Internet Marketing Starts with your Domain Name, A Great Interview Part 2 of 4 - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 29

Episode34 min2009-10-27

Choosing a descriptive domain name, targeting local keywords over national ones, and keeping credit card balances under 39% of the limit are the core growth lessons from this episode.

Cover art for Internet Marketing Starts with your Domain Name, A Great Interview Part 2 of 4 - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 29
Key takeaways
the sale starts at the search result

About this episode

Learn why should you hire an SEO Expert? Learn why Internet Marketing starts with your domain name. Joe Orsak shares with us what are ideal colors for your website. In part 2 of a 4 part series we get some great information from Joe Orsak. Joe is a marketing expert and owner of ImproveMyCreditUSA.com. He gives us great advice on posturing your business, from a marketing perspective, to satisfy what your customer…

Questions this episode answers

Why should a small business target local keywords instead of broad national ones for SEO?

Ranking for a broad term like credit repair draws millions of competing results, making it nearly impossible for a small budget. Targeting a city-specific phrase like credit repair Houston narrows the competition to a manageable level and produces quantifiable results much more quickly, according to the episode.

How does credit card usage percentage affect your FICO credit score?

The FICO model works in increments of 20 percent. Carrying a balance above 39 percent of your credit limit puts you in a worse scoring bracket and can cost 30 to 50 points. Staying at 19 percent or below is the ideal zone, and you should never exceed 39 percent going into a reporting date.

What is the optoutprescreen.com tip for improving credit scores?

Visiting optoutprescreen.com removes you from pre-approved credit card offer lists, similar to a no-call list for telemarketers. Doing so can add an average of 5 to 15 points to your credit scores because creditors view fewer open credit offers as a lower risk indicator.

Why is a descriptive domain name important for online marketing?

A domain name that clearly states what the business does eliminates the need to explain the service. The episode uses ImproveMyCreditUSA.com as an example, noting that people never ask what the company does after hearing the name, which also helps customers find the site through relevant search queries.

In their words

Nobody knew what the heck we did. Right, right. You know, because we market our product, our service, typically to the mortgage and real estate professionals, we wanted to convey to them that we were developing buyers.

Joe Orsak

if you type credit repair in Google, you're going to get millions of hits. It's just nuts. Right. So I couldn't compete with that. But if you type credit repair Houston, then I can actually work on that.

Joe Orsak
Terms defined in this episode
Meta description
The text tag in a webpage's source code that Google typically displays in search results, serving as the first sales pitch to a potential visitor before they click.
FICO scoring increments
The FICO model measures credit card usage in bands of 20 percent, so crossing from 39 percent to 40 percent usage triggers the first major score penalty.
Local keyword targeting
Focusing SEO efforts on city or region-specific search phrases, such as credit repair Houston, to compete in a narrower, more winnable search landscape before pursuing national terms.
Optoutprescreen.com
A website where U.S. consumers can remove themselves from pre-approved credit card mailing lists, which can raise credit scores by an average of 5 to 15 points.
Read the full transcript (6,229 words · 31 min read)

Hi, and welcome to the Unknown Secrets of SEO Podcast. Yes, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us for another fun-filled edition of the podcast. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, sales manager of eWebStyle. And this is Podcast 29. We are continuing from Podcast 28 our interview with Joe Orsak. Yay! The crowd goes wild. Welcome back, Mr. First-Time Guest. And he has joined us on the continuation of our You Like Spanking Me podcast. Yes! You like to spank it. Not spank it. I'm not even going to finish. Cut. Cut. You know, you're just lucky. The first guest, the spanking podcast, you've got to love that. For those of you, we go over what we did last podcast. The last podcast was the first half of the interview with Joe. Some really good information. We've got really kind of the background of Joe, his history, his current company. And now we're just going to tear his website up from an SEO perspective. Yes. Are you ready, Joe? Cool. He's already whimpering. Cool, I think. We'll be gentle with the way we tear up your website. All right. Our news information from last time was, you know, this is Are You Like Spanking Me? We're going to kind of cut that short. Go back and listen to the last podcast. We're going to get right into the meat of the interview. We're on the spanking. So, last time, Joe, we ended on this very important note. You were saying how important it is that people use eWebStyle's services. Could you just finish that thought? Yeah. Let me reiterate the importance of knowing what you do. You know, like I said, it worked. You know, I'm just giving you a hard time. He was talking about, you know, use experts. You know, if you're going to court, you're going to use a lawyer. If you're going to, you know, a tax attorney, we said acorn. I mean, again, it just keeps happening. Accounting. Any website, we are experts at what

we do. So, Joe was talking about being a really talented marketer and not really understanding the online marketing game. And because there are experts out there that are reasonably priced, there's really no reason for him to spend and or waste time learning the nuances of search engine optimization. I think that's a very valid point. When I first went to your website, I noticed some things kind of right off the bat. I noticed that I felt, wow, when, and it was you who made the website, right? That is correct. When you made the website, you took SEO into consideration in some cases. You know, some really popped out for me. So, I wanted to ask you kind of the first, as we start looking at your website from an SEO perspective, I wanted to ask you, what things did you take into consideration? And, you know, what decisions did they lead you towards, et cetera? First, give the website so the listeners can go take a look while we're doing it. Yeah, please do. ImproveMyCreditUSA.com I definitely took the name of the company into consideration in our marketing. Obviously, the old thing, what's in a name? Right. In fact, did the name of your company kind of come from, you did like domain searches to make sure that all of that? Oh, yeah. We definitely went down that road. We started off, and this was, you know, I think another thing about being in business is be willing to adapt. Right. We started off as another company, and it's our incorporated name, Buyer Development Services, and which if you, you know, on the bottom of our page, it says, you know, that's our incorporated name, Doing Business Ask. Right. ImproveMyCreditUSA. Because we started off as Buyer Development Services, and that was our domain. Nobody knew what the heck we did. Right, right. You know, because we market our product, our service, typically to the mortgage and real estate professionals, we wanted to convey to them that we were developing buyers. Right, right. Right? You send us

people with bad credit. We'll help develop them into a buyer, someone who can actually… A viable buyer. Yeah, exactly. And we ended up having to explain that enough to the people, and then when they finally got it, like, oh, so you guys are credit repair. You know, once you explain it, I'm like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we, we, it didn't take us long at all before we adapted. Right. We actually just tried to do that for three months. Right. And said, you know what, we're fighting a battle here that we don't need to fight. Let's make it easier on ourselves. We adapted, we ended up, you know, doing a lot of time searching for some good names, and Improved My Credit USA popped up on the radar, became something that we could grab. Right. We also have Improved My Credit Houston. Right, okay. And that's something we own. And, you know, anyway, long story short, it definitely falls in line with Keep It Simple Stupid. Right. And my… And availability. Availability. Availability. Availability. Exactly. You know, and I don't know, maybe there's a lot of people who don't really realize that until they get to the point, like, oh, here's my company name and I'm all set up. And then they're like, oh, wait, I should have done some domain searches because that's not available or whatever. So, if you're thinking of starting a business, go ahead and, you know, start looking for your domain name even before you name your business because it's really important to try and have some sort of tie-in. And I think you make a great point. Like, when somebody can read your shirt, I mean, obviously if they're on the other side of the room, they can't. But when they're close enough to read their shirt, they don't walk up to you and say, so what does your Improve My Credit Report USA company do? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's very little question. People know, you know, who are you with? Improve

My Credit USA. I don't ever get asked, what do you do? Yeah. After that, you know. So, that was definitely part of the consideration in people searching for us online or searching for the subject online. Okay. So, that's good information. And then as you started moving into the website and you're putting together the website, I know software is a big part of what you do and you're partnered with a software developer that really kind of tweaks and controls and helps you on making sure you've got a 100% constant communication promise to customers. And that's one side of things. How about the kind of the look and feel, the upfront, what people see? So, we're looking at your front page right now. You know, what kind of things went into, we talked a little bit about, you know, and I'd like you to expand on it a little bit about the colors and then some of the components here. Like, what were your goals and any sort of SEO that you took into account on the homepage? Yeah. From a marketing standpoint, again, faces, and I don't know if you guys get into this or not, but, of course, faces is what the eye gravitates to. Yep. And so, if you look at the faces on my page, two of them, there's three different people. Two of them are above our company name and the third, just from a photographer standpoint, it draws you towards the name of our company. Right. So, that was in my mind, that at least where the eyes gravitate to, our company name is relatively there. It's in between them. Right there. So, you are drawn to our name, which then, again, tells you what we do. Right. Improve My Credit USA. I wanted to quickly be able to communicate on our website what we do. Right. And our name speaks to solving the pain. Right. I have bad credit, and I need it improved. Right. And you know what? Not just bad credit, but we improve credit. Right. Even good

credit. Exactly. I sign up people on a regular basis that are in their upper 600s, not terrible credit by any means, just not great credit. Right. And they want great credit in order to refinance, you know, getting one more point on the mortgage these days, you know, translates to 100, 200 bucks, depending on the cost of your home. So, a month. Right. So, it pays for my service, you know, very quickly. Right. So, that was definitely a consideration, using people and using that to draw them to what I wanted to see. Um, also, um, the, we talked about, a little bit about the last podcast, everything on my page, everything in my company, from, I mean, when we talk to our employees, everything in my company is about our message, how we speak to solving someone's pain. Right. Uh, our target audience, and not just, you know, our, our, um, referral partners. Right. I mean, universally, I have 100%, I have yet to have a referral partner that would say, oh, no, my last credit repair company communicated with me, great. Right. It was just their credit repair they were lousy at. Right. I have never heard that. Right, right. Right. Because, pretty much, the skills of credit repair are the same. Right. There's definitely, I mean, we're good at what we do. Right. I mean, honestly, we really are. But there are. And it's not rocket science. Exactly. You're good at what you do. Just like us, SEO is not rocket science. We're good at what we do. There's a lot of people out there that do that. Right. But, what we are unique at, our communication ability, doesn't exist. Right. We blow away the competition. And when I show people how we do it, when we get a new referral partner and we take them into our software as just a demonstration. Right. You know, when you send somebody over to me as a referral, this is what happens. Wow. When they sign up as a customer, this is what happens. When they

send us a fax, you know, their new credit report, this is what happens. Right. And universally, they're blown away. That's right. I haven't had somebody that wasn't blown away. So, back to how that's relevant to our conversation, everything on our website is focused on that. Right. You know, the little flash thing we have going at the top. Right. Immediately speaks about our communication promise. That we're going to keep you more informed on your progress towards excellent credit than any other company. Right. Because that's the most common pain we felt out there. Like, they may be doing a good job of improving somebody's credit and they have no idea. Exactly. I don't know what's going on. You know, I have no idea whether they're doing a great job or not. Right. Right. Or are they doing anything? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I don't know what they're doing. And, you know, in our business, it's kind of a watch, wait, and see thing. From the moment somebody signs up with us, within 24 hours, we have their disputes out. We have their, you know, the first round of attack. Right. You know, sent out. Well, by law, the credit bureaus and creditors have 30 days to respond. And so there's this, you know, month time plus mail time. Hurry up and wait. Exactly. You know, so there's like a 45-day period with mail time where you don't know. Right. So if there's no communication going on, it's like, well, hey, I just paid these guys X number of dollars and I haven't even heard anything for a month and a half. Right. Right. You know, so we wanted to make sure that was addressed. And so everything on our website speaks to that, you know. So this is kind of a question that pops into my head. For that 30-day, what kind of contact do you have with the customer? Do you send them emails? Absolutely. We have an automated email system that starts providing them tips, things that they need to do, you know, just basically credit

tips. Right. Here's some things that you can do on your own to start improving your credit. They get an email about opting out of. Wait a minute. You said credit tips. I'm thinking this is an opportunity for us to get some free information out of you. Yeah. Since you brought it up, are there a couple things? There are. One, three, some things that we can mention as credit tips. I'll definitely toss out. Of course, this will be for our, I don't know if this is exclusively for our U.S. audience. I don't know how much it applies overseas because we do have. Yeah, it is totally different overseas. Okay. So at least for our U.S. audience, here's a couple tips. And they're probably good things in general for people in general. Yeah, I can give, you know, I can give some information that is just good general credit information. Right. The whole credit system works differently overseas. But anyway, on our website, on the homepage, there is a opt-out button on the left-hand side. You'll see optoutprescreen.com. Right. Click on that. That's going to take you to a website where you can remove yourself from the pre-approved credit card offers. Right. So just kind of like the no-call list for telemarketers, this is the no-call list for the pre-approved credit card offers. Okay. Excellent. So you're going green, you'll save a tree, you'll stop getting all that junk mail for credit card offers, and on average, you'll pick up between 5 to 15 points on your credit scores. That's awesome. So that's a freebie. And I guess you pick up those 5 points because the credit agencies realize that it's a risk to be receiving those because somebody could lift them out of your mail. Very, exactly. Very astute there. What, what... Well, thank you. My work is done. What happens is that creditors look at you as a greater risk. If you have good credit and everybody's sending you credit card offers, you're more enticed to take out credit. Right. Which means you incur more

debt, which means, yeah, you can flip, which does absolutely happen, especially for people who had bad credit. We get them to the point where they have good credit, and they're like, woo-hoo, big screen time! I'm going to gallery furniture, I'm going to fill the whole house. Exactly. Is that one of your tips? So that's one of the credit tips. After you get good credit, do not ever say, woo-hoo, big screen time! Okay, so... Tip number one. Yeah, opting out of the pre-screen, opt-out pre-screen, so take yourself on the credit card list. That's one tip that's easy. You don't have to talk to anybody. Just fill out the information, and bam, you're off. They have the option to take you from, you know, opt-out for a short amount of time, a five-year period, or permanently. Opt-out permanently. Permanently, okay. Because, at the end of the day, you only need two credit cards, and you need two majors. Stay away from department store stuff. I don't care if they're offering 10% off, all that stuff. Forget that. Because you get two good majors, and for that matter, there's even majors out there that will offer you, you know, rewards for usage. Yep. But, you know, so that's a biggie. Stay away from the department store stuff. Another credit tip is, and this is a little-known one, and there's a lot of misinformation out there on this one. All right, there's a secret. Yeah, exactly. Get your pen and paper ready. Mine's ready. This is very valuable, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. The way the FICO scoring model works on credit usage is that they take increments of 20%. Okay. All right? So, 0% to 19%, 20% to 39%, 40% to 69%, et cetera. Right. Right? On the amount of credit usage you have. So, in other words, if you have a credit card that has a $1,000 limit. Right. Right? Right? It's very common people will say, don't ever use over 50%. Right. Right? That's very common. That's the most common piece of advice

I hear. Okay. And generally, excuse me, generally, that's okay advice. Right. But it can really honestly hurt you in that if you are carrying a 42% balance going into your end-of-the-month statement, you actually will hurt your score. And here's why. Increments of 20%, 0% to 19%, 20% to 39%. Once you break that 39% group and you actually hit 40%, that's where you take the first big ding on your credit. When you hit 40% of a credit card. Yes. So, in other words, you never want to carry a balance higher than 39% of your total credit limit. So, if you have a $1,000 card, do not carry over $390 going into the next month. Is that different than, so if I have a $1,000 card and I go into the month at, let's say, $750 and I pay it off, that's not a concern? Here's the thing. Or I also want to keep that under $40? You absolutely want to keep it under $40 at the reporting date. Okay. Call the credit card company. Find out when they report. They'll at least give you a general time period. Right. It's usually between the 5th and the 12th, that type of thing. That sounds like a lot of work. I'm just going to go ahead and keep it under $40. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And some people need to use their cards for different purposes, business, that type of thing. So, for those individuals, call the credit card company. Find out what their reporting date is. You never want to go into a reporting period with more than a 40% balance. Ideally, not more than 19%. Okay. Right. So, here's a quick thing you can do to improve your credit. If you have credit cards with balances out there, right? We're like, well, hey, I paid off these cards. Now, I'm working on paying off this one. Well, that's great, but go ahead and transfer. I don't even care if you're paying more interest because it'll cost you more in the long run. If you have a card,

I have three cards, let's say. One of them, I have 80% usage on. Right. I've got $1,000 limit. I've got $800 on it. The other two are paid off. Right. You may think you're doing great, but that one card is causing you a massive hit on your scores. Wow. Okay. It can be 30, 40, 50 points just for that one thing. Wow. Right. So, go ahead and transfer off of that $800. Go ahead and transfer, you know, $250 on one card and $250 off to the other card. So, now you have the same amount of debt, but you've got it spread out over three cards, all of which now you're under 30% usage. Probably. Boom. Scores up. Probably about 50 points. Exactly. And you can accomplish that immediately. Yeah. You can do that now, and as soon as your credit scores update at the bureaus, which will be 30 days or less, your scores can go up 30, 40, 50 points. Wow. So, that's another easy thing to do, big. And we look for that when we do an analysis on somebody's credit. That is, those are great tips. I've never heard of that. Yeah. And it's, like I said, that's not a very commonly known thing. And if you do hear it from so-called experts, they'll tell you to stay under 50%. Okay. So, that's okay information, but it's not 100% accurate. So, really, they should either say stay under 60, or stay under 40. Yeah, exactly. 50 is a stupid number. Exactly. 50 is a stupid number. At 50, you might as well go, you can go up to 69. Yeah. So. Interesting. Ideally, 19% or below. That's A zone. That's where you want to be, but never go over 39%. 39%. Okay, excellent. That's great advice. Thanks for that. Some freebies. All right. No charge. We like that. Feel free to mail donations to Joe Orsak. With my name on the check. L-A-N-S-A-N-S-O-N. I missed out on the last one. I'm not missing this one. Grasshopper, you're allowed to quickly. All right.

So, let's get back to, you know, some of the considerations. You talked about color. I think that's something worth talking about on your website. And this is from, like, a general marketing perspective. Yes. And, you know, I think those who listen to our podcast regularly understand we don't just, you know, hammer home searching for optimization. We say, okay, what are you going to do once you get them to your website? And you have a nice green color. Tell us about the color green. Yeah. From a, just from a color standpoint, different colors communicate different things. And green, in general, communicates health, wellness, well-being, stability, all the things that you think of that fall into that category. Okay. Which is why the example I use, if you go to the store, every piece of food that they're trying to sell you as healthy, you'll always see in a green box. If it's not in a green box, I promise you they're on their way out. Okay. Also, you know, like if you're in food and you're trying to sell food, you'll notice that very commonly reds, oranges, those kind of colors. I guarantee you, in other words, like go pick up a pizza box. They'll all be oranges and reds. They're trying to convey that to you because pizza's not healthy. Right? Oh, okay. So they're just trying to make you hungry. Eat more. You'll never see a pizza box that's green. That's green. Okay. Unless they're trying to, you know, it's a health food pizza or something. Whole foods pizza. Right, whole food pizza, exactly. Probably tastes like trash. It's rubber, right? And I've got to make this comment. This is beautiful. Anybody looking at the website, again, it's improvemycreditusa.com. The people in the top, it's a flash, and we've talked about how to utilize flash. You're doing a great job from SEO because it's really dynamic, it's good, and it's not your entire website, and you don't have a splash page. Those are the two things that we recommend regarding flash. But they're in

green outfits, and my guess is that they weren't green when you started. No, that's correct. But the guy in, there's three people. The guy was wearing a white shirt, one of the ladies was wearing a pink shirt, and one of the ladies was wearing a blue shirt. None of them were wearing green. But I all wanted them in shades of green so that it flowed and fit more dynamically with the website. And you've got, so you've got some good skills there with Photoshop. Yeah, that was pretty nice. Are there any other colors that you have cool stories about other than green? Yeah, you know, honestly, I mean, it just, it's, it depends on the product, you know? And just some, you know, color marketing. If you do some Google on that, you can pick up some quick tips on what colors convey and that type of thing. I definitely think it's valuable information to know. What kind of a feeling you want to give somebody emotionally when they hit, when they hit your site. That's very worthwhile. And green, you know, you were talking about all this health stuff. Let's just cut to the chase. Green is the color of money. I was thinking that. Yeah. Okay. Here's a very subliminal little thing. If you look at our logo. The dollar sign. The dollar sign. Oh, I see it. It went to the U and the A. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was very intentional, obviously. The USA, the USA forms the dollar sign bar. And we actually, when we started off, buyer development services, the BDS, the bar and the D, B and the D, the S went there as well. So, we kept that idea fluid when we transferred names. That's very cool. That's a great idea. No, that's a good job. So, we're tying in here health and wellness to financial stability with the money. So, there was a lot of thought that went into that. So, when we get into looking at your meta tags, and we pulled up a report and

we'll do this. We may have to do another podcast because we were down to about 10 minutes if we can make that happen sometime. Yeah, yeah. Always up for it. But we'll look for, so I pulled up your, you know, just did a, you know, if you right click on the website, and depending on your browser, you go and you'll see view page source. So, I can get into the source code and look at, so you actually have keywords and you actually have a description. You actually have a robot text file. Are those, those are things you put together since you did the website, I'm supposing. Uh, no. No, because, because, because, because, because I, I don't know the field at all, um, and I did have a friend, uh, that, that, uh, did do that stuff. Right. Uh, they kind of threw that in there for me. Okay. Well, so, it's actually good that you have those in there, um, and, you know, you've got your keywords. I didn't know you guys then, so. Whatever that's worth. You should have known that you were, I sound like a woman. And I'm not going to spank you, so don't ask. Sorry. That's a good thing. Um, so, you look at these keywords and you understand, you know, we would make maybe a couple tweaks to them. Uh, you know, we've been talking about this a little bit, kind of, outside of the podcast. The description is typically what will come up in Google when somebody searches for something that you come up for, uh, Google will use your description. And you've got Premier Credit Repair Company in Houston, and this is kind of a classic error of these kinds of tags, because, well, first off, we say that the sale starts at the search result. Mm-hmm. So, as soon as your website comes up there, whether it's in the first position, if you're with us, or the 10th, if you're working on your own, um, the, the description comes up. And that's your first opportunity

to say something that really, really hits home. Um, so, there's two angles you can go. You can say, all I really want in my description is just keywords. To make it more keyword relevant. Or, I actually want to start my sales pitch. So, you know, your sales pitch can be, you know, 100% communication, which probably wouldn't be the best thing at a search result. Right. But would be consistent with your, your marketing message. Um, you may want to do something else, you know, just, you know, credit repair company in Houston. Get, get rid of the Premier, because that, you know, Premier is one of those sales words that people will gloss over. Right. Very true. Um, so that's, you know, that's just one of the things that I noticed inside your description or, and you've got keywords, improve your credit, improve my credit, improve my credit, Houston. And we talked about this, and you were asking, what was it you asked something about Houston versus national versus, what was your concern there? My, and actually, believe it or not, when the, when I had the person do this, I just didn't know the code to do it. Uh, but I had the concept of what I wanted, um, so like the description and all that sort of thing, I told them what I wanted. Yeah, I told them what I wanted, and then keywords, I told them what I wanted. Um, my idea or understanding of, uh, how the keyword thing worked was that I couldn't compete with the marketing budget of the big guys out there in credit repair. Right. You know, um, we are still a young company. We're doing extremely well, uh, and, uh, uh, even from industry standards, we've been told that we're, we're kicking tail and taking names, uh, which is very encouraging. And then, and then communicating it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we are building this to take it nationwide. Right. Uh, there really isn't, you know, I, I, I use the analogy of, uh, CarMax. Right. Uh,

in that, you know, there was a time where you say use cars, you know, and, and, and, and just the whole sleazy used car salesman. Yeah, poor reputation. Exactly, you know, clad suit, you know, and all that stuff, uh, just trying to, to rake you over the coals on the deal came to mind. But then CarMax came along and really put a whole different spin on. Kind of put like a Toys R Us spin on selling used cars. Yeah, you know. Like a good corporate. Yeah, exactly. I can, I can trust this operation as being, you know, stable and, you know, be around and they were uniformed and, you know, all this type of thing. Like, we really want to do the same thing with credit repair. We intend on marketing this nationally in a, in a franchise, uh, branch hybrid. Right. Uh, where we actually have physical stores with the company name and all that type of thing. So if you're interested in franchises, please call me. Hey. We didn't say we could sell it. My number is, uh. I love the plug. Turn the mic off. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut. I'm a, I'm a big believer in franchises. So if that's something that you're interested in, excellent. You know, if anybody out there is interested in, in some sort of credit repair franchisor, yeah, I have to plug it, you know. And, and, uh, to be honest, we're not there yet. Right. Uh, but we are building everything we do. I mean, the software, we, we already have that as our business model. So you've got multiple tiers in the software so that you can be a super. We are massively scalable, uh, you know, and, and, uh, credit repair right now is, is a massive growth industry. Yep. Uh, 600% growth in the last year alone. Wow. So, yeah, it's, it's insane. So we definitely want to, you know, ride that wave. Yep. And, uh, get franchises out there. Um, but, uh, anyway, we're, so bringing that back

to relevant to the SEO thing was we're not able to compete financially against the marketing dollars of a national company. So my idea was, uh, to focus on marketing Houston. Right, right. So that's my. So you can type credit repair in Houston. Yeah, exactly. So if some, if you type credit repair in Google, you're going to get millions of hits. It's just nuts. Right. So I couldn't compete with that. But if you type credit repair Houston, then I can actually work on that. I can market that. It's, it's manageable. It becomes, brings it into a manageable realm. Yeah. And that was my idea anyway. Uh, I don't know if that was a hundred percent accurate, but it's. Actually, actually it is a hundred percent accurate. That's, that's, it's very astute because, you know, when you're looking at marketing budgets and when you're looking at efforts, you know, we, you know, we were just talking in our break that, you know, we can get any keyword on the front page. We're not worried about that. The issue is time. Right. So if you were in this case, maybe you were paying for SEO services, you're a new company, you, you want to see some return on those dollars quickly. Right. You know, it's not something that you were willing to invest in for six months because you need, you need those dollars for other things, you know, improving software, coming up with franchising concepts, all of that. So you really want to turn those dollars around quickly. The right way to do that is it's easier to get on the front page for credit repair Houston than it is for credit repair. That's much easier. Right. So that's something that, you know, a company like ours or, you know, if, if you were to bring it in house, your efforts would yield, you know, quantifiable results much more quickly. So that's actually a very good decision. And whoever advised you did the right thing, you know, our, our concept for your company would be along the

lines of, okay, well, let's start looking at Dallas and San Antonio and Austin. Let's make it a Texas kind of focus, marketing focus. Um, and we may, depending on where your budget is, we may also say, and at the same time, we are going to work on a national campaign. Yeah. Or maybe we just want to say, we want to do Texas and choose another state or choose some NFL, you know, the classic NFL, 33 NFL cities. I think it's 33, something like that. Yeah. You know, go after the major, the cities with enough market to have an NFL team are usually large cities that you want to go after. Um, so, so yeah, that's, that was actually really good advice. Um, and, and we would tend to follow that with anything, any campaign that we would, we would run for you. Um, you've got some interesting calls to action. What we're in, and I think this is probably your marketing experience as opposed to, you know, just web experience in general. What? Wow. We're already at 30 minutes. Wow. That happened fast. It did happen fast. Well, can we save that? What? We'll talk a little bit off air. Maybe we'll get you back here soon. Um, I think we covered some really good information. We actually just started on SEO. So, uh, we'll have to try and do it soon. Uh, if that works for you, maybe, maybe next podcast, we'll, we'll talk about it off air. Um, Joe, we've loved having you. You've given us some great information from the marketing perspective, from an entrepreneur perspective, uh, and also the free, free tips, free credit tips. I wrote that down. 19% standard 40, probably 19. Awesome. Um, opt out, pre-approved credit cards. Opt out, pre-approved credit cards. And your website, plug your website. Improve my credit USA. Franchising soon. Yes. You just want to go ahead and send us the money now. We'll work something out. Yes. You can make that out to Paul. I just want to make sure everybody understands

this. I'm not missing any money this time. All those checks, it was painful, huh? When those checks came to you and they, with my name on it. Yeah. Addressed to me, like, what kind of crap is this? All right, guys. Uh, please tune in for our next podcast. Thank you for listening. The three things that we like to hit. Um, by the way, we do have, uh, what we consider kind of a viral video. It is available on, on Facebook. It's up, yeah. Uh, if you go to our Facebook, which you can get to easily by going to our website, type ewebstyle.com. That's e-webstyle.com. And then put a slash and the word Facebook. Press enter. That will take you to our Facebook page. Find us on Twitter. That's twitter.com slash ewebstyle without the hyphen. Um, and send us emails at podcast at e-webstyle.com. Um, again, Joe, thanks. It was an amazing interview. We're probably going to continue it. That's awesome. I think our listeners are going to be looking forward to that. I know I am. Yeah. Um, I want to thank Melanie again for coming up with the idea. Melanie at lushpad.com was an awesome idea. We had a lot of fun. Appreciate it. And thanks to everybody who listens in every country, everywhere you are. I can't even remember them all now. We are international. I love it, though. Thank you so much. Thanks for all the comments we did. I'm starting to get a lot now, so thanks. I appreciate it. Excellent. Thank you guys, and we'll hear you, listen to you, see you on the next podcast. Bye-bye for now.

This episode answers

Matthew Bertram, host of The Best SEO Podcast
Matthew Bertram
AI keynote speaker · Owner & CEO, EWR Digital · President, ModalPoint

Matthew Bertram is an AI keynote speaker, creator of DIG® (Digital Information Governance), and owner and CEO of EWR Digital. He helps energy and industrial leaders win visibility in AI search (GEO and AEO), is President of ModalPoint and CMO of the Oil & Gas Global Network, hosts The Best SEO Podcast, and has authored eight books including LLM Visibility. More about Matthew Bertram.

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