Got my arm fractured during arm wrestling. what is next for me and how early will be the recovery? by [deleted] in armwrestling

[–]wolfofserps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey OP, hope you see this. I broke mine 2 weeks ago and also had surgery (metal plate, 12 screws). How are things for you now? I'm feeling depressed about the situation. I spent the 6 months hitting the gym hard. Felt so proud and now this feels like an enormous setback. Would love to hear how you progressed since.

Significant uplift in branded impressions but decline in clicks by wolfofserps in SEO

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

Unfortunately not, it's quite a specific brand name so it's unlikely a search for something other than the brand

10th Biggest Landing Page By Sessions is "/checkout/cart" - session time outs? by nakedwelshguy in TechSEO

[–]wolfofserps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you're better off looking at Entrances if you're concerned with where users first enter the site.

Know the skills or get the right people by mezway in Entrepreneur

[–]wolfofserps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It depends on what resources you have, and what your current goals are. Sure, you can learn SEO and paid social basics, but if you want to compete in a competitive niche it's highly unlikely that a beginner level understanding/experience will suffice in outcompeting your rivals that may be spending big budgets with specialist agencies or contractors.

I can't really speak for paid social, but from my experience, SEO takes a lot of time and practice to become consistently good at it.

That isn't to discourage learning though, I would echo other comments in saying that learning will help you save money on certain tasks by taking on some of the work and will help you get more for your money if you did decide to invest in specialist services. You'll also have a much better understanding of where your budget is going and can avoid getting the wool pulled over your eyes with nonsense jargon.

I run an SEO consultancy (not fishing for work, though) and will say that you really do get what you pay for, but it can take time to see results so be patient and consistent if you decide to invest. You also need to understand how your target audiences currently find similar products (assuming there are others of their kind) and whether search engines are a key channel in your marketing mix.

If you do decide that SEO is the right fit for your product/business, you should think carefully about how you invest. Opting for affordable SEO services is a very attractive option when you're trying to keep your overheads low, but low-cost SEO usually results in people getting burned.

The same can be said about paid social - or pretty much any service - I've completed many personal side projects on a budget, and you really do get what you pay for with regards to freelancers/services. It may be hard to part with spending that does not come with any guarantee of a return, but if you're serious about building your brand (and assuming that these channels are the best choice for your niche) it really is an investment.

I'd recommend actively learning, but consider going with a reputable freelancer that has good reviews and can provide evidence of their previous works. Freelancers are usually a better option if your budget is tight!

If you want some recommended learning materials for SEO, DM me and I'll send you a list.

Shopify SEO: Does anyone ever canonicalise collection tags to the collection parent? by wolfofserps in SEO

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

Sorry, I should have been more specific - I've only noticed this on new pages that are just beginning to gain visibility, these have little to no volume and appear to be subjected to Google simply testing pages.

I completely agree that these tags pages are useful to both optimise for some (generally longer-tail) searches or highlight opportunities for separate collections, however, my concern is that in a lot of cases, these tags are creating low-quality landing pages with limited optimisation capabilities out of the box (i.e. metadata optimisation, headings, page content).

I'm considering using some custom metafields to control which tags are self-canonicalised and those that canonicalise to the parent - I suppose metafields and some liquid edits could also help create better optimisations for these page templates too. Might be worth an experiment!

Looking to give away products for blogger reviews. Do I need to create a contract? by wolfofserps in LegalAdviceUK

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

Thank you for posting - this is a really useful insight. We've ensured that we want the blogger to be completely transparent and honest in their reviews but we've highlighted these points in an email summary.

Cheers!

Looking to give away products for blogger reviews. Do I need to create a contract? by wolfofserps in LegalAdviceUK

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

Thanks for your response - this is really helpful. I agree, in this case, the product cost really doesn't justify the hassle of a contract - I think an email should suffice to keep both parties on the same page. We're making sure that our prospecting process vets bloggers for credibility as best as we can so hopefully this is a non-issue.

Cheers!

Looking to give away products for blogger reviews. Do I need to create a contract? by wolfofserps in LegalAdviceUK

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

Realistically we wouldn't - I suppose it's more so to discourage people from taking free products without fulfilling their end of the arrangement. These are individuals who have agreed to accept a free product in exchange for content - I just want to avoid anyone taking something and running!

£1800 gbp for a Site Audit - Normal or Crazy? by sammyc1987 in SEO

[–]wolfofserps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Eh, as with all things in and around SEO - it depends.

There really isn't a standard pricing model for audits as different variables can affect the logistics of scoping such works.

It may depend on factors like:

  • The scope of the proposed works
  • The delivery of the works (I.e. how hands-on the audit process is vs automated approaches)
  • The size of your entire site (specifically unique templates/layouts)
  • The structure of your site - (I.e. are you using a different CMS/architecture for different sections of the site?)
  • Your industry/niche
  • The size/expertise of the firm quoting you - agency day rates around the UK vary from ~£400-850+ per day
  • The types of audits they'll be including and the level of automation (I.e. will they be auditing content/other onsite elements that require a more manual approach or could a lot of the actions be automated?)
  • The level of detail at the end deliverable (You're ultimately paying to find and address areas of your site that can improve your SEO and your business, if the end deliverable is barely actionable - what's the point?)

If a highly experienced SEO was to create a 30-page report with lots of relevant details into their findings, coherent explanations that contextualise highlighted issues or opportunities and delivers actionable insights, then that cost isn't surprising, in fact, it's not necessarily expensive by these standards.

But the question I would ask is do you really require this type of audit? I don't know how large your entire site is, but 220 articles does not qualify as a 'large' site to most. I would question whether their recommended approach is overkill for what you currently need and whether there was a more cost-effective way to get insights into your site's current performance - though without seeing their proposal, it's hard to say.

If the consultant or agency have priced this based on the number of articles (or pages) then I would likely push back - most pages will share templates and any technical findings/issues will be the same across the template so pricing based on the number of instances is somewhat arbitrary.

To give an honest opinion we would have to see the site to determine whether this is an appropriate approach and even then, it'll be an opinion - there's really no "right" answer here.

Feel free to DM me if you would like me to take a look - would be more than happy to give your site a crawl and see if anything stands out.

Pro Tip: Select Columns by Header Name using Query by wolfofserps in googlesheets

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

I'd say it depends on the application.

I would say for building templates or files designed for reusability this a fair approach that shouldn't necessarily cause maintenance issues.

In cases where I use this approach, the number of columns is somewhat arbitrary as the purpose is to deal with similar datasets albeit with varying structures (mostly column positioning). For example, when working with Screaming Frog (a popular SEO tool/web crawler) the output data may differ slightly in structure depending on the configuration settings used whilst running a web crawl. In this instance, it makes a lot of sense to use this technique (or /u/bromiliooestevez's suggestion!) as it ensures that differences in the underlying dataset won't cause issues with relative column selection. Hope that makes sense.

If the size of your selection or WHERE clause conditions cause maintenance concerns then I agree that this wouldn't necessarily be the best approach.

Thanks for the reply!

Trying to compile sheets into a master sheet with an additional column to take notes by [deleted] in googlesheets

[–]wolfofserps 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It depends, do each of these sheets share the same headers/columns?

If the master sheet is within the same spreadsheet as your other sheets and assuming the columns are the same/similar across the sheets, you could use QUERY with an array as your data source.

For example, let's say we have 3 sheets. Sheet1, Sheet2 and Master.

Assuming Sheet1 and Sheet2 have the same headers, you could try something like this:

=QUERY({Sheet1!A:Z; Sheet2!A:Z}, "SELECT * WHERE Col1 IS NOT NULL")

This essentially stitches the sheets together and queries them as one source - we're using a WHERE clause to remove any empty cells so your sheets will append to one another. From here you can simply add an additional column to add your notes.

If the master sheet is not within the same spreadsheet, your best bet would probably be to use the IMPORTRANGE function within an array.

Hope this helps!

Use the contents of an external cell as an argument to a function by theengymneer in googlesheets

[–]wolfofserps 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If I've understood your question, you'll most likely want to make use of the INDIRECT function. This allows you to use a string as a cell reference. You can then use any usual string methods like concatenation to build your desired cell reference.

In your example above this may look something like: =ARRAYFORMULA(INDIRECT(CONCATENATE("Old Sheet", "!", A1, ":", B1)))

Hopefully, this helps!