How to be a SEO Manager and How AI Could Change the Industry

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | You're listening to Let's Talk Jobs,

00:00:08.780 | where we give you practical insights into jobs and careers.

00:00:12.320 | I'm Tim Chen, and today we're talking

00:00:14.480 | about search engine optimization, or SEO.

00:00:18.000 | Now, dangerous question.

00:00:19.960 | What was the last thing you searched for on Google?

00:00:23.400 | Mine was, and I'm gonna look at my phone here,

00:00:28.800 | can dogs eat grapes?

00:00:31.880 | The answer is no, you should not let your dog eat grapes.

00:00:34.760 | They're part of the nightshade family,

00:00:36.780 | very poisonous for pups.

00:00:39.120 | Now, that answer came from a website,

00:00:42.600 | and that top result in Google means that page

00:00:45.320 | will likely get the most visits,

00:00:47.080 | possibly converting that visit into a sale.

00:00:49.520 | So SEO is the practice of optimizing your webpage

00:00:53.960 | so that it is more easily discoverable

00:00:55.660 | by search engines like Google or Bing,

00:00:57.760 | and your goal is to rank at the top.

00:00:59.760 | Simply put, it doesn't matter how beautiful your website is

00:01:04.540 | if nobody can find it, right?

00:01:06.920 | So how does SEO work?

00:01:09.420 | Imagine you're walking into a library

00:01:11.140 | with a specific book in mind.

00:01:13.320 | You notice right away that all the books sit on shelves

00:01:15.840 | that are neatly organized into rows.

00:01:18.440 | Above each row are signage that cleanly label

00:01:21.200 | different genres categorized by age group.

00:01:24.880 | Each book has a visible title,

00:01:27.280 | and in the cover is a short description

00:01:29.800 | that gives you a clear idea of what the book is about.

00:01:33.300 | Now, in this analogy, the well-organized library

00:01:36.280 | is your website, and you play the role of the search engine.

00:01:41.120 | The organized rows represents your site structure,

00:01:44.380 | and the hanging signage represents

00:01:46.080 | a website's navigation menu and categories.

00:01:49.360 | The book's stocked shelves represents

00:01:51.240 | your website's content, and the words that make up

00:01:54.040 | the title of the book you're looking for,

00:01:56.440 | those are the keywords.

00:01:58.200 | So if I'm looking for a book

00:01:59.320 | that's about safe diet for dogs,

00:02:02.280 | I'm going to zero in on the book title

00:02:04.120 | that most closely represents that.

00:02:05.880 | Now, the full book title itself and a description

00:02:11.320 | represents your page's title tags and meta descriptions.

00:02:15.640 | The more optimized all of this is,

00:02:18.360 | the easier it is for a search engine to find you,

00:02:20.800 | deem you relevant, establish you as an authority,

00:02:24.320 | and that pushes you up into search rankings

00:02:26.160 | so someone can find you on organic search.

00:02:29.480 | So it's safe to say that search engine optimization,

00:02:32.160 | in my opinion, is one of the most important functions

00:02:35.000 | of marketing.

00:02:36.340 | It also happens to be a job function

00:02:37.800 | that is always high in demand,

00:02:39.280 | as the ROI can be high when done correctly.

00:02:42.440 | So today, we'll be joined by Mike Shaw.

00:02:45.040 | He's an SEO manager at Lego Education.

00:02:47.520 | He also comes with years of experience

00:02:49.240 | on the agency side of the business,

00:02:50.920 | so he has a very broad and deep perspective

00:02:53.440 | into the business of SEO.

00:02:55.360 | In this video, he's going to cover topics

00:02:58.360 | such as how search engine optimization works,

00:03:02.200 | how to get your keywords onto page one,

00:03:05.320 | and where do companies typically struggle

00:03:08.680 | when it comes to SEO?

00:03:11.080 | All right, let's get started.

00:03:13.320 | - Hey, guys.

00:03:14.140 | Today, we're talking about

00:03:15.440 | how to be a search engine marketer.

00:03:17.240 | Joining us is Mike Shaw.

00:03:18.440 | Mike, how you doing?

00:03:20.000 | - Good, how are you, Tim?

00:03:21.120 | - Good.

00:03:21.960 | Mike, I may be biased.

00:03:23.720 | No, that's not true, right?

00:03:25.040 | I'm absolutely biased.

00:03:27.080 | But SEO, especially for digital marketers,

00:03:29.200 | is probably one of the most important disciplines today.

00:03:31.700 | Like, it doesn't matter how wonderful

00:03:33.440 | or beautiful your website is,

00:03:34.840 | if no one can find it, right?

00:03:36.640 | So can you tell us a little bit

00:03:37.680 | about what you're doing today

00:03:38.880 | and how long you've been doing it?

00:03:41.040 | - For sure.

00:03:42.120 | So I've been doing SEO for about eight to nine years now.

00:03:46.680 | Kind of hard to keep track.

00:03:48.680 | Started back in 2014.

00:03:50.080 | Worked at agencies pretty much across the country.

00:03:52.940 | And today, I'm working for a fully remote agency

00:03:56.660 | that's out of Irvine, California.

00:03:59.020 | And they focus mostly on B2B SaaS.

00:04:02.840 | That's kind of their niche.

00:04:04.320 | So I'm working with a bunch of different clients

00:04:05.800 | that are into mobile DevOps.

00:04:08.880 | Some of it is freight and logistics transportation.

00:04:12.200 | Just across the gambit,

00:04:13.560 | and I've done even more than that into e-commerce.

00:04:16.080 | And finance and everything like that in the past.

00:04:19.480 | So yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell,

00:04:21.160 | the verticals I'm working in,

00:04:22.200 | where I'm working at now.

00:04:23.600 | Outside of that, just in the day-to-day,

00:04:26.100 | trying to get things done.

00:04:27.760 | - That's obvious.

00:04:28.600 | So let's just set some kind of foundational work

00:04:30.880 | for our viewers.

00:04:31.800 | Can you just tell us from your point of view,

00:04:33.680 | what is SEO and why should it

00:04:35.800 | and why does it matter for businesses?

00:04:37.780 | - Absolutely.

00:04:40.080 | So I like to,

00:04:42.840 | SEO is constantly changing over time.

00:04:45.100 | So I feel like as more things get added in,

00:04:47.040 | the definition gets more and more vague.

00:04:49.160 | So I was trying to think of a good one

00:04:50.240 | before we got on here.

00:04:51.120 | And I kind of came up with,

00:04:52.560 | it's the art and science of helping websites

00:04:55.040 | improve their visibility in online spaces

00:04:57.800 | that are accessed through in-brand keyword searches.

00:05:01.200 | If that makes sense.

00:05:02.520 | - That's actually really solid.

00:05:03.560 | That's good.

00:05:04.440 | Tell us about that.

00:05:05.280 | - Yeah, I agonized over that one.

00:05:07.840 | So essentially just encompasses

00:05:11.760 | pretty much the entire concept of,

00:05:14.160 | we're trying to get these websites seen by more people

00:05:16.700 | in areas that people are already looking for them in,

00:05:19.100 | but they might not necessarily be there.

00:05:21.580 | So one good thing,

00:05:22.620 | and this is a skill that you'll wanna think about too,

00:05:24.420 | if you wanna get into the career,

00:05:25.460 | is think about how you'd explain it

00:05:27.660 | to your aunt at a Christmas party,

00:05:29.300 | which is obviously a real thing

00:05:30.840 | that I've had to do multiple times,

00:05:32.100 | probably with the same aunt.

00:05:34.100 | So if you wanna break it down into more simple terms,

00:05:36.940 | most people understand what Google is.

00:05:38.860 | Google has 86% of the market share.

00:05:40.820 | So it's not too far off to say,

00:05:42.100 | this is what we do anyways.

00:05:43.180 | We work mostly in Google,

00:05:44.760 | but we're saying, okay,

00:05:46.280 | you search for something on the first page of Google

00:05:49.280 | and you don't see it.

00:05:50.600 | Are you gonna go to the second page

00:05:51.800 | or are you gonna search again?

00:05:53.360 | Everyone searches again.

00:05:54.460 | No one goes to the second page.

00:05:55.780 | So there you're demonstrating the value of,

00:05:58.200 | we want people to be on the first page.

00:06:00.180 | You wanna help websites get there

00:06:01.560 | 'cause if they're not there,

00:06:02.440 | they might be down in the other eight pages

00:06:04.140 | where they're not getting any visibility.

00:06:05.920 | There's just no value there.

00:06:07.400 | So through us helping them improve the quality

00:06:09.620 | and optimization of their site

00:06:10.740 | through a bunch of different levers,

00:06:11.920 | you can help them raise their rank and get to that point.

00:06:15.080 | And that is essentially what we're trying to do through SEO.

00:06:18.660 | - That's an awesome description.

00:06:20.280 | I've had conversations with probably the same man.

00:06:22.480 | So we need to have another conversation with her together,

00:06:24.760 | team up on this one.

00:06:25.760 | I love how you talk about being art and science.

00:06:29.680 | That's absolutely true.

00:06:31.840 | So let's maybe focus on maybe the objective piece first.

00:06:34.960 | It's like, there's like the discipline

00:06:36.680 | if you wanna get really tech, like technical,

00:06:38.360 | like there's on-page, there's off-page

00:06:40.320 | and there's technical SEO.

00:06:41.860 | Can you maybe break it down for us?

00:06:43.240 | Like when you're looking at an SEO strategy

00:06:45.360 | that's all encompassing, like what do you need to do?

00:06:48.440 | - For sure.

00:06:50.840 | So, I mean, I think, you know, when you're starting off

00:06:53.960 | and even now I really do like to break things out

00:06:57.360 | into pillars like that technical on-page and off-page

00:07:00.680 | where, you know, you think of technical,

00:07:02.360 | like your site and your content has to be accessible.

00:07:04.880 | The search engine has to be able to see it

00:07:06.880 | in order to get into the search results in the first place.

00:07:09.160 | So if you don't have that, the other two don't matter.

00:07:11.680 | And then after that, it's like, okay,

00:07:12.980 | they can see your site and you go to on-page.

00:07:14.900 | That's about what's the content in your site.

00:07:16.940 | Does it say the right things that are related

00:07:18.540 | to the keywords that you wanna be showing up for?

00:07:20.860 | If you don't have that, how are you gonna rank

00:07:22.940 | for those keywords you wanna see?

00:07:24.500 | And lastly, authority is more of, you know,

00:07:27.460 | proprietary search engine Google type thing

00:07:29.720 | where we're saying, you know,

00:07:31.180 | how much authority do other sites give this site?

00:07:35.020 | And that's essentially external linking.

00:07:37.020 | You know, do other sites link to you?

00:07:38.780 | Google uses that kind of as like an unofficial voting method

00:07:41.880 | say like, all right, you know, these two sites,

00:07:44.320 | really good technical, pretty much the same content.

00:07:46.600 | One of them has 50,000 linking root domains.

00:07:48.960 | The other one has two, 50,000 linking root domains.

00:07:51.600 | Everyone is saying this is more authoritative.

00:07:53.360 | We like this best.

00:07:54.380 | It helps their robot decide what's the better result

00:07:57.080 | when it can't do it on its own.

00:07:59.080 | - Yeah, that's a good point.

00:08:00.000 | I remember like when you're looking

00:08:01.680 | at your back linking strategy,

00:08:02.960 | when someone who may be uninformed,

00:08:05.400 | they're like, hey, increase our off pay strategy.

00:08:07.640 | And it lists all these websites that link to it.

00:08:09.540 | It's like, look, they're not gonna link to us

00:08:11.600 | if our content doesn't read right,

00:08:13.160 | or if it doesn't have authority,

00:08:14.320 | or we don't sound credible.

00:08:15.500 | And so a lot of it has to do with coaching

00:08:17.900 | our content creators on writing something that's memorable,

00:08:20.900 | that's meaningful and actionable to our viewers.

00:08:23.940 | A lot of times I feel like they do

00:08:24.980 | the most convenient, right?

00:08:26.240 | They just kind of write something out there,

00:08:28.060 | maybe it's 500 words, if at all,

00:08:30.300 | and they just hope it sticks.

00:08:31.780 | And just no one's gonna link to that.

00:08:34.140 | I like your analogy where if you're trying

00:08:35.740 | to explain to somebody, and if you're trying

00:08:37.840 | to refer them to a credible source of article,

00:08:40.840 | like you would want to send them somewhere that's meaty,

00:08:43.680 | right, that they're actually gonna learn something.

00:08:45.040 | If it's just high level, like no one's gonna read that.

00:08:47.160 | And for the same reason,

00:08:48.000 | like no one's gonna want to back link to you.

00:08:49.240 | So I love that description.

00:08:51.700 | Can you tell us a little bit about the on-page keyword

00:08:55.440 | kind of strategy piece of it, right?

00:08:57.120 | 'Cause there's like, how do you go around

00:08:58.720 | identifying the keywords?

00:09:00.080 | How do you prioritize them?

00:09:02.320 | And then what does it take to even move up a page

00:09:06.980 | when it comes to on-page optimization?

00:09:09.500 | - For sure.

00:09:10.340 | And I think, especially if we're gonna go back

00:09:12.860 | to the real basics here, we can step back

00:09:14.500 | and talk really briefly about how do search engines work?

00:09:17.340 | How do they understand there's differences

00:09:19.220 | in keywords and stuff like that?

00:09:20.460 | So essentially, to get through quickly,

00:09:23.520 | say there's a little robot that comes

00:09:25.580 | from the search engine, they call them Spiders,

00:09:27.500 | and they will crawl all the websites

00:09:29.220 | that they can discover through the internet,

00:09:30.780 | whether it's links or other ways like that.

00:09:33.600 | And they index the content and basically say like,

00:09:36.440 | all right, as far as we can understand it

00:09:38.120 | from AI or machine learning,

00:09:40.520 | this is what this content is about.

00:09:42.360 | They kind of assign it to a general bucket.

00:09:44.280 | And within those, there's just more and more buckets

00:09:46.340 | that are kind of different topics and keyword related.

00:09:49.320 | So then when you're thinking about keywords for your site,

00:09:51.520 | you wanna say like, all right, what is my offering?

00:09:53.640 | What am I trying to do here?

00:09:54.700 | What do I want people discovering me for?

00:09:56.720 | And then you have to look and understand through,

00:09:59.520 | there's a couple different metrics here.

00:10:00.820 | Like one is search volume, where you can see

00:10:03.580 | how many times a month on average

00:10:05.020 | does this term get searched?

00:10:06.620 | And you say, all right, this one has high search volume,

00:10:08.580 | a lot of people are looking for it,

00:10:09.980 | and it's really relevant to my product.

00:10:11.700 | And that's kind of how you get to like, all right,

00:10:13.700 | this is a particular keyword that I wanna have ranking

00:10:16.100 | for on my site, and so on and so forth.

00:10:18.600 | You're obviously gonna have more than one keyword

00:10:20.620 | ranking for your site,

00:10:21.460 | but that's kind of the general concept around it.

00:10:23.780 | In terms of actually getting yourself to rank

00:10:25.860 | for that keyword, that's kind of where

00:10:27.580 | the art and science of SEO comes in.

00:10:29.600 | It's about having specific areas on your site,

00:10:32.920 | there's things like title tags, headers,

00:10:35.960 | different areas where search engines are predisposed

00:10:38.520 | to look for instances of keywords to get a quick like,

00:10:41.340 | all right, this is what this is about,

00:10:42.800 | and then I'll evaluate the content to see if it's any good.

00:10:45.480 | And then it's also to your point talking about,

00:10:47.540 | you want something meaty,

00:10:49.160 | it's not just about earning a link like that,

00:10:51.000 | the search engine algorithm is able to understand

00:10:54.520 | if you're covering a topic completely.

00:10:56.840 | Google doesn't wanna show bad results

00:10:59.680 | in the higher positions, they want someone to come in

00:11:02.900 | and say like, all right, this page completely satisfied

00:11:05.880 | the intent of this query, I don't need to go back out

00:11:08.240 | and look for a different result.

00:11:09.620 | That's kind of how they maintain their market share

00:11:11.200 | by having really high quality results versus being like,

00:11:13.560 | why do I never find what I want on the first page?

00:11:15.800 | Which no one ever says 'cause Google's pretty good at it.

00:11:19.120 | - Yeah, and even adding to that,

00:11:20.720 | I think for the part of the science is like you mentioned,

00:11:24.720 | looking at average monthly searches, right?

00:11:27.080 | Broadly across the whole internet,

00:11:28.620 | you're also looking at competitive score, right?

00:11:30.240 | And having good mix of things that aren't super competitive,

00:11:33.640 | but have high volume is a kind of a sweet spot to be, right?

00:11:37.060 | How do you do that?

00:11:40.420 | So let's say you have a keyword,

00:11:44.440 | let's say it's 9,000 search volume and above,

00:11:47.380 | and let's say SEMrush says the difficulty score is,

00:11:50.320 | let's say 85, right?

00:11:52.240 | And let's say within that keyword group,

00:11:54.460 | let's say there's 10 keywords

00:11:55.640 | that are kind of very closely related

00:11:57.480 | of varying degrees of competition.

00:12:00.160 | So how do you go about cracking that nut for a high volume,

00:12:03.600 | relatively high competitive score keyword?

00:12:05.820 | - Well, it depends a lot like that KD,

00:12:10.000 | like the keyword difficulty that metric in SEMrush

00:12:12.960 | pretty much tells you, you know,

00:12:14.960 | there's really big players, the high authority players here.

00:12:17.360 | So if you could take that back roughly to say like,

00:12:19.480 | these people have a lot of links

00:12:20.920 | and if you don't have a lot of links,

00:12:22.440 | it's gonna be a lot more difficult for you

00:12:24.520 | to score in that keyword.

00:12:26.440 | So it kind of depends on the site that you're coming in on.

00:12:28.760 | Like I've had clients where I've come in

00:12:30.920 | and they have this huge backlinking portfolio,

00:12:32.960 | they've been around since like 2002.

00:12:35.280 | And it's like, we can pretty much rank

00:12:36.800 | for whatever we want.

00:12:37.640 | The keyword difficulty really doesn't apply to us

00:12:39.880 | because we have the authority to back it up

00:12:41.960 | versus other sites if you're just starting out

00:12:43.980 | and you're saying like, I wanna go after

00:12:46.400 | like mesothelioma claims, which is, you know,

00:12:50.040 | unrelated like the most expensive keyword

00:12:51.880 | you could bid on a paid search.

00:12:53.400 | But that's gonna be like, you know,

00:12:54.800 | everyone wants that keyword.

00:12:55.960 | There's gonna be a ton of sites going after it

00:12:57.560 | and it's gonna be like,

00:12:58.780 | we might have to back into that in a different way.

00:13:01.040 | And that's gonna be about like, all right,

00:13:03.480 | how many of those subtopics like you just talked about

00:13:05.840 | do we have that maybe have a lower keyword difficulty

00:13:09.280 | that we can try to get in on there?

00:13:10.520 | So you're starting to look from short tail,

00:13:12.840 | which is gonna be like, again,

00:13:14.720 | I'll do a different example 'cause this is better, shoes.

00:13:17.000 | Like, you know, that has huge search volume.

00:13:18.840 | There's really generic.

00:13:19.880 | It could mean a ton of different things,

00:13:21.520 | but then you can get down to like the really nitty gritty

00:13:23.520 | stuff like size nine trail running shoes for women

00:13:28.400 | with thin sold feet.

00:13:30.240 | You know what I mean?

00:13:31.060 | Like the search volume is really low,

00:13:32.160 | but the difficulty goes down

00:13:33.360 | 'cause there's much fewer results

00:13:35.380 | that are talking about that.

00:13:36.760 | So you try to build up your relevancy on the long tail,

00:13:38.800 | what's most applicable to your product.

00:13:40.640 | And then you kind of build up to getting

00:13:42.400 | to that more short tail keyword through site hierarchy.

00:13:45.200 | So say we're talking about shoes again.

00:13:48.280 | So we wanna say, let's build a page that's just shoes.

00:13:52.160 | And it's like, here's all the shoes

00:13:53.600 | that we have in categories.

00:13:55.200 | We have men's shoes, women's shoes, running shoes,

00:13:57.440 | hiking shoes, trail running shoes.

00:13:59.080 | And we're linking out from these things to different pages

00:14:01.680 | that are all about these different things.

00:14:03.640 | So like what I said before,

00:14:05.040 | Google wants a result that satisfies

00:14:06.640 | the entire intent of the query of say, shoes.

00:14:09.560 | How do we satisfy the entire intent of shoes?

00:14:11.960 | We literally have a page that says,

00:14:13.280 | here's every single shoe in every category that we have.

00:14:16.380 | We link down to it and their whole site hierarchy

00:14:18.360 | just keeps going down.

00:14:19.200 | We have more information, more products.

00:14:21.140 | We get down to even the most nitty gritty,

00:14:22.660 | like what I've made a ridiculous thin sold example.

00:14:25.940 | That is kind of how you build up to it.

00:14:27.420 | You start with the easier, not so difficult keywords,

00:14:31.520 | make the site structure right, build out the right content

00:14:34.260 | and just keep building those pages out.

00:14:36.140 | And that's how you're gonna get to that point.

00:14:37.880 | Obviously it takes a long time.

00:14:39.320 | You have to build authority while you do that,

00:14:40.820 | which can obviously happen naturally.

00:14:42.580 | And there's other things that you can do

00:14:43.700 | to try to influence that.

00:14:45.120 | But that is the general sense,

00:14:47.100 | if you're coming from kind of a net new site

00:14:50.380 | and you want it to build up to play with the big dog,

00:14:53.340 | so to speak.

00:14:54.620 | - Yeah, that's really helpful.

00:14:57.020 | One thing that I do, and I'm kind of curious

00:14:58.900 | if you have your own version of this,

00:15:00.820 | 'cause everyone does it a little differently,

00:15:02.100 | is when I'm building my keyword strategy,

00:15:04.660 | and of course you build that through input

00:15:06.180 | from many internal stakeholders, right?

00:15:07.500 | So I'm talking to your product, I'm talking to your comms,

00:15:09.700 | I'm talking to support and sales,

00:15:11.500 | kind of doing a conglomeration of all the relevant keywords.

00:15:14.900 | I usually group them into protect, grow, and expand, right?

00:15:18.060 | So protect are ones that we should absolutely

00:15:20.180 | be on page one for,

00:15:21.180 | and if we're not, what's the plan to get there?

00:15:23.180 | Expand are your very relevant keywords

00:15:25.920 | that may be a longer tail,

00:15:28.420 | or maybe difficulties like maybe 60 and below, right?

00:15:32.800 | And then expand is purely competitors are there,

00:15:36.040 | you're not in there at all.

00:15:37.640 | It's probably gonna take some kind of investment

00:15:39.360 | to break into that.

00:15:40.640 | Or you're maybe identifying a trend

00:15:43.800 | that may be two years out from now,

00:15:44.980 | and you wanna start now and start building and owning that.

00:15:47.760 | So I typically look at it that lens.

00:15:49.240 | Is that kind of similar to how you kind of go about

00:15:51.520 | kind of advising like a keyword strategy,

00:15:53.300 | or is there another way that you look at it?

00:15:55.640 | - Not that it's not a valid way of looking at it.

00:15:57.680 | You know, it's definitely,

00:15:58.520 | if you're taking that difficulty into mind,

00:16:00.000 | it's really good in a sense that you're like prioritizing

00:16:02.800 | for what can we win on immediately

00:16:04.640 | and what can we plan out for,

00:16:05.740 | which, you know, a lot of stakeholders,

00:16:07.280 | if you're internal or clients,

00:16:08.760 | if you're working at an agency really like.

00:16:10.620 | For me, I don't do it so much as that.

00:16:13.680 | I really just don't take keyword difficulty into effect,

00:16:16.320 | maybe to my detriment, honestly.

00:16:18.320 | But I look at it more as like,

00:16:20.020 | I like to just map out the entire site.

00:16:22.840 | I take like an Excel sheet and it has like row one,

00:16:26.280 | basically representing click levels down to four.

00:16:28.560 | So like homepage, solutions page, sub page.

00:16:31.280 | So you know what I mean?

00:16:32.120 | Like that URL title tag,

00:16:33.920 | and then I do up to three keywords for each

00:16:36.000 | that either they are kind of ranking for,

00:16:38.160 | or I find a competitor that's doing that page

00:16:40.080 | better than them and assign that keyword.

00:16:42.160 | And that's kind of how I get to that, you know,

00:16:44.640 | I think maybe protect grow,

00:16:46.240 | saying this is kind of what we have,

00:16:47.800 | this is what we want to grow into.

00:16:49.280 | And then for expansions, it's about competitive gap for me.

00:16:52.620 | I go in, you know, look at other sites like, okay,

00:16:54.720 | what do we just don't have that they have?

00:16:57.040 | And then I build a content strategy around that

00:16:59.460 | mostly is what I do.

00:17:00.360 | So I guess I kind of do something similar.

00:17:02.120 | It's just mine are just more grouped into, you know,

00:17:05.200 | what are the different sections of the site

00:17:07.000 | and whether it's protect, grow or expand

00:17:09.000 | is just, you know, kind of irrelevant

00:17:11.020 | as long as the tactic I'm doing to get there,

00:17:13.240 | you know, is in place.

00:17:14.320 | That makes sense.

00:17:15.160 | - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

00:17:15.980 | And actually, I like how you're thinking

00:17:17.320 | in terms of site structure and hierarchy,

00:17:19.280 | 'cause to your earlier point,

00:17:20.360 | that's how Google is gonna look at as well, right?

00:17:21.920 | Like is the structure of a site relevant as a whole,

00:17:25.840 | and that kind of all kind of,

00:17:26.880 | they all add together in some to like your authority

00:17:29.960 | as a site.

00:17:31.100 | How, when you're looking at,

00:17:33.880 | let's say optimizing a product page for keyword

00:17:37.200 | versus let's say pairing in blogs to supplement that,

00:17:40.840 | what's the relationship between those types or even beyond?

00:17:44.040 | Like if you're trying to grow a keyword category,

00:17:46.160 | like where is like, where should a product page play

00:17:48.780 | versus where should a product

00:17:50.000 | or even like a glossary page or like a SERP?

00:17:52.840 | Like what are your thoughts on that?

00:17:55.080 | - So that's a big thing that I like to call

00:17:59.960 | commercial versus editorial keywords.

00:18:02.280 | I think it's a direction we can take that

00:18:04.000 | where we're saying there are keywords that trigger SERPs,

00:18:07.680 | search engine results pages,

00:18:09.280 | that have results that are articles, blogs, news,

00:18:13.840 | whatever you wanna call it.

00:18:14.760 | We call that editorial, it's more long form,

00:18:16.800 | it's kind of informative type content.

00:18:18.840 | And then commercial terms are the ones

00:18:20.660 | that trigger product category homepages,

00:18:24.280 | pages you're gonna wanna convert on.

00:18:26.080 | And you'll often find that with product pages,

00:18:29.000 | it's like, I'll just stick with shoes 'cause it's easy,

00:18:32.920 | like Nike Metcon 2,

00:18:34.800 | that's gonna be probably a product page,

00:18:36.920 | if not a category page or like by Nike Metcon 2.

00:18:40.520 | Or if you're talking about like,

00:18:42.440 | SaaS or something like that,

00:18:43.960 | it's usually like mobile DevOps solutions,

00:18:47.240 | mobile DevOps software.

00:18:48.700 | Whereas if you would just put in mobile DevOps

00:18:51.040 | or CICD, whatever it might be,

00:18:53.180 | you're probably gonna get a more informative page.

00:18:55.060 | So it's about looking at what kind of SERPs

00:18:58.440 | are being triggered by those keywords

00:18:59.840 | and then you can kind of get an understanding of like,

00:19:01.880 | all right, for this,

00:19:02.760 | I'm gonna need to write an article for it

00:19:04.440 | 'cause I'm not gonna write for it on a product page

00:19:07.520 | or something to that effect.

00:19:08.680 | Or you could take,

00:19:10.040 | there's plenty of experimental approaches

00:19:12.080 | where you can do a quasi editorial product page

00:19:14.080 | where it's traditional kind of like e-commerce,

00:19:16.960 | picture, price, whatever it might be

00:19:18.960 | or whatever that is.

00:19:20.080 | And then underneath you have a lot more content

00:19:23.080 | that's maybe like an FAQ format,

00:19:25.240 | it's tabbed or something like that,

00:19:26.720 | where you're saying like,

00:19:27.840 | here's why I'm selling this

00:19:28.760 | and here's everything you need to know about it on one page.

00:19:31.640 | So it's really about understanding what type of SERP,

00:19:34.120 | how does Google understand this

00:19:35.360 | as transactional or informational

00:19:37.080 | and then making the appropriate piece of content

00:19:39.640 | to meet that.

00:19:41.280 | - That's awesome.

00:19:43.440 | And kind of building upon that

00:19:44.960 | and maybe even bringing in a topic

00:19:46.720 | you touched on earlier briefly is just,

00:19:48.960 | how do you measure efficacy of your SEO program, right?

00:19:51.360 | So like you mentioned earlier,

00:19:52.760 | you mentioned like there's elements of it

00:19:54.240 | like search keyword volume and your position,

00:19:56.800 | your rank on page one.

00:19:57.640 | I think those are the obvious ones,

00:19:58.720 | but like when you're building a dashboard,

00:20:00.680 | whether it's for an executive audience

00:20:02.160 | or maybe for a decision-making peer or a content creator,

00:20:06.920 | like what kind of dashboards and information

00:20:08.720 | or data do you put together that helps tell the story

00:20:11.440 | to compel like your desired action from them?

00:20:13.800 | - For sure.

00:20:16.160 | So, I mean, there's different levels.

00:20:18.320 | You can go pretty basic,

00:20:19.880 | which is like the every man's SEO metrics,

00:20:23.040 | which are gonna be like keyword rankings and traffic.

00:20:25.520 | Like period over period, did we improve rank

00:20:27.480 | and did we get more traffic?

00:20:29.120 | Like, all right, good.

00:20:29.960 | That's good in one sense,

00:20:31.400 | but what does that really tell me

00:20:32.400 | about like the health of my business?

00:20:34.120 | So then you gotta think like, all right,

00:20:35.120 | what's the next level?

00:20:36.040 | And that's gonna be conversions.

00:20:37.920 | Or if you're in e-commerce, we have revenue metrics,

00:20:40.120 | you know, getting into GA here.

00:20:41.720 | You can say like, all right,

00:20:42.720 | period over period for these new pages we created

00:20:45.240 | or pages that we added new content to

00:20:47.000 | or made some change to,

00:20:48.560 | this is how many more conversions we got

00:20:50.280 | through the organic channel specifically.

00:20:52.460 | And that kind of helps say like,

00:20:53.680 | look at this is actual business values

00:20:55.320 | for customers coming in.

00:20:56.800 | That's what we're looking at there.

00:20:58.240 | And then there's even like, you know,

00:20:59.920 | the really go big level where you're talking

00:21:01.840 | like almost a rev ops where you're like

00:21:03.520 | actually attributing pipeline revenue

00:21:05.540 | to what you're doing on the site.

00:21:07.400 | And that gets into like, you know,

00:21:08.640 | lifetime value, customer acquisition costs,

00:21:10.840 | where you're legitimately like making a ratio

00:21:13.120 | to prove out for every dollar that you're paying me,

00:21:15.760 | this is how many dollars I'm making you back

00:21:17.560 | through SEO efforts.

00:21:18.720 | And that's where you really get into like,

00:21:20.240 | you know, the advanced stuff.

00:21:21.640 | And I think that's ultimately where everyone should end up,

00:21:24.320 | but you know, getting there is, like I said,

00:21:28.480 | pipeline revenue, rev ops,

00:21:29.640 | that kind of stuff gets really complicated.

00:21:31.040 | Even conversions sometimes can be complicated.

00:21:33.480 | If you know, a client or a site,

00:21:34.880 | you'd be surprised like big names don't have them set up.

00:21:38.160 | Or they say like, well, we don't have attribution

00:21:39.800 | and Salesforce or something to that effect.

00:21:41.360 | So, you know, it can be hairy.

00:21:43.120 | So I always start from the basics,

00:21:44.760 | make sure I have those covered,

00:21:45.880 | but try to understand whoever the stakeholder

00:21:48.120 | is in your company or whoever the client is,

00:21:50.120 | what they really wanna see.

00:21:51.320 | I always say like, what's gonna make you happy

00:21:53.380 | at the end of the day?

00:21:54.220 | What's gonna be your measure for success?

00:21:55.640 | Just emphasize that as much as possible.

00:21:58.280 | But I think it's always good

00:21:59.120 | to tell that other story underneath as well.

00:22:00.720 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:22:01.540 | So for the Holy Grail situation,

00:22:03.120 | where you're able to tie like organic activity

00:22:05.480 | to revenue or pipeline influence or whatever it is,

00:22:10.160 | are you able to do that down to the keyword

00:22:13.480 | or are you just looking as a program?

00:22:14.800 | Like my organic program in total,

00:22:17.600 | you've spent 80K and this is what it gets you.

00:22:20.360 | Like, or is it more granular than that?

00:22:22.960 | - No, it's pretty much, I think at the overall level,

00:22:26.560 | at that point you're just trying to say like,

00:22:28.600 | dollar spent in the program,

00:22:30.000 | this is the output you're getting from that,

00:22:31.240 | just almost like an ROI type thing.

00:22:33.340 | When you're getting down to keyword stuff,

00:22:36.880 | that's kind of the difference between us

00:22:38.600 | and someone like paid search.

00:22:40.400 | If you look through the evolution of SEO,

00:22:42.440 | there was a lot of issues with keyword spam,

00:22:45.120 | keyword stuffing and Google's solution for that

00:22:47.460 | was to really just cut off keyword level data altogether,

00:22:50.400 | not tell you kind of what you're getting

00:22:52.500 | at the keyword level

00:22:53.340 | 'cause it was just apparently causing issues.

00:22:55.440 | So you really have a hard time doing that.

00:22:57.620 | You can do some of it through Google Search Console,

00:22:59.440 | but still that data is sampled.

00:23:01.040 | So I always tell people to take that

00:23:02.540 | with a grain of salt for sure.

00:23:04.040 | - In your opinion, where do companies usually fall short

00:23:08.400 | when it comes to SEO?

00:23:10.480 | Whether it's not including the best practices,

00:23:12.980 | not having rigor or program, or it could be workflow.

00:23:16.740 | Because you work with so many clients,

00:23:18.560 | what are the general challenges you see out there?

00:23:21.060 | - It varies a lot, but I think that a lot of it

00:23:23.680 | comes down to like sloppiness,

00:23:27.080 | just kind of not keeping up with some of the technical

00:23:31.080 | and content quality tasks that you should be.

00:23:33.280 | You always find a bunch of like duplicative pages,

00:23:35.920 | things that were indexed from an event they did,

00:23:39.240 | however, six, two years ago,

00:23:40.920 | and there's like a million of those.

00:23:42.840 | It's just a lot of loose ends to clean up

00:23:44.520 | that can overall, if your site has all these pages

00:23:47.540 | that are dead ending, they're broken links,

00:23:49.840 | they're from really old dates,

00:23:51.220 | say like you haven't cleaned up your blog content

00:23:54.440 | in the last 10 years,

00:23:56.160 | but the majority of your content is from four years ago.

00:24:00.000 | The search engine is gonna look at your site

00:24:01.580 | and be like, all right, this is irrelevant stuff.

00:24:03.480 | These people obviously aren't on top of their game.

00:24:05.920 | We're gonna demote you.

00:24:07.160 | That kind of content or like sloppy mess

00:24:10.000 | or whatever you wanna call it,

00:24:11.160 | can actually bring down the quote unquote

00:24:14.080 | quality score of your site.

00:24:15.760 | And that's gonna hurt you overall,

00:24:16.860 | even if you have a really nice optimized core section,

00:24:20.080 | all that fat's gonna drag you down.

00:24:21.880 | That's one big thing that encompasses

00:24:23.920 | a lot of different tactics and strategies

00:24:25.560 | that I think sites don't always do well.

00:24:29.200 | - Yeah, I like that 'cause whenever you do

00:24:31.440 | any kind of new SEO engagement,

00:24:33.240 | the question is always like,

00:24:34.140 | what's the lowest hanging fruit?

00:24:35.920 | And people think I need to start writing all this copy,

00:24:39.520 | whereas it's like, really, it's like actually,

00:24:41.840 | there's some foundational stuff that you did.

00:24:43.600 | That's the most, the lowest hanging fruit.

00:24:45.320 | And I like your dead end pages as one example, right?

00:24:48.680 | And just removing those systematically,

00:24:51.000 | it can just by nature, improve your site performance

00:24:53.680 | or even like things like improving site speed, right?

00:24:56.080 | That's not dependent on content creation.

00:24:58.560 | Yeah, and for me, like I,

00:25:00.080 | even from a workflow point of view,

00:25:01.440 | it's like there's that systematic foundational stuff.

00:25:04.360 | And I think SEO is almost like to me,

00:25:07.760 | synonymous with culture as well.

00:25:09.800 | Culture meaning like as an organization,

00:25:12.040 | does everyone believe in the value of SEO,

00:25:14.720 | especially those who are creating content

00:25:16.920 | and how willing are they to utilize best practices

00:25:21.120 | or SEO or keyword research or whatnot.

00:25:24.000 | And it varies, right?

00:25:25.160 | And again, that's not actually a criticism on anyone.

00:25:28.520 | It's just like, it's tough when you have time to publication

00:25:33.240 | and like if the due diligence is not there,

00:25:36.000 | like how do you work that into it?

00:25:37.520 | So I think it's got to evolve.

00:25:38.880 | It's got to be a part of culture.

00:25:40.680 | It has to be like a part of discussion.

00:25:42.280 | Otherwise like you'll systematically

00:25:44.200 | or always be fixing things retroactively

00:25:46.240 | instead of getting ahead of it.

00:25:48.560 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:25:49.520 | That's a really good point of like,

00:25:51.840 | they just don't have SEO first

00:25:54.120 | or even SEO third approach,

00:25:55.600 | if you want to take it from that.

00:25:56.440 | You know what I mean?

00:25:57.280 | There's no one inside evangelizing for it.

00:25:59.520 | Like you said, everyone has their own schedule to meet,

00:26:01.480 | their own weekends they want to get to.

00:26:02.920 | And it's like, unless someone's making that obvious for them

00:26:05.480 | and they're making it a well-oiled machine,

00:26:07.200 | the parts don't work well together

00:26:08.520 | and you kind of get that sloppiness.

00:26:10.880 | - Yeah, cool.

00:26:11.720 | I got one more question for you

00:26:13.200 | and I want to shift to like your career journey

00:26:15.760 | and specifically around like skills

00:26:17.960 | that people should be considering

00:26:19.160 | if they're trying to look into search engine optimization

00:26:21.800 | or marketing as a career.

00:26:23.960 | So the last technical question I have for you

00:26:25.600 | is just around the topic of AI, right?

00:26:27.840 | There's a lot of tools out there.

00:26:29.960 | I don't believe using AI to replace

00:26:32.880 | search engine marketing is the way to go,

00:26:34.480 | but certainly it should augment.

00:26:36.400 | And so like, are you using the tools these days

00:26:38.240 | to kind of help you out?

00:26:39.080 | Or do you see anything, like let's say on the horizon

00:26:41.800 | that you think might either change the game

00:26:44.000 | or in change, maybe influence our efficacy

00:26:46.800 | of creating content or whatnot?

00:26:49.160 | - For sure.

00:26:50.000 | I mean, most recently,

00:26:51.080 | chat GPT and just generative AI in general

00:26:54.680 | definitely changed the game.

00:26:56.280 | There is so much you can use it for

00:27:01.080 | to augment what you're doing

00:27:02.680 | or make your life that much easier.

00:27:04.320 | Like you have to take a lot of it with a grain of salt,

00:27:06.560 | honestly, especially if you're asking it.

00:27:08.880 | I was reading an article the other day,

00:27:09.960 | like certain types of questions,

00:27:11.320 | like definites versus like what ifs type questions,

00:27:13.640 | like that.

00:27:15.200 | But you can use it to generate content ideas.

00:27:18.880 | You can use it to do really complex things,

00:27:21.360 | like hreflangs, like you can put in like,

00:27:24.080 | identify the international alternate

00:27:25.640 | and then write the hreflang in an XML sitemap format.

00:27:28.200 | And it's like, spits that out for you, which is crazy.

00:27:30.520 | So, it's definitely in that sense, like, okay,

00:27:33.720 | this could be a really big help for us.

00:27:35.840 | And then in the other sense,

00:27:37.520 | there's the stuff that we're seeing going on right now,

00:27:39.280 | even like the more macro outside of SEO

00:27:42.120 | with like, you know, writers and artists where, you know,

00:27:44.920 | they're like, okay, you know,

00:27:45.760 | this is kind of ripping off our stuff

00:27:47.720 | and we're not really not getting credit for this.

00:27:49.560 | And it's kind of making us obsolete in some senses.

00:27:52.440 | And that's definitely, you know,

00:27:54.000 | a big concern in the SEO community,

00:27:55.840 | especially since Google announced it's,

00:27:58.520 | you know, coming out with that,

00:27:59.680 | I think it's the SGE,

00:28:00.760 | the search generative experience is what it's called.

00:28:03.600 | And it's essentially just, you know,

00:28:04.920 | if you've ever seen, you search something on Google

00:28:07.400 | and it has the answer box before you can even get

00:28:09.440 | to click into anything and taking that

00:28:11.400 | and just amping it up times 10, you know,

00:28:13.720 | like scraping all these sites from their content

00:28:16.440 | and then pretty much putting a lot of generative AI

00:28:19.480 | at the top of the search results

00:28:21.120 | and driving down the traditional search results,

00:28:23.640 | which obviously drives down the visibility,

00:28:26.080 | the value of the click-through rate.

00:28:27.600 | So, you know, there's a lot of worry right now

00:28:30.720 | of what's gonna happen there.

00:28:31.860 | And then, yeah, even with like content writing,

00:28:35.160 | there are really good uses of it.

00:28:37.600 | I've seen it work really well in some cases, you know,

00:28:39.480 | if the human edit it's a bit after or whatever.

00:28:42.200 | But right now, you know, there's no like policy

00:28:45.840 | at Google against using pure AI content.

00:28:48.400 | So, you know, you could have a competitor overnight,

00:28:50.640 | rip out, you know, 20 new articles

00:28:52.880 | that really match the quality of your content

00:28:54.360 | when they couldn't before.

00:28:55.560 | And that really changes the level of the playing field.

00:28:57.640 | So it's the wild west.

00:28:59.120 | It's hard to say what it's gonna be right now.

00:29:00.680 | I love it because it makes my job easier.

00:29:02.440 | But again, I'm gonna take my job, I don't know.

00:29:04.600 | - Yeah, I agree with you on the last thing you said

00:29:07.320 | around like lack of policy, right?

00:29:09.920 | I think the things that everyone should be cautious about

00:29:13.360 | is like policies will be put in place eventually,

00:29:16.160 | or as Google gets more sophisticated

00:29:18.640 | in measuring efficacy of content,

00:29:20.040 | like we've seen penalization of keyword stuffing, right?

00:29:22.840 | And so it's not far to imagine

00:29:24.280 | penalization of AI source content.

00:29:26.880 | And there's sniffers out there now, right?

00:29:29.320 | You can detect if it's AI written.

00:29:30.840 | So I definitely agree, like you shouldn't use AI

00:29:33.600 | to completely author content without a human review.

00:29:37.960 | Now things you can do, right?

00:29:39.200 | Like you can literally take a article and say,

00:29:41.040 | hey, look, rewrite this article,

00:29:42.600 | utilizing like these five keywords, X amount of times,

00:29:45.720 | and focusing on this world event or whatever it is,

00:29:48.040 | and it'll spit something out for you.

00:29:49.680 | But it's up to you to then like reread that

00:29:52.200 | and adjust it to fit your tone, voice,

00:29:55.840 | review for accuracy, et cetera.

00:29:58.120 | 'Cause again, you still wanna come back

00:30:00.080 | to a source of where that's not generated by AI.

00:30:03.000 | 'Cause again, you don't wanna be punished by plagiarism

00:30:04.840 | or whatever that is.

00:30:06.240 | - Yeah.

00:30:07.240 | - Cool, so let's kind of shift gears.

00:30:09.120 | Like SEO, like how did you kind of come across this?

00:30:12.520 | How did you discover this as a field?

00:30:13.920 | Like did you have prior experience before doing this

00:30:16.120 | or was it kind of out of the blue?

00:30:17.840 | - It was kind of out of the blue.

00:30:20.720 | So I had graduated my undergrad in like 2007.

00:30:25.600 | It was a music management degree.

00:30:28.920 | And at that point, I really wasn't sure

00:30:30.960 | what I was gonna do with it.

00:30:32.360 | The landscape had really changed since I got into college.

00:30:35.440 | Even going back from like Napster just kind of wiped out

00:30:38.160 | most of the things you can do with music management

00:30:40.040 | as that evolved.

00:30:41.160 | And so I was like, all right,

00:30:42.000 | I gotta buy myself more time.

00:30:43.440 | I'm gonna go to grad school.

00:30:44.720 | So I went to Suffolk here in Boston and got an MBA.

00:30:48.560 | And while I was there, I was in a group project

00:30:51.720 | with this guy, Victor, who ended up being the VP

00:30:54.440 | of analytics at the first agency I worked at.

00:30:56.600 | We were getting a drink afterward.

00:30:57.800 | And I just mentioned, I was like,

00:30:59.160 | yeah, I gotta figure out something.

00:31:00.600 | I think I wanna do marketing.

00:31:01.600 | He's like, well, I'm the vice president

00:31:03.080 | at a marketing agency.

00:31:04.600 | So he got me in for a round of interviews

00:31:06.880 | that they had just happened to be doing.

00:31:08.840 | They were looking to fill a bunch of different positions

00:31:10.640 | across different types of media, paid media display,

00:31:15.480 | whatever it might be.

00:31:16.600 | And then for SEO, there was only one guy who did SEO.

00:31:19.400 | We got into the interview and we were like,

00:31:21.480 | oh my God, we like a lot of the same things.

00:31:24.080 | We're all friends with Victor.

00:31:25.920 | And he's like, you seem like a cool dude.

00:31:28.080 | As long as you seem like you have some initiative in you,

00:31:32.160 | let's give it a shot or give it a try, whatever.

00:31:35.200 | And I did come in thinking, I think this one might be cool.

00:31:38.560 | I tried to learn a little bit about each thing

00:31:40.600 | and just to kind of rattle off things I'd heard online.

00:31:44.440 | And he's like, you're good.

00:31:46.600 | So yeah, it really came down to just kind of networking

00:31:48.880 | and then personality and gelling.

00:31:51.200 | I think that's the truth for a lot of jobs,

00:31:53.320 | especially when you're getting in at that low level.

00:31:55.000 | It's like, you can't expect anyone to really know much.

00:31:57.320 | It's like, you just got to want to learn and be diligent.

00:32:00.800 | - Yeah, that's hilarious.

00:32:03.240 | 'Cause that mirrors a lot of my own personal experiences

00:32:05.760 | as well, especially as it pertains to the field of SEO

00:32:09.480 | in particular, like I didn't have prior experience either.

00:32:12.760 | I think that's something you mentioned there,

00:32:14.520 | which is really important is like,

00:32:16.360 | obviously you want to know the fundamentals of what it is.

00:32:19.360 | Even if you haven't practiced it,

00:32:20.640 | you just got to know what it's about generally

00:32:22.600 | and what the best practices are

00:32:23.520 | so you can say at least speak to it.

00:32:25.520 | But the human element is very, very important

00:32:27.680 | 'cause it's a very cross-functional discipline, right?

00:32:31.120 | If your ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders

00:32:35.280 | allows you to, I guess, create a better efficacy of a site

00:32:39.320 | as a whole, because you have so many

00:32:40.760 | different content creators.

00:32:41.680 | And then that takes a certain individual, right?

00:32:43.760 | The one who's more successful at doing that,

00:32:45.640 | you're doing less cleanup in the future, right?

00:32:47.480 | Retroactively.

00:32:48.320 | I also feel like having at least some foundation

00:32:53.280 | in analytics is important.

00:32:55.520 | Out of the gate, I think as you described earlier,

00:32:57.520 | it's not deep analytics.

00:32:59.120 | It's pretty straightforward stuff you can learn.

00:33:03.280 | Again, getting used to interfaces like Google Analytics

00:33:05.840 | as one example and knowing what to search.

00:33:08.000 | Yes, that takes a little time to figure out.

00:33:09.600 | It can also be learned on the job,

00:33:10.800 | but being willing to look into data

00:33:13.760 | to kind of figure that out allows you to do the whole

00:33:16.120 | science versus art piece that you talked about.

00:33:18.520 | 'Cause a part of the art is discovering things, right?

00:33:22.080 | So when I've made hires for SEO in the past,

00:33:24.800 | one thing I look for is almost like

00:33:26.360 | an entrepreneurial spirit.

00:33:28.000 | Do you have that go-getter mentality

00:33:30.520 | where you just want to figure something out

00:33:32.520 | and you're just naturally questioning things?

00:33:35.000 | 'Cause that's the kind of mindset of an optimist, right?

00:33:38.600 | When you are looking at making a hire

00:33:40.960 | for, let's say, a first-time career,

00:33:43.520 | is there anything else that you're looking for?

00:33:44.840 | And then conversely, if you're looking to hire

00:33:46.720 | someone who's senior, what are you looking

00:33:49.320 | for in that individual?

00:33:51.960 | - So you're talking like new hire.

00:33:53.480 | I think I look for a lot of personality

00:33:56.240 | and I think I base it off of my kind of experience.

00:34:00.520 | Did they actually come in prepared

00:34:02.680 | to answer some kind of questions about this

00:34:04.800 | and display they had some kind of knowledge?

00:34:07.320 | And then I do a lot of it based on personality.

00:34:09.840 | You gotta work directly with this person.

00:34:11.160 | You're gonna get along with them.

00:34:13.240 | So sometimes with new people, it's taking a chance.

00:34:16.160 | Looking at a more senior person,

00:34:18.960 | that's gonna be a much more,

00:34:20.680 | there's gonna be a lot more scrutiny

00:34:24.160 | in terms of use, not use cases, case studies almost.

00:34:28.800 | What have you done in this particular situation?

00:34:31.400 | What do you think is important for X, Y, Z?

00:34:33.000 | A lot of things you've been asking me today,

00:34:34.640 | I'd probably ask them the same things

00:34:36.560 | and just try to make sure they understand,

00:34:39.280 | did they think the same things are important

00:34:40.840 | that I think are important?

00:34:42.440 | Obviously that the clients are gonna think important

00:34:44.000 | and that kind of stuff.

00:34:44.840 | But that's more a stringent type skills interview

00:34:47.880 | and then personality, for sure.

00:34:50.120 | You can't just hire a guy you like to do something

00:34:51.840 | that's gonna be client-facing

00:34:53.240 | when they're gonna be all shoulders, like, "I don't know."

00:34:55.760 | (laughing)

00:34:57.480 | - Yeah, so true.

00:34:58.880 | Well, Mike, this was a very informative meeting,

00:35:01.320 | or not meeting, that's so formal, like a conversation.

00:35:03.680 | I really enjoyed that.

00:35:05.480 | How can people find you

00:35:06.720 | if they wanna maybe hit you up for some advice

00:35:08.320 | or anything else that you wanna showcase?

00:35:10.360 | - I think LinkedIn is probably the best place.

00:35:14.880 | I'm sure we can figure out how to share a link after this

00:35:17.240 | and we post this wherever you're gonna do it.

00:35:19.200 | And then, yeah, hit me up.

00:35:21.080 | My agency is always looking for new opportunities.

00:35:24.320 | So if you're in B2B SaaS, we might be able to help you out.

00:35:27.360 | - Right, thanks a lot, Mike.

00:35:29.440 | - All right, Tim, talk to you later.

00:35:30.280 | - All right, talk to you later.

00:35:31.440 | - Bye.

00:35:32.280 | (upbeat music)

00:35:34.860 | you

How to be a SEO Manager and How AI Could Change the Industry

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