo will ding you for having too many of these is a waste of mental energy. If you are having a lot of these, simply think about how you are going to fix it.
One of the most heard off suggestions from my counterparts is that you have to redirect your 404 all the time so that you don’t waste any sort of “link juice” which I think is highly debatable. The jury is out on that one and I think that you do not necessarily have to redirect all 404s.
404s GONE WILD!
Now there are cases, actually I am currently working on one, where the site has 5,600 pages but the site is getting 8,000 404s and around 15,000 503s (503 is something I will discuss on a different article). See the discrepancy on that example? Content wise, the ratio of unique pages to 404s isn’t proportional, giving a reverse Pareto Principle. When this happens, this is where an SEO solution geared towards a technical one will make more sense. With the advent of Google Hummingbird as well as if you have Google Webmaster tools, fixing the above example is paramount. Having webmaster tools running on your site in someway handicaps all of us. Most webmasters and SEO professionals out there will argue with me on this but, I honestly think that since Panda, Google uses parts and pieces of your webmaster data to further refine their search algorithm. Not necessarily to ding your performance and act like big brother but more of perfect search for the user in using that data, by combining the technical components of SEO as well as user experience.
When high occurrences of 404s happen to your site similar to the example I mentioned, it is something that needs to be fixed and addressed. For me when I see something like that, I worry more about the user experience and flow. Think about that for second. Why? Because that is what search engine bots do, is look at the flow from the point of the user. Providing a good user experience is key in addressing 404s.
Now on the topic of redirecting 404s, I believe that not all of it should be redirected. If you have to do a redirect make sure that it points to either a main category page on your site or a page at the top of that structure (a parent page). I do not think that redirecting everything to the home page will lift you up with search engines anyway, but pointing the the right experience will.
To be continued next week at BuzzStarter! Need immediate help? Contact us and let us know how we can make you successful in your next SEO campaign.
Last time at the BuzzStarter Insider, was elaborating how big data has emerged as a critical piece in today’s businesses. Companies from different segments and verticals are starting to embrace the value of what it has to offer. Organizations who have already implemented massive infrastructure and investment capital are leveraging the value of big data to get ahead of their competition with cost effective results. On the last part of this article, I would like to give you where I believe my perceptions and predictions are on where this going to be a tremendous help.
- Big data will be mission critical to every organization to compete in such a cut-throat economic landscape. Startups, small to medium sized will start to take advantage of big
data to grab a piece of their market from bigger companies. Larger companies, although slower to move initially, will not be able to deny the value of utilizing big data as these smaller and medium sized competitors continue to chip away at their market lead. Newer companies nowadays are actually more data-driven when it comes to making decisions and innovating their products and offerings, being able to making real-time decisions.
data to grab a piece of their market from bigger companies. Larger companies, although slower to move initially, will not be able to deny the value of utilizing big data as these smaller and medium sized competitors continue to chip away at their market lead. Newer companies nowadays are actually more data-driven when it comes to making decisions and innovating their products and offerings, being able to making real-time decisions.
- The value proposition of big data will vary across different industries. Some companies, depending on what their business is, will gain from this insight more than others. I predict that various business sectors will increase productivity when looking at different segments of this data, both current and historical and measuring them against an index that combines different quantitative measures. Obviously the value proposition will be different for different business verticals, for example innovation found by analyzing big data for an online retailer will be different from that of a healthcare provider. Regardless of such, companies has a lot to benefit in this.
- Data mining will be an important business function, for almost all
companies. Departments will be creating data groups that works side by side with the various parts of the business, especially those involving marketing and sales. It is actually happening now as we speak! I remember when I started in web analytics back in 2004, nobody even knew what that was. Fast forward to today, a number of colleges and universities are now offering courses in this field.
companies. Departments will be creating data groups that works side by side with the various parts of the business, especially those involving marketing and sales. It is actually happening now as we speak! I remember when I started in web analytics back in 2004, nobody even knew what that was. Fast forward to today, a number of colleges and universities are now offering courses in this field.
- Big data will present a number of gains not only to these businesses I mention but also to customers (or consumers) as well. Imagine a company using big data in trying to understand how their customers engage their products, seeing what sells and what doesn’t, improving their product research efficiency by 30% and sales by 25%. Looking at the research done by using open source software makes it an open playing field for any aspiring developer to tap into a $10bn Android App store market, the benefits are there because big data reveals these important data points to the average person.
- With big data comes big storage and this will likely get bigger as more data is collected by data-driven companies. Imagine running a production website that gets 5 million visits a month at an average of 12 million pageviews? You would have to have redundant/load balanced webservers just to handle that type of traffic let alone collect all that log file data. It is estimated that an average US company nowadays stores somewhere around 800 terabytes of data and these numbers will keep on growing as demand for the business grows. The storage and virtualization industries will keep on innovating and improving, coming up with cost and energy efficient solutions as the technology scales and improves at the same time. These storage and virtualization companies will utilize different data segments in improving their products and big data is to thank for this.
- Have you heard about OfficeMax’s recent blunder with their mailers? Or the Data Broker that that was selling lists of rape victims, erectile dysfunction sufferers and alcoholics? With big data comes power and more and more scrutiny has been focused on these brokers in the past 3 years. As much as we do not like the government stepping into something that the private sector can handle, it cannot be denied that there has to be some form of legislation that will have to be provided about the privacy, intellectual property and
security of such data. The with two news articles I mentioned, who should be penalized for such mistakes? The last thing you want is a mailer arriving in the mail with the words “this guy likes pink lollipops” written in bold letters for the mailman to see, having an embarrassing “Oh My God” moment. Access to data is critical to companies and government sectors but there has to be a responsibility attached to getting access to this data. These issues need to be addressed as people become more connected and sharing bits and pieces of everyone’s information is commonplace.
security of such data. The with two news articles I mentioned, who should be penalized for such mistakes? The last thing you want is a mailer arriving in the mail with the words “this guy likes pink lollipops” written in bold letters for the mailman to see, having an embarrassing “Oh My God” moment. Access to data is critical to companies and government sectors but there has to be a responsibility attached to getting access to this data. These issues need to be addressed as people become more connected and sharing bits and pieces of everyone’s information is commonplace.
To learn more on how we can help you utilize your data in realizing its benefits in improving your business, contact us here at Buzz Starter and drop as a line.
I remember when I started tinkering the first set of web reports back in 1996. It was a report running on CGI, comes out of the box with Apache that displayed a lot of cool graphs such as Hits (Yes! We used Hits as a measure back then.) coming from referring domains, mostly .com, .net and .edu TLDs. I remember pouring over a number of pie charts displaying where ISP hits are coming from, and they came from all over the place. At that time I found that data so amazing and interesting, sort of magical. It was almost like discovering a unicorn or a full spare tire. Where our system admins saw only the value of the data from a skin deep perspective, such as figuring out where people are coming from, as a webmaster at the time, I just saw a lot, lot more. I recall thinking that, if we were to measure traffic going to the site as Hits, then we were not effectively identifying the traffic. I also started thinking about other applications of the data such as figuring out what people liked or didn’t like on our website, or what type of content our traffic reads on a daily basis and figure out how to monetize that.
Now fast forward years later and BuzzStarter in tow, a number of data platforms after and we are in this age of information where sorting through this is now a critical piece in an organization’s business. Data is just exploding in a large scale and the bigger the data to analyze, the better it is to help a business 
scale their operations in terms of competition, productivity, innovation and growth. For an enterprise retail site that get’s 2 million visits a month, that averages around 4 million pageviews, that data reveals a lot when it comes to trends, behavior and engagement. With that said every leader of any business will have to create departments within their organizations to tackle the importance of big data and it’s not just a few analysts here and there. We are now living in an age where we can capture every bit of data that we can and this will create a huge growth in data in the coming years.
In my experience in digital analytics and online marketing, I see certain verticals where big data can come into play. Looking at these segments, the value proposition in big data investment is potentially big. These are:
- Retail. Being in this space is such a competitive industry. The landscape is full of players from small to big trying either to capture their entire market or create a profitable niche. Investing in big data can improve areas such as analysis of existing sales funnels that can possibly improve conversions by 25%. This can also mean the difference between knowing which online campaigns to kill or scale based on your bottomline.
- Healthcare. Healthcare has been a hot/passionate/intense topic in the United States since Barack Obama took office and his push for Universal Healthcare. If the current US Government leveraged data and did this right, HealthCare.gov would have been an immediate success. However, what happened was there was a lot of technical issues that crippled the website on day one, two, three, four… you get it. Big data could’ve helped save the US Government $174 million dollars in trying to fix the problem, especially in understanding how to really operate and push out enterprise websites like this.
- Customer Service. More and more companies are now investing in automation, especially in handling customer support issues. Leveraging big data can further help you understand sticking points in your customer satisfaction. For example, a customer is returning your product because of visible defects. The product carries a tag containing a code where it allows you to quickly figure out where this item was made, either one of your factories in Beijing or Saipan. Being able to figure this out at breakneck speeds allows you to correct issues with your supply chain and fix these problems on the fly.
- Come back to Buzz Starter for insights and the continuation of this article. Impatient on how data can help understand and grow your business? Contact us and we will get back to you soon.
Last time at the BuzzStarter Insider, we discussed key elements in finding and evaluating SEO professionals that can possibly work on your project. In today’s article, we will be continuing this topic in further giving you tips on how to accomplish this.
- Talking About Past Successes
During the initial talks with your potential SEO provider, telling them what your business is about and what you are looking for is always a good thing. Now if during these talks it becomes a fit between parties and they are willing to work on your project, the next thing would be asking them for a portfolio of their past projects and how successful they were in accomplishing these.
Do not be turned off or be surprised if they are very selective of the projects they talk about. I have done work for a number of clients and depending on how the client implemented the project after I turned it over for a long term project or how they implement if my role is more of an short-term/advisor-type, it would be unfair to judge me on past projects I have no complete input over. I say the same thing for other SEO companies out there so in my case I always try to demonstrate my work on the matter with more current clients. Though we can only be judged in the current, I would still mention past companies that I have successes with such as iLeads or The Advice Company.
Do not be turned off or be surprised if they are very selective of the projects they talk about. I have done work for a number of clients and depending on how the client implemented the project after I turned it over for a long term project or how they implement if my role is more of an short-term/advisor-type, it would be unfair to judge me on past projects I have no complete input over. I say the same thing for other SEO companies out there so in my case I always try to demonstrate my work on the matter with more current clients. Though we can only be judged in the current, I would still mention past companies that I have successes with such as iLeads or The Advice Company.
- Present Scenarios
Have you heard these words “No Spec?” For those who do not know this, what it means is that a consultant isn’t supposed to do any work for potential clients unless there is a written contract
to do so. With that in mind, respecting the boundaries of what you can ask your selected SEO professional should always be within consideration.However, it is not so unreasonable if you were to ask certain things. Throwing scenarios to the consultant within acceptable parameters is ideal so that you can understand how they will approach the problem. Asking them how they resolve certain issues, for example like “What if my indexing went down,” or “What will you do if we haven’t moved the needle after 4 months,” is not only fair but prudent. It will give you an idea on how the consultant will approach the problem his level of expertise.
to do so. With that in mind, respecting the boundaries of what you can ask your selected SEO professional should always be within consideration.
- Being Referred Is Always A Good Thing
Most of the time, you may not even have to open the yellow pages or do any searches for a good SEO company. A referral from a colleague is as close as you can get to a good one that will work with you to get your SEO objectives done.
I have been lucky enough that I have had good references from current and past clients. Mind you, this still does not mean that I will get the project. I haven’t had a former or current client say anything negative about me so far but that doesn’t also mean that all the goals we have agreed to at the beginning of the engagement are at 100% completion. SEO is work over time and sometimes during the lifetime of the project, the scope will change if it is within the contract. Embrace the referral but also be reasonable that all of us doing this work is at the mercy of the search engines. Tips and strategies that work now may not work tomorrow if a new update is pushed out.
- Review Everything
From the first time you start talking to your preferred SEO company, to the time you are offered the contract to be signed, make sure you look at all your notes, read the proposal and contract carefully. Pay attention to things you wrote when you where discussing scenarios with your consultant, remember how they think and how they approach a problem.
From the first time you start talking to your preferred SEO company, to the time you are offered the contract to be signed, make sure you look at all your notes, read the proposal and contract carefully. Pay attention to things you wrote when you where discussing scenarios with your consultant, remember how they think and how they approach a problem.
- Got Quote?
I used to teach and run the IT program for one of Jerry Brown’s charter schools, a college preparatory in Oakland. It is a military charter ran in cooperation with The California National Guard, The City of Oakland and the Oakland Unified School District. As the person in charge of the IT budget, one thing I learned working with the military in securing critical equipment and services is that it always makes sense to get pricing from different vendors. How many vendors? The magic number for me including the vendor you would work with will be three. Having two extra quotes to look at gives you a perspective on where you should be on your budget.
At this stage, you already have decided on what SEO company you will be working with. Always remember though that price isn’t always everything unless you are working on a limited budget. Remember that pouring $70K or more on a project will tend to bring you back faster results. You will make your money back with the increase in positioning and traffic you get in the immediate term. Working with a limited budget will get you there longer and the likelihood of you being impatient in recouping your dollars per conversion will be higher. As long as you are aware of the advantages and limitations of these scenarios, select the most comfortable one for you.
- The Selection Process
Making business decisions are never easy. Deciding factors can sway back and forth. Reading through this article hopefully will get you there in picking the right SEO company for you. Always remember that you have to have a clear defined end game on why you are doing SEO. Align that with your business goals and your budget. Figure out a long term and short term strategy in
maintaining this, either in-house or continuing on with your vendor. However, picking the right one will come into play when everything they talk about, when it comes to Search Engines sounds practical and sensible. They must be technically competent, it really is like hiring an employee, they must know certain implementations of SEO be it optimizing your copy, inlinking strategy or off-page optimization. Feel their passion for the industry, do they live/breathe SEO? Are they always giving you free advice before the project starts?
maintaining this, either in-house or continuing on with your vendor. However, picking the right one will come into play when everything they talk about, when it comes to Search Engines sounds practical and sensible. They must be technically competent, it really is like hiring an employee, they must know certain implementations of SEO be it optimizing your copy, inlinking strategy or off-page optimization. Feel their passion for the industry, do they live/breathe SEO? Are they always giving you free advice before the project starts?At BuzzStarter, we try to provide the best service I can possibly deliver even after the clock stops ticking. If you want to learn more on how we can deliver the best possible results for your campaign, please contact us and we will get back to you soon.
Choosing Search Professionals – Part 1
Here at Buzz Starter, as much as I would love to always have you on board and work with you on your next SEO campaign, I always tell potential clients that I also look for a good fit. My team and I can always do the work to the best of our abilities but I always try to have a deep conversation with my clients on what exactly its that they’re expecting from an SEO engagement. Within the consultation phase I also advice my clients on trying to even look for other agencies that can compare Buzzstarter’s services and work. This advice is something I would like to share in this article.
- The Big Picture – Goal Setting
How big is your team? How well do they know SEO? Is your organization aware of what SEO is? It is not that bad to do some research first on what the basics are about search engine optimization. Learning some aspects of it on your own gives you an idea what the best practices are. It also gives you an idea of certain things that you are not aware of or do not understand about the practice. Understanding what you know and what you do not know gives you a sense of where you want to go in your SEO project. Have that list ready when you start talking with agencies and you will get a sense of how things will flow once you commit to a vendor.
I have been lucky to work with a number of startups and companies who are savvy enough to understand what their objectives are as a whole when it comes to running their organization. Where I come in is to bridge the gap between their objectives and how SEO fits in. Be it generating leads or improving gross revenue I come in to help them connect the dots. Sometimes it may be hard to understand where the ROI comes in when dealing with search optimization. This is natural, it takes a lot of trust for any organization to understand what SEO is about, let alone how it fits in with any company’s big picture. Aligning their goals and what SEO can realistically offer is really where things should start.
I have been lucky to work with a number of startups and companies who are savvy enough to understand what their objectives are as a whole when it comes to running their organization. Where I come in is to bridge the gap between their objectives and how SEO fits in. Be it generating leads or improving gross revenue I come in to help them connect the dots. Sometimes it may be hard to understand where the ROI comes in when dealing with search optimization. This is natural, it takes a lot of trust for any organization to understand what SEO is about, let alone how it fits in with any company’s big picture. Aligning their goals and what SEO can realistically offer is really where things should start.
- Ask Around – Talk To Your SEO-centric Friends
Have you ever worked with agencies before? Or have you ever outsourced any sort of work to other companies? If you are, you’re a step up in understanding the concept of deliverables and consulting services. Be that it may, start going to your peers in your vertical or industry and start asking around if they have focused on SEO or have done work with an SEO professional. Familiarize yourself with various social networks. For example, LinkedIn offers a number of groups in your same business as well as SEO. Doing simple searches on Facebook or Google yields a number of listings for forums and blogs that also offer not only information about SEO but recommendations and lists of the best SEO companies out there. Due diligence is key and knowledge is out there, you just have to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Have you ever worked with agencies before? Or have you ever outsourced any sort of work to other companies? If you are, you’re a step up in understanding the concept of deliverables and consulting services. Be that it may, start going to your peers in your vertical or industry and start asking around if they have focused on SEO or have done work with an SEO professional. Familiarize yourself with various social networks. For example, LinkedIn offers a number of groups in your same business as well as SEO. Doing simple searches on Facebook or Google yields a number of listings for forums and blogs that also offer not only information about SEO but recommendations and lists of the best SEO companies out there. Due diligence is key and knowledge is out there, you just have to sort the wheat from the chaff.
- Communication Is Key – Talking Is Better
Most of my clients are referred through the usual medium, Email. It really is interesting how email has taken over a lot of our day to day lives, be it sending documents or getting in touch with your family and loved ones. However one thing that you can never forget is that having an actual person to person talk over the phone (in-person is even better if the schedule works out) is always much better. Sometimes email can either be to cold and formal or too relaxed and unprofessional, it is always great to discuss business outside of that medium.
Establishing a relationship with your SEO consultant is always a good thing, making sure that he is in-charge of your project and that person is not delegating it too much. I mentioned earlier that I look for a fit as well when it comes to working with clients but that works both ways too. If you feel like you cannot seem to create a level of comfort with your professional, put things on hold and evaluate what is pushing you back from proceeding any further. If it isn’t something that you think can be resolved, you are better off cancelling the project but make sure you honestly convey the reasons why you aren’t moving forward.
Establishing a relationship with your SEO consultant is always a good thing, making sure that he is in-charge of your project and that person is not delegating it too much. I mentioned earlier that I look for a fit as well when it comes to working with clients but that works both ways too. If you feel like you cannot seem to create a level of comfort with your professional, put things on hold and evaluate what is pushing you back from proceeding any further. If it isn’t something that you think can be resolved, you are better off cancelling the project but make sure you honestly convey the reasons why you aren’t moving forward.
- Being Crystal Clear – Knowing The Deliverables
It is hard enough to understand sometimes what SEO is, it is even harder to know what the actual work entails. In my experience, I have consulted with organizations who had no knowledge of SEO and are like cavemen seeing the light of day for the first time. I have also had worked with people who think they know SEO and would argue with you constantly without even getting past the discovery phase. The one big item that can help clarify this is requesting that the SEO professional actually lay out the tangibles in their proposal. It should contain what work will be performed during the first month of the project, hours it will take to do the work and the frequency on how the work will be delivered. It should also contain what work will be done every month from that point on and how it will be measured. Be sure that you are clear in this aspect and make sure to ask questions. Spend time over the phone or in person to clarify this and avoid any back and forth emails.
It is hard enough to understand sometimes what SEO is, it is even harder to know what the actual work entails. In my experience, I have consulted with organizations who had no knowledge of SEO and are like cavemen seeing the light of day for the first time. I have also had worked with people who think they know SEO and would argue with you constantly without even getting past the discovery phase. The one big item that can help clarify this is requesting that the SEO professional actually lay out the tangibles in their proposal. It should contain what work will be performed during the first month of the project, hours it will take to do the work and the frequency on how the work will be delivered. It should also contain what work will be done every month from that point on and how it will be measured. Be sure that you are clear in this aspect and make sure to ask questions. Spend time over the phone or in person to clarify this and avoid any back and forth emails.We will continue the next and final part of this article next week. Stay tuned.
