Alright, well everyone welcome to another episode of Faithfully Engaged. Today we're
going to talk a little bit about social media, SEO. If you have no idea what SEO means, you're
going to learn all about it today from our guest Brandon. So Brandon, it's great to have you on.
Why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Yeah, thanks for having me on. My name
is Brandon Lebowitz and I've been involved with digital marketing since 2007, helping people get
more visibility and exposure online. Got my degree in business marketing and after I graduated, the
first time I got out of school was helping a company out with digital marketing and I didn't
really know much about it. They said, don't worry, we don't know much either. We're going to learn
what to you and take you to classes and workshops and seminars and this is back in 2007. And after
doing that for a few months, just kind of realized this is probably the future. Everyone's probably
got a website in the future and there's lots of different ways to get traffic, such as like social
media, running paid ads, doing email marketing, doing search engine optimization, but we'll just
focus more on the SEO side of things because it's a way to get free traffic. And I always thought,
why spend money on paid ads? If you can get up there for free and over the years I've worked
at different advertising agencies as a director of SEO, but also realized that I could work
and pick up like build a freelance business up by finding clients that aren't a conflict of interest.
So when I was working at these agencies, most of the clients were like e-commerce businesses. So
I was able to go to like a local restaurant or doctor or lawyer or whatever it may be,
that's a local business and essentially offer them my services to see if they need help with SEO and
built that up by working before work, after work, on my lunch breaks, on my own company and built
that up to where as I would eventually quit my job and focus solely on this and really been doing
that ever since, just helping people tap into that free traffic from Google. Yeah, well,
it's great to have you on and then let's start with just that SEO. You've already mentioned
what that is, but for somebody that's listening, like what on earth is SEO? What's kind of that
over 10,000 photo overview, basic explanation of what SEO even is. So SEO is search engine
optimization, which means optimizing websites for search engines. So when you're searching
on Google, which Google kind of runs the show, there's ads at the top. Those are all paid ads.
Right below the ads are the organic, the free listings and SEO is all about getting you
in those free listings. There's 10 spots on that first page of Google that list out websites. So
we're trying to get your website listed on that first page of Google. So you can get that free
traffic without having to spend money on paid ads. So it's really just trying to tap into that free
Google traffic. Gotcha. Yeah. And like you mentioned, their free Google traffic, you said
free is better than paid. I mean, pretty much every way. So you're obviously an expert at this.
You've been doing this for quite some time. Let's start back in that 2007 timeframe.
What was different back then? How did you get your feet wet and learn more about it?
That was way before my days of having a website and everything. So what was that like kind of
pioneering back in those days? It was a lot easier because there's less competition. So the more
competition, the tougher it becomes back then. Like you said, you didn't have a website. Most
people didn't have websites nowadays. It's a little too easy to build a website on WordPress or
Shopify or Wix or Squarespace where anyone could build a website, throw it up in a few hours and
start becoming a competitor. So it's a lot more. It's a lot tougher nowadays back then. It was
much easier. And for the most part, everything is still similar to what Google is looking at in
the search engine, the algorithms. It's just changed a little bit because people found loopholes and
ways to kind of game the system, which search engines, they know, we don't want you to find
these loopholes. We don't want you to gain the system and find these shortcuts. We want you to
work to build it up. So essentially, like all the algorithm updates are like really just trying to
stop spam, like cleaning up spam and people have figured found loopholes and game the system. And
I mean, the only major updates that really have a big impact are like back in 2013,
Google said, mobile is taking over. And if your website's not mobile friendly,
we're not going to show you on mobile devices, which nowadays accounts for over half the traffic to
any website or every website loads slowly. We're not going to like that. So every once in a while,
they'll let you know what they're doing. But most of the time, they don't really tell you what they're
doing. They kind of keep it secret. But as long as you're not spamming, then you don't really have
to worry about any of those updates, because that's really what they're doing is trying to just clean
up the results and provide the best user experience. Because if someone searches on Google,
goes to your website, and then it loads slowly or it doesn't look good on mobile, that's a bad
easier experience. And you probably hit that back button. And Google doesn't want you to do that.
They want you to find what they're looking like you're looking for as quickly and as easily as
possible. So the easier you make it for people to find what they're looking for on your website,
the more Google is going to reward you with more traffic and higher rankings in the search results.
Yeah. That all that sounds, you know, fairly, fairly basic. Yeah, I get this
website built up. It needs to be be relevant to goes on the Google search engine, it needs to load
fast. Okay, fine. That that that won't take me very long. It'll just take me 10 seconds and I
master it, right? Like, of course not. There's more that goes into that. So why is this, why can
it be a little besides just the competition? Like you said, why might it be a little intimidating
for people to try to tackle SEO issues all on their own? Well, Google doesn't really care what you
put on the website. So all that stuff, like making changes to your website, building a website,
putting keywords on it, doesn't do anything. Because it's too easy. Google knows that anyone
could build a website. That doesn't mean that you're real, legitimate, credible, trustworthy.
Because again, Google doesn't want to rank a website and then find out that you're selling
like shoes online and you're selling fake Nike's or something like that, or you're just stealing
people's credit card information. So they want you to build up trust. And the way to build trust
is by getting what are called backlinks, getting other websites to talk about you, the more websites
that talk about you, that are related to what you're doing, the more trust Google is going to give
to you. And then they look at those keywords on your website, but it doesn't work the other way
around without building backlinks. It's pretty much impossible to rank on Google. And what is a
backlink? A backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. So let's say
you're reading an article on Forbes.com in there, it says Brandon Leibowitz and you click on it and
it goes to my website. I'd be getting a backlink from Forbes.com. So the more websites that talk
about you, it's kind of like a popularity contest, the more trustworthy Google sees you as. And but
yeah, there's so many other variables. That's why it's tough because SEO is like a puzzle. There's
a lot of pieces to this puzzle. Some are bigger than others like the content on your website.
The backlinks are two really big pieces of that puzzle, but there's so many little tiny things
that have those impacts that it gets a little tricky with Google. They don't make it the easiest.
They make it seem straightforward and easy, but there's so many little nuances and technical
details that it gets a little tricky. Yeah, kind of sticking on the topic of backlinks.
That's something if, you know, if anybody saw the title to this episode and like look up SEO,
what's SEO and backlinks inevitably is going to be something that pops up when you're looking
at SEO. So that makes sense of somebody is backlinking me. So good. That's communicating to Google.
Okay, this website probably is something that's trustworthy. So let's say I'm a new business
owner. I'm trying to get my website out there to all sorts of different people. How do I get
those backlinks? How do I get people to communicate back to me and to show Google that I'm really
legitimate? Well, there's a lot of different ways to build backlinks. The best way is look at your
competition, spy on your competitors, easy paid tools. You have to pay for these tools. They're
about like $100 a month or so. So just pick one of them. Like Ahrefs is pretty popular.
Or Moz or some rush. I just like pick one, use that tool and then go into Google search for your
keywords and make a list of all the websites that appear because these are your competitors.
Even though they might not be your competitor offline, if they rank on that first page of
Google for your keywords, they are your competitor online. Like let's say you're a restaurant and
you search on Google and you see that Yelp appears. You're like Yelp is not my competitor. But if
they're ranking for your keywords, technically they are. You might have 20 other restaurants
in your city, but if none of them rank on that first page of Google, then they're not really
your competitors online offline. They're your competitors, but online got to figure out who
your competition is, who ranks for your keywords and then throw make a list of all those websites
and then throw them into those tools and you can see all of their backlinks. And if they're on that
first page of Google, Google is definitely rewarding them because of those backlinks. So if you could
look at those backlinks and find out which ones are relevant and authoritative and reach out to
those sites to see if they potentially link out to you. Because if they're linking to your competitor,
they'd probably link to you. You just got to get creative and figure out what did your competition
do? Did they write an article? Did they get an interview? Did they do a blog post? Are they a
local business? Are they on the Yelp? Are they on Google Maps? Are they on Apple Maps? Are they on
like the BBB? Did they join like a Chamber of Commerce? Do they like sponsor a trade show and
got a backlink? And you're pretty much reverse engineer in their entire strategy and see how
they've gotten that traction, what they've been doing and then you try to replicate that as much
as possible. You're not going to be able to replicate everything because you just some of those
websites here and be 10, 20 years old that you're not able to reach out to these sites. But you want
to try to find as many sites that are related to what you're doing and authoritative. You don't
want to just go for any website. You got to make sure that they're niche related and they have some
authority to it because if you feel the wrong type of backlinks instead of ranking higher,
you're going to actually drop down, which we don't want that to happen. We want you to rank higher.
We don't want you to fall down those results. Do you have some more examples of the bad
backlink side of things? What are some examples of a bad backlink, so to speak?
I mean, so like if you're, let's say, selling shoes online and you're getting a backlink from a
pharmaceutical company or a gambling company or like anything that doesn't really align,
that would be a bad backlink. Or it's like if you're based in the United States and you're getting
backlinks from other countries or other languages, that's also a negative sign to signal to Google.
So I'll come down to just thinking like, all right, if I'm selling shoes in the United States,
what type of websites would link out to someone selling shoes? Probably like other websites,
well, Japan, what type of footwear if you're selling like sports shoes and maybe like sporting
websites or like, it's all about just understanding like what's related to what you're doing, maybe
other manufacturers, designers, stuff like that, that that's going to be related to what you're
doing. So it's all about relevancy. That's the big part is finding sites that are related to what
you're doing, not just finding any random website, but finding sites that are at least somewhat related
to what you're doing. The more related, the better, but it doesn't have to be exactly what you're doing.
Like I'm an SEO company, probably not going to get other SEO companies to link out to me because
we're all somewhat competitors. But if I could find websites related to like marketing, even
traditional marketing like TV, print, radio, it doesn't have to be digital marketing or SEO,
anything somewhat related to what you're doing, that's what Google wants to see.
Yeah. So it's probably not the best idea of ideas just to say,
Annie and everybody put my website on your website, but if it's in the ballpark,
we definitely want that because that's still in Google that, yeah, I'm selling shoes and these
warehouses or whatever are back linking me, but probably a legitimate website there. So that
makes sense. Now I'm going to kind of rail on my hometown for a little bit. So I'm in a somewhat
rural Oklahoma and not that nobody in town has heard of SEO and things of that nature, but
it's not necessarily the talk of the town. It's usually you go to that restaurant because so-and-so
owns it from so-and-so. It's a lot of word of mouth, which that obviously still matters.
But their big thing, I know, I can't tell you how many times I've tried to Google a restaurant or
something in my town and they don't have a website. So I go to their, I go to their social media page.
I would imagine you would agree having some form of social media presence isn't a bad thing, but
what would you say to somebody that says, well, why do I need a website? Because I have a Facebook.
Every business in my town has Facebook, but they may not have a website. Why might that be an issue
if they already have a Facebook? Why should they just go ahead and get a website too?
Well, if they have a Facebook page and you go on their Facebook page,
there's ads that promote other businesses there. And if you have a website, you're not going to
promote other companies. You're going to promote yourself. You don't want people going to your
website and then be like, oh, look at all these ads. I'm going to click on these ads. And then they
forget about your service and maybe made five bucks from that ad, but you could have made
whatever amount by having that person actually become a client and having them repeat business.
So it's just really understanding that like Facebook, it's promoting other companies and
it's not yours. They could take you down anytime and you just lost everything or Instagram or
these platforms could take you down for any reason. Like you don't have any control. That's not
yours. You're just renting space off these platforms. And that's the biggest issue. You're just
renting space. Also engagement is really low or reach is really low, especially on like Facebook.
So if you worked to build up that Facebook like 10 years ago and you have like a thousand likes
on your Facebook page and you post 10 years ago, all of your ads are just like,
you know, all thousand people would see what you post. Nowadays, about 5% of that audience will
ever see what you post. So five out of a hundred people will see what you're posting. So if you
have a thousand likes, 50 people will see what you're posting, which is good, but it's not a thousand
that you work to build and build and build. And if you want to show it to those other 950 people,
there's a little button on Facebook and Instagram that says boost this post up to show it to the
rest of your audience, which essentially means you're like paying to play. Like these are all
paid platforms nowadays. Social media used to be free, but now I mean, it's still free. But if you
want that exposure and the reach, you have to play, you have to spend money on paid ads. So
that's one thing is like, you're not going to be able to reach out to audience. And also you just
have to understand like, who is your audience like for restaurants? Like I don't know how many people
are going on Instagram to look for a restaurant. I mean, some people do, but most people are probably
going to go on like yo, or Google to find a restaurant and then maybe check them out on social.
It's like social proof to make sure that real legitimate have reviews or trustworthy. But
in general, most people are probably going to go on Google first and then check you out on social.
But you still should definitely have that presence on social media. Just understanding who your
audience is and where are they like for ecom or like for sports and news that need definitely need
to be on social media. Like anything sports related news music. Social is where you're going to get
your traction because people really aren't going on Google looking for like new music. Some people
might again, but majority of people are probably going to go on social or Spotify. So it's all
about just knowing where your audience is and how to be in front of them at the right moments at
the right times. And it's good to have the presence everywhere, but you don't want to put your all
your eggs in one basket. And you also don't want to rely on social because if you just focused on
Facebook only now you're like, I should have probably focused on Instagram or now I need to
focus on TikTok and have to start all over again and rebuild that audience. It's not that easy
getting an audience from Instagram to TikTok or to Twitter or vice versa, even though they
know who you are. It's really, really tough to get them to cross platform change over and follow
you on a new platform. So that's why having your website, CRS, you have full control, you
know, put out what you want. No one's ever going to take you down. I mean, Google could drop you
down in rankings, but you still own that website that's yours forever and you promote yourself.
You don't promote other companies and you get that reach and visibility and it's just
it's a way to brand yourself and get yourself some real visibility exposure.
Yeah, absolutely. And that's something in my short timeframe. I've got for this podcast,
have my own podcast website, but also more importantly for my counseling practice,
have really seen that that importance there that, yeah, that website is mine and that's
fundamentally different than social media. My page is kind of mine sort of, but not really.
That's Facebook's. So I think that is a key difference there.
On the topic of social media, have you found particular types of social media that are
more important than others? Are there some that you should like, I really need to make sure I
have a Facebook or really need to make sure I have an Instagram? Does it really matter what kind of
social media presence you have? Oh, it really comes down to your audiences. Who is your audience
and where are they? That's what matters. You don't need to be everywhere. I mean, it's good to
like claim your username on all those platforms. So no one else could take it. But in general,
being active, do you really need to be active all the time? Not necessarily. I mean, some platforms
maybe, but it just depends on your audience. Like, where are they? Who are they and how do I engage
with them? And like for myself, I do SEO, like not many people are really going to go on Instagram
looking for an SEO company. So I'll post every once in a while, but it's not like I'm going all in,
whereas like on YouTube, I could post a lot more people are looking for SEO related content on
YouTube. So just trying to really understand who and where your audience is going and how to be
in front of them when they're actually on those platforms. Yeah. Yeah. So it really does go into
that awareness of what is my business and what, where are these customers at? And I'll just kind
of throw my own two cents in there too. I've been kind of doing some of my own social media presence.
And for me, maybe it's just the old soul in me. I don't really understand TikTok that much. It's
just not, I'm not really a short form content kind of guy that's might have a longer form podcast.
I'm just not going to go there. And other people can, people can be successful there, but I know
myself as kind of what I'm looking forward to you and some of my audience members. So
it really is a lot of those, those personal preferences there kind and your, your customer
preferences too. On kind of the topic of social media and just even on your, on your site, on your
website, it's one thing to have people to go to your social media or to go to your website. But
it's another for them to actually follow through to actually get that sale in the end. So how do
we go from just attracting people? Google sends us in. That's, that's great. But how do we get to
the finish line? How do we turn all those followers into sales? Well, that is a tough part. It's not
easy. And that's where it's got to figure out offering, well, especially with social media,
it's tough to get people off of social media. Most social media locks you in there. They don't
want you to leave. So you don't really get, especially like Instagram, you get like a bio link.
And maybe you do like a swipe up story with a link, but other than that, there's not many ways for
people to go to your website. So having like a good, like called action in your bio, offering
something of value for free. It's going to incentivize people to go to your website. But even
then once they go to your website, that doesn't mean anything either. Like visitors are just visitors,
how do you get people to convert on your website? And that's where you got to really think about
what's called conversion rate optimization is how do I optimize my website to maximize the value of
every visitor, which some reason not many people really talk about too much. It's like, I'll just
build a website and make it look nice and pretty, but you don't want a pretty website. You want a
website that converts that traffic into sales leads, phone calls, whatever that conversion
goal is. And that's where you have to understand that whatever someone sees on the screen, that's
called above the fold. Most people don't scroll down on the website. So if you don't have a value
proposition at the top, many people know what's in it for me, having your call to action at the top,
like if your e-commerce websites just have the add to cart right there, but in right now,
above the fold where they don't have to scroll down, or if you're a service-based business,
you could have like a form right there or your phone number or email address, but you got to have
some call to action above the fold value proposition, then maybe like couple bullet points or video or
something that's easy to digest quickly because tension spans are just so short nowadays that
if you have a long block of text, no one's going to want to read that. So shorter kind of little
bullet points lower down on the page. You can have all these details and go deeper into it, but
essentially on the top, you got to keep it clean, easy to navigate, more minimal, just really the
things that need to be there. And again, kind of take a step back. If you're looking for your
progress service, what would you want to see on this page? What's going to keep you engaged that
you don't hit that back button and don't leave that website, maybe offering something for free,
that we could capture people's email addresses as well, having like a pop up, like if you're
e-commerce, they could give a discount, like anyone that's in first time customer gets 10%
off, just give me your email address. If you're a service-based business, it's a little tougher,
you got to create something like a class or e-book or something that you offer for free,
collect those email addresses and then start content marketing through email, just offer value,
don't promote yourself, just offer value and establish yourself as a subject matter expert or
if you're selling products and establish yourself as an expert in that product, but whatever it is,
you just got to offer value and offer tips and really that's going to be the best way to get
someone to trust you to want to buy because you got to get Google to trust you to rank you in the
search results. Once people get to your website, you got to get people to trust you. So it's two
folds, you got to get search engines and people to trust you and getting people to trust you is
probably harder than getting Google to trust you because Google is just a robot and there's
kind of a formula, but people are people and everyone's unique and how do you really relate and
get someone to want to learn more about your product or service? It's not the easiest.
Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a really good point and something that I think is very important that
you keep saying is value. That's something that I find important just in my relationship with others
and how I want to treat people, not just in a business, but in day-to-day conversations,
is am I bringing them value and am I bringing my wife value in the way that I'm treating her?
Now, your customers to your website or you may not know them personally, but if you're just
trying to take their money and that's my only goal, like of course we want to get their business,
but we're not trying to rob them. We're trying to give them something that's worth their time
and putting your best foot forward there, kind of going back to the, how would you like to be
treated? How would you like to engage on a website? Yeah, I think that really goes down to it to not
just see people as that robot, like the Google search engine, but seem as people and even if
you don't interact with them personally, still treating them as people and treating them as
somebody that's valued and giving them a good product or good service instead of just, yeah,
give me all your money right now. That usually doesn't work very well on that website.
No, no, people could see through it pretty quickly. So, yeah, got to offer value and be
authentic and not just being in for that quick buck. Yeah, great, great. Now, let's say I'm a
business owner and, okay, here are all this SEO stuff. That's great, but I don't have time to do
all these backlinks and build that all up. I need this right now and they're going to look into that
pay to play to do Google ads or social media ads. Where do you even start with that? I want to run
ads, like they might be overwhelmed. Like how do you even manage an ad campaign like that for
your website or social media? Well, that's again, knowing who your audience is and where they are
because there's so many different ads that you can run that most people want to do social media
ads, but they're cheaper for a reason because it's lower quality traffic. You're just interrupting
people based off interest and topics, but they're not searching. Someone's searching on Google,
they're searching, they're looking actively, they have that buyer intent behind it. So,
it'll be a little bit more expensive to run Google ads, but that's where you're probably going to get
a better return on your investment. And it's just really testing throwing everything against the wall,
seeing what sticks, what resonates and pushing more money to that. Pull money away from what's
not working because with Google ads, there's lots of different ads you can run with Google. You
can do search ads where it's searching on Google. You see those ads at the top of Google. You do
banner ads. You do Gmail ads. You can do YouTube ads. You can do discovery ads. There's so many
different ads that Google has that it's all about kind of just testing and seeing what works and
pushing more money to that, scaling back what's not working, just testing and optimizing. That's
the biggest thing with the ads is don't just set it and forget it. Set them up. Test them out,
see what works. Push more money to that. Pull money away from what's not working. Maybe females 40
to 45 are clicking, but they're not converting. Cut them out. Maybe males 20 to 25 are clicking
and they're actually becoming a client. Push more money to that. So, it's all about testing
and testing and testing. That's the biggest thing with the paid ads. Well, just in general, with
everything with digital is testing, but especially with the paid ads because you're paying every
time someone clicks. Well, depending on how you pay, there's other ways where you pay per
impression. So, anytime that a thousand people see your ad, you might spend $10. So, there's
different ways, but you want to maximize that value because you don't want to just be wasting that
money because the ads, they get quite expensive. They work. You're making a positive return on
ad spend. I'd say keep running them. Something wrong with those ads, but just be aware that
they do cost money and they can get a little pricey. So, that's where you want to try out
all these different platforms because some will be less expensive than others. Google search ads,
very, very expensive. YouTube ads, pretty cheap because not many people create the video. People
don't want to put the creative video. It's a little bit more time invested whereas, so,
less people are bidding on those video ads. It's going to be much cheaper. Everyone has a website.
They just throw the website up saying, I want to rank for this search term. So, those become much
more expensive, but the ones that require a little bit more work like banner ads, a little bit cheaper.
YouTube ads much cheaper and doesn't mean much better. I feel like YouTube puts a face behind
the company, builds trust up and it really helps out a lot. That's a really interesting piece.
There I hadn't even really thought about that myself. It makes sense. It's that supply and
demand type of thinking there. It's very easy to, like you said, every time that I go on Google,
you see those top ads like that. We see it all the time. When you're on YouTube, you see it too,
but you just don't think of it quite in the same way. It does seem to be more of a production
quality and things like that, a little bit of a harder entry there. If you put in the work,
I hadn't considered of the cost with that, but sounds like that could be a really good value
if you're willing to put in that work to put the video in for that.
Especially because YouTube also gives you 30 seconds free ad space. Someone watches your
video ad for 29 seconds, then skips it, you don't pay a penny. After 30 seconds,
then you pay like 10 cents or 20 cents a view. It's much, much cheaper. If they skipped it,
like if they skip it after five seconds, they still heard you talk for five seconds. They
still got a little bit of your message in there, not the full message, but at least they heard you,
they saw you. So implants that scene. It's pretty much free ad space because YouTube knows that not
many people make those videos. So they want to incentivize you to make these YouTube videos
because they are really powerful. It's just that barrier to entry. But nowadays, with cell phones,
you just grab your phone and do a video right there. You don't have to have the whole production.
It's actually more authentic. People like that more than the whole production and commercial
style type of video. Yeah. So those of you listening, if you're like, man, I really have this great
idea. I have this great project, but this is so expensive. That might be something to think about
of going down that more video route. It could be some decent bang for your buck.
On this advertising side of things, I'm sure it depends on the company and where you're at. But
have you found a sweet spot over how much paid advertising as opposed to how much SEO? Should
I focus more effort solely on SEO, half and half SEO and ad space? Do you really have a good answer
for that? I'd say it's different for every business, depending on where you are. If you're
a startup, it's a brand new website, SEO is going to take months and months and months. So if you
want immediate traction, paid ads might be a good start. Once you start getting that Google rank
or the SEO starts kicking in, then maybe you could scale back a little bit off the paid ads. But
if you're making the positive return on ad spend, I would say there's no reason to turn them off.
As long as you're making more than you're putting in, then don't necessarily need to turn them off.
But if you're losing money, then you definitely want to cut them out because we don't want to be
bleeding money to any of these platforms. So as long as you're making a positive return, I would
keep them going. But the main ads I really do like that I would always keep going are
retargeting. So anyone that goes to your website, doesn't make a purchase. Like if you go on Amazon
and you don't make that purchase, you see those ads that follow you around. You can do the same
thing to your website. Anyone that goes to your website, doesn't do a specific action, like doesn't
fill out a form, doesn't make a purchase, whatever it is, you could set up different ad
campaigns. And these are all warm leads, warm traffic that have been to your website, but
didn't convert. And that was your chance to try to get them to convert. And that's going to be much
cheaper than doing a cold outreach campaign where you're just targeting random people. These are
all people that have been to your website, something distracted them, maybe it loaded slowly,
maybe it didn't look good on mobile or whatever it may be, but they were there. Now you just got to
keep yourself top of mind. And those are really cheap and really effective.
Yeah. Again, kind of that value word coming back in there, even on your end of things. You want
to bring value to the customer, but you also want to get value out of you. You're the customer
there for your ad. You want to get value on that end. And that seems to be a very attractive way
to try to get those people that they already clicked. So let's try to get them to click back again.
Yep. Yep. They were that close. Let's keep yourself top of mind. And it's going to be much
easier to get someone like that versus a cold outreach campaign where you're just targeting
people I've never heard of you. Yeah. Yeah. On some just another kind of practical type of question,
I know this is one I've thought of myself on social media. And I know it kind of depends on
again, what social media you're doing, but is there a better time of day to post things?
Like, should I do it in the morning and the afternoon? Does it really matter?
That one is also saying that it depends on your business. Like, let's say your concert venue,
you're going to be like, all right, we got post Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday versus if you're
like selling baby diapers, you're like, all right, one kind of reach parents when they have some
free time, maybe early in the morning, or maybe after they drop their kids off at school or whatever
it may be. So you got to kind of like take a step back and think like if you were your client or
looking for your product or service, what times of the day would you be searching or do you have
free time to actually look for it? I mean, in general, most people say post like Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday from like, 9am to 11am. But that's not used to think, but now I realize it's
not a one size fits all really depends on your business. Like, if you're doing sports, like,
you could post 20 times a day, no one's going to be mad versus if I post about SEO 20 times a day,
you're going to be like, what is going on? This is too much SEO. So it's all about really just
understanding your audience. And I would look at your competition and see what your competitors
are doing. What platforms are they active on? How often do they post? What time of the day they post?
What time of the week do they post? Because digital, pretty much everything is out there.
There's nothing that's really hidden. If you look in the right places, you can see what your
competitors are doing and get ideas based off them. Like maybe they're posting 10 times a day,
nobody's liking and engaging, then maybe Facebook isn't the best platform or maybe they're just
doing Facebook wrong. But if you see, they're posting on Instagram all the time and they're
getting a ton of engagement, all these likes, all these comments, and you're like, maybe I should
be on Instagram. So it's all about just kind of getting ideas, basing them off your competitors
and just trying to get a test. Don't just copy what they're doing, but copy it and then test
and see, does this work? If it does great, if not, try something else and keep testing and
testing until you find that sweet spot. But usually the analytics will tell you two in a lot of these
platforms are not all in, but some of them will show you like time of day that your audience is
active. So you could use that. But again, you gotta think just because they're active, does that mean
they're looking for my product or service? You gotta think like, when do they actually have free
time that like if they're a new parent, they're not gonna have much time maybe in the afternoon or
when their kids asleep, they could have some time to search for products about children and babies.
But if you're like a venue for music and concerts and like, all right, weekends are probably where
I'm going to be posting all the time to keep people active because now it's relaxation time.
Let's give them content about how they can enjoy their free time.
Yeah. And again, some common themes keep popping up here of I like that there's kind of that
creativity part there that, hey, if something's not working, then go try something else. But
there's also that analytic part. Let's look at the numbers. What is working here? What was an
aspect of that post that worked great? What didn't work well? It's just kind of going back to the
drawing board there. And as opposed to just this is the one way you have to do it. And I'm gonna
follow this formula every single time. If it works, great. But if it's not working, then,
you know, try something new. Nothing too extreme about that. That's kind of just life in general.
And I think that's what I enjoy about this conversation is, well, these topics like, yeah,
there's a lot of moving pieces. And I don't think anybody understands every single aspect of SEO.
But that barrier to entry there isn't quite as high as some people might think. Oftentimes,
it's those fears that really keep us from going. So I think you've given us a lot of really good
ways to get your feet wet, get started, and go create, go make new things, go make great
content out there. But sometimes we're our worst enemy and just think, oh, I can't do it. I'm not
good enough. And then we just don't make anything. And that's that. We should go out and try to make
new great things. Yeah, definitely, definitely just play around and don't be scared. Don't get
overwhelmed. I mean, it's a lot, but if you piece by piece it, it's not as overwhelming and over time,
you'll get that traction, but just don't get overwhelmed or get scared and just jump in there
and play around and test and test and test. And if you break something, it's fine. You can just go
back and fix it. And it's not the end of the world. It's not like you can't change it. You can't
be for those changes. Everything is pretty flexible with the digital. So don't get overwhelmed.
Great. Well, I'm imagining there are people listening to this episode that want to catch up
with you and follow you and maybe they're interested even in some of your services and getting
their own website up and going. So where can the audience find you?
So anyone that wants to learn more, actually create a special gift for them if they go to my
website at SEO optimizers.com. That's S E O O P T I M I Z E R S dot com forward slash gift.
And like find my contact information and a bunch of classes I've done over the years.
I've thrown up for free so they could see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about.
And also if they want to book some time on my calendar for a free website analysis,
I'm happy to check out their website from an SEO point of view and they could book some
time on my calendar there for free as well. Wonderful. Well, yeah, I wouldn't I would encourage
all of you if you have a website or you're thinking about about making a website for
for your business services or whatever, go check them out. And yeah, I really appreciate your
your conversation on this topic. That's not very well understood by a lot of people, but
I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me on today.
All right. Well, thank you for everyone that were listening to this great conversation today.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. And let's just go continue fighting for truth. Thank you.