I feel like 2017 was flown by in an instant. It doesn’t seem like much time has passed since I sat down to write about 2016’s year in review. The funny part is while I feel as though it’s been an uneventful year, it was anything but quiet. I look back at the activity list of 2017 and I realize, a lot did happen. I was just too mixed up in the craziness to recall any of it.
I like busy. I’m not one to sit all day and watch TV or spend time curled up with a good book. And honestly, I haven’t been for a very long time.
Instead of maintaining a low key lifestyle, I like to keep myself and my mind occupied. When I actually take the time to reflect on 2017, I see this year kept me and my mind active and it is a great illustration of my need for speed.
Sadly, this comes at a price.
Because of this craziness, I’ve fallen way behind on blogging. This makes me incredibly sad because writing is therapeutic for me. Before I beat myself up for this or allow you to look down on me, let me explain why I’ve been so bad at maintaining Web Savvy Marketing’s blog this year. Quite honestly, I haven’t had any available time to do so. I’ve either been working on client SEO projects, teaching people about SEO on webinars, or launching new events.
Here’s a Recap of What Happened in 2017
Traveled to 9 live events and spoke at 7:
- SEO Bootcamp Dallas
- DFW SEM Association Meeting
- PressNomics
- WordCamp Miami
- The Entrepreneurs’ Organization of Oklahoma
- SEO Bootcamp OKC
- WordCamp Kent
- WordCamp Minnesota
- WordCamp Ann Arbor
Provided the iThemes community with 12 months of free webinars:
- Select Getting Personal With Google Search Console
- Digging Deep into Competitive Research
- A Practical Guide to Keyword Research
- Building a Website Architecture That’s SEO Friendly
- A How-to Guide for On-Page SEO
- Blogging Your Way to Great SEO
- Understanding the Knowledge Graph and Featured Snippets
- The Ins and Outs of YouTube SEO
- Why Everyone Should be an Expert in 301 Redirects
- Select Taking the Scary Out of Schema
- Linking Strategies: The Who, What, and Why
- Twelve Days of Google Analytics
Provided the iThemes community with 2 premium training events:
- Select SEO Summit
- Website Audit Workshop
Appeared on 6 third-party podcasts and webinars:
- LearnDash Training Webinar
- The Matt Report
- WP Apprentice Training Webinar
- ZenFounder Podcast
- The Jeff Large Podcast
- BobWP eCommerce Show
Other notable activities included:
- Launched a number of custom designed websites for clients
- Worked directly with lots of SEO consulting clients
- Held quite a few Clarity.fm coaching calls
- Launched an SEO podcast called SEObits.fm
- Released three new SEO courses:
- Released two premium online training events:
- SEO Mastermind for Users
- SEO Mastermind for Freelancers and Agencies
- Launched a private Facebook group for SEO
- Was able to sneak off to join industry friends at CaboPress
- Sold and transferred our Genesis theme store to 9seeds
Yep, that was a lot of activity, and when I look back at that list, I’m rather surprised it all happened. I don’t know how I executed it without losing a little bit of my sanity.
But guess what? I enjoyed the craziness of it all. I enjoyed teaching people and helping them learn SEO. And most important is the fact that my students and clients had positive results!
Here’s a Visual of What Happened in 2017
Since many of you have spent the last year with me in one form or another, I thought I would share some of the pictures that we captured along the way. These include both professional and personal events spent with industry friends.
Thank You for Spending 2017 With Me!
Before I close I just want to say thank you to everyone who took part in my 2017. There were so many of you that came from all over the world to train with me and laugh with me.
I can’t thank you enough for the memories you’ve provided and the support you’ve given me both professionally and personally.
I look forward to spending more time together in 2018!
I think one of the best reasons to do a year in review post is to realize how much you’ve really accomplished in a year. Yours certainly wasn’t uneventful! I have really appreciated your continued focus on SEO education, as I have learned incredible amounts from your course, webinars, Bootcamp and Mastermind. Thank you for generously sharing your knowledge and encouragement in 2017.
Looks like you did a lot of things in 2017, Good Luck for 2018.
Look forward to continuing to work together in 2018. Maybe this will be the year we finally get the chance to meet in person.
2017 might have been great if Web Savvy Marketing had kept its Theme products. 9seeds is a dud. Just look at their blog – nothing since November 2017.
When I purchased the Pro Theme package it was because of the sterling reputation of WSM. The value of this package has significantly decreased with its selling to 9seeds.
Hi Marcus. I do hear and understand the frustration.
We (9seeds) had hoped to start releasing new themes a few months after the acquisition (before the end of 2017). We’re now in March 2018 so that clearly didn’t happen.
There are a couple legitimate things that have delayed our plans. The biggest being the uncertainty around Gutenberg. Gutenberg is finally in the last few weeks started to solidify to the point we’ve been able to build beta Gutenberg support into new themes with some confidence that it won’t turn into a giant mess when Gutenberg finally lands in WP Core later this year. Needless to say this is a HUGE course shift for how our themes get developed and was also somewhat dependent on Genesis itself preparing to support Gutenberg.
Beyond that, we’ve completely rebuilt the base framework themes are built from. WSM’s base child theme was great and solid but hadn’t been kept up to date for several years and this was the right point in time to overhaul that.
We’ve also worked on a new method for how our themes get installed and setup, that we are super excited about and will have benefit to all our future theme releases. That requires a 3rd party library that also was unstable until very recently.
In short, new themes, are coming. They’re going to be great. Stay tuned and feel free to reach out to me directly on 9seeds. I’m always looking for feedback from passionate customers on what they want to see, even that’s just “more themes now!”.