SEO... But Stolen From Social

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.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

ARTHUR: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the SEO show. My name is Arthur Fabik, and as always, I'm here with my wonderful co-host, Michael Costin. How are you doing? Did you like that intro and enthusiasm?

MICHAEL: Yeah, it was all right. I wasn't sure if I was meant to say Michael Costin or not.

ARTHUR: Well, that's what you do to me every time. It's confusing, isn't it? You should point. I should point if I want you to say something.

MICHAEL: Do you want to know something that's really sad considering how useless we are at intros? Not sad, but even bewildering. What? we're finalists in the podcast. I forgot about that. It's pretty big. It's not bad, but we can't even do an intro properly.

ARTHUR: I thought that was pretty good. Yeah. So what category are we nominated in?

MICHAEL: Best business podcast. Okay. I've, I'm going to go out on a limb and say, we're probably not going to win because we are a niche SEO podcast and we're up against like, you know, motivational business podcast, Mark Bouris type people of the world. So it's just good to be there. I guess at this point, the little SEO show that couldn't, uh, yeah.

ARTHUR: I'm happy with that. Yeah. I mean, imagine a year ago, me telling you we'd be nominated for, what is it? Podcast of the year? I don't even know. You put the nomination in. The Australian Podcast Awards. The Australian Podcast Awards. You never would have believed it. I wouldn't have not.

MICHAEL: But here we are. And guess what? We are also here for another episode of Stolen. Stolen from Social.

ARTHUR: One of our favorite segments.

MICHAEL: Yep. It's a segment we fall back on when we've done no preparation whatsoever. Cause we actually banked like six episodes of the show and now we've realized, Oh my God, it's Tuesday. We've got to do something.

ARTHUR: It's actually been a while since we've sat in here together.

MICHAEL: It's been like ages since, um, an episode with you's been on it.

ARTHUR: Well, that's true. Yeah. I forgot I had a podcast.

MICHAEL: Yep. Well, you're going to have to remember, all you have to do is go on Twitter and read stuff and talk about it. Cause we're stealing ideas from Twitter for our Stolen by Social episode three. I don't even know how many tweets we have. Six. Six. Cool. Cause what we do basically, you know, I sort of troll through SEO Twitter and when I come across stuff that I think would be good to steal, I just drop it in a little sheet and then me and Arthur come and talk about it. And I read all of it.

ARTHUR: Yeah. And that's a podcast.

MICHAEL: So there's a podcast, an award nominated podcast, absolutely elite level production there. And, um, maybe we'll just get into it and talk about the podcast. That was not the podcast, the question that was stolen from Mark press. I got distracted by that sound going off in the background there. So it's an absolute disgrace for our first episode since the award announcement, isn't it?

ARTHUR: Sure. Let's keep pushing on though.

MICHAEL: Let's keep pushing on. We're going to say what Mark Preston wrote on Twitter. Ready? Ready. Serious question. Dot, dot, dot. Why do you work in the SEO industry? So Arthur, why do you work in the SEO industry?

ARTHUR: Because I love it. Love it so much. Yeah. Why do I work in the SEO industry? Well, because I've been in the industry since I've started my career. I fell in love with it. It matches what I like doing, what I want in a job. So that's why I'm still doing it. That's a combination of, you know, being a nerd, creativity, you know, technical just yeah. Without preparing an answer, that's basically it.

MICHAEL: Okay. Yeah. Well yeah, me too. I do it because I've been doing it for years. So at this point it's a career.

ARTHUR: Yeah, exactly. The reason I'm still in it is because I love it because it's fun. It's constantly changing. It keeps us on our toes. It's exciting and frustrating at the same time. You meet great people. It's good. It's a good career to be a good industry to be in.

MICHAEL: You get to get nominated for awards by talking about it on a podcast.

ARTHUR: It's also very rewarding. So, you know, if you get a client ranking really well, then you can see, you know, I guess the fruits of your labor. Is that the term? Yeah, the fruits of your labor. Yeah, fruits of your labor. I don't know if that was the correct term. I suck with analogies. Did you stumble on fruits of your loin? And were you getting a bit dead about saying- I didn't even know that was a saying. I'm awful with analogies, but- Different meaning. You get to, yeah, you get to see That basically, and I find that really rewarding. Seeing keywords, ranking, position one, traffic, everything. It goes along with it. SEO. SEO.

MICHAEL: Just explaining SEO now. I remember when I interviewed at my first SEO agency job. Which was where?

ARTHUR: DGM back in the day. So you got the first job you interviewed. For an SEO agency, yeah.

MICHAEL: Right, and you got it. Yep, yep. One for one. So did I. Same agency as well. Yep. Different name though, right? At the time. No, still DGM. Okay. Well, anyway, in the interview, they asked me like, why do you, why do you like SEO over SEM? And I remember giving the answer at the time that the game of it, I love the game. I love doing stuff like thinking about stuff that I think is going to work, implementing it and waiting to see what Google does. And then when you win, it's fun. And I remember giving that answer and they were all like, yes, yes. And like, as they were reacting like that, I thought, you know what? I could get this job here. And that game is still a thing today. Like it's nonstop, I guess, evolution learning challenges.

ARTHUR: So that's pretty cool. Funny story. You were in my interview when I was interviewing there. One of the questions that I was asked was what's your favorite website? And I said, Facebook.

MICHAEL: How did you end up getting a job? Here I am.

ARTHUR: I don't know. I liked Facebook.

MICHAEL: It's a pretty broad question to be fair. Like what's your favorite website? I wonder what I was looking for.

ARTHUR: What's your favorite website?

MICHAEL: I'd say Reddit or Twitter probably.

ARTHUR: Well, it's the same thing. Yeah, I guess. There was Reddit, but it wasn't as popular. So I was a valid answer and here I am. So you've done it.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, let's read out what a couple of other people said on this thread. I like what Callum Scott had to say. He said it's a good way to make money, good money that keeps my brain stimulated while working. Any job that requires continued learning to stay in the game would suit me. I agree. It suits me too.

ARTHUR: And you need to stay in the game. Otherwise you're gone.

MICHAEL: Very true. Very true. The other thing he said is he likes SEO Twitter drama. Which I don't know, you don't really follow it that much, but there's some good drama on there from time to time. Pretty pointless drama, but like, you know, people will be ranting and raving over some sort of topic on there from time to time. Maybe I need to get on Twitter. Get on there, see what you think. You can assist in creating these stolen from social episodes. I could, I could, I will. Steph Graves said, um, continuous challenge, nonstop learning, no time for boredom, flexibility, remote opportunities, great work-life balance, and the never ending puzzle that my brain loves to fix. All stuff that we said just in probably a much better words. So cool. Yeah. I thought that would be good to start with just to see why you're an SEO. Let's move on though, because the next one comes from, I'm going to call him friend of the show. Friend of the show really is, isn't he? Friend of the show. Kevin Indig was on a couple of episodes ago and he asked the hardest part about B2B SEO is blank. what would you say the hardest part about B2B SEO is?

ARTHUR: With little preparation, again, I think that targeting keywords and targeting the right person, if you're working with a B2B client and the keywords crossover with B2C, you're at a risk of getting the wrong traffic to the site. So just, I guess, targeting the right people.

MICHAEL: Yeah. For me. Yeah. Okay. Do you agree or disagree? Yeah, I think so. It's like trying to find the intent there and like, cause it's often people will, it's like with Google ads, like let's say someone's coming in on the keyword builder. They could be wanting to build a cheap as chips entry level home or a super expensive premium high end home. Yes. And you can't really get at the intent there. Yeah. And with B2B, you know, like if you're going hardcore for intent, then volume is probably going to be low. Yeah. So there's always going to be crossover and sort of tire kickers and the like.

ARTHUR: So yeah. One example that comes to my head was we used to work with a custom uniform sports uniform. Can I name them? Doesn't matter. Anyway, they did custom uniforms and essentially they- They don't exist anymore? They don't exist. On they go sports. And essentially what they did was they did custom uniforms, sports uniforms for large orders. Did they not? Like that was the main purpose.

MICHAEL: Well, they had like minimum order quantities, I think.

ARTHUR: There was a lot of people that came through that wanted one coming off the same keywords. So someone winning a custom Jersey, but with a minimum order of 10 or whatever it was. So, you know, targeting, matching that intent, targeting the right keywords, you're always going to get people coming through depending on what the industry is.

MICHAEL: That can be a bit of a problem in general. Like SEO is blamed in that case. All this traffic is not converting, it's no good. But like it's more the offer or the product that's a problem in that case. I liked what our Crystal Carter had to say about it, which was showing ROI on deals that take months and multiple touch points to close. Everyone, sales, account manager, SEO, PPC tries to take credit for something that must be a team effort. I thought that was pretty cool because I agree. We were speaking to a colleague of, well, a friend of ours who works in B2B SaaS. And he was sort of saying that he's judged on how many sales his Google ads were bringing in a month, even though the lead time or like the sort of sales cycle could be months and months and months, which is a bit unfair trying to neatly attach revenue to leads generated in a month and maybe being judged on generating leads or MQLs rather than sales figures is a bit more fair, but that's definitely the case. Attribution in general, nightmare across all channels. Um, so I like that one. What about this one from Brandon van Moolagam?

ARTHUR: Oh yeah. I remember that surname. Moolagam.

MICHAEL: Sorry Brandon, that's a tough name to say, but he just said, realizing sometimes SEO isn't just the way to go.

ARTHUR: Upside down, smiley face emoji.

MICHAEL: Hmm. Pretty true. Like SEO is not always right. And when it comes to B2B, if you're in a really niche sort of industry, there might not be even search volume and people searching for it. Yeah. Like you're going for bottom of funnel intent driven search when really you almost need to be creating a market.

ARTHUR: We worked with a client that did Powerline software and that was very much B2B. Keywords had absolutely no search volume. It was just very hard to kind of target the right thing.

MICHAEL: Yeah, so Powerline software is about as niche as it gets. So in that sort of case, probably advertising on LinkedIn and doing outbound emails and even doing Facebook ads to people who have an interest in Powerline.

ARTHUR: Yeah, they were targeting councils and developers and things like that and big ticket kind of governments and stuff. So yeah, SEO wasn't the right channel.

MICHAEL: Another person commented on there, Bhavesh Lal, which I thought was pretty cool. Not pretty cool, but right. It's constantly combating long form content. So having to refresh an already evergreen content and then diversifying keyword targeting once you've hit a plateau due to lack of opportunity. So he's basically saying scaling after a certain point and maintaining performance. So like if you have really done a good job with your B2B SEO, you have content hubs on your site with all different silos, heaps of content there around themes, getting heaps of traffic, you need to maintain that content. Like over time it sort of decays, even though it's evergreen in inverted commas, other competitors are writing similar things or, you know, Google's changing algorithms and you're having to go back and refresh that content. Yeah. try and think laterally and find other angles to write about to maintain or continue growth, which is a bit of a problem in the B2B world where there can be a limit to that because of the niche focus of a lot of them.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Look, to be honest, B2B SEO is not my favorite type of SEO. No? No.

MICHAEL: What's your favorite type of SEO?

ARTHUR: B2C SEO.

MICHAEL: Like what, if you had an absolute dream client walk in the door, what are they doing?

ARTHUR: A nice Ecom site with a big budget. Okay. Yeah. A nice healthy SEO budget.

MICHAEL: For me. Yeah. I wonder what my, I don't know that I have a dream. A big, yeah. Ecom's good. Cause you can sort of. It either makes sales or it doesn't. Someone that has a budget for conversion rate optimization too, like a good site, because you can get the traffic there. And then if it doesn't convert, you're in the bad books. But, um, yeah, generally I like saying, you know, like when Google ads, I like lead gen for a service business, SAS or software as a service or, um, like home services, medical services. So maybe that for us with a healthy budget.

ARTHUR: I think it'd be fun. Like for me, e-commerce, if it was like a, like a JB hi-fi, like a big site, big budgets get to play around or like all the technical aspects and content. And it's just, I think it would be fun. Yep. Preferably something that's in the industry that I'm interested in. So I love tech. So working on something like that would be more desirable to me.

MICHAEL: What about crypto? FTX.com? No interest? Could not care less about crypto to be honest. Good. Okay. Let's move on and have a look at what Jen Boland had to say. Maybe you can read it. Cause I've read them all.

ARTHUR: I need to open it up.

MICHAEL: I'll read it. Just met with a client who wants to improve hashtag SEO, but doesn't want to create content or fix anything on their website. Hmm. Mm. Indeed. That's annoying. Isn't it? It is. And it's all too common. Unfortunately. Yeah. Many people will be very wedded to odd things about their site, you know, wordings here and there things that other people are just not looking at and they won't want to change it or there'll be. There'll be reasons why someone in their business wrote that page and they don't want it touched, you know, outside of actually the thing that they're trying to achieve, which is improve rankings and traffic and visibility in the life. Yeah. Um, so what Corey, Corey Hynde, Corey Hynde, said in response, I thought it was pretty cool. Pretty normal truth. Kind of like a new gym member who wants to get in shape, but not do any training or change their diet.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It can be very frustrating. Been there done that.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And someone else chimed in with a comment that Bruce Clay said back in the day, which is never complain about the results you don't get because of the work you don't do, which is perfect. And you'll often find that the people that sort of say that you can't do anything. I don't want content credit. I don't want to change anything in my site. We'll be annoyed when there aren't results.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I guess to one up that people that think they know better. So clients that think they know better after engaging us as experts and then having that constant uphill battle of essentially fighting with them to try to get stuff done. So, you know, client doesn't always know best, unfortunately. Yep. Um, but I think, yeah, the fact that he said, uh, pretty normal, Everyone's kind of experienced that. Every SEO would have experienced a client that refuses to implement your recommendations. Yeah.

MICHAEL: The I was the most important part of SEO. Actually doing the optimization work. That's it. So, um, all right, let's move on. I think this was your, you were very excited about this question when we, um, had a look at them. I saw you copying and pasting and putting little screenshots in. So I'll let you handle it. It's, uh, Daniel K Chung.

ARTHUR: Let me just quickly scroll down to it. Daniel K Chong. Okay, SEO Twitter, do your thing. What is the one thing that keeps you working in SEO?

MICHAEL: The one thing.

ARTHUR: The one thing. I'm asking you.

MICHAEL: The one thing. For me, I'm a partner in an agency that provides SEO. That keeps me working in it. But, um, I liked, um, this response. PPC getting more expensive. Yeah. Guess what? Yep. It is. Google ad costs rose something like 20% on average last year and have done it again this year. War maybe industries. Oh, yeah, that was on average on average.

ARTHUR: Yeah, some of our clients.

MICHAEL: Yeah, we're seeing it in like plenty of accounts. Now, where bids have tripled over the space of this year and you just have to do that to get the impression and that is I'm only going to get worse because Google, you know, they have their share price to constantly be growing and, you know, keeping the markets happy and they need never ending growth to do that. So getting as much blood as possible from stones, which means, you know, um, It makes it tough to be making money on Google ads. Whereas with SEO, if you can get that visibility, the amount of traffic you can drive through those campaigns significantly more than you'll be able to through paid ads. Yeah. So I like that one. Um, what else was there? Money. Yeah. Pretty straightforward. Well, yeah.

ARTHUR: Why not? Not wrong. Yep. Christine. I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce that. So she's given like 30 different answers. Interesting. I agree. Tick never gets boring, which I guess is the same thing as interesting problem solving, which is probably one of my favorite things is, you know, if I still like going in accounts and trying to figure out why things are happening. So for the people that are like analytical minded and like doing that, it's, it's an amazing industry to be in the people. I mean, depends on who you work with, I guess, but you know, working with the right people, it's amazing learning from them, you know, growing and yeah, what more can I say? The traveling to conferences is always fun. We haven't done that much recently, obviously due to COVID, but the times that we have, we have a lot of amazing stories that we can probably not share on the podcast, but it's a good, I guess, perk. Knowing people, all over the world. So again, this, another thing that you've done with the podcast is you've spoken to different SEO leaders and thought leaders from all across the globe, like us, UK, Scotland, Argentina, Argentina.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Everywhere. German pretty going all over the place.

ARTHUR: Literally. Cool. Quite literally. Yup. The friends that are like family. Yup. the community tick and the clients I can help.

MICHAEL: So that's a lot of, that's a lot of one thing there. What, what is the one thing? I reckon never gets boring, I guess.

ARTHUR: Problem solving, which I guess is kind of, yeah, never gets boring. Interesting. Never gets boring. Problem solving to me, it kind of bucketed into the one thing.

MICHAEL: Yes. Which is like the game in my amazing answer that I gave in that job interview back in the day.

ARTHUR: Isn't it? Yeah, it's a no. You did well. You looked really displeased.

MICHAEL: Disinterested. Displeased or disinterested. Yeah. Right. Well, I think we're up to the last one. I know, second last one.

ARTHUR: Let me do this one. You want to do it? Okay. Adriana Stein. Steen? Stein. Whatever. Do you think backlinks are overrated? No, I do not. They're very important. They're our favorite part of SEO. We love talking about backlinks and link building.

MICHAEL: So everybody loves backlinks as we always say, but actually on this post, some people don't. So there's plenty of people that do, you know, people saying, I don't think so. Backlinks are one of the top three Google ranking factors. They're really important. Very. Every quality backlink matters a lot. With some niches you can rank with minimal effort, but mostly proper bank link strategy is important to rank. Agreed? Correct. No, they are important and play an important part in ranking your website. Yes. That was from Shag. Shag Infotech. Ken Chow says, it doesn't matter whether I do or not. It only matters what Google algo thinks.

ARTHUR: Well, that's a very valid response, I think.

MICHAEL: Did you know that Michael Costin at Service Scaling actually replied to this one too? Shameless plug.

ARTHUR: No, I didn't see that. Did you? Did you only do it right before this?

MICHAEL: I did it on October 18, it says. Let me find it. Can I read it? It says, if you can find it quickly, you can read it out. Give me one second. Give me one second. I'll read some cases. I've read some people that were against that. So metrics like DA and DR are overrated for sure, but you need backlinks to be competitive in many industries. In many cases, people who are saying you don't need to build links are lying to themselves. I absolutely agree with that. Or they're working on websites that get tons of links coming in naturally and they don't need to build links. So an example would be like a big, you know, Telstra. They don't need to do a lot of link building.

ARTHUR: So the agency I used to work at, we never did any link building because there were big brands that just naturally acquired links. You didn't need to do it. But I guess the question isn't, is link building important? are backlinks important? Yeah. So backlinks are important. Of course. Um, I found this one here from, um, at service scaling, Michael Costin. Oh yeah. What, what did he have to say? He had to say they are still super important in competitive niches. So I don't think they're overrated. What an answer. Wow.

MICHAEL: Eight likes one week. Retweet on that one. So did you actually set this comment a lot? Really? Other people had 36 likes on there, so we'll just ignore that. But, uh, Yeah, I agree with what he had to say there. Very good. I need to start following you. Um, now this guy's trying to say Darth Autocrap. Don't get me wrong. Links are still important and one of the biggest factors, but they're not as influential as they were 10 years ago. I don't get, I don't understand. They're not influential, but they're still the biggest factors and important. I still think that. We know, we know, we do it all the time. And in any competitive space, if you just put up a site with content, it's not going to go anywhere. Good luck with that. Good luck with that.

ARTHUR: All right. Last question. I'll let you read this one out.

MICHAEL: I've hijacked it. This is from Nathan Gotch, at Nathan Gotch. I can see he's got the blue check mark there. I wonder if he's paying for that.

ARTHUR: Should get him on the SEO show. Yeah. It's got 13.6K followers, so.

MICHAEL: We'll have Pamela reach out, see how we go. Let's have a look at what he has to say. Is SEO overrated? Absolutely.

ARTHUR: You think it is? No. God, no. I love SEO.

MICHAEL: I love it too, but I like this answer. My Bantog Cruz said, underrated by many business owners in fact. Oh.

ARTHUR: Did you like that? I did, my microphone dropped as that happened.

MICHAEL: Underrated by many business owners in fact. So she's saying the opposite of what he's saying.

ARTHUR: Yeah, which is true. I love SEO, I think it's perfectly rated.

MICHAEL: Perfectly rated.

ARTHUR: I think so, yeah.

MICHAEL: It's not that we're biased on a show called the SEO show. Well, yeah, that's, no, it's just, yeah, that's perfectly rated. Now Taylor Toussaint said that, no, not at all. When CPCs increase seasonally, organic traffic gets the traffic increase without the increased costs. So many other reasons too.

ARTHUR: Well, yeah, you need to be ranking first, but yeah, or ranking well to get that traffic. So.

MICHAEL: But this comes back to what we're talking about. Like when you are ranking, it's definitely not overrated. It can be, I'll tell you what it can do. What? Skyrocket your business. It can, 10X. Just skyrocket your growth. Open the floodgates. It can open the floodgates to.

ARTHUR: You'll be drowning. You'll be literally drowning in leads and.

MICHAEL: You can double, triple or even quadruple your customers. So we're making fun of ads here.

ARTHUR: I like the next one. SEO is dead. Has been running for years. SEO is dead is articles that I've seen when I started doing SEO in 2012. Yes. It's been dying for the last decade.

MICHAEL: Yes. I literally just read one yesterday about how it's dead now.

ARTHUR: And every year SEO is dead. Yep. And here we are on the SEO show talking about SEO.

MICHAEL: Yep. So Julian D said that, and he says, we're still waiting. Upside down, smiley face.

ARTHUR: I love that. Passive aggressive, upside down, smiley face.

MICHAEL: What do you interpret an upside-down smiley face as?

ARTHUR: Passive-aggressive or like just… Yeah, I don't know.

MICHAEL: So I'll tell you what one person said here, which I agree with. Sadly, well, I don't know what the sadly is in response to, but he's saying we should upgrade our skillset. People with multiple skills, like SEO, PPC, social media, and good communication skills, so you can manage good clients are earning well. Oh, he's refined. He's saying SEO is underpaid. Someone says in Pakistan and India, that may be the case, but this guy's feedback was right. Yes, SEO is good, but you want to be. Even if you just have really good comm skills as well, you're not just hiding behind your screen, dealing with technical stuff all day, but you can communicate about SEO in terms that business owners will understand in terms of outcomes to them, in terms of the things that they care about. Yep. If you can manage clients and keep them around, that's a valuable skill that makes you worth more as an SEO. And then if you can also run Google ads as well, then forget about a unicorn. You are entering unicorn territory then. There's plenty of jobs like client side jobs online where they just want a digital marketing rockstar to come in and run everything for like a pretty basic salary. Like a jack of all trades, master of none. I don't know what they think they're getting, but like, yeah. Very basic entry level. In their head they think they're getting someone that can come along and run all of that stuff awesomely, which.

ARTHUR: There would be people out there, but they'd be experienced people.

MICHAEL: Super expensive. And they probably don't want to go work in those sorts of roles. So, um, so yeah, the last one, I thought that was the last one. Now the last response to, do you think SEO is overrated? Hamad Rafiq said, let them think it's overrated to keep the competition low. Because Rafiq knows how good ranking in the SEO results in Google is, doesn't he?

ARTHUR: That's the best. It's yeah. What we strive to do every day is rank in the SEO results. We'll keep on striving. Top of Google paid position one, ideally.

MICHAEL: Yes. That's what it's all about at the end of the day.

ARTHUR: There's no position two in SEO.

MICHAEL: What do they say?

ARTHUR: The one person we used to work with told me once. Yes. I'll tell them it's quite literally as a position to an SEO. Yeah. It's quite good. You also try to reverse engineer SEO by explaining to it what it was to you anyway. Yes. Going up tangent here. Ignore me. You are getting too excited. It's been, it's been a while since I sat in front of the microphone.

MICHAEL: So I feel we're rusty too. I feel we owe an apology to our listeners and we will be better next week. I guarantee it. But until then, happy SEOing.

ARTHUR: Bye bye.

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