259 : Phil Singleton – Create a web asset with your ecommerce business
I loved when Phil used the term: “Web Asset”. Have you thought of your business this way yet? Think if you owned a building or had equipment that you use in the business. It would be an asset on your books that has value. Makes sense. So if you create a web presence that sells goods, services or has content others are looking for you have created a web asset. That web asset in todays marketplace has more value than many brick and mortar places. Start thinking about how you can use third party sites to help you create your own web asset.
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Stephen: [00:00:34] back. Give back give back. This time of year.
Stephen: [00:00:37] Thanks hope your Q4 is going good. It’s a great time to be selling and sell a lot. Watch your reprice hers. I just got whacked on one last fifteen dollars a unit. I didn’t lose either lost in profit because I showed a blocked one wasn’t paying attention so please do me tell you about a couple sponsors in scope from Sellar labs. If you’re not using it to even just to take your wholesale accounts of course you’ve got to use it for private label right. You need to understand the keyword you want to understand a key word. Go look at your competitors get their keywords and then use them. That’s smart business right because they already have proven that proof of concept. But take the same approach to your wholesale accounts. Make sure that those keywords are in there. If not upload those changes many times you can but many times you can’t take advantage scoped from seller labs.
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Stephen: [00:02:11] Take a look at a setup for 2018 now. Tell Karen I sent you when you think it about Q4 lists and I hope you don’t use them just Q4 I hope you use them all year long again. You want to learn how to fish right. And so the best thing to do when you’re buying a list is look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it and then figure that out on your own. That’s the approach that Gala’s B uses and a million dollar arbitrage list. It is closed for the rest of this year. However I have asked them and they have said they would do it if there’s an opening they will pull from the wait list. OK so I have the link out on my site.
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Cool voice guy: [00:04:29] to the e-commerce momentum blog where we focus on the people the products and the process of e-commerce selling today.
Stephen: [00:04:37] Is your host Stephen Peters then welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 259 Phil Singleton OK. This dude is smart. Clearly he has an enormous amount of experience in helping create what he called a web asset. Had not heard of that phrase. And you know it’s funny as a former accountant and yet I have not thought about it that way but it makes perfect sense right. You create a sayit or a presence that has value marketable value whether you sell services you sell goods or you just bring on an audience that is interested in what you do. You now have marketable value. There’s value in selling that business. And as I point out it could be more value than a brick and mortar depending on what it is and so you know if you gain authority over subject and you continue to bring an audience and then eventually you bring a product to them they’re likely to buy from you because you’re trustworthy right you’ve gained their trust you’ve earned it in the long game.
Stephen: [00:05:48] And so Phil is one of the sharpest goes up talked to who knows an enormous amount about this stuff helping larger accounts really get to that level. This is the world we live in today. Great great interview. Let’s get into the podcast. All
Stephen: [00:06:03] right welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast very excited about today’s guest a little different. And you know I get approached by PR companies a lot and most of the time I ignore them because they just always tell me they’ve got a better solution blah blah blah blah blah but this one really struck me because what I appreciated about Phil and introduce him to a second was he has walked the walk and not only talks the talk but walk the walk. I love. He’s involved in a book and I enjoy the book. I enjoy duct tape Mark and I enjoy all that stuff and I look back to see what he’s accomplished and I’m like this is the kind of thing that we’ve all been talking about. We know we need to have control of our own destiny whatever that means for you. And I think that Phil has some advice and maybe can offer some insight in what it really takes because it’s not easy. Welcome Phil Singleton welcome faith thank you so much for having me. It’s
Stephen: [00:06:57] not easy as it no it isn’t. You
Phil: [00:07:01] know what I mean but if I can give you set things up the right way and take little baby steps out of time. You know you can build a mountain is it it’s like a master garden. Like
Stephen: [00:07:10] I mean I always use this in trying to give people some perspective to think about what it looks like. So I think about like if you have a big house right and you’ve got all this property you develop this plan of attack. Right. I want to have this master garden going to have this over here this now. You can’t do it all at once. However I’m working towards it whenever I’m doing something like oh does that fit in my big plan. Yes. And I’m going to go forward with it right. Is it is it the same approach. Because then the problem comes is a storm comes and it wipes everything out and you’re like oh that didn’t go so well. Is it’s the same thing. You
Phil: [00:07:44] know I think it’s I think it’s very similar. Know I think about e-commerce and e-commerce stores and eBay and Amazon I think about the same way almost I do in some cases podcasting and even content on people’s own websites. A lot of folks you know will will do these kind of one dimensional things where they put their stuff whatever they want to sell their information. A lot of times up on a third party platform that they don’t control. Right. So then you know we talked about before the show in the green room so to speak where that’s going to be a scary thing where you don’t if you don’t have a single place as an archive or a referral source for all the things that you’ve been doing. It’s a scary prospect that somebody can come along one day and reshuffle the deck like Google does or change rules or you get the wrong end of the stick on a ruling maybe from eBay or Amazon or something like that and it really has a can have a huge impact on your business almost overnight.
Phil: [00:08:33] And if there is no fallback plan or you don’t have a way where you’ve created like your own web asset that you own. It’s tough to start over again. Right. And
Stephen: [00:08:42] that’s a league with phrase a web asset. I’ve never heard that. I mean that’s I like it.
Phil: [00:08:49] I think that’s really what you know our whole approach is is any more. I mean you want to have your own asset that you control. You
Phil: [00:08:57] want to set it up in a way where you can get multiple benefits and not just think of kind of these. I think I think a digital market lies one dimensional tactics and that’s what a lot of folks end up doing.
Stephen: [00:09:06] And I think about the blog launch give and give an example. Go ahead and give me an example.
Phil: [00:09:12] Well Greg here’s an example one for why that strategy that we put into place every single day for our clients blogging. If you’re going to have a Web site you want to make sure that you set up in a way that again as a referral source for all your content and the best way to get traffic and get higher conversion rates off of your own Web site is to blog right. So but if you think about blogging. This is going to tie all together into into a more holistic strategy. Blogging is great if you do it one blog post at a time right. In a way where you’re maybe targeting keywords or target something that’s trending or finding some way that you can demonstrate authority in whatever product or niche that you’re trying to sell on. But what ends up happening is if you just do one one blog post you’re losing out an opportunity to get to really repurpose it in a way that can help you grow your business and grow your brand.
Phil: [00:09:58] And what I mean by that is to give an example. We for all of our clients we work with we. Blogging is an important part of it but the way we do it is we do them in series so we’ll do them in a series of say 10 or 15 at a time we’ll sit down with the client and brainstorm some kind of a how to guide or some kind of table of contents so that we can have these independent blog post almost as chapters that are standalone posts that can go on the Web site grow out the pages be distributed to social media and do all these things for you.
Phil: [00:10:27] But at the end of like say 10 or 15 weeks we stitch these together into an ebook. The e-book then becomes a call to action on the Web site or a free giveaway to give somewhere else right. We do not take that e-book and we spin it up into a Kindle. The Kindle then goes up on the Amazon but we make our way and we make our clients an author. This is a very important point as we’ve actually done this and exploited this myself. If you go on to Amazon now and you optimize say the content that you repurposed from your own Web site you can then start showing up in searches in Amazon almost use Amazon against itself. Right. So if you go into Amazon right now and type in local SBO or on that kind of stuff you’ll see typically see one of my books come up in the top three spots.
Phil: [00:11:08] Right. So I’m out there leveraging that assets getting in them and we’ve done this in a way where again we’re kind of leading everything back to our own asset that we’ve created but we’ve done we’ve done it so in a way that it’s been more strategic and we’re getting multiple wins off of essentially the same amount of work because you’ve won you’ve got this place where you can you know like I say Your website has to be an asset. I look at almost you have them it’s almost like your publishing platform. But again you do this in a way where you are strategic about it and you can get all these additional wins out of it while still kind of finding a way to draw that back to your Web site where you can kind of build drone audience and trust. So
Stephen: [00:11:46] thinking about an e-commerce site. So you know I guess I should qualify this. We have people that are Walmart that sell everything and then we have people that are specialized and sell their own products. They’re trying to create a brand right. And I think there’s a big distinction between the two. Right. Because the approach has to be a little different. So so with the specialist and they’re selling sports water bottles up to look at my Starbucks mockup here. But that’s just called sports water bottles. So the content would be you know probably sports related that kind of thing right. Health related that that makes sense.
Stephen: [00:12:20] Now if I’m selling sports water bottles and washing machines and typewriter ribbons remember typewriter and pens. Right. Just thinking of different things. How do you how do you what’s your advice there. I mean it has to be two different types. Correct
Phil: [00:12:36] . Exactly. And I think you get to a really important point about what whens and what converged today online and what really does it is some type of a niche based opportunity. So the way to beat Amazon in terms of getting Google rankings in this kind of thing where you can actually be found online is to beat them niche by niche because it’s a huge Amazon’s huge Ebates you know also really big but Amazon kills it on not only is it a source for people just go directly but they’ve also got really good at Google rankings on a lot of different things. Right. And Google still is the one place where people tend to go to look for some type of information as that as the ticket item goes higher and higher than the more Google search you’re going to see and the more research people are going to do to make that kind of stuff.
Phil: [00:13:26] But the way to beat them really is to beat them I mean beat them in a Google search so that you have a chance to come up on the first page or even beat them on their rankings is to one have a niche based on your website so your base you’re selling you’re either selling one type of product and demonstrating to Google that you’re an authority and more of an authority in that space than Amazon is or maybe doing a different way where you’re selling a lot of different things but maybe to a specific industry or niche. But if you go up and try and go head to head and say I’m going to be the next Amazon next to be really tough because the one of the reasons they beat everybody through Google is because they’re so huge and of Q-Med so much authority.
Phil: [00:14:08] And actually if you look at their products I use Amazon a lot in terms of how to structure websites their product pages are essentially Web sites. I mean there’s so much information on there’s so much proof there’s so many reviews online. You know there’s videos and this kind of stuff but if you go to a lot of times what would happen if you go to an independent Web site those product pages tend to be pretty thin. Right. It’s just got a description of stuff and you don’t see near the amount of information on it. So Amazon’s got kind of got our head up on a lot of searches that’s right there right there. That’s
Stephen: [00:14:40] a huge mess right there.
Stephen: [00:14:42] So that example let’s go back to my sports waterbottle because Amazon has you know 5000 sports water bottles and each one of them has huge pages of data behind it. Correct. If Steve’s water bottles has just the image and the price and hey it’s a great thing to take biking or some nonsense right.
Stephen: [00:15:03] I got no shot none whatsoever. That Miss right there.
Phil: [00:15:08] It’s it gets to a bigger problem. That’s it. That’s a huge mess right. I think so when we get in we work with our e-commerce clients. The first thing that we’re trying to do is obviously get it there make Web sites that are more authoritative make sure they’ve got blog posts and they’re more content on them. We’re actually also one of the things that you want to do that we’ve seen this time and time again is you know you want to create these rich category pages where they almost become like mini landing pages. We’re working on like a luxury.
Phil: [00:15:35] We’ve got a client that’s a luxury watch seller right so obviously having a lot of trust on that site is really big. But we’ve done it in order to help beat the Amazons and other larger players in the niches we’re creating these rich almost mini web sites for each brand that they sell so before what was just be a Category Page or maybe there would be products lists in the category page and no introductory content. Now we’ve got a nice slider at the top with information we’ve got the products we can easily see them then down below we’ve got like 300 words of text explain you know the history or why this thing’s really good. We have blog posts that are piling onto that page. When you land on that category page for that particular e-commerce product it looks like its own website almost kind of an Amazon fashion we’re pulling reviews up and then we take it down even further that when you actually get into a product on that thing on that site where we’re getting we’re trying to develop and build more information on the particular products so that that model number or what have you has a better chance to start outperforming Amazon’s on google and whatnot.
Stephen: [00:16:38] So. So back to our example so the sports waterbottle I think he did a good job explaining that. You’d have to make it rich and you go all deep and get everything there. When you’re trying to be the Wal-Mart you really either are going to do one for your sports waterbottle and do dedicated pages for your washing machines and dedicated bit I mean it goes on and on and on and then it’s just probably insurmountable right because they’re really tough. Yeah. And the only thing you won’t be able to compete on is price.
Stephen: [00:17:04] If you Nitsch down and so if you look at the top selling items that you can replicate that’s the place to go and develop because that’s has the potential to be something right. And going on that.
Phil: [00:17:17] So one of the things you could do just to put a little spin on it is if you really wanted to sell a problem with SEO in general is the more you try and try and optimize for more competitive things the more you dilute the overall value of the Web site because it just gets harder and harder to rank for things. You know when Google looks at these as independent right things like they’re going to look at washing machines a different type of search and water bottle. So the more you add things that are different on your Web site kind of harder and unless you’re like an Amazon it’s got so much authority so much things written they’ve kind of they’ve been able to overcome that dilution.
Stephen: [00:17:53] What does it hurt if you just do books Sleman is going to use make it an easier example. If I’m a book specialist and I do a book only Web site that’s different much easier because it’s a category I think he said that earlier and I probably missed it but it’s a category.
Phil: [00:18:10] Yes. And they get the more you can Nitsch down and define who you are like IDEO clients are the more you can build their website around them the better right. So
Speaker 14: [00:18:17] if you’re niche into books maybe the book books get down to a certain kind of book and then maybe it’s even a certain kind of discipline. Then the more you can kind of niche into it the better chance your site has to rank for something that’s competitive. So on the other hand I don’t think we’re going to get you could I think have a broader more diverse product or service offering if you try and niche it in other ways. Right.
Phil: [00:18:42] So if I wanted to be a mini Amazon the online seller in maybe Kansas City I could have a site that has maybe a broader listing of things but since I’m so focused on Kansas City and have so much Kansas City related content I might be able to outrank in that region for a specific city or if I wanted to say I wanted to be the Amazon broad reach of services and go after a certain industry like I want to sell to specifically to say nurses around the world. Then you can really start because then you’re going to get a little bit more targeted type of situation your products will probably be a little more targeted that area and you might have a chance to rank outrank the bigger players in that space because you’ve missed down to that level.
Stephen: [00:19:23] So in that example. Right. I think that’s a good example. The nurses. So you need to gain authority. Right. And then I guess trust on Google is that what happens that overtime you earn trust based on content. And I mean I’m not clear on how that happens.
Phil: [00:19:41] Okay so there’s a great.
Speaker 14: [00:19:43] BOYLE It’s not a great way because there’s a Google has course the way they rank Web sites is all based on a complex algorithm of hundreds of factors. Right. But what’s interesting about Google is they hire this independent army of 10 I think I’m IBM closer to 15000. Search the value search evaluators search quality evaluators they call them. So they literally hire people for ten fifteen dollars an hour to manually check the quality of the results for different kinds of searches. Now before you become a search quality evaluator which I think essentially are mostly think independent contractors but they might have some that are ex employees. You have to read this guide it’s a 167 page guide about it. And that’s meant for everybody because it really meant just for a part time person to be able to come out and say OK and read this guide.
Speaker 14: [00:20:31] Now I know what Google wants to see in order to determine if this is a quality Web page or what not. So inside this document the research if you do a search for say the link to it it’s like you just do a google search for google search quality guidelines.
Phil: [00:20:46] It’s fascinating because it to me it lets you look into the soul of what Google wants right because they’re actually having people manually check what they want their algorithm to deliver. OK. So inside this document they’re very specific on what they want to see on the website in terms of they actually get some acronyms in it and make it simple. The biggest one they repeat over and over again is E eighty eight education authority and trust. And then they give you specific examples of what they want to see on your Web site. Right so they talk about robust about us pages testimonials making sure that you can see who the people are who owns the website who wrote the content where they’re located. If you see a lot of e-commerce websites that don’t provide any information where they are where they’re located that is a not a trust signal right is the opposite of having a trust signals so having a blog and that shows rich content that shows you again blogging they got to the first one in that acronym is e right education.
Phil: [00:21:39] How are you going to educate you’re going to provide blog posts or ebooks or show people that you’re actually in authority in your in your space. What makes you more trustworthy which makes them more make. So if you look at how they’re instructing their evaluators to grade the results you know what the goal of the algorithm is when they go in and try and use their crawlers to grade them look for the signals.
Stephen: [00:22:05] Is that kind of getting this gets a little bit abstract but no I think it makes sense so you actually have a guideline and if you follow the guidelines well give me give an example. Have you used that guideline to help somebody improve. And if so what did it do for them.
Phil: [00:22:20] Here’s what happened as I had always been reading about myself and this year the beginning this year they changed it or three times a year they changed it three times this year but they had a really major change this guideline book in February this year and it was almost in total response to the election cycle. So it ended up happening is they saw that people already inherently don’t trust the Internet all that much. That’s why Google is so powerful because it’s a tool to go in there and search and do your own due diligence so to speak. But what ended up happening is something that was already inherently not very trustful became a lot less trustful after the election because there’s all this fake news people are talking about people getting ripped off. So they went in and really doubled down on trying to figure out how do we establish that these Web sites and Web pages are trustworthy.
Phil: [00:23:06] So they amped that up quite. And when I saw that I was like holy cow you actually get to redesign my own I actually did that and just spent some time obviously we spent working harder on our clients and we do on our own websites so I read this in February and didn’t launch my Web site until my new one my Casey web design or dot com website until October last month almost immediately my organic training rankings doubled and my conversion rates improved markedly. At
Phil: [00:23:32] least 20 percent. So I know I was being rewarded for hitting those spots. If you go on my Web site now you see it’s like loaded with trust and authority. I mean I literally have you know here’s our clients here’s what people said about me. It’s a lot less about the products and the services on the home page and it’s more about proof about how I am trustworthy and authority and my niche and that’s. And he can do that on a home page right because you can still showcase your stuff as an e-commerce.
Phil: [00:23:56] You know Joe your things build up a lot of trust signals and items throughout the page your Web site and then drive people where you want to drive them in terms of you know your call to action of the products of that kind of stuff. But that’s a really specific example. And I know this is pretty much the way forward and the things that we did before still work. You know the fundamental parts of Vescio and having a good Web site building content knowing your keywords and all of stuff are still really important.
Phil: [00:24:20] But you’re looking at your own site in terms of I almost look at it in terms of like a it’s like a you know criminal law case it’s like you’re trying to present proof in front of the jury the jury or you know are are your potential clients about you know why you’re the boss you get to provide them like evidence and proof. Right. And in most cases it’s third party stuff so if you fill up your Web site with just hey here’s what we do and don’t provide like additional third party proof about that. That can backup the claims you make on your Web site. You lose an opportunity for conversion. But I think you’re also losing opportunity for rankings because these are the things that Google’s really looking for to give you more visibility.
Stephen: [00:25:04] So how did they. I mean as you’re describing that I mean I always thought it was this a computer that was sitting there making these decisions. But you’re talking that there is some human intervention right. And it needs to be right because they’re trying to measure right based on this chain ever changing thing and so there’s there’s got to be some emotion in it.
Phil: [00:25:25] These people have influence that much influences 15000 people have that much influence in a way or not exactly because they got you some way to take a step backwards everything the way that they rank websites. You know it’s automated. I
Phil: [00:25:41] mean there are some things Google will do like they actually have an army of folks offshore that will look for Web sites that have flags and do something called a manual action. So the algorithms will will Peanut will penalize your site if they see you’re doing all sorts of shady back linking stuff or keywords stuffing a lot of that process is automated. But some people are sneaky about it and can get underneath the radar of the algorithms that filters and it throws a flag up and they’ve got a they’ve got a different set of people that go in and will actually say hey you’re doing this wrong you’re cheat you’re essentially I’ll say it like this but they say you violated our guidelines you have a manual action penalty and then you have to go address that. So that’s one thing that will that is a manual intervention intervention on your Web site to lower the visibility on the search results not the quality raters are really just kind of a secondary way for them to get some human feedback.
Phil: [00:26:31] We’ll grade the changes that they’re making so it’s not just totally. Now let it loose to the algorithms in terms of and they can’t you know it’s hard for them and they can’t just go in and be manually checking the stuff all day long so it makes sense that they would have some kind of a sampling to make sure that the people are out there I can give them some feedback and then they can use that feedback then to make tweaks onto the onto their algorithm to improve it because Google’s whole thing is they have to they have to produce trustworthy high quality relevant results to people because when that stops and they lose that trust.
Phil: [00:27:07] Exactly. Work also so that so they’ve got all sorts of different ways I think to them to do that. Now I do think they’re cannibalizing themselves with the way they’re in almost kind of over overdoing the ad word stuff. But
Phil: [00:27:20] I think they’re gonna keep doing that until at some point they’re going to realize hey you know people aren’t using us because this is becoming like ads and not not my own research type thing.
Stephen: [00:27:30] At some point there’s saturate saturated you can only make. They should only make so much money at some point they got to sit back and say no it’s content content content quality matters. Ultimately you win the long game right rather than the short term. So when I look at your Web sites I’m looking at Kansas City. So it’s Kacie web designer dotcom. Guess we’ll pick your stuff Casey web designer dotcom and so first thing I noticed in the top right hand corner is your phone number. So imagine from a trust point of view it’s like OK this is a real place I could actually call. Right. And so that that’s probably a pretty big thing.
Stephen: [00:28:02] And then I come down and I see you actually have real clients their logos with links to them. Then I see you know your Kansas City’s most recommended. They’re saying with some people who I guess are testimony’s. And then here’s a book as you said to content and created a book I assume. Is it a printed book. It looks like a printed book but is it any book.
Speaker 14: [00:28:28] It’s print a book. It’s a pretty picture.
Stephen: [00:28:30] OK. And so then we got other experts from the field endorsing your work.
Phil: [00:28:38] You’re laying claim to 60000 Web sites messenger blog and we have ANSTO plug in its kind has been taken off this last year. So that’s kind of how we help.
Stephen: [00:28:47] But it makes sense I’m buying it and then I come down and it says hey here’s where I’m featured at. So you know here’s what I’ve done or here’s here’s places I’ve been and they all are pretty big names like Yeah I think entrepreneur Forbes and they’re probably going to make it right. And come down and then you offer your services and stuff. And even more blog posts and then you have your little award. I don’t mean to downplay it. I don’t mean it that way. There are just small image wise. And then there’s a massive gorilla. And so all that combined are they are small compared to all that combined. Not one of those things. It’s all that combined to get that effort to be optimized is that is that right. Part
Speaker 15: [00:29:29] of it you can see the sites got a lot of content on it but also as you scan down if you don’t know who I am in 30 seconds I just established a lot of authority and trust on those. There’s no question that I’ve got some. So it just I put the proof down and that’s what I wanted to do. I want you to scroll down and by the end of the game if you’re thinking about web design if you’re in especially if you’re in Kansas City I’m on your shortlist and I’m going to get a phone call that’s up to me the kind of clothes or how the rest of the process that makes it simple but you don’t see a whole lot of me. The you know the services or the packages during the down below I kind of put it in a lot of that really to be quite honest with you as Google ranks Web sites that have more content on them.
Phil: [00:30:08] So there’s this balance that we’re trying to play with having things rank and but not be cluttered but also give Google enough where they’re going to latch on because at the end of the day they’re still ranking quite a bit on content and work. So to the extent that you know a phrase and variations of a phrase exist on a page and they can link that up with the searchers phrase then you’re going to have a higher trans that’s a really big ranking factor and just go on that. There’s been several studies that show you know a 2500 word Page is going to tends to rank a lot higher than a fifth of a page. It’s
Speaker 16: [00:30:45] really thin it doesn’t have anything Sierre a lot of folks will go out there and just have like a slider and a couple of words and then maybe a few products on the front and there’s nothing on the home page for the search engine to latch on to. So what we try and do is make the messaging simpler above the fold. But people are so used to scrolling now that you get infinite scrolls on Facebook and a lot of other places where you’ll go that it’s not yet clients it may take a little bit worried about oh my gosh my page is so long. But if we think about how we go through especially on phones now mobile devices I mean that’s all you’re doing is scroll and scroll around other things so you get to be able to do two things here you can kind of make the messaging about the client and about what you can do clear above the fold and toward the top of the page and you can load the content a little bit more with some people that want to dig and provide them more information.
Speaker 16: [00:31:34] But also some more Google friendly text maybe get that down more mid page and lower in the page and then you can kind of serve those two masters right. Because clients want stuff that’s easy I want to get to it and I don’t know what the pricing is but. So clients want. I think they want to be potential customers. It’s almost like they want to be the hero on your site or they should be here on your site. But Google wants to see that you the service provider are the hero. So you’re kind of trying to manage this balance right because they want to rank heroes they want to rank authorities and people that are educational and trustworthy type deal and the client wants to be the hero when they got that type of the I want you to be the guide so to speak.
Speaker 16: [00:32:11] So that’s what you’re trying to do on a web page as on every page of the site is provide this kind of stuff because when you have a Web site and you came in it’s on my web my Web site but you know blog post Ranck really really well. So
Phil: [00:32:21] a lot of times if you’re blogging or even product pages tend that rank really well if you if you can set those things up right a lot of times those are going to be the entry point to your site. This is really important because not everybody comes to your website your home page and Google doesn’t necessarily want to rank only homepages. So when we set websites out in fact if you drill down on my website a little bit further you’re going to see any of the pages. I’ve got a sidebar so that and some top almost kind of mini heter stuff where if you’re coming into it almost kind of looks like a blog post almost kind of looks like a mini landing page. I got a headline title the top I got the content over to the left but I’ve got a sidebar that makes things a little bit sticky and shows some other ways to get into track try and show a little bit of that proof stuff because they came into the visit visited my Web site through through an entire page and not not to the home page.
Stephen: [00:33:09] So I think it goes deeper and deeper and deeper as I’m watching it through. And so each one of those things that help you gain trust. Is that part of the message. I mean each one of these layers over time because each one has their individual trust factor and then collectively is there a collective effort yeah.
Speaker 16: [00:33:28] So the bigger the bigger your website is in terms of going to have products from an e-commerce website. But particularly in terms of blogs I mean you want to have educational Web stuff on your website and grow it out and it should be one of the things in the search quality evaluators guidelines that I mentioned and they repeat this over and over again as they say does the page. Or does the site have a satisfying amount of MC and they use. MC a million times. What does MC on the web page its main content. So they give their screen shot after screen shot and that shows like you know you had this and where is the main content. Where are you placing your ads are the ads valuable or you know they don’t basically say where you going to place ads on the page how much content you’re going to have you know are the ads relevant and they value are they valuable to the to the person that’s on that page.
Phil: [00:34:18] So there’s a big emphasis on content in there and if you’ve got products that’s great because you’re going to grow your Web site out. And like I believe you should time on those product pages on your own site add more descriptions Add user reviews even videos to the extent that you can over time build those out. But one of the best ways that you can establish yourself to your clients into Google is to maintain an active blog where you’ve got these you know authoritative posts. So Google I believe that don’t come out and explicitly say this but if you read the guidelines I mean it’s like it’s almost like they’re telling us in so many words. And I see this already because the clients that we have that blog do much better than the ones that don’t. You’re growing your site out you’re adding more relevant content to it the more pages you have on your site that are relevant content to what you’re selling is again an on page trust factor and that kind of thing.
Phil: [00:35:05] So yeah. So building that out. But if you see that and you’re almost kind of making the site almost like again your referral source for your content. And I think one of the things I mentioned at the beginning was I think one of the biggest mistakes we see just for small businesses in general is if they do anything online like save for their own business they’re usually putting that stuff on somebody else’s platform. So obviously we see this on e-commerce because people have to put it to access eBay and Amazon asked us to get access to their customers. But we see this also just on regular you know home services local for businesses though if they’ve got something cool they put it up on Facebook.
Phil: [00:35:41] You put it up on Facebook. You’ve got that’s almost kind of like a chance at a real time view and then it kind of goes to the river and never sees it again. The best way to do that really is to post that content up on your Web site. Share the linkback so that those people have to come back to your website to see it. So you get that traffic signal back and you get a chance to interact with them and maybe get them on your your e-mail list or offer them that e-book that you may then but also more importantly when you put stuff up on a third party platform especially like on a Facebook let’s say for example Facebook’s not the best search engine to find historical answers right.
Stephen: [00:36:18] But that’s not at all right.
Speaker 16: [00:36:20] So if you put that poster to about that pose and put up on your Web site and you share it on Facebook you get the advantage of reaching that social audience.
Phil: [00:36:27] But now you’ve actually put on your Web site in a way that the Google will Google crawl it and it can be an answer to somebody’s questions forever and that’s a big important point in terms of when we talked about web asset and building your Web site as a referral source for all your content and that kind of stuff. That’s why I’m a big believer no matter what. I mean if you’re an e-commerce seller and you have your whole business is based on these third party platforms there’s nothing to really stop you. Now if you wanted to dip your toes into getting some kind of a Web site for your own business it’s a simple Web site you know a simple WordPress Web site can get up a maybe just working overtime to add some content on there and figure out where you’ve got this kind of home base that you’ve always got almost kind of a Plan B building up and if you spend just a little bit of time to it over months and potentially years it’ll actually start to drive its own traffic and you know you’re right that kind of maybe turn it on.
Phil: [00:37:16] I
Stephen: [00:37:16] think when you would need to down the road how often does that do you recommend a blog post so let’s go back to this example some Selwyn’s boards water bottles. And so my sportsbook waterbottle site I need to have content I’m going to just say I’m going to focus on running. Right
Stephen: [00:37:32] now I’m the farthest thing from running. I like to drive. But anyway so. So we’re so we’re going to talk about running so I’m going to now be an authority on running and therefore be able to talk about sports water bottles. Right. How often. And is it just written were can it be video should it be video should it be a podcast what should it be.
Phil: [00:37:54] I in general everything that we think does to me like blog posting is kind of a heart and soul of it even if you think about like podcasting like I’m not launching my own podcast right after being on several shows I can see all sorts of value into it but a good podcast really is essentially a high production blog post.
Phil: [00:38:15] Right. Yes it gets distributed on third party platforms but the people that do it right put it on their Web site make that an anchor piece of content. They make Shonna it’s on a prescribed transcription they actually put the audio file on the page so that people can click through and actually listen to on the page and this is really important because Google looks a lot at signals on your own Web sites. One of the signals that a lot of Aecio experts talk about the last two years anyway is something called dwell time. So they stay away from bounce rate a little bit because somebody can come to one pager Web site and then leave. And the traditional definition of bounce rate was people go to your Web site and then bounce off of it and not click any other pages. Well that’s really not the case somebody comes onto your product page it stays on there and buys and doesn’t go to the home page or on that page that bounced around doesn’t mean anything it did its job and it did it really well.
Phil: [00:39:05] It’s the same thing with a piece of content or a podcast or blog post. If you’ve got a podcasting Web site and have shown notes on it and somebody clicks on that audio and listens to it they’re going to stay on your page a lot longer and people actually listen to audio files a lot longer than they do video. Right. So video is great because it’s great proof. And people I think look good. But the problem with video is a two minute video is really long. It commands all your senses right where you can go and listen to a podcast or an audio file on your desktop for a while and still be doing other things you can’t do that with a video.
Phil: [00:39:39] And so that’s that’s really kind of gotten away often do a little bit of a tangent there but for sure. Podcasting I think is one of the most powerful forms of content marketing that you can have because you’ve accomplished so many things on your site access to new you know new people get a great blog post out of it you get a piece a rich media on there that goes onto the site. It can increase your dwell time because people might listen to it on the site and they just have higher production value right because you’re going in and you’re actually a lot of cases people are making custom graphics and they go out to social media and it’s just a more launcher able piece of content than a standard Bakos.
Phil: [00:40:16] But if you’re talking about how often you should do any of this you should do it at least once a week. So podcasters a la times the weekly blog podcasts. But if you’re not into podcasting it seems too hard definitely you want to at least do just your standard weekly blog post and that’s where you’re going to get the most benefit out of out of content marketing and Nescio is to think about what types of content on your website that are gun that are going to be shared and that are going to help you maybe get more search traffic and then also help you increase that on page trust factors on our site. Now how do you decide on what things are going to blog about. Was a couple different things right.
Phil: [00:40:58] One is to do some keyword research. Anybody that sells anything online should have at least some kind of idea on what people are searching for. If you don’t there’s all sorts of tools you can go after if you have you can go actually into Google get an ad words account axemen spend any money. Use a tool called keyword planner in there and they will actually help you show you type in a couple of root keywords and they’ll actually feed you back a ton of different keywords that people are searching for in and around that product receivers that keyword. Once you had that list it can give you an idea of how you need to inject naturally put keywords onto your Web page or in that blog post. But another important tool that I think you should try and manage things with is you can go to other places like Buzz sumo right and they’ve got a free tool.
Phil: [00:41:39] And there is a premium tool in there. But the reason why buzz Sumos important is because you might select OK you’ve got water bottles and you might be able to go in there say Okay see the water bottle keywords that I need to make sure that I can naturally weave into this blog post for this title Jozen. You actually take those those keywords and then plug them into somewhere like sumo and then you can actually see what types of articles are trending and generating engagement related to that keyword. So this can be really important because then all of sudden you can see what what’s trending on the market and then you are Madec we know that you write about this trending topic that’s related to this key word and your business once you start to distribute on social media your chances of getting more shares are higher.
Phil: [00:42:22] So again you’re kind of doing. Doing all these things and we’re tracking about one blog post. We do the blog post. We do our keyword research him and naturally we’re thoughtful about our title and in the words that we use in the blog post. And we also try and write about things that are trending in and around this particular topic that we’re writing about. You can get a lot more RAII out of that post and if you just have a big thing about really these days is having an asshole mindset and thinking kind of like I am like when I put a piece of content out there I’m constantly thinking How can I think like Google and how can I put the right keywords and I’m going to sure that I’m writing about people and you kind of get into this mode where you’re always kind of thinking in that in that mindset and then you end up just getting a lot more out of any effort that you put online.
Stephen: [00:43:07] But then you market it. Instagram Facebook Twitter or whatever other ones out there right. Then you kind of I mean the smart move is to make them similar. Right. It’s the same content right. So if you’re using an image for my running and it happens to be hey there’s a race in Kansas City and I’m talking about preparing or whatever it is right. I stay with that same theme I get to use it on those other channels drive them back to that blog post right. Correct.
Speaker 16: [00:43:35] Totally got it. In fact we do a lot in WordPress so we’ve got it down to we’re like OK I do a blog post. I put it up in there. I use this plug in called SNAP auto poster. And it’s beautiful because I plug directly from WordPress inside the blog post. I’ve got ten social media accounts that are directly connected through an API so that when I hit publish it goes on on my Web site and then it basically drip feeds on to all those social media channels. So it today goes out to medium and maybe after that it goes out to Twitter tomorrow it goes out to Facebook. I’m not doing any. I mean I’m just all I did was put the blog posts up and optimize right now my web site’s actually distributing it for me and it’s dripping it out there.
Speaker 16: [00:44:12] So we don’t spam everybody at once but it goes all these major places so that you don’t have to worry about all this manual type stuff. So it all really kind of gets back into that web asset making your Web site a hub of all your marketing tying everything together. So it all kind of comes back there and really doing it in a way that you can get multiple wins and not have to do a lot of work because I’m all about like how can I leverage this one piece of content on this one. Things can get multiple ones out of it and to me it really comes back into just having this kind of CEO Google mindset. How do you how do you Baycol this thing in one time and just get to your mind to the point where you’re always kind of thinking like this and then you can just get a lot more benefit for everything you publish either.
Stephen: [00:44:51] All right so let’s let’s do this because I’m thinking about. I mean people are saying oh my god this guy just dropped 5000 words right.
Stephen: [00:45:00] And I’m not doing any of them. I don’t know where to start. Scares me to think about that sounds overwhelming. All those different things. However it really isn’t what you said in the beginning is hey you need to own a web asset so you’ve got to start right. Get a simple wordpress site that will go back to the beginning. That’s what it needs to be. So Steve who has his own products. Right. Which is the smarter move right if you have your own products and you want to own your own future. So you’re saying let’s get a web asset. So let’s let’s just walk somebody through what you would do with a standalone. First off do you handle small clients that handle a couple of hundred thousand dollars in sales three four hundred thousand dollars in sales.
Speaker 16: [00:45:38] So that’s a small you know not to. So our process is pretty much. And this is where he caught and. If you’re thinking about I’m thinking about myself as I’m sure you’ve got listeners that are on different range but if somebody is almost exclusively on Amazon or in a third party platform and doesn’t have a Web site then I can see how investing in a custom WordPress e-commerce or even like a Magento Web site would be a pretty big investment. For example if we build a new e-commerce website somebody’s it’s going to Fitz’s a custom wordpress site. It would be ten thousand dollars starting and sometimes it’s more to how many products or stuff like that. But literally you can go in and hire somebody and we don’t. We don’t really come in and do like the premade themes but if let’s say I was OK let’s say do Shopify or Wouk commerce those are easy. I
Stephen: [00:46:24] mean you the the time.
Speaker 16: [00:46:26] Yes we’ll shop at Shopify is great but the problem is Shopify is like this double it’s it’s it’s you’re on that third party platform but there’s also a way that you can have WordPress website and get all the benefits of WordPress and still have that feed and that’s really the best of both worlds worlds on Shopify to me is happy to say that again because I’m not sure I understand that.
Stephen: [00:46:46] OK so Otherland just don’t a standalone Shopify site because again that’s not a web asset because Shopify can go out of business tomorrow. God forbid they can go out of business and you’re out of business. Correct. Correct. OK. So there again is your advice that’s a third party application. You have no control. That’s not a web asset right. I guess I can sell my Shopify store but then I’m finding that new buyer I’m limiting what their potential is because they’re now bound to that right.
Speaker 17: [00:47:13] So it’s also that whenever you’re on a third party platform it’s not open source if you want to do more advanced SBO on it later. You can’t because it’s somebody else’s now WordPress is open source has all sorts of people to go and figure out tools so that’s one thing. But here’s the best of both worlds on Shopify is you can have a standalone WordPress custom wordpress site or a theme and there’s a plug in that Shopify has that enables you to feed it up onto your Web site as if it looks like your product. So meanwhile you’ve got your own Web site it’s own your own domain. You can build content and your blog posts and all kind of stuff edgers you’re still kind of on the hook a little bit with Shopify because you’re using their platform it looks like you’re on your own website but you’re actually you’re feeding it basically through the plugin but that’s it.
Speaker 17: [00:47:55] That would be the best way to me to use Shopify if you wanted to have your own asset because literally if they go out of business you could eventually have commerce which again is an open source on your own server. It’s your stuff nobody else is involved right except for the software providers and the stuff so that that’s the best way I think that I would do it. Shopify is to leverage their e-commerce system through a plug in and I hope I’m explaining that now I think we are. And
Stephen: [00:48:23] for us in our little world we all know that Shopify has a plug into Amazon which allows them to handle the fulfillment side of it. So
Stephen: [00:48:31] that’s what’s very attractive about that site where you can you can automate that whole process. And it’s already developed so there’s not a lot there.
Phil: [00:48:38] So there’s a great WordPress way that I think leverage you know the best of both worlds.
Stephen: [00:48:42] So build it on WordPress put the shopify plug in. Had that been linked in through Amazon and eBay actually eBay I think is coming live this year where they’re having a about has a plug in to where then the fulfillment can be handled through there. But still that’s still not the web asset. The original Web site is really still owning your own stuff because in fairness Google will change its algorithm correct. Amazon will change their algorithm and their rules and eBay will change their ways and all that kind of jazz. If I own my own website site I still own my own website right. I mean generally you know I have some things I’m relying upon my content is my content. Right. And then when a new marketplace opens up and I can adapt to it the way I want. And I think I think I’m correct that generally somebody is very quick to develop a WordPress plugin for almost anything.
Phil: [00:49:33] Exactly. That’s the beauty of it. It’s like I have my iPod. I couldn’t find a schema plug in that I lived for. And I built one and it’s taken off in terms of free stuff. Explain
Stephen: [00:49:42] to me what that is.
Stephen: [00:49:43] Chris I’m looking at it and I went and looked at it I’m like OK it’s a it’s called W.P. SEO structure. And I have links to all this stuff. WP CEO structure data schema and I’m like OK let me see what this means and I am about two paragraphs in I’m like All right I’m in over my head already. I realize I’m like All right I’m not that smart.
Speaker 17: [00:50:03] Well Google here’s what it boils down to is Google’s really gotten on the last year too into doing a bunch of stuff obviously but in search results. If you’ve ever seen. When you do a google search and you’ll see like a knowledge vox pop up or inside the results you see like a star rating or an event. A lot of that doesn’t come up just 100 percent nationally it comes by putting a little bit of extra code and tagging your website data and saying hey this is a review and if you tell Google it’s because Google doesn’t go on with its bot and just look at a phrase and say gosh this looks a lot like an actual review for a customer. Well if you use like a plug in or a little snippet of code you can actually instruct them and say hey Google.
Speaker 17: [00:50:41] Yes. And they’ve got like almost like a standardized way of tagging data on your website so you can say this is an event time and you use the same the same structure over and over again. Then they get some trust in the type of data it is and they’ll feed it right into the results. If you’ve ever seen the rich snippets they call it versing extra data come up in search results beyond the blue link and a little gray title and the green are bar that usually is the result of additional schema that’s on a website. Sometimes Google will get enough trust and I’ll try and be able to figure it out on a Web site. But more and more when you see like a whole knowledge box come up like now like if you do a search for say you or your phones it will be just search for like two podcasts looking services right.
Speaker 17: [00:51:31] You’ll see a knowledge box that says what it tells you what it is gives you a little picture. And there’s all sorts of examples like this if you type in for a recipe recipes will come up so schema is a way for you to go into a poster or a page and say here’s what kind of data exists on this page and then Google goes in there and if they trust your website and if they see that you have this extra tag on there they’ll show more information up into the search results.
Stephen: [00:51:57] It is visual that visual thing is much more attractive. When I put in podcasts booking services and up came a whole bunch of crap the ads and then a ton of listings. But there is this one image thing that makes me want to click on it.
Speaker 17: [00:52:13] So when you use schema you do it properly you have a trustworthy Web site. You get more information displayed in the search results and your click through rates go through the roof right. Because it’s like a giant free app that you get. It’s
Stephen: [00:52:24] a billboard. It literally looks like a billboard relative to everything because everything else is just plain you know just plain jane stuff. However this has a beautiful image it’s a little box to find around it. There’s some highlighting or bolding that was done on these. And so it really shows it really looks like. Steve you got to click here.
Speaker 16: [00:52:44] That is largely based on the way the page was set up. The trustworthiness of the Web site and the fact that there is scheme on there that told Google what this was all about. So they just trust that page a lot more to the extent where they’re going to say you know what we’re actually going to not only do we trust this website I think it’s a great answer the solution we’re actually going to show it to people before they even get to the site. So this is huge right. The star ratings are the best example as people even see this with products for e-commerce sellers. I mean that’s golden when you can get up there especially when there’s not a whole like sheet full of them on the search results and you see that you’re going to be more inclined to click the four star review.
Speaker 16: [00:53:21] So the trick is really to do all these things on your Web site. Make sure you do all the organic Aecio and and building the trust factor. But also adding this additional code that helps Google take the guesswork out of what the content is. So really what it does is it provides a bit more context to Google about what you’re trying to do and then if they trust them more they’ll show more information the results and that’s what this plugin does. It’s no guarantee for it but it’s pretty funny if you go to Google and look at they’ve got a whole like section and guide for developers on how to how to mark up a website with this type of schema it says on there. Just because you have it doesn’t mean we’re gonna display it but it vastly increases your chances of getting it’s more likely than not right not your guaranteed not to say.
Stephen: [00:54:04] OK so so let’s let’s go through a couple of things. All
Stephen: [00:54:08] right so I want to I want to finish up with this and I’m going to pitch all your stuff I’m going to put all the things out there. You’re generally handling larger clients. I mean let’s be clear on that. You’re not interested. Not that you’re not interested you can’t handle all these small accounts. However you can still offer advice and you still have lots of content out there that people who are looking for this figure are trying to figure it out. You can go to and get all this advice and have all the links to all that stuff. But I want to go back again and I want to make sure we get to that guy who started because we went on. Yes yes. I want to get that guy who’s thinking about this saying OK Phil. I really need to do something. I think I sell my own products there my name it’s my brand. I want to create a brand.
Speaker 16: [00:54:53] Where do I start. The best thing and I think I honestly think everybody should do is if I buy hired somebody a few months ago they came into operation. I said I want you to have your own personal website just so you have it. So you’re just getting out of school and you can start accumulating your own authority. Ten years from now you’re going to thank me for having you have your own domain the fact that you have this type of a deal. Not only that it’s going to teach you a little bit about how web design works and how it kind of in the background. So how do you I mean we can we would don’t advise people that really want to get into their site and they go right into themes there’s a lot of themes about free wordpress themes that aren’t great for us.
Speaker 16: [00:55:29] One is they’re not meant really for search optimization they’re meant to sell for fifty nine dollars to 100000 people. Now that being said it’s a great and it’s probably the best way and it’s way better than not having any Web site to start off with some kind of a customized theme. And that’s a lot less of an investment. I mean you still want to go in there you can get a free one obviously if you go to like theme forest or somewhere like that and you can pick one get one for like fifty nine dollars. And they’re really cheap that way. The problem with that is a lot of times to get it installed and to get to customize and get your content on and get up to speed. There’s a bit more work in that and you usually are she you probably have some kind of a web designer or a web developer help you get it to where it’s somewhat customized and not this kind of choppy little deal.
Speaker 16: [00:56:13] So in that case you’re probably looking at more like a 5300 2500 maybe investment from a smaller boutique or even a freelancer. You just really have to do your homework when you get into that price range because that’s where the cliche of the flaky web designer is you know they come in and they overcommit. They don’t know what they’re doing with the so they promise they can do other things when people feel burned when they come in and out. But on the other hand there’s a lot of great independent smaller boutique shops that that can give you a nice custom customized WordPress theme instead of your own custom WordPress website that’s built from scratch.
Speaker 16: [00:56:48] Kind of how we do it. And that’s a great way to kind of get started because what ends up happening is if you want to convert later and say hey you know what I got my Web site my web business is doing a lot better. I’m ready to take the next step and hire somebody like Phil to really take us to the next level. We can use all the info because you’ve already in the WordPress format we can use that database and all that content and poured it over to a custom Web site and leverage the work that you’ve already done so you don’t lose don’t lose the authority right whatever authority I’ve worked towards.
Stephen: [00:57:18] So OK so I get my set up lets say you know I get some help. Now I start you know do I just put all my my items for sale or do I start trying to build that reputation which is first apple cart.
Speaker 17: [00:57:31] I would I would if it were me I would probably forego trying to to sell products on that site first. Because any web design right now you get into it it’s a journey it’s a little bit messy. It gets tough you know to get in there with the products stuff and figure that out but there’s no reason why you couldn’t still start setting up your own website doing some branding and starting on the authority type piece right and getting some. So if it were me and I thought gosh I have my own e-commerce website on different platform seems a little bit overwhelming. It might be a better step to come in and say let me just set up a standardized kind of nice theme Web site that’s got just like the blog post the anti social media to it and start using that as kind of the hub and I would actually at that point you start sending people back you know or whoever’s got your products I would still try and use your products as a way that some still use an affiliate link right.
Stephen: [00:58:23] You could still you can link to your product and Amazon.
Speaker 17: [00:58:26] Just as an affiliate of your own product I mean you could do it that way if you wanted to and even support anything and get people coming to your website so that you can do things that you can set up things like add words retargeting or Facebook Pixel where you don’t have to advertise to people yet. But as people come to your Web site you could actually be building almost like a cookie to audience so that when you want to retarget people later you’ve already got those like tags on there. There’s all sorts of things you can be doing again to build this asset on that turn on later. But if it were me and I was really like 100000 or 200 thousand dollar guy I understand it’s I totally wow. The light bulbs going off. I don’t have ten grand or 20 grand design custom e-commerce website.
Speaker 17: [00:59:03] Could I think about like a fifteen hundred or two thousand dollar investment into a theme to get to get some guy to help me put this together and start getting on like a blogging program. That’s the way I would do it. I would first do I would first go into my theme I’d start blogging and buy into that authority piece of it and start you know trying to get get into some kind of routine. Then as the business built I was start socking maybe a little bit away to start thinking about you know what I’m seeing this right now. I really want to have a secondary channel that I hope because my primary channel someday to sell these products and that’s kind of the way I would do it.
Stephen: [00:59:32] Because you now you now have this third year you have a new audience and now I can market to my audience because I built the trust I burned the right to do that. The other thing that you can do too is you can offer a warranty for your product so I’m selling sports water bottles I guarantee you for life or what have you. You can do that and then have them come back and Amazon with a lot of this in their terms of service to come back to your site for the warranty implementation and then that way you then have that customer become your customer. Yes close to Amazon customers. Now you can’t do that. You know you can’t play games with that you’ve got to be honest and you’ve got to make it right. You do have to replace the bottle because it’s a warranty but you do that right at that point and then they are your customer and then you get to market to them.
Stephen: [01:00:14] And that’s a pretty smart business model because ultimately you know you want to stand Dow if there’s 5000 waterbottle and there’s more than that there’s probably 50000 water bottles for sale on Amazon. How does one stand out. You’re never going to be able to stand out other than playing with their search right to play their games with their searches and realize what they will do.
Phil: [01:00:35] Right. You’re trying to figure out.
Stephen: [01:00:36] Right. Right. So ultimately having a really good product on your own website some day when there is a way to get people to find it that’s really ultimately the way you win. Right.
Speaker 17: [01:00:47] Yes. The second piece of this that’s a struggle for everybody that we’ve got ways around is blogging is really important. Almost no small business owner has time to write their own blog post but they are the experts in their field so one of the things that we do as a hack around that is to almost everybody these days almost unless you’re getting something like a podcast which is great because it almost like the contents being done for you to some degree and there’s some tweaking but we get either in-house we use an outsourced writing agency or we directly send people to writers. But being able to hook yourself up with a low cost high quality Rider is the key.
Stephen: [01:01:27] It works or something like that. When we cyber let me send you there’s a link.
Speaker 17: [01:01:31] I have got like the top 10 out the Accies one called the content company which is fantastic in Canada because I’ve had this struggle for like years where it’s like how can I outsource to somebody who’s going to be able to research it and give it some. And nobody ever when my post editor is able to turn them back that I don’t edit so I’ll go back and I’ll say here’s why I want to write about. Here’s a here’s a post it’s kind of like that don’t copy it but use it as kind of inspiration. And here’s the points I want to make somebody then go writes it for me. They turn it back. I do some minor editing and posts on my Web site. It saves me because none of us are writers. Yet these guys can write and write all day long.
Speaker 17: [01:02:03] It cut rolls off their tongue for us as business owners and people will Hamman ha over a blog post and then they procrastinate. Then don’t do it. So if you’re going to a blog post and you buy into this authority and building it up you almost have to find someone to help you out with a blog post even if it’s on a monthly basis. Weeklies the best bi monthly but there is a link. I can say that’s got ten great ones on there.
Stephen: [01:02:25] Please send that to me and I’ll include that in the notes.
Speaker 17: [01:02:29] It makes no sense to invest even fifteen hundred twenty thousand dollars on a theme and just let that thing go and die. That’s what happens to a majority of them doesn’t. Right. Right. So you gotta find some but if you do it the right way and you say I’m gonna at least hire somebody to come in and we’re going to blog post. Hook these up to my social media account. It’s almost almost on autopilot. All you’ve got to do is edit click the publish button and you can at least get that weekly or that you know once a month blog post pumping into your social media accounts so you’re when people go and see it they’re seeing at least weekly or monthly activity on and you’ve got this live web site. And here’s the most important part of this. Google is not going to crawl your Web site if it never changes.
Speaker 17: [01:03:12] Again this is why blogging and e-commerce websites are great because a lot of times people are you know they’re adding and changing products all the time so at least there’s some change. But the blog is key to get those crawlers across your Web site. And again that comes of the authority and trust something these guys are investing in content on their website on a regular basis. I’m going to send my crawlers in that crawl. It’s more likely that they’re making this kind of investment and we’re seeing these other signals that they’re more trustworthy. We’re going to rank it higher. So you kind of see where all these pieces you know kind of come together. And then there’s a lot more going on. I think when people think of Web sites they’re still thinking of oh I see GoDaddy says are Wick’s or Weebly says 50 dollars a month and I’ll get on Google and there’s still this like digital brochure style extatic Web site.
Speaker 17: [01:03:53] Well that’s not what they are into to really help you make money they’ve got to be living breathing like marketing platforms and this is the hack into this that can actually you can be running this thing on autopilot for low cost and over time as you see it gain value you can maybe start to develop a little more resource on it. And this I think is the way to higher margins and more direct business and not maybe necessarily you know being worried every night is Amazon going to shut my business down because of this scamming product or whatever misunderstanding you took me right where I wanted to go.
Stephen: [01:04:25] Now I’ve said no it’s exactly.
Stephen: [01:04:27] It’s a great way to close because I think what you’re saying makes perfect sense. So again we’re going to have our own Web site. We’re going to have dedicated product pages in those product pages are going to go deeper. They’re just not going to be static. They’re going to get living breathing. I love also the fact that you’re publishing content Yuri purposing has done more or we have deep repurpose your content. Right. So you’re you’re putting that content out in other forms in other places. And I love the way you also have push a button. I’m going to look into this service to push a button to put it out on all these other services rather than paying somebody to do it. I just think this stuff all makes sense. And again eventually I get to sell my product to you if I tell you enough about sports water bottles and all the sports and all the rest of this things eventually I get to say hey Phil by the way I have my own water bottle if you ever did know it.
Stephen: [01:05:14] And you know maybe that be something you’d be interested in. And man that’s cool because that’s how a brand that’s really how a brand. In the old days you couldn’t do this with a brand.
Speaker 16: [01:05:24] You could do this today you can. And the beauty about setting the website up right. Just like I showed you on my site. If you set it up right and just accumulate some of your track record and your trust you can look like the the dominant person.
Stephen: [01:05:38] Yeah yeah and much larger than what you are right. All
Stephen: [01:05:41] right. That’s cool. All right. So let’s pitch your stuff and I’m going to pitch a bunch of his websites. So we talked about the one Casey web designer dotcom that’s Casey web designer k see web designer. One big long word then another one as CEO for growth dot com. And
Speaker 16: [01:06:01] that’s our book. We didn’t talk about that but that’s 10 years of me working saying here’s the way I look at Web sites I promise you if you read that book and you implement what’s in there it will work is what we’ve done for this is just been I’ve got a lot of people that come in there just like we love what you say. I can’t afford it. If everything that we do is in that book in fact the engagement at the end is in the book. Here’s the 20 things that we do on a monthly basis. Do this yourself if you have time or the resources to do it. We’re not hiding anything in there because we get more business coming in now that we can handle it at some point so you never have and you never have. There’s always room for ideal clients type of thing but we get a lot of inquiries from folks that maybe aren’t a good fit but we want to help people.
Speaker 16: [01:06:41] I mean that’s why I got in is my passion as I want to help people so the really the stuff that’s inside the book is real things that will help you if you if you implement them into your business so it’s not just the team but this 15 bucks. All
Stephen: [01:06:54] right everybody got 15 bucks go buy it or use your inaudible down to audible credit. That’s what I do. All right.
Speaker 16: [01:07:00] We got Casey SEO pro dot com is another site that you have just mentioned one thing about that zone which is now I got back into where I was mentioning about how niche sites do better than than general sites. I was able to rank my one web design SEO site for a long time and dominate here locally but more competitors came in and that’s what I decided to do as a geezers enough pools of searches for SEO and web design that it merits me having two separate Web sites. So when people search for SEO they land on Aecio Web site right and that ranks higher it’s got more Aecio content. My web design you know cross promote both of them but it still plays into that idea where you can see why would you have to say isn’t that confusing for the brands. Not really.
Speaker 16: [01:07:45] I want to be what my what my ideal clients are searching for. And in this case there was enough of return on investment to make that investment to cemen at two separate sites that are branded separately. So I can you know they’re kind of being part of my marketing channel.
Stephen: [01:07:59] That’s why I’ve already said that. But you said that earlier that sometimes you got to take and separate the water bottles from the washing machines because there are different audiences looking for them and then you just gotta give a lot of content for that. So that kind of makes sense to me. I mean they’re they’re separate right they play off of each other and then I saw you did share some content between the two.
Stephen: [01:08:19] So I imagine there’s a lot of linking. OK so if someone has some follow up questions they want more information. Is there a place on these web that they can ask a question.
Speaker 15: [01:08:29] Yes. By all means. And I love most responsive and I love to hook up with people on LinkedIn. So that be a great place to have your Lincoln.
Stephen: [01:08:37] CEO Kansas City linked in dot com slash in slash as CEO Kansas City and have links to all that too. And I’ll put that here. OK. Man oh man I’m pumped. Well it’s exciting to me because you know is it. Well let me ask this dumb stupid last question. Is it the end. I mean because we’ve all been selling so much on Amazon and don’t get me wrong we love it. I mean we’re not complaining about it we’re just saying hey we better have a plan. That’s my advice go in and Amazon. And it’s the place to be. It’s the marketplace. There’s nothing even close. Nothing all that Wal-Mart.com nonsense. It is Amazon period. However however they will change and they can change your business without your outside of your control. And I’m not saying you know planned for the worse or be a nature. It’s just that you do have to have a plan. What’s my next plan. Is it too late to start a Web site for my product and actually make sales. Is it too late.
Speaker 15: [01:09:39] I don’t think it’s too late at all. I mean I actually still of course still like in the beginning of the golden age of you know about marketing websites stuff because for the most part most small businesses still don’t even have a Web site now feels doesn’t feel like that for e-commerce because e-commerce was born on the web. So but I don’t I don’t think that it’s I think the more important thing for people to realize is not to put all your eggs in one basket. And the reason I say this is there’s a website here that let the pull up and show people. All of our clients come. It’s been the same way for two years. There’s a site called Dogs of the Dow that show the largest companies in the world by market cap. OK. And the five largest companies in the world right now are by an order are Apple Google Microsoft Amazon and Facebook those are now to me if you think about it’s mind blowing that it’s the internet and everything that towers and they didn’t exist how long ago. No
Speaker 16: [01:10:31] it’s not. If you are to think people will probably think of some traditional site but look Apple’s the devices that we consume and buy stuff on a continent through the iPhone and their computers. Google’s how we search for stuff. Microsoft again plays the operating systems the way we consume content. Amazon represents e-commerce. And to me it really the more extent it represents two things it represents the way we’ve become a review based economy because Amazon reviews are essentially the way most people buy everything that we all dig around dig for stuff but it also is the king of all Amazon and then Facebook that’s basically represents all social media. But those five places are not only really important or important for all businesses. We have to as businesses everywhere don’t care if you’re a painter or an e-commerce person you’ve got to be playing in all five of those places because that’s where literally all the action is you know.
Speaker 16: [01:11:18] And it just represents the Internet and social media and e-commerce and Amazon’s place. So is it too late. No no it’s not too late. But not only is it too not too late but it’s almost kind of like unavoidable. It’s just hard if I’m looking at that one chart of the top five and I’m only playing in one Amazon because I’m in an e-commerce one. That to me should be a little bit of a wakeup call to folks to be like hey you know Apple Apple Google Microsoft are really your Web site and if you don’t have a separate you know what I mean those top three to me represent your Web site and if you don’t have a Web site you need to be there to make sure that you’re in on that action.
Stephen: [01:11:54] Not too late but the best time to start was a couple of years ago the second best time to start today.
Speaker 17: [01:12:00] Exactly. And look I mean I think podcasting right now is like super important and I’m just like kicking myself for not doing it earlier but I’m staunch in mind right now. Never too late to start any of that stuff right. Even
Stephen: [01:12:10] though I get it. The average podcast last seven episodes. The key is to stick with it period. Phil Mann that is awesome. I appreciate you taking this much time and giving us this much information. That’s a lot of talk and you’ve got a lot of words and I’m going to I’m going to pump you out on Google and it’s going to rank me for all these phrases you put out there very well because you put a lot of great content. And I appreciate it. Thank you so much. This
Stephen: [01:12:35] was fun. I really appreciate this. Wish him nothing but success. Take
Stephen: [01:12:39] him right back at you terrific energy and the dude is smart clearly very smart but what he’s saying makes perfect sense. If you been sitting here thinking about hey I need to have a plan for 2018. Well this is the plan. Create a web presence. Now I don’t know how you create one other than starting with a plan put down on paper. You know the pros and the cons what you can bring to the market what you’re interested in and then start to figure out a plan to develop a web asset. Once that asset starts build it out keep adding to it kind of with that master plan description. I talk about. But just build it out and then in the end you’ll have something of value that you control not a third party and I think he did a great job explaining that hey get ready that toys for tots thing that Celera labs is doing is going to end the 17th or last day.
Stephen: [01:13:30] Please make a contribution it’s tax deductible it’s a great business opportunity a chance to give back. You’ve taken so much. You’ve earned it. Don’t get me wrong. Guilty. However it’s time to give back. Check out the sponsors especially seller labs with that Toys for Tots. Just an awesome awesome program.
Stephen: [01:13:47] E-commerce momentum. Dotcom e-commerce momentum dotcom ticker.
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