SEO Tips Simplified For Beginners & Beyond - Content Capitalists Podcast

Speaker A: Google is just a robot, and you have to feed them as much information as possible to let them know that you're trustworthy, you're relevant, you're credible. You're not some like a bait and switch and pretty sophisticated, but they're not that smart. Brandon Leibowitz, digital marketing expert and founder of SEO Optimizers. With his extensive experience in SEO, social media marketing, and Google Ads, Brandon's insights can benefit both business owners and curious learners. Google doesn't trust any website, and they don't care what you put on your website, what keywords you put on the website. Google just says, all right, how do we really know you are who you say anymore? You're not building what are called backlinks. Google's not going to trust you. And the way to do that is by getting other websites to talk about you. And once they get to your website, they're just like, all right, how do I know you really are a legitimate company? How do I trust you? And social media is a great way to build trust up where they can see some reviews and put some face beyond the company. There's ways to game the system, and they don't want people gaming m the system. They want people to work for those rankings. But one thing I really tell people

Speaker B: is the Content Capitalist podcast. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of the Content Capitalist Podcast. Today I've got a guest with me, and this hopefully is going to answer a question that I get a lot, and it's like, should I be? A lot of business owners, when they're thinking about advertising and marketing, they're thinking, should I be working on content creation, social media marketing, or SEO? And I don't think it's an if or. Or either or question. And luckily, we have someone who is an absolute expert at, uh, SEO and also social media marketing. Brandon Leibowitz, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you for having me on today.

Speaker B: Awesome. Brandon. Uh, I gotta get this question off my chest, because, um, when your name came up, the first thing that comes to me mind is Annie Lebowitz, the famous photographer. Any relation?

Speaker A: Nope. I wish there was, but nope. Get that one all the time. But she is the only famous Leboitz out there.

Speaker B: Okay. And, um, I know this is totally off topic, but I believe it's like, uh, you have Jewish roots with that name, Is that right? M. Yeah, yeah, got it, got it.

Speaker A: Mix of Eastern Europe, but, yeah, all Jewish.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, technically, everybody in the US Is an immigrant, right?

Speaker A: At some point, yeah, pretty much almost everybody is. Almost came from somewhere Else. Yeah, there's not too many natives. I mean there are Native Americans, but there are.

Speaker B: That's a whole another topic for another podcast. Anyhow, Brandon, I would love it if you could give us a uh, 30,000 foot view for the listeners. What is it you do and how do you, what uh, kind of people do you help and how do you help them?

Speaker A: I help people get more traffic to their website using SEO, search engine optimization, do a little bit with Google paid ads, a little bit with social media, but really focus on SEO. Been doing that since 2007. Kind of got lucky that I fell into that early. After I graduated from college, got my degree in business marketing and the first job I got at school was helping a company out with their digital marketing, which I don't really know much about it back then in 2007 and they said, don't worry, we don't know much either. We're going to learn with you. Taking classes and workshops and seminars kind of similar to this where after doing that for a few months, just realized this is the future. Everyone's probably going to have a website in the future. And SEO is just a way to get free traffic. And who doesn't want free traffic? So been doing that ever since helping out companies, working full time at advertising agencies as a director of SEO and before work and after work and on my lunch breaks, I work on my own company and eventually built that up to where I was able to quit my job and focus solely on this and been doing that ever since. Helping out mainly small, medium sized businesses, just trying to get them more visibility, more exposure and get them in front of their audience when they're actively looking for their product or services.

Speaker B: I think that's really interesting. Uh, with SEO you get in front of them when they're actively looking. And with social media marketing it's not exactly the same unless you're actually paying for ads. So that's, you know, that's a key difference I want to explore a little bit later. Is there any, um, potentially recognizable brands or companies you work with that, that you're allowed to share?

Speaker A: I've worked with lots of, well, not lots of, uh, but Fortune 100 companies like General Electric and some other ones. And I don't know if I could say all the names because this is

Speaker B: one, I think General Electric already, you know, everybody recognizes that, especially if you're in the U.S. that's, that's a good start.

Speaker A: Yeah, they have a huge presence and they have just tons of different spins off of products that they're pushing and they're a huge one.

Speaker B: Okay, now just so I understand, uh, this a little bit better, I, I'm going to act like uh, a Labrador who knows nothing about SEO. And to be honest, I've never, I've never hired an SEO guy. I've never read a single book on SEO. I. The amount that I know about SEO is only what pertains to like social media. You know, like things you know, how to get ranked in YouTube, LinkedIn and things like that. And sometimes you get search engines feeding into that. So work. Walk me through why it's important to invest in SEO. Like as a business owner. How is like is the page the conversion point? Is it a lead, uh, acquisition point? Is it branding? Kind uh, of walk me through that because those are genuine questions I have right now.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah, I know SEO is great for just getting in front of people when they're searching. So SEO is search engine optimization, which means optimizing your websites for search engines. Which Google's a search engine. But it could also be like you were saying LinkedIn, you could search on there, Amazon, you could search on Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor, anywhere where there's a search engine, there's ways to optimize that listing your website or wherever it's on that platform, YouTube to just make sure that you show up when people are searching for your keywords. And SEO, I mean it's okay for brand, like if someone's searching for your brand, but you're always going to rank for your brand name. So with SEO we want to try to get you up for non brand keywords. Keywords that don't have your company name in them. Because if someone's searching for your company, they already know who you are. I mean you want to make sure that you show up for that name. I've had clients where their company name is the same as another company's name that's really big and popular. And it's then it's like, all right now it's branding. We gotta make sure that you show up along with this other big company. But we have to make sure that you show up as well. But usually it's the non brand keywords that lead gen trying to show up for keywords that are related to your product or service when people are searching, whether on whatever platform they're on.

Speaker B: Yeah, but then they, when they do end up on your site. Right, like um, if I go to General Electric or, or you know, any company, like are they looking for a purchase? Are they looking For a lead capture. Like, in general, what's the go to purpose for SEO? If I'm investing in another company or a service, I want to know, how do I make my money back?

Speaker A: Yep. So SEO really is just to get traffic to your website, which over the years I realized is not really a means to an end. People don't care about traffic, they care about conversions. So that's where I also work with businesses or websites to make sure that once we get people to your website, how do we get them to convert? Because half the battle is just getting them find you through Google or whatever platform you're on. And once they get to your website, it's called conversion rate optimization. How do we optimize that website to convert those visitors into calling you or emailing you, or if it's E commerce, buying that product? And that's where we just have to really look at the website, make sure. I mean, there's so many variables that go into. But make sure it loads quickly. Making sure it's easy to navigate through, especially on mobile, because mobile could kind of get cluttered. But big thing is whatever you see on the screen is called above the fold. Most people don't really scroll down on a website, which just seems a little weird. But whatever people see on the screen on mobile or desktop or tablet, whatever platform you're on, you gotta make sure that you have all your printed information out there. Meaning like a value proposition. Like, what's in it for me? What am I gonna get from using your product or service? Maybe have a couple bullet points about the benefits of your product or service. Maybe put a YouTube video up there. Because people's attention spans are so short nowadays that they don't want to read a bunch of text and just try and make it so it's easy to skim through, navigate through, and understand what that page is about. Don't just have like a giant hero image which takes up the entire screen, which I still see to this day all too often, where it doesn't really convey what your website's about. Maybe it's a picture of a bunch of people smiling and you're selling car parts.

Speaker B: No doubt.

Speaker A: Yeah. So just making sure that you try to take a. And also try to take a step back. Think if you were looking for your product or service and you land on this website, is it easy to navigate through? I mean, we kind of get blinded from looking at our website so often, but asking friends or family or other people that really don't look at your website and seeing how they navigate through because you want to get those conversions. That's really the ultimate goal is getting conversions, getting leads.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that's what every business wants, right? There's, there's, that's what the game is about. Now if we were to look at this, and you did say you do some like social media marketing too. Like how. What do you say are the biggest differences between social media marketing and um, I'm talking about organic here, social media marketing and SEO marketing. Walk me through the biggest differences.

Speaker A: Well, SEO takes unfortunately time, so it's not immediate. Google doesn't trust any website and they don't care what you put on your website, what keywords you put on the website. Google just looks at you and says, all right, how do we really know you are who you say you are? And the way to do that is by getting other websites to talk about you. The more websites that talk about you, the more popular Google sees you as. And then they look at those keywords on your website. But it doesn't work the other way around. If you're not building what are called backlinks, Google's not going to trust you. And building backlinks takes months. Sometimes it could even take years depending on how competitive that industry is to break through. So SEO is more long term play. Social media is a great way to just get in that market and you don't have to compete with all the big players. I mean you are still competing with them, but you could go viral and things like that without having to wait months and months and months. Unfortunately with organic though, all these platforms kind of drop the reach so much that most of them are kind of pay to play platforms where like Facebook, you post on Facebook. The think now it's like 5% engagement rate. Instagram is owned by Facebook and they're slowly doing the same thing. They haven't done that yet because they have competition. They're competing against TikTok and Snapchat still. But the organic reach is dropped so much that it just makes it kind of tougher. But social is great for immediate results penetrating that market. SEO is more that long term play and both work well. A lot of people think I should do one or the other and they work really well together. I mean, social is also good for social proof. So somebody finds you on Google or whatever platform, they go to your website and once they get to your website, they're just like, all right, how do I know you really are a legitimate company? Can I really buy off of you? Give me you, my Credit card information. How do I trust you? And social media is a great way to build trust up where they could see that you're active on these platforms, some of them let you have reviews, and it just shows that you're a real business and puts a face beyond the company.

Speaker B: Perfect. Um, one thing stood out to me from what you just said there. You said Facebook has a 5% engagement rate. Is that 5% of reach? 5% of followers? Like, where does that 5% come from?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, 5% of, of reach. So if you have a hundred likes on your Facebook page and you post on Facebook, only five out of those hundred people will see what you post without you having to click that little blue button at the bottom that says boost this post up, and then they'll show it to your whole audience. But if you're running paid ads, I would say avoid the boost because it doesn't really give you full control. If you really want to run social ads, you have to go into the real editor, Ads manager, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Now, I've got some strategies that work actually better on with the boost function than ads, but most of the time you're going to want to go to the ads manager and to, you know, get a bit more control. Um, okay, this is super cool. Now, SEO, uh, here's a question that I've got, right? Um, and I'm going to go way back to the olden days, and I'm going to date myself a little bit here. Uh, Yellow Pages. You remember those, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, you pay money. Once you get your little business listed with, you know, you're in one of the columns, if you, if you're rich, then you get a whole page, right? And once a year, you pay once and you're there forever. Now, with SEO, it's like this,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: monthly retainer that most agencies or experts require. So explain to me why there needs to be a constant monthly retainer. And what are you doing on a month to month, week to week, year to year basis as an SEO service provider?

Speaker A: Yeah. The biggest thing is those backlinks I talked about a little bit earlier. And what is a backlink? A backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. So if we're reading an article, let's say on Forbes.com in there, it says Brandon Lebow, it's going to click on it and it goes to my website, I'd be getting a backlink from Forbes.com so the more websites that link out to you that are related to what you're doing the more popular or trustworthy Google sees you as. So, and that's how Google's algorithm first started is they said we're not going

Speaker B: to rank page rank. Right.

Speaker A: Based off keywords. Yeah, we're going to rank them based off backlinks. And the way backlinks work, there's tools that I could see your backlinks, you can see my backlinks. And if I was trying to outrank you, I would look at your backlinks and try to acquire as many as possible that are relevant and authoritative. And once I get to that first page of Google, I'm pushing someone off that first page of Google because there's only 10 spots on that first page of Google. And that person or that website is not going to be happy.

Speaker B: They're going to fight back, right?

Speaker A: Yep. They're going to look at my backlinks, they're going to get my content, my keywords, but they're really going to look at those backlinks and try to build more backlinks. The more backlinks that you have from relevant, authoritative sites, the higher you're going to rank. So not just building any random backlinks, because in the past it was the more backlinks you had, the higher rank. If I have 100 and you had 200, you would rank higher than me. But now.

Speaker B: But it's how many backlinks those backlinks have. Right. Those backlink sources have too.

Speaker A: It's like, uh, you could just keep going, building backlinks to your backlinks, to your backlinks. And now one thing that really is a big issue is indexing. So I could build backlinks for my clients and get them published on these websites. But sometimes Google doesn't find these websites. So a way to get them to find them is you build backlinks to your backlinks. And that hopefully gets Google to find them a little bit quicker. And you can just keep doing that indefinitely and kind of build that strategy. But it really is those backlinks that requires a retainer along with adding content. Just updating your website every once in a while, like sometimes. I mean, there's always trends. When I first started doing digital marketing, it was called Internet marketing. So my whole website was focused on Internet marketing. Now it's digital marketing. So I had to go back and change all my keywords from Internet marketing to digital marketing. So just keeping up to date with search volume, trends, slang, industry jargon, things like that, just making sure you're on top of that because what works today doesn't always work tomorrow. And you just have to stay on

Speaker B: top of that 100%. I think the landscape movies even faster with social media. As far as what works today doesn't work tomorrow, it's, it's nuts. Um, I got to actually I got to backtrack a little bit. I lied earlier because I said I know nothing and I never did SEO. Um, m. This is a long time ago. I must have been, must have been like 2000 and 2004, maybe 2005 when I discovered this thing called affiliate marketing. And this is when Google didn't have a very sophisticated algorithm. I mean it worked but you could, you could game it really easy. You remember those days, right? Right. So uh, when I set up, I think I signed up to ClickBank and I bought some, some course about how to make money online. I was just like, okay, what's this Internet thing and can it really pay me? And I m. The first website I set up was just this landing page. And I thought I was so clever. What I did is um, I took a whole bunch of high ranking keywords and I set the font to white so they're invisible. And I had the whole background just, you know, just flooded with keywords over and over and over again. And, and I couldn't believe it. It worked and I ranked really well and I thought it was so smart until you know, Google, the Google slap came around and shut down all my stuff. But that was actually my, my like foray into uh, you know, learning about doing business online. Um, not, not something I'm proud of. But also it was something that as a young adult I was, I was curious about and it worked. Um, and that, that brings me to the next topic. You know, like, like the idea. I don't think people use that term Google slot very much anymore, but every now and then they update their algorithms so drastically, something that was working well stops working well because they want to change the behavior of marketers. What have you seen happen recently?

Speaker A: Yeah, Google is constantly changing and updating their algorithm pretty much daily. Every few months they'll have a big update. And like you said like in the past, Google didn't really care about that keyword stuffing behind those keywords till like the Penguin and Panda updates came up in like 2011 where they really looked at backlinks and content and just focused on like quality, don't hide stuff. Google pretty much knows almost every trick nowadays, but some of the big ones more recently now is like Google looks at user experience. So if you're ranked number one on Google and everyone that goes to, from Google to your website, if a majority of those people hit that back button, Google's gonna look at that like, all right, maybe this isn't the best result. Let's try ranking number two and moving whoever's in number two up to number one and see do people stay on the website or do they hit that back button and come back to Google? Because Google wants to have a good user experience. They want you to find what they're looking for the first time without having to go and do multiple searches or go to multiple websites. But one big one is that, uh, AI thing that came out a few or last year is Google in the past said, we don't want content that's written by AI. We want humans to write it. But now AI has gone so good that Google can't differentiate what's human or AI. Even the checkers like ChatGPT had a tool that would tell you if content is written by AI or not. And they took that down a few months ago because it doesn't work anymore. Like, they thought the Bible was written by AI. So, yeah, now Google says if your content, as long as it offers value, that's number one. So if you're just copying and pasting AI content, Google's probably going to penalize you and drop you down those rankings. But if you go in, edit it, make sure it's accurate, and provide value to the user, Google said, we don't really care anymore. We'll let you. We'll let that slide. So that's a big one. That just came out a few months ago. Or like last year, actually.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, they might as well say that because they literally can't control it. So they like. I'd imagine as an AI engineer, that would be one of the easiest problems to solve solve because it is literally the definition of machine learning. They just keep giving, you know, uh, they just keep making variations until the result matches the. The model. Right. And AI figured that out real fast. AI versus AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, AI versus AI is an interesting one. But that has taken over and I feel like that is going to be the future with everything is AI is.

Speaker B: And how are you leveraging AI right now?

Speaker A: Just helping out with content creation. So not using it to create content, but using it to help come up with topics for content for, like, blog posts and then using it to help come up with outlines for those blog posts, but not having it write it, because writing it, I mean, it's great, but it's not there yet, so still need someone to manually edit it and review it. So I'd rather just give it to my writers and have them write that content. But unfortunately half my writers are using AI and then trying to charge me for it, so I had to fire a lot of them. And now I'm just trying to find good people that are trustworthy and credible. And it's kind of tough now because I can't even differentiate what's written by AI or not. So it's a little tricky, but also trying to figure out is Google going to incorporate AI into the search results, which they are slowly doing. Bing owns.

Speaker B: What do you mean by that?

Speaker A: So ChatGPT is created by Bing. So when you search on bing, Bing has ChatGPT in the search results. Google saw that and they're like, wait, hold on. We don't want people just jumping to Bing because they have chat GPT incorporated in the search results.

Speaker B: Oh, you're saying that it generates an answer for the question they have versus sending them just to websites. Is that what you mean by that?

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. So Google has Google Bard, which is our AI version of Google or of um, AI. And it's not there yet, but it's like being released in beta. So some people when they're searching on Google they'll see the AI search results at the top, then the sponsored ads, then the organic pushed way down there, which, but it doesn't always work. Like for e commerce, you can't really buy off AI. Like it just gives you information. So it's more informational. Not transactional yet, but I'm sure that's going to change pretty quickly. But we'll have to see what happens if Google sticks with this AI in the search results because they're testing it out. Or maybe just leave Google as is and just have the AI as a whole separate thing. But uh, it's kind of like the wild wild west right now. We'll have to see what happens.

Speaker B: It is the wild west. Here's my theory. I'm going to make a prediction, okay. And you tell me if you agree or if you think I'm wildly off. I believe that uh, the two are going to merge very well. But most likely, uh, search is going to be instead of GPT and AI being in the search results, there's going to be some sponsored results inside of chat GPT answers or chatgpt like results. So for example, if I search plumber, uh, near me, then that's literally just going to give me all the plumbers near me because I need to have a problem, right? So that's the best result for me. But if I say how do I fix, say my, my computer is, is broken, how do I fix it? It's going to give me an intelligent answer and then also give sponsored uh, you know, results below. It's gonna say, hey, this is what you should probably do. But if you need an expert, try A, B, C and D. And there's gonna be, you know, a little sponsorship mark next to people who are sponsored and then you know, like actual ranking, uh, results. I think that that's what search is going to be AI first and like website second. Do you see that as a potential.

Speaker A: Mhm. No, definitely. Because right now they don't want to monetize it because they want to get that data. The more people that use it, the more accurate it's going to become. And once they have it to a level that they're happy with, then they could realize like, all right, there's no more of these AI hallucinations where AI makes um, up the answer if they don't know it. So which is kind of weird and not the best user experience. But once they get through all that, I definitely feel like they're going to monetize it somehow besides just having chat GPT4 where you pay that $20 subscription, which is nothing compared to how much they can really make if they have a sponsor results and people click on those ads because Google brings in tens of hundreds of millions probably each day off those paid ads. I was working in the past with ad agencies where they're spending million dollars a day on Google Ads, which seems insane, but it works. They're getting that return on ad spend and as long as you're making more than you're putting in, just keep feeding that machine and AI is probably going to be similar, something similar to that.

Speaker B: That's amazing. It's crazy how much is changing so fast. Like for example with uh, you know, oh gosh, I forgot the name. Apple's new thingy. Vision. Yeah, um, Vision Pro. That like okay, chat GPT and OpenAI has been around for a while but like in November 2022 is it kind of went public, right? And everybody started, it started exploding because they made that, that free version and then everybody's ears perked up. There's like this is going to change everything. And now it's through this kind of this stage where people are trying to figure out, you know, like what is really, you know, the, you know, how's, how is it Going to change everything. And you know, there's all different iterations. And with the Vision Pro, I think the same thing's happening. There's so many people who are saying, and I don't own one, I don't know if I even plan on buying one, maybe version four or three. But so many people are saying this is going to change everything. But how it's going to change everything is yet to be seen. I'm kind of comparing it to the very, very first iPhone. There was no app store, it was 2G Internet. There was a crappy camera. Everything about it was as basic as it gets. But it changed everything because people saw the possibility and built on top of it. So I think that maturity level of the technology that's running the Internet is, uh, it's really guided. Not, I think technology is a catalyst, but human behavior is what's really going to guide it in the end. That's not really a question. It's just kind of sharing my thoughts on the maturity of different technologies.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, definitely at that infancy. And yeah, the Vision Pro is interesting. And yeah, like you said, it's like version one, it's great. It does a lot of stuff that the iPhone does or your desktop computer does, but once people tap into that augmented reality, it's going to be a game changer and it's going to change everything. And we'll have to see just how people adapt to it. If people want to use it, which I've tried it out and it is pretty cool. It's pretty interesting to use it, how it changes the whole room and makes everything much, much different. It looks really realistic and vivid and stuff like that, but it's very expensive and has a huge barrier to entry. But once it lowers price, I feel like a lot more people are going to jump on that. We're going to just have to see.

Speaker B: I remember when everybody was shocked that the iPhone cost $500. That was shocking because phones back then were between 50 and 100. Right. And the BlackBerry, you know, like the king. I think that was like 299 or something, you know, uh, so, you know, I think Apple just likes to set new standards. Um, but this is the first time I feel like the phone could get replaced. Like the first time, like, like if you had a, you know, something the size of Ray Ban sunglasses and you pop them on and you have, you know, everything that your phone could have and more, then that's, uh, that, that's. That potentially could replace the phone. Uh, let's get back to Talking about SEO, we're geeking out here. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that potential clients have when thinking, uh, about hiring you for SEO?

Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of them think that it's just instantaneous, unfortunately.

Speaker B: Takes time, like turning on an ad, right?

Speaker A: Mm. Yep. I'm like, if you want those instantaneous results, let's run some paid ads. SEO is more the long term. And also a lot of them don't realize the importance of backlinks or never heard of backlinks. And still to this day, I'd say like 80% of the people I talk to don't know what backlinks are. Never heard of them. And I tell them, like, backlinks are the, um, one of the most important things for SEO. Changed all the time. But backlinks still to this day are such a big part of their algorithm that if you're not building backlinks, you're not really going to get Google to trust you. Or if you're building the wrong type of backlinks, that's also going to negatively impact you. So you have to build the right type of backlinks. And to Google, a good backlink is a site that's related to what you're doing and also authoritative. Those are like the two main things when you're building backlinks is not just going after any random site, but going after targeted sites that are related to what you're doing and have some authority already built up to them.

Speaker B: M. Is there a world in the future you can foresee where backlinks will become obsolete?

Speaker A: I mean, Google said that they don't value backlinks as much as they used to, but I've never really seen a website rank without backlinks. So I feel like for back, for SEO purposes, for Google search, they need those backlinks because it's like other websites are essentially like voting for you, saying we trust you, versus, like what we've or you're saying in the past. Just keyword stuffing, throwing a bunch of keywords in there and putting in fine size 0.001 and white text and blended it in. It tricks Google, it tricks the search engines because they're just robots. They're not that smart. I mean, they're pretty sophisticated, but they're not that smart. And there's ways to game the system and they don't want people gaming the system. They want people to work for those rankings. So not sure what else they could use besides. I mean, they look at, like, social signals, they look at user Experience or behavior like how long do they stay on your website. But those backlinks are like votes from other websites. I'm not sure how they could have other websites essentially vouching for other websites without those backlinks for the time being, but we'll have to see.

Speaker B: And does Bing look at backlinks the same way as. As Google?

Speaker A: Yep, they all look at backlinks is a big part of their algorithm. M they all have different weights to how they look at the backlinks. If they're do follow or no follow or if they're what anchor text there's in there or if it's an image backlink versus a text backlink, they're all going to have different weights. Or sometimes if your name is just mentioned there like it could be my company SEO optimizers.com is not a clickable link but it's mentioned there. That could be like a citation. So looking at all those, because there's lots of platforms like Wikipedia was a great way to get backlinks. And a lot of people still go for Wikipedia backlinks but Wikipedia got spammed so much that all their backlinks are called what's nofollow? Where they put this tag saying don't count this as a backlink. But Google still sees your name in there so it still counts as a citation. So trying to figure out like what's the weight of a citation versus a clickable link versus a do follow and no follow and there's just so many variables that go into it. That stuff where I just. Nowadays don't even worry about that. Just focus on good quality backlinks from sites that have traffic and sites that are related to what you're doing. And don't just spam or go for these ones that are like where you're kind of like tricking stuff like gaming the system and it's going to do more harm than good.

Speaker B: Yeah, you could probably find loopholes but they all eventually get shut down, don't they?

Speaker A: Mhm. Yep. There's always those loopholes but it's better to just go for the quality versus that short kind of term game where you might game the system for a few months and get that traffic. But once Google sees it or once your competitor sees it and tells Google then your traffic is going to just drop down which you don't want that to happen.

Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. This reminds me of uh, have you ever watched Black Mirror that. That show on Netflix?

Speaker A: M yeah.

Speaker B: Remember that one episode, uh, I can't remember the name, but it's the story of this, this woman who wants to get her social ranking high enough to be able to move into this, this fancy, you know, like upper class neighborhood. Uh, do you remember that one? And every interaction she has with anybody, they rank each other. Like that was a one star, a two star, a ten star, whatever. Right? I, I think that that's literally just a skit on how the Google algorithm works, isn't it? Like the more people that vote for you, the, the higher your status is and then you get to go, you know, dress in fancy clothes and, and go to parties and get, get great rates on everything.

Speaker A: Yep. And once Google trustees, they get us, kind of keep you up there like those big brands, it's tough for them to get penalized. I mean some of them have been penalized in the past. Like JCPenney started throwing a bunch of keywords in there and Google actually penalize them. But they get out of these penalties.

Speaker B: They try to abuse Google, those guys.

Speaker A: Mhm. Pretty much everyone does. Um, they've tried to find little loopholes or ways to game the system, but Google will catch you. But for these big brands, they kind of give them preferential access. We're like, all right, we'll let you fix this. Whereas if like one of us got penalized from Google, getting all these penalties is very, very tough. It's doable, but it is really, really tough and takes months, if not years to get all these penalties because Google just looks at you like you messed with us, we're going to mess with you. And we're not going to give you these rankings because we want you to spend that money on paid ads because that's really how Google makes all their money. And they're happy to penalize the website and get you to spend more money on Google Ads.

Speaker B: That's nuts. Uh, so tell me about, um, when it comes to SEO and the type of businesses you serve, which ones are you going to see the most advantage from? SEO, we've got, you know, we got services, you got E commerce, you got, you know, we got everything. But like, which ones it doesn't make the most business sense for.

Speaker A: That just depends on the competition. So for E commerce, it's really, it works very, very well. But if you're just selling something really generic, like I get a lot of people that have come to me in the past saying like, I'm selling T shirts or socks. I'm like, all right, it's gonna be really, really tough to beat these competitors because whoever Ranks on that first page of Google is your competition. And if you're selling socks or T shirts you got Amazon and Target and Walmart and all these big, big brands. And if you're just a startup it's going to be really, really tough. But if you can find something unique about like if you're selling like organic hemp, um, children's T shirts or something really, really niche then it's going to move the needle much faster. So finding something that differentiates yourself. And same with like service based businesses. Like if you're a local business and let's say you're a plumber in Los Angeles, it's hyper competitive. It's gonna be pretty tough to rank for that keyword. Eventually we could get you up there, but if we could find a city that's smaller in your area, we focus on that smaller city and then build you up to the bigger ones. But it all comes down to the competition. The more competitive these keywords are, the more time it's gonna take. And if you're just a brand new company, brand new website, it's gonna take time. But if you've been around for a while and have some trust built uh, up with Google then it'll move much quicker. But those are one things I really tell people is try and niche down, not just go so broad and generic because it's, I mean we all want those big keywords that bring in a bunch of traffic but in reality how long is it going to take? Is it feasible? And let's say you rank for the word T shirts and you're just selling like women's T shirts. Half the people that come to your website are going to hit that back button and say I wasn't looking for a men's T shirt. So finding more long tail, more niche keywords, that's going to be the better long term strategy. But those two are the more popular companies I work for is local businesses and E E commerce local business.

Speaker B: Got it, got it. Good to know. Did that thing ever get shut down where uh, shops started naming their businesses, you know like barber near me, nail salon near me, Pizza near me. Like I remember that was a big thing. Did Google like are they allowing that still?

Speaker A: So that's called an exact match domain and a lot of people will buy exact match domains and it worked really well in the past. I still see it working a little bit to this day. It doesn't have that same effect. Like if you're a plumber in Los Angeles buying like plumberlosangeles.com. it still has some value, but not as much like it's really dropped down. So in the past if you bought that, you're pretty much guaranteed to rank for that keyword. Now Google's like, we'll give you a little bit of help, push on that keyword. But still you guys show us other signals, the content, the backlinks and all the other stuff that goes into the algorithm.

Speaker B: Got it. Um, I'm gonna ask a question that's got to do with my business and maybe you can give me some advice around this. Okay. So I got another business, manufacturing and design. And it's a high end product. We sell it for $11,000. It's called Go Box Studio. And if you go to goboxstudio.com you can see it's, you know what it is? It's an all in one professional video studio setup. You got lights, wireless cam, sorry, wireless microphones, multiple cameras, mixing and it's all that. Uh, and you can take a carry on. So it's a unique product and for the right person, $11,000 doesn't feel like a lot, but for most people it's going to be like, okay, cool, neat gadget. But uh, you know, maybe later or you know, I'll go try and build it myself now for high end e commerce product that up until now I've, you know, most of the sales have been through people making an appointment and me, you know, walking them through and answering their questions. Do you see a place for a high end product like that with SEO or should that be a different strategy?

Speaker A: It could work for SEO if people are searching for it, but people aren't just.

Speaker B: But nobody's searching for it because it's. That category never existed. Like I for example, I took out a patent on it because it was so novel. So people are not searching for like portable, you know, professional video studio. But what would I be like, how would I get people who are searching for like, I don't know, at some place along the journey to come to the conclusion that this is what they need?

Speaker A: Yeah, that one's a little tough. If people aren't searching for it, then you have to drive that awareness and a good way is by getting on other blogs, so reaching out to other blogs that are authoritative in that industry and trying to see if they could write a blog post about you and um, letting people know about this product. Social media, it's going to be a great one. Which you're probably tapping into social and. But yeah, running paid ads or doing SEO it's going to bring you the wrong traffic. If nobody's searching for it and you're trying to rank for a keyword that's similar to that product or service, but it's not the same. You get a lot of people that are going to go and say, no, this is not what I was looking for. So it's really about driving that awareness and building that name up and great ways like that product placement and blogs, giving it to big authoritative sites and seeing if they could write about it. Getting influencers to write about it on their website and share it on social and on YouTube and things like that would be a great better way to do it. But for SEO, it's a little tricky because you don't want to rank for that keyword. I mean, Google will see that if you're ranking for that keyword and a lot of people come to your website are just hitting that back button, is that not a good user experience? They're not finding the product that they were looking for. So it's a little tricky with that stuff, which I get people all the time that have a new invention, a new product that's not out there and I'm just like, unfortunately SEO is not going to be the best play for what you're doing eventually. If we can get people searching for that product related keywords then be great. But right now it's not going to, it's not going to have that same momentum that we'd want.

Speaker B: Okay, thank you. That, that actually gives me a lot of clarity because I was, that was all in the back of my mind. Should I be thinking about SEO with this product? Um, another question I have is when it comes to ranking in Google, I, you've, you're probably seeing around you there's a whole landscape of landing page builders, whether it's, you know, click funnels, uh, go high level, uh, kajabi, whatever you name it, right? And all these marketers love, love, love these things because if it's right in and dovetails with the rest of their marketing system. Does platform really matter for SEO ranking?

Speaker A: I mean, not too much. I mean in the past WordPress is the best because it lets you do anything and customize everything. So you're not locked into like Shopify or WIX or Squarespace where they kind of limit what you could do. Now they're much better. Like Shopify is really good for E commerce. Wix and Squarespace are like a step down below where you, I mean they've done a lot more where now you can actually make, like, changes, like technical stuff like canonical tags and things like that that they didn't have in the past that are pretty important for SEO. But like click funnels, that's really kind of. You're just renting space off those platforms, and they kind of lock you in where they don't give you full control. So anywhere where you don't get full control, those are not gonna be the best platforms. But switching from one to another is not really necessary nowadays. Like, if you're on Wix, I wouldn't say just jump to WordPress unless you are rebuilding your website. Then I'd say, all right, if you're building a new website or rebuilding it, then I'd probably look at WordPress or Shopify if you're E commerce, because they give you a lot more features and functionality, but it's all about just knowing what features you're able to do. Like, I have real estate clients that have this. I forgot what the platform's called, but is probably one of the worst platforms because you can't make any changes. You can't do any, like, title tags or meta descriptions. Even creating a new page, you have to reach out to them and ask them if you could create a new page, and then they get approval to do it.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: Such a bad platform, and they charge so much. And I'm telling one of my clients, like, you need to leave this platform because this is not good for SEO. It's good to make your website look aesthetically nice and pleasing. But WordPress and all these platforms, if you have a good web developer, they could make those changes and make your website emulate those sites.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's crazy. Uh, I would feel like if I was in that situation, I'd feel like I get to an Airbnb, right? And then the host is like, yeah, every time use the bathroom, just come knock on my door and ask for the key. Like at a gas station, you know, which is like, that's not a great experience.

Speaker A: Yeah. Frustrating.

Speaker B: Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Leave them. Okay, um, walk me through something here. Uh, a lot of people might be thinking, like, well, when it comes to SEO, why don't I just, you know, watch YouTube videos, buy a course, learn it? Um, obviously, you and I, we're both in the services industry. We help people do, you know, we do the stuff for them in different fields. Can you tell me, like, uh, if somebody has a website, let's say, on Shopify, and they're thinking about doing it on their own, what are the pitfalls they should be watching out for. How much time should they expect to have to invest and uh, like, you know, on a per, per day, per week kind of basis. And uh, what's some of the main reasons you think that they might fail at this?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean a lot of people that do it themselves kind of comes back to what I've always been saying. These backlinks, a lot of people will go in and optimize and put keywords in their title tag, the meta description, they'll add header tags, they'll have their site map that they submit to Google. But a lot of people don't realize the important importance of backlinks and think that just putting keywords on your website is good enough. Which, it's a great starting point, like 1999, right? Yeah. And I always tell people, SEO is like a puzzle. There's a lot of pieces to this puzzle. Some are bigger than others. Like content backlinks are two really big pieces, but there's so many other little pieces that you have to make sure you put in place to get Google to really trust you and rank you for those keywords as doable. But when I tell people, it's like me, like I might have an issue with my car, like my engine might break and I could go on YouTube and try to figure it out, and eventually I might figure it out. It's going to take me a while, but I could probably do it myself. But do I want to spend all that time and effort trying to learn something versus just paying someone that's a subject matter expert? Let them handle it and, uh, let me focus on my core capabilities, which is running my company or focus on manufacturing or providing a good service to my clients.

Speaker B: Got it, got it. And have you seen people go the DIY route and then, uh, fail and come back to you and say, you know what, this is too much, can you just take it? For me, has it happened?

Speaker A: Yeah, all the time. Because I teach classes all the time. I like it. Unfortunately not all the time, but I do teach a lot of classes and I've taught a lot of classes over the years. So a lot of people will come take my class and do it and then a few years later just be like, all right, this is too much. I thought I could do it, but it's just taking up too much time because it does become like a full time job because you have to maintain those rankings and that requires you doing more, building more backlinks, whether it's running articles or blogs or doing Press releases or being on podcasts, or joining chamber of commerce, or joining local directories or whatever it may be to build backlinks, that strategy that you're going after. But that requires a lot of time, a lot of effort, and there's no way to simplify that part of the algorithm yet.

Speaker B: Mhm. That must be such sweet satisfaction. You give someone enough value, enough information, so they can do it on their own and they come back and say, please, can you do it for me? Like as I do something similar and it's so satisfying and sometimes it takes forever, sometimes it doesn't happen, but when it does, it's just like, yes, I'm doing something right.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's nice to see that. Well, also if they succeed and they're like, oh, I got some momentum. But then after a while they're like, all right, how do I sustain this momentum? Like I ranked for this keyword, which a lot of people take my classes. They're like, all right, I got some rankings, but it's not where I want to be. Like, maybe I'm on. I used to be on page 10, now I'm on page three. But how do I get to that top? And that's where it becomes hyper competitive. And everyone's doing SEO and just doing the basic strategies is good to get you to like page two or maybe the bottom of page one. But to get to the top, you really have to know the ins and outs of all these really technical issues like schema or just having like a lot of people don't even put like a Contact Us page. I'm like, you have to put that there. Privacy policy or terms of service or making sure your footer, your copyright is updated. Because right now it's 2024, but it's February 2024 and still some of my clients have 2023 at the bottom of their website. Or some of them have like 2020. I'm like, update this. Because Google reads all that. And if they see that, they might think that you went out of business that year because Google is just a robot. And you have to feed them as much information as possible to let them know that you're trustworthy, you're relevant, you're still in business, you're still, you're credible, you're not some fly by night companies that's going to do like a bait and switch and rank for some keywords and m. All of a sudden once you rank for these keywords, switch over to selling like some pharmaceutical drugs and things like that, which happens all the time. We don't see it because Google's good at finding that, but it does happen way too often.

Speaker B: Yeah, got it. You mentioned earlier that uh, about building backlinks with reputable sites. You mentioned Forbes, you mentioned a couple other sources. Now do you have like unique special connections with these authoritative sites that like if you submit something then you got your inside guy who's going to help you get it published or like. And is that part of what you offer as a service?

Speaker A: Mhm. In the past I had some people, but the thing is like so many of them, like so if someone working for Forbes, if I'm helping someone that sells T shirts. So we want to be on like a fashion side of Forbes and they're gonna have a different writer versus like me, I do marketing, I want to be on the marketing or the business side. So it's going to be a different writer. So having connections there is good, but it only works for whatever niche that they're writing about or whatever content they're putting out there. So. And also allow them. It's not the best anymore. Like a lot of these just like if some, if I'm just reaching out to somebody, they're probably letting me do it, they're probably letting a bunch of other SEO people do it as well and they're just going to put low quality content up there and eventually Forbes is going to revoke their, their authorship or their editorial status and it's just going to drop down. So a lot of what I do is just that cold outreach, just building relationships that I usually don't or I don't have or sometimes like if someone comes to me that's a uh, fashion related company business. I might have some apparel companies, they're not going to be the big, big ones, but I have some connections at those blogs. I could reach out to them and submit some content and they'll give me a little bit more preferential treatment. Since they've worked with me in the past, they know I'm putting out good quality content, not just putting out some like low quality content that doesn't read or doesn't make sense or it's just a bunch of gibberish.

Speaker B: Okay. So I'm uh, putting myself in the, in the place of the listener here. Most of my clients are going to be uh, they're going to be selling courses, they're going to be uh, coaching people and they're going to have like some kind of community where it's mostly going to be like business centric. These are People who help other people grow their businesses. Um, what publications or sources should they be thinking about getting published on?

Speaker A: That one would also depend on what type of coach they are, like, what type of business. Because you want to say.

Speaker B: Yeah, let me just, uh, you know, paint a picture here for you. So someone, uh, in the us, um, he is going to be married and he's going to be, let's just say a relationship coach. So him and his wife, they've got a podcast, they've got a blog, they've got a YouTube channel, uh, and they've got a community, uh, and they target entrepreneurs, helping them with relationships and marriages and their marriage situation and, you know, really just navigating that whole space. Is that enough info?

Speaker A: Yeah. Then I would go after. So anything related to. So entrepreneurship and relationships, I go after anything related to business because it doesn't have to be exactly what they're doing. That's the sites that you go after, as long as it's somewhat related. So entrepreneurship could be so many things that as long as it's related to business and then relationships, like marriage, stuff like that, I just go for more general kind of just relationship or even like health could be related to marriage, things like that. So even like psychological health, things like that. But websites, off the top of my head, I have to search around and see which ones rank on Google. So I would go into Google and type in like relationship blog or marriage blogs and see who's on the first couple pages of Google. Because if they're on that first, especially if they're on that first page of Google, they ask, they definitely have some SEO value. And if you could get those websites to link to you, that's going to be the best, especially your keywords. So if you search your keywords, and if I may be tough because of your competition, but if you could get all 10 of those websites that are on that first page of Google for your keyword to link out to you, that's going to show Google that you're really relevant to that specific keyword. So it's not just, here's a list of sites to go after, but let's search on Google and see what Google thinks are relevant or authoritative sites. Because what we think, like there might be a magazine, that's huge, but if they don't rank on Google, then offline, it's really good to be on, but online, it's not going to have that same impact. So looking at what Google treats as a good site by just searching on Google and searching around for Multiple keywords that are related doesn't have to be your exact business, but as long as it's somewhat related, those are the type of sites that Google wants to see. Right.

Speaker B: Well, I think we're almost out of time here, but everything you shared so far is super interesting and I think that, yeah, like you said, uh, you answered one key question for me, which was about my own product. It's a new business, it's a new invention. Nobody knows it exists, but when they see it, they're amazed. That's not an SEO move, that's more like a social media marketing ads type of marketing move. So thank you for that. And I think everybody who's listening is they're probably going to take away a lot from this in terms of, you know, deciding what sector to hit and how to do that. Um, if anybody listened to it this far, I'm going to assume that something that we discussed, something that you shared, was really interesting. How can people get in touch with you and where's the best place for them to, you know, maybe ask some questions they have about potentially working with you?

Speaker A: Yeah. So anyone's still listening? I created a special gift for them. If they go to my website@seoptimizers.com that's SEO option I M M I Z E-R-S.com forward/gift. They can find that there along with my contact information and classes I've done over the years I've thrown up for free so they could see step by step a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also if they want to book some time on my calendar for free website analysis, I'm happy to check out their website and they could book some time on my calendar there for free as well.

Speaker B: Perfect. And ah, we'll have all the same links down below. If you're watching on YouTube, it's going to be in the description. If you're listening to the podcast, you're going to find that in the show notes. Any last word of advice for somebody who's considering, uh, going into this, working with SEO?

Speaker A: Um, just be patient. Don't get discouraged if you don't see results right away. I get a lot of clients that come to me and we'll start working together and after like two months they're just like, why am I not ranking at the top of Google? And I tell them it just takes time. So as long as you stick with it and see that growth, as long as you see yourself moving up, looking at like Google Analytics or Google Search Console to track your Traffic, you'll see that you're moving up and just don't get discouraged. A lot of people just give up and say this is not working, but it's more the long term play. So keep doing SEO, but also do email marketing, do social media, do paid ads. It all works together. You don't want to just put all your eggs in one basket. SEO is just to get away, a way to get free traffic. But there's so many other ways to get traffic and you just really want to diversify and get traffic from as many sources as possible that your audience is on. You don't have to be everywhere, but you just have to try to understand who is your audience, where are they and how do I get in front of them. Perfect.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for that. I want to point out that when you said, uh, you know, like, people are not seeing quick results, you say, you know, it takes time. And here's where it's so important to build trust as a service provider. Because if someone keeps saying it takes time, they then you better trust that person a whole lot that you're going to keep paying the money until the result comes. So, uh, I think that if you're on all the platforms, you're building trust as well so that your agency clients are going to trust you and go with you through the process. And I think that that's my takeaway from this. I want to thank you so much for sharing that, guys. I hope you enjoyed the pod and please do check out the links. Check out, uh, everything down below. And other than that, I will see you next week. No hassle worship here. Wear a different brief. Action is what we got. If action is what you need. Content capital. We're breaking the flow cuz the old way sp New stories to the toes of content capital. Let's get to the price. This is the Content Capitalist podcast and my name is Ken Okazaki. There are as many ways to make money with content as there are people doing it. So listen in as my clients, past, present and future, unpack how they crack the code to making a million dollars a year or more while capitalizing on their content. Let's get started.