Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted SEO podcast host. I'm here with Jesse Ringer and he's going to tell us why we should listen to him as he explores his background in history.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hey, Jeremy, thanks for having me.
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Yeah, pleasure.
So what's your past? What part of SEO have you been involved in and what have you been seeing recently?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: So I started in SEO, like right out of school.
I always aspired to be working in an ad agency doing copywriting, and Shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, it was pretty tough to land consistent work back then. And so I kind of fell into SEO through some friends needing some support with their businesses.
And so I got a lot of experience early on just looking at every facet of the website. For a long time I had a focus on content and the keyword strategy and performance side of things like that. But as things have evolved, I've definitely taken on more of a technical role. Being able to communicate why a website is doing what it's doing to someone who barely knows how to upload a blog post was something that I had to learn pretty quickly. And so as I've grown as an SEO professional, as I've expanded to having a team and running my own agency, I've taken on much more of a technical performance side of things. And so today it's hard to be kind of optimistic given all the things that are going on with Google right now. I love SEO. I think that it is essential for every business that has a website.
But at the same time, it's really hard to demonstrate the value that search engines provide, given especially for businesses that generate their revenue through their website. Google isn't sending the traffic the way they used to. And that is cause for concern, especially for small and medium sized businesses that really rely on that, that traffic source and revenue stream.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: I think that's true. There was an implied deal, a devil's bargain, if you will, of, hey, you can access all of our content and in exchange for the fruit of our labor, you'll send us eyeballs, you'll send us customers. And you know, it started with the hotel niche where they started doing booking directly through Google, and then it was the travel niche and then they started being able to book flights directly. So there's been a creeping element here and there. It just seems with AI overviews, it took it a step beyond because first we objected to the rich snippets, right? The featured snippets came in and directly stole your text and displayed it on the main page like, okay, well, you're kind of upending our deal. And the table continues to get flipped over and there isn't any part of it that is more beneficial now for small businesses than it was in the past. I can't think of a single SEO facet that really has moved in the favor of publishers or moved in the favor of small business owners. It really has just gotten harder.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: It really has.
It doesn't even feel like the businesses that have created all this content, all of the information that is in Google's search results now have any recognition to their work, to their ideas that have been created. And you can, to me, it feels like Google is really just like shareholder value. That's it. We need to drive ad spend, we need to increase our revenue, and that's it, you know, forget everyone else that's kind of, you know, left in the wake and that it feels, you know, it definitely shifts because in the conversations I have with our clients, like, they're like, well, what's the point of writing blog content now? You know, what's the point of creating new information to put on our website if Google is just going to take it? Or conversely, like all the AI content out there, like, our content won't even rank. So what is the value proposition at that point? And so I think that that's certainly like one thing that sits in my mind and lives rec free right now.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: I definitely have that squatter problem in my mind as well. As I look at that.
I do have to balance it because I have a lot of these conversations and it's funny because exactly zero SEOs that I talk to have zero concerns. All of them have some level of existential angst, some awareness of our impending doom operation Impending doom is here.
And it just feels like it's just in different aspects because some are genuinely worried about the inversion point of when LLM tools become truly generative.
But anybody that's actually using Claude on a regular basis, anyone that is using ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, it's very bitter fruit because on the one hand, everything that has been promised that AI can do, it can't, it won't, or it does it so inconsistently that you couldn't possibly trust a business process exclusively to it. I think there are some very, there are some active fringe cases, like my friends over at Caladon. They're doing things with multiple agents that they have to layer. This AI agent checks this, AI agent checks this. So it goes through a working process to kind of come out to some sort of working output. That makes sense. But AI has become ubiquitous and at the same time somehow faded into the background of like only kind of, only kind of useless, but useless so spectacularly everywhere that it just, it doesn't improve.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: And I can't remember the SEO person that like came up with this idea, but like that the traditional bell curve of content, you know, where there's like really bad content, there's, there's the mediocre content and then great exceptional content. You know, that bell curve has really shifted now that LLMs are like becoming so common that they are learning off of even more mediocre and crappy content. That the exceptionalness is like there but the back end of the bell curve has become like bloated and round and you know, it's just going to become, maybe, maybe this will come full circle and human made content will become more desirable again. But, but I think it'll be a while before people realize the mediocrity of the content that is out there before we realize like, oh, humans are better.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I saw that stat.
I think it was 50 or 56% of content on the Internet either comes directly from an LLM or has been processed at least in part through an LLM based AI tool of some sort.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: That's insane.
I get speed of service is something that we care about, productivity is something that we care about a great deal. But man, like it's so short sighted, like what's the, where's the originality? Like you know, we tell our clients and like people want to do business with you and like what makes you unique and special, like as a business, as a brand is part of why people do business with you. And if you take that away by putting in mediocre content that sounds like everyone else just for the sake of a couple of clicks, it's not going to help you in the long run.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So what has been your like concrete response to that? Like how do we, I, I have been seeing more people looking outside of what's been traditionally the boundary points of SEO because up and maybe it's because we haven't had to worry about it, maybe because there was such a rich vein of traffic for us for so long that some of our sensitivity, our capability beyond just writing and including particular keywords or doing keyword research or getting links maybe or, or looking for, you know, there are wins on the technical SEO side, but I, I've had more conversations about like stretching our legs a little bit more. You know, like I've been for example, doing Community cleanups in physical locations. Like I've got one going on in San Diego coming up. I did one in Sarasota, I'm doing one in my hometown. And you know, getting the SEO value out of it, like getting, you get the event aggregators, the event aggregators then show up on local news sites. So there's a rich ecosystem of backlinks and you get physical bodies out to participate in the event. And that's 10 to 20 engaged people who have shared with their social network. So like you can try to calculate backwards and show, okay, there's trying to add SEO value to other efforts or look at other efforts through the lens of, okay, well we're doing X or Y or Z. How can we combine that with an awareness of SEO and make more idea.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: The event idea, like doing these community benefiting ideas. We haven't been so altruistic with some of the stuff like we've done webinars and we do like host events and workshops and we offer that for our clients too to be like, you should do workshops partly because it's a good way to demonstrate. But I like, you know, garbage pickup and things like that. Like doing, providing a community service is a great way to do that and build like brand trust.
I think one way we've always kind of considered and thought about SEO is it feeds into the rest of your marketing strategy, right? Like it feeds into your social content, your newsletters and things like that. I'm a strong advocate for owning your traffic. Owning that kind of that list to an extent, like newsletters has become something that we've also helped to foster because that content lives on far beyond just, you know, just the day to day.
But yeah, like those are types of things that we'll, we'll recommend building out more like more substantial content pieces, like longer white papers and things like that. Things that can live on just beyond like a couple of clicks, especially if they are in, especially in a service based business or something where they need to demonstrate their expertise.
That's where we really want to put them into that environment and help them cultivate something that is more substantial and that they can use across different media.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Well, it's almost like regaining our legs in the PR world. You know, like half of the purpose originally of like doing an impact study or creating a content piece was so that you could have those conversations with those existing publishers, with the newspaper people, with the PR person and have, you know, something in your back pocket to be like, hey, we're doing something. Here's a unique data Point, you know, can you. Are you interested in the more. You know, I think we, we need to dust off those skills. There are so many hungry news writers though. Like there, there used to be help a reporter out. There's a whole ecosystem similar to helper help a reporter out. I think it's called sos. There are some other substit there that have replaced that basic email list. I think there's like 10 competitors now. So any SEO that isn't looking at, how can we, instead of just making blog content, how can we either doing something impactful or combine insights from our workshops to publish as a white paper or as a research piece or, you know, take it a step further so you can multiply that effort by somebody else's reach? You know, that's really how I've been looking at SEO on the outreach side of things is, you know, not, not only just link building, you know, thinking about podcasting, thinking about getting on webinars. It's as much about accessing other people's existing audience and then trying to really capture and leverage email as like, I think I'm guilty of this. And you can tell me if you think of this as well, that we have atrophied on the SEO side of just thinking of just conversions and not realizing, hey, if we build an audience and have not just a pop up of join our newsletter, but actually have something valuable like a reason that that becomes a captive audience that we don't have to go back to the well again because there's so much disposable traffic that had existed in SEO. I think we had just become kind.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Of wasteful to echo that point too. Like, we as SEOs too often got to coast on rankings as a metric and click as a metric. And now we kind of have to be like, okay, what is the revenue impact? What is the kind of lead impact? Like how many qualified sales qualified leads are we generating? You know, and it's not just like, hey, we got 10,000 people to your website. And like, well, they didn't do anything, so now what? And so those things are, yeah, we've had to really shift our conversations away from, you need a blog strategy so you can rank for these keywords. You know, we've scaled content for, for a number of brands over the years. And like, at the end of the day, like, you take away the blog piece and just look at their conversions. You're like, well, their conversions didn't really change with the content.
And so, and that was certainly like, specifically, if we're looking at kind of like mental health services and things like that where it's more like informational. And those blog posts tend to serve kind of a self help kind of audience. But yeah, it, yeah, it wasn't converting, it wasn't generating the leads and traffic the way we ever expected it to. And we've kind of really had to reframe our conversation with the client being like, yes, blog content is important, but we need it to, you know, help generate more opportunities from making money.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: That makes sense. What's your take? You know, I've had conversations with like Morty Oberstein, Wix and others, others about brand And I think SEOs have started to become in the last year, you know, far more brand conscious. I'm guilty of it. I know that at some point, I think it was 2016, my starting process for SEO audits would sound something like, oh, okay, here's our Google search console traffic. We're going to filter out all of those useless brand clicks so that we can focus and see what we need to grow in SEO.
So I feel like that that's been flipped on its head. Certainly Google's algorithm is a beast. Now that reward is using brand as a cudgel to kind of knock back some of the obvious AI and programmatic SEO out there. So in a world where brand is more valued, how has that influenced that conversation of driving content and strategy that builds revenue but also builds brands?
[00:18:04] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's ultimately it. Right? Like SEO for a long time was just kind of keywords and that and now it's like it's all of it. It's the brand entity, it's that brand experience. You know, people are searching on a variety of things, not just Google, you know, and that's a real thing that we have to not battle against. But consider it, you know, that how do, how people might be searching for you, how they may be interacting with your brand will impact your search performance because it's certainly all becoming intertwined.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: That makes sense. If you're like Lamar Law Office, what does that actually mean in terms of like what your strategy is to tie into their brand? Like, it sounds good, it's a good sound blurb. Hey, SEOs need to start caring about brand. But like you're a lawyer, like for you're an SEO for a lawyer.
What are some tactical or strategic things that you're looking at now that wasn't on the table or wasn't in our brains in 2012?
[00:19:18] Speaker B: That's a great question because I think lawyers and law firms have A different challenge. You know, we, insofar as that generally speaking, you should. People only really need a lawyer maybe once or twice in their life. Obviously that's a simplification.
Let's, let's talk.
One example, we used to work with an employment law firm. So in theory, like one person being unfairly dismissed or you know, dealing with racism or sexism, whatever, in the workplace might only need that lawyer one time.
So how do you create a brand kind of around that and it becomes like word of mouth, it becomes part of that, you know, that review system, you know, having lots of good cases but really demonstrating at its core like the human side of it all. I think for a law firm, you know, being a, building a brand around trust and reputation is always been the case. You know, we look at, we watch a lot of, I don't know if you watch daytime tv, all those like injury lawyers and all that stuff that comes out right, like that, that's, that's part of that brand. Like they, they fight for you and they ensure that you get a payout. And you know, I think that same idea holds true in the search space of like, okay, how do these people, these lawyers work for you? How do they treat you?
[00:20:58] Speaker A: So it's about case studies, about bringing interviews, conversations with and not while also demonstrating thorough expertise. So that does mean that you probably still have a lot of work of creating a lot of content even though it's getting hoovered up and even though LLMs might try to brave those waters and be the experts, I think there is still, I think that's still a space where you're still wanting to project expertise. You're still wanting to have the answers to your potential clients questions before they ask them to be able to say in that conversation you, you know, we have a resource for, you know, if you've been fired from your kindergarten teacher's job because there is a volume of, you know, niche and specific research that is still going on. You know, it's not all evaporated. And there's also different areas of trust. I don't think we're going to see anybody who is going to confidently say, oh yeah, I GPT my lawsuit and I'm good.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: You know, the number of, I've heard more than two times where a lawyer used, well, one of them, they use chat GPT to like create their opening remarks. And chat GPT pulled cases from Law and Order, the TV series, like that kind of stuff, like that's legit, like that's concerning. And the fact that that exists and we don't. If you're not a lawyer, even if you are a lawyer, you probably wouldn't know that these cases weren't real.
Imagine if you never studied law and you're like, oh yeah, this, you know, person versus person. Like, oh my God, that's totally my case. And it turns out to be from Law and Order or csi. Like that would be devastating. So I think.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: Yeah, or just, or just totally made up from whole cloth. Like there was a study of GPT where they asked for a series of articles from specific authors from a newspaper in, in London and they got them, but they never existed, they'd never been written. Even though the, the prompt was crafted to say, you know, I don't want any fake results. Do not hallucinate this. I need actual articles. It still persisted in, in giving it. It's getting that oh, I'm sorry response from GPT. Oh, you're right, I would have a lot of money if I got a nickel every time that GPT said, oh.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: You'Re right, that doesn't exist in a, in a career that has, you know, very specific expertise and ones that require a lot of studying and due diligence. Like, I think that you're, you have an advantage, like you really need to communicate the value that you bring in that sense. Like, how do you do that? And I think that that comes down to, you know, cases being able to speak to what you've accomplished.
Testimonials worked really well for us and really like getting into those nitty gritty of like, you know, what do you do if you've been let go from your software company? What do you do if you know, you've been fired and you have equity, those kinds of things like, and providing examples of it and real life ones. Especially like if we're talking about, you know, depending on the state you're in, here are cases that happened in your state that may refer, reflect your own experience. And I think that's something ChatGPT and other LLMs are not quite there yet.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's about human connection, it's about niche knowledge and subject matter expertise. So kind of, I hate to say it, but E, E A T. I feel like we've experienced enthusiasm.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: But it's not. I think that there was a time where we looked at that through the lens of, oh, okay, that just means that I need to add an author page and add some schema markup and that's expertise, authority, authenticity and trust. That's all I need to do.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: Yeah, but also, you know, on the flip side of that, like Google needs to honor that too, right? Like these search engines still need to honor that. Eat right. And right now it doesn't feel like Google is doing that, you know, and so it's kind of challenging to be like, yes, do these things, be an expert, be authoritative, be trustworthy. But if Google doesn't honor that, where is the value?
[00:26:07] Speaker A: That's a good challenge. And I think it leads to how do post SEO, SEO, because there will be, there are steps to understanding AI search. And you know, Rand Fishkin put out his study yesterday looking at, you know, how much bigger Google search still is than any of the market share of all the AI tools combined. And that's a reality. Like it's kind of a threat in a specific way. But what's a much bigger threat is how Google decides to apply LLM technology to our search results. Like they came out ridiculously last week and said, oh, our test testers said people really liked a search results when literally every consumer study everywhere is showing the whole, you know, the, the lack of the emperor's clothes of like, we don't like it. Like it's not, it's not the same. Like we've had a generation of people growing up with being able to Google things and now we get this fakey half baked AI overview stuff and they're wanting to push AI mode on us. And it's certainly challenging in addition to that too.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: It's a, the results, the blue links haven't been great. They don't like you add in a simple caveat to your question, like, what do I do if I was fired as a kindergarten teacher? And it will bring back results being like, how do I become a kindergarten teacher? Like five steps to know if I would be a good kindergarten teacher. Like, the results haven't been. I can't remember the example I was trying to do, but I was like, oh, I was, I was researching tax things for my business, business tax questions and everything that it returned was about personal taxes. I'm like, that isn't the question. I'm like, what can I forget, man? Yeah, I was deferring some expenses or some aspect of that and it kept returning the equivalent. But in, in personal taxes. I was looking for banking info for my, like opening a new account for my, my company. And they're like here, personal banking right here. Just add right? I'm like, that's not good. And you don't notice it right away until you're in it. I'm like, oh, they. Why do they need my personal information? Even though. And it was just like very.
It's interesting. And that part's tough too, because the results, if people don't trust them and we have to defer to like spending ad dollars just to rank. It gets.
I don't know it. Yeah. Anyway.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: It is hard to be 100% as enthusiastic about the SEO industry as in the golden age, which we didn't know was the golden age before rich snippets came out. We had our own troubles and challenges and thought, oh, this is terrible. But we had no idea just how bad search results could get. So I guess part of it is hardening our hearts and looking for the winds where we can get them, you know, taking the lessons as they come. And you know, it. It does add more value in a certain way of what we do of like, it's more complicated than ever. Google business profiles is harder than ever. Like, people are just getting suspended left and right for no reason now.
Like, it's. Every facetime of SEO has become more difficult, even though, you know, I know there's that up upward chart of like, more companies are investing more now in SEO than ever before. So we have even more competition for a smaller piece of the pie with a more muddled syrup with more questionable results.
So I guess the clarion call just is, you know, to be very British about it. Right. Keep calm and SEO on.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: I agree with that. Like, I still feel tremendously optimistic about our industry, whether that is tied to Google or not. I think that SEO folk think about it's this weird world of marketing, but also technology and brand to an extent. But like the. The confluence of all those things has been never been more exciting, I think, for SEO.
And maybe like, to your point that we'll have to really become much more of like not just marketers, but really demonstrate our expertise on how you like surgically, like get traffic out of Google. How do you actually get those good little bits of people that are exploring and using Google to come to your website and do what they need to do and not to compare us to lawyers or doctors by any stretch. Like, we're not saving lives or keeping people out of jail, but we are certainly going to become that bridge even more so for brands to ensure that they can continue to provide the services and exist as entities in the world.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: I think it's that we have to demonstrate our own expertise, authority and trust in this process. And having that fidelity is hard. As you know, any system that has a lot of money flowing into it has a lot of bad actors. We've always had bad actors in the SEO space.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: We've always had.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: No, never.
[00:32:27] Speaker A: No, no. Absolute no, never.
It is very tempting.
I didn't expect it, but I had a very white hat, a very clean looking site come in and they're like, oh, we got a bunch of links. We did a bunch of link building. And I looked at it and I'm like, oh my God, you have literally bought the worst comment spam links that I have seen in a generation. And it worked like their page that they got 100 comment spam links. And these are totally spammed out. All of these comment spam pages had literally hundreds of other links, but it worked. And I'm like, okay, well thank you for proving that backlinks do still have an impact. Let's maybe clean that up and try to get some non hacked sites to link to your banana hammock page.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's still. Yeah, I've seen it so many times where, yeah, they buy out old domains. These SEO folk buy domains and, you know, will convert it and then put every one of their clients in an article and link to them all very specifically and it's still so effective. Like, SEO folk are very smart people, they're very creative. And like, if you could just put that energy into something, maybe not shady, we would do really well. I wouldn't have to go into every meeting with a prospect and be like, I know you've been burned before, but we're different. And it really sucks, like the number of times we get clients because, oh yeah, my previous SEO person wasn't good because they did this or that. And it's like, I know. And it's, you know, talking them off that ledge of being like, we're not all bad people, but there's enough of us that kind of mess around with people's trust that it hurts everyone.
[00:34:27] Speaker A: It does hurt everyone. And if you're listening, don't do black hat SEO. Or if you do, just do it on your own projects and don't burn clients with bad practices.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Just don't do it.
Appreciate that a lot. But you know, like, it also works for us as like a sales generation tool because like, people get burned and then like, you know, people with good reputations, SEOs with good reputations can come in and save the day.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: That's true. It's the, the sweetie is sweet without the sour. But I still, I recall one unique conversation at Pubcon, like 2012 went to the conference. And afterwards, I sat at the bar next to this guy, and it was like sitting next to the Dark Lord of the Sith, because he was like, no, the Jedi are evil, the Sith are good. Google is the bad guy. We're the good guys fighting the good fight. We're getting traffic from a corrupt system. This is capricious in nature. Google is setting up these arbitrary rules and persecuting people who cross their imaginary boundaries while rewarding huge brands with huge amounts of traffic. And if you did the same thing for that brand on your small site, you would be slapped down in a second and you would never possibly hope to make that. So we're the warriors of truth, justice and the American way, simply pointing out Google's flaws. We're helping the algorithm by finding these exploits, and we're creating a lot of revenue for our clients in the process. But I was sitting there like, wow, thank you, Palpatine, for that unique, different worldview.
That's the flip side of SEO of those who view the algorithm as a game, who view the livelihoods of people who are doing business with them as there's risk involved.
I think there is some truth to that, that there are things that Google has done and there are areas where it's like, that's against Google's guidelines. And it's like, really though Google, the only reason that exists is because you have an algorithmic problem and you can't sort out these trust signals. So should I never, ever get a link from somewhere where it could be perceived as being bought, even though there's no possible way that you could genuinely know whether that link was purchased or not. It was a gray area. But at the same time in that conversation there is when you are unethically representing to your client the amount of risk you're taking on their behalf and their business goes down in flames because you bought spam links from a hacked site, or you hacked a bunch of sites and injected did JavaScript injects, or you did DMC takedowns, or you created a bunch of bought 30 domains a month to stand up a content farm just to send bad links to your competitors and not do the same for your own. There are unethical SEOs, and those are.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: The ones that I oppose. I remember years ago briefly working with a criminal lawyer, and the first part of our work was regaining access to his Google business profile that the previous SEO had taken over and turned into his SEO office and doing like crap like that. And, you know, obviously Google doesn't Care that Google's not there to like help you get your listing back, but man, like just doing petty things like that that are just so short sighted and clearly just man, like, yeah, to everything that you said, I'm like, yeah, hell yeah. Like, screw these people that are like taking small business owners through the cleaners and jeopardizing their business for the sake of a few extra dollars. Like, you know, I appreciate the people that find holes in the algorithm and figure out how it works. You know, those people do incredible work. But if you're doing it at the cost of clients and other human beings that are trying to make a go in this world, like, yeah, screw you. Figure it out. Figure out a better way to do it.
You're not saving the world by wrecking other businesses.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: As we kind of wrap this up, I love we've got pretty far afield.
What's something in SEO that's near and dear to your heart that you got a lot of enthusiasm over? We'll end on a high note of something that you're either a campaign that you did that you're super proud of that had this unique aspect or a different tack or angle that you've been looking at something.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: That's a great question. Thank you. And I appreciate the idea of circling back to ending on something positive because I think at the end of the day, you and I both are enthusiastic and excited about the field we're in, even if it doesn't seem like it's going well. But I think our, you know, our. Yeah, I think I'll speak for myself. Like my feelings around this are because I have a lot of hope and excitement for this industry. Like, I think SEO is fantastic.
And then one thing that has, we've been working with this Portuguese company and E commerce space and you know, okay, go ahead and name drop Luisa Paixao. They sell artisanal products from Portugal around the world.
And you know, being able to really take our technical expertise and help them, you know, make sure that their French content shows up in France, you know, their American content shows up in the States and like their European content is only showing up in Europe. Like that in and of itself was like extremely rewarding. Yes, we helped them make a ton of more money, but like they were having issues where European content was showing up in the American results and like hindering their ability to generate meaningful revenue. And you know, that that stuff really is exciting. Being able to, it's not like, okay, get the keywords right, boom, great. It's like figuring out how do we build a brand in the United States while also continuing to serve France and the rest of Europe? For them, I think was one piece that we were like, that is very exciting and tangible for us, where you see the idea and the strategy that we put into it work out in their favor. And knowing that it was that work and not just an algorithm update or competitor shit in the bed or whatever, like it was something. It was really work that we did. That part does bring me a lot of joy.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Multinational SEO is hard.
It's extra triple layers because you've got language barriers, you've got regional barriers, you've got literal, different versions of the Google search engine and ensuring that your technical SEO is actually set up correctly. Even if they say, oh, we've got so and so from big corporation or big SEO product or whatever is heading the team and you're looking at it like, that's really not going to work.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: They had done because there was limitations in the early going of their stuff. Like they had set up a.com, a.co.uk, a EU and a US and all four of them could and were showing up in the States and they were showing up in different parts of Europe and in Canada as well. And so really being able to kind of be like, okay, here's your domain strategy so that Europe is strong and like that's their bread and butter. And then this is how we make the US market a lot stronger too.
So that stuff gets me very excited. I will talk about that stuff any day of the week.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Was that through href Lang tags or did you end up going with subcloder route?
[00:43:26] Speaker B: He was the client, was rightfully kind of nervous about making any big changes. And it's his baby. He started this with his wife and they've grown it to be a pretty sizable business. So what we're doing at the end of the day, the goal is to get everything back onto the.com and use hreflang and subfolders to differentiate for the time being, because that's going to be a huge amount of work and lift. To get to that point, we migrated the the UK and the EU content because they're both in English to the dot com with an English subfolder. We've left the US as a US for now because that will still rank in the United States. And then ultimately we'll get them using like Geo fencing and everything on the dot com, but for the time being it's two websites rather than four.
And it seems to like the early results show that it's having a pretty positive impact so far.
Yeah.
[00:44:28] Speaker A: Fantastic. Let's end on a pitch for your agency. What's the name of your agency, your specialty and where where you're active on socials if people have questions.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: So method of metric is the agency.
You can find us@methodandmetric all1word.com we're really active on LinkedIn.
Starting to get more active on Blue sky and Instagram.
And you know our core competencies are technical SEO. Content is still a big part of that conversion optimization as well as like analytics and strategy around the reporting process. So yeah all of that is like technical SEO and on page SEO are kind of our two biggest sources of expertise for sure.
[00:45:23] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thanks for the incredible conversation. We went through some dark times but ended up on a positive note. I love talking international SEO so thanks so much for your time and expertise.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: Super fun to conversation.
