May 22, 2025 • 22 mins
🎙️ I had a blast being a guest on this podcast!
We dug deep into all things SEO — what it is, why most people still don’t fully understand it, and how to use it to get more traffic, leads, and sales (without spending a fortune on ads 💸).
Since 2007, I’ve been running SEO Optimizers, helping small and mid-sized businesses grow online. In this episode, I broke down my process, shared actionable tips, and even revealed why SEO is both an art and a science. 🧠🎨
We talked about:
- Why short keywords won’t cut it anymore
- How to spy (ethically!) on your competitors
- What Google looks for in a website
- Why do you need content, even if you hate writing ✍️
- How paid ads and SEO work together (not against each other)
- And why remarketing might be your secret weapon 🔁
If you’ve ever wondered how SEO works (or why your website isn’t ranking), you’re going to love this one.
Check it out now and let me know your favorite takeaway!
#SEOtips #MarketingStrategy #SmallBusinessGrowth #DigitalMarketing #SEOStrategy #GoogleSEO #OnlineVisibility #EntrepreneurLife #TrafficToSales 🚀
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
So you've been searching highand low to figure out how to
use SEO. Pardon that pun.
That was terrible. I know,I know. But you know, it's.
It seems like every other daypeople who offer SEO services
are seeking me out.
I bet it's the same for you.
And I think the problem for alot of SEO companies may be,
and we're going to find outbecause I'm going to
ask our guests.
It may be that people just don'tknow enough about it to even
(00:24):
think to ask about it or to callor find an SEO company that may
be a problem. I don't know.
We're going to find out.
That's why I'm excited to haveour great guest today.
Brandon Lebowitz.
He runs and operates SEOOptimizers. Since 2007,
he's been doing this.
They're a digital marketingcompany that focuses on helping
small and medium sizedbusinesses get more
online traffic,which in turn converts into
clients, sales leads,wealth beyond your wildest
(00:47):
dreams. Well, you hope. But it,at the very least,
it will help you build yourbusiness. Brandon,
welcome to the virtual lounge.
Thank you for havingme on today.
My pleasure.
So am I nuts or what?
I mean,do you think people just don't
still at this point know enoughabout what you do to seek
out an SEO firm?
I think it's just ambiguous andit changes all the time.
(01:09):
So people get confusedand overwhelmed.
It's not really tangible.
It's tough to really put intowords or put into actually a way
to physically see what's goingon versus waiting few months to
get some traction and thenseeing that growth. But yeah,
I think that's the tough part isthat intangible and the weight,
because it's not immediate.
(01:30):
SEO does take time,but it is the better
long term strategy.
It really is. So let's just,hey, let's boil this down here.
Lets just say let's assumepeople in the audience just
don't know what SEO is.
Can you, can you give us yourelevator pitch?
So SEO is search engineoptimization,
which means ranking websites inthe different search engines,
(01:51):
which nowadays is justprimarily Google.
When you search on Google,there's ads at the top.
Those are all paid ads,but right below the paid ads are
the organic, the free listings.
And SEO is about getting yourwebsite listed in those
free listings.
There's 10 spots on thatfirst page of Google.
So they're trying to get youinto that free traffic so you're
not paying every time someoneclicks on your Website.
(02:13):
There's. It's a science.
But what do you say, Brandon?
It's also kind of an art.
Because I just, for example,I'm a.
I've got several books out onAmazon and one area is where
I've fallen short. Just,just as an example
is the keywords.
I just put like oneor two keywords,
not phrasing or anything.
And I didn't really think aboutthe seven or eight keywords that
(02:35):
are phrases that peopleused to search. Right.
Its just not enough to putmystery novel. I mean,
you're not really gonna getfound if you just put
mystery novel.
But if you put quirky mysterynovel set in Nebraska,
you're more, you know,people might,
might actually be lookingfor that.
That's just a weird example.
But.
But would you say that that'spart of what you're doing
(02:55):
is like when you,when you settle in with a
client, you already said to the,the true statement that of
course it's not going to happenovernight. You have to,
you know,you have to keep working at it.
But is it kind of an art tofigure out just exactly how
people are searchingfor your clients?
I'd say that's definitely one ofthe first starting points,
is figuring out those keywords.
(03:16):
Because if you're targetingthe wrong keywords,
it's not going to do much.
So you got to go and do thekeyword research by figuring out
what keywords people actuallysearch for using different
tools such as,like the Google Keyword Planner.
It's a free tool from Googlethat will show you how many
people actually search for thatkeyword every single month.
So you see,is this a good keyword?
Should I change it?
But like you said,putting like one word keywords
(03:39):
are not the best you want toreally put because people don't
really search one word.
People usually searchmultiple words.
So the longer the keyword,the less people that use it or.
But the more intent behind it.
Someone just searching for book.
What does that mean?
It can mean a million differentthings. What is that?
Or mystery book.
It's a little bit more specificbut still pretty broad.
So the more words the better.
(04:02):
So if someone's lookingfor like mystery book,
detective murder or somethinglike that,
and writing about that's goingto be a lot more specific.
Ver.
So definitely getting moregranular is going to be
a lot better with SEO,with the keywords especially.
Yeah. And sometimes too, I've,I've seen and I'm trying this
out a little bit. You Know,Knives out and Glass Onion are
(04:23):
pretty popular mystery moviesand maybe people are like
mystery novel, like Knives Out.
I mean, I,I don't know if that's
going to work or not,but sometimes you just gotta,
you gotta try,you gotta kind of experiment
a little. Don't.
You never know until you try.
So it's all about, with SEO,it's all about testing,
seeing what works. If it works,keep doing it, if not,
cut it back.
But it's all about testing andtesting and testing to figure
(04:45):
out what that sweet spot is to,to get, actually to,
to get that traction,to get that growth.
So let's let's kind of gothrough some steps here.
Let's pretend like you're,you're onboarding me,
my company. Okay.
And how would that work?
You already stressed and I wantto restress this to the audience
as well. It's kind of like pr,which is mostly what I do.
It doesn't happen overnight orrarely does it happen overnight.
(05:08):
But can you kind ofwalk us through?
Say I' small to midsized business.
And I've decided I come toyou and I say, Brandon,
here's the deal, man. I,I can't get anywhere
near page one.
You know,the phone's not ringing.
I don't know if my website'sany good.
I don't know if my social mediais helping or hurting. Well,
how does this work?
Let's say I just signed thecontract. What do you do?
(05:29):
What are your steps?
Well first is always a websiteanalysis because it's not
a one size fits all.
So gotta look at your website,analyze it versus the
competitors and try to figureout what the disconnect is,
what's working for you or what'snot working for you.
And same with your competition.
What's working for them,what's getting them to the top
and how can we implement what'sgoing on into their websites
(05:50):
onto yours?
And that's really lookingat like their keywords,
looking at their backlinks.
And with SEO,everything's transparent.
I can see what you're doing,you can see what I'm doing.
So if you just look inthe right places,
you'll be able to kind of seewhat strategies people are
incorporating and try to forgothow to put it into your website.
But that's the other styleone size fits all.
So I always do a free websiteanalysis to try to just figure
(06:11):
out where you are and where yourcompetitors are and how to
get you to that level.
Would you say though, that.
Let's say, you know,you were signed on and we're
doing a And I don't even knowwhat you'd recommend.
I think it probably dependsclient to client.
But let's say I'm spending theamount of money you say
I should spend on,on on not only keywords,
(06:33):
you know, with you doing thekeyword stuff,
but also maybe some Google Ads.
Does that, does spending a.
Does an ad spend with Googlehelp with Google,
or is that something that you,you would never know,
but you could basically assumeit might help or how
does that work?
No, no, they're separate.
So Google's not going to helprank you higher just because
you're spending money on ads.
Unfortunately,they would get a lot of trouble
(06:54):
for that. So they don't do that.
But what they do is you run.
If you do SEO and thenyou run paid ads,
your cost per click might be alittle bit cheaper because
Google wants you to optimizeyour landing page and do all
these things to help reducecost per clicks,
but it's not going to help yourank higher for organically.
Do you typically,though advise that you do some
(07:16):
advertising to kind ofspeed things along?
What if they're like me andthey're really impatient?
They're like, like, dude,I want to get,
I want to get some resultsin the next six months.
Would you recommend ads withthe keyword work or what?
I always recommend someremarketing ads.
So anytime someone goes to yourwebsite and doesn't make a
purchase, follow them around.
Because fortunately half thetraffic is probably going to
leave your website immediately.
(07:37):
Got to capture them and keepyourself top of mind.
And that's where you're runningthese paid ads.
We'll follow them around andkeep you top of mind for like,
warm traffic.
If you want to do cold outreach,you could do that,
but it gets pretty expensive.
It just turn.
Depends on your turnon ad spend,
making sure you hit a positivereturn on ad spend and you're
not bleeding more money outthan you make again.
So as long as you're making morethan you're putting in,
(07:59):
then I would say run those ads.
But definitely the remarketingwhere you follow people around
and just keep yourselftop of mind.
So, so putting in a pixeltrying to capture email
addresses. Do drip campaigns.
Does that, does that figure in?
The more touch points,the better.
So you don't want to just focuson SEO or paid ads.
(08:19):
You want to do socialmedia marketing,
you want to do email Marketing,you want to get traffic from as
many different sources aspossible. The more the better.
So don't just think youshould do one thing.
You want to diversify and try tocapture that traffic from as
many different placesas possible.
Yeah let's talk about strategya little bit here.
What do you think of thestrategies that are most
(08:41):
effective right now?
Well,it's definitely adding content
to your website.
So adding text to every singlepage. Google feeds off text.
They can't really readimages or videos yet.
But the more content youhave on each page,
the easier it is forthem to read,
understand and know whatkeywords you're targeting.
So got to make sure you puttext on every single page.
(09:01):
Not just the homepage,but any page that you want to
rank needs a couple hundredwords of content.
And that's going to really helpthe search engines read and know
what keywords are targeting.
A lot of people,especially E commerce websites,
don't put much texton their website,
so it becomes tough for thesearch engines to know what
keywords you're focused on.
So you go in and clean up or Imean just add some text
(09:22):
to each page.
Unfortunately it has tobe original content.
You can't just take text fromone page to another.
Right.
Have to be 100% unique.
But you take that text from onepage to another and I mean,
if you write unique textfor each page,
that's going to really helpout search engines a lot.
And I know a lot of peopleprobably don't want to put a
bunch of text on their website,but it doesn't matter where you
(09:42):
put it on the top, the middle,the bottom of the page.
As long as Google sees it,that's all that matters.
Just don't hide it.
Don't put in like font size0.001 with white text.
If your backgroundis white text,
that's going to potentiallyget you in trouble.
But as long as you put thevery bottom of your page,
most people never reallyscroll to the bottom.
But Google will read from top tobottom and see that content.
(10:03):
And that's just going to helpout with their with their
understanding of what yourwebsite's about.
Because Google's just a searchengine, they're just a robot.
They're not that smart.
They need to really spoon feedthem as much information
as possible.
The more you give them,the easier it is for them to
know what keywords to rank youfor and ranking for the
correct keywords.
Yeah, I mean,it's a prettier site when it's
(10:23):
images that are moving and,and you know,
great images and visualsand that kind of thing.
But as you say you know,Google's not really stiffing
around for that.
They need to see the words.
Right.
So I appreciate that.
That's a good thought.
And I hadn't thought about evenif your site is just very geared
toward that and it's anaesthetic where it's just mostly
a visual and not a lot of wordsput them in there somewhere.
(10:46):
That's even at the bottom.
That's a fantastic thought.
I've never considered that.
But can it can a site?
Okay, here though.
This speaks to me.
I'm asking this for me.
Can, can your site be too wordy,too many, too much on a page?
Yeah So Google says,just put the right amount
that needs to be there.
So if you're writing an articleor you're someone's right
(11:07):
answering a question,what's two plus two?
And you have 10,000 words,that might be a little too much.
But if you're saying,if you have an article about
like how to fix your car engine,that could be potentially
10,000 words.
So it just depends on what thecontent is and how much text
needs to really be there.
If you don't want to just addextra text to add it,
you just need to write whatneeds to be there.
(11:27):
So writing for people,not writing for search engines,
don't write extra tax justbecause it should be there.
What you want to do is search inGoogle for all your
keywords and,or I mean searching Google for
your keyword and open up all thewebsites on that first page of
Google and see how much.
We'll skip over the ads,but open up all the organic
listings and see how much texteach website's using.
(11:48):
And then what you're going todo is average it all out.
So if you see everyone'swriting 500 words,
you should probablywrite 550 words.
If you see everyone's writinga thousand words,
you should probably writethousand words.
So that will kind of giveyou insight of what,
how much text should be there.
That's, that's a great point.
That's a fantastic. Well, let's,let's go back for a second
to keywords then.
(12:09):
How do you research thekeywords? So is it,
are there sites thatpeople can use?
You did mention the Googlesite that's free,
but I can't imagine it'sanywhere near as good as the
stuff that you bringto the table.
Do you bring kind of a,a big gun to the table,
so to speak,for that kind of thing that you
can't just get for free?
No.
The best is really GoogleKeyword Planner because it's
(12:30):
going to show you all the dataabout what keywords or I mean
how much search volume eachkeyword gets because there's no
third party tools that areable to see that data.
Google gets all that data andthen all these third party tools
that do keyword research justpull that data in and
make it look pretty.
But it's all pulled from theGoogle Keyword Planner because
there's no other tools that areable to see what the data
(12:53):
that Google has.
Google keeps that private exceptfor search volume,
which is kind of nice thatthey give you that.
But other than that,everything else is pretty
much kept top secret.
Yeah, but,but you do bring to the table
the expertise how to use that.
And there, as I said earlier,that's an art and a science to
what we're doing here and whatyou're doing here for your
clients. Right. So it's, it's,that's why it's beneficial.
(13:14):
And I just can't imaginea lot of my.
Okay.
You know, I'm a PR agency.
I can't imagine most of myclients having the time and
really just, just the,don't take this the wrong way.
Clients who are eliciting,but the,
the sophistication in thatparticular area to do it
effectively, you know,Time wise and,
and just knowing what's,you know, kind of knowing how
(13:34):
to do the process.
It just seems like it's a,kind of a bit of a learning
curve and be a little easierjust to hire a firm to help.
Yeah, no, definitely gotta,just having a tool doesn't
do anything.
You gotta make sure you usethe tool the right way.
So having tools is great,but if you're not using
it in the proper way,then it's not going to help out
or it might do moreharm than good.
So definitely I know how to,how to navigate through those
(13:56):
tools, what to look for,what are red flags,
what are green flags?
To go ahead with this keywordand just try to figure out that
you're on the right track andnot just wasting time.
Yeah. So tell me your,your firm,
you say you work with mostlysmall to mid sized companies.
Is there a generalterm that people work with you?
(14:19):
Is it more of a short term dealor do you work with people
year over year?
How does that look?
It varies.
So some people will beon for a few months,
some will stay on for years.
It just depends on,really depends on
the competition.
If there's no competition,once you rank at the
top of Google,then you pretty much you're
(14:40):
going to be up there.
But if you have competitors,there's only 10 spots on that
first page of Google,so they're going to be fighting
for it and trying toget to the top.
So it just depends on howcompetitive that industry is and
that lets people know how muchtime they need to do to keep,
to keep those rankings up.
Because you don't want to justrank and then drop them down.
You want to keep those rankings.
(15:00):
You don't want your competitorsto outrank you.
Because what's gonna happen isonce you get to that first
page of Google,they're gonna look at all the
keywords, all the backlinks,everything that you've done and
try to do a betterjob of doing it.
Just like that's whatI would do.
And anytime I get a new client,I look at all the competitors,
see what they're doing and tryto do a better job of it.
So it's kind of like a backand forth battle,
keeping those rankings.
(15:22):
Very good. And are there,there are some other ways
to kind of leapfrog,aren't there to.
What about if you usea good solid,
have a good solid Googlebusiness presence that,
what does that do for you?
Google business?
Google Maps is more local.
So if you're a local businessthen you definitely want to be
on like Google Maps, Apple Maps,Bing maps, yellow pages,
(15:44):
MapQuest,all these different maps.
Because if you're a localbusiness you want to get that
local presence and showup for local searches.
But if you're internationalbusiness then,
then the local is notthe most important.
But definitely if you're like adoctor, a lawyer, a dentist,
something like that,you gotta be on Google
my business.
That way you make sure that youshow up when people search for
(16:05):
you locally and capturethat traffic.
So just trying to take up morefree real estate on that first
page of Google becauseGoogle will show,
they'll show websites,they'll show maps of your local
business, they'll show images,they'll sometimes show videos if
you have any videos thatare optimized.
So really want to try to take upas much free real estate as
possible on that firstpage of Google with,
without spending money on ads.
(16:27):
Right, right. Yeah.
Like for example you searchKansas City Public Relations and
if you go into the businessafter you get through with
the million ads at top,you go to the businesses thing,
click on that and then allof a sudden we're,
we're in a good position thereand we get a lot of traffic.
Although we're working ongetting away from just being
in that little subsection.
My agency is. But you know,so what about LinkedIn?
(16:49):
I've heard it tell that LinkedInhas such tremendously good
you knowfor want of a better term
credibility with Google thathaving a LinkedIn presence can
also be beneficial in SEO.
Is that true?
I mean Google is blocked frommost social media so they can't
really see what you're doing.
(17:10):
They can see if you have aprofile but they can't
see beyond that.
So they can see because mostbusinesses want Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn,Pinterest,
all the kind of basic ones,tick tock, stuff like that.
But beyond that they can't seehow many followers or how active
you are. And all Those,except for YouTube,
they own YouTube. So right.
Twitter,they partnered with Twitter
(17:31):
so they could see that.
But other than that,but to normal business,
Google wants to makesure that you,
I mean a normal businessshould have,
social media should have like anAbout Us, a Contact Us page,
a privacy policy page,a Terms of Service page,
a phone number that's easy tofind or an email address
that's easy to find.
If people don't have that stuffthen it looks like you're not a
(17:54):
real business to Google becausea New real business would
have most of that stuff.
Even if you're not activeon LinkedIn,
as long as you have a presence,it shows that at least you were
at some point a real business.
It doesn't tell Google thatyou're still active.
And that's where these backlinkscome to help Google see that
you're still a real business andpeople are still talking
about you.
Very good, Very good. Yeah,there's just so much out there.
(18:15):
And you,you can tell with some of my
questions where you're,you're being polite and going,
I don't know where you heardthat crap. But, you know,
you just hear stuff as abusiness owner all the time
though, you know, oh, well,you got to do this,
you got to do that.
And but that's the other thingtoo is you bring the
expertise to sayyeah, have that presence,
but don't waste, you know,all your time on it.
You've got other thingsyou should do to,
(18:36):
to to turn up in the page.
So if would you say on,if you don't mind me asking,
do you.
Do you think that Facebookadvertising at all is beneficial
compared to Google,or does it just depend or
any thoughts on that?
(18:56):
Kind of just depends.
If you're a new business whereno one's searching for you and
people aren't gonna besearching on Google,
then I would say social mediamight be better because
if no one's searching,it's gonna be tough.
Yeah.
If you create a new productor invent something,
but people are searchingon Google,
then you definitely want toprobably run Google Ads,
(19:18):
because social media,you're just interrupting people
based off interests,but doesn't necessarily mean
they care or want to use yourproduct or service.
In the past they might have,or in the future they might,
but doesn't mean they wantto now versus Google,
people are searching,they're showing intent,
they're actively looking. So,right,
a little different with that.
(19:39):
Where I would always say Googleis going to be a lot better
because people search,they're actively looking versus
you interrupting people hopingthey're interested.
But it just depends on intent.
But yeah,you definitely want to be in
front of your audience at theright moments at the right
times. And that's where Google,SEO, social media.
You just got to figure outwho your audience is,
where they are,and how to be in front of
(20:00):
them at the right time.
Because you don't need tobe everywhere. I mean,
the more places you are,the better.
But you just really need to bein front of your audience.
And you just got to figure outwho your audience is and how to
get in front of them atthe right moments.
So if I'm hearing you correctly,yeah, Google number one.
But I guess, and you're right,nobody, especially on social,
you know, quit interrupting.
You know, that guy. That's.
You're right.
But if they follow you on,let's say follow your Facebook
(20:22):
fan of yours or follower,and every now and then you might
want to boost a post about aspecial you're doing or just a
post that's got some tractionso more people see it.
Would that go along with whatyou said earlier about,
you know, you want to, you know,constantly touch your friends
and fans and potential customersin that way?
Because that's less,that's a little less intrusive
because you kind of signed upand said, hey, look, I'm a fan.
(20:43):
As long as you don't abusethe privilege. Would you.
So I guess what I'm asking is,in the right mix,
Facebook advertising could help.
But it's as. Again,back to what you said.
It's not.
It should not be your primary.
Yeah, I would do Facebook afteryou exhausted Google.
So spend all the money on GoogleAds because that's where
you get the most sales.
Social media is cheaperfor a reason.
(21:04):
It's lower quality traffic.
Right.
A lot of different types ofads you can run on Google.
Like Google owns YouTube,so you can run YouTube ads.
And yeah,YouTube gives you 30 seconds
free ad space.
So if somebody watches yourYouTube video ad for 29 seconds
and then skips it,you don't pay a penny
after 30 seconds.
Then you pay like10 cents a view.
So there's a lot of other adplatforms that are cheaper
(21:25):
than Google. Well,Google owns YouTube,
so still technically them,but people also buy off people.
And video is going to be a lotbetter at conveying a message
than a couple of lines of texton a Google search ad would be.
So there's lots of ways to tryto tap into that free traffic
that Google's giving you.
Even though it's notnecessarily free.
You have to pay after someonewatches 30 seconds.
But it's much cheaper and muchmore affordable in
(21:48):
the long term.
Oh, fantastic.
So Brandon Lewis if peoplewant to learn more,
is it SEO optimizers.com,is that correct?
Yeah.
So I actually created a specialgift for everyone that's
listening.
If they go to mywebsite@seoptimizers.com that's
S E O O P T I I z e rs.com forward/gift.
(22:10):
And they can find that there,along with my contact
information and a bunch ofclasses I've done
over the years.
I've throw it up for free sothey can watch them anytime.
And if they want to also booksome time on my calendar for
a free website analysis,I'm happy to dive in and
see what's working,what's not working,
and how to get them to the levelthat they want to be at.
And they can book some time onmy calendar for free
as well there.
(22:30):
That's fantastic.
I'm looking at the site rightnow, folks. It's a great site.
It explains everythingin simple terms.
Theres more details about everylittle thing that is available.
And boy, after listening today,I've certainly learned,
obviously learned a few thingsabout some assumptions I had or
some things I'd heard thatweren't necessarily true.
(22:53):
That's one of the main reasonsyou're going to want to talk to
Brandon and his team and seeabout what they can do.
Brandon Lieboots,thanks again for joining us.
We learned a lot.
Dad, thank you for havingme on today.
So you've been searching highand low to figure out how to
use SEO. Pardon that pun.
That was terrible. I know,I know. But you know, it's.
It seems like every other daypeople who offer SEO services
are seeking me out.
I bet it's the same for you.
And I think the problem for alot of SEO companies may be,
and we're going to find outbecause I'm going to
ask our guests.
It may be that people just don'tknow enough about it to even
(00:24):
think to ask about it or to callor find an SEO company that may
be a problem. I don't know.
We're going to find out.
That's why I'm excited to haveour great guest today.
Brandon Lebowitz.
He runs and operates SEOOptimizers. Since 2007,
he's been doing this.
They're a digital marketingcompany that focuses on helping
small and medium sizedbusinesses get more
online traffic,which in turn converts into
clients, sales leads,wealth beyond your wildest
(00:47):
dreams. Well, you hope. But it,at the very least,
it will help you build yourbusiness. Brandon,
welcome to the virtual lounge.
Thank you for havingme on today.
My pleasure.
So am I nuts or what?
I mean,do you think people just don't
still at this point know enoughabout what you do to seek
out an SEO firm?
I think it's just ambiguous andit changes all the time.
(01:09):
So people get confusedand overwhelmed.
It's not really tangible.
It's tough to really put intowords or put into actually a way
to physically see what's goingon versus waiting few months to
get some traction and thenseeing that growth. But yeah,
I think that's the tough part isthat intangible and the weight,
because it's not immediate.
(01:30):
SEO does take time,but it is the better
long term strategy.
It really is. So let's just,hey, let's boil this down here.
Lets just say let's assumepeople in the audience just
don't know what SEO is.
Can you, can you give us yourelevator pitch?
So SEO is search engineoptimization,
which means ranking websites inthe different search engines,
(01:51):
which nowadays is justprimarily Google.
When you search on Google,there's ads at the top.
Those are all paid ads,but right below the paid ads are
the organic, the free listings.
And SEO is about getting yourwebsite listed in those
free listings.
There's 10 spots on thatfirst page of Google.
So they're trying to get youinto that free traffic so you're
not paying every time someoneclicks on your Website.
(02:13):
There's. It's a science.
But what do you say, Brandon?
It's also kind of an art.
Because I just, for example,I'm a.
I've got several books out onAmazon and one area is where
I've fallen short. Just,just as an example
is the keywords.
I just put like oneor two keywords,
not phrasing or anything.
And I didn't really think aboutthe seven or eight keywords that
(02:35):
are phrases that peopleused to search. Right.
Its just not enough to putmystery novel. I mean,
you're not really gonna getfound if you just put
mystery novel.
But if you put quirky mysterynovel set in Nebraska,
you're more, you know,people might,
might actually be lookingfor that.
That's just a weird example.
But.
But would you say that that'spart of what you're doing
(02:55):
is like when you,when you settle in with a
client, you already said to the,the true statement that of
course it's not going to happenovernight. You have to,
you know,you have to keep working at it.
But is it kind of an art tofigure out just exactly how
people are searchingfor your clients?
I'd say that's definitely one ofthe first starting points,
is figuring out those keywords.
(03:16):
Because if you're targetingthe wrong keywords,
it's not going to do much.
So you got to go and do thekeyword research by figuring out
what keywords people actuallysearch for using different
tools such as,like the Google Keyword Planner.
It's a free tool from Googlethat will show you how many
people actually search for thatkeyword every single month.
So you see,is this a good keyword?
Should I change it?
But like you said,putting like one word keywords
(03:39):
are not the best you want toreally put because people don't
really search one word.
People usually searchmultiple words.
So the longer the keyword,the less people that use it or.
But the more intent behind it.
Someone just searching for book.
What does that mean?
It can mean a million differentthings. What is that?
Or mystery book.
It's a little bit more specificbut still pretty broad.
So the more words the better.
(04:02):
So if someone's lookingfor like mystery book,
detective murder or somethinglike that,
and writing about that's goingto be a lot more specific.
Ver.
So definitely getting moregranular is going to be
a lot better with SEO,with the keywords especially.
Yeah. And sometimes too, I've,I've seen and I'm trying this
out a little bit. You Know,Knives out and Glass Onion are
(04:23):
pretty popular mystery moviesand maybe people are like
mystery novel, like Knives Out.
I mean, I,I don't know if that's
going to work or not,but sometimes you just gotta,
you gotta try,you gotta kind of experiment
a little. Don't.
You never know until you try.
So it's all about, with SEO,it's all about testing,
seeing what works. If it works,keep doing it, if not,
cut it back.
But it's all about testing andtesting and testing to figure
(04:45):
out what that sweet spot is to,to get, actually to,
to get that traction,to get that growth.
So let's let's kind of gothrough some steps here.
Let's pretend like you're,you're onboarding me,
my company. Okay.
And how would that work?
You already stressed and I wantto restress this to the audience
as well. It's kind of like pr,which is mostly what I do.
It doesn't happen overnight orrarely does it happen overnight.
(05:08):
But can you kind ofwalk us through?
Say I' small to midsized business.
And I've decided I come toyou and I say, Brandon,
here's the deal, man. I,I can't get anywhere
near page one.
You know,the phone's not ringing.
I don't know if my website'sany good.
I don't know if my social mediais helping or hurting. Well,
how does this work?
Let's say I just signed thecontract. What do you do?
(05:29):
What are your steps?
Well first is always a websiteanalysis because it's not
a one size fits all.
So gotta look at your website,analyze it versus the
competitors and try to figureout what the disconnect is,
what's working for you or what'snot working for you.
And same with your competition.
What's working for them,what's getting them to the top
and how can we implement what'sgoing on into their websites
(05:50):
onto yours?
And that's really lookingat like their keywords,
looking at their backlinks.
And with SEO,everything's transparent.
I can see what you're doing,you can see what I'm doing.
So if you just look inthe right places,
you'll be able to kind of seewhat strategies people are
incorporating and try to forgothow to put it into your website.
But that's the other styleone size fits all.
So I always do a free websiteanalysis to try to just figure
(06:11):
out where you are and where yourcompetitors are and how to
get you to that level.
Would you say though, that.
Let's say, you know,you were signed on and we're
doing a And I don't even knowwhat you'd recommend.
I think it probably dependsclient to client.
But let's say I'm spending theamount of money you say
I should spend on,on on not only keywords,
(06:33):
you know, with you doing thekeyword stuff,
but also maybe some Google Ads.
Does that, does spending a.
Does an ad spend with Googlehelp with Google,
or is that something that you,you would never know,
but you could basically assumeit might help or how
does that work?
No, no, they're separate.
So Google's not going to helprank you higher just because
you're spending money on ads.
Unfortunately,they would get a lot of trouble
(06:54):
for that. So they don't do that.
But what they do is you run.
If you do SEO and thenyou run paid ads,
your cost per click might be alittle bit cheaper because
Google wants you to optimizeyour landing page and do all
these things to help reducecost per clicks,
but it's not going to help yourank higher for organically.
Do you typically,though advise that you do some
(07:16):
advertising to kind ofspeed things along?
What if they're like me andthey're really impatient?
They're like, like, dude,I want to get,
I want to get some resultsin the next six months.
Would you recommend ads withthe keyword work or what?
I always recommend someremarketing ads.
So anytime someone goes to yourwebsite and doesn't make a
purchase, follow them around.
Because fortunately half thetraffic is probably going to
leave your website immediately.
(07:37):
Got to capture them and keepyourself top of mind.
And that's where you're runningthese paid ads.
We'll follow them around andkeep you top of mind for like,
warm traffic.
If you want to do cold outreach,you could do that,
but it gets pretty expensive.
It just turn.
Depends on your turnon ad spend,
making sure you hit a positivereturn on ad spend and you're
not bleeding more money outthan you make again.
So as long as you're making morethan you're putting in,
(07:59):
then I would say run those ads.
But definitely the remarketingwhere you follow people around
and just keep yourselftop of mind.
So, so putting in a pixeltrying to capture email
addresses. Do drip campaigns.
Does that, does that figure in?
The more touch points,the better.
So you don't want to just focuson SEO or paid ads.
(08:19):
You want to do socialmedia marketing,
you want to do email Marketing,you want to get traffic from as
many different sources aspossible. The more the better.
So don't just think youshould do one thing.
You want to diversify and try tocapture that traffic from as
many different placesas possible.
Yeah let's talk about strategya little bit here.
What do you think of thestrategies that are most
(08:41):
effective right now?
Well,it's definitely adding content
to your website.
So adding text to every singlepage. Google feeds off text.
They can't really readimages or videos yet.
But the more content youhave on each page,
the easier it is forthem to read,
understand and know whatkeywords you're targeting.
So got to make sure you puttext on every single page.
(09:01):
Not just the homepage,but any page that you want to
rank needs a couple hundredwords of content.
And that's going to really helpthe search engines read and know
what keywords are targeting.
A lot of people,especially E commerce websites,
don't put much texton their website,
so it becomes tough for thesearch engines to know what
keywords you're focused on.
So you go in and clean up or Imean just add some text
(09:22):
to each page.
Unfortunately it has tobe original content.
You can't just take text fromone page to another.
Right.
Have to be 100% unique.
But you take that text from onepage to another and I mean,
if you write unique textfor each page,
that's going to really helpout search engines a lot.
And I know a lot of peopleprobably don't want to put a
bunch of text on their website,but it doesn't matter where you
(09:42):
put it on the top, the middle,the bottom of the page.
As long as Google sees it,that's all that matters.
Just don't hide it.
Don't put in like font size0.001 with white text.
If your backgroundis white text,
that's going to potentiallyget you in trouble.
But as long as you put thevery bottom of your page,
most people never reallyscroll to the bottom.
But Google will read from top tobottom and see that content.
(10:03):
And that's just going to helpout with their with their
understanding of what yourwebsite's about.
Because Google's just a searchengine, they're just a robot.
They're not that smart.
They need to really spoon feedthem as much information
as possible.
The more you give them,the easier it is for them to
know what keywords to rank youfor and ranking for the
correct keywords.
Yeah, I mean,it's a prettier site when it's
(10:23):
images that are moving and,and you know,
great images and visualsand that kind of thing.
But as you say you know,Google's not really stiffing
around for that.
They need to see the words.
Right.
So I appreciate that.
That's a good thought.
And I hadn't thought about evenif your site is just very geared
toward that and it's anaesthetic where it's just mostly
a visual and not a lot of wordsput them in there somewhere.
(10:46):
That's even at the bottom.
That's a fantastic thought.
I've never considered that.
But can it can a site?
Okay, here though.
This speaks to me.
I'm asking this for me.
Can, can your site be too wordy,too many, too much on a page?
Yeah So Google says,just put the right amount
that needs to be there.
So if you're writing an articleor you're someone's right
(11:07):
answering a question,what's two plus two?
And you have 10,000 words,that might be a little too much.
But if you're saying,if you have an article about
like how to fix your car engine,that could be potentially
10,000 words.
So it just depends on what thecontent is and how much text
needs to really be there.
If you don't want to just addextra text to add it,
you just need to write whatneeds to be there.
(11:27):
So writing for people,not writing for search engines,
don't write extra tax justbecause it should be there.
What you want to do is search inGoogle for all your
keywords and,or I mean searching Google for
your keyword and open up all thewebsites on that first page of
Google and see how much.
We'll skip over the ads,but open up all the organic
listings and see how much texteach website's using.
(11:48):
And then what you're going todo is average it all out.
So if you see everyone'swriting 500 words,
you should probablywrite 550 words.
If you see everyone's writinga thousand words,
you should probably writethousand words.
So that will kind of giveyou insight of what,
how much text should be there.
That's, that's a great point.
That's a fantastic. Well, let's,let's go back for a second
to keywords then.
(12:09):
How do you research thekeywords? So is it,
are there sites thatpeople can use?
You did mention the Googlesite that's free,
but I can't imagine it'sanywhere near as good as the
stuff that you bringto the table.
Do you bring kind of a,a big gun to the table,
so to speak,for that kind of thing that you
can't just get for free?
No.
The best is really GoogleKeyword Planner because it's
(12:30):
going to show you all the dataabout what keywords or I mean
how much search volume eachkeyword gets because there's no
third party tools that areable to see that data.
Google gets all that data andthen all these third party tools
that do keyword research justpull that data in and
make it look pretty.
But it's all pulled from theGoogle Keyword Planner because
there's no other tools that areable to see what the data
(12:53):
that Google has.
Google keeps that private exceptfor search volume,
which is kind of nice thatthey give you that.
But other than that,everything else is pretty
much kept top secret.
Yeah, but,but you do bring to the table
the expertise how to use that.
And there, as I said earlier,that's an art and a science to
what we're doing here and whatyou're doing here for your
clients. Right. So it's, it's,that's why it's beneficial.
(13:14):
And I just can't imaginea lot of my.
Okay.
You know, I'm a PR agency.
I can't imagine most of myclients having the time and
really just, just the,don't take this the wrong way.
Clients who are eliciting,but the,
the sophistication in thatparticular area to do it
effectively, you know,Time wise and,
and just knowing what's,you know, kind of knowing how
(13:34):
to do the process.
It just seems like it's a,kind of a bit of a learning
curve and be a little easierjust to hire a firm to help.
Yeah, no, definitely gotta,just having a tool doesn't
do anything.
You gotta make sure you usethe tool the right way.
So having tools is great,but if you're not using
it in the proper way,then it's not going to help out
or it might do moreharm than good.
So definitely I know how to,how to navigate through those
(13:56):
tools, what to look for,what are red flags,
what are green flags?
To go ahead with this keywordand just try to figure out that
you're on the right track andnot just wasting time.
Yeah. So tell me your,your firm,
you say you work with mostlysmall to mid sized companies.
Is there a generalterm that people work with you?
(14:19):
Is it more of a short term dealor do you work with people
year over year?
How does that look?
It varies.
So some people will beon for a few months,
some will stay on for years.
It just depends on,really depends on
the competition.
If there's no competition,once you rank at the
top of Google,then you pretty much you're
(14:40):
going to be up there.
But if you have competitors,there's only 10 spots on that
first page of Google,so they're going to be fighting
for it and trying toget to the top.
So it just depends on howcompetitive that industry is and
that lets people know how muchtime they need to do to keep,
to keep those rankings up.
Because you don't want to justrank and then drop them down.
You want to keep those rankings.
(15:00):
You don't want your competitorsto outrank you.
Because what's gonna happen isonce you get to that first
page of Google,they're gonna look at all the
keywords, all the backlinks,everything that you've done and
try to do a betterjob of doing it.
Just like that's whatI would do.
And anytime I get a new client,I look at all the competitors,
see what they're doing and tryto do a better job of it.
So it's kind of like a backand forth battle,
keeping those rankings.
(15:22):
Very good. And are there,there are some other ways
to kind of leapfrog,aren't there to.
What about if you usea good solid,
have a good solid Googlebusiness presence that,
what does that do for you?
Google business?
Google Maps is more local.
So if you're a local businessthen you definitely want to be
on like Google Maps, Apple Maps,Bing maps, yellow pages,
(15:44):
MapQuest,all these different maps.
Because if you're a localbusiness you want to get that
local presence and showup for local searches.
But if you're internationalbusiness then,
then the local is notthe most important.
But definitely if you're like adoctor, a lawyer, a dentist,
something like that,you gotta be on Google
my business.
That way you make sure that youshow up when people search for
(16:05):
you locally and capturethat traffic.
So just trying to take up morefree real estate on that first
page of Google becauseGoogle will show,
they'll show websites,they'll show maps of your local
business, they'll show images,they'll sometimes show videos if
you have any videos thatare optimized.
So really want to try to take upas much free real estate as
possible on that firstpage of Google with,
without spending money on ads.
(16:27):
Right, right. Yeah.
Like for example you searchKansas City Public Relations and
if you go into the businessafter you get through with
the million ads at top,you go to the businesses thing,
click on that and then allof a sudden we're,
we're in a good position thereand we get a lot of traffic.
Although we're working ongetting away from just being
in that little subsection.
My agency is. But you know,so what about LinkedIn?
(16:49):
I've heard it tell that LinkedInhas such tremendously good
you knowfor want of a better term
credibility with Google thathaving a LinkedIn presence can
also be beneficial in SEO.
Is that true?
I mean Google is blocked frommost social media so they can't
really see what you're doing.
(17:10):
They can see if you have aprofile but they can't
see beyond that.
So they can see because mostbusinesses want Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn,Pinterest,
all the kind of basic ones,tick tock, stuff like that.
But beyond that they can't seehow many followers or how active
you are. And all Those,except for YouTube,
they own YouTube. So right.
Twitter,they partnered with Twitter
(17:31):
so they could see that.
But other than that,but to normal business,
Google wants to makesure that you,
I mean a normal businessshould have,
social media should have like anAbout Us, a Contact Us page,
a privacy policy page,a Terms of Service page,
a phone number that's easy tofind or an email address
that's easy to find.
If people don't have that stuffthen it looks like you're not a
(17:54):
real business to Google becausea New real business would
have most of that stuff.
Even if you're not activeon LinkedIn,
as long as you have a presence,it shows that at least you were
at some point a real business.
It doesn't tell Google thatyou're still active.
And that's where these backlinkscome to help Google see that
you're still a real business andpeople are still talking
about you.
Very good, Very good. Yeah,there's just so much out there.
(18:15):
And you,you can tell with some of my
questions where you're,you're being polite and going,
I don't know where you heardthat crap. But, you know,
you just hear stuff as abusiness owner all the time
though, you know, oh, well,you got to do this,
you got to do that.
And but that's the other thingtoo is you bring the
expertise to sayyeah, have that presence,
but don't waste, you know,all your time on it.
You've got other thingsyou should do to,
(18:36):
to to turn up in the page.
So if would you say on,if you don't mind me asking,
do you.
Do you think that Facebookadvertising at all is beneficial
compared to Google,or does it just depend or
any thoughts on that?
(18:56):
Kind of just depends.
If you're a new business whereno one's searching for you and
people aren't gonna besearching on Google,
then I would say social mediamight be better because
if no one's searching,it's gonna be tough.
Yeah.
If you create a new productor invent something,
but people are searchingon Google,
then you definitely want toprobably run Google Ads,
(19:18):
because social media,you're just interrupting people
based off interests,but doesn't necessarily mean
they care or want to use yourproduct or service.
In the past they might have,or in the future they might,
but doesn't mean they wantto now versus Google,
people are searching,they're showing intent,
they're actively looking. So,right,
a little different with that.
(19:39):
Where I would always say Googleis going to be a lot better
because people search,they're actively looking versus
you interrupting people hopingthey're interested.
But it just depends on intent.
But yeah,you definitely want to be in
front of your audience at theright moments at the right
times. And that's where Google,SEO, social media.
You just got to figure outwho your audience is,
where they are,and how to be in front of
(20:00):
them at the right time.
Because you don't need tobe everywhere. I mean,
the more places you are,the better.
But you just really need to bein front of your audience.
And you just got to figure outwho your audience is and how to
get in front of them atthe right moments.
So if I'm hearing you correctly,yeah, Google number one.
But I guess, and you're right,nobody, especially on social,
you know, quit interrupting.
You know, that guy. That's.
You're right.
But if they follow you on,let's say follow your Facebook
(20:22):
fan of yours or follower,and every now and then you might
want to boost a post about aspecial you're doing or just a
post that's got some tractionso more people see it.
Would that go along with whatyou said earlier about,
you know, you want to, you know,constantly touch your friends
and fans and potential customersin that way?
Because that's less,that's a little less intrusive
because you kind of signed upand said, hey, look, I'm a fan.
(20:43):
As long as you don't abusethe privilege. Would you.
So I guess what I'm asking is,in the right mix,
Facebook advertising could help.
But it's as. Again,back to what you said.
It's not.
It should not be your primary.
Yeah, I would do Facebook afteryou exhausted Google.
So spend all the money on GoogleAds because that's where
you get the most sales.
Social media is cheaperfor a reason.
(21:04):
It's lower quality traffic.
Right.
A lot of different types ofads you can run on Google.
Like Google owns YouTube,so you can run YouTube ads.
And yeah,YouTube gives you 30 seconds
free ad space.
So if somebody watches yourYouTube video ad for 29 seconds
and then skips it,you don't pay a penny
after 30 seconds.
Then you pay like10 cents a view.
So there's a lot of other adplatforms that are cheaper
(21:25):
than Google. Well,Google owns YouTube,
so still technically them,but people also buy off people.
And video is going to be a lotbetter at conveying a message
than a couple of lines of texton a Google search ad would be.
So there's lots of ways to tryto tap into that free traffic
that Google's giving you.
Even though it's notnecessarily free.
You have to pay after someonewatches 30 seconds.
But it's much cheaper and muchmore affordable in
(21:48):
the long term.
Oh, fantastic.
So Brandon Lewis if peoplewant to learn more,
is it SEO optimizers.com,is that correct?
Yeah.
So I actually created a specialgift for everyone that's
listening.
If they go to mywebsite@seoptimizers.com that's
S E O O P T I I z e rs.com forward/gift.
(22:10):
And they can find that there,along with my contact
information and a bunch ofclasses I've done
over the years.
I've throw it up for free sothey can watch them anytime.
And if they want to also booksome time on my calendar for
a free website analysis,I'm happy to dive in and
see what's working,what's not working,
and how to get them to the levelthat they want to be at.
And they can book some time onmy calendar for free
as well there.
(22:30):
That's fantastic.
I'm looking at the site rightnow, folks. It's a great site.
It explains everythingin simple terms.
Theres more details about everylittle thing that is available.
And boy, after listening today,I've certainly learned,
obviously learned a few thingsabout some assumptions I had or
some things I'd heard thatweren't necessarily true.
(22:53):
That's one of the main reasonsyou're going to want to talk to
Brandon and his team and seeabout what they can do.
Brandon Lieboots,thanks again for joining us.
We learned a lot.
Dad, thank you for havingme on today.
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