027 – STOP Selling “SEO” – Do THIS Instead

00:01.86
peteeveritt
Hello and welcome to this episode of the WPSEO show. My name is Pete and I’m joined by Jeff Allaway from California. a How are you doing, mate?

00:10.82
Jeff
Hey, good. Hot. How are you?

00:13.52
peteeveritt
i’m I’m good. Thank you. And I hope you mean hot in terms of temperature ah rather than anything else.

00:19.90
Jeff
Well, that that was when I was referring to, but I’m kind of sad to realize that you don’t think I’m hot. Like, is that what you’re getting at right now? I’m a little hurt. It’s your approval of my um my beauty is not really something that I they keep me up at night, but I’m still a little a little hurt.

00:28.88
peteeveritt
wait

00:35.51
Jeff
You don’t think I’m hot.

00:35.85
peteeveritt
Well, so the the irony of this is that Jeff has, that I’ve started this show.

00:36.15
Jeff
I thought you were hot, but whatever.

00:41.38
peteeveritt
We always have this debate before we hit recorders. Who’s going to start a show? And he’s just said, you start it because you’re better at starting them. And literally I, you said the first word was, oh, your second or third word was hot and that’s it. We’ve ruined the intro straight away.

00:55.68
Jeff
I know.

00:55.80
peteeveritt
So thanks for that, bud.

00:56.98
Jeff
You’re welcome.

00:56.94
peteeveritt
You may as well kick this one off.

00:58.62
Jeff
I may as well, but we’re only one minute in so far. And if it was me, it’d take three minutes before we ended my ADHD rant. So I think we’re still ahead of things here. I think we’re doing good. We’re on a good path, hopefully.

01:12.01
peteeveritt
Well, weirdly, weirdly, sort of ah things not appearing the way they seem is kind of the theme for this week’s show. So maybe you did did sort of, you know.

01:22.73
Jeff
See, it was all strategic. It was all strategic.

01:25.46
peteeveritt
That wasn’t your liar.

01:28.25
Jeff
Yeah, we’ve got, I’m not gonna lie, this is a clickbaity title. I mean, you know, we we don’t necessarily finalize the titles before we start, but the one we’ve got jotted down is is definitely the most clickbait title that we’ve ever had. And I’m i’m here for it. I’m fine. i’m Let’s do it. Let’s go. ah

01:45.91
peteeveritt
Well, the irony is we’ve actually got two clickbaity titles written down. And at the minute, I don’t know which one you’re referring to.

01:53.28
Jeff
I’m going with the second one, the second one.

01:54.87
peteeveritt
Right. Okay. So stop selling SEO and do this instead.

01:57.84
Jeff
yet this yeah I can see the thumbnail already, right? And people are going to be clicking it on YouTube. It’s going to be great. That’s what we’re doing. We’re going for clickbait. There’s going to be no actual good content in this. It’s all about getting you to click the title.

02:10.37
peteeveritt
Yeah. So if you’ve got two minutes in, if you’ve got to and the number you got two minutes in, then that’s all the content we’ve got for you this week, guys.

02:10.89
Jeff
No, I’m i’m joking. Pete waited too long to laugh at that.

02:17.80
peteeveritt
yeah and

02:20.89
peteeveritt
So, look, I guess we need to start by ah exploring why you should stop selling SEO. What’s the problem with selling SEO?

02:32.16
Jeff
Yeah, and I mean, okay, or I’m already gonna like cover our butts here and say, we’re not saying don’t sell SEO. We’re just saying, take a little bit less of a focus on the quote unquote SEO, right? Because let’s, let’s, let’s role play Pete, you like role playing?

02:48.15
peteeveritt
Yeah, this this episode’s going really weird.

02:52.23
Jeff
That’s my goal most things in life. um Okay, you’re, you’re a plumber, right? And I start talking about SEO. What are you thinking?

02:59.31
peteeveritt
i want I want to come in and fix the photocopier instead.

02:59.90
Jeff
are

03:01.43
peteeveritt
Can’t I do that?

03:02.55
Jeff
What?

03:03.44
peteeveritt
I want to come in and fix the photocopier instead. Can I do that?

03:06.07
Jeff
You want to OK, you’re the foot. wait No, that’s not that’s not a business owner. A photocopy repair guy is probably not hiring us to do SEO.

03:13.81
peteeveritt
Okay, I’ll be the plumber. I’ll be the plumber. Right, go for it.

03:16.45
Jeff
Thank you. Goodness gracious. Hey, Mr. Plummer, thanks for paying us to, you know, build this website for you. Hey, are you interested in SEO now?

03:24.44
peteeveritt
No.

03:26.00
Jeff
You don’t even know what SEO is or you’ve heard horror stories about it, right?

03:30.21
peteeveritt
yeah Yeah, absolutely. There was this one guy that I know and and he spent like $15,000.

03:33.81
Jeff
Okay.

03:37.61
peteeveritt
They said they were going to get him to number one in Google and they just took his money and ran away.

03:41.86
Jeff
They just, I mean, yeah, okay. All right, if you’re an agency owner or a freelancer, you’ve built a website for somebody, you’ve had that conversation. Maybe this role playing idea wasn’t a good idea. Pete’s not a good role player. but It was worth a shot. It was worth a shot, but no, I’m just kidding. But that’s that’s the truth of it is though, right? How many times have we as the as the business professional the digital market or whatever heard that from a company, oh, I’m not interested in SEO because you know it’s it takes six months, you know you never see results, or they’ve heard all the horror stories. ah And that’s because we’re using technical terms. I know SEO isn’t super technical, but it is for that type of of of business owner or that person. It’s not insulting their intelligence, it’s just their experience and where they are in the market.

04:25.57
peteeveritt
ah Yeah, you’re right. It does have this um persona almost of being um ah difficult and because it’s difficult, it’s therefore expensive. And so, yeah, you you are fighting if with certain clients who, if they’re if they’re not educated in the you’re write in the jargon, in the ways that these things work, You can be fighting an uphill battle before you start just by using terms like SEO. And then if you deep dive, the other thing that I find with a lot of clients is some of them don’t care how it works. And that’s the other thing. If you, if you then try and pigeonhole clients into something like SEO, they almost feel like, well, if we only do that, then I’m missing out on all of these opportunities over here. And actually all they really care about is either getting more sales or getting more inquiries.

05:16.04
peteeveritt
So, you know, they they don’t they don’t really care how it happens. They just want it to happen. So if you come in and just blast them with the SEO gun, you are not talking their language.

05:28.30
Jeff
Well, the other thing is they don’t they probably don’t even know what SEO, quote unquote, is what I mean, or what you mean by that, too. You know, I mean, they might, I guess, let’s assume that most people know that SEO is moving up Google. All right, that’s as simple as we can state it. But most of them don’t really know what goes into that or what you would be doing or what they would be paying for. If you were to, if they just sign up for that, you know,

05:48.25
peteeveritt
Well, yeah, or or it’s just creating blogs in chat GPT, isn’t it?

05:55.15
Jeff
According to some people we’ve talked to lately, yes, that is all SEO is. And oddly enough, they were complaining about not getting results.

06:03.99
peteeveritt
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we, we, we took this in house. We did it with chat GPT and it’s not working, but we, yeah, we, we don’t know why.

06:12.40
Jeff
Oh gosh, I really want to tell some stories, but I don’t think we could go into that story right now.

06:12.77
peteeveritt
Okay.

06:19.20
Jeff
o

06:19.70
peteeveritt
So yeah, so that’s that’s that’s the first part of it. There’s also, and we were just chatting about this before we before we started the recording, which is there’s there’s also kind of a flip side to that coin, which is… yeah you as the agency. Now, if if you are running a pure thoroughbred SEO agency, I mean, that that is what you do. This next bit isn’t really going to apply to you because that that is, as I say, that that’s all you do. But if you’re more of a general agency and SEO is one of the services you offer, it doesn’t matter if you’re ah if you’re a solo solo agency or a multi-person team, but if if you do build websites and you offer care plans and you do hosting and maintenance and you maybe do some ads

07:02.47
peteeveritt
and you do SEO kind of in the mix of that, then… the the The problem with going too hard in on the SEO, particularly if this is a site you haven’t built, is you can kind of end up pigeonholing yourself into a corner, which means that if, for whatever reason, the your efforts your efforts drive traffic, but for whatever reason, traffic doesn’t convert on the site, either that due to the quality of the traffic or the website design isn’t great or you know the the contact form doesn’t work or whatever it is that’s technically outside of your remit,

07:35.93
peteeveritt
because you haven’t built the flipping thing in the first place, then actually you can end up taking the brunt for other people’s bad decisions, other people’s errors, other things that have just gone wrong. Maybe the site loads slow because it’s on GoDaddy and they they refuse to move the move the hosting or whatever. You can make all the recommendations that you want, but if you Those recommendations on their own, unless they’re actioned, aren’t going to demonstrate any results to the clients, which is hence why I say you’ll end up, could end up pigeonholing yourself into a corner. i So there’s there’s a flip side to that coin as well.

08:08.16
Jeff
Yeah, it’s not something you can just go purchase and just like plug into your website. Like it’s not a plugin you upload. Like most of the time your website’s going to be ready for this stuff. But how many times have we just an SEO hive and this is working with professional agencies, like in a no disrespect.

08:21.56
peteeveritt
Mm-hmm.

08:23.07
Jeff
Sorry if anybody feels, figure it feels like I’m talking about them or anything like that. But how many times have we onboarded a client and found out later that like their contact form wasn’t working this whole time?

08:33.83
peteeveritt
Yep, yep.

08:34.46
Jeff
And and that’s ah we could have potentially figured that out, but it’s really out of our scope. And it’s something that, unless we were even concerned about it, would never would never notice. you know We would never go specifically check that and track all that. and like But as the website developer, the maintenance people, whoever, you know that is your job to make sure that they can send email correctly or whatnot. or I mean, we’ve seen sites without blogs that want to start you know posting. And in WordPress, not the biggest problem in the world, but it is an issue that has to be taken care of.

09:04.15
peteeveritt
Yeah.

09:09.13
peteeveritt
Well, no, no word of a lie. We had a guy come to an agency approaches with a, with a single page website and wanted us to start blogging on it. And we’re like, dude, it’s one page. Where, where do you want us to put this stuff? What? Like add more sections at the bottom, you know, it’s, you know, so but they did have to go away and build a blog and build a, you know, build a blog template, build a post template.

09:24.43
Jeff
Yeah.

09:30.27
peteeveritt
And then we came back and oh, look yeah, now we can, now we can post some stuff. Cheers.

09:33.88
Jeff
Yeah, but I remember you talking about it was very specifically like a unique theme that didn’t have anything built in it.

09:34.20
peteeveritt
But

09:38.69
Jeff
We’re like, okay.

09:41.58
peteeveritt
I must admit when you started saying what you’ve just said, I thought you were going to say, how many times have we had a Divi site just to find that they haven’t used templates but have styled all of the posts in the building?

09:53.43
Jeff
I’ve seen probably like

09:53.45
peteeveritt
No offense to any Divi users out there.

09:55.48
Jeff
Yeah. It just happens a lot with Divi. It doesn’t need to, but for some reason, everybody who does Divi does it this way.

09:59.54
peteeveritt
It does.

10:01.15
Jeff
And I have seen that. I’m not trying to start ranting about Divi, but I have seen like probably like seven posts this week. And you know how little I really go on like Facebook and all that stuff. But I have seen so many people go, Hey, I just ah converted the site from Divi. Now all the blogs are like, there’s code all over them and stuff. And I just keep seeing that and going, Oh yeah, that happens. ah That happens.

10:22.22
peteeveritt
there’s baby There’s a business idea that we’re releasing live on the show, which is if you can create a plugin that monitors your posts, and if you’ve created like half a dozen or more posts in exactly the same format, but have designed them in the post, it pops up and says, do you want to create a template for that? And it strips all that crap out and makes a template and just, you know, sets you up properly. We’d be millionaires.

10:45.89
Jeff
Well, I don’t know about an automated way to do that, but I have done exactly that. We’ve had sites that come aboard and they’ve just got the same post template for blogs, another one for events, all that done as one. And then they instructed the client to just keep cloning that one post and changing the content every month.

11:02.53
peteeveritt
Yeah.

11:03.32
Jeff
And it’s like, Oh, okay. Now you want to design change. Guess what? We have to do it a hundred times or, or whatnot. So I’ve taken one built a template and then stripped all the stuff out and been like, look at that. We did it right from the start now.

11:18.00
peteeveritt
Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, we’ve gone off track. that the Having Divi templates is not the reason why you should stop selling SEO and do this instead, right?

11:21.33
Jeff
Squirrel.

11:28.60
Jeff
Yeah.

11:29.56
peteeveritt
Although if you are doing Divi, do this instead and build your Divi templates in templates and and not in stuff. You can do both. That’s absolutely fine.

11:38.70
Jeff
we um We’ve seen another thing happening a lot lately too with people like requesting specific keywords. We’ve talked about this a lot, but people requesting specific keywords or even focusing on certain keywords already, only to find out there’s absolutely no search volume. There’s nobody looking for those keywords.

11:57.33
peteeveritt
Yeah. I want to be number one for tartan pigs. Who the hell wants a tartan pig?

12:05.82
Jeff
yeah

12:06.18
peteeveritt
But it doesn’t matter because such and such down the road, they’re in number one and our tartan pigs are better than their tartan pigs. So we want to be number one for tartan pigs. Yeah. Okay.

12:17.25
Jeff
Yeah, you know, and I think there was a time too where we were probably guilty of allowing that to happen too often. where, because we asked an onboarding just, and I’m sure many people asked too, like, what are the keywords that, you know, you hold dear to your heart. I’m like, cool. We’ll throw them on the, on the list and track and say, let go. And then after a couple months, you look at me and go, why aren’t they improving? Oh, that’s why nobody’s here. So you can, I mean, how many people out there are selling clients, these services and putting all the work into that? Maybe they’re doing honest where I’m just going to give them benefit of doubt that they’re they’re doing it from a good, you know, a good place and they’re putting in the hard work.

12:53.00
Jeff
but only to just be wasting everyone’s time and money, you know?

12:58.56
peteeveritt
Well, and and this is bringing us on to the the sort of the crux of what you should be focusing on, because the the real ah look we’ve we’ve done this for years in our agency or my agency, we’ve done it for years or we we’ve encouraged our clients to do it for years with through SEO Hive, which is actually you need to establish what the results are going to be that are going to grow a client’s business. whether that’s more sales, whether that’s more inquiries, and then from there you can then figure out what the competition’s like, and you can you can start to build this picture up of knowing what it is you need to to compete ah in that in that place. And this is where SEO becomes more than SEO, because it’s not at that point it’s not just about driving the traffic.

13:48.37
peteeveritt
It’s then making sure that when the user gets to the site, they can take the action that you want them to take in order to make that SEO worthwhile to demonstrate that return. And this is where SEO becomes more than just the SEO tactics. It is it has an element of conversion rate optimization in it. and i’m i We’ll be the first to hold my hands up and say, I am not a conversion rate optimization specialist. But after having done SEO for the last 15 years, I know a few things that work and can normally spot a ah glaring problem quite easily.

14:24.08
peteeveritt
But I’m, as I say, i’m I’m nowhere near a specialist or ah a UX designer that that, you know, a conversion rate designer that can, you know, there’s people far more skilled at that than I am.

14:34.22
Jeff
Yeah, that people literally specialize in that and do it all day long and they do it for very high levels.

14:34.21
peteeveritt
But I know enough of the broad brush strokes.

14:41.73
Jeff
I think I would agree with that assessment about myself as well. i think i but But saying that, both of us are probably like in that top 20% of people that can do it, just because we’ve had that time and that that experience and we’ve seen that stuff. So like we may not be the best at doing all that, but we can do a review and quickly see the problems, quickly see where there’s things that’s broken, quickly see where this is not gonna work.

15:02.64
peteeveritt
Yeah.

15:06.41
Jeff
And if anything, just kind of opening your mind and putting yourself in a customer’s shoes. like If I were to try to do this, would I have a challenge? I don’t know about everybody listening. I, my father, love him to death has become very experienced and comfortable with technology as he’s gotten older. But now it’s coming full circle. He’s starting to regress a little bit, you know, but it’s like, to be fair, I mean, Apple changes their iOS like layout every six months or something like that. and He’s just all overwhelmed with it. But there’s and lost my train of thought with this. Where was I going with this?

15:43.58
peteeveritt
i don’t know I don’t know your dad and well enough to to finish that story for you, mate. You could have gone absolutely anywhere, but you chose that one.

15:52.14
Jeff
I’m gonna cut that part out, sorry.

15:55.69
peteeveritt
That’s all right. You might want to remember it’s about just under 16 minutes, 15 and a half minutes long.

15:59.76
Jeff
All right, sorry about that.

16:03.73
peteeveritt
So do you want to pick up again?

16:05.56
Jeff
ah Yeah, should we go to other channels we utilized?

16:09.82
peteeveritt
ah Yeah.

16:10.80
Jeff
Okay. Another thing to look at too beyond, you know, just the search engine, right? I mean, that’s the one we’re doing all this work for, but this kid is easily translatable to other marketing channels, like Facebook or something. ah We were just talking about this yesterday. Somebody asked if one of our our sales calls was asking if we do social media. And I said, no, we don’t. um But it is something I highly recommend. And I’ve told many, many people in calls this like, we’re already producing content. repurpose that, turn it into a Facebook post, turn it into ah a tweet or an X or whatever they call them. They turn it into a threads post, an Instagram to do something with it. And it’s, when it’s already done, you’ve already got 99% of the assets there. It’s just a matter of tweaking it, repurposing it. So that’s another thing that could be you know quickly put into your new SEO plan that you could rename into something fancy like growth plan or marketing, whatever. I’m not creative for these things, but you know where I’m getting that.

17:06.74
peteeveritt
Well, there is actually there is actually and an SEO benefit to having social media traffic for your site, um but but it only works for brand new content as you’re publishing it, which is, so here’s here’s a little side tip. i So, you know, ah when we when we submit, unless you’ve got your site set up for the news the news vertical in the SERPs, generally when you create something on a site, it’s gonna take two, three days maybe to to appear in the search engines. um You can get things in there faster than that, not saying everything goes that slow, but generally speaking, general page, general product is going to take a couple of days to it to appear in the search engines. Now, if you’ve got GA4 installed on the site, so this wouldn’t work if you’re only using Fathom or something like that. But if you’ve got GA4 installed on the site and you send social media traffic to that new piece of content, when Google indexes it, it will see the visits that it’s had from social media. So rather than just seeing a blank page with no history,

18:03.91
peteeveritt
It will see a ah page that already has a number of visits, it already has a bounce rate, it already has a time on site, it already has a scroll depth, already has a click-through rate for two other pages. So you can kind of spoon-feed all of that. So when it starts to index, it’s already got some user data, all just by taking the content that we’ve created for you and creating a Facebook post that goes out the time that things published.

18:28.25
Jeff
that’s And it’s a really small but amazing thing that you can do. And I love that because it’s it’s using, I guess, the you know it’s validating it, right? It’s seeing people are are are are actually interested in this. um Whereas you can create a page, post it to search console, say, hey, index this, but if no one’s gone to it, you’re just waiting for the traffic to build up, just waiting for it. So send it there and help help build that foundation.

18:53.08
peteeveritt
Absolutely. Absolutely. So um and and this is this is really the the thing that we are saying you should do instead, which is rather than sell SEO is work with clients to grow their business. And like you mentioned the word growth plan ah earlier, or you can call it a marketing plan or a

19:07.55
Jeff
Uh

19:09.78
peteeveritt
or whatever, my my brain doesn’t, when we’re trying to name services at SEO Hive, it literally takes weeks of ideas batting backwards and forwards of, hey, what about this? And what about that? And I have a big PDF full of B based terms so that we can see if anything will fit. But that’s, ah you know, so um whatever you want to call it, but actually have you create the plan which is going to target the the growth of the customer’s business.

19:31.33
Jeff
-huh.

19:35.97
peteeveritt
And essentially at that point, rather than just becoming an SEO supplier to them, you’re becoming their marketing partner. And you have far more autonomy to make sure this thing is working from end to end. A large piece of that jigsaw is going to be the SEO work that you do, because that’s what you’re ultimately wanting to do if you’re approaching it from this end. But you are not confined to that, you have autonomy that goes before, after, and either side of it in order to make sure it’s working.

20:07.02
Jeff
Yep. Now, you could certainly take the time with them. and You should, if you can, you know determine what the deliverables deliverable should be. Excuse me, I cannot talk today. I’ve got marbles in my mouth. um You could figure out what the deliverables are. I mean, safe to say they probably need content. There’s that. you know But you can look at where are their customers, how are we speaking to them, how can we easily reach them? Maybe that’s just auto posting their new blogs. Maybe that’s creating custom social media content, but you know, either way you can build this into those monthly packages. So that’s, that’s the biggest thing everybody we talked to wants to do. They want monthly packages. They want the recurring revenue. So instead of just signing them up for hosting and you know, maintenance plan, which are great. And, and it’s actually positioned you to be this person perfectly, but it’s still is small time and limiting and what you can and will do for them. So,

20:57.31
Jeff
you know When you can insert yourself into that position and plan the growth with them, man we i mean we’re just seeing so much more success from i mean our direct clients, from our agency partners doing things like this, getting away from the big kind of corporate feel of SEO. you know I felt in the past, of anytime anybody talked about SEO, they always had to wear a suit and tie and they’re talking about you know these metrics of thousands and thousands of of views every day and like, let’s be realistic, small businesses don’t get that. Most of them aren’t getting that type of traffic and things.

21:29.29
Jeff
So what’s next?

21:30.54
peteeveritt
And some of them don’t, well, the vast majority of them don’t need that type of traffic either.

21:33.79
Jeff
no

21:34.30
peteeveritt
you know to To demonstrate a return in somebody’s business, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of views or ah visits to a site. You just don’t need that. If it’s structured properly, a 15% or 20% gain in traffic in the first year will make you look like a superstar to the vast majority of of client That’s that’s the reality as long as the quality of that traffic is something that’s actually going to buy whatever it is that they’re selling and but the the. The other thing that that you can do in these positions is again if you’re looking at a ah being a marketing partner to somebody is.

22:13.12
peteeveritt
You can also put other other metrics metrics in place to aid to that marketing journey. So, for example, you might want to, you know, if if you’re if you’re working on a site and the only option is either to inquire now or to buy now, that does like one call away, which is give me money. actually putting something in there which is, hey, download this resource or download our free guide to this or have a free sample or whatever it can be. And then that builds an email marketing list, which then gives you another arm of something you can deliver through your growth plan, which is email marketing to people that have already shown an interest. Because we all know that cold customers don’t generally give you money. Most customers need somewhere between four and seven touch points with a business before they’ll consider trusting it enough to actually place an order. So if you’re just working on SEO, you’re kind of expecting that cold traffic to give you money. Now, if you’re selling, if you’re selling, you know, pens, that might that might work. But if you’re selling yachts, it sure as hell doesn’t. I know because we’ve sold yachts. So that’s that’s the you know, it is kind of

23:23.76
peteeveritt
dependable on where on that spectrum you are, anywhere from a pencil sharpener to a yacht, but it’s it’s it’s something else you’re in control of. and ultimately What particularly we’re really focusing on in this episode is the more that it sounds like you’re going to do more work, but actually what it’s really doing is giving you more control over the the ah the output of the retainer to help the client rather than just narrowing it down to SEO, which is something that they may or may not want. They may be prejudiced about in the first place anyway.

23:58.48
Jeff
yeah Yep. You mentioned, you know, excuse me, um when you’re getting cold traffic, they’re not, you know, they’re not really jumping to buy, right? I mean, cold traffic isn’t the the hot, ah the hot customers that you need. um So I’m kind of connecting my thoughts here. But the the the thing about doing some more stuff on social media is people can see that. Whereas your SEO ranking, sure, you know they’re going to search for you and you’re going to be high up the rank, hopefully. And that’s you know that’s going to kind of cement you as as a legitimate and an active business. Because how many times have you like ordered something from a ah company online and it turns out they’ve been shut down for six months and just never turned off their website or something like that?

24:44.16
Jeff
and And I’m i’m weird. like I’m one of those ones that doesn’t like to cough up money unless I really, really trust them. And so before I ever buy something from somebody for the first time online, big, small, who cares? I’ll check their socials. Are they active? Do they actually seem like there’s people in the office like taking my orders? um you know And I say this admitting that we are not very active in our socials sometimes, but like that’s… You know, those are the things that people do look for sometimes. and And they see like, are they showing up? Are they out there? Do they actually exist? Or is this just a website somebody copied 10 years ago? I mean, like, we’ve seen those things happen.

25:20.28
peteeveritt
So if you check our socials out after this episode and see that there isn’t any activity on there, please email hello at seohive.co and make sure the subject says, for the attention of Jeff.

25:30.81
Jeff
Hey, I think the fact that we put our faces on these videos and podcasts out there, i mean I think that’s kind of checking that box a little bit there, but but you’re right. We we we should be axing more. Is that what they is that what the the act of posting on ah on that is and more?

25:45.13
peteeveritt
Surely it’s kissing more, but that sounds wrong.

25:48.89
Jeff
That does sound wrong. We should kiss more. Not you and I, but we just in general.

25:52.23
peteeveritt
Definitely not you and I.

25:53.74
Jeff
Just in general, we should just do more kissing in this world.

25:58.07
peteeveritt
i’ll I’ll leave that up to your side of the business. So again, if you that’s the service you want FAO Jeff, start your email. Yeah, that’s that’s all good.

26:07.74
Jeff
I got some new ideas s spinning now, thanks. Thanks for that.

26:12.18
peteeveritt
Yeah, but you’re you’re right. Cold traffic cold traffic is… it’s It’s difficult to make, yeah you know, it it it is on that spectrum as I say, depending on depending on why where the client’s product sits. um the The one thing I would say though is ah SEO is…

26:33.03
peteeveritt
basically the only version of non-interruption marketing that we’ve been talking about so far, with the exception maybe of Google ads. So, you know, if if you think about running Facebook ads or social posts or whatever it might be, you know, somebody who’s seeing them sitting there on their phone and they’re scrolling past the next door’s kids and next door’s cat and, you know, great aunt Maude’s fig tree and whatever it might be, then all of a sudden they see an ad for your super duper biro pen that you’re selling. um And they’re not really in the headspace for it because you are running the ad in their social space.

27:07.49
peteeveritt
But if you run the the the difference with SEO and Google ads is because they’re keyword based, the end user has obviously typed something in in order to see your result. So they are kind of already in the headspace of whatever the theme or the topic is that that that you’re ranking for. um So there is a slight difference to it. But all of that stuff you’ve said about brand validation and company validation and all that kind of stuff. it doesn’t From a social media point of view, it it is about playing the algorithm. you know if If you’ve got National Fish and Chip Day or it’s National Dog Day and you you do a thing about the dog, it doesn’t all have to be about work. But actually keeping it active means that at least ah you have content there that is

27:52.38
peteeveritt
is validating for prospective customers, but you’re also playing to the strengths of those algorithms as well as playing to the strength of Google’s algorithm so that when you do have a message you want to broadcast on social media, guess what? You you know, you’re going to get far wider reach than if you than if you ah haven’t posted anything for weeks and then decide to share a blog post on that. So this you’ve got to keep multiple plates spinning here, but this is exactly why

28:13.05
Jeff
Yep.

28:18.87
peteeveritt
purely selling, trying to sell SEO as, open quotes, SEO, is ah it’s it’s as it’s just as limiting as it is difficult. And that’s really the purpose of this show.

28:29.97
Jeff
a little story here. I have ah somebody I follow on Instagram, really cool company. They do custom motorcycle, not you, not you.

28:35.26
peteeveritt
Why thank you. ah not Not me.

28:38.65
Jeff
No, they do really cool custom motorcycle products. And I mean, they just have just, you know, if you’re into this stuff, they just have such a cool aesthetic and style and all this stuff. And about a ah week or two ago, the the owner gone on and he’s just ranting. and He’s the guys rough around the edges. I would, you know, I’m going to be honest. He’s rough around the edges and he gets on.

28:57.02
peteeveritt
Thank

28:57.69
Jeff
He just starts ranting outside of his face. he He’ll take it as a compliment. ah He’s ranting about how, you know, they put all this work in on their Instagram and all those things.

29:02.84
peteeveritt
you.

29:07.22
Jeff
But this post they just did isn’t getting any traction. And, you know, nobody has got 10 likes and stuff. But then this next one has has 100,000 whatever. And yeah. There’s some algorithm stuff going on. I don’t know how to crack that. That’s that’s not what I’m focused on. But he was like, I don’t even know why I’m going to keep going. i’m just goingnna i you We’re just not even going to try. you know i Maybe we shouldn’t even bother. And I just i wanted to reach through the screen and be like, no, you keep going. That’s what you’re doing. you know Those little things are seeds, right? that Yeah, I didn’t get the traffic. But you go to your feed, you see how active you’ve been.

29:38.59
Jeff
you You’re building the algorithm, hopefully, maybe. I don’t know. We’ll never know. We never see behind the scenes. but you know I said, but the one where you actually wanted to really drive attention to, it’s the off the charge. So that’s what’s important. you know you You plant those seeds and I don’t know, maybe it was wrong time of day, whatever it is, but it’s there. I’m sure it’s still helping. And all these things are going to help you build the foundation of your business. They’re going to help you kind of you know keep building up and growing and growing. Not any one of them is ever going to completely change your business. It’s never going to result in

30:13.84
Jeff
You know what I mean? Doubling your sales one day. like it’s That’s not gonna happen, but all of these combined, hopefully they will.

30:20.23
peteeveritt
Absolutely, absolutely. so There is one massive caveat I have to put on this, which is something we talked about before the show, which is, absolutely stop selling SEO and do this instead. But what this starts with is not selling marketing plans or growth plans or whatever it is. It’s actually about having an audit process or a triage process or a discovery process that you use with new clients. Because not everybody is gonna be a great fit to work with on a retainer. That’s no disrespect to anybody. Sometimes people just don’t get on.

30:58.03
peteeveritt
um And that’s the way it is. And having, you know, I’ve frequently, I might have even done it on this show, I’ve frequently made the connection of selling an SEO retain or selling a marketing plan on in the first meeting is a bit like getting married on the first date. Right? So you you don’t want to do that. You want to make sure that you’ve worked together before, that you you understand each other. You’ve got to make sure you can help these people because otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for a fail. So that’s where the whole process of having a discovery process or a triage process, as I say, whatever it is, you want to call it. If somebody rings you and says, I’ve got a problem. Great. We have this triage process. Let’s sit down. The process is this. It costs X and we’ll really get to the crooks of the problem.

31:43.65
peteeveritt
and figure out a plan for you. And if we can help you with that plan afterwards, we’ll, we’ll absolutely do that. But if, you know, otherwise the plan is yours and we can even maybe help you go and find the help that you need, just in case that isn’t in our skillset. Happy days. Nope. The pressure’s taken off. You’re going to work with somebody for a one-off process that maybe takes you a day, day and a half in total from start to finish. And if it’s not a good fit, you just never offer them the growth plan. It’s that simple.

32:10.49
Jeff
Yeah, yep, yep. That’s, you know, from my perspective, you know this, but I come from the the maintenance and, you know, we do hosting and things for hundreds of customers. And I’d love inserting ourselves in that situation. And I’m not saying everybody should go be hosting all their websites. If it’s not something you’re comfortable with, don’t do it. But, you know, that puts us in a really good position. Many of them have their own SEO teams, internal, external, other agencies they work with, and that’s all well and good. But lots of them are constantly coming to us and like, oh, we need to open this.

32:42.36
Jeff
What do we do here? And for years, we just went out, sorry, that’s not part of the service and, you know, whatever. And we’ve changed the last couple of years, and ah not quite a couple of years, but focusing on hourly retainers each month, which, you know, drives many people off the wall that don’t do hourly, do value based. But what it has done is cemented us to put it in that work and then allow us to go, sure, we could do that for you when they ask when they never leave it or when we can make a suggestion or when we see something that isn’t working, right? It’s time to address this and we’ve already got the monthly budget.

33:12.84
peteeveritt
Mm

33:13.98
Jeff
So let’s do that this month or you’re using it on this. Let’s have another discussion.

33:18.30
peteeveritt
hmm.

33:18.62
Jeff
But you know, I love being put into that kind of central position of being their go-to person that handles their whether it’s a website or the digital marketing or, you know, their online business, you know, perhaps, but you know, we’re not the most vital person in their business, but we are the go-to for most of that stuff.

33:35.28
peteeveritt
Well, and and becoming that go-to is what cements you in their business as the long-term supplier, rather than getting tire kickers that are going to come maybe sign up for a month or two, ah you know, get as much as they can out of you and then just leave. um Because let’s face it, we’ve all had customers like that in the past. um ah You know, you you will become their go-to. And yeah, I’ve got Weirdly, I’ve got two two clients at the moment that I’m working with really in depth. They’ve got big projects going on at the moment. um I met them both when they both worked at the same company like eight or nine years ago. They were one of my first clients when I set my agency up. And they’ve they’ve now taken me to various companies that they’ve both worked in. And off the back of that, I’ve got five or six clients because they

34:25.41
peteeveritt
I’m their go-to and then they introduce me to the company that they work at and then when they move on they take me to the next company but I still work end up working with the previous ones and so on and so forth it’s it’s a great growth strategy um no I take that back take that back don’t base your business on that but it just it just shows how if you build the right relationships it can be a great way to grow your business over a longer period of time.

34:48.79
Jeff
Yep, yep. I mean, we’ve I’m sure we both had plenty of clients come and go over the years, but you know i’ve I’ve still got customers I’ve been working with for 10 years now, it’s you know give or take. And i yeah I love that. I love that. And we do all kinds of random things for them over the time. And you know and those are those are probably the customers that if I had to sit back and go, boy, I’m really glad I’ve got those because those have helped me understand how to keep growing my business and help more people like them at a greater rate.

35:14.23
peteeveritt
Yeah.

35:18.49
peteeveritt
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think that brings us into land. I hope that, I hope you found this episode kind of interesting. um

35:28.01
Jeff
I hope so. I hope you’re not too mad at our clickbait title. But seriously though, we’re not we’re not saying like you just were you were just saying this, but we’re not saying don’t sell SEO. Just don’t sell quote unquote SEO. It’s just so much easier to grow at it from a wider perspective or I guess maybe a more targeted perspective. But in either case, just As people that sell SEO for a living, I want to get away from selling SEO. Sounds so hypocritical, but you know, it’s just is the way things are going.

35:53.92
peteeveritt
Oh, yeah.

35:57.33
Jeff
Let’s be honest.

35:58.15
peteeveritt
the The disclaimer is that all of the content in this show has been produced because Pete and Jeff have tried to sell ah SEO so many so many times. And these are the things we wish we could say.

36:10.06
Jeff
Well, I mean, hey, there’s there’s been a couple people that have reached out and said, Hey, I want SEO. And you’re like, okay, cool. What do you mean you mean by that? You know, but usually it’s a much different answer. Oh, hey, we need help with our marketing or help with our email list or help with this, help with that. And I think honestly, if you’re listening to this, if and what, at least 95% of our active customer, our agency partners would be great at doing all of this stuff if they wanted to do it. They’re all capable of it.

36:36.37
peteeveritt
yeah

36:37.34
Jeff
you know it’s it’s This is all in our zone. So as you know web professionals, however you want them to find that, keep expanding, keep learning and keep growing.

36:44.30
peteeveritt
Yeah.

36:48.15
Jeff
Keep offering more and more things or be able to offer more and more things to your client. You don’t need to go sell them everything all the time they want it, but at least be able to do that when they need it because they’re going to need it.

36:58.15
peteeveritt
Absolutely, absolutely.

36:59.53
Jeff
Recognize when it when the need comes.

37:02.72
peteeveritt
Well, I’ve certainly enjoyed recording this. um It’s been good. We haven’t done a show in a few weeks. Our rhythm, we got into a really good rhythm and the rhythm kind of had a bit of a hiccup, but we’ll, you know, I know we’re heading right into the summer at the moment, but I’m sure when the, when the fall comes, we’ll, we’ll certainly get into a regular rhythm of doing these things again. Yeah.

37:21.12
Jeff
Yeah, they’re always fun. They’re always fun. And we always enjoy the response.  The one or two thousand people that reach out and tell us how awesome the episode was. We thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

37:32.28
peteeveritt
yeah And I thank the other one.

37:38.23
peteeveritt
All right guys, you we hope you found this valuable. um Let us know if you have, if you haven’t, just keep that to yourselves. And yeah, we will ah see you in the next show.