What's going on everybody?
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Bronx Attorney Broadcast.
Today's guest is Matt Halperin.
And Matt Halperin is the owner of Backstay Digital.
And what Backstay Digital does is everything to do with websites.
He can design your website.
He can do SEO for you, you know, personally.
He did a website for me.
He does SEO for prior law.
You know, I think he's great.
He is the youngest person, I think, so far to be on the podcast.
He started this business from his dorm room.
He's got a lot to say.
He knows so much about this area.
And I hope you enjoy the episode.
All right. How's it going, Matt?
Thanks for coming on the show today and talking to me.
Thanks for having me.
Glad to be here.
So tell us a little bit about your background.
Where you grow up?
You just recently graduated from college.
Tell me a little bit about that.
So I'm from Westchester, New York, so a little bit south of where you are in the Bronx.
And I went to I went to Union College and I had one as an economics major.
At that time, my goal was to become an investment banker or become a trader
and work on Wall Street.
OK, so then I take it that it didn't go that way.
Yeah. So my first internship, it was at a real estate investment trust.
And I had enjoyed it at that time.
But I, you know, I noticed people around me, they really weren't that happy
where they were. They were kind of clocking in, clocking out.
And I never really thought much of it now by sophomore year.
So that's about two years ago.
I ended up making a switch, switching from economics to political science.
I just found that I enjoyed I enjoyed writing a little bit more and COVID hit.
Right. So I was home.
I had just finished my winter term of school.
We were on a trimester calendar, so it was a fall, winter, spring.
And I had nothing to do.
I was sitting at home just kind of bored out of my mind.
And I had found a good way to take up time was to start writing.
So I started writing content for other websites.
For the purpose of it was SEO, so search engine optimization.
I know you're very familiar with that.
You're the big marketing guy, the marketing.
Right. So, so at that point, when you were doing this,
were you working for somebody else or were you starting your own business?
Or I was strictly doing this freelance.
So I was doing this for you. I was doing it for prior law.
I was doing it for my father and other small law firms
that needed content on their website to help drive clients and pick up leads.
OK, so for somebody who might know nothing about SEO,
they have a business and they go on and they make a little website.
It has the name of their business and the address and their photo.
And that's it, right?
For someone like that, what is SEO?
How does that help your business?
So I think the best example for SEO is when you get a parking ticket or a speeding ticket.
The first thing you do when you get a speeding ticket, say you're doing 82 and a 50,
you're going to look up how many points am I facing when I'm doing 32 miles over the limits.
I'd say most people look that up.
And if you notice when you look it up,
the first five or 10 websites are all traffic attorneys.
And that is what SEO is.
What they do is they write content on their websites,
either through blogs or through landing pages.
And their goal is to capture website traffic for people looking up
keywords related to what their practice areas are.
So in their case, they're looking for speeding tickets, clients.
And then their hopes is that their information on the website will be helpful
and then they can convert that person into a client.
Exactly. So they want you to engage with their website.
They want you to look through their content,
maybe get a little nervous, think you're going to lose your case.
If you go higher than that.
Exactly.
They have a lot of call to action.
So if you were a loved one, have been speeding or been ticketed for a speeding ticket in New York,
call so and so.
So that's really what SEO is.
And that's where I started.
I was strictly writing the content for other web designers and developers.
And it kind of gave me a little bit of freedom.
I made a little extra money.
And I kind of coasted until I'd say the winter.
And that's when I really decided that I wanted to take my business to the next level
and start expanding my service areas.
So when you first got started, did you form an entity to do this under?
Or did you have somebody that was helping you with it or was it just you under your own name?
I was really lucky in that my father was a lawyer and he was very prudent in that.
You know, he told me the first thing you need to do is you need to make an LLC.
If you get sued, it'll go through your LLC.
Your assets won't be at risk.
So he was very, very helpful in guiding me through that.
But I'd say I really started the business out of necessity.
Or I guess expanded it out of necessity.
Because I come back, this is about March of 2021.
I come back from a trip with my friends and I had no money.
And I was frantically looking for...
Try to put some money together.
Exactly.
Enjoy yourself at college.
Exactly.
I was frantically looking to put together some money, get money together so I can enjoy the rest of my year.
And I looked to see where the real business was, where people were really making money
in the digital marketing and web design area.
And I had realized that it's in the web design.
The guys that make the websites, they make the money.
So I kind of emulated their style or their business model in a sense.
And tried to make it my own at the same time.
So I had done my first website right when I got back.
I cold called, found clients.
I think actually you might have referred me my first clients.
Oh yeah?
My first website clients.
They got my first website.
Yeah.
And so you start doing this, did you eventually, when you started, was there somebody helping you with it?
Or was it just you?
Or when did you start to look to others to help you?
It was just me.
I figured that every dollar that I'm making, I should keep in the company or I should reinvest.
So I didn't hire anyone else.
I kind of just put the money towards expanding my capabilities, learning what web design is,
how to design a website.
For those of you who don't know a website, it's I guess CSS and HTML are the two main languages
to design the front end to make it customizable, make it beautiful.
And this is with WordPress.
And is that something that you taught yourself or you had classes on?
Exactly.
So I taught myself on YouTube and I had taken other courses.
So I took the rest of my money that I had at the time, I think was around $1,500.
And I spent all of it on to starting the business and learning how to do this.
Okay.
And then so when did you start to, how did that beginning start?
Did you pick up a lot of clients right away?
Was it slow and steady working on the same couple websites?
I'd say it was slow and steady.
I made the big mistake of not spending half my time looking for clients and looking for
business and instead just spending all of my time delivering work to my clients.
So whether it was a landing page or a website, I didn't really focus on my own business.
It's a little bit ironic because I was a digital marketing business that wasn't doing digital
marketing for themselves.
Right.
And so at this, you know, you said it was during COVID, your sophomore year,
you found this way to make money.
Is it, did you always want to start a business during college or, you know, was it just,
you didn't know what you could get a job doing in the middle of COVID?
I'd say it was more the latter.
I think it was the uncertainty.
Not a lot of people were hiring.
If they were hiring and they're usually hiring people that are older than me,
because I was a sophomore going into junior year at that time, they were hiring juniors
going into senior year, you know, people that could work for them after.
And there just wasn't that much of a market for people that were like me young and that
wanted to work in an office setting.
So I got, I guess I kind of made my own office.
Was that jobs in general or was that more in this sort of website design and SEO space?
So now that's the interesting part.
I'd never really considered the website design or digital marketing space.
Until I started doing it for myself, because at that point I was strictly set or dead set on
just finance.
I wanted to be an investment banker.
I wanted to make a ton of money and that was how I was going to do it.
But I learned at the time that entrepreneurs,
that entrepreneurial route was the best way to make money.
If you don't want to work in finance or in those other,
I guess they call them high paying industries,
because you have the freedom to own your own business, do what you want,
and hopefully enjoy doing it at the same time.
All right.
And then growing up, you know, I know you said you're looking at finance right before college,
but growing up, did you have any sort of, you know, aspirations to be a business owner or was
it re-dialed in on finance?
I was really dialed in on finance, but looking back, I can kind of see how the puzzle kind of
fixed itself, because I was actually talking to this last night with my parents.
I had sold duct tape wallets in middle school, and I was always kind of hustling when I was growing up.
Yeah.
And exactly.
Get some money, go to CVS, and get a Snickers bar.
Gotcha.
And looking back, I guess it was kind of meant to be in a way, because I'd always enjoyed that
hustle mentality, you know, what you make is what you keep, not just clocking in, clocking out,
where you kind of can't take, have an appreciation for your work.
Gotcha.
So now you're looking at going to law school, right?
Yeah.
And so that, how did law school come into the fall then, and how does your current business,
how does that, you know, work with law?
So I never thought about this until recently, but the idea of me doing the digital marketing
and SEO specifically at first, at least specifically for law firms, the idea behind that was that I
can go to law school, become an attorney, a plaintiff's attorney like you, and being able to bring
in clients through a website would be an asset to myself, because I'd be able to bring in my own
clients and hit the ground running.
So you're going to use your experience in website design and SEO to eventually, do you want to own
your own law firm?
I hope so.
Gradually.
That's exactly what I want.
I wouldn't be an entrepreneur if I didn't own my own law firm.
Okay, so you're going to use your experience to kind of get yourself the clientele that you need?
I hope so.
So tell me a little bit about where your business is at now.
You know, how many clients do you have?
Do you, what locations do you have clients in, where do you work?
So we have two offices now.
We have one base in Westchester where it started, and then our new office is on Madison Avenue,
48th and Madison, and I guess when we first started doing websites, we were doing maybe
one every two months.
In July alone, we did eight websites, which was great.
It was the most we've ever done, and that's actually what forced me to expand the business.
I call it the lawyer's mentality, where you try to do everything on your own until you just
physically can't handle the work, and then you start hiring, starting with an associate,
and then more and more and more.
So as of now, we have two other employees, three total.
One that specializes in web development, and the other that specializes in digital marketing and SEO.
Okay, and what's the name of your business again?
Backstay Digital.
So, I don't know if we said it at the top, so.
It's a weird name.
So the Backstay Digital, the Backstay is the part of a sailboat that holds up your mast.
Okay, and if you lose the backstay, you lose your mast, you drop it, and you're in a really bad
situation.
So in a way, it's kind of the most important part of the boat that no one ever talks about.
And that's what I wanted my web design and digital marketing company to be like,
you know, something that you don't realize how integral it is until you don't have it,
or until you really need it.
Gotcha.
So what I say is, good web design, you can tell, great web design, you can never tell.
I like to be invisible in the sense that you don't realize that we're there,
but if you're in a business, you know how important we are to helping you bring in clients and,
you know, maintaining a nice professional digital presence.
And that's what I really wanted, and then that's what we're hoping to achieve over the next five to
ten years.
Okay, and then, so what, when you're building a good website, what types of components to a website
do you need?
I always try to go for the visually pleasing functional type of website.
So for example, a new thing I'm doing is on the front homepage of every website,
I try to do montages.
I'll show you to a little later, maybe we can post it up, but the montage is essentially
like a video slideshow that has become a new digital marketing trend in the last,
I'd say six to nine months.
So I'm always trying to kind of come up with new concepts that will allow me to create new,
exciting, and unique content for my clients.
Okay.
I'd say that's where, that's where I am right now.
And it's something that I think will help us grow in the next five to ten years.
Essentially, finding out what's hip, what's new, and if it doesn't exist, creating it for our
clients, because we always say we like to offer them, you know, full 360 control over the website
in terms of what they want, without them having to sit down at the computer and tell me exactly
what to do.
And that's in the web design.
That's in the web design.
And I'd say that's actually the biggest trend in the next, I'd say the next five to ten months
is you're going to see a lot of websites with a front homepage, the top area is always a
slideshow or a video.
And what, like, what is it a slideshow of, like, what that business does and the people who work
there?
It could either be a slideshow of the business itself.
So if you're a power washing company, it could be a slideshow of a ASMR type video,
where they're power washing graffiti off a wall.
I'm actually doing a website right now for a digital media company that specializes in drone
videography.
Okay, that's a pretty easy one to get some footage for.
You can't get bad footage on a drone, that's what I always say.
So when you want to be findable online, the number one place to go for that is Google, right?
Yeah, because Google is, you know, no one says I Bing this the other day.
No one uses Bing.
Google is the bees knees.
It is what people use.
It's what people search with.
And it is the best way to get yourself in front of a big audience.
So what do you have to do for a website so that it's climbing that ranks to be coming on the first
three or five pages of Google?
I'd say the most important thing you can do for your website is post every day or post at least,
you know, once a week.
And what types of things should you be posting?
So it depends on the industry.
You know, if you're a website designer, for example, like myself, I'll post on my website,
you know, new content about digital marketing trends.
You're a lawyer, so you look at a post about stuff that's related to your practice areas.
So for example, last year, trip and fall accident went up 10%.
Year over year, COVID could have played a role in it, but it's an interesting statistic,
nonetheless, and it's something that could help you get in front of people.
And so that's through blog posts.
Exactly.
You're doing this and you will write content for people like attorneys who need this kind of
Exactly.
Words on a page type of thing to stay relevant.
So we write exactly.
So we write, you know, 1000 to 1500 word blog posts.
The blog posts kind of answer questions that you might have.
So for example, you get hit by a car.
You might want to know what kind of damages you can collect, what kind of compensation.
A good blog post or landing page will talk about the different types of compensation
may be entitled to such as pain and suffering, wrongful death, loss of consortium, the kind
of things that the courts pay out.
So you really have to tailor your content to what your audience is looking for and what
your demographic is looking for.
So if you're a personal injury attorney in the Bronx, for example, you might be looking for
someone that's a construction worker because there's demographically there's a lot more
construction workers in the Bronx than there would be in large Montignor or Ryan New York.
Because the business is in the Bronx and in Manhattan, that's where people live.
So you might want to tailor your blog post towards scaffolding accidents, trip and fall
accidents related to construction work, electrocution, stuff like that stuff that your demographic
or your target demographic would look up and would engage with.
Because engagement rates are really what you're looking for.
Because the more people engage with your website, the more likely they are to retain your
services or to buy your product.
And that goes for any industry, whether you're working in wealth management as a financial
advisor, you're working as an attorney, or if you're just trying to sell a product,
for example, a wee wee pad.
Okay. And so when you say engage with you, is that the time that's spent on the website
itself or on the page?
Exactly.
So we track everything on any website through Google Analytics.
So we like to see how people are getting to a website, whether it's through ads,
if it's organic, if it's through social media.
And then we like to see how long they spend on your website and how long they spend on
each page.
And that's a very good predictive indicator for whether or not they'll A, be back, and
B, will retain your services.
I'd say it's not as great for the latter.
However, people that spend more than three to four minutes on a website,
generally come back to that website.
And so you're able to tell all of this information from what?
From Google Analytics.
So one of the employees I have, the digital marketing specialist, is very good with Google
Analytics.
He can track engagement rates.
That's what he does.
He's a data analytics person.
So I'd say that's his area of expertise.
But what I can tell you is that we can pretty much track a person's general behavior on
any website that we operate.
And that allows us to create better content, target our ads a little bit better for using
advertising as a model, and generally speaking, assess how well the website is doing.
Okay.
So how exactly do you change your approach based on that information that you're finding
in Google Analytics?
I think you touched on a little bit, but.
So for example, if we're, I say the best example I can give you is with the one wheel
campaign we recently finished.
So the one wheel, one wheels, as you know, there are these big one wheel skateboards and
we're creating content to raise awareness for their defects.
Right.
And we were doing this for an attorney.
So we found that the, at first we started advertising strictly in New York City and Manhattan
and the outer boroughs.
So strictly in that area, but what we had filled the realize in the first month was that
these boards cost 12, 13, $1400 and they go 20 miles an hour.
They might not want to, people might not want to ride these boards in condensed cities where
they can take subways where they may not want to walk around with a 20 pound board.
Okay.
So what we did was we changed the, or we did an IBM, I call it, we completely pivoted
and we went towards suburban areas where people are more likely to be on a skateboard or a
bike for more than one mile.
Okay.
And kind of understanding our demographic and who we're looking for, essentially for
one wheel, I guess it would be their client or their customer for us, our clients, allowed
us to better place our ads, save money and more importantly get cases.
We call them viable leads, potential leads.
And essentially just changing our demographic where we advertised to was the most effective
way and that was done, that was best done through Google Analytics because it's a lot
of efforts because Google Analytics essentially told us that people don't engage with our posts,
they don't like to see these one wheel ads or these one wheel accident attorney ads.
So what we did was we scrapped the projects, we, from the bottom up, ran a whole new advertising
campaign and it's been wildly successful since.
Okay.
And so before we get to, to talk a little more about ads, you know, why should somebody
pay you to create content for their website?
Because everybody's in the back of their head is like, I know this better than everybody else,
right?
I should just write the content for my own website.
Well, I would say when you work with a digital agency or a creative agency,
we generally understand people pretty well.
So you might understand your demographic and you know, your ideal customer, your ideal client,
but we can do it just as well and we can work essentially in the background what you can
focus on your business.
Okay. I think that's a big thing about, you know, focusing on your business.
Exactly.
Because my biggest problem was, like I said before, I was a digital marketing agency that
wasn't doing any digital marketing for themselves because I was too busy doing it for other people.
When you operate a business, your customer, your clients generally come first and you're
working long hours often.
If you're an entrepreneur, a lot of the time you're not working in normal nine to five,
you're working to finish the work that's put in front of you.
And that could be, you know, 8am to 12am or it could be two or three hours a day.
It really depends.
But when you're focused on your business, you should really be focusing strictly on getting
the work done and delivering good quality products or services, not just finding clients.
Because they'll, they're really impede.
You can't do two things at once.
You can't be a digital marketer.
You can't be a lawyer.
Well, maybe you can.
But for most businesses, it just doesn't make sense the way they to allocate your time
split between two very important things.
When you could be, you know, perfecting your product or service and letting it agency deliver
you clients and potential leads.
Okay.
And then so you're talking about ads.
Do you help people with ad campaigns as well for their, for their business?
Yeah, that's a big part of what we do too.
We do PPC ads, we call it pay per click as well as social media ads.
Those allow us to get in front of a bigger audience, you know, get in front of 30 to
300,000 people.
But at the same time, we like to post at the same rate, you know, three to five times a
month, the very least.
And what that allows us to do is essentially create organic content and promote the page
at the same time.
Think of it like the TikTok effect.
You know, you see, you see something that's in front of you and ad, you click on the page
and sometimes you scroll through five, 10, 15 other videos and you engage with this.
And that's only possible because they're posting this content regularly online and
Facebook or Meta will even tell you it's not even worth advertising your services if
you're not posting consistently every month or every week.
Okay.
So you want to hook somebody with one post and then have them collect on the website
looking at everything else.
Exactly.
So think of the, for as a fishing metaphor, think of the ad as a hook that's 100 yards
out from your, from the dock or think of the ad as chum, rather, for you in the fishing
method.
Your ads are chum and you have hooks right around the boat that allows whales and sharks
to come in.
That's really what it is.
Exactly.
You can sail your fish.
Convert our traffic into leads or leads into clients or customers and the customers and
clients into your bottom line.
Okay.
And this might sound like a stupid question, but what, what is pay per click?
So pay per click are the types of ads on Google and on Facebook or Instagram on social media.
They charge you for every time someone clicks on your website for every engagement.
So there are two types of ways of measuring ad traffic or measuring traffic to a website.
There are engagements, which are people interacting, for example, on Facebook or Google, that'll
be a click that redirects you to your website.
And there are impressions or views, no different from a YouTube view, just whether or not someone
scrolled through.
Got it.
And there are a lot of different ways to track engagement, but with PPC or pay per click ads,
it strictly comes down to how often they click on the, the advertisement link to get to your
website.
And in some practice areas or some industries, that's great.
You know, if you're a contractor in some areas, that could be a great way to bring in business
or lawyer, but in more cases than not, I'd say most of the time, pay per click ads become
pretty expensive, which is why we choose SEO.
Gotcha.
So if you're selling, you know, a product or service that's worth a lot of money,
pay per click could be more beneficial because of how expensive it is.
Exactly.
So one click on a construction accident advertisement on Google, if you look up construction
attorney, that'll cost between 35 on the very low end, but more likely closer to $350 per
click just for one click.
And that doesn't even ensure you will receive a client out of it.
So we choose SEO because it's a little slower, but it's an organic way of bringing people
to your website.
And sometimes we actually do SEO and PPC at the same time, which is the same thing that
we do on social media where we advertise and add content.
And essentially allows us to get engagements with our content and help push it higher on
Google.
And there's a lot you can do with the social media advertisements as well in terms of looking
at your audience, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
If you have a business account with Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, you have access to all
their analytics.
And I guess from a normal person standpoint, that's not really immersed in this digital
marketing area.
It's a little overwhelming because you don't realize how much data they collect from you.
So how specifically can you pinpoint your target customer, that is the ideal customer
for your client's business?
So some of it comes down to rationalizing understanding consumer behavior.
And I'd say our company is pretty good at that.
We can understand who our target demographic, our target audiences and tailor our content
to that demographic, to that audience.
However, with the power of the meta data that they offer us or meta being Facebook, Instagram,
we can actually see exactly how long people are spending on our posts, how well they're
engaging.
And they won't give you the actual timer, but every time you scroll through an Instagram post,
a timer starts off.
So you scroll to my post, one, two, three, four, you scroll down and the timer resets.
And they have a very good understanding of how people are engaging with your content.
They don't necessarily give you those tools or the raw data.
However, they do have a very robust platform that allows us to better understand our
engagements in our audience because no one's engaging with your post.
What's the point of posting at that point?
This episode of the Bronx Attorney Broadcast was brought to you by me, Will Ferreiro.
I'm an attorney of prior law right here in the Bronx, and we primarily practice in personal
injury.
However, we do also do a variety of areas of practice.
So I can help you with just about any sort of legal issue that you might have.
I'm admitted to practice both in New York and New Jersey.
And if it's not something that I can personally help you with, I can connect you with
someone in my network of attorneys who is best equipped to help you with your legal issue.
You can find me on Instagram and on Twitter at Bronx Attorney.
You can send me an email, Ferreiro at prior law or call me at the office, 718-829-0222.
And now back to the show.
All right.
And back to Google searches.
How important is it to have a Google My Business account and to be collecting reviews?
Because that could be really teeny.
That is critical.
So there are two types of SEO.
There's on one side, there's local SEO, and then there's national level SEO.
National level SEO, very easy.
Think of it as, you know, you look up one real attorney, construction attorney,
and what pops up on Google on the first page, that's national level SEO, I call it.
Local SEO is also equally as important, especially if you're tailoring your services
to a certain area or industry.
So for example, Bronx Attorney, a local SEO is critical because if someone looks up
attorney near me or attorney in the Bronx, all the Google businesses show up.
And the way Google ranks them is not random.
It's ranked often based off the reviews, based off how many people engage with them.
So having a lot of reviews on your Google page is very, very important.
And also setting up your Google business page in a way that you can,
you list out your services, so those keywords are indexed with Google is very important
because if someone looks up, maybe contract attorney near me,
you might not show up if you don't offer that as a practice area with Google.
Got it.
And that's actually in Google's, the way you set up your business.
Exactly.
That's in Google business specifically.
So when you set it up, they'll give you all these questionnaires,
and a lot of the time people just skip them over.
But that is a big mistake if you do.
Yeah, you gotta go back in and look at mine now.
I took care of you.
So, you know, it sounds like you need all of these things to be taken care of,
to really have your advertising and SEO to be successful, right?
Yeah, I would say it's like a Rubik's Cube in that you need every side to be perfect,
or to align nicely.
It's going to be very hard to get clients these days as a lawyer,
if you don't have a website, but you have a very good Google business page,
or vice versa.
So you need to have kind of every side of the, I guess, of the Rubik's Cube there.
I guess it's done the very best analogy, but that's all I can come up with.
So, I mean, it seems like now there's so many businesses that are offering what you're offering,
right?
I get emails that have since been filtered out of my email, you know, for a ton of them.
So why should people hire you to take care of this for them?
I'd say we're results driven, and that I say several different reasons.
The first one we're results driven, and that we don't charge an exorbitant amount of money
until we start delivering new clients.
But the biggest, I guess, distinction with my company is that we have real people that are
good at writing, doing our content.
And that's at the basic level.
A lot of the reason I got into this industry was I noticed that a lot of the content writers,
a lot of the copywriters just weren't producing good content.
The attorneys were spending an hour, hour and a half making red lines and delivering it back
to the copywriter or the copy editor, and it just wasn't efficient for them.
And so is that because they're writing with poor grammar or they don't know the subject matter?
Exactly.
So it's a little bit of both.
They don't know the subject matter.
They have poor grammar.
And also they don't know how to implement their keywords in.
So they don't know how to add the main keywords, the primary keywords.
We call them the secondary keywords.
So a primary keyword could be a Bronx need or a employment attorney.
And the secondary keyword could be weights theft.
You need to be able to embed those keywords into your article or just say implement them rather.
Because if you don't, then there's no point in posting it because you're not going to target
any specific search queries.
So that's one thing that really sets us apart.
And I think another thing that sets us apart is I guess the quality of our services.
We tend to deliver, at least I like to think we deliver pretty good websites.
And we tend to be pretty responsive.
So I think that's a big distinction between us and a lot of other companies.
I mean, I like our websites to be in front.
So that's actually that.
Thank you.
So I'd hope that that's a big distinction.
You know who you're dealing with a lot of the time we deal with referrals.
So a lot of the time people can see what we've already done.
And generally speaking, people like our websites.
We give them full creative control over the website if they would like it.
If they're not really sure what they want, we always deliver mockups.
I mean, you give them kind of an option or multiple options to choose what they like.
And we don't use templates and we pride ourselves on that.
We don't like to use themes or templates if we can help it.
We like to make our own theme files.
If you're looking for a template or something that you go online and you download it.
Exactly.
So we don't like to do that if we can help it because that doesn't help with the SEO.
That really impedes it.
And that's one thing that also is a distinction really sets us apart.
When you're dealing with a lawyer's website, that's a WordPress theme, for example,
50, 500 other lawyers could be using that.
And a lot of the content people just don't change.
We will fight for you could be use across 5000 websites.
So using the having a bottom up creative agency like us allows you to have full creative control
and have a website that's unique and SEO friendly.
And that's a big distinction and sometimes a little bit more expensive.
But at the end of the day, you want to have something that's yours and you like it's like buying a watch.
I say you have to love it and it has to be useful for you.
And I think we deliver a web we for all of our clients.
I think we deliver both of those.
I think we deliver websites that are SEO friendly that allow a client to bring in business and help them in the long term.
And they're visually pleasing.
We have a good user experience.
We have great design.
At least I think we have great designs.
I always say that.
And I think that's what sets us apart.
And that's what I pitched my clients.
Okay.
You ever deal with apprehensive clients because of how young you are as you were doing this in college?
So I wouldn't say I deal with apprehensive clients based off my age.
I think clients tend to be they tend to be unsure because based off their age, I've noticed that selling a website to someone that's in their 40s is a lot easier than selling a website to someone that's 60, 65.
Just because when you're in your 40s, you tend you generally speaking, you've grown up with this technology, you understand you were through the dot com era where you understand how important a website could be versus, you know, someone that's older has been in business for quite a long time.
They deal often they deal based off their or they get clients based off their reputation or based off referrals.
And I'd say that's the biggest that's the that's the biggest trend that I've noticed.
I always like to ask people about that because every once in a while, the potential clients eyes are bug out of their head and they realize that I'm their attorney and not six year old guy with a big white beard.
So tell me a little bit about links.
We've talked about links in the past, right?
How you're sort of how to do good SEO you want to be linking throughout your website and you want other people to be linking to your website to right?
Yeah, so outbound and inbound links on your website and you want to have outbound links and other people's website.
So link building is quite important.
So let's outbound and inbound.
When we do a page, you'll notice that pretty much any website, you'll notice that also start with an attorney.
There are links on the page that take you to your practice areas that could take you to a contact page.
These links essentially that are in that are internal links, these inbound links, they essentially are said there's internal links and external links and inbound links and outbound links.
Internal links are within your website, so they take you to your contact page, they take you to your practice area page, and that kind of guides the flow of traffic.
So think of it as a link on my page that links elsewhere.
Exactly.
It's like a current in the water.
It pushes your traffic into this area or into another area.
Outbound links are really just good for SEO in general.
It's really difficult to describe, I guess, how good an external link, how it really helps your websites.
Now having links on other people's websites or to other people's websites are very, very important because that allows people to get to another traffic service.
It allows people to get from one website to another instead of looking up or googling or going on social media to get there.
It's a new way of bringing people in.
That also gives your website credibility with Google, right, when you're on other people's websites.
Exactly.
So Google loves that.
If you have no links on other people's websites, it won't necessarily ruin your SEO, it won't make it or break it.
However, if you're in that middle ground, I call it the middle page problem where you're not on the last page, you're not on the first page, but you're in like the fifth or sixth page.
Having these links could really push you higher.
I'd say that adds a level of credibility to Google.
Having external links on your website, for example, to like a statistic point, to data point, also adds a layer of legitimacy for your own content.
When you're linking to something else.
Exactly.
Okay.
And I've heard that Google changes its algorithm kind of frequently about how it, you know, values websites.
How do you deal with the kind of moving target?
I love that.
I think that it's in a way kind of evens a playing field, because if Google had never changed their algorithm the way they rank websites, the guys I got in there early would just be there for life.
It'd be like Manhattan real estate.
Gotcha.
This kind of levels of playing field in a sense that it gives you the opportunity to get to the first page.
So whoever's staying on top of their game is the one that's rising to the top.
Exactly.
So the, for example, since we're so on the lawyer's subject, if you're doing a products liability case and your keywords involve other products, exact tech, their hips and knees, one of the two, they just recently had a recall in February of 2022.
And the problem with advertising or putting SEO up is that exact tech, technically, they have a lot of, they have a lot of SEO.
They have pretty much the first page entirely with their products for any keyword related to their knee or hip or total hip systems, total knee systems.
So having a changing algorithm, having Google adjusted every month or year allows you to get to that first page a little easier because you're not just competing against them.
It's more of the way you go about it.
Okay.
So what did you say the biggest difficulties of owning your own businesses?
I'd say the biggest problem with it is you've got to wear a lot of different hats.
You have to, some days you have to be the accountant.
You have to run your own books.
Other days are the salesman.
You're looking for clients.
Maybe you're cold calling.
And I've noticed that wearing all these different hats can be convoluting and kind of take away from my, pull my focus away from where it should be on the business.
Turning out websites, creating content and interacting with clients.
And the operations really convoluted things.
They make it difficult to achieve your goals.
So that's actually why I ended up hiring more people.
I told you the lawyer's method.
I worked until there was physically too much work for me to handle.
And pushing that aside has allowed me to work more on the operations and building the company.
And I'd say that's the biggest impediment that I've noticed in running your own business.
Yeah, my next question was going to be how do you deal with that?
But you were to answer that, so that's good.
What would you say to somebody who is sitting in their dorm room thinking about starting a business,
but is feeling apprehensive about it or that they feel like they're too inexperienced or too young to really get started?
I was actually just talking to my friend about that.
I'd say just do it.
I would rather be the person that tried and failed than the person that never tried.
Because you try and fail, it could hurt, it could put you down a little bit.
But at least you tried.
At least you did something that no one else has done.
Or at least most people haven't done exactly.
Not that many people, everyone says America is the land of small businesses.
Not that many people I know run their own small business.
So just trying, putting yourself out there I think is really valuable and you can learn from your mistakes.
So what's the first step you think you should take?
What was the first thing you did towards approaching a new business?
So I guess before you even consider starting a new business, I'd say the first step is find a problem.
I'd say most businesses, most great businesses, they start with a problem and they start with a niche.
So I'd say find a problem, find your niche.
So a big problem I guess in my industry, the digital marketing is not a lot of people have websites these days.
A lot of these small businesses have been founded way before websites were even a concept and they just never thought to start one.
So I found the problem and found my niche.
And why do you think that is?
I think people started and didn't have a website so they thought they just never needed one.
You know, if a name broke, don't fix it.
A lot of people tend to get their clients or customers from referrals or from I guess the reputation in the community.
And they tend to stick with that.
Whereas younger people, someone who's just started a business, whether it's website related or not,
they understand the power that a website can bring.
They can bring clients in.
A lot of people don't even have Google businesses because they don't think it's worth their time.
Got it.
Yeah, and that's something that's relatively easy to do.
Ten minutes, I'd say.
Very easy.
So what do you think is the most, in the past few years of owning a business,
what's been the most rewarding thing or what have you been creating to accomplish it so far?
I guess generally speaking, rewarding is seeing the finished project or the finished product.
So I've always had trouble finishing projects or products when I was young.
I'd started something, I'd have really immersed in it and I just wouldn't want to finish it.
So nowadays I really take pride in finishing a website.
Going forward, I think we're moving more towards website development and app development.
So that's really been my baby these last few weeks and months.
So my hope is that by the end of the summer, or at least by the end of September,
that my next project will be finished, which will be a financial literacy app.
Okay, and what is the financial literacy app going to do?
But what's its use going to be?
It's going to solve a problem.
So the big problem was we've noticed that my colleagues and I noticed that a lot of people
just don't understand simple concepts such as compound interest or the value of putting away $500 a month
to max out your Roth IRA.
And our goal is to deliver an app that works kind of like a course where people can learn at their own pace
how to invest and how to become financially sound and independent.
And I'd never really thought about this until recently.
It actually came from my siblings because they are pretty savvy.
They work, they know how to use a computer, they understand the stock market to an extent,
but they never got out and made an account, made a brokerage account.
So my goal is to essentially deliver an app that can help the normal person, the common person,
learn how to invest and how to push their future, I guess, and ensure their future.
Okay, and so when do you think that's going to be the data coming out?
That's going to be, I remember thinking six to nine months, hopefully.
Not as long as I would have thought.
We've, you know, a website can take four to six weeks.
An app is a lot longer, and that's actually something that we didn't realize because we,
what we did and what I did from the very beginning was I'd always say,
I'll learn how to do it on the fly, you know, if I'm making a website, my first website,
I didn't know how to make a website.
I just did it on the fly.
I learned how to YouTube open in one tab, learning how to do it,
and I had the website, I had WordPress open on the other tab.
So there's a little bit of a learning curve, and I tend to learn as we do it.
The app's a little bit different because I'm the one doing the learning.
We have app developers or web developer, and he's the one that's the charge of it.
But I tend to learn as I go, and what I thought could be four to six weeks as a normal website
turned out to be, you know, six months plus.
And so is app development something that you offer clients through your business,
or is that something that you're just doing yourself?
So this particular project, we're doing ourself.
The reason why we're doing this, ourself, is because we want something to show our clients.
It's very difficult to sell a website to someone, or to sell an app if you've never done it before.
You know, no one wants to be your first.
So we're doing this to kind of get experience doing it.
The website, we never did that, and that was, I'd say, a mistake
because we were learning on the fly, and we did make a lot of mistakes in the way.
Doing an app, we don't want to make those same mistakes.
So we're going to do it ourselves.
But in the future, we will be offering website developments, or I think web applications,
and app development services to clients.
Whether they want an app for their own business, or if they're raising money for a startup,
we will provide those services.
And that's where we're really looking to move in the next five to ten years.
What else do you see on the horizon in the next five to ten years for you?
In terms of the digital marketing and design, I think we're actually going to move away from the digital marketing
and more towards creating websites and creating apps.
Real tangible things that can really push us into the next decade.
There tends to be a lot of, as you mentioned, you get a lot of solicitations for digital marketing.
You don't get as many for web development and for app development.
The market isn't as saturated.
So that's where we're really trying to push.
We think it's a growing industry.
There's a lot of demand for it.
So our hope is to really move into that niche and move away from things that we started off with,
things that seem a little bit more comfortable.
Alright, cool.
And so if somebody wants to get in contact with you to inquire about your services, how can they find you?
So they can find me at BackstayDigital.com.
You can always email me.
My name is Matt, and my email is matt at BackstayDigital.com.
We try to make it easy.
We look right into the camera for the cellular at the end.
For the call to action.
Alright Matt, thanks for chatting with me today.
Thank you. It's been a pleasure.