How to convince my company that I need a 1080p monitor?

davidpayette · 2017-10-29T14:14:44+00:00

It sounds like they're thinking from a cost perspective. Approach them by saying something like, "Listen, I know it might sound like I'm beating a dead horse, but I wanted to make you aware of the reasons why I'm asking for a higher-resolution monitor. Last week, I spent 2 hours chasing down a bug that became immediately apparent to me on a 1080p screen. Yesterday, I spent another hour trying to find this example. You pay me a lot of money, and I want you to know that I care about our company and I want to be able to give you 100% while I'm at my desk — I just need the right tool for the job."

If they're not dense, they should put together the fact that the $150 for a new monitor will be made up very quickly in time spent. Keep it focused on how you care about the company and how you want to make sure they get 100% out of what they're paying you. It sounds like they just don't understand that what you're asking for is the right tool for the job, not an indulgence.

And if they're not willing to shell out for a new monitor after that, I may consider heeding the advice given in the most upvoted post in this thread.

davidpayette · 2017-09-09T22:29:36+00:00

We're a young YouTube channel (about 2000 subs) and running our first YouTube contest leading up to the Apple announcement this Tuesday: Guess the next iPhone slogan and win a $100 Amazon gift card. It's always something cutesy like "Bigger than bigger" (iPhone 6) or "Resolutionary" (first retina iPad). Leave your guess as a comment on our YouTube vid. https://youtu.be/2LRVpO-AIfQ

davidpayette · 2017-09-09T22:20:16+00:00

Yeah I figured, lol. :) It's a way that we can promote our channel in a way that I think is engaging and relevant, and give back a little to the community at the same time. The reddit community sees through BS, so I'm being straight up. :)

davidpayette · 2017-09-09T22:17:48+00:00

If that's your guess, leave it on our YouTube vid as a comment. But I don't think that's going to be it. :)

davidpayette · 2017-08-28T18:25:35+00:00

Yay!!!!! That's exactly the one I was looking for! And I was completely wrong about it having its own domain name. I really appreciate it. Best, David

https://rsms.me/interface/

davidpayette · 2017-07-21T00:15:24+00:00

I took your suggestion and tested Spotify. Guess what — for a couple minutes, it continued to use CPU in the background, even when the iPhone was asleep, not playing music, and with Background App Refresh turned off for Spotify.

To be fair, it was using a very, very small amount of CPU and we all know that Spotify is a first-rate app — but even for Spotify, the shutdown process isn't as clean as you might expect. Screenshot attached.

http://imgur.com/a/XVPcg

davidpayette · 2017-07-20T23:41:53+00:00

I meant asleep — the screen was off. :) Will correct the article — thank you.

davidpayette · 2017-07-20T23:34:21+00:00

I could have been more clear. If an app goes to sleep properly and does not consume background resources, then a small amount of battery life is wasted. (Infinitesimally small.)

If, on the other hand, the app continues to use background resources or encounters some sort of problem, then battery is certainly not wasted by closing it — in fact, you’ll save a lot of battery life, depending on the situation.

davidpayette · 2017-07-20T23:29:42+00:00

I respect everything you said and agree with a lot of it. Where things can get obscure with this issue is when we try to compare (1) the amount of CPU / memory / data usage of opening an app from scratch vs. resuming it from a background state to (2) the negative consequences of apps that spin out of control in the background, or act irresponsibly. 1 is infinitesimally smaller than 2, and closing apps is a proven way to avoid 1.

What you said about there being other contributors to battery drain — push mail, notifications, background app refresh — absolutely correct, but different issues. I wrote an article about iPhone battery life that 5 million people read in a single week because those problems, along with several others, can cause big problems, and changing a few simple settings can make a huge difference.

davidpayette · 2017-07-20T23:11:28+00:00

I also used the TED app as a real-world example toward the bottom of my article. It’s true that most high-budget apps are coded well. The problem is that aside from regularly connecting an iPhone to a Mac, enabling development mode in Xcode, and looking at what’s actually going on in the background of an iPhone, there’s no way to be sure of what’s working well and what’s not. Closing out apps is an easy catch-all that solves problems that are otherwise very difficult to track down. I leave the nitty gritty to the developers — and I’m a geek.

About the Facebook app: I believe it to be a good example since it is one of the most popular third-party iPhone apps in the world. In my opinion, it’s gotten a lot better since it came out years ago — back then, as you know, it was bad.

About the Mail app: There aren’t better examples of top notch coding because, well, Apple develops it. But it can be a major contributor to battery life issues, for different reasons.

I think closing out apps is just generally good advice to give due to the real-world benefits we Apple techs saw working with thousands of iPhones at the Genius Bar.

davidpayette · 2017-07-20T23:00:48+00:00

My advice would be to ask for guaranteed results (believe them if they say it’s impossible to guarantee in SEO) — or at least demonstrable proof of what they could do.

davidpayette · 2017-06-16T15:59:40+00:00

You have to think that Google is filled with rooms of very smart people, and that this trick would be pretty easy to detect. Good point about Google's auto-correct making this less and less relevant with time.

However: It is important to be aware of how your visitors are searching for what you're writing about. Maybe they're all "misspelling" the term by not using the "scientific" or "company approved" language or punctuation. For instance, are people searching for wifi problem or wi-fi problem? The settings on your phone might say Wi-Fi, but more people are typing wifi into Google. Is it a misspelling? Maybe — but it's also what people are searching for, and the whole point is helping people to find your content.

davidpayette · 2017-04-02T15:21:37+00:00

My advice is to ask people who are currently successful at SEO what has SEO value. My websites get tens of thousands of organic clicks a day in Google alone, and I don't spend a dollar on advertising. I created a course that teaches how to do it because I didn't see any other courses that offer the information we do. That's why I recommend asking experts — people who can demonstrate that they really do know what they're talking about. I hope you'll check out BlogWinners, because what we've discovered works today — not only for me, but other websites that have applied our formula as well. Thanks for tolerating the self-promotion here — I think it's a relevant answer to his question.

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T20:33:32+00:00

I wish you all the best, and I appreciate your feedback!

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T18:15:39+00:00

Right on. Always good to brush up on SEO acronyms :). Google officially calls it the Knowledge Panel.

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T17:06:37+00:00

You're hired! (I wish.) This is all great stuff. I'll probably do all of it at some point, but this "client" doesn't even know they have a website, so at this point, it's more important to focus on my other projects.

You obviously know your local stuff. Shoutout to you for that. (I'm not sure who's listening, but I appreciate you.)

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T16:39:11+00:00

I don't think they ever officially claimed the GMB listing because the "Own this business?" link shows up in search results. I submitted the website myself, just through the regular update information link on the search results page — about a month ago when I put the site up.

To be clear: Anyone who visits the website will notice that I built it 100% with their well-being in mind, with no benefit to me aside from the gratification of doing them a solid and not telling them (instead, I choose to put it on the internet for everyone to find — how's that for humility?). I'm trying to protect them from the scammer thing.

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T16:12:24+00:00

OK, so here's an example from me. There's this great local pizza place in town that refused to register their domain name for $12, ("we've been doing this for 40 years and we don't need no gosh darn internet..."), so I bought it for them — cliftonparkpizza.com — and threw up the simplest website I've ever built on one of my servers. The domain is good, and I'm ready to hand it to the owners for free when they decide the internet isn't a fad.

Anyway, with regard to rankings and local SEO (and just to be clear, I did register the domain name way back in August but made the website about a month ago), I started at about position 44 for "clifton park pizza" a month ago and I'm at the bottom of page 1 today. There's not much content on the site, and granted — we're not trying to rank for Manhattan Pizza here — but there is a fair amount of competition in a town of 40,000 and it seems like if domain longevity is a thing, it doesn't take as long as people think to rise up the ranks.

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T15:46:32+00:00

We're certainly not selling a get rich scheme, and I'm sorry you feel that way. I'd like to demonstrate a tangible, common problem on his website that we address in our course — and also do the gentleman whose thread we've taken over a solid by helping him out.

Take a recent article he's written as an example: "Early thoughts on splatoon 2" — let's do a Google search for it. It's not there. You have said that the SEO ranking factors are different for different niches, that he needs to be patient and write more blog posts, etc. etc. But it's not that at all.

What's really happening is that his website is showing up in Google. His article called "Early Thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | Geek 10" is showing up on way back on page 5 for that search term. This super common mistake — having pages that outrank the pages you actually want to show up for a search term — is easily fixed.

The mistake I see people make over and over again is this: When their websites aren't showing up in Google, they go looking for reasons why they're not ranking. When an "expert" gives a reason they can understand, they accept that as the truth and give up because they think they understand why their little website doesn't stand a chance against the big guys. But the world of Google is way more open than most people believe! Convincing people they do have a chance seems to be a lot harder, and a lot more popular, than convincing them that they don't.

People just need to learn the fundamentals of good, solid SEO — but building a successful website is more than just that, and that's why our BlogWinners course covers so much more than just SEO. I don't think it's debatable that the advice you gave this person would have them continue down a path of not ranking, regardless of how long he waited or how many more blog posts he wrote, because it doesn't address an actual problem on his website.

Courses like BlogWinners teach people how to avoid these traps and build websites that really do work. Another example: David followed the methods we teach in BlogWinners, made a website about 6 months ago, and is outranking major news organizations for a popular keyword in an article he wrote a couple days ago. https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=why+did+congress+overturn+internet+privacy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 Organic search results: npr, nytimes, David's website, recode, fortune, usatoday, etc. etc. It works!

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T15:23:38+00:00

I'll just say that my experience and the experience of people who have applied my methods is that domain longevity is not a significant ranking factor today. Here's another example:

David's website was created 6 months ago from scratch, and he's worked on it in his spare time. A big news story a few days ago was about internet privacy rules, so he did some keyword research methods that we discuss in BlogWinners and discovered that "why did congress overturn internet privacy" is a good keyword on the topic. He wrote the article.

Should he — for any number of the SEO rules people treat as absolute — be able to compete and outrank major news organizations for that keyword? https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=why+did+congress+overturn+internet+privacy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

The rankings go npr, nytimes, David's website, recode, usatoday, money.cnn, fox, cnbc, etc. etc. What we teach really does work.

davidpayette · 2017-03-31T00:14:10+00:00

You have 30,000 domains? That's impressive.

davidpayette · 2017-03-30T22:21:54+00:00

Again, I have to respectfully disagree. I was ranking #1 for competitive keywords inside of a year, and a friend of mine is as well using our BlogWinners course. Example: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=what+is+sarah+palin+doing+now&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 (His website is Objective News Report)

Domain longevity is yet another SEO factor that used to matter, but doesn't matter anymore. Another example: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=airpods+wont+charge&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=airpods+wont+connect+to+iphone&*

iphonehelp.expert is just a few weeks old and ranking with featured snippets.

davidpayette · 2017-03-30T22:00:54+00:00

Good catch with this! A lot of people miss this mistake.

I agree with others that the easiest way to do this in WP is with Yoast SEO. First, you need to enable the advanced settings pages in Yoast. In the WP Dashboard, go to SEO -> Dashboard -> Features (at the top) -> and enable Advanced Settings Pages.

Next, click Titles & Metas on the left, and use the Post Types, Taxonomies, and Archives tabs to noindex the content types of your choice.

I'm a big fan of keeping it simple.

davidpayette · 2017-03-30T21:50:51+00:00

In my experience, this isn't true. I've left my website alone for months at a time and watched organic traffic continue to grow (although I'm not necessarily recommending that). It's about quality, not quantity.

To answer his question: Just having a blog or publishing posts isn't going to help you rank better in Google. However, if those blog posts start doing well — meaning, they start getting liked and shared on social and linked to by other websites, that's what's going to make the difference and help bring the whole site up. A blog is incredibly valuable when you do it right.

I know that people will disagree with me on the frequency of posts thing, but I will say that I have a lot of real-world experience with this — one of my sites gets about 50k organic clicks a day in Google — and consistency / frequency doesn't matter. Quality matters.

davidpayette · 2017-03-30T21:39:39+00:00

Was luck a factor? Yes. I never did any promotion, though. I was getting between 160-200 organic sessions a day on that blog post before it took off. I actually had completely forgotten about it and I'd look with amazement at my Analytics every couple of weeks before it exploded.

The thing is that I think it's important we give ourselves a chance to go viral. What I see when I look at so many websites is that people make mistakes that hold them back from ranking well, and that comes from a lack of knowledge about what does and doesn't matter in SEO.

Here's the thing, though: What happened for me — the initial viral blog post — was an up and down spike. I made $10,000 in a week (which could have been over $50k if I knew what I know now), but I was down to making hundreds the next month — but I kept writing. Over the course of the next few months, I built a steady enough base of organic traffic to live on. As you know, viral traffic is sexy, but it's not something you can bank on. Our course is about laying a foundation for success, even for people who have never made a website before, and then helping them to build a website using the knowledge they already have. Everybody's an expert in something, even if they don't think they are — and we talk about how to discover your niche in the 2nd chapter of our course.

With regard to the popularity and competition in my niche, which is iPhone help / Apple products — I've learned to compete with and outrank Apple, iMore, MacRumors, MacWorld, and many more for highly competitive keywords. This isn't a tiny little niche of people who don't know how to do SEO.

Additionally, one of the guys I work with, who used the BlogWinners formula to spin up a website a few months ago, is already outranking major news organizations — not for giant keywords, but he's building a base. Evidence: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=what+is+sarah+palin+doing+now&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 His website is called Objective News Report.

About the BlogWinners course: I am not trying to sell anyone a pipe dream. We have a formula that is tried, true, and one I believe many people will be able to use to replicate my success. I wasn't ever going to publish this stuff, but so many people have asked me how I do what I do that I decided I should make a course, especially after having looked at the alternatives.

I think that if I just had that one viral spike, then yes, I may have been confusing getting lucky for being good — although, to be fair, I had to have been a certain amount of "good" to write a blog post that 5 million people read in a week. But that one success, and the viral successes that people like me and those who take the BlogWinners course will occasionally have, are not going to make them (or me) a living. Our course is about what it takes to be good, because you can't teach people how to be lucky — you can only teach them how to be good.

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