Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Steven Schneider, who's going to give himself a killer introduction focusing on why we should trust him and what's the most interesting thing he's been working on this week.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Wow, what a great way to jump into it. I've been doing SEO for about 10 years. I got my introduction way back when in college building micro affiliate sites back in kind of the Amazon heydays. My first company, which I started in college, we scaled to about 40 sites and published like 3 to 400 articles month in the affiliate landscape, scaled that to 1.4 million ARR. And that was kind of like my quick and dirty internship into SEO. I guess you can call it that. Nowadays I help B2B and SaaS CMOs kind of leverage the same strategies that I've been employing on my own businesses and sites. And my partners have been kind of leveraging the same thing for their own portfolio of companies. So very entrepreneurial mindset when it comes to. To a bunch of the stuff that we're working on nowadays. And yeah, yeah, a lot of the what's exciting that I'm working on, been working on a system that really kind of focuses on how calculators and digital assets like quizzes can be used for SEO in order to drive more meaningful leads and traffic to businesses as a way to facilitate just better inbound through SEO.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: I think that makes sense. I was working with a brand specialty design build like two weeks ago and they're like, yeah, we got plenty of calculators and tools on our site. And I went to the page and it was like, how much does adding a renovation to your house add to, you know, what's the value? And I tried typing it in and it basically said that I was going to make a million dollars by adding a single room to my building.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Nice. It's a must.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Point it out to them. It's. Yeah, I've been doing it wrong. All I needed to do is add 250 square feet to my house and I could make, you know, 200,000 dol.
So obviously one, one factor of these digital assets is, you know, paying attention to the output and making sure that if you're providing a free tool to the community or to your prospects, that it's not going to end up embarrassing you.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's kind of the goal too. I mean, we've been building a calculator for a client of ours who's in the cost segregation space and it's been a two or three month construction. I mean it's not like we're spitting these things out in 20 minutes via chatgpt and lovable.dev I mean it's a very calculated process and making sure that quality remains the priority because kind of like what you saw, if the calculator doesn't have any validity to it or any real use case, then there's no trust.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's, it's interesting to think about these particular use cases and in SEO because we are losing one quiver or several arrows in the quiver of let's just write blog content. Let's just do the top of funnel stuff and do all of that stuff up there.
You know, like turning your eye to what are the unique value propositions of my business? You know, like, you know, you're doing something, you know, hands on with your home, whether you're, you know, doing painting or whether you're putting in handrails. You know, you have to think through what are those questions that your potential audience are going to have and answer them in more, more thoroughly answer them in unique, different ways. So I like the idea of calculator assets. What are some of the pitfalls or danger areas that you have to be aware of when you go down that route, aside from accuracy of the tool?
[00:03:53] Speaker B: Yeah, accuracy is a big one I think. Also is the realism of can a client rank for this keyword and can they actually find value in the calculator?
You know, there's tons of calculator keywords out there. Some of them are very, very easy to rank for, others are not. And so if we are going to build something for a client, does it actually make sense at the end of the day? Like if they're not going to rank for EBITDA calculator and finance, like good luck or credit card points calculator, like no way. So I think that it really just has to match when it comes to who the client is and what the asset is that we're creating and how do those two actually live in unison together.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: So what you're saying is you need to make a calculator, a keyword calculator calculator to release.
That's the only way to analyze if the keyword calculator keywords are worth calculating 100%.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: I mean, took the words out of my mouth, but yeah, we always, I mean everything should be backed in keyword data. I would say that creating a calculator just for the sake of it probably doesn't have as much value unless there's you know, a thousand monthly searches tied to it. Like we have another client who does mergers and acquisitions and they have a valuation calculator for their stuff. And it's like one of the best valuation calculators like currently ranking top three or top five for that. And they came to us and they said, hey, we have this calculator, it crushes, just give us as much traffic as possible. So that was kind of like where we first started to see these sort of things come to life. And then we have another client who has a similar process but kind of in the law space where they do settlement tax calculators and stuff like that. So we're starting to see this trend through our clients kind of accidentally and we're like, oh, I think there's something here. Let's actually start keyword, keyword first make the asset and then use content to drive awareness to it.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: So I should tell my law office guys, hey, we should look at potential calculators to put onto the site as a, as a class of assets is what you're saying.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that if it makes sense for their ICP a hundred percent, I mean it's such a great way to bring more leads in, actually deliver value and then you can set up a nurture sequence on the back end that could potentially give them a three to five day drip or you know, that's connected to the sales team like 100%.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: See that's, that's, that's the, that's the ticket. That's what you know, I've been talking to Michael McDougald of Right Think Agency and we need to as SEOs be ready and willing and pushing towards multi channel. And so it's about like developing a class of tool, a tool that you can then shop back to that email list that you developed by launching another asset previously. And then also doing that next layer step of probably putting out social ads or finding a way to drive additional subscriptions based off of hey, use this calculator. Capturing those emails with that calculator and then having a follow up process, process that's going to turn that into leads. Because we can't rely on Google alone anymore to be our sole traffic provider. It's just suicide.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's the secret sauce right there. It's like you exchange email in trade of the full report or whatever they actually need. I think you should still give them the answer, but I also feel like there's other ways to gatekeep some of that information. Maybe it's just the input or just the output and then the, whatever gets sent to email is more or less a added value proposition that they can kind of feed off of.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a yes and you know, it's like give the give, don't gatekeep the answer. Give them the answer. But you know, give them the option of, you know. Cause I know I'm forgetful. So even just like you know, a reminder, you know, get a reminder on this or you know, think thinking about what is the next step and this was something that you should be doing with your services anyways is what is clearly defining what are the steps for somebody to make that purchase. Like what are the decision making steps? It's like if you've got an asphalt company, you need to have an idea of how big your driveway is and you know, also have an idea of exactly how damaged it is. Because those are also questions that, that you have to have to know, is it already asphalt or is it part partially pavement that's going to need to be torn up? I didn't know that before I got a quote from my driveway.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: You know, it's, it's. And, and people aren't going to know that unless they're so focused on, well, I've got to, I need to make sure that I say asphalt contractor 12 times on my page. Well, I might not know what an asphalt contractor is or what the exact process is. So let's try to as SEOs, be, you know, explanatory, go back to basics. Like I was talking with Matt Brooks, the SEO Tarek of let's, let's have this view of our services and explaining them not insultingly but actually describing them thoroughly. You know, there's this tendency where, you know, like we're brainstorming how to describe, you know, some of the fundamentals of SEO without being condescending.
And there is a fine line of like, well this is a keyword and the keyword does this and like you don't want to do that, but you also want to be aware of like, you know, if you're talking to a small business owner, you need to describe to them like, what is the, what is the value of this? Like, I know you're busy, you want to go pave driveways. Why don't you tell me what that process is so we can transcribe it and put that workflow onto the site.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think that's, I mean, 100%. I think the other thing too is that many people who work with SEOs think that it's their magic solution to more leads. And in many cases it is. But if their website looks like it was built in 2004, I can't help that I'm not a magic maker when it comes to conversion. And so I think that part of our job as SEOs, as the game is evolving has to be this evolution of how are we giving customers and visitors value as SEOs and thinking a couple steps ahead because our clients are busy, they don't have that hat on to think about. Their job is to hire us and we figure out the rest. And so if AI is changing the game and SEO is just changing in general, like, how do we kind of start to think outside the box to really ensure that quality doesn't slip?
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And I think it's also being a little bit more proactive as an SEO and not just taking it on the chin of like, okay, I'm going to go off and do keyword research, but pushing back and saying, okay, I'm going to be part of your business.
I'm going to be going to be helping you. I need to understand what is your sales process? Like, how many sales guys do you. Do you have, it's just a girl at the front desk who isn't very trained, or you send all of your calls, you have good leads who go to Joe, who always is the killer closer, or you or is in the e commerce. Like, you got to understand what happens after that person clicks, submit or clicks in email or clicks. Clicks to call.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: Clicks to like what?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Like, yeah, like what. What exactly is that? And what's the back end process of like, follow up on this stuff, you know, because.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: If you're, if you don't, if they're just submitting a form, it was a horrendous stat, and I wish I kept the source of it. Somebody did. They spent a couple weeks submitting contact forms on local business sites, and 80% of form submissions on local service sites got zero response. And it was something like 1% actually responded in the same day. And even a fraction of that responded within an hour.
And that's just horrendous.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: It's brutal. Yeah.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: I'm going to suggest to the guys at Lead Truffle that they have like an AI chatbot tool where you put in, instead of a regular capture form, you ask for their name and phone number, then it starts an AI chat on their phone to qualify the lead.
So I'm going to suggest they go do a study and just go and fill out a bunch of Service forms and record how long it takes and then publish that as a. As a data study because it's horrendous.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that would be great. I'd love to see that too. I think that.
And that's kind of the ongoing meme nowadays, I think in B2B is that the sales process is so wonky in some industries and websites too. Like, there's such a disconnect between teams that when an SEO comes in, we can bring you all the traffic in the world. But if all the other pieces of the puzzle are disjointed, it's like we almost need to get back to square one and fix the foundation at that rate. Yeah.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: I think it's like working with rehabs. If your ENT intake dynamic is targeted towards the family, but the people that are doing the intervention itself and doing the conversations are trained to do one on one conversations with an actual addicted person, then you've got a mismatch between the, the lead target audience that you're trying to address with this content versus the sales mechanisms, follow up and services development. So you got to make sure that.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: The customer versus consumer debate on that one.
[00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely.
What's. What's the most challenging niche that you've worked in so far when it comes to se.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: That's a good one. I would say, like, finance is always rough because if we don't have a finance writer, like, it's just impossible to try and, you know, bring that knowledge to the table. Same thing with, like, health. We worked a couple of them, like Peptides space, like now, like with all the evolving kind of boom around Peptides. And that's just scientific, like, it's just. You have to have somebody who understands that, like, you can't really BS your way through a Peptides article. I mean, anything that's in like the. Your money, your lifestyle niche is always going to be super complex.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: Okay, okay. So your money, your life. I was just talking about this again with McDougal. We just had like this long conversation. So I'm interested for your. Your take on it because we were looking back your money and your life. One of the biggest changes around that, of course, was the announcement of eat, but before that was the medic update. And you know, we have our own personal example of where we were. I worked with and did consulting with Dr. Axe, which was a huge chiropractor guy, and he was putting out legendary. Like, he hired the team from Gantt and they had to cite like 10 scientific studies. And it's like a 10,000 word article and it was ranking and killing it. And then overnight medic comes out and I shit you not. A healthline article with one paragraph, replaced his magnum opus article that was 10,000 words long, had tons of links. And so we were looking at what we know. Google put its thumb on the scale. How do you think that is? Because I have my own pet. We have our own pet. Theory of what signal. What's the easiest, cheapest, quickest signal that Google could have changed to spike the ball when it comes to your money, your life sites to bias towards those medical, truly medical sites like Healthline, those.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Type of sites, MD, et cetera, WebMD.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: Yes. I was like, I know there's one.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yes, there's one. Like little small name out there. Yeah. I think, I think that they have to almost use brand recognition as a bigger umbrella definition or category weight in some term. Like this guy that you just mentioned, Dr. X, like, probably very well known, very, very sharp guy. I've never heard of him, but I've heard of WebMD. So it's like almost like the appeal to the masses and let the number of agreed yeses define the health space, if that makes sense. Like someone could actually put in the work and do all the research and do all that sort of stuff. But we almost have to use branding as a social weight of trust to some degree. And I think that that's how Google looks at it in terms of those bigger conglomerate brands. It's like WebMD. You trust the brand, you know the brand, Understand that. I think it's just an easy, safe fallback for them when it comes to protecting their downside and user risk in that health space.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: I think that, I think that dovetails with where we were going. We were looking at two concepts. One, there's a trust rank algorithm in addition to the page rank algorithm, and there's a flow of trust from particular sites. And so the more links you have from more sites that are closer to. So it's like distance to seed. So if you are Dr. Axe and you're a chiropractor, you know. Yes. You may have a link from, from news articles. You probably have a very good backlink team. But most of those sites aren't universities, most of those sites aren't hospitals, most of those sites aren't government affiliated. So our theory is that it was trust rank slash distance to seed in the medical niche, like within the vector of this, your money, your life of health and wellness. How far are you from those sites as well as, like, you know, if you have a ton of those links. Obviously, you know, WebMD has a lot more links from, you know, Mayo Clinic has a lot more links from other sites because it's repeating, you know, that mainline, you know, medical practice, as opposed to the benefits of Ashwagandha root, which.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: You know, it's also kind of an echo. It's kind of like an echo chamber in a way for those things. They kind of all feed off each other. They kind of all reinforce each other too. It's kind of like a flywheel within that niche or expertise of trust. Because I think that the more WebMD is used, the more Healthline is used and that just builds association between who are the top players and if this is ranking. But also like at the same time, I think that those brands, not saying that Dr. X doesn't have a reputation to protect, but those brands as big, big, big brands, put a lot of time and money and resources into ensuring that every single piece of content is 100% dialed in.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I think that's, I think that's generally true. I do have to put the caveat of I did a subcontract for HCA and you. I literally had to take a drug test in order to edit, you know, 20 pages on their site.
So yes, they're very meticulous. I had to use their logged in laptop. I couldn't log in with my own laptop. I had to be on their campus using their wifi. So they're very.
But that also means their volume of content is much lower, you know, because they, they have to narrow down. I think it's good too, which can be good. It can, but it's very expensive and we're paying much higher insurance rates to pay for much less relevant web content.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: So what else have you been working? What's. I mean, there's a lot of things happening in SEO. What's some recent challenge that you've seen, a new development that you've been looking at that you have an opinion on or have come up with something new?
[00:20:13] Speaker B: Question. I would say that what we're starting to do is try to educate our clients around the importance of SEO and how it relates to the evolution toward AI ChatGPT searches. And I think that there's a lot of ambiguity right now and nobody understanding how to rank in ChatGPT. And I love seeing on LinkedIn everyone who's like adding their title is like AI Chat GPT SEO expert. And I'm like, no one knows. You don't have no idea what's going on, but being able to see that there is a minor correlation between quality content authority and strong SEO and how those searches are appearing. Like we're starting to just search for primary high intent keywords and ChatGPT using more conversational tones and questions and seeing how our clients are appearing. And so kind of over time that's been fun to monitor and also share those wins with clients just to kind of show them like, hey, we're not doing anything special, like we're not optimizing for ChatGPT as people describe it as, but you're still ranking and like the content we're creating is still driving meaningful results. So I think that there is a fun kind of exploration when you can go down that path and know that it's all falling into place organically.
[00:21:33] Speaker A: It's, it is good. I have been, I've had several good conversations around it as well as, you know, the eventual doom and gloom conversation of oh my God, we're totally going to die.
But I think those who have been focused on like the upside of it or the benefit of it or the adjustment to it, you know, like Mike Buckbee of Noah Toa, he's got a AI brand awareness type of tool. Patrick Stocks just noted that Ahrefs added kind of a brand awareness.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I just did a sponsored post for them on that. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: So I think being aware of how your brand is visible in it is important. But I think going back to our earlier conversation of what are the meat and potatoes? Because what can we offer on our site as part of our process that can't be done in a general chatgpt or that Gemini or AI overviews is not going to be able to do because it's not going to do be able to execute on detailed square foot valuations for the California home home market for your adu. You know, you're not going to have a good ADO tool in the SERP itself yet. I'm sure at some point Google will decide that. Oh, the best way to curate information about ADUs and home calculators is to put our own feature into AI overviews to calculate these things eventually. But for this season it does seem like that's in the middle of the funnel. So focusing our efforts in that middle funnel at the bottom of the funnel, truly comparative to other competitors and you know, kind of developing that. That middle belly.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so too. I think that it has to kind of be this multi prong approach in order to really tie it back to kind of like what we were Saying earlier, it's like, how do SEOs come in and become more of a fractional partner than just the traditional SEO agency that you hire to get traffic? Like, I don't think that that playbook is the same as it used to be 10, 15 years ago.
I think that it's almost a requirement now for people to think like what we are saying. Where it's like, okay, your newsletter look like, are you guys actually growing that? Where are we driving traffic? Where are we driving people? Why don't you have lead magnets? How quickly can you make those? Like, if we bring you traffic, what's the next step? I think that it has to be this cohesive thought pattern process in order for it to be successful. Otherwise you're just going to drive traffic and meaningless results and you're going, you.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Know, slowly, over time, drive less and less traffic. Offer the same results.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: We gotta do more with less or find and build and develop alternate sources.
You know, we gotta look at cross channel marketing. You know, I was talking with Melissa Pop of Rickety Roo and she was very much on board with that.
I guess, you know, that fractional development of our role, the fractional development of our, the way that we work within organizations, you know, you can have all the semantic arguments of what you, you know, are we AIAIOs or GEOs or SEOs? That doesn't matter. I think calling it, you know, developing a fractional title and understanding, you know, how we can deliver value in different aspects of the organization has more value even if it's harder to explore, express. So I always use the example of, you know, what looking at what are you for your SaaS. And you know, if you're doing a lot of consulting for SaaS, one of the biggest expenses in human resources is customer support. Well, the best way to decrease your customer support human resources requirements is for you to spend the time developing your online digital assets before people have those questions. Questions, Buddy, I'm doing a podcast. I just took a shower. Okay, buddy, can you, can you go over there on the other side?
I'm recording.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Cute.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Yeah, so, so like with the customer support problem, you know, you got to develop those front side assets to prevent those questions from having to be answered by a human.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: I think that there's going to be a lot of really positive changes in the next five to 10 years. And it'll be really fun to see how teams utilize SEOs to drive more traffic, not only through AI, but also through organic search. But I think at the end of the day I think that that's kind of the benefit that we've explored mostly at Trio is that we spent the last 10 to 15 years kind of building businesses of our own and exiting businesses of our own. And for the first time we're kind of flipping the script and are able to step into a business and wear that entrepreneurial hat that allows us to know how to pull different levers of different pieces of the business and the site in order to really bring it to life.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: I agree. There has to be more awareness of business and how, you know, how these markets and industries work and less awareness of how Semrush works, less awareness of how Ahrefs works, you know, so if you are, you know, wanting to upskill in SEO, if you want to develop your career, like you really need to be developing, you know, those, those business skills.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. And I, I think that that's one of the things that many people aren't really thinking about nowadays, at least from what I've seen from like the, the content creators on LinkedIn. I've shifted myself away from trying to talk about like, what is SEO and kind of the fundamentals of that sense and really shifting more toward an agency perspective of what's it like working with us, what's it like for the teams? I think that a lot of the value that we're hearing from CMOs and founders is that they're looking for somebody who can come up and almost be an extension of their team. So I think over time, like collaboration is going to be a really successful medium in that front and the teams who can step in with more of a collaborative process and kind of come with forward thinking ideas are definitely going to kind of, you know, reap the dividends down the road.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: Love it. That's exactly where my head's at as a kind of round the corner here on the closing up. What's the top action item as you bring somebody on board as a new client? Where's the, where's the meat? Where's the biggest thing that you're looking at to make an impact? Because you do have to, you do have, you do have to lay out that, hey, this is a long term thing, but where do you go for that first win to develop their confidence in your capabilities?
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Yeah, most of our onboarding process is built around mastering their brand and understanding the tonality, the messaging, what's their ideal call to action, where are we directing people, what's the links, all that sort of stuff. Creating content definitely I think is a micro win outside of getting the results that they're looking for just so that they can know that there's a trusted team in place to kind of spearhead a lot of that ongoing work.
The other thing I think is really important is that one of my favorite questions to ask clients is, how are you currently tracking success on your website?
And it's so odd how many people cannot answer that question correctly. Whether it's, this is what we're doing, this is what's currently worked for us in the past. You know, we'll work with a client. And I say, how are you guys currently tracking leads? How are you? What's the success metric? Because they say, okay, great, we can't wait for this to start working. And I said, well, what. How do you define what works? How do you define how success even looks at the end of the day? And if they can't answer that, we kind of have to. To rip it apart from square one and say, okay, well, let's start thinking about that. What actually moves the needle in the company? Where are we signing people up? Is it demos? Is it free trials? Is it webinars?
I think that the lack of clarity when onboarding somebody can actually dig yourself a deeper hole. Because you look back at the end of three, four, or five months, and they're like, great, is this working? And you guys never actually agreed upon what was supposed to work from the get go.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that is. That is solid gold. And it's also an opportunity too, because it allows you to reset expectations, like, once you've gone through the process. Okay, let's. Let's look at these things. Tear it down. Okay, now we start, and then we can compare going forward. You know, how we're doing versus vague.
You know, I had, you know, one client where it. I got a bunch of leads, and it seemed like things were going really well.
And then he gets back and like, no, none of those leads.
I said, okay. You had multiple minute conversations like, no, they want the wrong type of project.
Well, what type of project did you want? What type of like, yeah, how are you disqualifying them? That we needed to qualify them on the front end. Like, that needs that. Like, we. I realized, hey, we need to split off and put up a whole separate site for the residential asphalt driveways versus the regional commercial asphalt project stuff. Like, it was nice to have both on one site because it's authority, but, you know, he doesn't want to do driveways everywhere. He just wants that within this range of, you know, his geographic location, while also Doing geo, you know, wanting multiple state for his commercial. Those are incompatible desires. Like you can't filter that out.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: No way. Yeah, I even had a client I was talking to. I think it was like last Thursday, like just even within the week. And I was, I sent the end of report for May and was looking at like, you know, free trial signups and demos booked and they were saying how the number looked higher than usual and I was like, I mean, isn't that what you want? And they were like, oh well, we forgot to tell you that people are actually using the free demo button as a contact form for existing clients or existing customers. I'm like, okay, so like now we just like that data is somewhat messy. So like, okay, we gotta clean that up. Like we can't have returning customers be using your primary lead magnet offer like so I think just communication is key throughout all that.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that is a huge, huge, huge issue with SaaS is making sure that you're able to quantify and qualify, tag and filter out, like, what does your site usage look like for your existing user base and not discount them, give them fresh food to eat, you know, to reasons to come back, ways to support, you know, the recurring revenue is the backbone of a successful SaaS. And if you're not leveraging your site, not leveraging your newsletter, not leveraging your news, your, your user base, not leveraging influencers that are associated with you, then your churn is going to be worse and worse and worse till it's not sustainable.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Percent yeah, awesome.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Well, tell us where we can find you. Is there a particular social. I know you mentioned LinkedIn a couple of times. Is that where you mostly hang out or are you somewhere else? Where can people interact with you?
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yep, that's my only one right now. Just super focused on growing LinkedIn. I have been posting daily for the last two, two and a half years. So you can always just reach out to me and go from there.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: All right, thanks very much, Steven. We'll see you around.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: All right, thanks Jeremy.
