SEO Butler To Bespoke Services With Jonathan Kiekbusch

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: Welcome to a special episode of the SEO show. We're live in Chiang Mai.

MICHAEL: And we have a guest, Jonathan Keekbush. A special guest. Special guest. He, um, he's staying in the area, the same area we're in, Niman, Nimanaheiman. I can't even say the word. It's a long word. Nimanaheiman. Yeah. And, um, he came by to chat about. His early days running a business SEO butler and that was a product tie service that he built up and what he's doing now running a more bespoke e-commerce SEO agency. What do we talk about? What topics did we touch on? We touched on leadership.

ARTHUR: what's important, what makes a good leader. We talked about, I guess, his team, how he builds teams, how he keeps them engaged.

MICHAEL: The type of personality traits he's looking for hiring an SEO. Favorite tools, of course. Yes, favorite tools. He talked a bit about his new business. Yep, that's it. But maybe we should just throw to the chat with Jonathan rather than recapping it. So we bring you Jonathan Keekbush from SwishDM, previously from SEO Butler. Let's do it. Hi Jonathan, welcome to the SEO Show. For people that might not have heard of you, if you could let us know a bit about yourself and what you do, we'll get going.

JONATHAN: Yeah, hey, thanks so much for having me, guys. Wow, it's been a bit of a journey. It's been a bit of a journey. I started in digital marketing in, what, 2014. The first ever product that we launched was a Filipino article writing service called Article Writing Ninja, which we very quickly pivoted into a brand called PBN Butler. And we added a bunch of services back then, and then we eventually pivoted into SEO Butler, which was acquired at the end of last year. And we went straight from that into our e-commerce agency, which is called Swish.

MICHAEL: Awesome. So I first came across PBN Butler back in the day. I think we bought some local citations. And then I saw it changed to SEO Butler. Was that just to get away from the stigma of PBNs?

JONATHAN: A hundred percent, yeah. So I was noticing a shift in the industry that we were going from just quick and dirty and large-scale PBNs and just people wanting to build these huge site networks to we kind of want to talk more about quality and we kind of want to move on to having content written by writers in the US etc and like have that like higher level of quality and also people just wanting to be able to charge more for the services that they were getting from us and so we Thought that there had to be a cutoff like it wasn't going to work to have pbn butler sell Those kind of services because of the stigma that we were always going to be associated with with pbn, you know with bbn's with the brand Yeah, yeah, and um, and we're kind of petrified too because like, you know, we were selling like I think we're saying like articles like $4.25 or something yeah, and then we went from that to charging like $20 an article and we were petrified that wasn't gonna work and And it was fine. So as yeah, it was a really good transition

MICHAEL: Out of interest with AI content and stuff now, you know, you move from PBN, maybe not so much in the realm of quality, let's say, and then into chasing quality. I know you're not in that game so much anymore, like the product ties content creation, but where do you see it at the moment?

JONATHAN: That's a really good question. I think, I think we're so early, right? Like it kind of feels like the, the early stages of the crypto boom where like everyone is just now being like, What is going on? And there's a lot of noise about the AI tools for us because we're in the bubble. But then when you speak to people that are outside of the bubble, they're like, yeah, I've heard of chat GPT in some news stories, and that's about it. My thought is that there are a couple of big players out there that are doing a lot of quantitative and qualitative research into creating really good products or really good services using AI. Like, you know, like the guys at Surfer, for example, like they're spending a lot of time and resources on trying to get it right. And I think there's a lot of people in our industry, like there always have been and always will be, who are just selling content that was generated by like chat GPT after asking one sentence prompts, right? And so I think in the short term, it's actually going to amplify the need for good writers, because people are going to get inundated with content that can't rank because it's just not optimized. And then in the long term, we're going to see all the low, like the lower end of writing slowly and steadily be replaced by AI tools or AI writers. Editors assisted by AI or whatever it might be right.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I don't think it's ever gonna replace copywriters No, no help them scale content and help generate ideas, but I you'll still need a proof it and optimize it Like you said, I think it's gonna be very important just augment what humans are already doing

JONATHAN: Yeah, and I think that there's like such a large spectrum for writing, right? Like, especially in SEO, a lot of SEOs are only ever really dealing with like the lower end unless you're working in like corporate or you're working with like really big clients. most guys are just, you know, like they want some blogs for like the plumbing business that they work with or like the small e-commerce store. But obviously when you're working with like a publicly listed company or whatever, like you can't, like the risk reward is, is so skewed that they're like, no, we'll, we'll pay for the content writer. Like it's fine. We need the copy to stand up. Yeah. And so, yeah, I totally agree. I don't think it's going to be replaced that soon. But I'm also not naive at the same time. I know that there are people using it very successfully. I don't deny that it's usable or any of that. I think that people, especially in our industry, try to be very polarized. They try to be like, It's the best. It doesn't work at all. And you're an idiot, you know, whereas I'm like, no, I think you can probably use it, but you don't have to.

MICHAEL: Yeah, exactly. People are big into the black or white camps in the SEO world in general, from hats through to their stance on AI.

JONATHAN: That's right.

MICHAEL: Well, look, it's cool that you've had experience, you know, with the productized service like SEO Butler, and now you've gone into Swish, which is from the outside looking in more like a bespoke consultative type service. And again, black and white pros and cons for both those services. You know, some people would, you'd sort of die by the ethos that productized service is a way to go. And then others, you know, consulting's the way, bigger payments, that sort of stuff. Yeah. What do you see as the pros and cons and what, What led you to sort of sell a product I service and then go into that more?

JONATHAN: Consulting type thing which might be harder to sell in the future sure so the The product I service you know like we had been with that brand For the best part of like eight years by the time that we even started the conversation to to have it acquired And there's a moment where you have to kind of make a decision to either be like to rejuvenate your love for it and be all in and like really try to scale it or to cut yourself off and to say actually you know what now is the right time for somebody else to take it to that next level of whatever they think that might be. And for me, it came to a point where, you know, we had optimized the business really well. And we, you know, a lot of my personal focus is on building processes and systems and enabling people to do the best that they can so that I don't have to do it or that I don't have to do, you know, that I don't have to be there day to day or whatever. But the flip side to that is that you also kind of have like run the risk of, getting kind of disconnected from the business in the long term when, you know, like it got to a point where I really didn't have to do very much for that business at all because we had disassociated me from the brand. Like, you know, in the early PBN Butler days, we used to literally have me as a mannequin, me as like a cartoon, be part of the logo to like not even having our team on the about page because we wanted to like slowly make sure that if we ever did want to sell it, we were able to, because, you know, A lot of personal brands in the space that are really hard to sell. Well, so over time, we made the decision that it was right to, to step away because also, SEO services are really hard to scale. You end up getting a lot of small orders and then a couple of really big orders that make it really hard to maintain the same quality and deliverability, et cetera, for everybody. And so it's like a logistical nightmare. And that was part of what we enjoyed about running that business, but it's also the biggest challenge, right? So anyway, we plan to set this business up for sale and we already had an agency so we basically posed the question whether we would be able to separate the two and turn them into two individual entities so that we would be able to maintain the agency because while they were kind of being run together at some point, they weren't the same service whatsoever. You know, one was, as you said, productized services, you order something on a website, it gets delivered to your inbox, and like, Bob's your uncle. Whereas on the other hand, like, this was bespoke, we build you a campaign, it's strategy, it's, you know, we have meetings and yada, yada, yada. And so all the conversations that we had were really positive. We were able to separate the businesses and then throughout the time that it took us to actually sell the company, the agency kind of had a glow up and we added some branding and we named it SwishDM and we kind of decided that our focus was going to be on e-commerce and migrations. It's a nerdy part of the job that we really enjoy doing. Yeah, and so that's that's really it. You know, I think you raised the point that it's difficult to sell agencies. That's 100% correct. But agencies have something that's very attractive, which is that they're extremely cash rich, usually like they're very, they're quite profitable. And so it's a really good way for us to maintain a team of people that A, we really care about, but B, that we might want to work with on projects in the future. So it's kind of like our little incubator of talent that is paying for itself, it's making some profit, and eventually if we go into SaaS, if we go into e-commerce ourself, if whatever, right, we might acquire a business or whatever, we have that team ready to go, we don't have to start from scratch.

MICHAEL: Yeah, absolutely. See, I don't know if you know Andrew Wilkinson from Tiny, but he ran an agency that spins off heaps of cash and now he's publicly listed buying up all sorts of other businesses with that cash flow from the agency. But I would be right in assuming that with your e-comm agency, you're again not in the day-to-day so much. You've built a team, right? You've recruited a lot of people.

JONATHAN: Yeah, so it's a small team. I mean, there's 11 of us right now. And we're async, fully remote. There's four of us in the UK. There's a couple of us in the US. There's a couple of guys in Vietnam. And it's another one of those businesses that sort of runs itself, obviously. Whenever you do consultancy, it's that there's a higher demand, it's not as passive as like the productized service business, because there you can really just have SOPs for pretty much everything. And it just kind of runs itself, you know, and the team can kind of look up like, what is what is our SOP for this, and then just run with it, they don't need you. Okay, whereas with the agency, we're kind of in a privileged position where we're now working with quite substantial stores, and when they want to make a big decision and strategy, it's pretty much a prerequisite that I show up for the call as well, which is ironic because I'm a lot of the time the least qualified person on that call, but it's just showing face and being there and kind of just, yeah, being there.

ARTHUR: Where are your clients located, like all around the world or a specific region?

JONATHAN: Predominantly the US. I always say this and people wind me up about it, but I've never, you know, living in the UK, I've never had much luck with British businesses. I find that their budgets are like, their budget constraints are much, they're much more constrained for budget than American businesses. And for us, obviously, the American time zones, especially in the East Coast, are a little bit easier to work with than, say, Aussie businesses. And also, Australia has a lot of marketing agencies.

MICHAEL: A lot of agencies, and you want to talk constrained budget, work with a small sort of Australian business, it's probably, you know, a third of what the English ones would be.

JONATHAN: Well, and then you have the currency issues, etc. So we've always had the best luck in the US. And it's also one of the biggest markets to actually market in for those businesses. And so if we wanted to have a large campaign, then it's just kind of logical to work there.

MICHAEL: How are you doing your lead gen over there at the moment?

JONATHAN: So we actually get a lot of business through referrals from we get a lot of referrals from dev companies. So this is one of the reasons why we're heavy into migrations. Pretty much anybody listening to this that's ever dealt with like a large e-commerce migration from a store that has a couple of thousand SKUs knows that it can be a nightmare. It can be. Yes. Right. And so a lot of, Dev, like software houses somehow don't have SEO capabilities within their teams. And so when they go to launch these big sites, a lot of the time they're actually petrified because they know that there's a risk that there's going to be this backlash from a client. And so we've kind of gotten into this win-win situation where we go, well, we'll partner with you, we take that over, the client pays us direct, but as a fallout of a, A, you have less problems with your clients, and B, we'll identify a bunch of stuff that they have to pay you for to, you know, to remedy, whether it's, you know, problems with URL structures or whatever it might be, that ends up being extra hours for you. And so it's like a win, win, win, win. And once you have just a couple of those dev outfits working with you, it becomes quite easy. And then usually, if the migration goes well, which it usually does, then you end up being able to retain a fair portion of those clients. So there's that. Then we do get some referrals, and we do a little bit of outreach as well.

MICHAEL: Great, awesome. So obviously you've built a team for this business and servicing US clients predominantly and from the sound of it, you know, technical migrations, I'm hearing, are you having to hire people with experience or do you try and find people that have certain qualities, you know, let's just call them SEO qualities that you can then, I guess, groom to do it the way you want. What's your sort of preference when it comes to that side of things?

JONATHAN: So it's funny that you say that because it's, it has been my ethos to try and skill people up. Um, but there are only certain aspects of what we do where I think it's, it's easy to do that. So for like senior technical roles, I think it's imperative that they have some background and some experience because There's just so much to learn. And you can learn it, but when we throw you in the deep end on a huge site, there's just too much to learn in too short of a time period. Whereas if you're joining as somebody that's just going to be working on on-page, etc. I would much rather look for qualities than for the experience because the junior people usually will have worked at an agency that isn't doing the work the way that we want to do it anyway. And so there's no real benefit to it. It's really funny because a couple of years ago we hired our one and only, I think, apprentice that was like an actual apprentice through an apprenticeship program, et cetera. And we were trying to come up with questions we could ask them because obviously they have no experience. That's the whole point. Like they're super young, they have no experience. So we started asking them like about what computer games they play and stuff like that to try and identify like how competitive they are, how much they're into problem solving. Are they the kind of person that's going to like work on their own and like just YouTube stuff to try and figure it out? Etc. And it's been so rewarding because all of those qualities really Transfer into into the work, you know Whether it's like trying to be number one on the leaderboard or whether it's getting stuck with something and needing to research I mean SEO I always it's probably like a hot take, but I don't think that SEO is very difficult. It's just, it can be complicated in some cases and it might require some thinking, but like SEO isn't hard. It's a game really. To me it's a game. And it has a lot of like, a lot of levers and you just need to know which lever to pull at what time and they change, right? Like that's kind of part of the game. So I don't know. I think that sometimes, Having a certain personality trait definitely helps, but on the more senior side of it, it does make sense to have somebody that has some experience. Now, when it comes to things like content writing, etc., we have always recruited in a… Think I want to say in like quite a different way to how a lot of agencies recruit in the past so in the past we always used to recruit directly via universities and we would basically reach out to their professional writing programs and to their journalism program and stuff like that and try to get writers that aren't jaded by the gig economy right so like the majority of writers that you find have a already kind of been ruined by people that have tried to make them write for SEO. And like, we want them to write for the reader. And then those two things don't really work. Now, the problem is with that approach is you end up with a bunch of writers who have learned how to write like in academia. And that is again, like a different style. So when it comes to things like sales copy, et cetera, they're gonna really need a lot of training. So what we do now in a world where you know the whole approach of content has changed a lot is We used to have I think this is quite common But we used to have a pool of writers for all the clients and basically say okay this you know today You're gonna work on this and today you're gonna work on that whereas now we use pretty much like almost exclusively specialist writers, so we were slowly, but surely migrating over to where I don't know, if you have a client that sells dentistry equipment, then you want to have somebody that's worked in a dental practice so that they understand the lingo and all of that versus a generic writer that's just going to regurgitate what's out there. Yeah.

ARTHUR: With everyone, I guess, working remote, how do you structure your teams? Do they work together like a lead and different kind of, I guess, job titles or do they have their own separate clients?

JONATHAN: So we have, It's it's obviously a small team, right? It's like like I said, it's like 11 of us plus writers Yeah, so the way that structured right now is that we have one senior SEO lead he has his own clients who are like the the top-end clients that require the most attention and then we have to SEO whatever you want to call them like I suck at job titles. Consultants. Specialists, consultants, managers. Very interchangeable. Yeah. Who, they also have some of their own clients, but they also help out with some of the deployment of the stuff on like the really big clients. And then we have a, What do you want to call it? I hate using the term VA. Like we have an assistant who also helps us with things like content deployment, et cetera, who is amazing. She's from Ukraine and she is just like a ninja. Um, then we have, uh, a couple of guys on link building, um, and outreach and doing that kind of stuff. And then we have the content team, and the content team is currently four people plus writers. So you have Lindsay, who's my wife, and she like runs a content team. And then we have Sean, who is… Really like he he does do some of the content management But he's really just a very senior writer with a lot of experience And so he's does like some of the really big meaty pieces for some of our higher-end clients that need to have that sales copy feel yeah, and then we have two editors who basically manage the process of processing all the content from all of the other writers and Yeah, and so basically The way that works right now is we have a Monday meeting that the whole team basically attends. We keep the meeting extremely short. In that meeting, we literally just cover what clients are renewing that week, what are the priorities for that week. any new clients or cancellations, and then any sort of priorities. And then the only other thing that we also do is we pitch topics for either research or writing, and there's a bounty on it in the teams. Anybody that pitches something that they actually then follow through with, they get something. Um, and, um, yeah, and that's, and that's it. And then we just crack on. And then basically people kind of like work semi async. So we, we kind of work around that like UK time zone, but you know, the two guys in Vietnam work a bit earlier in the day, the guys in the U S work a little bit later. If there's a meeting that's on at a certain time, then we'll, we'll, we'll honor that time, you know,

MICHAEL: And is that enough there to sort of maintain quality? Like if you have writers, are you hiring people where you can be confident that they'll get the job done? Because, you know, in the early days, the first couple of months you're seeing it and then you trust them or do you have a level of oversight or quality control going on outside of, you know, just like a Monday meeting with the whole team? Do you have individual one-on-ones or, you know, feedback to keep people onto a standard?

JONATHAN: So, our content creation process is really convoluted and to our, like probably to our detriment, we start the process with the SEO team identifying gaps in the content. and saying like okay this is what we need to create from there it goes over into a scoping process so basically the SEO team decides what they need this content to look like based on the SERPs but not like they don't give a keyword list or anything like that they just kind of say look here's some of the headings that would be great if you could incorporate these here's some of like the FAQs I wish you would answer and then also they attach like the the client bio so that if it is a new writer for that client that they have that background of like what is the voice that we want to use like what are the do's and don'ts you know we work in a couple of industries that are regulated And in those obviously then there's like a laundry list of things that they are or aren't allowed to say or make claims of or whatever it might be. From there it then goes to the writer, the writer writes the content, it then goes to the editor, the editor checks whether the writer followed the scope. And then it goes on to the website and then the SEO guy goes in and does the final tweaks once it's on the site, like adding final internal links or whatever. And so it's already a really long process. And I personally review clients on renewal. So like I check every single report on a monthly basis to get like, to keep my finger on the pulse of like what the campaigns are like so that if I ever needed to be on a call or something that I'm like, you know, in sync. And then obviously when there's a call, then we have meetings beforehand, et cetera. But I'm also like day to day, I try to be involved to a point, you know, like when the team gets stuck, we have a really good environment where, everybody is extremely open to collaboration in the team. And because of that, we quite often will have like huddles on Slack where people are just, you know, just brainstorming or shooting the shit and just trying to figure out like, oh, I'm stuck with this. Can you like, do you have any idea or whatever, you know? And that's also where it helps to have like some of the more senior people in the team where you can kind of say like, Hey, I'm really experiencing this problem. Do you have any idea how to do it? But sometimes it's also having the new person on the team come in and have a completely like left field idea that you haven't thought about because like you have your way of doing things, right? The SEO blinkers on. Exactly.

MICHAEL: Exactly. Awesome. Well, let's talk leadership in SEO agencies, because that's not really something we've spoken about much on the show, but, you know, I'm hearing from this product ties world and then Swish that, you know, you're involved, but you are sort of, I guess, more setting the agenda or the planning at the top and making sure the team can get the best results. So what do you think makes a good leader in this space and what qualities do you think are essential for a leader in the SEO space?

JONATHAN: Well, that's a great question. I think the number one thing is probably empathy. It might sound cheesy to some, but I think being able to relate to people and actually understand what they're going through, what they're doing, how they feel, et cetera, especially in a world where people are sat behind a computer in their house for however many hours a day, how many days a month or whatever, I think it's really important, you know, especially if you want to get the best out of people. I always say that the leader works for the team and then the team works for the clients and that if you are able to, you know, take problems off of the team members like table or plate or whatever, then the less that they have to worry about, the more they can deliver for you. And it doesn't always have to be these big grand gestures. You know, we've all seen, um, uh, what is it like undercover bosses where like the boss comes in and it's like, Oh, here's a check for a hundred thousand dollars. Like it's, it's not really that it's about like just kind of making like checking in on people and making sure that they're actually okay. You know? Um, but, I think when it comes to when it comes to like leadership, it's it's also about actually wanting to get people to another level and taking pride in helping them get there. You know, what we see a lot of in this industry is people trying to build businesses for a lifestyle. And that is okay. but sometimes it translates into the wrong kind of, you know, like the wrong kind of vibe. So like, I've seen a lot of businesses where they outsource everything to like $5 an hour VAs. And it's just like, I don't wanna have anything to do with it or you or whatever, just do the work and like, let me collect the money. And like, that's it. and you know that might be someone's prerogative and and that's fine and they might be really successful with it but for me that's not fulfilling like I want to be a part of that person's like journey if I make the commitment to have them work for me because I can't expect them to want to help me grow this business, if I'm not committed to helping them grow their career, personal life, whatever, you know, so it, it sounds very cheesy. But for me, I really think that people obviously deliver their best work when when they're just like living a good life, you know, when they're not trying to make ends meet, when they're not stressed out, when their mental health isn't in a shitter, you know, like all of that kind of stuff. So. Yep. Awesome.

ARTHUR: Awesome. Did you ever, I was going to say, how do you keep everyone engaged if they're all scattered around across the globe?

JONATHAN: So I think one of the benefits that we still have is being a small team makes it really easy to communicate. You know, I was talking to some of the guys that surfer actually, and you know, they're like 90 people now. And so keeping 90 people that are partially working remote, partially working in an office is definitely a challenge I would imagine. Whereas for us, it's still pretty easy to just like jump on a huddle, whatever. One of the things that really helps too is, um, breaking off into smaller groups that aren't set. because again, because it's such a small team, you end up having calls with like two or three different people in these little, in these little bubbles, um, to just work on different projects. And I think that really helps to keep it fresh because if you were just working with like the same two people, it, it can get really stagnant, you know? And so that's why we try to mix it up. We'll have like, you know, this content person work with this person on this client and then like you mix it up for the next one, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, um, And then we also just try to do things whenever we can to, you know, just to keep things a little bit more casual. Obviously, it's not as easy with you not being in the same place, you can't take everyone out for a beer or whatever. But, you know, just like trying to catch up if somebody went on holiday or whatever to, you know, like, just catch up. Yeah.

MICHAEL: What about, you know, the SEO world is constantly changing, as we all know, and I know you've got your process like content creation and the SEOs might set the strategy and it goes through its process, but the SEOs and the strategy that they're coming up with, how do you stay on top of that, like the continuous learning? Is that a trait you look for when you're recruiting, you know? people that are listening to the right podcast or they're on SEO Twitter or they're reading the right blogs and you can just sort of trust that they're sort of that mentality or is it something that you try to foster and you know share updates that have happened with the team like on Slack or something, hey did you see this, like what's your sort of approach to that?

JONATHAN: The finding people that are the researchers that want to know what's going on, that want to read the big like super detailed blogs and stuff is definitely something that I try to look for, especially in the in the senior guys because i think that they um because the reality is like i don't i don't read everything i don't watch everything i don't have the time i don't have the patience and also a lot of the time in the 12 000 word article there's like 200 words you need to read right and um So one of the things that we really try to foster within the team is sharing knowledge. And it just goes down to the principle that if 11 people have to read the article, we're wasting like 10 people's time versus one person reading it and then them sharing their like cliff notes, right? So that's something that we try to foster and we we do a lot of shit posting because of it, you know Like there's there's a lot of stupid stuff that goes around because of it too because people read stuff that ended up not being good And they're like, can you believe this crap, you know, and they share that But on the on the flip side like the benefit is that people will watch a long video or something They're like, hey, this is a good video. I think you should watch it. But if you don't hear some of the key takeaways and When it comes to the ever-evolving SEO strategy, I think it's kind of weird because I think there's just way too much weight on the updates and stuff. People are so worried about it, but nothing has changed for the last 10 years. the algorithm is going to update and it's going to keep updating. And that is what is keeping us in business. Because if it didn't change, then everybody would do it. Right. Because then there would just be a black and white blueprint that would be diluted over time into something that anybody can follow. The same way that like we used to like building a website in the early like noughties, the late nineties, et cetera. was a nightmare and you really needed to have a lot of technical know-how how to do it until it got distilled down to having like easy site setups with WordPress and Shopify and all of that kind of stuff and now anybody can have a website. It's kind of the same thing right like if it got too easy everybody could do it. Sometimes it feels like everybody is already doing it but that's a whole different story. So I guess for me it's like while the priorities and SEO seem to change frequently. What we do, which is optimizing sites for an algorithm, isn't like changing in and of itself.

MICHAEL: We call it 80-20 SEO a lot. It's like the basics will always be the same. And you can get sort of stuck in the weeds sometimes talking about keyword density or, you know, whatever. Pick the flavor of the day when really, yeah, the basics have always remained true and nail them. Yeah, do you, out of interest, you've got your agency and you guys work on e-com and migrations, do you do any affiliate marketing or build sites of your own and sort of go a bit more wild with your testing and tactics or are you keeping it client-focused these days?

JONATHAN: we, we, we do have a couple of like, um, test, um, uh, properties, I guess. Um, and with those test properties, what we, um, what we're able to do is just like do more data's things. So like, for example, when everybody started asking about, um, can you generate content with with GBT and stuff like that? Obviously, we can't just say, no, it doesn't work or whatever, we have to build a site and put a couple 100,000 words of like generated content on there and test it out. And that kind of stuff. So we do have some of our own properties, but they're not massively for profit, like some of them make some money. But I I really like working on these established brands because what you can do is just so big. It feels very satisfying. You know, when you start working with a brand that's already generating like a million dollars a month via their site, and then you come in and like they've only ever done marketing via like socials and influencers and like TV ads or whatever, and you come in and you're like, Okay, let's just drop this bias guide and immediately the bias guide goes to one. It's like, that is really cool, you know, so we have our own properties, which we use for testing. We're currently in the process of working on a SAS project as well, which is not in the marketing space whatsoever. It is a complete shot in the dark, and we're complete novices at it. So like, It may go nowhere and be a massive money sink, as software always tends to be, as I'm hearing. But again, it's just us trying to figure out where we're going to go over the course of the next five years, next 10 years. What can we do to maintain our team, which we really care about? What's going to keep the wheels turning, basically?

MICHAEL: Awesome. Well, look, man, this has been really great chatting with you. What we always like to do with every guest that comes on the show is ask them the same question, because it's always cool to get the different perspectives and ideas and what they do. And the question is pretty basic. It's in the SEO world. We love tools. If you had to have an arsenal of three tools to get the job done at the sort of exclusion of all other tools, what would be your go-to three tools?

JONATHAN: Oh, good God. Right. So it would probably be a, it'd probably be an analysis tool like Ahrefs, probably Ahrefs over SEMrush, despite the controversy with their pricing. Yeah. depending on when the episode is aired and so it's probably that just for analysis and then I'd probably use a crawler to so either like site bulb or screaming frog to try and you know to audit the site and then I would probably Ah, for the third tool, I would probably use something like surfer or whatever. If I, if I want to, you know, if I want to, uh, just make my life a little bit easier, I think of the back of those three tools, you could already make a decent chunk of change. Um, and then everything else after that, you're kind of getting into semantics of like, you know, whether it's, whether it's a tool, whether it's a plugin or whatever, but yeah, I think those, those three things, uh, would probably take you a long way.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I agree. That's pretty good. I'd say that's almost my choice too. But yeah, cool. It's been great having you on. So thanks a lot. And if people want to go find out more about you and look into your businesses, check you out, where can they go?

JONATHAN: So you can head to swishdm.com to find me. You can find me on socials. I'm the only person with a surname and I am awful at getting back to people on socials. So it's always best to hit me up on either LinkedIn or via the website. Awesome.

MICHAEL: Thanks a lot for coming on the show, Jonathan. Thank you.

INTRO: Thanks for listening to The SEO Show. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. It will really help the show. We'll see you in the next episode.