In this inaugural episode of "The SEO Show," I, Michael, along with my co-host Arthur, dive into the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and what listeners can expect from our podcast. We kick things off by introducing ourselves and sharing our backgrounds in the SEO industry, highlighting our experiences and the journey that led us to create this show.
Arthur shares his eight-year journey in SEO, starting from his marketing degree to his first role as a junior link builder at an agency. He discusses his growth in the field, working with notable clients like Woolworths and Optus, and his current position at Local Digital, where he has spent over five years honing his skills.
I follow up with my own story, recounting how I stumbled into SEO back in 2009 while working at a car rental company. My initial successes with Google AdWords and SEO ignited my passion for the field, leading me to work with major clients such as Harvey Norman and UNICEF. Together with my business partner Dom, we aimed to provide quality SEO services to small and medium-sized businesses, ensuring they receive the right strategies and support.
Throughout the episode, we emphasise our mission: to demystify SEO for business owners who often feel overwhelmed or misled by industry jargon and sales tactics. We aim to equip our listeners with the foundational knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their SEO strategies, whether they choose to tackle it themselves or engage an agency.
Looking ahead, we outline our plan for the podcast, which includes breaking down SEO into its core principles in the initial episodes. We will cover quick wins and essential knowledge that every business owner should have. As we progress, we will delve into more tactical and granular aspects of SEO, keeping our content relevant and valuable.
We acknowledge that we are still refining our presentation skills, but we are committed to delivering high-quality content that will help our audience navigate the complexities of SEO. We invite our listeners to join us on this journey and look forward to sharing our insights in future episodes. Thank you for tuning in, and we hope to see you in the next episode!
00:00:00 - Introduction to the SEO Show
00:00:10 - What to Expect from the Podcast
00:00:27 - Meet the Hosts: Michael and Arthur
00:01:49 - Arthur's SEO Journey
00:02:58 - Michael's SEO Background
00:05:17 - Podcast Structure and Future Topics
00:06:02 - Closing Remarks and Expectations
MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show. Welcome to the SEO show. It's got a basic name, but I tell you the content is going to be pretty good. My name is Michael and I'm joined today by Arthur. How are you going? I'm good. How are you? Yeah, not too bad. I'm feeling a little awkward talking into a microphone whilst looking at you, but I'm sure we'll warm into it. But yeah, look, I wanted to introduce why we're doing this show and what to expect moving forward with the SEO show. So the SEO show is the Search Engine Optimization Show. And we're going to be talking about all things SEO. So tips, tactics, little tricks we've picked up over the past decade or so that we've both been in this game. And the reason we're wanting to talk about this is because we deal with business owners in our agency jobs every day. We see a lot of them get burnt or a lot of them be confused about terminology and lingo and sort of having the wool pulled over their eyes by SEO salespeople. So we want to demystify it a bit and just talk about things, I guess, from the front lines of doing this stuff all day long and share our knowledge and help business owners be better armed and informed with more information that can help them make good decisions when it comes to SEO. It's a bit of a rambling way of getting into things, but I guess I wanted to maybe throw to Arthur and he can explain a bit about himself and then I'll do the same so you can see that we do know what we're talking about and we have a bit of value to add here. So yeah, Arthur, tell us about you and your adventures with SEO. Sure.
ARTHUR: So I started doing SEO eight years ago. I did a marketing degree at uni. I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I was looking for jobs. Basically, everyone was looking for experience. I had basically no idea what I wanted to do. One of my friends was working at The Iconic doing SEO. She basically said, you know, why don't you give it a crack? You love tech. You're a bit of a nerd. You like marketing. It kind of all fits together. So I applied for a junior SEO role at an agency called DGM, got the job. I was basically started off as a junior link builder, worked my way up. moved to another agency called Columbus. I stayed there for a year working in accounts such as Woolworths, David Jones, Optus. And yeah, a year into that, yourself and Dom approached me to see if I wanted to come work with you guys at Local Digital. Obviously I jumped at the opportunity. I have been there for a bit over five years now. And it's been amazing. Yeah. The, everything, the company's grown so much over the last five years. Yeah.
MICHAEL: Here I am. That's five years of your life. You were saying off mic before, right?
ARTHUR: Yeah. That's five years. Yeah. Yeah.
MICHAEL: A hundred bucks is over there too. Thank you. But, um, I guess you spend your days doing SEO for clients, right? Yeah. Pretty much what you do all day, every day. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, a thing or two about SEO probably you'd hope so. Yeah. Can impart a bit of knowledge here after eight years.
ARTHUR: Yeah.
MICHAEL: You think I'd pick something up? Yeah, well nice. I guess I'll give a real quick overview of myself as well. I discovered SEO back in 2009. I was working at a car rental company that was trying to drum up more business. So I did a bit of reading about Google AdWords and SEO and the like and basically gave it a crack on their website. And had some wins, you know, saw some leads coming off the Google ads, got the website ranking for some keywords that we were going after. And before too long, I wanted to be doing SEO all day, every day, rather than working at a car rental company. So I too went out and pounded the pavement, spoke to a few agencies and got a job at one. Worked there for a few years, got promoted a couple of times and was able to learn a lot. You know, we were working on clients like Harvey Norman, Suncorp Group, UNICEF, Rebel Sport, eBay. Just a, you know, really big sort of enterprise clients. Great team there, great knowledge in the team and really learnt a lot. Before too long with that business, you know, we were sort of seeing, when I say we, me and my business partner Dom, we're seeing clients coming along or potential clients coming along that were being turned away because They either didn't have enough monthly budget or they weren't the right fit for the agency. So they would then go on to have a bad experience with what I call a cowboy operation. So these are businesses or agencies that will sign up anyone and everyone and not really give much thought to strategy or what's right for the customer. They're just trying to grow their own business first and foremost. So we wanted to bring what we had learnt at that enterprise agency to the smaller medium end of the market. And we did that five or six years ago now, six years ago now. And yeah, it's been really our passion ever since. So working on SEO for clients all day, every day, and I just love talking about it, love doing it, run affiliate websites on the side and love ranking websites and sort of playing the game of the Google rankings. So that's pretty much why we feel we can talk about SEO on a podcast and hopefully share our knowledge. Anything you want to add to that, Arthur? No, I think you covered it off pretty well. Yeah, cool. Well, basically what we're going to do with this podcast is, you know, for the first few episodes, we're going to really break SEO down to its core principles. We're going to talk about all the foundational stuff, all of the quick win type stuff, all the grounding knowledge that, you know, business owners should have if they're wanting to do SEO themselves, or if they're wanting to engage an agency so that they can at least talk the talk and separate the charlatans from the decent operators. So we're going to break that down episode by episode. And once we get through that, we're then going to start getting into more tactical stuff, more granular stuff around, you know, different SEO things going on in the world, SEO tactics and the likes. So that's the general plan of things. We will probably improve over time in the way we present.
ARTHUR: I really hope so.
MICHAEL: I'm sure we will. Look, we're a couple of computer nerds coming here and trying to talk about SEO, so our skills will improve, but the content is always going to be good once we get into it. So we hope you stick around and we'll see you in the next episode. Hooroo! See ya!
