Internet Marketing

I see landing page errors all the time, but you usually don’t see it scaled. You might see it on a brand that spend $5,000/month, but not on a brand that spends that much a day.

I came across an excellent offer today from Hulu on Facebook today. You can get Hulu for $0.99 a month. As an ad buyer, I love a good offer, so I tapped to check it out to see what the catch was.

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This blog is mainly dedicated to more advanced techniques, however here is an introductory rundown for those new to the space.

So you’re a small business, and you have a website, but you want to rank higher on Google. This process is called search engine optimization, or SEO. Since 2009, I’ve been studying the hundreds of factors that affect the rankings. I’m now going to summarize a few points that I have for small businesses who are just starting to get interested in SEO.

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In the vast labyrinth of SEO strategies, slug optimization often slips through the cracks, left unnoticed and unattended. Yet, much like the humble yet industrious garden slug, a well-optimized URL slug can serve as a crucial factor in boosting your website’s search engine rankings. Let’s unravel the mystery of slug SEO and explore how to optimize it effectively for maximum organic reach.

What is a Slug?

In the context of a URL, a slug is the part that comes after the domain name, separated by slashes, often representing the specific page or post. For example, in the URL https://example.com/blog/slug-seo, ‘slug-seo’ is the slug.

The Importance of Slug SEO

User Experience

A well-crafted slug provides a clear, easy-to-read URL that helps users understand the content they can expect from the page. This readability is a key component in enhancing user experience and enticing clicks.

Search Engine Rankings

Search engines like Google also pay attention to URL slugs when indexing pages. A well-optimized slug can help search engine bots to accurately index your content, thereby improving your SEO ranking.

Tips for Effective Slug SEO

Keep it Short and Simple

The ideal slug should be easy to read and remember. Try to limit it to 3-5 words that encapsulate the essence of your page content.

Use Hyphens to Separate Words

Using hyphens instead of underscores or spaces is beneficial for SEO because search engines read hyphens as space, making it easier for them to understand the slug.

Include Keywords

Incorporate relevant keywords into your slug without keyword stuffing. This will help improve its SEO value.

Avoid Stop Words

Words like “and,” “or,” “but,” and “the” don’t add any SEO value and can clutter your slug. It’s best to leave them out.

Be Descriptive

Your slug should give both users and search engines a good idea of what the page content is about. Avoid using generic terms like “page1” or “article.”

Tools for Slug Optimization

There are several tools available online that can help you create and optimize URL slugs. Popular options include Yoast SEO and Webpilot’s Slug Optimizer, which offer suggestions and even automate slug creation based on your page content.

Conclusion

While it might not be the flashiest part of your SEO strategy, slug optimization is an essential cog in the wheel of a well-optimized website. By adhering to best practices and using tools to aid you, optimizing your slugs can offer an easy yet effective boost to your website’s search engine rankings.

By giving slugs the attention they deserve, you ensure that they serve as strong supporting characters in the story of your website’s SEO journey. And remember, just like a garden can’t thrive without the little creatures that maintain it, neither can your SEO strategy without optimized slugs.

In the ever-evolving landscape of the internet, securing the perfect domain name for your business or personal project is crucial. However, not all domain registrars are created equal. A recent incident on a popular online forum has brought to light some concerning practices that could affect anyone in the market for a new domain.

An individual recently shared their experience with GoDaddy, a well-known domain registrar. They had found a great domain name, completed the purchase, and even received a confirmation email. However, the domain never appeared in their account. Later, they received an email stating that the domain was not available and had been listed as a “premium domain” for a higher price. Customer support was less than helpful, claiming that “someone else” had purchased the domain just a split second before.

As someone who has been in the internet marketing industry for years, I can tell you that this is not an isolated incident. While GoDaddy is a big name in the domain registration world, they are often criticized for their business practices. For instance, their renewal costs are significantly higher than other registrars.

“Someone else bought it a split second before I did, not GoDaddy but ‘someone,’ and of course they could not tell me who it is due to ‘privacy,’” said the individual. This kind of ambiguity leaves customers in the dark and creates a sense of mistrust.

What You Should Do

1. Research Before You Buy: Always do your due diligence before purchasing a domain. Look for reviews and compare prices.
2. Check Availability: Use multiple platforms to check the availability of a domain. Don’t rely solely on one registrar.
3. Secure Payment: Make sure that the payment process is secure and that you receive a confirmation for your purchase.
4. Customer Support: Ensure that the registrar has a reliable customer support system in case issues arise.

Securing a domain name is a significant step in establishing your online presence. However, it’s crucial to be cautious about where you make that purchase. While GoDaddy might be a household name, their practices have raised several red flags. Always remember, a little research can go a long way in saving you both time and money.

Would you risk your business or project with a registrar that has a history of such incidents? It’s a question worth pondering.

Has your company been hit with negative reviews after a viral social media post? I’ve been in ORM (online reputation management) since 2009 and will explain the next steps throughout this post.

Let’s first look at some examples of companies that easily recovered from negative Google reviews.

Example 1

Company: Oh Sweet Day! Bake Shop in East Vancouver

Date review bombed: June 29, 2023

Corrected rating: 4.7 stars

Example 2

Company: Fishing Sushi on Concession St in Hamilton

Date review bombed: August 23, 2023

Corrected rating: 4.7 stars

Example 3

Company: Pete Davidson’s NYC Pebble Bar

Date review bombed: March 16, 2022

Current rating: 4.4

How do I know what reviews qualify to be removed?

The first thing to consider is, are these people real customers? Reviews from non-customers are most likely to be removed, or ghosted meaning the reviewer thinks they are live. The review looks live when logged into a browser with a similar Google account, cookie session or IP address as the originator. However, to new customers, that review is hidden. Ghosting is something most major platforms (Twitter, Reddit, Craigslist, Facebook, etc.) use when suspicious activity is detected.

How does Google know which reviews should be deleted?

This is an easy one. If you live in Utah, and you review a business in Chicago, and Google knows you haven’t been to Chicago in a while then it’s obvious. However, if you’re local, it can be tricky. You need the signal of the review bomb from suspicious accounts to really get the attention of Google.

How does Google address review bombing incidents?

It’s important to mention that a significant number of review bombing attempts are effectively prevented from becoming public due to Google’s advanced AI-based moderation systems. These systems are capable of detecting the distinctive patterns of review bombing and can proactively remove such reviews before they are published.

Furthermore, alongside Google’s machine learning tools, there is a dedicated team of human moderators who assess the reviews flagged by users. This ensures that any content overlooked by the AI can still be appropriately handled.

Google has the capability to eliminate reviews stemming from review bombing campaigns and can also take action against accounts involved in such activities, including suspending their access.

Remember, Google is known for deleting other types of reviews as well, for example on their app store (example 1, 2).

How long does it take to get reviews taken down?

Google doesn’t take immediate action. If reviewers think their voices aren’t being heard, they’ll look to do more damage from their armchair so Google will leave the reviews up for a few weeks until the news dies off and the next viral TikTok directs their attention elsewhere. That’s when Google usually automatically removes reviews.

I was recently involved in the migration of a DTC brand from ReCharge to Swell. As many of you know, ReCharge is a billion-dollar payments platform built around subscription businesses. This is the second time I’ve used ReCharge in a DTC startup. Anyone who has worked with ReCharge knows how unaccommodating their support is. Although much of our core business was stable, our business was really limited in terms of functionality and freedom to manage subscriptions.

ReCharge was used for our checkout experience whereas the core WWW was based on Shopify. After talking with some of our affiliates who run large campaigns, it seems to be of general consensus that Shopify is slow and not ideal for brands looking for that extra edge in terms of CVR. So we decided to move this brand from Shopify/ReCharge to Sanity/Swell.

Sanity is a CMS platform used by some large brands. I wouldn’t say the platform is perfect, but it’s not awful. There are bugs you expect when moving from an established eCommerce CMS to a newer CMS. They’re not totally unequipped however, as they did recently raised another $39 million.

After careful consideration, Swell was our choice for a payment gateway that allowed plenty of flexibility around managing subscriptions. It wasn’t until a few days into the migration that we realized it wasn’t as ideal as we thought. Swell has led to a number of issues, some of which I rather not publish to world on the internet as its embarrassing. Here are a few.

The Good

Before we get into the bad, let’s talk about the things I love about Swell.

Weekly calls

Every Monday our team syncs with Swell’s and we review our ongoing needs and blockers. This is not something you get from ReCharge.

Live chat support is always online

Whenever I need a quick answer, live chat is often available to chat immediately. They are really helpful with simple onboarding problems when our team was learning some of the basic operations within the dashboard. Shout out to Steven!

The Bad

Here are some of the struggles we run into with Swell. I’ll update these as their platform improves. So any of these listed below are current issues you likely also experience with Swell.

Lack of tracking capabilities

Performance marketing, specifically tracking, is of the utmost importance when it comes to growing a DTC brand enough to move it from seed to series A. Things like GTM, GA and the Facebook pixel are essential for any DTC brand. Essential cannot be emphasized enough. I don’t think there’s a single eCom brand that can operate without analytics. Swell presently does not implement checkout scripts correctly, causing marketing campaign attribution in Google Analytics to be incorrect.

Conversion API

If you run Facebook ads, you could run into serious complications. Unlike Shopify, where Conversion API is just a matter of updating your settings, Swell doesn’t offer an implementation for Conversion API. With iOS 14 adopted in full-force, you need Conversion API. The workaround is to use Zapier, but sadly they don’t pass essential information from the order which Facebook needs for matching events to users. These data fields include:

• The customer’s email (yes, the email address)
• Facebook browser id
• Facebook click id
• User agent
• IP address

Slow bug fixes

Most of our bug reports are normally well-received by the Swell team but they are not implemented quickly. The smallest of fixes, regardless of how badly they impact workflow take about 2 weeks at minimum to deploy. This is really hard to base a business around.

Reporting is incorrect

If your company cares about KPIs at all, they’ll be incorrect. This is due to an ongoing timezone issue. So for example, if you report weekly KPIs, the stats for purchases for the week December 1-7 may actually include purchases from November 30 or December 8. This means our KPIs every week are out 1-10%.

Overall Rating: 3/5

After bringing up a lot of these complications to the Swell team, we learned most customers don’t use their self-hosted checkout but rather custom build their own checkout. Little did we know.

This post will be updated to stay relevant and accurate to our current experience as a DTC brand using Swell.