Today’s episode takes a closer look at a very specific aspect of running an online business; Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What exactly is it? It’s the process of improving your website to increase its visibility for searches. In other words, it’s how easily people who are looking for you on Google can find you. Just think of how often you turn to Google to find an answer or a service provider. Those search results on that first page, those sites have good SEO.
In this episode, we deep dive into all aspects of SEO, what it is, how to optimize it, how to get results, what to avoid, and everything in between. My guest, SEO-expert John Vuong, shares valuable insight that he’s gathered from running his SEO agency, Local SEO Search, for eight years plus the decade he spent in advertising. Through his years in the industry, he has served over 5,000 local businesses and has built his agency from 3 people to now a group of 40 in-house experts covering all aspects of SEO.
In this episode, we discuss how vital it is for small business owners to cultivate a good SEO strategy, so they don’t miss out on the opportunity to serve potential customers who are willing to pay them. Ultimately, SEO allows you to connect with those who are looking for you. But how do you do that in an online space with endless competitors, with endless metrics to track, with endless things to know, with endless information and misinformation about SEO? Listen and find out!
WATCH
SUBSCRIBE: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Amazon Music | Google Podcasts | iHeart Radio | iTunes | Stitcher
WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
What it means to run a successful SEO campaign
What you need to consider when hiring an SEO agency
When can you expect to get results and how much that will cost you
How to improve your SEO by becoming a thought leader and what that means
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer:
Okay, hello, hello. Welcome to the Happy Productive Podcast. I’m Jennifer Dawn, a business coach and founder of the Best Planner Ever. If you’re ready to start winning big in business and life, you’re in the right place. This podcast is your go-to resource for learning how to bring awareness and clarity, some determination, even a little mental toughness into your daily productivity so you can knock your goals out of the park, set yourself apart from the pack, and of course, start succeeding on a whole new level. I’m super excited you guys today. I’m going to be talking with John Vuong. Did I pronounce your name correctly?
John:
Yes, you did.
Jennifer:
John is the owner and founder of Local SEO Search; he works to help small and medium-sized businesses rank on page one of Google. You guys, I know this is a productivity podcast, but we’re going to dive into SEO today. This is also a business podcast. As many of you know, I’m a business coach, and SEO has been a real hot topic, especially with so much information out there, so much misinformation out there.
Today, John is going to help us get super clear on what we really need for SEO. Before we hop in, John, can you just give us a little high-level overview of who you are, what you’ve been doing with your life, how you’re helping the business owner? I’m going to be quiet, and I’m going to let you tell us a bit of you.
John:
Well, thanks a lot for the intro, Jennifer. I’m excited to be on your show today and honored. So just to give you an insight on my back story, I started this agency back in 2013, called Local SEO Search, to serve the community and help small business owners who were great at business but not so great at digital marketing and visibility on search. But before that, I was actually in advertising sales for ten years. So that’s my background. I went to school for business finance. I grew up as a fourth child of immigrant parents from Vietnam.
I came to Canada, didn’t know the language, didn’t know the community, and didn’t have money. We kind of survived and lived a good life to be brought up here in Canada, in the Western society, and now we are like everyone else. So just having that opportunity has allowed me to now give back.
This is where I feel with the podcast, with a business, with all my other initiatives, it will enable me to help business owners who are the foundation of every single community to really help cultivate a stronger, you know, value in their business, understanding what it means to run a business, right? Then giving and serving a purpose to offer it up to products and services to have customers consume it, right? And this is the whole point of small business owners.
So eight years now running this business, and I have a lot of different initiatives. One of them is to amplify my message and educate business owners on the importance of value and what it really means to run a successful SEO campaign. With all the miss-noise information out there, it’s hard to consume information that you don’t know certainty in terms of, like, what’s true, what’s false. It’s the same thing with health.
There’s a lot of misinformation out there. There’s a lot of studies. So what do you believe, right? So SEO is very similar. So I want to hopefully answer any of your questions that you have, with all your audience members to which I can add value to.
Jennifer:
Oh, I love this so much. And you guys SEO, search engine optimization. Maybe you’ve heard the term; you didn’t know what it stood for. And really, in a nutshell, we’re talking about if a consumer or a business need your product or service, right, and they’re going to Google, and they’re saying, hey, I need a business coach, I need a plumber, I need a whatever.
Search engine optimization ultimately is helping you get found on Google. There are millions, billions of company’s search results out there. If you’re not on page one, your chances of getting found by a prospect are pretty much nil. So that’s why search engine optimization, SEO is so very, very important. So John, tell me why SEO? Why did you pick that particular topic to help business owners with?
John:
Great question. Ten years in advertising sales, where I dabbled in traditional advertising, print, media, trade shows, and magazines. Then I dabbled in online affiliate performance-based. I understood CPM conversion, email drip campaign, banner paid ads, and I worked at Yellow Pages which was a directory. I was there for five years, and that’s where I met thousands of your plumbers, dentists, lawyers, physiotherapists, small business owners, and restaurant owners.
I got to really connect with them on a more intimate level, not intimate, intimate, but understanding what it means to run a business; what it took, what they looked after, and cared about most, which is usually family support. But the time spent to understand their customers adding value in people’s lives and offering an outstanding product and service that people want to consume. Taking care of their customers, right? All the foundation of running a good business.
When I left Yellow Pages, the last couple of years was challenging because people were getting frustrated with the return on investment, spending more than ever, but not getting a good amount of leads. The user behavior was shifting to more digital platforms like social media, paid ads, search. I felt you know; I was using Google a lot. I just didn’t click on paid ads. I didn’t understand social, so I just stuck with search.
For me, the map and below the map is where I clicked. And of course, with Yellow Pages, all these business owners just wanted someone they can trust to do the work correctly and with a good track record. Right? Then they can, you know, easily transition their user paid ads, marketing dollars to an agency or someone that they trust to take care of them, build a solid relationship.
That’s how I started this business. I had no SEO experience, I had no technical background, but I listened to the gap in the marketplace with Yellow Pages’ clients, and I wanted to serve them. So over the last eight years, I got better and better, learned. I built a team around me to support these small business owners to become thought leaders and industry experts.
In the last couple of years, I’m very confident in not just the team’s abilities but SEO in general and how important and vital it is for small business owners to cultivate and, you know, pursue and take action on. If you’re not doing it today, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity of customers seeking out your products and services daily that you can at least win over or have an opportunity to sway them to you.
Jennifer:
Exactly so true. You know, for my business coaching practice, I’m going to say 99% of all of our leads and our new clients that come in all say they found us on Google. Think about it, you guys, when you need something, you need a product, what do you do? You Google it. It’s just where you go. So if you’re not in a position to be showing up when a potential client, prospect, the customer is Googling for your product or service, you are missing out.
It’s different than Facebook advertising if you’re doing Facebook because, for Facebook, those people are there to socialize, right? And think about it. When you’re on Facebook, you’re having a bad day; you go to Facebook. I don’t because I hate Facebook. But most people I hear, I’m having a bad day, I go on Facebook. I have been sick; if I have a cold or something and there’s just nothing to do, I’ll get on Facebook. But generally, people are on Facebook socializing. They want to see what their friends are doing, and they’re looking at pictures.
So all those sponsored ads are getting put in front of. Now you can target, which is great. You can put your ad in front of who you think the right person is. But generally, they’re not always hot buyers. When you’ve got a person on Google who’s actively looking, they’re often actively looking to buy because they want a solution to their problem, and they want it fast. So that’s why I just love the Google traffic. I think it’s such a higher quality of client, a higher quality lead for a business. So it is so important to make sure that you’re taking advantage of this.
Now, in the SEO world, I hear so many different things, and I know you do too. This is what you have to do. This is what you should do; you shouldn’t do. Prices vary wildly for having people do SEO. I’ve seen companies that say they’re doing SEO, and they’re doing absolutely nothing. So as a business owner, it’s really hard to know, are you getting your money’s worth?
Is it working? So let’s just kind of start with, John, I have so many questions for you. Alright, so let’s start with, as a business owner, if you’re doing SEO, what is basic SEO look like? What does it include? You know, what should you be getting? If you’re working with a company that’s doing your SEO, what’s the basic stuff you should expect if you’re working with somebody who says they’re doing your SEO?
John:
So my basic is a full-service boutique, C level, what big brands are doing but bringing it to small business owners level. Because if you’re going to do it, you do it properly. Just like any expertise, plumber, dentists, physiotherapists, someone’s been trained ten or twenty years of business.
With hours of experience, you expect it. So with SEO, various range and everyone thinks are experts, however, what does that mean to you? You just care about results. When I look at basic, I look at what they are doing on-page development; they build social reputation, content, and everything else in between on-page and off page.
Because that’s what it takes to position a website, and a business owner, to cultivate their customers and users to become known as a thought leader. It doesn’t happen overnight. Like if you look at a dentist in New York, how many dentists are there? Thousands, tens of thousands. To optimize to then appear on the first page, you better be a thought leader, someone who writes a book, speaks to someone who knows their stuff and produces great content that compels to the users.
Ultimately, forget about Google. Listen to your customers. And that’s what it means to become a thought leader, someone that is an optimized website. And this is what Google’s after, right; matching the best website for the user’s intent. So it’s user and ad focused, and therefore the user will continue coming back to Google, knowing that the results match their intent with the website they trust. Google’s done their best job matching with.
The more you understand the business side of Google, and more you know the business side of how you rank a website, focus on the customers. So my minimum is trying to do everything but do it well because there’s no minimum to get by. There are going to be gaps in a proper SEO campaign. The proper agency will find gaps and opportunities to outrank you. That’s why there are a lot of tools and a lot of resources, a lot of people, to do things properly the right way.
Jennifer:
You mentioned that it takes time to rank; I’ve heard this as well. We read somewhere that it can take a year for you to rank on a keyword that is a high volume keyword. For us, it would be business coaching. To rank on a keyword like that, we were told you got to be at this for a year before you’re going to be able to rank. True or false, John? How much time should somebody realistically if you want to rank on a keyword that has high traffic? Really, how much time does it take to get your rankings up so that you are showing on page one of Google?
John:
That’s a great question. I get that daily, maybe a dozen times? How much does it cost? And how long will it take? So regarding the timeframe, it depends. I know; it’s the hardest question to answer. But you have to look at your competitive landscape. Do you want to rank locally, internationally, or globally? And who is in the space currently? What have they been doing, and for how long? How many people have been working on their campaign?
Is it realistic based on your budget versus their budget? If you’re competing on a product that you’re competing with Amazon? Good luck. Or a big brand or a big retailer, right? Walmart or Costco or whatever? Or if you’re a service, if you’re competing with, say, Tony Robbins. You know how long he’s been. He’s been speaking, booked, has programs, and has a huge audience. He has a huge budget and a team. Yeah, good luck, right? So I always say be realistic with it.
That’s why I’m always with all these professionals I work with; how realistic are you with your expectations? If you heard it, it’s hearsay. But if you’ve seen other people perform and got good traction, that’s a different story, right? Don’t believe what other people are selling you. Try to do enough digging and research to uncover. Does it logically make sense or not? And don’t be sold, right? If people say I can get you ranked in a month or two months for a very high competitive keyword, how realistic is it? If you’re a brand new business, and suddenly you appear on the first page, does Google like that? Does Google want that? Your clients, the people who are typing those keywords in, expect to see you if you’re a two-month-old business.
Jennifer:
Right. Probably not.
John:
You have no track record, no reviews, and you’re probably spamming Google. They’re going to figure it out, right? They’re smarter than you think. So, therefore, realistically, if you’re a business expert, you know, get started, right? Then be realistic in terms of expectations. Go after long-tail keywords that have low volume but high conversion rates. That will allow for more traction, and once you start getting traction, you can expand it to more broad keywords that have more high volume. But you know, it takes time, right? Everything takes time in terms of running a business; the same applies to SEO.
Jennifer:
This is one of the things I’ve always taught my clients is that SEO, it’s a long-term play. You’ve got to be in it; you’ve got to be committed to it. It is generally not going to prove results, like in a month. But is it realistic to say, you know, Tony Robbins is who I’m up against? And you know, I’m little, he’s a giant, but I do want to do everything I can to get on page one for our prospects. I mean, is a year a realistic amount of time to say, yeah, that’s realistic, that’s completely ridiculous? Where does that amount of time fall in?
John:
Well, I throw it back at that Tony Robbins example; there are probably a dozen or a couple dozen competing or even hundreds of companies competing.
Jennifer:
Hundreds, yes, hundreds that are competing, yes.
John:
That has been only doing SEO for five to ten years as well. If you’re brand new, one or two years and someone says I can rank you in a year. Logically, what’s your budget like, and is it realistic? Right? Running a business is not easy. Tony Robbins is on stage producing, writing books, all this. And he has a team to do that. Right? Even though you think you hired the best team, is it realistic? Again, it’s hard, right? And I say, look at your competition.
Look at the keywords that you want to rank for. Is it realistic? I’ve seen clients rank a couple of months and seen clients rank a couple of years, right? Depending on the competition, depending on where they’re sitting today, benchmark basis on the competitors, and what is the campaign looking like, right?
What needs to be done to get there. We can have a roadmap, we can figure things out, but it has to be a transparent relationship too, right? And realistic. People that don’t invest but expect a lot. How realistic is that? Also, is their KPI realistic? You know, are their expectations even possible, right? Like everyone wants to be the top number one ranking for every single term.
Jennifer:
Yeah. This is great, John. Some of what I’m taking away from this guy’s, and I think everybody is who listening too, is like if you’re talking with an SEO company. They’re saying, “Oh, yeah, we can get you ranked on a high traffic keyword in two months or three months,” they’re probably not giving you the right information.
If you’re like, only looking to get ranked locally, you know, you’re in a small town, you’re the only plumber in town, that’s probably a lot easier to get ranked for if you just don’t have that volume of competition. But you’re a high-level service provider, there are thousands of other people you’re competing with, and you’re trying to get ranked on a national level; it’s going to; what I’m hearing John is that it’s going to matter. So who you are, you know what kind of content you’re putting out, how you’re positioned against all these other people. Those factors have to be taken into account, not just what you’re doing for SEO.
You have to be kind of out there and that thought leader, at least that’s what Google’s looking for. When people are sitting down googling, Google is trying to give them the best answer. I had learned, John, you can tell me if it’s crap, but I had learned that Google will pay attention to bounce rates. So if people are sending traffic to your site, and your site’s not answering the question, and they’re bouncing very quickly, that hurts your rankings because Google is thinking, “oh, they’re not the right answer for this solution. True or false, John?
John:
True.
Jennifer:
That’s what’s happening. Right?
John:
Yeah, your website is the biggest asset piece of your business today. It used to be a storefront; it used to be your telephone. Right now, that website is like an online brochure that you can update with blogs, before-after pictures, testimonials, services that you offer, everything is on your website. So if you keep coming up with fresh content that resonates with your clients who are seeking out the products and services that you offer, you keep them engaged with substance, right? Internal links and people stay on your site longer and hopefully take action with a phone call or fill out the form.
Then Google sees and watches all that, and they’re going to reward you if they take action and stay longer less bounce rate. They read third-party reviews; they go to different asset pieces like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram account of yours, LinkedIn. People do so many different things with multi-channel touchpoints that will convert to a real solid lead.
SEO, if done right, will provide you inbound leads of ready-to-buy customers of your ideal tribe. So if you do everything right, imagine your best profile clients are knocking on the door wanting to do business with you. And that’s what we do for clients. I position them so that they become thought leaders in the industry of their market or niche. And they just have to worry about conversion. I worry about lead generation.
Jennifer:
Yes, exactly. So you guys can go hire John to do your SEO. But he makes some great points here. If your website sucks, and so your bounce rate is high. And we talk about bounce rate, I don’t want to use words that if you don’t know what we’re talking about, I always hate it when I listen to podcasts, they use big words, and I’m like, “What is he talking about?”
Bounce rate is just when somebody goes to your website; if they stay on the site for a long time, you’re going to have a low bounce rate. If they bounce right off that website very quickly, you’re going to have a high bounce rate. And so we want a low bounce rate; we want people to stay on the site as long as possible. And then John made another great point; we want them to take action, we want them to opt-in, we want them to schedule a phone call, we want them to get scheduled, and get on your schedule. We want them to take some kind of action on the site.
So think about your website, all you business owners listening right now. If you don’t have the ability for somebody to take action on your website, you’re hurting your SEO efforts because people can come to your website, and then they don’t know what to do. If they can’t opt-in, if they can’t schedule a call, this is one reason why with all of our clients, we go through their website. We check those boxes and say, okay, we have everything here that Google would be looking for. To maximize this ideal prospect who will hit your website, we want to do everything that we can to get them to convert.
Alright, good. Good stuff, John. Okay, so go into it with a realistic expectation of how long it’s going to take to rank, keeping in mind the size of your audience and how much competition there is for your keywords. And you mentioned price. What should a small business owner realistically expect to spend? I know that agencies out there will charge, you know, I’ve seen on the low end, you know, $200 to $300 bucks a month. On the high end, I’ve seen $5,000 to $10,000 a month. So for a small business owner, what could a small business owner realistically expect to spend on SEO?
John:
That’s the hardest thing, right? I get the budget is a huge component of you know, if they rely heavily on the website to convert and generate leads and revenue and sales and profit, then it’s a lot of pressure on the SEO agency right to perform. Therefore, the timeframe is very critical for their overall success or survival rate, right? All SEO companies are not, you know, comparing apples to apples.
You have to understand what they’re going to do for you. Are they focusing on just on-page SEO? Are they focusing on link building to generate some authority? Right? Are they creating good content for you? And how much input do you have in terms of personalization of like that conversion rate optimization should you focus on? How about reputation management?
These are so critical in terms of price point because we’re kind of full service. We take care of everything we’re in-house pillars of experts. So comparing to the big brands that we’re kind of doing it for, comparing against, we’re a fraction of the cost. Doing it for the small, medium-sized businesses, but we’re trying to help the small business owners because all the ones at a lower price point can’t compare to what we are doing for them. So if you only have a $200 budget, I would say play with that. Don’t commit to SEO because you’re not going to do it properly the first time.
It’s very similar to trying to figure out how to do a plumbing job. You can go to YouTube. You can try to hack it, figure out how to do it, or hire someone for $100 to come in fix it in 20 minutes. It’s doing it yourself, or you hire an expert that knows it because they’ve been doing it for 20 years.
They’ll come in, diagnose it, get the part, figure out how to fix it, and they’re in and out. You are trying to figure it out; you might go to Home Depot, buy the part, watch a YouTube, get stressed and frustrated, come in and try to fix it, then hire someone that will cost you double, triple. All these things matter. Right? It’s the same thing with SEO.
It’s your business. Do SEO when you’re ready. Don’t do it before you’re ready, and this is timing as well. Maybe this is a good time for me. When should you hire an SEO expert? I would say when you know how to run a business. When you have profit and revenue, and you probably have ten ideal persona avatar-type clients that you can pick their brain and ask any questions.
Before you have that, don’t hire an SEO consultant because the SEO consultant doesn’t know your business as well as you should. You should be providing a lot of input and data analysis, and content to support the campaign. So be in business for a couple of years, have some revenue, and know your ten best types of clients with that avatar personality.
Then when you create content and create a website, it should answer every single question and problem in situations of those customers that have problems. And therefore, when you create that website, it’s going to bring in and cultivate all those ideal customers of yours with those same similar pain points and problems, so it resonates with them. It answers all the problems that have already been answered on the website, and it will cultivate more lead generation of ready-to-buy customers of your ideal tribe.
Jennifer:
Yes, I love it. So let’s talk a little bit, just break down for me the pieces of SEO. You’ve mentioned several things. So when you say on-page SEO, what are you talking about, John? I know what you’re talking about, but everybody listening may not know what you’re talking about. So what are we talking about? What’s on-page SEO?
John:
On page is anything that’s residing on your website. On your website, in your website, from technical implications, mobile, responsive content, title, tags, description, and images. The substance of type of content. Is it video, audio, images, or written? The answer is based on how your ideal customers are consuming content. Right? To produce good, high quality, well researched, depth information that resonates with your ideal customers.
When you start doing and producing better quality, people take you seriously. Don’t focus on just producing is based on quantity. Focus on quality. Focus on spending time, personalizing, customizing your content pieces so that the people who are reading will not press that back button. They will want to consume more information because of your position as a leader. They’re going to take the time to actually read it, go line by line, and then navigate through different pages within your site. So on-page is anything to do with on your website, in your website.
Jennifer:
Okay, I love this. This is so helpful. Okay, so let’s talk about you mentioned writing content that’s high quality. So let’s say I’m a business owner, and you’re starting your business, and you’re writing your blog posts, right? They are personal. It’s your knowledge. You’re writing this great blog post, then you get bigger, and you hire a company. They come in, they start writing your blog posts, and they’re not quite as personal, but they are; I’m doing air quotes, “SEO Yoda,” right?
We’ve all heard of this if we’ve been in business for any length of time, where we hire a writer, and they’re like, I’m going to write you a high-quality blog, and it’ll be all SEO friendly. But the blog itself, let’s say because it’s not in your voice, you could kind of tell, maybe it’s written by somebody else.
Now, does that hurt you? Does it help you? And I know this is something I’ve seen a lot of my clients kind of struggle with. They can write a blog, but they don’t always have the time to do it. So you hire it out. What’s Google looking for? Does it hurt us more to have a blog that somebody else wrote that maybe isn’t that interesting, but it has all the right keywords? Versus a blog maybe we wrote that’s much more personable that maybe doesn’t have quite as many of those SEO keywords in it, or does it not matter?
John:
I think tracking analytics and understanding the true purpose of what you’re writing should resonate with the clients and convert to ultimately a lead, a phone call, a form, inquiry, or purchase. The more of that to support your cause to build your authority. And what we’ve done is bring everything in-house, right? We have content writers; we have SEO strategists; we have developers; we have graphic designers and videographers. We have link builders, social media, and we collaborate and speak within.
Therefore, when we speak to the client, every time we do that call, you realize what your tone of voice is? You know, what are the topics that resonate with you? What do you want to be known as, right? All that gets shared within the team. Therefore, when we start doing keyword research, we start looking at competitive analysis, figuring out what terms they’re ranking for, where you want to play, and properly doing it well.
And this is what big brands do, right? They have a full team. Well, I’m now taking it to a small, medium-sized level because most business owners can’t afford developer content, social reputation, link builders, everything that I’ve kind of done. And yes, the margins aren’t the greatest.
But I feel like we’ve got a good team that supports the cause of helping small, medium-sized businesses voice their personalized voice, customized their voice to their ideal customers to amplify their authority. And we have a solid track record now, too, right? Like, we kind of got a system, framework in place to do it properly at scale. We want to help the ones that understand the value of what SEO can do for you and the know-how to run a business, ultimately. I don’t want to train him on how to run a business; I wanted just to help them position themselves as leaders in their space.
Jennifer:
So some of what I’m taking away from that, John, is that if the company writes you a blog, you read it, and you’re bored to tears, your ideal prospect probably will be too. So would you say that it’s better to have less content that’s higher quality? This is another SEO thing I see all the time when they’re just pumping volumes of content to try to rank, and the content is not necessarily good. So is it better to have less content that’s higher quality or higher volume that’s lower quality when it comes to SEO?
John:
So again, it all depends on KPI. What is your goal? The ultimate goal is to be known as an industry expert for X amount of niche in which market, right? What are some of the content pieces that supported pillar content services? What you want to be known for? All the blogs should be supporting it, so it’s interlinked. If you’re going scattered, going after everyone, not knowing who you want to go after, your customers don’t know how to take your content and absorb it because you’re all over the place.
But if you’re hyper-focused, you know what matters, know who you want to be servicing, know which market niche, category, and market, it allows you to have clarity on the type of pieces of content that you should be writing to support it. That’s why people always say niche down, personalized, customized with depth because then you don’t have to focus on quantity.
You don’t have to unless you’re a big brand, like Amazon, that goes after every single product out there. But they have a full team that can afford it. You’re never going to be like that; realize that and understand that you are; happiness means competing with them or just taking care of your base. That should be enough to keep you busy and fulfilled. Success will eventually come when you resonate with the ideal type of client, right? So be realistic.
People want to do everything, not pay for anything, and want everything yesterday. Well, business ownership doesn’t happen like that. And a lot of people in their 20s like, yes, he saw a social media poll. They read a blog or watch the video, and they say that they made $100,000 last month. You don’t know how hard it is to earn $100,000. Think about it logically, right? People don’t get it. And yet, one person out of a billion people or million peers did it great for them. Now they’re selling you a course. They’re selling you all these other things. Good luck, right? That’s their business now.
Jennifer:
Okay, great stuff. So if you are hiring, know some of these; some of you guys who are listening right now, if you have hired out some of your content creation, make sure that that content is going to resonate with your ideal client, that it’s good content. A rule of thumb I like to use is if I read it, and I’m like, this is boring, it kind of sucks, my client is probably thinking the same thing. So even if you are hiring it out, make sure that they are writing good stuff, high-quality content, that if you’re in their shoes, and you read it would be helpful to you.
John:
Proof it. So you should be using everything that goes on your website. And make sure you write it for your customers and not for you. You’re not the one paying for your product and service. It’s your ideal customers; speak to them. And that’s the one thing a lot of business owners forget, right. They’re always talking about themselves. Well, you want to be the greatest, the best, great business, but no one cares about that. You should be serving others, right? To speak to what they want. And then you’ll be servicing better, serving you better as well.
Jennifer:
I love that so much. All right, link building. Backlinks. You hear this a lot when you’re looking at backlinks; backlinks, backlinks. Alright, so how important are backlinks? And why should business owners care about them?
John:
Backlinks are very important because maybe I’ll just explain if you do not understand. Think about traditional businesses. I was at Yellow Pages for many years. What did they rely on? Word of mouth and referrals. Mainly, right now, Google has come out, and they can only index websites. They are spiders crawling, and they can only read what they see online on a computer with digits, zeros, and ones all day long, right? So, therefore, what they’re going to do is see what is out there that supports your website.
A backlink is another website linking back to your website. And that’s what a backlink is. There’s a lot of different factors that you should look at when you analyze the data of that backlink, from trust flow domain authority, page authority, organic traffic niche category, and also people that you want coming from that website to your site. And that’s more of a gut check, right? Is that good traffic that will resonate with the type of website that I want to produce to be on that site on the first day? There are hundreds of ways to generate some backlinks. But I always look at the most white hat authoritative way out there to produce good content, yet some awareness and PR.
Build some really good authority and credibility, like speaking in associations, creating a book or a blog, guest posts commenting on others, different things that will drive awareness, and that generates more trust in others, and don’t sell your product and service. Add value to people.
And they may check your authorship, or those check out who you are and what you do, then link to your site and check you out. So it’s a genuine help. The more you serve others on other sites, the more they will realize what you’re about. And hopefully, it resonates with them to then check you.
Jennifer:
Oh, nice. Okay. And so when we talk about good effective SEO campaigns, what I’m hearing is that we need good on-page SEO. So the landing pages, everything that’s on your website, including the back end, the meta tags, and those kinds of more technical things that need to be in good shape. I’m hearing that we need to have some backlinks—so other websites with good authority, not crap.
But good websites are also now pointing to your website, a good content strategy. So we need to be putting out good content to reinforce those keywords. What else, John, what are we missing? So for a good, effective SEO campaign? We’ve got on-page, link building, content; what are we missing?
John:
Reputation is huge. Reviews, third-party reviews, not reviews that you just create and put on your website. You want what other people are saying about you because Google’s sniffing all this your customers are checking you out on third-party platforms to bet you to see if you’re a good fit for them. Therefore, building a good business takes time. Taking care of your customers to then write a review takes time.
So just like running a business, your ten best clients should mean you should at least have ten reviews out there that support the type of business that you’re trying to serve to the community right in your niche. So reputation is huge. And I know there’s a lot of competitive analysis going on because we have to watch what’s going on in the competitive landscape of the nation category, industry, and market that you’re playing in. Because if you’re not, I mean, there’s always people that are battling.
People, who know what they’re doing are trying to take on other companies that are hired to compete, right? This is a challenge I have. But I love the thrill. And I love the aspect of doing everything ethically. Yes, it’s going to take a lot more time and effort. But if you do it right, it’s going to bring in so much more traffic of your right type of avatar. And look at the different mediums as well, like content is what we talk about, written content on blogs. Video is huge, YouTube Video Channel. It’s a huge component of how people consume information today. How-to videos.
How do you build a YouTube channel properly? What about social media? We don’t talk about that a lot. Paid ads, strategy retargeting ads are huge. What’s your community? Do you have an email funnel? What’s your marketing side? So we talk about media in general. My background has always been advertising.
I’ve worked with tens of thousands of businesses; I love this stuff. And I get into the nitty-gritty of like, how are you doing? What have you done? Are you happy? If you’re not doing any of that, then we can talk and help you come up with something that will resonate with you to support what you dreamt of, goals, aspirations, and KPIs.
Jennifer:
Oh, I love this so much. You guys, I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned a lot about SEO today. When I saw John and his expertise, I was like, yes, it’s a productivity podcast, so I am going to ask you a productivity question. But all of this, SEO is so great! Do SEO when it’s right for your business. Go into it knowing it’s a long-term play, that you are going to have to invest in your business, and it will pay off if it’s done right.
What is ballpark on the price of what you can be kind of be, you know, expecting to pay for good SEO, but just go into it with realistic expectations when it’s right for you and your business? If you’re a month old, it’s probably not necessarily the right time. If other areas of your business haven’t worked out, then you’re going to want to get some of those things worked out. John mentioned your ideal client avatar.
If you don’t know who that is, it’s probably not the right time to invest in SEO until you get some of those things figured out and flushed out. And then obviously, making sure your website, your social media, those different pieces, you know, are not like crickets chirping, and oh, I haven’t posted on social in three years. Probably not going to help your SEO effort. John, is there anything else that you would love to add for business owners to help them when it comes to solving the SEO challenge?
John:
As a business owner, I was going through the same challenges. When I started bootstrapping this, not even knowing what the hell I was doing, right? Yeah, that’s the mindset of every single business owner unless you come from a family of business owners, and it’s a little bit different.
But getting in, getting your foot wet, then trying to figure out what you enjoy doing, what you don’t like doing. This is a field of advertising, marketing, and sales. And as your one little pillar that can really, if done right, solve your entire sales, marketing advertising strategy. And this is what big brands have been doing for many, many years.
And now, small business owners, I’m just trying to make it feasible and possible for you guys because I’ve solved it for you. Because the thing about inbound traffic versus outbound pushing ads at people, when they’re not even in the mindset of buying your product and service when people went to yellow pages for 100 years, they were already in tenfold, for going to the restaurant, picking up that plumber, or going to a dentist. So all you have to be was be there at the time of purchase. And they have to decide; this is what Google has done for you.
And suppose you can understand the concept of it and understand and grasp the opportunities just being visible. In that case, you can realize people who’ve done it and taking action have done it properly are optimizing their business for many, many years to come. Right. And you don’t have to worry because it’s an inbound lead low that you don’t have to pay for ads anymore.
But people are stuck on seeing the actual ad that they advertise. SEO is behind the scenes where ads, you see it visibly, social media, you see your ad. You’re happy, but you’re frustrated because it doesn’t generate good quality leads or traffic.
There’s a difference between personas and avatars and personality or people that consume data and content on social versus Google. The quality of your customers searching on Google supersedes any other form, even tradeshow magazines, newspaper, radio, television, you name it because Yellow Pages was the best way to advertise your business ten years ago. Now Google is it. If you don’t optimize for it, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
Jennifer:
Yes, I agree. All right, John. This is a productivity podcast, which obviously will tie into SEO because if you do your best, you will be saving so much time and so much money advertising your business and getting new clients. But if you don’t mind, would you share? What’s your favorite productivity tip? I mean, you help all these thousands of business owners; you’re a busy guy. So what is one of your favorite productivity tips you could share with our audience today?
John:
Yeah, for me, it’s transitioned over the years of where I was at, in the business. So early days, I was in the business, trying to figure things out, productivity was not as important as staying afloat. Creating revenue and making sure that I survive the first couple years, then as I evolved, I was then able to pay for staff and work on management, and making sure that they became more accountable and trained them. And now I’m more about the brain, right?
My productivity is focused on getting the word out there about the company. And the team has systems and processes in accountability in place. So it’s changed over the years. So today, me being productive is being focused on my calendar and understanding that this is my family time and this is my work time. I’m going to be focused tenfold and give it all to the audience members of yours during this podcast. And whenever I do things,
I’ve focused on providing the best value for anyone that I’m producing content for or having conversations with, team and staff. I understand their time, and I commit to it so that everyone’s going to get the best out of it during that period when I’m with them.
Jennifer:
I love that; that’s such a great tip. It’s one of the things that when we go into a client, and we help them with their systems and processes. You mentioned this as you were growing your business because, in the beginning, you’re doing it, and you need to do it; you can’t skip that step in your business, like the doing it; doing it because then you’re figuring it out from doing.
Then comes documenting; in the next phase, we document, and we write down, here’s the process, here’s how we do it. And from there, we can delegate it. I just love that order, do it, document it, then delegate it; you’ve got to do it at that right time.
And I love that that’s how your productivity has kind of changed. Because then once you start to delegate and you’ve got other people doing these things for you, now you can focus on growth, scaling, working on the business, not in it so much.
John:
Yeah, and I love this aspect, and every aspect of your business is challenging differently. And you have to enjoy, live in the moment, live in a growth mindset, and continue. Yeah, there’s going to be rejection and failure throughout the entire journey, right. And that’s a part of it. And you either pursue and continue, or you give up, and a lot of businesses give up after the first failure or rejection, right? How do you endure it so that you continue for however many years you want to do it?
I feel this is a lifestyle business for me because I’m always challenged. I love what I do. I love supporting my team; I love growing and getting better. And I love different aspects of now, the working on the business, and therefore I just am always true; I consume and absorb a lot of content, as you can see. I love learning and growing from others. And yes, I still make mistakes. I’m human. And that’s a part of living and growing.
Jennifer:
Yeah, it is, you know, some of my most important lessons learned came from the failure or the rejection, that getting screwed over, you know, whatever, all those kinds of “bad things that happen.” That’s where some of my best lessons have come from. So I love this so much. All right, John, tell everybody where they can find you online.
John:
So the best way is the website, it’s localseosearch.ca. Yes, we’re based in Toronto, Canada; we serve North America, UK, and Australia. Clients anywhere, that’s a Western culture and English speaking. We also have a podcast. I’m just going to plug this because I try to inspire and educate a lot of the small business owners because of all my experience, like me, working at Yellow Pages for five years.
My VP of Sales was there for 30 plus years, working with tens of thousands of business owners; real-life conversations with successful or not successful business owners. And these are tens of thousands of them in every single vertical niche category throughout Canada.
Therefore, we have real-life experience that we’re just trying to help and make sure that these business owners don’t go through the same tribulations and failures so that they can improve their business. Ultimately, it’s called Local SEO today, and now we’re interviewing more people as well.
So it’s more fun. right? You got to focus not just on, you know, the bottom line, but have fun throughout that journey. And if you are okay with some failure, some successes, balance, and lifestyle, then you know you’re doing something that resonates with your purpose in life, which is hoping to make an impact.
Jennifer:
Yes. Oh, well said. And you guys, we will also put the links to John’s company and his podcast in our show notes. John, thank you so much for being with me today. I know we were going to talk more productivity, but I was just like, I have too many SEO questions. I’m going to ask John.
John:
Well, you can always if you have any questions about learning productivity like I’ve learned a lot, I read a forum. I tried to practice by doing everything. And that’s the only way to learn, right? Or you because it’s all personalized. And it might be great for me, but not for someone else. So my perspective is different than any other. And I run a digital agency, which is different than a lot of small, medium-sized businesses. So yeah, it’s a different toolset in terms of software. It’s just understanding and understanding that it’s different for every single person, and it’s okay to fail.
Jennifer:
Yeah, exactly. I love that one of our mottos is win happy because we have to win the day, you know, just take it one day at a time, and we need to be, or we should try to at least be in a happier place. Because when you’re in that higher emotional state, you’re going to be making better decisions, you know, showing up for your team so much better. So enjoy the ride. Even the challenging, tough part, just there are always lessons and good things to learn there.
There are always growth opportunities. And if you can learn to turn that stuff around, you will be winning happy every single day. I love it. All right, you guys, if you’re listening, and you know a small business owner if you’re a small business owner, and you’re like, oh, wow, that was helpful.
Please share it with others, pay the goodness forward. This is a really important topic for businesses to be able to get found by their ideal clients so that they can sell more. Now, if you’re like, oh, Jennifer, I need some help with this. Well, come on over to my website and check me out at jenniferdawncoaching.com.
We’re a small coaching firm; we help small business owners. You know, if you’ve lost that loving feeling for your business, we can help with that. If you’re thinking my business has so much more potential and I just haven’t been able to unlock it, we can help with that. And if you’re trying to hit your first million revenues, or maybe you’ve hit your first million, and you are trying to hit your second, we can help with that.
We coach the mindset to succeed, and we consult the changes necessary to transform your business. And if you decide that today is the day you need a better time management system come check out bestplannerever.com. Alright, you guys, that’s it. Thank you so much for listening. Now go out there and have a happy, productive day. Bye