The People First Framework With Keith Breseé

Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (00:01.242) Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, host of the Unscripted SEO podcast. I'm here with <a href="https://go.seomastery.com/pf-framework">Keith Bresee</a>, a good friend for a long time. I you to give yourself a nice introduction, Keith. Keith Bresee (00:11.566) Hey Jeremy, super awesome being here. Yeah, so I've been doing SEO, what is this, 24, basically 25. I've been doing SEO for, it'll be 15 years this January, which is wild, January 11th. And it's so weird. And in that time, yeah, I've worked with and scaled big brands like Manscaped, Dave Ramsey, Dr. Axe, where I think we initially met. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (00:27.13) right? Keith Bresee (00:39.52) Remax and many, many other big brands. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (00:44.78) And were you in-house or freelance at those positions? Like, how did you fall into those slots? Has it been freelance the whole time or did you start on the agency side? I realized I'd never, like we've been friends most of this time. I never said, where did you come, where did you start? Keith Bresee (01:02.574) Right? I have never been... Oh yeah, you don't know my origin story probably. I don't know if... Right? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (01:07.674) Are you Hulk? Were you bit by a radioactive SEO? Keith Bresee (01:11.534) That's funny. I wonder what that would look like. Radioactive SEO. PBNs? I don't know. No. So I went to school for photography at Belmont and I wanted to create a photography course for moms who buy digital cameras and don't know how to use them. And that's still that problem still runs rampant. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (01:17.69) Yeah. Keith Bresee (01:39.93) And I remember it took me six months to build my first website, living at home with my parents. And I was just married or dating at the time. And I remember the day I launched it, the next day was like Christmas morning in July, literally in July. Go to the website, look at Google Analytics and of course, crickets and. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (02:06.564) Yeah. Keith Bresee (02:07.68) That was the intro to my, well, why isn't this working? And then, do you know who Brian Harris is? He's in Franklin, actually, Growth Tools. It used to be video for a billion years ago. He hired me to help him ship eBay stuff and... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (02:18.52) Yeah, I do know. Yeah. Keith Bresee (02:32.398) A week into that he asked me, hey, I have this friend, Brian Dean. He just put out this post called the skyscraper technique. You want to try it? And I'm like, yeah, sure. He's like, how much do you charge? I don't know. How does 75 bucks sound? Sure. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (02:47.204) you Keith Bresee (02:48.014) And literally we got like 60, I want to say 62, 63 backlinks in like less than a month. And within four months, his post was out ranking HubSpot, Neil Patel's, it wasn't NeilPatel.com, it was a growth sprout, something like that. And anyway, worked really well. And then he referred me to Noah Kagan of AppSumo. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (03:04.054) Yeah, gross rabbit foot pain before. Keith Bresee (03:12.75) Noah later became my mentor and he referred other clients and it's been and now you know the rest of the story. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (03:20.186) The rest of the story. Yeah, I knew what happened after that, but I don't think everybody listening to this podcast does know the rest of the story. let's keep going. mean, like, so you kind of started out with the skyscraper method, which is handy because my first website was actually a GeoCities site. My second website was a little... Keith Bresee (03:23.543) Right? Keith Bresee (03:40.077) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (03:47.586) a little bit later on and made in Dreamweaver. So I think things have come along a lot since the early days and things are changing in SEO as they always do. SEO is never dead, it's just mutating and Frankensteining along in a new fashion. So what have you been seeing has been successful? in the last year or two. Keith Bresee (04:19.491) So. This is, you I've been asked this question, you you go to meetups, you go to networking events, other big shots, yeah, I used to do SEO, now I do ads, does this thing still work? You know, sort of shenanigans. And while, let me see, you know, while keyword stuffing or white text on a white background might not work anymore unless you're with chat gbt which is a thing Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (04:52.266) no, the white text on my background is back. What is old shall be new. Keith Bresee (04:55.586) Dude, I know. Did you see that? Dude, like I saw that. I'm like, no way. It was just like, what? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (05:05.306) That's hilarious. I gotta look. Keith Bresee (05:06.412) I know. But so regardless if it was, you know, 10 years ago or now, literally now, though, what so many people fail to see is what's behind the algorithm or on the other side of the algorithm. So, for example, you know, I have one client because of the nature of their business, their traffic was like 7x the day of Christmas. from in search console and then have another client it was literally half and That was the first one. I looked at Yesterday morning and I was like, shit. wait a second. It's Christmas, you know, and then look at the rest of the days and it's just fine But the reason for that and same with Facebook ads or any ad platform is They're not numbers. looking at it's people on the other side Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (05:47.322) Right. Right. Keith Bresee (06:02.966) And so when you optimize for people and you understand their intent, like I have been a, can I cuss? Okay. I have, or say I have my in-laws are pastors, I have to, certain crowds I'm a saint. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (06:12.74) Yeah. Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (06:21.114) If you want to self-censor, that's fine. I mean, I don't have to currently mark it as explicit. So if you go on some tirade rant and just, you know, use every vulgarity on the Sun, I might have to change that. But for the moment, I'm assuming that people who are learning about SEO are of age or 18. And if they aren't, then, hey, go get your parents permission to listen to Keith. Keith Bresee (06:30.455) Right. Keith Bresee (06:37.569) Right. Keith Bresee (06:42.105) Right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (06:47.244) say a couple of naughty words while he talks about his CEO. But feel free to, like, if you, you know, like, if you optimize for an adult site, that's fine. Just, you know. Keith Bresee (06:49.664) Right? my gosh. Keith Bresee (06:58.152) right, which I've never done. I've optimized casinos, but never an adult site. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (07:02.874) I helped a male escort guy. Ross Jones gave me that lead. He didn't want it, so I helped him out a few times. But mostly showed him how to get his dancers to show up appropriately. Inappropriately. Keith Bresee (07:11.2) Yeah. Keith Bresee (07:21.996) my God, that's funny. What's ironic now is I don't even remember what I was going to say that prompted that question. Anyway, well, good to know for the rest of conversation. But so. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (07:34.02) you Keith Bresee (07:40.266) optimizing for people, you know, I've always been hardcore into intent. cause like if I Google, I have a Rubik's cube here on my desk as I have probably since the entire time we've known each other. right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (07:53.582) Yes. Keith Bresee (07:56.206) I have a Rubik's Cube. If I just Google Rubik's Cube, am I wanting to buy it? Am I wanting to learn it? Am I wanting to, like what's the intent there? And you know, for those sorts of keywords or maybe, I don't know, gun case, you know, you would think that's more of a buyer oriented or maybe best firewood or whatever. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (08:19.492) Yeah. Keith Bresee (08:20.15) They're all different. There's obviously informational, transactional, all the different types of keywords or categories of keywords. But getting into that and figuring out what is driving that intent and then optimizing for the intent and not necessarily the keyword has we've had a lot of success with. so. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (08:38.969) Hmm. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (08:43.652) Did you see Mark Williams cook the Google endpoint leak that he had dug into in the past month and needed a presentation at a conference? I'm not sure which one, but he kind of showed that there were these intense buckets for keywords of like Boolean, whereas like yes or no, where... The intent is like a tutorial. So there's like eight different buckets of intent that Google parses keywords into. Keith Bresee (09:19.702) I didn't see that, but I believe that all fucking day long. Dude. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (09:23.354) Yes. I'm going to try to get him on the podcast. think he said yes. Hopefully I'll be able to dig into that. Keith Bresee (09:31.01) Dope. That'll be good. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (09:33.946) Yeah, I'm looking forward to that at least. But I think that's right. I think that's right, especially, you know, I was talking with Mike Buckby of Noatoa. He's making tools that can kind of show you how you rank in AI search or where your brand shows up in AI searches. And we were talking about like the intents of people's questions and that there's... Keith Bresee (09:36.994) Right. Keith Bresee (09:51.832) cool. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (10:02.466) chunks of that search volume that is just going to get gobbled up by AI, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because like, just because they consume that information, if you're one of the cited sources, then that's still valuable and you still show up. So it's not completely dead, but creating content that maps to that people first intent. Keith Bresee (10:08.995) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (10:32.537) That makes sense to me. Keith Bresee (10:35.02) Yeah. Did you have a follow up question? I can keep, I can talk for three hours. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (10:39.994) Yeah, yeah, no, I want you to, well, you can't do three hours, but we can go a while. Yeah, let's keep digging. Keith Bresee (10:51.646) So, okay, so I think what will help a lot of people, it helps when I got on prospecting calls or proposal type calls, is understanding how I came up with the People First framework, just for context, because if you can understand like, yeah. You know, if I'm looking at a math algorithm or an algorithm to solve a Rubik's Cube, you know, seeing the annotations is one thing, but being able to visualize what that means and how it translates to the actual Rubik's Cube is totally different and a game changer in being able to actually apply it. So I was funny enough with this is right before Dr. Axe. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (11:29.562) Mm-hmm. Keith Bresee (11:42.214) And Michael, our mutual friend, we were at Industrius. I can't remember where we were. Somewhere with the whiteboard downtown, maybe renting from WeWork or something. And he's trying to get backlinks to doors, commercial doors. Right. You know, that's how many conversations have we had about bathroom doors or bathroom partitions and commercial doors? Right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (11:55.822) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (12:02.06) Right. Yeah. So many, so many conversations about toilet partitions. Keith Bresee (12:11.566) It's funny. And so we're scraping the bottom of the barrel because he's like, yeah, there's no one else I can do skyscraper to. And I took a class, a couple of classes at Stanford way, way back. I was like 19, no idea how that happened. It was total luck because I'm not that smart. Stanford is one of dream Stanford and MIT and my dream schools and one of the things on there was Working backward I can't remember the name of the class but what the lesson was about was trying to find product market fit and Which totally aligns with that's kind of like what we do as SEOs just with our whatever it is. We're trying to rank sort of asset And he mind mapped a bunch of problems and conversational pieces. And he was like, you can use all this data, you can use whatever, but, this will always stick with me like forever. Like if the data you get is not your paying customers, it's an assumption. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (13:28.173) Okay. Keith Bresee (13:28.994) So by that standard, keyword research is an assumption. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (13:33.668) is an assumption. Keith Bresee (13:35.04) It's an assumption and I will stand by that argument all day long because, you know, I can look up all the rank for X, Y, and Z keywords and you know, that data is backed by a whole lot. That keyword data is backed by a whole lot more keyword data and don't get me wrong. have one, two, I have six tabs open between search Atlas and Simrush right now. So like that keyword data is valuable. Don't get me wrong. I still pay it's Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (14:01.434) Right. But it's an assumption. It's not, and it's, You know, there's flaws in the methodology. There's limits on how much Google will actually give you through the API. And that, you know, it's secondly mapped out. And there's a black box effect too, because the search volume Google Ads gives through its API is not the same search volume that SEMrush displays necessarily, because they have their own proprietary spyware. I mean, their own proprietary data source. Keith Bresee (14:15.758) which is annoying. Keith Bresee (14:29.912) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (14:35.724) sources that they have, you know, whether it's creepy browser extensions that are recording people's search information and recording that anonymously, aggregating and reselling that data. Keith Bresee (14:48.302) Right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (14:52.506) You know, but that's a black box and there's assumptions that that's true, that's valid or appropriately mixed. know, any of the major search tools out there that aren't just giving you the Google ads volume are introducing a level of a secondary level of doubt as far as the validity of that sourcing because it's not coming from Google anymore. But even if it is coming from Google, there's disambiguation. can get the same search volume for four queries and no, that's not how it works. It's just that when it serves up in that API, Google in Google ads treats those six keywords as the same for when they're serving ads. So is it are all six of those equal synonyms or is one of them actually slightly higher or lower? So if you, your mouth isn't puckered from so much salt when you're using search volume data. Keith Bresee (15:23.473) yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (15:52.392) data, then you're doing it wrong. If you're talking with absolute confidence when it comes to search volumes, then you're doing it wrong. It's an assumption. Keith Bresee (16:05.246) Mm-hmm. And so a great one. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (16:07.404) A good one, useful. It's like correlation. People say correlation isn't causation, but it implies a relationship. It's up to the experts to better understand what is the nature of that relationship and how strongly it should influence your decisions as an SEO, as a marketer. Keith Bresee (16:12.77) Mm-hmm. Keith Bresee (16:18.006) Yes. Keith Bresee (16:30.294) Right, totally. So at the end of the day, it's still an assumption. And as an SEO, as a marketer, because we're going to use those keywords for more than just SEO and paid media sort of approach. Maybe where it's content or, I mean, there's only so many buckets you can use that data for. Anyway, you get the point. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (16:37.241) Yeah. Keith Bresee (16:59.562) in that Stanford class, he was like, no, here's what I want you all to go do. And here's here was his homework. And I still have the interviews from this. He said, I want you to go out and interview three real people. And he's like, I don't want you to interview your mom, your grandma, your brother and your sister, your aunt, all the women who are going to poke her up and give you a nice big kiss on the cheek at Christmas. Don't talk to them. He was like that. That was always funny. Of course, you know, half the class laughed. He was like, I want you to go and get three interviews of paying customers. I was like, and then the assumption element kind of like made sense. He's like. If I'm going to make content, if I'm going to make a product, if I'm going to make anything with a transactional relationship being the goal, why would I go to anyone else that's not going to pay me money to get information from them? Right? So then the whole idea is people first. So go interview three real people. So back to the whiteboard with Michael and working on bathroom partitions and I'm pretty sure we were working on bathroom partitions. We were at the whiteboard trying to figure that out and we within that week we got on or he got on and I was listening in on the call on speaker. It was just two or three different paying customers. just different people that he was knew he could call and he got him on the phone and we asked him a handful of questions. Not the refined questions we have now or we use now. But we wanted to understand where they where their mindset was, what perceptions of the problem was in their mind, what perceptions of Michael's solution that he was offering. And that was about it. Then the questions again are totally different now. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (18:42.084) Yeah. Keith Bresee (19:04.846) But the whole thing is trying to get in their mind. And there's a famous phrase, I can't remember who it's by, and I'm gonna botch it, but in marketing, the best copywriters or marketers don't interrupt the customers where they're at, or customers' conversations. They meet them where they join the conversation they're already having in their head. And that's what the interview element where that comes into play. So you go out, you interview people and then our whole process is literally, I have hundreds of mind maps from all the different proposals or clients and friends and whatnot we've done. You turn those interviews into a mind map. Okay, if they're having this problem, then they're also going to think this. And if they're going to think this, then they're going to have that problem. And that problem is what's going to lead them to this, you know, et cetera. And then you go down the awareness, you know, the three different levels of awareness, problem aware, solution aware, product aware. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (20:12.283) Recap that real fast. I think I get it, but touch on it again. Keith Bresee (20:15.478) Yeah. How far do you me to zoom back? You say touch on. so yeah. So problem where is I know I don't feel good. I'm 300 pounds or more, and I'm not sure why I don't feel good and all my health is going to shit. Problem where. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (20:19.77) Just those three things, like problem wear. Keith Bresee (20:38.71) I'm morbidly obese and I need to stop going to McDonald's three times a day. Solution aware, I know that I need to change my diet. You know, so maybe a nutritionist sort of thing or my lifestyle is the solution. I need to change my lifestyle. Eat home, eat or as raw as possible, juice, get exercise, something like that, right? Product aware is, Suzy at Just Be Fit in White House. She's a exercise person, but she's also a board certified nutritionist who could help me do all this. I need to call her. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (21:00.602) Hmm. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (21:06.552) of it. Keith Bresee (21:20.854) Right. So then you can take all of the elements of the mind map of all the types of conversa- or all the conversational pieces that you would have mapped out from your interviews, put them into those different awareness buckets, and now you have an aplethora of content. Before AI, before Jarvis, I think Jarvis was the real first big one. Or Jasper, I still call it Jarvis, obviously. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (21:32.356) Mm-hmm. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (21:44.556) Yeah. Jasmine. No, it's Jarvis. It'll always be Jarvis. Quiet, you want to get sued. Keith Bresee (21:50.026) Right? I still have, right? I still have, I don't use as much, but I still pay for it because I'm grandfathered in it. Such a, I'm, I was, I'm in the first price bucket. I was in the first like 200 customers. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (22:03.962) Thanks Keith Bresee (22:09.55) Anyway, so before all that, before AI, we were regularly using this process to come up with, you know, I'm not exaggerating, a year's worth of daily content for SEO. Like, in a matter of a couple days once the interviews are done. the, when you talk, for example, one of our questions on our current interview process, or one of the questions, there's like 12, Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (22:28.57) Yeah. Keith Bresee (22:39.406) The first question is, what is your main goal in going after X? So like if, well, my God, so many conversations are coming to mind. I've done. men's from Manscaped, men's grooming products for down south. For another product, it was women's period products. So you can only imagine the conversations I've had there. But the first question is, what is your main goal in being interested or in most cases, purchasing said product? So if it's collagen, what's your main purpose in buying collagen? because collagen helps with many things. I want to know what the majority of my buyers are. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (23:17.274) Mm-hmm. Keith Bresee (23:26.224) of them might say gut health. Sure, we'll go with that for this example. I buy collagen for gut health purposes. Darn it. I am blonde and totally got sidetracked. Before that, where was I going? I'm so blonde. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (23:41.134) Gut health purposes. no, no, we lost the thread. You were talking about mind mapping. It was an example. You were following the thread of... Keith Bresee (23:54.702) Oh, oh, yes, thank you. Okay, so they might say gut health for the first question. Well, one of our later questions is, is, oh, how do I, what is it exactly? It is. What would it mean to you to have said problem solved? And then another one is what emotions are driven behind the product of the behind the purchase of our college and product very similar What are the emotions driving the product? Why did you buy it two different questions, but we asked similar questions because 90 % of the time we will get different answers and we'll get even more in-depth insight into why they made the transaction into the intent of the purchase. And when you're able to do that over and over, and then you put this into a mind map and not just in the mind map, in the copy itself, especially the headline and especially the intro, speaking, literally using the information to speak to the customers. Like we have one customer, we have one client right now from Google. I don't know what other people's average, I should probably look this up, because this might be really low and I might be just shooting myself in the foot right now, but our average click through rate from Google for the last six months is 12%. Like, like across all keywords in Search Console. Yeah. So I mean, that's, think that's definitely on the higher end, but. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (25:27.33) and Google Search Console. Yeah. Keith Bresee (25:35.914) All of our content, like we have, I think it's like three minutes on average within like 28,000 visitors a month from this one client, an average of three minutes on site. And most of it, like 80 % of it is blog related. And it's all because we're speaking to, like I know this woman's customer set, like gangbusters. And she has like 100,000 monthly visitors, give or take, from all social emails, et cetera. And... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (25:47.908) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (26:01.38) Yeah. Keith Bresee (26:05.808) like Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (26:08.442) So it's as much about informing copywriting and not leaving off that piece of like, oh, I need to create content that ranks well. Instead, it's creating content that is working well to communicate as well as possible to communicate the product, which is going to make even more sense, even if that gets gobbled up by AI, and that AI snippet actually has its first go at... Keith Bresee (26:16.685) Yes. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (26:36.09) surfacing your speak about it, that's still going to come through and your copy is going to reflect in that. You're going to be cited as a source. People are still using, know, diving in deeper because, you know, even now AI blurbs are, they're kind of useful, but they're not like, people are using AI tools, not as just raw. not like Google search, they're using it to support and supplement Google search. Keith Bresee (27:08.322) Yes, that, I, I agree. Anyway, so starting with the people first, like you said, it, you're... you're literally just able to speak to the customer. And then of course, if the time on site is great, if they're not hitting back, they're clicking through to a second and ideally third page. They're hitting their goals in Google Analytics, whether it's a target page or an opt-in or a purchase. All of that supports, especially with the leak, what was it in May? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (27:47.854) Yeah. Keith Bresee (27:48.396) all the click data, all of that supports, what am I trying to say? The leak supports the fact that Google likes seeing those clicks. And when we can keep them clicking, excuse me, keep them clicking, keep them longer, get them buying our stuff on the first interaction especially, like with, I don't know if I can say this, with a Minns, health and wellness brand that I've worked with in the past, we had 6 % buy on the first interaction. Granted, that's the peak, but it was averaging like four and a half to 5%, pretty average. First interaction from Google, 6 % at the peaks, 5 % on average would buy from like cold traffic. Like that's really high. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (28:20.804) sure. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (28:31.503) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (28:41.53) That's good. Yeah. Keith Bresee (28:46.934) Like, I did. It was 50, 60 interviews for that brand though. like we knew, and I can speak to that customer really, really, really, really, really well. So just the more you're able to speak to them. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (29:08.676) Yeah. Keith Bresee (29:08.718) the more that's gonna come across in all the stuff that you do. this works, numerous times we'll even have clients that will be like, hey, can our ads, our media buying team, can they have access to all this, the interviews and all this stuff? And they'll turn around. We have, I see ads from one of our clients right now daily almost on Facebook using the copy that we came up with because we interviewed, I think we're up to like 20, 25 people so far for this one client. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (29:37.603) Yeah. Keith Bresee (29:39.196) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (29:40.91) So it's a little more difficult than just like, I need a keyword resource tool, I'm gonna plug in a keyword and it's going to tell me stuff. But the results of having something like a product for person, people first framework seems to like have a better long time value in return on that strategy, strategy spend. Keith Bresee (30:06.016) Every year for one of our clients, just speaking to that, our health and wellness client that I've brought you in on numerous times, you know the one. And for the last three years, I didn't look at the exact numbers for this year in about a month, but we're right about this number. Every year, we've over doubled revenue from SEO. And this is all we do. And last year, this year, they were at in early December, they were already, it was a right, I want to say it like 2.9 million in revenue from SEO. Like, yeah, like they're crushing it. Like they're doing well. And when I started for Context four years ago, I want to say it was around. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (30:52.76) Nice. That's, yeah. Keith Bresee (31:05.39) I don't even know if it was $100,000. I think it was like $60,000 in revenue. So that's more than doubled. But you get the point. And that's just speaking to your longevity statement. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (31:13.123) Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So what's the last pieces of the people first framework? Keith Bresee (31:23.16) So literally in our SOPs, we have technical, no, excuse me, have audits, then we have, these are our actual folders, or things in Notion, audits. analog research, is the interviews, the mind mapping, and awareness mapping, digital research, which is we take all of that, we take the mind maps, we take everything we have in a spreadsheet that we manually put there, and we didn't export from anywhere. We go and back that up with keyword data and any other sort of data, like we use... We have a love-hate relationship with BuzzSumo. So social shares, social engagement, backlinks, actual stuff ranking with a similar intent from what we can tell on the surface side. We take all of that and we try to find as many data points that line up with our... from the horse's mouth interviews, and then we translate that into an actual content strategy. And that's where you can literally, once you do that, like this whole process can, once the interviews are done, you can have this, I'm not exaggerating, a year's worth of daily content, data-driven from your customers in like a week's time. It's nuts. So once you have that digital research lining up, then it's just a matter of execution. And so now what's Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (32:38.628) Yeah. Keith Bresee (33:06.554) hilarious is I don't really have to worry about where I'm going to go get backlinks for doors or bathroom partitions anymore if when I have this conversation still. Love you, Michael. Because like I know that if. OK, here's. I'm going to segment into backlinks really quick. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (33:18.905) Hehehehe Keith Bresee (33:34.67) and then I'll come back to execution. If, let's say I have all my assets for ranking already built and they're all done. And because there's SUs, amazing, amazing SUs out there that don't believe in back linking or do it very minimally. And I'm, while that works, I've never gotten big results for any of our clients without doing substantial back linking. I end up in, for context, when I say big results, I mean like... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (33:36.751) Yep. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (33:42.169) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (33:50.584) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (33:58.969) Yeah. Keith Bresee (34:04.526) Dave Ramsey Keith Bresee (34:09.838) We started at like 270, 280,000 monthly visitors, somewhere around that range. And then by the time we were done, I know we were in the almost two million range, give or take. I don't remember the exact numbers, but anyway. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (34:14.148) Yeah. Keith Bresee (34:29.774) So that kind of growth or wellness mama, you have to have backlinks. It has to be part of your acquisition strategy, period. But so for getting backlinks, because I know all these topics, whether it's BuzzSumo or any of these other tools, I have in a plethora of keywords at minimum. This is just one of the many ways you can go after backlinks. Keywords at minimum for going after or for key, Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (34:32.004) Yeah. Keith Bresee (34:59.68) excuse me, keywords to use in all these tools to go find all these people. Like I can't tell you how many times we would take a keyword, put into Simrush, Ahrefs, you know, your drug of choice that is way overpriced. Part of the reason I use, I have been really liking Search Atlas. still pricey but not their pricey and you get a lot more for the bang for the buck. I'm not an affiliate by the way, I should be. Punch in a keyword and you know can look up... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (35:29.306) You Keith Bresee (35:36.674) Granted, there's more advanced tools now, but we would have to find all the people ranking for these keywords or competitors of sort of things or taking Healthline and looking at all of their keywords and all the other people ranking for those, et cetera, and constantly exporting how many god knows Google Sheets and compiling them. But you're able to do this and you're able to find these sources because you have the keywords. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (35:56.292) Yeah. Keith Bresee (36:06.608) In fact, one of our, anytime my back is up against the wall, so to speak, and I'm like, I have to get backlinks, and like, bathroom partitions, no one talking about those. For people that don't know what bathroom partition is, it's the wall inside a public restroom, separating the toilets. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (36:14.394) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (36:19.385) Yep. Keith Bresee (36:25.458) Who wants to talk about that? Or commercial doors? Nobody. So when you have the mind map, and so here's the, I can't tell you how many thousands of backlinks we've gotten doing this. When you have the mind map. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (36:26.81) Yeah, right. Keith Bresee (36:40.238) whether it's in a sheet or a visual. And I'm looking at the topic of, I'm just going to stick with it, bathroom partitions. Who's going to talk about that? Who's who on the web is talking about bathroom partitions next to nobody, even though there's billions of people online. But if I zoom out maybe two or three steps into the broader topics, bathroom partitions falls under commercial construction. Commercial construction is a shoulder niche or shoulder topic. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (36:53.37) Right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (37:05.24) Yeah. Keith Bresee (37:09.942) to or no actually I'll do I'll verbalize it like this zoom out of commercial construction and now you're at construction well what's another avenue of construction DIY construction and you know you can go down the rabbit hole of DIY construction of those topics then while you know bathroom partitions might not have anything to do with me remodeling my home bathroom I can write I can this is where you have to get creative and this is Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (37:36.259) Yeah. Keith Bresee (37:42.689) before AI you had to do this, get creative and figure out how can I in my bathroom, in my article on my bathroom partitions website, how can I write about whatever other topic. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (37:44.622) Yeah. Keith Bresee (37:54.99) home remodeling, bathroom remodeling, DIY, how can I write about bathroom partitions or a technique for framing or something like that that these DIY bathroom dudes would be wanting to read as well? Figure that out. Write a little snippet about it in your article. And now, because those two shoulder niches are connected, I now can now talk to those people in those topics. even though no one's talking about bathroom partitions, I can talk to the people talking about DIY bathroom remodeling and try to get a backlink from them. So... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (38:34.606) What does that pitch usually look like? Is that an email? Is that connecting to the Rodeo? And how do you get that backlink? Keith Bresee (38:46.638) In the last six months, we've actually had a decent amount of success, minimal compared to others, but decent amount of success with X or Twitter, just because more people with the hype of Elon buying it and whatnot, engagement has gone up through the roof there. But LinkedIn or email usually is the avenue. It's almost... Probably 70 % email, I would say. And then the pitch is something along the line of, have I done something recently? Trying to think of a real example for. Keith Bresee (39:30.528) Okay, so there is this woman who had a, I think it was a psychology blog on, I can't remember, some mental framework or something, I can't remember. And she liked skiing in, I want to say it was Aspen or some Colorado resort. She posted that online. I commented on there. I was one of the first commenters on her. It was a blog post and this is just me just having to do it. Commented and then literally that night after looking at her site, I was like, oh, she's a relevant person. That night we had one of our writers rework one of our collagen, no, no, it was magnesium article and. Granted magnesium and mental health there's a much closer relation. So that was a little bit easier But we reworked our Article to fit something that she had said so this isn't the exact strategy, but it's the same execution play We worked the article to include some of the things that she was talking about But with our own take and our own spin with our own data Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (40:32.089) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (40:47.116) huh. Keith Bresee (40:47.982) for the health and wellness client we've been talking about. within like three days, we had a domain rank from a personal blog, 72. So I was happy with that. But the pitch was basically, hey, the pitch is always something to the effect of, hey, we have something different from a different perspective that you did not mention in your said article. So it's skyscraper-esque. And one thing that we don't do is, or we've always done, is we don't ask, we ask for permission because you know, so many, like right before our call, I got a DM and I told you about it, right? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (41:18.969) Yeah. Keith Bresee (41:32.976) It's just comical the amount of outreach emails for something about SEO or backlinks is just bad. So we've always taken the standpoint of, if we're gonna reach out to this person, we're gonna do it in a creative way and we're gonna be respectful. And what that looks like. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (41:43.918) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (41:51.8) Yeah. Yeah. So kind of like do an outreach and like, hey, is it okay that we mentioned your groundbreaking, brilliant, you know, we have our own pitch, we have our own take on it and took it in this direction. I know you have your article already, but here's an extra data point that you might have missed that you could include in your post. Is that basically? Keith Bresee (42:15.244) Very close. One thing to mention that we do in every single email, whether it's for a JV pitch or a backlink podcast, whatever, is we include anchors. So I mentioned her skiing resort comment because, and that was not on her, may have been on her website, may not have been, I can't remember. It was hot and I was in Texas. I just know it was in the summer this year. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (42:42.115) Right. Keith Bresee (42:44.768) we used anchors. So it wasn't, hey, I, well, the skyscraper email has an anchor. Hey, I saw you wrote this article here, Link. I actually wrote this article that is better or because you are, you know, something like that. And yeah, traditional skyscraper. So ours is, her name was Mary, I believe. Hey, Mary. I really resonated. And granted, this is already after I commented and she saw, I know she saw that. because she had liked it. Hey Mary, saw I really resonated with your your article on X Y & Z topic and now I'm gonna go into why I resonated with it a sentence or two not long and then I'm gonna try we always try to include two anchors because hey I saw your article linked over here or mentioned or I saw you shared well that is an anchor that's that's Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (43:15.983) bright. Keith Bresee (43:42.646) I can automate that process entirely. But if I say, hey, I was actually at that same ski resort last summer and really loved it, that's an anchor that I can't automate. And that's real input. And then I say something very similar to what you just mentioned, which was the I have something different, a little bit different data or something different perspective, whatever it might be. And then we ask, mind if I show it to you? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (43:53.358) Mm-hmm. Keith Bresee (44:11.822) or might if we share it. And 50 % of the time, they will email us back, hey, I mentioned it. And I don't even have to ask for the link. And then I'm going to go out of reciprocity, share their stuff on whatever, or wherever I can. But if... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (44:12.025) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (44:29.977) Yeah. Keith Bresee (44:33.792) And I learned this funny enough that they are just, I'm sure you saw that Gale Brinton and Authority Hacker Pro, they just closed down. Do you see all that? Do know who Gale Brinton is? He's big in the SEO affiliate space. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (44:43.736) No, didn't. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (44:47.386) No. Okay. Keith Bresee (44:51.534) And their whole thing was SEO and make money with it via affiliates. Great dude, great program. And I wish they wouldn't have shut it down because like just... Anyway, I'm not gonna... I don't want to verbalize on that too much. I thought it could have been shifted and then changed and continued adding value, but they... for whatever reason, they closed down. Anyway... Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (44:57.358) Got it. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (45:05.658) you Keith Bresee (45:17.226) in his thing years ago, and I've loved this and I still use it literally this, well maybe not this week, no not this week, in December we have for outreach. When asking for the backlink, he did this on a, I think if you type in Simrush ultimate skyscraper technique. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (45:40.238) Yeah. Keith Bresee (45:40.556) or something like that, there was a webinar and his pitch in the email was once they say yes, here, send it and then once they give you some amount of feedback or something, you say... I would love to, I think it would be a great way, there's always tons of ways to say it. I'm gonna, this is not how we verbalize it, this is why I have other people doing this, but it's something to the effect of, I think it would make a great fit here. I'd be happy to write a short custom paragraph for your article if you wanted to add it to your site. So now I tell them, I take out all the annoying elements of adding the backlink. Where do I add the backlink? What do I say? Where does it make sense? What's the anchor, et cetera? And I give them updated content that they can add to their site so they can get the new timestamp on the update. And I take out the hard part of harder, you know, it's not hard, just annoying of where do I place the link and what do I say? I just tell them, Hey, go put this link here with this paragraph. And like 30 % of the time that will fly 20 to 30 % of the time. It's definitely gone down in effectiveness over the years. but when it works, we get to control the anchor for the backlink. So that's always fun. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (46:50.446) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (46:58.33) you Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (47:12.239) So 30 % of the time it works every time. Keith Bresee (47:16.366) When, well, OK, 30 % of the time, they let me put it in that way. I'll say it like that. That's more accurate. Does that make sense? So when the backlink is a yes, 30-ish percent of the time, I'm able to control the anchor. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (47:17.347) You Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (47:29.314) Yeah, no doubt it does. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (47:38.776) Legit. Wow. That makes sense. mean, the approach, making it personalized, having two different touch points, because I get those, I get... Keith Bresee (47:41.144) So. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (47:52.93) I get cold outreach for links all the time because I have multiple different sites where I'm publishing. like, did you take, you were calling me an agency. Do you not know that this is literally a SaaS tool? Like you didn't even take the time to like figure out the category of site that you are, that I am before you tried to pitch me. Like, and if I was an agency, then you knew. you knew that I knew how to do link building and this is not how you do outreach to build a link. Like, give me the respect of, you know, taking me out to dinner if you're going to get something out of it. Keith Bresee (48:27.594) I know, right? Which, funny enough, I have done to get a backlink. Mm-hmm. In Nashville, yeah, it was, well, I don't know. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (48:33.038) Taking somebody out to dinner? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (48:43.18) I mean, I do have to say I have gotten a large number of links because I've gone to like Webmaster tool, like Webmaster meetups and like connected with other SEOs because it's way easier to get a link from an SEO who's working with six different sites versus like one, you know, small business owner who like barely knows how to manage or edit their own site. So I think there's definitely, you know, if you are doing the outreach approach, having a love Keith Bresee (48:50.794) Mm. Right. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (49:13.174) of awareness of who you're most likely to be interacting with, which might be why, hey, if they're constantly posting on Twitter or X, somebody's posting that and they're taking their time to be on that channel. So if you can find a way to engage them and show them that you're real, that's a way to warm up a conversation so you're not some rando just sending them an email. you know, like spend a week of like, like something Monday, like and read some retweet something Tuesday at message them on Wednesday at message like retweet on Thursday, Friday slide into their DMS. Keith Bresee (49:48.078) Dude. We have a whole training and series of SOPs we call the Bishop's framework, the Bishop's court technique. Have I told you this? So the whole idea is if I'm wanting to talk to the Pope, and this comes from a 48 laws of power rule, I don't remember which law it was. You know the book? Robert Green. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (49:59.105) No, no. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (50:13.356) No, not offhand, but go on. Do I have reading? Okay, I got to do reading. Robert Green. Okay. Keith Bresee (50:18.366) my God, go read everything by Robert Green. GREEENE. 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, Seduction. Dude, you read one of them, you'll be hooked. Favorite modern living author. Anyway, from 48 Laws of Power, you know, the person's intent was to kill the Pope, which I don't have that intent, so I wanted to talk to the Pope in my analogy. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (50:29.015) Okay. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (50:41.878) Right. Keith Bresee (50:45.23) But if I just say, if I try to walk in to the Vatican or wherever he's at, I'm not getting an audience with him. But if I court or date or, you know, build a relationship with his bishops. And then those bishops, I start rubbing shoulders with the other bishops. And now I my access to the pope. is one degree less and I can either get an interview or by sheer luck possibly say, hey, I've been talking to these bishops over here. Do you have a minute to speak with me? Your majesty. I don't know what they call the pope. Right, right. So the whole. That would make more sense. Definitely not your majesty. But but so the whole. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (51:13.049) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (51:24.41) Your punty finness. Your grace? I think it's your grace. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (51:35.77) a Keith Bresee (51:41.484) tactical aspect to this is and like, like, I literally since we've been on this phone, got an email and I have a call to go over a proposal with a verbal yes to getting a new client. Because of this, funny enough. the bishop's court technique, but it's literally similar to what you just said. Every day for a week, you engage with them on social, like you're number one, you're reply guy. That's the strategy. You're reply guy. Then you ask, and you're just replying, getting comments. Your whole thing is to get a comment or like from the person. Then your goal is to ask a question and get them to respond to the question. Then you email them a more thoughtful question to something that is just gonna take more time to answer than a tweet or LinkedIn something and you get them to answer that. Then that's where you're and this is over like a two week period and once you're at that once you've gotten them to respond to an email then you're able to tee up whatever pitch you want. Hey podcast, joint venture. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (52:36.591) Yeah. Keith Bresee (52:55.862) Backlink. Oftentimes, I will even do for a like I've gotten Guy Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist officer of Apple to share my stuff and link to me from numerous sites because of this. I did exactly what I just said. And then I said, Hey, I'm writing this article. It's not published yet. Can I get your thoughts? He says, yes. He says, I like this. I like this stuff. Gave whatever input. Very minimal. I took that input where applicable, edited my article, published it, and I said, Hey guy, I published what I, what you participated in helping me create. So now he's invested. have this long two, three week relationship with him. He shares it and boom off to the races. And I got like seven or eight backlinks from that. Like he was the only person who shared it in the beginning other than myself and you know, myself with no following compared to Guy Kawasaki, you know, all the traffic. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (53:35.514) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (53:47.791) Yeah. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (53:54.34) Right. Keith Bresee (53:54.666) it clearly came from him. Anyway, so you can leverage that sort of approach for, like I use the Bishop's Court for like our specific framework and approach for everything. And like I got an interview, this client that I have this call with next week or soon to be client was a referral because of the Bishop's Court. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (54:09.348) to. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (54:23.008) Sweet. So as I kind of wrap up here, like what's the thing, the most actionable thing from a framework approach that after somebody listens to this, they should immediately go and do? Keith Bresee (54:40.46) interview three paying customers. Not talked like I can't tell you how many times I've had people, whether it's SEOs or other entrepreneurs or business people or whatever, come back and tell me, my God, we can see why we've missed the mark or we can see why things haven't worked, et cetera. Like interview three paying customers, ideally newer ones. And if you can, happy customers and angry customers do three minimum. Ten is the ideal minimum. But like if you have the time, like keep going. Like the one health and wellness client I told you about, I still do one to three customer interviews calls a month. And I'm doing this, I'm not outsourcing this. And the questions you ask, here's the first, I have 12 questions, and I'll tell you some of them, just because I can't remember all of them off the top of my head. First question, what's your goal? What was your goal in buying the product that you bought? Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (55:34.138) Go, go, go. Keith Bresee (55:43.06) So in going after this goal, what obstacles have you hit? In going after this goal, what fears do you have? In going after this goal, what burning, what two or three burning questions do you have? Those are the most important ones that if I only have five minutes, that's what I'm asking. If you have a little bit more time. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (55:59.79) Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Keith Bresee (56:05.09) Would you buy this again? Is a very great one. If, especially if it's in the health and wellness niche or any niche really, if it can change someone's life, so your life, your money categories, the very last thing I'll ask them is, and this is, always have the, I'm always entertained by the most by this one is, try to sell me the product. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (56:15.822) Mm. Keith Bresee (56:27.85) or try to sell me the product. Talk to me for five to 10, 20 seconds and try to sell me the product. So I'm getting from the horse's mouth, the sales pitch. And then, and then this is the better part. And this is where it always changes, especially in the your life, your money category. I'll say, now try to sell it to me as if I was a loved one. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (56:34.586) Nice. Nice. Keith Bresee (56:50.25) And it gets more endearing, it gets more affectionate, gets more... So the tone changes, but the words and the way they communicate changes too. It's super interesting. And so you take all of that, interview, like just don't stop interviewing, period. And let that translate into every piece of SEO that you're doing, that's customer facing. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (57:00.204) Interesting. I like that. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (57:18.402) Right. So I know I've given you a couple of pieces to work on some of your clients' projects and some of your SOPs, but I know you've been working on putting this framework in a place where it's available. Is that something where people can go somewhere and learn more about it, or is it like a client relationship thing? What's the status on that right now? Keith Bresee (57:42.71) Yeah, so you can literally just go to SEO Mastery forward slash framework and it'll redirect you to the right link. And I have a it's twenty seven bucks and it's a framework with a bunch of bonuses and super dope stuff that will including all the questions, the the the awareness map, all that sort of analog research, everything that you need for twenty seven dollars, the full training on the the people first framework. Yeah, so that way you can start executing this on your own campaigns or your client campaigns or your grandma's campaigns or whoever. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (58:21.21) Awesome. If people want to have a conversation with you, are you on X, you on Twitter, on LinkedIn? If people want to engage and see what you're up to. Keith Bresee (58:31.894) Yeah, so because I kind of abandoned my personal account in the crypto phase and that got shut down mistakenly, my Twitter account is forward slash the major underscore ETH. I know, right? Well, think of the mate. Do think of the major from. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (58:52.058) that's easy. I'll link it in the show notes. Don't worry. Keith Bresee (59:01.388) ghost in the shell. Jeremy Rivera - Unscripted SEO (59:03.206) the major, but Keith Perzai, you're on Twitter then. Okay, yeah. Thanks so much, always fun to talk to you. I'll make sure to add a bunch of links to everything you mentioned on the show notes. I'll see you around. Keith Bresee (59:06.742) Yeah, if they search my name, they'll find me. Keith Bresee (59:20.92) Sounds good, appreciate you bro.

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