Local Search / Maps

Medical / corona related shakeups

Thin Content is losing (not unusual)

It takes a while to really analyze this… 3 days ago it just finished rolling out. 

Also shifts in general: 

Look at month over month data - and look what pages lost out

Identify how that might represent algorithmic shifts

Apply what you learn from the losers - improve upon it and spread the love

Post pandemic digital re-think

PHYSICAL ONLY = WEAKNESS I need my systems in place for getting leads without physical stuff

ECOM WINS - Obviously eCommerce boomed and retail suffered, I’d say 30-50% of those ppl stick w new options they found (because convenience)

IS IT HARDER NOW? Love this quote from Steve Toth of https://seonotebook.com/ “A lot of people think #SEO is getting harder because of how much Google has advanced. When really there are two main reasons: an increasingly cluttered SERP with lower CTRs and the fact that more and more people are producing amazing content (especially on established sites).

The moral: build links or you will have no chance 1-2 years from now.” 

1. The Brute - Home Advisor, Yelp, Houzz etc.
2. The Bloat - Big agency bullshit that’s focused on warm & fuzzies not results.
3. The Creep - Email Spam SEO Companies
4. The Bumbler – Your neighbors cousins brother who knows a little SEO, you probably 
5. The Hunter  - Linkedin Spammer, who looks like they might be legit. Spend 2k to find out, & regret it. 
6. The Spitter - “Your Google listing is broken” phone spammers

3 Surges in Home Improvement + How They Affect Lead Generation

1. SALES - People are seeing results from Video Sales Consultations + even saving time.
2. EVENTS / VIDEO  - Home tours, traditionally a huge source of leads for remodelers and home builders are being canceled. Video tours with social push (organic + paid) is huge. 
3. AFTER - Post-COVID pent up demand. Projects on Houzz… Say if / when you’re open for business. (2-3 posts a wk on IG, not a bad call for plumbing/hvac/electricians) Precautions. Bar on the top of the site

According to SparkToro – SEO’s might use SparkToro’s data to “SparkToro can help you find exactly those sources that reach the link-likely, amplification-primed groups you need to grow visibility, rankings, and traffic.”

Audience Intelligence tools 

• Where they spend time online
• Listen to 
• Watch 
• Talk about

The problem with surveys – hard to get data.

• Selection bias when you’re trying to follow

What does the tool claim to do?

• Follows billions of social accounts and makes it easy to distill data / interest from those profiles at scale. 
• Get insights on competitors website visitors. 
• Build a list of websites to get on, podcasts to get on etc… \

Based on these claims I wanted to use it and find what construction companies are watching and listening to most if I can. 

Have you ever gone through a Website relaunch disaster and saw rankings drop drastically? 

These are some really simple things but they are absolutely essential to making sure that you don’t totally ruin your websites rankings when doing a redesign. 

It’s crazy how many times I’ve seen someone’s traffic go for hundreds of people a day down to 30 or 50 because a website company launching a redesign didn’t make sure these things were in place. Don’t be that company or web designer – follow these 5 simple steps when re-launching your site. 

I guess our culture isn’t just pizza parties and beanbag chairs (or as we like to call them ‘boneless couches’).. 

We actually have to come up with substantive stuff like ‘core values’ and ‘clear defined priorities’ and ‘key performance indicators’

Just kidding - I love this shit… here’s 9 ACTIONABLE TIPS to maintain company culture while working remotely. 

According to an article on Inc.com 3 Ways Company Culture Directly Impacts Your Bottom Line – in addition to making a company more fun to work at, a strong company culture is strongly associated with profit…

If you didn’t care about company culture before the pandemic – it might be a great time to start. Micro-managing is really hard when everyone has access to Netflix at their fingertips and no supervision.

What are your core values? Will they carry you? What kind of fun challenges, new habits, and infrastructure can you put in place when nothing else matters but the work.

1. NOW MORE THAN EVER – PEOPLE NEED CLEAR WEEKLY GOALS AND STRUCTURE AROUND ACCOUNTABILITY

We love Traction/EOS’s structure, and have quarterly goals and check in on weekly habits with our teams on how we did each week. Everyone has 3 rocks – that are all tied to our companies top goals around effectiveness, client acquisition, and profit. 

2. INCREASE CHECK-IN’S

You may not have done one on one’s with everyone before - but you might want to get some more in. 

3. WORK FROM HOME BINGO

We have a template for this at the full blog post on this topic - hookagency.com/remote. + prizes can be gift cards for local restaurants at a time when they need our support. 

4. SLACK, ZOOM, & getting your remote tools tightened up

5. GIFS, MEME’S, #RANDOM SLACK CHANNEL

I love giphy maker for making my own gifs :) If you’re not a millenial, wouldn’t be a bad time to brush up on meme culture (my favorite meme account is @middleclassfancy on Instagram.)

6. HUMOROUS GAMES + HAPPY HOURS

We absolutely loved Tee K0’s tee-shirt game – comment below if you have any other great remote games and I’ll credit you and add them to the list on our post! 

7. DON’T IGNORE THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ISOLATION, BE THERE FOR PEOPLE

We know that there isn’t just positive stuff going on during all of this – and if you are good with working from home – some other people may not be. Check-in with each employee to see how they are handling it, and do rhythmic, rolling check-ins every couple of weeks

8. DAILY INSTAGRAM TAKEOVER BY EMPLOYEES

If you want to go this route - we included prompts on the blog post!  You want to give people some structure so it’s more fun for them! Shout out to Augurian, another local agency - saw them do this, so thanks for the inspiration guys :) 

9. ASK IF PEOPLE NEED ANYTHING AND GO ABOVE AND BEYOND

Mike Grinberg of Proofpoint Marketing says they’ve done the following “1. Purchased grocery delivery subscriptions (their choice of Shipt or Instacart). For $100/person it’s well worth it, especially if you have anyone that has extra anxiety about the danger of the virus 2. We just scheduled a wellness workshop, with a health/wellness consultant 3. Mandatory days off – people aren’t really taking time off right now because there is no “vacation” but it’s still important for people to spend some time on themselves, so we are forcing everyone on the team to take a few days off every month”

What are you doing to improve your company culture during remote working? Drop a tip below!