What Happened When We Fired Our SEO Company

This year we decided it was time to bring SEO in-house. Last year we hired an internet marketing company to optimize our website, and we were unhappy with their performance. After several meetings and a frustrating lack of improvement, we decided it was time to fire our SEO company.

What went wrong

On Friday we called to break the news.

By Monday the SEO company used their access to our Google My Business account to delete all photos associated with the account – even the logo. Several were stock photos uploaded by the company, but some were photos I had personally uploaded.

They pulled down a testimonial video they made for us. Fortunately, it was a stock video that won’t be missed.

Worst of all, they took down disabled the Yoast SEO plugin, which took down our sitemap. When Google crawlers visited the website and looked for the sitemap, all they got was a 404 “page not found” error. From all I can tell, this could have had major effects on our organic search rankings after a full month.

When I called to get an explanation, they said this was a normal part of the “exit process”. The changes were required to protect their “proprietary information” (like the Yoast SEO plugin, apparently). The manager I spoke with wouldn’t say what changes were made, but reiterated that this is standard operating procedure.

What you can do

In the grand scheme of things, these were little problems, and we were fortunate enough to catch them early. You may not be so lucky.

If you’re thinking it’s time to fire your SEO company, here are a few things to keep in mind.

  • Read your entire contract. Ours required us to provide notice of termination 2 months before the renewal date. This could have become a problem if they attempted to enforce these terms.
  • Send a Termination of Contract letter. You can find sample formats online. Send it through Certified Mail. This provides you with evidence that you’ve canceled the contract, so that it’s harder for them to play dumb later.
  • Ask for specifics (even if they refuse to provide them). Don’t assume that they’ll alert you to changes they’ve made.
  • Change your passwords. This will prevent them from accessing your accounts and causing damage.
  • Have your new SEO plan ready. Even if you keep them out of your accounts, their internal processes may negatively affect your rankings. Don’t count on termination periods to keep them honest: be ready to hand off to your new SEO company or take over yourself.
  • Prepare to lose ranking. Try to make the switch when you can ride out the changes in your organic rankings. It may take several months for them to recover. You may need to invest in some other lead sources or just ride out the storm.

Thankfully, not every experience with an SEO company will end up like mine. There are some great companies who take good care of their customers. However, stories like this are not uncommon. Whether you’re switching SEO companies or you’ve decided to do your own search engine optimization, be alert for shenanigans that could affect your website rankings.

The Dip: book review

I’m reading through 70 books in 2018. This is one of them.

I’ve read a lot of Seth Godin over the years, and this review reflects that. I’ve also read The Dip before. It was one of the books on my list which I thought would be worth a re-read. It did not disappoint.

The Dip which the title refers to is the area of frustrating struggle which separates beginners from winners, or the hopeful from the best in the world. This is the clear subject of the entire book, and Seth uses many examples to illustrate in detail why pushing through the dip (the concept, not the book) is worth it.

Intertwined with the main subject is the subject of quitting. In this sense, I feel like the book almost misses an opportunity with the title, as the dip is entirely about knowing when to quit and when to push through. The impact of the advice and questions in this book is difficult to overstate. If you are one who struggles to know when to quit, or when to push through to the end, this book is a must-read.

At the end of The Dip, Seth notes that “Short books are hard to write”. This book is quite short, for its kind: 80 pages in my hardcover version. Following his own advice, Seth has quit many of the rabbit trails and side points that would have diluted this book, making it more valuable and more accessible at the same time.

This is the 10th book I’ve read this year. You can see the others on my reading list. Have a comment or question? Send me a message or an email

How We Get Customers to Write Reviews

If you’re in a home service business you know that getting reviews is one of the hardest customer interactions, ranking up there with getting a budget number.

With our most recent test, we asked 32 customers and got 11 reviews in 1 month. That’s a 34% review rate!

Here’s how we did it.

We do all of our scheduling through Housecall Pro. Housecall Pro has a lot of cool and useful features, including their automatic email reminders which we used to get a 20% review rate from customers.

That’s fantastic, and I had other Housecall Pro users contact me and ask for the copy I used in that email (you can get it here).

But we knew we could do better. And we did. Last month we tried something that beat the review email… and I can’t take any credit for it.

Housecall recently added the ability to edit and customize the text message notifications that get sent to our customers, both before and after a job.

When I mentioned this new feature to Eric, the operations manager, he got that look in his eye. He had an idea.

Eric edited the text message that gets sent when a job is completed. Now, when our tech leaves a job, the customer gets this message:

The review text that got us 11 new reviews in 1 month

This text update alone boosted us from 74 reviews to 85 in a month!

Here’s why this method is so effective:

  • It’s personal. It looks like it comes from their service tech, asking for a personal favor.
  • It’s automatic. We don’t need to remember to ask every time – this message went out to 32 customers without a second thought from anyone on our team.
  • It’s easy. The short link in the message sends customers straight to the Google review page. Just a few clicks and it’s done. Most of the reviews happen within an hour of job completion.

We shared this tip with Nate Brott, who also uses Housecall Pro, and he tried it out. I got a message from him a few days later:
Review request text message

Trying out the text message review link? Let me know how it works for you!

A Burglar’s Guide to the City: book review

A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh

A Burglar's Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh

I just finished book number nine for the year: A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh. This book was gifted to me by my friend Jesse. He knows me well; I’m always up for reading about crime, psychology, or architecture, and this book covers all three.

The book is a mixture of historical events, personal experiences, and discussions of theory and psychology. It’s not an action-oriented book by any means, but it contains a respectable share of thrilling crime stories. It also covers quite a bit of ground, from lockpicking to government surveillance to municipal planning and more.

The broad range of topics never strays too far from the author’s primary message: that burglary forces us to view the world differently. Burglars are the original hackers, exploring vulnerabilities in architecture and exploiting them to their advantage. Whether he’s walking you through an infamous heist or an abstract discussion of transportation design, the author stays focused and delivers food for thought.

I enjoyed ‘A Burglar’s Guide’ and the way the author discusses architecture as a spatial worldview. Burglars see a door where others see a wall. They reject the expected use of a space and create their own. In a sense, it’s quite poetic.

I’m reading 70 books in 2018. Check out my reading list for more book reviews.

Books I Want to Read in 2018

Reading List 2018This post is about all of the books I want to read in 2018.

(If you’re just here for the list, it’s at the bottom of the post.)

Why I want to read in 2018

I used to be a reader. Some would call me a voracious reader. It was my gift. My mother claims when I was a toddler she could leave me with a stack of books all day and never needed to check up on me. It’s probably not far from the truth.

By the time I was 10 I had read every book in the house. I was so desperate to read, I started reading our 27-volume encyclopedia set. I lost interest somewhere around ‘spumoni’.

In 9th grade I took a reading test to check my speed and comprehension. According to my dad’s memory, I read 750 words per minute with 95% comprehension.

Unfortunately, after high school my reading dropped off considerably. Once I had my own transportation, there were just too many other things to do. There was money to make, people to meet, places to visit. Books had lost their interest as I discovered the wide world outside my imagination.

Of course, I still read some books. I read some business books, how-to and psychology books. Once or twice a year I would pick up a fiction book, and sometimes I’d even finish one. Mostly, I read articles, blog posts, Facebook statuses, tweets. Some great, some good, mostly worthless.

Towards the end of last year I realized how little I actually read, and how much I miss reading. When it came time to set goals for 2018, I knew what I needed to do.

How I came up with this list

This reading list came from four major sources.

First, I was inspired to start reading again by Jon Acuff’s incessant Instagram posts about the books he was reading (learn how Jon read 100 books in 2017). Many of these books were drawn from his reviews.

Second, last year I read The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday. The book was fantastic, definitely the best book I’ve read in several years. After reading that book I found Ryan’s reading list and added a bunch more books to my must-read stack.

Third, Jason Zook from JasonDoesStuff has a running list of books he’s read, an idea which I ripped off for my reading list. Many of his recommendations made it onto this list.

And fourth, I asked my Facebook friends for recommendations and they came through in a big way! If I put all 100+ names here, the post would be longer than the reading list!

A few caveats

Okay, we’re almost to the list. Before we jump into it, there are a few things I want to point out.

This list is not comprehensive. I may read books that are not listed, and I might not read books that are on the list. I don’t have a reading order or a strict regimen around this.

This list is not a recommendation. There are some great books on here which I’ll rave about after I’ve read them. There are some others which are the antithesis of everything I believe about humanity (I’m looking at you, Mein Kampf). Let the reader beware.

This list is not for children. Along the same lines as the last point, some of these books may be inappropriate for young impressionable minds. Don’t print this off and hand it to your kids as a summer reading assignment.

This list is not complete. It’s only January, which leaves 11 more months for recommendations and discoveries. I’m super excited to find more great books to read, and I’ll try to add them here as I find them.

 

The reading list

Sorted alphabetically.

  1. 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
  2. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
  3. 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
  4. A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh
  5. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
  6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
  7. Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou
  8. Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman
  9. And He Dwelt Among Us by A. W. Tozer
  10. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers
  11. Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra
  12. Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet
  13. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
  14. Bold by Peter Diamandis
  15. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  16. Conditional Design by Anthony di Mari
  17. Confessions by St. Augustine
  18. Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason
  19. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull
  20. Deep Work by Cal Newport [NEW]
  21. Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
  22. Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible by Sophie Lovell, Klaus Kemp
  23. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual by Jocko Willink
  24. Draw to Win by Dan Roam
  25. Ego Is The Enemy by Ryan Holiday
  26. Every Day I Fight by Stuart Scott
  27. Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis
  28. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin
  29. Finish by Jon Acuff
  30. Food Rules by Michael Pollen
  31. Footprints on the Moon by Seth Godin
  32. Ghost In The Wires by Kevin Mitnick
  33. Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance
  34. Hit Makers by Derek Thompson [NEW]
  35. Hooked by Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover
  36. How to by Michael Bierut
  37. Hyrule Historia by Akira Himekawa
  38. Ish by Peter H. Reynolds
  39. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  40. Luther by Eric Metaxas
  41. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
  42. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
  43. My Life and Work by Henry Ford [NEW]
  44. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
  45. Pre-suasion by Robert Cialdini
  46. Priceless by William Poundstone [NEW]
  47. Poke The Box by Seth Godin
  48. Quantum Christianity by Aaron Davis
  49. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
  50. Redwall by Brian Jacques
  51. Richest Man In Babylon by George Samuel Clason
  52. Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
  53. Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
  54. Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
  55. Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
  56. Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen
  57. Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
  58. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler
  59. The Big Red Fez by Seth Godin
  60. The Book With No Pictures by B. J. Novak
  61. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
  62. The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds
  63. The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
  64. The Flinch by Julien Smith
  65. The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
  66. The Happiness Hypothesis by Jordan Haidt
  67. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
  68. The Influentials by Edward Keller, Jonathan Berry
  69. The Information by James Gleick
  70. The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
  71. The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong
  72. The Laws Of Simplicity by John Maeda
  73. The Life And Times of a Remarkable Misfit by A. J. Leon
  74. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
  75. The Measure Of My Days by Florida Scott Maxwell
  76. The Name Of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
  77. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
  78. The Pillars Of the Earth by Ken Follet
  79. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  80. The Power of Positive Deviance by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin
  81. The Purple Cow by Seth Godin
  82. The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley
  83. The Science Of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
  84. The Score by Richard Stark [NEW]
  85. The Score Takes Care Of Itself by Bill Walsh
  86. The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton
  87. The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites
  88. The Trumpet Of The Swan by E. B. White
  89. The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield
  90. The Way Of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
  91. The Year Of Less by Cait Flanders
  92. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
  93. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
  94. Tribe Of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
  95. Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday
  96. Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand
  97. What if? by Randall Munroe
  98. What Matters Now by Seth Godin
  99. What To Do When It’s Your Turn by Seth Godin
  100. You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

 

Whew! That’s a long list!

If you’d like to know how far I’ve gotten and get my opinions on the books I’ve read in 2018, check out my reading list.

How To Write The Best Review Emails That Get Results

If you’re like most small business owners I know, asking for reviews isn’t fun. What are the best review emails you can send?

Here’s the best review email I’ve ever sent out. You can copy this word-for-word if you like – I won’t tell.

Subject: Small favor

Hello [customer name],

Would you do me a small favor? It will take less than a minute, but it would mean a lot.

Would you write a review of your experience with us? (Here’s the quick link: [put your link here] )

Google Reviews help people like you make decisions every day. They help to explain our service in a way that we can’t do ourselves.

(If you’ve already left a review, thank you so much!)

Here’s how to write a review:

1. Click the link below.
2. Sign into your Google account if asked (you might already be signed in!)
3. Write your review, give us a star rating, and press “post”.

That’s it! It’s quick and easy, and it really does help others to make an informed decision.

Here’s the link to write a review: [put your link here]

Thank you!

Best Review Emails
The best review emails get your customers to click through and write reviews.

This email is automatically sent out to our customers through our scheduling software. I send it one week after we’ve completed the job. I’ll probably run a test to find out if this copy would perform better on a shorter timetable, but right now it’s been bringing plenty of reviews at that 7-day mark.

Keep in mind, the best review emails frame your request as something that benefits your customer. In this case, you’re telling them that they’ll be helping other people like themselves. They get a good feeling from helping their fellow man, and you get a good review.

30 days with a bullet journal

In September I started keeping a bullet journal. If you’re not familiar with the concept, it’s basically just like it sounds: a cross between a bulleted list and a journal. It’s a way to keep track of what you do each day, as succinctly as possible.


A search through Pinterest or Instagram will reveal some ridiculously complex and artistic bullet journals. It seems to have become a popular way to show off your doodling skills in the name of productivity.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BBz5AK6tl8o/


These are not my journals.

I had no such aspirations. Instead, I was looking for a simple way to track what I was accomplishing throughout the days and weeks.

I used my bullet journal daily through the month of September, which was 30 days as of yesterday. Here are my impressions so far.

Wait, not digital?

Starting off I had doubts about the idea of a physical notebook. Ever since I was about 12 I’ve been obsessing over technology and the ways it makes our lives easier and better. At that time I saved up something like $150 and bought a PDA. If you’re younger than me, a PDA (personal digital assistant) was the grandaddy of the smart phone. It had a calendar, address book, to-do list, notepad, and email if you were lucky. The later versions had a basic web browser built in, right before they were killed off by the release of the iPhone. At the time I was convinced that my productivity and memory recall would increase exponentially if only I had one of these magical devices.

The PDA didn’t change my life significantly, but I continued to live under the assumption that technology was making my life much easier. As a result, physically writing something down seemed backwards and counter-productive.

I bit the bullet (no pun intended) and bought a Moleskine journal (actually I bought 3 of them, because you can never have enough fancy hipster journals). Creating the index and future log was fun, but I seriously doubted whether I would keep this up for long.

As it turns out, the physical aspect played out in my favor. I carried the journal around in my backpack right in front of my laptop, which meant that I had no choice but to see it every day when I sat down to work. I got into the habit of pulling it out right at the start of the day and setting it down beside my laptop. In that spot it served as a visual reminder that I had goals for the day.

The day-to-day experience

The act of filling out the day’s milestones and marking them as complete was almost therapeutic. When I didn’t make the progress I had hoped, it served as a reminder that I had missed something (this happened often).

Unlike the examples I referenced above, my day-to-day journaling looks mind-numbingly similar. Each day has it’s own bulleted list, which I filled out as the day progressed. I used the most barebones notation: • bullets are tasks, – dashes are notes or reference items, and º circles are meetings or events.

There were a few instances where I got brave and changed the format; these were all for meetings, where I just dropped any sort of notation and wrote my scattered thoughts line-by-line until the meeting was over. Otherwise, I stuck entirely to the daily format.

Retrospective

Now that a month has past, it’s time to create a new month calendar in the journal. One of the key points of bullet journaling is migration: reviewing all unfinished tasks or goals in the past month and migrating them forward as necessary.

Having just completed migrating all of last month’s tasks, I think it’s the most valuable part of a bullet journal. With my other productivity/organization setups, unfinished tasks ended up in a Someday list which was subsequently ignored. Tasks would disappear for months or years, if not forever. With migration, I’m forced to go back and reassess any unfinished business to see if I still need to pay attention to it.

So far my experience with the bullet journal has been positive. I’ll continue to use it to track my progress through the month. I don’t foresee a whole lot of changes to the format.

Ultimately, the bullet journal is just a way to document what’s happened; it’s my choices during the day-to-day grind that make the difference. Having tried so many to-do lists and productivity hacks over the years, I’m painfully aware that the real gains come from hard work and persistence.

If you’re curious about bullet journals, visit the website – or if you’re looking for doodling inspiration, look at the #bulletjournal hashtag on Instagram.

Experiment: The Argument Clinic

Last week I read about The People Walker, a guy from San Fransisco that is getting paid to walk people. It’s is one of those poster-boy stories for Inc Magazine; someone making money with nothing but a weird idea.

When I read something like this, I get envious. Having put in a lot of work and time to pursue ideas that just never got the attention I thought they deserved, there’s a feeling of entitlement that kicks in. It’s the mind’s way of shedding responsibility. What makes this guy so lucky? I’d never get paid to do something as dumb as walking around.

This time, though, I decided to try out a stupid idea of my own. I sat down and started writing. Ten minutes later I had this Craigslist post:

Argument Clinic craigslist ad

I hit publish and promptly forgot about it. I didn’t even remember I had put it up until this showed up in my inbox.

Weird response to Craigslist ad

I started off excited – I was going to get paid! – but my interest quickly waned. This sounded more like some sort of weird fetish than an argument. Even if it was just a confidence-building exercise, it sounded oddly over-structured and, honestly, just a bit too weird for me.

I politely declined, and reposted the ad. Let’s see what another week brings.

Did someone really drill a hole in their iPhone?

Last week, following Apple’s announcement that the new iPhone 7 wouldn’t have a headphone jack, some clever chap made a video claiming a secret hack for adding a DIY jack to your brand-new phone by drilling a hole in it.

Seriously, he takes an iPhone, clamps it in a vice, and puts a hole in it with a 3.5mm drill bit. It’s a very expensive bit of satire, but funny nonetheless.

Then, the YouTube comments started blowing up with users reporting that they had tried it with disastrous results.

iphone-7-portal-to-hell

Lots of comments come across as satirical responses, like Simon T’s comment above. But some of them are frighteningly serious.

Woman drills headphone jack in iPhone 7

Man is angry about wrecking iPhone 7 by drilling headphone jack

Of course, news outlets are having a heyday with the comments, warning their readers against drilling into their phones and reporting about voided warranties and gullible YouTubers. Even Fortune got in on the action.

Everyone is reporting users drilling into new iPhones. But are they?

screen-shot-2016-09-26-at-4-44-35-pmscreen-shot-2016-09-26-at-4-47-04-pm

122 shares on LinkedIn? I didn’t know there were that many people using it.

But are there real, live people falling for this and drilling holes in their brand-new iPhones? It’s fun to believe that people would be that stupid, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it has happened. After reading through the top trending stories with headlines like “Drilling hole in iPhone video fools dumb customers” and “People Are Drilling In Headphone Jacks” (thanks Fortune), I found no actual reports of individual incidents; only references to comments on the YouTube video. Someone has been trolled here… and I’m not entirely sure who it was.

If you really drilled a hole in your iPhone, let me know. For security purposes, don’t send it over the internet; just set your house on fire and use the smoke to signal me.

Here’s the original video:

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Week In Review #3

Week In Review 3

Finds