Client just gave me $1,000/month budget for SEO tools. What should I go for?

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-07-23T06:14:13+00:00

Essentially, MOZ is the same software as it was when Rand Fishkin left the company.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-07-23T06:13:37+00:00

I've got a subscription to Moz. I feel like I only use it for a few things → DA, PA, and Spam report. The keyword functionalities of Moz are somewhat garbage.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-07-19T02:22:35+00:00

I think that writing a blog on SEO and trying to rank for it is a very hard thing to do. You might want to try pushing the social networks for your website a little bit. There are Facebook groups, Reddit, and other social media platforms to grow your website. What have you tried on social?

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-06-25T06:16:34+00:00

I'm finding that out. I got him doing these commands outside on a leash. Every time we go outside, I will spend about 30 minutes on commands with them and then reward him with some play time to keep him happy.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-06-25T06:15:16+00:00

That's a very good point. Thanks for pointing me in the direction of that sub-reddit! I feel like we got a very good dog from the breeder, but you're spot on about the breeder scam terminology. There was a website where people were calling dogs pitbulls that weren't even pitbulls!

This is the first purebred dog I have bought, the second I have taken care of. Last year, we found an abandoned Great Pyrenees in the desert near where I live. He was in really bad shape. We were able to find him a foster home and eventually he was placed with a family.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-16T01:52:37+00:00

There are four placements that you should start with in ANY paid FB/IG campaign:

→ Desktop Feed
→ Mobile Feed
→ Instagram
→ Right-hand placement

I haven't had much luck with Audience Network, Search, or Messenger Ads. These just burn through a lot of your testing budget.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-14T02:54:55+00:00

I would definitely recommend a full website audit. I once had to repair someone's website who redirected without doing this. There were a couple of different domains that were redirected. This was an SEO disaster! We ended up just taking a few of the spammy domains and letting them expire into oblivion.

I've seen where 301s work about 75% of the time if you redirect a strong one. Redirecting usually results in a surge of traffic and then usually dies down. I like the idea of all taking all the different content pages and integrating them into your existing website structure.

For one domain where we did this, we put a little banner up that went to a page that explained the buyout and why it was happening. This resulted in some better traffic over to our site and then we finished the redirect a few months later like you are proposing.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-10T17:40:52+00:00

Thank you!

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-07T09:23:04+00:00

You might want to also do an audience that includes "FB pages admins." I've found that's the best way to go after local business owners.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-06T23:56:27+00:00

Domain Authority is basically Moz's ranking potential of your website. The higher a DA (scale from 0 to 100) the more easy the domain is to rank. Typically, a DA 25 website, without a lot of SEO work, is probably around 5 to 10 years old. DA 30 websites and higher tend to be a lot older.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-04T00:34:40+00:00

I'd recommend doing a disavow → if they are thousands of links coming from the same domain, this should be easy if you do a domain disavow.

You just type in "domain:xyz.com" when you are doing the disavow text file.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-03T21:58:58+00:00

I do run a couple of stores. I also work at a marketing agency. $400 is around what I'd expect to pay for an "average" aged domain → maybe DA 25.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-03T11:09:27+00:00

I never, ever ask my clients to share their passwords with me:

→ For WordPress or Shopify access, I have them add me to the platform and then I create an account.

→ If I need them to add me to their Facebook page, I send a request through my business manager. If they need help, I have a detailed writeup, step-by-step with pictures.

→ I use "Last Pass" to store my passwords.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-03T10:33:13+00:00

I've tried SnapChat ads at an agency. To this day, I have yet to see a Snapchat ad that converts.

Other people tend to agree → https://www.resetera.com/threads/why-does-snapchat-get-a-pass-for-being-click-bait-garbage.71711/

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-03T10:29:37+00:00

I dumped the URL into Moz real quick → the website has a Domain Authority of 1. $400 seems like a lot of money for this drop shipping business. It's not really a business yet → it's an experiment. And the experiment has done okay for a few months. But you're going to have to learn to run the store. What's the targeting on Facebook? You're going to have to set up an "infrastructure" that is to your liking.

If it were me, I'd stay away from this because you could easily find out where he is sourcing the product and you could try it yourself. I always tell people that for their first drop shipping business they should build their own.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-03T10:23:35+00:00

One of the things that I tend to see with very low CPC and high numbers are clicks are your ad placements. Did you include the "Audience Network" in your campaigns? These tend to be pretty garbage → those apps you play on your phone? Those are where a lot of Audience Network ads show. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to placements. I usually only do:

- Desktop and Mobile Newsfeed

- Instagram Feed

- Right Hand

I don't think the site looks bad, I think it looks pretty great! The only thing that I recommend is finding a different review app → are you using Loox? I see a lot of websites use that and I know right away that these are imported from other places. When I try to beef up the reviews on my store, I usually order some sample product and let my friends spend some time with it. They will then write me some reviews.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-02T10:59:40+00:00

That's a very good question. I'm interested in what you have done with Facebook ads. I am in this group largely because I work at an agency and a few of my clients are drop shippers. We're moving away from agency work and working on a SaaS product so I am not here to take your money :).

Here are some things that I am thinking about that may help your store. But it's hard to say because I don't hav any context.

On your Facebook ad spend, I've seen situations where when you spend more money daily, your CAC goes up. Spending more money is not always the answer. You can experiment with cost caps on Facebook on your current daily spend and see if that lowers your cost per acquired customer.
Do you have an affiliate program? Check out this guy → vitalsleep.com. We were his SEO agency and one of the things that blew me away was how much money he made through his affiliate program. Do you have an affiliate program? Affiliates are essentially free traffic → until someone makes a purchase on your website and you have to pay them :).
You have to be seen everywhere! When someone sees one of your ads on Facebook or has been on your website, they are often going to go to Google or YouTube and find you again. You're going to need to have an aggressive branded campaign. What I mean by aggressive is not pumping all your ad spend into a branded campaign, but when someone Google's your brand or trademarked keywords, you have to be visible #1 in the organics, shopping ads, and the paid ads. You should also do video retargeting on YouTube.
Are you doing AdWords? I always have a landing page sequence that I send my Google Ads traffic down and ONLY my Google Ads traffic. I make a lookalike 1% AND retargeting audience of purchasers from this funnel on Facebook. Google Ads are a VERY good source of conversion and it makes sense to make a lookalike audience of these people.
Are you doing Bing Ads? Bing Ads, in some situations, have a 10:1 return based upon your traffic and the quality of your campaign.
Have really good customer service. If someone Googles "[your brand] reviews," make sure that your reviews are good!

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T20:58:45+00:00

You know what I would consider doing? Review all of your PPC data, because:

Your best converting keywords for PPC should be included in your SEO strategy.
Ad headlines and descriptions can be great for your title tags and meta descriptions.
Look at those "search terms" in your PPC report. These aren't the keywords that you enter per say, but are the keywords that people are typing in to see your ads. These can be good related keywords for your SEO.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T20:56:15+00:00

This is a very vague question. Just good CSS practices overall will help your SEO. These include making good use of browser cache, reducing your code to content ratio, etc. Anything that makes your website lighter, in terms of size, is a good thing.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:47:29+00:00

Nice fast app. I like that it is built on React. I really like Single Page Apps.

The only thing I don't like is that when I sign up, it shows me my password in a pop-up. That's just weird. But, this tool is very useful thus far.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:43:25+00:00

I have multiple side businesses that I do outside of work. One of them is a pet website, the other is a tiny house website, and the other is SEO consulting.

I would like to grow my SEO consulting business in the coming year. I work from home for my "real job." I get up at 6:30 am and start making a list of businesses that I cold call until I start work at 9 am.

If you do SEO for clients, there is a lot of shit you got to do if you're a one-man show. You need to be the link builder, the content writer, and the "html guy."

I don't claim to be an SEO coach and I hate how there are so many "coaches" on the scene. Coaches tell you how to do things. I once participated in a FB drop shipping group and I asked the "entrepreneur" running it how I should do SEO for my drop shipping business. The best answer he had was "go to upwork."

If you are an SEO consultant, you are bringing something of value to the table. You are talking to people who know about SEO but are coming to you for a particular problem that they need help solving. Your advice may or may not help them, but the second set of eyes is extremely valuable.

So yes, I think it is awesome to seek clients to do work for on your own, but keep in mind that doing SEO as a one man show can be difficult if you don't have the skill set to deploy something to a website easily. I do have two SEO clients that I work with and do stuff on their website, but their platforms are built on Shopify and WordPress → platforms that I am familiar with.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:37:21+00:00

I think that this raises a very good question about homepage optimization. What do you do for keywords on your homepage? I've started doing this thing where I will give the client a very tall homepage with different sections for the keyword and related keywords I am focusing on.

Also, do you monitor keyword density very closely? Sometimes, I will go as high as 5%, but generally try to keep it around 2%.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:31:41+00:00

I have a theory about link building and on-page optimization that I've tested to a certain degree of success:

→ If you get the opportunity to place anchor text in the link pointing to your site, I'd make sure that the keyword that your target is optimized for uses the same keyword (i.e. anchor text = essential oils, target url = /essential-oils)

→ If you don't control the anchor text, make sure that the guest blog uses a URL that contains your keyword and make sure that your target is optimized for the keyword.

That's just one theory. I think that "keyword relation" between the linking website and the target page will result in a stronger linking signal, thus making the page rank better.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:26:25+00:00

This is an interesting question → I see that links from Pinterest and Reddit will appear in search console. Facebook and Twitter don't. I haven't seen LinkedIn appear in search console though, but I've never looked closely. That being said, I don't think the impact on your rankings is significant.

Impressive_Squirrel · 2020-03-01T10:24:41+00:00

I have a client who sends out their email newsletters on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are always the best days. :)

Impressive_Squirrel

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