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Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advice Line: What To Do When Your SEO Traffic Drops (Matt Hylland)
00:47:33
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Transcript76 lines
- [00:00]
Kendra
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Today's guest is Matt from Arnold Moat Wealth Management. His team of six has been helping clients transition into retirement for eight years. Their current revenue is a million dollars per year, and they want to grow to $2 million per year in the next five years. Let's jump in and see how we can help them improve their marketing to make progress towards this goal. Welcome to the show. We have an amazing conversation ahead today for you to get started. Can you share your name, firm, and location with us today?
- [00:39]
Matt
Yeah, my name is Matt Hilland I'm with Arnold and Moat Wealth Management, and we're out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
- [00:45]
Kendra
All right, awesome. And could you share with us also that big question that you want to jump into today with Taylor and I?
- [00:51]
Matt
Yeah. My big question was on SEO. It's been, I think, really good for us in how it's brought traffic and prospects to us, but I see it as this potential black hole for time and not knowing how much time is responsible to spend on it. What's good enough, some things to do to try to recover maybe lost traffic or rankings and when to throw in the towel. And just how you guys think about budgeting your time on SEO with everything else that you can do too.
- [01:23]
Kendra
I think this is an amazing question because I think even if you aren't an advisor who is investing in SEO, I think this question comes up across all marketing channels. How much time to put in? You know, sometimes it can feel like a black hole. The first question I want to ask you is just to understand what marketing activities is your firm doing right now. You mentioned SEO. Is there anything else or are you guys all in on SEO?
- [01:45]
Matt
Yeah, SEO is the big one. You know, I view it as kind of our top of funnel marketing that we do. We also do about $1,000 a month in Google Ads, and so that turns into some real numbers also. And then, you know, for trying to nurture leads, there's kind of email marketing that I view as kind of a middle of the funnel. And we do some YouTube also that also I just see as kind of nurturing prospects, helping them get to know us a little bit and know what to expect, working with us before they're ready to schedule a meeting to actually talk with us.
- [02:23]
Kendra
Okay, great. And you mentioned in the info you sent us that you have had a bit of a traffic decline. Could you share a little bit about what the traffic you were getting looks like and what it's dropped to?
- [02:35]
Matt
Yeah, I Mean like whole year numbers, 20, 23, you know, the January to December, we had 122,000 visitors to our site. And this year, you know, December's a big month. Just with, with year end stuff, it's going to be around 75,000.
- [02:53]
Kendra
Okay, great. And with that, for the traffic that you're getting, are you noticing that it's going to a few kind of core posts or is that splintered out across a bunch of different posts from a traffic perspective?
- [03:06]
Matt
Yeah, it's. I mean there's definitely a few that are the bigger ones. You know, I look through just for calendar year and I think there's 18 posts that got more than like 700 people to them this year. So there's some, you know, spread out a little bit, but there's definitely, you know, our top five are for sure, 50%, you know, probably 75% of that total traffic.
- [03:33]
Kendra
Okay, awesome. And then we were talking about, you said, you know, these used to convert more effectively for our firm. Our. Are we talking about from a conversion standpoint, a new client, a new email subscriber or something else? Like, what does conversion look like in your mind?
- [03:48]
Matt
I misused the word conversion in that, you know, at first I was thinking traffic, which, you know, is not. So I should have just said kind of. We've definitely seen a decline in traffic coming to the website. Blog posts that used to bring in traffic just aren't bringing in as much anymore. And yeah, have seen, you know, a little bit of a decline in prospect meetings also. Some of that was intentional to slow things down because 2023 was too much. So we've kind of put our pricing right up front and you know, so there's a lot going on. I'm not concerned about the number of prospects as much as just knowing, you know, seeing that, that decline in traffic and wondering, you know, how much effort should be done to kind of recover that. And ways, you know, simple ways that you guys would start, you know, looking at troubleshooting some of this.
- [04:42]
Kendra
Two more questions here, Taylor, and then I'll bounce it over to you. For the content, you know, process and the content decay that you're seeing, do you have a system in place to help you identify and update those performing posts? Like what are you currently doing to keep those fresh and updated?
- [04:58]
Matt
Yeah, so we have a, it's a trello board where each post has a card that I set reminder dates on on, you know, something usually like 60 days, 90 days and then a longer term one to just go in and check traffic, check Standings, you know, rankings for these and see what's going on. I've backed off on some of that though, because it was becoming time intensive and, you know, that's something I'm happy to hear would be good. But I've kind of backed off on that just because it turned into a full time job. We do generally two to three posts a month and so just over here, five years, it's turned into a lot of, of updating and, and looking at, you know, many different blog posts and I got a little overwhelmed with it.
- [05:44]
Kendra
Yeah, that makes sense. And with that amount of content output, do you guys have anyone that you lean on from like an SEO consultant standpoint that can help you identify, you know, the specific technical pieces of those posts that need to be updated so you see that traffic go down. Are you bringing anyone in to give you a little bit more of the technical expertise or really trying to manage that yourself?
- [06:05]
Matt
We have not. It's been myself and you know, I think I saw SEO when I was getting started as a really good thing when you have lots of time and not a lot of money. And so part of this is me questioning just, you know, eventually, you know, as my time is more valuable now and you know, is the right thing for me to spend 15 hours a week or whatever tracking blog post traffic and stuff. And so I rely on some tools that are out there just to, you know, help optimize things and some Google search console reports and things like that just to try to stay up to date on what's going on.
- [06:42]
Kendra
But that makes a lot of sense. And just to confirm the traffic has went down, but the quality of prospects continues to be good. You haven't seen a change or drastic impact there, correct?
- [06:52]
Matt
Correct. Yeah, it's been good. In 2023, we did about 100 prospect meetings and we wanted to slow that down. It'll be kind of upper 40s for this year and I think. And that's okay. That's not what keeps me up at night. Just because they're. We're getting the same qualified prospects and a lot less, you know, unqualified.
- [07:15]
Kendra
So definitely. Taylor, what's coming up for you?
- [07:17]
Taylor
Matt, you mentioned SEO being top of funnel. And for any listeners that have listened to us talk about the marketing funnel, have heard one of us say, you know, you can't expect your search engine optimized blog post to convert a total stranger into a cl. Right. It's just its job is to bring awareness to you and your firm. Talk to us about what the journey looks like from an SEO standpoint, since that's what we're primarily talking about today. You've got an SEO optimized blog post and well, maybe first, what is that most trafficked blog post? What is the title? What is the topic? And then talk to us about the journey of that total stranger finding that blog post and then how do they ultimately end up on your calendar? Talk us through each stage of that funnel and what that looks like.
- [08:01]
Matt
Yeah, so one really popular blog post is a long guide on Roth conversions. And so it's One of those 2,500 Word Word blog posts, lots of images. And so we rely a lot on getting them to sign up to our newsletter, our email newsletter. And you know, so that's a success if I can get someone from Google in who, you know, the point of the blog post is hopefully show them some things they weren't thinking about. So that post is, you know, trying to be educational, trying to go a little bit deeper and trying to catch someone who thinks, you know, hey, there is something here where I can see value. And Matt knows something that I was wasn't keen on for the Roth conversion analysis. And yep, signing up to the newsletter. So there's a few call outs there, whether it's pop ups or we embed videos a lot and have a pop up over those embedded videos to get them to sign up some kind of lead magnets in certain respects. And so you know, some posts on like tax brackets will use. Taylor, I think you've mentioned kind of the FP Pathfinder resources. We've done that for a few things, but yeah, by and large it's, it's an email pop up over our videos is, is the big item that's driving people to our newsletter.
- [09:25]
Taylor
Sure, sure. In today's episode that published on the podcast about referrals, you know, we talked about how most marketing activities are evolving, right. That like we can't just keep doing the same thing. We can't just ask somebody to give us their email address in return for joining a newsletter that we have to offer more than that. Matt, I know that you're actually doing something pretty unique and interesting, so I want you to share it with everybody. When somebody lands on that Roth conversion blog post, you just, you know, gently mention there that you've got this pop up over a video. But there's a little bit more to capturing that total stranger that found that Roth conversion blog post. They see this video that's embedded on that post, but you're doing something kind of clever and you've had a lot of success converting them to an email subscriber. Talk to us about that. The software you're using just because I think it is interesting and unique and you have had success with it.
- [10:14]
Matt
Sure, yeah. So we, you know, host all of our videos just on YouTube just because that's easy, especially working with WordPress to embed. And then we use another tool on top of that called Convert Player that allows us to have a pop up on the video. And so what someone sees when they're on our website and clicks play on the video is a pop up there that, you know, gives a little pitch on why to join our newsletter and if they enter their email address that Convert Player tool works with in our case ConvertKit for the email marketing and applying tags in ConvertKit to the topic that they came to our website on. So if someone hit play on that Roth conversion video, we know in ConvertKit that they came to us through Roth conversions and then have a special follow up series that, you know, we know they're, they're tax aware, they're tax conscious, taxes are a big pain point. And so our email newsletter is going to focus a lot on things like probably irmaa, you know, when to do Roth conversions, when not to. It's not going to talk about claiming your child as a dependent on your tax return or something like that, you know, might be off base for them.
- [11:34]
Taylor
So yeah, I mean you have a really nicely stitched together funnel here. I want to make sure everybody's hearing this, that this total stranger is going to Google and they're typing in something around Roth conversions. What is Roth conversion? Should I do a Roth conversion? Some percentage of them are landing on this blog post that you wrote on Roth conversions. They are liking what they're reading. And then they see this video that you've embedded on that blog post to learn more about Roth conversions in a video format. And you say, well if you want to watch this video, you need to put in your email address. They enter their email address. Now they're in your email marketing platform, which is ConvertKit. And you could use anything by the way, you don't have to use ConvertKit here, but now they're in ConvertKit, which is your email marketing platform. They're automatically tagged as, as you know, a Roth conversion, you know, blog post reader, however you, you tag them but you know where they came from. And then you've got this automated sequence that they go through and convert kit. I don't know exactly how many emails it is, but they're going to get a series of automated emails from you. You know, something around tax planning and retirement. I'm sure you touch on Roth conversions, like you said, maybe there's something about Irma in there. And then talk to us now at the very bottom of the funnel. So they went through that whole funnel like, wow, this is amazing content. This, you know, is addressing a lot of my pain points. How do you actually convert that person that was a total stranger on the Internet that used SEO to find you? How do they end up on your calendar for an intro call?
- [12:55]
Matt
Yeah, it's eventually a call to action in the final email sequence there. Our, I believe it's the fifth email is the final one there that is really just, hey, this, you've seen what we do. Here's our fees, here's our calendar link and try to get them. And they do, you know, even if they don't click that, they stay on our monthly newsletter. And so, you know, it's very common that just takes people a little longer. And so we still engage with them. We have that monthly newsletter knowing that there's some, a lot of people that might be on the fence still reading it, where we're, you know, showing topics that we're talking with clients about and showing value. But yeah, it's really hoping that after a couple weeks or a few weeks, they get that call to action and have seen enough knowing that, you know, we're, we're knowledgeable and, and what services we offer.
- [13:53]
Taylor
Yeah, no, I mean, I think you, you nailed the funnel. You've got one single top of funnel activity. The, you know, search engine optimization optimized blog post. You've got the middle of the funnel, your email marketing, you've got a nice sequence when they join the email list so they don't have to wait to hear for a month. They're going to hear from you every day or every week for a period of time and then you've got that final kind of big ask email. If they don't take action, fine, they're still on your email newsletter. They're going to receive your newsletter, whatever the cadence and frequency is. And I'm sure there's some additional asks along the way periodically throughout the year. So I mean, you've, you've nailed a, a great funnel here. So one of my questions is you said that traffic has significantly dropped and I can see the back end of your website. I use an SEO tool, so I can see, you know, the history of your traffic. So I can see that traffic is significantly dropped. But you said traffic is dropped, but we're still getting the same number of high quality prospects. So something doesn't quite add up there. Where are these high quality prospects coming from? If there's a significant drop in search engine optimization and people finding you, they must be finding you somewhere else.
- [14:55]
Matt
There are. Yeah. And so I think, you know, it's, it's easy to focus on. For me, it's too easy to focus on that traffic number. And I know that probably shouldn't be the ultimate thing to focus on. We do get prospects from wide variety, you know, just referrals. And we've stepped up Google Ads just as SEO traffic has come down a little bit. So that's helped fill, fill a little hole in there also. And so, yeah, but it would be, you know, if in a perfect world here we could get that traffic back, we could save some money on Google Ads. And you know, we're also, if we're in a position to grow a little bit, that prospect number could increase a little bit too. And I think, sure. That we're not quite seeing, you know, 100 prospect meetings was too much. We could do a little more than 40, 50, what, what we'll do this year. And so if that's helpful.
- [15:51]
Taylor
Yeah, yeah, no, it's really helpful. And you know, I heard you say, I don't know if I should be focusing on, on traffic. If that's a distraction. I want to emphasize it's absolutely okay to obsess over the traffic to these blog posts because SEO is your primary top of funnel activity. You identified that and you're setting proper expectations. Your expectation is not that somebody finds this blog post and becomes a client. Your expectation is, you know, I'm, you know, up there on the first page of Google somewhere. I'm getting an appropriate amount of traffic for that blog post and the amount of volume it typically gets. I'm getting the visibility that I want to get and in turn, I know a certain percentage of them will join my email list and so on. If you're seeing traffic start to drop, absolutely you should pay attention to that and identify what's happening and how can I repair and recover that traffic. Where I think a lot of people get stuck is their expectations are wrong. Their expectations are more traffic equals more clients. And that's not necessarily the case. But yeah, in your case, absolutely, we should be focusing on traffic. It's an important part of your marketing. Funnel. I know you want to talk about metrics and we'll get into that a little bit. I just Want to clarify one thing? You mentioned in 2023, 122,000 site visitors. Site visitors. Total site visitors is different than organic traffic. Site visitors, they could be coming from social media posts. They could be coming from just somebody shared your website or blog post through, you know, an email. They could be clicking on an email from ConvertKit to end up on your website. So are you talking about just total site visitors, no matter where they came from, or are you talking about pure organic traffic, meaning they went to Google, they typed in some keyword, and land on the blog post?
- [17:29]
Matt
Yeah, I'm looking at in Google Analytics the organic search. Okay. Number. So which is the majority? You know, we also had 10,000 direct, a little more than a thousand for paid search, thousand for referrals. But yeah, so this, that's what's showing up as organic search.
- [17:47]
Taylor
And okay, so your actual total site visitors is a lot more. Especially because you're. You're paying for Google Ads.
- [17:52]
Matt
Yeah. Yep. Okay.
- [17:53]
Taylor
Okay, good. Kendra, what else is on your mind before we start kind of attacking this and providing some. Some recommendations?
- [17:59]
Kendra
So the first question I want to ask with the Google Ads is how much are you spending per month?
- [18:04]
Matt
A thousand dollars.
- [18:06]
Kendra
Okay. And when did you start spending money on those ads?
- [18:11]
Matt
We've spent a little bit, you know, a few hundred dollars a month for a couple years just to have something out there, mostly on local searches. You know, within a certain radius of us, we've spent more recently. We're a flat fee firm and so we're spending more now to try to get in front of some flat fee advisor searches nationally. Just being where we are in Iowa, I think we find that we can be competitive pricing. You know, if someone in New York is looking for a flat fee advisor, we're comfortable working remote and that we can be pretty competitive on price. And so most of that increased budget is in the last nine months or so where it probably a little more than doubled.
- [18:59]
Kendra
And where are you sending this traffic when you put the ad out?
- [19:04]
Matt
Mostly to our services page on our website.
- [19:07]
Kendra
The reason why I'm asking is because it makes sense to me that a lever you might pull is Google Ads. And Google Ads, just like SEO, requires its own marketing funnel because it can be a good awareness tool to put you in front of the right people. But a very, very, very small percentage those people are going to be ready to convert into clients. Because one of the bigger questions you had here is how much effort should I put into organic search? Kind of my first takeaway here is if search is the core kind of marketing funnel that you've built here. And it's, it's actually working pretty well because we're not seeing this change in the quality of prospects. Our first question is where could we cut a few things so you feel a little bit lighter in. My first thought goes to one, I'd be looking at the Google Ads. I have a current client, they first came onto me and they were spending a couple thousand dollars a month. And the reality is if you're not sending them to some kind of page built just for ads to capture that email, you essentially have the same thing happening with your SEO post, but you have no middle funnel to convert them. So with this client of mine, we turned off their ads and I very specific, I watched their traffic plummet. I saw no change in their schedule of calls. In fact, I actually saw less unqualified because my theory was I think we're getting eyeballs to the website, which is top of funnel works, but we're not actually moving them through the process. So it didn't actually really impact their, you know, new clients. So that's just something that you could take a look at. The second thing there that I saw was also YouTube. I'm really curious, like how much time are you putting into that? Is, is that taking up much of your time? Because like, I see a couple things here that we could potentially trim off. So you feel one, you get some money back that you could potentially invest in someone to come in with some SEO expertise to really look at this more detailed, but also some time and energy. So you feel like you have time to invest in recapturing some of that traffic.
- [21:03]
Matt
Yeah, yeah. With YouTube that came up because we've, since COVID we've started doing regular webinars for clients and so we'd record them and, and we just kind of built up this library of recordings already and so we'd publish them on YouTube just so clients could access them later. And now I try to save time by, you know, most blog posts are also videos out there and the text for the blog post starts as the transcript of the video. And then do some editing for just readability for SEO. But I try to make it a little efficient like that. Where I don't consider YouTube a full time part of my marketing hours. It's, it's really there just to kind of help the website out with being able to embed videos really easily. And because most of this we're, we're doing anyway kind of the recording the video is how I get the content together and then use the transcript for the blog.
- [22:07]
Kendra
So, and how are you choosing. You have two to three posts a month going out. How are you choosing those topics for those posts and making sure that there's search traffic and the keyword difficulty is something that you could compete for.
- [22:19]
Matt
Yeah. So those posts to a month are shorter posts. So they're also just two minute videos or so that are just made to be on a much more specific topic. Maybe just one single question. And so for example, you know, like a IRMAA type of post. We're not going to have a two minute video on irmaa. It's going to be something like how do I appeal my IRMA surcharge? And. And then behind the scenes I kind of see it as I think it's called like the pillar page strategy where we have a 2,000 word post on IRMAA and then there's lots of smaller posts that kind of link up to it on these shorter topics. And so I've gotten away from trying to plan topics based on traffic as much as I used to because now just again, partially as this is time and just I could, I feel like I was spending hours trying to get together 8 topics for videos and I wasn't really seeing a return in that time when we get enough questions from clients that I can come up with eight video topics, you know, right now. And then what I've done instead is kind of published the transcript of the video. Then 30 or 60 days later, look in Google Search console and see if it's starting to rank at all for, for certain search terms and then kind of optimize the post for those search terms. So I guess I've kind of changed up a little bit more the effort, SEO effort is on the back end or afterwards it's less effort up front to find a list of topics.
- [24:05]
Kendra
Great. I want to stop you right there because I think you just gave us some really good information on kind of how you're building this, why you might be burning out. One follow up question here and then I think, Taylor, I'd love to start kind of walking through what we suggest next. How big is your current email list?
- [24:20]
Matt
1400 emails.
- [24:22]
Kendra
Okay, cool. Taylor, where do you think as we start to, you know, map out how he should look at focusing his time, how much time he should put into organic search and the changes that are happening.
- [24:32]
Taylor
Yeah, I do have two more questions. I think we have a lot of questions.
- [24:36]
Kendra
So much. I'm excited.
- [24:37]
Taylor
Yeah, yeah, no, it's all really good stuff, Matt. If, if you wanted to just like really grow, really ramp things up in 2025, you know, you had the capacity to do so, you had enough team members, you were just like ready to go. How much would you be willing to invest in your marketing dollar wise for the entire year?
- [24:54]
Matt
Yeah, the money is, I mean, just between, let's see, like if you knew.
- [24:58]
Taylor
It was going to a good use.
- [25:00]
Matt
Yeah, it could be high. You know, just thinking what we're about a million dollars in revenue and so knowing, you know, I feel like that 2% metric that's out there, I know that's low and yeah, you know, that's more than something we'd entertain.
- [25:15]
Taylor
It sounds like you're open to investing more than a thousand dollars per month.
- [25:19]
Matt
Yeah, I see the value in investing in this for sure.
- [25:22]
Taylor
Okay. And then I know we didn't really get into today kind of your, your perfect client, your ideal client. I know on your website you, you kind of, you do cast a pretty wide net. You guys do flat fee planning and you know, you are pretty accessible for a lot of different people. So we don't really need to get in like your ideal and all the pain points that we typically get into. But I am curious, like, what percentage of your prospects are local versus national prospects? People reaching out, scheduling calls.
- [25:49]
Matt
Yeah, right off at roughly 50, 50. Just, you know, to get something in the ballpark.
- [25:54]
Taylor
Do you see the conversion rate being higher with local versus national or do you see any difference?
- [26:00]
Matt
Yes, I think local has just been tough to, to match. When we can sit down face to face, have someone in our office here that has a higher close rate. Okay.
- [26:10]
Taylor
Yeah, I do think, you know, if you want to avoid this potential burnout, you want to get more focused, you want to have more predictable marketing success. I think Kendra hit the nail on the head. We got to start to kind of get more focus and start to push some of these things to the side. The alternative is, you know, we spend a lot of money to bring experts in to fill some of these gaps. But let's just set that to aside for the moment and try to get a little bit more focused here. The top traffic posts that I'm seeing on my end are all local. The Iowa inheritance tax changes, there's some income tax changes. You've got a couple great blog posts that are local. Now the volume of those posts of the, the average number of people going to Google and typing in inheritance tax, Iowa is only 200 people per month. So somebody might look at that, say it's only 200 people per month. Like you're not going to capture all that traffic. You might only capture, you know, maybe at best half of that traffic, maybe. So you're only going to Capture, you know, 50 to 100 of those people per month. You may think, well, that's not very much. But the quality of these people is much more important than the quantity. So if we start to go all in, you know what, like, we've got some great content for local people in Iowa. We're having success there. Let's just triple down on local now. We don't have to get really focused on thousands and thousands and thousands of site visitors. It might be 500, it might be a thousand. Just really amazing, high quality local people who we know we're going to have a lot of success with. So I think there's a decision to be made there. Do I want to triple down on local SEO because you already have a lot of great traction there, or do I want to compete with these big national keywords? I mean, it's no surprise you're having trouble competing for Roth conversions. It's no surprise you're having trouble competing for, you know, Medicare, IRMAA brackets. I mean, these are really challenging, difficult keywords to target. They're not impossible. It just takes a lot of time and resources and energy to keep up. So I think that's one decision to make. There is like, do I just want to triple down on local or continue to try to fight, you know, the big sites for these big keywords? And then I think Kendra does make a good point there with YouTube. I know it starts to feel like, well, it's not that big of a lift and we're doing this anyways. But anytime I start to hear somebody say I do this and sometimes you do this and, or I do this and sometimes they take this transcript and do that. It just sounds like a little kind of all over the place and not like, you know, that very simple stage funnel. I do this and I do this and I do this and we see this sort of success. And so if you are looking for some areas to cut, I could see setting YouTube to the side for the moment and really, you know, putting a lot more energy and time and resources into this funnel. That's really working well. This SEO to email newsletter to, you know, converting to intro calls.
- [28:45]
Matt
Yeah, no, thank you. That's great to.
- [28:47]
Taylor
So, so my, my suggestion is going to be, from an SEO standpoint, no more new blog posts. More is not better. Better is better. You don't need more. Blog posts. You already have some great blog posts that have gotten traction. I recognize that they've lost traffic, but that doesn't mean that you're just out of luck and have to go create more content. So I would say no more new blog posts and then I would say pick three of your blog posts that have had traffic. You've proven that, like you can get that traffic. Maybe you've lost quite a bit of it, but pick three of them that you think are fitting for your ideal client, that you've had some previous traction with before, or you're already having traction with right now, and focus on how can I make these five or ten times better. I took a quick glance at a couple of these posts and just immediately came up with, you know, 10 different areas that could be improved here. There's a lot of room for improvement. So to me, you already have having traction with these things and I'm seeing a lot of areas for improvement. It just seems like really low hanging fruit. If these posts, if I looked at these and they were just absolutely perfect, you know, textbook SEO optimized posts, we'd be having a different conversation. But it's like you're having success and traction and I'm seeing a lot of opportunity for improvement. So put those two things together and I think you can recover that traffic pretty quickly. It also depends on how much traffic you want to target because you might say, well, I'm going to go more hyper local here. And so the amount of traffic I might be trying to, you know, earn is not going to be as high as it used to be when I was fighting for Roth conversions. If you still want to try to do all these things, I think you have to invest and hire somebody. And even so, on the SEO front, I'd probably argue that you probably need to hire an expert there to at least do a site audit and an audit on some of these high performing blog posts to provide you with some guidance as to how to rework and improve and restructure things. I mean, I am an absolute SEO nerd. I've studied SEO for a really, really long time and I still pay somebody on an ongoing basis to provide guidance and help because things are changing very frequently and sometimes it's hard to look at things clearly when it's our own content. Somebody comes in with a fresh pair of eyes like I am on your website and I can see these 10 or 12 things that need to be addressed. The last thing I want to say here is, you know, you mentioned kind of algorithm updates Affecting traffic. I just want to acknowledge that it doesn't matter if it's SEO or email marketing or podcasting, you're always going to be susceptible to algorithm and platform changes. I know some very, very high performing podcasts that lost a lot of subscribers recently because Apple made a big tweak to how they handle subscribers to podcasts. So you're always going to be susceptible to those things. I don't think SEO is dead. I don't think it's going away. I don't think AI is going to kill SEO. I think there's plenty of opportunity there. So I just want to acknowledge, like, we don't need to just blame algorithm changes and throw our hands in the air and go try to find something else. I think we just have to accept, like these things change and we have to evolve with these changes.
- [31:38]
Matt
No, thank you. That's great.
- [31:40]
Kendra
And Taylor, I really loved that plan you laid out there. One way that you can really work with an SEO consultant and I think this could be, you know, a really key part of your strategy is now bringing someone in at a very specific part of your funnel, which is, hey, I have these core posts now have someone who has an SEO expertise write you a content brief and they will use technical tools. We do this with our team. We have a SEO consultant who's amazing, supports us and I show them the post that needs to be improved and I have them tell me what am I missing to recover traffic here, to regain the traffic. And they'll literally give you the headlines you need to write. They'll tell you the questions you need to answer, you know, FAQs you can add in there and really improve that post. And you know, if you look at like Taylor's Irma post, I think it's a great post. I'm sure you've seen it. You'll see he also has custom graphics in there. So you can go in there and update that post. And then also looking at, you know, who's outranking you, what are the content gaps? So there's a few different things there. And really if you cut back on the number of posts going out and you consider reducing potentially something like your investment in YouTube or even Google Ads, it's going to free up your time and free up a little bit of money so that even your current budget could work to do this and just focus on, you know, getting those top three posts working 5 to 10x better. And I really, really like what Taylor said about the frustration with platforms changing and it, it's Every platform is changing. I know that SEO has had some really big shakeups, but like Taylor said, it kind of ripples across the industry. And I think early in my career I had to just get really comfortable with the fact that made me uncomfortable. And it was, it was an ongoing, constant thing. And you, you can also see the upside of that, that if these changes happen and you're willing to, you know, learn and evolve your strategy and your approach and get better, it will cut other people out of the game. So I think you have a really, you know, well defined marketing funnel. I think some of your risks are that you're starting to play in other lanes of traffic that like YouTube and potentially, you know, Google Ads. It could be distracting to the fact that your funnel is working. So how do we continue to update it, improve it as digital is changing?
- [33:51]
Matt
Great.
- [33:52]
Taylor
A few quick things here just for listeners who are interested in SEO. And I mentioned that I noticed a handful of things that could be addressed and improved on in these posts. Just a couple of really quick things and it's hard because we're not, you know, screen sharing right now. But, you know, number one, the title. So I'm looking at your Iowa tax brackets. The new tax brackets blog post that you have. The title is 2024 Iowa tax brackets dash new 2026 Iowa flat tax comma 0% retirement tax to me kind of looks like this kind of keyword stuffing. I'm trying to like, get squeeze as much in there as possible. And I'm not really, I'm not really considering the user here. So if a user goes and types in, you know, new Iowa tax brackets, Google's going to feed them, you know, ten different potential articles. And the user, whether they know it or not, they're looking at the title of those articles, those potential articles, and they're looking at the description and they're likely going to click on the one that sounds most interesting to them, that's easily digestible and readable and just very quickly say, yeah, that's the one I'm going to click on. So there's probably some room for improvement there with the title to put yourself in the user's shoes. And you can still include the important keywords, right? We can't just ignore the keywords. But there are some ways where you can structure titles. There's some great tools out there to help you rework titles. You can study what some of the other titles look like, you know, that you're competing with. But that's, you know, one that really stuck out to me, it was like, this is looks like a keyword stuffed title. And I could see Google potentially penalizing you for that. Or users are just clicking on the other ones that sound more appealing to them. And that's telling the algorithm that we like these articles better than Matt's. And it's pushing you down the other thing too. And this again, all roads are going to lead back to user experience here. And putting yourself in the user's shoes, that's the trap we can fall into with SEO, is I've fallen into it myself, is like, you start going down these nerdy rabbit holes, you're like, oh, I can try this and I can do this and I can hack the system here. And then you end up just neglecting the actual user who is on your site trying to consume this information. So this sounds really silly, but for me, when I scroll through this post, there's some large gaps of space, like just kind of odd big gaps of space. I don't know why they exist there, but just from a visual user experience standpoint kind of tells me, how did this article get thrown together here? It just doesn't look like someone put real time and attention to this. There's like giant gaps of, of random space between paragraphs. A very simple kind of website tweak. I'm sure there's just some, you know, code in the background that's, you know, causing that to happen. Similarly, we've got this giant image here of, I don't know who's in this image, a bunch of people surrounding a desk and a woman clapping. I'm sure there's some context here, but no matter what, it's not providing any value to me. It's like a picture of some people, you know, celebrating something. But. But for me as a user, it's not. It's not adding any value. It's not taking what I just read to the next level and explaining it visually in a. In a better, you know, more constructive way. So it's taking up my entire screen right now, and it's this image that doesn't add any value. So these are those little things that once you're having success with a post, you can then go in and start to optimize those things. Say, yeah, why did I have this image in there? Like, I can remove that image or replace it with something more valuable to the user. So a lot of this user experience type stuff, there's a lot of content out there that you can read about user experience. This is where a great web developer comes in and a couple times per year, I'll notice things like this on my site, send a list to my web developer to improve. I'll go to the Google page, Speed Insights, I'll drop my URL in there. I'll get the report from Google, send it to my developer, like, hey, just address these things, fix these things. So there's a lot of room for improvement here. Nothing that you're doing terribly wrong, but there are ways to optimize. And just finally here, Kendra said this earlier, but I'm with her, that I think you can scratch Google Ads. It doesn't sound like there's like a real clear process and plan in place for taking advantage of Google Ads. You're probably just throwing a thousand dollars a month away. I don't know for sure. We have to study that a little bit more. But could you take that $12,000 that you're paying to Google and instead take that $12,000 and go and spend it on an SEO consultant, a really high quality consultant to help provide kind of a roadmap for recovering some of this traffic?
- [37:54]
Matt
Sure. No, that is great. Great to think about here and get to work. Yeah.
- [37:59]
Kendra
And I also wanted to point out something I thought was really fascinating about this conversation is we talked about your organic traffic dropping from 122,000 people to 75,000 visitors. You know, this year. However, your prospect quality or flow was still good. So something I want to remind you of and advisors listening, and I have to remember this all the time, is we are looking for quality over quantity. That's a lot of traffic. That's a solid of. Still, even without the recovery that you've done, what that tells me is there's a strong possibility that some of that traffic that fell off may not have been the kind of quality of traffic you needed. Because I don't see any downstream impact of that. Now, that doesn't mean we don't want to recover that traffic, but we're just kind of going with the ebbs and flows. This is very common with SEO to see these changes. So that's just the element of this marketing channel. And every marketing channel has its thorns. Right. So I really think you're actually in a great spot if you can kind of shave away a few of those marketing activities that aren't really supporting, you know, your marketing funnel, maybe reinvest that time, that energy, intention, into the funnel you already have. That's working. So we threw a lot at you today. I'd love to know, you know, what's your biggest Takeaway from this conversation. What might you do differently after you hang up from this call?
- [39:21]
Matt
Nope. I love the idea of thinking about where I'm spending time and if it's away from, you know, that kind of email list, just scrutinize it very heavily and not get distracted like I think has been happening. And yeah, I think definitely just a review. Second set of eyes on the website at this point is good. You know, Taylor, I think it said, you know, six years ago, I nerded out on SEO, and I think that's where my knowledge stopped. And so it's also just kind of recognizing that, unlike years ago, I don't know if it's my best use of time and getting up to speed at being an expert in that right now.
- [40:01]
Taylor
So. Awesome. Well, I'm glad it's helpful. Are there any final burning questions you have for us? Any clarifications that. That you need?
- [40:09]
Matt
No, I don't think I had a question on how you would think about, like, accepting defeat, I think, or how to word that. Right. But, you know, so your Irma post. Yep. The algorithm does what it does. You go in and update. You know, maybe you get outside help. Is there a point where, you know, if you tried these few things, you just accept it or how would you think about that?
- [40:35]
Taylor
Yeah, my starting point would be, is this even important to me? Right. Because, like, again, SEO can just be a distraction and it could just be like, oh, I just like seeing people show up to my website. But is it really. Is it really helping me with my growth goals? So that's the just step one for anybody listening is before we go down this SEO Rabbit hol. Is it an important part? Is it an integral part of your marketing funnel? If yes, then yeah, I'm. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna give up on these things. So candidly, my Irma blog post, highest performing blog post I've ever had, lost a significant amount of traffic earlier this year. I don't have it in front of me, but it went from something like, I don't know, 20,000 organic visitors per month down to like 2 or 3,000 per month. And anybody listening? I've said this before, like, I don't obsess over the traffic. Like, traffic does ebb and flow, and I don't obsess over it every month. But when I see that significant of a change, I'm like, this needs some addressing. So to your question, Matt, then the question becomes like, do I just accept defeat? Are there some major algorithm changes that I'M just never going to be able to compete with. And that's what led me to go hire an expert, hire a consultant to come in, provide that audit and tell me, hey, is this post worth putting some time and energy and resources into or should we just throw up our hands? So with their guidance, like, oh, no, like we can absolutely compete. We just need to make these improvements. We need to, you know, follow this plan for the next six months and now today. So I hired them, I think it was in March of this year, I'd have to go back, but earlier this year, I think it was March and traffic was an all time low. And now we've recovered all of that traffic and more and we're back to where we were. So again, that's where I think an outside expert consultant comes in with a fresh pair of eyes, somebody who knows a lot more about me and the competitive landscaping can do that research and say, yeah, you know what, like the Wall street journals and Wikipedias are going to dominate this keyword. This is a waste of time and energy. Or, yeah, this is absolutely something. Now, something we regularly talk about when I meet with them on a monthly basis is before we go and start to target new keywords, let's ensure that these keywords are attracting the right type of people. Right? We could go and compete for this, this keyword, you know, what is a Roth ira? But like, is that really going to speak to the pain points of your ideal client and draw in the right types of people? So I catch myself all the time getting distracted seeing these keywords that I know we could compete for. And then they'll remind me, like, but yeah, is this really, is this really, you know, helpful to your growth goals? So, so hopefully that helps. So I, I think at the end of the day it might just require a third party consultant to let you know, like, yeah, you're chasing something you shouldn't be chasing.
- [43:00]
Kendra
And I think that you, you touched on something really interesting. And it's the same thing with financial planning, right? Most financial planners have their own financial planner because there's an element of having someone come in with fresh eyes who understands your goals and they study that element all day, right? Like, you know, I have a support who understands all these elements of SEO and, and I don't get all those little pieces. I just need to know, how do I fix this thing? How do I make, how do I make it bring the right people to the website? I don't care how we get it done, as long as it's ethical awesome and honest. They know how to, you know, put all the puzzle pieces together. And then you have that set of eyes of, does this align with my firm? Does it sound good with my voice? But to me, you know, this element of accepting defeat, I think it's actually learning to ride the wave of uncertainty. I think that happens in business. I think it happens in marketing. And I had to really understand that, you know, the marketing channels that my clients have chosen to grow, they're not uniquely broken. They're all changing. And so for me, I found a way to trick myself. And I said, what if I started to look at this like a game? What if I made it fun? How could I look at becoming masterful at what I do so that I can out compete and outperform everyone in a really incredible way? Like, I just had to change my perspective of it because I know it can feel really defeating. And even if you're not competing in SEO, this happens on all channels. So. So I think it's a really good question, but I think after our conversation here today, I think we really outlined some good steps. And I hope to hear that if you go through these, you'll have a conversation similar to Taylor. So here's what we wrote down for you on your next steps with your marketing. Number one, we're going to give your marketing a haircut. First, we're going to chop off the Google Ads. Second, we're going to chop off YouTube. Third, we're going to say no more new posts for now. We're going to take that time, that energy and attention, and you're going to choose three of your best posts that, you know, attract and convert your ideal kind of prospects. And you're going to hire someone to help you build a roadmap to improve and recover that traffic. And then after you recover that traffic, it may be worth going back to the drawing board and seeing, are there any additional posts? Or if you do want to go back to writing more posts, we're going to flip it. I would flip it the opposite way and I would look for what's the right keyword with the right difficulty that I can compete for. And I'm going to write very intentionally. If I'm shipping posts, I'm not just going to, you know, write what I feel and then see if it ranks, because you could cut that down to, you know, Taylor. And I've talked about this before. One post a quarter and do that very intentionally and get the traffic that you need. So I don't think anything's broken I just think your funnel needs to evolve.
- [45:43]
Matt
No. Perfect. Very, very helpful. Thank you.
- [45:46]
Taylor
I just want to say I don't think you have to set YouTube aside forever. If you enjoy creating these videos on YouTube and you want YouTube to be a part of your funnel, I think that's fine. I think we're just zoned in on one area of our funnel. Really needs attention right now, and to really give it the attention that it needs, we can't be doing all these other things. You already have YouTube videos. Those YouTube videos are supporting your funnel. I know there's probably room for improvement. You might be craving to do more of them, but maybe set those aside for a minute and let's go repair this hole over here, and then we can come back to YouTube if we want, because YouTube does have a role in this funnel. Right. We talked about that person landing on the blog post and seeing that video and then capturing their email in order for them to get access to that video. So that is an important part. It's kind of an extra little layer there in the funnel that is important. It's not critical that we, you know, create more of those videos at the moment. So I just don't want you to feel like, oh, gosh, I was really enjoying YouTube and now Kendra's told me never to do YouTube or to, you know, cut that out of my marketing plan. I just think let's set it aside and let's fix this other thing first.
- [46:44]
Matt
Point taken. And I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
- [46:46]
Taylor
Awesome.
- [46:47]
Kendra
Thank you so much for joining us today, Matt. Hopefully you got some good answers on how much effort you should put into this, how much time you should devote to each of these marketing channels, and what the next best steps for you might be to move forward and recover this traffic and hopefully have even stronger marketing going forward. Thanks, everyone, for listening, and we'll see you next week. We hope you enjoyed today's episode to get the resources shared or sign up to join us as a guest on one of our advice line episodes. Check out the links in the show notes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.