1. WHAT TO DO WHEN
EVERYTHING GOES WRONG
Michael King
@iPullRank

3. #theinbounder
This is a story about failure

4. I will not lose because even in defeat there’s
valuable lesson learned, so
that evens it up for me.
@S_C_

5. For those that don’t know, I used to make music for
a living .

6. For those that don’t know, I used to make music for
a living .
I grew up loving and making what is called
“underground hiphop.”

7. #theinbounder
At the end of 2016 undergroundhiphop.com
announced it was closing.

8. #theinbounder
I took a look and it saw that they got hit by Panda
and never recovered.

9. #theinbounder
Some of the biggest acts in the space are doing SEO
all wrong.

10. #theinbounder
So I put up the Bat Signal.

11. The founder and I got together and began some
reasonably aggressive negotiations.

12. All in all we worked it out and my partners and I
made our first acquisition.

13. It was important to me to give the founder a good
deal.

14. And Then What Happened?

15. #theinbounder

16. #theinbounder
We expected that we could improve traffic by 10%
and conversion by 15% MoM.
0,00%
0,20%
0,40%
0,60%
0,80%
1,00%
1,20%
0
200.000
400.000
600.000
800.000
1.000.000
1.200.000
Jan 16 - 31 Feb-17 Mar-17 Apr-17 May-17 Jun-17 Jul-17 Aug-17 Sep-17 Oct-17 Nov-17 Dec-17
UGHH Projections
Site Visits Orders Average Order Receipts - Existing Sources Receipts - New Sources Total Receipts Conversion Rate

17. #theinbounder
We added TF-IDF optimized copy to the category
pages.
#theinbounder
We did the audience research to figure out who our
addressable and aspirational segments are

18. #theinbounder
We added TF-IDF optimized copy to the category
pages.We did the journey mapping to figure out their need
states and emotional experiences.

19. 215
42
891
69
491
32
710
58
209
76
205
171
44 16
19
16
6
13
7
20
12
15
17
12
20
18
20
16
0
5
10
15
20
250
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1.000
Music
Bargain
Forum
Clothing
BrandedSearch
MusicDownload
Graffiti-art
Video
HipHop
UndergroundHipHop
CD
Radio
Vinyl
VideoDownload
Segments Search Volume vs. Ranking
Average of Avg Monthly US Search Volume2 Average of Google Ranking
#theinbounder
We did the audience-driven keyword research to
figure out their intent and prioritize opps
999.890
761.780
763.230
248.820
636.410
20.040
31.200.000 31.400.000 31.600.000 31.800.000 32.000.000 32.200.000 32.400.000 32.600.000 32.800.000 33.000.000
Riveted Rex
Anti-mainstream Aaron
Enthusiast Ethan
Progressive Paula
Independent Iris
Casual Chris
Sum of Search Volume by Personas
Search Volume of Overlapping Keywords Search Volume of Non-overlapping Keywords

20. #theinbounder
We audited the content to determine the weaknesses
and built a strategy to go forward
We audited the analytics to improve our ability to
measure against our goals.

21. #theinbounder
We tested the low hanging fruit items on the site to
improve conversion

22. #theinbounder
We redirected all the link equity that was floating
out there to the right places.

23. #theinbounder
We audited the content to determine the weaknesses
and built a strategy to go forward

24. Because of the Panda issue, I made Content the
core focus of our approach

25. #theinbounder
Shopify’s CMS is trash, so I was looking for a way
to get content front and center

26. #theinbounder
So we put WordPress in front and reverse proxied
Shopify to /store
www.undergroundhiphop.com Reverse proxy /store

27. #theinbounder
Unfortunately, Shopify throttles this because all
traffic comes from one IP

28. #theinbounder
We learned this at launch, so I angrily placed
Shopify on a subdomain.
www.undergroundhiphop.com Reverse proxy Shopify.undergroundhiphop.com

29. #theinbounder
Don’t let anyone lie to you and say that a
subdomain is just as good for SEO

30. #theinbounder
We added TF-IDF optimized copy to the category
pages.

31. #theinbounder
We built keyword-relevant category pages
prioritizing rappers who drive lots of sales

32. #theinbounder
This has worked well for our some of our clients in
the space.

33. #theinbounder
We also launched a magazine with a focus on high
quality editorial content

34. #theinbounder
Magazine content only drove $152 in transactions
for the year

35. #theinbounder
Looking at assisted conversions and content helped
drive $9,659.44 in conversions.

36. Unfortunately, we spent ~$90,000 on content
in 2017.

37. #theinbounder
We did do some put out some stuff that I’m
incredibly proud of though.

38. But this is e-commerce, isn’t the best practice to
focus on Paid Media first?

39. #theinbounder
Yep. Google Shopping is our best converting
channel, but there is little volume and the AOV is
way lower.

40. #theinbounder
So we basically spun our wheels until Black Friday
and the end of the year sales

41. #theinbounder
Here’s a big picture look at what it’s like to fail
hard on an e-commerce site.
Best Record Store Day
of all time
When that super
good deal kicked in
Magazine investment

42. #theinbounder
In January the founder left us with the site held
together by duct tape and bubble gum

43. #theinbounder
I ended up having to build a whole new toolset to
manage everything .

44. #theinbounder
We ended up getting very backed up and tons of
customers pissed at us

45. What can we learn from all this?

46. #theinbounder
1. Find your step function and maximize it.

47. #theinbounder
We launched a subscription service a la Amazon Prime.
I thought that would be our step function.

48. #theinbounder
In hindsight, Google Shopping is very likely where
our step function lies

49. #theinbounder
..but our ads were basura due to some Shopify hack

50. #theinbounder
Find your step function.…and I’m not sure how our landing pages ever sold
a single thing .

51. Identify your step function. Focus in on it
relentlessly until you get on solid ground.

52. #theinbounder
2. Build a culture of testing everything you’re doing
as an organization.

53. #theinbounder
Had I load tested the reverse proxy, I would have
known that it wouldn’t work

54. #theinbounder
Instead, I should have put the magazine on a
subdomain and tested content in isolation.
magazine.undergroundhiphop.com Server www.undergroundhiphop.com

55. #theinbounder
We also should have made A/B testing a much
higher prioritized activity

56. #theinbounder
Add your SEO efforts to the software testing mix so
new deployments don’t break your SEO

57. #theinbounder
3. Know who you are working with.

58. #theinbounder
I should have taken the time to realize that team was
misaligned and proactively made changes

59. What’s next for UGHH?

60. #theinbounder
First, we’ve rebranded. It’s a visual separation
from what we once were.

61. #theinbounder
We’ve launched a new website on WooCommerce so
we can rapidly deploy new things

62. #theinbounder
I should have done this.
I’ve taken ownership publicly of all the failures of the
past few months

63. #theinbounder
I should have done this.
I even did a livestream AmA on Facebook. The
questions were surprisingly tame.

64. #theinbounder
I should have done this.
We’re investing in better customer service that is
available 24/7.

65. I should have done this.
We’re launching a marketplace to allow our community
to leverage our audience

66. #theinbounder
And we’re zeroing in on our step function and
letting that drive everything moving forward

67. That’s another difference that’s between me and
them: I smarten up, open the market up.
@S_C_

68. Bonus Round
Just in case I didn’t give you enough actionable stuff

69. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Think Like @RichardBaxter

70. #theinbounder
PHP gets a really bad rap, but modern PHP is
actually kind of awesome. Upgrade now!

71. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Nginx is Faster than Apache
>

72. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Need to Speed up your WP Site?

73. Check out the Code Coverage report to see what code isn’t be used and
delete it from your pages. https://www.portent.com/blog/user-

74. Is SEO Scared of New Tech?
Just a question that I’ve had

75. Natural Language Generation
Natural Language Generation is here whether
we like it or not.

76. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
NLG is already used by Reputable Brands

77. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Automated Insights

78. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Narrative Science

79. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
PhraseTech

80. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Lots of E-commerce Sites Use It

81. More Importantly
You’re reading articles created this way everyday
without even knowing it.

82. We need to keep up with front end
development trends.

83. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
CSS in JS?
What are you going to do with CSS baked into JavaScript becomes commonplace?

84. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Read up on JSS
http://cssinjs.org

85. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
There are Other CMS Besides WordPress
http://www.contentful.com

86. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Static Site Generators
Static Site Generators allows you to use a CMS and other tech to generate flat files for your site.
https://www.staticgen.com/

87. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
GatsbyJS
Get familiar with Static Site Generators http://www.gatsbyjs.org

88. It’s not the same world
Many modern front end developers
understand the need for server side rendering
(SSR) these days.

89. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
NextJS
Middleware like NextJS is commonplace is most front end dev workflows at this point.
https://github.com/zeit/next.js/

90. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
React won the Battle
Across the web, people are abandoning Angular and focusing more on React with Vue gaining a lot of ground in
the past couple years.

91. Keep those things on your radar.

92. Auditing JavaScript Websites
While we’re on the subject

93. View Source is Dead

94. Inspect Element is the computed DOM

95. You need to compute the diff between the view source and the inspect
element versions of the page to understand what Google may or may
not see.

96. Use Screaming Frog – Crawl in text mode and in JavaScript
mode then compare the hash columns. Those that are different
have rendering disparities.

97. If you want to get fancy, crawl how Google crawls.
https://codeburst.io/a-guide-to-automating-scraping-the-web-with-
javascript-chrome-puppeteer-node-js-b18efb9e9921

98. You can even watch a Googler teach you to scrape Google with
it.

99. Nothing that requires a user action to be displayed
will ever be considered for ranking.

100. @justinrbriggs has a good step by step on how to do this.
https://www.briggsby.com/auditing-javascript-for-seo/

101. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Distilled is Right About Split Testing
Check out DistilledODN https://odn.distilled.net/

102. “It's becoming such a complex system, we
often can't really know how a change will
affect our own site until we roll it out.”
@WillCritchlow

103. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
I’M SURE ODN IS
GREAT…
…but you don’t need their platform to perform
effective split-testing.

104. Hypothesis Generation
“If we build X internal links from pages with 10 or more external links
to Y pages that we want to improve visibility, we will see an increase in
rankings and traffic.”

105. Bucketing Pages
Generate three buckets of pages. Two controls and one variant. Make
sure to choose pages that regularly get crawled and regularly get traffic.

106. Benchmark Current Performance
Determine how your page buckets are currently performing so you can
compare against later.

107. Implement Experiment
Test your hypothesis by actually implementing those changes on the
variant bucket.

108. Analyze Performance
Perform statistical analysis to ensure that there was an impact beyond
expected growth or loss.

109. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Prophet by Facebook
Facebook’s Prophet can be used to Forecast impact of changes https://facebook.github.io/prophet/

110. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
CausalImpact Package
Google’s CausalImpact package
is one can be used to determine
impact of experiments.
https://google.github.io/CausalImpact/CausalImpact.html

111. We need to get comfortable with
medium data.

112. Wrapping Up
Who am I and where am I from?

113. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
I’M #ZORASDAD
First and foremost.

114. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
MY NAME IS MIKE
KING
Razorfish, Publicis Modem alum
Full Stack Developer
Full Stack Marketer
Moz Associate

116. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
We Do These Things
Machine
Learning
SEOContent
Strategy
Paid Media Measurement &
Optimization
Marketing
Automation

117. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
Machine Learning for Marketers Guide
skratchcoin.com
http://ipullrank.com/machine-learning-guide/

118. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
skratchcoin.com

119. IPULLRANK.COM @ IPULLRANK
skratchcoin.com

121. THANK YOU!
Michael King
@iPullRank