March 12, 2025 • 52 mins
The digital marketing world often portrays SEO as a complex technical mystery, but what if the real secret is much simpler? Andrew Laws, founder of Yeseo and a 25-year veteran of search marketing, strips away the mystique to reveal that effective SEO begins with business fundamentals, not technical wizardry.
From his humble beginnings selling buttons (or "badges" as they're called in the UK) to building a successful digital marketing agency, Andrew shares how the internet became the great equalizer that allowed his small operation to outrank industry giants. The key insight? Search engines reward businesses that clearly communicate what makes them excellent.
Throughout our conversation, we explore why many businesses struggle with SEO despite its apparent simplicity. Andrew explains his process of helping clients identify their overlooked differentiators – those unique aspects of their business they've become so accustomed to that they fail to highlight them properly online. These discoveries often yield the most powerful content opportunities.
For small business owners with limited resources, Andrew offers practical starting points that don't require significant investment. The Google Business Profile emerges as the single most important free resource, with Andrew sharing a cautionary tale of a thriving business losing customers because Google incorrectly showed them as "permanently closed." He emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining consistent business information across all platforms to build search credibility.
The discussion also tackles emerging trends, including the impact of AI on search behavior. Rather than diminishing SEO's importance, Andrew explains why tools like ChatGPT actually make website optimization more crucial than ever. Whether you're just starting your digital marketing journey or looking to refine your existing strategy, this episode provides actionable insights to help your business get found online through authentic, honest communication.
Ready to cut through the SEO myths and focus on what really works? Listen now and discover how to amplify your business excellence in the digital landscape.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
glad to have you here on the show.
This is another episode, by theway, of big talk about small
business.
That's how we say it here inarkansas, that's right.
Don't pay attention, though, topop culture.
We're not all hillbillies here,not all of us mark's, not we,
we, we um.
(00:29):
Some of us have indoor plumbing.
Yes, we've got a dentist intown, but you know a good
outhouse.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We wear shoes.
A good outhouse is probably thebest thing in the world it's
much the same experience.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hey, I'm in.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
We're tired of being typecast as a bunch of ignorant
rednecks here, Although if yougo 10 miles out of town you'll
find plenty of them.
We're an island ofenlightenment and a sea of
ignorance to a certain extenthere, in.
Fayetteville, which is wherethe University of Arkansas is
based.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's a fine institution.
It is a fine institution.
So tell us a little bit aboutyourself, andrew.
I know you've been doing this along time.
That much I know.
25 years.
Interesting name for thecompany.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, I started actually doing SEO last century
building servers, buildingwebsites and realized no one was
going to find them.
Now the company name werebranded a few years ago
because the company name wasAndrew Laws Associates Limited,
but the problem I had with thatis it just sounded like a gray
haired, middle-aged man I mean,which I unavoidably am, but it
(01:42):
just needed something.
Also, everyone thought I was alaw firm.
I mean, my name is andrew laws.
I'd get these, get these fancyand slightly terrifying letters
from people sometimes andtelling him, telling me about
the things they did not they'vedone, and asking for my help.
So I changed it and I did myresearch and the there's only
one other person in the worldusing the name Yeseo and it's a
(02:06):
South Korean K-pop star.
Okay, and as far as I know, wedon't get confused, I think,
kind of.
So far, I think I'm notablydifferent.
I don't think anyone'scontacting the manager of Yeseo
in South Korea and asking forSEO advice.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So how'd you get started, Andrew?
What was the genesis of yougetting in this business?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The genesis was partly starting a company of my
own making buttons, or makingwhat we call in the UK badges.
I've got one stuck here thesethings Sorry, I know this is a
visual thing on a podcast, butI'm not sure you see that.
So I had just enough money tobuy, buy the machine like a big
crank machine thing for makingthem, making the buttons.
But I had no money formarketing so I figured I'd use
(02:53):
seo to launch the company.
I sold that company withinthree months of starting the
button company, not the buttoncompany.
Uh, because it turns out I suckat making buttons like really
bad.
I think we'll rank, rank thewebsite number one and and it's
still there and I'm in, I'm intheir spare room.
When I was looking for anoffice they've brought me in
like a sort of a benevolentgrandfather or something so like
(03:16):
keep an eye on me.
But what really?
What?
That really appealed to me, theidea that you could, you could
be this tiny little company.
You know, I was 22 years old, Ithink, but I I took on the
biggest button companies therewere in in the uk and beat them
hands down and I thought that'scool.
I really like that and and youknow, the early days of the, the
(03:38):
internet, were like the wildwest you, anybody could do
anything if you could see as faras the horizon, then I don't
know.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You had a lot of walking to do yeah, it is true,
the internet was like the greatequalizer.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I mean, it just opened up the whole market to us
, with no bounds, in a sense andthen, yeah, the market that
opened up to me was a lot ofpeople wanting buttons and, uh,
I was working in the city at thetime.
I was working in london, so Ihad like a three-hour commute
every day and then I'd get homeand make buttons until like
(04:12):
midnight.
The problem is when you do it,when you're tired.
Two things happen.
When you pull the little leverto make the button, to press it,
if you haven't got it straight,it pings off and hits one of
your cats.
You don't have to have cats tomake buttons.
Or the other thing, if itdoesn't ping off and hit a cat,
then it will crush your fingers.
But I still live in the samehouse, right, and it's been.
(04:33):
Yes, 25 years ago I sold thatcompany and we still find button
parts down between thefloorboards.
And well, I live in a victorian150 year old house because
everyone does.
They just you turn 18 andthey're like the queen just
knocks on the door and goes that, that one's yours.
That hovel, third from the leftover there, that belongs to you
(04:56):
now.
So there's big gaps everywhere.
I'm just yeah, they're allbeing plugged up with button
parts.
It's not quite the seodiscussion you might be
expecting kind of at this stageit's perfect man.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So you launched your button company with SEO right,
search Engine Automation is whatwe're talking about, for those
that may not understand what SEOis.
And so you, which basicallymeans that you kind of started
talking about it, puttingkeywords in, really writing
content explaining the buttons.
And then the internet crawlersgrabbed you found, you rolled
(05:30):
you up in ranks and you got moreclicks, and that's how you did
your sales.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Believe me, back then SEO was very easy indeed.
I looked at the biggercompanies and they weren't using
the word buttons We'll saybadges in this country.
They weren't using the wordbuttons wouldn't say badges in
this country.
They weren't talking about them.
They'd have a page with like oh, these are all our brilliant
machines, this is how nice ouroffice is, this is what our
sales team looks like.
And back then it was trendy tohave a page saying oh, this is
(05:56):
the office dog and his name isbarry or whatever it was.
But they didn't actually talkabout the badges very much so.
So I thought well, I don't havean office dog, I don't have a
team, but I can write quite alot about badges.
So I did that and I say it wasmuch easier back then.
Because what happens when youstart to do really well with SEO
(06:17):
, when you get to the top ofGoogle?
So everyone, to this day,everyone who searches for badges
in the UK finds my old company.
As soon as you start to do well, your competitors notice and
they start sniffing around andit becomes a bit of an arms race
.
So you have to be careful whatyou start.
You've got to be in in it forthe long haul.
But I still get.
I still get a kick out of itall these years later and it's I
(06:39):
don't know.
I hope not to do it until I die.
Um, I hope it hope it's not thereason for my death, but I can
see myself doing it for a goodwhile.
Yeah, the pension pot's not bigenough for me to.
Yeah, I don't have 401k oranything because we don't have
them in the UK.
So the king sends out MaundyDay pennies.
(07:03):
If you're really poor, the kinggives you a coin on some time
around Easter, is that it?
That's completely true.
Yeah, but there's too many ofus here now.
So 16th century there was notso many people living in Britain
and the pennies were probablyeasier to hand out.
I don't think King Charles hasgot the time to knock on
everybody's door and give them apenny now.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
So I'm sticking with SEO.
So let's let's just take itTell us a little bit about what
you do for your clients and howyou do it, because there are a
lot of small business owners outthere.
You know.
We have businesses ourselvesthat sell products online, for
example.
What are some of the things?
You know?
(07:45):
Most of us spend a fortune onadvertising, whether it's on
Google or on YouTube or Facebookor Instagram.
What is it that we should bedoing?
How do you help your clientswith SEO?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
It actually starts well before anything technical.
In my experience, there are twotypes of people who run a
business.
There's the type of personwho's very smart much like your
listeners, of course and they'vedone their research and they've
learned about this thing, thisthing, this thing over here.
They've got that and they'vebuilt a business which is really
doing well, but has hit aceiling.
It kind of got stuck, stuck.
(08:24):
Is there something it can'tquite get past?
Those people are fantastic towork with and when I go and
speak to them I just say whatare your strengths?
Why should people buy from you?
Uh, you know what?
What differentiates you fromthe market?
What have you had?
Successes and failures withthose guys are really easy.
The harder type of person is thetype of person I don't know if
you've met these people whostart a business and they fluke
(08:46):
it, like I did with the badgecompany to a certain extent,
because those guys you say whyshould anyone buy from you?
Because we're the best.
And you say, okay, why are youthe best?
Because we're the best.
Just, you can't just keepwaving your arms around saying
you're the best.
So a lot of people.
It starts with helping themfigure out what.
What is they're doing.
I say you know, why shouldanyone buy from it?
(09:06):
It's a funny question to ask,and if you say to people why,
why the hell should anyone buyfrom you, the reaction you get
can be quite telling as well,because some people get quite
offended.
I don't don't mean to offendthem, but well then, it's that
would be.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You've got to know typical of a discussion.
If you were helping a companywith their branding, I would
think right.
I mean, those are some of thequestions that you would want to
get into.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
We have to, because SEO can only amplify excellence.
It can't sort of conjurenonsense.
If you haven't got a goodcompany already, all SEO is
going to do is bring you moreleads you can't convert and you
can't make sales with anyway.
So, yeah, we do a fair bit ofhelping companies.
Just get their, get their acttogether, kind of.
(09:51):
You know, fill, fill in thegaps and and tighten the tighten
the ship.
Is that what you do to ships?
You tighten them.
Um, it's the end of the day.
I'm going for as many mixedmetaphors as I can.
Um, yeah, so once we found outwhat is so good about a company,
we, we make sure the worldknows, so a lot of it does come
(10:12):
down to content a lot of thetime.
You know, um, there's afantastic book I recommend.
Everyone who's wants to knowmore about.
Seo is a non-seo book which isvery good to read.
It's a book called they Ask,you Answer, written by Marcus
Sheridan.
Have you heard of that guy?
No, no, okay, so he's, I can'tremember.
He is somewhere Midwest, Ithink, and he realized years ago
(10:34):
he's not an SEO guy, but herealized that he was able to
sell his product, which wasswimming pools like pre-made
swimming pools, not by tellingpeople how brilliant they are or
trying to convince people tobuy them, but by answering the
questions that people have aboutthem.
Because the genius.
This is why I like this as a wayof explaining SEO, because
(10:58):
we're all like to think we'reindividuals.
If we're buying something orwe're considering hiring someone
, we have a bunch of questionsin our head that I think we
probably like to think are quitenew.
I think people like to thinkthey're smart.
I mean by about the thirdcoffee of the day, I start to
think I'm smart Before then.
It's a mixed bag, but the truthis, if you've had a question
(11:20):
about a product or a service,you're not going to be alone.
There will be thousands ofother people.
Even a tiny little lump of rockbobbing around in the sea, like
the United Kingdom, there's alot of people who will have the
same questions.
So, with no technical knowledgewhatsoever, you can do fantastic
SEO by thinking what are thequestions people ask me?
(11:41):
And start with the ones theyask just before they commit to
buy, and then write an articlewith that question as the title
and use your brilliance, shareyour brilliance, give.
Give the answers away because,apart from anything else.
When people do end up on thatpage, it's a brilliant way of
building trust, and that's theonly thing your website really
(12:02):
needs to do.
People need to go hey, I'm inthe right place, I trust these
guys, and that's the only thingyour website really needs to do.
People need to go hey, I'm inthe right place, I trust these
guys, and that's it.
So I I don't.
I don't.
I do know a load of technicalstuff.
I mean, I tried talking to mywife about it in the evenings
and she doesn't care.
Catch it wanders away.
I've got a teenage child, soI'm I try not to talk technical
(12:24):
because it terrifies me that foras long as I've done SEO, it's
been sold as this kind of like,this kind of dark art that you
know we do SEO and they take youto this back room and shine a
light in your eyes and they giveyou the secret knowledge.
It's not.
It's pretty simple.
I keep trying.
It's pretty simple really.
What would you tell peopleabout your business, what you're
(12:46):
proud of?
I get?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
caught.
I don't know about you, but Imean I get like messages, emails
, linkedin, you know messagespractically every day from
somebody who tells me they wantto help me with seo.
Usually they're in India or thePhilippines or somewhere else.
But what differentiatessomebody who really knows what
(13:12):
they're doing and does a goodjob at this versus all these
other providers that are outthere promising to do it on the
cheap?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
The harsh answer is if someone's really good, they
probably don't want you as aclient because they're too busy.
It's a bit like contractors thebest contractors are the ones
that can't help you for sixmonths.
The worst contractors are theones who you ring up and say,
look, I need to build anextension to the back of my
house, and they say, oh, we canstart at eight o'clock tomorrow
morning.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You're like why, like why I get the people before I
was in that business, so I'm Ican appreciate that yeah, so
that the real differentiator issomebody who's prepared to spend
time learning about yourbusiness, the, the.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
There are some fantastic agencies all around
the world, really, really good.
But I think with seo, havinghaving somebody who's fairly
nearby is going to help youbecause they can come into your
business and have a look aroundand get a feel for you.
And one of the things I do andI know some of my fellow SEO
people do here is just go sit inthe office for a little while,
(14:20):
just soak it up.
Are just soak it up becausewhen we're looking for the
excellence to amplify, quiteoften the business owner or the
marketing guy or sales guywhoever has this pre-prepared
thing that they trot out youknow, they'll be like oh, we do
this and this is why peopleshould buy from us.
That's usually quite boring,it's usually quite dull.
(14:40):
I'll give you an exact example.
We were filming a couple ofdays ago with a client who
supplies uh, it's called passiveglass, huge sheets of glass
that go on on new builds, um,all throughout europe, right.
And we were filming and he wasgoing oh, this is how the window
goes in.
The ledge is like this.
We do this so that it doesn'tfill up with water.
(15:03):
And as we were driving off, hesaid I forgot about that.
I said what he said oh, theroof panels.
They just look like roof panels, you know, like shingles, but
they're all solar panels.
And I was like right, stop thevan, get out, tell me that again
.
Let me film that.
And we're going to write aboutthat, because all the other
stuff was just what all hiscompetitors are saying on their
websites yeah, it's findingthese little things that you go.
(15:25):
Hang on, you've.
You've got used to the factthat you do things this way,
haven't you?
But did you know that?
That's really cool?
Got work with a company thatmakes one of my clients that his
company makes whole tv series,so, like a tv channel will
contact him and say, right, weneed a six part series on motor
(15:46):
racing, anything like that.
And they go and make them andhe does some really cool stuff.
And I did this thing of goingand sitting in his office and
he's an editor as well so justwatching him work and I was
saying, you know, what are wegoing to talk about on your
website?
What do we need to get across?
And he was like I don't know, Idon't know, I don't think
anything that interestinghappens.
(16:06):
And behind him, where he wassat, there was a massive kind of
six foot square photograph ofhim with guy ritchie and he's
holding um british director,he's holding guy ritchie's oscar
.
I was like, you know, guyritchie, he's like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, we're friends like, andyou think that's not interesting
.
You know, you've clearly sat infront of that picture for so
long, but you found somethingreally interesting.
(16:27):
You've got somethinginteresting there that people
will want to read about.
So it's partly.
I think a lot of businessowners are quite shy.
Maybe they don't want to beboastful or brag, but quite
often all the hard work that allsuccessful business owners put
in is probably in the back oftheir mind.
That all successful businessesput in is probably in the back
of their mind because they'relooking for the next great thing
.
They're looking for the nextgood leap forward.
(16:48):
They might have forgotten thereally cool stuff that just got
them going in the first place.
So we dig that out and makesure people know about it.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
But I appreciate what you're, you know I mean SEO can
be such a complicatedconversation, right?
I mean especially like you'retalking about when folks don't
know much about it.
But conversation, right, I meanespecially like you're talking
about when folks don't know muchabout it.
But I feel like that when youexplain that, what are the it's
like a frequently askedquestions about a really
specific thing that you do.
That's unique, differentiator,that your company does, just
(17:17):
like the solar panel roofs,right?
And then what are all the 20,30 questions related to that
specific niche that you have?
That's where you're basicallybuilding some competitive
advantage from all the webcrawlers and such.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, because Google's getting pretty good.
Google has the comprehension ofa toddler like a three-year-old
.
So it comes and looks on thewebsite, you know, like a kid
wobbling around.
So what's this?
Okay, there's a picture of aswimming pool here.
It must be about swimming pools, oh, but they're not saying
anything else about swimmingpools.
I'm going to go over there nowand film a diaper or whatever.
That's how I imagine googlethinks.
(17:57):
Um, but the reality is, youknow, if you, if you have your
website, if you do swim pools,just stick with that, because
why not?
And Google's toddler waddlesonto your website and goes, oh,
it's a picture of a swimmingpool.
And look, oh, look, there's anarticle about a swimming pool
here.
I wonder how long it takes tofill a swimming pool from a
faucet in a house.
Well, oh, look, there's anarticle explaining it.
I like it here.
(18:17):
This is nice, there's lots ofinteresting.
I, if you, if you lose too muchpersonality, then that toddler
is going to lose interest aswell.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, and that that toddler is just a simplified
version of all humanity, rightso, yeah, from the out to all
humanity, yeah, from the toddlerperspective, I mean, it's like,
as it starts to learn your site, it's going, you know, wow,
this person or this companyreally knows what they're
talking about, they're an expertin this, and so now I'm
trusting that, like a toddlerwould I trust this opinion, this
(18:52):
perspective, and so then I justkeep.
Then I want everybody else toknow about the expert.
So that's what my search rankresult page is, that's what page
one is Right.
And now, yeah, and then.
So quick question I mean, likewith SEO, it's been going on for
you know, for a couple ofdecades now.
Right, I mean the practice.
You've been doing it for 25years and I mean what have you
(19:17):
seen has evolved in this?
Has it become more complicated,or is it really the same basic
thing that people just don'tseem to do?
Really well, that's been kindof my experience, right, like it
hasn't changed much.
It's really exactly what wejust said Niche, expertise,
providing credibility, expertise, expert voice on it.
(19:38):
Differentiator yeahdifferentiator and just and then
telling the robot over and overagain and giving that
credibility.
But it feels like that peopletake it on these scroll paths
Like it's just this bigcomplicated thing now it's so
difficult, but is it really justthe same?
True kind of fundamental thingsthat are going on in one one
(20:00):
respect, nothing has changed atall.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
In another respect, the people who, years ago, used
to try and fool google yes, andand this is where all the
complexity is to be honest, ifyou're going to try and fool
Google, you've got your work cutout.
And every big change they maketo the way they crawl the site
and work out the results is notto make things more difficult
(20:25):
for genuine business owners.
It's to make things moredifficult for the grifters, for
the people who are trying to getaround the corner and get to
number one faster without havingactually done the work.
So every time there's a bigupdate, it's cause for
celebration because it means ifyou are running a good company,
then your life's just going tokeep getting easier, easier and
(20:47):
easier.
The other side of it issometimes you do have to do some
really complex things, and thereality of that is if your
company has national reach andyou are in an incredibly
competitive market, if you'reselling mortgages or I don't
(21:09):
know some sort of insurancepolicy, you're going to have to
do some really technical SEO.
The reality is, if you're asmall to medium company, so if
you're just a freelancer, ifit's just you or you're anything
up to maybe $25 million a year.
Where you are located, youprobably haven't got very stiff
(21:30):
competition around you.
Going back to my example of thebutton company, that website
was not the best button companywebsite that ever existed, but
it was enough, better enough,betterer, it was better it was
it was it was.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Why did I?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
installed a bottle of betterness on it.
And yeah, you don't have to bethe best in the world, you just
gotta be a little bit betterthan your competitors.
But just watch, because they'regoing to come up behind you
real fast when they figure outwhat you're doing.
Yeah, so, yeah, big changes atgoogle, but all all for the
better, all for making us guys.
You're making the people whofight the good fight get, get
(22:09):
through.
And and the david versusgoliath thing.
You know the small companyleveling the big guys, that it's
harder now and it comes downlargely to budget, but it's
still possible.
You can still do it.
It's still the thing that I geta real kick out of here.
You know doing what I do everyday.
It's like especially youngcompanies if a company's been
(22:31):
going six months to a year,we'll actually work for them for
free.
Um, just to go right, we wantto give you a foot up, we want
to give you some time just tohelp get that ball rolling.
Just explain a few concepts toyou because, for one thing,
that's what we like to do.
It's kind of a cool thing to tokeep our community, our
business community, healthy, butalso they're probably going to
(22:53):
come back when they are doingwell, when they become one of
those type of businessassociates I mentioned earlier
that hit ceiling and get stuckand go look, we've done
everything we can.
How are we not getting to thenext step?
Then we'll hopefully be theguys they remember.
That's another reason forchanging the name, so that
people actually remember us.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I do like that.
Yeah, let me ask you a question.
I just want to kind of get to aspecific example.
So let's say, for example, wehave a motorcycle manufacturing
company that has very nicheproducts in a very small
percentage of the market.
In what we do, we're 12 yearsold, we give tons of content.
(23:32):
We just have tons of videos onhow we make every part on the
bike and reviews of bikes andrides on bikes, and you know so
much content.
What would you do Now?
We sell direct to the consumer.
So obviously this is what it'sall about is getting people on
our site where they can designtheir own bike and then they
(23:56):
order it and we make it.
What would you do to help ourSEO If that was a case that you
were working on?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
The first thing we'd look at is talk about amplifying
excellence.
We look at what assets you'vegot, okay.
So in your case you say, look,we've written a lot of articles
about various aspects of thebikes.
So what we do is we look at allof those and we we try and find
articles in your archive thatare maybe page three, page two
on google.
Okay, then we figure out whatgoogle understands about that
(24:27):
article and then we look at whatthe competition is in that very
small niche.
So if it was like saddleleather on motorbikes I guess
that must be a thing we wouldsay okay, well, this page on
your website is in the thirdpage of results on Google.
(24:48):
Who are the first 10 results?
We then do some analysis.
This is the technical side ofSEO.
We then do some analysis and wesay, right, well, your
article's 300 words.
The articles on page one rangefrom 2,000 words to 800 words.
So you need to up the number ofwords on your page.
And as we look at the otherarticles, they've all talked
(25:12):
about where you source theleather and what the grain of
the leather is, but you haven'ttalked about that.
So that tells us that googlevalues that as a part of the
information, as, in a way lookat what is number one yeah yeah,
there's always a way to dothese things without tools.
(25:32):
When I when I started, I didn'thave to have any software.
Now I have to pay a cripplingamount of money each month for
software, but all software isdoing is making these things
faster.
You don't need any software ifyou've got time and you've got a
brain.
Any business owner or anyone inmarketing just stand back and
look and go.
One of these things is not likethe other things and those
(25:53):
pages on those posts, thosearticles, whatever on page one.
Google likes them.
So what is it about them?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, where I see what happens is like it is
really simple.
I'm glad you're, because SEO isreally very a simple thing and
it's just being genuine honest.
You know, and I go back to,like Google, it lives in its own
paradox.
It absolutely has to deliverthe best result.
(26:19):
If it does not deliver that toits search users, it
cannibalizes its entire business.
That's what people don'tunderstand.
Like it has to, it is reallythe it's got to work, it's got
to.
It is really the it's got towork.
It's got to.
Yeah, well, it's, it's, it'sgot to be the truth center.
The second that it startsfibbing people lose credibility.
Like they just stop using it.
(26:40):
And so to andrew's point allthese spammers, these people
trying to trick out this stuffgoogle sets out rules that that,
just that tries to destroy thembecause basically they found
ways to work around google'slaws and they come on the top
results and if those people win,then google loses its business,
sure, and so it's super simpleit has to tell the truth.
(27:03):
It's like a really greatlibrarian like that knows every
book and article in that libraryright and can point you exactly
.
Remember those people back inthe day.
You go to the library, talk tothe librarian and be like, hey,
I'm looking for this book, andthey go oh yeah, come over here.
It's like how the hell and allthese millions of books did you
find?
That's what google is acrossthe entire planet.
But you know when?
(27:24):
When people go outside and gotry to go all these little
tricks and stuff, but where Isee the breakdown happens is
that humans skip, they want toskip all these processes.
And it's to Andrew's point no,what is what article is getting
some ranking?
That's not hard to find.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, or video.
What video is getting ranking?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
What is it?
That's kind of winning.
And then look at thecompetitors.
What are they doing Becausethat's kind of winning?
And then look at thecompetitors.
What are they doing?
Because that's telling you whythe librarian of google is
saying this is the right book.
Yeah, this other book.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Never heard this before.
Yeah, all I've ever heard isyou come up with all the
keywords and you try to makesure those are there.
They're hidden on your site orwhatever you have a white
background and we write whitetext so nobody sees it.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Those are the spammers, isn't that right?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
I mean you've heard all that, I'm sure.
Oh, it's very entertaining tohear all those things,
especially see people on YouTubesaying, hey, this is how I got
to number one in three days, andyou think, nah, you didn't.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, and what they're promoting is the lies.
What they're doing is they're abook writer that's lying to the
librarian and eventually thatlibrarian's going to go.
You know, wait a minute, thatbook's not credible.
That's not the best book.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You're out.
You're not reading the Bible.
There's a comic in there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So this tells me why you need somebody who's really
thinking and you need somebodywho's willing to do the work to
put all this together.
What about AI and its impact onSEO today?
I mean, I personally, you knoweverybody all they want to talk
about is AI, and I'm a professorand when I see somebody that
(29:09):
use chat gpt to write theirpaper, I can spot it like that
um, and I've seen it so it's.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
it's really, really easy in the in in britain it's
so easy to spot anythinggenerated on chat, gpt or any of
the other llLMs, because it'sjust a reflection of the
information it's absorbed.
And America is so much biggerthan the UK.
If somebody in the UK says, hey, write me an article about
(29:39):
motorbike saddles, it'll writeit in American English.
I mean, we don't use Zs when weput an S, you put a Z for
organization words like that andyou just scan it yeah, you just
scan it and go.
Well, that that's been writtenin chat, gpt and it's it's lazy
to such a deep extent becauseeven if you are going to
(29:59):
generate it, you still need toscan it, and before you put it
on your website.
You were saying about um mark.
You were saying about howGoogle only has the ability to
refer people to good sources,and what we're seeing at the
moment with GPT is it'sconjuring nonsense sometimes,
and people love to poke fun atthat.
(30:19):
They love to go ah, have youseen what it thinks like when it
started, when you could makeimages?
Make me an image of Donald Duck.
I can't do that because it'scopyright protected.
It's alright, I'm Walt Disneyalright, then here you go you
know.
So if, if google's, if google's,it's true, if google's crawler
is a toddler, then chat gpt isan overenthusiastic
(30:42):
nine-year-old who just reallywants to please but has no idea
what it's saying.
Yeah, it's like you could.
You could give a nine-year-olda a rude poem, you know, with
full of hidden meaning anddouble entendre, and read it out
with a straight face and allthe adults in the room would be
falling over themselves laughing.
That's basically where we arewith that type of ai at the
(31:03):
moment, but it's gonna changeand it is changing all the time.
But in terms of SEO, in termsof the relationship between SEO
and AI, it's making SEO moreimportant than ever.
So, google if you ask aquestion to Google or look for
information, google looks atyour website and it bases about
(31:27):
60 to 70 percent of its answeron what it finds on your website
and the rest of it is lookingall around the web because
Google owns all these properties.
You know they've got Googlebusiness profile.
They've got they're alwaystrying to launch their own
social network and no one cares.
But they go.
Look at Facebook, they go right.
Well, where's this company beingtalked about?
How important is this company?
(31:48):
Big bit of research donerecently by, I think, ahrefs or
the SEO software people, foundout the chat GPT relies 90% on
what you put on your website, sothe information can't be as
good because it's not verifiedfrom other sources.
But what that also tells us isthat the search, the number of
people leaving Google and usingChatGPT instead, it's like 5%,
(32:12):
but you're talking abouthundreds of billions of searches
every year, so it's still asignificant number of people.
But the nice thing is, ifyou're still doing good stuff,
then you're already perfectlypositioned to benefit from being
found by AI.
(32:32):
It's the same thing.
It's exactly the same thing.
It's amplifying your excellence, making sure the crawlers or
the AI understands what it isyou've got on the page.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Let me ask you a question Does the design of the
website impact whether it findsthe information or not?
Because let's just say, there'sa ton of information on the
site but you got to go here andyou got to go there, I got to go
to the blog, I got to find theblog first.
You know, whatever.
Does that make a difference?
Speaker 3 (33:04):
or if it's just there , it's absolutely, crucially
important, this user experience.
Put it this way If you walkedinto a gas station and you said,
look, I want a cold can ofdrink, and they say, sure, help
yourself.
And you're like but where is it?
And they go, well, no, just golooking.
And eventually they're like,look, we put the refrigerator
(33:27):
underneath the floorboards, isthat okay?
Why would you do that?
I'm not coming back here, youfreaks.
Whereas if you walk in and youimmediately see the chiller
cabinet, then I've got what Ineed now.
It's quite a nice analogy,because a lot of people in SEO
(33:47):
freak out about how long peoplespend on your website.
It used to be a thing if peopleare only on your website and
they only look at one page, orif they're only on there for
five seconds or 10 seconds, andyou failed and Google will put
you lower down in the resultsbecause people aren't hanging
around.
That's not the same.
Now Google's so smart and itunderstands the way people use
your website.
(34:07):
If people are on your websitefor a relatively short period of
time unless it's a biginvestment-type product like a
motorbike then you want them tostay for ages.
On the whole, if you can servepeople the information they're
looking for and then they go offsomewhere else.
That's fine, that's good, butthe difficult design thing is it
(34:27):
really amuses me Sticking withthe gas station.
If you ever walked into a gasstation and there's been a been
a table, you just kind of youwalk into and crush your groin
immediately and fall over on thefloor?
Probably, probably not, becausewe don't do that kind of thing
in real life.
So why, in that case, when yougo to a lot of websites, does it
have this massive image at thetop that then goes away and
(34:49):
another image comes up that'sthe website quiver and they're
walking in and crushing yourgroin on a table in a gas
station, and you can quote me onthat yeah, because, like it,
like it, what google wants todeliver back to the customer is
really fast, relevant, accurateinformation as fast as possible,
to your point, like it.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
It kind of applauds people get being able to get
their information they need andthey go on about their day and
their businesses.
So that could be crediblebecause you're delivering that.
And I think that peopleoverwork their site right, they
try to over design, they try toget into this massive experience
.
Now there's some parts on thesite that could be that could be
valuable from just a pure brandperspective or ad perspective.
(35:31):
But you know, when you're like,my philosophy on a lot of times
, andrew, is that that articlesection.
You know what we call a blog,but I'd really like to see it as
more of like an article.
You're creating a magazine,you're creating a news resource
with all the FAQs.
You're just giving thatinformation to the humans and
the bots, genuinely answeringquestions, and then that's very
(35:55):
well organized, categorized, hasgood taxonomy to it in the back
end and it's just simply.
It is the library, it's a cardcatalog system for us old-timers
, but I mean it's just pureorganization that allows
everybody the bots and thehumans to easily navigate and
find what I'm looking for andget back out of there.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Okay, I'm sorry, go on, andrew.
I'll just say I love thelibrary analogy.
I was a volunteer librarian athigh school.
That's why I know the wordDewey Decimal System.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, me too, man, the card catalog.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, I got fired.
I got fired as a volunteerstudent because there was one
corner of the library that Ithought that's the one I'm going
to look after and I rearrangedall the books by color.
Oh my oh yeah, they didn't likethat, Not good not good at all
Let me go back to this again,though.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Let's just say I'm a prospective client of Andrew's
here and we've got this businessand we sell something online
and we've got this complexwebsite.
Before you come up with yourrecommendations to which I
(37:13):
assume is to help them generatemore content and maybe
reorganize the site right, whatdoes that cost somebody?
Can a small business afford touse somebody like YesEO?
Speaker 3 (37:24):
It's a really interesting theory and it's one
that a lot of people here in theUK are wrestling with.
At the moment.
The uk is struggling.
We, we left europe, which was,I think, was a mistake, but at
the moment, because a wholebunch of stuff there's there's
many, many, many things it's thefirst time that I've run a
(37:45):
business going into a recessionwhere people don't want to spend
money on marketing.
Normally, smart people indifficult times spend money on
marketing because their, theircompetitors, lose ground that
you can rush in and grab it.
That's not really happening.
So our our rates and I've gotthem on my website which is
fairly radical.
For seo agency, our rates startaround 900 pounds a month, so
(38:06):
say 1500 us dollars but what I'mincreasingly doing is saying to
clients look that that's usdoing a lot of things.
We can charge you less if wecan train your people.
Doesn't matter who it is, itcould be the you know janitor,
(38:27):
it could be absolutely anyone ifwe can train them to help you
meet your goals, we don't haveto pay you this, we don't have
to charge you these retainersthat are so high.
And I picked up a few clientsjust in the last few weeks and
we're charging them for ourmentoring sessions.
So that's like $200 for an hourand the amount of value that we
(38:56):
can get across in an hour isI'm not boasting and I'm not
being brag.
I'm not bragging because I'veworked hard to develop this
system, so I'm proud of it.
Sure, but I'm starting torealize that, yeah, the days of
the big retainers unless thiscompanies are big, then they're
kind of over and the amount thatwe charge in the UK and Europe
is about a third of whatAmerican SEO consultants charge.
(39:19):
When we look at people doing SEOin America, they're like ah,
you've got a really nice car.
Look how big your house is Inthe UK.
I don't know why that is.
I don't know it's becauseAmerica kind of got there first
and developed it as a, as anindustry, before anyone else
really know knew what to call it.
But, um, it's a massivedisparity between the two
(39:40):
companies.
And then from us, you know,stepping down to you mentioned
india and indonesia placesearlier they appear to charge
very little.
It's it's a a path which ischallenging at the moment, but I
think the companies that aregoing to survive in all sectors
are the companies who properlydouble down on just being a
(40:01):
brilliant company, so payingpeople properly, not cheaping
out on parts, all that kind ofstuff.
I'm afraid it's white-knuckletime.
You've just got to stick withit.
You know, uh, that was a fairlythat kind of went, went all
over the place that answer, buthopefully that I should have
just 900 quid a month there yougo yeah, I, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So, so no, that makes a lot of sense, I mean, I guess
you be careful, though, thatyou don't destroy your business
by selling what you do toocheaply.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Well, you know, the skill of it is not diminishing
the value.
So if you give any business, ifyou give somebody a price for
something, you say, right, it'sgoing to be $1,000.
And they say, well, can youmake it $800?
And you say, well, I can'treduce the 800.
You say I can't reduce thequality, so I can't reduce the
price.
But that thousand includesthese bits, sure?
So if you don't want those bitsor you're going to do those, if
(40:57):
you're going to make your ownmotorcycle saddle, then I'm
going to charge you 300 less foryour motorbike.
God, that would be awful.
How would you drive away?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
you just have to, like, stand the.
Yeah, you've cut the scope, sodo you work with any companies
outside?
I mean, I know you said it'sgreat to go there and observe
but do you work with companiesin the US?
Speaker 3 (41:25):
We have done not so much recently.
The time difference isn't aninsurmountable issue, but now I
don't know why.
Actually, I did approach a lotof American companies a few
years ago and when they foundout I was in the UK, the
conversation just kind of driedup, which I don't understand.
I don't think I have animpenetrable British accent, you
(41:48):
guys understand me.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Okay, we can change your S's and organization
disease I mean I can do that now, like we've got to do it
ourselves, right I mean, if youcall an elevator, a lift, we can
fix that or whatever right?
Speaker 3 (42:05):
bizarrely, I I grew up between two massive american
air force bases.
So when I was a kid I I grew uparound a lot of amer, a place
called Bentwaters, which iswhere the only official USAF
United States Air Force UFOsighting is.
That's the one that they said.
Yep, that's where I grew up,that one where it chained to the
school?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Is that the one where it landed at the school Do?
Speaker 3 (42:29):
you know, despite the fact I grew up right next to it
, I'm not that up speed on thedetails I can tell you that when
I was at school, we did workplacements and they put me with
the security police, who taughtme how to use an M16 machine gun
when I was 14 years old.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Well, you'd make a great mass killer today.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
I probably wasn't at the school then.
It's one of those things.
Oh, it was a different timeback then.
Yes, we had this thing calledthe cold war and everything was
wonderful, hey andrew.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
So for our listeners that have maybe are starting a
business, they're really smallbusinesses.
You know one thing that I've,you know I just want to get your
your gut check on this, on myperspective.
What I've told with my one ofmy businesses is I got the team
relentlessly focused on thegoogle business profile and I
(43:19):
mean like I am just adamant that, like the reviews responding,
optimizing that page, tellingthem it's our hours when, when
are our holiday hours?
Put pictures, videos,everything you possibly can on
that page, and I've alwaysadvised that that's a really
great first step at seo.
If you're not going to do much,do that be really have an
(43:43):
excellent google places page Iagree wholeheartedly.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I do quite a lot of public speaking.
So I go and speak to businessgroups and obviously, like a lot
of people who do publicspeaking, I have a set of talks
I give.
That's the one I give mostoften and it's called Is Google
Lying About your Business?
Wow, and I say to people, ifyou've got no budget, if it's
just you, if you haven't got thebig marketing spend, focus on
(44:10):
google business profile.
Do that first, because googledon't lie about you.
But if you don't give them theinformation, then they won't
know what to do.
And the example I give I boughta.
I'm a guitarist and I bought aneffects pedal.
You know, I go, you spend 500pounds, you get a metal box with
a button on it that makes youthink you might be able to play
guitar better.
But it got delivered.
(44:31):
It got delivered to somewhereelse, somewhere I used to have
my old office and I was like, ohman, I haven't been there for
years.
And so I looked up who was inthe company, you know who had
that building, and it said inbig red letters permanently
closed.
And I was like, oh man, where'smy pedal?
I'm gonna have to face up tothe fact, I suck at guitar.
So I drove over there and whatdo you think I found when I got
(44:54):
to the location?
A business that was opening, athriving business.
There were people in theretapping keyboards, speaking on
phones, doing business stuff,and I spoke to them.
I got my pedal, so happy ending.
But I spoke to the managingdirector and I said you know,
when people search for yourcompany name, google's telling
them you've gone out of business.
And they went.
Yeah, we know.
I was like, well, I don't wantto tell you what to do or
(45:17):
anything, but you might want tofix that.
And they're like I'm notbothered.
And I was thinking, oh my God,this room full of people and
this company spending money onmarketing and branding and doing
a good job for their customers,trying to drive referral
traffic, and 86% of all searchesfor information start on Google
and 86% of people looking upthat company see a red bit of
(45:38):
text that says permanentlyclosed.
Don't let that happen to you.
Your business is cruciallyimportant and it's free.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
It, is it really?
Speaker 1 (45:49):
is.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I think with the, you know, think as simple as we
talked about SEO really is.
It's just the truth of it, butit also can get complex.
It's a big spider web of thingsthat you can do.
You do the complexities as youhave done a lot of the
foundational stuff, but doingthose places is like it allows
(46:12):
people just to just focus onthat, just get into that thing.
And then I would also advise,like the next step on that is on
your social media channels,doing the same type of practice.
Like who are you, what you know, like making sure the because
Google is crawling, like Andrewpointed out earlier, it's about
if it has your places and thenyou're big into Instagram,
(46:33):
because that's where a lot ofyour readers are.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Oh, I see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Fix that crap too, and tell Facebook what you're
about.
The thing is, the bot will gocheck your places, go look at
your social.
It's going okay, check, check.
They're at the same location,they have the same phone number.
The same phone number, the samecontact, this the same hours,
and it's just going validate,validate, validate and all
that's going credibility.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
I said that I don't use acronyms, but I'm going to
use one because it's nap, whichI like, because nap just means a
little sleep but it's name,address, phone number.
Make sure they're the sameeverywhere you are.
I know that's exactly whatyou're saying and it's free.
It's another free thing to dobecause you won't just be listed
on Google Business, you have tohave your address on the bottom
(47:19):
of your website and it will beon business directories.
There's loads of freedirectories that are associated
with newspapers here in the UK.
There'll be thousands of themin the States as as well, but if
you don't put your informationdown exactly the same way on all
of them, it makes it hard forgoogle to match it up and people
always think well, how would Iget that wrong very, very easily
?
This building I'm in is sevenbailey close.
(47:41):
Ipswich is the shortest version.
The address the longest versionis seven bailey close.
Hadley road, industrial estate,south ipswich, ipswich, suffolk
, you know there's all thesedifferent ways.
I think you, you have anadvantage in the states because
you have a zip code and youdon't have these very, very two
things we like in this country,like very, very long addresses
(48:02):
and very, very long names.
You know, we love it when awhole load of people get married
and they both keep their nameand it takes you 10 minutes to
introduce your friends.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
And then 20 minutes to describe where you live.
Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
So we need to wrap this discussion up.
Unfortunately we're running outof time, but I think this is
some really valuable informationfor our listeners.
So I used to go to Londonoccasionally.
I had several clients overthere in years past and I was
always fascinated with the wayit worked over there.
(48:37):
The arguments the Brits werealways the Irish and Scots made
fun of the Brits and they saidthey were all uptight.
And then the Scots and the Britsall made fun of the Irish and
(48:57):
said they were all drunks.
And then the Irish and theBritish made fun of the Scots
and said they were all cheap.
Is that still the case?
It's been a while.
You think you'll find it'senshrined in law.
Is that still the case?
Speaker 3 (49:10):
It's been a while I've been there, you'll find
it's enshrined in law.
And when did you see KingCharles' coronation?
Yeah, he has the duty to upholdthey took out the bit about the
duty to uphold the Christianfaith and it is just the duty to
uphold.
The joke an Englishman, anIrishman, the Scotsman walk into
a bar.
So the King's speech next year,which they genuinely put on
(49:32):
television.
They stop all television andput on the King's Speech.
It's going to start, I hope,with an Englishman, scotsman,
irishman walk into a bar andthen hilarity will ensue, I'm
sure.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Well, it's been great having you on the show.
If anyone wants to reach out toyou, what is your contact
information?
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Andrew, the website is yeseoio and that's Y-E-S-E-O,
dot I-O.
And it's I-O because that meansinput, output, because with SEO
, put good stuff in and you'llget good stuff out.
You can also find me on myYouTube channel, which is called
the Business Amplifier Podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Okay, Awesome, that's great.
Well, I think this has been awonderful episode.
It's been educational for me.
He's an old fart.
He doesn't know anything aboutthis.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, I think that I honestly believe though I mean
you know to your point aboutyourself, mark, but then there's
new confusion related to AI and, like you don't have to
optimize or you know, I've seena lot like the advertising side
of algorithms has, especially onthe social side, andrew, I've
(50:42):
seen has really interestinglybecome stronger, like as far as
getting discoverability, becauseeverybody's trying to get paid
by ads on the social platforms,but people cannot forget about
the seo, the foundational roots.
I mean there's not a human inthe world that likes to be lied
to.
There is not a human and thebest bots don't want to be lied
(51:06):
to either, and so all you got todo is just speak the truth,
just be honest, you know, andthen be consistent with that
honesty.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
I learned that from both of you guys.
Today the consistency is socritical.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, and then the nice thing is you haven't got to
invent anything.
It's your business, it's inyour head, right?
That's the most powerful thing.
You can ignore all the seoadvice in the world.
Just have a good business, allright well of it.
It's ain't advertising, it'struth-telling yeah, which I
realize that's not going to helpme get work, is it if I keep
(51:40):
going out and telling peoplethat you don't need seo?
Just wait a minute?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
I thought you said we're supposed to share all this
stuff and that's how they findus.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
So no, no, no To do SEO.
You just give me $10,000 a weekand I'll sort it out for you.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
All right, guys?
Well, we really appreciate yourbeing here today with us,
Andrew, and hope you have agreat rest of the day and week.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And until next time.
This has been another episodeof big talk about small business
business.
glad to have you here on the show.
This is another episode, by theway, of big talk about small
business.
That's how we say it here inarkansas, that's right.
Don't pay attention, though, topop culture.
We're not all hillbillies here,not all of us mark's, not we,
we, we um.
(00:29):
Some of us have indoor plumbing.
Yes, we've got a dentist intown, but you know a good
outhouse.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We wear shoes.
A good outhouse is probably thebest thing in the world it's
much the same experience.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hey, I'm in.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
We're tired of being typecast as a bunch of ignorant
rednecks here, Although if yougo 10 miles out of town you'll
find plenty of them.
We're an island ofenlightenment and a sea of
ignorance to a certain extenthere, in.
Fayetteville, which is wherethe University of Arkansas is
based.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's a fine institution.
It is a fine institution.
So tell us a little bit aboutyourself, andrew.
I know you've been doing this along time.
That much I know.
25 years.
Interesting name for thecompany.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Well, I started actually doing SEO last century
building servers, buildingwebsites and realized no one was
going to find them.
Now the company name werebranded a few years ago
because the company name wasAndrew Laws Associates Limited,
but the problem I had with thatis it just sounded like a gray
haired, middle-aged man I mean,which I unavoidably am, but it
(01:42):
just needed something.
Also, everyone thought I was alaw firm.
I mean, my name is andrew laws.
I'd get these, get these fancyand slightly terrifying letters
from people sometimes andtelling him, telling me about
the things they did not they'vedone, and asking for my help.
So I changed it and I did myresearch and the there's only
one other person in the worldusing the name Yeseo and it's a
(02:06):
South Korean K-pop star.
Okay, and as far as I know, wedon't get confused, I think,
kind of.
So far, I think I'm notablydifferent.
I don't think anyone'scontacting the manager of Yeseo
in South Korea and asking forSEO advice.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
So how'd you get started, Andrew?
What was the genesis of yougetting in this business?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The genesis was partly starting a company of my
own making buttons, or makingwhat we call in the UK badges.
I've got one stuck here thesethings Sorry, I know this is a
visual thing on a podcast, butI'm not sure you see that.
So I had just enough money tobuy, buy the machine like a big
crank machine thing for makingthem, making the buttons.
But I had no money formarketing so I figured I'd use
(02:53):
seo to launch the company.
I sold that company withinthree months of starting the
button company, not the buttoncompany.
Uh, because it turns out I suckat making buttons like really
bad.
I think we'll rank, rank thewebsite number one and and it's
still there and I'm in, I'm intheir spare room.
When I was looking for anoffice they've brought me in
like a sort of a benevolentgrandfather or something so like
(03:16):
keep an eye on me.
But what really?
What?
That really appealed to me, theidea that you could, you could
be this tiny little company.
You know, I was 22 years old, Ithink, but I I took on the
biggest button companies therewere in in the uk and beat them
hands down and I thought that'scool.
I really like that and and youknow, the early days of the, the
(03:38):
internet, were like the wildwest you, anybody could do
anything if you could see as faras the horizon, then I don't
know.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
You had a lot of walking to do yeah, it is true,
the internet was like the greatequalizer.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I mean, it just opened up the whole market to us
, with no bounds, in a sense andthen, yeah, the market that
opened up to me was a lot ofpeople wanting buttons and, uh,
I was working in the city at thetime.
I was working in london, so Ihad like a three-hour commute
every day and then I'd get homeand make buttons until like
(04:12):
midnight.
The problem is when you do it,when you're tired.
Two things happen.
When you pull the little leverto make the button, to press it,
if you haven't got it straight,it pings off and hits one of
your cats.
You don't have to have cats tomake buttons.
Or the other thing, if itdoesn't ping off and hit a cat,
then it will crush your fingers.
But I still live in the samehouse, right, and it's been.
(04:33):
Yes, 25 years ago I sold thatcompany and we still find button
parts down between thefloorboards.
And well, I live in a victorian150 year old house because
everyone does.
They just you turn 18 andthey're like the queen just
knocks on the door and goes that, that one's yours.
That hovel, third from the leftover there, that belongs to you
(04:56):
now.
So there's big gaps everywhere.
I'm just yeah, they're allbeing plugged up with button
parts.
It's not quite the seodiscussion you might be
expecting kind of at this stageit's perfect man.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
So you launched your button company with SEO right,
search Engine Automation is whatwe're talking about, for those
that may not understand what SEOis.
And so you, which basicallymeans that you kind of started
talking about it, puttingkeywords in, really writing
content explaining the buttons.
And then the internet crawlersgrabbed you found, you rolled
(05:30):
you up in ranks and you got moreclicks, and that's how you did
your sales.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Believe me, back then SEO was very easy indeed.
I looked at the biggercompanies and they weren't using
the word buttons We'll saybadges in this country.
They weren't using the wordbuttons wouldn't say badges in
this country.
They weren't talking about them.
They'd have a page with like oh, these are all our brilliant
machines, this is how nice ouroffice is, this is what our
sales team looks like.
And back then it was trendy tohave a page saying oh, this is
(05:56):
the office dog and his name isbarry or whatever it was.
But they didn't actually talkabout the badges very much so.
So I thought well, I don't havean office dog, I don't have a
team, but I can write quite alot about badges.
So I did that and I say it wasmuch easier back then.
Because what happens when youstart to do really well with SEO
(06:17):
, when you get to the top ofGoogle?
So everyone, to this day,everyone who searches for badges
in the UK finds my old company.
As soon as you start to do well, your competitors notice and
they start sniffing around andit becomes a bit of an arms race
.
So you have to be careful whatyou start.
You've got to be in in it forthe long haul.
But I still get.
I still get a kick out of itall these years later and it's I
(06:39):
don't know.
I hope not to do it until I die.
Um, I hope it hope it's not thereason for my death, but I can
see myself doing it for a goodwhile.
Yeah, the pension pot's not bigenough for me to.
Yeah, I don't have 401k oranything because we don't have
them in the UK.
So the king sends out MaundyDay pennies.
(07:03):
If you're really poor, the kinggives you a coin on some time
around Easter, is that it?
That's completely true.
Yeah, but there's too many ofus here now.
So 16th century there was notso many people living in Britain
and the pennies were probablyeasier to hand out.
I don't think King Charles hasgot the time to knock on
everybody's door and give them apenny now.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
So I'm sticking with SEO.
So let's let's just take itTell us a little bit about what
you do for your clients and howyou do it, because there are a
lot of small business owners outthere.
You know.
We have businesses ourselvesthat sell products online, for
example.
What are some of the things?
You know?
(07:45):
Most of us spend a fortune onadvertising, whether it's on
Google or on YouTube or Facebookor Instagram.
What is it that we should bedoing?
How do you help your clientswith SEO?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
It actually starts well before anything technical.
In my experience, there are twotypes of people who run a
business.
There's the type of personwho's very smart much like your
listeners, of course and they'vedone their research and they've
learned about this thing, thisthing, this thing over here.
They've got that and they'vebuilt a business which is really
doing well, but has hit aceiling.
It kind of got stuck, stuck.
(08:24):
Is there something it can'tquite get past?
Those people are fantastic towork with and when I go and
speak to them I just say whatare your strengths?
Why should people buy from you?
Uh, you know what?
What differentiates you fromthe market?
What have you had?
Successes and failures withthose guys are really easy.
The harder type of person is thetype of person I don't know if
you've met these people whostart a business and they fluke
(08:46):
it, like I did with the badgecompany to a certain extent,
because those guys you say whyshould anyone buy from you?
Because we're the best.
And you say, okay, why are youthe best?
Because we're the best.
Just, you can't just keepwaving your arms around saying
you're the best.
So a lot of people.
It starts with helping themfigure out what.
What is they're doing.
I say you know, why shouldanyone buy from it?
(09:06):
It's a funny question to ask,and if you say to people why,
why the hell should anyone buyfrom you, the reaction you get
can be quite telling as well,because some people get quite
offended.
I don't don't mean to offendthem, but well then, it's that
would be.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You've got to know typical of a discussion.
If you were helping a companywith their branding, I would
think right.
I mean, those are some of thequestions that you would want to
get into.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
We have to, because SEO can only amplify excellence.
It can't sort of conjurenonsense.
If you haven't got a goodcompany already, all SEO is
going to do is bring you moreleads you can't convert and you
can't make sales with anyway.
So, yeah, we do a fair bit ofhelping companies.
Just get their, get their acttogether, kind of.
(09:51):
You know, fill, fill in thegaps and and tighten the tighten
the ship.
Is that what you do to ships?
You tighten them.
Um, it's the end of the day.
I'm going for as many mixedmetaphors as I can.
Um, yeah, so once we found outwhat is so good about a company,
we, we make sure the worldknows, so a lot of it does come
(10:12):
down to content a lot of thetime.
You know, um, there's afantastic book I recommend.
Everyone who's wants to knowmore about.
Seo is a non-seo book which isvery good to read.
It's a book called they Ask,you Answer, written by Marcus
Sheridan.
Have you heard of that guy?
No, no, okay, so he's, I can'tremember.
He is somewhere Midwest, Ithink, and he realized years ago
(10:34):
he's not an SEO guy, but herealized that he was able to
sell his product, which wasswimming pools like pre-made
swimming pools, not by tellingpeople how brilliant they are or
trying to convince people tobuy them, but by answering the
questions that people have aboutthem.
Because the genius.
This is why I like this as a wayof explaining SEO, because
(10:58):
we're all like to think we'reindividuals.
If we're buying something orwe're considering hiring someone
, we have a bunch of questionsin our head that I think we
probably like to think are quitenew.
I think people like to thinkthey're smart.
I mean by about the thirdcoffee of the day, I start to
think I'm smart Before then.
It's a mixed bag, but the truthis, if you've had a question
(11:20):
about a product or a service,you're not going to be alone.
There will be thousands ofother people.
Even a tiny little lump of rockbobbing around in the sea, like
the United Kingdom, there's alot of people who will have the
same questions.
So, with no technical knowledgewhatsoever, you can do fantastic
SEO by thinking what are thequestions people ask me?
(11:41):
And start with the ones theyask just before they commit to
buy, and then write an articlewith that question as the title
and use your brilliance, shareyour brilliance, give.
Give the answers away because,apart from anything else.
When people do end up on thatpage, it's a brilliant way of
building trust, and that's theonly thing your website really
(12:02):
needs to do.
People need to go hey, I'm inthe right place, I trust these
guys, and that's the only thingyour website really needs to do.
People need to go hey, I'm inthe right place, I trust these
guys, and that's it.
So I I don't.
I don't.
I do know a load of technicalstuff.
I mean, I tried talking to mywife about it in the evenings
and she doesn't care.
Catch it wanders away.
I've got a teenage child, soI'm I try not to talk technical
(12:24):
because it terrifies me that foras long as I've done SEO, it's
been sold as this kind of like,this kind of dark art that you
know we do SEO and they take youto this back room and shine a
light in your eyes and they giveyou the secret knowledge.
It's not.
It's pretty simple.
I keep trying.
It's pretty simple really.
What would you tell peopleabout your business, what you're
(12:46):
proud of?
I get?
Speaker 1 (12:47):
caught.
I don't know about you, but Imean I get like messages, emails
, linkedin, you know messagespractically every day from
somebody who tells me they wantto help me with seo.
Usually they're in India or thePhilippines or somewhere else.
But what differentiatessomebody who really knows what
(13:12):
they're doing and does a goodjob at this versus all these
other providers that are outthere promising to do it on the
cheap?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
The harsh answer is if someone's really good, they
probably don't want you as aclient because they're too busy.
It's a bit like contractors thebest contractors are the ones
that can't help you for sixmonths.
The worst contractors are theones who you ring up and say,
look, I need to build anextension to the back of my
house, and they say, oh, we canstart at eight o'clock tomorrow
morning.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
You're like why, like why I get the people before I
was in that business, so I'm Ican appreciate that yeah, so
that the real differentiator issomebody who's prepared to spend
time learning about yourbusiness, the, the.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
There are some fantastic agencies all around
the world, really, really good.
But I think with seo, havinghaving somebody who's fairly
nearby is going to help youbecause they can come into your
business and have a look aroundand get a feel for you.
And one of the things I do andI know some of my fellow SEO
people do here is just go sit inthe office for a little while,
(14:20):
just soak it up.
Are just soak it up becausewhen we're looking for the
excellence to amplify, quiteoften the business owner or the
marketing guy or sales guywhoever has this pre-prepared
thing that they trot out youknow, they'll be like oh, we do
this and this is why peopleshould buy from us.
That's usually quite boring,it's usually quite dull.
(14:40):
I'll give you an exact example.
We were filming a couple ofdays ago with a client who
supplies uh, it's called passiveglass, huge sheets of glass
that go on on new builds, um,all throughout europe, right.
And we were filming and he wasgoing oh, this is how the window
goes in.
The ledge is like this.
We do this so that it doesn'tfill up with water.
(15:03):
And as we were driving off, hesaid I forgot about that.
I said what he said oh, theroof panels.
They just look like roof panels, you know, like shingles, but
they're all solar panels.
And I was like right, stop thevan, get out, tell me that again
.
Let me film that.
And we're going to write aboutthat, because all the other
stuff was just what all hiscompetitors are saying on their
websites yeah, it's findingthese little things that you go.
(15:25):
Hang on, you've.
You've got used to the factthat you do things this way,
haven't you?
But did you know that?
That's really cool?
Got work with a company thatmakes one of my clients that his
company makes whole tv series,so, like a tv channel will
contact him and say, right, weneed a six part series on motor
(15:46):
racing, anything like that.
And they go and make them andhe does some really cool stuff.
And I did this thing of goingand sitting in his office and
he's an editor as well so justwatching him work and I was
saying, you know, what are wegoing to talk about on your
website?
What do we need to get across?
And he was like I don't know, Idon't know, I don't think
anything that interestinghappens.
(16:06):
And behind him, where he wassat, there was a massive kind of
six foot square photograph ofhim with guy ritchie and he's
holding um british director,he's holding guy ritchie's oscar
.
I was like, you know, guyritchie, he's like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, we're friends like, andyou think that's not interesting
.
You know, you've clearly sat infront of that picture for so
long, but you found somethingreally interesting.
(16:27):
You've got somethinginteresting there that people
will want to read about.
So it's partly.
I think a lot of businessowners are quite shy.
Maybe they don't want to beboastful or brag, but quite
often all the hard work that allsuccessful business owners put
in is probably in the back oftheir mind.
That all successful businessesput in is probably in the back
of their mind because they'relooking for the next great thing
.
They're looking for the nextgood leap forward.
(16:48):
They might have forgotten thereally cool stuff that just got
them going in the first place.
So we dig that out and makesure people know about it.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
But I appreciate what you're, you know I mean SEO can
be such a complicatedconversation, right?
I mean especially like you'retalking about when folks don't
know much about it.
But conversation, right, I meanespecially like you're talking
about when folks don't know muchabout it.
But I feel like that when youexplain that, what are the it's
like a frequently askedquestions about a really
specific thing that you do.
That's unique, differentiator,that your company does, just
(17:17):
like the solar panel roofs,right?
And then what are all the 20,30 questions related to that
specific niche that you have?
That's where you're basicallybuilding some competitive
advantage from all the webcrawlers and such.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, because Google's getting pretty good.
Google has the comprehension ofa toddler like a three-year-old
.
So it comes and looks on thewebsite, you know, like a kid
wobbling around.
So what's this?
Okay, there's a picture of aswimming pool here.
It must be about swimming pools, oh, but they're not saying
anything else about swimmingpools.
I'm going to go over there nowand film a diaper or whatever.
That's how I imagine googlethinks.
(17:57):
Um, but the reality is, youknow, if you, if you have your
website, if you do swim pools,just stick with that, because
why not?
And Google's toddler waddlesonto your website and goes, oh,
it's a picture of a swimmingpool.
And look, oh, look, there's anarticle about a swimming pool
here.
I wonder how long it takes tofill a swimming pool from a
faucet in a house.
Well, oh, look, there's anarticle explaining it.
I like it here.
(18:17):
This is nice, there's lots ofinteresting.
I, if you, if you lose too muchpersonality, then that toddler
is going to lose interest aswell.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Yeah, and that that toddler is just a simplified
version of all humanity, rightso, yeah, from the out to all
humanity, yeah, from the toddlerperspective, I mean, it's like,
as it starts to learn your site, it's going, you know, wow,
this person or this companyreally knows what they're
talking about, they're an expertin this, and so now I'm
trusting that, like a toddlerwould I trust this opinion, this
(18:52):
perspective, and so then I justkeep.
Then I want everybody else toknow about the expert.
So that's what my search rankresult page is, that's what page
one is Right.
And now, yeah, and then.
So quick question I mean, likewith SEO, it's been going on for
you know, for a couple ofdecades now.
Right, I mean the practice.
You've been doing it for 25years and I mean what have you
(19:17):
seen has evolved in this?
Has it become more complicated,or is it really the same basic
thing that people just don'tseem to do?
Really well, that's been kindof my experience, right, like it
hasn't changed much.
It's really exactly what wejust said Niche, expertise,
providing credibility, expertise, expert voice on it.
(19:38):
Differentiator yeahdifferentiator and just and then
telling the robot over and overagain and giving that
credibility.
But it feels like that peopletake it on these scroll paths
Like it's just this bigcomplicated thing now it's so
difficult, but is it really justthe same?
True kind of fundamental thingsthat are going on in one one
(20:00):
respect, nothing has changed atall.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
In another respect, the people who, years ago, used
to try and fool google yes, andand this is where all the
complexity is to be honest, ifyou're going to try and fool
Google, you've got your work cutout.
And every big change they maketo the way they crawl the site
and work out the results is notto make things more difficult
(20:25):
for genuine business owners.
It's to make things moredifficult for the grifters, for
the people who are trying to getaround the corner and get to
number one faster without havingactually done the work.
So every time there's a bigupdate, it's cause for
celebration because it means ifyou are running a good company,
then your life's just going tokeep getting easier, easier and
(20:47):
easier.
The other side of it issometimes you do have to do some
really complex things, and thereality of that is if your
company has national reach andyou are in an incredibly
competitive market, if you'reselling mortgages or I don't
(21:09):
know some sort of insurancepolicy, you're going to have to
do some really technical SEO.
The reality is, if you're asmall to medium company, so if
you're just a freelancer, ifit's just you or you're anything
up to maybe $25 million a year.
Where you are located, youprobably haven't got very stiff
(21:30):
competition around you.
Going back to my example of thebutton company, that website
was not the best button companywebsite that ever existed, but
it was enough, better enough,betterer, it was better it was
it was it was.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Why did I?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
installed a bottle of betterness on it.
And yeah, you don't have to bethe best in the world, you just
gotta be a little bit betterthan your competitors.
But just watch, because they'regoing to come up behind you
real fast when they figure outwhat you're doing.
Yeah, so, yeah, big changes atgoogle, but all all for the
better, all for making us guys.
You're making the people whofight the good fight get, get
(22:09):
through.
And and the david versusgoliath thing.
You know the small companyleveling the big guys, that it's
harder now and it comes downlargely to budget, but it's
still possible.
You can still do it.
It's still the thing that I geta real kick out of here.
You know doing what I do everyday.
It's like especially youngcompanies if a company's been
(22:31):
going six months to a year,we'll actually work for them for
free.
Um, just to go right, we wantto give you a foot up, we want
to give you some time just tohelp get that ball rolling.
Just explain a few concepts toyou because, for one thing,
that's what we like to do.
It's kind of a cool thing to tokeep our community, our
business community, healthy, butalso they're probably going to
(22:53):
come back when they are doingwell, when they become one of
those type of businessassociates I mentioned earlier
that hit ceiling and get stuckand go look, we've done
everything we can.
How are we not getting to thenext step?
Then we'll hopefully be theguys they remember.
That's another reason forchanging the name, so that
people actually remember us.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
I do like that.
Yeah, let me ask you a question.
I just want to kind of get to aspecific example.
So let's say, for example, wehave a motorcycle manufacturing
company that has very nicheproducts in a very small
percentage of the market.
In what we do, we're 12 yearsold, we give tons of content.
(23:32):
We just have tons of videos onhow we make every part on the
bike and reviews of bikes andrides on bikes, and you know so
much content.
What would you do Now?
We sell direct to the consumer.
So obviously this is what it'sall about is getting people on
our site where they can designtheir own bike and then they
(23:56):
order it and we make it.
What would you do to help ourSEO If that was a case that you
were working on?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
The first thing we'd look at is talk about amplifying
excellence.
We look at what assets you'vegot, okay.
So in your case you say, look,we've written a lot of articles
about various aspects of thebikes.
So what we do is we look at allof those and we we try and find
articles in your archive thatare maybe page three, page two
on google.
Okay, then we figure out whatgoogle understands about that
(24:27):
article and then we look at whatthe competition is in that very
small niche.
So if it was like saddleleather on motorbikes I guess
that must be a thing we wouldsay okay, well, this page on
your website is in the thirdpage of results on Google.
(24:48):
Who are the first 10 results?
We then do some analysis.
This is the technical side ofSEO.
We then do some analysis and wesay, right, well, your
article's 300 words.
The articles on page one rangefrom 2,000 words to 800 words.
So you need to up the number ofwords on your page.
And as we look at the otherarticles, they've all talked
(25:12):
about where you source theleather and what the grain of
the leather is, but you haven'ttalked about that.
So that tells us that googlevalues that as a part of the
information, as, in a way lookat what is number one yeah yeah,
there's always a way to dothese things without tools.
(25:32):
When I when I started, I didn'thave to have any software.
Now I have to pay a cripplingamount of money each month for
software, but all software isdoing is making these things
faster.
You don't need any software ifyou've got time and you've got a
brain.
Any business owner or anyone inmarketing just stand back and
look and go.
One of these things is not likethe other things and those
(25:53):
pages on those posts, thosearticles, whatever on page one.
Google likes them.
So what is it about them?
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, where I see what happens is like it is
really simple.
I'm glad you're, because SEO isreally very a simple thing and
it's just being genuine honest.
You know, and I go back to,like Google, it lives in its own
paradox.
It absolutely has to deliverthe best result.
(26:19):
If it does not deliver that toits search users, it
cannibalizes its entire business.
That's what people don'tunderstand.
Like it has to, it is reallythe it's got to work, it's got
to.
It is really the it's got towork.
It's got to.
Yeah, well, it's, it's, it'sgot to be the truth center.
The second that it startsfibbing people lose credibility.
Like they just stop using it.
(26:40):
And so to andrew's point allthese spammers, these people
trying to trick out this stuffgoogle sets out rules that that,
just that tries to destroy thembecause basically they found
ways to work around google'slaws and they come on the top
results and if those people win,then google loses its business,
sure, and so it's super simpleit has to tell the truth.
(27:03):
It's like a really greatlibrarian like that knows every
book and article in that libraryright and can point you exactly
.
Remember those people back inthe day.
You go to the library, talk tothe librarian and be like, hey,
I'm looking for this book, andthey go oh yeah, come over here.
It's like how the hell and allthese millions of books did you
find?
That's what google is acrossthe entire planet.
But you know when?
(27:24):
When people go outside and gotry to go all these little
tricks and stuff, but where Isee the breakdown happens is
that humans skip, they want toskip all these processes.
And it's to Andrew's point no,what is what article is getting
some ranking?
That's not hard to find.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, or video.
What video is getting ranking?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
What is it?
That's kind of winning.
And then look at thecompetitors.
What are they doing Becausethat's kind of winning?
And then look at thecompetitors.
What are they doing?
Because that's telling you whythe librarian of google is
saying this is the right book.
Yeah, this other book.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Never heard this before.
Yeah, all I've ever heard isyou come up with all the
keywords and you try to makesure those are there.
They're hidden on your site orwhatever you have a white
background and we write whitetext so nobody sees it.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Those are the spammers, isn't that right?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
I mean you've heard all that, I'm sure.
Oh, it's very entertaining tohear all those things,
especially see people on YouTubesaying, hey, this is how I got
to number one in three days, andyou think, nah, you didn't.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, and what they're promoting is the lies.
What they're doing is they're abook writer that's lying to the
librarian and eventually thatlibrarian's going to go.
You know, wait a minute, thatbook's not credible.
That's not the best book.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
You're out.
You're not reading the Bible.
There's a comic in there.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So this tells me why you need somebody who's really
thinking and you need somebodywho's willing to do the work to
put all this together.
What about AI and its impact onSEO today?
I mean, I personally, you knoweverybody all they want to talk
about is AI, and I'm a professorand when I see somebody that
(29:09):
use chat gpt to write theirpaper, I can spot it like that
um, and I've seen it so it's.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
it's really, really easy in the in in britain it's
so easy to spot anythinggenerated on chat, gpt or any of
the other llLMs, because it'sjust a reflection of the
information it's absorbed.
And America is so much biggerthan the UK.
If somebody in the UK says, hey, write me an article about
(29:39):
motorbike saddles, it'll writeit in American English.
I mean, we don't use Zs when weput an S, you put a Z for
organization words like that andyou just scan it yeah, you just
scan it and go.
Well, that that's been writtenin chat, gpt and it's it's lazy
to such a deep extent becauseeven if you are going to
(29:59):
generate it, you still need toscan it, and before you put it
on your website.
You were saying about um mark.
You were saying about howGoogle only has the ability to
refer people to good sources,and what we're seeing at the
moment with GPT is it'sconjuring nonsense sometimes,
and people love to poke fun atthat.
(30:19):
They love to go ah, have youseen what it thinks like when it
started, when you could makeimages?
Make me an image of Donald Duck.
I can't do that because it'scopyright protected.
It's alright, I'm Walt Disneyalright, then here you go you
know.
So if, if google's, if google's,it's true, if google's crawler
is a toddler, then chat gpt isan overenthusiastic
(30:42):
nine-year-old who just reallywants to please but has no idea
what it's saying.
Yeah, it's like you could.
You could give a nine-year-olda a rude poem, you know, with
full of hidden meaning anddouble entendre, and read it out
with a straight face and allthe adults in the room would be
falling over themselves laughing.
That's basically where we arewith that type of ai at the
(31:03):
moment, but it's gonna changeand it is changing all the time.
But in terms of SEO, in termsof the relationship between SEO
and AI, it's making SEO moreimportant than ever.
So, google if you ask aquestion to Google or look for
information, google looks atyour website and it bases about
(31:27):
60 to 70 percent of its answeron what it finds on your website
and the rest of it is lookingall around the web because
Google owns all these properties.
You know they've got Googlebusiness profile.
They've got they're alwaystrying to launch their own
social network and no one cares.
But they go.
Look at Facebook, they go right.
Well, where's this company beingtalked about?
How important is this company?
(31:48):
Big bit of research donerecently by, I think, ahrefs or
the SEO software people, foundout the chat GPT relies 90% on
what you put on your website, sothe information can't be as
good because it's not verifiedfrom other sources.
But what that also tells us isthat the search, the number of
people leaving Google and usingChatGPT instead, it's like 5%,
(32:12):
but you're talking abouthundreds of billions of searches
every year, so it's still asignificant number of people.
But the nice thing is, ifyou're still doing good stuff,
then you're already perfectlypositioned to benefit from being
found by AI.
(32:32):
It's the same thing.
It's exactly the same thing.
It's amplifying your excellence, making sure the crawlers or
the AI understands what it isyou've got on the page.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Let me ask you a question Does the design of the
website impact whether it findsthe information or not?
Because let's just say, there'sa ton of information on the
site but you got to go here andyou got to go there, I got to go
to the blog, I got to find theblog first.
You know, whatever.
Does that make a difference?
Speaker 3 (33:04):
or if it's just there , it's absolutely, crucially
important, this user experience.
Put it this way If you walkedinto a gas station and you said,
look, I want a cold can ofdrink, and they say, sure, help
yourself.
And you're like but where is it?
And they go, well, no, just golooking.
And eventually they're like,look, we put the refrigerator
(33:27):
underneath the floorboards, isthat okay?
Why would you do that?
I'm not coming back here, youfreaks.
Whereas if you walk in and youimmediately see the chiller
cabinet, then I've got what Ineed now.
It's quite a nice analogy,because a lot of people in SEO
(33:47):
freak out about how long peoplespend on your website.
It used to be a thing if peopleare only on your website and
they only look at one page, orif they're only on there for
five seconds or 10 seconds, andyou failed and Google will put
you lower down in the resultsbecause people aren't hanging
around.
That's not the same.
Now Google's so smart and itunderstands the way people use
your website.
(34:07):
If people are on your websitefor a relatively short period of
time unless it's a biginvestment-type product like a
motorbike then you want them tostay for ages.
On the whole, if you can servepeople the information they're
looking for and then they go offsomewhere else.
That's fine, that's good, butthe difficult design thing is it
(34:27):
really amuses me Sticking withthe gas station.
If you ever walked into a gasstation and there's been a been
a table, you just kind of youwalk into and crush your groin
immediately and fall over on thefloor?
Probably, probably not, becausewe don't do that kind of thing
in real life.
So why, in that case, when yougo to a lot of websites, does it
have this massive image at thetop that then goes away and
(34:49):
another image comes up that'sthe website quiver and they're
walking in and crushing yourgroin on a table in a gas
station, and you can quote me onthat yeah, because, like it,
like it, what google wants todeliver back to the customer is
really fast, relevant, accurateinformation as fast as possible,
to your point, like it.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
It kind of applauds people get being able to get
their information they need andthey go on about their day and
their businesses.
So that could be crediblebecause you're delivering that.
And I think that peopleoverwork their site right, they
try to over design, they try toget into this massive experience
.
Now there's some parts on thesite that could be that could be
valuable from just a pure brandperspective or ad perspective.
(35:31):
But you know, when you're like,my philosophy on a lot of times
, andrew, is that that articlesection.
You know what we call a blog,but I'd really like to see it as
more of like an article.
You're creating a magazine,you're creating a news resource
with all the FAQs.
You're just giving thatinformation to the humans and
the bots, genuinely answeringquestions, and then that's very
(35:55):
well organized, categorized, hasgood taxonomy to it in the back
end and it's just simply.
It is the library, it's a cardcatalog system for us old-timers
, but I mean it's just pureorganization that allows
everybody the bots and thehumans to easily navigate and
find what I'm looking for andget back out of there.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Okay, I'm sorry, go on, andrew.
I'll just say I love thelibrary analogy.
I was a volunteer librarian athigh school.
That's why I know the wordDewey Decimal System.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, me too, man, the card catalog.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Well, I got fired.
I got fired as a volunteerstudent because there was one
corner of the library that Ithought that's the one I'm going
to look after and I rearrangedall the books by color.
Oh my oh yeah, they didn't likethat, Not good not good at all
Let me go back to this again,though.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Let's just say I'm a prospective client of Andrew's
here and we've got this businessand we sell something online
and we've got this complexwebsite.
Before you come up with yourrecommendations to which I
(37:13):
assume is to help them generatemore content and maybe
reorganize the site right, whatdoes that cost somebody?
Can a small business afford touse somebody like YesEO?
Speaker 3 (37:24):
It's a really interesting theory and it's one
that a lot of people here in theUK are wrestling with.
At the moment.
The uk is struggling.
We, we left europe, which was,I think, was a mistake, but at
the moment, because a wholebunch of stuff there's there's
many, many, many things it's thefirst time that I've run a
(37:45):
business going into a recessionwhere people don't want to spend
money on marketing.
Normally, smart people indifficult times spend money on
marketing because their, theircompetitors, lose ground that
you can rush in and grab it.
That's not really happening.
So our our rates and I've gotthem on my website which is
fairly radical.
For seo agency, our rates startaround 900 pounds a month, so
(38:06):
say 1500 us dollars but what I'mincreasingly doing is saying to
clients look that that's usdoing a lot of things.
We can charge you less if wecan train your people.
Doesn't matter who it is, itcould be the you know janitor,
(38:27):
it could be absolutely anyone ifwe can train them to help you
meet your goals, we don't haveto pay you this, we don't have
to charge you these retainersthat are so high.
And I picked up a few clientsjust in the last few weeks and
we're charging them for ourmentoring sessions.
So that's like $200 for an hourand the amount of value that we
(38:56):
can get across in an hour isI'm not boasting and I'm not
being brag.
I'm not bragging because I'veworked hard to develop this
system, so I'm proud of it.
Sure, but I'm starting torealize that, yeah, the days of
the big retainers unless thiscompanies are big, then they're
kind of over and the amount thatwe charge in the UK and Europe
is about a third of whatAmerican SEO consultants charge.
(39:19):
When we look at people doing SEOin America, they're like ah,
you've got a really nice car.
Look how big your house is Inthe UK.
I don't know why that is.
I don't know it's becauseAmerica kind of got there first
and developed it as a, as anindustry, before anyone else
really know knew what to call it.
But, um, it's a massivedisparity between the two
(39:40):
companies.
And then from us, you know,stepping down to you mentioned
india and indonesia placesearlier they appear to charge
very little.
It's it's a a path which ischallenging at the moment, but I
think the companies that aregoing to survive in all sectors
are the companies who properlydouble down on just being a
(40:01):
brilliant company, so payingpeople properly, not cheaping
out on parts, all that kind ofstuff.
I'm afraid it's white-knuckletime.
You've just got to stick withit.
You know, uh, that was a fairlythat kind of went, went all
over the place that answer, buthopefully that I should have
just 900 quid a month there yougo yeah, I, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So, so no, that makes a lot of sense, I mean, I guess
you be careful, though, thatyou don't destroy your business
by selling what you do toocheaply.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Well, you know, the skill of it is not diminishing
the value.
So if you give any business, ifyou give somebody a price for
something, you say, right, it'sgoing to be $1,000.
And they say, well, can youmake it $800?
And you say, well, I can'treduce the 800.
You say I can't reduce thequality, so I can't reduce the
price.
But that thousand includesthese bits, sure?
So if you don't want those bitsor you're going to do those, if
(40:57):
you're going to make your ownmotorcycle saddle, then I'm
going to charge you 300 less foryour motorbike.
God, that would be awful.
How would you drive away?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
you just have to, like, stand the.
Yeah, you've cut the scope, sodo you work with any companies
outside?
I mean, I know you said it'sgreat to go there and observe
but do you work with companiesin the US?
Speaker 3 (41:25):
We have done not so much recently.
The time difference isn't aninsurmountable issue, but now I
don't know why.
Actually, I did approach a lotof American companies a few
years ago and when they foundout I was in the UK, the
conversation just kind of driedup, which I don't understand.
I don't think I have animpenetrable British accent, you
(41:48):
guys understand me.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
Okay, we can change your S's and organization
disease I mean I can do that now, like we've got to do it
ourselves, right I mean, if youcall an elevator, a lift, we can
fix that or whatever right?
Speaker 3 (42:05):
bizarrely, I I grew up between two massive american
air force bases.
So when I was a kid I I grew uparound a lot of amer, a place
called Bentwaters, which iswhere the only official USAF
United States Air Force UFOsighting is.
That's the one that they said.
Yep, that's where I grew up,that one where it chained to the
school?
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Is that the one where it landed at the school Do?
Speaker 3 (42:29):
you know, despite the fact I grew up right next to it
, I'm not that up speed on thedetails I can tell you that when
I was at school, we did workplacements and they put me with
the security police, who taughtme how to use an M16 machine gun
when I was 14 years old.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Well, you'd make a great mass killer today.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
I probably wasn't at the school then.
It's one of those things.
Oh, it was a different timeback then.
Yes, we had this thing calledthe cold war and everything was
wonderful, hey andrew.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
So for our listeners that have maybe are starting a
business, they're really smallbusinesses.
You know one thing that I've,you know I just want to get your
your gut check on this, on myperspective.
What I've told with my one ofmy businesses is I got the team
relentlessly focused on thegoogle business profile and I
(43:19):
mean like I am just adamant that, like the reviews responding,
optimizing that page, tellingthem it's our hours when, when
are our holiday hours?
Put pictures, videos,everything you possibly can on
that page, and I've alwaysadvised that that's a really
great first step at seo.
If you're not going to do much,do that be really have an
(43:43):
excellent google places page Iagree wholeheartedly.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
I do quite a lot of public speaking.
So I go and speak to businessgroups and obviously, like a lot
of people who do publicspeaking, I have a set of talks
I give.
That's the one I give mostoften and it's called Is Google
Lying About your Business?
Wow, and I say to people, ifyou've got no budget, if it's
just you, if you haven't got thebig marketing spend, focus on
(44:10):
google business profile.
Do that first, because googledon't lie about you.
But if you don't give them theinformation, then they won't
know what to do.
And the example I give I boughta.
I'm a guitarist and I bought aneffects pedal.
You know, I go, you spend 500pounds, you get a metal box with
a button on it that makes youthink you might be able to play
guitar better.
But it got delivered.
(44:31):
It got delivered to somewhereelse, somewhere I used to have
my old office and I was like, ohman, I haven't been there for
years.
And so I looked up who was inthe company, you know who had
that building, and it said inbig red letters permanently
closed.
And I was like, oh man, where'smy pedal?
I'm gonna have to face up tothe fact, I suck at guitar.
So I drove over there and whatdo you think I found when I got
(44:54):
to the location?
A business that was opening, athriving business.
There were people in theretapping keyboards, speaking on
phones, doing business stuff,and I spoke to them.
I got my pedal, so happy ending.
But I spoke to the managingdirector and I said you know,
when people search for yourcompany name, google's telling
them you've gone out of business.
And they went.
Yeah, we know.
I was like, well, I don't wantto tell you what to do or
(45:17):
anything, but you might want tofix that.
And they're like I'm notbothered.
And I was thinking, oh my God,this room full of people and
this company spending money onmarketing and branding and doing
a good job for their customers,trying to drive referral
traffic, and 86% of all searchesfor information start on Google
and 86% of people looking upthat company see a red bit of
(45:38):
text that says permanentlyclosed.
Don't let that happen to you.
Your business is cruciallyimportant and it's free.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
It, is it really?
Speaker 1 (45:49):
is.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
I think with the, you know, think as simple as we
talked about SEO really is.
It's just the truth of it, butit also can get complex.
It's a big spider web of thingsthat you can do.
You do the complexities as youhave done a lot of the
foundational stuff, but doingthose places is like it allows
(46:12):
people just to just focus onthat, just get into that thing.
And then I would also advise,like the next step on that is on
your social media channels,doing the same type of practice.
Like who are you, what you know, like making sure the because
Google is crawling, like Andrewpointed out earlier, it's about
if it has your places and thenyou're big into Instagram,
(46:33):
because that's where a lot ofyour readers are.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Oh, I see that all the time.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
Fix that crap too, and tell Facebook what you're
about.
The thing is, the bot will gocheck your places, go look at
your social.
It's going okay, check, check.
They're at the same location,they have the same phone number.
The same phone number, the samecontact, this the same hours,
and it's just going validate,validate, validate and all
that's going credibility.
Speaker 3 (46:58):
I said that I don't use acronyms, but I'm going to
use one because it's nap, whichI like, because nap just means a
little sleep but it's name,address, phone number.
Make sure they're the sameeverywhere you are.
I know that's exactly whatyou're saying and it's free.
It's another free thing to dobecause you won't just be listed
on Google Business, you have tohave your address on the bottom
(47:19):
of your website and it will beon business directories.
There's loads of freedirectories that are associated
with newspapers here in the UK.
There'll be thousands of themin the States as as well, but if
you don't put your informationdown exactly the same way on all
of them, it makes it hard forgoogle to match it up and people
always think well, how would Iget that wrong very, very easily
?
This building I'm in is sevenbailey close.
(47:41):
Ipswich is the shortest version.
The address the longest versionis seven bailey close.
Hadley road, industrial estate,south ipswich, ipswich, suffolk
, you know there's all thesedifferent ways.
I think you, you have anadvantage in the states because
you have a zip code and youdon't have these very, very two
things we like in this country,like very, very long addresses
(48:02):
and very, very long names.
You know, we love it when awhole load of people get married
and they both keep their nameand it takes you 10 minutes to
introduce your friends.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
And then 20 minutes to describe where you live.
Right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
So we need to wrap this discussion up.
Unfortunately we're running outof time, but I think this is
some really valuable informationfor our listeners.
So I used to go to Londonoccasionally.
I had several clients overthere in years past and I was
always fascinated with the wayit worked over there.
(48:37):
The arguments the Brits werealways the Irish and Scots made
fun of the Brits and they saidthey were all uptight.
And then the Scots and the Britsall made fun of the Irish and
(48:57):
said they were all drunks.
And then the Irish and theBritish made fun of the Scots
and said they were all cheap.
Is that still the case?
It's been a while.
You think you'll find it'senshrined in law.
Is that still the case?
Speaker 3 (49:10):
It's been a while I've been there, you'll find
it's enshrined in law.
And when did you see KingCharles' coronation?
Yeah, he has the duty to upholdthey took out the bit about the
duty to uphold the Christianfaith and it is just the duty to
uphold.
The joke an Englishman, anIrishman, the Scotsman walk into
a bar.
So the King's speech next year,which they genuinely put on
(49:32):
television.
They stop all television andput on the King's Speech.
It's going to start, I hope,with an Englishman, scotsman,
irishman walk into a bar andthen hilarity will ensue, I'm
sure.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Well, it's been great having you on the show.
If anyone wants to reach out toyou, what is your contact
information?
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Andrew, the website is yeseoio and that's Y-E-S-E-O,
dot I-O.
And it's I-O because that meansinput, output, because with SEO
, put good stuff in and you'llget good stuff out.
You can also find me on myYouTube channel, which is called
the Business Amplifier Podcast.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
Okay, Awesome, that's great.
Well, I think this has been awonderful episode.
It's been educational for me.
He's an old fart.
He doesn't know anything aboutthis.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, I think that I honestly believe though I mean
you know to your point aboutyourself, mark, but then there's
new confusion related to AI and, like you don't have to
optimize or you know, I've seena lot like the advertising side
of algorithms has, especially onthe social side, andrew, I've
(50:42):
seen has really interestinglybecome stronger, like as far as
getting discoverability, becauseeverybody's trying to get paid
by ads on the social platforms,but people cannot forget about
the seo, the foundational roots.
I mean there's not a human inthe world that likes to be lied
to.
There is not a human and thebest bots don't want to be lied
(51:06):
to either, and so all you got todo is just speak the truth,
just be honest, you know, andthen be consistent with that
honesty.
Speaker 1 (51:14):
I learned that from both of you guys.
Today the consistency is socritical.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, and then the nice thing is you haven't got to
invent anything.
It's your business, it's inyour head, right?
That's the most powerful thing.
You can ignore all the seoadvice in the world.
Just have a good business, allright well of it.
It's ain't advertising, it'struth-telling yeah, which I
realize that's not going to helpme get work, is it if I keep
(51:40):
going out and telling peoplethat you don't need seo?
Just wait a minute?
Speaker 1 (51:45):
I thought you said we're supposed to share all this
stuff and that's how they findus.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
So no, no, no To do SEO.
You just give me $10,000 a weekand I'll sort it out for you.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
All right, guys?
Well, we really appreciate yourbeing here today with us,
Andrew, and hope you have agreat rest of the day and week.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
And until next time.
This has been another episodeof big talk about small business
business.
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