Hubspot Enterprise SEO - How to Create an SEO Strategy for 2020 with Chris Burres and Matthew Bertram #493 Part 2

Hi, and welcome to the SEO podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, one of the owners of EWR Digital. And my name is Matt Bertram, I'm the lead digital strategist at EWR Digital, which stands for E-Web Results. Tell everybody the background story of E-Web Results, because EWR Digital, it's like Kentucky Fried Chickens, now like KFC, you know? It's the evolution of a brand. It's what typically happens when a brand has some sustainability. We actually started as E-Web Style, and then I had a business coach in one of my business meetings, he was like, Chris, and at one point, 30% of our business was from his referrals. And he was like, Chris, I think you need to change your name, because I'm having a hard time telling everybody how you're about results, and it's about results, and how you're focused on phone call results, and how you're focused on form submission results, and as you're focused actually on business results, what's their name, E-Web Style. I think this is true of most business owners, that their business, including the name, is their baby, and if you ever suggest that they change their name, I actually have one partner in one business who we really need to change the name of that business, and she could not be more resistant. I think one of my good characteristics is that baby thing didn't hold me back, right? I was quiet, I thought about it for maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute, and I was like, I think you're right. If we're really about results, let's get results, and now you've taken over as CEO. You said, hey, we need to be going after larger corporations, those are the ones where we can deliver an immense amount of value, and have less of the headaches, and that can come from much, much smaller companies. You're talking to our audience, our audience of, well, other agencies, they get it, and the reality is I can't mention some of the brands that have already reached out to

me, but that I'm talking to. But they're sweet. Yeah, they're real sweet. The deal is, for all the agency owners out there, small business owners, put your fingers in your ears for a minute. If we can help you, we will help you, and it'll make sense for us and for you, and if not, we have a good referral system to do it the right way. We have a good referral system. I'm getting a lot of people calling in, and it's not the right fit for our agency at this time, but there's people out there that I know and trust that are potentially a better fit for you, so we like to refer it out. That's why I was actually, in June, before COVID, was going to do a big workshop or mastermind where I was going to teach people some fundamentals of enterprise selling, like digital services, how to structure an agency, how to scale an agency quickly, SEO, Facebook, all that, but getting people certified in the way that I want to see things done. I can tell you, when I interview people, like other SEOs, I can tell really quickly if they understand it on the level they need to understand it on, and if their philosophy matches similar to mine, and there's definitely people that don't. I think in the last podcast, we talked about those people, and those are the ones when there's an algorithm change, like, ah, all my customers have just tanked. Well, yeah, and I think that there's a place for everything, and I think understanding and trying to break the algorithms are really important, and it helps you understand what's going on, but yeah, I think that there will be people that I will not name that are some really, I guess, senior. I've interviewed 10-year-plus SEO guys, and some of them, multiple of them, really are not the right fit for the way we believe SEO should be done, and so I think that that's really important, and so when I'm referring out business, because a

lot of people call and, ah, Chris, don't do that, I want to make sure who I'm referring to is going to take good care of them, bottom line, so. Well, that's an easy way to get you to wrap up. I'll just focus the camera on you, and you're like, and that's all I have to say, because you're so camera-shy. Yeah, so ultimately, and really, what I was getting is like to tighten up the brand and have it be more appealing to kind of Fortune 500 companies, you've taken the brand and now said, hey, let's do EWR Digital, let's keep the heritage, the E is from E-Web Style, the web results is from E-Web Results, and now the brand is continuing to move forward, so I couldn't be happier. Well, okay, so there's a little bit of design component to it, but the main emphasis behind that was the E-Web Style or the E-Web Results was when the internet and the little e in front of everything was like, that's how you knew it was the internet, right? It's like iPhone, I, and it's just like, iPhone drops the I, like I know other people have heard me maybe say that, but like, do you expect iPhone to ever drop the I? But if they did, and then people are still operating under I whatever, it dates the company, and we're very cutting edge, and so with all our strategies and the things that we're providing for clients and our reporting and analytics and all that, and just as you changed it from E-Web Style to E-Web Results, because that's what you're focused on, really, I felt like we needed to kind of update the brand, right? And so we did a full brand refresh, which is we've done it for a few other clients, and now we've done it for ourselves, and it is a lot of work, because you got to, so I mean, I probably should write out like all the different considerations, because there's things that I haven't even thought about that,

you know, we've got to change, so. Very cool. All right, so I was going to read a review, but we kind of covered that for a little while. No, no, I'm going to skip it. I'm going to save it. We've got, we'll have it for the next podcast. You'll have to tune into podcast number 490 to read that, to listen. I thought we just broke 400. Are we breaking, what did you say, 93? This podcast is 489. Oh, okay, so we're going to break 500. Yes. We didn't have a freaking watch party party for that. That's 200, at least 250 hours of content, probably more. Our podcasts are like 30 plus minutes, so. I think we should put them all on a thumb drive. Yeah, yeah, I think we can do that. Like in a car or something, you know. All right, so let's jump into this article. So this article is, we got it from HubSpot. It's how to create an SEO strategy for 2020, and we're really going to, really kind of calling this an enterprise SEO techniques. We covered the first five in the last podcast, so if you missed that, go back to 488 and listen to the podcast. I'll just summarize real quickly. Make a list of topics. Those are going to go into your pillar content. Make a list of long-tail keywords based on those topics. So those are going to be your topic clusters. Can you make your screen really big while you're talking, please? You want me to do that? Is that going to make you feel comfortable? Yeah. The only problem is I sometimes look down and read, so I'll try and be more diligent about not doing that. Number three, build pages for each topic. Number four, set up a blog. So if you don't have a blog, you need to have a blog, and the blog is where those subtopics are going to go. And then blog every week to develop page authority, and that's really talking about the consistency of blogging regularly, which

is in fact redundant, that that has an impact on what Google thinks of you. So now we're going to get into the next one, and that next one is number five. No, we just covered that one. Next one is number six. Create a link building plan. So, Matt, what would you say? What is link building? What do you say is entailed in link building? The camera work in this podcast is just, we're going to get some feedback on how good it is. I love link building. Link building, like I love on-page SEO. I love SEO. It's so fun. Okay. No, don't do that. But link building is the process in which, like I don't know, I'm not reading it, but the process in which you are developing a relationship with another website or webmaster, and they are giving you a link back to your site, or I would call it a vote, based on different techniques, but really it's about you believe, they believe you're adding value in some way, and they want to link to you as an authority in whatever matter that regards to. And so, link building is, okay, so let's see how I did. Link building is the process of building one-way hyperlinks or backlinks from a website, the goal of improving search engine visibility. Common link building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken backlink building, and public relations. And that's what Backlinko said. So, he was a little more succinct. I think if I wrote it out, I could be a little more succinct, but I like that definition too. What is HubSpot's definition, Chris? He says, our first five steps were dedicated to on-page. Link building is the primary objective of off-page SEO and is a huge factor. Link building is the process of attracting inbound links, also called backlinks, to your website from elsewhere on the web. I think that's like the shortest one. I like that, that Backlinko got into a lot of some of the details. Yeah, yeah. Well, that was in

the, whatever it's called, Knowledge Graph, so. Yeah. Oh, by the way, Patrick Lopez is actually watching us right now. You can actually see on the screen. I'm going to give him like an elbow bump because, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. No high five. He's like, hey, guys, hope you guys are well and safe. We replied and just let him know we're doing well. We'll hope he's doing well. We haven't heard from him, so great to hear from him in a while. I think he's in the Miami area. Dedicate some time to brainstorm all the different ways you can attract inbound links. Again, that's where we talk all the time, like have a strategy and put some schedule in place. Another great way to attract inbound links is to use your blog to post articles related to current events or news. Also, of course, you can post just like once you get your blogs up, post on Twitter, Facebook. They actually introduced Google Plus and LinkedIn. He used Google Plus? No, not in 2020, sir. Google Currents today on my G Suite. I'm like, what is Google Currents? Then it was like having me connect with people. I was like, is that their new G Plus? Really? I've been reading a bunch of ad copy books recently, Chris, so I haven't been keeping up with the news. I'm news overloaded right now. I'm just reading some stuff that I want to learn or get better at. Yeah, actually, whatever books you have, send me the best one. Well, I'm going to get on this guy's podcast because I don't know how he started talking, but he told me about this book. I don't know who this guy is or whatever, but I don't know how he started talking. He has a podcast that he named, and it's called Profit First. He based it on this book called Profit First that my mom got me. That's a great book. I've read that book a long time ago. That's not about copy, though. That's about how to

run a business. I know, but you were just talking about great books. I'm looking at all my books, and that book's on the top. The writing ad copy, whatever ad copy books you have. I have a lot of ad copy books. Are there any audio books? I know that may sound odd that I want to read a book about copywriting. Come on, Chris. Dan Kennedy's, I believe, one of the greatest copywriters of all time. He charges $2,000 per hour, and he takes projects. I don't know. I was reading one of his books, and he's involved, but it was like a $100,000 minimum. If he takes it, then he takes a percentage of whatever he builds out because it's like an asset, and it's all direct mail stuff. Dan Kennedy's a great—I mean, I've read probably 10 of his books. Very cool. But there's a bunch of other people out there. What is it? The guy from Ogilvy & Mather, David Ogilvy, his old school book. You've shared with me lots of examples from that particular book. I mean, I think a lot of this stuff still works, a lot of the stuff going all the way back. Humans are still humans. Yeah, same kind of motivations and drivers. One that you recommended a long time ago, I liked very much, was Influence and then Prefluence, the one that followed Influence, which is just phenomenal books. All right, so that was number six, create a link building plan. Number seven is compress all media before putting it on your website. This is getting very technical. Smush it. Yeah, he mentioned that. He or she mentioned that. Visual assets help you retain visitors, but it's easy to forget, oh, I'm adding this value to the website, so I'm just plugging this image in here. If you're not thinking about how big the image is and what impact it could possibly have on on the page load speed, then you're doing yourself a disservice, right? Chris, question. Why, when I take a picture on my iPhone, which I

know you have an Android or whatever, but why are the images so freaking large? I usually put the little square if I'm going to post on social media, but these images are freaking huge. There should be a selection, like, hey, I'm going to post on social media, or maybe there is, and I don't know what it is, and I'm not using my iPhone to its fullest potential. Thank you for the confidence in believing that I might have the answer to that question. Number two, I just listened to Joe Rogan, and he has a comedy routine about how we don't know anything. There's like, whatever, 300 smart people on the planet. Joe Rogan's coming to Texas! Yeah, that's true, yeah. And he says, look, Matt, if I dropped you off in the woods with a flint and just a saw, how long would it take before I got an email from you? We don't know how this stuff works. It's all magic. And because we don't know how it works, and you can get what you don't know how to work up on a page, there are tools that you can use. And he says, if your images are anywhere, like in the megabyte territory, or even just one megabyte, it's a good idea to use an image compression tool. There's sites like TinyPNG. There's Google Squoosh. But it has been known to shrink files sizes to microscopic levels. Ultimately, keeping the files to the kilobytes will sufficiently protect your website's page speed. One point he makes, no matter what software you use, make sure you double check the actual size of the file afterwards, because maybe you think it compressed, and it compressed really well. Some of these plugins don't always do it right. Yeah. So be very careful. All right. Number eight, stay current on SEO news and practices. The search engine space is ever evolving. Staying on top of current trends and best practices is a difficult task, unless you're listening to our podcast, actually. A couple resources. Well, that's one of the

goals, right? Is to stay current. Yes. Yeah. I mean, we've shared regularly, even if this podcast wasn't responsible for some of our business, sometimes at some points in the business, 30% of our business, we would still do the podcast, because it does a number of things. And one of the very important things is it keeps us and everybody on our team, because everyone listens to the podcast, up to date on the latest SEO trends. And that's not easy. It's a training tool. It's a training tool. Educational. Yeah. And we like to give back to the community. Yeah. Some of the tools he mentions where you could stay up to date, SEO Moz, SEO book, search engine roundtable, search engine land, search engine journal. He specifically didn't mention. That's interesting. Diggity marketing. I never heard of about that. And then he says, this blog, right? And then of course, our podcast. So you guys are taking care of his number eight, just by listening to our podcast. So good job. Number nine, measure and track your content success. I always like this. And I've learned this from a couple of different places. People are aware of the concept, test and measure, right? In reality. And I believe this is true. It should be measure and test. Meaning before you even start throwing stuff out there, before you even start some process, you should know how you're going to measure it and how you're going to quantify if it was successful or not. So let me just do it, measure it. Now that's in a little bit of contradiction to another kind of fundamental premise. I believe we're all aware of ready, aim, fire, and we have too much fine time. Right. Yeah. And we can spend too much time aiming and never get to the firing. So there's a kind of reversal of that concept, which is ready, fire, aim, right? So go ahead and get it out there and start doing stuff with it. If it's going to slow you down to have the exact

plan of what you're going to do in terms of measuring at first, like don't slow down, but go into it, knowing that you're going to measure it and knowing that and having some ideas about what you're going to measure and ultimately define what's going to be a successful campaign for you. All right, Chris, I got a pop quiz for you. Okay. You brought up something from my youth. Okay. We'll see. We'll see how you do. You were talking about test and measure and like, you know, you got to, whatever you're doing, measure, test, test, measure, measure, test. Like you're iterating multiple times, right? Like keep optimizing it like over and over and over again. So for whatever reason, I started thinking about, what is it? Up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, A, B, select, start. What is that from? Left, right, left, right. Oh, is that, I'm guessing it's like the start sequence of some video game. Yes. I believe it was Contra or something like that. Contra. Wow. I don't even know that one. I just, you know, up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right. I don't really remember, but it was something like that. It's probably some sort of cheat code on some games that actually cost quarters. So in the book that we have coming out, like, I'm not going to go into it, but I wrote a whole chapter, which like I'm not using, but I was talking about Mario Brothers and you know why in Mario Brothers they had those warp, I don't know, did you play Mario Brothers, Chris? Yeah. Yeah. Were there warp mushrooms or something? Basically in Mario Brothers, there's these warp pipes to get to like different levels. So you can beat the game in a few minutes. Do you know why? Another pop quiz. Do you know why the warp pipes were actually developed as like, you know, whatever Easter egg in the program? Well, I'm a programmer. So I can imagine it's like when the game took three hours

to finish, they could use those warp things and fast forward and get to the next section to debug it. Boom. You got it. Look at that. Whoa. I'm, I'm really good at pop quizzes. Bring me something else. This podcast isn't over. I feel like I'm done with the, I'm going to retire from the pop quiz arena. I've been successful on two. It's right. It's a hundred percent success level rate. I'm just going to retire victorious at this point. So measure and track your success over things you want to look at overall organic traffic, how your pages are ranking under each long tail keyword, your pages are targeting. SEM rush is a great tool. I think we would both agree with that wholeheartedly. Track index pages, leads, ROI, inbound links, keywords, your actual rankings on SERPs can, this can help you to recognize what I love is when we dig into the data for ourselves or for a customer. And we notice some unique data trend trend that we weren't expecting. And out of it is born a great marketing strategy that generates a lot of value for the customer. That's that's when you're like, yeah, we should look at data more often than, you know, I, I love data. Yeah. I love information. It gives me warm fuzzies. It's yeah. I need my beer now. So as we're wrapping this up again, this is how to create an SEO strategy for 2020 written by HubSpot. He talks about the SEO process, build a process to continue optimizing to fit new intent and keywords. And there's like four points here, just to wrap this all up, historically optimize your content and devote some time each month to revisit your old blog posts and give them new and up to date information. This can also be the time maybe as you're looking at that blog post, you realize, oh, I didn't do all my alt tags, or maybe I met a description wasn't as powerful as it should be, or not only wasn't engaging, but didn't tell

the customer what they was going to happen to them when they click through. Go ahead and take that time to look out for changing keywords and new search intent. So sometimes customers terminology for your products or your services change. You know, it might be that what did we call it the money? I think the inbound marketing is freaking amazing. Right? They develop that whole term. Yep. Yep. So So be aware that the terms can change, who knows, maybe psycho will be what everybody uses here soon share, like and follow. Number three, add more editorial value to your old content. Maybe you know of an audio file, maybe the post is out of date, and you just need to tweak it, just have a plan for for all of that. And then for no new content and updates aimed at SEO and a monthly content plan. So month to over month to keep up your SEO strategy, it can be helpful to create and refine a monthly content strategy. My my killer attack dog is I'm scared through the and that wraps up how to create an SEO strategy for 2020. Do you have any kind of final words for this SEO strategy? Um, okay. Historically optimize your content. I was listening. Look out for changing keywords and new intent. Add more editorial value to old content. I talked about that last project. Oh, that's so cute. And then new content updates aimed at SEO monthly content plan. Like look, like, I think it's I think it's all about the fundamentals. Okay, like going back to the fundamentals, doing the things that are right. You know, it once if you do the fundamentals, you're like 80 90% of the way there. And then and most people are not doing the fundamentals. So you do that you're going to be ahead of them. And then if you're in a competitive industry, then you can get exotic and you can get into some of the advanced strategies. But if you stick with the fundamentals, Google's not thinking that

all small businesses, right? Are are are SEO savvy, right? And they know that, like, just like the government puts huge burdens on people for making sure policies and things are up to date, Google's not necessarily trying to do that. Um, you know, so, again, but if you understand generally, like, what, what the Google guidelines are, or the content guidelines are, and like, I mean, it is good to read those things. But I think Google knows that not everybody's going to read it. But if you're focused on the user experience, and and you're at least giving Google enough information to organize the data, they're going to take care of you. So again, I think, like, like this, this article, it's for 2020. Maybe he repurposed the article because there was a g plus in there. Who knows? Right. But, but again, this was 2018. And this was 2020. Like, again, when you're talking about fundamentals, has it changed that much? Really? Yeah, the fundamentals? No, right. And especially if you boil it down to the ultimate fundamental, which is if you're providing a good experience to the Google user, then Google is going to look favorably upon you. I think you're very right, like write the content and the experience and create the experience for the Google user. But you know, just keep in mind the the other user, like keep in mind that the algorithm is watching. And so you can make decisions that that give better results. The algorithm is watching algorithm. Sounds very terrifying. Yeah, I know. All right. Well, listen, this has been podcast number 489. You guys have made us the most popular podcast. And what we're gonna ask you to do is please tell three people about this podcast. Those are people who maybe own a business or are CMOs, chief marketing officers, who are looking for the right information to help them manage their processes, their internet marketing and SEO processes. We have that information available for you. If you're looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest

marketing tool on the planet, the internet, call EWR digital for increased revenue in your business. Or it might be better just really like Google. Honestly, Chris, Google. Honestly, Chris, it's really like Google and YouTube. Like, sorry, correct. I'm just trying to be more accurate in 2020. Yeah, yeah, internet marketing tool. It's well, yeah. It's Google, YouTube, Facebook. There you go. I think that covers it all. Maybe like this here and there. Yeah. So call EWR digital or actually just go to our website, EWR digital.com and fill out a form. We'll get in contact with you and we've got a team of amazing people who will be able to help you out. If you have a referral, just do the same thing. Fill out a form. We'll get in contact with you. We do have a referral program. We've got referral programs that put money in the hands of charities, your charity of your choice, like whatever it is that excites you. We're happy to take care of customers for you. We were filmed in Houston and you can get a transcript video and audio of the podcast by going to bestseopodcast.com. You guys have made us the most popular SEO podcast and one of the most popular internet marketing podcasts in the known universe. We're going to go with that. Until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burgess. My name is Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now.