3 Things: Biz Networking/Becoming a Better Marketer/Minimalist SEO
Hi, my name is Andrew Scherer and this is my 5k post.
Sorry, this is nothing groundbreaking but hopefully for some it will be at least thought provoking.
1. Working At Home Is Nice, But There's An Opportunity Cost
Some of you know I recently moved to FL after living in Mexico for the last 6-7 years. I came to Florida originally to start investing in distressed real estate but I was also very eager to check out the whole coworking thing that has been mentioned here a few times over the years.
I have read previous threads of some of you speculating about it, some negative and some not, but it was something I had to check out for myself.
While every space is different, all I can say from what I've seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive.
If you're not already out there in your business/tech community then chances are you're missing out.
Just within the first month of being out here I have met more respectable hustlers than I can count. A boatload of coders, UX guys, designers, and interestingly enough very few IM guys. I already have some good deals in the making, we'll see what happens.
2. Knowing Too Much About Too Little
I have been focused solely on SEO for the last 7 years and I could probably describe my marketing knowledge as knowing a lot about very little.
But specialization is for ants, not people.
There are so many facets of marketing I still need to get into more, maybe you as well. We lost a lot of our paid marketing crowd on WF, I remember when the SEO guys were the minority here. Many other marketing skill-sets rarely get talked about here unfortunately. When was the last time you read a thread here (or any other major IM forum) about conversion optimization? Retargeting? We miss a lot of the good shit that made this forum great but don't let that stop you.
It seems like most folks are looking for the easiest way to get right to the money. And certainly this is human nature. Very few are looking for the most effective way if it takes some elbow grease or maybe a little learning. Don't be that person. Experiment and tinker with shit, it's how you got here in the first place. Become a better marketer, apply yourself, and the money follows.
Pluralsight so far has been good to me.
Udemy looks amazing, a lot of courses in bite sized pieces. Apparently this is the way to go. <--- read this.
3. On Minimalistic SEO
This has gone around before but I will restate it. "Less is more" is the new mantra I am playing by for SEO.
This past year I have looked at a lot of order forms and I can tell you with certainty that most SEOs are still overly aggressive with their campaigns to their own detriment. Overoptimization is the silent killer that will hold you back, guys out there are cutting themselves off at the knees with chainsaws and don't even realize it.
This is an interesting graph of a client I had last year who wanted me to work on his site for just a week. I built a couple QUALITY (I wish I could triple bold this) links for him, shuffled his content around (1 keyword 1 page), and after that he didn't touch it anymore (he is a working professional - no time? I don't know).
Now certainly 0 - 100ish visits a day isn't squat in the grand scheme of things but I don't remember any time in my last 7 years in this profession where a site has been able to build a whopping 4 links and achieve traffic increases month over month.
That's All Folks
I hope you liked it.
I'm going to start blogging again. It feels good bro, putting together posts like this again. I want to put together a marketing case studies site and I'm already working on content for it, if anyone has any ideas PM me.
