I’M going to introduce you to My world of SEO experts and show you some of my favorite books on how to be The most findable business online, If you love to read or you have an E-Reader Then I’ve got some great books for you Now. I know a lot of us. Do our Learning through internet Internet searches blog posts, But I wanted to Cover my top books on SEO and social media People that I admire greatly and I Want to point you toward because they are master craftsmen in their own niche.
The first one I want to talk about is a book that I’ve looked at and read and Recommended my clients for years This is a book by Steve Krug. It’S called “, Don’t Make me think” – And this is actually a revised edition from 2014, But what it Does talk about is when I come to a website or I come to a digital asset. Don’T make me think, Give me exactly what I need when I need it. So I highly Recommend the book “ Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug.
The next one is a Gentleman that I admire greatly, He is a genius at Facebook targeting and when it Calls psychographic targeting And he wrote a book called “ Killer, Facebook ads.” And it’s from 2011, but it’s still absolutely relevant today. He also wrote A book called “ The Complete Social Media Managers, Guide, essential tools and Tactics for business success.”! So if you want to be a social media manager that Is the book you should absolutely read, It is genius It lays out the whole concept of how to really learn to be an expert in Community and social management – That’s Marty, Weintraub with AimClear.
He speaks At all the major conferences He is hugely well-respected in the industry. And I read everything I can get my hands on by Marty. The next one is search. Engine optimization all-in-one for dummies, You guys have all seen these Dummies book Well, this book is unique And that there is no dummy happening here. Bruce Clay is the father of SEO as far as on maybe the Godfather. Yes, I’m the Godfather of SEO – And I tell you this book – is the front the back – that the Sides and the inside of SEO from start to finish, I highly recommend this book.
It is search engine, optimization all-in-one for By Bruce Clay, Okay, So the next one is a dear friend of mine and a genius in Social media, His name is Corey Pearlman. He and I actually spoke at search engine Strategies a million years ago, When my book came out, findability formula Published by Wiley & Sons, he came out with his book called emarketing bootcamp And he and I instantly connected because we were sort of the the more extroverted People at search engine strategies, And so we kind of got you know we were Instantly liked each other – and we were very much comrades in arms And he’s Recently launched another book called “ Social media overload.
”. So if you’re a Business owner, who feels like all of it is just too much. You would definitely Want to read this book: It’s by Corey Pearlman, It’s called Social Media Overload Simple social media strategies for overwhelmed and time deprived Businesses, So I’m just absolutely enthralled by that book. Another book I Really like Look up Gina’s book, It’s called “ Social Media Doesn’t Work”. If you Don’T work it It’s a great book on how to really be an expert, but you have to Know how to work the system and that’s what Gina’s book is all about And then Last but not least, is my books, So I’ve had a tremendous education around not Only working with publishers, but also with self-publishing, So my first book Findability formula was released in.
… Oh, I hate to say it Was least. I think it was Like 2009, is that right, Yes, March of 2009, which seems like forever Ago, But I just stopped leaving…, I just stopped working at Yahoo and this Was my very first book out on my own? A lot of this was based on the experiences I had with my trainees when I was training for Yahoo. My second book is Called Thumbonomics — the essential business roadmap for social and mobile Marketing And that’s all about how to treat social media as search engines as Rather than social media sites, So it’s kind of an interesting take on social Media And then my final book is marketing espionage.
How to spy on Yourself, your prospects and your competitors to dominate online This book, Is my course work From start to finish it’s all about how to lay out an online Strategy based on data, Human intent data. What are they doing? How can I build a Business, that is in alignment with what people already want, with they’re already Searching So marketing espionage is a book from start to finish on how to Execute a SEO, slash findable strategy to connect and convert So I hope you’ll add Some of these books to your bookshelf – I absolutely adore these authors and They’Re experts in their own right – And hopefully this will help you to keep Digging keep learning and know that you’re never done with marketing and There’S always the next best thing: If you love to read, or maybe you have an E-Reader, I hope you love the books that I shared with you today, There’s so many Experts out there, So what I’m going to do to give you a head start is give you a Link to my ebook, It’s down in the description of this article, Download it Share with anybody you like I’m over it.
I can’t stop it Like once it hits Amazon if you’re an author, you know that it Just goes everywhere, So I give it away now. This is the best possible calling Card, So how I want to help businesses online So again, the links down in the Description Download that bad boy and hopefully you’ll get to become the most Findable business online with a little help from me,
You have to try the best pumpkin seed snack from Spunks! Learn about the creators by watching the video below.
Welcome to the we are slam, show a show where we share marketing trends, best practices and ideas to help your business grow, and today I have with me Whitney Brockman. She is our art director here at slam agency and today we’re going to share some tips and some best practices on how to design for digital. Yes, I’m very excited stuff, yeah yeah.
So this is the type of stuff that Whitney does day in and day out, for slam and for our clients, and so I’m really excited, because this is a this is going to be some good information that you can use immediately. You can take back to your teams to your agencies and you can you can get some good work done so Whitney welcome to the show Thanks. So today we’re talking about best practices for designing and digital, and more than anything, we have to realize that print and digital are two completely different things.
Print in many cases is still relevant, but most of the design work is going digital at this point. So let’s talk about like, what’s the one, the big thing that people should keep in mind so traditionally the clients that I’m working with have been more towards the print side of design, and it’s been interesting to have them translate what they’ve been doing in print to Digital because it is dramatically different, there are limitations.
There are, you know, restraints that you can’t necessarily it doesn’t translate in digital world and you really have to grab the attention of the viewer and when I am given tasks and projects to work on, I really have to think about the big picture so like what It what’s the goal who’s going to see this who’s this for and if it’s a campaign, when is it going to end, so I can figure out the best way to get the most attention and engagement right off the bat and that that big picture is important Because, with print you know like a magazine ad or something like that, you’re designing it, it’s going through several different stages of iterations of you know.
Process might take a few weeks or a month to design going back and forth with the client and then at some point in the future. Like you see it in a magazine and that’s that right yeah, you can’t, if you see it once, you can’t necessarily go back and find it through all your magazines, but on social media. It is interesting because if you remember an ad, you can easily go find it with a lot of campaigns, you’re going to have multiple ads on multiple platforms.
So you can do those ads targeting your audience, and you know they’re going to see that over and over again, which is really great and that’s why you have to think about the big picture. It’S not just one ad. It’S not going to just be there for just one person to see and with a print ad. Typically, you want to include as much information as you can in the ad. Typically, that’s what we see a lot of, but in digital, like you, said, think of the big picture like that.
Storyline is constantly happening across different blogs different times, and you have opportunities to communicate that message over time. You don’t have to do it all at once and because, most of the time, the ads going to click through to a page where you can put all the information you want, so the driving factor is you just have to make it look good. You have to make it different. You can take risks because it’s a digital platform.
It’S like I said it’s only going to live for a couple days. You can take risks, that’s what’s important and that’s that’s one of the advantages of digital is that you can try new things and because and because of that – or you can do that, because you have essentially instant feedback built into each of the Train of flexibility. Yes, so like we post something on Facebook and instantly, we know whether or not that design and that copy is engaging and whether it’s having the effect we want it to have easy, well easily trackable.
You know if, if you have one post that you post one day and it’s getting all this feedback a lot of likes and comments and shares, you know they were doing right. But then you maybe post something very similar with a different image and you can see that it’s not engaging and you really got to sit down and you know dissect that feedback and figure out what makes one post better than the other. And we are talking a little bit earlier about just like this traditional process, which typically, you know, takes time yes and the digital process, which, because of the nature of digital, we are able to create content today and post it today and get our feedback today, and Because of that, you, you mentioned earlier to be quick, like don’t sit on ideas, especially when they’re relevant you know in this world we have things going viral every day and and you can’t wait a week if something’s gone viral, if you want to jump on board, You got to get going and figure out the best way for your team, or you know yourself to manage your time and get what needs to get out as fast as you can and because you have a format or a blog, where things only last.
For a couple of days, it’s okay! If it’s not perfect, right right exactly and if you make a mistake, you can delete it, which is nice. You can re-edit re-upload, so um. I think the thing that drives the most results is taking those risks within the brand guidelines, of course, of course, stay on stay on bran, but take those right and within the blogs guidelines. That’S probably the final point that we mentioned is that yeah, you mentioned a little bit earlier about advertising on Facebook and the 20 % rule, but just in general, every network is going to have some sort of guidelines right.
So it’s become second nature for me because I do it so much, but if you aren’t aware of especially with Facebook guidelines for advertising, there’s a limit for the amount of words that you can have on an ad. So it’s you want to really have the strong imagery making sure that your ads are going to be the most boosted and going to reach the the biggest audience there you go so Whitney. Thank you for sharing with us on how to design for digital.
If you have questions about how you should be designing for digital or just about designing in this day and age period, Whitney is going to be answering your questions on this article. So leave a comment, a question right below this article and we nee we’ll get back to you with an answer right away. So thank you for reading. We’Ll see you next time. Thank you. Thanks for reading, if you like what you just readed subscribe, then hit that Bell you’ll be the first to be notified when new content goes live.
After that you can read more articles from slamming. We pick something we think you’ll love,
And the most trusted for searches related to Your products or business, So those two things, Relevance and trust – is What Google’s looking for to determine? Which which Websites, it should rank on the first page, And so when I say Google, just so you know, I’m going to be using that interchangeably for all search engines. Because 167 billion searches happen on Google a month. That’S a ton. Most searches happen on Google right Right, so I’m just going to Use, Google interchangeably, I mean it is the 167 billion Pound gorilla in the room, so we’re just going to go with it.
I’M scared All right so SEO, like Why why is it important? Why should we invest our time? Energy and money into it So search engines, they’re The new Yellow Pages: This is where people go to find answers Billions upon billions of Searches are happening each month and many of those are for Your products and services, So, if you’re not showing up On the search results, page you’re missing out on a Huge untapped potential of all these customers, Who, literally, are typing your products into the search? Bar wanting to purchase 88 % of people, research Before they buy and they’re-, where do they research [ Nealey ], That’s huge Google, so you need to just- It’S just plain and simple: You need to be there So, instead of me telling You, let me just show you, Let’s go check out a Search result right now, Cool: let’s do it All right, so we’re going to Break down the different pieces of SEO by going to the Search results page itself: Okay, So, let’s dive into it, So let’s go to Google.
Com and What’S an example business that we should look into [ Nealey, ] Um: let’s try, lawyers [, Morgan, ], Laywers, ahh, That business of yours is getting big time: huh [ Nealey ], Something like that. [ Morgan, ], Yeah, Phoenix Arizona, you need a lawyer now So lawyer, Phoenix Arizona. So what I just typed into The search bar is known as the search query and this Is a phrase or a question that you are looking for answers for This can contain your Keywords, for example, lawyer, is a keyword and Phoenix Arizona is probably a keyword.
So now, let’s look at the Three different pieces of the search engine results, page Also known as the SERP Okay, so these first two sections Right here these are the ads paid ads and normally You can tell because they have a little ad flag right there. So you can see there are two ads here and then, if we scroll down to The next section this is the local map listing sections, So these are local businesses.
Only so if you serve a national audience or you Don’T have a physical location that you serve, then you Aren’T going to show here The way that you appear Here is you have to have great SEO on your website? And you also have to have an optimized Google, My Business profile, And you can see that only a Few businesses appear here so there’s usually three. This is known as the local three pack And then occasionally there’d be an ad, So this is an example of Someone who’s paying to appear in the local listings and Then these three below it are the ones that are naturally Organically showing up here, which Google has deemed For Phoenix Arizona, these are the best three.
You can click on more places. And that’s going to bring you a wider map of all the Different local lawyers, So you can see quite a few And then you can dig into their Google My Business profile from there, So here’s an example of one So the next and last piece at the bottom. These are the organic results. This is where you want to be Because, unlike the paid ads, you have to pay to play for those.
So once your ad budget is Out poof you’re gone you’re no longer there, But with these you prove to Google over time that you’re the most relevant and The most trusted answer and then you’re going to stay Here, for a long long time, as long as you continue To show Google that you’re better than your competition And people love these A lot of people while ads are affective, we’re kind of trained to Just skip over the ads and go straight down: To the organic results, and so so many people will Just hop down right here and they’ll click and find their lawyer, So I wan na go back to the Top and I wan na talk about keywords and keyword.
Competitiveness because keywords are things which We’Ll be talking about, you need to put all across your website. It’S these search terms. That people are looking for, and so you need to make Sure that you have that on your website as well Um, however, some are much More competitive than others, So if you look at lawyer, Phoenix Arizona, there’s about 32 million results, It’s pretty broad Phoenix is a pretty big city.
If we change it to something. That’S less competitive, let’s say a dog grooming- Dog groomer Phoenix Arizona, only 2.3 million results So clearly less competitive business. So there’s not as much competition there, which is great if you’re a Dog groomer cause. That means you have a- if you’re Doing the right SEO it’s going to be easier to Appear on the first page for that search term, Unlike lawyers, where They put a lot of money into advertising.
It’S a very Very very competitive space. There are people, always Fighting for those top spots, Should we only put short keywords: Is there anything else we can use So initially, no With Google. You need to start Small with they’re called long-tail keywords, so They’Re they’re keywords with three four: five: Six words altogether um, because you need to prove your authority in the small, less competitive Spaces before Google is going to realize that you Should be ranking for these more broad terms, So for this example, If I’m a dog groomer, let’s say I specialize in poodle grooming, So we’re going to change It to poodle, groomer, Phoenix Arizona And you can see the Competitiveness there’s only 300 thousand search.
Results, so this is great because there’s not as many People who put poodle grooming on their websites, and so for me this is a great opportunity. For me to start building that authority with Google, So remember if I’m a dog Groomer and you go to my website and there’s absolutely Nothing about dog grooming, it’s just my name. My phone Number and maybe a photo Google’s going to look at that and think this doesn’t talk anything about It’s not relevant Yeah.
It’S not relevant. So this person must not be great for this keyword: They’re, probably not a dog groomer at all, So our job is to go and make Sure that all the content on our website is relevant, To those keywords, All right, so you’re Telling me all I need to do is update just a little bit. Of content on my website, Not exactly so remember, That we’re doing this not only for our users, So they have information, but for Google, Okay, So and Google wants our Websites to be structured in a very particular way right.
Ultimately, it’s a robot That’S scanning the backend of our website, so the Backend data of the website, Google wants to make sure that We have it formatted in a way that it can easily read and Know what our website is about, So these are things like Our H1 tag, our meta data meta descriptions which I’M going to go into right now to show you where this is [: Nealey ] Awesome. Let’S see it [ Morgan ]! So for Since we’re here on this poodle grooming website, Let’S go to this one Puff and Fluff Grooming and Pet Sitting: [ Nealey ], I’m all about rhyming, [, Morgan ]! It’S a nice! Looking Website it has great colors great branding, but the problem is Google doesn’t see any of that.
This is what they see Boom. [ Nealey ]. That’S gross [, Morgan ]! That’S not that pretty And end users, your customers, If this was your way that your website was presented, they would get nothing from this However, this is exactly what Google looks at when they’re Wanting to rank a website All right, so you’re Telling me that I have to know how to code to do that. Not necessarily because Modern day website builders already have this built in here.
You can see with this website. They’Re actually using a plugin for WordPress Called “ All in One SEO”, Where you just put it in and It just makes it super easy for you, as a non-technical. User to update all of these SEO elements, which is awesome So as part of this, you need To have your meta title, so this is basically the title: Of each part of your website that when you go back to the Search engine results page you, this is what will show up So for this example.
They set their meta title for Puff and Fluff Grooming and Pet Sitting And then you can also see right, Here the meta description they get to choose what that is All right. So that’s the basics of SEO. The search engine results page Everything on your website. We just talked about everything on-site that you need to do to your Website so now, let’s talk about the things off-site. Okay, That shows Google that you’re The most trusted answer for search results.
All right so explain trust A little bit more for us Yeah, so I have an analogy. So let’s say that you get a call one day and it’s from a fifth grader And the fifth grader says: “: Hey Morgan is the best basketball player in the entire world..”. Are you going to believe him? Probably not. I think you paid him Right all right now. What If Kobe Bryant LeBron James and Michael Jordan, called you up and said, “ Hey, I’ve got the scoop.
On this new player, Morgan She’s, the best basketball Player in the entire world.”. What would you say to that? Would you believe them? Oh absolutely Yeah They have authority, They have authority, so you will trust their opinion. And it’s the same thing with Google: The way that Google can Tell if your website, if it should trust your Website cause again, we could toot our own horn all day long, And we see this all the time.
People say: “ best dog, groomer, In Phoenix Arizona,,” right, Like people love to toot their own horn, but with Google [ Nealey ] Self-proclaimed. It needs that authority. From other people and that’s where backlinks come in And so backlinks are Links on other websites that point back to your Website and Google uses this as an indicator to see Oh okay, this is actually a really good website. Other people are talking about it Now with backlinks.
It’S Quality over quantity, You don’t just want to go on. The internet and go put your you know, go on every comment. Every YouTube comment, like just put your website everywhere, cause that’s going to look spammy Google’s not going to like that. It wants really high quality. The Michael Jordan’s, if you will, What is one thing they can do right now, The biggest thing that you Can do that will give you so much bang for your buck is to put content on your website.
Especially content that has your keywords To determine those keywords: You should probably… What are the products and Services that you offer or what are the products And services that you want your customers to know about, For example, using the dog Groomer in Phoenix Arizona – maybe is there certain types, Of grooming that you do that you’re really well known for Let’s say you’re the best Darn toy poodle groomer this side of the Mississippi, ( laughs, ).
Okay, You should have a separate Page with content on it about that specific Service that you offer So that’s what I recommend Go make sure your page Just has tons of content so that way, when users and Ultimately, Google look at it, they know exactly what You’Re about and then Google will start ranking you All right guys. I hope you Found this beginner’s guide to SEO helpful and that These are actionable things that you can start doing now.
So that way, your customers can start finding your business online If you’re going to get started. And you found this helpful, let us know in the comments: Below the number one thing you learned about SEO today Awesome and make sure You like this article, subscribe to the blog And if you wan na see these articles first ring that bell, But this has been The Journey Signing off.
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So, let’s get started to get started open your dashboard in a new in a new tab and now again we have to install a new plugin for this, so how our plugins click on add new and in your search for Yoast.
Okay, here it is Yoast SEO by Yoast. This is by far the best plug-in, for you know SEO, as you can see, more than 13,000 people have rated and that it is a five-star five-star rated product, five-star rated plug-in and more than 1 million active installs. At present, so this is an amazing plugin, no doubt so. Just click on install now now click on activate. Ok. Now again, you will see a new thing, a new tab, oh yah, which says SEO just click on that.
Ok, here it is it’s. It says zero problems, which is fine notification, not needed right down. Just click on general here you’ll get an option called open. The configuration wizard click on that now you have two options. You have to select this one configure Yoast SEO in a few step now here, the environment, you have to select the environment, three options: production staging development development is when the site is running locally for development purposes.
Staging is a copy of side used for testing purposes and production and the site is life with the real traffic. So our website is at production stage, so select production click on next now you have to select the type of the website, whether it is a blogging website, whether it is a webshop web shop is basically ecommerce website. So we have to select the webshop click on next, whether it’s a company or a person.
Ours is a company, we’ll select log, toad incorporation. You have to choose an image: a company logo, let’s select any image, a short image. If you have okay, this one select your logo, your company logo, click on choose an image. Click on next now put in your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever you using Google+ or YouTube URL, and don’t don’t ever underestimate any of these steps? Don’T think? Oh man! This is not important.
Our facebook URL is not important now this is not important. This is really important. All these steps that are over here, it is not like you know they have just given you some random. These things are really important. I it is really connected to the SEO stuff, so make sure you put all your url, so you, okay now after you do so click on next, then it is post type visibility. The first one is, the post type post should be visible or hidden means the post type, which is post, which is basically our blocks, whether you want a visible or hide them on.
You know, search engine, so obviously we want it to be visible. But what should be there for your pages, whether you want to show your pages on search engines or not? For example, we created about this Contact Us page, so obviously we want them to be visible on search engines. If you want, you can also make visible for media. You can also hide them. If you have any products. Here is the main thing products we want this to be visible.
Okay, this is the main thing make sure it is visible for products. The most important thing. Okay, so once you have done this setting click on next okay, so it asks whether it has multiple authors does. Or will your site have multiple authors? If you think yes in the future, you have more author, then select yes. If no, then, no, then click on next. Okay, now you have to get Google authentication code.
So just click on this ok select your account. Click on allow just copy this code paste it over here now click on next and now you have to select the separator, for example, come back to your website and here at the top you see the title which says ecommerce website address in this separator is a Pipe – and you can select this big so on so let’s select this one, the small and click on next, you can have any kind of separator.
It’S just separates your website name with the product name or page name whatever. It is now click on next now you can sign up for the newsletter. If you want, you know, if you don’t, then just click on next. Ok, now you have some options. Basically, it is just you know some ads from Yoast. If you want to upgrade to premium, you can click on this. If you want to learn how to write copy that rank, you know whatever it is.
You have different courses, free courses, I guess on YouTube, so you can read those articles if you want, after that, just click on next. It says your turn Nate. You have done it. So click on close now come back over here in the webmaster tool, and here we have to add a Google search console so just open new tab or search for Google console. Ok search for Google search console! Ok! Fine! Now here you will see this link.
Google Webmaster Tools, click on that okay, now here, if the you’re upset and obviously wants you’re upset because we haven’t created that so click on add a property and just copy your website link paste it over here, click on add: okay. Now we have different options through which you know you can a connect. Your ghost from this Google search console with this one. No, so you have many different options.
Just click on the first one, HTML tag, the most easy one now here, you’ll see something called content. Is equal to then quotations under quotations? You have some code to you have to just copy those code which is under quotation, but I think you cannot copy when you click on that everything is selected. So just do one thing: copy everything open, a new tab, paste that way your and from here you will be able to copy this portion so just copy this push in which is under content.
Click on control C come back for you paste it over your click. On Save Changes, okay, once you do so again, come back, oh you’re on the console page and click on verify. Okay, so it should say this message. Congratulations. You have successfully verified your ownership of your website and you will see your website link over here. So we have successfully done that the most important thing this was the most important step.
Now, let’s see how to set up or how to increase the search engine optimization of our products, for that how our products, click on add product all products now select any one of the product. For example, let’s select this one men’s blue shorts live now scroll down. Now here, you’ll see one new box over here, which is Yoast SEO. Ok, you’re, getting a snippet preview of how your product or how your link for this product will look like on Google.
Ok, you can select mobile, so this is how it will look on mobile. You select that top. This is. How do we look on desktop now to select one focus? Keyword basically focused keyword should be like you know. Let me show you, for example, it is men’s. Blue shorts live, so what you can select is blue short sleeve. This might be, this can be your focus keyword. So now you have this, you know analysis section where you have different dots, red dot, orange dot, a green dot.
Basically, we have to turn all this thing into green dot so be here. We have turned two things into green dot. The first one is focused, keywords appears in the URL for this page. What does this mean? We have selected a focus keyword over here, and this is the URL of our of our page of our product. So, as you can see, blue short-sleeve is there. This is a focus keyword, it is present in the permalink, so that is what it means.
Okay and second, was, is you have never used? This focus keyword before very good? This is basically because this is the first product on which we are working for SEO. Optimization. Now, let’s see other thing now, this one, which is a red dot, it says no meta description has been specified. Search engines will display copy from the page instead, okay, so what you can do is just click on this edit snippet and you can have meta description, just copy something from your and paste it over here.
Okay, when it turns red, it means that you have. You have to decrease the size for this okay, okay, so this is how this is the length of Meta Description that you should have now. As you can see, the Meta Description is available. I and you can see it on the snippet preview. Okay, once you do so click on close snippet editor. Now we have the third thing. Also green, which says the length of the Meta Description is sufficient.
Now, let’s see the net nada dot, which we have to work on, the focus keyword doesn’t appear in the first paragraph of the copy makes your topics clear immediately: okay, so basically the focus keyword should be available on over here. Okay, so let’s add anywhere over here and obviously it should make sense, I’m just showing you for the sake of showing, but you have to see. Where does this thing fit and it should make sense, the sentence should make sense.
Okay, so that we have put this thing or your now again, we have turned one more thing, Green, which is very, very awesome. We are going good now again this a red dot which says a Meta Description has been specified, but it does not contain the focus keyword. So this is our focus keyword. We did enter a meta description, but it doesn’t have the focus keyword. So, let’s replace this thing with our focus: keyword, okay, put a full-stop at the end, click on close snippet, editor and now boom.
We have five green dots, so we are really going good. It says no internal links appear in this page. Consider adding some as appropriate. So what this means is, you know you have to link something to your to your page. Internal link. Internal link is basically when you click on that link, it will redirect you to different page or different product which is available on your own website. Okay on the same website – or I know external link are basically when you click on that link.
You will be redirected to another website, so that is internal and external link. So how to do that, for example, here it is written typewriter, so you can select this. You can a you have insert or edit link click on that and you can paste a URL okay. So, let’s add this URL domain website URL and click on apply. Okay, now we have added an internal link on this website and again now we see six different, green dots, which is awesome.
The keyword density is 0.4 percent, which is too low. The focus keyword was found one time. Okay, so basically, what it means is the focus keyword should be no available at several places. For example, let’s add all yours now we have to then we can add over here. We have three. Now, let’s again come back now, it has. The keyword density is now 10.1 %. So out of this content, one person content can has our focus keyword, which is very fine, which is very good.
Now, let’s see this thing, this orange marks, which says that okay, fine, it is good, but it is not best. You have to turn this thing into green, which is the best practice with best SEO practice. So, let’s we don’t want good. We want the best so we’ll turn all these things also into green. The next thing is the text contains 267 words this slightly below the recommend recommended minimum of 300 words add a bit more copy.
Okay, so we have to add some more text over here. So just copy this thing again paste it over here now again come back okay now it says the text contains 370 words to 74 volts, which is above the minimum of 300 words. So again we have a new success. Now, let’s move on to another point, it says the images of this page are missing, alt attributes. So basically what it means is, you know, let’s see, let’s, let’s see we have an image over here.
So, let’s click on this image, and here besides image, you have caption all text description, so you have a title which is good. You also have to have a caption, so basically caption you might have seen in different news ma news websites. If you have seen when you have an image like this, for example, this is the image the Indy caption in below this image. It will be written. This is a beautiful girl or she is Taylor, super she’s, so on and so forth.
So that is what a caption is, which says you about this image. Okay, so you have to put a caption for this image, so this image is selected and make sure you do this for all the images which you have used in your website, then there is alt text you. What is an alt text? Suppose someone is using a very slow Internet and what happens is you know? While is visiting your website? The image doesn’t load because he is using a very slow Internet.
So, instead of this image, he will see this text, so image won’t be shown, but he will see some text so that is alt text. Now you have to write some description about this image, so you can write some description about this image. Okay, so make sure you select all these images and you fill everything title caption alt text, description. Okay, once you do so click on set product image. Now again, that thing has turned green, which is again awesome.
Okay, where is it yeah here? It is the images on the page contains alt attributes with the focus keyword. So this is awesome now here it is no output. Outbound link appears, as I said, we have to kind of link. We have already had an inbound link. Now, let’s have an outbound link. Okay, so let’s select some something some you know some word house and let’s link it to outbound. For example, let’s select this word, click on link and let’s link this to wordpress.
Org. Don’T just link you to any random website, make sure you’re linking to a very strong website. WordPress.Org is a very strong website. You can link it to YouTube or so on. You can, for example, suppose you are talking about your product and you want to say that you know what I have a article on this product, so you can read that article on YouTube and you can give that link. So basically, your this link will redirect to YouTube, which is a very strong website, so make sure you, you know, have a mumbling for a very strong website, not just a mini XYZ website.
Okay, now come down and only one thing is left now. The SEO title is too short, use the space to add variation or create compelling call-to-action copy okay. So this is the title now again: click on edit snippet, okay, so basically it is at present everything is set to you know everything is set to default, which is the first. The title will be there. Then page name will be there. Then date will be there and then site name will be there.
You can have you know a custom title. For example, let’s have this title: you know click on this title and add something more best short or best blue shirt, because you want to use this terms again and again best blue short, sleeves sorry shirt available in the market. Okay, so this title does make sense and it is also bigger just keep it this to available. Basically, you have to turn this thing into green.
Okay. Now click on close now, as you can see, everything is turned to green. Now it says SEO thing is good, but readability, it needs improvement, because you know all these words. I don’t know which language is this, so you have to use basic English language and you have to use some really basic words. You don’t have to use some tough words. Basically, you have to have the description wherein everyone can read something easily.
Even a school guy can understand what you’re talking about. So if you do so, after that, your readable readability will increase okay, once you are done with all the changes, click on update and you have successfully posted and increased the SEO power of this product. Now your product become really strong. Seo is very, very, very important. Companies charge thousands of dollars just for making this thing the same, they use the same plugin, and this is how they will do everything and they charge a lot of money for that.
So after reading this tutorial, I hope you guys how you get a lot of help, and this tutorial helps you and you are saving indirectly you’re saving a lot of money. So just for this, I hope you guys will give a 5-star rating to this course, because I have used – and I have put in a lot of efforts in making these goals, and I’m also providing these bonus lectures to you, which will be very beneficial for you.
Not only for this website but for any website which you make in future, so I hope you are so I hope you guys have enjoyed this lecture. Take care and I’ll see you guys in the next lecture, probably the last lecture. Okay, so see you soon,
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Reading this thinking. Okay, you know: Cody Cody built a six million dollar lead generation company.
He must be a absolute marketing, baller. Okay, also we’ve! You know the the conference. We’Re scaling is now the largest independent insurance agent training conference for insurance agents in the industry in the world really very quickly. They have you know the number one YouTube blog and all this stuff, so you would think like I’m just like a marketing legend of the insurance industry. However, I thought that till I met my good buddy Landon.
Okay, he’s a marketing freakin baller! Well, thanks for saying that man a legend and I’m telling you if you aren’t working with us, you’re missing out, okay. So thanks for saying that man, you got a man dude you’re, a UH! You are influence in the industry in the way that you are going about insurance marketing. Well, it’s just different these days. I feel I feel like there’s a massive digital shift.
Yeah, that’s happening. Everybody that I know in the insurance industry is moving into digital in some form or fashion, whether it’s a small percentage that our budget dude or a major percent budget we’re talking to like we’re talking to no joke. Like hundred million dollar companies, Oh bigger than that billion dollar companies every day and they are making massive shifts, it is I mean it’s, a big market shift, that’s happening and that’s causing a lot of issues on Facebook, specifically because that’s right now, the lowest hanging fruit.
Sure in the digital marketing space, but uh yeah man – I mean you know whenever I used to own an advertising agency – that you know we did four million a year in management fees. We had no specialty, though yeah, so you were declining, that’s how we met in the first place and the more the digital marketing world evolves. It’S going to be like the the the lawyer that has to specialize the digital marketer has a specialized.
I can’t imagine if I ever was to compete. If we were ever to compete on a digital marketing project. With someone that didn’t specialize in insurance, we will win 100 percent. That’S easy! It’S totally different when they do specialized insurance. Still freaking win. It’S totally different. Totall insurance marketing is completely different than general marketing, and the reason is is because insurance marketing is 100 % based around leads cost per lead, leave all you leave quality and really that’s not the case for a lot of business industry specifically before we continue to dive.
In I had an idea: okay, okay, I I found I found them reading this already, I’m like holy crap. I want to talk to that dude, okay, correct! Yes right! I mean, and that’s happening correct. It is absolutely so if they wanted to do that, is there like a link that there’s a way yeah yeah we’re going to add it you’re going to click it you’re going to schedule a free strategy session with Landon to talk about the struggles you’re having the Problems and what we can do to fix it, yeah we’ll just go through an unbiased sort of walkthrough of your digital marketing footprint.
Talk about your budget talk about results. Whatever I mean you know, we can do search engine optimization web development, social. Whatever. On that note we’re: how should we pivot, because this interview and how you’re influenced in the industry can go, because this is I’m interviewing? You can go a lot of different ways. Well, you mean for this call this this particular. What I feel like is interesting right now is search engine optimization, the really very interesting.
The reason I think that’s interesting is because one of the biggest things that I hear people say is: how do I diversify my lead source from social, because a lot of people are spending. You know when it comes to their digital marketing budget. Let’S just say: that’s: 20 to 30 % of their overall marketing budget or 50, or whatever most of that is going toward social, and the reason is because the easiest way to scoop up leads yeah right but what’s happening is, is digital marketing principles like search engine? Optimization and good website and blogging and content creation.
That is that’s low-hanging. Fruit: that’s why you see choice mutual and some of these guys that are scooping up hundreds of policies a year and all it is, is a final expense producer that figured out right and when you look at boomer benefits – and you look at some of these websites That are getting thousands of clients a year through Legion on their website through content marketing, you realize that it’s a low bar really in the insurance industry.
Most people are just scooping up the social leads, but they don’t know anything about search engine. Optimization, that’s what I think is interesting right now and we seem to be we’re noticed, I’m noticing a trend of people coming to you saying: hey! We we want to be on the cutting edge of getting thousands. If not tens of thousands of organic leads every year. Yeah well and that’s doable, I mean I can point you to websites that are not that innovative and large that are getting thousands of policies a year.
Just because they’ve been doing SEO for a couple years, and you know it’s not the search engine optimization. The reason it’s not taking hold and the insurance industry specifically, is because it doesn’t provide immediate results. You know, like social does, I mean sheesh you do. A social campaign will be generating X amount of leads in 48 hours, you’re saying right with SEO. It takes time. So so, basically, people a lot of times your hand-to-mouth, but you’re going to do that for so long, not to mention socials, changing Facebook’s, making it tougher where the privacy concern totally it’s more expensive with ap right now and also the holidays.
I mean our cost per leezar increasing, so you want to be diversified, really yeah, I’m a I made one mistake when I started this interview was that you know to us what I’m telling all myself. What do you mean? I didn’t. I just assumed that everyone. That knows me knows you it’s true, and maybe they don’t they may not. Maybe they don’t right so Landon McCarter. He has co-founder and partner with me and secure agent and marketing.
Yes, sir, it’s a marketing company that is is working with at least the top three finally expense call centers in the country yeah. We know that for a fact, yeah we’re actually going. I forgot we’re going to get here in about a couple weeks. I think to meet with a major insurance carrier, that’s doing billions a year in premium yep, and they want us to help them. Look at marketing yeah, which is strong, okay, well, yeah, multiple other IMO’s that we work with yeah or agents field forces whatever.
What why marketing for you to all take it away from that and what I’m introduced you know we did jump ahead. Didn’T we yeah, so you know wellmaybe sumed, you rape at 8 %. I assumed you so well, so why marketing white? Why marketing? For me all right: first off, I got my degree in marketing from Missouri State, so I’ve always been in sales. Sales and marketing go hand in hand. You can’t sell without leads, you can’t get leads without marketing.
So a good salesman has a good marketer on there. In their pocket always or they are a good marketer like if you know we interviewed James Nevins yesterday, you know he’s just a great salesman that understands marketing. Wouldn’T you know he’s have got a successful business. You know, I’m saying it’s like the people. You know marketing and sales skills are the two most important things in growing a large insurance business.
I believe yeah. Maybe you would agree. Oh dude, okay, so you know it’s it’s a it’s a secret sauce. I love marketing because I learned a long time ago and it doesn’t always work out this way. But you know marketing is if I could figure out a way for you to give me a dollar, and I can give you back to you’re going to give me a lot of dollars. I’M saying so well and even to add to that point. I’Ve gotten to where I’m so confident in our marketing now that I just increased our budget for inbound lead fall this morning.
By about nobody even knows this, my wife Lauren, don’t even know us by about 120 grand a year okay, this morning, okay, because I’m so confident in our marketing and our processes and our sis. Well, you do. We do get about 250 at about 350. Inbound leads a week of insurance agents contacting us for coaching leads for marketing whatever, where you’re going to be talking about and sharing with people at your SEO master class yeah yeah.
You can put that December 4th yes December, 4th at 4 p.M. But we’ll do a link to that Keith, don’t forget to put a link in the description there and even if they can’t attend they’re, going to get the recording for life just sort of so the Point is you need to be on that if, and you know what I’m going to I’m going to clarify a little bit, if you don’t want thousands of passive leads a year for without spending advertising dollars, then this isn’t for you yeah.
Well, what I’m going to teach on that class? If that’s, what we’re going to go now is there’s I’m going to demystify search engine optimization because there really it’s not as complex as it once was from a technical perspective, meaning you don’t need to have an understanding of web development to know a bulk of what Seo actually is because it is, it is super daunting. Well, you think think about you, think Google and they got the search engine robots that are going to call your sites or looking all these technical things.
And yes, there is absolutely a component of technical SEO and on-page SEO and that’s part of it, but there’s also a major what I call content for strategy and I’ve done a article on content first SEO and that’s how you get results. And I can show you over and over and over examples of the insurance industry. That’S content first SEO that just kills it, and so what I’m going to do is break down and demystify SEO I’m going to teach how to actually how to do it yourself.
For the most part and understand, I always said this 100 times: what is north, I’m going to teach you what North is on SEO, so you kind of aren’t getting led astray by the $ 1.99 social package that you saw. That also does SEO, and that’s all that crap you know, but there’s that’s not North. I can tell promise you that yeah we see so many of those than you even said did we could sell them, but we’re not going to deliver anything.
So, what’s the point is just taking people’s money, so it’s I will teach you how to make. If you can execute what I’m going to say, it’s worth probably eight hundred dollars a month in SEO Wow, you know if you can implement now. That’S the problem. Ten dollars so so that 397 ticket is going to be worth about 96 K over the next ten years. Sure yeah, I mean it’s more yeah because you’re just saving the money in SEO cost, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not picking up those additional thousands of leads for free, exactly that’s not including the business that you close from raids.
I mean I was looking at an analytics account of a search engine, optimization Medicare site that we were doing and I think in one week they were getting like fourteen, like just passive leads through the site which they never got before, and this particular agency that I’m Working with I’ve looked at their Facebook feed and they were bragging that they wrote 38 Medicare policies in two days between two guys.
It’S crazy yeah. It’S all passive leads. There was no like active marketing going feeding that it was. Is they just websites and walk-ins, and all that now they are they’re an existing business? So it’s not like you can just start a Medicare shop and get there, but you know how it goes man you know you got to build. You got to build something and that’s what SEO is is building for the future. Did you always know you would do you visit? Is it in your DNA? You know like just just to be such an influencer and a baller like where’d that come from? No, it’s not the.
What I love is the appreciate you saying you love. I knew that it really. What I find is is, if you want to be a good marketer, you got to go with what’s working and I started in direct mail and then I evolved into digital. I still direct mails great, like I’m, not sure you know whatever there’s a lot of people that make a lot of money on direct mail, but I found that I think I just don’t happen to use any of it well and it’s just not as it’s flexible.
It’S not as you can’t pivot. You can’t adjust you’re like all in on certain budgets that it may or may not work, whereas you know with digital, you can kind of pivot quickly, if you’re, starting to see things, aren’t working so, but also just digital the future. We all know, and so not not to mention more and more. The insurance industry is going towards phone sales, which is you know, multi-state.
Well. How do you there’s no way to reach multi-state audiences effectively unless you’re going to spend tons of money on TV, radio and you’re not going to do that? Direct Mail you’re, not mailing the state, you know saying so your options, even the major players that that you’re, helping and influencing now, as I keep using that word since that’s the name of the show, are shifting well just to give you an example, I mean we.
I two days ago, I met with the lead developer for one of the largest Medicare call centers, and we just collaborated and had fun man like it’s so the industry, so big like it wasn’t like my way, is better than your way and your ways better than My way, so let me let me show you how to do it right. It’S like! No! No! What are you doing? What what here’s my articles? You bring up a good point. Some people have a guy yeah.
Some people have a marketing department, so people have a marketing team, etc, and the good thing about you is that they don’t you’re not coming in to change everything or replace everything replace the internal team. That’S actually helped provide ideas and run alongside the team. It’S difficult for I wouldn’t it was. It is not advised to try and outsource all of your marketing to an independent company.
All the successful relationships that I have there’s a lead manager, a lead, developer, a marketer whatever that I’m just being leaned on as another outside resource, because coach Burt says it all the time you got to have somebody outside of the picture frame to kind of see. What’S going on, and since we do about seven figures of ad spend a month in digital marketing insurance industry, we learn a few things along the way and so not we’re not just working in this one space.
This one industry, this one market, so we’re leaned on quite a bit from what’s going on in the industry perspective you know, and that adds that alone you know. I know we have retainers built out for some of these clients right now that I know they’re not keeping us on retainer because of the cost per lead that we’re driving them, because they could put in to do it themselves. It’S the big ideas that we bring in the shifts that we were able to bring manage the YouTube beta that we got in for one of our clients as well, that kind of stuff.
You know just kind of be able to bring a bigger picture, cutting edge man. Well, it really is it. I don’t know of anybody. That’S spending more per month on marketing and the insurance industry than us I mean. Maybe there is, but how do you get to eight figures in good management? I just grow the book. Man keep it going, you know, it’ll, be there. The market shares there. What’S what’s one thing that as an agent out there that’s reading this and let’s say they have their own agency, their own team, their own office? What’S some helpful tips to provide to them that are looking out and they’re thinking? Okay, this is daunting.
I don’t know what to do well. Maybe it’s this free free strategy session I’ll make it easy man I’ll make it super easy. You can’t do anything without a marketing budget and a percentage of that budget is digital. If it’s not you’re crazy. Okay, so you now, you know how much meets on the bone. Okay, so if you don’t have a marketing budget, if you’re just winging it and like trying to buy, leads here and there like, there’s better ways to get leads, that’s more consistent, yeah you’re going to be saying: what’s what is it about that? Why do agents jump from vendor to vendor linking then the next person’s going to have the secret sauce? We have a joke in our staff where it’s like you know, leads are heroin and you know insurance agents are heroin addicts.
You know it’s just like. I got ta get it. I got to get my leads because at the end of day, it’s that important, it’s their livelihood, didn’t anybody talk to them and how they sell, and so what I think is interesting about insurance marketing. Is that there’s this perception? All of us marketers are all using Facebook, okay. So what what’s the point of bouncing from one guy to the next and round and round about learning anything? Why not like work with people that you trust to like execute a monthly strategy that you can learn from and adjust and pivot and grow and diversify? So that’s that’s one of the things that we try to do with our clients is let the people that want to bounce around, and you know that’s okay, like that.
That’S okay! That’S not like a problem necessarily, but there’s a better way to do it, and if you have a budget, then that’ll get you there, yeah. Okay, on that on that no budget yeah. What what kind of budget they need depends on what you’re trying to accomplish now? Big yard, but in general the way I charted back into budgets is: what’s the amount of lethal that we need and do we need to have short-term or long-term goals, and then we allocate the budget that way.
Even people that are jumping around in buying leads. Would you say they have at least a thousand bucks at least yeah? Always even little producers yeah you got to have people talk to you, you’re buying leads from somewhere you’re buying. You know the main lead sources that I see are telltale transfers, which are fine. I think things are getting cracked down. I see a lot of lawsuits coming down the pipe and a lot of issues there, but it’s still a very valid valid way to get things done.
I think a lot of people bring him overseas right now. It’S kind of an industry thing that I’m seeing, but to me that’s a little bit of whatever anyways, that’s sketchy. You know what I mean like I’m not like yeah, it just seems risky to mean it. You have a big old operation in Costa Rica. You know yeah sure it’s a good idea, I’m sure they’ve ran their numbers, but I see the telesales leads. Direct mail leads or digital leads right now or networking growing your war market, and all that would you agrees or so that okay, so well they’re all if you’re not spending $ 1,000 a month, then you’re, probably not growing your business you’re, probably just working your warm Market and you’re getting by and talking about how the market sucks and if you aren’t you’re spending it on a part time, caller that’s cold, calling so you’re spending it.
You know what I mean like you’re spending it are they are. They, though, are they? I don’t know if anybody knots been in a green a month. I don’t either so on leads or everything and if you’re not like the chance of you being part of that, 2 % is substantially larger and you’re listening right now, you’re like I don’t want to be, you know, so it is a big difference. When you talk to people – and I don’t talk to anybody – that’s a very successful insurance industry that doesn’t have a healthy marketing budget area, zero people – that’s true – I mean, if you’re, trying to work your warm market and do your networking thing only in one city and Try and go to the bee and eyes and all that stuff.
That’S going to get you so far, but you’re not mill scale. You don’t be able to be a big time. What was it about insurance for you? Well, first off I met you and I didn’t really know honestly that I’ll tell this story so, but when I had my, I don’t know this. I have my agency. I told Kody this before I always told my staff, I trained my staff. I said you know. We can do anything, digital marketing, there’s only two industries, I don’t want to touch and that’s insurance and real estate.
I know because I did I just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the two industries. First off it was so lead oriented. I didn’t get it and then, but now that I’m in it it’s like. Oh my gosh, it’s so fun, there’s so much to the number one marketing influencer in the insurance industry. I hope I am. I don’t know if I am or not I try to eat. I but I I really feel like I have a lot of fun with other guys that are also doing marketing.
I try there’s a lot of us. You know that are good and there’s a lot of people that stink like. In fact, I knew. I know this. This agency, that just got like 20 million dollars of venture capital, will start an insurance industry in insurance agency, and I’m like like what do you need 20 million dollars for like you me did this? We put this together and don’t you’re going to mean it’s like. So so what are you doing with your twenty million dollars like what’s going on here? You know like it’s, because they don’t know what they’re doing yeah they don’t they? Don’T I’m telling you let’s let me learn, but you don’t even say you don’t need 20 million bucks, so I mean you and what you’ve done with your you know, brand and growing and building security.
Marketing together has been so much fun man and to help people out and to get those text messages. It’S like you’re really blessing my family with the marketing campaigns. I’M able to you know it’s just it’s a lot of fun. Talk about the brand aspect. You know from a marketing perspective from your brain, but someone’s out one thing to build a brand like because old school be average age is 59 and a half so yeah the old school people.
Don’T think that branding and I’m not saying needs to be that leader like we, you know we brained along the way, but having a brand having people know you getting attention, putting out content all these other things it it’s almost like, I’m in the insurance industry. So I don’t need, I don’t need it well, that’s like the old school there’s what I would call like axioms that come like when it comes to branding one.
You kind of you kind of get a certain level where your brand is important to you and you have money to invest yeah if you’re a new agent, you really probably are going to have a tough time having any sort of like branding budget because it’s expensive. It’S something you’re, investing your repiy or your sewing into something for later benefit. But if you do your lead development, the right way, then you can kind of brand along the way as a new agent, meaning you can set up a website.
You can push people to that website. You can have your own. You know brand developed that way as a new agent, but there’s a certain point where you hit a level where your brand is important and – and that to me is you know when you start doing, marketing campaigns lead development campaigns with your own brand associated investing in Content search engine, optimization, investing and you know, different various marketing methods that aren’t fully focused on lead cost per leaf.
Yeah see what I’m saying: that’s what I mean by branding, because there’s Mart marketing you have. In my opinion, I’ve got two really ways you go. You’Ve got lead development marketing that are only Cape key performance indicator that matters is leap, cost per lead and you got your brand. That’S like I’m getting my name out there, I’m making myself well-known seminars getting referrals that kind of stuff you need to kind of do both.
You know. Yes, that’s how I perceive branding versus lead, dev, I’m trying to get to where I’m personally spending seven figures. Just just promoting me us what we have deprive already are spending more than that depends on how probably so, whenever you count an eight percent. You know at the end of day, you’re going to mean like what. What is that I mean at the end of day when you look at the numbers of eight percent, you know it’s like: what’s your what’s your thoughts on that by the way cuz cuz outside looking in marketing guy well before before we partnered, I was reading your Stories cuz, you were, you know I knew you were in the same town and I’m like this dude got Nissan Stadium like who’s.
This guy think he is what in the whole world, is he doing whose kid you know I was just kind of like, because I was going to be condescending, but I was like yeah. What is this guy doing? Get Nissan Stadium from Springfield, Missouri, and, and now I get it because you know with with this last a person nation that I was a part of, I there’s just something which I went bigger with by the way. Well, whatever, whatever man I, I thought it was awesome, and this year this next year’s going to be ridiculous.
I can have freaking wait. Oh my god do you think I mean you’re you’re, seeing a lot of the risks and stuff and you’re seeing it pay off. Talk to someone out there, that’s, like you, know, you’re able to see it and be a part of it now, what’s what’s what’s there’s let people out there that are scared to take some of those risks. Man! Well, you, don’t you, don’t you, you don’t understand how consumers people work with the people that educate him, and so, if you’re not doing anything, that’s educating your consumers by content or whatever you’re, making a big mistake, because that’s who people are working with they are period.
So, like you know, for instance, if you can offer, let’s just say to Medicare, if you can offer a free three-hour course of how to pick your Medicare plan or whatever. That is and then put it on your website. You know get that content and add value to that person. They’Re going to work with you if they go through your your marketing, you know stuff, so you know you got to be able to craft good marketing funnels, you got ta, be able to educate and you got to be able to invest in this stuff, but it Takes money to build a website yeah, so a lot of people are like well.
Do I want to put twenty five hundred dollars into a website, or do I want to put twenty five dollars in the Legion it’s like in the short term, yeah Legion, but you hit a certain point where it’s like you got to get the brand the marketing You know your websites, the chassis of your digital marketing, your social should be part of that as the engine your SEO should be part of that. Your content should be part of that.
Your all your testimonials, if your customers should be part of that, but your website’s, the chassis of your digital marketing, a lot of people, don’t really understand that or they don’t care about that or they don’t get out important. It is yeah. What was the first thing? Random question: what was the first thing? Maybe it says maybe you’re a teenager. Who knows what was the first thing you ever marketed and sold pumpkins seriously.
I was, I didn’t know that I was a 9 year old kid and I was like dad. We my dad had a garden and so there’s I don’t know about pumpkins, but basically they, I guess they come up in the fall or something I remember this. It’S been a while, but my dad’s garden was completely empty in the fall and he’s like dude. I could make you some pumpkins and you can go, sell and I’m like. Let’S do it so he’d plant me a bunch of pumpkins.
I got him in a wheelbarrow and like in the beginning of October. I will bear all the pumpkins from door-to-door and sold them for, like 5 bucks, apiece yeah and I’m making like I’m like a nine year old kid making like a hundred bucks a week in October. So I bought Nintendo’s in like all kinds of stuff, and then I also my mom did swimming lessons. We had. We had pool lessons so like we had a big old pool in our backyard and we had swimming lessons and my mom did like you know.
Hundreds of kids would come through with all the brothers and sisters would come swimming lessons, so I bought, I went to Sam’s and bought bubblegum and soda, and all that I’m just set up a table, and just it was fun man. I even like spending my Nintendo out there. While I was sitting there playing Nintendo and then I was dude. I was making like 30 bucks a day like as, like a probably a 10 11 year-old kid just sitting in my backyard selling the brother and sister.
You know push pops or something so the entrepreneurial spirit, she’s always been there. It’S just. You know it’s. Whenever I hear Jordan Belfort talk about yeah, maybe listen, Jordan Belfort. He talks about how he had this. What was it shaved ice then? He would sell on the beach that was. It was just like that, like I just had this knack for, like you know what there’s so many bored brothers and sisters while their kids other brothers in the pool they’re going to go, get two bucks for their mom.
Just the mom’s going to give him two bucks because they just wanted to just get out of my hair. You know so I was just like raking today. Anna, I was like you know, and I would run out of inventory by the 3 o’clock and it was so fun man. Those were the days dude, that’s awesome, who’s, your who do you listen to the most cuz you’re, someone that listens and reades and maybe just maybe for fun and then maybe also from you know, marketing relieve it or not.
I actually liked Oren Belfort’s content. You know, I think, I think, he’s a sales guru. He has a speaker at 8 % and I but people I first whenever it whenever you said I want to get Jordan Belfort. My first reaction was what what I say do you remember? I was like no way man, I’m like well. No, I member saying like the dude, is not a good dude man like a no respect, yeah. That happened. You mean like.
I don’t really respect the dude like got famous by, like you know, making people and then you I was already dope into his column yeah. So then I got into his content and I was like okay. He actually admits that he was made mistakes and apologized and he’s did his time. They literally present time yeah and he doesn’t like brag about it. He’S, in fact, is, you can tell he’s remorseful, you know and like what the dude’s a Salesman yeah, I’m saying yes, and so I respect his content and I listen to it.
I also just listen to random YouTube articles all the time, I’m probably if you looked at my YouTube, read time. I bet you. I have 13 to 15 hours a week. You know listening yeah, I mean listen to YouTube all the time, so I do listen. Grant Cardone dude, I listen to you, don’t connect as well with him, though no no, but but that’s okay, I mean he’s still got decent content. I I like his three or four-minute articles about him.
Just kind of like have you ever seen this conference table articles where he kind of talks to his team yeah. Oh my gos, those are good. I don’t really love the way he treats people most the way he precedes his chest, pretty hard yeah, and I don’t but whatever you know even says you know, you want to push away half the crowd and attract half the crowd right. I think I’m kind of a the crowd. They attracted me for some reason.
Well, um he’s a super successful guy. So good friends, you know, but yeah I mean really just there’s all kinds of different podcast to listen to. You know I like it’s just random humor. I, like stand-up comedians podcast, so like the fighter and the kid which you probably don’t know about it. You talked a lot about. They did last one that this guy last night, the the Queen’s the Stone Age. It was a really great interview, but it’s just I like people, and so I like listening to their perspectives, I really like long-form content.
That’S why they favorite my favorite content that we do is the podcast and all that cuz. I get to know people and I’ve had a lot of people say that come to work with us that say I’ve readed your articles. I want to work with you. I don’t really know why I just I can just tell that you care and we wouldn’t be able do that without long-form content. That’S it man, it’s true! It’S true! Well, what do you think looking forward in the insurance industry, as we got a couple minutes left? What do you see happen in the next decade? I see a boatload of money going to social media and I see costs increasing extraordinarily, I see our cost per lead.
Extra. The window of social media lead development. It like the heyday is, I think it’s it’s coming, not to an end, but it’s going to be much tougher. It’S just like Google, so, like yeah, Google AdWords in the beginning, they were just printing money. Whoever got into that first, you know just was printing money because it’s like people were like well, I don’t want to pay for website traffic with people understood it.
We’Re like oh gosh, I’ll pay for as much as I can get and they and they were getting. You know 20 cent clicks that are now dollar clicks, yeah, you’re saying so that’s coming, and so what’s going to happen is is you’re going to have to diversify your lead source? Like you, you if you think that you can just run lead forms on Facebook forever. You are absolutely wrong like it is not going to happen.
I’M wrong, I’m already seeing a shift. That’S going from lead forms to other ways to use social traffic that are much more advanced, that you’re not going to be able to do. The random person isn’t going to be able to do and I wouldn’t be able to do in, let’s say a thousands dollars to practice of our own stuff. You know so I see social drying up. I see us needing other digital lead sources. I I see, I don’t know, I see the digital wave being more important than ever, but I think it’s going to have to be earned.
I think there’s going to need to be a good website with a good search engine optimization base and with social media. Being a part of that, I don’t think we’re going to be able to just lean on social for our lead development, like that, I’m already seeing it happen where it’s just it’s way or I mean, would you agree that it’s harder now than it has ever been? It’S 44 % add increased just this year, supposedly that is going to continue to happen and you had in order you’ve got to be able to prepare for that because there’s a lot of businesses.
I know that are built around that as like the core secret sauce, and it’s not going to be that way for theirs. It’S it’s it’s it’s it’s unique because most people think I just need to figure it out and have control and do it on my own. But even the biggest places are doing stuff on their own are still using us in some way. Yeah. No, absolutely like. We have a major, but it’s always a great relationship, though too, because we’re not peacocks with our feathers up saying like I’m telling you guys, this digital world changes every three months it does, and so you’ve got to have sharp people around you to kind of like Be able to say I’m trying this, what are you trying, because there’s so many like like for an example, this gigantic call center that I was working with you know I was helping him from the lead funnel to get the inbound call, because I had cracked that Nut but one of things I was struggling with was potential medsoft language and article content, and I’m like what do you think about this article he’s like man? He goes honestly.
I would add this this and this and this and it’s like collaboration, yeah and we’re working and it’s like and before you know it. It’S like with our powers combined. You know, like all of a sudden now we’re killing getting. You know $ 6 leads where he was getting 12 and then we’re getting. You know in $ 1,000 ad spend we’re getting 60 call. Ins in 198 leads or something like that. We’Re buzzed before I was getting half that and he was getting half that.
So it’s like you’ve got to like work with people that the whole I’ve got the secret sauce Cody and I’m going to you’re going to have to pay me for this course and I’m going to teach you that course. It’S bananas and you’re going to be you’re. Going to know perfectly and you’re better use it forever, and it’s never going to change. I’M the lead development. Amazing know it just don’t even do it in fact multiple times, if we don’t have people at our retreats that have just paid multiple thousands of dollars for their course and then still had us handle it, because it’s like they make it almost so complex yeah and It is complex, so dude you’re an influencer.
You know what thank you for letting me be. An influencer you’re brought a and you to be with you and on your team has been a lot of fun. Man. We’Ve had a lot of fun. We’Ve won we’ve taken. Some bruises, but man overall dude we have like had a lot of fun man. Oh it’s been, it’s been like the more you’ve enjoyed the journey reading. This do me a favor schedule, a free strategy session with this dude, okay, click link below yeah, fill out.
Your information yep, let us know your problems, what you’re struggling with and Landy can help ya. We’Ll just talk. Do whatever we can. It’S free. You might as well take us up on it landing makar, strange market, thanks to being on your show. Thank You. Man appreciate it bro. Thank you guys, see you next time.
Today, we’re going to take A look at: how can you be a savvy marketer, be the most findable restaurant Online and spend the least amount of money getting there. If you own a restaurant, you know how Challenging it is to become findable online. You probably have a ton of people Walking in every day trying to sell you some new marketing strategy, I’m going to Show you, as a restaurant owner or a hospitality group, how you can dive Deeper into your findability, based on how your prospective audience is, Searching and how you can show up to them in the exact way they search.
I’M Going to show you a tool called KeywordsEverywhere.Com, Very simple, to install Just go to KeywordsEverywhere.Com and we’re going to show you how the Keywords that people are searching are the best way for you to show up for them. So, let’s take a look at my search results. I just searched for pizza. Restaurants, Denver. I love a good pizza, But pizza restaurants, Denver. You know, That is that pizza delivery Is it you know, is it going to be like Domino’s or Is it going to be like something really spectacular? I’Ve had enough Domino’s in my life, I’m ready for something a little more Interesting, So what we’re going to take a look at is what shows up on a search Result pages incredibly important to restaurants Now, primarily because it’s All local driven meaning where I’m at right now my IP address right now is Going to match up with how you have your restaurant listed, So the first thing: You’Ll see here is you’ve got Google local business listings.
So what you’ll See here is you’ve got Pizza on this page. It’S all over. I’Ve got Blue Pan Pizza West Highlands, Marco’s Cold, Fired Pizza, Anne’s Pizza Denver. So that’s Great, it’s got all of them have pizza in the description, but take a look at this If you come over, KeywordsEverywhere will show you exactly how people are Searching for pizza Now I could of course, Pizza Denver or best Pizza, Denver.
It’S always going to be like the brass ring of keywords, But there’s only 10 Results on a search result page so that can be pretty challenging. So let’s take A look pizza, restaurants, Denver gets 260 searches per month. That’S a lot over the Course of a year Now Now that we know that that’s where people are hanging out We got to figure out like what are the clubs? Where do the people hang out? And they hang out in different spots in Google search Results So if we figure out where they’re hanging out, then we can market To them, specifically based on where they’re at Let’s jump over to the actual Keywordseverywhere data KeywordsEverywhere you’ll, see here, puts the data Right inside the search results on a Google search result page, So some other Ways I may want to think about is Denver pizza company Mmm, okay, That gets 1,600 Searches a month How about best pizza delivery in Denver 390 Searches a month Pizza near me, Denver 390 searches, a Month, Best pizza in downtown Denver, 210 Denver, Colorado, pizza, 20 searches, So Look at all the different ways that people are searching: they’re searching For company they’re searching for best Best is an incredibly powerful phrase If You have ever been given an award you’ve run.
Would you’ve won something that Indicates that you’re the best optimize for the word “ best”, So some of the most Powerful converting keywords on the Internet are “, best”, “, affordable” and “ cheap” You know the business owner is like “. I don’t want cheap”, Be careful with that. Because cheap is actually they’re just looking for a good deal, It doesn’t mean They’Re not going to spend money, they just want the best deal possible.
So “ best”, “, affordable” and “ cheap” are going to be your three biggest trigger words. We Call them to getting in front of people that normally wouldn’t even know about Who you are but should Now, let’s take a look at scroll down and see what else we Can find Now we’ve got of course, Yelp Yelp is sort of the big bad boy of Restaurants, Keep in mind that Yelp is a search engine. So when you go in to Optimize, your restaurant, maybe your restaurant, is Nicolo’s.
Now Nicolo’s is a Family name, it’s been in your business, it’s been in your family business Forever I get it, But you’ve got to balance that with what you do So based On the search volume that I’m seeing, I would do Nicolo’s best pizza in Denver. Now what that does is it says “? Yes, I’m going to find you four Nicolo’s, but then I’M also going to find you four best pizza Denver”, which gets 390 searches a month.
I want some of that action When you start balancing The restaurant phrase, like your Niccolo’s and then your best pizza in Denver. You add that to your Google Local Listing, You add that to your Yelp Listing And now you instantly become findable to people who don’t know who You are but are searching for best pizza or best pizza, restaurant Denver, Those Are the client kind of clients you want And then you have to create a page that Says look: we’ve won all these awards and here’s all of our google reviews and you Can show them all the reasons why you are the best pizza restaurant in Denver, Let’S keep going down so that’s how we deal with Yelp.
Let’S see what else So! There’S always those sort of outliers there’s in the local community. There’S a Website called Westward It’s one of those newspapers you can pick out in Front of any of the major grocery stores or any of the lot of the restaurants Have them too, but a lot of people use that as as ways to find new restaurants. So Westward they’re featured as Denver’s best pizza by style, which is kind of Interesting then, the next one is Thrillist.
Thrillist is also another Restaurant, They do actually all entertainment entities, but they have a Very specific section on Thrillist. So if you could go and you’re thinking about Where do I spend my money, you’re going to go and you’re going to see Westward how Do I get in there They’re already ranking in search results, Then you’re Going to go to Thrillist.Com, How can I maybe buy an ad in there, So I’m findable On that page You’re, going to where people are hanging out, you want to find The clubs you want to go create marketing materials based on how people are Already searching That’s when you’re able to grow your business to people who Don’T know you exist but should and not spend a fortune doing that When you try To go after too many strategies, it gets muddied really quickly.
So pick one or Two strategies and go after those see who comes up on search results for your Restaurant type Go nuts think about Uber Eats. I search for pizza in Uber Eats or I Searched for sandwiches or Mexican food, These are search engines, Uber Eats Grubhub Yelp they’re all search engines So think about not from how you want to Market, your restaurant, but how am I searching as a Potential customer for what you have in your restaurant.
This is the real change. In thinking that you have to have as a restaurant owner, stop buying all these Willy-Nilly, one-off online marketing and start thinking more about who wants to Eat your food, and why should I come to your restaurant? I’Ve been a business Owner, I know how hard it is to run a business, and it’s so hard for you to Know the snake oil from the real deal. So if you like this content, make sure to Follow my blog hit the belt so that you could be notified of my daily easy Empowering tips to make you the most findable restaurant online
You have to try the best pumpkin seed snack from Spunks! Learn about the creators by watching the video below.
I’M Darlene and let’s check it out, we’re going to start this demonstration from the websites Plus marketing header, select marketing and choose SEO. If this is your first time through the process, the SEO wizard will guide you through optimizing, your homepage and don’t worry, nothing is set in stone. You can go through this process as often as you’d like to make changes to the keywords that you choose, but keep in mind that it does take time for the changes you make to show up in search engine results.
Seo is not an overnight success story. Let’S start the wizard, the first thing you need to do is select where your customers are located, are they nationwide or worldwide or local? Now you need to tell the wizard what your page is about in one or two words to get suggestions on phrases that customers may use to find you. My site is about article games and repairs, and I’m going to put them in that order as the most important thing that should be in the primary spot.
If I put repair first, then we might be pulling from a larger pool than we want now. The SEO wizard will analyze your categories and make suggestions that match up with popular search terms. You should select the top two or three phrases that best describe your page. If you don’t like the suggestions, you can choose more phrases when you have two or three of your top choices. Click Next, the wizard will show your homepage, and now you need to select which phrase best describes it now, you’re ready to optimize your homepage.
You need to choose a page title for the search engine results, page or SERP. For short, this is what customers are going to see when they find your site through Google, Yahoo and Bing. I’M going to choose this one now, it’s time to focus on an accurate and enticing home page description. You should use your top choice, keyword or phrase in the description. The box on the Left displays how your site will appear in search engine results when you have a good description that includes your keyword, you’re ready to move on click Next now, it’s time to edit your headline to include your main search phrase.
Keep in mind that you’re actually changing the text on your site’s home page, so you have to find the balance for optimizing, a search engine and making a sense to your customers. Let’S move on by clicking next, the SEO wizard is going to look at every text. Block on your home page add your keywords everywhere that you can but make sure that it makes sense, be creative and map out those keywords: the best that you can now it’s time to review the changes that you’ve made to improve your SEO.
You can edit each individual section if you need to when things look good and click done when you’re done with the SEO wizard, you can go review your site and if things look good, don’t forget to publish now that your site is live with your new and Improved SEO changes, patience is key. Seo is a long game, so it can take time for your page to rise in search results. I’M Darlene thanks for tuning in
You have to try the best pumpkin seed snack from Spunks! Learn about the creators by watching the video below.
We see it so vividly in our minds and we almost see it so vividly as it has already happened, and I was running fast to make that happen. All right guys welcome back another episode of a mere proved now. Today’S guests is good friend of mine, dev Bassett. Now before we begin, today’s show a little bit housecleaning notes for everyone out there. Now, if you haven’t already make sure to subscribe to my youtube blog because every single week, I’m picking two lucky people to earn twenty dollars in bitcoins so make sure to subscribe, and if you’re listening to this on iTunes, if you leave a review, I will also Be looking for one to two lucky people, so I can get them 20 bucks in Bitcoin now without further ado, our special guest.
Today our guest is dev Basu. He is a founder of power, bi search, a performance media and digital marketing agency that helps b2b software technology companies, such as click funnels and Shutterstock in 2018, powered by search work has driven over 2.4 billion in annual sales directly from the intent engine mythology apply successfully To SEO and direct response paid search, let’s impress her brother.
Well, you like it’s all, it’s all downhill from here Goodman. I have to have you on the show man thanks for having me yeah man, so the reason I want to have you on the show is like, first of all, kudos our round of applause for a building powered by search. Thank you. It’S impressive and you know you and I know each other for a while, and I would love to know the ins and the outs, the ups and the downs of smiles and frowns, of what it took to build power, buy search.
And maybe, if you can kind of rewind and tell us a little bit history of the process and what it actually took to create this amazing business that you built yeah for sure man, it’s a what a trip we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary this October. So I can take you down memory lane to do it. So 2009 is when I started the business and recall: wasn’t the best time to start a business after the crash right after the crash to start working in technology and marketing.
But honesty was a boon, because what I realized is money flows from less effective blogs, the more effective blogs. So one of the things the wind that was at our back back then was a fact that businesses that we used to work with and we didn’t work with software businesses when we started it was, you know, small businesses, local businesses, they were pulling money out of This thing, I don’t, if you even remember it’s called the Yellow Pages yeah.
What is that thing good for a door stopper these days yeah, so they were pulling money out of there and they needed somewhere. To put it so most of the time, advertising and marketing goes down in a recession, but the part that remains what actually ends up happening for growth businesses as they go. We need to cut, but we’re not going to cut everywhere. Let’S cut down the blogs that are the worst performers now that we have some savings, there’s no point just putting it under a pillow there, a business you want to grow.
You realize that a recession is actually a really good time to grow your business, to be able to get more market sure, so you got ta put it somewhere and the thing that most of our clients wanted was they wanted to figure out how to get Google To love on them how to get Google to love their websites? How to get you know, visibility had to get clicks. How to get. You know phone calls and leads, and that was kind of the Wild West back then, and so that’s what we helped them do and it started off real small, so the business it started when I was when I was, I was probably 21 yeah 21.
At that point you know starting to finish up my university career. I did an undergrad at: U of T the BBA program to live in Scarborough, which is on the east end of Toronto. Small 50s good fifty sort of square foot condo solarium, is where I started this business and the way it came around actually was. I was working at a job. You know it was interesting. I was a director of marketing at an agency that was affiliated with the Yellow Pages, so I actually got to see the inside track on how the Yellow Pages was sold.
What kind of businesses used it how they tracked and measured success, and I was also able to see what was going to happen to it next, and you know, I think it panned out in a way which wasn’t exactly a curative or ry+ for for them over The last decade and and that’s why there are door stoppers right, so I looked at that. There’S a point where my boss, at that time she calls me to Maya into her office and sits me down and says: have you know you’re you’re graduating soon? What do you want to do? They said I don’t know you know I’m having a fun time working over here.
I’M learning Lots. I would just want to contribute and continue working in this field, and she says you know. I think you should never start your own business, really yeah Wow. I said what. Why would why do you say that, and she said I think, you’d be a terrible manager. I’M going now I’m curious right, I’m not I’m not even mad. I’M curious, I’m like what what makes you say that she said well, even a split that aside, you know, for you know just a minute, a hot minute.
Do you know how expensive fax machines are? I know fax machines. It’S 2009. I haven’t used a fax machine since 2007. That was still you know, because the company Hughes fax machines. At that point she said you know how many found much phone lines cost. I’M like I’m. I use Skype so 2009 right and I think just the that nature of the argument I think reflecting on it. You know hindsight’s always 20/20.
She was worried that I’d go on my own and she predicted that correctly, but that was also the tipping point for me. I, despite like oh yeah yeah, I was ever this person is yeah. I thank her. Thank you so much right, so that was like. On a Friday I was in Montreal. I flew back to Toronto. I went and registered an incorporation. I was like you know. Just basically playing around with names like what can I call this company and the genesis behind the name powered by search actually comes from me being a nerd, remember, vbulletin, before I’m sorry, yeah, so at the bottom of every vbulletin forum was powered by people didn’t and So I kind of I did some soul-searching over that weekend and it’s odd.
What do I call this company? What’S my what’s on my DNA, and it was just as fact that I had learned so much about how Google and other search engines worked over the last. You know five years what I started in 2005 and I said it’s got ta be powered by search. That’S what we’re powered by. If I, if there were no search engines, I wouldn’t know what to do in this business. There’D be nothing to optimize there’d, be no! You know advertising to run, and so it’s going to be powered by search.
That’S that’s! That weekend was magical because I went from incorporating the company online, not knowing anything, about how to incorporate a company at all to starting to put down the site map and then just updating my LinkedIn profile on that Monday and just saying hey, you know what I’ve Gone out of my own, I’m an independent consultant at this point in time, and that was it. It was interesting that there was just an outpour of people who are my network reaching out and saying hey? Can you help me and would you have a look at my website and then before I knew it that first I think two months it was already at 30 to 50 km RR and then just kept growing from over there, and it was too much work to Handle – and you know how it goes well, there’s too much work to handle and you’re a technician.
You hire another technician and that kept snowballing into this. This agency, that and this consultancy that we’ve built now ten years later, and so you mentioned 20k 50km RR yeah – was that just through word of mouth completely who word-of-mouth, okay yeah it just came in, and you know I one of the things that I really learned About pricing in the early days was never to charge by the hour. I made that mistake, mm, probably eight I’d, say I’ll.
Tell you the story. Actually I uh I designed a website. It was for a florist in 2008 and I didn’t know a lick of HTML or coding, and I thought this is a really get good way to get. You know to get paid to learn. So let me take this on, and this is back like I was using notepad mm-hmm notepad to design these websites, and the guy gives me an Excel spreadsheet with you know all the different types of flowers and whatnot he has and got some images.
He just gives me a USB key, no Dropbox at that point, not not that I can recall at least it says, design me a website, it’s a simple directory style site and you just keep clicking clicking clicking until you get to a point where you find a Flower, you like and there’s a phone number. You can call super simple, so it was a hundred, maybe pages that I needed to design I charged him 500 dollars for this website and then a hundred hours later.
Well, I calculated my per $ 1 per hour. Yeah yeah, my effective, I really rate, and I was like oh boy. This was an expensive lesson, yeah yeah, and so I think what helped in those early days was just using value pricing understanding what expensive problem I was being hired to solve and then really helping the business of the owners I was working with and as a simple Right now, it’s like what two people three people in the company yeah.
I was two people. Okay, it was two people at that point in time, and then it grew to three by the end of the first year it was four and and then it just kept growing more over there. So you were hiring people like developers, designers, yeah, yeah and in the beginning they were like. You know Swiss Army knives right, so people who were generally complete generalists – and you know they could talk to clients, so they could build decks and they could write copy and they could build ad campaigns.
They knew how to do outreach things like that and then, as we started honing I learned about you know what t-shaped talent basically looks like where you can go deep in one area and and that’s how we started: building or functional practice areas. And so when did you when you exhausted your word of mouth, then referrals? What was your next strategy to take growth to the next level? We decided to practice what we preach, so that meant publishing speaking.
You know getting beats by our own SEO, our own AdWords. So one thing that you might see is: like digital agencies: don’t advertise, you know the good ones, don’t and it’s all referral, referral referral and, frankly, I think it’s a little lazy, because you should be getting better at your own craft, not just getting better at it. Based off your clients time, and so, if you aren’t walking the walk, then your believability goes down mm-hmm, and so, as a result of that, we really practice that, and you know whatever our focus was over the years.
We got really good at it and then we just started sharing freely. So the idea was that you know our best. Thinking was either going to be really expensive or it was going to be free and it’s ping-ponged over the years as to what that is, and currently our best thinking is free. You know, but we know that it’s going to be one of those situations where no one’s going to come in, lift it and just do it on their own.
So what was it the? So? I really want to dissect this. So you don’t 2250 K. You know people can kind of understand that right, yeah get a couple of leads in yeah, a retainer. You know, okay, you know tema, for what between like? What would you say? The Jim was a gradual jump, or did he go from 50k? Tens like 300k a month like how did that process look like doubling every year, doubling every year, doubling every year so first year, I think our revenue was 480 okay.
Then it was like 960. Okay. If I recall correctly, we went to 1.7 the then it was 2.5 it was. There was what year we were three and it just kept growing, basically over over there until this is all paid like majority of the normal SEO and paid yeah SEO and paid. You know that’s 90 % of it, and then 10 % was other things that clients needed, whether that was you got into some really cool projects. By the way, you know building voice of customer research or analytics and attribution projects, but largely, I think, the the big thing that businesses wanted to work with us and hire s for was getting traffic and converting it.
Okay and so the two ways you do that, are you know you can you can pay for it? You can earn it or we can collaborate with somebody else to get it, and so we didn’t do referrals or influence or type programs. We just did you know you can pay for it PPC and you can earn it and that was SEO yeah, so you’re putting in the money in the vending machine. So if people wondering like how would that campaign look like? So if we were winding back a couple of years, you know you had a couple of million dollar revenue, say: 1.
9 million. What did that funnel? Look like so you’re bidding on what kind of keywords rebidding on like for other agency owners or other people who might be in similar situations, is that it was the strategy back then, oh just for like getting leads yeah I mean sir. You start at the bottom of the funnel right, so if somebody, if you’re trying to get local clients, what we would do is look at all the variations of Toronto Plus digital agency web design, agency marketing agency SEO agency and so on, then you want coverage over There and then you build up and you go okay.
So that’s like somebody who takes a small percentage of market who are already looking for an agency there’s, so many more people who are in the market looking for help. They just don’t know that they want an agency ad. So then you start looking at all the different use cases. So an example of you know: huge growth periods for us was when Google would come in and penalize a bunch of different websites and so they’d drop in their rankings.
They’D reach out, because what we had optimized for was Google penalty recovery, ok or AdWords suspension recovery, and I seen are. This – is like early early days like so. If you end up seeing that, like you know, an advertising program is feeding someone’s business. Let’S it’s an e-commerce business and they get banned or suspended. They want to come out and go. How do I quickly get back up and running, and so we bid for those terms.
We would you know, optimize and have landing pages for those terms. So it’s really scrappy really really scrappy stuff and so yeah. We don’t want to go 50,000 foot high level talking about a lot of ideas, but not doing CPC landing page fill out the form getting a call, easy, peasy right and then one thing that we did, that was kind of interesting, was sequential remarketing. So one of the big problems we saw early when remarketing came out, which is just you know the ads that follow you around.
If you don’t do the thing that the website and what you do they just retargeting the problem with those ads is that most marketers think of the audience the person they do. Humanize the person say this is a lead as a lead as a lead, and so, if you’re, a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and so you just keep seeing the same ad again and again and again and eventually get sick of the brand right.
Like you hit like that ad fatigue, ad fatigue and you might hit like don’t show this to me again. You know I’ve done that on Facebook and other networks, where you see ads, hitting you again and again again, so what we did was we wanted to be sequential. So if somebody came to a page where we wanted him to fill out a form and they didn’t do it well, what are some possible reasons why they didn’t do it? Maybe they weren’t ready? Maybe they needed to see more proof? Maybe they wanted to see some case studies.
Maybe they wanted to understand what the process was right. Maybe they didn’t know that if they could afford it, and so each one of those deserves a different message. So we’d start with the most probable one and then, if that didn’t work, and not three to five date, have appeared, we’d switch it up. We’D show them a different at that point in time, and so that just kind of like we saw that everybody’s got a different track in their customer journey.
But you got ta meet the customer where they are yes, not where you want them to be, and so at this point, are you still the only person who’s trying to close the deals like all these deals are coming in the top yeah yeah yeah yeah, all Coming in through, we had a very structured sales process, for you know, engaging and enrolling and basically getting started with clients, and I mean I recommend this there’s a specific process for almost any type of consulting, which is you start off without trying to prescribe the solution To your your prospect, because that’s what the number one rookie mistake is you tell me what your problem is and I already am going to say: I’ve got a solution for that, so instead, what you do is you diagnose before you prescribe right? Just like a doctor, you think about all the experts that you trust in implicitly trust.
You trust your your doctors, your lawyers or surgeon. You don’t have a question any of the recommendations, but each one of them will ask you a few questions and then give you a course of you know a way to go basically with digital. The problem is that every everybody thinks they can do it. Everybody thinks they can write copy. Everybody thinks that they’ve got an opinion and design, and so, instead of just coming out of the end saying we can take you on it’s going to cost X and you know work with us the better ways to say hey.
I don’t know if we can help you or not, but if we did a discovery where we diagnose what the gaps are, we have an idea where you want to go where you are and let’s figure out, what’s the blocker, you know the the things that are Roadblocks in the middle, then we come up with the right strategy and roadmap and then from there we help you execute it. Does that make sense and for most people who are rational, logical layer like that makes complete sense.
I wish somebody would actually spend the time to articulate what the problem actually is, rather than guessing or feeling their way through a problem wasting a bunch of time and then saying oh yeah, I didn’t work six months later, except now I’ve been paid, and you know The clients pissed off, which is the majority of incoming clients, that we we’re seeing had that frustration being loved another agency.
They left another agency. We were very rarely where we, the first agency, that anybody worked with. They had done a different budget for things. They’D work with individuals, consultants or freelancers they’d hire other agencies and then the beginning. I don’t blame them, it’s not their fault because they just simply know one thing, which is what it costs. What the you know, the monetary funding basically is required.
They don’t know how to tell good from bad, and so they go through a couple of experiences which lead them. You know, leave them underwhelmed and then they go. I think I need someone better, because that tier of investment didn’t get me a bespoke or tailored solution. I got a cheap solution instead and so that’s kind of like this philosophy of you. You know you either are very you’re a premium or you give away your best ideas for free, but nothing in the middle.
Basically, so would you say the the pain point started happening in the company, we’re like like now what oh yeah so cuz right now, like you’re growing you’re, doubling here by a year? So that’s you know, compound growth when, in that process like what year was like yeah like things are going to I’m going to say falling apart, but things are kind of hectic they’re hectic yeah. I think that came around year three for sure.
I realized that we were having a hub-and-spoke model where we didn’t have any systems we didn’t document anything we were flying by the seat of our pants yeah. Of course man. I know it’s, it’s really just getting a bunch of smart people together and hoping and praying that big things just work sure. So we didn’t have. We had no one-on-ones, we didn’t have a weekly stand-up structure, we didn’t have properly track goals, we didn’t have objectives and key results.
It was literally just do what you feel is best for the client in their best interest, and so that was a dart core kind of thing was, you know we have a fiduciary duty to win, for our clients do what it takes to make that happen right, But when you start scaling your company and you get to the point where you’re anywhere above 10 people things start to fall apart, and it’s just a there’s, a simple equation for the nodes of communication.
Uh-Huh developers would know this very easily. It’S actually one of the first things in the early days, LinkedIn used to test engineers. With this question saying you know, LinkedIn’s got this one-to-one and then in a second degree, third degree, fourth degree and it starts becoming geometric right. The number of nodes of connection, so can you calculate what the most efficient way to get to people who are not connected with each other and three degrees apart to talk to each other? So I saw that, and I said okay.
This is where it falls apart. People don’t talk to other people and information gets lost in the ether and they assume that communication has happened and as a result of it, they are operating in silos, and that can happen in a company as little as ten people. So that was her third year, where I reckon that you know we couldn’t have a a command and control type of structure. We couldn’t operate without having meetings and we needed some structure in place and the funny thing I think is you know when you start a company, you most people have worked with other companies and they hate way to hate structure.
They want freedom right and then you start your own company, and you realize that oh man, like people say they don’t structure, they don’t want structure, but they actually crave it mm-hmm, because it gives you gives you lines to color with them. The other thing as well as and I think in the beginning, you start hiring people who are like you, it’s just a common human condition. No one tells you that you should hire compliments of yourself.
You know the things that you’re not the greatest at you hire for that, rather than people who are likeable and are easy to hang out with and exactly thinking the same way you are, which I did you know so I hired for four skills over sort of Fact did the DNA, the drive, nature and acumen of what these people would bring to the company, and that was a mistake. You know, obviously in hindsight and so around year.
Three is when we really started sort of playing with what would it mean to put some structure and and creating SOPs and looking at what were what things we were doing. That was repeated as well and that’s when we started putting in kind of the the codification of who we were what we stood for, how we worked, we created something called the playbook, and the playbook was the first thing that an onboarding hire would see.
In fact, we started showing little bits of it, even in the interview process as a means to actually show them that look. We’Ve thought this stuff through we’ve spent the time, and I think that was a big game-changer, because one of the things that I I discovered was different about. The way that we built the company was all of the smartest people and the best people from a culture fit that we hired had one thing in common.
They were typically a lone wolf wherever they worked before they were. The experts expert everybody used to come to them and say what do you think we should do, but as a result of that, they didn’t have a feedback loop. They didn’t have people to talk to and bounce ideas off of, and they crave that, and so when they came to us, they found that they were like okay. These are you know. A group of people are really passionate about what they do interesting.
There pause for a second, you said something that struck me: lone Wolf’s worked by themselves. Yes, rock star self motive, motivated how the were you attracting these people. It was a couple of different things, so you do the basics right like if you think about a massive pyramid of hierarchy of you know you, you have to realize that the best people are not looking for jobs. Of course, they’re not getting headhunted they’re getting headhunted.
So we wanted to build community around what these people were not only involved in, but the next level up as well, so supple, a couple of things that we did that were offbeat and seemingly you know somebody would look at us at that point in our journey And said that this was a waste of time, you should be going out and building a sales team or you know doing something of that nature or maybe hiring a headhunter.
So, instead, what we did was we created a meet-up series and then in Toronto is called you know, inbound tío, which grew quite large and every month what we would do is to supposed to free Meetup, different digital marketing topics. How the guest speaker come out. We would speak as well and the idea wasn’t to get a single client out of it. The idea was to assemble people and give them to be the connector really in the room.
I would say you know what we’re going to take we’re going to put this investment in of time and money and effort. It would always be after hours, by the way that was it was never during work. Hours would be like between 7:00 to 9:00 p.M. Or 6 to 8, and you know different people’s offices when we didn’t have the space. We worked with friends who had bigger offices and could loan us a room and whatnot.
This is like the early years right and that thing grew and grew and grew, and then we created a conference called endowed con, which grew – and you know it started. You know fairly small, a hundred people and then it’s a tight. It was like 450 people coming up to a conference we took over the CBC. You know their whole hall, basically over there and production costs of 300 thousand dollars for for that conference right and so just by being this hub, I think it really helped with that.
Very hard to track word-of-mouth, which then attracted these people to us became the epicenter yeah yeah hard to connect the dots kind of as you do it, and you just have a good feeling about it. But it’s easy to look back at and go okay, I see how that all figured itself out, and so how do you know now? We have thanks for sharing it’s really good strategy. You know creating community right building the tribe.
You know letting people know that you know like they you, I just respect them, but this is more than just business. This is about making friendships. You know building a local community mm-hm funny thing like you know, for Toronto, being such a big city, always gay! You probably get this question a lot too. I mean you know any growth, hackers, I’m like, oh yeah, for a big city. We don’t have that many like, I feel disconnected at times.
You know yeah for sure, um, just fascinating um. So with the with the new introductions of okrs, kpi’s and systems. How did that transition look like to adopt these new systems? Rough yeah? I bet yeah. You know what I didn’t realize I think was. I was running a mile, a minute of surrender and then I think the the key thing that entrepreneurs do differently and maybe we’re configured a bit differently than than other people.
Is we see a reality? That’S not here. Today we see it so vividly in our minds and we almost see it so vividly as if it’s already happening – and I was running fast to make that happen and some mentors basically said hey it’s a bit like you’re the bus driver. You’Ve got everybody on the bus, you start taking a 90-degree turn on this bus and you’re going 60. You know kilometers an hour everybody’s going to fall out of the bus yep and that’s you know that it was the risks that we really ran when all of this happened.
So I really have to teach myself to go slow enough to have one major change at a time and that’s still a work in progress. You know 10 years later and having this business, where I want to continue pushing my nature is driving its impatient. It’S. Why can’t this happen any sooner? What do we need to do to cut through the noise? Did you have any employees or team members that could not accept the adoption of these new systems yeah for sure, and they left? Oh yeah yeah? I think that – and I think that’s good for both them and for us right so, and there’s no judgement in that as well as I think this is just always about fit, and I always thought about this as a like fit should exist between your team members And it should also exist in the client agency relationship as well, and so, if you have great fit like you’ve, been there Amir like where you work with people and some people are such a joy to work with and others.
You want to pull your teeth yeah. So just you know when you find the right person when you find the right who yeah life is such a joy, they can almost they can pick up exactly where you’re leaving it things off, and then they can run with it. They’Re yeah they’re alert they’re the resource folder, you know very easy to work with, and so when we and we realize that that that, like you know, you want to take a mirror earth and look at yourself as well, so there was every year you know.
I would do that as a year came to a close and says say what who do we need to become? Who do? I need to become personally to attract that kind of person into my life, whether that was a key higher key client that I wanted and even a reputation I’d like who do you need to go? What contribution do you need to make for that to be true, and so how did that process look like? Was it just you booking off three hours of time, just thinking that pen and paper or yeah, I just basically go I’ve got.
I follow right now. What I do is I follow a process called your compass, okay and every year. It’S this download this questionnaire essentially, and it helps you reflect you slow down, you’re just going to go. What worked well, what didn’t work so well? What goals that I said that I hit that I need to say for this. Your compass, that’s about your compass time, cos you’re like why you know your your your compass, your compass, yeah, and it’s made by some guys in Europe, and it’s really nice that they just kind of did this as a service to the world where don’t charge anything For it, you can print it out.
We can do gatherings or parties with people where you everybody does it together. As a group, I do it, I do its introspective kinda on my own, and so that was one of the key processes that I used. You know there’s a there’s that and and then just asking questions about, like you know how, like how might I type questions, how might I improve our client service? How am I did? How might I be of higher service to my team? How am I push my team in kind of a gentle ways right and just like doing that and also getting feedback as well, so we we put in a feedback loop at first, we use it a system called tiny pulse, tiny policy, yeah and then – and now We use something called office vibe and the idea is fairly simple.
It’S like you know, work happens on a day-to-day basis. You can typically look back and a on a week on a Friday and go. How do I feel about my week? What we’re highlights, where were the lowlights, and you should capture that and do it in a way where psychological safety is really important in teams like, if team’s trust, each other Trust is the basis upon which everything else happens. You know performance doesn’t come without rest and so yeah we put this in and we started measuring how happy and how engaged our teams are and that one had to tap in every every week right.
It would just ask you different questions about engagement and, and then we were on custom poles as well. So just ask like okay, how are we doing about topic X or how am I doing as a CEO? What else should I be doing if you were a CEO? What would you do instead? I love that question and it’s great, like you just start, seeing all these different things that people see from their own lens that they were in the SEO department.
They would say something different than if they were in design or if they were working with clients, they would say ABC things and would just like create ideas for where to go next, and so at this point year, three growing yeah employment systems. Some people leave some people like it. It’S part of the process. Are you hiring more sales reps now because it can’t just be you closing the deals all right.
So, what’s that next stage like what was that next pivotal stage to build your company, maybe to 3x from there on it, yeah yeah? So what we found was here’s a characteristic, we’re solving a complex problem, we’re going up and to the right in terms of the clients we worked with so higher ticket in terms of what they would invest annually with us more complexity in terms of SEO and PPC. We moved beyond local businesses moved to national it, businesses franchises ecommerce businesses and then technology businesses where we really found our stride.
You know software and technology businesses and what what I found with that was. They wanted a an agency that had a codified way of thinking. So not just smart people, but a smart, smart people with a way of doing things that would get them to the result that they wanted. The second thing was they: they wanted transparency as well know something that really locked in this. This industry, where you know agencies, would do this thing where they’re cobbling together a deck five minutes before the Commission walks in the door and they’re like hey, look over here, yeah, okay, yeah and then they would just make stuff up, and so that we saw all Of that, and as we were rolling it out, the key thing that we wanted to really emphasize on was that we will be in it too.
It both for ourselves and for our clients is one of our win situation. Just isn’t one for us exactly and then you’re aligned right, I think you’re you’d figure. That would be like basic business practice yeah. I think it’s ingrained. You start seeing it and in interesting ways. You know I’ll give you an example of where I found that incentives mean everything. So the way people behave is heart highly predicated on what their incentives are.
Always men right, so features of habits right, so you can create good incentives. You get good behaviors, basically that right so to I’ll get to your point about like whether we hired salespeople are not in a second. What we found is with clients who were bigger and we started working with. You know national global brands like a FedEx, PMO, Remax, etc. Their procurement departments would start getting involved or the buying department now procurement departments.
You know I love them, you know, god bless them, but they start thinking of every single thing that they buy as a blue widget. So, if you’re trying to buy expertise, if you treat that the same way as you’re buying computers doesn’t quite work mm-hmm, you know it doesn’t give you the end result, but the incentive is always we need all of our terms to get accepted on our you know Terms that protect us against risk making sure that we get the best possible price and we need to negotiate down the price as hot as low as possible.
Essentially, and so we started looking at that going. Oh, this is really interesting that their incentives are set up. This way, how might we, you know, win in that situation, and it was not to battle procurement? It was the best way to win in that situation was to have an internal champion to whom the cost of not hiring us was larger than the cost of doing so, and so we recently did this with a large brand, and you know procurement was giving us A hard time and just saying hey, you know what look we can’t do this and that you got ta accept our terms, we’ll pay you in 180 days, Natalie.
No, that’s not going to happen! 80 days 90 days, and so we just got simple conversation with our internal champion or stakeholder and just said: hey, look before you. If you want to buy the expertise, we’re really not for you. If you’re trying to essentially get a six-month loan for 0 % interest – and she said yeah – I totally understand – let me take this back – you should not be dealing with this, which was a very refreshing change, 10 years into the business compared to what would it look Like in year 3, so to answer your question, we didn’t hire salespeople.
What we did instead was we got our operations team involved as part of the sale. Ok, so how? How does that look like? So what I found is that on, in my experience, working with salespeople and being someone who sells you know day to day me myself, you have to qualify, you need to make sure that it’s good fit. Then you need to figure out what you need to work on together. You need to write up a proposal or a discussion document.
Then you get across the line. This is like the standard consent, simple stuff right, the part where I think most salespeople, if you’re, not in the delivery of the result where they miss it, because they’re not part of that process, is they make promises that the delivery team can’t keep, of course, because They’Re just trying to sell it. Yes, exactly thinking it’s a its affirmation base, whatever you know, and it’s that’s where the incentives start falling they’re very different right salespeople are incentivized to sell into closed operations.
Teams are incentivized to retain right and to grow and to delight I said this doesn’t make any sense. We’Re a small company like what we should be doing, that the client should have a joint, unified experience from the get-go, and so what we would do is I’d. Come in vet the deal and say hey: is there something for us to work on over here and then I’d have strategically people from my team come on board number one problem that agency owners often face in their early years is they are the face of the Company, and so everybody just wants to work with them as they’re already grows thanks men yeah, there’s like we want to work with you, we don’t know your team yeah, and so what we did instead was we’re like.
How do we change this so that they’re seeing the team from the get-go not when they closed the deal, and that this, the simple answer was only to people who are fits from a values, thinking budget goals, perspective and then introduce them to the team as soon As you know that to be true get the team involved so that you can shape the deliverable together, so would that mean every time a new potential client came through this team would be a combination of people from your whole company, like you, wouldn’t be the same Team from different people interesting different people.
So if we identified that a the you think about a triangle, you’ve got like acquisition up top got engagement on one side and conversion which one hurts the most, which one are they weakest at if it was converging, we’d pull in designers and developers, UX people right, Because that’s what they needed, help with sure and those people being in the day-to-day would know about what to do to fix or diagnose that situation way better than anyone in sales could in their limited capacity of dealing with the client.
And if it was somebody in you know they didn’t have any traffic, this makes sense, pulling an SEO or PPC consultant and they’d be able to go. Let me have a look at your problem and that it was. It was a dual sided thing. It wasn’t just it made sales easier it. You know boosted retention, but it also didn’t make the delivery team grown. When a new client comes on board, cuz they’re, a part of the process was like the IKEA effect, they’re co-creating.
What to work on together? Now you were, though, one of the keys here and that’s a brilliant strategist. First time I actually heard that the IKEA strategy, no, no, this got into great sales processes yeah, because everything is kind of saddled before them. So the the the beginning, part, though, is you, are still triaging or yes heading at the beginning, right so you’re doing the filtration to kind of weed out the potential bad fit at the beginning, yeah.
Well, so just two things like so even in operations. We think about it as when you’re starting to work with collaborating. So if you’re a senior consultant – and you want to work with your team to deliver you’re not involved in a day-to-day delivery, it’s like the AES are at ten. Eighty ten rule you set, you shape the project and the temp of first ten percent of it. The team carries at 80 percent of the way, and you polish, at the other ten percent right as you’re influencing the work on both ends of it, but the largest part of it is the expectations or the outcomes or set.
He knows exactly what they need to do and then you help you bring in people to help you with that ten percent as well to help them grow. So, let’s fast-forward, like let’s say, contract comes in it’s a hundred k contract yeah, whatever your takes eight months, cause a lot faster than Oh Nance contract right yeah, who, how do you have the system set up for at the end of the line to kind of Continue this relationship with that company, yeah, great okay, so I’ll, give you a more recent example, so went on honeymoon recently, Portugal, anyway, congratulations! Thank you.
Thank you and we actually had a deal worth a hundred and fifty K close without any of my involvement whatsoever. Didn’T even open the deal right, and so all I knew in terms of updates was deal came in. I had a director of strategy come in and vet the deal. He created a project task team to come in and say what would the you know the diagnostic stage, a discovery stage, look like the road mapping, the execution stage.
Now that that’s closed. What we also have is we, you know, unlike a lot of agencies, have like account managers or account directors, and we tried that for a couple of years, didn’t work for us at all, and I think the the key thing over here is that this whole idea Of the division of labor, like that, goes back to the Industrial Revolution where you know, let’s make this look like an assembly line where each person does a different kind of work in what we do.
It just doesn’t work and not in our experience at least, and so the best consultants are the ones who can understand the client understand their business needs. Translate those business needs into what the what needs to be done in terms of the work. They don’t necessarily need to do all of the work, but they can work with a team of people who do the work and then once you’ve got the data. You need to be able to tell a story with it.
So turning a data into insights, and so they so the entire team is actually maintaining a relationship with the client we’re very upfront with our clients in saying. Look if you, if you’re, hiring us, because you know you have the desire only working with one person or probably not the right fit for you, because you’re primarily trying to hire someone to manage a relationship and a relationship essentially implies that you are you’re buying a Commodity think about it.
This way you have an Account Manager for a commodity, like maybe your bank right, so you might have somebody who manages your mortgage. For example, all mortgages are essentially the same right: different interest rates and whatnot, essentially the same product underlying. So you don’t buy a mortgage because of its expertise. It’S a commodity to come out. It yeah, so you’re buying the relationship and that’s what most people stay with their bank is they have a relationship now that’s going away by the way.
Right, like that’s, really go. Some cost bias is leaving yeah, that’s that’s leaving, but most people they’ll continue working with whatever the professional is in their life because of the relationship and relationships are a really good reason to stay, but not a really good reason to attract a client and there’s a Very key distinction between that what you should do to attract the client is to have demonstrable meaningfully different, exacta, Bertie’s right and so now that the clients got a relationship with everybody on the team.
We have structured intentional interactions and so, if you’re on the senior leadership team once a quarter, we’re dropping in and just saying, hey how’s it going so we’ve got the standard. You know Net Promoter Score every month, asking them a scale of 1 to 10. How likely would you two be to refer powered by search to a colleague of similar caliber? We’Ve got the quarterly drop in that happens with the senior leadership team.
We’Ve got people who are directors of paid and of SEO, looking at quarterly Business Review reports that make sure that the QA and that’s done properly, the where you know, there’s high throughput in terms of what we’re, what we’re delivering to a client. But there’s no one person that owns that client relationship, which is also kind of different. It’S contrarian a little bit because intuitively it makes sense that you would want a high.
You know a person who’s got high relationship bias like they’re just good at connecting with people and building. That’S interesting strategy, though it’s like point of failure is kind of the biggest point of failure is for anybody with relationships that and leaves and takes those relationships. A hundred percent yeah yeah, so it’s strategic yeah right, because the idea is you get everybody to shine where they’re meant to shine.
So, instead of this having this old school to, you know thinking that, like if you’re running, if I was running a web development agency, what I’ve heard in the industry is, you want to have your front facing kind of sales relationship, people who don’t know anything about The code mm-hmm and then you’ve got people in the back room coding and that just doesn’t work. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
So why would you do that with marketing? You want the in the copywriter, the designer the PPC consultant right there in the room. All three of them working with the client and we asked for the client to not just be having one person but having their product people their sales people. So we can ask questions that are more dynamic. It’S not just about getting the lead or the marketing qualified lead hey.
How did that demo go? What questions are you asking on the demo? Where are you finding friction and then it’s just beautiful, like um there’s a book that came out recently, it’s called trillion dollar coach I’ve been meaning to read it, it’s really great, but I actually download inaudible. It’S still sitting there, it’s a great book. So one of the the the quotes in this book is from that. The specific coach is work, the team, then the problem don’t work, the the problem first and then the team.
So the idea is, if you just pair up people and you point them in the set in the right direction and say, go figure this out. I don’t care how you figure it out, but work together to figure it out. Don’T just say: okay got the problem and you go off in your own silos and we do that on our team. But we also do it with a client and we say: look, let’s start from the same side of the table and approach this problem together and we’re it’s going to be a better together, approach, wonderful and so that’s around year, three or four yeah, and that that’s Ideology has existed all the way here thing yeah.
When would he say Dannette next hurdle or roadblock, and I came in after, like here three or four yeah, so you’re four. I wasn’t in place in the hub-and-spoke model going. I don’t have enough time to spend with our team of 14 or 15 at that point in time that with to spend with each and every one of these people developing, you know they’re they’re, you know competencies, capabilities or growth maps all of this type of stuff And I thought I couldn’t hire at that point.
It was naive enough to think that I couldn’t hire anyone to help me with that. So what I did was, I said. Okay, you know the only way to go about this is potentially to find someone to partner with give away equity in my company and get a few partners on board, and maybe we could delight in conquer, and so I went and found a few people were running Their own agencies ended up partnering with them and then stayed partnered with them for the next four years, and that process was very interesting interesting.
You know going through the process of merging together and I was Arsuf working together. Oh that’s, I’m actually interested. I was more interested in the fact that you were able to sell them the story, because you had your company doing or you know, two million dollars plus yeah. You have these two other individuals, yeah, I’m assuming they’re, doing okay, yeah, right and so to meet up with two other parties yeah and then sell the dream and story to come together.
That’S a that’s fascinating! Well! It was kind of interesting, because what I figured was that pretty much everybody at that size was having the same growth challenges: okay, right, the lack of systems, a lack of focus in the specific area of the business, whether there was operations or new business marketing finance Right and running a really tight ship over there and I didn’t go into it with a plan of like hey, I’m going to sell these people on the dream mm-hm I went in and hey what are you doing? What are you finding? Are you have running the same problems I’m running into and we just got to talking and they’re like yeah we’re running into the same problems, and I think we sold ourselves on the fact that if we put our heads together, we would be able to focus and Have our own lanes essentially, so everybody brought in something friend, yeah yeah, at least on the surface level.
It felt that way and that we would be focusing in different areas and it’d be a better together approach. You know three heads are better than one hmm. How did that merger look like? Well, it was yeah, it took probably six months to put it all together and figure out the logistics of it, and I think the biggest thing was in the first year of that merger. It’S a little bit like when two families like you’ve got a stepmom stepdad, basically come together and you’re, bringing in kids into the picture and that’s exactly what it was like, and so you guys all want to like same building like same same same they were remote.
You know I had an office and they came together and we were 60 people overnight Wow. So you went from like 15 to 60. Oh yeah, huge growth, you’d started that new team then or the new merger that they start adopting the system you built before yeah and and part of it was also the chief operating officer that we took on at that point that my partner’s at that. That point had his own systems that he you know he was heavy into automation and process, optimization and my talents always being and visualizing and architecting, but I followed through his crap mm-hm.
So you know I’ve always been the ideas guy and I needed somebody to work. The system again and again – and that was what I wanted this partnership to look like so the bottom line is yeah. They came in with their own systems and we had a mishmash essentially until we found our footing. It took like a whole year to be able to get to that point: yeah yeah Wow, that’s crazy man, yeah, okay, so the merger happens, 60 people overnight same office, different systems all trying to kind of find equilibrium among each other.
What, then, the hardest part of about any kind of partnership is understanding who’s, taking lead in a specific area and not succumbing to decision by committee and I’m the type of guy who is very open-minded. I want to listen to everybody else’s ideas and I started really seeing okay they’ve had their own success that got them up to here. Let’S start this better together, three heads, you know put together type of approach when I realized was that we ended up.
Actually, you know Neapolitan ice cream dan sullivan says this all the time where it’s like strawberry you’ve got your chocolate and vanilla, and there are nice. You know there’s three very distinct ones, but if you put them in a bowl and it’s out in the sun, you end up getting mush yeah. So in hindsight, that’s that’s kind of what happened like we were watering down each other’s ideas as opposed to reinforcing them.
We had growth, you know I, we had a couple years of solid, getting new clients on board new team members on board, but if I were to look at hindsight of core values and mission and why we were doing what we were doing, each party bought a Different vision to it, and that’s that was both a source of growth, but also a source of healthy conflict, sometimes unhealthy conflict as well in the business.
At this point, when you, sir, like things have to change them, yeah, it’s I’ve always just been a proponent of you know. If I’m feeling a certain way are other people feeling that way, let me start polling mm-hmm and I started pulling. You know incoming team members. You know their first two weeks, they’re still fresh. What are they seeing that’s different about how we’re doing things versus wherever they came from and I over-index on exiting team members as well and the exit interview like hey? What are you seeing? Why do you know? Why didn’t this work out for you and the thing that camp kept coming up is well and without you know, trying to code it in any sort of fancy paint it was.
You know one partner says one thing: the other partner says something else that where there’s some level of conflict we don’t know what to do hmm, and so I think that created confusion. And to me I looked at that. I said: okay, what needs to change over here is there’s no judgment or good or bad. It’S simply. There are many different ways of running a company and what a team needs is clarity on what is the one way that we’re going to run this company and that’s the clarity I think the team deserved.
So I looked at that and I really want hmm. I think we need to change the way that we’re approaching this and the way that the business is being run and that led to a conversation and in 2018, where we decided that well, one of us is going to kick by it by out the others and That process culminated it. You know last year in June, where I bought them out of their shares and that’s a whole circle. Isn’T it from 2014 going from running a business as a sole founder? How did that conversation go like originally was like random, like hey guys, you know.
I think that the key thing I found about it is that people don’t like being surprised, and so what I really focused on was how do I deliver a firm but kind message as well? I don’t think they were surprised by it. Nothing any of us were surprised by the conversation. It was the right thing to do and then, as is probably true for anyone going through an acquisition or through an M & A type of process, it kicks off all sorts of dirt into here right and it’s a whole thing.
Oh yeah, it’s a whole thing. Oh yeah, yeah Zeke side is trying to figure out how I get back bigger piece of the pie. I brought this and uh well, it just goes back to incentives. You know you have opposing incentives at that point in time, and so it’s hard work. It is, it is very hard how long did the negotiation or process take to siglos yeah? Well, I mean I’m exceptionally fortunate that it closed in three months.
Really yeah 90 days need everything bring up talking yeah. I thought about this. For a long time, though, I was thinking about it towards the end of 2018, talking to some mentors trying to figure out what the right cuz I wanted to really like. When I’m said in a direction, I really go for it. Mm-Hmm I take I’m a high fact-finder on the Colby. So just means that I’m gathering a lot of data, I’m playing it through all the angles, and then I commit right, and so I knew what different directions it could go down and I had lots of great people and my you know – support network helping me both As a great ear to kind of listen to what was going on to mentor me through the process as well, and so that’s one of the reasons why it was most, you know it went as a sort of efficiently as it did it kind of like.
You know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs were, like my friends are entrepreneurs, so I there’s someone else who I know and in our community who closed their deal recently and that deal took a a year and eight months, which is a long time a long time About the opportunity cost right, hmm, the negotiate it ever bring up the day, maybe wanted to buy you. Oh oh yeah, yeah that that was like that there’s a dance that happens right, so the dances about it’s like playing poker.
You don’t want to show all your cards, you don’t see everyone else’s cards, and so it’s a it’s a back and forth where you have to strategically kind of think about like what’s right for the company. What do you want personally? What does the other side want? Hmm and I learned a lot of a negotiation last year – master class man – Oh, is I felt like I could talk about that for hours. Looking back in hindsight, anything that you would have done differently with the negotiation.
I know I mean we. I think it went well. I think that every did we never resorted to. Never any sort of yelling shouting matches that kind of thing. It was just cool and collected and unpatient. Like that’s one thing like, I have a name page, and I heard this from navall and it kind of summarizes me well very impatient with actions definition with results. So I thought thing you’ve gone on for another two months: Odeon fine with it, and so where are you at right now with powered by search so the buyout went through that was last year? Luckily, I went quick and easy mm-hmm, you know um.
What’S the major focus now, what’s the because now you’re in charge, you know it’s one single-minded or you can cook the kitchen yep, what’s happening with paradise search we started at the ground level, which is any consulting business, is ultimately a people business. You can have all the greatest systems and thinking of everything else, but I’ve, no, sir people to execute on that it’s difficult to scale.
So we went back looked at every one of our people. We looked at. What do we need to do to support them and their growth? What’S their growth, not basically look like what’s the last time that there’s chaos, it happens when you have this type of partnership turmoil where you start ball, dropping some balls like you know. When was the last time we did a quarterly bonus. Oh oh crap! Now that didn’t happen, so, let’s start going back and keeping every single promise that wasn’t kept and make good on it like.
That was just super important to me. So we did right by our people. First recognize people who were high performers coached the ones that needed some more help offered. You know a path up, so you know coach up or coach out mm-hmm, so we had to do that. The next thing we did was brought in a VP of Operations, because I knew exactly where I wasn’t going to excel in the company needed somebody with high systems follow-through and looked at.
You know, through my network and talked to people and found this person and hired hired her and then went to clients and said hey. Well, you know what could we be doing differently for you than we’re doing today? Had honest great conversations got there, Net Promoter scores worked on stuff, it’s been like a huge amount of growth along that path, and then we were very flexible throughout the the journey.
Like a couple of things, I don’t know if you know, but we offer five weeks of paid time off to everybody at powered by search doesn’t matter whether senior already is the agency. Business is one where people work long hours. They burn the midnight oil from both ends, you know of the candle and we didn’t want. I never wanted a company that was unsustainable, like that said, if you don’t have time to enjoy life like what’s the point of like saving up for this retirement thing, so five weeks of vacation, it works out to roughly about 10 % of pay.
If you look at it for the entire year, and so we give that, then we were offering people two days of work from home as well, so 40 % of your work week. If you really wanted to, you could work from home and there were people who loved it and are heavy. You know great contributors and other people who kind of bent the rules a little bit. I know they. They took advantage of that privilege. They saw it as a right yeah, and so we looked at that and said: hey look.
You got this great office in downtown Toronto. You’Ve been there, we’ve done a nice office. Yes, it’s good office, but there’s a conversation we have with a mutual friend of ours. Jason Gaynor and Jason, I mean we’re having lunch and after lunch he said hey. What are you thinking of doing with the office and the team and everything and I’m like you know, I want to grow it so putting in all the right Lego blocks to be able to do that, and he goes yeah.
You realize that you could be buying a Toyota Corolla every single month, with what you pay in rent. I don’t know that was like the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and I’d been kind of toying with the idea of what would it look like to work with the best in the world, and you know, would I be thinking it was my head Up I’d screw it on the right way to think that the best people in the world are going to be an hour’s commute from this office, and I realized the answer was no, because I looked at all the people that I admired and they were all around.
The world they were and they were in Australia in the UK in the US you know in South America – I’m playing. How do i? How do I tap that? How do I make sure that I can get these people to to connect and become part of powered by search, and that’s when this idea of going fully distributed? Remote first came up. I guess in hindsight, like I’ve, always been thinking about like how do I do it differently than it’s done today, and that’s one thing that you don’t see with too many agencies, especially Akamai.
That’S probably interesting kind of transition, oh yeah, again it was well planned. We did surveys, we asked everybody and her team. What do you think about this? What do you think our clients will think about it? How will it impact you and then we quantified it and said? Look most of you are spending two weeks of your entire life commuting every single day. Yes, two weeks, what would it look like to have two weeks back and then we actually got.
You know type form survey responses of? Oh. What would you do and said? I would walk my dog. I spend more time with my parents, you know I’d go to I play with my little brother and things like that right play with my kid. Like that’s priceless right there. You cannot put a price tag on uh-huh, and so that was also a very motivational push towards going remote, and so we made that change and man. It’S been a world of difference, that’s amazing, yeah, but the system’s have to be there.
Oh yeah, the processes. Okay, ours, KPI or boards for tracking reviews, yeah everything. So how frequently do you guys physically meet up for some type of generally speaking like once a month? Okay is when we meet up, and that’s still because a large portion of the team is in Toronto. Yeah, we’re still figuring it out in terms of what we do. We hired our first full-time guy in Cape Town, South Africa, oh cool earlier this year, he’s working out fantastic, he’s fantastic at what he does, and so the next step is really to go to an annual retreat that where we fly everybody down and use the budget That we would have used for on-premise, you know in office and that’s just a great way of like incentivizing people towards an end of year, like here’s, where we’re going to go uh-huh.
It’S amazing man, yeah! Well, thanks for sharing the story. Yeah. Thank you. Like wow nice file, virtual man, that’s crazy, yeah yeah, especially the offer everybody. No, no, especially for that team, I’m totally in favor virtual. If you can do it, yeah um, you know overhead cost. You save save time, especially throttle net traffic. I think I’ve become especially sensitive now to getting stuck in traffic yeah, because I just look at any go.
There’S all the other ways. I could be spending this time like yeah like yeah. The funny thing is that remote doesn’t mean you’re working at home um, not stepping out like. I am very happy to jump on a flight to go, see a client mm-hmm, that’s quality, in-person time. You know what I mean like. The difference, I think, is when you are putting in that time in the commute, but it’s low-quality, that’s right! That’S a waste yeah and I think remote work is the future cool man.
Well, Deb thanks for sharing good if the people want to get in touch with you, learn more about power, bi search or what you’re doing on the side. What’S the best resources hit me up on LinkedIn, just search, dev Vasu, and then our site powered by search calm when we publish we’re on a publishing role actually right now something publishing methodology around how to grow: software’s and service businesses and b2b technology business as well Cool guys go check out, dev and I’ll see you guys next week, peace
There are so many different ways you can go about that, but We’Re actually going to cover how to actually optimize Your images for web and SEO here on The Journey All right fun facts with Nealey time. Did you know that images are The second most popular way to search after keywords.
No, but that makes sense I mean people buy with their eyes right Absolutely so leveraging The power of images with your content is crucial And that’s why, if you want to really make your business stand out and be noticed, you have to leverage the power Of images with your content, So there’s a lot that goes into it and I’m not going to do. All the work for you Come on. Please help a girl out All right I’ll at least help you I’ll.
Take you through your own website and show you at home a quick demo of how to optimize your Images for web and SEO Perfect: Let’s do it Cool compromise All right Alex. So, let’s Check out some of the images on your website, so where do You go and upload your images, So I normally go to where it says: media [, Nealey, ], Okay. So let’s Check out some of the content that you’ve uploaded All right, so all burgers, I dig it [ Alex ], Nothing wrong with that.
So let’s check out one of these images Cool, so I’m noticing some good things and noticing some not so good things. Let’S dive into this little bit: Okay, Alright! So we’ll start with a good Start with the positive right. So I do see here you have Some of what’s called “ Alternative Text.” Now, when Google or other Search engines crawl, your site, it can’t actually see This delicious burger, All it sees is that it says “ image”.
It doesn’t know what to do with that. That’S where that Alternative text comes in so this one, you put awesome Burgers, which is good, it’s descriptive, shows Exactly what it is, But I don’t see you have it On any of your other images, So you definitely want to Write some type of description of what that is, that way, it Gets indexed by search engines because, like we said before, it is the second most Popular way to search Okay, so every image gets Its own alternative text Yeah, and you really Want to describe it too, The more descriptive the better.
This also helps for Visually impaired people that are on your site, That have screen readers So if they’re on your site, It’Ll have delicious burger it’ll. Have this or it’ll have that versus just going and saying Image is not very helpful. You got to keep the site successful to Moving on to title Your titles aren’t bad I’ve seen worse. I’Ve seen The ones that are like screenshot dash this date dash blah again, that’s not really helpful.
You want to be as descriptive as possible. [ Alex ], Okay, [ Nealey ], So this one says Beef dash blur dash bread and then some numbers. How do I make it better? So we can probably just Get rid of the numbers Again, it has to be Descriptive of what the image is all about, so beef dash blur Dash bread that one’s fine You want to have those dashes in there,’cause that’s! What’S going to Show up in the address bar [ Alex ], Okay, It’s also something that Google kind of takes a look at as well, And then WordPress saves in real time.
So as soon as I clicked Off of that, it saves So you kind of have the same trend here. Blur dash buns dash burger those numbers just get rid of the numbers All right. The next thing, You really want to look at are the captions of the image themselves. The captions are one of the Most read parts of a website so having something there again, As descriptive as possible, Now, if you got this image elsewhere, usually caption has the source Of where you got that image, These are your photos and Since you’re Alex eats food, so it’s yours there and Then description same thing As descriptive as possible: The more descriptive, the more keywords you can Add to your website‘s images, the better you are going! To be in search engines, [ Alex ].
So what would be a Good example for a caption here, literally just really describe it Juicy delicious burger. I can’t type today I really can’t type today With tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, And Dijon mustard sure, So it’s a pretty solid caption and I really cannot type today, Let’s add burger in there too, Oh yeah, maybe I guess Burger there. We go Nope, not there. Let’S put it right here, I’m struggling today, I’m just hungry.
It’S about that time. [ Alex ], ( laughs, ), A mustard burger Juicy, delicious mustard, all right All right now with this, it’s not really optimizing it for SEO. But it is optimizing it for your website itself. Now what you don’t want, To do is have an image: that’s like 5000, with by 5000 height, It’s way too large. My screen, Is definitely not that big? You want to keep them condensed If they are pretty big.
You Can resize them on a computer and re upload them? You can actually resize Directly in WordPress, by going to edit image, And then right over here, there’s new dimension. You Can literally just type say I want this to be 800 width, it will automatically Constrain it down to by 533 Click scale and then It’Ll shrink my image, so it’s not as large. You also use the plugin WP Smush, smush And it’ll.
Basically do What exactly what that is it’s going to smush your Images so they’re not as large, because also the faster Your website is the better search results. You’Ll come up with whether it’s text based search results or image, search results, Good to know perfect. Well, thanks, so much Nealey. Hopefully my great burger pictures will get seen a lot more now, Yeah Be sure to let us know. In the comments below what kind of articles you Want to see in the future Yeah and while you’re there make sure you smash that Like button as always Subscribe to, the blog and You can get this content first.
This is The Journey We’Ll see you next time,
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Google Search itself – like how this whole thing actually works, and while this is a subject, Entire books have been written about there. ’ s a good chance! You ’ re in the market, for something A little more concise, So let ’ s say it! ’ s! Getting close to dinner! And you want a recipe for.
.. Lasagna. You ’ ve, probably seen this before, But let ’ s go a little deeper Since the beginning back when the homepage Looked like this, Google has been continuously mapping the web, hundreds of billions of Pages to create something called an index, Think of it as the giant library we look through Whenever you do a search for lasagna or anything else Now, the word lasagna shows up a lot on the Web pages about the history of lasagna articles by a scientist whose last name happened to Be “ Lasagna, ” stuff other people might be looking for.
But if you ’ re hungry, randomly clicking Through millions of links is no fun, This is where Google ’ s, ranking algorithms. Come into play first, they try to understand what you ’ re looking for, so they can be Helpful, even if you don ’ t, know exactly the right words to use or if your spelling is A little off, Then they sift through millions of possible Matches in the index and automatically assemble a page that tries to put the most relevant Information up top for you to choose from Ok.
Now we have some results, But how did the algorithms actually decide? What made it onto the first page, There are hundreds of factors that go into Ranking search results, so let ’ s talk about a few of them. You may already know that pages containing the words you searched for are more likely. To end up at the top – no surprise there, But the location of those words like in The page, ’ s title or in an image: ’ s, caption – those are factors too There.
’ s a lot more to ranking than just Words Back when Google got started, we looked at How pages linked to each other to better understand what pages were about and how important and Trustworthy, they seemed Today linking is still an important factor. Another factor is location – where a search Happens – because, if you happen to be in Ormea Italy, you might be looking for information. About their annual lasagna festival, but if you ’ re in Omaha Nebraska, you probably Aren, ’ t When a webpage was uploaded is an important Factor too – pages published more recently often have more accurate information, especially In the case of a rapidly developing news story, Of course, not every site on the web is trying To be helpful, Just like with robocalls on your phone or Spam in your email, there are a lot of sites that only exist to scam and every day, scammers Upload millions more of them So just because instantvirusdownload.
Net lists The words “ lasagna recipe ” 400 times that doesn ’ t mean it. ’ s going to help you Make dinner We spend a lot of time trying to stay one Step ahead of tricks like these making sure our algorithms can recognize scam sites and Flag them before they make it to your Search results page. So let ’ s review billions of times a day. Whenever someone searches for lasagna or “ resume, writing tips, ” or “ how to swaddle A baby ” or anything else, Google, ’ s; software locates, all the potentially relevant results.
On the web removes all the spam and ranks them based on hundreds of factors, like keywords: Links, location and freshness, Ok., Good time to take a breath. This last part is about how we make changes. To search and it ’ s important Since 1998, when Google went online people Seem to have found our results pretty helpful, But the web is always changing and people Are always searching for new things – in fact, one in every seven searches is for something That ’ s never been typed into the search box before by anyone ever So.
We ’ re, always working on updates to Search – thousands every year, Which brings up a big question: how do we Decide whether a change is making search more helpful, Well, one of the ways we evaluate potential Updates to Search is by asking people like you Every day, thousands of Search, Quality, Raters Look at samples of search results side-by-side then, give feedback about the relevance and Reliability of the information To make sure those evaluations are consistent.
The raters follow a list of Search Quality, Evaluator Guidelines, Think of them as our publicly available guide. To what makes a good result?… Good, Oh and one last thing to remember: we use Responses from Raters to evaluate changes, but they don ’ t directly impact. How Search Results are ranked So there you have it every time. You click “ search ” our algorithms are analyzing, the meaning of the words in your search matching Them to content on the web understanding what content is most likely to be helpful? And reliable and then automatically putting it all together in a neatly organized page: Designed to get you to the info, you need All in.
.., oh 0.81 seconds Wow. Anyone else ready for dinner, Interested in learning more We’ve got a whole website dedicated to how Search works. Just click right here Want to read the Search, Quality, Rater Guidelines, For yourself, Click right here,
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