Episode 511: 12 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO by Sam Hollingsworth #511

how did you think of that chris that was awesome we now are what wait what we now have an intro like intro music and video cuts and yeah i did the outro first there on man that is cool that is awesome well done like yeah so we're just we you know we hired another videographer um you know we're trying to take everything to the next level we're going to be building out more videos more content trying to put some polish on everything um you know i know that the the listeners uh uh through the podcast typically get like an intro and outro but not the people uh watching the videos and you know what would even be cool chris too right as we can do uh so the so the title of this article today is 12 reasons why business absolutely needs seo by sam hollingsworth um and and really we could break each one right into a different uh section on youtube and then you can click like little chapters you know what i mean um and then we can put a you know a little tag on that's not called a tag but put it put a little card that yeah yeah put a little card that pushes it uh to other podcasts that are familiar with this topic and we're looking at building out um uh you know like people have called like people have messaged us and called in and like hey i want i want to learn seo or i want to learn something about digital marketing and putting together kind of if you watch these podcasts in this order it'll give you a good understanding i know we've uh kind of uh put on the back burner talking about um you know building some video courses but i think that that's starting to come back on the table so yeah yeah getting getting things set up and organized and ready well uh uh welcome to another fun-filled edition of the podcast we're excited that you're here we really are

matt and i are broadcasting live from houston texas and we are your results um like matt mentioned we're jumping into this article 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo uh in case you didn't know that it absolutely needed seo we're going to give you 12 you know i i i believe that not all businesses think that they need seo i i i think you're right i think they don't under and it's it's a little hard to understand right because you think about whoever owns the business whoever's in charge of marketing whoever's doing whatever in these businesses that are not that keen on seo you know they search for stuff right they you know that they experience the internet the way everyone else experiences the internet and then there's something where they're just not going hey how do i i got the paid ad i got my team doing a really good job and we show up on as many of the paid ads as possible um but i don't really care about this like i don't it's well i i think people think of uh in terms of media buys right like so hey i got to run this commercial or i'm going to run this facebook ad or i'm going to do this they don't think about seos like omnipresent right and like in the background on what every everybody's doing like seo makes everything better if they hear a radio ad and then they search for you right or whatever it is like seo supports all media channels and i think that not everybody looks at it that way and also um business owners that uh haven't grown their business through the internet uh have a different viewpoint of uh how seo what seo is how it impacts the business so i think that there's um some good education uh that could be offered of you know why you need seo if only there was a podcast where you could figure out why you need s wait that's this podcast good good

point all right uh we do have a review um i'm it's pretty awesome it says hands down number one best internet marketing podcast i'm a young digital marketer tuning my uh turning my own agency tuning excuse me my own agency in scottsdale arizona it was great meeting the team in houston texas anyone looking for relevant internet marketing strategies and reinforcement tips this podcast is for you patiff secret service number two uh all right let's jump in and talk about the 12 well really actually in this podcast we're only going to talk about six of the 12 reasons your business absolutely needs seo patiff to sam hollingsworth uh we really appreciate you breaking this article down or we're breaking the article down we appreciate you writing the article and we're breaking it down so the number one reason that he has or listed as number one i don't know this is an order of importance organic search is most often the primary source of website traffic so if you look at uh at google analytics for most websites what you're going to notice is that most of the traffic is coming from organic that in and of itself that should be enough like i need to do a better job how do i increase that number how do i optimize that number and that should be enough uh to help you organic search is a huge part of most businesses website performance as well as a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or an engagement well you know my thoughts on this is it's just so funny um when i'm talking to clients and we're breaking down analytics and um you know they're looking at uh different channels that they're spending on and then the number one channel always is organic yeah right so there might be other things that generate that demand but the harvesting of that demand is coming through google and that's not an area that everyone's always focused on and that should be your

primary focus if that's your primary source of conversions and people finding you uh online so yeah 100 all right so number two is seo builds trust and credibility uh i used to have a stat that i would talk about regularly that the presence of a ppc click and also being an organic the presence of that ppc increased your organic click-through and it was attributable the argument was that it was for the reason was because of credibility right having seen the brand once before you're in the organic and you've got more credibility you and i know so many people who just skip the paid ads like they're just you know they're buying them that doesn't mean credibility that means budget and so we skip the paid ads and we go directly to the organic organic speaks to most people uh on a on a level of credibility that paid can never do well i think uh people are are kind of projecting the trust that google comes up with right they trust that google is going to give them the best result and people aren't paying to to be at the top of the search engine so you know google is looking at different ways to integrate and that's where they make uh all their money right um is through ads uh but a lot of people know that too right and so a lot of people skip the ads there's not a lot of people that click on ads and uh look at organic like there's certainly a section of that but there's ad people that click on ads and then there's people that um or click on whatever and then there's people that click just on organic and you know based on where they rank it i mean it it projects trust right it projects credibility because they know that google's spending a lot of money on this algorithm to give them the best results and there's certain factors that are playing into that that google put that at the top of the search

results so therefore i trust them and inherent credibility there's a number of things that you're going to do to work on this trust and credibility right quality backlink profile positive user behavior machine learning signals optimize on-page elements and content and and one of the points that's that's made in this article that sam makes is that that these things those things that actually build trust and credibility it's like like when you meet a stranger do you trust them wholeheartedly no it takes time it takes process it takes consistency and those are the same types of things that you need from an seo campaign that will help give you that trust and credibility i mean that machine learning i know we might be expounding upon that later but machine learning is playing into this more and more and more and really the chrome plugin right that that a lot of people chrome just the browser that a lot of people are using um google is taking all that data like tesla right every day people drive tesla uploads that data every day every minute every click google's um grabbing that information and seeing how people are interacting with this site versus that site right and what's happening online and the machine learning's really starting to decide uh based on what they're trying to achieve is a good user experience um who should be ranked where and they're moving things around they're testing things mobile desktop very different um and you know all this data is being fed into like a machine learning algorithm that's being trained and it's getting better and better and better and and trust and credibility are two drivers of that so i think that's incredibly important yeah absolutely all right number three good seo also means a better user experience i mean it boils down to this this i think was written actually before kind of google's latest update that's really focused on ui uh but to have good seo really is to have a good user experience so yes uh the article's

right 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo well i mean you got page speed which is huge right if a website takes a couple seconds to load sometimes you just click back right also google's looking at are you clicking back right and so is the navigation menu uh easily to get around the website uh dwell time how long people are spending on each page what are they doing on that page are they clicking through are they looking at other pages are they watching a video how are they interacting with it how long is it taking them reading how far down the page they go like google's looking at all this stuff and is trying to understand what you do uh and then how uh potential customers and visitors are interacting with your website to determine what based on that search who's who should show up most right and so um that's providing a lot more weight to google than it has in the past and uh everything's driven by customer experience and yes there's a new update this month um the web vitals update that's all about user experience you know and speed's going to be incredibly important to that i think we're going to see um i think we're going to see a shakeout i i think um a lot of highly optimized websites that um from the technical side things that are very fast are going to rise to the top you know um and because google keeps waiting that more and more than some of the other tactics um you need to have good on page i mean you got to do everything right and i don't think that there's really gaming google it's just helping google understand uh what your website's about what that information is providing that high quality content delivering the customer what it needs in a convenient fast way and to be able to navigate the site so you know really like you know seo is now like almost like all marketing to a certain degree i

was just thinking it's like branding like yeah like every aspect of how your brand looks online i mean and speaks to the again focused on the customer do that well with the understanding of what google's thinking about and and what the understanding of what the algorithm can key in on in terms of customer experience like that's it it goes back to as long as you're providing a good experience to the google user google will shine favorably uh favorably upon you well the last thing i can really say is like i haven't seen um well the reason a lot of agencies don't uh really predominantly do seo it's because it's hard and there's a lot of different things that have to happen uh it's a moving target um and there's so many different uh specialties that you have to have to provide good seo right and you have to pull them all together uh to to click off those 200 250 different kind of signals that google's looking at um and that's difficult and that's why it's really important to understand what that framework looks like understand what seo is how it impacts it and how valuable it is i think um people undervalue um uh what seo is and it is starting to become all-inclusive and it's like your overall customer experience online and your branding and how people interact with your brand you know it's not just like traditional media um where you put out a message people can interact right and it adds a whole new level of complexity um and it's all encompassing and and again that's why our viewpoint and from what we've seen in the data over the years is seo should be first and then everything else right so that's absolutely all right so number four again 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo local seo means increased engagement traffic and conversions so local seo is a fundamental part of small and medium-sized businesses success local seo aims at optimizing your digital properties for specific vicinity so people

can find you quickly and easily putting them one step closer to the transaction focus on specific towns cities regions and even states i know you're working on some some really local campaigns for kind of larger brands uh how's that speak to you well um you know driving foot traffic is different than driving internet traffic um and there and you're trying to drive people um maybe in store or you're offering a local service in a particular service area um and with seo um being broad now you focus on local and then regional words uh and then the national words and you have to have that strong local presence but from all digital marketing right uh to seo there's specific strategies and you have to treat every location like its own um as own campaign and try to kind of draw a circle around it of uh where you're trying to impact and you're going to get other additional benefits but like we have 48 for one client 48 different campaigns right for each location right we did a small test uh worked successfully we're rolling it out to all 48 locations same thing goes if you have five locations same thing goes if you have one location um and you're targeting different things and it's all about the intent um you want people to search for you locally you want people to be able to get a map easy to find you and for you to show up in the three pack and though and a lot of people don't know this the three pack is actually a different search engine than universal search they kind of well than regular google search and they wrap it together it has kind of similar uh target points but it's its whole separate uh search engine just like being is a different search engine just like youtube uh is a different search engine and so uh you have different strategies to achieve that um and and we have a special service just for local to to get uh local

businesses to rank and that has a lot to do with uh what is on your site and on page and locations uh through the gmb through uh what you can do on different social media platforms um you know and engagement's big right like if people are talking about you people are going to your site people are sharing about you um and and the last thing i'd say is you know facebook and google don't didn't typically like each other right and i think that they've kind of fell in love and come to some kind of arrangement um where you know instagram um you know facebook they're starting to index that stuff and incorporate that uh into their search algorithm in addition to other platforms um and and like people think about like twitter right and and and why why do those signals matter well twitter's like a small um pressure lease basically right you're like this is what you're saying to the public as a business so google's looking at that that's potentially important right um and so a lot of these platforms are changing and again the definition of seo and what it's encompassing is broadening and so you gotta kind of understand that but i mean you know if you're an e-commerce company you're a local company like whatever your goals are there's different things that you want to be doing to generate uh a different impact and showing up differently in the search results um and and all those things should be considered on the strategy side and that's really what i've seen mostly with a lot of campaigns recently is i'm not saying that the seo is bad well yeah some of it is really bad um but uh what i'm really saying is there's no strategy really right maybe they're ranking for their name or they're ranking for words that they don't want like they're there's not this consistent strategy that's pulled through so whatever it is they're doing it's just you know kind of the mouse with and melt trying

to turn it into cheese you know there's no there's no real um concerted effort to achieve a specific goal and just like any of your paid campaigns your seo campaign should have a goal it shouldn't just be every month we're doing seo i'm spending money and also certain campaigns and certain keywords um i looked at a proposal from another company um uh the other day and and i was just like look like you know i think the company has it right like of what they're trying to do i think it's a good fit but but the reality is i'm not sure you need to be throwing that money away on seo because i don't think you're doing enough to make an impact and so you you might want to spend that money elsewhere um because it doesn't make sense for what you're trying to do so again seo is an investment and it's got to make sense and it's got to go after the right keywords and focus on the right area and i know that was a lot before so i'll stop so that's number four local seo means increased engagement traffic and conversions uh absolutely uh let's move on number five seo impacts the buying cycle um and i'll be honest i didn't really find much to to to to circle up and and add that sam had put here but but i i would say that the seo goes to the credibility right so if you've got that credibility that we've discussed already then yeah more likely to buy also it gets them in the funnel in the first place i mean if they can find you in organic and then they can click through to you like that starts the buying process so without that kind of seo placement then you are not going to have any impact on the buyer cycle it's interesting i had a couple conversations about where seo fits in the cycle is it top of the funnel is it middle of the funnel is it bottom

of the funnel guess what it's everywhere right um it's again the campaign of how you're using it and the terms that you want to show up for and again that's why it's all encompassing right and and it supports and is a multiplier lift to anything else that you're doing and so it's just so incredibly important um you know also you know you got to understand what's the buyer persona and you got to understand what the customer journey is and then where you're trying to get in the conversation and show up um but there's a lot of data out there and early on you know like when people are buying a tv or a car or tennis shoes you'd see how the search is right remember change from top level to comparison to specific brands to pricing right and it's all about that customer flow and where they're at in the buying cycle and again i love seo because it it achieves all those things they're just different campaigns so yeah yeah i i mean from the perspective of covering the whole funnel you think you know a question that ends at obviously the bottom of the funnel which is you know buy nike shoes now near me or something like that like what are the best running shoes like those are the opposite ends of the funnel or why why would i use running shoes instead of loafers whatever it is like that top of funnel people doing research down to uh where do i buy nike running shoes near me is is is that's the whole gamut i mean think of like carbine too like similar kind of thought process yeah and there's a lot of different products that are that way and and i think it's really important to understand what the buying cycle is based on the data that you know right now and then what are you overlaying from a marketing strategy uh to cover that right and then you know what is your brand story that that you know you

want to communicate and so um again strategy super important right because every single keyword's like almost like a different campaign um so it's almost like strategies the seo of an seo campaign there's a general idea there we're not sure how well that made sense all right number six seo best practices are always being updated now i don't know that this fits into 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo i think this goes into 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs ongoing seo right so the point is is hey maybe you did a bang up job you did some seo in the beginning maybe your niche wasn't that competitive in the beginning so you actually didn't even have to do that much seo which is still true depending on your niche um and then now if you're not monitoring it if you're not keeping track of it if you're not watching your rank and making sure that you're generating the sales and or leads that you used to before then you're eventually you're just going to wake up and go hey i used to have a whole lot of leads coming in the door and now i don't have that many leads coming in door i probably should go look at my seo and figure it out and i would submit that's not a good strategy so yeah they're very reactive i mean here's the thing right anybody that starts a business they start on whatever principles they know and they typically operate under those principles and grow that business and that works for a lot of businesses that certainly doesn't work for seo because things are being updated strategies are changing i'll give you one example uh meta keywords okay meta keywords um you know are in every site like hey put in your meta keywords i can show you a lot of third-party resources that say hey google considers it spam actually maybe google doesn't consider it all and bean considers it spam okay and so um i'm seeing a lot of sites

like okay that was a strategy back in the day marketers overused it tried to manipulate the search engines google saying hey that's not a ranking factor anymore also yeah the the machine learning uh uh algorithm is getting smarter um you know that's not something we look at like there's a a lot of tactics in seo and like people still think a lot of those tactics um work now the algorithm hasn't completely changed but it's evolved and it's gotten smarter um and and it's it's moving away from a lot of those things and so um you know staying up to date staying current um on top of things with seo is going to impact you and one of the big things that i've seen is if you're staying ahead of the curve on some of this stuff uh a lot of websites miss it right for a long time and then they're reactive when they've dipped down so far you know i mean you know you you're ranked first for a keyword and you drop down to sixth and then you're like holy cow what happened to all my revenue and then you trace it back and you know it's your seo right and then it's like well uh other people have made changes or stayed on top of things and i haven't and i'm telling you what this new update this new kind of uh you know web experience web vitals update and speed um i think we're going to see that i think we're going to see it big time and so that's really what um we've been preparing for this month and what we've been focusing on with our clients is uh to make sure that that happens uh properly um and you know we're hiring more people we just hired uh another software engineer um to do um some things like basically uh taking uh php and then you know it security issues it's slow rewriting as javascript i mean there there's a lot of things uh seo is becoming a lot

more technical so yeah um and and more branding like it's just harder right so it's it's very as you said earlier the reason a lot of organizations don't do seo uh or don't do it well is because it's so complex to put together and it's about getting um the individual pieces which is hard enough now you got to get the individual pieces to work together all right if you're in a niche market and it's not that competitive probably any one of those individual pieces could add a lot of value and move the needle for you but if you're in a competitive industry you really got to have all of those valves fire firing at the right time to drive that engine um you know to the top i mean it's not just buying an ad and and letting you know letting it run or you know like having the billboard up there's a lot more that goes into it also there's a lot more data you can see and make decisions um and data science that goes into it i mean i would argue strongly chris that seo is much much much harder than the traditional mediums yes and and more valuable well of course yeah people people haven't in their head like made that switch like yeah you know i think it's same thing with crypto uh understand that the world financial system is changing all right we were going to get through this podcast without mentioning crypto no all right um and so again seo best practices are always being updated what's one really good way to make sure you're up to date uh listen to this podcast hire us um you know that's two great ways yeah maybe you don't even need a consulting session with us yeah maybe you don't even need to to uh stay up to date you just hire us and then we stay up to date that's our job uh or if you're trying to stay up to date uh then just continue to check out this

podcast so that is point number six again out of the 12 reasons why your business absolutely needs seo uh from sam hollingsworth patiff to you sam we're going to cut off right here and we'll be making a part two that you'll be checking out later uh are there any announcements that you want to make um no i just really want to play this outro to see uh oh wait hold on before you don't get too excited one of the points that i remembered that i missed was there's in terms of local seo right and this is actually goes to credibility there should be a strong emphasis on user reviews on google um on google and just in general i would argue that video reviews can be some of the most powerful things you can do matt would you happen to know a good way to get a secure a video review i mean i do i'm just checking with you pro testimony.com pro tip pro testimonial.com pro tip for you go to pro testimony.com we developed this uh in the middle of covid when we couldn't send our videography crew to to do sit down uh very cost effective uh we believe well all our clients should be using it um we're we're working on generating a bunch for ourselves super valuable tool easy like i think the point is easy like i think most people think oh video testimonial daunting like even if i don't have to send a crew and i've got to ask somebody to do it and take care of it themselves this will never happen the reality is it's so easy you send a link an email link they click it i know this because my other business we use it and we're driving video reviews you they click a link either on their phone or on their computer and it doesn't even you don't have to download anything it just like puts you in the position where you're where your client is recording that video real time right away

it gets submitted to you there's tools in the background to make it even better like it's it's just a phenomenal product pro testimony.com check it out i think there's a 14 day free trial uh we we believe in it uh you know uh we want to get it out there i think it will help um i'm gonna play the outro now wait before you do oh we are the number one seo podcast in the known universe that's thank you to you guys we really appreciate you guys uh until the next podcast my name is chris barris my name is matt bertram bye bye for now