February 5, 2025 • 27 mins
🌟 Get ready to supercharge your SEO game! 🌟
🎙️ In this episode, I chat with none other than Brandon Leibowitz, the SEO mastermind who has been cracking the code to Google rankings since 2007! 🚀 From finding the right keywords to optimizing your website for conversions (because traffic means nothing if it doesn’t turn into 💵), Brandon breaks down the secrets to getting noticed online.
🧩 SEO isn’t just about traffic; it’s a puzzle of backlinks, bounce rates, and Google’s ever-changing algorithms. But don’t worry—Brandon’s here to help you piece it all together! 🕵️‍♂️
💡 Whether you’re a small business owner, content creator, or someone just starting your website journey, this episode is packed with actionable tips like:
✨ Why one-page websites are a big no-no.
✨ The power of naming your files properly for SEO (yes, even your podcasts and videos).
✨ How to use free tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to track your success.
✨ And, of course, how to make Google trust you!
🚨 BONUS: Brandon’s got a special gift for YOU! Head over to SEOoptimizers.com/gift for free classes, a website analysis, and more tools to dominate the search engines. 💻
📌 Don’t miss this insightful convo—it’s your ticket to SEO mastery.
🎧 Tune in now, and let’s make your online presence unforgettable!
#SEOOptimizers #SEOExpert #GrowYourBusiness #PodcastLife
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And from there,that's where you got to make
sure your website converts.
Because SEO gets youtraffic traffic,
targeted traffic that has buyingintent if you target
the right keywords.
But once people getto your website,
how do you get them to buy?
And that's a whole another fieldwhere it's conversion
rate optimization,just making sure that you
maximize value of every visitor.
(00:21):
That way you don't losethat traffic.
Because unfortunately onin general,
most websites lose abouthalf the traffic.
It's called bounce rate.
So half the people that come toa website leave immediately
just because, well,of tons of different reasons.
Usually the websiteloads slowly.
It doesn't look good on mobile,or it's not what they're looking
for, or just cluttered,it's hard to read through
(00:42):
and things like that.
So getting people to yourwebsite is what SEO does.
Welcome everybody back toanother exciting show of the
about that Water podcast,where we help you build strong
financial habits so that you canhave that confidence talking
about money, spending money,or even having that fun
(01:03):
conversation at that cookouttalking about money.
So I have a special guest todaywho is going to help you take
your SEO to a whole new level.
And I cannot thank this guyenough because he actually found
me through SEO stuff.
Apparently the page is actuallyranked. So, Brandon,
(01:24):
how you doing today?
I'm doing well,thank you for having me on.
All right, so,man you've been doing this for
so long. What got you into SEO?
That was something Idid not plan on,
didn't really know about it.
And after I graduated fromcollege, got the first.
First job I got was doingdigital marketing,
(01:46):
which my degree was.
Business marketingis back in 2007.
So digital marketing wasn'treally taught too much in school
and I didn't really knowmuch about it.
And the company that wasstarting to work for said,
don't worry,we don't know much either.
We're going to kindof learn with you,
which I thought was interesting.
Like where I take your classesand workshops and seminars and
(02:07):
kind of just learn alongside youand let you learn while you
implement some of these changeson our website.
And did that for a while andespecially going to
these seminars,just realized that you could
work full time at a company,but you could also get a little
side hustle where I could offerSEO to a local business that's
not a direct competitor of thecompany that I'm working for,
and did that for a while andworked at different advertising
(02:30):
agencies as a director of SEOand before work and after work
and on my lunch breaks,I'd work on my own company and
eventually built that up towhere I was able to quit my job
and just been doingthis ever since, man.
So I just recently talked aboutthis a lot on my show,
and I actually try to bringit up more often than not,
which is understanding thatour jobs allow us to fail,
(02:54):
but we get paid to fail.
And like them taking the leap onyour skill set, we're like, hey,
we don't know,but we don't have the time to do
it. We hired you for your time.
Learn it and let us know.
And it's like,once you gain that knowledge,
nobody can take thataway from you.
No, that's the nice part.
(03:14):
But you gotta test and try.
And if you don't try and you'renot testing, and unfortunately,
sometimes you don't succeed,but you learn and grow from it,
and that's really what matters.
Yeah.
So can you tell us a little bit?
What is SEO?
Yeah, SEO is search engineoptimization.
So that means ranking websiteson search. Search engines,
(03:35):
which really is just kind ofGoogle really runs the show.
So when you search on Google,there's ads at the top.
Those are all paid ads.
If you click on it,those websites are paying
Google for each click.
Could be a couple cents,could be a couple dollars
for each click.
Could be a hundred dollarsfor one click.
It's pretty expensive.
But right below that are theorganic, the free listings,
(03:58):
which is what SEO is all about.
There's 10 spots on thatfirst page of Google,
and what we want to do is rankyour website in one of
those 10 positions.
Yeah.
So being ranked high is veryimportant in being noticeable,
especially for smallerbusinesses.
Considering like,my podcast is small as it is,
(04:18):
I guess you would say,considering it's an employee of
one. But what is it like?
Is there like a website thatsomebody can go to to kind of
check out their ranking ifthey have a website?
Yeah,if you have a website and you
want to see how you'reperforming,
then I would use like,Google Analytics or Google
(04:39):
Search Console.
Both are free tools from Googlethat will let you see
your traffic.
So you can't see otherpeople's traffic,
but you can see your own andjust sign up. It's free to use.
You have to install a littletracking code on your website,
which is not that hard.
And if you don't knowhow to do it,
I would just Google it and justsearch how to install Google
Analytics for.
(04:59):
And then you fill in the blank.
If you're on WordPress,how to install Google Analytics
for WordPress.
If you're on Shopify.
How to install Google Analyticsfor Shopify.
And it shouldn't take morethan 30 minutes.
And once it's installed thenyou're going to be able to see
where your traffic's comingfrom, what pages they visit,
how long they stayon your website.
Google search console will showyou what keywords you rank for,
if there's any like errors,if your website loads slowly,
(05:22):
if you maybe even beenpenalized by Google.
Hopefully no one gets penalizedfrom Google.
And instead of ranking higher,Google actually sometimes will
drop you down because they don'tlike your website or think that
you're not a real legitimate,trustworthy business.
Yeah, so like we hear this term,we kind of get an understanding
of it,but how does this SEO process
(05:43):
turn into money?
Because we trying to make somemoney on our websites,
we're trying to get noticed.
But what, what is the,the end result of having
a good SEO?
If you're ranked on Google,people are going to search for
your keywords related to aproduct or service or whatever
it is that you're promoting andthat's going to get people
to your website.
And from there that's where yougot to make sure your
(06:04):
website converts.
Because SEO gives youtraffic traffic,
targeted traffic that has buyingintent if you target
the right keywords.
But once people getto your website,
how do you get them to buy?
And that's a whole another fieldwhere it's conversion
rate optimization,Just making sure that you
maximize value of every visitorthat way you don't lose
(06:25):
that traffic.
Because unfortunately onin general most websites lose
about half their trafficcalled bounce rate.
So half the people that come towebsite leave immediately
just because,well of tons of different
reasons.
Usually the websiteloads slowly,
it doesn't look good on mobile,or it's not what they're looking
for or just cluttered,it's hard to read through
and things like that.
(06:45):
So getting people to yourwebsite is what SEO does.
And then once people getto your website,
you gotta figure out how can Iget people to trust my website
and want to buy off of me versusa competitor or just going to a
brick and mortar store ifyou're selling products.
Amazon is a competitor to almostevery e commerce website.
Unfortunately that makes sense.
(07:06):
So because I noticed a lot ofsmaller businesses or so like
say for my podcast and eventhough I'm located in Maryland
and I want to go to like a momand pop shop, like, hey,
I noticed that your websiteIsn't that great? You know,
why don't you come on my podcastor something like that to
help build a backlink?
I've heard backlinks a lot.
(07:26):
It just means that your linkis on somebody else's page,
but what's the importanceof having one?
So Google doesn't trust websitesbecause anybody could put
keywords on a website.
And a lot of people havemanipulated and still to this
day try to game the system byputting keywords that are not
really what theirwebsite's about.
And that's why Google becamepopular back in the
(07:48):
90s is they said,we're not just going to look at
your keywords, but we're.
Because that's what all oldersearch engines would do,
is they would just look atkeywords and pull those keywords
out and then rankyou accordingly.
And I could build a websiteand I could say, like,
Brandon's dentist dot com.
And he was like, all right,are you really a dental office?
Because we just want to makesure that you're really
a dentist.
We don't want to send peoplehere and then find out that you
(08:10):
don't exist or you'rescamming people.
So Google said not only we wantto look at your keywords,
but we want to look at whatother websites say about you.
So if I'm a dentist,I should be on, like,
WebMD or Wikipedia or GoogleMaps or Apple Maps or Yellow
Pages.com Chamber of Commerce.
So the more websites thattalk about you,
(08:32):
the more kind of popularGoogle sees you as,
the more trust Google gives you,and the higher they're
going to rank you.
So backlink is really just aclickable link from another
website that pointsto your website.
So let's say you're reading anarticle on, like, Wikipedia,
and in there it saysBrandon Leiboitz,
and you click on it andit goes to my website.
I would be getting a backlinkfrom Wikipedia.
(08:54):
So the More websites,other websites that
talk about you,the higher Google is
going to rank you.
That makes sense.
So that could be the reason howyou came across me then.
So when you did your Googlesearch, how did you find me?
Like,what did you search to find me?
My advanced search operators.
(09:15):
So I put, like,these things called, like,
site colon and then in quotationmarks, podcast.
And then I put keywords,and then it's going to show me
websites related to podcaststhat are related to my keyword.
And it's a little complicated,a little technical.
I have full classes. I do that.
I've done for free that I'vethrown up on You Tube that shows
step by step how to do that.
If you just search my name,Brandon Webot on YouTube,
(09:37):
you can see it's the linkbuilding classes I did
or videos I did,which shows you how to do those
advanced search operators andreally find targeted websites to
help you build backlinks to getyou to rank higher on Google.
Because Google's whole algorithmreally is based off back or
heavily based off backlinks.
And the more backlinks you havefrom sites that are related
to what you're doing,the higher Google's
(09:58):
going to rank you.
That makes sense in because alsosome of these folks that like to
geek out with me I used todo HTML a long time ago.
I kind of slowed down on thatand a little bit of css.
But I would see embedded in thatthere's some coding called
like the metadata and,or like the meta description.
(10:22):
What does that actually helppeople out with when they
building their website?
So once you build backlinks andget Google to trust you,
Google's going to read yourwebsite to figure out what
keywords to rank you for.
And what Google sees versus whatwe see is much different.
Google can't read a websiteor can't see what we see.
They just look at the code.
(10:43):
So Google looks at your codeand reads it line by line,
trying to read that code andtrying to figure out what
this page is about.
And there's certain areas thatGoogle puts a little bit more
emphasis for SEO purposes,like a title,
tag or meta description.
All this stuff kind of getstechnical header tags,
schema all this stuff.
But one place that's really easythat anyone can do without
(11:04):
coding is just add more text toyour website. Every single page.
Not just your homepage,every single page,
add text to it.
Because Google feeds off text,they can't read images or videos
yet. They're getting much,much better at it,
but they can't really read them.
All they can read is like afile name on an image or,
or a file name on a video or apodcast or whatever it is.
(11:25):
So if you have any content thatyou upload to the Internet,
make sure you namethat file name.
Something descriptive like thisepisode, you can name it.
Search engine optimizationstrategies that work in 2024
with Brandon Leos or somethinglike that, dot MP4 or whatever.
But putting those keywords inreally helps out a lot because
they can't really,they just feed off that text.
(11:46):
So everyone needs to add moretext to Their website,
that's very,very important and easy,
doesn't require any coding,no techn knowledge,
just add more text.
Google's gonna reward youwith more rankings then.
That would explain why I'mgetting more hits on my videos.
Because what I've been doinglately is actually explaining it
fully of like the whole podcast,actually putting the word
(12:09):
podcast in the actual file name.
Even when I uploaded to YouTubeor even uploaded to Spotify
or even Apple,like to make sure that their
full name is spot out.
Does that help out or is thatjust kind of like I'm faking
myself out at this point?
No.
The more you do to make iteasier for them to read and
understand and know what you'retrying to rank for,
(12:30):
the more they're goingto reward you.
If you just have an image onyour website and name it
image.jpg they're like,all right, what is this?
But if you name it descriptivewords and then you have text
around that image or thatpodcast episode,
if you can transcribe it,or if it's a really long
episode, timestamp it,summarize it,
that really helps out forYouTube, for any website,
(12:51):
any platform,because they all really
feed off text.
They're getting muchbetter nowadays,
especially with AI andunderstanding audio and video,
but still not perfect.
And the more you help them out,the more they're going
to reward you.
Like even putting subtitles orclosed captions on your own
videos instead of lettingYouTube do it, putting your own,
that really helps out becausethen they read that text and
(13:12):
that's like you transcribingthe entire video to them.
That makes sense. Okay,I'm had to start doing that for
more often because I didit for a couple videos,
but I haven't did itfor all of them.
Just to kind of test out to seewhat happens and what works,
what doesn't work and see whatthe people actually
resonate with.
Is there something that somebodywho's starting a brand new web
(13:34):
page or they just started acompany, got a domain name,
they have.
Have a place where they want tohost their particular website.
Now they just gota blank canvas.
Is there like Because mostpeople do those one pagers.
I've seen a lot of one pagers.
Is it good to have those, like,little anchored links or just
(13:55):
kind of like just throw a bunchof text and just keep it as is?
One page limits you.
Because the more pages you have,the more keywords you
could target.
Each page on your website canonly really target about like
three to five words.
After that kind ofloses relevancy.
So if you want to target morekeywords, you need more pages.
The more pages,the better off you're
(14:16):
going to be.
That's why blogging becamepopular is after a while you
build a website and you couldsay, like, I'm a.
I sell Windows and I do Windows.
Then you can have pages onyour website about like,
selling windows for, like,homes for cars,
for commercial real estateand things like that.
You have all these pages thatlist out all these services.
(14:37):
So if someone is searching forlike Windows for cars,
you have a page about that thatmakes you really relevant.
But after a while,there's only so many pages
you could create.
And then you want to rank fornew keywords. So like,
you might want to rank for howto replace my car window or
my car windshield myself.
You write a blog postabout that,
then you rank for that keywordthat someone's searching for,
(14:59):
like, how to replace my carwindshield. And hopefully, well,
they'll read it.
And either they can fix itthemselves or they're just like,
all right.
This is way too complicated.
Let me contact you.
So it leads them intoyour website,
but without having those morepages or more pages,
you're not going to beable to do that.
So one page websites are really,really bad for SEO.
They really limit you down.
They look nice,they look aesthetically good,
(15:20):
but in terms of rankings,it's going to really hold
you back significantly.
Yeah.
So why do you go so hard intoSEO? Why not any other business?
I just kind of fell into it andbeen doing my own thing or I
mean, I love skateboarding.
So been doing a littlepassion project,
a little side hustle of tryingto build up a skateboarding
(15:42):
company.
Because I've helped all thesecompanies out over the years.
I was like,maybe I should just follow my
passion and help myself out.
But SEO has always beeninteresting and it was
something that.
Just trying to figure outGoogle, it's like a puzzle.
So just trying to.
Because Google changes theiralgorithm all the Time.
So it's not just doing the samething over and over
and over again.
It's keeps it interesting andlike helping businesses and
(16:04):
watching them grow and watchingthem succeed.
Yeah.
So what's the hardest thingabout SEO then?
Because it seemed like it justkind of came out of necessity
versus like something youreally wanted to do.
Yeah, I had no idea about it,but do something with marketing.
So coming business marketing anddigital marketing was just
something I was just starting topick up back then and just kept
(16:26):
going with it and realized thisis probably the future.
Traditional is still important,but it's not as relevant as
digital and especially nowadays.
I'm glad I stuck with it.
Back in 2007,no one knew what SEO was.
I mean I barely knew.
And trying to get clients,like trying to get like little
freelance projects here or therewas really, really tough.
Now seems like it'snew Hot topic,
(16:48):
everybody's talking about it andeveryone's trying to
jump into SEO.
So glad I got in soonerthan later.
But it is somethingthat's really.
And as long as there'ssearch engines,
people are going to be searchingand there's ways to just try to
make sure that you get thatvisibility that you're
looking for.
Yeah.
And I do appreciate you keepingthe energy going with SEO
(17:08):
because you could easily justsay, you know what, this isn't,
this isn't scratching youritch like you want it to.
Like most people who starttheir businesses,
everything's going tobe small up front.
But like Coca Cola only soldlike 25 cans their first year.
So it's like this is a marathonand you're track,
you're on track and your timingis excellent, especially now.
(17:30):
So everybody can look for you.
As the SEO guru at this point,would you consider yourself
a guru though?
I definitely do it for a while.
Definitely.
Passed my 10,000 hours by far.
So I feel like, yeah,been through the weeds and seen
a lot of the changes over theyears because Google changes
(17:52):
all the time.
So see now back in 2007 to now,it's changed a lot.
It's going to keep changing.
With AI and everything else,it's just going to makes
it interesting.
So it just keeps youon your toes.
Yeah. With AI,is that going to impact your
particular work or you thinkit's going to be helpful for you
now that you have at leasta little leverage?
(18:12):
Im not sure.
I'm more worried about if Googlejust shifts to AI only in
the search results.
So AI will help any business outbecause it creates content,
it can write articles for you.
It create blogs like I wastalking about earlier,
Blogs are very important.
Create content.
It's not the best content.
You have to edit it.
So bun just use AI andjust copy verbatim.
But you use it as like astarting point to help you write
(18:35):
outlines and things like that.
So it does help out even socialmedia. You could say,
write me 50 social mediaposts about SEO.
Or I can even say like,here's my website.
I've written hundredsof blog posts.
Write a social media post foreach one and then I could
schedule them all out.
So it saves a lot of time.
And unfortunately I feel likecopywriters are going to.
Writers,content creators are fortunately
(18:57):
going to.
Everything's going to shiftto AI for them. SEO,
not too worried about it becausecan't build backlinks.
Could do some of this,like title tags and
meta descriptions,they kind of do it,
but it's not really accurate.
So feel like I'm safefor a while,
but we'll have to see how.
Long that is got you.
So for people who are lookinginto getting into SEO,
(19:19):
where did they start?
Like as a business?
Like for them getting intothis type of business?
Yeah,they should just start learning,
reading articles,blogs just trying to podcast,
maybe joining Facebook groups orforums and trying to learn as
much as possible. And then test.
Don't just read andread and read,
but take action and see whatworks and got to test
(19:42):
things out.
Perfect.
So we coming up on thethird segment here,
which is a feature.
So what skills or habits thatyou feel is going to take
you to that next level?
Just managing business now.
So doing SEO,but also trying to grow a team
and manage and hiringand doing systems,
processes and everything elsethat comes along with
(20:05):
owning a business.
And that is important.
A lot more than I thought so.
A lot. But it is all very,very important.
Yeah.
I actually started reading thebook the E Myth Revisited,
and they were talkingabout the manager,
the technician and theentrepreneur and just having
(20:25):
that separation becauseit seems like you're,
you're a good technician,but it's like,
how do you branch out and stepaway from that technician piece
to more the entrepreneurialpiece.
That is a tough part.
Stepping away and delegating andbeen doing that a lot more.
But it is tough if I just.
Get out the way I'm doing it.
Yeah.
(20:46):
Just because you want tohave that control.
But if you want tobe able to grow,
you can't just do everythingyourself.
Yeah.
Is there Anything you want toleave the audience before we
dive into the finalfour questions?
Yeah, well, yeah,I mean one thing is just like
with SEO, just be patient.
It does take time.
So does take about sixmonths if not longer.
(21:07):
I mean sometimes it'll befaster, but just in general,
Google doesn't trust a websiteand they're not going to rank a
website quickly. It takes time,especially nowadays.
So be patient.
Don't get discouraged if you'renot ranking right away because
it does take time if you wantimmediate results. Paid ads,
social media, email marketing.
But SEO is more the long term.
We have to build itup over time.
(21:29):
Yeah.
Oh one thing you did recentlypost on Twitter.
I was just checking it out.
You're talking about video SEO,because this is going to be
posted on video sideof the house.
Is there any tips for thoseolder people who are looking to
get into video SEO should.
Well, yeah, I'm gonna have to doSEO for this video.
Is there any like tips andtricks that people can kind of
(21:52):
do or at least I coulddo when I post it?
Kind of talk about likethe file name earlier.
That's really cool.
That one is very,very important.
Make sure you namethe file name,
something descriptiveand then add text.
So if you can transcribethe video,
if it's an hour long video,maybe don't transcribe
the whole thing,but timestamp it and summarize
(22:13):
it and then you add that as adescription because that text is
really what the search engines,whether it's Spotify, YouTube,
wherever you put it up there,they're all,
they all have search engine orthey all have algorithms and
reading through that andthe more content,
the more descriptive you are,the more,
the better off or the easieryou're going to make it for them
to really understand whatthat video, that audio,
(22:34):
that podcast is about.
And then reviews are alwaysgood. The more reviews,
not necessarily the better,but the more reviews
with keywords,the better off you're
going to be.
So if you could get someone towrite a review and mention words
in there like podcastor SEO podcast,
not just saying thiswas amazing.
That doesn't do much but thispodcast episode was great.
(22:55):
I learned so much about SEO andbuilding a business and how to
get more money revenue for mybusiness, that really helps out.
So keywords,but it's kind of hard like to
influence people to say toput keywords in there.
But the more keywordsand reviews,
the higher you're going to rankor comments description.
I need stuff like that.
So that what they call it,that not the social marketing,
(23:19):
is it?
Social marketing where prettymuch you see like if you were to
look at a book or a business,you look at how many people got
reviews. So you're like, yeah,I'm not going to shop at this
shop because it's only got like5 reviews versus another shot.
Could have a thousand reviews.
You're like, okay,I'll trust this shot more so
than the first shop with onereview, if that makes sense.
(23:40):
Yeah.
What it's called?
Can't remember.
But yeah, no, no,people love to see more reviews.
Definitely. It builds trust up.
As long as it's good reviews.
Not not one star ones,but good price.
All right,so final four questions.
You ready?
Yeah.
All righty.
(24:06):
Number one,what does wealth mean to you?
Financial stability. Just,I mean wealth could mean you're
very, very wealthy,but as long as you just have
enough to get by and not haveto think about money,
that is something that I thinkwould be amazing for everyone.
Okay. Number two,what was your worst
(24:29):
money mistake?
Maybe not buying bitcoin when Isaw it for like $100 like 10
years ago back or like back inlike 2013 or 14 or something
like that.
So thought about buying a coupleof those and got talked out of
it and wish I bought thosebecause that would have been
a nice investment.
(24:49):
Yeah,that's a whole nother story.
But yeah, yeah.
Number three,what is your favorite financial
or non financial book?
Never,rarely read too many financial.
I mean, maybe like Rich Dad,Poor dad kind of is
a financial book.
So we can go with non financial.
(25:10):
I mean, it's okay.
No, I think that one is a goodone too. Just Rich Dad,
Poor dad is always a.
It's a good book foreveryone to read.
Yeah,that's normally to go to you.
And number four,what is your favorite
dish to make?
Chicken parmesan to make candy.
This is my favorite.
Love Italian food.
(25:30):
And that one is my favoritechicken parmesan.
Can't go wrong with that.
No, you can't.
That's just that used to be mygo to dish when I order out.
A good choice.
The very last questionof the show,
which is where could peoplefind out more about you?
So for everyone thatmade it to the end,
(25:51):
I created a special gift.
If you go to my website@SEOoptimizers.com,
that's SEO O P T I I z e r s.comgift and you can find that there
along with my contactinformation and a bunch of
classes I've doneover the years.
I throw it up for free so youcan see step by step how to do
(26:13):
a lot of stuff that we talkedabout. And also,
if they want a freewebsite analysis,
I'm happy to check out theirwebsite from an SEO
point of view.
And they could book some time onmy calendar there for
free as well.
That is amazing.
Thank you for the gift.
I mean, for everybody. I mean,it's just I might have to
check it out myself.
Definitely. The more the better.
So share it around,check it out.
(26:34):
And if you need that websiteconsultation,
if you do have a websiteor anyone does,
feel free to schedule some time.
Awesome, man.
Thank you so much, Brandon.
It's been a pleasure havingyou on and I mean,
I can't thank you enough forall of your insight,
all of your knowledge about SEO.
How do we can monetize andactually optimize our websites,
(26:56):
our videos,and any of the content that
we put out there?
This is definitely a great valueadd for those of you who are
actually going to take itlife to that next level.
So if you haven't already,go ahead on and like, subscribe,
share, do all the fun things.
If anything else,y'all be safe out.
And from there,that's where you got to make
sure your website converts.
Because SEO gets youtraffic traffic,
targeted traffic that has buyingintent if you target
the right keywords.
But once people getto your website,
how do you get them to buy?
And that's a whole another fieldwhere it's conversion
rate optimization,just making sure that you
maximize value of every visitor.
(00:21):
That way you don't losethat traffic.
Because unfortunately onin general,
most websites lose abouthalf the traffic.
It's called bounce rate.
So half the people that come toa website leave immediately
just because, well,of tons of different reasons.
Usually the websiteloads slowly.
It doesn't look good on mobile,or it's not what they're looking
for, or just cluttered,it's hard to read through
(00:42):
and things like that.
So getting people to yourwebsite is what SEO does.
Welcome everybody back toanother exciting show of the
about that Water podcast,where we help you build strong
financial habits so that you canhave that confidence talking
about money, spending money,or even having that fun
(01:03):
conversation at that cookouttalking about money.
So I have a special guest todaywho is going to help you take
your SEO to a whole new level.
And I cannot thank this guyenough because he actually found
me through SEO stuff.
Apparently the page is actuallyranked. So, Brandon,
(01:24):
how you doing today?
I'm doing well,thank you for having me on.
All right, so,man you've been doing this for
so long. What got you into SEO?
That was something Idid not plan on,
didn't really know about it.
And after I graduated fromcollege, got the first.
First job I got was doingdigital marketing,
(01:46):
which my degree was.
Business marketingis back in 2007.
So digital marketing wasn'treally taught too much in school
and I didn't really knowmuch about it.
And the company that wasstarting to work for said,
don't worry,we don't know much either.
We're going to kindof learn with you,
which I thought was interesting.
Like where I take your classesand workshops and seminars and
(02:07):
kind of just learn alongside youand let you learn while you
implement some of these changeson our website.
And did that for a while andespecially going to
these seminars,just realized that you could
work full time at a company,but you could also get a little
side hustle where I could offerSEO to a local business that's
not a direct competitor of thecompany that I'm working for,
and did that for a while andworked at different advertising
(02:30):
agencies as a director of SEOand before work and after work
and on my lunch breaks,I'd work on my own company and
eventually built that up towhere I was able to quit my job
and just been doingthis ever since, man.
So I just recently talked aboutthis a lot on my show,
and I actually try to bringit up more often than not,
which is understanding thatour jobs allow us to fail,
(02:54):
but we get paid to fail.
And like them taking the leap onyour skill set, we're like, hey,
we don't know,but we don't have the time to do
it. We hired you for your time.
Learn it and let us know.
And it's like,once you gain that knowledge,
nobody can take thataway from you.
No, that's the nice part.
(03:14):
But you gotta test and try.
And if you don't try and you'renot testing, and unfortunately,
sometimes you don't succeed,but you learn and grow from it,
and that's really what matters.
Yeah.
So can you tell us a little bit?
What is SEO?
Yeah, SEO is search engineoptimization.
So that means ranking websiteson search. Search engines,
(03:35):
which really is just kind ofGoogle really runs the show.
So when you search on Google,there's ads at the top.
Those are all paid ads.
If you click on it,those websites are paying
Google for each click.
Could be a couple cents,could be a couple dollars
for each click.
Could be a hundred dollarsfor one click.
It's pretty expensive.
But right below that are theorganic, the free listings,
(03:58):
which is what SEO is all about.
There's 10 spots on thatfirst page of Google,
and what we want to do is rankyour website in one of
those 10 positions.
Yeah.
So being ranked high is veryimportant in being noticeable,
especially for smallerbusinesses.
Considering like,my podcast is small as it is,
(04:18):
I guess you would say,considering it's an employee of
one. But what is it like?
Is there like a website thatsomebody can go to to kind of
check out their ranking ifthey have a website?
Yeah,if you have a website and you
want to see how you'reperforming,
then I would use like,Google Analytics or Google
(04:39):
Search Console.
Both are free tools from Googlethat will let you see
your traffic.
So you can't see otherpeople's traffic,
but you can see your own andjust sign up. It's free to use.
You have to install a littletracking code on your website,
which is not that hard.
And if you don't knowhow to do it,
I would just Google it and justsearch how to install Google
Analytics for.
(04:59):
And then you fill in the blank.
If you're on WordPress,how to install Google Analytics
for WordPress.
If you're on Shopify.
How to install Google Analyticsfor Shopify.
And it shouldn't take morethan 30 minutes.
And once it's installed thenyou're going to be able to see
where your traffic's comingfrom, what pages they visit,
how long they stayon your website.
Google search console will showyou what keywords you rank for,
if there's any like errors,if your website loads slowly,
(05:22):
if you maybe even beenpenalized by Google.
Hopefully no one gets penalizedfrom Google.
And instead of ranking higher,Google actually sometimes will
drop you down because they don'tlike your website or think that
you're not a real legitimate,trustworthy business.
Yeah, so like we hear this term,we kind of get an understanding
of it,but how does this SEO process
(05:43):
turn into money?
Because we trying to make somemoney on our websites,
we're trying to get noticed.
But what, what is the,the end result of having
a good SEO?
If you're ranked on Google,people are going to search for
your keywords related to aproduct or service or whatever
it is that you're promoting andthat's going to get people
to your website.
And from there that's where yougot to make sure your
(06:04):
website converts.
Because SEO gives youtraffic traffic,
targeted traffic that has buyingintent if you target
the right keywords.
But once people getto your website,
how do you get them to buy?
And that's a whole another fieldwhere it's conversion
rate optimization,Just making sure that you
maximize value of every visitorthat way you don't lose
(06:25):
that traffic.
Because unfortunately onin general most websites lose
about half their trafficcalled bounce rate.
So half the people that come towebsite leave immediately
just because,well of tons of different
reasons.
Usually the websiteloads slowly,
it doesn't look good on mobile,or it's not what they're looking
for or just cluttered,it's hard to read through
and things like that.
(06:45):
So getting people to yourwebsite is what SEO does.
And then once people getto your website,
you gotta figure out how can Iget people to trust my website
and want to buy off of me versusa competitor or just going to a
brick and mortar store ifyou're selling products.
Amazon is a competitor to almostevery e commerce website.
Unfortunately that makes sense.
(07:06):
So because I noticed a lot ofsmaller businesses or so like
say for my podcast and eventhough I'm located in Maryland
and I want to go to like a momand pop shop, like, hey,
I noticed that your websiteIsn't that great? You know,
why don't you come on my podcastor something like that to
help build a backlink?
I've heard backlinks a lot.
(07:26):
It just means that your linkis on somebody else's page,
but what's the importanceof having one?
So Google doesn't trust websitesbecause anybody could put
keywords on a website.
And a lot of people havemanipulated and still to this
day try to game the system byputting keywords that are not
really what theirwebsite's about.
And that's why Google becamepopular back in the
(07:48):
90s is they said,we're not just going to look at
your keywords, but we're.
Because that's what all oldersearch engines would do,
is they would just look atkeywords and pull those keywords
out and then rankyou accordingly.
And I could build a websiteand I could say, like,
Brandon's dentist dot com.
And he was like, all right,are you really a dental office?
Because we just want to makesure that you're really
a dentist.
We don't want to send peoplehere and then find out that you
(08:10):
don't exist or you'rescamming people.
So Google said not only we wantto look at your keywords,
but we want to look at whatother websites say about you.
So if I'm a dentist,I should be on, like,
WebMD or Wikipedia or GoogleMaps or Apple Maps or Yellow
Pages.com Chamber of Commerce.
So the more websites thattalk about you,
(08:32):
the more kind of popularGoogle sees you as,
the more trust Google gives you,and the higher they're
going to rank you.
So backlink is really just aclickable link from another
website that pointsto your website.
So let's say you're reading anarticle on, like, Wikipedia,
and in there it saysBrandon Leiboitz,
and you click on it andit goes to my website.
I would be getting a backlinkfrom Wikipedia.
(08:54):
So the More websites,other websites that
talk about you,the higher Google is
going to rank you.
That makes sense.
So that could be the reason howyou came across me then.
So when you did your Googlesearch, how did you find me?
Like,what did you search to find me?
My advanced search operators.
(09:15):
So I put, like,these things called, like,
site colon and then in quotationmarks, podcast.
And then I put keywords,and then it's going to show me
websites related to podcaststhat are related to my keyword.
And it's a little complicated,a little technical.
I have full classes. I do that.
I've done for free that I'vethrown up on You Tube that shows
step by step how to do that.
If you just search my name,Brandon Webot on YouTube,
(09:37):
you can see it's the linkbuilding classes I did
or videos I did,which shows you how to do those
advanced search operators andreally find targeted websites to
help you build backlinks to getyou to rank higher on Google.
Because Google's whole algorithmreally is based off back or
heavily based off backlinks.
And the more backlinks you havefrom sites that are related
to what you're doing,the higher Google's
(09:58):
going to rank you.
That makes sense in because alsosome of these folks that like to
geek out with me I used todo HTML a long time ago.
I kind of slowed down on thatand a little bit of css.
But I would see embedded in thatthere's some coding called
like the metadata and,or like the meta description.
(10:22):
What does that actually helppeople out with when they
building their website?
So once you build backlinks andget Google to trust you,
Google's going to read yourwebsite to figure out what
keywords to rank you for.
And what Google sees versus whatwe see is much different.
Google can't read a websiteor can't see what we see.
They just look at the code.
(10:43):
So Google looks at your codeand reads it line by line,
trying to read that code andtrying to figure out what
this page is about.
And there's certain areas thatGoogle puts a little bit more
emphasis for SEO purposes,like a title,
tag or meta description.
All this stuff kind of getstechnical header tags,
schema all this stuff.
But one place that's really easythat anyone can do without
(11:04):
coding is just add more text toyour website. Every single page.
Not just your homepage,every single page,
add text to it.
Because Google feeds off text,they can't read images or videos
yet. They're getting much,much better at it,
but they can't really read them.
All they can read is like afile name on an image or,
or a file name on a video or apodcast or whatever it is.
(11:25):
So if you have any content thatyou upload to the Internet,
make sure you namethat file name.
Something descriptive like thisepisode, you can name it.
Search engine optimizationstrategies that work in 2024
with Brandon Leos or somethinglike that, dot MP4 or whatever.
But putting those keywords inreally helps out a lot because
they can't really,they just feed off that text.
(11:46):
So everyone needs to add moretext to Their website,
that's very,very important and easy,
doesn't require any coding,no techn knowledge,
just add more text.
Google's gonna reward youwith more rankings then.
That would explain why I'mgetting more hits on my videos.
Because what I've been doinglately is actually explaining it
fully of like the whole podcast,actually putting the word
(12:09):
podcast in the actual file name.
Even when I uploaded to YouTubeor even uploaded to Spotify
or even Apple,like to make sure that their
full name is spot out.
Does that help out or is thatjust kind of like I'm faking
myself out at this point?
No.
The more you do to make iteasier for them to read and
understand and know what you'retrying to rank for,
(12:30):
the more they're goingto reward you.
If you just have an image onyour website and name it
image.jpg they're like,all right, what is this?
But if you name it descriptivewords and then you have text
around that image or thatpodcast episode,
if you can transcribe it,or if it's a really long
episode, timestamp it,summarize it,
that really helps out forYouTube, for any website,
(12:51):
any platform,because they all really
feed off text.
They're getting muchbetter nowadays,
especially with AI andunderstanding audio and video,
but still not perfect.
And the more you help them out,the more they're going
to reward you.
Like even putting subtitles orclosed captions on your own
videos instead of lettingYouTube do it, putting your own,
that really helps out becausethen they read that text and
(13:12):
that's like you transcribingthe entire video to them.
That makes sense. Okay,I'm had to start doing that for
more often because I didit for a couple videos,
but I haven't did itfor all of them.
Just to kind of test out to seewhat happens and what works,
what doesn't work and see whatthe people actually
resonate with.
Is there something that somebodywho's starting a brand new web
(13:34):
page or they just started acompany, got a domain name,
they have.
Have a place where they want tohost their particular website.
Now they just gota blank canvas.
Is there like Because mostpeople do those one pagers.
I've seen a lot of one pagers.
Is it good to have those, like,little anchored links or just
(13:55):
kind of like just throw a bunchof text and just keep it as is?
One page limits you.
Because the more pages you have,the more keywords you
could target.
Each page on your website canonly really target about like
three to five words.
After that kind ofloses relevancy.
So if you want to target morekeywords, you need more pages.
The more pages,the better off you're
(14:16):
going to be.
That's why blogging becamepopular is after a while you
build a website and you couldsay, like, I'm a.
I sell Windows and I do Windows.
Then you can have pages onyour website about like,
selling windows for, like,homes for cars,
for commercial real estateand things like that.
You have all these pages thatlist out all these services.
(14:37):
So if someone is searching forlike Windows for cars,
you have a page about that thatmakes you really relevant.
But after a while,there's only so many pages
you could create.
And then you want to rank fornew keywords. So like,
you might want to rank for howto replace my car window or
my car windshield myself.
You write a blog postabout that,
then you rank for that keywordthat someone's searching for,
(14:59):
like, how to replace my carwindshield. And hopefully, well,
they'll read it.
And either they can fix itthemselves or they're just like,
all right.
This is way too complicated.
Let me contact you.
So it leads them intoyour website,
but without having those morepages or more pages,
you're not going to beable to do that.
So one page websites are really,really bad for SEO.
They really limit you down.
They look nice,they look aesthetically good,
(15:20):
but in terms of rankings,it's going to really hold
you back significantly.
Yeah.
So why do you go so hard intoSEO? Why not any other business?
I just kind of fell into it andbeen doing my own thing or I
mean, I love skateboarding.
So been doing a littlepassion project,
a little side hustle of tryingto build up a skateboarding
(15:42):
company.
Because I've helped all thesecompanies out over the years.
I was like,maybe I should just follow my
passion and help myself out.
But SEO has always beeninteresting and it was
something that.
Just trying to figure outGoogle, it's like a puzzle.
So just trying to.
Because Google changes theiralgorithm all the Time.
So it's not just doing the samething over and over
and over again.
It's keeps it interesting andlike helping businesses and
(16:04):
watching them grow and watchingthem succeed.
Yeah.
So what's the hardest thingabout SEO then?
Because it seemed like it justkind of came out of necessity
versus like something youreally wanted to do.
Yeah, I had no idea about it,but do something with marketing.
So coming business marketing anddigital marketing was just
something I was just starting topick up back then and just kept
(16:26):
going with it and realized thisis probably the future.
Traditional is still important,but it's not as relevant as
digital and especially nowadays.
I'm glad I stuck with it.
Back in 2007,no one knew what SEO was.
I mean I barely knew.
And trying to get clients,like trying to get like little
freelance projects here or therewas really, really tough.
Now seems like it'snew Hot topic,
(16:48):
everybody's talking about it andeveryone's trying to
jump into SEO.
So glad I got in soonerthan later.
But it is somethingthat's really.
And as long as there'ssearch engines,
people are going to be searchingand there's ways to just try to
make sure that you get thatvisibility that you're
looking for.
Yeah.
And I do appreciate you keepingthe energy going with SEO
(17:08):
because you could easily justsay, you know what, this isn't,
this isn't scratching youritch like you want it to.
Like most people who starttheir businesses,
everything's going tobe small up front.
But like Coca Cola only soldlike 25 cans their first year.
So it's like this is a marathonand you're track,
you're on track and your timingis excellent, especially now.
(17:30):
So everybody can look for you.
As the SEO guru at this point,would you consider yourself
a guru though?
I definitely do it for a while.
Definitely.
Passed my 10,000 hours by far.
So I feel like, yeah,been through the weeds and seen
a lot of the changes over theyears because Google changes
(17:52):
all the time.
So see now back in 2007 to now,it's changed a lot.
It's going to keep changing.
With AI and everything else,it's just going to makes
it interesting.
So it just keeps youon your toes.
Yeah. With AI,is that going to impact your
particular work or you thinkit's going to be helpful for you
now that you have at leasta little leverage?
(18:12):
Im not sure.
I'm more worried about if Googlejust shifts to AI only in
the search results.
So AI will help any business outbecause it creates content,
it can write articles for you.
It create blogs like I wastalking about earlier,
Blogs are very important.
Create content.
It's not the best content.
You have to edit it.
So bun just use AI andjust copy verbatim.
But you use it as like astarting point to help you write
(18:35):
outlines and things like that.
So it does help out even socialmedia. You could say,
write me 50 social mediaposts about SEO.
Or I can even say like,here's my website.
I've written hundredsof blog posts.
Write a social media post foreach one and then I could
schedule them all out.
So it saves a lot of time.
And unfortunately I feel likecopywriters are going to.
Writers,content creators are fortunately
(18:57):
going to.
Everything's going to shiftto AI for them. SEO,
not too worried about it becausecan't build backlinks.
Could do some of this,like title tags and
meta descriptions,they kind of do it,
but it's not really accurate.
So feel like I'm safefor a while,
but we'll have to see how.
Long that is got you.
So for people who are lookinginto getting into SEO,
(19:19):
where did they start?
Like as a business?
Like for them getting intothis type of business?
Yeah,they should just start learning,
reading articles,blogs just trying to podcast,
maybe joining Facebook groups orforums and trying to learn as
much as possible. And then test.
Don't just read andread and read,
but take action and see whatworks and got to test
(19:42):
things out.
Perfect.
So we coming up on thethird segment here,
which is a feature.
So what skills or habits thatyou feel is going to take
you to that next level?
Just managing business now.
So doing SEO,but also trying to grow a team
and manage and hiringand doing systems,
processes and everything elsethat comes along with
(20:05):
owning a business.
And that is important.
A lot more than I thought so.
A lot. But it is all very,very important.
Yeah.
I actually started reading thebook the E Myth Revisited,
and they were talkingabout the manager,
the technician and theentrepreneur and just having
(20:25):
that separation becauseit seems like you're,
you're a good technician,but it's like,
how do you branch out and stepaway from that technician piece
to more the entrepreneurialpiece.
That is a tough part.
Stepping away and delegating andbeen doing that a lot more.
But it is tough if I just.
Get out the way I'm doing it.
Yeah.
(20:46):
Just because you want tohave that control.
But if you want tobe able to grow,
you can't just do everythingyourself.
Yeah.
Is there Anything you want toleave the audience before we
dive into the finalfour questions?
Yeah, well, yeah,I mean one thing is just like
with SEO, just be patient.
It does take time.
So does take about sixmonths if not longer.
(21:07):
I mean sometimes it'll befaster, but just in general,
Google doesn't trust a websiteand they're not going to rank a
website quickly. It takes time,especially nowadays.
So be patient.
Don't get discouraged if you'renot ranking right away because
it does take time if you wantimmediate results. Paid ads,
social media, email marketing.
But SEO is more the long term.
We have to build itup over time.
(21:29):
Yeah.
Oh one thing you did recentlypost on Twitter.
I was just checking it out.
You're talking about video SEO,because this is going to be
posted on video sideof the house.
Is there any tips for thoseolder people who are looking to
get into video SEO should.
Well, yeah, I'm gonna have to doSEO for this video.
Is there any like tips andtricks that people can kind of
(21:52):
do or at least I coulddo when I post it?
Kind of talk about likethe file name earlier.
That's really cool.
That one is very,very important.
Make sure you namethe file name,
something descriptiveand then add text.
So if you can transcribethe video,
if it's an hour long video,maybe don't transcribe
the whole thing,but timestamp it and summarize
(22:13):
it and then you add that as adescription because that text is
really what the search engines,whether it's Spotify, YouTube,
wherever you put it up there,they're all,
they all have search engine orthey all have algorithms and
reading through that andthe more content,
the more descriptive you are,the more,
the better off or the easieryou're going to make it for them
to really understand whatthat video, that audio,
(22:34):
that podcast is about.
And then reviews are alwaysgood. The more reviews,
not necessarily the better,but the more reviews
with keywords,the better off you're
going to be.
So if you could get someone towrite a review and mention words
in there like podcastor SEO podcast,
not just saying thiswas amazing.
That doesn't do much but thispodcast episode was great.
(22:55):
I learned so much about SEO andbuilding a business and how to
get more money revenue for mybusiness, that really helps out.
So keywords,but it's kind of hard like to
influence people to say toput keywords in there.
But the more keywordsand reviews,
the higher you're going to rankor comments description.
I need stuff like that.
So that what they call it,that not the social marketing,
(23:19):
is it?
Social marketing where prettymuch you see like if you were to
look at a book or a business,you look at how many people got
reviews. So you're like, yeah,I'm not going to shop at this
shop because it's only got like5 reviews versus another shot.
Could have a thousand reviews.
You're like, okay,I'll trust this shot more so
than the first shop with onereview, if that makes sense.
(23:40):
Yeah.
What it's called?
Can't remember.
But yeah, no, no,people love to see more reviews.
Definitely. It builds trust up.
As long as it's good reviews.
Not not one star ones,but good price.
All right,so final four questions.
You ready?
Yeah.
All righty.
(24:06):
Number one,what does wealth mean to you?
Financial stability. Just,I mean wealth could mean you're
very, very wealthy,but as long as you just have
enough to get by and not haveto think about money,
that is something that I thinkwould be amazing for everyone.
Okay. Number two,what was your worst
(24:29):
money mistake?
Maybe not buying bitcoin when Isaw it for like $100 like 10
years ago back or like back inlike 2013 or 14 or something
like that.
So thought about buying a coupleof those and got talked out of
it and wish I bought thosebecause that would have been
a nice investment.
(24:49):
Yeah,that's a whole nother story.
But yeah, yeah.
Number three,what is your favorite financial
or non financial book?
Never,rarely read too many financial.
I mean, maybe like Rich Dad,Poor dad kind of is
a financial book.
So we can go with non financial.
(25:10):
I mean, it's okay.
No, I think that one is a goodone too. Just Rich Dad,
Poor dad is always a.
It's a good book foreveryone to read.
Yeah,that's normally to go to you.
And number four,what is your favorite
dish to make?
Chicken parmesan to make candy.
This is my favorite.
Love Italian food.
(25:30):
And that one is my favoritechicken parmesan.
Can't go wrong with that.
No, you can't.
That's just that used to be mygo to dish when I order out.
A good choice.
The very last questionof the show,
which is where could peoplefind out more about you?
So for everyone thatmade it to the end,
(25:51):
I created a special gift.
If you go to my website@SEOoptimizers.com,
that's SEO O P T I I z e r s.comgift and you can find that there
along with my contactinformation and a bunch of
classes I've doneover the years.
I throw it up for free so youcan see step by step how to do
(26:13):
a lot of stuff that we talkedabout. And also,
if they want a freewebsite analysis,
I'm happy to check out theirwebsite from an SEO
point of view.
And they could book some time onmy calendar there for
free as well.
That is amazing.
Thank you for the gift.
I mean, for everybody. I mean,it's just I might have to
check it out myself.
Definitely. The more the better.
So share it around,check it out.
(26:34):
And if you need that websiteconsultation,
if you do have a websiteor anyone does,
feel free to schedule some time.
Awesome, man.
Thank you so much, Brandon.
It's been a pleasure havingyou on and I mean,
I can't thank you enough forall of your insight,
all of your knowledge about SEO.
How do we can monetize andactually optimize our websites,
(26:56):
our videos,and any of the content that
we put out there?
This is definitely a great valueadd for those of you who are
actually going to take itlife to that next level.
So if you haven't already,go ahead on and like, subscribe,
share, do all the fun things.
If anything else,y'all be safe out.
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