Why Your Hardest-Working Colleague Isn’t Getting Promoted
And the three status signals that actually decide who moves up
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Phil Buckley's Articles
I'm a self-taught web technologist from way back in the 1990’s. I learned to love search engine optimization, social media and digital strategy over the last 15 years. My blogging insights on how to save the newspaper industry were noticed by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University but never by the newspaper company he was working at.
My super power is the ability to make the über-geek jabber understandable to mere mortals and to explain marketing speak in binary code.
I helped build the country’s most successful SEO Meetup in Raleigh,NC. and started the Digital Marketing for Business conference in 2013.
Now I spend my days helping clients rule the web as Director of Technical Search at Adapt Partners.
Circle me on Google+Follow me on TwitterFriend me on FacebookConnect with me LinkedInSee what I'm PinningFollow me on FoursquareFollow me on QuoraGet my Scoops on Scoop.itSee my reviews on Yelp!See my photos on FlickrCheck me out on TumblrWatch my videos on Vimeo
Building AI-Only Pages in WordPress (and Teaching Bots Where to Look)
For the last week, I’ve been working on a side project: creating a WordPress plugin that generates AI-optimized versions of a page. The goal was simple, give large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity a version of a page that’s structured for them, not for humans.
That meant tackling three big challenges:
- Generation: automatically producing a machine-friendly version of each post.
- Routing: making sure bots get the AI version, while humans still see the normal page.
- Logging: tracking who gets what, so I know if GPTBot or PerplexityBot actually found the /ai/ pages.
Here’s what I learned along the way.
[Read more…]Building Internal Links with Screaming Frog Embeddings and Gemini or ChatGPT
I wanted to do more internal linking, but I wanted to focus on the pages that needed it most and link the pages that seemed to make sense. The problem was, it was a big site and I didn’t know every page – so I turned to Screaming Frog’s easy to set up Embeddings to make this easier.
I ran a long, slow crawl and turned on 3 different Embeddings.
1. OpenAI – Extract embeddings from page content (using the OpenAI API)
2. Gemini – Extract embeddings from page content (using the Google Gemini API)
3. Gemini – Extract semantic embeddings from page (using the Google Gemini API)
Why Your Website Is Taking Forever To Complete
I get to work with a lot of great clients and developers who have to work together to make the magic happen. There is always a certain amount of strain between what the marketing department needs and where the development team thinks it should fit into the schedule. Then once the dev team is actually working on it the stress level ratchets up again.
Marketing has already made a vague promise and now the developers have to meet the deadline. Sometimes it’s a fair deadline, almost always it’s an aggressive timeline and occasionally it’s just crazy.
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How Zales, Kay Jewelers and Tiffany & Co. Overthought Ring Sizing
The U.S. jewelry industry is somewhere around a $30 billion market. A big slice of that is rings, which is why I was shocked to see Glen Gabe tweet out this.
I bet every ecommerce retailer selling rings is in shock that a *Facebook Note* won this featured snippet 🙂 #seo pic.twitter.com/xKKyHCVrFB
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 3, 2016
I can’t imagine how much money the big national jewelry retailers pour into marketing, but it must be substantial. So how does an Independent Avon Representative based in Trinidad and Tobago win that snippet?
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100 People in the Triangle You Should Connect With Today
There’s a problem that we all deal with. We want to connect with all the smartest people in our area, but sometimes the smartest and most capable people aren’t very visible to us.
A couple weeks ago I met 3 people that I didn’t even know existed and yet they were all amazing. How is that possible?
I decided to ask some of the smartest and best connected people I know who they feel is flying below the radar. We all know people who are amazing, but not well known.
Below is the list – in no particular order, it’s just the order in which people got back to me. I’ve made the list as easy as possible for you to connect with them.
Do you know someone who missing from the list? Let me know in the comments.
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What I Learned Organizing The Most Successful SEO Meetup in the United States
In the winter of 2008 I was on the verge of getting fired from my job as a web developer at McClatchy Digital. The entire newspaper industry had fallen through a hole in the floor and people were being laid off left and right.
Even though I was a low-level web developer, I could see the writing on the wall even if the brain-trust out at the corporate offices in Sacramento was still convinced everything would bounce back in a few months.
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How I Shaved 10 Seconds Off Page Load Time
Do you wish your site loaded quicker?
We all want our site to load as quick as possible for our users convenience and to keep Googlebot happy.
My friend Janet’s new site was dead slow when she asked me to take a look. Here’s how I spent about a couple of hours to get a WordPress site to load in about 2 seconds. When I started in was regularly taking over 10 seconds, sometimes hitting 20 seconds.
Lean E-Commerce in 2014
Have you been thinking that you should move your business online and start selling globally?
Unless you are offering something spectacular or something dirt cheap, you should proceed with caution.
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You Installed WordPress, Now What?
If you’re the type of person who feels like you’ve been working hard on your WordPress powered blog, but not getting the results you desire, this is for you.
I wrote up a checklist for a client yesterday and thought it was worth sharing with anyone struggling with a WordPress blog that is underperforming.
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A product so boring no one will care
“My product is so boring that I can’t create compelling content around it.”
You don’t have to talk about the concept of content marketing for very long before you run headlong into this statement. It’s usually someone who has been at the same company a long time. Sometimes even the founder.
You’re right. You never should have taken the job of promoting it, because you’re doomed to fail. Give up now and start sending out resumes to apply for jobs listed in your local newspaper.
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The Ultimate Website Migration Checklist
Groundwork
As early as possible gather together the teams that will have an impact on the final site launch. That may include project managers, design team, development team, user experience, copywriters, account executives, network administrators and possibly even legal if they need to give their approval.
Write on the whiteboard what the problems the new website will be solving. You are planning the migration for a reason, make sure everyone is aware of those reasons and understands why they are important enough to burn the resources to make all this happen. Knowing that the old site struggled with time-on-site or click-through rates will help the teams focus on making those better on the new site.
Plan the terribly expensive meeting for everyone to sit in one room at one time for no more than 1 hour. In that time everyone needs to offer up their concerns. No one can say “I have no concerns” because if they do, they’re lying.
Write all the hurdles down so the next time you meet with any members of the team you can address their concerns. A site migration is a big deal; you’ll need buy-in from the whole team.
Producing Content When You Don’t Like To Write
Do you have good ideas for blog posts, but no time to write them?
What if you could give a writer the title, some simple instructions and get back a well-written blog post that you could make your own?
That’s where many small businesses are. They have the ideas, but no time to execute. Let me tell you about a service I tried that might make your life easier.
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That’s Our Policy
We all visit stores sometimes and ask what we think is a simple question yet receive back an unexpected answer. We often follow up with something like, “why is that?”
The worst of all possible answers to hear at this point in the conversation is, “That’s our policy”. That eye-roller barely wins out over the other infuriating phrase known to patrons around the world, “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
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Cheating vs. Looking for an Advantage vs. Business
While reading Mark Schaefers‘s The business case for cheating your way to social media superstardom this morning I noticed something. When we cheat it’s “gaining an advantage”, when others do we say it’s “cheating” or “a scam” and sometimes even “scum”.
Yesterday I read a great post by Owen Good entitled, A-Rod May Not Be in MLB’s Next Video Game, but Virtual PEDs Will. Good draws a brilliant parallel that had never occurred to me before. If you’re playing a video game (like MLB 10) and you pay real money to buy additional skills for your virtual player are you digitally juicing?
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Are You Still on Facebook?
I try to check Facebook at least once a day, usually on my phone and usually just before heading to bed. I “like” a handful of things and call it a day.
I am on Google in some way, shape or form the entire day. GMail, Google search, Google Maps, Google Plus, Google Local Business, Google Reviews, Google Shopping and even answering questions in Google’s Webmaster Forum.
It got me thinking about how Facebook can possibly think it is possible to hold off Google+ as the default social platform in the coming years.
I’ll admit that I am not a power-user on either platform, which probably is like 99.9% of the users. So I decided to ask on each platform if people are active on the other platform. On Google+ I asked if people were using Facebook and on Facebook I asked if people were using Google+.
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Holly Springs Chiropractors, Local Results and Negative SEO
A couple of months ago I started working with a chiropractor in Holly Springs, my home town. They wanted to make sure that they were doing everything they could to appear for people searching for their services.
The local search box showed 4 chiropractors.
This is the strange story of a handful of small businesses competing in a small town. Holly Springs has a population of about 27,000, so 4 or 5 chiropractors seemed like a lot to me, but I assumed there was enough business for all of them.
One evening I was looking at Anderson Chiropractic Center’s backlinks in Google Webmaster Tools and noticed a new term, a very unexpected term.
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Stop Making Excuses
If there is one thing that drives me crazy it’s all the excuses people make up. Maybe I just notice it more now than I used to, but I’m seeing it everywhere, especially from people in their 20’s and early 30’s. I don’t remember if I was the same way, but I fear I probably was.
There are a lot of people watching and waiting for you to do anything so they can tell you that you’re wrong. You’re not as good as someone else. You’re not as good as the person you replaced. You’re not photogenic. You’re not smart enough. You don’t have the right degree.
I get it, it’s scary. Standing up and saying, “this is me” takes a fair amount of courage. “This is the best I can give you” is a terrifying sentence to say, because we fear that the person we’re saying it to might reply, “it’s not enough.”
Spoiler alert: That person doesn’t matter.
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Don’t Keep Your SEO Partner a Secret
I had a long flight out the West Coast this week that gave me some time to think. One thing that popped into my mind is how all of us feel additional pressure when we know someone is watching us. That’s why we drive the speed limit when the State Trooper is behind us on the highway.
In the strange world of SEO, most companies hide the fact that they are involved with an SEO agency. What got me thinking about is was watching my friend Mike King on Twitter. Mike is a constant presence on social media and is connected to a lot of people.
Mike is a well-respected SEO working for a well-respected SEO agency. They have well-respected clients, although they are no doubt under NDA with most if not all of them. Why?
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What’s Your Role?
Where are you in the org chart?
It’s a funny question in 21st century America. Why the hell should it matter? Am I valuable? Can I help you?
Growing up in Boston I saw the end of the career of John Havilcek. He is commonly thought of as the greatest sixth man in NBA history (especially in Boston). If you’re not familiar with that term, it was a concept that hall of fame coach Red Auerbach came up with. He would use a superb player in a “off the bench” role, supporting the starting five.
John Havileck was great. He was the first player to scored over 1,000 every year of his (16 year) career. Red Auerbach called him the “guts of the team”.
What Red Aurebach, the Boston Celtics and the rest of the NBA figured out, Havileck didn’t fit into a traditional basketball team org chart, He was a special case. He did his best work as an outlier. He helped his team win 8 NBA titles as a sixth man. He made it into the basketball hall of fame as someone who bucked the system.
Sometimes the most valuable people in your organization don’t fit so nicely into the pre-built pigeon holes that you have had in place the last 20 years. Babe Ruth was a great pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but that’s not what he’s remembered as. He’s remembered for fundamentally changing the game, and essentially saving it.
That’s Not My Department
I run an SEO department at Virante Search Marketing. I try to always get opinions from outside my department. When someone offers help, I usually reply with, “hellz yes”. The reason it’s easy for me to not get overwhelmed by an org chart is that I never fit into one myself.
In high school as soon as I made the team as a catcher, I was bugging the coach to let me pitch. As soon as I got hired as a web developer I was bugging the marketing team with SEO ideas. When I talk to SEO clients, I end up talking about content marketing, customer service and social media.
I once heard a very smart woman use the phrase “make heroes of the brave“. It has become one of my guiding ideas. I know there are people who love the structure and defend their org chart like it’s a feudal kingdom and you are some type of barbarian, but don’t give up. The barbarians always triumph in the end.
How do I get on the first page of Google?
In 1970 Honda unleashed the N600 sedan on the American consumer. The car featured front wheel drive and an air-cooled, four stroke, 31 horsepowered two-cylinder engine, which was borrowed from the Honda CB450 motorcycle.
Honda didn’t think the N600 would replace the Chevy Impala, but they had to start somewhere. It’s the same on the web.
Every SEO gets asked the dreaded “how long until I’m number one on Google” a lot. At that point our job becomes one of teacher. Ranking first on Google means that your web page is better than any of the other 40 trillion pages on the web. That’s a pretty high bar right out of the gate.
So you spend a year making your site more responsive, adding better content, optimizing for conversions and building out your community. You still have very little traffic. You start to think you’re doing something wrong. You start asking around and looking at your competitors. Amazon makes it look so easy.
As you start to slog your way through year two you see some progress. You are starting to attract some links, a few people start to leave comments on your blog posts. Now you can feel your expectations start to rise. You feel like something good is right around the corner. Okay, maybe the next corner. Damnit, maybe that next one.
This is where half of the population gives up. This is what Seth Godin refers to as “the dip“. Seth’s main point in that book is knowing when it’s a dip that you have to power through, or something you should quit all together and move on.
I love the graphics that Rand Fiskin uses to illustrate this exact point. It’s the Google Analytics traffic line of his wife’s blog.
I’ve heard it said that it always feels like you’re losing, right before you win. If you still love what you’re doing and it feels right, I implore you to stay on the treadmill a little bit longer. Real success doesn’t come overnight.
I still remember the impact of Chris Brogan’s blog post about overnight success from way back in 2009 and how it made me more determined than ever.
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