Building An SEO Business Case Your Boss Can’t Say No To Ep. 536

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burrows, one of the owners of EWR Digital. And my name is Matt Bertram. I'm the lead strategist at EWR Digital. The man in charge of strategy. You know, I didn't do the sheet that I usually do. So welcome back to another fun-filled edition of the podcast. We are both broadcasting live from Houston, different locations, but live from Houston. We are having a little bit of internet challenges. So we'll try and manage that and hopefully provide to you a good experience. I'm just going to jump into the article and if there's any kind of background information that you wanted to share, Matt? Besides, we're happy to be back. We've been pretty busy. You were in Dubai. I was in like Mexico and Vegas and Miami for a number of different conferences. So we've had a busy half of the year and we apologize for not being consistent. That is something that we're working on. But thank you for coming in. That's excellent. And I was also in Vegas. I was there for a business conference and that was- Oh yeah. Yeah. See, you were in Vegas too. Like we've been like missing each other. Like we've been just jet set in here, you know, speaking, attending conferences. I was just at the Bitcoin and the VIP and the, you know, it was, it was, it was fun. So there's been, there's been a lot of fun things going on. And so excited to get back and get back into things and share it. The teams are growing. Everything's going like amazingly. We apologize, but we need to get back to doing this consistently. So we're excited to be here. Yeah. And we're back. And at one point I know you had like sent me a note and it was like, Hey, maybe we should do like, I think it was a Dubai, Miami podcast, you know, and just the scheduling didn't work out. So we'll maybe, maybe we need to

be thinking about that as you or I, or both of us are out of town and our location, right? So we, we rebuilt out our office location and we have a fantastic podcast studio there that we would need to get in together and use and, you know, bring some guests in. Like there's a lot of stuff that, um, is on the agenda for this year. So very cool. All right. Well, let's, let's jump right into this article. Uh, and this article is by Lauren Baker. We've interviewed him in the past quite some time ago, maybe need to reach out to him and get them back on the title of the article is building an SEO business case for your boss. Excuse me. Your boss can't say no to, right? So if you've got to report to somebody and get approval, uh, then this is, this is how you do that, right? This is the steps you need to go through. He starts off. Actually, I like how he starts off kind of on SEO related, but he says, uh, scientists may tell you the last dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, but they haven't met your boss. How are you going to convince that boss to do SEO? This is, this is where we go. So, uh, Patif to, to Lauren and let's jump in. So why SEO should be part of every marketing plan. Matt, did, did you know in 2021 American consumers spent $870 billion online? I did not know that, but I think it's amazing. That's roughly 19% of total purchases. It's like, so 20%. I remember, right. I, Chris, I remember dial up, right. When people were just trying to give stuff away online, basically like you had to like putting, putting your credit card in online. Is it safe? Like, it's just so funny of where we've come as an industry and really where even since COVID it's been accelerated that everything is like online first, right? Mobile first. Yep. Absolutely. Um, so then he jumps into why, uh,

why you need a business case to support this. Right. And we, you know, touched on the dinosaur boss. Um, but just know you're probably wasting valuable resources on projects with little benefit, losing sight of project goals and struggling with proper prioritization. If you don't have a case or a plan in place, you need a good business plan to make your case. One that describes the following, the opportunity, the problem in the current system, and then the solution. So being concise when you're putting this plan together is like, as with most content is almost always better. It does not need to clearly describe the vision and goal of your SEO. It does need, sorry, clearly. Yeah. It needs to say, uh, our goals are irrelevant. No, it does need to clearly describe the vision and goal of your SEO strategy and have data to support your contentions and the technology, technological tools that you're going to need. Ideally, you need to include financial projections about cost and return on investment. Again, if you're speaking to your boss and eventually that's going to get up the rung high enough that they're going to be talking about finances, uh, you want to, you want to show the ROI for the particular project. Yeah. So I, I actually think I have an article that either is launched or is launching about this particular thing and really, um, have like digital transformation is a real conversation that's going on. There's a lot of businesses corporate on down to, um, SMBs that really have maybe operated their business, not, um, from a digital landscape first standpoint, and they're shifting their businesses like that is accelerated with COVID and really understanding how to operate online. Even the new Google algorithms are looking at wanting to see more interactions online, more things happening, uh, on the website. And, and really what, where I see everything going is that SEO or SEO specialists is not necessarily going to be like a role at the company anymore. It's going to be incorporated into everything people

do is like how to communicate the best and get, um, exposure and reach, uh, online. And so I think a lot of, um, CEOs, this used to be like a business, like, or a CFOs, this was like a line item, uh, on, on whatever proposal. And they didn't really understand, uh, some, some metrics tied to sales and how it all fits together. And in the conversation I was having, people are being more and more open to it, understanding, understanding the fit to it, seeing really the long-term ROI. Uh, we have a couple of clients that really had never done SEO before, uh, enterprise level clients. Now they are, and their eyes are really open on what the possibility is and what they can do when looking at building a strategy from, from a digital standpoint. And I think that this is going to continue and the education is going to permeate throughout, um, business organizations on down. And they're going to be looking at like in today's world, if you were to start a startup or start a business, you would be thinking about how do I generate leads, all, you know, views, eyeballs, attention, whatever online first, that's where the conversation goes, uh, any business today. Right. And so it's, it's just the cornerstone of any kind of marketing plan. I think even digital marketing, right. The name has changed modern marketing, right. I mean, it's, it's changed, right. And it's now at the forefront of everything we do and SEO from what I've seen from a ROI standpoint and how it helps every aspect of a business. It needs to be one of the core strategies. So, yep. All right. So let's, let's jump through building your SEO business case. So first conduct a website audit, uh, like any good plan, your business case should start with research, evaluate your current SEO status and strategy, determine what's working at bringing in traffic to your website. Do you have keywords that are leading to your site? What pages are visitors landing on most? Uh,

look at both on-page factors like keyword density, optimized images, headers, and URL names and off-page factors like backlink quality site structure, internal linking, and four or four errors. Now I think he got a little bit of this back because he calls off-page factors, um, site structure. That's really an on-page factor. And then internal linking is also an on-page factor. And we've discussed this in recent podcasts where internal linking, linking is incredibly important for SEO and internal linking is the linking over which you have the most control. So you need to optimize that, um, and intimidated by this process. Don't be, there are numerous free tools you can use, uh, for the site audit audits that will give you the information you need. You, you probably have a couple of favorites, Matt. All right. Ahrefs, AWT, right. Is a free, free tool that, uh, you can use. Um, we use, uh, things like SEO Clarity, um, Screaming Frog, uh, SEM Rush. I mean, there's a lot of them that are out there. Uh, Uber suggests like, it depends on what the tool is and what you're trying to do. Um, and it also depends how accurate the data is, right? So a lot of these tools are not like a hundred percent accurate. Like if you need enterprise little data on specific areas, pulling from all the Google data centers, um, you know, it, it, it just depends what you need and what you, you know, you need it for, right. If you're looking at off page link structure versus on page, like there's different audit tools out there. There's better backlinking tools. There's things like majestic, like there's, there's like, usually you use a variety of different tools to pull this together. They're there. I haven't rarely found a one tool that's affordable that has all these things together, um, and does them all really, really well. So typically all of them do like one thing a little bit different or better. And you use these tools to kind of triangulate what's going on. And

a lot of these free tools give you a little bit, but then they want you to pay for more data, right? So it's depending on how much granularity, how many searches, um, and what you're looking for that you need. Um, but all the different things that you listed are completely accurate of like what you need to do. I mean, I think the number one thing is, okay, why is SEO a business strategy? And then the first thing that you said is what keywords are you currently ranking for? Right? We look at it's a lot of times can't understand their SEO strategy. They're just typically ranking for their name, right? And a few other random keywords because they haven't built out the signals properly on and off page to let Google know what they're an expert at, what they want Google to know, what the customer journey looks like, who they're going after. There's a lot of pre-work that has to be done with SEO. Fixing like the technical structure is almost like the last thing, um, that, that you would do because you need to understand they're going, those are kind of basic things that just let Google know that the site's cleaned up and is operating well. And it typically ranks those sites better, but it really goes back to how that information's organized, what information you're putting out there to help someone based on each search for those decision making or micro moment processes. So, so that's, you know, conducting a website audit that's on yours. I'm going to talk a little bit about doing competitive analysis now. Um, while I'm doing that, Matt, think, uh, think of, um, some of the audience audits that you do. Cause I don't think we break them down as simple as, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, your own website audit or competitors, you get more nitty gritty, but let me, let me jump through the competitive analysis and then you can come back to those different things that are available. So, uh, number two, first

one, conduct a website audit. Number two, do a competitive analysis. SEO is a zero sum game. The traffic you're landing is the traffic your competitors are not landing and vice versa. It's absolutely crucial that, you know, exactly what they're up to, uh, figure out who you're up against with an SEO competitive analysis. And in this, you want to ask what keywords do your competitors rank for? Which keywords are they not utilizing effectively? How are they promoting their content? What is their overall SEO strategy? How is their on-page content optimized? What is the quality of their backlinks? And are they using paid ads and to what effect? Um, so that's really broad based, like it's really kind of on-page analysis and then competitor analysis. What, what are the different kinds of analysis analyses that we go through, uh, as a customer is onboarded or is just getting, you know, one of our analysis packages? Yeah. Um, I think that that's a great question. It, it really depends where they are in the SEO process when they come in and really where our baselines are, uh, when we start with them. But a lot of times, one of the first things we do start with is an audit, right? Um, depending on, again, their needs, um, we can do a full website, uh, standard analysis, like audit. Uh, we have those, uh, packaged out. Uh, we do CRO audits, right? Uh, UX or UI audits are super UX UI audits are super important on, um, on, um, how someone's interacting with the site, how granular you need to get that kind of dovetails into like CRO. Um, we, um, Conversion rate optimization, right? Conversion CRO Yeah. Conversion rate optimization. So, so you, UI UX audits, like user experience, basically, um, user interface, uh, and CRO are a little bit different, but you know, CRO is like pretty straightforward. Uh, here are some of the things to like convert tactically. And then the UI is more like, uh, and the UX is like that experience. Right. And so

it's, it's broader. Um, but like SEO audit or, uh, CRO, uh, UX audit are two of the big things we do. We'll do also speed optimization on the server side. Typically co-hosted takes care of that, um, competitor analysis audits, content audits, keyword audits, um, doing the customer journey and target persona. These are all foundational things that we put together to understand where someone's at, to be able to compare the data against that and also create some, some type of baseline. So, um, you know, people don't have that stuff. We have them do a workshop. If they do have that stuff, we'll audit it out. And then we have PPC audit, right? Like we, we, we look at our, all their tools set up is the goal set up properly is, is that functionality there. And it's really like building the vehicle and understanding that assessment piece. Um, and there's a variety of different steps, but we really, it's like a product high service and a lot of categories and people really like those. We even have people that have internal, uh, SEO people that come to us for like a second opinion. Um, and, and then we can do some consulting and talk strategy about maybe what they should do or how things are structured. So we've been doing a lot of those, um, we've been doing a lot of those and, and really, I think a lot of what's happening over the last six months with Google is Google's kind of spun the dials again on, on where, um, where things are ranking and what's getting pushed up and down and people are trying to level set what, what's happening and where those changes are. And personally, a lot of what I'm seeing is it's moving over to the, um, UX UI component of it. Um, that's one of the big things that Google's seen. Certainly speed has been, been a lot more important. And then some of those foundational audits of the competitor analysis, the keyword audit, um, you know, we'll even map

out, right. Where, where, where, where pages should rank for interlink. Like there's a lot of stuff that goes in to SEO. If you're going to do it right on the enterprise level on the front end. Um, and you gotta, you gotta do the work to know what you're trying to do, or you're just kind of, uh, chasing keywords. Right. And so we typically plan things out, um, over a, a, a, a time period or a track, we typically do three month basis of like, here's what we're focused on. Here's what we're going to do and build that plan out. And so, uh, hopefully that answers your question, but it's very hard to say, what do you need? Because it depends what you already have and where you're already at and where that baseline is. And so if we understand where that baseline is, and some of that pre-work's already been done, um, you don't have to go back and do it all. Uh, what's tough is sometimes people come in and they need to rank really quickly and they've done none of that pre-work and they don't really understand that. And then they don't even know who their target client is. Right. Truly. Right. Or their target persona is like five different clients talking about the same strategy after those. Yeah. Yeah. Let's, let's go to our third point. Cause that's right, right, right where you're, you're at. Right. So point number three, in terms of putting together the SEO plan that you're, that your boss can't say no to, uh, speak to your target audience based on intent. There are actually like this. There are actually people on the other side of your campaigns. Take some time. It's not just a computer and you're like running algorithms. Take some time to identify your target, target audience persona and research why this hypothetical person is visiting your website in the first place. Ask questions like, who is a typical target? What do they want? What keywords or phrases are they searching for? Marketers find it

helpful to create a character or characters to whom they can speak directly to with the content. Uh, for example, an online hardware store might have a persona. Jim is a middle aged man from mid from the Midwest. He has a good job, but not enough disposable income to hire a professional for home repairs. So he does things for himself. He knows his way around tools. He is a family man who enjoys sports, barbecue, and watching television by, by envisioning this gym, right? This typical customer persona as a real person, some writers, and I would argue most writers find it much easier to speak directly to them. And I think that goes to what you were just saying. No, I mean, that's, that's perfect. You can see how prepared I am for this article. Um, uh, what, what, why this is so important. And when people think of SEO, they're like, Hey, you're going to just move a bunch of words around on my page. You're going to move a bunch of links around or whatever. This strategy component is arguably the most important thing because you can optimize a website, but you're optimizing it for what, right. And there's, there's, there is this kind of opaque set of, uh, user guidelines that Google puts out there, but this is trying to take multiple algorithms, right. That are all running simultaneously in a way that a human can understand it. And so a lot of times if you'll even talk to people at Google, they don't even exactly know why something happened because they're overlaying algorithm on algorithm. Right. And there look, there's so many different data points to figure it out. So they're like, this is generally how it works, but we don't really know why that's happening. Like, those are some of the feedback that I get. Right. And so I think thinking about there's a person on the other end of it, and then really starting with that and building that customer journey of who that person is and what they're doing and

do they have all the things to make the right decision at those different decision points. And then, you know, reaching the right people, making sure that there's a search volume there. It's really like a, uh, a symphony. Right. And so you, you, there's so many different components that come into this at different times. And it is certainly a ongoing process and a moving target. It's not, Hey, you optimize the website once you get it, Google friendly or Google optimize friendly or whatever. And then you're done. Like that is not how it works. Um, and really your website should be kind of this living, breathing, interactive sort of, um, way for people to find out more information about maybe your products or services or to buy or however, and you got to understand all that and you got to understand how that fits in all that. And so all these things and laying this stuff out, sometimes people don't see the value in them, but like, for example, like creating a creative brief for writing articles, like you can't start writing articles out of the gate. You got to get the voice, right. You got to get the branding, right. You got to get the topics, right. You got to, uh, understand what are the goals and what you're trying to communicate. I mean, there's so many different things that you have to go into. It's the whole measure twice, cut once philosophy. So really doing that strategy piece or those strategy pieces on the front end and getting all the right data that really helps with the delivery of it to know exactly what you're doing, where it's going. And I think a lot of, um, people just look at it very head on and they don't look at the overall process. And that's what I believe Lauren's trying to share. And what this article is about is understanding the bigger vision and getting the buy-in from leadership, uh, on that level. So yeah, yeah, that, that makes sense. All right. So we've got number

one, do an audit. Number two, do a competitive audit. Number three, speak to your target audience, understand your target audience. Now, number four, create a monthly content plan. So create a month by month plan, outlining the content, determine what you will focus on the theme, like maybe a holiday season or a product you want to push. Next review your calendar to identify key dates, like events, product launches, affiliate promotions, and then incorporate all of those into your plan, into your calendar and, and ultimately SEO plan. Um, so that, so that that's part of what you're presenting. Hey, this is what's actually going to be executed. These are the actual deliver deliverables. Yeah. I mean, we do that on a quarterly basis because month over month, like you, you want to have enough time to plan for certain events or conferences or, uh, holidays that are coming up that, you know, and you don't want to, you don't want to, uh, you want to plan it out a little bit better. So, so there's no kind of either hurry up and wait, which is kind of a military veteran term, um, or just like having to last minute, like rush, rush, rush. It's really nice to, to look at that on, um, again, a broader scope and figure out what do we need to do, make sure we have the resources, the time allocation, uh, and we have the pieces in place as that happens. So we technically look at it on a quarter by quarter basis, or, you know, even when we, um, build these year long plans, it just helps, uh, on the planning side. And there's so much more that we can do and layer on, but having a calendar that you drive them. And I think a lot of people can appreciate that use their calendar on a daily basis or on a weekly basis to drive their activity, right. To understand what they need to do, where they need to go. If it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen sort

of thing. It's kind of the same thing with a content calendar, right? So if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen. And if you have multiple people that are coordinating to get this done, um, having a master document to work from is important. Yeah. It becomes the accountability partner, right? That calendar really drives like when, when do things need to get done? Yeah. All right. So number six, build the workplace relationships you need. And this is probably something that you, you know, if you're putting together a business plan and you're presenting it to your, to your boss, uh, your dinosaur boss, right? You gotta, in my opinion, you've got to really spend some time here and you've got to get some buy-in. So you don't, you don't have to hire an SEO specialist or, or, or, uh, hire an outside firm. I would say it's a very good idea. Even if you have an in-house SEO specialist, Matt mentioned earlier, like people reach out to us just to bounce ideas off of just to have, uh, a second set of eyes on, on what's going on, but you don't have to, uh, what you do want to include is marketing, obviously it and sales. They should all be brought in, spend some time educating those, uh, departments or individuals, uh, on the process and be sure to highlight the importance of each of their roles and explain the goal. Like what is the goal of SEO and what are we trying to achieve and what impact will that have on the company, right? Because some people are going to come to this meeting. Maybe it's it. We've had conversations with, with bigger companies where, where our requests to it are just more work. They're not seen as, you know, pushing the company towards a good goal because it hasn't been pitched to them. They're like your it, you do this. It's much better to bring them into the fold, but get their buy-in and have everyone understand, Hey, this website needs to run faster

so that we get more sales. Here's the percentage drop in conversions. If the website's slower, get their buy-in. Uh, I think that's, that's probably something that gets missed the most if you're, if you're putting together an SEO plan for your dinosaur boss. Well, yeah, I, I, you know, I don't know if dinosaur boss is necessarily the, the right word, but, but I think that SEO is something that a lot, uh, more, uh, executive team are more, more open to, I think in the past, certainly, um, trying to get SEO, uh, on the marketing budget or a line item was certainly uphill battle. Uh, we, we still put help put together presentations. Like typically there's an advocate or a champion for that at the company and they, you know, bring us in to help build that strategy to help pitch that because they know that that's, what's going to help them meet their objectives and achieve the goals for the company. And then having other people on board, certainly it, uh, has become a roadblock in, in, in a lot of cases and they're focused on security. And, you know, so, so there's ways around that to, to work with enterprise level clients that have some of those, uh, restrictions or data privacy policies and, and bringing in outside firms and that sort of thing. But man, internally making sales is like a huge advocate, right? Cause like basically they, you know, drive more sales, getting them involved, uh, with that. Um, like if you can get it on board, that is, that is excellent. And then you go to that executive suite and, and you start bringing these things in as again, the overall thought and strategy for the company. And typically, um, the, the value add can be seen at the executive level of like what you're trying to do if it's presented right. Right. And so, uh, sometimes bringing us in to help kind of frame it up and pitch it, uh, based on what their goals are or what they see are

with these audits has been extremely helpful, but having a, uh, having a group of champions in different business units that are all kind of working together on this goal, um, is what's going to get it done. Right. Because still SEO is so broad and could be an abstract concept and how does it like drive revenue? So you've got to get like true believers, right? People that have seen it work. Um, and typically it's like someone new coming into a company, there are changes, like they're seeing the power of it. Um, I feel like you're leading directly into the next one. So, uh, but, but you said something that's worth, um, that, that I think is worth repeating. So there's a number of occasions where we've got a director of marketing or a CMO, um, who really in a, in a more traditional company, a company that's been doing traditional marketing and the CMO or the director of marketing understands that SEO needs to be part of the strategy moving forward. And they've reached out to us to really put together this plan we're talking about, uh, to present it to their boss. And the next piece of that plan is actually strengthen your case with facts and data. That's right. It sounded like that's what you were just about to get into. There's a good article. At the end of the day, most executives only care about one thing, does it provide a return on investment? And, and in the case of SEO, there's ample evidence to show why you need an SEO plan, right? And, and Lauren goes in and gives a couple of examples. Google is responsible for 92% of web searches, and that's more than 267 million unique visitors in the U S alone. If you want access to them, you need to be providing content that answers the questions or, uh, is shown by Google when they search for those keywords. Like, um, the question you might ask your boss, uh, or that, you know, the CEO is what percentage of

those 267 million unique visitors would you like to visit our site? Um, if you're promoting a paid component to your overall SEO plan, be sure to highlight that for every dollar of business spent on Google ads, they made an average of $2 in revenue, right? So these are the things that help make the case using this data. You can, and there's a lot more data out there. Um, and you can get more, we've gotten more granular just on like, Hey, our prediction is based on you're in position three and what percentage of clicks that gets, we get you up to position one, that should have a eight fold increase of, of traffic. And so you should see X, Y, Z dollars. The uplift is real. I mean, the uplift is real. I mean, I mean, if people drop a couple positions, they'll feel it right. Depending on how much they're leverage, like if it's the right keyword. And here's the thing, if you look at businesses, like, and we keep in touch with like a lot of businesses, they come back to us. Like, wait, what's interesting is if you look at a business, like, or two businesses or one focuses on SEO and other focuses on like whatever print marketing or traditional channels or whatever. And then you look at that, those companies in a year, the people that embrace digital and the people that embraced SEO are so much, so much better. They're just such a better place. Okay. As a company, healthier, more revenue, more like SEO SEO is like a, a headwind or a backwind, right? It's a back, whatever it is. It's like wind at your back. That's just pushing every aspect of your business, more leads, more visibility, more trust, more, um, reoccurring sales, like just everything. It, it, it helps move the visibility and mindshare factor forward. And I mean, the 10 X 30 X return on investment, and we've seen it both ways up and down, man. If you lose those keywords, man, you feel it almost

immediately. Right. And, and it, and it's really dominating that first page, top of that first page. The data is so clear. Uh, and, and, you know, once, once people see, I mean, we have clients seven year, eight year clients, right? Um, tons of clients at the five year mark, like basically when they see the magic and power of SEO, you, you don't go to anything else, right? You add other things to it and we're a full service agency, but SEO is that, that cornerstone service to grow your business. And it works better than anything else I've ever seen. And we've tried everything, you know what I mean? And, and, uh, uh, it's just, it's just really a beautiful thing. So, um, yeah. And then I think this is the, yeah, final point is measure and track your success. And I think, I think the wording on this is, uh, is a little bit different. I mean, cause it, it really needs to be in your plan, how you're going to measure and track success. And, and what are you, what are you going to report? Are you going to talk about organic traffic? Are you going to talk about keyword ranking? Are you going to talk about click-through rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, time spent on page? I mean, I feel like that's his list. And some of the things that are mentioned are like, what's the average order value, right? So when people do, if you're selling something, what, how much are they spending on their first order? What's the lifetime value? LTV, like, you know, sales, uh, store visits, phone calls, form submissions. Like, I think a lot of these things are kind of middle of the funnel, maybe top of the funnel things. And I think these things are important. It's kind of like sales, like for salespeople, they know, Hey, you need to make this many sales. You need to talk to this many prospects. And then you're going to close X amount of deals. Right. And so all these metrics

are those leading indicator metrics that are going to drive that, you know, like the, the, the final, the, the store visits, like the things that are really bottom of the funnel and revenue as that bottom line to, to, to look at that. And again, it takes a little while to get the flywheel going and then boom, like it starts really hitting, um, the bottom line in a big way. And, uh, being able to attribute the factors that led you there, because sometimes if you don't do a good job with the reporting and having the analytics in place, it's kind of like those quotes, but is it like, you know, I spent, you know, a hundred percent on marketing and 50% worked. And I don't know what the other half did is because they can't really attribute what's happening exactly to the revenue. And that is really the power of digital and even SEO. You can really tie that. Um, you can, you can also look at how much we talked about PPC a little bit, how much the PPC value is of those clicks. Right. And you can add that up and you can show quantifiable value in marketing dollars reallocated. And then also like, what are your CPM rates? Like, I mean, the SEO, there's no other service in my opinion that can drive as much value over the longterm. And also like ads versus SEO, the SEO value lasts if, if you're doing it right and you hire the right agency well beyond it's like owning the real estate versus renting the real estate. And, and there's certainly a trust factor associated with that as well. And so, um, the reporting component, and that's why we buy enterprise level data. Um, we get updates on a daily basis. We can see the changes we make and how, when it gets indexed, exactly what happens. We can see what's happening when Google updates stuff, which they're doing a lot right now. Um, it's just so incredibly important to be on top of that data,

get good reporting and understand what that happens. One of the big things that we've solved for a lot of enterprise level clients is multi-location ranking in those specific areas, getting those data points that are not just on a broader level. And that, that has actually been been doing a lot of, uh, consulting on, um, how, how to build those visualizations, how to see that stuff for, for other agencies. And that was been a big pain point that multi-location, um, uh, like franchises have come to us with, and we've been able to really solve that with some customized tools and reporting, and then being able to link all that together. Cause you want to see what your data looks like from all your different campaigns and making sure that, um, audiences are attributed, right. And it gets really fun. What you can do after SEO with really good analytics and really good data capture. Um, there's, there's even some interesting stuff we need to talk about in the future of where kind of pixels and, um, you know, customer information tracking is probably going to go. Uh, that's for another discussion, but it's super, super, super interesting. And, um, yeah, but analytics reporting key. So tracking. And I think there's, I wanted to kind of dub dovetail cause you're, you're talking about SEO placement and we mentioned, you know, tracking lifetime value and, and you might say, well, lifetime value is dependent on kind of backend things, but the reality is, is sometimes people are going to forget that they're your customer, right. And they're going to go look for your product or service again. And if you're in the top position, then we're like, Oh yeah, that's who I bought it from last time. Right. So that's how lifetime value gets extended. And, and it's, and it's really important. And it goes to that credibility too. Like if you're in that number one position, we were like, well, this is the credible source for this. Um, that of course I'm going to buy it from

there. I, and, and I would say the attribution component is something that really should be talked about on the front end, right? Like just standard reporting or data, sometimes reports come in and you can't like, what do they mean? Right. Like a lot of people send like data reports and you don't really understand what they mean and how it all fits together, but understanding that attribution and what those KPIs are on the front end to track, uh, and being able to pull that through. And then like, to your point, be able to attribute that to not just one category of like new sales, top of the funnel, but reoccurring business. I mean, it kind of is like a cost layer when you think about it, that goes across every component of the business. It just helps out everywhere, right? Being able to find someone's, uh, customer support number where it creates less friction and, um, easier to get access and the customer. It could be helping out over there. It could be helping out on, um, somebody that hasn't bought for a while. There's data that says, I think it's like people are three times more likely, or maybe it's even eight times more likely if they've, uh, heard about you before to, or, or they bought from you in the past to buy from you versus other, other people. And if you're not showing up on the, the, the top positions in Google, uh, you're going to lose that sale to somebody else. Right. And, and so at every step of the funnel, even past the funnel on the customer retention standpoint, um, existing customers making access to information, it's about organizing information effectively, um, is incredibly important. And so SEO again, should be the core stone of every strategy. And if you're doing it right, the value should be pretty clear. If you give it, if you have the right person and you have the right strategy and you give it a reasonable amount of time, I mean, that's why we retain clients

for, for so long because it becomes apparent and man, when it stopped, like if, if a keyword drops, like certain keywords, that's the crazy thing too, is certain keywords can drive, you know, I've seen 70, 80% of traffic is through one keyword. Right. And so when you start adding on all those keywords, there's tremendous amount of growth that can happen. But also if you have so much traffic coming in through one keyword and something changes or shifts or a competitor, right. Cause it's a zero sum game with what everybody else is doing and they start doing stuff and you fall, man, it's like almost. And they, they, if they don't have good analytics, they can't put their finger on why business dropped, but it almost always comes back to, um, where they place in the search means. So a loss of focus on, on their search engine optimization. All right. So conclusion, SEO, and he put SEO is a good investment. I actually say SEO is a great investment for any organization, but it requires an investment upfront in both time, budget, and resources from increasing your customer base to driving new sales. There is no question. A quality strategy will help achieve company goals, uh, company wide goals. Now get to work and have an SEO base, uh, business case to build, make it and give it to your dinosaur boss or, or have us make it and we'll, we'll present it to your dinosaur boss or what, whatever, uh, you, however you want to describe your boss. We're, we're, we're here to help us is the fundamental. Yeah. I can't say it any better than that. Um, you know, I, I, I thought it was a great article. Uh, I thought it was outlined well, uh, certainly made a lot of sense of how it flowed. It'd be a lot. It'd be very similar if I was to put together a article myself, that's probably the format that I would go, go, go down. So good job, Lauren. Um, yeah, I would just

say, please, if you like this article, leave us a review. Um, we would love to get some reviews on different platforms. Um, if you think that there's value in what we're doing, uh, let us know. Uh, we would really appreciate it. Reach out to us. If you've got somebody that's interested, Chris, why don't you do the spiel? You got it. Yeah. So, so if you are on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and click that little bell notification. So you get notified when we go live and when that's available. Um, we do actually broadcast live on Facebook. Uh, when, when we go live, uh, the place you can leave a review, you can leave a review on Facebook. Just go to, go to the page. And please leave us reviews on Facebook because right now people are spamming Facebook and leaving reviews and we've already filed and you're probably dealing with the same thing. And we want to bury, uh, these things till they get removed, but people are spamming Facebook and we would love to get some, uh, good reviews, like real reviews. Yeah. People, I mean, they're five stars. Google wants or Facebook won't take them down. So yeah, please leave us some Facebook reviews. That'd be great. So there are five stars, but you know, they're like five stars and then promoting some other product in the review and like, okay. I mean, I appreciate the five stars, but it's a nice tactic. Yeah. Facebook needs to get a little bit better at, um, shutting a lot of that stuff down. So, um, and you can go to EWR digital.com forward slash reviews. That'll take you actually to our Google page. Go ahead and leave us a five-star review over there. And we're going to keep this short that, uh, that's all, that's all we're going to. Oh, if, if you did like this podcast, we would ask you to share it, whether it's email, share it on Twitter, share it on Instagram, share it on Facebook, share it with a couple of

your friends, uh, let them know it's good content and we're good guys. And until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.