January 3, 2022 • 34 mins
In episode 110, host Eric Dickmann interviews Dmitrii Kustov. Dmitrii currently serves as the Internet Marketing Director of Regex SEO, a digital marketing and web design company based in Houston, and has been helping businesses build their online presence through innovative marketing campaigns.
Regex SEO is a full-service agency that develops comprehensive digital marketing strategies.
Working with clients, Dmitrii focuses on building higher search rankings to generate more organic traffic and improve sales.
For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/finding-balance-web-design-seo-s7ep10/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Dickmann (00:02):
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Dimitri.
Welcome to The Virtual CMOpodcast.
(00:22):
I'm very glad you could join ustoday.
Dmitrii Kustov (00:24):
Hello.
Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Dickmann (00:26):
Yeah, it's great.
We're going to get into talkinga little bit about SEO today.
You know it's a common topic.
We broach it often here on thepodcast, but I also think it's
confusing for many smallbusinesses and I'm hoping that
you can shed some light on sortof what you need to do from an
SEO perspective as well asbalancing that out with some
design considerations for yourwebsite.
(00:47):
But before we dive into all ofthat good stuff, I'd love it if
you could just share a littlebit with the audience about your
background and how you came intothe SEO business.
Dmitrii Kustov (00:57):
Alright.
Okay, so technically byeducation, I'm a programmer and
a mathematician.
So I got my education in Russia,and I was studying applied
Mathematics and CodingProgramming, and I kind of by
(01:20):
chance, got into SEO world.
So there was a local companyhere in Houston hiring PHP
developers, and after a coupleof weeks or maybe even days,
they told me, you know what, wekind of don't need a PHP
developer, we need somebody whodoes SEO.
(01:40):
And they told me to figure itout or
Eric Dickmann (01:44):
Yeah.
Dmitrii Kustov (01:45):
bust.
So I had to figure it all out.
That's how I got seriously intoit.
Of course I was playing with itin the four, then just a little
freelance projects and stufflike that.
Uh, but that's how I got to SEOas an actual job.
And now 10 plus years later, youknow, I run the agency in
(02:06):
Houston area in Houston, Texas,and we do great work.
Eric Dickmann (02:11):
Oh, that's great.
You know, it's alwaysinteresting to hear people's
paths on how they got to wherethey are today.
And you know, as we talk aboutthis, I'd love to break it down
sort of this way.
So when we look at SEOholistically, I kind of break it
into these three buckets.
I look at Technical SEO, youknow, the what's underneath the
covers, is your website set upcorrectly?
(02:32):
You know, do you have yourschema?
Do you have your H1 tags, yourH2 tags, your metadata, all that
kind of stuff that Google needs.
And then I sort of put into asecond bucket, the great content
that you produce, whether it'syour blog or whether it's the
wording on your web pages, thekeyword focused stuff, the
things that Google is reallylooking for so that you get that
(02:53):
authority.
And then in that third bucket,even though it's technical, I
sort of put speed.
Because now with core web vitalsand all of this emphasis on
speed, we've really got to focuson that almost as an independent
task.
And I think one of the thingsthat's challenging is that we're
also in this time when there's alot of video, there's a lot of
(03:14):
imagery.
And so that conflicts with goodcontent, because video and
imagery are not written words,right?
That's not keyword focused.
They also conflict in some wayswith speed, because the more of
that that you have on yourwebsite, it can slow down your
website.
So I'd love it.
If we could just break theseapart and kind of talk about
them one by one.
(03:35):
And then as you look at websitedesign, how do you balance all
of this stuff out?
So let's start with thetechnical SEO side.
Dmitrii Kustov (03:42):
All right.
So that's a very good point thatnowadays you have to design for
users for humans, as well assearch engines.
And that's one of the biggest,biggest issues that is not
typically being addressed bymost website owners.
So you're very much right thatvideos, which is engaging
(04:06):
content, which is typicallycreated for humans is not really
useful for SEO rankings andGoogle rankings and so on and so
on for search engines.
And yes, it does slow down thepage.
So there are few things that canbe done from technical
perspective, from contentperspective, and so on and so
(04:27):
on.
I can talk about this all daylong so need to stop me at some
point.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
So basically what we typicallysay is you always have to have
the first viewport of thewebsite, the first screen which
other people see, has to be forpeople, don't make it for search
(04:49):
engines.
And maybe even right below that,somebody scrolls down on your
website, make sure that's alsofor humans.
That's where you put yourvideos, that's where you put
your main call to actions andlike what the page is about and
stuff like that.
And below that, kind of thefurther the page you go, that's
(05:11):
where you start introducingthings for search engine, which
is keyword optimized content, alot of texts.
It doesn't have to be necessarya lot of images needs to be, it
needs to look nice becausepeople do read, but the main
story there, the main thingthere is to make sure that you
capture your audience, youcapture your users at the top of
(05:34):
the page and down at the pagethat's for search engines.
You mentioned things like theloading speed for example, there
are quite a few things that youshould be doing regardless.
For example, image optimization.
You can upload like a 5,000 by4,000 pixels image, for mobile
(06:01):
device for example, thatdisplays mobile device.
That makes no sense, So makesure that your images are
optimized and their correctsize.
There are things that is calledlazy loading, and that is the
image or really any content isnot being loaded until user
scrolls almost all the way toit.
(06:23):
It's maybe like, there's usuallycertain amount of pixels before
a user gets to it.
Eric Dickmann (06:29):
So, this is when you're going down the page.
It's instead of loadingeverything all at once,
everything that's on thatwebpage, it kind of loads it
just in time.
So if you never scroll down tothe bottom of the page, then it
never even bother loading it up.
Dmitrii Kustov (06:42):
Exactly.
Exactly, yeah, And that makesthe website load quicker.
And at the same time, all of thetext content that loads
regardless because that's pureHTML and that for search engines
works and you don't have toworry about your rankings or
anything like that.
Uh, and in terms of videos andstuff like that, there are also
many different ways to preloador rather post load.
(07:04):
So for example, It's typically abad idea to have autoplays on
the videos.
If you have some kind of YouTubeembed or even like a background,
a little video playing in thebackground, you have to really
make sure that first video againis optimized and it's correct
size.
And that it's not some kind of4k quality that you're trying to
(07:27):
play in the background behindsome kind of overlay that people
can't really see anyway.
So just make sure that thevideos are optimized.
And then if it's actual videolike a embed from YouTube, make
sure that it only loads whenpeople click to play.
Otherwise again, it's going tostart loading and it's going to
slow everything down andnobody's going to benefit from
(07:49):
that.
Eric Dickmann (07:50):
Yeah, I think these are great tips.
And you know, maybe you shouldexplain a little bit about this
core web vitals, something thatGoogle had recently released,
you know within this past year.
And it's having impact on a lotof sites.
What used to be a good page inGoogle's mind can help be a bad
page if things don't loadcorrectly.
So maybe give us a little bit ofa background in terms of what is
(08:12):
it and what is the impact onSEO?
Dmitrii Kustov (08:15):
Right.
So core web vitals, there arefour main metrics that Google is
looking at.
And there are things like at theend of the day, it's how fast
the page loads in differentstages of loading.
Google looks at, for example,the very first response from the
(08:39):
server.
Before, like typically,especially if you're in a very
slow connection or a really badoptimized or not optimized
website, you can sometimes seeit.
You go to the website andthere's like a white screen.
Just doesn't show anything forsecondary two before it starts
showing something.
So that's one of probably theworst things that you can do or
(09:02):
not do to your website becausethat's considered the time to
first paint.
That's what they call it.
And basically, the whole idea isthat nowadays everybody is so
impatient.
Everybody's used to, you know,one day Amazon delivery, same
day.
I want, I want it right now.
(09:24):
There's a comedian, I forgot thename Chan something, anyway yeah
he has this bit about one day istoo slow now.
I want it right now.
I want you to give it to mebefore I even think it.
So that's the whole idea there.
And Google thinks about that andthey want to encourage websites,
(09:47):
website owners, businesses thatcan provide the best user
experience.
So make sure that whenever youare optimizing your website,
something needs to show prettymuch immediately.
And typically that's of coursenot going to be an image or
video, it's going to betypically the text.
(10:08):
So add the H1 tag, which is themain title of the page that
should show up pretty much rightaway so that people understand
that they are on the correctpage, that the page is actually
loading, being in the process ofloading.
I don't typically typicallyrecommend those screen lloaders
(10:28):
where it's like spinning wheelof fortune.
Eric Dickmann (10:31):
Right, right, the spinning beach ball.
Dmitrii Kustov (10:34):
Yeah.
Because that also deters peoplefrom kind of, it doesn't really
tell you how long it's going tobe spinning, so that's not the
best idea either.
So yeah, at the end of the day,make sure that everything loads
quick and especially in mobiledevices, that's where a lot of
(10:56):
emphasis is happening right now,because everybody is using their
phones for everything.
Most industries are 80% or ataround 80% mobile devices are
being used and browsed by frommobile devices, iPhones and
Pixel, and so on, and so on.
Eric Dickmann (11:16):
One thing.
We had a guest on just a coupleof weeks ago, and we were
talking about some of the greattools that Google's offers,
whether it's the Analytics orGoogle Search Console.
And I know in Google SearchConsole, you can go in and you
can actually see the health ofyour website, you can see
exactly what it's looking at interms of these core web vitals.
But I think what's confusing fora lot of people.
(11:37):
I've seen an awful lot ofchatter about this on the
internet is if you go to GooglePageSpeed Insights, and you test
out your site, you can get greatscores and then you go into
Search Console and you see whatthe report is on your website,
and the scores are terrible.
Why is there that difference?
Dmitrii Kustov (11:56):
Well, okay.
So those are actually twodifferent things.
The page with Insights is it'sloading speeds.
How fast the things on yourwebsite are loading.
In Google Search Console, theerrors there are very different.
They are of technical nature, ofinflexibility, of crawlability,
(12:18):
of accessibility of yourwebsite.
So when, like, how does Googlework in general, the Google bots
and whatnot?
They try to get to your websiteand they try to look or crawl
your page and they want tounderstand what is on the page?
(12:41):
Is there something broken thereor not?
And that's the typical errors inGoogle Search Console, there are
what they call like a slowloading error, but that's kind
of not really the same as coreweb vitals or what you get from
(13:01):
Page Speed Insights.
They are connected, but it's notthe same at all.
So typically you should be usingthose tools for different
reasons.
You use Page Speed Insights forweb vitals, for loading speeds.
And then for your technicalissues, if Google or any other
search engines can't access yourwebsite properly or some pages
(13:23):
are not loading correctly, ormaybe some links are broken or
something like that, that's whatthey use Google Search Console
for.
And you fix your site maps andother things there, or it tells
you about that there.
Eric Dickmann (13:37):
Yeah, no understood.
I guess I'm referring to aspecifically the core web vitals
section of Google Search Consolewhere it kind of breaks that
down a little bit.
And my understanding was one ofthe reasons that it's a lagging
indicator is because that usesthe Chrome experience report.
And so if you don't have enoughwebsite traffic specifically
using Chrome, that it just takesa long time for it to gather the
(14:01):
data in order to sort of updatethat where page speeds in
Insights, it's just a one anddone,
Dmitrii Kustov (14:07):
Right.
So those tools are not kind oftalking to each other, which is
also weird thing.
You know, you think that it'sthe same company, the same
people.
So they kind of have the samedata in multiple places, but
it's not.
(14:28):
And Google PageSpeed Insights,the one you go to the PageSpeed
Insights tool, the data thatthey're looking at, there, it is
kind of like a database almost.
So sometimes, especially if youhave a smaller website, if
you're a small business owner,they will not have any core web
vitals data for your website atall because there are certain
(14:50):
threshold.
They basically only gatherwebsites or data when they have
enough metrics, and so on and soon.
So if you have you know, acouple dozen people going to
your website or a couple ofhundred people going to your
website in a month, you're notgoing to see that.
In Google Search Console, that'stypically your, as long as it's
(15:13):
installed properly, that is yourwebsite as it performs on a
daily basis.
So in that regard, you kind ofneed to look at the errors and
the issues that are beingreported in PageSpeed, Insights
tool, even though it's not coreweb vitals, because it will tell
(15:35):
you your score, is it 60 out ofa 100 or whatever, and then they
will tell you what you need tooptimize.
So that's what I typically say,you have to pay attention at
first because some people kindof go after the score themselves
or the core of that vital numberitself.
But they forget about the ideaof it.
(15:56):
It's just an indicator.
It's like, okay, something isnot loading right or you
shouldn't be going after thenumbers, you should be going
after the results.
And at the end of the day,especially if you're talking
about big websites, bigprojects, apps, and so on, so
on, you should be doing reallife testing, like on the actual
(16:19):
devices with differentconnection speeds and so on and
so on.
So that's the proper proper way.
And again, just take those, allthose numbers and metrics with a
bit of a grain of salt andrather look at what slows you
down rather than trying to getthat 0.1 second of the first
(16:43):
paint or something like that.
Eric Dickmann (16:46):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(17:07):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(17:30):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
I think that's a great pointbecause it does give you an
overall score on the PageSpeedInsights, but that's not at all
what shows up in Google SearchConsole, it is really looking at
those paint scores.
And that seems to be, as yousaid, the biggest indicator that
Google is looking at right now.
And I'm also interested to divein a little bit more around your
(17:52):
comment with mobile.
You're exactly right.
So many businesses, the majorityof their web traffic now is
coming through mobile devices.
So we talk about responsive webdesign, being able to look at a
website on multiple platforms,multiple screen sizes.
When you advise clients on SEOand really helping make their
websites better, what are somebest practices that you look at
(18:16):
for mobile devices?
You recommend just stripping outas much as you can, and it's
mostly text-based?
How do you keep the same webexperience while making those
load times even faster?
Dmitrii Kustov (18:27):
Right.
You shouldn't be strippingeverything down.
Well, it depends on theindustry.
If you are in some kind of likea news industry where you
provide articles of like newsstyle articles, then sure, you
might want to strip down as muchas you can and kind of present
(18:47):
it almost like a newspaperformat and maybe have one or
couple images that are optimizedand so on.
But if you are, let's say,selling shoes, you want those
pictures, you want the productimages, whatever you sell,
otherwise, it's not going tomake any sense.
(19:09):
Things that are helpful for theuser.
The main thing is userexperience.
That's what people tend to kindof misunderstand I guess.
It's not about loading speeditself, it's about the user
experience.
The loading speed is one ofthose factors, but in a lot of
(19:32):
cases, Sure, if your websiteloads in like half a
millisecond, but then it's allmessed up and it doesn't make
any sense, and you can't findwhere to click and what to look
at, people are going to hate thewebsite, they're going to leave,
and therefore you're going tolose the rankings.
So it's a balance of loadsomething as quick as possible,
(19:55):
which is typically the firstviewport, what we call and then
in the background, while peopleare browsing, you need to load
things so that it looks verygood that it provides the best
user experience that none of theinformation is missing.
Let's say if we are talkingabout product, you want to show
(20:17):
things like specifications ofthe product and maybe dimensions
and I don't know, like some kindof warranties, whatever else.
You still should show it all onmobile, you just need to load it
so that it doesn't affect theuser experience.
And that's where the things likelazy loading or pre-loading, or
post loading and so on and so oncomes in.
(20:39):
And sometimes you might want toseparate that into different
pages, so we feel, you know, youhave just little buttons, check
more specifications for thisproduct, and it takes you to a
different page that also can bepreloaded before when people
click on that.
So yeah, again, it's not aboutthe scores, it's about the
(21:01):
experience.
And what a typically recommendis give whenever we have a
website, for any business ownerreally, give it to a kid, a
young enough kid, not a fiveyear old or something like that.
Somebody who understands whatyou want them to do.
It's like, Hey, can you go tothis?
(21:21):
And then find me some kind ofshoe, whatever it is, and then
just see how they interact withit.
And then after that, give it tograndma or grandpa who are you
know, 80 years old or somethinglike that, and then ask them the
same question, just look atthat, see how they what they do,
how they do it.
And after that, it's going to bea very clear where the big
(21:43):
glaring issues are, Are theyclicking on something that they
think is clickable, but it'snot?
Or can they not figure out thatlet's say one of the section is
meant to be scrollable, like tothe side, but there's no
indicator of any source that itis scrollable or something of
(22:03):
that nature.
And just by observing realpeople, especially in those
groups that is kind of on theedge of the perception, then
that's where you can learn a lotof stuff.
Eric Dickmann (22:18):
Yeah, I think we've all experienced websites
where buttons are too small orthey're off the page, or maybe
the site has a pop-up and youcan't get rid of it on mobile
because some part of the frameis off there.
It's just really understanding,I love the way you put the focus
on customer experience becausethat's truly what it's all
about.
You want people to be able toexperience our website in a way
(22:40):
that is equal no matter whatdevice they're on.
You know, one of my huge petpeeves, we talk about it on the
show a lot is how many companiesare so poor working with
browsers auto-fill functions.
When you're on a mobile device,you really don't want to type
that much.
You want as much to be prefilledas possible.
And when you disable that orhaven't enabled it, it can be a
(23:01):
real frustration to users.
If it's simply just putting intheir name and address, that can
be a big pain.
Yup, for sure.
And kind of other couple ofthings that I'd like to mention
for mobile devices specifically,unfortunately.
so there's this AMP, AMPtechnology that allows kind of
(23:24):
stripped down version of.
pages and unfortunately I see alot of that being overused
incorrectly, especially invisual industries.
Like, let's say you are.
I don't know, a company thatproduces nice banners, like the
(23:51):
one behind me.
Like, where you use for tradeshows and whatnot, it's very
visual.
You want to see all thosepictures of products and how
they're being used and whateverelse.
That is the main reason whypeople go to your website.
If you strip that off, what'sthe point?
(24:14):
People don't read.
Nowadays nobody reads texts,they just want to watch a video
or they want to look atpictures.
So you have to think aboutintent, then that's a whole
complete different conversationI can talk for two days straight
about user intent.
Why are people going to yourwebsite and specifically when
(24:35):
they're going to a given page,whatever that page is, why they
are coming to that page or whatthey're coming to that page for?
What do they expect?
What are they expecting?
And you have to kind of reverseengineer all that stuff and give
the answers for the questionspeople are looking to be
(24:59):
answered.
Give those answers right away atthe top of the page, especially
on mobiles and then everythingelse, you still want to have on
your page.
Push it down, push it down,rearrange the model, that's all
it takes.
And as long as you use the lazyloading or something, it's going
to be fine.
Do you think there's a future tothe AMP pages or do you think
(25:22):
they're going away?
It kind of seems like Google'sabandoning them.
Dmitrii Kustov (25:26):
I think I don't know about Google themselves
because it's still being used alot in kind of like the news
type of industry, you know?
Things like any virtualnewspapers or publications or
buzzfeeds of the world, it'svery much being used there a lot
(25:46):
still, and it does help.
And what I typically recommendfor businesses that are service
businesses or productbusinesses, use it, but use it
on blog pages.
Blogs that are in that narrativestyle, whereas there is not a
lot of imagery or videosrequired.
(26:10):
You know, top five tips forblah, blah.
Okay, it's bullet point list.
You don't have to have all thecrazy images and whatever else.
Now, if it let's say, if it'ssome kind of like, a DIY guide
to replacing your roof, thenyeah, you probably want to put a
lot of images and videos andeverything else, and make it
(26:32):
very useful for the user.
And for that, obviously don'tuse AMP.
So again, just a lot of thisstuff is very common sense.
What Google wants is provide theanswer in the quickest possible
(26:54):
way.
And that's why they introducethings like the zero result,
right?
Where they give you the answerbefore you even go anywhere.
They just put it at the top ofthe Google results page.
Eric Dickmann (27:07):
Right, which is great.
Dmitrii Kustov (27:08):
Yeah.
That's why they're introducingthings like the little snippets.
It's kind of like, even if youclick on a result, it takes you
to a specific part of the pageand they kind of highlighted in
yellow, like stuff like that.
So what they want is if youthink about Google and business
model, they want more and morepeople to use their search
(27:32):
engine.
So if you can get an answer veryquickly for whatever question
you have as a user, you're goingto come back to the search
engine and ask more and morequestions.
So that's why Google isintroducing or encouraging
(27:52):
behaviors that are helping usersto find the answers quickly and
the right answers.
That's all it is.
It's just common sense type ofsituation.
Eric Dickmann (28:02):
You know, that's very interesting.
And you know, the AMP was such abig thing awhile ago and they
have seemed to deemphasize itand I believe they're no longer
counting it against you if youdon't have AMP optimzed pages
where they were for awhile.
So yeah.
It's the reality of the worldthat we live in, that things are
constantly changing, which isthe, one of the reasons there
(28:23):
are so many SEO companies andthey provide such a valuable
service.
So as we kind of bring theinterview to a close here, if a
business is struggling a littlebit, if they're not getting the
web traffic that they want,they're not getting those sort
of organic results that theywant, what should they look for
in an SEO company and whatshould they expect from an SEO
company?
Dmitrii Kustov (28:44):
Okay.
Do you have about two weeks togo through this?
Eric Dickmann (28:48):
But we'll take the short version.
Dmitrii Kustov (28:50):
Okay.
Short version.
Okay, they come kind of twoparts of the question.
What should they be looking forin an SEO company?
In my mind, it's alwaystransparency.
What you're going to do for meand how it should affect the
results.
(29:11):
That's really the reason why wecreated our own company, because
we've ran across so manydifferent companies, SEO
companies, where they offer SEOplans.
Hey, no matter who you are,here's three different plans,
choose from it.
Well, if you're a lawyer or adentist, the approaches are
completely different.
If your e-commerce or service,approaches are completely
(29:33):
different.
So it needs to be targeted toyour business or tailored rather
to your business.
You need to understand how thatcompany is going to be helping
you and your businessspecifically.
So transparency, data, kind ofprojections and predictability
(29:54):
of some to some extent.
Of course we can guaranteewhat's going to happen with
Google tomorrow, but based onexperience and data and metrics,
you can tell at least withcertain degree of certainty,
with high degree of certainty,what should happen?
Also another thing that I highlynot even suggest, but it's
(30:17):
almost a must is progress.
Of course, nobody can get you tothe first page, organic rankings
tomorrow.
However, you should be able tosee progress, whatever that
progress is.
Are you getting two more visitsin a day?
In the week?
Than you were before,
Eric Dickmann (30:38):
Hmm.
Dmitrii Kustov (30:38):
Are you getting one more lead in a week than you
were before?
If you're hiring for technicaloptimization, is your page
loading 0.1 second quicker thana couple days before?
Stuff like that, right?
And just kind of like, you caneven ask for itemized list of
(30:58):
what's been done, like a log ofwork.
So that's what you kind ofshould be looking for when you
talk to an SEO company.
And as for what in generalshould be done, if you're
talking about how to get to thefirst page of Google, really
it's the four buckets or foursections content.
(31:19):
Content is always king as we sayin the industry, if you're not
talking about puppies, thenyou're not going to be ranking
for puppies.
If you're talking aboutsomething else then sorry, and
that, so content, the other oneis technical optimization, which
we kind of covered in quite alengthy way today.
(31:40):
The third one is userexperience, which is related to
technical, but not necessarily,because our experience is more
about behavior, while technicalis more about those metrics.
And then the fourth big sectionis backlinks and that's one of
those nate oil salesman industrythat a lot of people don't
(32:02):
understand or try to like thesellers of those backends try to
kind of, they bring bad rep tothe industry.
But at the end of the day,backlinks are just
recommendations from otherwebsites.
That's what it is.
If another website links to you,they should be recommending you
(32:25):
for the service that youprovide, as long as it's in the
same industry, as long as it'stopically relevant, that's all
you need to know.
That's all we should care aboutrather.
Eric Dickmann (32:36):
Building that credibility and domain
authority.
Yeah.
It's so important.
But you're right a lot ofsalesman out there pushing
building backlinks.
Dmitrii, this is good.
I love your focus on the userexperience.
I think that's really great.
Where can people find out moreabout you and your company on
the web?
Dmitrii Kustov (32:52):
All right.
So my company is called a RegexSEO, Regular Expressions SEO,
that's our website,regexseo.com.
And if anybody would like toreach out to me directly, you
can find me on social medias.
my handle is@DigitalSpaceman,you know, we are in Houston,
(33:15):
NASA, space, and our industry isall about reaching new heights.
So yeah, digital spaceman.
Eric Dickmann (33:21):
I like that, and the backdrop is a perfect match
for that.
And like I said, it's aconversation we have a lot on
this podcast, but it's one ofthe most important things I
think you can do for yourbusiness.
And so it's good to dive intothe details and it was great to
get your perspective on this.
Dimitri, thanks so much forbeing on the show today.
I really appreciate your time.
Dmitrii Kustov (33:39):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Eric Dickmann (33:44):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
In this podcast, we haveconversations with marketing
professionals who share thestrategies, tactics, and mindset
you can use to improve theeffectiveness of your marketing
activities and grow yourbusiness.
Hey, Dimitri.
Welcome to The Virtual CMOpodcast.
(00:22):
I'm very glad you could join ustoday.
Dmitrii Kustov (00:24):
Hello.
Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Dickmann (00:26):
Yeah, it's great.
We're going to get into talkinga little bit about SEO today.
You know it's a common topic.
We broach it often here on thepodcast, but I also think it's
confusing for many smallbusinesses and I'm hoping that
you can shed some light on sortof what you need to do from an
SEO perspective as well asbalancing that out with some
design considerations for yourwebsite.
(00:47):
But before we dive into all ofthat good stuff, I'd love it if
you could just share a littlebit with the audience about your
background and how you came intothe SEO business.
Dmitrii Kustov (00:57):
Alright.
Okay, so technically byeducation, I'm a programmer and
a mathematician.
So I got my education in Russia,and I was studying applied
Mathematics and CodingProgramming, and I kind of by
(01:20):
chance, got into SEO world.
So there was a local companyhere in Houston hiring PHP
developers, and after a coupleof weeks or maybe even days,
they told me, you know what, wekind of don't need a PHP
developer, we need somebody whodoes SEO.
(01:40):
And they told me to figure itout or
Eric Dickmann (01:44):
Yeah.
Dmitrii Kustov (01:45):
bust.
So I had to figure it all out.
That's how I got seriously intoit.
Of course I was playing with itin the four, then just a little
freelance projects and stufflike that.
Uh, but that's how I got to SEOas an actual job.
And now 10 plus years later, youknow, I run the agency in
(02:06):
Houston area in Houston, Texas,and we do great work.
Eric Dickmann (02:11):
Oh, that's great.
You know, it's alwaysinteresting to hear people's
paths on how they got to wherethey are today.
And you know, as we talk aboutthis, I'd love to break it down
sort of this way.
So when we look at SEOholistically, I kind of break it
into these three buckets.
I look at Technical SEO, youknow, the what's underneath the
covers, is your website set upcorrectly?
(02:32):
You know, do you have yourschema?
Do you have your H1 tags, yourH2 tags, your metadata, all that
kind of stuff that Google needs.
And then I sort of put into asecond bucket, the great content
that you produce, whether it'syour blog or whether it's the
wording on your web pages, thekeyword focused stuff, the
things that Google is reallylooking for so that you get that
(02:53):
authority.
And then in that third bucket,even though it's technical, I
sort of put speed.
Because now with core web vitalsand all of this emphasis on
speed, we've really got to focuson that almost as an independent
task.
And I think one of the thingsthat's challenging is that we're
also in this time when there's alot of video, there's a lot of
(03:14):
imagery.
And so that conflicts with goodcontent, because video and
imagery are not written words,right?
That's not keyword focused.
They also conflict in some wayswith speed, because the more of
that that you have on yourwebsite, it can slow down your
website.
So I'd love it.
If we could just break theseapart and kind of talk about
them one by one.
(03:35):
And then as you look at websitedesign, how do you balance all
of this stuff out?
So let's start with thetechnical SEO side.
Dmitrii Kustov (03:42):
All right.
So that's a very good point thatnowadays you have to design for
users for humans, as well assearch engines.
And that's one of the biggest,biggest issues that is not
typically being addressed bymost website owners.
So you're very much right thatvideos, which is engaging
(04:06):
content, which is typicallycreated for humans is not really
useful for SEO rankings andGoogle rankings and so on and so
on for search engines.
And yes, it does slow down thepage.
So there are few things that canbe done from technical
perspective, from contentperspective, and so on and so
(04:27):
on.
I can talk about this all daylong so need to stop me at some
point.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
So basically what we typicallysay is you always have to have
the first viewport of thewebsite, the first screen which
other people see, has to be forpeople, don't make it for search
(04:49):
engines.
And maybe even right below that,somebody scrolls down on your
website, make sure that's alsofor humans.
That's where you put yourvideos, that's where you put
your main call to actions andlike what the page is about and
stuff like that.
And below that, kind of thefurther the page you go, that's
(05:11):
where you start introducingthings for search engine, which
is keyword optimized content, alot of texts.
It doesn't have to be necessarya lot of images needs to be, it
needs to look nice becausepeople do read, but the main
story there, the main thingthere is to make sure that you
capture your audience, youcapture your users at the top of
(05:34):
the page and down at the pagethat's for search engines.
You mentioned things like theloading speed for example, there
are quite a few things that youshould be doing regardless.
For example, image optimization.
You can upload like a 5,000 by4,000 pixels image, for mobile
(06:01):
device for example, thatdisplays mobile device.
That makes no sense, So makesure that your images are
optimized and their correctsize.
There are things that is calledlazy loading, and that is the
image or really any content isnot being loaded until user
scrolls almost all the way toit.
(06:23):
It's maybe like, there's usuallycertain amount of pixels before
a user gets to it.
Eric Dickmann (06:29):
So, this is when you're going down the page.
It's instead of loadingeverything all at once,
everything that's on thatwebpage, it kind of loads it
just in time.
So if you never scroll down tothe bottom of the page, then it
never even bother loading it up.
Dmitrii Kustov (06:42):
Exactly.
Exactly, yeah, And that makesthe website load quicker.
And at the same time, all of thetext content that loads
regardless because that's pureHTML and that for search engines
works and you don't have toworry about your rankings or
anything like that.
Uh, and in terms of videos andstuff like that, there are also
many different ways to preloador rather post load.
(07:04):
So for example, It's typically abad idea to have autoplays on
the videos.
If you have some kind of YouTubeembed or even like a background,
a little video playing in thebackground, you have to really
make sure that first video againis optimized and it's correct
size.
And that it's not some kind of4k quality that you're trying to
(07:27):
play in the background behindsome kind of overlay that people
can't really see anyway.
So just make sure that thevideos are optimized.
And then if it's actual videolike a embed from YouTube, make
sure that it only loads whenpeople click to play.
Otherwise again, it's going tostart loading and it's going to
slow everything down andnobody's going to benefit from
(07:49):
that.
Eric Dickmann (07:50):
Yeah, I think these are great tips.
And you know, maybe you shouldexplain a little bit about this
core web vitals, something thatGoogle had recently released,
you know within this past year.
And it's having impact on a lotof sites.
What used to be a good page inGoogle's mind can help be a bad
page if things don't loadcorrectly.
So maybe give us a little bit ofa background in terms of what is
(08:12):
it and what is the impact onSEO?
Dmitrii Kustov (08:15):
Right.
So core web vitals, there arefour main metrics that Google is
looking at.
And there are things like at theend of the day, it's how fast
the page loads in differentstages of loading.
Google looks at, for example,the very first response from the
(08:39):
server.
Before, like typically,especially if you're in a very
slow connection or a really badoptimized or not optimized
website, you can sometimes seeit.
You go to the website andthere's like a white screen.
Just doesn't show anything forsecondary two before it starts
showing something.
So that's one of probably theworst things that you can do or
(09:02):
not do to your website becausethat's considered the time to
first paint.
That's what they call it.
And basically, the whole idea isthat nowadays everybody is so
impatient.
Everybody's used to, you know,one day Amazon delivery, same
day.
I want, I want it right now.
(09:24):
There's a comedian, I forgot thename Chan something, anyway yeah
he has this bit about one day istoo slow now.
I want it right now.
I want you to give it to mebefore I even think it.
So that's the whole idea there.
And Google thinks about that andthey want to encourage websites,
(09:47):
website owners, businesses thatcan provide the best user
experience.
So make sure that whenever youare optimizing your website,
something needs to show prettymuch immediately.
And typically that's of coursenot going to be an image or
video, it's going to betypically the text.
(10:08):
So add the H1 tag, which is themain title of the page that
should show up pretty much rightaway so that people understand
that they are on the correctpage, that the page is actually
loading, being in the process ofloading.
I don't typically typicallyrecommend those screen lloaders
(10:28):
where it's like spinning wheelof fortune.
Eric Dickmann (10:31):
Right, right, the spinning beach ball.
Dmitrii Kustov (10:34):
Yeah.
Because that also deters peoplefrom kind of, it doesn't really
tell you how long it's going tobe spinning, so that's not the
best idea either.
So yeah, at the end of the day,make sure that everything loads
quick and especially in mobiledevices, that's where a lot of
(10:56):
emphasis is happening right now,because everybody is using their
phones for everything.
Most industries are 80% or ataround 80% mobile devices are
being used and browsed by frommobile devices, iPhones and
Pixel, and so on, and so on.
Eric Dickmann (11:16):
One thing.
We had a guest on just a coupleof weeks ago, and we were
talking about some of the greattools that Google's offers,
whether it's the Analytics orGoogle Search Console.
And I know in Google SearchConsole, you can go in and you
can actually see the health ofyour website, you can see
exactly what it's looking at interms of these core web vitals.
But I think what's confusing fora lot of people.
(11:37):
I've seen an awful lot ofchatter about this on the
internet is if you go to GooglePageSpeed Insights, and you test
out your site, you can get greatscores and then you go into
Search Console and you see whatthe report is on your website,
and the scores are terrible.
Why is there that difference?
Dmitrii Kustov (11:56):
Well, okay.
So those are actually twodifferent things.
The page with Insights is it'sloading speeds.
How fast the things on yourwebsite are loading.
In Google Search Console, theerrors there are very different.
They are of technical nature, ofinflexibility, of crawlability,
(12:18):
of accessibility of yourwebsite.
So when, like, how does Googlework in general, the Google bots
and whatnot?
They try to get to your websiteand they try to look or crawl
your page and they want tounderstand what is on the page?
(12:41):
Is there something broken thereor not?
And that's the typical errors inGoogle Search Console, there are
what they call like a slowloading error, but that's kind
of not really the same as coreweb vitals or what you get from
(13:01):
Page Speed Insights.
They are connected, but it's notthe same at all.
So typically you should be usingthose tools for different
reasons.
You use Page Speed Insights forweb vitals, for loading speeds.
And then for your technicalissues, if Google or any other
search engines can't access yourwebsite properly or some pages
(13:23):
are not loading correctly, ormaybe some links are broken or
something like that, that's whatthey use Google Search Console
for.
And you fix your site maps andother things there, or it tells
you about that there.
Eric Dickmann (13:37):
Yeah, no understood.
I guess I'm referring to aspecifically the core web vitals
section of Google Search Consolewhere it kind of breaks that
down a little bit.
And my understanding was one ofthe reasons that it's a lagging
indicator is because that usesthe Chrome experience report.
And so if you don't have enoughwebsite traffic specifically
using Chrome, that it just takesa long time for it to gather the
(14:01):
data in order to sort of updatethat where page speeds in
Insights, it's just a one anddone,
Dmitrii Kustov (14:07):
Right.
So those tools are not kind oftalking to each other, which is
also weird thing.
You know, you think that it'sthe same company, the same
people.
So they kind of have the samedata in multiple places, but
it's not.
(14:28):
And Google PageSpeed Insights,the one you go to the PageSpeed
Insights tool, the data thatthey're looking at, there, it is
kind of like a database almost.
So sometimes, especially if youhave a smaller website, if
you're a small business owner,they will not have any core web
vitals data for your website atall because there are certain
(14:50):
threshold.
They basically only gatherwebsites or data when they have
enough metrics, and so on and soon.
So if you have you know, acouple dozen people going to
your website or a couple ofhundred people going to your
website in a month, you're notgoing to see that.
In Google Search Console, that'stypically your, as long as it's
(15:13):
installed properly, that is yourwebsite as it performs on a
daily basis.
So in that regard, you kind ofneed to look at the errors and
the issues that are beingreported in PageSpeed, Insights
tool, even though it's not coreweb vitals, because it will tell
(15:35):
you your score, is it 60 out ofa 100 or whatever, and then they
will tell you what you need tooptimize.
So that's what I typically say,you have to pay attention at
first because some people kindof go after the score themselves
or the core of that vital numberitself.
But they forget about the ideaof it.
(15:56):
It's just an indicator.
It's like, okay, something isnot loading right or you
shouldn't be going after thenumbers, you should be going
after the results.
And at the end of the day,especially if you're talking
about big websites, bigprojects, apps, and so on, so
on, you should be doing reallife testing, like on the actual
(16:19):
devices with differentconnection speeds and so on and
so on.
So that's the proper proper way.
And again, just take those, allthose numbers and metrics with a
bit of a grain of salt andrather look at what slows you
down rather than trying to getthat 0.1 second of the first
(16:43):
paint or something like that.
Eric Dickmann (16:46):
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to
the podcast.
But first, are you ready togrow, scale, and take your
marketing to the next level?
If so, The Five Echelon Group'sVirtual CMO consulting service
may be a great fit for you.
We can help build a strategicmarketing plan for your business
and manage its execution,step-by-step.
(17:07):
We'll focus on areas like how toattract more leads.
How to create compellingmessaging that resonates with
your ideal customers.
How to strategically package andposition your products and
services.
How to increase lead conversion,improve your margins, and scale
your business.
To find out more about ourconsulting offerings and
schedule a consultation, go tofiveechelon.com and click on
(17:30):
Services.
Now back to the podcast.
I think that's a great pointbecause it does give you an
overall score on the PageSpeedInsights, but that's not at all
what shows up in Google SearchConsole, it is really looking at
those paint scores.
And that seems to be, as yousaid, the biggest indicator that
Google is looking at right now.
And I'm also interested to divein a little bit more around your
(17:52):
comment with mobile.
You're exactly right.
So many businesses, the majorityof their web traffic now is
coming through mobile devices.
So we talk about responsive webdesign, being able to look at a
website on multiple platforms,multiple screen sizes.
When you advise clients on SEOand really helping make their
websites better, what are somebest practices that you look at
(18:16):
for mobile devices?
You recommend just stripping outas much as you can, and it's
mostly text-based?
How do you keep the same webexperience while making those
load times even faster?
Dmitrii Kustov (18:27):
Right.
You shouldn't be strippingeverything down.
Well, it depends on theindustry.
If you are in some kind of likea news industry where you
provide articles of like newsstyle articles, then sure, you
might want to strip down as muchas you can and kind of present
(18:47):
it almost like a newspaperformat and maybe have one or
couple images that are optimizedand so on.
But if you are, let's say,selling shoes, you want those
pictures, you want the productimages, whatever you sell,
otherwise, it's not going tomake any sense.
(19:09):
Things that are helpful for theuser.
The main thing is userexperience.
That's what people tend to kindof misunderstand I guess.
It's not about loading speeditself, it's about the user
experience.
The loading speed is one ofthose factors, but in a lot of
(19:32):
cases, Sure, if your websiteloads in like half a
millisecond, but then it's allmessed up and it doesn't make
any sense, and you can't findwhere to click and what to look
at, people are going to hate thewebsite, they're going to leave,
and therefore you're going tolose the rankings.
So it's a balance of loadsomething as quick as possible,
(19:55):
which is typically the firstviewport, what we call and then
in the background, while peopleare browsing, you need to load
things so that it looks verygood that it provides the best
user experience that none of theinformation is missing.
Let's say if we are talkingabout product, you want to show
(20:17):
things like specifications ofthe product and maybe dimensions
and I don't know, like some kindof warranties, whatever else.
You still should show it all onmobile, you just need to load it
so that it doesn't affect theuser experience.
And that's where the things likelazy loading or pre-loading, or
post loading and so on and so oncomes in.
(20:39):
And sometimes you might want toseparate that into different
pages, so we feel, you know, youhave just little buttons, check
more specifications for thisproduct, and it takes you to a
different page that also can bepreloaded before when people
click on that.
So yeah, again, it's not aboutthe scores, it's about the
(21:01):
experience.
And what a typically recommendis give whenever we have a
website, for any business ownerreally, give it to a kid, a
young enough kid, not a fiveyear old or something like that.
Somebody who understands whatyou want them to do.
It's like, Hey, can you go tothis?
(21:21):
And then find me some kind ofshoe, whatever it is, and then
just see how they interact withit.
And then after that, give it tograndma or grandpa who are you
know, 80 years old or somethinglike that, and then ask them the
same question, just look atthat, see how they what they do,
how they do it.
And after that, it's going to bea very clear where the big
(21:43):
glaring issues are, Are theyclicking on something that they
think is clickable, but it'snot?
Or can they not figure out thatlet's say one of the section is
meant to be scrollable, like tothe side, but there's no
indicator of any source that itis scrollable or something of
(22:03):
that nature.
And just by observing realpeople, especially in those
groups that is kind of on theedge of the perception, then
that's where you can learn a lotof stuff.
Eric Dickmann (22:18):
Yeah, I think we've all experienced websites
where buttons are too small orthey're off the page, or maybe
the site has a pop-up and youcan't get rid of it on mobile
because some part of the frameis off there.
It's just really understanding,I love the way you put the focus
on customer experience becausethat's truly what it's all
about.
You want people to be able toexperience our website in a way
(22:40):
that is equal no matter whatdevice they're on.
You know, one of my huge petpeeves, we talk about it on the
show a lot is how many companiesare so poor working with
browsers auto-fill functions.
When you're on a mobile device,you really don't want to type
that much.
You want as much to be prefilledas possible.
And when you disable that orhaven't enabled it, it can be a
(23:01):
real frustration to users.
If it's simply just putting intheir name and address, that can
be a big pain.
Yup, for sure.
And kind of other couple ofthings that I'd like to mention
for mobile devices specifically,unfortunately.
so there's this AMP, AMPtechnology that allows kind of
(23:24):
stripped down version of.
pages and unfortunately I see alot of that being overused
incorrectly, especially invisual industries.
Like, let's say you are.
I don't know, a company thatproduces nice banners, like the
(23:51):
one behind me.
Like, where you use for tradeshows and whatnot, it's very
visual.
You want to see all thosepictures of products and how
they're being used and whateverelse.
That is the main reason whypeople go to your website.
If you strip that off, what'sthe point?
(24:14):
People don't read.
Nowadays nobody reads texts,they just want to watch a video
or they want to look atpictures.
So you have to think aboutintent, then that's a whole
complete different conversationI can talk for two days straight
about user intent.
Why are people going to yourwebsite and specifically when
(24:35):
they're going to a given page,whatever that page is, why they
are coming to that page or whatthey're coming to that page for?
What do they expect?
What are they expecting?
And you have to kind of reverseengineer all that stuff and give
the answers for the questionspeople are looking to be
(24:59):
answered.
Give those answers right away atthe top of the page, especially
on mobiles and then everythingelse, you still want to have on
your page.
Push it down, push it down,rearrange the model, that's all
it takes.
And as long as you use the lazyloading or something, it's going
to be fine.
Do you think there's a future tothe AMP pages or do you think
(25:22):
they're going away?
It kind of seems like Google'sabandoning them.
Dmitrii Kustov (25:26):
I think I don't know about Google themselves
because it's still being used alot in kind of like the news
type of industry, you know?
Things like any virtualnewspapers or publications or
buzzfeeds of the world, it'svery much being used there a lot
(25:46):
still, and it does help.
And what I typically recommendfor businesses that are service
businesses or productbusinesses, use it, but use it
on blog pages.
Blogs that are in that narrativestyle, whereas there is not a
lot of imagery or videosrequired.
(26:10):
You know, top five tips forblah, blah.
Okay, it's bullet point list.
You don't have to have all thecrazy images and whatever else.
Now, if it let's say, if it'ssome kind of like, a DIY guide
to replacing your roof, thenyeah, you probably want to put a
lot of images and videos andeverything else, and make it
(26:32):
very useful for the user.
And for that, obviously don'tuse AMP.
So again, just a lot of thisstuff is very common sense.
What Google wants is provide theanswer in the quickest possible
(26:54):
way.
And that's why they introducethings like the zero result,
right?
Where they give you the answerbefore you even go anywhere.
They just put it at the top ofthe Google results page.
Eric Dickmann (27:07):
Right, which is great.
Dmitrii Kustov (27:08):
Yeah.
That's why they're introducingthings like the little snippets.
It's kind of like, even if youclick on a result, it takes you
to a specific part of the pageand they kind of highlighted in
yellow, like stuff like that.
So what they want is if youthink about Google and business
model, they want more and morepeople to use their search
(27:32):
engine.
So if you can get an answer veryquickly for whatever question
you have as a user, you're goingto come back to the search
engine and ask more and morequestions.
So that's why Google isintroducing or encouraging
(27:52):
behaviors that are helping usersto find the answers quickly and
the right answers.
That's all it is.
It's just common sense type ofsituation.
Eric Dickmann (28:02):
You know, that's very interesting.
And you know, the AMP was such abig thing awhile ago and they
have seemed to deemphasize itand I believe they're no longer
counting it against you if youdon't have AMP optimzed pages
where they were for awhile.
So yeah.
It's the reality of the worldthat we live in, that things are
constantly changing, which isthe, one of the reasons there
(28:23):
are so many SEO companies andthey provide such a valuable
service.
So as we kind of bring theinterview to a close here, if a
business is struggling a littlebit, if they're not getting the
web traffic that they want,they're not getting those sort
of organic results that theywant, what should they look for
in an SEO company and whatshould they expect from an SEO
company?
Dmitrii Kustov (28:44):
Okay.
Do you have about two weeks togo through this?
Eric Dickmann (28:48):
But we'll take the short version.
Dmitrii Kustov (28:50):
Okay.
Short version.
Okay, they come kind of twoparts of the question.
What should they be looking forin an SEO company?
In my mind, it's alwaystransparency.
What you're going to do for meand how it should affect the
results.
(29:11):
That's really the reason why wecreated our own company, because
we've ran across so manydifferent companies, SEO
companies, where they offer SEOplans.
Hey, no matter who you are,here's three different plans,
choose from it.
Well, if you're a lawyer or adentist, the approaches are
completely different.
If your e-commerce or service,approaches are completely
(29:33):
different.
So it needs to be targeted toyour business or tailored rather
to your business.
You need to understand how thatcompany is going to be helping
you and your businessspecifically.
So transparency, data, kind ofprojections and predictability
(29:54):
of some to some extent.
Of course we can guaranteewhat's going to happen with
Google tomorrow, but based onexperience and data and metrics,
you can tell at least withcertain degree of certainty,
with high degree of certainty,what should happen?
Also another thing that I highlynot even suggest, but it's
(30:17):
almost a must is progress.
Of course, nobody can get you tothe first page, organic rankings
tomorrow.
However, you should be able tosee progress, whatever that
progress is.
Are you getting two more visitsin a day?
In the week?
Than you were before,
Eric Dickmann (30:38):
Hmm.
Dmitrii Kustov (30:38):
Are you getting one more lead in a week than you
were before?
If you're hiring for technicaloptimization, is your page
loading 0.1 second quicker thana couple days before?
Stuff like that, right?
And just kind of like, you caneven ask for itemized list of
(30:58):
what's been done, like a log ofwork.
So that's what you kind ofshould be looking for when you
talk to an SEO company.
And as for what in generalshould be done, if you're
talking about how to get to thefirst page of Google, really
it's the four buckets or foursections content.
(31:19):
Content is always king as we sayin the industry, if you're not
talking about puppies, thenyou're not going to be ranking
for puppies.
If you're talking aboutsomething else then sorry, and
that, so content, the other oneis technical optimization, which
we kind of covered in quite alengthy way today.
(31:40):
The third one is userexperience, which is related to
technical, but not necessarily,because our experience is more
about behavior, while technicalis more about those metrics.
And then the fourth big sectionis backlinks and that's one of
those nate oil salesman industrythat a lot of people don't
(32:02):
understand or try to like thesellers of those backends try to
kind of, they bring bad rep tothe industry.
But at the end of the day,backlinks are just
recommendations from otherwebsites.
That's what it is.
If another website links to you,they should be recommending you
(32:25):
for the service that youprovide, as long as it's in the
same industry, as long as it'stopically relevant, that's all
you need to know.
That's all we should care aboutrather.
Eric Dickmann (32:36):
Building that credibility and domain
authority.
Yeah.
It's so important.
But you're right a lot ofsalesman out there pushing
building backlinks.
Dmitrii, this is good.
I love your focus on the userexperience.
I think that's really great.
Where can people find out moreabout you and your company on
the web?
Dmitrii Kustov (32:52):
All right.
So my company is called a RegexSEO, Regular Expressions SEO,
that's our website,regexseo.com.
And if anybody would like toreach out to me directly, you
can find me on social medias.
my handle is@DigitalSpaceman,you know, we are in Houston,
(33:15):
NASA, space, and our industry isall about reaching new heights.
So yeah, digital spaceman.
Eric Dickmann (33:21):
I like that, and the backdrop is a perfect match
for that.
And like I said, it's aconversation we have a lot on
this podcast, but it's one ofthe most important things I
think you can do for yourbusiness.
And so it's good to dive intothe details and it was great to
get your perspective on this.
Dimitri, thanks so much forbeing on the show today.
I really appreciate your time.
Dmitrii Kustov (33:39):
Well, thank you so much for having me.
Eric Dickmann (33:44):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of
The Virtual CMO podcast.
For more episodes, go tofiveechelon.com/podcast to
subscribe through your podcastplayer of choice.
And if you'd like to developconsistent lead flow and a
highly effective marketingstrategy, visit fiveechelon.com
to learn more about our VirtualCMO consulting services.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.