October 13, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Local Marketing Secrets, Danny Leibrandt joins Jason Hennessey—an internationally recognized SEO strategist, author of Law Firm SEO and Honest SEO, and founder of Hennessey Digital. Jason shares how he went from reverse-engineering Google in the early 2000s to leading a 100-person, eight-figure agency, while building a 1.7M+ audience on Instagram with daily insights on marketing and growth.
You’ll learn what truly drives local search in 2025: clean technical foundations, intent-matched content, and authority through the right mix of relevance and high-trust links. We break down the “Lamborghini” agency model vs. low-budget churn, why schema and robust location/service pages still power Google Business Profile, how to use topical authority and internal linking to lift pillar pages, and where AI/LLMs change (and don’t change) the playbook. Plus: “outsourcing genius” with expert audits and community-first social that actually converts.
Action steps for owners/marketers: tighten GBP hygiene, increase review velocity, pursue smart link opportunities, and—most importantly—take action. Connect with Jason on Instagram/LinkedIn/Facebook (@JasonHennessey) and grab Honest SEO on Amazon.
If this helped, subscribe, review, and share it with a friend who needs better local rankings.
Jason Hennessey, Founder of Hennessey Digital:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasonhennessey/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jason.hennessey.399/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhennessey/
Website: https://www.jasonhennessey.com/
Hennessey Digital: https://hennessey.com/
Danny Leibrandt, Founder of Pest Control SEO:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/DannyLeibrandt
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dannyleibrandt/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DannyLeibrandt
Website: https://dannyleibrandt.com
Pest Control SEO: https://pestcontrolseo.com/
Local Marketing Secrets Platforms:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LocalMarketingSecrets
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1TCL0LhZbsJS6mzanqnnT1?si=224075c9fbda42f5
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/local-marketing-secrets/id1741176782
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0bb5254-5d6c-4940-8211-085157cc1239/local-marketing-secrets
Podcast Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Jason Hennessy
06:05 Understanding High-Value SEO Services
12:09 Client Engagement and Homework in SEO
17:49 The Importance of Schema Markup
21:05 Creating Effective Landing Pages for Local SEO
25:39 Building Topical Authority through Subpages
32:00 Adapting SEO Strategies in the Age of AI
38:20 The Role of Social Media in Local Marketing
42:53 The Future of Local Marketing
#localmarketing #localbusiness #homeservicebusiness #homeservicemarketing #homeserviceadvertising #localseo #localadvertising #seo #marketing #podcast #business #localbusinesspodcast #dannyleibrandt #localmarketingsecrets #localsearch #localseotips #localseoexpert #jasonhennessey #hennesseydigital
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey there, and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host, Danny Lebrand, and today I'm joined by Jason
Hennessy, an internationally recognized SEO expert,
entrepreneur, author, and the founder of Hennessy Digital, one
of the fastest growing marketingagencies in America.
Jason's work has helped hundredsof businesses, especially law
firms, dominate Google and scalethrough proven SEO systems.
(00:21):
He's also the author of Law FirmSEO and Honest SEO, and he's
built a massive following of over 1.7 million people just on
Instagram, where he shares dailyinsights on marketing mindset
and business growth. In this episode, we dive into
Jason's 20 year journey from reverse engineer, reverse
engineering Google's algorithm back in the early 2000s to
(00:42):
leading 100 person agency today.We talked about what really
drives local search success in 2025, the biggest mistakes small
businesses make with SEO, and how to future proof your
marketing in the age of AI. Now, without further ado, Jason,
welcome to the show. Thanks, Danny.
I appreciate you having me on here.
I'm excited to to dive into all these topics here so.
(01:03):
Yeah, definitely. So it seems like you're kind of
the local marketing or local SEOveteran You, you've been in it
longer than most people and you got into it around 2001.
Can you just give me some more background and like how you got
started and how you got into thespace?
Yeah, I think like most people that stumble upon the area of
like digital marketing or specifically SEO, it kind of
(01:26):
starts as like a need. Especially back then when I was
getting into it, SEO wasn't really a, a main topic that a
lot of people spoke about. In fact, it was kind of like
black magic. Like if you knew like how to do
SEO, you were like, like a, likea ninja, right.
And so at the time, I just gotten out of the Air Force.
(01:48):
I served my country for about four years, got out of the Air
Force. I was going to college, I was
studying for the LSAT, I was going to go to law school and I
had like a side hustle, I guess if you will.
It was DJ ING like weddings and parties and such.
And so I paid a developer like $5000 to develop a website and I
(02:10):
called it Vegas weddingmall.com because the thought process was
if people were Googling, you know, wedding venues or wedding
DJs, like I wanted to be able torank on and Yahoo and Google at
the time. And so the developer spent about
two months developing it. And then once he was done, there
was nobody coming to the website.
So I called him up and I'm like,I think This site is broken
(02:34):
because nobody's coming to it. And he's like, oh, no, that's,
that's like this thing called SEO, Like, I don't know how to
do that. And so at that point, I'm like,
OK, well, I'm guessing I'm goingto have to like teach myself
this stuff. And so that was kind of like the
genesis of how I got into it. Yep.
Interesting. And then what about starting
your agency? How did that come about?
(02:55):
South in 2008, after building that wedding directory that I
talked about, it went from Vegaswedding mall to Seattle wedding
mall to Los Angeles wedding malland eventually kind of built all
these directories. Ended up selling that move to
Atlanta, GA, partnered with a guy by the name of Brad Fallon
(03:15):
who had a company called Stompernet.
It was like one of the first platforms that taught SEO to
business owners. And so while I was in Atlanta,
Brad got asked to speak at a DUIlawyer mastermind.
And it was like 50 DUI lawyers that got together once a year,
(03:36):
and they brought in expert speakers.
And so Brad said, hey Jason, youknow way more about this SEO
stuff than I do. Why don't I come introduce you
and then you could, you know, talk, talk a little bit about
like SEO. And so I'm like, OK, great.
So he gave me 24 hours to put together a deck.
I knew nothing about legal marketing at the time.
And so I got up on stage, gave apresentation.
(03:59):
I was very transparent. And so out of the 50 lawyers,
there was like 7 lawyers that approached me and said that was
awesome. You know, I'm, I'm paying my SEO
guy like $6000 per month and he's not doing any of this
stuff. Like do you do this like from a
consulting basis? And I'm like, not really, but
(04:19):
give me your card. And so I ended up leaving there
with like 7 business cards that turned into about $30,000 per
month in reoccurring revenue now.
So just 145 minute presentation that I got asked to do one night
before was the genesis of my first agency.
So. And you didn't even necessarily
choose the law firm niche, but you just got invited to speak at
(04:41):
that event. And that's how that's.
Exactly right. Yeah.
So like I just it just fate, I guess.
Yeah. How it all happened?
Like that. Dang, Dang.
And yeah, talk to me about the evolution of your agency because
I mean, plenty of people have local marketing agencies, a lot
of people have niche agencies, but you've grown it to over 8
figures or you're at 8 figures. Just explain to me like the the
(05:03):
evolution of your agency and howyou've grown it so large.
So the, so that first story there, that was my first agency,
which was called Everspark Interactive.
And so that was an agency that Iat the time had three other
business partners. We ended up buying one of the
partners out. So then it was just me and one
(05:25):
other business partner. He and I are still friends, good
friends today. We built it up to a point where
we got it to like maybe like 3 and a half, $1,000,000 in in top
line revenue. And then it just got to the
point where, you know, we had two different owners that kind
of wanted to take the agency in different directions.
And so he ended up buying out myinterest after about 8 years of
(05:46):
building that. And, and so I ended up leaving.
And so, so that was basically the first agency.
And so Fast forward to 2015. So that was from 2008 to about
2015. Fast forward to 2015, we moved
out West to California. My young son was pursuing an
(06:07):
acting career in Hollywood. I just kind of exited my first
agency to my partner. That business continued.
In fact, it's still around. It's run by another good friend
of mine now. And so I got bored.
I played tennis, like, every single day.
And then my wife was like, are you ever going to get back to
(06:28):
work again? And so I'm like, yeah, you know,
I probably should get back into it.
And so then I started Hennessy, which is my current agency,
which has been around for about 10 years now.
And so similar, you know, I, I focused on just working with
lawyers. I niche down.
(06:48):
I got my first client for that agency and I'm like, screw it.
If I want to like really get good results, I'm just going to
ask for the right budget. And so the proposal that I sent
to the first lawyer that I started working with was for
$15,000 per month. And the, the attorney agreed to
(07:10):
it. I spent every waking second like
working on that to make it an amazing case study because I now
had the firepower to do it right, $15,000 per month is a,
is a great budget. And so I was able to basically
make that a great case study. And then I leveraged that case
study to get my second client at$50,000 a month and my third
(07:31):
client right. And then eventually, you know,
built that up to to a nice lifestyle business at the time.
And then from there, you know, the journey continued.
I delegated, brought in a coach,brought in like a good executive
C-Suite team to work with me. And then since scaled it to now
(07:53):
we're probably do about 23 million top line, 7 million in
profit. That's incredible.
Yeah. I feel like that's almost
something you're known for. Is, is charging a lot as an
agency. And I, I want to ask you
especially for maybe local business owners that aren't too
aware or that they just don't know what goes into it, because
rightfully so, that there's a lot of SEO agencies that are
(08:13):
scams. They don't do a good job.
So when you charge something like 15 KA month or 10 or 20 or
whatever, what goes into that? What?
What? Yeah.
What is that money getting used for?
What's the justification, right?So realistically, it's, it's
what's necessary in the field that I work in, right?
(08:36):
You know, I work primarily with not just lawyers, but personal
injury lawyers. And so personal injury law is
it's a vertical where there is high competition, you know,
very, very probably one of the most competitive spaces in the,
(08:57):
in the world of SEO, right? But there's also very high
margin and profit for the attorneys as well, right?
So like if I could generate a lead for a client that turns
into a case, that case has a minimum value of like 12 to
$13,000, that's their fees for just one case.
(09:22):
And those fees can go as high as$100 million, right?
Just depending on the case, right?
And the, the, the injuries and you know, and, and specific.
And so, so that's the justification is, you know, like
when I first got into it, everybody just thought like SEO,
(09:43):
like in the personal injury space, you just pay $5000 per
month and you kind of get SEO right.
And I'm just like, that's not really how it works.
I mean, like, if we really want to be able to dominate, you
know, the Serps, right, the search engine result pages a we
got to study the competition, wegot to go get the links that
they have. We got to write the content
that's necessary, got to put together a good strategy.
(10:04):
And my time is valuable too, youknow, and I knew that that, you
know, I was pretty good at this stuff too, right?
And so I wanted to make sure that I valued my time and it
there's two ways to kind of go in the agency world, right?
You can build the Walmart model,right?
Or you can build the Lamborghiniapproach, right?
So I, I wanted so, so there's a lot of agencies that work in
(10:29):
legal that, you know, they just want to be able to generate to
get clients that'll pay 20, five, 3500 bucks per month,
right? And, and get 500 clients, right?
You know, and that's not a bad model, right?
You know, but I think there's problems to that, right?
(10:50):
Because a lot of times, you know, just having like a cookie
cutter approach to 2500 bucks per month might not be the right
budget, you know, in certain markets, right?
And so I think, you know, you have trouble scaling, you might
have high churn, right, Because,you know, maybe you're
(11:10):
mismanaging expectations, not intentionally, right?
And so I don't know, that's justkind of like a different model,
right? Whereas the Lamborghini
approach, I think in my mind is like, hey, you know, rather than
go out and get 6 clients that pay 2500 bucks per month, why
don't I just get one client thatwill pay, you know, the
(11:32):
combination of all what the six clients would pay and then
really have the firepower to kind of make that perfect car,
right? That when people see it like
it's just sexy, it's on the road, right?
And now you become kind of like the Lamborghini dealership of
your industry, right? And so that was just the
approach that I decided to take.Like I said, at the time, I
(11:55):
wasn't doing it for cash. Like I just exited my first
company. I was pretty OK.
I guess at the time it was just a matter of like, OK, if I'm
going to do this, I want to build like, like I said, that
Lamborghini dealership in my face.
Yeah, no. And I, I think that is the right
way to go about things because it gets so complex dealing with
(12:17):
so many clients. I, I've learned that with, with
my agency, I used to just kind of take on anyone from any
industry and it gets so complex.And also the people just being
straightforward. And I'm sure you know this, the
people that are paying little are now demanding more results
and their worst clients, the best clients are usually the
ones making the most money and giving you the most money, which
is almost ironic. So I, I completely agree.
(12:41):
I get that if I've never heard it get phrases the Lamborghini
model, but I like that. And I want to ask you to get a
little bit more nuts and bolts on that.
So like let's say A15K retainer,what would be the most expensive
of that? Would that be like paying for
backlinks or building pages on the site?
What would that be? Yeah.
(13:03):
You know, back backlinks is partof it.
And believe it or not, like evenwith that $15,000 per month
budget, like we're not doing allof the work.
Like in some cases, in fact, in most cases, like we're reverse
engineering competition and we're giving our clients
homework. And so, you know, we might see
(13:25):
that, you know, six of their largest competitors all have a
link from the Better Business Bureau.
You know, three of their largestcompetitors, you know, might
have a link from PR Newswire, right?
Because they did a press release, right?
So then what we're doing is we're going back to our clients
and saying, hey, we really need you to reach out to the Better
(13:45):
Business Bureau, sign up for it.Even if you don't get any
business from being on the Better Business Bureau, we need
that link, right? And they say, OK, great,
perfect. They go do their homework in the
background. We're also going and doing like,
you know, our citations, we're doing, you know, the guest blog
posts, right? We're kind of doing all the
reverse engineering of the linksthat we could build.
(14:07):
But you know, I'm an agency that's known to give out
homework to our clients, right? Because SEO, it's not, it's,
it's definitely a two way street, right?
There's only so much I can do asyour SEO vendor or partner, I
should say, you know, but there's other things that I'm
going to tell you that you need to do as well.
And the clients that actually get engaged and do their
(14:28):
homework are the clients that really do very well in their
markets, right? So, so that's a big part of it
is like link building, you know,content creation was also a, a,
a large part of it, right? This is, you know, back before
the world of like AI, you know, where you'd have to pay writers,
you know, to write good content and edit the content and publish
(14:50):
the content and develop the content strategies.
And so in the world of legal, you just can't write like a
bunch of like BS content, you know, because you can get your
client to lose their law license, right?
You know, and you start saying wrong things, right?
And so, you know, so we had to hire more sophisticated writers
(15:12):
to write the content and get them trained and, and then from
there, really the biggest expenses like our, our labor,
right, you know, our payroll, you know, for our team.
Yeah, got it. Makes sense.
I I wanted to touch on things you're telling clients to do
more. So you said that could be
something like, hey, you know, you might have to get accredited
(15:32):
on the Better Business Bureau. Everyone else is doing that.
What are some other common things that you're typically
telling your clients to do? Yeah, a lot of it is around the
link building, right, Figuring that out.
Sometimes it's about local SEO, which you know, I know, we'll
probably talk more about, you know, getting them to respond to
(15:53):
reviews in a time and manner, getting them to get more
reviews, getting them to be moreactive with, you know,
publishing photos on their, on their Google business listings.
You know, maybe getting them to do things like when, you know,
when people come to the office, like click on driving directions
(16:16):
so that we get more of those, you know, user signals, you
know, all kinds of things, you know, that we that we do, you
know. And so from there, you know,
like I said, the clients that actively participate and are
engaged and do their homework, those are the ones that that
turn into some of our best case studies.
(16:38):
Awesome. Yeah.
Let's, let's touch more on Google Business profile stuff.
This, I feel like it's always a hot topic.
I mean, it's, there's not too many things to do there and you
know, it's, you can see results pretty quickly.
Yeah. What are some of the things
you're seeing that are moving the needle there?
What? What's working with your
clients? Yeah.
So I'd say a making sure. I'm not sure how technical your
(17:03):
audience is, but I'll just mention that, you know, schema I
think is something that we see as being important in the world
of local rankings, you know, making sure.
So for those that don't know what schema is, you know, on a
website, you have your HTML, right?
And so that's the stuff that theuser sees, that's the images and
(17:27):
the content that you know is on your website that people can see
and click. But in the background there's
like this other language that's specifically written for the
search engines for AI to basically give them more clues
into who you are and, and what you do.
(17:49):
And so schema markup is something that you can go in to
tell the search engines such as Google that, hey, this is the
name of our business, this is our verified address, this is
our verified phone number. There's something called same as
schema where you can tell the search engines that we're the
(18:10):
same as, you know, company that is referenced in this New York
Times article. We're the same as a company
that's also has this specific Facebook profile, this specific
LinkedIn profile, right? You can tell them this is the
latitude and longitude of our office.
You can tell them that these aresome of the verified reviews.
(18:34):
You can tell them that this is what you're known for, right?
So there's, you know, there's, you know, different things that
you can mention in there. I mean, it just kind of goes on
and on and on. Yeah, No, I don't.
I like, you know, and so so you know, in the world of legal, you
know, like you have to have the edge, right?
You know, because, you know, my competitors, right, you know,
(18:58):
are working with very sophisticated agencies.
And so I have to be more sophisticated than some of the
most sophisticated agencies in the country, right?
You mentioned you had Chris Dreyer on, you know, Chris
Dreyer has an agency called Rankings.
They're also a very reputable agency that that focuses on
legal. So a lot of times like Chris's
crew and my crew kind of going like just to try to get that
(19:21):
little edge, right. And so, you know, that's kind of
what it takes. Now having said that, you know,
pest control, you know, like theindustry that you specialize in,
you know, maybe it's not as competitive, right?
You know, maybe you don't need that firepower of the large
budget, you know what I mean? So I'm just saying like what I
(19:44):
need to do and some of the most competitive markets is, is, you
know, a lot of times different than, you know, the rest of the
world that cash, you know, I'm so.
Yeah, yeah. But it's got to be tough, right?
Because the doesn't there have to have to be a breaking point
where like, I mean, we're just spending so much on SEO and
it's, it's getting too ridiculous and everyone's so
(20:05):
competitive. Like just isn't that tough in
your space. Not necessarily because at the
end of the day, like you think like 15 grand, you know that
that is not even that expensive.I mean, I've had clients that
paid us over $100,000 per month for SEO, right?
Like just for one client, you know, on average we got clients
that are in bigger markets like Los Angeles and Dallas and
(20:29):
places like that, that will often pay 30 to $50,000 per
month on SEO, right? And then it seems like a lot of
money, but when a law firm's getting 100 cases as a result
of, you know, a $50,000 per month SEO spend in every case
has a minimum value of 12,500, Like I said, that's kind of like
(20:53):
the minimum their fees. You know, I'm with a $50,000
value, I could be generating over $1,000,000 in revenue for
that firm, right? So like you know, the ROI is
there. Yeah, but that's, that's what I
was going to mention is it's, it's about ROI.
It doesn't even have to be like,oh, we're paying this much for
backlinks. We're doing this.
It's like like if we're generating you $100,000 a month,
(21:14):
I mean, it makes sense to pay 1020 KA month.
So yeah, cool. That makes sense.
I I want to get clear on the scheme of stuff.
So and just for people that don't know, obviously Google
business profile on your websiteis different, but your website
can still power up your Google business profile.
I think that's what what you were hinting at.
So with the schema, are you talking with the schema across
(21:36):
the site or just to the page youlink to?
Because I know there's some nuance there.
Both. So I think that the that the
page that you link to, if you have a brick and mortar
business, which most of my clients do, you know, you
basically should have the GoogleMy Business profile, right for
(21:57):
that location, linking to a specific page that's built for
that location. Yeah, you know, so I think
that's important. And then you also want to be
linking back with a map in bed right back to that specific
page. And then the schema, you know,
there is definitely like schema that goes throughout the whole
website. And then there in the world of
(22:19):
legal, there's something called legal services schema and that
is specifically for that page. And that's where you can kind of
give it more information about, you know, that specific
location, the longitude, latitude, right?
All the zip codes that you service for that location,
right? So you can get very specific
(22:42):
with with schema. And I mean, you can probably,
you know, write more schema thanyou do, you know, just HTML,
right when you're kind of completing that, because you can
go down rabbit holes of OK, great.
Like we even do things where we'll actually like link out to
(23:03):
the Wikipedia page that defines that specific, right, You know,
so like there are things that you can do to to be a little bit
more sophisticated than the nextperson.
Got it. Yeah.
Let's let's go deeper on those landing pages.
Obviously this is super important and this applies to
basically any local business andit will usually be some
(23:26):
combination of a, a service service and city.
At least that's most common in home services, which is what I'm
most familiar with. So might be pest control Chicago
or termite control Houston. You know that there's, there's
some kind of combination there and in legal, I know you guys
have something similar there. What are you guys putting on
those pages and what what reallymoves the needle there?
Yeah. So in most cases, a lot of our
(23:49):
clients might have like, you know, one headquarters right at
their main office and they mighthave a couple satellite offices
as well. And so in order for us to be
able to dominate an entire region or entire state, you
know, it's either you open up offices in every single city,
(24:11):
which is not really plausible, or we develop a content strategy
to make sure that we have a personal injury lawyer page, a
car accident lawyer page, a slipand fall lawyer page for every
small city in the state. And so you obviously start with
the city in which their headquarters is.
So if it's in Fort Lauderdale, FL, we have a Fort Lauderdale
(24:35):
personal injury lawyer page, a Fort Lauderdale slip and fall
page, right, all of those. But then we kind of continue to
expand. And so we might have 20 practice
area pages and we write those practice area pages for every
city throughout the state. And then there's a way in which
we internally linked those pagesso that you have slip and fall
(24:57):
pages linking back to other cities, right?
So it gets really sophisticated in the way in which we
internally linked the pages so that we can pass relevancy and
page rank. And then we also build out
something called topical authority.
So if you have a car accident lawyer page, right, that could
be like a parent page for what would be like a head on
(25:21):
collision accident lawyer or fatal car accident lawyer or a
left turn car accident lawyer, right?
I mean, like you can get really sophisticated, right?
And all of those sub practice series of car accident, all
linked to the car accident lawyer referencing the anchor
text as the first link on the page, right?
(25:42):
So like a lot of times we're building out a lot of these sub
practice area pages, not so muchthat we're ever going to get
people that will type in, you know, left turn car accident
lawyer, right? We do, don't get me wrong, like
those will generate cases, but they're zero search volume 0
competition. But what's happening is those
pages are basically serving as the building out the topical
(26:04):
authority for some of those other more important pages,
which is building out the topical authority for the
personal injury page in Fort Lauderdale, which is the root,
right? So that page, right.
So we're building out all of these.
I know we might have like 50 pages, right, that are kind of
just boosting up that Fort Lauderdale personal injury page,
right? It gets really sophisticated.
(26:26):
Yeah. So, so that's almost a strategy
to rank what's called like pillar pages.
You kind of had better it's yourcore concept like the pest
control Chicago or the, you know, the lawyer of Houston,
whatever. That's right.
You you want to have some supporting pages for those
You're that's what you're saying.
That's exactly right, yeah. And it doesn't Even so much I I.
I just want to make sure I'm clear here.
(26:48):
Hear your thoughts on this. It doesn't even really matter if
those pages rank, but almost their sole purpose is to power
up the the top level page. Yeah, In fact, I, I had a call
recently like this is like one of my pet peeves.
My pet peeve is when, you know, we've been working with a law
firm, right? Let's just say we've been
(27:08):
working with a personal injury lawyer for like 7 years, right?
And it all started with us working directly with the
personal injury lawyer. Eventually the personal injury
lawyer does so well because of all the cases that we've helped
generate that they now have a budget to bring in a marketing
director. I mean, and so now the new
marketing director comes in and that can get really interesting
(27:31):
because a lot of times the marketing director, they come in
and they need to justify, you know, their new role, right?
So the first thing they say is like, holy shit, we're spending
like $40,000 a month on SEO. That's crazy.
Like you know, at my old place, like I was only spending 5000.
Like, so they're immediately like a lot of times they come
(27:52):
and try to shave budget, right? And sometimes they're
successful, right? But the reason why I mentioned
this is because I was on a call recently with a marketing
director that was new to a firm.And so the marketing director
just came in and they're like, Isee that we have all of these
like pages, right, that don't get any traffic, you know, like
(28:13):
this, you know, fatal car accident lawyer in Fort
Lauderdale and this, you know, whatever, right?
You know, and there's a bunch ofthese pages and they're like,
you know, I want, I want to get your agency to remove all those
pages. And I'm like, Oh, no, I said, I
said absolutely not. I said, I'll, I'll call my
client who I have the relationship with, and I'll
(28:35):
terminate the relationship before I do that to my friend
because that would have just killed his whole website.
And so sometimes you have to do the right thing.
And in this case, I was ready tofire the client just to make
sure that they didn't, you know,lose the investment that they've
been making for all this year just because of an incompetent
(28:57):
marketing director. Dang, OK, so well actually first
I'll ask you this. So you are are not a lawyer, but
you're making content for lawyers or, you know, your
agency is making content for lawyers and obviously it's it's
very sensitive and you're makingtons of content.
You know, I mean, it might be like 100 or more pages per site.
(29:17):
Yeah. How are you making sure that
that content is expert level, that it's that also it's not
duplicate content because a lot of those topics obviously are
fairly similar and just talking about a a slight nuance in the
service maybe. How do you make sure that the
content is good and that it's not duplicate?
(29:38):
Sure. For one, that's always a a
misconception is when you're working with a lawyer that you
have to write content in legalese as though you're
writing to another lawyer. But that's not the case.
You know, the people that are hiring a lawyer, a lot of times
(30:01):
it might be their first time ever having to hire a lawyer,
right? You know, somebody was in a bad
car accident, they're in the hospital.
You know, most people are reading at an eighth grade
level, right? So it really comes down to
writing content for that audience, right?
And having more compassion, having more empathy, talking
(30:22):
about some of the pin points that they might be feeling.
You might be scared, you might not know how are you going to
pay your medical bills? You don't know, like how are you
going to get your car fixed, right?
You start talking about some of their pin points, you know, and
it's OK, we've helped people like you in the past.
You're on the right page, right?You know, kind of.
(30:43):
And then you talk a little bit about the firm, obviously.
So, so how we do that in a way that we don't do it so that it's
duplicate content is, you know, just through, you know, skill,
you know, over time that, you know, we reference.
So if we're writing specificallyabout Fort Lauderdale, we'll
(31:03):
reference Fort Lauderdale courthouses, municipalities,
right? Whereas if it's a different
city, we might be referencing those, right?
But a lot of times like the opening is like, you know,
similar, you know, like then coming across having empathy and
compassion, right, but optimizedin a way that it's obviously
going to have the right H1 tag and you're, you're, you're
(31:24):
optimizing for those cities. And so a lot of times because
like, it's not really all that competitive.
And if a website is super authoritative with links, you
know, even if some of the content seems as though like,
let's just say it's like 27% duplicate, if you ran it through
like a cop escape, it's still gonna rank anyway, Gannon.
(31:49):
I wanted to switch gears here and I wanted to touch on AI and
LLM and all this stuff. I know it's been a hot topic for
the past few years. It seems like everyone wants to
hear it all the time. Yeah.
So First off, what have you seenhas changed in the past years?
Let's start with just Google. But what's changed with Google
in the past few years? Because there's been AI
(32:09):
overviews now they have AI mode.Have you changed much of your
strategy and what have you seen has changed?
They haven't really changed muchof the strategy.
You know, our strategy is still the same for the most part.
You know, we, we're seeing that AI overview is picking things up
(32:29):
obviously from the content that we've been writing.
So I think that the strategy will kind of still remain the
same. You know, I think links still
carry the same importance as they ever did.
You know, now we're doing thingsa little differently though,
where we might be leveraging parasites or, you know, posting
(32:51):
listicles, you know, on authoritative websites so that
we can actually try to optimize some of the chat sites, giving
us a greater chance of ranking. Like who are the best personal
injury lawyers in Miami, right? You know, I think if, if you can
(33:11):
publish an article on USA TODAY that talks about the five best
personal injury lawyers in Miami, because you know, you've
already studied it, you know that USA TODAY is a source that
ChatGPT uses, right? So it's no different, I think in
the world of SEO, whether you call it a EOGEOSEO, whatever you
(33:32):
want to call it, at the end of the day, we are just conditioned
to reverse engineer algorithms, right?
And so I, in fact, I actually went back to college.
I, I went and got an executive MBA at Stanford just because I
wanted to be surrounded with some of the smartest people that
are developing a lot of these new AI technologies.
(33:54):
And so, you know, so you're always kind of like, you know,
making sure that you're trying to just be a little bit smarter
than the next day, you know, and, and, and I love this stuff.
Like, I love it when there's newchallenges because a lot of our
clients need us even more than they did before, You know, some
of this change took place, you know?
(34:14):
Yeah, definitely. So you've been in the space
almost 25 years now. I want to ask you almost the
flip side of that, which would be what has always remained the
same. What what, what are the
principles that's have stayed intact?
Yeah. I think three things, A, making
sure that the website has a goodsolid technical structure and
(34:37):
makeup, right? You know, making it very easy
for search engines and chat botsto basically crawl the site,
right, and index the site. I think that's important.
Writing or publishing content that satisfies the intent of
what people are searching for, right?
I don't think that will ever change, whether it's in the
(34:59):
written format or if it's in a video format, you know, I think
that's important. And then the third will, you
know, which has always been the case is, you know, building
authority through links. You know, now that has certainly
been, you know, there's been a lot of iterations of link
building. You know, when I first got into
(35:19):
SEO, there was the whole world of spammy link building.
You know, I mean, you, you foundthat Coca-Cola had some kind of
like a like a forum and you can basically leave a comment on a
Coca-Cola form, a form and you put your name as personal injury
lawyer Miami, right? And then that Coca-Cola forum
(35:42):
would link back to you using that exact match anchor toe.
And even though it wasn't relevant to personal injury,
like you still have a link from Coca-Cola, right?
And then that would really drivethe results, right?
Nowadays that doesn't work. You know, it can be seen as
spammy and malicious, and you can probably get, you know, your
site penalized if you did too much of that.
(36:04):
But, you know, at the end of theday, it just comes down to
getting like strong links, you know, good links.
Yeah, Yeah. I, I want to dive a little bit
deeper on that because I feel like a lot of people kind of end
up on one of two ends of the spectrum, which would be
authoritative links or relevant links.
And you mentioned relevance, butcould could you explain a little
(36:25):
bit further on that? Where do you lean towards
authority or relevance or both? You have to kind of.
You have to try to find a mix ofboth, right?
I mean like a guest blog post ona, on a site that has a a lot of
different guest blog posts on all kinds of different topics,
right? You know, you might have one
(36:45):
article that's talking about pest control and then two
articles later they're talking about, you know, car crashes in
Seattle, right? Obviously the topical authority
of that website, is it necessarily all about, you know,
car accidents, right. So should I build the link on
that? Yes.
You know, I mean kind of depending on the domain
(37:07):
authority of the website and youknow and, and where you're
linking to sure is that website going to really push the needle?
Maybe not, right? But it's at least it's checking
the box that you've got the samelink that your competitor got
because they've got a link from that guest blog post website
too, right? However, if you're doing real
things, right, let's just say you're a personal injury lawyer,
(37:30):
right? And you know, you represented a
celebrity and that celebrity, you know, ends up in the news
and then you were representing them.
And so now you've got a link from TMZ, you've got a link from
CNN, you've got a link from Fox News, right?
All because you were the personal injury lawyer that
(37:51):
represented the celebrity. Those are good links.
Now, is CNN all about personal injury war?
No, right. But it's like we are 96 website
that is probably one of the mosttrusted websites on the
Internet. And the fact that they have an
article that's relevant to your clients and what you do, that's
(38:11):
some of the best links that you can get, right?
You know, so trying to figure out a way that you can kind of
maneuver to get, you know, all types of links like that.
Yeah, OK, So what people say it's almost like investing in
stocks. You have to diversify.
It's not just try to get ACNN link or don't just sign up for
like the lawyer directory, but you know, get get a good healthy
(38:32):
mix of both. Got it exactly right.
Yeah. So something else I wanted to
talk to you about, and I think you have a pretty unique
perspective on this is social media.
So you have a huge following. You have over 1,000,000
followers on Instagram, a lot onLinkedIn and Facebook, so it
seems like you value social media for your personal brand,
but do you recommend it for yourclients and other local
(38:54):
businesses? I do.
It just depends on, on on who your audience is.
Like for me, like I talk about acouple different topics, right?
Like I talk about my passion, which is SEO.
But over the years I've built anagency, I scaled an agency,
right? And so I talk about agency life
(39:18):
and then I also talk about, you know, business, right?
And all the lessons that I learned in business, right?
So I'm trying to like capture multiple audiences, I guess,
with my my personal brand. Do I think it's important?
Yeah. I think everybody should have an
active social media campaign, right.
But at the end of the day, like I also take into consideration
(39:40):
that, you know, the topic of like, law is a very boring
topic. And so should you be creating
videos like everyday about, you know, here's the six things you
need to do, you know, before youhire a personal injury lawyer.
I mean, sure. You know, I mean, like, you
(40:02):
could have some of that content,but maybe instead, you know,
talk about, you know, that, you know, you're giving away
backpacks for, you know, underprivileged kids and for
everybody to come to your office.
On a Saturday morning, right, sothey can get a free backpack,
right? Talk about the things that
you're maybe doing in the community, you know, maybe go
(40:24):
out and and highlight like a teacher, right?
Give away an award for like nominate the best teacher, you
know, in the district, right? You know, get very localized,
you know, I mean, there's a lot of other things that you can do
that would resonate with your audience rather than just
talking about such a boring topic of, of law, you know?
Yeah, No, I agree. Like essentially getting
(40:46):
involved with the community, right.
I, I really like that aspect. And I kind of kind of like you
were saying earlier, I, I don't like SEO just being A1 sided
thing and it's just the agency. But I would like to work with a
business ideally that's already somewhat involved in the
community. And then we, we could just, you
know, demonstrate that and, and amplify that by showing it on
social media and, and other places.
(41:07):
But I, I feel like you have to be doing the right stuff in
person. And then that's almost the
easiest stuff to advertise. And another thing I'd say too,
is like, so anybody that followsme, a you're going to see my
life, right? You know, especially on
Facebook, you know, I'm pretty active on Facebook.
You know, I'll post photos of mykids.
(41:29):
You know, what they're doing aretrips that we take a lot of
times, like I get clients, you know, that have just been
following me on Facebook, you know, just because they see me
as like a Family Guy. I'm a business guy.
I seem like a trustworthy person, right?
And that's who people like to dobusiness with, right?
And so a lot of times when I seesomebody, they're like, oh,
(41:50):
Jason, you know, I've been following you on social media,
man. Oh my God.
Like that trip you took to Italywith your family was is so
amazing, right? A lot of times that's the stuff
they did talk about, right? They're not talking about that
video that I did six months ago about like rel canonical tags,
you know what I mean? Like gives a shit of, you know
what I mean? Like, you know, so like, that's
the stuff that really resonates.And then I use humor a lot too.
(42:14):
You know, I don't take myself seriously.
You know, I think, in fact, my last LinkedIn post that I
published yesterday was I said OK.
You know, I'll admit I cheated in high school, but I did it the
hard way, right? I didn't use AI, you know what I
mean? Like.
Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that, you know what I
mean? Like adding humor, you know, you
(42:34):
know, to the mix as well. I think it's important.
Yeah, no, definitely. I found that helpful for myself.
What are the last questions I want to ask you, Jason, is what
is the future of local marketing?
Where are things headed? You know, things are changing so
fast and they're continue to go faster, but where?
Where do you see things headed? Yeah.
So I would say, you know, I, I can't predict, you know, where,
(43:00):
you know, the world of AI is heading.
All's I can say is the stuff that you have to just get right
is just doing a good service foryour clients, right, You know,
creating a good experience for your clients.
You know, maybe leveraging people like you, me experts that
(43:21):
are trained and versed in different fields to come in and
to maybe add commentary on whereyou can maybe adjust the
strategy a bit where you should maybe be focusing on where you
should be. You know, maybe spend less time
focusing on. I do that often.
You know, I, I myself like I'm, you know, I'd consider myself
(43:41):
like an SEO expert after all these years, but I'm certainly
not the smartest person in the room.
You know, there's people that are way smarter at local SEO,
way smarter at schema markup than I am.
And I will often bring them in to audit my client's work.
I call that outsourcing genius, right?
You don't need to bring them in full time.
(44:02):
You just pay them couple $1000, they audit your work, you're
like, Oh my God, that's amazing.Thank you.
Then you basically leveraged the, the stuff that they shared.
You do an experiment. If it works, right, then I, all
my clients get the benefit of that, right?
So even us as experts, we do that.
So you as a business owner should certainly be kind of
leveraging that. And then, you know, try to get
(44:24):
positive reviews, you know, reply to the reviews, you know,
any of the tools that you know that Google gives you or ChatGPT
gives you, make sure you're leveraging that, you know,
uploading photos, uploading video, you know what I mean?
Just make sure you're exploitingas much of the tools that they
give you. Love that.
(44:45):
And last question I've got for you, Jason, and it kind of ties
into what what you're already saying, but whatever you'd like
to say here, what is your message for either local
business owners or local marketers?
What do you want to tell them? What do you think they need to
know? Yeah, so a if you've got it, if
you've gotten to this point of the podcast, like I applaud you
(45:08):
because, you know, most people don't take action or they get
bored. And so the fact that you've kind
of listened for 45 minutes and you've gotten to the end, you're
a different kind of person, right?
You're like the 1%. And so congratulations, right?
You're a go getter and usually the 1% are the people that win
(45:31):
in life just because they're always trying to kind of get
better, whether they're listening to a podcast or they
are reading books or they're taking action, right?
And I always like to say that you can create the future that
wasn't going to exist in life bytaking action, right?
(45:53):
I wake up every single day and I'm like, what action can I take
today that is going to, you know, make my life better
tomorrow, right? And so, you know, there's a lot
of things that we talked about on this podcast that you've been
taking copious notes. Don't just leave the notes
aside. A lot of people do.
They go to conferences and they're like inspired and
(46:14):
they're writing so many stuff down and they get home and they
just get back to their everyday life, right?
And they don't take action. So you have to go take action.
Amen, take action. Awesome.
What? I love that message.
Super simple, applies to everyone.
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jason.
This has been awesome. It's been great to meet you and
and chat with you. Where can people find you on
social media and connect with you?
(46:36):
You can meet me on Instagram just at Jason Hennessy LinkedIn,
Jason Hennessy Facebook again, if you want to meet my family,
Jason Hennessy and and Danny, you're, you are one of those
people that took action, right? Because I wouldn't be on this
podcast if you didn't watch a different podcast that I was on.
Yeah, Right. And then you reached out to me
(46:59):
not even knowing who I was, right, And said, hey, Jason, I
was inspired by the way, you know, will you be on my podcast,
Right? So like, you took action and you
created a future that wasn't going to exist, right?
So you're living proof of this happening right now, right?
So like, I just want to get you to see that, right?
You didn't have to reach out to me and I didn't have to respond,
right. But I will always kind of, you
(47:21):
know, go the extra mile for people that are in that 1%.
I I appreciate you acknowledgingthat.
I I love the the way you phrase that making the if I'm not
getting this wrong, making the future happen that wouldn't
exist. Exactly.
Love that man. Yeah, no, I, that's, that's what
I'm trying to do here. And let, like you said, the
podcasting is so powerful because now, you know, I, I
(47:42):
might be talking to clients, right?
I might be talking to other people in SEO and be like, well,
I don't know much, but here's what Jason said.
And I had them on my podcast andyou can go watch it.
So I, I, I love the podcasting frame.
And yeah, thank you so much for coming on again.
Also, I'll I'll ask you, is there anything else you'd like
to plug or promote here? I'd say, you know, if you got
value from this, I have a book that probably would be
(48:03):
applicable to the audience that's listening.
It's called Honest SEO. You can buy it on Amazon.
It's basically me spending about18 months giving the person
that's going to read it as much value that I feel that I could
give them in the four hours thatit takes to read the book.
So yeah. Awesome, cool.
(48:25):
So make sure to go follow Jason on every social platform.
Make sure to go by his book Honest SEO.
All those links will be in the description and thanks again for
coming on Jason. This is this has been great.
Thank you of. Course.
Hey there, and welcome back to Local Marketing Secrets.
I'm your host, Danny Lebrand, and today I'm joined by Jason
Hennessy, an internationally recognized SEO expert,
entrepreneur, author, and the founder of Hennessy Digital, one
of the fastest growing marketingagencies in America.
Jason's work has helped hundredsof businesses, especially law
firms, dominate Google and scalethrough proven SEO systems.
(00:21):
He's also the author of Law FirmSEO and Honest SEO, and he's
built a massive following of over 1.7 million people just on
Instagram, where he shares dailyinsights on marketing mindset
and business growth. In this episode, we dive into
Jason's 20 year journey from reverse engineer, reverse
engineering Google's algorithm back in the early 2000s to
(00:42):
leading 100 person agency today.We talked about what really
drives local search success in 2025, the biggest mistakes small
businesses make with SEO, and how to future proof your
marketing in the age of AI. Now, without further ado, Jason,
welcome to the show. Thanks, Danny.
I appreciate you having me on here.
I'm excited to to dive into all these topics here so.
(01:03):
Yeah, definitely. So it seems like you're kind of
the local marketing or local SEOveteran You, you've been in it
longer than most people and you got into it around 2001.
Can you just give me some more background and like how you got
started and how you got into thespace?
Yeah, I think like most people that stumble upon the area of
like digital marketing or specifically SEO, it kind of
(01:26):
starts as like a need. Especially back then when I was
getting into it, SEO wasn't really a, a main topic that a
lot of people spoke about. In fact, it was kind of like
black magic. Like if you knew like how to do
SEO, you were like, like a, likea ninja, right.
And so at the time, I just gotten out of the Air Force.
(01:48):
I served my country for about four years, got out of the Air
Force. I was going to college, I was
studying for the LSAT, I was going to go to law school and I
had like a side hustle, I guess if you will.
It was DJ ING like weddings and parties and such.
And so I paid a developer like $5000 to develop a website and I
(02:10):
called it Vegas weddingmall.com because the thought process was
if people were Googling, you know, wedding venues or wedding
DJs, like I wanted to be able torank on and Yahoo and Google at
the time. And so the developer spent about
two months developing it. And then once he was done, there
was nobody coming to the website.
So I called him up and I'm like,I think This site is broken
(02:34):
because nobody's coming to it. And he's like, oh, no, that's,
that's like this thing called SEO, Like, I don't know how to
do that. And so at that point, I'm like,
OK, well, I'm guessing I'm goingto have to like teach myself
this stuff. And so that was kind of like the
genesis of how I got into it. Yep.
Interesting. And then what about starting
your agency? How did that come about?
(02:55):
South in 2008, after building that wedding directory that I
talked about, it went from Vegaswedding mall to Seattle wedding
mall to Los Angeles wedding malland eventually kind of built all
these directories. Ended up selling that move to
Atlanta, GA, partnered with a guy by the name of Brad Fallon
(03:15):
who had a company called Stompernet.
It was like one of the first platforms that taught SEO to
business owners. And so while I was in Atlanta,
Brad got asked to speak at a DUIlawyer mastermind.
And it was like 50 DUI lawyers that got together once a year,
(03:36):
and they brought in expert speakers.
And so Brad said, hey Jason, youknow way more about this SEO
stuff than I do. Why don't I come introduce you
and then you could, you know, talk, talk a little bit about
like SEO. And so I'm like, OK, great.
So he gave me 24 hours to put together a deck.
I knew nothing about legal marketing at the time.
And so I got up on stage, gave apresentation.
(03:59):
I was very transparent. And so out of the 50 lawyers,
there was like 7 lawyers that approached me and said that was
awesome. You know, I'm, I'm paying my SEO
guy like $6000 per month and he's not doing any of this
stuff. Like do you do this like from a
consulting basis? And I'm like, not really, but
(04:19):
give me your card. And so I ended up leaving there
with like 7 business cards that turned into about $30,000 per
month in reoccurring revenue now.
So just 145 minute presentation that I got asked to do one night
before was the genesis of my first agency.
So. And you didn't even necessarily
choose the law firm niche, but you just got invited to speak at
(04:41):
that event. And that's how that's.
Exactly right. Yeah.
So like I just it just fate, I guess.
Yeah. How it all happened?
Like that. Dang, Dang.
And yeah, talk to me about the evolution of your agency because
I mean, plenty of people have local marketing agencies, a lot
of people have niche agencies, but you've grown it to over 8
figures or you're at 8 figures. Just explain to me like the the
(05:03):
evolution of your agency and howyou've grown it so large.
So the, so that first story there, that was my first agency,
which was called Everspark Interactive.
And so that was an agency that Iat the time had three other
business partners. We ended up buying one of the
partners out. So then it was just me and one
(05:25):
other business partner. He and I are still friends, good
friends today. We built it up to a point where
we got it to like maybe like 3 and a half, $1,000,000 in in top
line revenue. And then it just got to the
point where, you know, we had two different owners that kind
of wanted to take the agency in different directions.
And so he ended up buying out myinterest after about 8 years of
(05:46):
building that. And, and so I ended up leaving.
And so, so that was basically the first agency.
And so Fast forward to 2015. So that was from 2008 to about
2015. Fast forward to 2015, we moved
out West to California. My young son was pursuing an
(06:07):
acting career in Hollywood. I just kind of exited my first
agency to my partner. That business continued.
In fact, it's still around. It's run by another good friend
of mine now. And so I got bored.
I played tennis, like, every single day.
And then my wife was like, are you ever going to get back to
(06:28):
work again? And so I'm like, yeah, you know,
I probably should get back into it.
And so then I started Hennessy, which is my current agency,
which has been around for about 10 years now.
And so similar, you know, I, I focused on just working with
lawyers. I niche down.
(06:48):
I got my first client for that agency and I'm like, screw it.
If I want to like really get good results, I'm just going to
ask for the right budget. And so the proposal that I sent
to the first lawyer that I started working with was for
$15,000 per month. And the, the attorney agreed to
(07:10):
it. I spent every waking second like
working on that to make it an amazing case study because I now
had the firepower to do it right, $15,000 per month is a,
is a great budget. And so I was able to basically
make that a great case study. And then I leveraged that case
study to get my second client at$50,000 a month and my third
(07:31):
client right. And then eventually, you know,
built that up to to a nice lifestyle business at the time.
And then from there, you know, the journey continued.
I delegated, brought in a coach,brought in like a good executive
C-Suite team to work with me. And then since scaled it to now
(07:53):
we're probably do about 23 million top line, 7 million in
profit. That's incredible.
Yeah. I feel like that's almost
something you're known for. Is, is charging a lot as an
agency. And I, I want to ask you
especially for maybe local business owners that aren't too
aware or that they just don't know what goes into it, because
rightfully so, that there's a lot of SEO agencies that are
(08:13):
scams. They don't do a good job.
So when you charge something like 15 KA month or 10 or 20 or
whatever, what goes into that? What?
What? Yeah.
What is that money getting used for?
What's the justification, right?So realistically, it's, it's
what's necessary in the field that I work in, right?
(08:36):
You know, I work primarily with not just lawyers, but personal
injury lawyers. And so personal injury law is
it's a vertical where there is high competition, you know,
very, very probably one of the most competitive spaces in the,
(08:57):
in the world of SEO, right? But there's also very high
margin and profit for the attorneys as well, right?
So like if I could generate a lead for a client that turns
into a case, that case has a minimum value of like 12 to
$13,000, that's their fees for just one case.
(09:22):
And those fees can go as high as$100 million, right?
Just depending on the case, right?
And the, the, the injuries and you know, and, and specific.
And so, so that's the justification is, you know, like
when I first got into it, everybody just thought like SEO,
(09:43):
like in the personal injury space, you just pay $5000 per
month and you kind of get SEO right.
And I'm just like, that's not really how it works.
I mean, like, if we really want to be able to dominate, you
know, the Serps, right, the search engine result pages a we
got to study the competition, wegot to go get the links that
they have. We got to write the content
that's necessary, got to put together a good strategy.
(10:04):
And my time is valuable too, youknow, and I knew that that, you
know, I was pretty good at this stuff too, right?
And so I wanted to make sure that I valued my time and it
there's two ways to kind of go in the agency world, right?
You can build the Walmart model,right?
Or you can build the Lamborghiniapproach, right?
So I, I wanted so, so there's a lot of agencies that work in
(10:29):
legal that, you know, they just want to be able to generate to
get clients that'll pay 20, five, 3500 bucks per month,
right? And, and get 500 clients, right?
You know, and that's not a bad model, right?
You know, but I think there's problems to that, right?
(10:50):
Because a lot of times, you know, just having like a cookie
cutter approach to 2500 bucks per month might not be the right
budget, you know, in certain markets, right?
And so I think, you know, you have trouble scaling, you might
have high churn, right, Because,you know, maybe you're
(11:10):
mismanaging expectations, not intentionally, right?
And so I don't know, that's justkind of like a different model,
right? Whereas the Lamborghini
approach, I think in my mind is like, hey, you know, rather than
go out and get 6 clients that pay 2500 bucks per month, why
don't I just get one client thatwill pay, you know, the
(11:32):
combination of all what the six clients would pay and then
really have the firepower to kind of make that perfect car,
right? That when people see it like
it's just sexy, it's on the road, right?
And now you become kind of like the Lamborghini dealership of
your industry, right? And so that was just the
approach that I decided to take.Like I said, at the time, I
(11:55):
wasn't doing it for cash. Like I just exited my first
company. I was pretty OK.
I guess at the time it was just a matter of like, OK, if I'm
going to do this, I want to build like, like I said, that
Lamborghini dealership in my face.
Yeah, no. And I, I think that is the right
way to go about things because it gets so complex dealing with
(12:17):
so many clients. I, I've learned that with, with
my agency, I used to just kind of take on anyone from any
industry and it gets so complex.And also the people just being
straightforward. And I'm sure you know this, the
people that are paying little are now demanding more results
and their worst clients, the best clients are usually the
ones making the most money and giving you the most money, which
is almost ironic. So I, I completely agree.
(12:41):
I get that if I've never heard it get phrases the Lamborghini
model, but I like that. And I want to ask you to get a
little bit more nuts and bolts on that.
So like let's say A15K retainer,what would be the most expensive
of that? Would that be like paying for
backlinks or building pages on the site?
What would that be? Yeah.
(13:03):
You know, back backlinks is partof it.
And believe it or not, like evenwith that $15,000 per month
budget, like we're not doing allof the work.
Like in some cases, in fact, in most cases, like we're reverse
engineering competition and we're giving our clients
homework. And so, you know, we might see
(13:25):
that, you know, six of their largest competitors all have a
link from the Better Business Bureau.
You know, three of their largestcompetitors, you know, might
have a link from PR Newswire, right?
Because they did a press release, right?
So then what we're doing is we're going back to our clients
and saying, hey, we really need you to reach out to the Better
(13:45):
Business Bureau, sign up for it.Even if you don't get any
business from being on the Better Business Bureau, we need
that link, right? And they say, OK, great,
perfect. They go do their homework in the
background. We're also going and doing like,
you know, our citations, we're doing, you know, the guest blog
posts, right? We're kind of doing all the
reverse engineering of the linksthat we could build.
(14:07):
But you know, I'm an agency that's known to give out
homework to our clients, right? Because SEO, it's not, it's,
it's definitely a two way street, right?
There's only so much I can do asyour SEO vendor or partner, I
should say, you know, but there's other things that I'm
going to tell you that you need to do as well.
And the clients that actually get engaged and do their
(14:28):
homework are the clients that really do very well in their
markets, right? So, so that's a big part of it
is like link building, you know,content creation was also a, a,
a large part of it, right? This is, you know, back before
the world of like AI, you know, where you'd have to pay writers,
you know, to write good content and edit the content and publish
(14:50):
the content and develop the content strategies.
And so in the world of legal, you just can't write like a
bunch of like BS content, you know, because you can get your
client to lose their law license, right?
You know, and you start saying wrong things, right?
And so, you know, so we had to hire more sophisticated writers
(15:12):
to write the content and get them trained and, and then from
there, really the biggest expenses like our, our labor,
right, you know, our payroll, you know, for our team.
Yeah, got it. Makes sense.
I I wanted to touch on things you're telling clients to do
more. So you said that could be
something like, hey, you know, you might have to get accredited
(15:32):
on the Better Business Bureau. Everyone else is doing that.
What are some other common things that you're typically
telling your clients to do? Yeah, a lot of it is around the
link building, right, Figuring that out.
Sometimes it's about local SEO, which you know, I know, we'll
probably talk more about, you know, getting them to respond to
(15:53):
reviews in a time and manner, getting them to get more
reviews, getting them to be moreactive with, you know,
publishing photos on their, on their Google business listings.
You know, maybe getting them to do things like when, you know,
when people come to the office, like click on driving directions
(16:16):
so that we get more of those, you know, user signals, you
know, all kinds of things, you know, that we that we do, you
know. And so from there, you know,
like I said, the clients that actively participate and are
engaged and do their homework, those are the ones that that
turn into some of our best case studies.
(16:38):
Awesome. Yeah.
Let's, let's touch more on Google Business profile stuff.
This, I feel like it's always a hot topic.
I mean, it's, there's not too many things to do there and you
know, it's, you can see results pretty quickly.
Yeah. What are some of the things
you're seeing that are moving the needle there?
What? What's working with your
clients? Yeah.
So I'd say a making sure. I'm not sure how technical your
(17:03):
audience is, but I'll just mention that, you know, schema I
think is something that we see as being important in the world
of local rankings, you know, making sure.
So for those that don't know what schema is, you know, on a
website, you have your HTML, right?
And so that's the stuff that theuser sees, that's the images and
(17:27):
the content that you know is on your website that people can see
and click. But in the background there's
like this other language that's specifically written for the
search engines for AI to basically give them more clues
into who you are and, and what you do.
(17:49):
And so schema markup is something that you can go in to
tell the search engines such as Google that, hey, this is the
name of our business, this is our verified address, this is
our verified phone number. There's something called same as
schema where you can tell the search engines that we're the
(18:10):
same as, you know, company that is referenced in this New York
Times article. We're the same as a company
that's also has this specific Facebook profile, this specific
LinkedIn profile, right? You can tell them this is the
latitude and longitude of our office.
You can tell them that these aresome of the verified reviews.
(18:34):
You can tell them that this is what you're known for, right?
So there's, you know, there's, you know, different things that
you can mention in there. I mean, it just kind of goes on
and on and on. Yeah, No, I don't.
I like, you know, and so so you know, in the world of legal, you
know, like you have to have the edge, right?
You know, because, you know, my competitors, right, you know,
(18:58):
are working with very sophisticated agencies.
And so I have to be more sophisticated than some of the
most sophisticated agencies in the country, right?
You mentioned you had Chris Dreyer on, you know, Chris
Dreyer has an agency called Rankings.
They're also a very reputable agency that that focuses on
legal. So a lot of times like Chris's
crew and my crew kind of going like just to try to get that
(19:21):
little edge, right. And so, you know, that's kind of
what it takes. Now having said that, you know,
pest control, you know, like theindustry that you specialize in,
you know, maybe it's not as competitive, right?
You know, maybe you don't need that firepower of the large
budget, you know what I mean? So I'm just saying like what I
(19:44):
need to do and some of the most competitive markets is, is, you
know, a lot of times different than, you know, the rest of the
world that cash, you know, I'm so.
Yeah, yeah. But it's got to be tough, right?
Because the doesn't there have to have to be a breaking point
where like, I mean, we're just spending so much on SEO and
it's, it's getting too ridiculous and everyone's so
(20:05):
competitive. Like just isn't that tough in
your space. Not necessarily because at the
end of the day, like you think like 15 grand, you know that
that is not even that expensive.I mean, I've had clients that
paid us over $100,000 per month for SEO, right?
Like just for one client, you know, on average we got clients
that are in bigger markets like Los Angeles and Dallas and
(20:29):
places like that, that will often pay 30 to $50,000 per
month on SEO, right? And then it seems like a lot of
money, but when a law firm's getting 100 cases as a result
of, you know, a $50,000 per month SEO spend in every case
has a minimum value of 12,500, Like I said, that's kind of like
(20:53):
the minimum their fees. You know, I'm with a $50,000
value, I could be generating over $1,000,000 in revenue for
that firm, right? So like you know, the ROI is
there. Yeah, but that's, that's what I
was going to mention is it's, it's about ROI.
It doesn't even have to be like,oh, we're paying this much for
backlinks. We're doing this.
It's like like if we're generating you $100,000 a month,
(21:14):
I mean, it makes sense to pay 1020 KA month.
So yeah, cool. That makes sense.
I I want to get clear on the scheme of stuff.
So and just for people that don't know, obviously Google
business profile on your websiteis different, but your website
can still power up your Google business profile.
I think that's what what you were hinting at.
So with the schema, are you talking with the schema across
(21:36):
the site or just to the page youlink to?
Because I know there's some nuance there.
Both. So I think that the that the
page that you link to, if you have a brick and mortar
business, which most of my clients do, you know, you
basically should have the GoogleMy Business profile, right for
(21:57):
that location, linking to a specific page that's built for
that location. Yeah, you know, so I think
that's important. And then you also want to be
linking back with a map in bed right back to that specific
page. And then the schema, you know,
there is definitely like schema that goes throughout the whole
website. And then there in the world of
(22:19):
legal, there's something called legal services schema and that
is specifically for that page. And that's where you can kind of
give it more information about, you know, that specific
location, the longitude, latitude, right?
All the zip codes that you service for that location,
right? So you can get very specific
(22:42):
with with schema. And I mean, you can probably,
you know, write more schema thanyou do, you know, just HTML,
right when you're kind of completing that, because you can
go down rabbit holes of OK, great.
Like we even do things where we'll actually like link out to
(23:03):
the Wikipedia page that defines that specific, right, You know,
so like there are things that you can do to to be a little bit
more sophisticated than the nextperson.
Got it. Yeah.
Let's let's go deeper on those landing pages.
Obviously this is super important and this applies to
basically any local business andit will usually be some
(23:26):
combination of a, a service service and city.
At least that's most common in home services, which is what I'm
most familiar with. So might be pest control Chicago
or termite control Houston. You know that there's, there's
some kind of combination there and in legal, I know you guys
have something similar there. What are you guys putting on
those pages and what what reallymoves the needle there?
Yeah. So in most cases, a lot of our
(23:49):
clients might have like, you know, one headquarters right at
their main office and they mighthave a couple satellite offices
as well. And so in order for us to be
able to dominate an entire region or entire state, you
know, it's either you open up offices in every single city,
(24:11):
which is not really plausible, or we develop a content strategy
to make sure that we have a personal injury lawyer page, a
car accident lawyer page, a slipand fall lawyer page for every
small city in the state. And so you obviously start with
the city in which their headquarters is.
So if it's in Fort Lauderdale, FL, we have a Fort Lauderdale
(24:35):
personal injury lawyer page, a Fort Lauderdale slip and fall
page, right, all of those. But then we kind of continue to
expand. And so we might have 20 practice
area pages and we write those practice area pages for every
city throughout the state. And then there's a way in which
we internally linked those pagesso that you have slip and fall
(24:57):
pages linking back to other cities, right?
So it gets really sophisticated in the way in which we
internally linked the pages so that we can pass relevancy and
page rank. And then we also build out
something called topical authority.
So if you have a car accident lawyer page, right, that could
be like a parent page for what would be like a head on
(25:21):
collision accident lawyer or fatal car accident lawyer or a
left turn car accident lawyer, right?
I mean, like you can get really sophisticated, right?
And all of those sub practice series of car accident, all
linked to the car accident lawyer referencing the anchor
text as the first link on the page, right?
(25:42):
So like a lot of times we're building out a lot of these sub
practice area pages, not so muchthat we're ever going to get
people that will type in, you know, left turn car accident
lawyer, right? We do, don't get me wrong, like
those will generate cases, but they're zero search volume 0
competition. But what's happening is those
pages are basically serving as the building out the topical
(26:04):
authority for some of those other more important pages,
which is building out the topical authority for the
personal injury page in Fort Lauderdale, which is the root,
right? So that page, right.
So we're building out all of these.
I know we might have like 50 pages, right, that are kind of
just boosting up that Fort Lauderdale personal injury page,
right? It gets really sophisticated.
(26:26):
Yeah. So, so that's almost a strategy
to rank what's called like pillar pages.
You kind of had better it's yourcore concept like the pest
control Chicago or the, you know, the lawyer of Houston,
whatever. That's right.
You you want to have some supporting pages for those
You're that's what you're saying.
That's exactly right, yeah. And it doesn't Even so much I I.
I just want to make sure I'm clear here.
(26:48):
Hear your thoughts on this. It doesn't even really matter if
those pages rank, but almost their sole purpose is to power
up the the top level page. Yeah, In fact, I, I had a call
recently like this is like one of my pet peeves.
My pet peeve is when, you know, we've been working with a law
firm, right? Let's just say we've been
(27:08):
working with a personal injury lawyer for like 7 years, right?
And it all started with us working directly with the
personal injury lawyer. Eventually the personal injury
lawyer does so well because of all the cases that we've helped
generate that they now have a budget to bring in a marketing
director. I mean, and so now the new
marketing director comes in and that can get really interesting
(27:31):
because a lot of times the marketing director, they come in
and they need to justify, you know, their new role, right?
So the first thing they say is like, holy shit, we're spending
like $40,000 a month on SEO. That's crazy.
Like you know, at my old place, like I was only spending 5000.
Like, so they're immediately like a lot of times they come
(27:52):
and try to shave budget, right? And sometimes they're
successful, right? But the reason why I mentioned
this is because I was on a call recently with a marketing
director that was new to a firm.And so the marketing director
just came in and they're like, Isee that we have all of these
like pages, right, that don't get any traffic, you know, like
(28:13):
this, you know, fatal car accident lawyer in Fort
Lauderdale and this, you know, whatever, right?
You know, and there's a bunch ofthese pages and they're like,
you know, I want, I want to get your agency to remove all those
pages. And I'm like, Oh, no, I said, I
said absolutely not. I said, I'll, I'll call my
client who I have the relationship with, and I'll
(28:35):
terminate the relationship before I do that to my friend
because that would have just killed his whole website.
And so sometimes you have to do the right thing.
And in this case, I was ready tofire the client just to make
sure that they didn't, you know,lose the investment that they've
been making for all this year just because of an incompetent
(28:57):
marketing director. Dang, OK, so well actually first
I'll ask you this. So you are are not a lawyer, but
you're making content for lawyers or, you know, your
agency is making content for lawyers and obviously it's it's
very sensitive and you're makingtons of content.
You know, I mean, it might be like 100 or more pages per site.
(29:17):
Yeah. How are you making sure that
that content is expert level, that it's that also it's not
duplicate content because a lot of those topics obviously are
fairly similar and just talking about a a slight nuance in the
service maybe. How do you make sure that the
content is good and that it's not duplicate?
(29:38):
Sure. For one, that's always a a
misconception is when you're working with a lawyer that you
have to write content in legalese as though you're
writing to another lawyer. But that's not the case.
You know, the people that are hiring a lawyer, a lot of times
(30:01):
it might be their first time ever having to hire a lawyer,
right? You know, somebody was in a bad
car accident, they're in the hospital.
You know, most people are reading at an eighth grade
level, right? So it really comes down to
writing content for that audience, right?
And having more compassion, having more empathy, talking
(30:22):
about some of the pin points that they might be feeling.
You might be scared, you might not know how are you going to
pay your medical bills? You don't know, like how are you
going to get your car fixed, right?
You start talking about some of their pin points, you know, and
it's OK, we've helped people like you in the past.
You're on the right page, right?You know, kind of.
(30:43):
And then you talk a little bit about the firm, obviously.
So, so how we do that in a way that we don't do it so that it's
duplicate content is, you know, just through, you know, skill,
you know, over time that, you know, we reference.
So if we're writing specificallyabout Fort Lauderdale, we'll
(31:03):
reference Fort Lauderdale courthouses, municipalities,
right? Whereas if it's a different
city, we might be referencing those, right?
But a lot of times like the opening is like, you know,
similar, you know, like then coming across having empathy and
compassion, right, but optimizedin a way that it's obviously
going to have the right H1 tag and you're, you're, you're
(31:24):
optimizing for those cities. And so a lot of times because
like, it's not really all that competitive.
And if a website is super authoritative with links, you
know, even if some of the content seems as though like,
let's just say it's like 27% duplicate, if you ran it through
like a cop escape, it's still gonna rank anyway, Gannon.
(31:49):
I wanted to switch gears here and I wanted to touch on AI and
LLM and all this stuff. I know it's been a hot topic for
the past few years. It seems like everyone wants to
hear it all the time. Yeah.
So First off, what have you seenhas changed in the past years?
Let's start with just Google. But what's changed with Google
in the past few years? Because there's been AI
(32:09):
overviews now they have AI mode.Have you changed much of your
strategy and what have you seen has changed?
They haven't really changed muchof the strategy.
You know, our strategy is still the same for the most part.
You know, we, we're seeing that AI overview is picking things up
(32:29):
obviously from the content that we've been writing.
So I think that the strategy will kind of still remain the
same. You know, I think links still
carry the same importance as they ever did.
You know, now we're doing thingsa little differently though,
where we might be leveraging parasites or, you know, posting
(32:51):
listicles, you know, on authoritative websites so that
we can actually try to optimize some of the chat sites, giving
us a greater chance of ranking. Like who are the best personal
injury lawyers in Miami, right? You know, I think if, if you can
(33:11):
publish an article on USA TODAY that talks about the five best
personal injury lawyers in Miami, because you know, you've
already studied it, you know that USA TODAY is a source that
ChatGPT uses, right? So it's no different, I think in
the world of SEO, whether you call it a EOGEOSEO, whatever you
(33:32):
want to call it, at the end of the day, we are just conditioned
to reverse engineer algorithms, right?
And so I, in fact, I actually went back to college.
I, I went and got an executive MBA at Stanford just because I
wanted to be surrounded with some of the smartest people that
are developing a lot of these new AI technologies.
(33:54):
And so, you know, so you're always kind of like, you know,
making sure that you're trying to just be a little bit smarter
than the next day, you know, and, and, and I love this stuff.
Like, I love it when there's newchallenges because a lot of our
clients need us even more than they did before, You know, some
of this change took place, you know?
(34:14):
Yeah, definitely. So you've been in the space
almost 25 years now. I want to ask you almost the
flip side of that, which would be what has always remained the
same. What what, what are the
principles that's have stayed intact?
Yeah. I think three things, A, making
sure that the website has a goodsolid technical structure and
(34:37):
makeup, right? You know, making it very easy
for search engines and chat botsto basically crawl the site,
right, and index the site. I think that's important.
Writing or publishing content that satisfies the intent of
what people are searching for, right?
I don't think that will ever change, whether it's in the
(34:59):
written format or if it's in a video format, you know, I think
that's important. And then the third will, you
know, which has always been the case is, you know, building
authority through links. You know, now that has certainly
been, you know, there's been a lot of iterations of link
building. You know, when I first got into
(35:19):
SEO, there was the whole world of spammy link building.
You know, I mean, you, you foundthat Coca-Cola had some kind of
like a like a forum and you can basically leave a comment on a
Coca-Cola form, a form and you put your name as personal injury
lawyer Miami, right? And then that Coca-Cola forum
(35:42):
would link back to you using that exact match anchor toe.
And even though it wasn't relevant to personal injury,
like you still have a link from Coca-Cola, right?
And then that would really drivethe results, right?
Nowadays that doesn't work. You know, it can be seen as
spammy and malicious, and you can probably get, you know, your
site penalized if you did too much of that.
(36:04):
But, you know, at the end of theday, it just comes down to
getting like strong links, you know, good links.
Yeah, Yeah. I, I want to dive a little bit
deeper on that because I feel like a lot of people kind of end
up on one of two ends of the spectrum, which would be
authoritative links or relevant links.
And you mentioned relevance, butcould could you explain a little
(36:25):
bit further on that? Where do you lean towards
authority or relevance or both? You have to kind of.
You have to try to find a mix ofboth, right?
I mean like a guest blog post ona, on a site that has a a lot of
different guest blog posts on all kinds of different topics,
right? You know, you might have one
(36:45):
article that's talking about pest control and then two
articles later they're talking about, you know, car crashes in
Seattle, right? Obviously the topical authority
of that website, is it necessarily all about, you know,
car accidents, right. So should I build the link on
that? Yes.
You know, I mean kind of depending on the domain
(37:07):
authority of the website and youknow and, and where you're
linking to sure is that website going to really push the needle?
Maybe not, right? But it's at least it's checking
the box that you've got the samelink that your competitor got
because they've got a link from that guest blog post website
too, right? However, if you're doing real
things, right, let's just say you're a personal injury lawyer,
(37:30):
right? And you know, you represented a
celebrity and that celebrity, you know, ends up in the news
and then you were representing them.
And so now you've got a link from TMZ, you've got a link from
CNN, you've got a link from Fox News, right?
All because you were the personal injury lawyer that
(37:51):
represented the celebrity. Those are good links.
Now, is CNN all about personal injury war?
No, right. But it's like we are 96 website
that is probably one of the mosttrusted websites on the
Internet. And the fact that they have an
article that's relevant to your clients and what you do, that's
(38:11):
some of the best links that you can get, right?
You know, so trying to figure out a way that you can kind of
maneuver to get, you know, all types of links like that.
Yeah, OK, So what people say it's almost like investing in
stocks. You have to diversify.
It's not just try to get ACNN link or don't just sign up for
like the lawyer directory, but you know, get get a good healthy
(38:32):
mix of both. Got it exactly right.
Yeah. So something else I wanted to
talk to you about, and I think you have a pretty unique
perspective on this is social media.
So you have a huge following. You have over 1,000,000
followers on Instagram, a lot onLinkedIn and Facebook, so it
seems like you value social media for your personal brand,
but do you recommend it for yourclients and other local
(38:54):
businesses? I do.
It just depends on, on on who your audience is.
Like for me, like I talk about acouple different topics, right?
Like I talk about my passion, which is SEO.
But over the years I've built anagency, I scaled an agency,
right? And so I talk about agency life
(39:18):
and then I also talk about, you know, business, right?
And all the lessons that I learned in business, right?
So I'm trying to like capture multiple audiences, I guess,
with my my personal brand. Do I think it's important?
Yeah. I think everybody should have an
active social media campaign, right.
But at the end of the day, like I also take into consideration
(39:40):
that, you know, the topic of like, law is a very boring
topic. And so should you be creating
videos like everyday about, you know, here's the six things you
need to do, you know, before youhire a personal injury lawyer.
I mean, sure. You know, I mean, like, you
(40:02):
could have some of that content,but maybe instead, you know,
talk about, you know, that, you know, you're giving away
backpacks for, you know, underprivileged kids and for
everybody to come to your office.
On a Saturday morning, right, sothey can get a free backpack,
right? Talk about the things that
you're maybe doing in the community, you know, maybe go
(40:24):
out and and highlight like a teacher, right?
Give away an award for like nominate the best teacher, you
know, in the district, right? You know, get very localized,
you know, I mean, there's a lot of other things that you can do
that would resonate with your audience rather than just
talking about such a boring topic of, of law, you know?
Yeah, No, I agree. Like essentially getting
(40:46):
involved with the community, right.
I, I really like that aspect. And I kind of kind of like you
were saying earlier, I, I don't like SEO just being A1 sided
thing and it's just the agency. But I would like to work with a
business ideally that's already somewhat involved in the
community. And then we, we could just, you
know, demonstrate that and, and amplify that by showing it on
social media and, and other places.
(41:07):
But I, I feel like you have to be doing the right stuff in
person. And then that's almost the
easiest stuff to advertise. And another thing I'd say too,
is like, so anybody that followsme, a you're going to see my
life, right? You know, especially on
Facebook, you know, I'm pretty active on Facebook.
You know, I'll post photos of mykids.
(41:29):
You know, what they're doing aretrips that we take a lot of
times, like I get clients, you know, that have just been
following me on Facebook, you know, just because they see me
as like a Family Guy. I'm a business guy.
I seem like a trustworthy person, right?
And that's who people like to dobusiness with, right?
And so a lot of times when I seesomebody, they're like, oh,
(41:50):
Jason, you know, I've been following you on social media,
man. Oh my God.
Like that trip you took to Italywith your family was is so
amazing, right? A lot of times that's the stuff
they did talk about, right? They're not talking about that
video that I did six months ago about like rel canonical tags,
you know what I mean? Like gives a shit of, you know
what I mean? Like, you know, so like, that's
the stuff that really resonates.And then I use humor a lot too.
(42:14):
You know, I don't take myself seriously.
You know, I think, in fact, my last LinkedIn post that I
published yesterday was I said OK.
You know, I'll admit I cheated in high school, but I did it the
hard way, right? I didn't use AI, you know what I
mean? Like.
Yeah, yeah. Stuff like that, you know what I
mean? Like adding humor, you know, you
(42:34):
know, to the mix as well. I think it's important.
Yeah, no, definitely. I found that helpful for myself.
What are the last questions I want to ask you, Jason, is what
is the future of local marketing?
Where are things headed? You know, things are changing so
fast and they're continue to go faster, but where?
Where do you see things headed? Yeah.
So I would say, you know, I, I can't predict, you know, where,
(43:00):
you know, the world of AI is heading.
All's I can say is the stuff that you have to just get right
is just doing a good service foryour clients, right, You know,
creating a good experience for your clients.
You know, maybe leveraging people like you, me experts that
(43:21):
are trained and versed in different fields to come in and
to maybe add commentary on whereyou can maybe adjust the
strategy a bit where you should maybe be focusing on where you
should be. You know, maybe spend less time
focusing on. I do that often.
You know, I, I myself like I'm, you know, I'd consider myself
(43:41):
like an SEO expert after all these years, but I'm certainly
not the smartest person in the room.
You know, there's people that are way smarter at local SEO,
way smarter at schema markup than I am.
And I will often bring them in to audit my client's work.
I call that outsourcing genius, right?
You don't need to bring them in full time.
(44:02):
You just pay them couple $1000, they audit your work, you're
like, Oh my God, that's amazing.Thank you.
Then you basically leveraged the, the stuff that they shared.
You do an experiment. If it works, right, then I, all
my clients get the benefit of that, right?
So even us as experts, we do that.
So you as a business owner should certainly be kind of
leveraging that. And then, you know, try to get
(44:24):
positive reviews, you know, reply to the reviews, you know,
any of the tools that you know that Google gives you or ChatGPT
gives you, make sure you're leveraging that, you know,
uploading photos, uploading video, you know what I mean?
Just make sure you're exploitingas much of the tools that they
give you. Love that.
(44:45):
And last question I've got for you, Jason, and it kind of ties
into what what you're already saying, but whatever you'd like
to say here, what is your message for either local
business owners or local marketers?
What do you want to tell them? What do you think they need to
know? Yeah, so a if you've got it, if
you've gotten to this point of the podcast, like I applaud you
(45:08):
because, you know, most people don't take action or they get
bored. And so the fact that you've kind
of listened for 45 minutes and you've gotten to the end, you're
a different kind of person, right?
You're like the 1%. And so congratulations, right?
You're a go getter and usually the 1% are the people that win
(45:31):
in life just because they're always trying to kind of get
better, whether they're listening to a podcast or they
are reading books or they're taking action, right?
And I always like to say that you can create the future that
wasn't going to exist in life bytaking action, right?
(45:53):
I wake up every single day and I'm like, what action can I take
today that is going to, you know, make my life better
tomorrow, right? And so, you know, there's a lot
of things that we talked about on this podcast that you've been
taking copious notes. Don't just leave the notes
aside. A lot of people do.
They go to conferences and they're like inspired and
(46:14):
they're writing so many stuff down and they get home and they
just get back to their everyday life, right?
And they don't take action. So you have to go take action.
Amen, take action. Awesome.
What? I love that message.
Super simple, applies to everyone.
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jason.
This has been awesome. It's been great to meet you and
and chat with you. Where can people find you on
social media and connect with you?
(46:36):
You can meet me on Instagram just at Jason Hennessy LinkedIn,
Jason Hennessy Facebook again, if you want to meet my family,
Jason Hennessy and and Danny, you're, you are one of those
people that took action, right? Because I wouldn't be on this
podcast if you didn't watch a different podcast that I was on.
Yeah, Right. And then you reached out to me
(46:59):
not even knowing who I was, right, And said, hey, Jason, I
was inspired by the way, you know, will you be on my podcast,
Right? So like, you took action and you
created a future that wasn't going to exist, right?
So you're living proof of this happening right now, right?
So like, I just want to get you to see that, right?
You didn't have to reach out to me and I didn't have to respond,
right. But I will always kind of, you
(47:21):
know, go the extra mile for people that are in that 1%.
I I appreciate you acknowledgingthat.
I I love the the way you phrase that making the if I'm not
getting this wrong, making the future happen that wouldn't
exist. Exactly.
Love that man. Yeah, no, I, that's, that's what
I'm trying to do here. And let, like you said, the
podcasting is so powerful because now, you know, I, I
(47:42):
might be talking to clients, right?
I might be talking to other people in SEO and be like, well,
I don't know much, but here's what Jason said.
And I had them on my podcast andyou can go watch it.
So I, I, I love the podcasting frame.
And yeah, thank you so much for coming on again.
Also, I'll I'll ask you, is there anything else you'd like
to plug or promote here? I'd say, you know, if you got
value from this, I have a book that probably would be
(48:03):
applicable to the audience that's listening.
It's called Honest SEO. You can buy it on Amazon.
It's basically me spending about18 months giving the person
that's going to read it as much value that I feel that I could
give them in the four hours thatit takes to read the book.
So yeah. Awesome, cool.
(48:25):
So make sure to go follow Jason on every social platform.
Make sure to go by his book Honest SEO.
All those links will be in the description and thanks again for
coming on Jason. This is this has been great.
Thank you of. Course.
Host
Danny Leibrandt
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