Unlock the Secrets of Search Engine Optimization - Marketer of the Day Podcast

🚀 Hey everyone! I had an amazing time as a guest on this podcast, diving deep into SEO, digital marketing, and how to tap into free traffic that actually converts! 💰✨

I run SEO Optimizers, where I help businesses rank higher on Google, drive more leads, and grow without breaking the bank on paid ads. We talked about:

✅ The power of content & backlinks 🔗
✅ Automating SEO to save time 🕒
✅ Google’s latest algorithm changes 📊
✅ Why SEO is like real estate—own more of the search results! 🏆

If you’re tired of being stuck in the SEO maze, this episode is for you! 🎙️ Listen in and let’s get you ranking!

📍 Grab my free SEO training 👉 SEOoptimizers.com/gift

🔗 DM me with your SEO questions! Let’s connect: @BrandonLeibowitz

#SEO #DigitalMarketing #GoogleRankings #OnlineGrowth 🚀

Transcript

0:00

Hey, and welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Brandon leibowitz from SEO optimizers.com Now Brandon runs and operates this company called SEO Optimizers. They are a digital marketing company that focuses on helping small and medium sized businesses get more online traffic, which then converts to clients, sales and leads. And so in SEO terms, Brandon is here basically guest blog posting, but in podcast format. Right. And we're meeting, we're talking, he's sharing content, will get some, some backlinks. As a result, he'll rank in the search terms. And in the meantime, have fun and help these businesses that are stuck with SEO. So Brandon, nice to meet you and what do you have to say? Thanks for having me on today. Glad to have you. And so so yeah, SEO, like people talk about it a lot and I feel like maybe in the past, like two to three years, I finally gotten my head around it because it seems like just up until then there was all this just minutia and it seems like just the last few years especially people have like structured it better and said like, here are these buckets, right? Here's like local SEO and on page and off page. And I feel like I get a better sense of like, what needs to be done. And so what are your thoughts on this whole search engine optimization thing? And how do you stand out from all these other agencies? SEO is a way to get free traffic to your website. And who doesn't want free traffic? So help people when they're searching on Google for your keywords, make sure that your website appears. But also when you're searching on Google, images appear. So optimizing your images, if you have any videos, optimize those videos. Videos sometimes appear. If you're a local business, catch up on Google Maps and just try to take up as much free real estate as possible. Because that's really what SEO is all about. It's all about just tapping into that free traffic from the search engines. And it's not just websites. There's a lot of other stuff nowadays. So just trying to tap into as much traffic as possible without spending money on paid ads and been doing it since 2007 and seeing all the changes over the years and how Google has changed, but really focus on good quality content and good quality backlinks. There's a lot of other variables that go in SEO, but those two things are some of the more important aspects. That if you optimize your content and you have good content and then you have good backlinks, that's going to help Google trust you and know what keywords to rank you for. Fantastic. You make it sound doable, right? The content and backlinks. And I like what you said there about how there's all this free real estate. And I mean, you're not joking. Whenever I get like an SEO sort of guest on my show, it's just, it's a lesson in itself to Google you and to Google your company name and to see like all the, the podcast guest appearances, the guest blog posts, the review sites, the different social networks and I think all these things like, oh, yeah, I could go over to Pinterest and post there and get these backlinks. And you mentioned there about the Google image search results and about, you know, optimizing your videos and like, oh, there's, you know, I post on YouTube, but I could also post to Vimeo. And so it seems at first like a whole mess of stuff, like a huge, big long to do list. But then it seems like the, the solution, there's probably like three solutions, right? There's a solution of do nothing, keep doing what you're doing, and be frustrated about the free traffic you're not getting. It seems like option two is to try to do some of this yourself. But you know, there's like 520 things to do just this month with SEO. And it seems like the third option is maybe go to a company such as yourself where you say, you know, this month, here's what's doable and we'll put a person on it, we'll put a team on it, and we'll get to these tasks and show you some results. And so like, what are your thoughts on this? What are your thoughts on just making sense of all these Google changes since 2007? And what are your thoughts on people just being overwhelmed with all the things that could be done? Well, there's a lot you could automate. So the more you could automate, the easier life is going to be using tools like Zapier or Zapier is a great tool where you say, all right, anytime I post on my own blog, share it on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Pinterest, and pretty much does it for you. It's not going to make it perfect. You might have to add some hashtags and things like that, but at least it kind of sets the foundation to save time. But there is a lot that needs to be done when you're doing content and publishing it out there and getting all the different platforms and making sure like if you do a podcast episode, you want to share it on all the social media sites, probably want to share it on your own website. And there's ways to kind of automate some of those tasks. Not completely, but anything to help you save time is going to make you more efficient so you can focus on the more important things, creating good content, creating good videos, creating good podcasts, or whatever content you're putting out there. But once it's out there, it takes a little bit of time to get that exposure, but a little bit of time is much less than the time that you invested creating that content. So if you're just creating content and throwing it up there and hoping people find it, it might work, might not work. But if you spend the extra time to really promote it, that's where you spend an extra 30 minutes promoting it. You're going to see that difference in the number of views, traffic, likes, comments, whatever, wherever you're posting it. But you'll see that engagement and people are going to stick and resonate more with it. So does take time. And unfortunately there's no little shortcuts. But there are tools. Like Zapier is a great free tool, and there's other tools that could help kind of automate some of those tasks. But you do need to spend the time and you need to learn them and stay up to date with what Google wants you to do. Because Google changes every single day. So what works today doesn't necessarily work tomorrow. For the most part it will, but Google changes all the time, so you never know what they're going to look for. But the main thing they're doing is they're trying to stop spam. So if you're doing anything that seems shady or too good to be true or like a shortcut that potentially could get you in trouble with Google. But if you're not doing anything that seems weird or sketchy, then you only have to worry too much about the algorithm updates. Except for sometimes we'll tell you, like, all right, if your website's not mobile friendly, we're not going to show you on mobile devices back in like 2013. So that was a sign, like, hey, if you're not mobile friendly, Google's not going to show you on mobile devices. And nowadays that's over half the traffic comes from mobile. So most websites are responsive mobile friendly nowadays. But there's tools that will let you check, like the Google Mobile Friendly test tool, and it'll show you if a website's mobile friendly or not to Google, because it might Be mobile friendly on your phone. But Google might say the fonts are too unique or the colors are too close to one another. That won't be mobile friendly. And I've seen that happen before. So it's a little nuances that you have to check all that stuff. But for the most part, if you're not doing anything weird or sketchy, then you don't have to worry too much about algorithm updates. But it is good to try to stay up to date. Talk to other Webmasters or other people that do SEO or other people in your industry or join forums or Facebook groups, or read blogs or listen to podcasts and just try to learn as much as you can to just be up to date. Because Google doesn't really tell you when they make those changes because they don't want you to know. They want you to. They don't want you doing SEO. They want you to run paid ads. That's how they make all their money. So they have to have the organic, the SEO listings. Because we went on Google and it's just all ads. You'd be like, no, I'm going on bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo or Brave or different search engine. But they have to have that balance. But they don't really like SEO. They want you to spend that money on paid ads. Those are some good insights that, yeah, like they don't want you to do SEO, they want you to do paid ads. And so it's sort of that moving target. But then there are those tools available, like that Google Webmaster console. That's a great tip because. And I didn't even know that, that your your website could look great on a phone. But, but then according to Google, they might say, oh, well, the colors aren't contrasted enough or the font's not what we want. And that's really good to know. And every now and then I get one of those errors like, oh, such and such website isn't mobile friendly. And I'm like what is that? And like, I don't always check because I'm just like, oh, I know that I'm using whatever WordPress theme, but maybe it's a WordPress theme from like, you know, five, 10 years ago. And now I know from you that I need to check that because there might be some specific issue that's easily fixable, but, but it's also easy not to fix it and let it go by the wayside. Next thing you know, you're not even being shown in the search results for mobile. So that, that is a good insight. And another good insight because I'm just trying to, you know, digest what, what you've been saying. Cause it was all really great is you're saying that there's your, there's the content side of things, right? You put all this work and effort into content and then you also need to pay attention to the distribution and that a lot of that can be automated. Like with Zapier, where you make your blog post, it checks your RSS feed, goes to these social profiles. But then also there's something in there that you said it was very helpful. Where you said like, there was, you said kind of like have a checklist of like where you want your post to end up and maybe make adjustments and hashtags. But what was really great is you said like budget like 30 minutes of time with every post, like have a set block of time just to like get it out there. Because it's so easy, it's so tempting to just say, cool, I made my blog post for the week. Now I'm going to go answer some emails and do some customer service or some, or manage my team or something else. And there's that really important aspect there of just the, the marketing of your content. And then also you mentioned how important it is to do that networking, to be on, on these social networks. Not just to play around and read, but also to participate and to you know, get some of these joint ventures worked out. And you know it's a it's a two way street, right? You want links back, you want to link to others and you don't want to just be some irrelevant person who's not existing. And also that ties exactly in with you being here on a podcast and doing that part of the networking. And with podcasting it's fun to jump into stories, right? You've kind of given us some kind of like, you know, facts and ideas. But stories are what are kind of the more interesting things because it shows what, what you do and the people that you help. So what comes to mind as far as like a case study or a success story or something that you guys at SEO Optimizers have had a lot of fun with. One recently been working with them for a few years but helping out a fashion leveling company and they make fashion for like music events and festivals. So it's a little bit more niche. The more niche it is, the less competition, the more realistic it is to be able to rank. Because just ranking for like fashion or women's clothing, hyper competitive. But if you can find something unique niche about your business, that's going to always, always help out. So with them worked with them, went on their website, made changes to their structure and their hierarchy of their different categories or collections since they were on Shopify, because that's a big part of your website, is how you organize it, how you structure it, helps Google and search engines find and really understand what that website's about. Because search engines are just robots and they get lost. So the easier you make it for them to find that content, know what that content really is supposed to be about, the more they're reward you. And by doing that, they pretty much shot up the rankings because they're a pretty big brand. They had a good backlink profile already built up, so they had some trust with Google, but Google just kind of got stuck with the website. They had a lot of duplicate page or duplicate categories where they were just kind of competing against themselves. This is another thing you have to realize, like if you have pages that are about the same topic now, you're your own competitor, where you're just cannibalizing your results and merging those pages together that let Google know, okay, this is the main page. All these other ones are duplicates. Let's redirect the old ones to the new one or the main one that we're going to keep as a central hub. So again, this is kind of getting a little technical, but you do need to go in and make sure that Google's able to read that website because they're having trouble reading the website, they're going to get stuck, lost and confused and they're not going to know what keywords to rank you for. So by making those changes, Google is able to better read their website and shop them up to pretty much the top position. Number one, number two, number three for almost all their keywords that are really competitive keywords where before they're on page two, page three. So they were close to being on page one. It's just they needed that little bump of the trust from or a little bump of Google reading their website better and me building some new backlinks to just keep that growth going. Because to Google a normal website would always be having some backlinks being sent it. So building backlinks by finding other sites, I relate to what they're doing. So with them they were a clothing fashion website. So finding anything related to fashion, clothing, those types of websites, and trying to build relationships with those webmasters to see potentially if there's like a partnership or if we could give like free product to somebody as an influencer and they write a blog post about it on their website and give us a clickable link. So it's lots of different ways to build backlinks and it's just you want to really get on sites. I relate to what you're doing. That's a big part of SEO, is relevancy. The more related the backlinks are to your website, the better off you're going to be. The more related those keywords are on your website to what someone's searching on Google, the more likely Google's going to show you for all that, for that keyword. So just making sure everything ties together. Got them up there and they saw sales shot up. Because we're tracking everything through Google Analytics to look at how much traffic, how much revenue they're getting. Because we could tie it directly there. They also have a store, it's a little tougher to tie revenue to that. But you could track like in store conversions and things like that with geotargeting a radius mainly through cell phones. So they could see if your cell phone, you walk into that store, they could track that as a conversion. Doesn't show how much they spent. But all that just helps out because sometimes it gets tough with tracking if there's. Sometimes you gotta get creative. Figure I, if I can't track revenue specifically if it's like an in store physical purchase, what other alternatives are there because you want to track those conversions. That way you could show what's really going on because traffic is great, but traffic is just half battle once people get to your website to get them to buy. And that's a whole another aspect where it's conversion rate optimization, optimizing that website for conversions where then we go in and look at the website, try to figure out, all right, maybe we should move the add to cart but in a little bit higher. Change the add to cart to buy now or do all this A B testing because you never know what's going to work until you test. And then once you see something that works like maybe add to cart, change it to buy now. That works better. All right, let's see if changing the color of the buy now button a little bit darker shade of orange or whatever the color is. Let's see how that affects conversions. Because there is no perfect website. You always want to be Testing to maximize the value of every potential traffic visitor to get them to convert into a client, phone call, email, whatever that conversion goal is that you're focused on. Amazing. And it's a lot of fun just hearing how passionate you are and just hearing about just taking all these quick dips into the geeky technical aspects of it and also kind of just experiencing a little bit of how it sometimes seems to be like an art and a science. Right. With you and your team doing some of this SEO work, like it's easy enough to say like oh well, like you know, I'm mobile responsive, I have a fast page load time, I have a sitemap file. But then like you, you as someone who's seen, seen everything, you might look at a site and be like, oh well the problem is that the, the organization, the hierarchy needs, needs to be a little bit different or like some like structured marker or something like that to make Google more happy. I can see how you can have a lot of fun solving these problems. And like you said doing the outreach to get these backlinks and just figuring out like what's that, that list of all those similar sites in the space to just keep reaching out and develop these relationships. Whereas again, if some company was trying to do this themselves and they were just like sending an email here and there or just seeing what comes their way, that just seems like little drips and drabs of what could be done. But then if there's someone like you and your team who is like looking at like you know, dozens or hundreds of, of you know, websites per day or like sending out on a consistent basis some of these emails and replying and following up and like you said, conversion rate optimization and moving a button, changing a color, changing the wording and then measuring that and seeing what the difference is, looking at the, the geotargeting and how the different kinds of like in store sale or website sale, I can see how you can have a lot of fun solving these hard problems. And it always seems like you solve one problem and it opens up even new, better problems for you to solve. But, but that's part of entrepreneurship, right? And that seems like it can be a lot of fun. And so many people out there just maybe treat SEO as like a one time thing or an every now and then thing or they stop. And I just, I like how with you there's just, there's always more detail, there's always something more to try. Like you said, there's never a perfect website. There's always just something new that that could be done. And so with all of your Like you know, multiple decades of SEO, you said that you've been at this since 2007. You've seen so much change. Is there anything you feel like sharing that has surprised you about Google and SEO that was just like completely, like just, you know, completely new for you? I mean, lots of stuff that was new that I didn't really expect coming up. But I mean like AI, a big one. That one I don't think anyone expected coming up. And just trying to figure out what's going to happen with AI. Are they going to incorporate into the search results? Because that might be something that. Well, Bing's doing that currently and Google is competing against Bing. They don't want to lose that market share, so they're going to do anything they can to hold on to it. But we'll have to see how that's going to happen. That one's pretty interesting. Happened kind of really quickly and it's just been exponential how fast it's been growing with AI and it's not slowing down and just have to see how that's going to work out and how it's going to come to play with that. But like that's the biggest thing. Everything else is kind of makes sense that Google's doing. Like if your website loads slowly, they're not going to rank you as high because they want a good user experience. If you're searching on Google and you click on a website, it takes like 10 seconds, especially on mobile, you're going to be like, no, I'm hitting that back button. So stuff like that, or making sure your website looks mobile friendly, like cleaning up spam, making sure you're not doing anything, like any weird stuff to build backlinks, all that stuff makes sense. It's just, yeah, just really trying to figure out what's going to happen with this AI stuff. That's one where it's a little black box of who knows what's going to happen? Is it going to. Are they going to incorporate into search results? Are people going to use it more than Google? Is that going to take over? But we'll just have to see and wait to see what happens. And I mean, do you have any guesses or do you think, is there anything we can do to prepare? Yeah, I don't know. It's tough because it changes so quickly. So if Google puts in search results, they might leave it there, they might take it away. They're testing so you Never really know, but for the most part, Google's still going to be there, but we'll just have to see what it's going to do and how it's going to change. And might change its look and feel a little bit in the future, but probably still will be websites. Because you can't do everything on AI. You can't just buy stuff yet on AI, so for E commerce, can't really do that or a lot of stuff it can't do. It's more good for just like questions and answers. Right? And I think about that all the time when there's all these promises about AI. And I mean I have been amazed by things like ChatGPT. But on the other hand, when I open the front page of YouTube or Amazon or something like that, I only see like 10 to 20% of like, what I really want. And I'm like, okay, as soon as they get that dialed in, as soon as I open up the Netflix screen, I don't have to click through and I see like, everything is like what I want. Or whenever whenever Amazon figures out that program where they order things for you and just deliver them, guessing about what they think you'll need. As soon as that's figured out, then I'll be like, even more impressed on another level. But but in the meantime, I'm like, okay, like, we're not quite there yet, but what is good even about just, you know, these ideas that you're throwing out? It seems like it's really valuable to tap into the, the curiosity factor. And for someone out there to say, you know, oh, there's so much to know with SEO, like, I don't want to know all of it, but it's, it seems like it's valuable to at least be aware of a lot of these concepts, even if they're not, they're not capable of implementing it themselves. Even if they want to have your company and your team do it. It seems like it's helpful just to like, always be exposing yourself to this information, right? To what changes are happening with SEO and with AI. That way you don't have to play catch up. And even if you don't understand it all or you can't use it all, at least it'll be just kind of going through your head and at least you'll just be a part of it. You'll be, be looking at it. Yep. It helps to be on top of it, be ready and just constantly be ready to keep learning. Because with digital, there is no Constant, just changing all the time. So it's gotta be ready and just stay up to date with all the changes and just be prepared for something that just a curveball be thrown at you and just gotta adapt and adjust with it and just figure out, all right, now, how do I go? How do I keep my business afloat? Or what do I do now to appease Google or whatever platform search engines. Out there, whoever takes over in, in the coming decades? And, and it can be fun, and it can be. If you look at your other competitors who refuse to learn, who refuse to change, who want to be the, the Blockbuster or the taxi company, then they can go by the wayside while you continue to remain in business. And so if a company or, or a person out there says, okay, I, I know now that I need to take this SEO idea seriously and I need to talk with Brandon and his team at SEO Optimizers to get some of this stuff figured out. They might say, I like what he did with the fashion company. He, he did this and this and this and fixed up their website, fixed up their, their outreach and their backlinks. And I'd like something similar. How does somebody know if their company is a good fit for your agency? And if they are, how do they contact you? Yeah the best would be, well, I create a special gift for everybody. So anyone listening or watching, if they go to my website at SEO optimizers. Com, that's S E O O P T I I z e r s.com forward slash gift. They could find that there, along with my contact information and a bunch of classes I've done over the years I've thrown up for free. So you can see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about. And also they want to book some time on my calendar. I'm happy to check out their website from an SEO point of view for free. And they could book some time there as well. Very nice. That's seooptimizers.com gift, or where you can check out what Brandon has for you, where you can get that little bit of free training. You can use that contact information to then take the next step. And then also you can find them all over social media at Brandon Leibowitz. I want to spell out his last name for the AI or the Google gods or the voice search or who knows, whatever. That's Brandon. L E I B O W I T Z Brandon leibowitz from SEO optimizers.com and so as we're wrapping up our conversation here. Brandon you've been doing sear search search engine SEO for 15 plus years. If you could tell your younger self who is just then jumping into search engine optimization, is there any advice you'd give your past self about all this? Probably getting mentors sooner than later and just asking for help from other people that have ran businesses. It doesn't have to be SEO or whatever you're doing, but just anybody that has some experience, some knowledge that you could feed off. And there's plenty of website or ways to get mentors like networking events and talking to other people. Or if you can't find one, There's a website, score.org where they'll connect you with a mentor. And now with everything being online, you don't have to be in the physical city that they're in. And that's a great way to find someone that's going to help just you learn from their mistakes and grow from what's worked and help them in the past and really just help you grow much quicker. So that's something I wish I did more. I have mentors use them in the past, but I just wish I'd really jumped in earlier because that would really help grow much faster would a shortcut. A lot of time for sure. So. So score.org I love that. I haven't heard of that. And then SEO optimizers.com the advice is to get a mentor because you can't learn karate from reading a book and you can't learn how to drive a car from watching YouTube. Sometimes you need that actual physical person to get you to where you need to go. And if SEO is the place where you're stuck or the place where you want to get your business more dialed in, use that free traffic, that free real estate from the you to go right now is seooptimizers.com gift. And thank you very much, Brandon for showing up and just blowing our minds and really impressing us with your SEO knowledge. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me on today.