I watch The Profit hosted by multimillionaire entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis and I wrote a few website SEO reviews related to The Profit and Marcus Lemonis.
I SEO reviewed two websites from The Profit and the Marcus Lemonis website, there was a LOT of SEO mistakes to work with, if you want to learn about SEO they are well worth a read.
The Profit Reviews
Marcus Lemonis Website Review
NYC Bagel Deli Website Review
Montiel Activewear Website Review
Guerilla Marketing Idea
I wrote the SEO review articles for several reasons.
- Reviewing websites makes for good SEO tutorials to teach others SEO, I enjoy passing on SEO knowledge to others.
- Keeps me in practice looking for SEO issues with websites.
- With these three reviews I was testing (for the first time) a Google guerilla marketing idea to see if I could get the attention of a potential major SEO client like Marcus Lemonis.
The main reason was to get noticed by a potential new SEO client, could a freelance SEO consultant gain the attention of the owner of a multi-billion dollar empire via Google rankings?
Camping World Holdings, Inc. Full Year 2018 Results
- Revenue increased 12.0% to $4.8 billion;
- Gross profit increased 9.8% to $1.4 billion;
Camping World RV Sales Review
Longtail SERPs with NO Traffic & NO Competition are NOT Impressive SEO
Gaining Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) like “Marcus Lemonis Website SEO Review”, “NYC Bagel Deli Website SEO Review”, “Montiel Activewear Website SEO Review” & derivatives like “Marcus Lemonis Website Review”, “NYC Bagel Deli Website Review”, “Montiel Activewear Website Review” isn’t particularly difficult, there’s not much competition because there’s not much traffic in that type of search.
Very easy longtail SERP like “Marcus Lemonis Website SEO Review” with no competition and very little traffic looks great, but it’s NOT impressive SEO wise.
To gain potential benefit from these types of SEO review articles they need to be seen by the specific businesses or possibly similar businesses who might be interested in hiring the services of an SEO consultant.
Marcus Lemonis for example is highly unlikely to be looking for articles reviewing the SEO of his website on Google, but he does have a Twitter account and will be actively tracking various hashtags related to his business interests, hashtags like #TheProfit.
I can work with that, I’m not just an SEO expert, social media marketing (especially Twitter) is an area of marketing I understand. I own multiple Twitter accounts, here’s a small sample:
OK, so I have three review articles Marcus Lemonis (or one of his competitors) might be interested in which could land me a lucrative SEO client. That’s not a lot to work with, so when I create a new article I try to not only maximise SEO traffic (Google traffic), but also social media traffic opportunities (especially Twitter).
I created roughly 30 Tweets associated with images to the three review articles which where then added to my Twitter Tweet schedule to promote the articles overtime. Now we’ve moved from three possible opportunities for potential first contact on Twitter to thirty opportunities.
Note: I opted to NOT go for the hard sell, I didn’t associate his Twitter account @marcuslemonis with any of the Tweets. Had I done that he’d have quickly noticed the Tweets, but they’d have been OTT SPAMMY and if someone did that to one of my Twitter accounts I’d block them!
The Twitter Guerilla marketing idea is to do enough to be noticed, but not be annoying.
Now my SEO/marketing Tweet schedule (I have multiple Twitter schedules running from a PHP script and database I built for different Twitter accounts) currently has around 1,400 Tweets. Since I avoid SPAMMING Twitter (would get my accounts banned) a particular Tweet can take a while (over a month) to be Tweeted. It’s not 1,400 purely promotional SEO Tweets trying to land SEO clients, there’s hundreds of SEO/marketing quote Tweets including hundreds of SEO tips I’ve pulled from my SEO articles over the years. I’ll probably pull a few snippets of text from this article and turn them into scheduled Tweets.
Example SEO Quote Tweet of Mine
All the images added to this article and other articles on the site are added to the Tweet schedule, so they will all be Tweeted as well, example below.
Example Tweet to Promote an Article
If you check the Twitter hastag #TheProfit you will find my Tweets scattered amongst the Tweets from Marcus Lemonis and others, this is how I was hoping Marcus Lemonis would notice my Guerilla marketing attempt.
Over the past year or so those articles have been Tweeted (via the 30ish Tweets) dozens of times and with so many Tweets the owners of the websites would have to be avoiding Twitter to not eventually see them. It’s a very slow soft sell Guerilla marketing technique, every time they check #TheProfit hashtag on Twitter there’s a chance they see one of my Tweets.
It’s a little like TV ads which keep cropping up, before you know it when you think about tinned baked beans it’s Heinz baked beans, want a high quality vacuum cleaner, it’s a Dyson.
It’s my first time trying this guerilla Twitter marketing technique and it finally got a little nibble from a huge shark, Marcus Lemonis.
Marcus Lemonis Notices a Guerilla Marketing Tweet
One of the scheduled Tweets posted on August 29th 2019.
Was finally noticed by Marcus Lemonis on September 2nd, he followed my main SEO Gold Twitter business account and made the Tweet below.
Since it’s been over a year since I wrote the Marcus Lemonis Review and I review a LOT of websites (many just for practice), I followed back, reread the three SEO reviews as a reminder and replied.
Also sent a Twitter Direct Message (DM) with basic contact details and a couple of new SEO issues with the Marcus Lemonis website and the Camping World website.
In my perfect fantasy world the very busy Marcus Lemonis with over half a million Twitter followers and presumably a completely swamped Twitter Notifications and Direct Message pages, would have dropped everything and had been eagerly waiting on Twitter just for my reply, but alas no quick reply or contact.
Marketing Tip: When contacting potential marketing clients be sure to use your actual telephone number, I included the wrong blinking phone number in my Twitter DMs: my telephone number isn’t +44 1754 76300, it’s +44 1754 763099. Talk about embarrassing to use the wrong telephone number AND not notice!
I created a detailed Camping World review as an example of my SEO skills and sent a followup Twitter DM linking to the Camping World review.
I normally work on a soft sell approach, aggressive marketing isn’t my style. I could go OTT, make multiple Tweets etc…, but I don’t normally go hard sell/SPAMMY.
I know how good I am at what I do, but I don’t feel comfortable ramming it down people’s throats! I’m confident enough in my abilities that if I were offered two options to work full-time on the Camping World sites SEO-
- 1. $200,000+ a year plus benefits…
- 2. US minimum wage (about $15,000) for a year and a bonus based on the traffic increase above the previous years traffic increase.
I’m so confident I can increase traffic on a site like Camping World, I’d take option 2, just so long as the real boss (my wife) would let me!
Marcus Lemonis is a potential career altering SEO client, looking at the Camping World site alone could easily be a full-time SEO job for years to come.
In September 2019 Marcus replied to my Twitter DMs and suggested I email him via his Camping World email address. I sent Marcus an email (included below) with some good SEO advice, but didn’t hear anything back. Sent a followup Twitter DM on October 17th, but no reply, so looks like my Google Guerilla Marketing plan failed to land a big SEO client.
Email to Marcus Lemonis regarding Camping World SEO
Hi Marcus,
Really difficult to communicate SEO problems via Twitter, so appreciate the email.
I haven’t analysed the full Camping World site yet, it’s a large site and so far I’ve concentrated on the RV sales sub-site which at every view I’m seeing SEO mistakes and opportunities.
I can see what your developer/SEO is trying to achieve, but they are getting it wrong.
There’s multiple ways to gain access to the same content, so to avoid duplicate content issues they’ve blocked part of the site from being indexed via the robots.txt file, this is not the best solution. I’ve included the best solution at the bottom of this email.
That’s a huge mistake and probably a contributing factor why when I search for RVs listed in your inventory I tend to see competitor sites above yours.
A few random examples to search for in Google
2020 KEYSTONE COUGAR 32RDB
2019 THOR HURRICANE 29M
2020 THOR FREEDOM ELITE 22HEF
2019 WINNEBAGO MINNIE WINNIE 31K
I copied these directly from the Camping World site inventory, these are the title tags of webpages on the sales site and you should rank high for them. You should be number 1-3 for some of these, but tend to be just outside the top 5.
Over 2/3rds of Google traffic goes to the top 5 listings, so when a large brand site like yours has a lot of just outside the top 5 Google rankings it means SEO improvements can result in big traffic increases. You will see the problem in your Google Search Console, the site will generate large impressions, but relatively low clicks: basically your RVs are listed in the top 10, but it’s not getting clicked because it’s not top 5.
When I see Google rankings like these associated with so many SEO mistakes and missed opportunities I get excited, it’s the sort of site I’d like to work on full-time.
I don’t do guarantees (no one controls Google rankings), but I’d be shocked if I couldn’t significantly increase traffic to the RV sales section of the site. I wouldn’t be surprised at a 50%+ increase within a year: I’d be disappointed at below 10%. Some of the SEO is really poor, which is a good thing, means there’s lots of low hanging SEO fruit to quickly pick.
I usually work with small businesses who can’t afford a full-time SEO: I consult mostly via email (like the advice for your developer below). I look for SEO problems and opportunities and their developer (or even the owner if the business if very small) puts the advice into action. This can be hit or miss, depends on how serious and skilled the person I deal with is.
Looking at the size of the Camping World site and the potential ROI gains, the best use of my SEO skills is working full-time. I’ve been looking for an opportunity like this where I can get hands on and make a big difference.
I’d suggest:
Stage 1 fix the SEO errors.
Stage 2 look for the easy SEO improvements.
Stage 3 look for harder SEO improvements which involves training staff to modify how they create content for the site for maximum SEO and social media impact.
Looking forward to working with you.
David Law
Feel free to pass this along to your developer:
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Change the site structure so when searching for a stock number like 1677378 it loads:
https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/new-travel-trailer-rvs/2020-keystone-cougar-32rdb-bunkhouse-30k-MCG1677378
Rather than
https://rv.campingworld.com/rv/1677378
The former is the better URL, it’s built into the sites navigation system (how your visitors will find an RV) and more likely to have generated backlinks or shared on social media etc…
You could do it the otherway around, keywords within a URL are a minor ranking factor and if it’s easier to manage only loading https://rv.campingworld.com/rv/1677378 and dropping https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/new-travel-trailer-rvs/2020-keystone-cougar-32rdb-bunkhouse-30k-MCG1677378 go with that solution instead and modify the rest of the advice accordingly.
Add an identical canonical URL with this format
<ink rel=”canonical” href=”https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/new-travel-trailer-rvs/2020-keystone-cougar-32rdb-bunkhouse-30k-MCG1677378″>
On both of the two page types above.
This will tell Google the longer URL format is the preferred URL format and will pass roughly 85% of any link benefit to the long URL format.
Change the robots.txt file to:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /searchpagination
User-agent: SemrushBot
Disallow: /
User-agent: SemrushBot-SA
Disallow: /
After making this change wait a couple of months for Google to reindex & rank the long URLs. After it’s reindexed we can 301 redirect the short URLs to the long URLs.
A Google site search for
site:https://rv.campingworld.com/rv/
Indicates everything under /rv/ are individual RVs.
If you can figure out a relevant 301 redirect rule, 301 redirect pages like https://rv.campingworld.com/rv/1677378 to https://rv.campingworld.com/rvdetails/new-travel-trailer-rvs/2020-keystone-cougar-32rdb-bunkhouse-30k-MCG1677378.
If you can’t figure out a way to 301 redirect the short URLs don’t worry about it too much, the canonical URLs will recover 85% of link benefit the same as a 301 redirect works & if there’s no way to find the short URLs via the sites search function they’ll be dropped overtime as stock is sold etc…
This change will recover a LOT of currently wasted internal link benefit, the recovered SEO benefit will be spread through the site making every webpage more likely to rank higher in Google.
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More annoying than not landing an SEO job from my Guerilla Marketing tactics is I’ve given Marcus Lemonis/Camping World some awesome SEO advice for free and as far as I can tell, not one single bit of the SEO advice has been followed!
This is not the first time I’ve given free SEO advice which has been completely ignored, what is wrong with businesses not following good SEO advice that’s free? The Camping World onsite SEO is rubbish, it’s complete amateur hour SEO wise, yet not one piece of my SEO advice has been followed!
I’m interested to know what others in marketing would have done differently and would do next to turn a little nibble into a big bite?
David Law
Website - SEO Gold Services
