B (3:01)

So, Phil, how are you? Welcome.

C (3:04)

I'm doing great. I'm jealous that you guys are in Florida. Although I know it's so cool down there. It might not be as jealous as I normally would be, but, yeah, I.

B (3:13)

Guess I feel bad for the people vacationing, you know, and they have one week of vacation and they came on the coldest week of the year.

A (3:18)

You know what, that's the funniest thing because, you know, am driving down. I was driving down the beach. I've got my boots on, I've got my leather jacket on my sweater. I'm like all bundled up and I see all these people in bathing suits. I'm like, they must be Canadians or for somewhere like really cold. And they think this is beautiful weather to lay out and like actually get in the water.

B (3:35)

What is that thing? The polar bear, like where you go in the freezing cold water, Ice plunge.

C (3:40)

Or whatever that is.

B (3:41)

There you go.

A (3:41)

Yeah, not gonna be in my repertoire.

C (3:44)

Did anybody even bother trying to cover stuff? Is it that cold or did just like wrapping all their shrubs up and stuff like that?

A (3:50)

Actually, we were talking about the falling iguanas before we push record. And people will actually put heating pads and heating blankets out on their docks down here to save the iguanas. And the iguanas come and like lay on the heating pads and that makes sure that they save them. You will not find the heating pads on my dock.

B (4:08)

Only in Florida.

A (4:09)

Only in Florida.

B (4:10)

So if you really love iguanas and you're coming to travel down, bring a heating pad so you can help save the iguanas. That should be a T shirt. Like an iguana. No, but an iguana laying on a heating pad, you know, I don't know, with a scarf in the sun or something like that.

A (4:25)

All right, so this is not an iguana deep dive. This is an SEO deep dive. So tell us how you got involved in this line of work?

C (4:34)

Well, it's kind of interesting. I took a non traditional path to digital marketing and I went to school and studied finance and business. Rolled out of college into an exciting career in insurance. And about the third or fourth year there I just felt I was in a kind of a soul crushing cubicle job. And I was like, I can't do, I mean, I'm sure, I don't want to cry. A lot of people are in insurance and I'm sure that works for them.

B (4:58)

That's okay. Not our listeners. So it's fine, you're good.

C (5:01)

But I was there and again, I was in my 20s, obviously coming out of school, but I just figured early on like this is not for me. At the same time it's like you see people getting into these corporate jobs and for me it was good money at the time. I was really thankful to be able to step out of college into a job because the market wasn't great when I got out. But it was like the third year in there. I was like, I can't do this anymore because I'm looking around, seeing the guys that have been there for 20 years plus and they're kind of like corporate zombies. And I was like, this is not me. But at the same time, each year that goes by, you feel like you're starting to get pulled down somebody else's destiny almost. So I did something radical like on the course of like a two week period, I quit, I packed my bags and I moved to Asia. Just like what?

B (5:45)

I know that was like a total like pattern to like what. Tell us about that. Why?

C (5:50)

Yeah, so at the time, I mean at the time it wasn't like cool or my, my parent, my, my family and friends didn't think I was like doing something exciting. They just basically thought I lost my mind. And perhaps I was a little bit, but I want to do something different and drastic and burst out of the bubble that I was in. And basically looking back, I think I was just subconsciously trying to change the trajectory of my career path. And I, and I did so in a big way. But I moved out there, studied Chinese, met my eventual, eventual wife, came back to the States, got an MBA and I got a job that took me right back there. So all told, I was there for like 10 years. But the very end of my stint there, I actually had essentially a software company fall into my lap. And keep in mind here I'm, you know, I didn't do my first website until after age 30, so I'm not Like a digital native or anything like that. But this job, this last job that I had in Taiwan is where I actually live. That was kind of my home base moving around was a software company. And this is going back like 15 years ago or so. And we were selling this company that basically fell into my lap as a result of kind of the dot com era bust that was there. I started learning about web design. And really a lot of the sales that were selling on this company were coming from Google again. Fifteen years ago, people were looking stuff up. They'd go to a website, they'd click on a banner link, go to our website. We'd sell them the software for $99, but we would give half of that sale and commission away to an affiliate marketer. And to me, I was like, well, wait, this doesn't make a lot of sense. But just because we got 50% of, say, $100 sale, and the other guys got 50, the big affiliate marketers, and here we had 25 employees, product development. I was like, you know, our little piece of the pie went down to nothing. And these guys were running their websites, forums, precursors to blogs. We were writing checks for like 50, $80,000 a month. And I was like, wait a minute, this doesn't make a lot of sense. But as the finance side of me was, okay, follow the ROI trail back to Google and online. I was like, okay, I see how this is happening, why these guys have so much power. Long story short, we ended up selling that company, moving back to the states and Kansas City, where I have roots. I told you guys I was. I consider myself in Florida because I was in grade school and high school there. But my extended.

A (7:58)

Wait, wait, wait.

B (7:59)

What happened in middle school?

C (8:02)

Middle school, Sorry, middle school.

B (8:04)

Oh, you kind of said. I was like, oh, there might be another.

C (8:06)

I kind of lumped those together. I lump those together. Got it, got it. But, you know, while I was in Florida, I went to college. My parents ended up moving back to Kansas City, which is there from my wife and I, we visit, we'd come back here, and she ended up loving, you know, the Midwest. So in 2005, we moved back here. And I didn't know really what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be. We sold this company. It was a nice payday, but it wasn't like, I can do nothing for the next 40 years, 50 years of my life type of a thing. So I ended up doing one website on a barter trade with this auto detailer. I had no business doing it, never tried to build a website before. I did have some exposure to SEO and how Google worked, but I ended up making this ugly one page Microsoft front page website for this guy. And 60 days later, after I built it, he calls me up. Literally. I could hear his voice cracking and hear the tear running down his eye. He was like, I don't know what you've done. You've changed my business, you've changed my life. And I was like, man, that was the most rewarding thing that had ever happened to me. A guy, you know, was my early 30s at this time, and I was like, wow, this is very powerful. Not only did I have the most rewarding professional experience I've ever had, I can make money at this. So did a couple more barter websites and it's kind of rolled into a thriving digital agency. Now I'm writing books and, you know, podcasts and, you know, doing all sorts of things. But again, I learned from the outside in. So I was like one of the, you know, these guys that are coming up in it, they're doing graphic design and coding, all this kind of stuff. At birth or at least in high school or college, I learned way after the fact. And that's just proof to tell anybody. Now you can get in here, get your hands dirty a little bit, learn some of this kind of stuff, and anybody can be a successful digital marketer, especially me in my little one sheet, I think I send you guys, I got a D in computer science. For a guy that makes his life living and a good living at digital marketing after they almost flunking out of the class in college. It just shows that anybody can do this if they put their mind to it.

A (10:05)

Yeah. And for private practitioners, digital marketing is key because so many people are going online and googling, where can I find a therapist? Or I'm struggling with this. And so when you have a solid website and you're able to get the organic search engine optimization going, then you really set yourself up for success and you don't have to pay. It's not paid advertising, it's the organic advertising, which is so, so, so important. Yeah, so tell us a little bit, because not everybody knows about what SEO is. I know I just said search engine optimization. But tell us a little bit for the basic practitioner, what that is and why that's important.

C (10:43)

Well, I think, yeah, for us, SEO is any way you can get organic visibility for somebody that goes through a search engine. And when we say search engine, we're basically talking about Google because they're the 800 pound gorilla and showing up on the first page, somewhere on it, preferably towards the top, organically, so you're not having to pay for it. So there's lots of ways onto the first page or more than there used to be, certainly if you're local. And it sounds like most of your listeners are being able really. To me, the holy grail of local SEO now is getting organic results, but also getting organic results into the local maps. Three packages. And to the extent that you can, I know we talked about this kind of in the green room before the show, to the extent that you can get some kind of review or social proof up in that map being reviews, huge, huge benefit. That's what really makes the phone ring more than anyone else. Because if I'm searching for ABC Practitioner or whatever vertical, and I see them come up first, lots of credibility there. I see them come up with more reviews than anybody else. I'm definitely going to call these guys because the Internet saying that they're the best at what they do type of thing. So I know it can be a little bit tricky for this. And we talked about some ways that people may be able to accumulate, accumulate some kind of review proof still by maybe staying within tighter guidelines that this industry has. And I have some ideas on that. You guys also had some. But certainly to me, like the holy grail of SEO for anyone local right now is combining that kind of that online reputation with the organic visibility.

A (12:12)

And for clinicians, we have to make sure that we're not soliciting reviews from our clients or patients. A way to get around that. We were talking about this a little bit before we hit the record button. And a way to get around that is to ask your colleagues or professionals that you've collaborated with, whether it's another doctor or psychiatrist or pediatrician or school psychologist or attorney, whoever it is, asking people for those reviews, your clinicians, your colleagues, other professionals, because that will help to beef up your organic SEO. And you're not asking your clients to put their identity at risk in order to do so.

C (12:50)

And of course, we talked about if somebody wants to do it on their own, there's really no way anybody can stop a patient from doing it. And we see that all over the place. And actually some places are some types of medical practices are definitely more aggressive than others. Because I know chiropractors go out and solicit reviews all the time. I know dentists do, because we have dentists. But I'm sure there's certain areas where it's probably maybe more regulated or more looked upon, and people have to be more careful about how they do it. The question, though, I'd have, and this might be a little bit of workaround I have to ask you guys on this is, could somebody solicit a review that's not necessarily on the type of medical service that they're getting, but maybe on a piece of content or like, say, a book or something they're writing? Right. So somebody writes a book and it gets up there and it's up on Amazon or whatever. Or perhaps they've got a review funnel to say, hey, we sent this out. Would you mind reviewing me at this link? And then you send that link to wherever you want, Facebook or Google. Can somebody say, hey, I read this book and Dr. So and so. This was a great book. I really enjoyed it.

B (13:54)

Yeah, somebody can definitely review that. As long as we're not like, soliciting to clients. Like, if I specifically send out a newsletter to my past clients, current clients, and say, hey, read this book and can you give me a review? That would be solicitation. But yeah, I mean, colleagues, friends, people like Kate was saying, people around, if they read your book or whatever, asking for that later on is cool.

A (14:15)

I actually went to a doctor's appointment maybe like a month ago to a new doctor. I was transitioning and went to a new doctor, and she was great. I had a great appointment with her. And I came out afterwards, I saw the receptionist, I was taking care of my bill, and I said, gosh, it was so nice meeting doctor. So and so I really appreciated how she spent so much time with me and blah, blah, blah. And she was like, oh, that's great. I'm so glad that you enjoyed. And actually, if you want to leave a review, here's an iPad. They had an iPad with like a whole review system. And as I was get leaving them a comment, I was like, you know what? Sure, I'll do that really quick. And I was like, wow, they were really smart to be able to do that, like, take care of it on the spot. But that's not something that we could do for clinicians.

B (14:54)

Right? Yeah, tricky.

C (14:56)

But yeah, people are getting into it. Most of those ones that are actually going from like an iPad, you have to be careful, not careful. When I say careful, I'm meaning to me, really to make reviews count, they've got to be in places that are highly visible. And there's a lot of places that doctors or some doctors will use to collect reviews, but they end up being placed on like a third party Proprietary system. So if I'm on somebody's like there's some like customer lobby, a couple other ones where you collect reviews and you're getting reviews and you can do that from an iPad and a single location, put them up on this review site, but they don't. You're not able to get a review like on an iPad like that and from one device in the same location. Keep posting them, say to Google from different places.

B (15:34)

So is the IP address.

C (15:36)

They'll flag it. Yeah. And eventually you'll.

A (15:37)

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.

C (15:41)

We're getting into a piece of this. Like I was going to tell you guys about this other strategy, but reviews are really a huge part of it. And you ask what really counts locally and it's organic stuff. A lot of that comes back to the website and setting that up and making sure you have the right content on it, but somehow trying to crack that review. Because it sounds like if a lot of the folks that are listening are in the same boat where they can't solicit, they're probably not getting a ton of reviews. So a handful of reviews might actually pull you up into the maps.

A (16:06)

Yeah.

B (16:07)

And so share with the audience. Like, why are reviews, how is that related to SEO and why is that so important?

C (16:12)

Well, for one, in terms of Google and Google Maps and that kind of stuff, that's one of the more important ranking factors. So they're going to actually look at your. Because that's proof. Right. Somebody visited or went to you and they came and they said these guys did a great job. Even if they didn't do a great job, they get some kind of review that actually establishes it is a real business. And the people that tend to have higher reviews are going to be the ones that are going to be pulled up into that map listing. So that helps you organically get a better shot into the maps. When people do a local search for that, it also helps to some degree it's a ranking factor to pull up under the organic list as well. Because again, it's another trust factor. And a big thing with Google right now is trust. In fact, one of the things we'll talk to you guys about, maybe even send you a link or people can look this up. But if you do a Google search for Google search evaluator guidelines or Google Search quality guidelines, you'll see a 160 page ebook by Google that they publicly make available because they've got an army of about 15,000 quality evaluators that actually go and Manually test results to check the quality of them. And inside that book, it's fascinating to me, you can read about the way Google instructs these quality evaluators that are going to independent contractors that get about $15 an hour for doing manual quality checks. It instructs them how to look for a quality website because again, they want to use the quality evaluators to make sure that their algorithms are serving up the right kinds of stuff. So they're actually giving you, to me, a cheat sheet on what you should be doing on your website to prove to the algorithms that you should be ranked. And inside this document that you read, Google just pounds these quality evaluators in the trainers. They tell them look for this acronym. They mention this acronym many times. Eat, Education, authority and trust. That's what they want their algorithm to serve up. And then they tell you, within this document, here are the factors you should look on a website to determine if they educate, if they're an authority website, and they can establish trust. So that one of the big things they talk about is reviews. Are they blogging? Are they showing a physical address? Do they show their pictures? Is it evident on each page of the website who wrote the content? So they give you this map and these guidelines about when we look at a website, what we should be able to see in terms of the things on the website that indicate this kind of quality. And you know that if they're instructing these people to do this, that that's exactly what they're making. They're trying to automate and look for their algorithm. So those are the things that you should focus on on your website. And trust factors, the reviews are one of the things they explicitly say in this document to say, hey, look for reviews, look for third party reviews, look for the bbb, look for independent, unbiased reviews from actual past clients or patients and this kind of stuff. So they're basically telling you this, and they're not saying do this because we'll rank you, but it's implicit that those are the things that they're using in terms of ranking factors. And the more we apply these to websites in the right way, we see them across a variety of different industries that they help increase the SEO rankings for just about everybody.

A (19:17)

So this is a major ninja tip because you have actually hacked the Google algorithms and you just shared that with our audience, Startup Nation, make sure you check that out. That's such an interesting acronym. So tell us how, give us some specific tips or examples of how to use that in positioning the content that you're putting on your website. So it sets you up to be Googleicious.

B (19:38)

And also, what is it that you need to say on those blogs and things like that? Like what are the key phrases, keywords, how do you find those for your industry or I should say your ideal client.

C (19:50)

So the first thing I think, to me, everything kind of comes back to, to your website and we have to look at website. I think this is one of the bigger mistakes that all small businesses make is they still kind of look at their website as digital brochures or some kind of a static place. But really you have to think of it as an investment, as a marketing platform and you have to invest in it, in content in a way that's going to help you attract people organically. But also it's one thing to do a great job with SEO, but when people land on the website, if you're not showing those trust factors and those conversion factors, it ends up kind of becoming a waste. When the good thing is Google's doing is they're kind of trying to merge that and they're telling people, we don't just want to have things to rank, so people land on them. We want to show them the stuff that gets them to make the phone call or fill out the form or schedule an appointment. So the first thing is to start looking at your website as an investment and probably as your most important investment that you have. Because everything these days leads back to your website, whether you like it or not. I mean, people talk about like referral marketing. There's very few referrals these days that don't get filtered back to the Internet in some way. They're going to look for review, they're going to look for your website, they're going to try and find you. If somebody gives me a referral and this just happens to me, I'm going to use a pediatric example because one of my kids needed to have go to an allergist because there's an allergic reaction to some food. And our pediatrician said, here, this is who we referred to all of our peers to go to in the old days. Maybe 10 years ago, I would have just taken that referral at face value and gone to them. Now guess where I went? I googled who the best allergy doctors were in town. The one they recommended had terrible reviews. I'm not going to them. I went and they basically, their website was okay. The reviews were terrible. We ended up going to another doctor because those doctors weren't taking care of their own Reputation management and their own website. Right. I think this happens over and over again. A lot of people will say most of our business comes from referrals. But what they don't really realize or admit is people don't get as much referral business as they think they get because they lose it when it filters back through the Internet. So just because you got your last three clients off of referrals doesn't mean that you lost seven of them because they couldn't find you or like somebody else, what they found online. So being able to look at that and understand how important that is to every single business, because we're all Internet businesses now, whether we like to be or not, I think is really important. So changing that and getting that mindset and understanding that you have to tend to your website and nurture it. A big part of that is looking for, you said, like keywords, understanding how your ideal client search. And this is really important. There's lots of free ways to go out there and do this. You can go to Google AdWords, of course, that's their paid platform. But within AdWords there's a keyword planner tool that's free. Set up an account. Don't set up an AdWords campaign. Go in there, use the keyword planner. They'll literally give you the. And you can pin it down to your location when you do this keyword planner. So you can go, okay, hey, Kansas City. Here's five root keywords for dentist or Overland park dentist or Kansas City dentist. They will give you, once you enter that information to the geography you're targeting and the root keywords you give them, they'll give you, say, another hundred or five hundred keywords in terms of the way people are actually searching for those. And they're giving you organic information even though it's within AdWords. They're giving you organic keyword information because they want you to use that to create the best AdWords ads you can. But within that AdWords paid platform, Goldmine of keyword. Once you know how people are searching, you know how to maybe go back to your website and make sure you're planting some of these keywords naturally into the pages, naturally into your blog posting, which we'll talk a little bit more because that's really important. And if you get a little bit under the hood, you know, being able to go up into your browser title or your meta descriptions, if people are familiar with like WordPress and Yoast, very simple tool to be able to go up there and, and naturally work keywords into Some of the more basic sections of your website and just doing these little things a lot of times can uncork SEO value or significantly increase your ranking potential just because you've gone in. And instead of a lot of people go on their websites, again, digital brochure mentality, they act like they have a captive audience. So they put the words that they would want to put on as they would present. But in search engine optimization we want to look at the way people are searching and then naturally work that language in so we can pull people in. And sometimes the wording that you use is a lot different because you're a professional versus the way people actually search. So that's really important is to be able to go in.

B (24:14)

Just a quick question, Phil, when you say meta descriptions, can you explain what that is for our audience?

C (24:18)

So that is if we do a Google search and you do a keyword search and you get a list of a bunch of organic results, 10 of them are going to be organically, three to four of them are going to be in the maps results and of course you're going to get some ads down in that organic section. The blue line, the blue hot link line is your page title. So you can go into that page title, into your backend and actually set that. A lot of websites out there, they don't have a page, their page title up in the browser bar might just be home or the name of the company or the name of the practice. But that's a super huge opportunity. And one of the more heavily weighted ranking factors on page is to make sure that you have a browser title up in the top that actually has your primary keywords that actually sync up with the rest of the page. So you can't say you're Overland Park Dentist and not mention Overland park dentist on the page somewhere. So a lot of people put your brand name up in there, but you also want to put some of those key keyword terms on your so that's the blue line. The meta description is the description that comes underneath the blue text title in an organic search on Google. So typically you're going to see the highlighted LinkedIn click and a little bit of gray descriptive text below that you can actually tell Google what you want to put down in there. And Google doesn't actually count that those words as much, but they're really super important for click through rates because the sexier, more attractive or more targeted that messages and is usually the more of a better click through rate you're going to get if you show up on the page. And interestingly enough, the higher your click through rate is, the more that's a search engine ranking factor. So you can actually pull yourself up the page if you manage to get yourself to the first page and all of a sudden people start going down and they see, oh, you've got it really attractive because you stay, you give free consultations or you've got something going on. You just have a better way to describe your business that can really help bring up your click through rate. Because you didn't just leave it to Google, you didn't set the meta description, you left it to Google to grab something randomly off the page that either doesn't make sense or maybe has the keyword in it. So to the extent that you can actually tell Google what you want to put if that search results is really powerful. So those are two things that a lot of people miss out on or they don' spend the time on that have a enormous amount of power for the amount of time and effort it takes to kind of set those. And that's just one of those things to be disciplined about and make sure that you're looking at those and putting. Because a lot of people leave a lot of potential on the table just by not putting a little bit of thought into setting that browser title on that meta description.

A (26:42)

It's very easy to do. It takes just a few moments to go through. And if you have a WordPress website, do your Yoast SEO. But you have to know what keywords to use and what verbiage is going to have a good result and that sort of a thing.

B (26:54)

What would you say some of the most common tips are? And especially in our field where people are really solopreneurs and a lot of times they're trying to do a lot of DIY stuff like what are some of the common mistakes you see folks make?

C (27:08)

I think the biggest mistake is just people, if they do anything online, they'll set up a website and leave it static. And if they've got some good content or something to say, they put it up on a third party platform like a social network, Twitter, Facebook, whatever it is, and it just goes up there once in real time, passes through the river and kind of dies there. That's not the way you want to market today. You want to put your best content on your website, share the link and make sure they come back to your site and use that as a referral source for all of your content communication. When you do that, you can do things like set an adwords remarketing tag or a Facebook pixel on there and you can start to collect audiences. Even if you don't want to start marketing or paid marketing, you can start to collect information on your or you can start to tag your visitors. So if you ever want to do a targeted campaign later, you're actually kind of building your website as an asset. So a lot of people, I think that's one of the biggest mistakes I see is they kind of treat everything separately, where they should really use their website as the hub and make sure that everything that they do, I think online and offline, comes back to the website in some way, shape or form. And so you've got some kind of call to action or something that's attractive. So you can all sudden get them into your education funnel and start nurturing them or collect the information so that you can market them later. Then you've got, if you think about it, if you start doing it this way, you can just for not a lot of effort, you can all sudden build up an audience of hundreds or even thousands of people. All of a sudden it's like, oh, I want to do a Facebook campaign. Well, I've been doing the Pixel for a long time now. I got an audience built in and I can start doing this right off the bat. So that's the biggest thing. The second thing really kind of gets into where I think so, Phil, before.

B (28:45)

You say the second thing, I know that a lot of times this is just general conversation for you and we know what a pixel is. You can share what a pixel is. People might be thinking like, is that the type of drawing the dots? No, no. What is a pixel?

C (28:59)

So there's lots of different things you can be doing to actually put code on your website that when somebody lands on it, you can tag them and then almost kind of build up your own database so that you can market to people there. Now Facebook's got their own special code or tagging system that they call a Facebook Pixel. And if you've got a Facebook account, you can go in there and for free, set up a little snippet of code that's called your pixel and then literally take that and install it very easily on your WordPress website. So that anybody that comes to your website, they will get tagged with this pixel that's associated with your account online. And then when you want to do some more advertising later, you'll actually have a built in audience of people that have visited your website. So they're highly targeted because they've already been there at some point and Again, you can start to accumulate these visitors in a way where you can retarget them. The same thing happens with AdWords. AdWords had one called their remarketing tag. So if you see people that actually do these kind of lower cost display campaigns that target and stalk you in other places online, it's because they tagged you with their version of this tag and again you collected it in your AdWords account. And at some point maybe you wanted to do a display or a banner ad so that somebody came back to your website. You can do those kind of stalker ads. Maybe not the best way to describe them, probably not, but something that can follow them around and kind of be. I know there's certain, there's certain restrictions. I know that I've got a bankruptcy attorney and they can't retarget in that market because of those privacy concerns because somebody came in, they don't want to show if somebody comes down and sits down to a computer again, that there's been bankruptcy searches. So I'm sure that applies to certain types of medical fields as well. But Google will tell you, I mean they just all of a sudden say you're not eligible because it's this type of an ad. But still it can't hurt you from using the tag and collecting the data and trying to have that if you can use it later. So again, this is a simple thing everybody can be doing for free. Basically, if you've got that mentality of hey, my website's my marketing hub, let's make sure that everything we're doing comes back there and then we're tracking people and being able to use that and bank that information for later.

A (31:02)

And if you're not doing your own website and you're having somebody else do it, your web developer or company can easily set that up for you.

B (31:08)

Right. And so I know we're running out of time, but Phil, if you could maybe give maybe just three more like tips or resources for SEO. You give us the Google AdWords, the keyword planner tool, gave us the Google Search educator guidelines cheat sheet. Anything else up your sleeve that you are like, must have tools.

C (31:26)

Yeah, I'm going to run. This is my biggest bang for the buck that anybody can do to get a lot more clients quickly. And that is you can set your website set up, come up with, commit to a blogging strategy, your blogging strategy. Think of doing them in terms of 10 to 15 posts each time. And get. You're not. Most people just aren't going to write 10 or 15 posts. You're going to have to find, especially a solopreneur or small business has to find an outsourced writing person, freelancer, somebody to at least help them. They get some coaching, write it up. You can edit it and do it this way. But the idea is to write 10 to 15 blog posts at a time, come up with the titles and when you do this, you want to do it so that the 10 or 15 is written in almost like a series, like a table of contents, how to hire then what you do at the end. So you've got a standalone blog post for each week. At the end of the 10 or 15 weeks you stitch them together into an ebook. The ebook then turns into a call to action on your website where you can collect emails, but more importantly for very cheaply, you can then spin that PDF into a Kindle, put the Kindle up on Amazon, become an author and leverage and get backlinks from Amazon. Now all of a sudden we're working on your personal branding and you as an authority that comes back to that eat education, authority and trust. You're becoming a published author, you're up on Amazon, they see a book on your website. One of the things that we've done for some clients now since I've been doing podcast guesting is you can actually then take that ebook and use it as a way to start getting yourself guested on other people's podcasts. Now this has been the most powerful thing I've done in 12 years of business. I've gotten so much business off of podcast guesting. So much great. The best form of organic SEO backlinks that you can get. Plus I've been able to leverage other people's audiences. There's this cross, I mean you guys know all the benefits in terms of doing this. The guests and the host cross use their social channels. And sometimes people I can't remember if you guys on your website, if you use your transcripts.

A (33:31)

We don't.

C (33:32)

You don't. So what I've done, people that don't use them, I asked the hosts like I asked you is do you mind if I transcribe at my cost? I then take that, turn that into a blog post, put it on my website and give the host links back from my website. That's done to. So I get a free blog posts out of this, right?

A (33:53)

Nice. Very smart.

C (33:55)

Long form blog posts end up being like 6 to 8,000 words. My the guests that I'm on obviously get the benefit of having that rank getting and getting links later and the show that I was on. Then all of a sudden gets a second round of launch because obviously you launch it first and then we would do it later type of thing. You do this pattern where you start, just start with your website, blog, do a series, you're taking care of your, you're taking care of your on page SEO, you're building your website up, you're targeting keywords, you're working on your personal branding your authorship by spinning into an ebook. You've got a call to action to collect emails, put it up on Amazon and Kindle, get backlinks from them, become an author on your own author page. Now all of a sudden, maybe start doing a guesting campaign. You can hire a booking agency. Some of these you can do by yourself. You can go out and just. There's a lot of podcasts out there that it's hard to get on, but there's a ton of them out there that are great and have their own little pockets. It doesn't matter if they've got 50 or 500 or 50,000 listeners. Each one of those is a great opportunity. And there's a way for you to kind of micro niche and again, build yourself up as an authority. Have other people say that you're an expert, you're coming on as an expert. And a lot of times the show notes, it's all about you. So a lot of times people going out with SEO trying to get backlinks, now they're trying to do it in terms of guest posting, It's a pain in the butt. Thousand word blog posts, they get rejected all the time. They're spammy. You might get one backlink that helps you out, but on somebody else's podcast, you're getting a whole show notes page about you. You know what I mean? Quickest way to build authority for anybody anywhere. And so I've been telling people I've been doing this for 12 years. I've never seen any single tactic that when you do it this way has this much bang for the buck. The final thing that I'll tell you on this, I want to get back to reviews is I've been going on every show and then saying, hey, here's my review funnel. Will you rate me in terms of a guest on my show? I've been sending them back to my Google page. I've gotten more than 50 reviews off of this on my Google account. That's then helped launch me locally for my own business. Just that alone has been worth every penny of this. But if you take all the other Benefits I've got along the way where you can just kind of aggregate these all together. Super, super powerful again. It all comes back to kind of like the blogging and just stretch it out and you do it once. This is the way people can build their authority, get all sorts of SEO stuff, and actually leverage other people's audience in a way that can really help grow and actually get clients out of it. I will finish with saying that I've at least gotten $100,000 in new business last year from podcast guesting. And that's not even. That's just gravy for me, because that was. And it's probably going to lead to another 100,000 this year at least. But I wasn't even thinking about doing that kind of stuff for clients. I was more thinking about what's the easiest way I can get natural backlinks back to my website. That's how I started. And I was like, holy cow, look at all these things. It's like raining down with benefits. And I think this can. This strategy can work for every business and especially practitioners that. Where it really helps to be able to become and be perceived as an expert in your area. Because that's what people. Who people want to go to, right?

B (36:51)

Great, great tips. And it's interesting. I kind of. I didn't expect us to focus so much on reviews and the idea of podcasting and things like that. But you're right. You can put these things, and you should. If you've been on a podcast talking about a specific area as a therapist, put that video, put that podcast on. Because it's a way for people to get to know you without even ever stepping in the door. And they get connected to you, and then they even feel better. It's like, you know, there's a big difference. I've been on YouTube looking for videos or something like that, and I keep getting the ads for Grammarly and then the ad change where it actually demonstrated someone using Grammarly. And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, I think I might use this because it actually looks pretty better than what I perceived it. So, yeah, you come to a website and it's about you or about your services, but if they hear you talking or doing a video, they're like, this person really can help me. They just did a demo. So, Phil, you've been really fantastic. Thank you so much. It sounds like we could probably talk about this for hours.

C (37:44)

Putting up with my rant, it feels like I'm trying to get so Much out. So much out. Well, Claire's video is one of those things where there's just so many things going in, but you got to try and boil it down for people can actually say, I, I get that I could actually do that. And hopefully there's a few things that we said today where people are inspired to do so.

A (37:59)

Yeah, it was a really value packed podcast and clearly you're really passionate about it and you're all amped up talking about these things and you've inspired new thoughts for me and I appreciate that too. So, yeah, it's been great having you.

B (38:10)

On today and we know that you have a giveaway for our guests. What is the giveaway?

C (38:14)

Yeah, head over to kcseopro.com just on my contact page, I've got a local SEO book that's chalk some of the things that we're talking about today and there are also some specifics in there about how you might just be able to apply some of these DIY to your current website. Of course, a lot of what we do is WordPress, but thankfully that's what most people are using today.

A (38:32)

Yeah.

B (38:33)

And so you can also head over to our show Notes page and we'll have all the links that Phil had talked about and more because he sent us a whole bunch. So that will just be a place where you can get everything and you just go to privatepracticestartup.com, head over to the podcast tab and search for the podcast episodes. So, Phil, thanks again so much for being on our show. We really appreciate it and Startup Nation, we hope you had a blast on today's show. I don't know, sometimes SEO might be like one of those things. Like you're like, I got a headache, I don't know my head. But hopefully, like Kate said that you've been inspired by at least even one tip. If you take and apply one tip that you've heard from today's show, whether it's get more reviews from your colleagues, whether it's be on a guest podcast and or post a podcast on your page or video, you know, that really makes all the difference is starting. I love this series idea for the blog. Creating an ebook, that was brilliant for me, that was my inspirational tool. So make sure to check out those show notes where all those tips, resources, giveaways and links from today's show are waiting for you there. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review, share the show with friends and fellow colleagues. And we hope you've had a great day. And continue to have a great day and we appreciate the opportunity to continue inspiring you from Startup to mastery. See you later Startup Nation.

A (39:46)

See you next time. Thanks for joining us on the Private practice startup. Visit theprivatepracticestartup.com for awesome resources, free trainings, attorney approved private practice paperwork, and so much more. Sam.