A Mattress store airs a very offensive 9/11 commercial starring Jabba the Hutt.
Turns out making fun of 9/11 isn't the best way to sell products. Checkout the backlash they got on their review sites:
Apparently the owner had no knowledge of the video and that his daughter (daughter the hutt) was the one who posted it. Now this one video has absolutely ruined their business.
SEO Take Away: There is such a thing as bad publicity. A retail store is not the place to try out your edgy online content that offends a majority of people (duh). In a day and age where your stupidity can spread like herpes you should probably watch what you post. Shows like Family Guy and Tosh.0 can get away with making 9/11 comments because it's their job to invoke those kinds of feelings and emotions. Your job was to sell mattresses. You're killing me, Larry.
We ordered pizza at the office last week and the guy who delivered it said his brother was looking for a job doing SEO and Web Design. We had him come in for an interview last week and it was a bit strange. Maybe it was because the pizza wasn't very good and I was judging him harshly because of it.
He had a lot of grandiose ideas about the internet and business and seemed very excited about what he was talking about. He mentioned he paid $10,000 for a business course from Tai Lopez.
Tai Lopez? That name sounded really familiar to me and then I realized it was the guy who was talking about his Lambo in his garage in the non-stop Youtube preroll campaigns that were rammed so hard down my throat.
Tai Lopez had one of the largest Youtube advertising campaigns ever and he is annoying as hell. Just knowing that the guy I was interviewing for a job paid $10,000 for a bunch of rehashed business ideas packaged into 18 minute videos made me really uncomfortable.
I had to know what was in these videos so I got my hands on his 67 Steps series. The first couple videos taught me about how I shouldn't date my employees and how raising 10 million dollars is way better than raising 1 million dollars. He also told me to get an accountant and an office that is within 2 miles of my home, or find a place that will let me sleep in my office.
The fact is Tai Lopez is a genius. Whatever crap he's talking about doesn't matter. What matters is this guy can sell and he's made a lot of money preying on people's hopes and dreams which is totally fine in a douche sort of way.
So what does this have to do with SEO?
I've had a lot of experience with Youtube prerolls and advertising on Youtube. The average cost of how much you pay per view ranges between 10 cents to 50 cents on average. I don't know how much Tai Lopez invested in his campaign but it's got to be something ridiculous to get over 100,000,000 views. I know some of that was that it went viral but the trick is going to be trying to find that threshold you need to spend before you become viral regardless of how lame your product is. With the amount of force and capital, he was able to become very successful even with the crap he is trying to sell. Kind of interesting.
The lesson I can take from Tai is that if you can come up with a product that is incredibly ambiguous and generates enough curiosity, it doesn't matter how shitty your product is if you just can find enough investors to bankroll your massive advertising campaign.
Good press or bad press, you will go viral and possibly laugh all the way to the bank.
Here's a link to the original article about bounce rates: Kickofflabs
I started this article trying to figure out why the bounce rate was so high on many of my clients' websites. I wanted to create a checklist that I could use to make sure I did everything possible to optimize their websites.
The more I read the more I felt that each situation needed ot be tackled on their own. I am currently working on a site: www.ImplantCenters.com and my goal is to get him locally on the first page for the keyword dental implants.
The first part of reducing bounce rates is to lower your page load time. As I got more into this I realized there are so many factors that go into this that it has to be dealt with in chunks.
The first part is to figure out what's slow on your site. Here are a couple links to some sites that tests speed.
Alignment in Article - Keeps reader from being distracted by flow of article
Open Graph - Adds thumbnails to social images.
XML Image Sitemaps - SEO stuff
My Work List for Implant Centers
Go page by page and view the images. Optimize them if they are too large
Add width and height to all images in the html
Check the responsiveness of the images on mobile devices after adding precise width and height values
Make sure each image has an ALT and Title tag.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4/19/16 - 3:38pm - Completed Images
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I went through every image on the ImplantCenters.com site and optimized them for web and uploaded them. I added widths and heights for each image I could and title/alt tags. Their score was 65 and now it's 67 on GT Metrix. I'm not sure what else I can do because the rest requires messing with files. I'm going to have Dan check it when he has time.
Domain diversity has substantial impact on rankings.
How do you get your website on other people's website?
Key Takeaway: Writing comprehensive, in-depth content can help you rank higher in Google. Articles with longer content outranked ones with shorter content
The average word count for a Google first page result is 1,890 words
What is HTTPS?
What is Schema Markup?
Shorter URLs rank better
Website speed has huge impact on rankings vs. slow loading pages
"In my opinion, Google is an algorithm that wants to think like a human being. So, "marketing to Google" and "marketing to human beings" is increasingly becoming the same thing as Google becomes smarter and smarter. So, we need to build brands among human beings that deserve to rank highly." - Samuel Scott
Summary:
As Google gets smarter and smarter it learns how to filter out manipulated and purchased SEO tactics. The more human Google becomes the more we have to earn our rankings through legitimate practices.
