September 3, 2025 • 34 mins
🎙️ I had a blast joining the Grow and Learn Podcast with Zorna! We dove deep into SEO, digital marketing, and how businesses can actually get seen online. 🚀
I shared how I’ve been helping companies since 2007 grow their visibility using SEO, content, backlinks, and the right digital strategies. We also talked about:
- Why backlinks are still 🔑 for Google rankings
- The shift to YouTube, TikTok, and short-form video 🎥
- How AI (yep, ChatGPT too 🤖) is shaking up content and SEO
- The power of email marketing 📧 and how it still outperforms social
It was a fun, engaging conversation all about cutting through the noise online and focusing on where your audience really is. 🌎
👉 Tune in to hear my tips, stories, and strategies to grow your business with SEO and digital marketing!
#SEO #DigitalMarketing #GrowAndLearn #Backlinks #ContentStrategy #AI #MarketingTips #SocialMedia
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Hi everyone.
Welcome to the Grow andLearn podcast.
This is Zorna, your host.
I'm especially welcominganybody who wants to
start a business,anybody who's engaged in
a small business, maybe growing.
You want to learn moreabout digital marketing,
about how to get aheadon social media.
So today we arewelcoming a specialist
in this area.
(00:32):
He's been in businesssince 2007, helping companies
optimize with SEO withall kinds of digital
marketing techniques.
Brandon Lebo.
Hi, welcome.
Thank you for having meon today.
Very good to have you.
You're based in la, right?
(00:55):
That correct?
Mhm, yep.
Los Angeles.
Pretty much grew up herewith my whole life.
So it's stugh to leavewith this weather.
It's too nice out here.
Ah, so you're in theepicenter of, social media
development, so to say.
I mean it's everywhere.
But I suppose a lot ofHollywood, actors would be using
(01:15):
services similar to whatyou're offering.
Yep.
Nowadays pretty mucheveryone wants it.
So everyone needs thatvisibility and exposure
with digital marketingto get that awareness.
Yeah.
Okay, so I have personally been,buying services similar
to yours,years ago when I started
(01:38):
my first, business, well,the first business where
I needed to use such services,and all kinds of
optimizations that I'veever used actually
turned out to be not sosuccessful.
I'll tell you what hasworked for me the best.
But I want to know,is SEO still working?
(01:58):
Everything that used tobe hot back in the day,
like backlinks,like writing blogs,
like optimizing, for Google.
Does this still work?
Ye, it's changed how it works,but for the most part
it's still the sameprinciples where you
want to have goodcontent on your website.
(02:18):
That way Google knowswhat keywords you're targeting,
but also that you havegood quality backlinks.
Because Google doesn'treally care what you put
on a website.
They just don't trustanybody without you
building trust up.
And the way to buildtrust is by getting
other websites to talkabout you.
So a backlink is just aclickable link from
another website thatpoints to yours.
So if you're reading an article,let's say,
(02:40):
on entrepreneur.com andin there it says Brandon Lebo,
and you click on it andit goes to my website.
I'd be getting a backlink fromentrepreneur.
Com.
So backlinks still workas now Google's looking
for quality, not quantity.
So in the past it was anumbers game.
If you have 100backlinks and I have 200
I'd rank higher than you.
Now it's not the numberof backlinks,
but it's the number ofquality backlinks.
(03:02):
And a quality backlinkto Google is a backlink
from a site that'srelated to what you're doing.
So not just finding anyrandom site to link out to you,
but finding sites thatare targeted and related
to what you're doing,that's going to really help out.
So overall strategiesare similar.
It's changed how theylook at all this stuff
because people havefound ways to gameain
(03:22):
the system and loopholeson how to get content
out there that's lowquality or duplicate
content and things like that.
Where Google's like,we don't want this,
we want original qualitycontent and we want good
quality backlinks.
Mhm.
I read somewhere and Ialso have the observation that
search volume isshifting from Google to YouTube.
(03:44):
So people are actuallynot looking for any
terms anymore.
In YouTube itself.
I know, sorry.
In Google itself.
I know YouTube is ownedby Google, but they're going
straight to YouTube.
So wouldn't it bemore efficient to
optimize for YouTubethan YouTube content
instead of bothering towrite blogs and optimize
(04:04):
with backlinks for Google?
if your audience is there,but your audience might
not always be on YouTubeso it's just
understanding who youraudience is,
where they're going to search.
But ultimately YouTubeis just a way to get
people to your websitebecause people can't
really buy off of YouTube.
So if you're sellingphysical products,
you might have a reviewthat you post on YouTube
(04:25):
but people can't buythat product on YouTube
directly.
Maybe they might changethat in the future,
but right now YouTube isjust a way to get people
to your website.
That way once they're onyour website they can
make that purchase allthat stuff.
But YouTube is justanother way to get traffic.
Just like Google'a wayto get traffic to your website.
And it's all about justknowing who your
audience is and whereare they actively looking.
(04:48):
Are they on Google?
Are they on Yelp?
Are they on TripAdvisor?
Are they on social media?
Where are they?
And you just have totake a step back and put
yourself in the user'spoint of view.
If you're looking foryour productct or
service wherever you goand that's where you need to be.
But YouTube is thesecond most popular
website on the Internet.
Google's the most popular.
(05:08):
YouTube and Facebookswitch off every day or
every all the time.
From the second andthird most popular.
But YouTube is just sucha big presence.
People want to, well,they don't want to read
long articles or blogs anymore.
People's attention spansare really short.
So video content is away to capture them and
get them, get their awareness alittle bit easier.
(05:29):
But it's all about justreally understanding is
my audience on YouTube?
Great, be there.
If not, then be where youraudience is at.
M Are you seeing asignificant shift to
TikTok now or how is itshifting the landscape on,
YouTube in general?
Because on my channelI'm seeing a significant
pickup on shorts and Iknow that,
(05:53):
it's a trend everywhere.
So is it worth it tooptimize YouTube videos
or will shorts do?
And then you spread themto all channels because
everyone's hot on shorts now.
You definitely want tooptimize your videos and
create content for eachplatform.
It's not always going towork sharing content
from YouTube ontoFacebook or to Twitter
or to LinkedIn or toVimeo or to TikTok.
(06:16):
Sometimes it can,but it doesn't always work.
So it's best to customtailor each video to
each platform anddefinitely tap into the shorts,
tap into the long formum,tap into TikTok and the
reels or even Instagramposting stories and
reels and all that stuffand just trying to test
it out and see what resonates.
But unfortunately, yeah,there's so many
(06:37):
different platforms nowadays,it kind of becomes overwhelming.
That's where you justgot to figure out who
your core audience is,what platforms are
really active on.
And that's where youneed to be active on.
You don't need to beactive everywhere.
It's really need to beactive on where your
audience is at.
Do you help your clientsidentify the best
channel also and thetype of format they're
more likely to engage with?
(06:59):
Yeah, because I do SEO and itdoesn't always work that
people aren't alwayssearching on Google.
So SEO, search engineoptimization,
and let's say I have aclient that invented a product,
nobody's searching forit on Google,
then it's not reallygoing to work.
If nobody's searching,then can't really help
them out on Google.
And it's like, all right,how do we get awareness?
And that's where socialmedia might come into play,
(07:20):
where that's where youcould showcase a new
product or new inventionor something that no
one's really searchingfor and drive that awareness.
And yeah,it's really important to
just figure out who youraudience is and where are they?
Because you don't wantto invest time finding
out that oh,I spent all this time
putting up my LinkedInand then oh, LinkedIn is S B2B.
But I'm not selling B2B,I'm selling B2C.
(07:41):
So it's truly trying tofigure that out first.
That way you don't spendtoo much time on
channels that aren'tgoing to get that big
return on investment.
I see.
And so you're helpingguide your clients
towards the rightchannel as well or do
you just tell them consider it?
No, I help them out and alsogiven them recommendations.
They're not always receptive toit, but I'll give them
(08:02):
suggestions and saymaybe this might be a
little bit betterbecause this might be
where your audience isversus this is a good platform.
But it doesn't mean thisis where your audience
like you might want tobe on TikTok because
TikTok is so popular.
But if that's not whereyour audience is,
then you don't reallyneed to be there.
I mean it's good to havea profile and have a presence,
but in terms of beingactive all the time,
if that's not where youraudience is,
(08:23):
I want to spend too muchtime on it.
I see.
Mhm.
Okay.
And so what are the hottrends now?
I mean I'd like to alsotalk about AI because
I'm seeing some prettysignificant improvements
there in terms ofincreasing engagement
across different platforms.
So what is yourobservation on trends
(08:44):
and on some of the toolsthat have come with the
development of AI?
Yeah, now chat GPT and's takenover and it's not
slowing down anytimesoon and it's definitely
helped with content creation.
Writing content for articles,blogs, social media content,
website content,mean copywriting,
all that stuff is nowreplaceable with chat GPT.
(09:06):
In the past Google saidwe don't want this.
If you put people likecontent or content
runitt by AI and toolslike that, Google didn't really
like that.
But last year or aboutlike six months ago that
actually said that wedon't care who writes
the content if it's runby people or AI,
as long as it offers value.
That's what Googlereally cares about.
So nowadays,I mean in the past I
(09:28):
would say don't use these tools,but now it's okay.
But I won't just copythem verbatim because
it's not 100% accurate.
You still want to go inand edit them and maybe
use them as like astarting point is like
an outline, away to help you out with
writing content.
But I want to t.
Just copy verbatim.
Not yet.
Few years it might workwhere you just copy
verbatim because themore people that use
(09:48):
these tools,the more it's going to learn,
the more accurate it'sgoing to become.
But right now it isstill not accurate.
So you need to doublecheck and fact check and
proofread to make sureit all looks proper.
I'm using Chat GPT andit's Quite okay.
It needs very littlefine tuning and I think
that the two years or anoverestimation,
(10:09):
I think within a fewmonths it will be
because I'm observinghow it's developing in
the past two, three weeks.
It's really learning.
So I think two years arean overestimation of the
capacity of it.
But I am also talking aboutapps that are optimizing
for example the performance ofInstagram or apps that
(10:32):
help you cut videos oroptimize for keywords and SEO.
On YouTube videos I'musing such.
So it's SEO optimizationusing AIs on all platforms.
What is your opinion onthe quality of these to use AI?
(10:53):
I mean you can use AI tohelp you write like a
meta description and SEOtitle tags because it
gets kind of technical.
I don't know howtechnical you want to get but m.
Go technical.
Yeah, go details.
Yeah.
So they need title tagsand my descriptions and
you could just tell ChatGPD to write you a title
tag or my descriptionbut those come out
(11:15):
really bad and I wouldn't.
No, I'm talking about otherspecific for each platform.
For example forInstagram there's Pat
Social and there are afew more that are AI powered.
For YouTube there is onethat is Vidiq and
there's yet another onethat I can't remember.
So they're integratedstraight into your
browser and they giveyou prompts where to optimize.
So I'm talking aboutreally developed AI
(11:39):
solutions now.
Mhm.
Yeah.
I haven't used thosespecifically so I don't
want to speak on thosetools and give wrong
information.
But I've used GPT4 andother tools like that
and creating pumps andthings like that to help
refine and really honein and get the right
responses that you'relooking for because it's
all about putting theright prompts in and you
(11:59):
don't really need to buythese other tools or
just putting promptstogether for you.
Some of them I'm not Sure.
What you're specificallytalking about,
but there's a lot oftools that will do the
AI for you,but they're just prompts
and if you can writegood prompts yourself,
you don't need to spendthe money on those tools.
But it depends whatthese tools are doing.
If they're doing otherthings besides just
writing prompts,then they might be valuable.
But essentially a lot ofthem are just prompts
(12:21):
that they're just doing for you,that they've taught GPT
how to go and write theright verbiage,
put the right keywordsin the right places.
But you know what you'relooking for and you
could put that in yourself.
Then you don't reallyneed those third party tools.
Mhm.
Okay.
Well, well optimization Ithink will more and more
(12:41):
develop towards AI.
Will.
We'll see what the adoption willbe.
But what is your opinionon email marketing?
Is it amongst your topmarketing tools that you
would recommend or doesit still depend?
No.
Email is always going tobe powerful because you
get full control of email,that's yours,
(13:01):
whereas everything elseis not yours.
Like social media,you're just renting
space off these platforms,you don't own any of
that and you don't getmuch engagement or reach
anymore.
Whereas with the email,you collect emails,
you send out the emails,everyone gets that email
doesn't mean they'regoing to open it.
Some might go into spam,but at least they're
going to get that email.
Whereas you post on Facebook,only 5% of your audience
(13:23):
will ever see whatyou're posting on
Facebook because thereach is so low that
they don't show it to everybody.
But email is alwaysgoing to be number.
Well not always but forthe time being and ever
since I've been doingdigital marketing has
always been the numberone channel.
They get visibility andget traffic because you
control that.
Just like your website,you get full control of
that email,you have full control of
your audience and it'sgoing to be the most
(13:43):
powerful by far.
But you have to collect emails.
You can't just buy emails.
And that's the toughpart is how do you get
people to give you theiremail address?
That's where you have tooffer something of value.
Like if your ecommerce website,you just have a little pop up.
Anyone goes to yourwebsite saying give me
your email and I'll giveyou 10% off your first purchase.
But if you're a servicebased business,
that's where you got toget a little bit more creative.
(14:04):
Like if you're a dentist,what could you offer
people that's going towant them to give you
your email?
That's going to be alittle bit more tricky.
Maybe you write an ebookabout seven ways to
whiten your teethwithout going to the
dent or I don't know,something unique where
you're getting,like hooking them and
offering them that free content.
Like myself, I offer classes,so I teach classes.
(14:24):
I also have free classesand I'll give away free
classes to people inexchange for the email address.
So it's all aboutgetting creative and
figuring out a way toget people to give you
their email.
Because if you're justbuying emails,
that's not going to work.
And also got to thinksomeone's selling an
email list of email addresses.
You got to think howmany people have bought
that list and that emailaddress is getting
spammed all the time.
(14:44):
That person probablydoesn't even use that
email address anymorebecause it've gotten
spam so much.
So don't buy emails,collect them.
And then when you dosend out emails,
just offer value.
Never promote yourself.
So when people sign upyour email list,
if you just startpromoting yourself,
no one's going to wantto read that.
Got to take a step backand think you re sign up
for someone's email list.
(15:05):
Do you want to just hearthem talk about why
they're the best,why they're the greatest?
Proably not.
You want to know whatcan they do to help you,
what tips can they offer you?
So giving them free tips,free advice,
free or like offeringbenefits and solutions
and then maybe subtlypromoting yourself at the end.
But if you just promoteyourself in those emails
lose people's trust.
And they're not going to,and they're not going to
(15:26):
want to read those emails.
They're probably goingto unsubscribe.
Mhm.
Well, I don't know.
With email marketing there,I've heard of quite a
few different opinionsof what is like the pace
you're supposed to sendout emails.
Like three nurturing emailsfollowed by a sales email.
You know, there are all kinds offormulas there.
(15:48):
What is your formula foremail marketing?
Just provide value.
I mean I'll nurture andthen at the bottom I'll
say and by the way,if you want to contact
me for every websiteanalysis or to learn more,
here's my link.
But I'm not promoting itspecifically.
Every once in a while Ipromote myself,
but that's really fewand far in between.
(16:09):
So most of them are justnurture offering that
value and then su subtlyat the end being like
and by the way,you want to learn more?
Here's a link to mycalendar to book some time.
My calendar so maybe 1out of every 10 that
might be promotionalwhere maybe the 10th one
I'll be like hey and by the way,are you still interested in SEO?
Here's a link to booksometime but that I try
(16:29):
not to do that too oftenbecause you want to
really offer value andif you're just promoting
yourself all the time,people are unsubscribed.
So try to make it likewhere I'm blogging,
where my blogs aresaying where I try to
offer value, give insights,give tips and tricks and
solutions at work versusjust trying to promote myself.
Mhm.
(16:50):
Is this the only way youconvert customers?
Through this subtle linkto your services?
At the bottom of the emails,how do you convert?
Well that one is just.
The email is justanother touch point to
keep myself top of mind.
Because they read those emails,they're probably not
going to just convertright away but it keeps
you top of mind.
So like oh I rememberBrandon does SEO.
(17:12):
And then they might seesome of my ads that
follow them around.
So if you go on Amazonand you look at a product,
you don't buy it,those ads will fall you around.
It's called remarketing.
Do the same thing for mywebsite or any of my clients.
I recommend that theyremarket to anyone
that's been to thewebsite and did do a
specific conversion action.
Redar remarket to them,follow them around
because these are allwarm leads.
(17:33):
People have been to yourwebsite, they know who you are,
something distractedthem or whatever it may
be that didn't get themto convert.
Let's try to keepyourself top of mind.
Especially like ifyou're ecommerce and
someone went to yourshopping cart,
added a product to theshopping cart but then't
check out.
Let's follow them aroundbecause they were that
close to making thatpurchase but they didn't do it.
Maybe we offered them am coupon code or
(17:54):
something of valuethat's just going to
reinforce it andhopefully get them to convert.
So just trying to deepmyself top of mind and
eventually hopefullythey'll want to.
They'want to reach outbecause you need
multiple touch pointsdepending on what you sell.
You're just selling a T shirt,don't really need to do
all that but somethinghigh ticket over 100 or 1,000.
(18:15):
You probably want tohave those multiple
touch points to getpeople to really trust you more.
Mhm.
We talked about thedevelopments in AI and
the fact thatcontent is now accepted
when it's produced by AI solely.
is there anything elsethat is a novelty in the
(18:35):
digital marketing sphere?
I Another one thatGoogle's look at is like
user experience.
So they're looking athow people behave on
your website because inthe past if you just
rank for a keyword onGoogle that looks good,
you're going to rank forthat keyword.
But Google said, all right,that's not really what
we want to do.
We want to make sure that when,if you rank number one
(18:55):
for a keyword and peopleclick from Google and go
to your website,that they stay on your website.
Because if people go toyour website and then
leave immediately,that tells Google maybe
you aren't the most relevant,that something's off.
So that's a big signalnow is user experience
and making sure thatpeople go from Google
and stay on your website.
They don't just leave.
Otherwise Google justthinks something might
(19:15):
be off and wrong.
And there's so manylittle things.
I mean Google doesn'treally tell you what
they do because theykeep it top secret.
They don't really wantyou to know what's going
on in their algorithm.
Every once in in a whilethey announce what
they're doing,but most of the time
they really keep a topsecret because they
ultimately want you toget frustrated and spend
money on paid adsbecause that's really
how they make all their money.
And SEO is just therebecause if Google was
(19:37):
just full of ads,nobody's going to want
to use Google.
So they have to havethat balance of the organic,
the SEO and the paid ads.
Mhm.
So how do you figure outthe algorithms?
Do you reverse engineerevery time there's a change?
that would be toughbecause it changes every
single day there's a change.
Oh wow.
They're usually tinychanges that aren't that
(19:59):
big of an impact.
Every few months they'llhave big updates and
that's where try tofigure out what's going on.
What's Google looking at now?
Talking to other webmasters,other people that do SEO,
reading up in differentblogs and forums or
looking your Facebook groups,listening to podcasts,
or whatver I could do tolearn and try to just
then try to reverse engineer.
But sometimes they'lltell you what they're
(20:20):
looking for.
Every once in a whilewe'll tell you.
In 2013 they said ifyour website is not
mobile friendly,we're not Going to show
you on mobile devices,which is kind of apparent.
Makes sense.
If you're searching onyour cell phone and you
click on a website andit's really hard to read,
you have to zoom in.
Not a good user experience.
So Google says mobilefriendly websites going
to get preferentialtreatment on mobile devices.
(20:42):
They said a while ago ifyour website loads
slowly then they mightpotentially penalize you.
They want fast loading websites,but other than that they
don't really tell youmuch about what's going on.
So it's just becoming adetective and trying to
figure out what's going on.
What's Google thinkingabout nowadays?
What's the future of SEOand how do I make Google happy?
Mhm.
(21:04):
Let's talk about Facebook then.
So you said that 5% onlyof all posts are being shown,
what is theeffectiveness of their ads?
Because in my experiencewith ads,
I've actually completelygiven up on Facebook ads
because for me this hasnever worked even when
professionally done.
(21:25):
So what is yourexperience on Facebook ads?
The ads work justknowing who your audience is.
So you have tounderstand Facebook,
it's going to be cheaperthan Google because
you're getting lowerquality content or lower
quality traffic.
If someone's searchingon Google, they're searching,
they're looking rightnow for your product or service.
(21:47):
Whereas social,you put in all these
parameters saying thisis my age group, my demographic,
this is the interestthat they have,
this is who I want to target.
But that doesn't meanthey want to use your
product or service.
They might want to useit in the future,
they might want to useit in the past,
but it doesn't mean theywant to use it now.
So Google, they're searching,they have that intent.
Social, it works,but it's just different.
(22:09):
Social is better forlike awareness.
So driving awareness forlike let's say you have
a new product or servicethat nobody's searching
for on Google.
Can't really do SEO ifnobody's searching for it.
So social is a way todrive that awareness and
get people to find outabout stuff like that.
But in terms of gettingnew leads,
it doesn't always work.
Like myself, I do SEO.
Not many people aregoing to go on Facebook
(22:30):
looking for an SEO company.
Some people do,but most people aren't
really going on social.
Looking for dentists, lawyers,service based businesses
doesn't really work too well.
But it does work to keepmyself top of mind.
So someone goes to my website,they don't fill out the form,
they don't contact me,then I'll remarket to them,
I'll follow them around onGoogle, I'll follow them around
(22:51):
on social,I'll follow them around
pretty much everywherebecause I want to keep
myself top of mind.
It doesn't matter whereyou are or I keep myself
top of mind.
So REM marketingdefinitely I would do on
social media.
But the cold outreach,I probably say Google's
going to be worthspending extra money
because you're gettingthat intent,
that buyer intent behind it,which is a little
different than social.
(23:12):
Mhm.
and on Google when I'mlooking for something,
at least it was likethat maybe a few weeks
ago because I paidattention maybe months ago,
that always on top oftheir YouTube videos.
I think they changedthis so now it links.
But at some point it wasmostly YouTube videos
(23:34):
showing us top searchresults for Google.
So isn't it then betterto focus all efforts on
developing a YouTubechannel and on YouTube content?
Not really.
Not necessarily.
Well Google owns YouTubeso they're going to promote it.
(23:54):
So when you search on Google,there's websites that appear.
There's 10 websites.
Nowadays though,it's not just websites
that appear in theorganic listings.
There's images, there's videos,there's maps.
But all that is random.
Sometimes it appears,sometimes it
doesn'doesn't always appear.
The 10 websites willalways appear.
There will always be 10websites.
If you're a local business,like if you're searching
(24:15):
for like a dentist or arestaurant, then the maps will
appear.
Sometimes the videoswill appear,
sometimes the imageswill appear.
But kind of hit or miss,you never know when
Google's going to showthem or when they're not
going to show them.
But best practice isoptimize all your images
because you want to makesure those images show up.
So the way to optimizeyour images is the file name.
Before you upload animage to your website,
(24:36):
you want to name thatimage with descriptive words.
You don't want to justname it image00Onet JPEG.
You want to name itdescriptive words.
And when you upload itto your website,
each platform is goingto ask for different
things like title, description,caption,
but they're going to askfor an alt tag or
alternative text.
That's where you alsowant to put those
keywords or describewhat that image is about
with the videos.
(24:57):
When you search onGoogle and you see videos,
Google owns YouTube andGoogle only cares about
making money.
So when you search on Google,if you see a video,
majority of the timeit's going to be YouTube
because Google doesn'twant to promote Facebook
or Vimeo.
They want to promoteYouTube because let's
say you search on Google,you don't click on an ad
at the top.
Google doesn't make any money.
They're not going to behappy about that.
But if you search onGoogle and there's a
(25:19):
video in there,there's a YouTube video
and you click on it,the first thing that appears.
Anytime you watch aYouTube video, there's always an
advertisement.
So YouTube is making money,which is really Google
making money.
And they're going topromote that as much as
they can.
But it doesn't alwaysguarantee that YouTube
is going to be shown inthe search results.
So I would still promoteGoogle or promote your website.
And if you have videos,I'd optimize those for
(25:41):
YouTube and all the platforms,but really push YouTube
as much as possible.
Just because Google isgoing to promote YouTube
as much as they can,they're not going to
promote Facebook orInstagram videos.
Sometimes they'll appear there,butjoy of the time it's
always going to be a YouTube.
And having that presencethere is just another
way to get more real estate,more exposure and people
(26:01):
also buy off people.
So YouTube is a greatway to put a facey
behind the company,build that trust up and
let people know thatyou're a real business
or that you're a personas well behind the
business that's going tohelp out that you care
about them and thatyou're there to offer solutions.
How long does it take tooptimize, a website for SEO?
(26:22):
I have now speak aboutmy experience again.
I have done this forthree websites and the
last one wasfor my business Hereal
and Learn.
And I worked with acompany for more than a
year and they did manageto pick up my website from the,
I don't know,400th place or whatever.
(26:44):
I think I was on theeighth page.
So at some point theybrought it forward but
it was not like it was asignificant improvement
where I would show up inthe first two pages.
So I mean,I guess it also depends
on the kind of business buthow long does it take
(27:04):
for you to optimizeusing SEO and see
positive results?
That one variesdepending on how much
shows youield has beendone to your website
versus the competitors.
Because really it's notone size fits all.
It's not just saying Ito take six months
because every website isdifferent and we need to
(27:25):
look at how much SEO hasbeen done to your website.
Versus the competitorsand what's the disconnect.
And that kind lets meknow how long it's going
to take.
If you're a brand newwebsite then it's
definitely going to takeat least six or more
months because Googlejust doesn't trust
anybody and you can'tjust build that trust up.
It takes time to buildthat trust up.
Trust really comes frombacklinks.
The more backlinks youhave from trustworthy, relevant,
(27:47):
authoritative sites,the faster Google's
going to trust you and rank you.
So that's the biggestpart is the backlinks
take time to build.
And also once you buildbacklinks, Google might not find
that backlink for acouple of days, a couple weeks,
couple months.
They might never findthat backlink.
Which is also part thattakes time is you could
build all these backlinks,but that doesn't mean
(28:08):
Google could find thembecause Google tries to
find all the pages onthe Internet but they
can't find every websiteand sometimes takes them
a lot longer to findthose backlinks or they
might never find thatbacklink and it's not
going to help out withthose rankings.
So it is a more long term play.
SEO does take a lot oftime and it really just
comes down to who yourcompetitors are,
how much SEO have theydone versus you?
(28:29):
And the more competitionyou have,
the more time it's goingto take, the less competition,
the more niche you get,the less competition,
the faster and theeasier it is to get
those rankings.
So you're just sellndinglike T shirts and
something really broadand generic like that.
It's really toughbecause you're competing
against big corporationslike Target, Walmart, Amazon,
all these big, big corporations.
(28:50):
But if you could findsomething more niche,
maybe organic amp Tshirts for children,
something like that,it's a little bit more niche,
a little bit more unique.
Less competition meansit'll be a little bit
easier to break throughand get into that market
and get you those rankings.
Mhm, I see.
Okay, and how about thesesmaller platforms or
(29:15):
video platforms or also podasts,podcast platforms.
do you recommendfocusing on any of these
or do they not really matter?
I mean if your audienceis on them then I would
definitely be on them.
So maybe there's somevideo platform out there
that you know youraudience is specifically on.
(29:37):
I would definitely jumpon it even if it's a small,
tiny platform,if that's where your
audience that you needto be there.
So but I woulddefinitely try to be as
many places Possiblebecause you never know
who your audiences,where they're going to be.
And I would just try tothrow everything against
the wall and see what works.
Look at analytics andother tools to see where
am I getting I traffic.
Maybe Vimeo is going tobring you more traffic
(29:57):
than YouTube, which I doubt it.
But you never know.
Every website, every business isdifferent and you never
know until you test.
So it's all about trialand error.
Test it out, see what works,push more time and money
into what's working,pull money away from
what's not working,and just try it all.
But I would try them all out,or at least the bigger
ones and see in analytics,using tools like that,
see how much traffic areyou getting.
(30:19):
You could see conversions,you can see sales,
and you might besurprised that some of
these smaller platformsmight bring in more
sales and more leads andsome of the bigger ones.
But you never know untilyou test.
Yeah, and would you say thatadvertising is, a must because,
you can advertise, I mean,you can optimize all you want,
(30:39):
but if a part of thealgorithm of Google is
to also have,advertising spent and you don't.
So my question is,does advertising
represent a significantportion of the
optimization efforts?
I mean, Google said that runningpaid ads is not going to
(31:00):
help out SEO becausethere'd be a big
conflict of interest.
So you don't need to berunning paid ads to help
your SEO.
I mean, Google will get in a lotof trouble.
They might.
I, doubt they're doinganything that would
jeopardize their,the credibility to do
that because then peoplewill be like, oh,
you're just paying toget up there.
So SEO isn't going to help out.
I mean, paid ads isn't going tohelp out with SEO,
(31:21):
but doing an SEO willhelp out your paid ads.
So if you optimize yourwebsite and have an SEO
optimized website,then Google said your
paid ads will actuallybe cheaper.
So if you're runningpaid ads on Google and
it might cost a dollarfor every click to your website,
but if you optimize yourwebsite and really have,
really good SEO on your website,Google said instead of a dollar,
(31:41):
they might charge you0.98 per click.
So you're going to savea little bit of money
off those clicks,which in the long term
will add up.
But other than that,that's the only benefit of SEO,
will help make your adsa little bit cheaper.
But running paid adsisn't going to help out
with SEO.
So where can people findyou Brandon if they need
SEO optimization and ifthey need to figure out
(32:02):
what the best channel isfor them to use,
I actually create aspecial gift for
everybody if they go to mywebsite@seooptimizers.com
comm that's SEO O P T IM M I z eash r s.com
gift and they can findthat there.
Along with my contactinformation and a bunch
of classes I've doneover the years I've done
(32:23):
up for free so you cansee step by step how I
do a lot of stuff thatwe talked about.
And also if they want awebsite analysis,
I'm happy to check outtheir website from an
SEO point of view for free.
And they could book sometime on my calendar
there as well.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much foryour generosity in
giving out this information.
It was a pleasure.
I appreciate youenighting us in these details.
(32:45):
It's also important for me.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for listeningto Grow and Learn.
We hope that you foundour podcast informative,
engaging and inspiring.
Our mission is to helpyou keep growing and learning,
and we hope that ourconvers and insights
have provided you withpractical advice and
useful perspectives.
(33:06):
If you're looking forpersonalized support and
guidance to help youachieve your personal or
professional growth objectives,I offer a range of
services to help As atrusted management
partner and mentor,I work with businesses
in the process oftransformation,
looking for new streamsof business as well as M and A.
With an extensiveprofessional network of
(33:26):
experts and mentors,I can bring on board the
right person or teambased on the specific
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To learn more about theservices I offer and how
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you can also reach outto me via email or social media.
I'd love to hear fromyou and if you enjoyed
this episode of Grow and Learn,please subscribe to our
(33:48):
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perspectives with you inthe future.
Hi everyone.
Welcome to the Grow andLearn podcast.
This is Zorna, your host.
I'm especially welcominganybody who wants to
start a business,anybody who's engaged in
a small business, maybe growing.
You want to learn moreabout digital marketing,
about how to get aheadon social media.
So today we arewelcoming a specialist
in this area.
(00:32):
He's been in businesssince 2007, helping companies
optimize with SEO withall kinds of digital
marketing techniques.
Brandon Lebo.
Hi, welcome.
Thank you for having meon today.
Very good to have you.
You're based in la, right?
(00:55):
That correct?
Mhm, yep.
Los Angeles.
Pretty much grew up herewith my whole life.
So it's stugh to leavewith this weather.
It's too nice out here.
Ah, so you're in theepicenter of, social media
development, so to say.
I mean it's everywhere.
But I suppose a lot ofHollywood, actors would be using
(01:15):
services similar to whatyou're offering.
Yep.
Nowadays pretty mucheveryone wants it.
So everyone needs thatvisibility and exposure
with digital marketingto get that awareness.
Yeah.
Okay, so I have personally been,buying services similar
to yours,years ago when I started
(01:38):
my first, business, well,the first business where
I needed to use such services,and all kinds of
optimizations that I'veever used actually
turned out to be not sosuccessful.
I'll tell you what hasworked for me the best.
But I want to know,is SEO still working?
(01:58):
Everything that used tobe hot back in the day,
like backlinks,like writing blogs,
like optimizing, for Google.
Does this still work?
Ye, it's changed how it works,but for the most part
it's still the sameprinciples where you
want to have goodcontent on your website.
(02:18):
That way Google knowswhat keywords you're targeting,
but also that you havegood quality backlinks.
Because Google doesn'treally care what you put
on a website.
They just don't trustanybody without you
building trust up.
And the way to buildtrust is by getting
other websites to talkabout you.
So a backlink is just aclickable link from
another website thatpoints to yours.
So if you're reading an article,let's say,
(02:40):
on entrepreneur.com andin there it says Brandon Lebo,
and you click on it andit goes to my website.
I'd be getting a backlink fromentrepreneur.
Com.
So backlinks still workas now Google's looking
for quality, not quantity.
So in the past it was anumbers game.
If you have 100backlinks and I have 200
I'd rank higher than you.
Now it's not the numberof backlinks,
but it's the number ofquality backlinks.
(03:02):
And a quality backlinkto Google is a backlink
from a site that'srelated to what you're doing.
So not just finding anyrandom site to link out to you,
but finding sites thatare targeted and related
to what you're doing,that's going to really help out.
So overall strategiesare similar.
It's changed how theylook at all this stuff
because people havefound ways to gameain
(03:22):
the system and loopholeson how to get content
out there that's lowquality or duplicate
content and things like that.
Where Google's like,we don't want this,
we want original qualitycontent and we want good
quality backlinks.
Mhm.
I read somewhere and Ialso have the observation that
search volume isshifting from Google to YouTube.
(03:44):
So people are actuallynot looking for any
terms anymore.
In YouTube itself.
I know, sorry.
In Google itself.
I know YouTube is ownedby Google, but they're going
straight to YouTube.
So wouldn't it bemore efficient to
optimize for YouTubethan YouTube content
instead of bothering towrite blogs and optimize
(04:04):
with backlinks for Google?
if your audience is there,but your audience might
not always be on YouTubeso it's just
understanding who youraudience is,
where they're going to search.
But ultimately YouTubeis just a way to get
people to your websitebecause people can't
really buy off of YouTube.
So if you're sellingphysical products,
you might have a reviewthat you post on YouTube
(04:25):
but people can't buythat product on YouTube
directly.
Maybe they might changethat in the future,
but right now YouTube isjust a way to get people
to your website.
That way once they're onyour website they can
make that purchase allthat stuff.
But YouTube is justanother way to get traffic.
Just like Google'a wayto get traffic to your website.
And it's all about justknowing who your
audience is and whereare they actively looking.
(04:48):
Are they on Google?
Are they on Yelp?
Are they on TripAdvisor?
Are they on social media?
Where are they?
And you just have totake a step back and put
yourself in the user'spoint of view.
If you're looking foryour productct or
service wherever you goand that's where you need to be.
But YouTube is thesecond most popular
website on the Internet.
Google's the most popular.
(05:08):
YouTube and Facebookswitch off every day or
every all the time.
From the second andthird most popular.
But YouTube is just sucha big presence.
People want to, well,they don't want to read
long articles or blogs anymore.
People's attention spansare really short.
So video content is away to capture them and
get them, get their awareness alittle bit easier.
(05:29):
But it's all about justreally understanding is
my audience on YouTube?
Great, be there.
If not, then be where youraudience is at.
M Are you seeing asignificant shift to
TikTok now or how is itshifting the landscape on,
YouTube in general?
Because on my channelI'm seeing a significant
pickup on shorts and Iknow that,
(05:53):
it's a trend everywhere.
So is it worth it tooptimize YouTube videos
or will shorts do?
And then you spread themto all channels because
everyone's hot on shorts now.
You definitely want tooptimize your videos and
create content for eachplatform.
It's not always going towork sharing content
from YouTube ontoFacebook or to Twitter
or to LinkedIn or toVimeo or to TikTok.
(06:16):
Sometimes it can,but it doesn't always work.
So it's best to customtailor each video to
each platform anddefinitely tap into the shorts,
tap into the long formum,tap into TikTok and the
reels or even Instagramposting stories and
reels and all that stuffand just trying to test
it out and see what resonates.
But unfortunately, yeah,there's so many
(06:37):
different platforms nowadays,it kind of becomes overwhelming.
That's where you justgot to figure out who
your core audience is,what platforms are
really active on.
And that's where youneed to be active on.
You don't need to beactive everywhere.
It's really need to beactive on where your
audience is at.
Do you help your clientsidentify the best
channel also and thetype of format they're
more likely to engage with?
(06:59):
Yeah, because I do SEO and itdoesn't always work that
people aren't alwayssearching on Google.
So SEO, search engineoptimization,
and let's say I have aclient that invented a product,
nobody's searching forit on Google,
then it's not reallygoing to work.
If nobody's searching,then can't really help
them out on Google.
And it's like, all right,how do we get awareness?
And that's where socialmedia might come into play,
(07:20):
where that's where youcould showcase a new
product or new inventionor something that no
one's really searchingfor and drive that awareness.
And yeah,it's really important to
just figure out who youraudience is and where are they?
Because you don't wantto invest time finding
out that oh,I spent all this time
putting up my LinkedInand then oh, LinkedIn is S B2B.
But I'm not selling B2B,I'm selling B2C.
(07:41):
So it's truly trying tofigure that out first.
That way you don't spendtoo much time on
channels that aren'tgoing to get that big
return on investment.
I see.
And so you're helpingguide your clients
towards the rightchannel as well or do
you just tell them consider it?
No, I help them out and alsogiven them recommendations.
They're not always receptive toit, but I'll give them
(08:02):
suggestions and saymaybe this might be a
little bit betterbecause this might be
where your audience isversus this is a good platform.
But it doesn't mean thisis where your audience
like you might want tobe on TikTok because
TikTok is so popular.
But if that's not whereyour audience is,
then you don't reallyneed to be there.
I mean it's good to havea profile and have a presence,
but in terms of beingactive all the time,
if that's not where youraudience is,
(08:23):
I want to spend too muchtime on it.
I see.
Mhm.
Okay.
And so what are the hottrends now?
I mean I'd like to alsotalk about AI because
I'm seeing some prettysignificant improvements
there in terms ofincreasing engagement
across different platforms.
So what is yourobservation on trends
(08:44):
and on some of the toolsthat have come with the
development of AI?
Yeah, now chat GPT and's takenover and it's not
slowing down anytimesoon and it's definitely
helped with content creation.
Writing content for articles,blogs, social media content,
website content,mean copywriting,
all that stuff is nowreplaceable with chat GPT.
(09:06):
In the past Google saidwe don't want this.
If you put people likecontent or content
runitt by AI and toolslike that, Google didn't really
like that.
But last year or aboutlike six months ago that
actually said that wedon't care who writes
the content if it's runby people or AI,
as long as it offers value.
That's what Googlereally cares about.
So nowadays,I mean in the past I
(09:28):
would say don't use these tools,but now it's okay.
But I won't just copythem verbatim because
it's not 100% accurate.
You still want to go inand edit them and maybe
use them as like astarting point is like
an outline, away to help you out with
writing content.
But I want to t.
Just copy verbatim.
Not yet.
Few years it might workwhere you just copy
verbatim because themore people that use
(09:48):
these tools,the more it's going to learn,
the more accurate it'sgoing to become.
But right now it isstill not accurate.
So you need to doublecheck and fact check and
proofread to make sureit all looks proper.
I'm using Chat GPT andit's Quite okay.
It needs very littlefine tuning and I think
that the two years or anoverestimation,
(10:09):
I think within a fewmonths it will be
because I'm observinghow it's developing in
the past two, three weeks.
It's really learning.
So I think two years arean overestimation of the
capacity of it.
But I am also talking aboutapps that are optimizing
for example the performance ofInstagram or apps that
(10:32):
help you cut videos oroptimize for keywords and SEO.
On YouTube videos I'musing such.
So it's SEO optimizationusing AIs on all platforms.
What is your opinion onthe quality of these to use AI?
(10:53):
I mean you can use AI tohelp you write like a
meta description and SEOtitle tags because it
gets kind of technical.
I don't know howtechnical you want to get but m.
Go technical.
Yeah, go details.
Yeah.
So they need title tagsand my descriptions and
you could just tell ChatGPD to write you a title
tag or my descriptionbut those come out
(11:15):
really bad and I wouldn't.
No, I'm talking about otherspecific for each platform.
For example forInstagram there's Pat
Social and there are afew more that are AI powered.
For YouTube there is onethat is Vidiq and
there's yet another onethat I can't remember.
So they're integratedstraight into your
browser and they giveyou prompts where to optimize.
So I'm talking aboutreally developed AI
(11:39):
solutions now.
Mhm.
Yeah.
I haven't used thosespecifically so I don't
want to speak on thosetools and give wrong
information.
But I've used GPT4 andother tools like that
and creating pumps andthings like that to help
refine and really honein and get the right
responses that you'relooking for because it's
all about putting theright prompts in and you
(11:59):
don't really need to buythese other tools or
just putting promptstogether for you.
Some of them I'm not Sure.
What you're specificallytalking about,
but there's a lot oftools that will do the
AI for you,but they're just prompts
and if you can writegood prompts yourself,
you don't need to spendthe money on those tools.
But it depends whatthese tools are doing.
If they're doing otherthings besides just
writing prompts,then they might be valuable.
But essentially a lot ofthem are just prompts
(12:21):
that they're just doing for you,that they've taught GPT
how to go and write theright verbiage,
put the right keywordsin the right places.
But you know what you'relooking for and you
could put that in yourself.
Then you don't reallyneed those third party tools.
Mhm.
Okay.
Well, well optimization Ithink will more and more
(12:41):
develop towards AI.
Will.
We'll see what the adoption willbe.
But what is your opinionon email marketing?
Is it amongst your topmarketing tools that you
would recommend or doesit still depend?
No.
Email is always going tobe powerful because you
get full control of email,that's yours,
(13:01):
whereas everything elseis not yours.
Like social media,you're just renting
space off these platforms,you don't own any of
that and you don't getmuch engagement or reach
anymore.
Whereas with the email,you collect emails,
you send out the emails,everyone gets that email
doesn't mean they'regoing to open it.
Some might go into spam,but at least they're
going to get that email.
Whereas you post on Facebook,only 5% of your audience
(13:23):
will ever see whatyou're posting on
Facebook because thereach is so low that
they don't show it to everybody.
But email is alwaysgoing to be number.
Well not always but forthe time being and ever
since I've been doingdigital marketing has
always been the numberone channel.
They get visibility andget traffic because you
control that.
Just like your website,you get full control of
that email,you have full control of
your audience and it'sgoing to be the most
(13:43):
powerful by far.
But you have to collect emails.
You can't just buy emails.
And that's the toughpart is how do you get
people to give you theiremail address?
That's where you have tooffer something of value.
Like if your ecommerce website,you just have a little pop up.
Anyone goes to yourwebsite saying give me
your email and I'll giveyou 10% off your first purchase.
But if you're a servicebased business,
that's where you got toget a little bit more creative.
(14:04):
Like if you're a dentist,what could you offer
people that's going towant them to give you
your email?
That's going to be alittle bit more tricky.
Maybe you write an ebookabout seven ways to
whiten your teethwithout going to the
dent or I don't know,something unique where
you're getting,like hooking them and
offering them that free content.
Like myself, I offer classes,so I teach classes.
(14:24):
I also have free classesand I'll give away free
classes to people inexchange for the email address.
So it's all aboutgetting creative and
figuring out a way toget people to give you
their email.
Because if you're justbuying emails,
that's not going to work.
And also got to thinksomeone's selling an
email list of email addresses.
You got to think howmany people have bought
that list and that emailaddress is getting
spammed all the time.
(14:44):
That person probablydoesn't even use that
email address anymorebecause it've gotten
spam so much.
So don't buy emails,collect them.
And then when you dosend out emails,
just offer value.
Never promote yourself.
So when people sign upyour email list,
if you just startpromoting yourself,
no one's going to wantto read that.
Got to take a step backand think you re sign up
for someone's email list.
(15:05):
Do you want to just hearthem talk about why
they're the best,why they're the greatest?
Proably not.
You want to know whatcan they do to help you,
what tips can they offer you?
So giving them free tips,free advice,
free or like offeringbenefits and solutions
and then maybe subtlypromoting yourself at the end.
But if you just promoteyourself in those emails
lose people's trust.
And they're not going to,and they're not going to
(15:26):
want to read those emails.
They're probably goingto unsubscribe.
Mhm.
Well, I don't know.
With email marketing there,I've heard of quite a
few different opinionsof what is like the pace
you're supposed to sendout emails.
Like three nurturing emailsfollowed by a sales email.
You know, there are all kinds offormulas there.
(15:48):
What is your formula foremail marketing?
Just provide value.
I mean I'll nurture andthen at the bottom I'll
say and by the way,if you want to contact
me for every websiteanalysis or to learn more,
here's my link.
But I'm not promoting itspecifically.
Every once in a while Ipromote myself,
but that's really fewand far in between.
(16:09):
So most of them are justnurture offering that
value and then su subtlyat the end being like
and by the way,you want to learn more?
Here's a link to mycalendar to book some time.
My calendar so maybe 1out of every 10 that
might be promotionalwhere maybe the 10th one
I'll be like hey and by the way,are you still interested in SEO?
Here's a link to booksometime but that I try
(16:29):
not to do that too oftenbecause you want to
really offer value andif you're just promoting
yourself all the time,people are unsubscribed.
So try to make it likewhere I'm blogging,
where my blogs aresaying where I try to
offer value, give insights,give tips and tricks and
solutions at work versusjust trying to promote myself.
Mhm.
(16:50):
Is this the only way youconvert customers?
Through this subtle linkto your services?
At the bottom of the emails,how do you convert?
Well that one is just.
The email is justanother touch point to
keep myself top of mind.
Because they read those emails,they're probably not
going to just convertright away but it keeps
you top of mind.
So like oh I rememberBrandon does SEO.
(17:12):
And then they might seesome of my ads that
follow them around.
So if you go on Amazonand you look at a product,
you don't buy it,those ads will fall you around.
It's called remarketing.
Do the same thing for mywebsite or any of my clients.
I recommend that theyremarket to anyone
that's been to thewebsite and did do a
specific conversion action.
Redar remarket to them,follow them around
because these are allwarm leads.
(17:33):
People have been to yourwebsite, they know who you are,
something distractedthem or whatever it may
be that didn't get themto convert.
Let's try to keepyourself top of mind.
Especially like ifyou're ecommerce and
someone went to yourshopping cart,
added a product to theshopping cart but then't
check out.
Let's follow them aroundbecause they were that
close to making thatpurchase but they didn't do it.
Maybe we offered them am coupon code or
(17:54):
something of valuethat's just going to
reinforce it andhopefully get them to convert.
So just trying to deepmyself top of mind and
eventually hopefullythey'll want to.
They'want to reach outbecause you need
multiple touch pointsdepending on what you sell.
You're just selling a T shirt,don't really need to do
all that but somethinghigh ticket over 100 or 1,000.
(18:15):
You probably want tohave those multiple
touch points to getpeople to really trust you more.
Mhm.
We talked about thedevelopments in AI and
the fact thatcontent is now accepted
when it's produced by AI solely.
is there anything elsethat is a novelty in the
(18:35):
digital marketing sphere?
I Another one thatGoogle's look at is like
user experience.
So they're looking athow people behave on
your website because inthe past if you just
rank for a keyword onGoogle that looks good,
you're going to rank forthat keyword.
But Google said, all right,that's not really what
we want to do.
We want to make sure that when,if you rank number one
(18:55):
for a keyword and peopleclick from Google and go
to your website,that they stay on your website.
Because if people go toyour website and then
leave immediately,that tells Google maybe
you aren't the most relevant,that something's off.
So that's a big signalnow is user experience
and making sure thatpeople go from Google
and stay on your website.
They don't just leave.
Otherwise Google justthinks something might
(19:15):
be off and wrong.
And there's so manylittle things.
I mean Google doesn'treally tell you what
they do because theykeep it top secret.
They don't really wantyou to know what's going
on in their algorithm.
Every once in in a whilethey announce what
they're doing,but most of the time
they really keep a topsecret because they
ultimately want you toget frustrated and spend
money on paid adsbecause that's really
how they make all their money.
And SEO is just therebecause if Google was
(19:37):
just full of ads,nobody's going to want
to use Google.
So they have to havethat balance of the organic,
the SEO and the paid ads.
Mhm.
So how do you figure outthe algorithms?
Do you reverse engineerevery time there's a change?
that would be toughbecause it changes every
single day there's a change.
Oh wow.
They're usually tinychanges that aren't that
(19:59):
big of an impact.
Every few months they'llhave big updates and
that's where try tofigure out what's going on.
What's Google looking at now?
Talking to other webmasters,other people that do SEO,
reading up in differentblogs and forums or
looking your Facebook groups,listening to podcasts,
or whatver I could do tolearn and try to just
then try to reverse engineer.
But sometimes they'lltell you what they're
(20:20):
looking for.
Every once in a whilewe'll tell you.
In 2013 they said ifyour website is not
mobile friendly,we're not Going to show
you on mobile devices,which is kind of apparent.
Makes sense.
If you're searching onyour cell phone and you
click on a website andit's really hard to read,
you have to zoom in.
Not a good user experience.
So Google says mobilefriendly websites going
to get preferentialtreatment on mobile devices.
(20:42):
They said a while ago ifyour website loads
slowly then they mightpotentially penalize you.
They want fast loading websites,but other than that they
don't really tell youmuch about what's going on.
So it's just becoming adetective and trying to
figure out what's going on.
What's Google thinkingabout nowadays?
What's the future of SEOand how do I make Google happy?
Mhm.
(21:04):
Let's talk about Facebook then.
So you said that 5% onlyof all posts are being shown,
what is theeffectiveness of their ads?
Because in my experiencewith ads,
I've actually completelygiven up on Facebook ads
because for me this hasnever worked even when
professionally done.
(21:25):
So what is yourexperience on Facebook ads?
The ads work justknowing who your audience is.
So you have tounderstand Facebook,
it's going to be cheaperthan Google because
you're getting lowerquality content or lower
quality traffic.
If someone's searchingon Google, they're searching,
they're looking rightnow for your product or service.
(21:47):
Whereas social,you put in all these
parameters saying thisis my age group, my demographic,
this is the interestthat they have,
this is who I want to target.
But that doesn't meanthey want to use your
product or service.
They might want to useit in the future,
they might want to useit in the past,
but it doesn't mean theywant to use it now.
So Google, they're searching,they have that intent.
Social, it works,but it's just different.
(22:09):
Social is better forlike awareness.
So driving awareness forlike let's say you have
a new product or servicethat nobody's searching
for on Google.
Can't really do SEO ifnobody's searching for it.
So social is a way todrive that awareness and
get people to find outabout stuff like that.
But in terms of gettingnew leads,
it doesn't always work.
Like myself, I do SEO.
Not many people aregoing to go on Facebook
(22:30):
looking for an SEO company.
Some people do,but most people aren't
really going on social.
Looking for dentists, lawyers,service based businesses
doesn't really work too well.
But it does work to keepmyself top of mind.
So someone goes to my website,they don't fill out the form,
they don't contact me,then I'll remarket to them,
I'll follow them around onGoogle, I'll follow them around
(22:51):
on social,I'll follow them around
pretty much everywherebecause I want to keep
myself top of mind.
It doesn't matter whereyou are or I keep myself
top of mind.
So REM marketingdefinitely I would do on
social media.
But the cold outreach,I probably say Google's
going to be worthspending extra money
because you're gettingthat intent,
that buyer intent behind it,which is a little
different than social.
(23:12):
Mhm.
and on Google when I'mlooking for something,
at least it was likethat maybe a few weeks
ago because I paidattention maybe months ago,
that always on top oftheir YouTube videos.
I think they changedthis so now it links.
But at some point it wasmostly YouTube videos
(23:34):
showing us top searchresults for Google.
So isn't it then betterto focus all efforts on
developing a YouTubechannel and on YouTube content?
Not really.
Not necessarily.
Well Google owns YouTubeso they're going to promote it.
(23:54):
So when you search on Google,there's websites that appear.
There's 10 websites.
Nowadays though,it's not just websites
that appear in theorganic listings.
There's images, there's videos,there's maps.
But all that is random.
Sometimes it appears,sometimes it
doesn'doesn't always appear.
The 10 websites willalways appear.
There will always be 10websites.
If you're a local business,like if you're searching
(24:15):
for like a dentist or arestaurant, then the maps will
appear.
Sometimes the videoswill appear,
sometimes the imageswill appear.
But kind of hit or miss,you never know when
Google's going to showthem or when they're not
going to show them.
But best practice isoptimize all your images
because you want to makesure those images show up.
So the way to optimizeyour images is the file name.
Before you upload animage to your website,
(24:36):
you want to name thatimage with descriptive words.
You don't want to justname it image00Onet JPEG.
You want to name itdescriptive words.
And when you upload itto your website,
each platform is goingto ask for different
things like title, description,caption,
but they're going to askfor an alt tag or
alternative text.
That's where you alsowant to put those
keywords or describewhat that image is about
with the videos.
(24:57):
When you search onGoogle and you see videos,
Google owns YouTube andGoogle only cares about
making money.
So when you search on Google,if you see a video,
majority of the timeit's going to be YouTube
because Google doesn'twant to promote Facebook
or Vimeo.
They want to promoteYouTube because let's
say you search on Google,you don't click on an ad
at the top.
Google doesn't make any money.
They're not going to behappy about that.
But if you search onGoogle and there's a
(25:19):
video in there,there's a YouTube video
and you click on it,the first thing that appears.
Anytime you watch aYouTube video, there's always an
advertisement.
So YouTube is making money,which is really Google
making money.
And they're going topromote that as much as
they can.
But it doesn't alwaysguarantee that YouTube
is going to be shown inthe search results.
So I would still promoteGoogle or promote your website.
And if you have videos,I'd optimize those for
(25:41):
YouTube and all the platforms,but really push YouTube
as much as possible.
Just because Google isgoing to promote YouTube
as much as they can,they're not going to
promote Facebook orInstagram videos.
Sometimes they'll appear there,butjoy of the time it's
always going to be a YouTube.
And having that presencethere is just another
way to get more real estate,more exposure and people
(26:01):
also buy off people.
So YouTube is a greatway to put a facey
behind the company,build that trust up and
let people know thatyou're a real business
or that you're a personas well behind the
business that's going tohelp out that you care
about them and thatyou're there to offer solutions.
How long does it take tooptimize, a website for SEO?
(26:22):
I have now speak aboutmy experience again.
I have done this forthree websites and the
last one wasfor my business Hereal
and Learn.
And I worked with acompany for more than a
year and they did manageto pick up my website from the,
I don't know,400th place or whatever.
(26:44):
I think I was on theeighth page.
So at some point theybrought it forward but
it was not like it was asignificant improvement
where I would show up inthe first two pages.
So I mean,I guess it also depends
on the kind of business buthow long does it take
(27:04):
for you to optimizeusing SEO and see
positive results?
That one variesdepending on how much
shows youield has beendone to your website
versus the competitors.
Because really it's notone size fits all.
It's not just saying Ito take six months
because every website isdifferent and we need to
(27:25):
look at how much SEO hasbeen done to your website.
Versus the competitorsand what's the disconnect.
And that kind lets meknow how long it's going
to take.
If you're a brand newwebsite then it's
definitely going to takeat least six or more
months because Googlejust doesn't trust
anybody and you can'tjust build that trust up.
It takes time to buildthat trust up.
Trust really comes frombacklinks.
The more backlinks youhave from trustworthy, relevant,
(27:47):
authoritative sites,the faster Google's
going to trust you and rank you.
So that's the biggestpart is the backlinks
take time to build.
And also once you buildbacklinks, Google might not find
that backlink for acouple of days, a couple weeks,
couple months.
They might never findthat backlink.
Which is also part thattakes time is you could
build all these backlinks,but that doesn't mean
(28:08):
Google could find thembecause Google tries to
find all the pages onthe Internet but they
can't find every websiteand sometimes takes them
a lot longer to findthose backlinks or they
might never find thatbacklink and it's not
going to help out withthose rankings.
So it is a more long term play.
SEO does take a lot oftime and it really just
comes down to who yourcompetitors are,
how much SEO have theydone versus you?
(28:29):
And the more competitionyou have,
the more time it's goingto take, the less competition,
the more niche you get,the less competition,
the faster and theeasier it is to get
those rankings.
So you're just sellndinglike T shirts and
something really broadand generic like that.
It's really toughbecause you're competing
against big corporationslike Target, Walmart, Amazon,
all these big, big corporations.
(28:50):
But if you could findsomething more niche,
maybe organic amp Tshirts for children,
something like that,it's a little bit more niche,
a little bit more unique.
Less competition meansit'll be a little bit
easier to break throughand get into that market
and get you those rankings.
Mhm, I see.
Okay, and how about thesesmaller platforms or
(29:15):
video platforms or also podasts,podcast platforms.
do you recommendfocusing on any of these
or do they not really matter?
I mean if your audienceis on them then I would
definitely be on them.
So maybe there's somevideo platform out there
that you know youraudience is specifically on.
(29:37):
I would definitely jumpon it even if it's a small,
tiny platform,if that's where your
audience that you needto be there.
So but I woulddefinitely try to be as
many places Possiblebecause you never know
who your audiences,where they're going to be.
And I would just try tothrow everything against
the wall and see what works.
Look at analytics andother tools to see where
am I getting I traffic.
Maybe Vimeo is going tobring you more traffic
(29:57):
than YouTube, which I doubt it.
But you never know.
Every website, every business isdifferent and you never
know until you test.
So it's all about trialand error.
Test it out, see what works,push more time and money
into what's working,pull money away from
what's not working,and just try it all.
But I would try them all out,or at least the bigger
ones and see in analytics,using tools like that,
see how much traffic areyou getting.
(30:19):
You could see conversions,you can see sales,
and you might besurprised that some of
these smaller platformsmight bring in more
sales and more leads andsome of the bigger ones.
But you never know untilyou test.
Yeah, and would you say thatadvertising is, a must because,
you can advertise, I mean,you can optimize all you want,
(30:39):
but if a part of thealgorithm of Google is
to also have,advertising spent and you don't.
So my question is,does advertising
represent a significantportion of the
optimization efforts?
I mean, Google said that runningpaid ads is not going to
(31:00):
help out SEO becausethere'd be a big
conflict of interest.
So you don't need to berunning paid ads to help
your SEO.
I mean, Google will get in a lotof trouble.
They might.
I, doubt they're doinganything that would
jeopardize their,the credibility to do
that because then peoplewill be like, oh,
you're just paying toget up there.
So SEO isn't going to help out.
I mean, paid ads isn't going tohelp out with SEO,
(31:21):
but doing an SEO willhelp out your paid ads.
So if you optimize yourwebsite and have an SEO
optimized website,then Google said your
paid ads will actuallybe cheaper.
So if you're runningpaid ads on Google and
it might cost a dollarfor every click to your website,
but if you optimize yourwebsite and really have,
really good SEO on your website,Google said instead of a dollar,
(31:41):
they might charge you0.98 per click.
So you're going to savea little bit of money
off those clicks,which in the long term
will add up.
But other than that,that's the only benefit of SEO,
will help make your adsa little bit cheaper.
But running paid adsisn't going to help out
with SEO.
So where can people findyou Brandon if they need
SEO optimization and ifthey need to figure out
(32:02):
what the best channel isfor them to use,
I actually create aspecial gift for
everybody if they go to mywebsite@seooptimizers.com
comm that's SEO O P T IM M I z eash r s.com
gift and they can findthat there.
Along with my contactinformation and a bunch
of classes I've doneover the years I've done
(32:23):
up for free so you cansee step by step how I
do a lot of stuff thatwe talked about.
And also if they want awebsite analysis,
I'm happy to check outtheir website from an
SEO point of view for free.
And they could book sometime on my calendar
there as well.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much foryour generosity in
giving out this information.
It was a pleasure.
I appreciate youenighting us in these details.
(32:45):
It's also important for me.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for listeningto Grow and Learn.
We hope that you foundour podcast informative,
engaging and inspiring.
Our mission is to helpyou keep growing and learning,
and we hope that ourconvers and insights
have provided you withpractical advice and
useful perspectives.
(33:06):
If you're looking forpersonalized support and
guidance to help youachieve your personal or
professional growth objectives,I offer a range of
services to help As atrusted management
partner and mentor,I work with businesses
in the process oftransformation,
looking for new streamsof business as well as M and A.
With an extensiveprofessional network of
(33:26):
experts and mentors,I can bring on board the
right person or teambased on the specific
needs of the company I'mworking with.
To learn more about theservices I offer and how
I can help you achieveyour goals, visit my
website@growandlearn.org.
you can also reach outto me via email or social media.
I'd love to hear fromyou and if you enjoyed
this episode of Grow and Learn,please subscribe to our
(33:48):
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