2019 has been a great year for our team here at SEO Hacker. Our team grew further and has reached higher heights this year and there are no signs of slowing down. And thanks to you, our readers, the SEO Hacker blog continues to thrive.

This year brought a lot of great news and discoveries for the SEO industry which has led to great content. Now that the year is ending, it is a great time to take a look back at our best articles for the year and gear ourselves for what’s to come in 2020.

A Close Look Into the Google January 2019 Algorithm Update

2019 started off with a bang as SEOs welcomed a new year with lots of volatility in the search results. While this algorithm update was unconfirmed by Google, many SEOs experienced fluctuations in their rankings and traffic. Similar to the Medic update in 2018, e-commerce and health websites were the ones that were impacted the most.

You Might Be Affected by the Google Search Console AMP Crawl Bug

In February, our team noticed a huge influx of AMP crawl errors in Google Search Console and many more SEOs were experienced the same. In a statement that they released, Google confirmed that this error was on their end and it was caused by a bug.

The error didn’t last long and Google was able to release another statement that the bug was fixed and the AMP crawling should be back to normal. But this became big news as many SEOs experienced a huge drop in their mobile traffic. 

Google Launches March 2019 Broad Core Algorithm Update

In March, SEOs experienced a huge fluctuation in traffic and rankings. SEOs flocked to Twitter to ask the Google Search Liaison about the update and they confirmed it! Or that’s how it sounded…

How to Optimize Your Google Discover (And Why It’s Important)

Google Discover is a mobile platform where Google shows users relevant content based on their interactions online or the interests that they choose to follow directly. There was no way to know if you are getting traffic from Google Discover until it was added in the Google Search Results under Performances. Google Discover is another platform for webmasters to attract users by providing relevant and evergreen content.

SEO Audit 2019: A Comprehensive Guide

SEO audits is a part of an SEOs daily life. However, no matter how many times we do it day by day, we keep on missing some of the things we need to optimize. In this guide, I wanted to make SEO auditing easier for SEOs and even non-SEOs by providing a step-by-step checklist on how to do it.

Google Announces Broad Core Algorithm: June 2019 Update

SEOs would usually speculate that there is an algorithm update when there are irregularities on their website traffic or rankings. But on a rare occasion, Google announced that it released a broad core algorithm update last June 2019.

How to Recover From Google’s Broad Core Algorithm Updates

Every time broad core algorithm updates are released by Google, there is no specific word on what are the things they tweaked because broad core algorithm updates improve many ranking factors.

New Website SEO: A Comprehensive Guide

Starting a new website is less intimidating when you know how to lay the foundations of SEO and it is crucial that you start off well as it could take you to the path of either profit or loss. I highly recommend this guide to new SEOs and even non-SEOs.

How to Track Outbound Link Clicks with Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager could do lots of things for you aside from organizing your tags and one of those is to track the outbound links on your website that users click. It is a great way to study user-behavior, find out what links users to exit from your website, and the location of links they usually click. It is valuable information that allows you to better optimize your website and keep users engaged.

Everything You Need to Know About Nofollow, UGC, and Sponsored Links

In September, Google announced the addition of two new types of links: User-Generated Content and Sponsored links. This was one of the biggest news of 2019. While the announcement was big, the effect is yet to be felt. It will take time for the whole internet to adapt to these new link attributes and this guide should give you a headstart.

How BERT Affects SEO and How you Can Optimize for It

BERT is another huge announcement made by Google this 2019. This roll-out helps Google better understand the relationship of each word in a user’s query. This rollout impacted 10% of all the queries in Google when it was released and it is not yet known if Google plans on releasing this to all of the queries. It is quite difficult to understand the technology behind BERT but what you have to understand as an SEO is that this is a step by Google to do a better job in serving relevant search results to users. 

SEO Tips: Upgrade your Content Strategy with NLP

NLP or Natural Language Processing is the process used by Google’s systems to understand human language. With Google launching BERT as a technique to further improve NLP, it would be important that you understand what it is and apply it to your content strategy.

The Ultimate HARO Guide for Brands and SEO

HARO is a platform that allows SEOs, webmasters, and business owners the opportunity to get their brand and website mentioned on high-quality websites. HARO is one of the best ways to get high-quality links in today’s SEO and the best way to get online PR.

Key Takeaway

Looking back, 2019 was a great year and I’m really proud that SEO Hacker continues to be a go-to blog for people looking for SEO news and tips. I plan on continuing relevant, informative, and fresh content for the readers and I hope to help more webmasters achieve better visibility online.

The post SEO Hacker Roundup: Best SEO Articles 2019 appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

On behalf of the team here at SEO Hacker, we wish all of you a Happy New Year! With 2017 being an important year for the company’s growth, with a lot of development focused on our team and services, we have definitely made it count. These experiences have simply made us a better company with a stronger team that is ready to take on all the challenges.

Now that 2018 is here, we expect to continue this upward trend in development, and make SEO Hacker even bigger than before. Here are some of the things that we are looking forward to this 2018.

SEO Summit 2018

With the success of the past SEO Summits, the 2018 edition once again aims to top them all by being bigger and better. The SEO Summit always aims to bring some of the most prominent figures in the SEO industry and discuss some of the most important topics about the growing industry. Expect the next SEO Summit to be another milestone event for the company.

Focus on AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages have set the standard for fast-loading high performance webpages, and has been used by an increasing number of websites during the past year. We have written a few articles about AMP during 2017, and how it has helped improve the user experience and performance of different kinds of websites. With more users also accessing the internet through mobile, AMP will definitely have a big part to play in 2018.

Optimize Everything

For us at SEO Hacker, we not only help optimize different webpages in order for them to reach the top of Google’s search rankings, but we also optimize the performance of our team to make sure we always perform at our best. One of our constant goals is to continue to optimize every single part of our company, from the tools that we use, down to the practices that each team does. Optimization is something that we integrate with whatever we do, and we will continue to do so this 2018.

New SEO Tools and Techniques

As members of SEO Hacker, it is our job to use the best and ethical practices that would help our clients. With that in mind, we make sure that we use the best SEO tools and techniques available in order to deliver the best service to our clients. This 2018, we are looking forward and very excited to trying out the latest SEO tools. If 2017 provided us with some excellent tools that became a part of our toolbox, things are surely looking up for 2018.

A Growing Team

2017 saw our team grow in number and skill, with some of the most skilled and dedicated people working in our company wholeheartedly. As our company and client list continues to grow this 2018, our goal is to find more like-minded people that can be a member of our SEO Hacker Family.

Key Takeaway

With 2017 being a year to remember here at our company, 2018 looks primed to open up more opportunities and possibilities that will take us to the next level. Whatever challenge it might be, we are sure that we would be prepared and ready for 2018. Once again, SEO Hacker wishes you a Happy New Year!

The post Happy New Year SEO Hackers! appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Anticipation was in the air as a steady flood of attendees entered the room at which the Summit was to be held. As the people arrived, it was only a matter of time before the 4th installation of the country’s annual no-nonsense SEO event. When it was time to start, SEO Hacker’s very own Digital Marketing Consultant, Charm Villanueva, gave the opening remarks to officially kick-off the SEO Summit 2017.

The event was held at The Bellevue Hotel Manila last July 1, 2017. A variety of people from different companies came with one purpose in mind – to expand their horizons in SEO, and hopefully, apply it in their own endeavors to make their business grow to new heights.

SEO Summit 2017

As the anticipation filled the room, SEO Summit was officially starting, and I couldn’t be more excited. Here are a few photos from the event:

We were just waiting for the room to be filled up with attendees until we start the event. As I have said, to officially start the event, the opening remarks were given. The first speaker was about to take the stage.

Carlo Ople, PLDT’s current VP for Digital Marketing Strategy, was SEO Summit 2017’s first speaker. His presentation entitled “A No-Nonsense Approach to Digital Marketing” gave the audience a view on the Carlo’s decorated career in Digital Marketing, and how people can effectively understand Digital Marketing.

He used the numbers from different statistics to tell the audience how they could integrate the numbers into their strategies to make it a more efficient, effective, and successful one.

The second speaker was Growth Rocket’s current director for SEO, Marc Samson. His presentation – which was aptly titled, if I do say so myself – was “Don’t Panic, the Increase is Organic”. It was all about how the increase in a website’s traffic is, more often than not, organic.

Then, he went to talk about the technical aspect of SEO. From web development to running the website, Marc was the one that opened the audience’s eyes to what the importance of proper and effective web developing could mean to a person’s SEO campaign.

The third speaker is the current managing director of DEJAN Marketing, Dan Petrovic. He was a speaker at last year’s SEO Summit, and has come back to talk about how people could create content that optimized for readability and “scanability”.

Later in his presentation, he went into detail on how content creators should make their content, and what the content should entail. From offering value, building trust, and engaging the readers, all of this was covered by Dan’s presentation.

The last, but not the least, is yours truly. My presentation was all about “Doing SEO Right This 2017”. It was basically about what SEO has become, and how you, as a practitioner, could properly and effectively use SEO to improve your online presence.

I talked about how SEO has come a long way ever since its inception, and what it could be in the following years. Of course, I talked about a variety of things, from proper content generation to  to user experience and of course, the totality of SEO. But the message remained the same – SEO is constantly evolving, and we need to adapt every single time.

Here’s me, Dan, and Marc at the question and answer portion. The questions were submitted to sli.do using #SEOSummit2017, and the questions were constantly coming in, so we did our best to answer every one of them. The topics of the questions ranged from link building – “Is it possible to rank high without link building?”, effective title creation – “Hi Dan. Can you give me more tips on creating an attractive title?”, to the most random question: “who among you is the most handsome? please be honest”

The Summit officially ended during the awarding ceremony. Here’s me, Dan, and Marc posing in front of the camera for an amazingly successful summit.

Key Takeaway

Overall, this is the best SEO Summit yet. From the interactivity between us, the speakers and the audience to the happy faces that came out of the venue doors when the Summit ended. This year’s Summit attracted a lot of attendees, and I can’t be any happier.

My team (SEO Hacker) and I continue to innovate and strive for a much better SEO Summit. That is why the quality of the Summit – ever since its start back in 2014 – has continuously improved. It was started to disseminate the importance of SEO in the industry, and it has worked its wonders. So, I am proud to say that SEO Summit 2018 will be BIGGER, BADDER, and BETTER. See you all there!

The post SEO Summit 2017: A Recap appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

It is undeniable that search engine optimization, or widely known as SEO is a vital ingredient in today’s business world since it can ultimately unlock your company’s latent potential with regards to visibility, reach, and influence.

However, the complexity of SEO is constantly increasing due to the continuous updates made by the search engine giant named Google. In regards to this matter, several SEO companies in the Philippines conduct seminars and events that make an effort to help co-practitioners learn, understand, and have an ample knowledge on how they can adapt to the recent changes that were made. One such event is the annual gathering of SEO experts and enthusiasts. That event is Summit 2017.

I know, I know. You’re curious as to just what the “SEXY” part is all about. Well please bear with me. We’ll get to that in a second. 

The SEO Summit’s main goal is to thoroughly discuss everything a person needs to know about SEO – from basic SEO, strategies, to how you will appropriately apply these to your business and websites effectively. These are only a small part of the things you can expect from the event. However, before we get into the SEO Summit 2017, you should go through a simple crash course of SEO.

SEO Summit 2017: What to Expect

In today’s digital age, it is a well-known fact that SEO is needed in order for your business and company to grow, thrive, and stand out in the market. It does not matter whether you are a venturing freelancer, a budding entrepreneur, a start-up business owner, or a multinational company executive – SEO will ultimately and definitely help you to be the best in the industry.

For this reason, SEO Hacker is hosting an SEO event that will truly help every business enthusiast, SEO experts, blogger, and webmasters in their journey to success and become the best. It brings in the greatest minds of the SEO industry, and they share about everything that people need in order to improve their overall business venture. From basic and technical SEO to tips and tricks that every practitioner should know, SEO Summit 2017 is the event that you must attend if you aspire to be the best.

The SEO Summit started last 2014, and ever since then, it has provided an extensive amount of knowledge about SEO to enthusiasts and experts all over the Philippines – and even to international SEO practitioners. This renowned event aims to offer and share more information about how to use SEO to their websites and businesses – from Search Engine Optimization, Link Building, Conversion Rate Optimization, to Marketing Strategies.

Even if you do not have any knowledge about SEO, you can still attend this event. The best thing about SEO Summit is that it brings together people that share a common interest – SEO. As long as you have the passion for learning SEO, you are welcome to attend the event. SEO Summit is beneficial for all the attendees, aside from the knowledge that you will be learning, you will have an opportunity to meet the different people involved with SEO; you will also have the opportunity to ask questions and interact with the esteemed speakers.

Here’s your favorite part and I know that you’ve been looking for this ever since you clicked on my post. I have good news for you! There will be four sexy(?) speakers in the event, and they are all SEO/Digital Marketing experts in their own right.

Here they are, your 4 Sexy Reasons TO BE IN the SEO Summit 2017!

Sean Si
CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker, Sigil, and Workplays
Co-founder of Qeryz

Sean is famously known for being a public speaker, internet marketing expert, and copy-blogging coach. He usually spends his time inspiring young and old entrepreneurs through his talks and seminars. He is a well-known expert in the digital marketing field, which is why he attracts so much attention from bloggers, company owners, businesses, internet marketers, and other people that want to enter the booming internet market of the world.

Dan Petrovic
Director of Dejan Marketing
Adjunct Professor in Griffith University
Australian Online Publicist

Dan is the best-known name in Australia’s search engine optimization scene. Aside from being connected to the academic landscape, Dan is also an accomplished web author, innovator, and a go-to industry event speaker.

Marc Samson
Director of SEO for Growth-Rocket.com
Co-founder of Devwerkz
President of SEO Organization Philippines

Marc is a man that has spent numerous years of his life in the SEO scene. From link building, content marketing, and technical SEO, Marc has become one of the go-to SEO experts in the country – and even abroad. His company, Devwerkz, is a company that specializes in web & software design and development. The clients that he handles ranges from large companies to enterprise level businesses.

Carlo Ople
Digital Evangelist and Transformation Agent
PLDT and Unbox.ph

Carlo is a man that has spent most his life in the digital aspect of our country. His 14 years of experience in the digital marketing field, is nothing to joke about because he has become one of the most respected digital marketers in the country. Among his many web properties, Unbox.ph has become one of the go-to websites when people need new or updates regarding technology and gadgets.

Key Takeaway

Your Summit 2017 speakers  may not be Gal Gadot herself but they’re the next best thing – especially if you’re into SEO!

Given all these facts, attending the annual SEO Summit this year will definitely improve your dependability, creativity, profit, and resourcefulness that will ultimately lead to your business’ success.

All of the speakers for this event has amassed an immeasurable amount of knowledge, which you can hear, see, and experience for yourself when you attend the Summit. It is undeniable that the SEO Summit 2017 is the most prominent SEO event of the year. Get ready to learn from the best, and you will eventually become one of the foremost SEO experts in our country

SEO Summit 2017 is the culmination of our experiences and our passion from our previous events and I can guarantee that this is the best one yet.

What are you waiting for? Purchase your tickets TODAY and get ready to be an SEO expert that can grow businesses and websites. 

BY THE WAY, if you were wondering how to register, well wonder no more. Here’s how you can buy your ticket in 3 convenient steps.

The post 4 Sexy Reasons Why You Need to Be in the SEO Summit 2017 appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Happy New Year, SEO Hackers! It’s our sixth year and we are still going strong! As an SEO Company here in the Philippines, we are now larger than ever and it is because of YOU that we are where we are right now. I believe that this is the perfect opportunity for us to review what we did last year so I will be listing down some of SEO Hacker’s best and most read posts from the past year. 

Do bear in mind that this list is not particularly arranged or ranked in any way and we have many more articles that deserve to be in the list. All of the articles that we published this year, whether they are guest posts or guides all have depth and value but I’ll be focusing on 10 articles that I think deserve to be re-read as we move forward to 2017. Let’s get started.

1 Ultimate Guide to Link Building Factors

It’s all in the link – that’s what I always say. Just enough quantity with the right quality. The perfect mix.

We all know that a hundred good links is better than 10,000 bad ones – but how exactly can you tell? Where’s the dividing line between ‘really great’ and ‘downright shady’?

2 How we Structured our Internal SEO Team Meetings for Extreme Efficiency

SEO Hacker is scaling up. We constantly are and I’ve learned a lot in the past 2 years about what it really means to be CEO. So for this series, I’ll be discussing more about how to run your SEO team better. Whether you’re an SEO agency owner, a business owner who hired an SEO company to do the work, or a startup SEO guy who may even be outsourcing a lot of the work to other people – this is for you.

3 How to do CRO without Damaging SEO

The two most important things to a website that wants to make money: Conversion Rate Optimization and SEO. In a perfect world, these two should be the powerhouse – the quarterback – to online success.

The thing is, it’s not a perfect world. And the two may have some intersecting problems along the way that may hinder your success instead.

4 Why we Gave our Conversion Rate Optimization Services Away and how it Landed us $32,000 in Sales

$1,500 per month. That’s the minimum of how much our Conversion Rate Optimization services costs. And yes clients from all over the globe do get them. Recently, however, we are giving parts of it away for free and it has already landed us over $32,000 in sales – just for 1 client.

5 Lessons Learned from Losing All our Rankings after a Bad Site Revamp

“We need a new look. We need to make our site mobile responsive…”

Totally agree with my client on that end. So I advised them on just one thing.

“Make sure you make the URLs the same for our important pages and landing pages.”

That’s all I asked.

Then January came. The site was launched – and while there was huge celebration happening on the other side of the world (because this was an global company), my brain was having a heart attack.

The URLs were all changed.

6 SEO Don’ts – Things that will make Google Hate you

Google is known for changing its search algorithms regularly. When it does, some SEO techniques that were once considered the best are now called spammy and intentionally misleading. This forces web developers and SEO marketers to quickly change tactics, often revamping an entire SEO plan within a few days to keep a website from falling off of Google’s search results.

7 Google Search Console – The Ultimate Guide to Google’s Tool for SEO Experts

Webmasters, SEO experts, and digital marketers are always looking for new and powerful SEO tools to make their jobs easier and help their clients reach more potential customers. There are a lot of tools out there, but some of them are not as good as others, and some require webmasters to pay a hefty fee to access.

8 How we Analyzed and Improved our Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency (TF*IDF) in 10 Minutes

Last week, we discussed the importance of TF*IDF to SEO and we learned a few things, which is good. The thing about SEO is that a lot of it is trial and error so we’re going to be taking learning about TF*IDF which means Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency a step further by doing a case study on it using actual data from the SEO Hacker website.

9 How Google Penguin 4.0 Affects SEO

The cat, or rather, the penguin is out of the bag. Penguin 4.0, which may well be the last Penguin by-version update by Google is rolling out and we’re already seeing the fluctuations in the search engine results pages. Here’s how Penguin 4.0 affects SEO long-term.

10 How to Step Up Your Customer Service Game Like a Pro

In SEO, it is important to build a rapport with your readers because generally, people are more likely to enjoy perusing content shared by people or websites that they like.  This is the reason why many SEO Specialists as well as Internet Marketers spend so much time perfecting their craft so that people’s average dwell time would get better over time as well as formulating general strategies in order to retain their converted leads.

And that’s it! I really hope that you enjoyed reading (or re-reading) some of our best articles! I look forward to sharing more articles with you next year but for now, enjoy your holidays! Happy New Year, SEO Hackers!

The post SEO Hacker’s Top 10 of 2016 appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

If you’re a heavy, everyday user of Gmail (like I am), you know for a fact that there are some things lacking when it comes to following up on emails with clients or with people in your team, or turning emails into tasks. Because let’s face it: Emails are as good as tasks and follow-ups are a pain. Hiver fixed that for me and my team. Here’s how.

I got an email from Niraj of Hiver. Frankly, I didn’t give it time when I received Niraj’s first email. I had too much on my plate. Shame on me. In fact, this honest review of Hiver is very late from when Niraj first reached out. Here’s his email:

When I finally found time to go through each one of my emails in my inbox, I decided to give Hiver a try. After all – why not?

After a month of using Hiver, I can honestly say that it is an extremely helpful tool that I use EVERY DAY with my team. Obviously because I use Gmail everyday. It’s the epicenter of all the work I do and opportunities I get.

First, Hiver makes it extremely easy to sign up:

When you click on that blue-green button that says ‘Install Hiver for Gmail’,you will be prompted to install the Hiver extension. Here’s how it looks like for Chrome. Obviously you have to click on ‘Add extension’ if you want to start using Hiver.

Here’s how it looks like for Firefox.

After the installation is complete, make sure that you’re logged into Gmail in the same browser. If you are, Hiver will automatically redirect you to Gmail in 5 seconds.

When you are redirected, you will immediately notice two things:

1. The Hiver logo, notifications icon and settings icon will be on the upper-right section of your Gmail interface
2. There are new ‘labels’ created by Hiver on the left menu section

Here are some of the features that I love about Hiver

Send Later

Hiver lets you schedule emails to send any time in the future. If you don’t like sending emails on weekends because it makes you look like a workaholic, well, now you could send it on a Monday morning without having to do it yourself.

Now reminding someone via email is a lot easier.

Email Tracking

If you’re the type who wants to know if your email has been viewed, you can now do so via email tracking. This, in my opinion, is a bit weird as I personally don’t want to stress out whether someone has read my email or not.

But that’s just me. Perhaps some people do like the lingering notion that their email was already given some attention.

Email Templates

I don’t like repeating myself. Especially on emails. Hiver’s email templates feature lets you ease off by making an entire email message into a reusable template.

Not only that, it enables you to share these templates – just in case if some people in your team would be sending out similar emails to yours. Easy does it.

Shared Labels

What I love most about Hiver though is the shared labels. This made my life so much easier. You could, create a label name, pre-set the color of the label, share it with users or groups, and assign a label to notify a user or group. The screenshot above is a live representation of the labels I personally use with my team.

Here’s how to create a Hiver Label. Go to your Hiver dashboard and select ‘Create New Shared Label’

Then you could check the advanced options if you want to select or deselect any of the advanced options available.

After that, you could assign the label to someone so that whenever a label is selected for a specific email or email thread, that person will be notified and it will be added to the person’s tasks.

Shared Mailbox

If you’re using Gmail for support or sales emails anyway, this is an extremely helpful feature for you. You could assign emails to individuals in your team and they would also be notified whenever you do so.

You could add notes about an email (for example, you did some level of troubleshooting or reaching out already), close an email (if you have been able to solve a pending task or issue), get notifications when someone else is already writing an email, and so on.

Try it out! Hiver is free for up to 3 users and their paid tiers are definitely worth it.

The post The Must-Have Gmail Optimization Tool – Hiver appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

My palms were sweaty as I felt the adrenaline build on my chest. Heart felt like it was roaring blood. SEO Summit is the annual event that I’m always nervous about. And you see that’s funny because it’s an event by SEO Hacker.

This year was our third year. And we decided to post all the Powerpoint decks right here at our blog.

I’ll try to put in a dash of what I personally learned per presentation too.

The Art to the Start of: Content Optimisation – Grant Merriel

The entire summit started with Grant Merriel’s presentation on content – the cornerstone of any good SEO campaign. There are some gems in his talk that deal with getting data from competitors, utilizing semantic phrases and so on.

We only have the Powerpoint here but the genius behind his presentation is how Grant delivered it and some of the examples he cited along the way.

Big Brand Link Building – Jason Acidre

Jason’s genius and creativity when it comes to linkbuilding never runs out. And that’s why he’s a world-renown expert when it comes to building links.

In his presentation, Jason builds on case studies that he’s done with some of his clients and shows us how to replicate that.

Creative SEO – Dan Petrovic

It’s no surprise that Dan had the most good reviews from the attendees. His talk about creative SEO was well… creative. In the most fantastic way.

He revealed case studies and experiments that he personally did to get links from the craziest places. He even told us about how he was able to become a Google scholar.

Competitive On Site Optimization – Bernard San Juan

One of the most no-holds-barred presentations was Bernard’s take on on site optimization. He bridged the gap between SEO then and SEO now.

The Powerpoint deck may not give his real-life presentation justice. Good thing we have it on video. However, it’s still being edited as I write this so it’s going to have to wait.

How to get Content Perfectly Optimized for Users and SEO – Wojtek Mazur

Wojtek’s presentation was a treat for people who are starting out with SEO. It’s very foundational in terms of approach so a lot of beginners were able to appreciate his talk at the summit.

How to Maximize Conversions through SEO & CRO – Sean Si

My presentation was about the intersection of SEO and CRO. Both don’t play too well if you don’t know them on a deep level. People who are not advanced in SEO might damage CRO and usability when trying both at the same time and vice versa.

I basically talked about how to use SEO and CRO in a way that they play as a team – maximizing your conversions in your site by a sweet margin.

SEO Summit 2016

As the adrenaline died down and the people gathered for photos, I realized SEO Summit 2016 was over too soon. It was a good 9 hours of good food, active networking and awesome case studies and lessons on SEO.

Based from the audience’s feedback, this was the best SEO Summit yet. I’ll try to augment this post when we have compiled the data soon.

Hope you enjoy the presentation decks as much as I did.

The post SEO Summit 2016 Presentations – Summary of Learning appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

The reason I came up with GRIBEE is that I believe that the SEO Hacker team needs a guiding light to propel the company to success.

And in order to achieve true success, the teams and individuals working in the company has to have instilled values. Principles that the team lives and breathes as we work together in pushing the company forward.

Just to be clear, GRIBEE is not, in any way final. I believe that values has to be shaped from a company’s past, present and future. And as with all futures, there are things that are unforeseen and uncertain.

So here goes.

Grit

Every member of the team, should embody determination, resilience and tenacity. Use mistakes and problems as opportunities to get better –  not reasons to quit.

Respect for Work

This embodies punctuality, a drive that requires no supervision, and the courage to confront indiscipline in yourself and in your teammates – all in one. When you respect your work, you will honor it and do your best to perform excellently.

Integrity

Know that God is watching everything you do at work. “Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.” – Ephesians 6:7 (NLT)

This is counter-intuitive with all the social media stuff about work and passion and leaving your job if you don’t feel good doing it.

However, there is deep wisdom in that verse. When you work for the Lord, you do your best, you keep your character in check and you DO THE RIGHT THING.

Always.

Beyond Technology

We know technology is great BUT then there’s the fact that everyone has access to it. Don’t think technology gives you an edge. It doesn’t.

Hard work does.

So go beyond the temptation to be lazy because of technology and work your ass off to be valuable.

Technology is common. Hard work is rare.

Empathy

Always put yourself in the client’s shoes. Is the article you are about to publish going to be appreciated by the client? Is the design you’ve just let out going to be admired?

Put yourself in your teammate’s shoes – do they appreciate you taking a leave with the heavy workload at hand?

Or put yourself in the management’s shoes – Are you going to appreciate it when the management is not confronted with issues in the team and we talk about it amongst ourselves?

Without empathy, our team will be cold – all brains, no heart.

Experimentation

Innovation may be too a daunting term. You don’t have to ‘create something new’. Learning by experimentation is enough.

Using whatever theoretical lessons you learned and applying it hands on – whether you succeed or not, whether you break your website or not, we appreciate that. And above all, you get to keep what you learned.

For a lifetime.

That’s it so far. Trying to connect the dots of the past, these are the core values that would really be effective for us to work together and to work well.

The post The SEO Hacker Creed: GRIBEE appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

SEO Hacker is scaling up. We constantly are and I’ve learned a lot in the past 2 years about what it really means to be CEO. So for this series, I’ll be discussing more about how to run your SEO team better. Whether you’re an SEO agency owner, a business owner who hired an SEO company to do the work, or a startup SEO guy who may even be outsourcing a lot of the work to other people – this is for you.

We all Hate Meetings

That’s because meetings eat up a lot of our time. We have things to do, deadlines to meet, coffee to brew and a dog to pet (yep our office has a dog running around). And meetings are a bummer. It takes us out of the stuff we need done.

And because it takes us out of our real work, it stresses us out when we’re suddenly chasing time to finish our deadlines.

Meetings suck. We hate them.

Meetings are Messy

That’s because there’s no structure to it. A person in the content department speaks up about how the ideation process has taken too much time. Someone in the design department talks about how the outline for the Powerpoint deck for the Slideshare campaign is stupid. And finally a linkbuilder speaks up because he insists that NinjaOutreach should win the award for the best linkbuilding tool in the world.

That’s one crazy, tangled up meeting.

The point is, meetings are messy because people are messy. If we want the meeting done quickly and done right, it has to have structure and a time limit.

Rockstars Eat up the Attention

No one likes a rockstar in a team meeting. But meetings can’t help but have them, can it? And if the rockstar is the CEO then the meeting will have a lot less value. Meetings should be about the team, about the clients and about the company – never about the CEO.

Tip: One way I’m able to control my tendency to hog a meeting is to write out everything in my motivational speaking blog.

No one likes a person hogging all the time and attention.

Okay we get it. Meetings are bad. And I made it sound really bad. But the truth is, a little tweak here and there and meetings can make chutzpah happen. Want the secret sauce?

Here’s the Meeting Structure we use at SEO Hacker:

Ground Rules

1. When the meeting starts, everyone should be present and listening. People who are online and who are present but are doing something else in their computers are considered disrespectful. You’ll know who they are because they respond late.
2. Respect the time limit. When time is up, time is up. If you weren’t able to say what you want, practice to get better at it next time.
3. If you have questions, ask it later. We have the entire day in the office and you can ask the person from whom you need the answer to anyway.
4. Don’t be late. If you’re late, we all know. Regardless, we will start on time with or without you. Time is all we have in this world and we can’t waste each others’ time.

How this Meeting Structure Helps:

1) Boosts Efficiency

You can’t go wrong when you have all the smart people in your team (that’s everyone) on the same page. Miscommunication, misunderstanding of each others’ responsibilities and team apathy is minimized. That’s a very beautiful thing. And if you’re scaling-up your company like we are, communication, understanding and team empathy are very powerful drivers of growth.

2) Keeps Everyone on the Same Page

The next time a linkbuilder in our team is wondering where she should focus her efforts on, she already knows. OOB clients come first – especially the ones whose contracts are on the latter part of the timeline.

3) Helps Everyone to Understand what Each Other is Doing

SEO is a multi-disciplinary practice (writing, linkbuilding, design, social media marketing, etc.). Often times someone in one team have no idea what the other person in another team is doing. The meeting helps bridge that gap by creating awareness of each others’ responsibilities – mostly in the Rankings, Client AdHoc and Breakout part of the meeting.

4) Improves Task Prioritization

Clients who are out of bounds in terms of rankings should be prioritized and given more attention especially if the days left in the contract are fewer. Knowing the rankings each week keeps priorities in the right order.

5) Promotes Teamplay

I find that people love to help. Teammates are more than willing to lend a hand especially in AdHoc tasks. Hey, it’s fun to help someone out.

Why we Don’t have Standups

With all the clamor about Standups, maybe you’re wondering why it wasn’t listed as a part of our meeting routine. That’s because we have them everyday on another Slack channel. And let’s face it – SEO work is mostly routinary grind so we’re mostly doing the same things except for client adhocs.

Your Turn

So now that you know how we save a huge amount of time with structured meetings, it’s your turn to apply it in your team. See if it works and let me know how it went in the comments section below.

The post How we Structured our Internal SEO Team Meetings for Extreme Efficiency appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.