April 16, 2025 • 27 mins
🚀 Had an awesome time chatting on Active FM! 🎙️ With 24,000 weekly listeners (13,000 in the U.S. alone!), we dove deep into all things SEO, digital marketing, and growing your business online.
I shared how I "accidentally" fell into SEO after getting my business marketing degree and how that first job in digital marketing changed everything. Now, after 15+ years of working with businesses of all sizes—mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 500s—I run my own company focused on one thing: getting free traffic from Google!
In this episode, we cover:
✅ The best business lessons I've learned over 14+ years 📈
✅ Why diversification is key (don't put all your eggs in one social media basket!)
✅ The power of SEO & backlinks—why they still matter in 2024
✅ Email marketing is NOT dead (it's actually the most powerful tool!) 📧
✅ How to optimize for Google without sacrificing user experience 👀
✅ Conversion rates, A/B testing, and getting more leads & sales 🔥
✅ Why SEO isn’t just for websites (Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor—everything has an algorithm!)
We even talked about influencer marketing, Google Ads, and the best ways to get in front of your audience at the right time and place. Oh, and of course, I shared a special SEO gift for all listeners 🎁.
💡 If you're serious about getting free traffic and growing your business, you won’t want to miss this one!
Check it out now & let’s connect! 👉 SEOoptimizers.com/gift
#SEO #DigitalMarketing #PodcastGuest #MarketingTips #BusinessGrowth #OnlineSuccess 🚀
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Active FM.
And as I mentioned earlier,we have around 24,000 listeners
that listen every week to thevarious shows and 13,000 of
those happen to be in the U.S.
Brandon,so should we get started?
How did you get startedand what's your story?
I just kind of fell into it.
I got my degree in businessmarketing, and after I graduated
(00:22):
from school,the first job I got was doing
digital marketing for a company.
And they wanted me to help outwith SEO, social media,
doing email marketing,running paid ads,
and kind of doing it allfor them. Back then.
And back then I realizedeveryone's going to have a
website in the future and that Ishould probably stick with this
digital marketing and just kindof kept going with it and ever
(00:42):
since then worked at differentadvertising agencies,
different pop shops,Fortune 500 companies,
and everything in betweendoing their SEO.
And right now I have my owncompany that really focuses on
SEO and that free trafficfrom Google.
Okay. Okay, great. What in.
I mean,you've been in business for
a while now. What's that,about 14, 15 years odd?
(01:06):
What are some of the bestbusiness lessons that you've
learned over those 14 years?
Theres a lot of lessons I'velearned over the years.
Just diversify.
Probably don't just put allyour eggs in one basket.
Try to get traffic from as manydifferent sources as possible.
Don't just rely on Facebook orInstagram or one of these
platforms because you never knowwhat's going to happen to them.
(01:28):
And if you just focus on oneplatform and you're not
really diversifying,like if you just focused
on MySpace,kind of be in trouble right now.
So you got to make sureyou diversify.
And having your own websitegives you full control
of everything too.
So always recommend,build out your own website
because you can controlall that.
You have control on socialmedia or other platforms.
(01:49):
You're just rentingspace off them.
You don't own it and they canjust take you down or you just
give them free contentthat you don't own.
So really take ownershipof everything.
Be patient.
A lot of this stuff takes time.
So don't just expectimmediate results,
but just keep working at it andyou'll see the growth over time.
But test and reallylook at the data,
look at analytics and trackeverything. But I mean,
(02:12):
the list goes on and on and on.
I think you raised like a verygood point there because
let's say you're asmall business,
perhaps even like amom and pop shop,
as you just mentioned there'sso much now, you know,
it used to just be, you know,you optimized for Google and
maybe you did AdWords and thatwas like 10 years ago.
(02:33):
And now you, you sort of raised,oh, now there's social media
advertising.
And which one is it?
Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram,is it Twitter?
So to those small businesses,what's the advice you give or
what direction do yousend them down?
When it comes to optimization,it just.
Comes down to who their audienceis. Are they on social media?
Are they going to be on Google,where are they?
(02:55):
That's what matters.
Who's your audience and whatplatforms are they active on?
And that's where youneed to be active.
You don't need to beactive everywhere,
you just need to be whereyour audience is.
That's the main thing.
So just trying to figure out whoyour audience is and how do
I get in front of them.
Don't try to be everywhere,otherwise you're going to spread
yourself way too thin and it'snot going to be effective.
You got to just really focus onwho your core audience is and
(03:15):
take a step back as a businessowner and try to put yourself
in the user's point of view.
If you're looking for yourproduct or service,
where would you go?
Would you be on Facebook,Would you be on Instagram,
on Google or.
Where would you go?
Try to look at that and that'sgoing to tell you where
you need to be.
Okay, great.
Now I've got another interestingquestion for you. So you know,
(03:37):
when you talk about optimizinga website for,
for Google I guess sometimes youalso need to sort of keep in
mind that people have toactually use your website
and to read it.
So I guess what I'm asking isoptimizers will often, you know,
they want a lot of text and itmust be the right text and
have the right keywords.
But then we live in a Twitterage where people want a picture
(03:59):
in 160 characters.
So how do you balance thisout on websites,
especially for the smaller orthe medium sized business?
It just depends whatyou're doing.
If you're trying to rankon Google for SEO,
you need to add more content.
More content,the better for every
single page.
You can write 400 wordsor more per page.
(04:19):
It's going to really boost upthose rankings on Google.
The more content, the better.
Google feeds off text.
Google can't really read imagesor video. Google has trouble.
They're getting better at it,but they really rely on content.
The more content you have onevery single page, the better.
But then if you like you said onTwitter they get 280 characters
that you're allowed to do.
They doubled it a coupleof years ago, so they're giving
(04:41):
you more space.
But even then it's notthat much space.
So you gotta writea short message.
And most people kind of showsyou like on social media they
don't want to read a long400 word text post.
So you're sharing thatmessage from Twitter,
you probably repost it onInstagram or Facebook or
LinkedIn or Pinterest with thatshort message and it's going to
(05:02):
work really well. But for SEO,you need to have content for
Google on your website.
I always tell people just throwthat content at the very
bottom of your page.
People don't want to read400 words of content,
but Google needs to understandwhat that page is about.
So just depends where you'readding that content.
And each platform is differentbut you got to know how your
audience is receptive.
Do they want to read a big longblog post or they want a short
(05:25):
snippet? Do they want an image,they want a video.
How do you use hashtags?
You got to make sure to usethe proper hashtags.
You don't want to justone word hashtags.
You want to use words that aretwo or more words so it's more
buyer intent behind those words.
Not just general broad wordsjust to get eyeballs on it,
but get targeted eyeballs byusing long tail hashtags.
(05:46):
Hashtags that are two or morewords but just depends
where you're posting.
Great.
And by the hashtags you'retalking about the social media
hashtags like on Twitter andthose sort of places.
Yeah.
When you're postingon social media.
Yeah.
Use hashtags not foryour website.
Yeah. Okay. No, great.
(06:07):
Okay Now the,the conversion rate.
They often talk about the,the conversion rate in on like
a website but just perhapsexplaining that to,
to our audience and then that's,it's something that you know
from the little bit ofexperience that I've seen or,
or what I've had contact with,it's quite difficult
(06:27):
to actually do.
Its something that you've got tolike sort of really keep track
of and it's the website issomething that you have to,
it seems like you almost haveto work on it on a,
certainly like a monthlyor a bi weekly basis.
What's been your experienceon that side?
Yeah, you gotta Be testing thatwebsite out as much as possible,
seeing what works,what doesn't work because
(06:48):
nobody knows.
There'S no perfect website.
You always have to be testingand that's ab testing,
split testing.
Hacker traffic gets served oneversion of your website,
half the traffic gets servedanother version.
And you could see what gets themost conversions because
you have to test.
If you're gettingenough traffic.
If you're not gettingmuch traffic,
it's going to be tough to makestatistically informed
decisions.
(07:08):
But if you're getting a decentamount of traffic to your
website, start testing it out.
Move the Buy now button,maybe change it from Buy
now to add to cart.
If you're an E commerce websiteor if you're a service
based business,you could maybe move your phone
number up or changethe font of the.
Phone number or changethe color and.
See does that result in peoplecalling me up more or does it
(07:29):
reduce my conversion rate?
And if it drops it then yougotta switch it back.
But if you see more conversionscoming in then that's
definitely a win.
And then you test that againstsomething else.
So now you have the newfont or the new color,
test that's a different colorand keep testing,
never stop testing.
You always have to be testing toreally hone in and optimize that
website for leads and salesand conversions.
(07:50):
Because half the traffic thatcomes to your website,
it's gonna leave immediatelyjust because they didn't find
what they're looking for,they got distracted or didn't
load properly on mobileor whatever it may be.
But you gotta keep yourself topof mind and keep making it easy
for people to convert.
Okay,so I think you just mentioned
something interesting,the A B testing.
So I've been in this industryfor a while,
(08:12):
but I've never heard of an SEOperson mentioned that before.
Yeah, well, more for traffic.
So just because you get trafficto your website,
just because I can rank you forall these keywords doesn't mean
that traffic is goingto convert to sales.
And if you're getting all thistraffic but your website's
not converting,you're going to be like, hey,
this isn't working.
So I realized over the years gotto make sure that the website
converts as well because trafficisn't a means to an end.
(08:34):
Traffic is just half the battle.
Once you get that traffic,how do you get it to convert?
And that is a tricky part,but it's all about testing and
just seeing what works andwhat doesn't work.
So something I've heard of morerecently is like the sales
funnels top websites,the funnels tops website.
(08:54):
Have you had any sort ofexperience with those?
Yeah, ever since I've been doingdigital Marketing back in 2007
Everyone says you gottahave a funnel,
you gotta have a conversionfunnel because just like I said
at the beginning like half thepeople that come to your website
are going to leave immediately.
So you got to keep them top ofmind by first capturing
their email address.
(09:15):
Then you could send them out thenewsletter or send them out
updates, have them,you can follow them around on
using Google Ads remarketing ifyou have their email address and
then you try to connect them onsocial media because I think you
need about five touch pointsbefore people actually
trust you.
So all that stuff works reallywell to just get people to trust
(09:37):
you because most peopleare just, they're going to leave
your website,they're not finding what
they're looking for.
So you got to buildthat trust up.
And something,I mean I noticed now sort
of going to your,to your website earlier a little
message sort of poppedup and it was,
can't remember exactly now is itlike 60 tips on SEO and then
(09:57):
into your email and subscribe.
So is that something you sort ofpromote even for the mom and pop
type stores or thesmall businesses?
Yeah,email is the most effective
form of marketing.
If you get email addressesyou're good because you own
those email addresses.
You could send out emails tothem anytime and everyone's
gonna receive that email.
It's not like we're social mediawhere only half your audience or
(10:18):
with Facebook only 5% of thepeople that like your page want
to see what you post.
With email you have full controland look at how much spam you
get every single day.
Email is the most powerfulform of marketing.
It's tough to get emailaddresses and I recommend
to everyone,start last year getting emails.
You have to get emails.
If you're not gettingemails you're not.
Going to be able to market as.
(10:38):
Effectively as you can.
So email is number one and it'stough to get email addresses.
You got to give somethingaway for free.
You can't just say subscribeto my newsletter.
Nobody cares about newsletter.
Got to give them somethingof value.
For an e commerce website,give them like a 20% off their
first purchase, a coupon.
If you're a servicebased business,
give them a free something freeebook or free free consultation
(11:01):
or whatever it may be to getthat person's email address.
Because email is number onephone numbers and all that
stuff are great, but.
Email is really what you want.
That's why a lot of websites,you'll see the pop up,
it just says give me your email.
They don't even care aboutyour name, phone number,
they'll get all thatstuff later.
It's because the morefields you have too,
the less likely someone isgoing to fill it out.
Back to the conversionrate optimization,
(11:22):
if it says name and email,that's an.
Extra field that you're goingto lose a lot of traffic.
It doesn't seem likethat big of a deal,
but just by asking for someone'sname you're losing a lot of
people. So less is better.
But it's all about testingthat A B Testing.
Yeah. So Brandon, this. Oh,this is actually mind boggling
because one would have thoughtwe went past the whole email
(11:46):
era like you would think sortof it's down to, you know,
social media and thosesort of things.
But sorry to harpon this but you,
you kind of indicating it's not.
Email is actually stillthe way to go.
Yeah,email is the most powerful.
That's why nobody ever talksabout it because they don't want
you to know how powerful it is.
Everyone's like sure,jump on Facebook ads and all
this stuff because they knowFacebook ads are low quality,
(12:07):
cheap traffic,that they're not interested in
your product or serviceat that moment.
They might have beenin the past,
but just because they'reinterested in your product or
have interests that are similarto what you're offering doesn't
mean they care about or want touse your product or service.
Whereas like on Googlesomeone's searching,
they're actively looking.
But the email,you could just keep their
self top of mind.
And some of the newsletterupdates or product codes
(12:29):
or discounts,I mean if you look at almost
every website stillasks for an email.
Somewhere in there they're stilltrying to capture those emails.
Email is by far the mostpowerful. For now.
There's a lot of other ways to.
Get traffic but email,you own those emails.
You don't have to pay each timeyou're posting or
sharing content.
You just have to create theemail. Create the newsletter,
(12:50):
whatever it is,and send it off to your audience
and then see if they'llconvert it.
If you have 100,000 peoplein your email list,
you send them off that email.
Anytime a hundred thousandpeople are going to
be receiving it.
It's not like you have to keepgrowing that audience.
I mean you want to keep buildingit up, but once you have them,
they're there.
Unless they unsubscribe.
But as long as you keepproviding value,
don't just promote yourself.
(13:10):
Give good value.
If you're promoting, yeah,put yourself in the user's
point of view.
If you sign up for a newsletterfor, like, let's say a dentist,
and the dentist sends youan email about, like,
why they're the best dentist,you're not going to really care.
But if they send you anemail about, like,
seven tips to whiten your teeth,you'll be like, okay,
maybe this is interestingand useful for me.
So don't just promote yourself.
(13:32):
People don't care about whoyou are, unfortunately.
They just want to know benefits.
They want to know what's in itfor them. So offer value.
Okay, great.
So if I sort of cross my mindback to that sort of 2008,
2009 period,when you talked about website
optimization,what it really was was kind
of optimizing the website,putting text on there
(13:57):
and then getting other sitesto link to your site.
Now I suppose the problem from2008 till now is now we have,
I think it's something like 50billion websites on Google.
So how important is actuallythat, what would you call it,
backlinking that you have fromother websites to your website?
(14:19):
Is that still very relevantthese days?
Yeah,there are a lot more websites on
Google or on the Internet.
So that's why it's becomemore competitive.
It takes more time for SEO.
It's not because SEOis really harder,
it's just because there's morecompetition out there and we're
not trying to beat Google.
I don't care about whatGoogle's algorithm is.
It's just trying to beat those10 websites on that first page
of Google and seeing whatthey've done. But yeah,
(14:41):
the backlinks are such a bigpart of their algorithm.
Google started basedoff backlinks,
and it's still based offbacklinks to this date.
It's changed a lot how theylook at those backlinks,
but it's still heavily based ongetting other websites
to talk about you.
The more websites thattalk about you,
the more trust Google has.
And then Google looks at thekeywords to figure out
what to rank you for,but it doesn't really work
the other way around.
Without those backlinks,Google just doesn't trust you.
(15:03):
And they're not going to rank awebsite that they don't trust
backlinks. Nowadays,Google's looking for quality
over quantity.
So in the past it was,I have 100 backlinks and
you had 105 backlinks,you would rank higher than me.
Now it's really the quality.
And to Google,what's a quality backlink?
Quality backlink is a websitethat's related to you and
authoritative. So like,if you're a doctor and you're
(15:26):
getting a backlink froma T shirt company,
that's gonna looka little weird.
But if you're a doctor andyou're getting a backlink from a
medical blog or another doctor,WebMD, something like that,
Wikipedia,that makes a lot more sense.
So relevancy is really,really important with
the backlinks.
It's not just let's getbacklinks to get backlinks,
it's let's get quality backlinksthat's going to move you
(15:46):
up those rankings.
Great, Brandon.
So I suppose that's one of thedifficult things because for a
small business, or as you say,a mom and pop store,
to get other people tolink to you is quite,
it's quite a tough process.
Yeah, it's a little tricky,but it's.
All about getting creative.
You could look at yourcompetitors backlinks using
tools like Ahrefs orMoz or Semrush.
(16:08):
These are all paid tools thatyou just throw your competitor's
URL in there and see alltheir backlinks.
But there's only so manybacklinks you'll be able to
get from those sites.
A lot of them might beold or outdated,
so you have to build new ones.
And the way to build new onessafely is finding other websites
that are related to you andtrying to build relationships
with these webmasters.
Maybe you offer thema free blog.
Post or a video orpress release.
(16:30):
Or sponsorship or whatever needsto be done to essentially get
another website totalk about you.
But there's millions ofdifferent ways to
build backlinks,but it's all about quality.
So you don't want to just buildbacklinks to build them.
You want to get qualitybacklinks.
That's really important.
And the best way to get qualitybacklinks is really just by
blogging on other people'swebsites,
building relationships withother people that are in your
(16:52):
industry and seeing if you couldcontribute a blog post
to their website.
Okay, great. Now,Google Adwords.
So how important arethose these days?
I've sort of readreports of the fake clicks and
you see in some little place ineither Thailand or China
(17:15):
or something like that,and they've got 104,
500 iPhones and they're sittingThere clicking on all
the iPhones. So the,the fake clicks is,
or the purchased clicks isactually seems to be becoming
more and more of anissue these days.
How have you found it withthe Google Adwords. And,
and is that still as effectiveas what it was many years ago?
(17:36):
Yeah. No.
Google tries to cleanup those fake.
Clicks or they'll refund you themoney. So they're on top of it.
Then there's third party toolsif you really want
to double check.
You could spend money on thesethird party tools,
double check to make surethere's no click fraud.
But Google Ads work really well.
It's just they're expensive.
That's why I prefer the SEO,the organic side of things.
But the ads do work.
It's just once you stop spendingmoney on ads, you disappear.
(17:58):
With SEO, you stop doing SEO,you're not going to
just disappear,you're still going to stay up
there for the time being.
Your competitors are going totry to outrank you and over time
you're going to drop down.
But it's not just that immediatewhere you're just gone.
So ads are definitelyvery effective.
It just depends on your budget.
Do you have enough money tospend on them and do you want to
spend money on those ads orinvest the time to get
(18:18):
that free traffic?
And how long does it take?
So let's say a small business,perhaps they like a
small manufacturermaybe employ that sort
of 50 to 100 people,that sort of tight number
and you know,they invite you into a meeting
in the office and they saycome and do SEO for us.
(18:40):
What's your general take on howlong before it starts
becoming effective?
So with SEO,it's not really a one
size fits all.
It just depends on that website,how much SEO has already been
done to that website.
If it's a brand new website,it's going to take at least six
months. If it's an older,more established website,
it might only takea couple months.
But it also depends onthe competition.
(19:01):
How many backlinks do thecompetitors have,
how much SEO has been done tothe competitors websites,
and what's the missing gapbetween yours and their website.
That's going to really let meknow how long it's going to
take. Because with SEO,every website is different.
It's not just this is goingto work for your website.
It's like you got to look ateach one individually and see
where the disconnect is betweenthat website and the competitors
(19:22):
websites and how tofill that gap.
Okay, super.
I see on Your on your websiteyou do Amazon marketing
services.
So is that where people areactually wanting to sell their
products on Amazon?
Yeah just optimizing.
Just like I could optimizea website,
I could optimize an Amazon page,could optimize a Yelp,
(19:44):
a TripAdvisor,I could optimize pretty much
anything out there.
There's always algorithmson them.
So Amazon is another one whereputting the right keywords in
the right places helps you rankhigher on Amazon so you
get more people,more eyeballs on your
products on Amazon.
Okay, interesting.
So search engine optimization isimportant on Amazon as well?
(20:05):
Yeah, on every website.
Almost every website.
Like if you're selling on Etsy,there's an algorithm on Etsy
you're selling on whateverplatform you might be on,
there's always analgorithm there.
So there's ways to kind of tweakit and optimize your profile to
try to get you higher rankings.
Okay.
The other interesting one thatI saw on your website,
which I guess I've neverreally thought about,
(20:26):
was influencer marketing.
Yep.
That one is more for socialmedia trying to say, hey,
we'll get this influencer toshout you out and they'll shout
your product or serviceout to their audience.
And that one has unfortunatelynow with the engagement dropping
so much on social media,it's not as effective as it used
to be, but still a great.
Way to get your name out there.
And brand awarenessand get your.
(20:48):
Get new people to see yourproduct or service or whatever
it is that you're promotingon social.
Okay, interesting. So Brandon,what would be some of the key
takeaways that you'd like togive to the listeners?
Just diversify and try to thinkabout who your audience is and
where they are and put yourselfin front of them.
Don't just be everywhere,just try to be in front of your
(21:10):
audience at the right time,at the right place.
And that one also patience,being patient with all this
stuff is not immediate.
It all takes time.
But over time you'll see thatgrowth and you'll see that
positive momentum and traction.
Okay, great man. Well, Brandon,thank you very much for your
time and we do appreciateyou coming on.
I think some of the insightsthat you've given you have
(21:31):
certainly been mindblowing for me.
So would you just like togive us your, I mean,
we'll put your details on to,in the links as well,
but would you just like to giveus your email address and your,
your website address?
So everyone that's listeningor watching.
I create a special gift forthem on my website.
If they go to seoptimizers.comgift they can find that there.
(21:55):
That's S e o o p t I I z e rs.com gift and they can find
that there along with my contactinformation, everything.
Great.
Thank you very much and thankyou very much for joining
us and have a good day.
Further,thanks so much for having me on.
Welcome to Active FM.
And as I mentioned earlier,we have around 24,000 listeners
that listen every week to thevarious shows and 13,000 of
those happen to be in the U.S.
Brandon,so should we get started?
How did you get startedand what's your story?
I just kind of fell into it.
I got my degree in businessmarketing, and after I graduated
(00:22):
from school,the first job I got was doing
digital marketing for a company.
And they wanted me to help outwith SEO, social media,
doing email marketing,running paid ads,
and kind of doing it allfor them. Back then.
And back then I realizedeveryone's going to have a
website in the future and that Ishould probably stick with this
digital marketing and just kindof kept going with it and ever
(00:42):
since then worked at differentadvertising agencies,
different pop shops,Fortune 500 companies,
and everything in betweendoing their SEO.
And right now I have my owncompany that really focuses on
SEO and that free trafficfrom Google.
Okay. Okay, great. What in.
I mean,you've been in business for
a while now. What's that,about 14, 15 years odd?
(01:06):
What are some of the bestbusiness lessons that you've
learned over those 14 years?
Theres a lot of lessons I'velearned over the years.
Just diversify.
Probably don't just put allyour eggs in one basket.
Try to get traffic from as manydifferent sources as possible.
Don't just rely on Facebook orInstagram or one of these
platforms because you never knowwhat's going to happen to them.
(01:28):
And if you just focus on oneplatform and you're not
really diversifying,like if you just focused
on MySpace,kind of be in trouble right now.
So you got to make sureyou diversify.
And having your own websitegives you full control
of everything too.
So always recommend,build out your own website
because you can controlall that.
You have control on socialmedia or other platforms.
(01:49):
You're just rentingspace off them.
You don't own it and they canjust take you down or you just
give them free contentthat you don't own.
So really take ownershipof everything.
Be patient.
A lot of this stuff takes time.
So don't just expectimmediate results,
but just keep working at it andyou'll see the growth over time.
But test and reallylook at the data,
look at analytics and trackeverything. But I mean,
(02:12):
the list goes on and on and on.
I think you raised like a verygood point there because
let's say you're asmall business,
perhaps even like amom and pop shop,
as you just mentioned there'sso much now, you know,
it used to just be, you know,you optimized for Google and
maybe you did AdWords and thatwas like 10 years ago.
(02:33):
And now you, you sort of raised,oh, now there's social media
advertising.
And which one is it?
Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram,is it Twitter?
So to those small businesses,what's the advice you give or
what direction do yousend them down?
When it comes to optimization,it just.
Comes down to who their audienceis. Are they on social media?
Are they going to be on Google,where are they?
(02:55):
That's what matters.
Who's your audience and whatplatforms are they active on?
And that's where youneed to be active.
You don't need to beactive everywhere,
you just need to be whereyour audience is.
That's the main thing.
So just trying to figure out whoyour audience is and how do
I get in front of them.
Don't try to be everywhere,otherwise you're going to spread
yourself way too thin and it'snot going to be effective.
You got to just really focus onwho your core audience is and
(03:15):
take a step back as a businessowner and try to put yourself
in the user's point of view.
If you're looking for yourproduct or service,
where would you go?
Would you be on Facebook,Would you be on Instagram,
on Google or.
Where would you go?
Try to look at that and that'sgoing to tell you where
you need to be.
Okay, great.
Now I've got another interestingquestion for you. So you know,
(03:37):
when you talk about optimizinga website for,
for Google I guess sometimes youalso need to sort of keep in
mind that people have toactually use your website
and to read it.
So I guess what I'm asking isoptimizers will often, you know,
they want a lot of text and itmust be the right text and
have the right keywords.
But then we live in a Twitterage where people want a picture
(03:59):
in 160 characters.
So how do you balance thisout on websites,
especially for the smaller orthe medium sized business?
It just depends whatyou're doing.
If you're trying to rankon Google for SEO,
you need to add more content.
More content,the better for every
single page.
You can write 400 wordsor more per page.
(04:19):
It's going to really boost upthose rankings on Google.
The more content, the better.
Google feeds off text.
Google can't really read imagesor video. Google has trouble.
They're getting better at it,but they really rely on content.
The more content you have onevery single page, the better.
But then if you like you said onTwitter they get 280 characters
that you're allowed to do.
They doubled it a coupleof years ago, so they're giving
(04:41):
you more space.
But even then it's notthat much space.
So you gotta writea short message.
And most people kind of showsyou like on social media they
don't want to read a long400 word text post.
So you're sharing thatmessage from Twitter,
you probably repost it onInstagram or Facebook or
LinkedIn or Pinterest with thatshort message and it's going to
(05:02):
work really well. But for SEO,you need to have content for
Google on your website.
I always tell people just throwthat content at the very
bottom of your page.
People don't want to read400 words of content,
but Google needs to understandwhat that page is about.
So just depends where you'readding that content.
And each platform is differentbut you got to know how your
audience is receptive.
Do they want to read a big longblog post or they want a short
(05:25):
snippet? Do they want an image,they want a video.
How do you use hashtags?
You got to make sure to usethe proper hashtags.
You don't want to justone word hashtags.
You want to use words that aretwo or more words so it's more
buyer intent behind those words.
Not just general broad wordsjust to get eyeballs on it,
but get targeted eyeballs byusing long tail hashtags.
(05:46):
Hashtags that are two or morewords but just depends
where you're posting.
Great.
And by the hashtags you'retalking about the social media
hashtags like on Twitter andthose sort of places.
Yeah.
When you're postingon social media.
Yeah.
Use hashtags not foryour website.
Yeah. Okay. No, great.
(06:07):
Okay Now the,the conversion rate.
They often talk about the,the conversion rate in on like
a website but just perhapsexplaining that to,
to our audience and then that's,it's something that you know
from the little bit ofexperience that I've seen or,
or what I've had contact with,it's quite difficult
(06:27):
to actually do.
Its something that you've got tolike sort of really keep track
of and it's the website issomething that you have to,
it seems like you almost haveto work on it on a,
certainly like a monthlyor a bi weekly basis.
What's been your experienceon that side?
Yeah, you gotta Be testing thatwebsite out as much as possible,
seeing what works,what doesn't work because
(06:48):
nobody knows.
There'S no perfect website.
You always have to be testingand that's ab testing,
split testing.
Hacker traffic gets served oneversion of your website,
half the traffic gets servedanother version.
And you could see what gets themost conversions because
you have to test.
If you're gettingenough traffic.
If you're not gettingmuch traffic,
it's going to be tough to makestatistically informed
decisions.
(07:08):
But if you're getting a decentamount of traffic to your
website, start testing it out.
Move the Buy now button,maybe change it from Buy
now to add to cart.
If you're an E commerce websiteor if you're a service
based business,you could maybe move your phone
number up or changethe font of the.
Phone number or changethe color and.
See does that result in peoplecalling me up more or does it
(07:29):
reduce my conversion rate?
And if it drops it then yougotta switch it back.
But if you see more conversionscoming in then that's
definitely a win.
And then you test that againstsomething else.
So now you have the newfont or the new color,
test that's a different colorand keep testing,
never stop testing.
You always have to be testing toreally hone in and optimize that
website for leads and salesand conversions.
(07:50):
Because half the traffic thatcomes to your website,
it's gonna leave immediatelyjust because they didn't find
what they're looking for,they got distracted or didn't
load properly on mobileor whatever it may be.
But you gotta keep yourself topof mind and keep making it easy
for people to convert.
Okay,so I think you just mentioned
something interesting,the A B testing.
So I've been in this industryfor a while,
(08:12):
but I've never heard of an SEOperson mentioned that before.
Yeah, well, more for traffic.
So just because you get trafficto your website,
just because I can rank you forall these keywords doesn't mean
that traffic is goingto convert to sales.
And if you're getting all thistraffic but your website's
not converting,you're going to be like, hey,
this isn't working.
So I realized over the years gotto make sure that the website
converts as well because trafficisn't a means to an end.
(08:34):
Traffic is just half the battle.
Once you get that traffic,how do you get it to convert?
And that is a tricky part,but it's all about testing and
just seeing what works andwhat doesn't work.
So something I've heard of morerecently is like the sales
funnels top websites,the funnels tops website.
(08:54):
Have you had any sort ofexperience with those?
Yeah, ever since I've been doingdigital Marketing back in 2007
Everyone says you gottahave a funnel,
you gotta have a conversionfunnel because just like I said
at the beginning like half thepeople that come to your website
are going to leave immediately.
So you got to keep them top ofmind by first capturing
their email address.
(09:15):
Then you could send them out thenewsletter or send them out
updates, have them,you can follow them around on
using Google Ads remarketing ifyou have their email address and
then you try to connect them onsocial media because I think you
need about five touch pointsbefore people actually
trust you.
So all that stuff works reallywell to just get people to trust
(09:37):
you because most peopleare just, they're going to leave
your website,they're not finding what
they're looking for.
So you got to buildthat trust up.
And something,I mean I noticed now sort
of going to your,to your website earlier a little
message sort of poppedup and it was,
can't remember exactly now is itlike 60 tips on SEO and then
(09:57):
into your email and subscribe.
So is that something you sort ofpromote even for the mom and pop
type stores or thesmall businesses?
Yeah,email is the most effective
form of marketing.
If you get email addressesyou're good because you own
those email addresses.
You could send out emails tothem anytime and everyone's
gonna receive that email.
It's not like we're social mediawhere only half your audience or
(10:18):
with Facebook only 5% of thepeople that like your page want
to see what you post.
With email you have full controland look at how much spam you
get every single day.
Email is the most powerfulform of marketing.
It's tough to get emailaddresses and I recommend
to everyone,start last year getting emails.
You have to get emails.
If you're not gettingemails you're not.
Going to be able to market as.
(10:38):
Effectively as you can.
So email is number one and it'stough to get email addresses.
You got to give somethingaway for free.
You can't just say subscribeto my newsletter.
Nobody cares about newsletter.
Got to give them somethingof value.
For an e commerce website,give them like a 20% off their
first purchase, a coupon.
If you're a servicebased business,
give them a free something freeebook or free free consultation
(11:01):
or whatever it may be to getthat person's email address.
Because email is number onephone numbers and all that
stuff are great, but.
Email is really what you want.
That's why a lot of websites,you'll see the pop up,
it just says give me your email.
They don't even care aboutyour name, phone number,
they'll get all thatstuff later.
It's because the morefields you have too,
the less likely someone isgoing to fill it out.
Back to the conversionrate optimization,
(11:22):
if it says name and email,that's an.
Extra field that you're goingto lose a lot of traffic.
It doesn't seem likethat big of a deal,
but just by asking for someone'sname you're losing a lot of
people. So less is better.
But it's all about testingthat A B Testing.
Yeah. So Brandon, this. Oh,this is actually mind boggling
because one would have thoughtwe went past the whole email
(11:46):
era like you would think sortof it's down to, you know,
social media and thosesort of things.
But sorry to harpon this but you,
you kind of indicating it's not.
Email is actually stillthe way to go.
Yeah,email is the most powerful.
That's why nobody ever talksabout it because they don't want
you to know how powerful it is.
Everyone's like sure,jump on Facebook ads and all
this stuff because they knowFacebook ads are low quality,
(12:07):
cheap traffic,that they're not interested in
your product or serviceat that moment.
They might have beenin the past,
but just because they'reinterested in your product or
have interests that are similarto what you're offering doesn't
mean they care about or want touse your product or service.
Whereas like on Googlesomeone's searching,
they're actively looking.
But the email,you could just keep their
self top of mind.
And some of the newsletterupdates or product codes
(12:29):
or discounts,I mean if you look at almost
every website stillasks for an email.
Somewhere in there they're stilltrying to capture those emails.
Email is by far the mostpowerful. For now.
There's a lot of other ways to.
Get traffic but email,you own those emails.
You don't have to pay each timeyou're posting or
sharing content.
You just have to create theemail. Create the newsletter,
(12:50):
whatever it is,and send it off to your audience
and then see if they'llconvert it.
If you have 100,000 peoplein your email list,
you send them off that email.
Anytime a hundred thousandpeople are going to
be receiving it.
It's not like you have to keepgrowing that audience.
I mean you want to keep buildingit up, but once you have them,
they're there.
Unless they unsubscribe.
But as long as you keepproviding value,
don't just promote yourself.
(13:10):
Give good value.
If you're promoting, yeah,put yourself in the user's
point of view.
If you sign up for a newsletterfor, like, let's say a dentist,
and the dentist sends youan email about, like,
why they're the best dentist,you're not going to really care.
But if they send you anemail about, like,
seven tips to whiten your teeth,you'll be like, okay,
maybe this is interestingand useful for me.
So don't just promote yourself.
(13:32):
People don't care about whoyou are, unfortunately.
They just want to know benefits.
They want to know what's in itfor them. So offer value.
Okay, great.
So if I sort of cross my mindback to that sort of 2008,
2009 period,when you talked about website
optimization,what it really was was kind
of optimizing the website,putting text on there
(13:57):
and then getting other sitesto link to your site.
Now I suppose the problem from2008 till now is now we have,
I think it's something like 50billion websites on Google.
So how important is actuallythat, what would you call it,
backlinking that you have fromother websites to your website?
(14:19):
Is that still very relevantthese days?
Yeah,there are a lot more websites on
Google or on the Internet.
So that's why it's becomemore competitive.
It takes more time for SEO.
It's not because SEOis really harder,
it's just because there's morecompetition out there and we're
not trying to beat Google.
I don't care about whatGoogle's algorithm is.
It's just trying to beat those10 websites on that first page
of Google and seeing whatthey've done. But yeah,
(14:41):
the backlinks are such a bigpart of their algorithm.
Google started basedoff backlinks,
and it's still based offbacklinks to this date.
It's changed a lot how theylook at those backlinks,
but it's still heavily based ongetting other websites
to talk about you.
The more websites thattalk about you,
the more trust Google has.
And then Google looks at thekeywords to figure out
what to rank you for,but it doesn't really work
the other way around.
Without those backlinks,Google just doesn't trust you.
(15:03):
And they're not going to rank awebsite that they don't trust
backlinks. Nowadays,Google's looking for quality
over quantity.
So in the past it was,I have 100 backlinks and
you had 105 backlinks,you would rank higher than me.
Now it's really the quality.
And to Google,what's a quality backlink?
Quality backlink is a websitethat's related to you and
authoritative. So like,if you're a doctor and you're
(15:26):
getting a backlink froma T shirt company,
that's gonna looka little weird.
But if you're a doctor andyou're getting a backlink from a
medical blog or another doctor,WebMD, something like that,
Wikipedia,that makes a lot more sense.
So relevancy is really,really important with
the backlinks.
It's not just let's getbacklinks to get backlinks,
it's let's get quality backlinksthat's going to move you
(15:46):
up those rankings.
Great, Brandon.
So I suppose that's one of thedifficult things because for a
small business, or as you say,a mom and pop store,
to get other people tolink to you is quite,
it's quite a tough process.
Yeah, it's a little tricky,but it's.
All about getting creative.
You could look at yourcompetitors backlinks using
tools like Ahrefs orMoz or Semrush.
(16:08):
These are all paid tools thatyou just throw your competitor's
URL in there and see alltheir backlinks.
But there's only so manybacklinks you'll be able to
get from those sites.
A lot of them might beold or outdated,
so you have to build new ones.
And the way to build new onessafely is finding other websites
that are related to you andtrying to build relationships
with these webmasters.
Maybe you offer thema free blog.
Post or a video orpress release.
(16:30):
Or sponsorship or whatever needsto be done to essentially get
another website totalk about you.
But there's millions ofdifferent ways to
build backlinks,but it's all about quality.
So you don't want to just buildbacklinks to build them.
You want to get qualitybacklinks.
That's really important.
And the best way to get qualitybacklinks is really just by
blogging on other people'swebsites,
building relationships withother people that are in your
(16:52):
industry and seeing if you couldcontribute a blog post
to their website.
Okay, great. Now,Google Adwords.
So how important arethose these days?
I've sort of readreports of the fake clicks and
you see in some little place ineither Thailand or China
(17:15):
or something like that,and they've got 104,
500 iPhones and they're sittingThere clicking on all
the iPhones. So the,the fake clicks is,
or the purchased clicks isactually seems to be becoming
more and more of anissue these days.
How have you found it withthe Google Adwords. And,
and is that still as effectiveas what it was many years ago?
(17:36):
Yeah. No.
Google tries to cleanup those fake.
Clicks or they'll refund you themoney. So they're on top of it.
Then there's third party toolsif you really want
to double check.
You could spend money on thesethird party tools,
double check to make surethere's no click fraud.
But Google Ads work really well.
It's just they're expensive.
That's why I prefer the SEO,the organic side of things.
But the ads do work.
It's just once you stop spendingmoney on ads, you disappear.
(17:58):
With SEO, you stop doing SEO,you're not going to
just disappear,you're still going to stay up
there for the time being.
Your competitors are going totry to outrank you and over time
you're going to drop down.
But it's not just that immediatewhere you're just gone.
So ads are definitelyvery effective.
It just depends on your budget.
Do you have enough money tospend on them and do you want to
spend money on those ads orinvest the time to get
(18:18):
that free traffic?
And how long does it take?
So let's say a small business,perhaps they like a
small manufacturermaybe employ that sort
of 50 to 100 people,that sort of tight number
and you know,they invite you into a meeting
in the office and they saycome and do SEO for us.
(18:40):
What's your general take on howlong before it starts
becoming effective?
So with SEO,it's not really a one
size fits all.
It just depends on that website,how much SEO has already been
done to that website.
If it's a brand new website,it's going to take at least six
months. If it's an older,more established website,
it might only takea couple months.
But it also depends onthe competition.
(19:01):
How many backlinks do thecompetitors have,
how much SEO has been done tothe competitors websites,
and what's the missing gapbetween yours and their website.
That's going to really let meknow how long it's going to
take. Because with SEO,every website is different.
It's not just this is goingto work for your website.
It's like you got to look ateach one individually and see
where the disconnect is betweenthat website and the competitors
(19:22):
websites and how tofill that gap.
Okay, super.
I see on Your on your websiteyou do Amazon marketing
services.
So is that where people areactually wanting to sell their
products on Amazon?
Yeah just optimizing.
Just like I could optimizea website,
I could optimize an Amazon page,could optimize a Yelp,
(19:44):
a TripAdvisor,I could optimize pretty much
anything out there.
There's always algorithmson them.
So Amazon is another one whereputting the right keywords in
the right places helps you rankhigher on Amazon so you
get more people,more eyeballs on your
products on Amazon.
Okay, interesting.
So search engine optimization isimportant on Amazon as well?
(20:05):
Yeah, on every website.
Almost every website.
Like if you're selling on Etsy,there's an algorithm on Etsy
you're selling on whateverplatform you might be on,
there's always analgorithm there.
So there's ways to kind of tweakit and optimize your profile to
try to get you higher rankings.
Okay.
The other interesting one thatI saw on your website,
which I guess I've neverreally thought about,
(20:26):
was influencer marketing.
Yep.
That one is more for socialmedia trying to say, hey,
we'll get this influencer toshout you out and they'll shout
your product or serviceout to their audience.
And that one has unfortunatelynow with the engagement dropping
so much on social media,it's not as effective as it used
to be, but still a great.
Way to get your name out there.
And brand awarenessand get your.
(20:48):
Get new people to see yourproduct or service or whatever
it is that you're promotingon social.
Okay, interesting. So Brandon,what would be some of the key
takeaways that you'd like togive to the listeners?
Just diversify and try to thinkabout who your audience is and
where they are and put yourselfin front of them.
Don't just be everywhere,just try to be in front of your
(21:10):
audience at the right time,at the right place.
And that one also patience,being patient with all this
stuff is not immediate.
It all takes time.
But over time you'll see thatgrowth and you'll see that
positive momentum and traction.
Okay, great man. Well, Brandon,thank you very much for your
time and we do appreciateyou coming on.
I think some of the insightsthat you've given you have
(21:31):
certainly been mindblowing for me.
So would you just like togive us your, I mean,
we'll put your details on to,in the links as well,
but would you just like to giveus your email address and your,
your website address?
So everyone that's listeningor watching.
I create a special gift forthem on my website.
If they go to seoptimizers.comgift they can find that there.
(21:55):
That's S e o o p t I I z e rs.com gift and they can find
that there along with my contactinformation, everything.
Great.
Thank you very much and thankyou very much for joining
us and have a good day.
Further,thanks so much for having me on.
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