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

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. Results. Tell everybody the background story of E-Web Results, because EWR Digital, it's like Kentucky Fried Chicken is 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 he was, we had, you know, 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 get, 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. And I, you know, I think, 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 like, I can, that, that, that baby thing didn't hold me back. Right. So I thought about, I was quiet. I thought about it for maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute. And I was like, I think you're right. Like 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. Uh, those are, uh, the ones where we can deliver an immense amount of value and, and have a lot of the less of the headaches and that, that can come from much, much.

You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're talking to our audience. All right. Our audience of, well, other agencies, they get it. They get it. And, and, and, and the reality is I can't, I can't mention some of the brands that have already reached out to me, but. You know, that I'm talking to, um, but they're sweet. Yeah. They're real sweet, but, uh, but, but, but yeah, I mean, the, the, the deal is for all the agency owners out there. So, you know, small business owners, like, you know, put your fingers in your ears for a minute. Um, you know, if we can help you, we will help you. Right. And, and, and it'll make sense for us and for you. And if not, we have a good referral system to referral system. I'm getting a lot of people calling in and, and I just, you know, like it's not the right fit for, for, for our agency at this time. But there's, there's people out there that, that I know and trust that are, 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 kind of some fundamentals of. You know, uh, enterprise selling like digital services, um, you know, how to, uh, structure an agency, how to scale an agency quickly. Um, you know, and then SEO, Facebook, all that, but getting people kind of certified in kind of the way that I want to see things done. Cause like, I can tell you when I interview people like other SEOs, um, I can tell really quickly, um, if they understand it on the level they need to understand it on. And if their philosophy matches, uh, similar to mine, and there's definitely people that don't, don't, uh, I think at 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, I, and I, I think that, you know, um, there's a place for everything. And I think understanding and like trying to break the algorithm for really important and it helps you, um, you know, understand what's going on. But yeah, I, I think that, you know, there will be people that I will not name that, uh, are, you know, some, some, some really, um, I guess, senior I've interviewed like 10 year plus, uh, SEO guys. And some of them, uh, multiple of them really, uh, are not the right fit for the way, uh, we believe, um, SEO should be done. Uh, and so, so I think that that's really important. And so like when we're, when I'm referring out business, because a lot of people call and, and, uh, Chris, don't do that. Um, like, I, I want to make sure who I'm referring to is going to take good care of bottom line. So, well, that's an easy way to get you, 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. Um, uh, yeah, uh, so ultimately in really where I was getting is like to, to, to tighten up the brand and have it be more appealing to, uh, kind of, uh, fortune 500 companies. You've taken the brand and now said, Hey, let's do EWR digital. Let's, let's keep the heritage. The E is from eWebStyle. The web results is from eWebResults. And now, uh, the brand is continuing to move forward. Well, you know, so I, you know, okay. So there's a little bit of design component to it, but, but the real, the, the main emphasis behind that was the, you know, the E dash 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, you know, I, you know, and, and it's just like. You know,

iPhone drops the eye. Like I know how other people have heard me maybe say that, but like, do you expect iPhone to ever drop the eye? But, but, but if they did, you know, and then people are still operating under eye, whatever, you know, it, it, it, it data, it dates the company and we're, we're very cutting edge. Um, and so, uh, with all our strategies and, and the things that we're providing for clients and our reporting and analytics and all that. And, you know, just as you changed it from, uh, E web style to E web results, because that's what you're focused on really, I, I felt like we needed to kind of update the brand. Right. And so we did a, you know, a full brand refresh, which is, um, 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, should write out like all the different considerations. Cause there's things that I haven't even thought about that. Um, you know, we've got to change. So. Very cool. All right. So, um, I was going to read a review, but we kind of covered that, uh, that, that for a little while. No, no, I'm going to skip it. I'm going to save it. We've got, we'll, we'll, we'll have it for the next podcast. You'll have to tune into podcast number 490 to read that, uh, to listen. I thought we just broke 400. Are we breaking? And what did you say? 93 for how we're just, we're this, 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 and at least 250 hours of content. Um, probably more podcasts are like 30 plus minutes. So, uh, 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. Yeah. All right.

So let's jump into this article. So this article is, uh, we got it from HubSpot. It's how to create an SEO strategy for 2020. Um, and, and we're really going to really kind of calling this an enterprise SEO techniques. Uh, we covered the first five in the last podcast. So if you missed that, go back to 488, um, and listen to the podcast. I'll just summarize real quickly. Uh, 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, um, your topic clusters. Can you make your screen really big while you're talking, please? You want me to do that? Is 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. Uh, 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, uh, those subtopics are going to go. Um, and then blog every week to develop page authority. And that's really talking about the consistency of blogging regularly, which sound, which is in fact redundant, um, that, that, that has an impact on Google and what Google thinks of you. So now we're going to get into the next one. And that next one is number five. Uh, no, we just covered that one. Next one is six, uh, create a link building plan. So, so Matt, um, what, what, what would you say? What is link building? What do you say is the camera work in this podcast is just, we're going to get some feedback on how good it is. Um, I love link building, link building, link building. And like, I love on page SEO. I love SEO. It's so fun. Okay. Keep going. No, don't do that. Um, but, uh, link building is, uh, the, the, the process in

which, like, I don't know, I'm not reading it, but the process in which you, um, 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, uh, based on different techniques. But really it's about you, you believe they believe you're adding value in some way, and they want to link to you as an authority in whatever matter, uh, that regards to. And so, uh, 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 back linko 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? Uh, he says, uh, the, 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, uh, 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, um, whatever it's called knowledge graph. So, yeah. Um, oh, by the way, uh, 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, uh, we're doing well. We'll hope he's doing well. We haven't heard from him. So, uh, great to hear from him in a while. I think he's in the Miami area, um, uh, dedicate some

time to brainstorm all the different ways you can attract inbound links. Again, that's, 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, uh, post on Twitter, Facebook, um, they actually have interest Google plus and LinkedIn. Uh, Google plus. No, not in 2020, sir. Something from Google currents today on my G suite. I'm like, what is Google currents? And then it was like having me connect with people. I was like, is that their new G plus? Yeah, I haven't, I, I, I, 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, uh, right now. Um, so I'm just reading some like stuff that I want to learn or get better at, you know? So, yeah, actually, uh, whatever books you have, I need to send it, send it, send me the best one. Well, you know, you know, I'm going to get on this guy's podcast. Cause he, he, he, uh, I don't know how we started talking, but he told me about this book and I don't know who this guy is or whatever, but I don't know how he started talking, but he, he has a podcast that he named and it's called profit first. And he based it on this book called profit first that my mom got me. That's a, that's a great book. I I'd like, I've read that book a long time ago. That's not about copy though. That's about, uh, how to run a business. I know, but you were just talking about great books and I'm looking at all my books and that book's on the top, the writing ad copy, whatever, whatever ad copy books you have. I have a lot of ad copy books. Are there, are there any audio books? I

know that may sound odd that I want to read a book like, come on, Chris, Dan Kennedy's like the greatest, like, I believe like one of the greatest copywriters all the time. He charges $2,000 per hour. Wow. Like, and he takes projects like, I don't know. I mean, I, I was reading one of his books and you know, he's evolved, but it was like a hundred thousand dollar minimum. Uh, if he takes in, then he takes a percentage of whatever he builds out because it's like an asset and it's all direct mail stuff. Um, but no, like, like Dan Kennedy's a great, I mean, I've read probably 10 of his books. So, um, but there's a bunch of other people out there. Um, you know, what is it? The guy from Ogilvy and Mather, David, David Ogilvy, like his old school book. Like, yeah, you've get, you've shared with me lots of examples from, from that particular book. Yeah. I, I mean, I like, I think a lot of this stuff still works, like a lot of the stuff going all the way back, like humans are still humans. So yeah, same, same kind of motivations and drivers. I, one that, that you recommended, uh, a long time ago, I liked very much was influence and then pre-fluence 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. So this is, I thought this is like, this is getting very technical. Um, it's, yeah, he, he mentions that he or she mentioned that. Um, so 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. And if you're not thinking about how big the image is and what impact it could possibly have on your downloads on, on, on the page load speed, page load. Yeah. Speed. Then you're, then you're doing yourself a

disservice, right? Chris question. Why, why, when I take a picture on my iPhone, which I know you have a Android or whatever, but why are the images so freaking large? And then like, why? Like, so like, you know, I, I usually put the little square if I'm going to post on social media, but these images are freaking huge. Like, why are they like, why would it not like, I mean, there should be like 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, uh, potential, but for my comment is, uh, thank you for the confidence in believing that I might have the answer to that question. Uh, number two, uh, 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, like, Joe Rogan's coming to Texas. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And he says, look, if I, Matt, if I dropped you off in the woods with, with a, um, with a flint and, uh, 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. Um, 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, um, like in the megabyte territory or even just one megabyte, it's a good idea to use an image compression tool. Uh, there's sites like tiny P and G, uh, there's Google's squoosh squoosh. Um, and has been, but it has been known to shrink files, uh, sizes to microscopic levels. Uh, 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. Uh,

cause maybe you think it compressed and it compressed really well. And some of these plugins don't always do it. Right. Yeah. So, so be very careful. All right. Number eight, stay current on SEO news and practice, uh, practices. Um, the search engine space is ever evolving, staying on top of current trends and best practices is a difficult task. And unless you're, you know, listening to our podcast, actually a couple of resources. Well, that's like, that's one of the goals, right? Is to stay current. Yes. Yeah. I mean, we've shared regularly, even if this wasn't, this podcast wasn't responsible for some of our business that sometimes at some points in the business, 30% of our business, we would still do the podcast because, uh, it does a number of things. And one of the very important things is it keeps us and everybody on our team. Cause everyone listens to the podcast up to date on the latest SEO trends. And, and that's not easy. This is a training tool. It's a training tool. Educational. Yep. And, you know, we'd like to give back, uh, to the community. Um, some of the tools he mentions, uh, where you could stay up to date, SEO Moz, SEO book, search engine round table, 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. Um, and, uh, and then of course our podcast. So you guys are taking care of, uh, his number eight just by listening to our podcast. So, um, good job. Number nine, measure and track your content success. Um, 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 don't just do it, measure it. Um, 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 time. That's 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. Um, if, 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, um, like don't slow down, but go into it knowing that you're going to measure it and knowing that, uh, and having some ideas about what you're going to measure, uh, and, and, 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, you, you brought up something from my youth. Okay. So we'll see, we'll see, we'll see how you do. Um, 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, um, I'm guessing it's like the, the, the start sequence of some video game. Um, yes, I believe it was Contra or something like that. Contra. Wow. I don't, I don't even know that one. I just, you know, up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right. Um, I don't really remember, but it was something like that. It's probably some sort of cheat code on some quarters. And now, you know, I was, so in the book that we have coming out,

like, I'm not going to go into it, but, uh, I, I, I wrote a whole chapter, which like I'm not using, uh, but I was talking about Mario brothers and you know why, uh, in Mario brothers, they had those warp, uh, I don't know, did you play Mario brothers, Chris? Yeah. Yeah. Warp mushrooms or something. So basically in Mario brothers, there's these, um, these, these warp pipes to get to like different levels. So you can beat the game and in a few minutes, do you know why? Another pop quiz. Do you know why the warp pipes were actually developed as like, like, you know, whatever Easter egg in the, uh, 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. We'll see if this podcast isn't over. Uh, I'm, I feel like, uh, I'm done with the, uh, I'm going to retire from the pop quiz, uh, arena. I've, I've been successful on two. You got a career. It's right. It's a hundred percent success level, uh, 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, uh, we would both agree with that wholeheartedly, uh, track index pages, leads, ROI, inbound links, keywords, your actual rankings on SERPs, uh, can, this can help you to recognize what I love is when we dig into the data for, for ourselves or for our customer. And we noticed some unique data 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, uh, that's when you're like, yeah,

we should look at data more often than, you know, I, I, I love data. Yeah. I love information. Data gives me warm fuzzies. It's yeah. I need my beer now. And so, so as we're wrapping this up, um, again, this is how to create an SEO strategy for 2020, uh, written by HubSpot. Um, he talks about the SEO process, build a process to continue optimizing it 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 sometime each month to revisit your old blog posts, uh, and, and give them new and up-to-date information. Uh, 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, uh, not only wasn't engaging, but didn't tell the customer what they were, what was going to happen to them when they click through. Um, go ahead and take that time. Uh, to look out for changing keywords and new search intent. So sometimes customers terminology for your products or your services change, uh, you know, it might be the, what did we call it? The money, um, I, I think the inbound marketing is freaking amazing. Like they developed that whole term. Yep. Yep. Um, so, so be aware that the terms can change. Who knows? Maybe Shiko will be what everybody uses here soon. Share, like, and follow. Uh, number three, add more editorial value to your old content. Maybe, you know, of an audio file, um, 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, um, no new content and updates aimed at SEO and a monthly content plan. Uh, so month to over month to keep up your SEO strategy. It can be helpful to create and refine a monthly content strategy. Um, my, my killer attack dog is,

uh, is, uh, Sounded like it. I'm, I'm, I'm scared through the. And that wraps up how to create an SEO strategy for 2020. Um, do you have any kind of final words for this SEO strategy? Um, okay. Well, historically optimize your content. I was listening. Um, look out for changing keywords and new intent, add more editorial value to old content. I talked about that last approach. Oh, that's so cute. Um, and then, uh, new content updates, aim 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, 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. Um, are, are, are SEO savvy, right. And, and they know that like, just like the government puts huge burdens on people for making sure, um, policies and, uh, things are up to date. Google's not necessarily trying to do that. Um, you know, so, uh, 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, um, and, and you're at least giving Google enough information to organize the data, um, they're going to take care of you. Um, so again, I think like, like this, this article it's for 2020, maybe he repurposed the article cause there was a G plus in there. Who knows? Right. But, but again, if this was 2018 and this was 2020, like, again, when you're

talking about fundamentals, has it changed that much? Really? Right. 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. Um, I think you're very right. Like write the content and the experience and create the experience for the Google user. Um, but you know, just keep in mind, uh, the, 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. The 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. Um, and what we're going to ask you to do, uh, is please tell three people about this podcast. Those are people who maybe own a business or, uh, uh, are, are, are CMOs, chief marketing officers who are looking for, uh, the right information to help them manage their processes, their internet marketing and SEO processes. We have that information available for you. Uh, 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. Uh, or it might be better. It's really like 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. Yeah. Internet marketing tool. It's well, yeah. It's Google, YouTube, Facebook. There you go. I think that covers it all. Uh, maybe LinkedIn's here and there, but yeah. Um, so call EWR digital or actually just go to our website, EWR digital.com and, uh, and fill out a form. We'll get in contact with you and we'll, you know, we've got a team of amazing people who will be able to help you out. Uh, if you have a referral, just do the same thing. Fill out a form. Uh, we'll get in contact

with you. Uh, we do have a referral program. We've got referral programs that, uh, put money in the hands of charities, your charity of our choice, like whatever it is that's a, that excites you. Uh, we're happy to take care of customers for you. Um, we were filmed in Houston and you can get a transcript video and audio over the podcast, uh, 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. Uh, until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burgess. And I'm Matt Bertram. Bye-bye for now. Bye-bye.