Happy Wednesday!
I’ve been spending an unhealthy amount of time on SEO and LinkedIn campaigns this quarter (mostly for work, but the funnel exercises are related to launching new campaigns and several small acquisitions we made lately.)
But before I move on to SEO and LinkedIn…
Are you interested in a separate newsletter on growing businesses from scratch and honing your management skills?
Here’s the thing: surveying this newsletter has outlined two categories so far:
- High-level B2B executives, CXOs of 7-8 figure businesses, angel investors, managers at companies like Google, Verizon, Nestle, Deloitte
- Startup founders, managers with side hustles, small agency owners, solopreneurs
Cross-checking my blog and Instagram stats, half of my top content is around acquisitions, revenue diversification, and investing, and the other half is leadership skills and growing businesses.
So I’m open to branch out into a separate newsletter for SMBs, agency owners, and solopreneurs if I get at least 50 people interested in this (otherwise it’s a wasted effort.)
If you want to join one, hit Reply and let me know – it’s that simple and I’ll invite you if we cross 50.
Back to SEO and LinkedIn:
I’ve been working with some of the sharpest folks I know on cracking both channels.
On the SEO front, we have a handful of agency clients leveraging our digital teams on SEO – and that’s working great.
However – we also lost some key ranks for DevriX and my own website. The classic “the shoemaker’s kids go barefoot.”
Considering we’ve been ranking for “wordpress agency” and “wordpress development agency” and a few others in top 5 for 8 years, that’s been an emotional hit for me personally. I’ve been an inbound marketing advocate (certified) since 2015ish, and a blogger since 2006. I don’t take this lightly.
So what we’ve discovered eventually is the following:
- The “helpful content update” by Google wasn’t as helpful after all. It’s obviously unrecoverable and going on for 6 months. If you’re hit, not great.
- Our programmatic SEO projects and even AI-infused tests perform much better than expensive content writers we employ on-site for our own sites. It’s virtually cheaper and just as effective to not post 4 times a week and just sell that time to our SEO clients that rank and grow.
- The EEAT update technically works but figuring out author authority is a wild card at best. We see lots of mixed signals here.
- There were several bugs in Google’s domain ranking over the past few months deranking non-dotcom domains on weekends, and we saw that in SERP for several sites.
- Last, but most importantly – Google falsely identified commercial and transactional keywords and started to provide listicles and “best of” and “top” articles from random sites (often low authority) instead of the leading vendors. Therefore we now see more Clutch and dozens of similar directories – or even random blogs – showing in top 10, sunsetting actual vendors (rotating at random).
- We get blog posts canibalizing the homepage for key terms with 5 backlinks while the core one has 100K keywords and title/meta around what we need
So, we do have several things in our backlog to try out – such as sprinkling more pillar content in the page just for the sake of SEO (thanks Google) and blasting separate pages per keyword – which we know works – despite being repetitive and completely obsolete.
On the LinkedIn front?
Reach is down for most of the population. I’ve mentioned that a few times, and it gets confirmed repeatedly by multiple sources. Local reach, reach drop, evergreen content, tons of other principles.
I have some highly determined folks in my network going above and beyond and crushing the algorithm by deploying their entire teams on daily testing and monitoring data minute by minute. We do that with 4 people here and see some interesting results as we go.
The biggest wild card here is engagement. You can get reach and engagement with clicky content, but this may tank your brand hard.
So finding the right engaging mechanisms to evoke likes and saves and reposts without being a cheesy viral influencer is key.
And building strategic relationships with other obsessed people in the network forms an informal “pod” of likeminded active individuals giving some boost.
Most importantly, analyze your former content and see what works. This topic relevance may carry you over. Seek your old content and repurpose some of it. Use the same hooks and structure and try it out. Bet on images – especially infographic-style – that works across the board.
A lot more we’re unpacking with my advisory agency clients at Growth Shuttle and our high-tier retainer partners at DevriX. Busy times – hit me up if you want to work together.
And a final reminder on the small business newsletter – get in touch if you want me to devote some time on growing a solopreneur practice to mid-seven figures (which I’ve done several times now.)
Yours,
Mario
My Take
The 8 Biggest Financial Mistakes Business Owners Make – Poor financial management is one of the main reasons small businesses fail; 82% of business failures are because of cash flow problems, according to a study by Jessie Hagen for U.S. Bank. Read 8 advices from YEC members on what to avoid.
2024 Mediums for Growth – LinkedIn’s reach is broken. Google’s “helpful” content update for SEO is unrecoverable in 90%+ of the cases 6 months in based on hundreds of reports from agencies and professional publishers doing that for over a decade. Luckily, there are other mediums that marketers and businesses can double down on while the big players refine their systems in the coming months.
Macro Environment & SEO – I took on Georgi T.’s podcast invitation yesterday and went through a thorough walkthrough of an abundance of topics such as how lost business trickle down to vendors/partners/contractors, SEO strategies, and the inception of DevriX and WordPress retainers.
Newsletter Recommendations
Stacked Marketer – One of my go-to newsletters and a business that we’ve worked with a while ago on the DevriX front. It is loved by marketers who get hands-on with campaigns, who need to stay up-to-date with frequently changing platforms., who need to get an edge, and who need to achieve outsized results with limited resources, aka performance-focused marketers.
Boldpush – А special newsletter for those interested in marketing intelligence and strategy to the most ambitious brands. Props to Julius Solaris for creating one of my top newsletter reads for GTM strategies and actionable content.
Business Strategy
JetBlue and Spirit end merger – JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines are ending their proposed $3.8 billion merger weeks after a federal judge blocked the deal, saying it would hurt consumers who depend on Spirit’s lower fares.
Microsoft’s Performance Max goes global – Performance Max campaigns are available globally on Microsoft Advertising starting March 5. Performance Max (also known as PMAX) is a new campaign type enabling you to work with AI for your campaign management, from building your assets to finding your audiences.
Claude 3 VS ChatGPT 4 – On Monday, Anthropic released Claude 3, a family of three AI language models similar to those that power ChatGPT. Anthropic claims the models set new industry benchmarks across a range of cognitive tasks, even approaching “near-human” capability in some cases.
EU fines Apple – Brussels on Monday fined Apple, opens new tab 1.84 billion euros ($2 billion) for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals via restrictions on its App Store, the iPhone maker’s first ever penalty for breaching EU rules.
Google March 2024 Core Update – The Update includes algorithm changes to improve search result quality and new spam policies. The update aims to reduce low-quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.
Global News
U.S. stock futures pointed lower, and even bitcoin showed signs of cooling off.
- S&P 500: $5,078(-1.02%)
At its Jan. 31 meeting, the Federal Reserve announced it would hold off changing rates, but could cut rates in the future. The Fed meets again on March 20, where they’ll announce an updated outlook. Rate fluctuations affect many areas of the economy, including the 10-year Treasury, a key benchmark for fixed-rate mortgages.
- 30-year mortgage rate: 7.25%(-0.09)
- 15-year mortgage rate: 6.70%(+0.06)
US stocks declined on Tuesday ahead of a slew of economic data and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell’s congressional testimony.
Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:
- Supreme Court rules in a unanimous decision that former President Trump cannot be kicked off the Colorado primary ballot over his actions leading up to the Capitol riot.
- President Biden says the U.S. will airdrop food aid into the Gaza Strip, noting that the humanitarian aid flowing into the region for Palestinians is not nearly enough.
- Congress votes to temporarily avoid a government shutdown, sending a bill to the president’s desk.
Investing Updates
- MindAhead – raising €1M to scale its digital therapy solutions that slow the progression of dementia.
- Atmos UAV – raising €800,000 to scale its land surveying drone solution.
- Reflaunt – raising €13,5M to scale up its sustainable fashion resale platform for high-end brands.
Note: Got a round going that you want to feature – your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.
Now let’s have a look at the latest top Flippa offers
Vehicle Infotainment and Accessories Ecommerce – This business sells various electronic accessories installed into vehicles.
- Monthly profit: $44.7K
- Monthly page views: 194K
- Business age: 4 years
Education & Software Content Site Portfolio – This is a 3-site portfolio that features content in the education and software review niches.
- Monthly Profit: $31.2K
- Monthly page views: 98K
- Age: 8 years
Kid’s Education Games FBA – This Amazon FBA business sells various educational card games for children.
- Monthly profit: $19.8K
- Average order value: $65
- Age: 5 years
Need my Help?
I’m involved with a number of initiatives – here’s what I can do to help you:
Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.
Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $600/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.
Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book.
Looking to start a US company? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.
Have you tried buying and selling digital property? Have a look at Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interests. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides you with the necessary tools to list your business and close the deal.
Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Nimity to manage it.
Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton. And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!