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This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 135. This is gonna be a short episode. No theme song. And by the way, I'm not in the studio. I'm on a cell phone, so the audio quality might be a little bad, and I apologize if that's the case. First, I want to thank everybody who has listened to Grumpy SEO Guy. You guys are great. I really appreciate the listeners and I really appreciate the email on the topic. If you email me, please check your junk folder. Okay. There have been a. A large quantity of people that email me and say, oh, I thought you never replied to me. But then I saw it in my junk folder. Like a lot of email clients, if they see the word backlink or backlinks or SEO or whatever, they will filter the email as spam because it's probably spam. So when you're talking about those things, there's a chance that your email might go to spam anyway. Sometimes people email me and it goes into my spam folders, so even it's crazy. So anyways, open your junk folders if you email me. Second, let me know if you have recommendations for episode topics. We have some really cool topics planned, but we want to make sure that we're providing the info that you guys want to know. So if you have recommendations, email them to me, hellorumpy seouguy.com or post them in the comments. And if they are good or we think we can do a good episode on them, we will try them. Here's a preview of some of the episode topics that we're thinking about doing. We might do another episode on sales. We did one before a long time ago, but people have been asking about selling SEO and stuff. So I'll. I'm not really a salesperson, but I will, you know, I can try to provide some information about selling if that would, you know, be useful. We're thinking about doing. And this is. I kind of want to do this episode. I think this would be entertaining, but let me know what you think. So I'm in a position where a lot of people email me and I don't. I don't tell them to send me this. They just send me this. They send me audits that other SEO agencies or consultants have done. And now this is actually a bit. Again, I'm not suggesting that people do this, but basically, I think there's a lot behind this, and part of it is they don't necessarily trust the person who did the audit, which they shouldn't. But that's A different topic. But anyways, a lot of these audits are terrible. Now I'm going to be honest with you. I don't spend a lot of time if somebody sends me a 100 page audit, okay? And by the way, I've never done a hundred page audit or anything in my life for SEO. So what. I don't. It's a lot of filler and garbage to get to 100 pages. I'll be honest with you. Anyways, if I'm. I'm not going to look through 100 page audit for free also, just FYI. But most of it is just fancy. It's a fancy template with a bunch of information that will not really like help the person following it. So this is actually interesting because one of the. Another episode topic that I was thinking about doing was going to be called like SEO audits are a waste of time or more specifically, free SEO audits. Here's the. There's. I have a lot to say about this. Here is a summary. Actually, let me. Let me just save you a lot of time. If you want a free. And let me tell you right now, free SEO audits are worthless. Let me first tell you why they're worthless. No, no, no. I'll tell you why they're worthless in a minute. If you want a free SEO audit, go to whatever search engine you enjoy. Type in free SEO audit, do a search. There you go. Plenty of results on the first page of whatever search engine that will give you free SEO audits. Now let me tell you why they're worthless. This is the short version. There is nothing in a free SEO audit that will help you get to the top of the search engines. And what is the purpose of SEO? The purpose of SEO is to get to the top of the search engines. So any information that does not directly result in you being able to get to the top of the search engine is a waste of time because it's not SEO. There are few cases where people do free SEO audits and in no cases will they ever help you. We'll talk more about that in the episode. Here's another thing, because I just feel like being kind of like insane about word definitions right now. Do you guys remember the episode where I talked about the difference between advising, consulting, coaching, and mentoring? You remember that episode? A lot of people use those words similarly, but they all have different meanings. Here's a. I'll explain them in a minute. But sometimes people say one when they mean a different one. Fine, whatever. Not a problem. The same thing is the case with words like audit. A lot of people say audit because they think they mean one thing, but that's not what they're talking about. So technically, an audit is different from an assessment, which is different from an analysis, and so on. And I understand that audit sounds cool, but audits are like a act, like, precisely explaining an audit is pretty worthless. Paid or not, an audit is pretty worthless when it comes to SEO. We'll talk more about that in the episode. But here's the definitions of the other one, because I know somebody's like, tell me what they mean, grumpy SEO guy. Okay? Advising is being paid to answer questions and tell people what to do. Okay? Coaching is being paid to ask questions to help you arrive at the answer yourself. Okay? Consulting is being paid to do projects for somebody. Okay? And mentoring is teaching somebody how to do a thing, basically. Usually it's usually on like a bigger picture range, but like, mentoring is usually free. And it's like teaching somebody the ropes, so to speak. If you know that. If you know what that means. So people. So for example, people email me and they're like, do you do consulting? But what they really want to do is get on the phone with me and ask me questions, right? Or do you do SEO coaching? And it's like, well, that's not what you. What you. I don't actually say it like this, but I'm like, what you're asking is not what you're trying to ask. So let's have a different conversation. I mean, unless you want to pay me to ask you questions till you answer the questions yourself. So anyways, SEO audits are worthless. Don't believe me? Go look for free SEO audits. Find one that's not worthless. And you won't, because they're all worthless. Because first of all, SEO data cost. Any data that is helpful will cost money. Okay? Why do you think the programs that. The good SEO programs are expensive? Now, that doesn't mean they're good if they're expensive, but. But the good ones are expensive. Why? It's because that data is not free. So no one is doing free SEO anything that's helpful for anyone. Just FYI. Because you literally can't get that data for free. And if you can, please let me know how, because I would like to not pay for it anyways. Probably that really long explanation right now, but we might do that. Episode 2 Just some of the crazy questions that people have asked me. Like, you guys, I get asked and I'm not. I'm not like, you know, ridiculing anybody. But I get asked the craziest things. Like. Like, people. So, okay, my. Let me. Let me tell you kind of a story. So my sales coach, he. He says that prospects do four things, okay? And by the way, a prospect is somebody that has not given you money, okay? A prospect is somebody that has not spent money yet, okay? So if somebody. If somebody has spent money with you, they are a client. If they have not spent money with you, they are a prospect, okay? So my sales coach says that prospects do four things. He says they run and hide. You know, obvious. Like, you know, have you ever. Have you ever been talking to somebody who, like, seems interested in doing business with you, but then, like, you can't ever get a hold of them again? That's running and hiding, okay? They commit to nothing, right? Have you ever tried to get somebody to buy your services and then they're just like, yeah, well, and they have all these excuses, right? Okay, I'm going somewhere with this. Trust me. They. They lie. Like, if you've ever done sales, you realize this. And four, they gather information. So number four is particularly significant for me, I think, because a lot of people think. Try to. You guys remember, like, a very, very early episode, I said, I talk about how I charge for my time. And I said that when you do SEO, everybody always wants to, like, pick your brain. I want to pick your brain, right? Because what that means is I want you to answer my questions for free or I want you to do unpaid. Sometimes it's called unpaid consulting. Right, whatever. Like, I get so much of that, and it's like, I'm flattered that people. Or I'm happy that people value my knowledge enough to reach out. But, like, some of the qu. And I don't know if people realize what they're asking, but some of the questions, things that would take, like, hours or days of research to answer, they just casually, hey, here's my website. Here's my competitors. What do you think I should do to outrank them? Like, that question is going to take a week to answer. Like, and I understand that sometimes people don't know that because they think that there's, like, a program, and you just put in the website and it tells you all the things you have to do, but there is no program that does that. So, like, I don't know. And then the other thing that I think is, like, funny is that a lot of the time they realize what they're doing, and I try to make it very obvious that I charge for my time. You Know, like, you want to book a zoom meeting with me, great. It's going to, it's going to cost you money, right? But people, you know, people don't want to pay money. So they, like, they try to be very, like, they try to be very creative with like, how they ask the question, but I still realize what they're doing. So basically, I don't know. It's funny. And you can tell because as soon as I mention that, like an advisory call, for example, costs money, I never hear from the person again. That's fine. Here's the thing. Listen. I get a lot of people that want to get on the phone with me and ask me questions, but if I did that for everybody that wanted to, I would have no time to do work for our clients. So I don't feel. But like, I, I don't. I realize that I provide a lot of value and I don't feel bad charging for my time. So anyways. But it's just, it's just, I don't know. And then the other thing, like, and not, not saying that this happens to me all the time, but anyone who does sales has had this happen. Probably, especially like when you were a novice, you'll do like a lot of extra work for somebody. You know, for example, in SEO, this might look like giving someone an SEO strategy, like a prospect, right? They haven't even paid you yet. This might look like maybe you create a plan for them and you put a lot of time and effort into it and then they go to a different agency. Well, I don't do stuff without getting paid, so not that I don't want to help people, but you've got to be, you know, knowledgeable about the value that you offer. Anyways, these are just some random things that we are thinking about making new episodes to discuss. Let me know what you think, post in the comments or email me and Happy New Year.