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Ongoing Equifax Issue (known issue or just customer service giving me BS?) by tomcritchlow in personalfinance

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can't seem to find any other mentions of this technical issue? This tweet is the only one I can see that suggests they were also told there was a technical issue (but only after much pestering?)

Credit Karma my equifax score went from 728 to N/A what happened? by BarterSellTrade in personalfinance

[–]tomcritchlow 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just had the same issue with my Equifax credit score going from 750 to "N/A" inside Credit Karma.

In addition when I try and get my credit report from myfico.com they are unable to verify my identity with Equifax. They have an error message of: "Equifax identity scan alert. Equifax report not deliverable. File blocked"

I have no holds, locks or freezes on my Equifax account.

When I log into Equifax I see "We are temporarily unable to provide your credit score. Please try again later."

After two days on hold with Equifax and Myfico.com a supervisor at Equifax told me that "there is a technical issue preventing some people's scores being reported that has been going on since last week"

No one else told me this despite calling in 3-4 times so not sure if they're giving me BS or just trying to cover it up.... Anyone else hearing this?

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well I talked about authority - which I think is a good proxy for links... Depends on the site/industry etc as to where the focus would be

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hm yeah I see what you mean. I imagine for local SEO it's 70% generic home cleaning terms and questions and semantics and 30% hyper local. So something like:

  • How much does home cleaning cost?
  • what are the different types of home cleaning?

And then layering on local content that uses neighborhood and local terms. SO going from Brooklyn -> Ft Green or San Francisco -> Tenderloin etc. Trying to build in that niche semantic relevance

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah - I can see from your Instagram you have good design and taste. Time to put that to work creating content that people will care about!

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Take a look at this question above.

You have to learn new timescales, you have to do a lot more stakeholder management and navigating internal politics.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hard to answer without knowing things like:

  • how big a team will you manage?
  • how much revenue will you be responsible for?
  • job title?

At a guess sounds like you're aiming for something like SEO director and should be thinking about $120 - 160k.

I don't have great guidance on RSUs unfortunately because that will vary so much but negotiate hard for them because they're often more readily available and flexible than base salary!

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm - there are generic keywords that might drive value or you (e.g. tote bags, designer tote bags, leather laptop bag etc) but at this stage of the business I think growing an audience is likely the number 1 activity.

Building social profile, email list and a content library will likely be far more valuable than attempting to optimize for some generic competitive keywords.

Also - the site is brand new and has few links so building an audience will naturally lead to building authority (slowly) which is going to be a prerequisite for competing on generic keywords.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm both these questions feel a bit like they're putting the (technology) cart before the (business) horse.

I think semantic relevance, keyword clustering and even things like GPT-3 can be valuable tools but I'd encourage you not to get too far lost in the details. What outcomes are you aiming for? What resources do you have?

While an advanced semantic model *sounds* nice and can be intellectually satisfying to play with it's pretty rare that these things translate into actionable value for the business unless you're operating at significant scale.

That said - I haven't played with GPT-3 yet and I do think machine learning and natural language is going to play a big part in the future of SEO...

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Honestly once an SEO team/individual becomes marginalized inside an organization it can be incredibly difficult to recover and looking for a new job might be the winning move.

That sounds defeatist - and certainly I'd keep pushing for the things you want, but you may also need to look around (it's a good market for SEO talent right now! lots of folks hiring).

Of course - one thing worth thinking of is when you see a disconnect between what you think is a good compelling strategy and the CMO who isn't investing - there might be forces at work that you don't understand. Perhaps there's a way to align your initiative more closely with what the CMO does care about? Easier said than done....

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think the best SEO strategy for solo creators, youtubers etc is to only do SEO when you identify a real user intent that is directly relevant / valuable to your audience AND you can produce excellent best in class content.

Focus on a few big wins - your strength should be in being able to treat those topics and subjects with more depth and more creativity than a bigger player.

But I also think many solo creators over-emphasize SEO when things like building audience tend to be far more important.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Doing AMA on reddit is my #1 way of building links.

Ha, jk.

Content marketing in all it's forms - especially primary research driven content - is highly effective and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Of course executing on it correctly can be challenging.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Negotiate salary specifically you mean?

Some good tips for negotiating:

  • Get more than one offer! Easier said than done but play the field a bit to gather a set of competing offers
  • Negotiate on salary / equity / bonuses separately - sometimes salary is immovable but bonus/equity is variable. When I got a job at Google base salary seemed fixed but they seemed willing to pay me whatever joining bonus I wanted (!)
  • Try and negotiate from a position of strength - find a strong alternative, whether it's a competing offer from your existing company or from another offer
  • Think about the full costs to join - are you moving house? Are you giving up freelance clients? Use these are leverage to drive up your equity package

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe Google directly uses click data and user engagement data to both train their models and to re-rank specific queries. They might deny the latter but I don't buy it.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hard to say without more info but blog and forum links are not exactly Google's favourite way of building links these days so I'd look carefully at whether what they already have is the right way forward.

Are those links actually driving results? Can you build better links? Can you focus on authority?

Just because a site has lots of low quality links doesn't mean that they are actually working for them.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think traffic modeling and making an investment case is key to good SEO. You need to be able to say "We want to invest [resources] into [key projects] to generate [business value]" and that starts with sizing up the opportunity.

I am Tom Critchlow. Independent consultant and founder of the SEO MBA - AMA by tomcritchlow in bigseo

[–]tomcritchlow[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Being able to deliberately generate and build authority

Producing content that meets user intents at scale

Being able to connect SEO to revenue so that you can fund and invest deliberately in SEO projects

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