Latest / Founder Talk with Alex Sheridan / SEO Expert on How to Get Found on Google and AI Search
Transcript
- 0:00Well, Mark Beeland, founder of Search Lab, welcome to Founder
- 0:02Talk podcast man. Cheers.
- 0:04Cheers. Nice to have.
- 0:05You on? Yeah, yeah.
- 0:06I'm excited to have this conversation.
- 0:08Likewise, I think every business since the history of time has
- 0:12wanted to be discovered. They've wanted to be found.
- 0:15And now especially now more than ever online and essentially
- 0:19that's what you help clients do is how do you get discovered?
- 0:22How do you get found when people are going to search, whether
- 0:25that be Google or now ChatGPT, of course, and other AI
- 0:29platforms. How does your business show up
- 0:32in that amongst other things that you guys obviously do.
- 0:35But I'd love to just start with the basics for for founders,
- 0:38entrepreneurs listening to the show, how does SEO really work
- 0:42and SEO obviously be in search engine optimization.
- 0:45So how does your business get discovered?
- 0:47Sure. So thank you again for having me
- 0:50on. I'm, I'm excited to be here.
- 0:52And yeah, I've been, I've, I've watched this journey the whole
- 0:55way through. So I started in 2007 at a
- 1:00company called Local Launch. At that time, the place to be
- 1:03found was like the Yellow Pages. Different times.
- 1:06Our, our company got bought by the Yellow Pages.
- 1:09RH Donnelly, who makes the Yellow Pages.
- 1:11And I really remember having these conversations with people
- 1:15where they would go. Yeah, maybe I don't know about
- 1:17this Google thing. The yellow page has been around
- 1:18for 60 years. That's where you get discovered.
- 1:20And then I've just kind of ridden that wave of watching
- 1:24people move dollars from print to digital over time.
- 1:28And it's been a great time. And now there's a lot of
- 1:31volatility in search. And so it's it's a it's a, it's
- 1:35a good question you ask. And how does it work for a
- 1:37business owner? It should be, I should say,
- 1:40first of all, I'm a specific type of an SEO.
- 1:42And so I'm a local SEO, which means doesn't mean I only serve
- 1:47businesses in Chicago. That's a common misconception.
- 1:49Means I serve businesses that have a brick and mortar location
- 1:54or serve a specific geographic area.
- 1:55I think of the credits. Local customers coming in.
- 1:58Correct. And so really what that has to
- 1:59do is the extent that people know about SEO, they know
- 2:02there's this algorithm that we're all interested in.
- 2:04It's more accurate to say there's algorithms, and I'm an
- 2:08expert in one of those algorithms, which is the local
- 2:10algorithm. And so when Google determines
- 2:12you have local intent, they'll run that search through a local
- 2:15algorithm and you can usually tell that it it, it, it is
- 2:19happening. If you see one of those map
- 2:21grids with three listings under it, that's usually a telltale
- 2:24sign. So I'll answer your question.
- 2:27The easiest way to appear on Google is to just pay for it.
- 2:30You can pay Google. You can set up ads.
- 2:33They've made it very easy. Is that just where you show up
- 2:35at the top of the Google search? It's like the promotion, you
- 2:37know, you get 3 promotion things, Yeah.
- 2:39Exactly. So you can, you can very easily,
- 2:42as long as you have a website. You know, I don't even think you
- 2:44need a website. You can do tactical ads now, you
- 2:47can appear in the sponsored section and there's an art and a
- 2:52science to all of that. And what we do for clients is we
- 2:56try and make sure that we're good stewards of those
- 2:58advertising dollars. So because they work with us,
- 3:01they make a much better ROI on those ads than they would if
- 3:04they had just tried to do it in house or left to their own
- 3:08devices. And truthfully, the way that
- 3:10Google has worked now and I've watched this over the course of
- 3:13my career, they will automate and, and do a lot of things for
- 3:17you, but in a way that makes Google money and so.
- 3:21They LinkedIn does the same thing with their ads, like
- 3:23optimize this and get shown this and I can increase your button
- 3:25and I'm like, yeah, it's, it's going to be worse results.
- 3:27I'm going to pay more. It's the same thing.
- 3:29So a lot of a lot of our job is just to be advocates for our
- 3:33clients and make sure they're not spending good money after
- 3:35bad, right? And so there's, there's a bunch
- 3:38of boring details of how you set up campaigns and ad groups and
- 3:41keywords and, and ads, But it, there's a methodology to all
- 3:44that. So that's one way you can, you
- 3:46can appear. The other way is that you can
- 3:48appear in the organic or, or in the in the local section.
- 3:51So the first thing that I would say if you do have a brick and
- 3:54mortar business or any sort of a location, the easiest, probably
- 3:59lowest hanging fruit is to set up a Google Business profile if
- 4:03you haven't already, or to optimize your Google business
- 4:05profile. And that will allow you to
- 4:07appear not just in Google search, but also anytime if, if
- 4:11somebody's looking for a map. So if they're using Google Maps
- 4:14to find your location. So if you're a restaurant or if
- 4:17you're a car dealership or if you're a auto repair, having
- 4:21that fully optimized and set up is really important.
- 4:25And I could get really, our team gets really nerdy about Google
- 4:29business profiles. And so there are specific things
- 4:32for, we work with a lot of car dealerships and specific things
- 4:35for car dealerships, specific things for hotels, for example,
- 4:40medical professionals, all that. So, so that's a really low
- 4:44hanging fruit. The other area is organic
- 4:46search, which is going to be a combination of you're on page,
- 4:50you know, like what's actually on your website, what's off
- 4:54page, which has a lot to do with links and signals off the
- 4:57website. So a link is a third party
- 4:59linking, sending a back link back to your website.
- 5:02It's kind of like a vote for your website and and then
- 5:06technical. So like, are you findable?
- 5:08Could have you have you set up your website in a way that
- 5:10Google can crawl it easily index it and get you in there?
- 5:14So. So a lot to I appreciate that
- 5:15explanation. I think it gives us a good like
- 5:17high level overview of, of what these different terms are
- 5:20because you live it every day and you know, I'm in marketing,
- 5:22so I get it. But for people that don't live
- 5:24this every day, they're like, what the hell is this and how
- 5:26does it work and which? And we're going to get into AI
- 5:29search here in a little bit too. I definitely want to talk about
- 5:31that and your journey as a founder too.
- 5:33Let me circle back to the, the, the Google trying to convince
- 5:36somebody to, you know, put their business on Google and kind of
- 5:39promote that way and be discoverable what you say back
- 5:41in 2007. That's when I started.
- 5:43It's an interesting, it's always interesting to me when you're
- 5:46kind of one of the, the leaders in a certain category and
- 5:49whether that was like early AI, early social media, early search
- 5:53crypto right now. Still, it's like people just
- 5:56kind of like dismiss it and they almost don't want it to happen.
- 6:00Or they're, they're naive. You know, they're skeptical
- 6:02about it until it gets to a point where they realize, oh
- 6:05shit, there's mass adoption. And I if I don't get on this
- 6:08train now, like I probably may not have a business.
- 6:11What was that? What were those conversations
- 6:13like back in 22,007? Surreal.
- 6:16You have to remember what was going on in the country to it
- 6:19this time. So yeah, this is a Great
- 6:21Recession. Yeah.
- 6:22And so I started my first company in February 2009.
- 6:25And you can look at the Dow Jones industrial Average and I
- 6:28think it, it bottoms out February 2009.
- 6:31So just a ton of, there's this huge changing landscape.
- 6:37There was a lot of, to your point, resistance to that
- 6:40change. And I mean, our, our sales
- 6:43strategy was let's get a Yellow Pages, see who has the biggest
- 6:46ad and call them until we can have a meeting with them.
- 6:49That was really it. I mean, I, I did this over and
- 6:52over again. I can't tell you how many, how
- 6:54many weird conversations I would have where people would be like,
- 6:58yeah, they should cut tribunes not going anywhere.
- 7:01Google, Google could be gone tomorrow, you know, man.
- 7:05And were they wrong? Yeah.
- 7:07And so you're right. The, the the benefit was I could
- 7:10see because I was it's your I'm doing this 8 hours a day.
- 7:13I could see people and I'm like, they're making a lot of money
- 7:17from at that point, clicks were so cheap.
- 7:19Oh yeah. And so I.
- 7:21Don't I was trying to think I don't remember like really even
- 7:23using Google in 2007. I mean it was there, but like
- 7:27maybe I just wasn't like it was. It was so new at that point that
- 7:30I don't even remember going to my phone and like Googling
- 7:32stuff. I don't think I remember that
- 7:34till like maybe twenty 10s or something like that.
- 7:37I don't know for me. Yeah, it was, it was early.
- 7:39It was, it was. I caught the wave like it was.
- 7:41It was just getting started and so that what that tells you is
- 7:45it's it's sort of like an auction system, not exactly
- 7:47there. There's the differences between
- 7:49an auction and how Google works, but it's sort of like an auction
- 7:52system where if there aren't that many people in the auction,
- 7:55the price is really low. So the.
- 7:57Bidding for certain words and things like that.
- 8:00The cost per click was, you know, today a personal injury
- 8:05attorney can spend like $200 a click.
- 8:06I mean, it could be a lot of money.
- 8:08In those days it was like $8 clicks or $5 clicks or something
- 8:13like that. And so you get, you get huge
- 8:15cases for very, very little money.
- 8:17So did you see certain clients then like who, who are like,
- 8:20yes, let's do I believe in it because I think it takes the
- 8:24leader, owner, whoever's in charge, it takes them to have a
- 8:26vision of and forward thinking of where things are going and
- 8:29for them to look at. Look, even though Yellow Pages
- 8:32and the Chicago Tribune or wherever else might work today,
- 8:35this Internet thing I think is going to be big and we should in
- 8:38minimum start doing it a little bit or like start understanding
- 8:42what it is. Hire somebody to help us.
- 8:44Did you, the people that were starting to do that with you
- 8:46guys, were they pretty blown away by some of the results that
- 8:49they were getting? Yeah, in early in early days, in
- 8:52a lot of times they take credit for they be proud of themselves
- 8:56for, you know, having seen these trends like you're talking
- 8:58about. The other thing I really the,
- 9:03the light bulb moment for me was all the data that we had.
- 9:07So I, I remember thinking, I don't know how somebody who
- 9:11sells billboard space could, could do it.
- 9:14No data. Yeah.
- 9:15I just thought it was so strange.
- 9:17Phone books, at least that that phone number you're calling,
- 9:19they can track how many times that phone number was called.
- 9:21But the, you know, a bunch of a bunch of different marketing.
- 9:25I was like, I don't know how they do it because for better or
- 9:28for worse, I'm Naked to the results a lot and it's
- 9:32performance marketing. And if the performance isn't
- 9:34good, I can't hide from the data.
- 9:37And so early on I saw that and I was like, this is this is not
- 9:42going to change. And candidly you have less
- 9:45information today than you had. I don't know, like probably like
- 9:49the mid 2000 tens was kind of the peak of being able to really
- 9:53get great data. And then, you know, a bunch of
- 9:57scandals happened, a bunch of regulation happened and a lot of
- 10:01a lot of that data is more constrained.
- 10:03But still today I think in digital we can show an ROI
- 10:07better than most other channels. Yeah.
- 10:11And it's like. About TV ads and stuff like
- 10:13that, it's like, how do you track that?
- 10:14I mean, unless someone tells you that they saw you on TV, but it
- 10:18just seems like I'd rather put my money somewhere where you can
- 10:21really see kind of every single metric.
- 10:23Yeah, I mean, I, you know, when I first moved to Chicago, where
- 10:27you from? I'm from Detroit.
- 10:29And so when I first moved to Chicago, I interviewed to sell
- 10:33radio ads and I thought. That wasn't.
- 10:35I remember when I was a kid, that was a big thing.
- 10:38Good money, too. Yeah.
- 10:38Good job. Yeah.
- 10:39And so I was like, this is this is what I'll do.
- 10:43Yeah, I'm glad I didn't get that job because it was it was really
- 10:46a again, I don't know how you I. Don't know how they make money
- 10:49today if they're still doing it. You got podcasts you got.
- 10:51I mean, it's just like. That pond has shrunk so much.
- 10:54And yeah, so it's it. I I gotta this is this is the
- 10:59you're getting a sense of like the world I came up in you.
- 11:01Know that's good, yeah. That it was, it was this real
- 11:04changing landscape from these more traditional forms of media
- 11:09and dollars were moving. Yeah.
- 11:11I just, I started companies that were in.
- 11:13I sort of skated to where the puck was going.
- 11:16It reminds me of, so I got serious about Lincoln in 2019,
- 11:19early 2020. And it was before everyone kind
- 11:21of realized LinkedIn was like the greatest platform to be on
- 11:23for B to B at least. And I just remember people not
- 11:27literally not like very smart executives not understanding why
- 11:30would we post videos on LinkedIn And we're going to look like
- 11:35what? Like I know it all or like, why
- 11:36the hell would we ever waste our time doing that?
- 11:39And I was like, no, no, no, it's not about you.
- 11:41It's about providing value to your audience and having and
- 11:45having you become the most trusted source in your industry
- 11:47and building credibility and helping them solve real world
- 11:49problems. And then when they're ready to
- 11:51buy, they come to you because they know, like and trust you.
- 11:54That was like such a foreign concept.
- 11:56I was working a full time job and doing this marketing gig on
- 11:59the side at the time in 20 in 2019, early 2020.
- 12:03And like nobody I worked with understood.
- 12:05They're like, why are you doing these videos and shit?
- 12:06And they didn't even think I was making money.
- 12:08And all of a sudden one day I was like, hey guys, I'm putting
- 12:10my two weeks notice. Like I'm making more doing this
- 12:11than I am my corporate job. And they were like what?
- 12:14It's just any you kind of see the same thing with crypto.
- 12:17I don't know if you're into crypto or not, but it's similar
- 12:21now where it's like people are just like, it's funny money.
- 12:23It's weird. It's but meanwhile behind the
- 12:25scenes, the Wall Street is going to be tokenized and everything's
- 12:29going on the blockchain and like the Bitcoin reserves and you got
- 12:32all this like it's it's really weird to be early.
- 12:36The question I have for you is, did you sometimes doubt it?
- 12:39Did you sometimes think from getting all the reject, you
- 12:41know, rejection thing and saying is this Google thing kind of
- 12:44crazy? Like is it?
- 12:45Am I crazy for going this far into this?
- 12:48Well, no, I didn't. And I, I can give you a sense
- 12:52why I'm, I, I am from Detroit. So like, I deep down, that's my,
- 12:58you know, like my culture and what?
- 13:01Brought you out here. I'm curious.
- 13:02Well. Job job.
- 13:04Like basically my my now wife was beat me out here by a year,
- 13:07but a bunch of my friends had already from college already
- 13:09moved out here. There's a big Detroit diaspora.
- 13:11I like people. If you, if you went to college
- 13:15or had opportunity, a lot of people left.
- 13:19And so I was, I just remember being in Detroit, like
- 13:21everything felt like it was shrinking and it was, you know,
- 13:24my, it's a, you know, 11 trick pony town.
- 13:28The car dealerships, I'm not the car dealerships, the car
- 13:31companies run everything. And my, my dad didn't work for
- 13:34the car companies, but by far, by far his biggest client was
- 13:36General Motors. And so their tentacles did
- 13:39everything. And it just felt like I was in a
- 13:40place that was, you know, that was shrinking, that wasn't
- 13:43advancing, that wasn't, you know, it was, it wasn't going
- 13:46the right place. So, you know, I moved to
- 13:48Chicago. But more than anything, I got
- 13:51into this industry and it was growing.
- 13:53And I could just, you could feel the groundswell of momentum and,
- 13:59and, and candidly, just like finances were moving in this
- 14:02direction. And even as the economy in the
- 14:05United States was terrible, people were moving like this was
- 14:10a good, good place to be. And you?
- 14:13Can feel it too. When you're on to something
- 14:14early. You're like, oh man, I I struck
- 14:17gold here. Like this is going to be big.
- 14:18Yeah, so it was, it was more intuition than anything.
- 14:21It was like I, I knew what it felt like to be in a place where
- 14:23I was like, man, it's, it sucks here.
- 14:27And I knew where I knew how this felt.
- 14:29And I went, I'm like this, this feels like a, this feels like a
- 14:32good place to be. And then you Fast forward the
- 14:35tape. Now it's 2025 when we're filming
- 14:37this end of 2025, and you know, everyone's all interested in AI.
- 14:43So it's like now, this is the first time in my career where
- 14:46there's been a viable alternative to search.
- 14:48That's a good point. The first big disruption and
- 14:51we're going to talk about that here in a bit too.
- 14:53Let me go back to the the some of the tactical stuff.
- 14:56So because I was talking with a client the other day and unless
- 14:58you like, if you're a lawyer, insurance broker or something
- 15:02like that, you've got a Google review.
- 15:04And I had a client that had a three-point O out of five, which
- 15:08obviously is not good. I think you need to be in four
- 15:10plus to be like considered even an option.
- 15:13That's why I thought at least how important are Google, How
- 15:17important are Google reviews? And what do you do if you got a
- 15:20bad review or you got a lower score and you want to get that
- 15:22up to a four or five? Yeah, it's a, that's a good
- 15:25question. I think reviews are very
- 15:29important and the sentiment of your, your customers is very
- 15:32important, not just for ranking. You can't outrank a bad
- 15:37reputation. So even if, even if you do a
- 15:39really great SEO and you, you know you're popping up all the
- 15:42time, if you're the sentiment is not good, people are just not
- 15:47going to click on your website, even if I put you in the best
- 15:50real estate in Google. So in Amazon too, I mean, if
- 15:53you, you know, I mean, if you're shopping and you see a 3.5,
- 15:56three .23 point O, you're almost automatically off that thing,
- 16:00right? That's my my friend Blake
- 16:02Denman, who's another agency owner, always says you can't
- 16:04outrank a shitty reputation. It just doesn't matter.
- 16:07And so I we've done studies. I I would, I would put your
- 16:11audience to our COO Greg Gifford has a weekly video series called
- 16:15Local Search Tuesdays. I've seen that.
- 16:16Yeah. And he will.
- 16:18He'll put weekly tips on there. Sometimes he'll put his
- 16:21conference presentations, but he's done a lot of studies on
- 16:25this kind of stuff. And one of the things that was
- 16:26interesting is a there's there's critical mass here.
- 16:30If you only have 5 reviews, whatever.
- 16:32But if you're a restaurant, you're going to get a lot, a lot
- 16:34of reviews. People are actually really warm
- 16:37to like a 4.6 review. So weirdly 5 star people is
- 16:44exactly 5 star people will start to go.
- 16:46Are you gaming this? Like is there some sort of?
- 16:48Totally. That's so.
- 16:49I do the same thing on Amazon. I'm like 5.
- 16:51Like that's something they have all their friends.
- 16:53Yeah, it's a weird psychology. So actually it's sort of like
- 16:564.74 point 8 is a really good is a really good rating.
- 17:01The way to do it is I think there's there's three ways that
- 17:05I would recommend people get reviews.
- 17:07There's one which is you could just ask, they call it personal
- 17:11ask. It's the most effective.
- 17:14It doesn't scale well. You can do marketing collateral
- 17:19so you can actually have the the you know, you've, you've gone to
- 17:24a restaurant, you can see the placards that say, you know,
- 17:27review us here. Make it really easy with AQR
- 17:29code. And why would I have a receipt?
- 17:31And give them an A free appetizer, a half off an
- 17:33appetizer or something that they'll come back and they're
- 17:35going to review it. That's like a no brainer to me.
- 17:37Yeah. So enough places to do that.
- 17:39Yeah. So just leaving it, it's, it
- 17:40scales super well. Yeah, you know, and it's easy.
- 17:44And so you can do that. And the third thing is you can
- 17:47you can involve some technology into this.
- 17:48So you can actually go through your customer list and and ask
- 17:52them to leave you a review. And so that that can go well,
- 17:56there are some of these that are they call it like review gating.
- 18:00There's there's some some protocols you should follow here
- 18:03before you before you do it, but there's a lot of that.
- 18:06So those are those are the three ways to that I recommend to our
- 18:10clients to generate reviews. The personal ask is the one that
- 18:13I find to be the best, like just ask, ask people for, for a
- 18:16review. What do you do though, if you
- 18:18have a bad review? For one thing, people really
- 18:22freak out. It, it becomes an emotional
- 18:24thing for our customers when they get a bad, they get a bad
- 18:27review. So the first thing is take a
- 18:28beat. It's, it's, it's fine.
- 18:32After a while, you're going to get a bad review.
- 18:34And remember, 4.64 point 7, that's the zone we're looking
- 18:36at. The next thing is try to get
- 18:39more reviews. So use one of those 3 methods
- 18:42that I talked about are all three try and get more reviews
- 18:44to just water down the bad review.
- 18:47And what I would really recommend, and that's what I
- 18:51always tell people is read the review and in fact, read the
- 18:54reviews that are negative. See if there's any sort of
- 18:57pattern detection that you can look at.
- 18:59This could be the best thing for you to help your business.
- 19:03And, and the last thing is you should respond to the review,
- 19:06not for the reviewer, but for people who will come later and
- 19:11read that review. That's smart.
- 19:12So I, we, we, we will either on behalf of our clients or
- 19:16recommend to them that they respond to every review.
- 19:20And in some instances that's a lot of reviews.
- 19:24The reason is if there's a, if there's a bad review, people,
- 19:30people will read it and see how you handle it.
- 19:31So if you go, you're an asshole, like why'd you leave me a
- 19:34review? And like, that's part of your
- 19:36review. They're not going to.
- 19:37That's not a good idea. If you go, sorry I had a bad
- 19:39experience, I'd love to talk to you about how we could fix this.
- 19:43You know, all feedback is a gift and we're committed to making
- 19:47sure our guests have a better experience moving forward.
- 19:50Thank you. Then you have a much better
- 19:52chance of getting some grace from the next customer who reads
- 19:55that review. That makes total sense to me,
- 19:58like and I think that's just like the right thing to do to
- 20:01from a customer standpoint, you know, it's just take care of
- 20:04your people. If someone left you a bad review
- 20:06to your point, there might be something to it might be some
- 20:08feedback there that even though it stings, you might go, yeah,
- 20:11we probably could get a little better at that.
- 20:13Maybe maybe we did drop the ball there.
- 20:15And then I think you reach out and you.
- 20:16Yeah, and you respond to it because other people are going
- 20:19to see it, but also. You know it's an opportunity to
- 20:22connect with that person, see if maybe you can rebuild a
- 20:24relationship. There's a we've had plenty of
- 20:26times where we've had a bad review, either the customer or
- 20:31us have reached out to that person.
- 20:33Usually you have their information.
- 20:34Yeah, like could, could, maybe you don't.
- 20:37But if if you can just pick up the old phone and call that and
- 20:42you're really control, you go yeah, I, I don't want anybody to
- 20:45have a bad experience. This is terrible.
- 20:47How can? Yeah.
- 20:49How can I make this right? There's a chance that that
- 20:51person will take that review down.
- 20:52Yeah, I think that would like absolutely floor people if you
- 20:55did that, like in a good way, I think they'd go holy shit, I
- 20:58just got a call. Remember that restaurant went to
- 21:00and we had a bad experience. I just got a call from the owner
- 21:03sometimes that it's like scale the unscalable.
- 21:06Sometimes, you know, like sometimes you got to do the
- 21:08things that don't like necessarily scale perfectly, but
- 21:11it just makes a big difference. Yeah.
- 21:13And a lot of a lot of this stuff with reviews, I'm just like
- 21:16telling you a bunch of things that are just basic blocking and
- 21:20tackling of running a company, customer obsession, admitting
- 21:26fault when you're wrong, taking accountability, genuinely
- 21:29learning from your mistakes to make sure they don't happen
- 21:31again. All that stuff is important in
- 21:35any facet of a business. It just so happens that we're
- 21:37really experts in this review part of it.
- 21:39But if you, if you're, if you're a, if you take those lessons and
- 21:43apply them to other parts of your business, you'll be doing
- 21:45well too. Customers obsession is my big
- 21:48talking point in my company, like we have to obsess about our
- 21:51customers. Customer centeredness are they
- 21:53keep the customer in the centre of everything that we're doing.
- 21:55A review is just a a way to to do that.
- 22:00Yeah, so I used to Google pretty much everything when I needed an
- 22:05answer. You know, it's like Google, you
- 22:07Google it, you type it in there, you get an answer.
- 22:10And now I'd say about 90% of my searches or inquiries are Jachi
- 22:14PT. So it's, it's shifted from
- 22:16Google to AII think a lot of people have made that shift to
- 22:19some degree, some more than others, some less than others.
- 22:22How does AI search really work compared to even traditional
- 22:25SEO? Well, it's different, and it's
- 22:28different in a lot of ways. So here's Google has evolved a
- 22:36lot over the years. So I'm dumbing things down and
- 22:39there are SER experts who may listen to this and go he's got
- 22:41it all wrong. But I'm I'm not for them.
- 22:43I'm simplifying it for a reason. So there is some predictability.
- 22:47If I search for a car dealer near me from here, you do that
- 22:52same search, chances are we're going to have this a very
- 22:55similar search engine results page.
- 22:59That's not how ChatGPT works. ChatGPT, if I look for first of
- 23:03all, they struggle with local. But if we did the exact same
- 23:06prompt, I mean word for word because of my past history and
- 23:09because of your past history using it, we'll get, we could
- 23:12get vastly different responses. I personally could do the same
- 23:17prompt four times and get 4 different answers.
- 23:22It's probabilistic. It's not predictable the way
- 23:24that search is, and so it's very hard in that world to say, do
- 23:31tracking or do create tools that could be.
- 23:34How often is your brand being mentioned on an LLM?
- 23:38It's probably wasn't. It's very much individualized
- 23:40for each person. The other part of it is we're
- 23:45finding that like that people use Chechi BT for things that
- 23:49they used to use search for, and they use it for things they
- 23:52never use search. For 100%.
- 23:54It's, it's a, it's not, it's not one of the same.
- 23:58And the last thing I would tell you is Google themselves are
- 24:01using AI. So even if you go to Google
- 24:04search right now, they call these like AI overviews are
- 24:07taking over a lot of the informational searches.
- 24:09So what Google's interested in and I think where we're seeing
- 24:15this is kind of their fortress is all the transactional
- 24:18searches. So still today they struggle
- 24:21with local, which could change very quickly.
- 24:24Where I'll give you, I'll give you like an example.
- 24:26I wanted an itinerary for an off site we were having in Boston.
- 24:31I wanted to meet at a Dunkin' Donuts near the aquarium and
- 24:36there's a Dunkin' Donuts everywhere in Boston.
- 24:38So I figured and they gave. And everywhere and everywhere.
- 24:40They they gave an address like Chichi BT gave me this great
- 24:44itinerary, give me an address for a Dunkin' Donuts.
- 24:46It was close to the aquarium. When I walked to that address,
- 24:50it was not a Dunkin' Donuts, you know what I mean?
- 24:52So it's just it does struggle with it with local right now.
- 24:55It's funny you say that because I actually, if I'm doing a local
- 24:57search, I actually really trust Google and I'll go straight to
- 25:00Google for something local like I'm finding, you know, movers or
- 25:03something like that, or a local coffee shop.
- 25:05I just trust Google and I can look at the map, but it's just
- 25:07more clean cut for local, but ChatGPT for more conversational
- 25:11type things like I can't really have a conversation as much with
- 25:15Google. And I think that's what's
- 25:16changing the search is people are not no longer saying what's
- 25:18a good marketing consulting firm or SEO firm.
- 25:21They're saying, hey, I'm this kind of company.
- 25:23I'm got this going on in my background.
- 25:26Our products and services are tailored to this type of
- 25:27company. What would be a good search firm
- 25:29and give me the top three and give me the pricing for each
- 25:31ones and that kind of stuff? Yeah, like I have, I'm very late
- 25:35on this. It's December.
- 25:37I need to plan our annual retreat for my leadership team,
- 25:41which is in January. And so I was like, oh man, what
- 25:45a idiot. So I, yeah, I didn't go to
- 25:47Google. I went to GBT and I said, like,
- 25:50here's my budget. I'd like to be in Cancun or
- 25:53Tulum or something like that. And it's going to be a business
- 25:59function. I don't want a bunch of drunk
- 26:00college kids at it. Give me some options.
- 26:04Yeah. And that would have been
- 26:06something I would used to do in Google, that that job to be done
- 26:09is being done better with AI right now, which is interesting.
- 26:12But when it comes to the mechanics, like what's different
- 26:14about AI search versus traditional Google search, like
- 26:18what is it looking like? How does it come up differently
- 26:21if I searched on Chachibiti right now versus if I type it in
- 26:23Google? Is Google looking for keywords,
- 26:26backlinks, this and Chachibiti or AI is looking for something
- 26:30different? Yeah, I think the Google is
- 26:34going to crawl the World Wide Web.
- 26:36So they're going to look for every website on the World Wide
- 26:38Web and then they're going to put it into an index.
- 26:42Think of that as like a giant my documents, right?
- 26:45And that's why they can search so quickly.
- 26:47So when you do a search, they're not looking at the live World
- 26:49Wide Web. They're looking at a modest,
- 26:53like very slightly outdated version.
- 26:55So they're going to recrawl the New York Times and Chicago
- 26:57Tribune like regularly throughout the day.
- 27:00And so you do that search, it runs an algorithm, which is a
- 27:05math problem. And very quickly it can spit out
- 27:07results. That's why you, if you ever
- 27:09notice they say results in .26 seconds because early search
- 27:12engines, they used to, they used to go out and bring it back.
- 27:16And so you have kind of three main parts in a search engine.
- 27:19You have the like a spider or a bot that crawls the World Wide
- 27:23Web. You have an index where they
- 27:25store all that. That's your giant my documents.
- 27:26And then you have an algorithm. And those are, again, I'm really
- 27:30dumbing this down. Algorithms probably.
- 27:33And but that's the that's the basis of a search engine.
- 27:37And LLM works differently. It's going to be machine
- 27:40learning. It's going to be much more about
- 27:44probabilistic, like what's the next word that I should be
- 27:47putting in here? And it's going to learn.
- 27:50It has to, you know, learning is probably a a word that I'm not a
- 27:55machine learning expert, but it's going to learn based on
- 28:00other sources. It's going to have training
- 28:03models. So a lot of that comes from like
- 28:05Reddit is well known to be a very big training ground for cha
- 28:08chi BT right? So they're going to learn how do
- 28:11people on these websites write, converse talk and you know, Croc
- 28:19is going to be Twitter like they're going to watch it.
- 28:20They're going to train on Twitter a lot.
- 28:22And the one that should probably win, I would say would be
- 28:26Google, because they have the most data and they, they just, I
- 28:31heard Bill Ackman, who's an investor, talk about this and
- 28:33he's like, they Google came out and had a bunch of embarrassing
- 28:36PR disasters in AI when they first started.
- 28:39Yeah, yeah. People thought they were not
- 28:40going to be the leaders and they're actually kind of turning
- 28:42the page now and it looks like they might be.
- 28:44They just have too many things. First of all, it's much more
- 28:49expensive than people realize to to run this stuff.
- 28:53So it's not like software, it's really expensive.
- 28:56So there's a lot of CapEx. Google has a bottomless pit of
- 28:59money. They have more data than
- 29:02anybody. I mean, Twitter is a trading
- 29:06mail versus everything that Google has is just not a fair
- 29:09fight, right? So Google has your e-mail, it
- 29:12has everybody's e-mail. Like there's a #1 e-mail client
- 29:14out there, they have all the search history, they can crawl
- 29:17the World Wide Web better than everybody.
- 29:19They have this first mover advantage there.
- 29:21And so they should, I think over time begin to use that
- 29:25advantage. It's right now.
- 29:27Right now it just seems like Cha Chi BT has kind of gotten the
- 29:30brand. They are the Kleenex of AI right
- 29:33now or from. A consumer standpoint, yeah.
- 29:35They're the brand, but I, I watch Google very carefully, see
- 29:39how they're looking at this. I think they're trying to use
- 29:41there. There are sometimes where it's
- 29:42like, I don't think AI was the best way to do this and you're
- 29:46just kind of shoehorning it in. Yeah, that's how serious if.
- 29:49You're not, it's like you're not up to date on what's going on.
- 29:51You know, so much investors are like, where's the AI in your
- 29:54business like, and if you don't have it, you need to have some
- 29:56type of AI in your business now. But that's, that's, that's the
- 29:59long and short of it. It's like, I don't know that in
- 30:03particular like ChatGPT is is interested in 10 blue links,
- 30:06what we would talk about in search, like we're going to rank
- 30:0910 websites per page. Old school SEO.
- 30:13GGT is looking for the answer. That's the difference and that's
- 30:17why consumers I think really flock to it because it wasn't
- 30:21the promotional stuff. It wasn't what they wanted you
- 30:23to see or what someone paid to see.
- 30:24It was, wow, I got an open and honest answer.
- 30:27Sometimes. Sometimes it hallucinates,
- 30:29obviously. What?
- 30:30Why do you think, why do you think Google just didn't create
- 30:33a chachi petite of their own 1st and say, you know, it's kind of
- 30:37like, why didn't freaking Walmart build an Amazon?
- 30:40I think about that all the time. It's a it's a good question.
- 30:42There's a lot of layers to it. It kind of kills their old
- 30:46business model is the problem. But I don't see it that way.
- 30:49I see it as like, hey, this is going to happen anyways.
- 30:51If anyone's going to put you out of business, it should be you.
- 30:54And if you adapt and do the right things, you can stay in
- 30:56business and probably be even stronger.
- 30:58Yeah, and there's, I mean, there's plenty of search traffic
- 31:01right now too. So it's like, Oh yeah, there's
- 31:03not a, it's not like either you have LLMS or you have search
- 31:09these, these, it's an ecosystem. And I would say Google's a
- 31:14company I've been watching, I've been fascinated by for a long
- 31:17time. And I started, I started in
- 31:192007. It used to be that they were
- 31:23this incredibly innovative company they would come out with
- 31:28to think about Google Maps. It's hard to, even for somebody
- 31:32who's listening to this, it seems like, oh, it's like
- 31:34they've always had Google Maps or whatever.
- 31:36That's an audacious thing to come up.
- 31:38With Oh yeah, I believe it was. Crazy like to to actually be
- 31:42able to put navigation details for the whole World Wide Web.
- 31:46They used to have the car drive around and every like get a
- 31:48picture of everything on the outside.
- 31:50That's a crazy, crazy innovation.
- 31:54When they really did that, they were leading with technology,
- 31:58they were leading with with their best foot forward.
- 32:02They did a whole. They basically just stole
- 32:04Microsoft Office. So they came out with a whole
- 32:06suite free. Yeah.
- 32:08Use Google Sheets. Use Google backs like.
- 32:10I like it better than Microsoft, but Microsoft annoys me but.
- 32:13They just went to, they just went and drank Microsoft's
- 32:15milkshake. They were.
- 32:17That's the company I watched early in my career.
- 32:20Yeah, innovative. They're going to come out with a
- 32:22phone. They're going to be a true
- 32:23competitor of the iPhone and something is different with the
- 32:28company today. It's not.
- 32:30It got so big. Well, that's all I was going to
- 32:32say. You're small, you're kind of
- 32:33fighting or innovating or disrupting.
- 32:35You get to you get to a certain point of size and stature that
- 32:38it's almost about how do we survive and not go out of
- 32:41business versus how do we thrive and push things to the next
- 32:44level. It could be about size, it could
- 32:45just be about culture too. They were very interested in
- 32:49engineers, just wanted engineers.
- 32:51And they wanted, they used strange words like googly and
- 32:55they did your 20% time to come up with stuff.
- 32:58So a bunch of really great innovations from Google came in
- 33:00this 20% time. Today it's much more of a
- 33:04there's a bunch more finance focused people there.
- 33:07They're interested in different things.
- 33:08They don't want to get, they don't want to get broken up as a
- 33:11monopoly. They don't want to have
- 33:13litigation or fines from they lobby.
- 33:16They're spending a lot of money on lobbyists and those come at a
- 33:19cost to innovation. And so I don't think it's, and
- 33:25that's not just to Google. I think a lot of these companies
- 33:27are just not as innovative anymore.
- 33:29When was the last great Apple innovation?
- 33:32You know, I, I don't think. But that's what I think, I think
- 33:34you get, I think not that you can't innovate at a bigger size,
- 33:37but I do think you get so big and you just got all these other
- 33:39problems and people and investors and now you're at a
- 33:42you're so you're the big dog. It's like, hey, we just we, we
- 33:44want to stay here. We're not necessarily saying how
- 33:47do we climb and get ahead and and be the number, we are the
- 33:49number one. We just don't want to get
- 33:51knocked off the mountain top. I think that's that's part of
- 33:54it. There's a book called
- 33:58Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen that talks a lot
- 34:00about what you're talking about, which is you're the entrenched,
- 34:05you know, behemoth in the market and you'll run well.
- 34:11You have good managers and they're telling you what you
- 34:14want to hear. Meanwhile, the disruptor is is
- 34:18not focused on any of that, right?
- 34:19And they're coming to just take your to take your lunch and you.
- 34:22Get a chip on your shoulder and they want to break, you know,
- 34:24breakthrough the noise and disrupt.
- 34:26And it's just a different, it's a cultural difference.
- 34:28It's just way different. Yeah, so I would say that's a
- 34:32big part of why Google didn't, didn't win the race, because I,
- 34:35I think the company's different. Yeah, Google in 2010, 1112 would
- 34:41be way ahead. I I just, that was a different
- 34:45time, different kind of leadership.
- 34:47They were so audacious. The things they would do were
- 34:49crazy. They didn't even make money on a
- 34:50lot of this stuff. They just thought it, they
- 34:53thought they had a ethos at any as long as the, the amount of
- 34:57people who are going to the World Wide Web went up, it was
- 34:59good for Google. And that was a, that was a
- 35:02great, I mean, Gmail, all these things were, were great.
- 35:05Adsense. So I think that's a big part of
- 35:08it. The other part of it is credit
- 35:11words too, you know, I think Chachi BT opening eye, they did
- 35:15a great job. They Oh, they definitely did.
- 35:17And, and now everyone's, everyone's chasing them and it's
- 35:21an it's an interesting race to watch.
- 35:23So if you're a business owner from a content standpoint, what
- 35:28type of content should you be putting on your, you said on
- 35:31page, off page? And does it vary between if you
- 35:34want, if you're maybe doing well on Google rankings, but you're
- 35:37not doing as well on AI search or AEO answer engine
- 35:40optimization, is there a difference in the type of
- 35:43content that you'd want to put out to rank for AI versus
- 35:46traditional search? Well, it's a good, it's a good
- 35:48timely question because we're doing a lot of studies right
- 35:51now. So I wish I, I'll, I'll send
- 35:55some links to you when these studies are done.
- 35:56But I, we have at search that we have an innovation like team
- 36:00that's working on this stuff. Well, what I will tell you is as
- 36:06strange as it sounds, as make good content.
- 36:08Yeah, I know. I always say that too.
- 36:11Focus on if you focus, focus on hacks, you'll have short term
- 36:17fits and starts. If you if you focus on who is
- 36:20your audience or who is your customer, who's your end, the
- 36:23end user of what you're doing and just make it really great.
- 36:28I think you'll have it may be harder, maybe slower, may take a
- 36:32little longer for your flywheel to get going, but in the long
- 36:35run, if you're making great content, it's much easier to
- 36:41pivot and move to where the eyeballs are.
- 36:44Sometimes I clearly understand the difference between AI search
- 36:47and Google, and then sometimes I'm like, it is sort of the same
- 36:49thing, just make really great content.
- 36:51I think some of the tactical things we've seen work in the
- 36:54maybe the differences between AI and search.
- 36:56I'd like to give your perspective here is it seems
- 36:59like the AI search engines, they're obviously looking for
- 37:02more conversational, how do you talk and how do you write and
- 37:05how do you present yourself and that kind of stuff so they can
- 37:06adapt the language. It does seem like more
- 37:09conversational content. I've also known the comparison
- 37:12content seems to be what AI really likes.
- 37:15Like we've seen increases in your search visibility on AI and
- 37:18Chachi Petite just from adding here are the top five blank
- 37:21companies in your industry or in the area because AI loves to,
- 37:26but maybe Google does too. I don't know.
- 37:27I mean it. Like, so listen, maybe that's a
- 37:29good point. It's like, what are some
- 37:30differences? Yeah.
- 37:32One difference that comes to mind is AI seems to really
- 37:37search like this too, but AI seems to really like new
- 37:40content, so freshness like not letting any of your content get
- 37:45old where and Google's. It was like make a great piece
- 37:49of pillow like a Evergreen content, Evergreen content and
- 37:53update it once per year and you'll be fine.
- 37:57It it seems that our our studies indicate that freshness seems to
- 38:02be really popular with with AI. Now where is that?
- 38:05Like a blog once a week? Is that LinkedIn?
- 38:08YouTube. Content, I, I would say you're
- 38:10on the right track. You're repetitive.
- 38:13The repetition of it is really important.
- 38:15So if you're in a, if you're a content creator, like a Blogger,
- 38:20let's not do that like once or twice a year, you know, have a
- 38:23have a rotation once a month, every every couple weeks,
- 38:26whatever you don't want. You don't want to make the time
- 38:29the the driver because it should be quality should be the driver,
- 38:32but there should be a calendar of of content.
- 38:37Is that because it wants the most relevant newest
- 38:39information? I mean, that kind of makes
- 38:41sense, right? And it wants consistency to show
- 38:43that you're not just, you did one thing, you don't really know
- 38:45it, but you've been doing it for a period of time, correct?
- 38:47And hey, let's pull the most relevant recent stuff we can.
- 38:50Yeah, yeah. Then there's also, there's also
- 38:52some evidence. I think this is actually a
- 38:57benefit. If you have googled recently a
- 39:01recipe on Google, you'll see what Seos have done wrong
- 39:06really. So recipes on Google will be
- 39:09very long to be a lot of words. They'll tell a story about how
- 39:12their grandma used to make this pasta recipe and she's from
- 39:17Italy. A bunch of things that nobody
- 39:20actually cares about, but it's a lot of content.
- 39:24Google has seemed to reward that sort of page.
- 39:27They put a lot of effort into it, it seems.
- 39:31Seems good. TGBT cares about chunks.
- 39:35They want that recipe. They want the bottom of that
- 39:38page. There's going to be, you know,
- 39:40this many cups of whatever and this many.
- 39:42That's what they care about. And so that's a difference.
- 39:47Google would be in in particular, maybe I'm maybe I'm
- 39:50dating myself a little bit, but in particular, you used to have
- 39:52a lot of words, you know, 1000 words.
- 39:54My friend Andy Cressidina publishes a a study of bloggers
- 40:00every year. And I mean, for years, the
- 40:02average post length just kept growing like more words, in
- 40:07other words. In other words, more more words
- 40:09per post. For the first time that it
- 40:13started to come down. I think that was like maybe two
- 40:15years ago it started to come down because people are
- 40:17optimizing for different signals now.
- 40:19They still want, there's an indicator that still wants
- 40:21search. So they're still going to write
- 40:22some longer form, long form content, but they are going to
- 40:26be, they're going to write chunk content that's really rich for
- 40:29LLMS. So if I if I'm making videos,
- 40:34does making videos help me rank higher in Google search and AI
- 40:38search? How does video fit in there?
- 40:40In and of itself no, but if you are creating good videos that
- 40:45hopefully have a transcript, hopefully there's stuff that
- 40:47Google can. Crawl, yeah.
- 40:50And likewise that that AI could probably, you know, maybe even
- 40:55could like. Watch the damn audio.
- 40:58And learn and train on it but. And so it's also like Google has
- 41:03the same models, Yeah, they probably can do that too.
- 41:07But from I'm thinking like an old school SEO, I would have a
- 41:10transcript that's easy to read and for them to crawl an index
- 41:15and. Like do you think it's like it
- 41:17is even Google, are they pulling up?
- 41:19It seems like they'll pull up LinkedIn posts sometimes or
- 41:22video or whatever it is. Like, do you?
- 41:23How much do you think social media plays into search?
- 41:25Yeah, it's there. There was a time where they call
- 41:29it a walled garden. They don't.
- 41:30Facebook in particular didn't want Google to be able to crawl
- 41:32their stuff. And then they give Facebook,
- 41:35then they give, you know, a little bit more access.
- 41:38So they'll, they'll let you crawl these parts of the website
- 41:41and over time, over time, that's the big question.
- 41:45So you can, you can prevent an LLM from or actually asked an
- 41:49LLM not to crawl your stuff. I could see why people would
- 41:52want to do that. They spent a whole bunch of time
- 41:54creating this content and now it's like, you're just going to
- 41:57steal my shit. I don't want that.
- 41:59Same thing with Google. You can just be like, you're not
- 42:01going to be able to crawl this. So it's a tricky, it's a tricky
- 42:04thing. You're like, could, could Google
- 42:08crawl every, every bit of LinkedIn?
- 42:10No, they're probably not going to, they're going to, they're
- 42:12going to put parts or perimeters around it.
- 42:15But it's a good thing to put a video up, I think on LinkedIn in
- 42:19and of itself. And if there is downstream
- 42:23benefits like appearing more prominently on Google or all
- 42:25alum sets, that's beneficial as well.
- 42:28And do you know from a search standpoint, when it's crawling
- 42:31through a website, is it looking for certain pages?
- 42:34Is it scrubbing the whole website?
- 42:35I know there's like the metadata, the behind the scenes
- 42:38stuff that's on there. And then there's like what's on
- 42:40the page, like break that down for us.
- 42:43Yeah, so they will. They'll crawl, they'll crawl a
- 42:47page and they'll go through hyperlinks.
- 42:50They call this like something surfer model.
- 42:54So anyway, they are crawling all of the all the content that's on
- 42:58that page and then hopping from hyperlinks.
- 43:01So if they if you're linking internally, they should crawl
- 43:04your whole page provided you've set up your website in a SEO
- 43:08friendly way. Some technical SEO
- 43:10considerations here that are kind of boring but important as
- 43:16well. If you link out, that's how new
- 43:20web pages get discovered by Google.
- 43:22So it's like they're going to follow from website A linking to
- 43:26website B, then they'll start to crawl this site and it just
- 43:29continues. Like a virus.
- 43:31Just continues to go through and all of that gets saved and
- 43:37updated. You know, depending on how how
- 43:40popular that website is, either daily or hourly or monthly.
- 43:45If you could come into a business and you can only do one
- 43:47thing to improve their search on how they get discovered by
- 43:51customers online, what would the one thing you would do?
- 43:55You have one kind of tactical thing you can do to a business.
- 43:58Yeah, I said it at the beginning, especially if they're
- 44:00a brick and mortar business, I think there's so much value in
- 44:02Google Business profile. I also think maps are a bit of a
- 44:05hedge in AI because what would and you still need navigation,
- 44:11You still need to know how to. Get if you can do that like if
- 44:14not if they. Are tough to have or what are
- 44:16they going to train on right maps yeah and there aren't there
- 44:19aren't 5000 of these things there's right Google Apple ways
- 44:24which Google Now owns. So I think making sure you're
- 44:29you're findable on maps and making sure you're findable on
- 44:32on search engine results page is really really important and
- 44:36you'd be surprised how many people mess it up.
- 44:38It's it's super it seems easy but good category selection
- 44:43making sure you've got in a way for your customers to engage
- 44:46with you with reviews that you're you're posting on to your
- 44:51on your Google business profile is really important.
- 44:53What, what, what has happened? This, this predates AI, is
- 44:58something called zero click search.
- 45:00So I do this a lot where I'm looking up a restaurant that I
- 45:05like to go to. On the right side you'll see
- 45:08what's called the knowledge panel where they've got
- 45:10information about that restaurant.
- 45:11Sometimes the information in there is more valuable than
- 45:13what's on their website, like they could put when the
- 45:17restaurant's the most busy, for instance.
- 45:20So when I don't want to go, then because it's going to be busy, I
- 45:24will see the I'll see the phone number for that restaurant.
- 45:28I'll. Call them and I will never visit
- 45:31the website. That's a great point.
- 45:33It's a zero click search. And you got no attribution for
- 45:35that? No attribution, yeah.
- 45:37And So what do you do with that? So this has been a, this has
- 45:41been a something going on for a long time in Google where zero
- 45:46click searches are now just like exploding because of AI
- 45:49overviews. So there's still a lot of search
- 45:54that goes on that we don't have those, that data that I started
- 45:58out a conversation talking about that I really love.
- 46:00It's, it's gone by the wayside. So if you're seeing that's a
- 46:04tricky customer management, account management problem where
- 46:08you're going like my friend, my friend Will Reynolds, who's like
- 46:11another agency owner, he, he said we need to get used to
- 46:14saying your traffic is flat. Isn't that great and.
- 46:18Like. You know that was never the
- 46:20case. You know, you would be like if
- 46:22if your if your traffic was flat problem, you know, but today
- 46:26they're just because of zero click search LLMS.
- 46:28It's more I think bigger loss is not people eyeballs moving from
- 46:34Google to LLMS, although that is a a real factor.
- 46:39Bigger problem is that Google is now just answering these
- 46:42questions. Instead of you going search, go
- 46:45to a website. I get some little attribution
- 46:48for that. It's you search the answer is
- 46:52there. You never go to a website.
- 46:54It's a zero click search do. You think websites will be
- 46:56irrelevant in the next 5-10 years?
- 46:59It's a good. Question I I I think you'll
- 47:02still have websites. You gotta have information right
- 47:05there, yeah. It just becomes, it just becomes
- 47:07a multiple multifaceted game. You know, it's it.
- 47:10Just because one thing's blossoming doesn't mean another
- 47:13thing goes away. A lot of times it's just you
- 47:16have to play. Yeah, a lot of positions now.
- 47:18Yeah, it'd be hard to see them going away, but also it's so
- 47:22hard to see in the future. If you go back 10 years ago, I
- 47:24don't think anyone thought we'd be here today.
- 47:26You know, when you first heard about Chachi PT and its powerful
- 47:30search engine and answer engine optimization, when you really
- 47:33had hit the scene and you were like, this is going to be big.
- 47:37How did you feel being a Google guy at that time?
- 47:39What was your kind of reaction initially?
- 47:41I just think it's cool. I mean, how do you, how do you
- 47:46think about things is really important.
- 47:48If I can help my customer, I don't care.
- 47:51You know I don't care if it's with AII, don't care if it's
- 47:56with carrier pigeons, right? Like.
- 47:58That's the perspective right there.
- 48:00How do you how do you help your customer get more, more value?
- 48:05And so if my, if my psychology is I'm an SEO and that's it, I'm
- 48:12in, I'd be in trouble anyway, you know, and like I said,
- 48:16there's a lot of that hack stuff that you see, I've been there.
- 48:19I like, I get a little hack in SEO and then that goes away.
- 48:24If you're really interested in just cultivating long term,
- 48:27mutually beneficial relationships with your clients
- 48:30and you will, you will move and evolve with them because you
- 48:34have the relationship with them. They'll allow you to experiment
- 48:36and tinker. And then before you know it, you
- 48:40have a a new service offering and then you have a case study
- 48:43and you have an that's how it works.
- 48:44And that's, that's how the whole, you know, that's
- 48:47professional services. One O 1 Yeah.
- 48:49And so when we're, when I, when I heard about it, I was
- 48:53interested at a personal level and then interested in how can I
- 48:57apply this to get more value for my customers?
- 48:59Yeah, goes back to what you said earlier, customer obsession.
- 49:02If you're focused on servicing the customer the best level
- 49:05possible, something new comes in.
- 49:07At first it's like, whoa, that's different.
- 49:08But then it's quickly exciting and something you want to test
- 49:10and try with your customers. I love that man.
- 49:12You mentioned to get a little bit more into your founder
- 49:14journey. You mentioned, I saw you had a
- 49:16post that talked about you had ruined your health.
- 49:20But this year you really turned it around, you know, growing
- 49:22your agency, you kind of let your health go on the wayside.
- 49:25What? What changed this year?
- 49:28Yeah, there's the back story is I've been an entrepreneur.
- 49:33This is my 16th year. Wow.
- 49:35So 2009 to. Congratulations, man.
- 49:38How many people make it that far?
- 49:39Yeah. I'm fully an outdoor cat at this
- 49:41point. Yes, you are, dude.
- 49:43There's no going in now. Yeah.
- 49:45So I I had three kids in that time.
- 49:50I stayed very busy and I think really it started to the problem
- 49:55started to escalate when I travel a lot.
- 49:56So a lot of our business comes from conferences and trade
- 49:59shows. And so that's a lot of nights
- 50:03eating out. It's hard, bad sleep.
- 50:05It's harder to track it, yeah. Drinks with clients, all that
- 50:08stuff. So I had gotten out of shape and
- 50:12and unhealthy, but it was there's sort of an inertia that
- 50:14sets in where I just continued to work, get the kids to their
- 50:18thing and the the busyness of it all.
- 50:22No changes were happening. And I wasn't at like young,
- 50:25younger me was a big athlete and like I consider myself like
- 50:31capable of playing sports in some way.
- 50:33So the, the big event was in May of 24, our V, our VP of search
- 50:40guy named Mark Irvin, who's very well known and PPC died
- 50:42unexpectedly. He was 35 years old.
- 50:45He's a good friend of mine too. It's like we work together and
- 50:48we he as much as anybody. He helped me build this thing
- 50:52and you go very close to somebody with that.
- 50:53So it was a devastating by far the hardest thing I've done in
- 50:58business is just trying to get the team back from that and
- 51:02rebuild because he was he had his hands and everything.
- 51:05So when when he died, almost my wife as much as anybody was
- 51:10like, you got to go see a cardiologist go.
- 51:14I was 41 then, right? Yeah, I was 41.
- 51:18So I, you know, did a whole bunch of tests.
- 51:22I was mostly healthier than I thought, but I, I had really
- 51:25high A1C, which is like I was pre diabetic.
- 51:28So I was heading toward diabetes if I didn't try to make some
- 51:32changes. So I tried a few things and I'm
- 51:36just an extremist to the Max. So if I don't really go crazy, I
- 51:41probably, I can't dabble. And so at the beginning of the
- 51:46year, I joined Adventure Club, which is Jesse Hitler's
- 51:50mastermind, if you know him. Yeah.
- 51:52And that was a big turning point for my health.
- 51:55So I've done a bunch of I've done 3 endurance events now that
- 52:02are notable. And he hired David Goggins,
- 52:04didn't he? He brought him live with them,
- 52:06yeah. Yeah, that's extreme.
- 52:08Yeah, with the SEAL and so. And Jesse's an amazing human
- 52:12being. I love him.
- 52:13I love all his stuff. And I've gotten to know him a
- 52:16little bit this year. And so I was like last weekend I
- 52:19was with him the last event. Yeah.
- 52:21And so the the first one was rim to rim to rim, which was the
- 52:26hardest one, honestly. So that is the rims I'm talking
- 52:29about are Grand Canyon. So I walked down the Grand
- 52:32Canyon, across, up the other side, down the North Rim, across
- 52:37and up the the South Rim. And so it's 44 miles.
- 52:40It took me 20 hours to do it. We did it one day too.
- 52:42It wasn't like gym camp and lost toenails and.
- 52:47Really. Amazing experience.
- 52:49It was an amazing experience. So the training for that was
- 52:51really grueling and I didn't I I didn't drink alcohol for two
- 52:56months. I dropped 2025 lbs.
- 52:59I got really a lot stronger. I was at the beginning, I could
- 53:03barely even run one mile and then I was doing 878 mile runs
- 53:07for training every every week, a bunch of bunch of exercise.
- 53:11So I, I got so into it and now it's now it really feels like
- 53:17this is a part of my life. I did this, this adventure.
- 53:22This adventure part is really in 2026.
- 53:24I'm already planning my adventures for next year.
- 53:26And so I, I'm, I'm a big cautionary tale for what can
- 53:32happen if you get super obsessed and, you know, it didn't have to
- 53:38have a lot of that's just lack of discipline, but also you can
- 53:45anybody who listens to this, it's, it's really hard to run a
- 53:47business. It's hard to have three kids.
- 53:50It's hard to I, I mean, I coach varsity football, I coach, I am
- 53:55involved in a bunch of boards. I just, I'm a hustler kind of
- 53:59person. So you you do that you need
- 54:02there. I needed the balance of exercise
- 54:04and diet and all that stuff to to make sure I could continue to
- 54:09perform at the to the NC 3. How do you do it all and find
- 54:12time to quote balance your work, your life, your kids, your being
- 54:17on boards, running the business? What's your kind of trick for
- 54:20that? There at any given time, I'm not
- 54:23in balance, right. I'm working out like a crazy
- 54:26person to get ready for an event that's not in balance.
- 54:30There are pretty soon I'm going to shut down and I'm going to go
- 54:35spend time with my family and I'm not going to be in balance
- 54:38with work and I have a lot going on at work and I'm just going to
- 54:40say see you in 2026. But there's a couple of tricks.
- 54:46I think one thing I I I've learned this through this
- 54:51adventure club or through my my journey here is your calendar
- 54:54can be your friend in this. So make sure I put in the things
- 54:59I'm I have to do this year. I have to do this race called
- 55:04trail and Park City. I'm going to put that on my
- 55:07calendar. I'm gonna Last year I had a goal
- 55:10to go on 22 dates with my wife. I've gone on 22 dates with my
- 55:13wife. That goes on the calendar.
- 55:15So you put all these really important things under his
- 55:18calendar for. Like the rocks and the Yeah.
- 55:20Exactly. You do all that stuff, put it
- 55:21all on your calendar 1st. The rest of the time that can
- 55:24work. And I wanted to attend 80% of
- 55:28the the practices for this football team that I'm involved
- 55:31in. I probably didn't quite get
- 55:32there, but I got pretty close. And then what's left?
- 55:35I can, I can work around that. And so it's, it's been really
- 55:38great. And there are, there are things
- 55:40that are priorities at work too, that I, I want to make sure they
- 55:42get, they get on the calendar. And so that's how it works.
- 55:46The other thing that really helps is I really, I really do
- 55:54tell myself it's myself talk, but I'm an entrepreneur.
- 55:57So I didn't start a job. I started a company the team has
- 56:03to do a lot of you know, I I I have to have a really good team,
- 56:07which I'm fortunately fortunate to have and that affords me the
- 56:12ability to sit with you and and and Tuesday morning not a care
- 56:16in the world. Yeah, it's nice.
- 56:17And so that psychological flip, which probably happened for me
- 56:21in like 2019-2020, I, I joined a, a group called Entrepreneurs
- 56:26Organization EO Chicago. That's yeah, I know.
- 56:29We have a mutual friend here who's who's in EO with me.
- 56:32Shout out Jared, awesome duties on the show.
- 56:34And, and so that that early period really helped me to shift
- 56:40from I'm an SEO, I'm a digital marketer to I'm an entrepreneur.
- 56:44And so even today, like you're asking me a lot of SEO
- 56:46questions, AEO questions, like can't believe there's people in
- 56:50my company would be better right there.
- 56:51Yeah, I'm not the best anymore. That's how it should be, right?
- 56:55I can. Spin some iron or whatever.
- 56:56But to really get that psychology right is I'm going to
- 57:01delegate a lot. I'm going to prioritize the
- 57:04things that are important to me. And then at any given point, my
- 57:07life will be out of balance, which is fine.
- 57:09Where do you spend most of your time now as a founder or CEO?
- 57:13Currently we're in an in an interesting point where we're
- 57:17looking to bolt on agencies. So I'm looking to acquire.
- 57:21So Corp dev would be kind of where I spend a lot of time and
- 57:24trying to find and I love, I love most of it and he
- 57:30absolutely hate some of it. It's really fun.
- 57:33It's always going to be a little bit.
- 57:34Of the case yeah it's really fun talking to other founders
- 57:38hearing their story and even if you're like you're not a good
- 57:40fit for us but that was a fun that was an enjoyable.
- 57:44Learn Something 40. 5 minute conversation.
- 57:47The part I don't like are brokers, lawyers, this whole
- 57:51cesspool like. Oh dude, I.
- 57:54Have vultures I don't really enjoy so I have wonderful
- 57:58lawyers. I really love them and I think
- 58:00one of the things that I really give them credit for is they
- 58:04speak this language. Nobody's authentic, nobody's
- 58:08sincere. The founder is, but no, neither
- 58:12they're a representation, they're broke or, you know, you
- 58:14have to be careful, walk on egg shells with every word you say.
- 58:17And so I don't love that. If I could just talk to the
- 58:21founder and we can navigate it without all these people, I
- 58:25would. I would like it'd be a 10 out of
- 58:2610 job. I'd do it.
- 58:27All right, I got you. Going back to the focus thing, I
- 58:31think one thing I try to do kind of on the micro level with what
- 58:33you do at a yearly calendar level is I've been trying to say
- 58:36coming into the day saying what are the three things I have to
- 58:39do today that's going to move the business forward and
- 58:41everything else can can fall after that.
- 58:44And then I think the other thing is just like a kind of a minute
- 58:47by minute, hour by hour focus reminder because it's so easy.
- 58:51Mom, I'm sure you probably see the same thing where you pull
- 58:53out your phone and pretty soon or you were going to check
- 58:56something on a LinkedIn DM and then you saw a post pop up from
- 58:59someone you knew and now you're in that.
- 59:00And then you got off LinkedIn, Now you're somewhere else.
- 59:03Or it's like you just can go a million different ways.
- 59:06And so I think part of the hack is focus.
- 59:09Just only do the thing that you need to do right now.
- 59:12And don't let your phone put it in the other room.
- 59:14Let it charge whatever it is. Don't let it pull you away
- 59:17because it's just it. I don't know.
- 59:18For me, it's easy to get down a rabbit hole quickly.
- 59:22I also think maybe it's because I'm in marketing, but there's so
- 59:27many things that are I they're trying to make you
- 59:32psychologically crazy. 100% everything is trying to make you
- 59:35move faster. Decide.
- 59:36Quicker. Stay on the.
- 59:37Platform. Yeah.
- 59:40And they're good at. It yeah upgrade from Uber X to
- 59:43Uber Black to Uber Comfort or whatever like it's like spend
- 59:47more money move more quickly, decide more and being just
- 59:51generally aware of that. I'm not a Zen, you know, I'm
- 59:55getting a little bit into, you know, an area I'm not that
- 59:59knowledgeable about, but really just being aware of that and
- 1:00:01going. I'm not going to play that game.
- 1:00:03Like the things just slow down and so that your phone is
- 1:00:07designed to make you anxious and.
- 1:00:10And it will. It will.
- 1:00:11In the head, you know, like you're it really, it really is
- 1:00:13just recognizing that and going, I'm not going to play that game
- 1:00:17like I, I I think that can be very helpful too.
- 1:00:21And the the importance of focus. Your your point about focus is
- 1:00:28really, really important. You know, where energy goes,
- 1:00:31everything flows. So as a founder, as a founder,
- 1:00:33where my focus is, is going to like people will galvanized
- 1:00:36around that. Yes.
- 1:00:38So if I'm, if I'm really interested in Corp dev, we're
- 1:00:40going to get really interested in Corp dev and that's the
- 1:00:42mission and that's people will will get involved.
- 1:00:45If I'm really focused on doom scrolling and letting them just,
- 1:00:50you know, it's going to be a mess.
- 1:00:52Like, yeah, we have to be, we have to be driving somewhere
- 1:00:55positive. If I'm talking customer
- 1:00:57obsession all the time, customer obsession to the point where
- 1:00:59they're rolling their eyes, like, you know, we'll say things
- 1:01:03like my friend Paul introduced me to this line.
- 1:01:05I'd say all this, I was like, profit is the applause of our
- 1:01:08customer, right? The profit is the applause of
- 1:01:10our customer. I love that.
- 1:01:12That's good. If I'm saying that, that's,
- 1:01:14that's, that's reinforcing. I'm obsessed with customers,
- 1:01:17right? It's their.
- 1:01:18That's a good line. It's their, it's their applause
- 1:01:21that is, that is our profit. Where did that come from?
- 1:01:23I don't know my friend Paul Piggle.
- 1:01:25Who's did he make it up? I.
- 1:01:27I I want to get that on some painting or something that's
- 1:01:29really, really good. And so if I'm saying that, then
- 1:01:32that becomes that becomes that tone at the top becomes
- 1:01:36hopefully what everybody else says.
- 1:01:37And if they don't and the contrast shows up, yeah, it's
- 1:01:41it. It will.
- 1:01:42It will. They'll be.
- 1:01:43It just might be about a nice person.
- 1:01:45But can't we can't coexist in a working environment.
- 1:01:49Yeah, if we don't have that. So.
- 1:01:52And what is it? What is the next 5-10 years look
- 1:01:54like for you? What's your ultimate goal with
- 1:01:55the business? Sounds like now you're trying to
- 1:01:57acquire, but is the goal at some point to sell?
- 1:02:00Is it to pass it on? Have you thought that far ahead?
- 1:02:03Even I don't. Know, I mean we, we, I'm very
- 1:02:06interested in this next run. So we talk, we have like a
- 1:02:09financial number, but I want to take the, the agency basically
- 1:02:15like triple it in the next three years.
- 1:02:18And so to do that is a combination of acquisition and
- 1:02:23organic growth. And then we should like incubate
- 1:02:27some services of our own, right? So that's a really fun ride that
- 1:02:32that does mean we're going to have to grow up a lot and some
- 1:02:35of the fun fly by the seat of your pants, less and less of
- 1:02:38that these days. But you know, it's fun.
- 1:02:42It was fun to run a pirate ship. And so it's fun.
- 1:02:45It's fun to this first phase, but now it becomes much more of
- 1:02:49like really disciplined rigor in every system and processing your
- 1:02:56business to make sure, yeah, you can scale appropriately.
- 1:02:59If an agency is listening right now, what are you looking for?
- 1:03:03So we're looking for a few things.
- 1:03:04One, we don't want to again, I don't want to hire a job.
- 1:03:08So I want somebody that it can be founder LED, but they should
- 1:03:11have a team and they the founder could leave and.
- 1:03:15The operation was. So.
- 1:03:16So there are things that are just important and fine, it
- 1:03:21needs to be cash flow positive. I'm not well about being a Piggy
- 1:03:26Bank for a start up, you know, that's just not my, that's not
- 1:03:28my thing. And then I would want something
- 1:03:31that's you can, you can imagine what these services would be
- 1:03:33like things that are complimentary to you guys.
- 1:03:36Yeah. And so to make a short story
- 1:03:40long, we, we got to the point most of my clients are small
- 1:03:45businesses, almost all. And we got to the point where we
- 1:03:49started, we're starting to plateau.
- 1:03:52You think about it this way, if you have $10 million of revenue
- 1:03:57and you're retaining 80% of your clients, which isn't bad in
- 1:04:01small business land, that means you need to sell $2,000,000 of
- 1:04:05services every year just to tread water, not grow, just to
- 1:04:10not lose money. So that becomes really hard and
- 1:04:14that reality, it started to hit me and I was like, man, well,
- 1:04:17how do we escape this, this trap?
- 1:04:20And so I decided I let's try and move up market.
- 1:04:22Let's try and get to the mid market.
- 1:04:25I'm not trying to get to enterprise OR like that, but
- 1:04:27let's get to mid market. So I talked to an agency friend
- 1:04:29of mine and he said, well, he was in between you.
- 1:04:33I was like, I'll introduce you to these guys.
- 1:04:34I'll introduce you to these guys.
- 1:04:36Anyway, they're not going to talk to you.
- 1:04:38You just have two services. They want an agency, they want
- 1:04:42to be able to drop any problem they can think of and it goes
- 1:04:46places and it's done. Right.
- 1:04:48And they don't want 26 niche service offerings, right?
- 1:04:53And so, yeah, I would recommend you grow your your agency
- 1:04:58horizontally, like your service offerings horizontally.
- 1:05:02I don't just do what anybody says.
- 1:05:03I thought about what he said a lot and I think he's right.
- 1:05:07And So what would be, if you could think about what would be
- 1:05:10a good bolt on to a company that's very strong on PBC and
- 1:05:13SEO, that would be who I would want to talk to.
- 1:05:18If you have a complimentary service to that, I would love to
- 1:05:23talk to him. Cool, Mark, I appreciate you
- 1:05:25doing this, man. This is a great conversation.
- 1:05:26Where can people find you, connect with you, learn more
- 1:05:29about what you guys do? So searchlab is my company,
- 1:05:32searchlabdigital.com is our website.
- 1:05:36I would just point people to we have a lot, a lot of free
- 1:05:43educational content about search.
- 1:05:45This, this topic that we're talking about South.
- 1:05:47Greg Gifford's weekly video series is called Local Search
- 1:05:49Tuesdays. Yeah, so he he's cool.
- 1:05:51He's enthusiastic about it too, which makes a difference.
- 1:05:53Yeah, I was talking to him on the way over here.
- 1:05:56Dane Seville is our Director of Brand Experience.
- 1:05:59He is doing at least monthly webinars now, which are awesome,
- 1:06:05and we're getting a really good response rate for that.
- 1:06:07Susan yen is on the PBC side. She's speaking at conferences
- 1:06:10all over the place. So you can find us at
- 1:06:14conferences. You can find us on our website
- 1:06:16and our blog and then hit us up on LinkedIn or Twitter or
- 1:06:20whatever your your favorite platform is and we usually share
- 1:06:25educational content there. Cool.
- 1:06:27Appreciate you coming by. Thanks for.
- 1:06:28Thanks for the thanks.