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- [00:00]
Richard Karn
No offense, but your brain is a terrible place to keep your big idea. It belongs in the world. But you know that already. You have a calling, a voice that says this is what I'm meant to do. Create the website your big idea deserves with wix. Make it your own with top to bottom customization, AI to help realize your vision and built in business tools to turn your daydream into your dream job. WIX supports every stage of the business journey except one. Your decision to begin. Ready? Go to Wix.com hi, I'm Richard Karn.
- [00:33]
Unknown (Pocket Hose Advertiser)
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- [01:26]
64,000 you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Host. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pocket host.com terms.
- [01:37]
Ross Dunn
Hello and welcome to SEO101 on WMR FM. Episode number 502. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my co host is my company Senior SEO Scott Vanack. Today as promised, we have a special episode for you. A special guest. We are interviewing Jim Hedger. He's a friend, SEO expert, host of Webcology on WMR FM and Stepforth's very first employee back in 2000. A lover of all things SEO and founding partner and chief bottle washer. That was a good one at Digital Always Media. Welcome Jim.
- [02:15]
Jim Hedger
Hey, how's it going guys?
- [02:17]
Ross Dunn
Great. Good to have you on man. It's been forever since we've had a chance to talk. We should have you on more often and just shoot the Shit. It's nice. It would. It would. So for those who don't know you, we've introduced you a bit. Who are you and how did you get your start in the world of SEO?
- [02:37]
Jim Hedger
Okay, well, okay, I'm Jim Hedger. I've been in SEO for almost as long as Ross and just slightly longer than Scott. I started by answering this ad in a newspaper. What's that for? This weird company with a weird name. Brave Art Website Management. I know, I know, but that's what they named companies back then. Okay, so I go to this cafe, right? And there's this young guy with blonde hair, looks like a lifeguard or a surfer or something, and he starts explaining this concept that by using words arranged in a certain way and titles and different aspects of a website, you could actually manipulate search engines. And back in 2000, this is like search engines were talking like Lycos and Alta Vista and Magellan and Dogpile and stuff like that. But the concept that he was explaining to me was suddenly mind blowing. And. And he was a really cool guy, and I really wanted to be part of this company. And, you know, because it was actually Ross who. Who was interviewing me, and it was that Brave Art Website management was the southwest corner of his studio. Condo. Studio condo in an old ice factory in. In Victoria. And that turned quickly turned into step fourth, which is the company you run today. Yeah. Remember that branding exercise you went through with a company downstairs? Anyway, so, yeah, I saw this ad in the newspaper. This guy explained a brilliant concept that I hadn't even considered. But, oh, my goodness, if you control information, you really literally control how people think about the world. And that fascinated me. And again, Ross, working with you was one of the best experiences of my life.
- [04:47]
Ross Dunn
We had a lot of fun.
- [04:48]
Scott Vanack
I never said that. I've never said that. Now I feel like I'm falling behind here.
- [04:53]
Jim Hedger
Well, Scott, you've been with ross forever for 23 years, and honest to goodness, you gotta leave to understand what a wonderful. What a wonderful experience you're having.
- [05:05]
Ross Dunn
Okay, don't say stuff that means.
- [05:08]
Jim Hedger
I mean, don't.
- [05:08]
Scott Vanack
Okay, I'll stay. I'll stay. I'll stay.
- [05:10]
Jim Hedger
You're having. You're having a remarkable career, dude.
- [05:15]
Ross Dunn
Oh, man. Well, it's been a. It was a lot of fun too, having my first employee. You had to go through my growing pains of having an employee for the first time too. Oh, my God. Well, yeah, but we.
- [05:27]
Jim Hedger
But you know what? The company was growing really quickly. We were. We were among the first SEO companies out there. And so once we actually learned what we were doing and how to communicate what we were doing, we started growing really rapidly. And that was really exciting.
- [05:44]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, it was. It was. And we saw some crazy stuff for sure. And I still don't understand how I was so convinced that Brave Art Website management was a good name.
- [05:58]
Jim Hedger
There was this whole Mel Gibson connection or something. It was.
- [06:02]
Ross Dunn
I thought I was smart. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and writing it on a board next to my bed. It was my idea board. Brave Art. Wow. And the reason why initially was I wanted to be a design company and I thought Art in the name and Brave. And it was just such timely with Braveheart doing so well. The frick. I was thinking. Anyway, I'm very glad that Step forth was. It was renamed to step 4th. First of all, it was step 4th search engine placement. But we got so many bad. We had so many bad leads from people wanting to be placed at search engines for jobs.
- [06:42]
Jim Hedger
Oh, my God. Yeah.
- [06:45]
Ross Dunn
And then we like, screw that. Step 4 Web marketing. Yeah. Anyway, it's. That's. That's a bit of the early ride we had. What do you remember? I guess what do you miss the most about SEO in the early 2000s?
- [07:03]
Jim Hedger
How rapidly things were changing. The thrill of discovering new things, the thrill of growing an audience. When the early days with both Brave Art and Stepforth. One of the things we did was publish a weekly newsletter that turned into a. Again, there wasn't a lot of us at the time. There was very few people writing to the space. So we were publishing a credible and competent newsletter weekly. And we were publishing it just to our clients. But other people started getting it and started getting distributed much more widely. And suddenly we were building an audience. I really missed that. Everything felt so new and exciting. And I bet you new SEO is getting into the field now. Aside from the pressure of making a living, feel the same sort of thing, the same sort of excitement about building something new. This is like, you know, we've been around forever. So I don't feel that excitement still, but I still feel the urgency to do that building.
- [08:03]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, it's a little weird when you don't have the excitement, but the urgency, it's not quite the same, is it?
- [08:08]
Jim Hedger
That never goes away.
- [08:09]
Ross Dunn
No, but it was interesting. And then of course, we hit the days where syndication work and oh man, that was the best. That's what I missed the most. Syndication, everything. We'd send. We'd send out those newsletters or just say an article we wrote. We'd least send one article out and it would be syndicated across how many websites? Like 20, 30 websites. And then those guys would then get scraped and syndicated and all those links back, all the link backs, links back to us. Can't speak helped back in those days. It was amazing.
- [08:44]
Scott Vanack
I missed that because I was like this nobody back then. And then suddenly I'm published everywhere. Like, how did that even happen? How am I writing things that are everywhere? It was just crazy.
- [08:55]
Jim Hedger
And it makes it real serious real quick.
- [08:57]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, it does.
- [08:58]
Ross Dunn
And nowadays to do that, you have to build. You have to be able to work a lot harder. You have to have built up practically a book level quality of great content. Unless of course, you've been in the business as long as we have and maybe, you know, we might know a few people we can get published somewhere. But if you're starting out, it's tough. I can't even imagine, like you've really got to stand out.
- [09:21]
Jim Hedger
Well, here's the thing though. Everyone's got to start somewhere. So don't let that competition scare you off. No, but don't let rejection scare you off either. Everybody gets it. We did too.
- [09:37]
Ross Dunn
So, Scott, do you want to take the next question?
- [09:39]
Scott Vanack
What was our next question? Yeah. So as you know, since the very beginning, every time Google does anything, every six months, SEO is dead. The headlines are everywhere. Every SEO is dead. And well, you know, 20 some years, it's still not dead. So with all this hype. So is AI going to kill SEO? Is it dead now? What do you think?
- [09:58]
Jim Hedger
No, I've always thought that we spelled the word die wrong in SEO. We should spell it D Y E, not die. Yeah, because SEO changes all the time. I mean, Google is doing like umpteen million updates, minor updates a year. SEO is subtly changing all the time. So what got us good placements, good rankings previously, really strong content, Good, good links. Integrity in the way that you, you build the website and do business, that you acquire assets for the website following basic guidelines that Google like spel months in advance. Google's like, hey, we're all, we're going over here five years from now, so why don't you all start doing something now? Well, okay, so start doing that. Because a few years from now, that's where Google's going. They telegraphed it for you. All that stuff is still integral to making a page crawlable and readable, making your content available to the great soup pot. That's generative AI the thing, that's the only thing that's major different now. I Think with SEO compared to before is the necessity to brand the click. You have to excuse me, there's little kid action happening on my driveway just outside my window and there's scream. Okay, okay, they're all done. Okay. So the thing that's different now is information is coming up in this sort of like soup pot of generative content to answer whatever query the user put in. If there's a clickable link, you want it branded back to you, back to your website, back to your client. I think that's the major difference than the days of the 10 blue links. But technical SEO is still incredibly important to making your site readable using, using effective markup language. Incredibly important to making your content available and explaining the content, the context of the content. SEO has always been about offering information in ways that search engines can deal with it. Well, I kind of see the generative world as the same thing. It's just the origin of the content is more of a, I don't know, a feeding ground than it is a, your personal domain. You're a training ground for LLMs and the way they relate to the topic that you're addressing. If you're going to get the click, though, that click has to be branded back to you, back to your product. I'm not sure. I mean, we don't know how Google's going to attribute citations at the end of the day in aio. Similarly, we don't know how Copilot is going to end up referring people back to the websites that they got this, this, this, this content from. I'm not sure they know exactly where they get the content from when it comes to LLMs and generative, generative responses, except for the, the, the, the, the, the grounding processes they use. So branding is an essential skill that, that newer SEOs are going to have to get an expertise in. That's something I don't think we had had to concentrate on so much, but otherwise, yeah.
- [13:32]
Ross Dunn
Can you explain what you mean by branding the click to the audience?
- [13:35]
Jim Hedger
Okay, so honestly, I'm not sure I can adequately explain it, but I'm going to try. When you put a, when Gemini or Copilot or whatever, Perplexity answers a query, they're predicting what should come after. You know, they're predicting how the sentences should structure themselves based on the question that was asked and how answers to that question would have been generated by the gajillions of words that they've read in there in their, in their training. It's a jambalaya, it's a It's a, it's a vegetable or an Alphabet soup response. Through the grounding process, Google and Bing are able to say we got this paragraph or this concept from X, Y or Z website. That's what you need to be that X, Y or Z that, that website that they know that they've gotten the content from. And that's what I meant by branding the click.
- [14:46]
Ross Dunn
So, so you mean like, like the, the little paperclip next to the result, saying that this is their source.
- [14:50]
Jim Hedger
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Ross Dunn
So one thing of course they're doing with Google at least is that when you click on that, you end up with a panel that comes out with three or four sources that they've used to sort of hybrid that answer. One thing I'm, I'm hoping they do because this would revitalize things is, or at least make SEO a little more traditional. Not like that that's going to continue happening. I'm so old, I always want things to be traditional. But is if they maybe gave credit to the first one that's on that list and put that name next to that clip, that business name or something even in small letters, like just small something would be nice. It would be great. It would give a little bit of credit to the people they're scamming all this comp. This content from because there's a lot of people aren't clicking those, those links and it's killing businesses. It's going to anyway if this isn't carefully done.
- [15:40]
Jim Hedger
So yeah, Google doesn't care. That's the saddest thing. You remember the Google, Google's had publishers come down to the Googleplex where they've basically stood over them and said, well you've clearly been doing it wrong. Try doing it this way. And they did that for, for like what, like 18 months until they finally came out and said hey, you know what? You're screwed. Most of you are out of business. E comm on the other hand, I'm seeing slightly fewer clicks for some of my E Com clients but they're making more money. They are literally, they're, they're, they're literally selling more products but they're not getting as many, many informational people traveling to their website when you got to purchase something. Until Google takes over that part of the funnel and completely owns it through like Google Shopping or Google Merchant or whatever, which they're trying to. Until then though, they got a click on my E Comm clients website to make the actual purchase. So I'm trying to explain to this client I have who's used to, like, seriously heavy traffic, that you're seeing fewer actual clicks. But again, like, you know, Google Analytics is telling me you're making more money unless we got it set wrong.
- [16:54]
Ross Dunn
So.
- [16:54]
Jim Hedger
You'Re probably seeing more valuable clicks. That's a. Now for people in the publishing industry who rely on AdWords and rely on advertising to make their revenues, y' all screwed. I don't know what else to say. I'm really sorry about that. I wish there was a better answer.
- [17:11]
Ross Dunn
Well, and I think first of all, we have the same data, we're seeing the same thing, even though there's been a drop in the traffic values the same, if not better. So that's good. And I think that's because people are still wanting to take that next step and find out what the heck they're reading. And if they're trying to go travel somewhere, if they're trying, they're not going to be using Google entirely. I don't know who would trust Google to do all their travel stuff. I'm sorry, that's never. That's.
- [17:41]
Scott Vanack
No, thank you.
- [17:41]
Ross Dunn
Distant, distant, distant future. If I ever even considered such a thing, you'd want to go and do your own homework because this is all your. This is a lot of money you're spending. And so you do end up going to our travel client sites and you do look at that and then you do make the purchase. And maybe they've already done that base homework using AI, but now they're getting serious and yeah, they end up going to the sites and doing their purchase. So it should be okay for now. Like you said about content, though, like the press, I do think this idea I had of adding at least the source name there would at least keep their brand getting some recognition, which would appease them a bit and perhaps also add and I believe this truly credibility to the results that are showing up there. Because if anyone's used that stuff for any length of time, oh my God, the utter crap that AI puts out is unbelievable. It could be so bad, it's just terrible. And if you're taking that AIO and you're believing it, that's a dangerous thing to do. I don't know. What are your thoughts? What else do you think they could do to make it easier for publishers? I don't believe they necessarily will, but it is in their best interest. They're under a lot of scrutiny right now.
- [18:53]
Jim Hedger
What can Google do to make it easier for publishers? Wow.
- [19:00]
Ross Dunn
Yeah.
- [19:01]
Jim Hedger
Google created an environment that was inherently toxic when they popularized adsense Now, I know a lot of people are about to hate me for saying that, and I apologize to all of you because what you did was amazing. And some of the stuff that you compiled and got together together and published was incredible. Some people built like very real publishing businesses based on AdSense, but most people built crap.
- [19:32]
Ross Dunn
It's true.
- [19:32]
Scott Vanack
They tried so many scraper sites.
- [19:35]
Jim Hedger
Yeah. And that was web pollution, an enormous amount of web pollution. Google had to look at and consider all of that stuff. Every time it tried to police its own Frankenstein, its own Frankenstein's monster, the villagers came and stabbed and stabbed it with pitchforks. Google created this environment and couldn't manage it. And who could? And by the way, I mean, like, you can totally see it when you're looking at it with 2020 hindsight, but I remember when they. When AdSense came out and it was the smartest thing since sliced bread. And since it made them so damn much money, it actually was the smartest thing of sliced bread. So move into a future where, you know, machine learning and generative. Generative search responses are consuming nuclear power plants worth of electricity. Google kind of had to cull the field a little bit there. And the place that they had to go to ruthlessly was the toxic environment they themselves created, the publishing world. That's my theory on it, and it's not a nice one, but it clicks all the boxes, both technical, engineering and conspiratorial in my head.
- [21:00]
Ross Dunn
I got huge, almost a withdrawal there during that discussion. I missed these discussions. We used to have these, by the way, to listeners. We used to have these all the time and just hammer out ideas and theories. And sometimes they got absolutely stupid, but they were so funny. And I miss your analogies, the farmers and.
- [21:19]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, I kind of forgot about all that too. Yeah, it's like flashback down memory lane or something here.
- [21:24]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, cool.
- [21:24]
Jim Hedger
That was particularly fun one.
- [21:26]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. So with all of this happening, we're looking in the next two years. I originally, Scott, put in seven. What's going to happen in the next seven years?
- [21:40]
Scott Vanack
And I thought I said several.
- [21:42]
Ross Dunn
Several, whatever.
- [21:43]
Scott Vanack
Not seven.
- [21:44]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, even two years, even one year is crazy right now. But with perplexity. Hopefully taking a huge chunk out of Google sometime soon. Please, please, of their traffic. All this stuff happening. Stargate probably running in 2026, mid-2026. What do you think? Where do you see SEO other than the technical. Yes, we're still going to have to make sure content is visible and that AI can understand it, all that stuff. But visibility for clients. How are we going to do anything to control that. In your opinion, in the next, over the next two years.
- [22:22]
Jim Hedger
I honestly don't know if we're going to have, if we're going to be okay. So one of the things in old school SEO was we always had two audiences that we were ready for. We were ready for actual. And we were writing for bots, search bots. I'm not sure we're going to be writing for actual humans in the future. We're going to be writing for their agents. I see a web that, I see a web that's coming that is more of a Life foundation place than it is an information and fulfillment space. So everything, like look at what you're doing online right now. You're ordering your groceries, you're getting all your entertainment, you're getting your music, everything is streamed to you. If you want to be a shut in, you can 1000% do that in the society now, provided you got a strong enough credit card, as long as you can order anything you want online now. Believe me, I order a lot of it.
- [23:18]
Ross Dunn
Yeah.
- [23:20]
Scott Vanack
Is this an ode to the dark web? Are we going dark web here? Like.
- [23:26]
Jim Hedger
I still smoke tons of pot. I get all of that online too. I even have to leave my house if I don't want to. I got this massive backyard. So I, I think the web is going to become infinitely more complicated. I think it's going to be running so many parts of our life services are in Canada. You do all your tax, you do all your taxes over the, over the web in seconds. And it's so damn easy. Like the easier things become, the more complicated the platforms become to facilitate it all. And that's where AI and agents and our own agents are going to be coming in. They're going to be doing the shopping for us. They're, they're, our agents are going to know us so well. They're going to be like our little buddies, like our cell phones are today, except infinitely more powerful and totally invisible. But they're going to be going out there and doing all the stuff I need to do to complete my life, including all my hobby stuff, which is where a lot of the e Comm purchases might come in, or my life fulfillments, which is where a lot of the ecom purchases might come in. Groceries, prescriptions, etc. Keeping up with my medical files. I'm getting older. I really, really want my phalanx of doctors to know everything, to share all that information about me. And that's all going to be agentic as well. So What's a website going to be? Well, I don't even know if people will look at websites unless they're well again because the search engine will probably give them the informational stuff that they're looking for or their agent will go get it for them. So for SEOs markup, machine language, predictive, a lot of predictive analysis. Yeah, I don't. The web is going to be really, really, really nuts and oversimplified at the same time and we're going to be servicing the tools that make it simple for the general population.
- [25:24]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, and I think that's definitely true for the, I guess more cutting edge clients because it's going to be a number of years until it's just like now you look at the older generations and they, they don't even know how to use it. They still, some of them don't know how to use a mouse. Now that's good. But they may not. Yeah, but we're techs though. We've been tech geeks for years.
- [25:48]
Jim Hedger
I deeply resemble that for Mark Ross.
- [25:52]
Ross Dunn
The ones that don't, holy smokes. Like they just don't want to. So there's still going to be a fairly large niche always, at least for a number of years, I'd say 10 easily where people are still going to want to go to websites and stuff. So it's still going to be business there depending on your market. But yeah, if you're cutting edge, if you're doing groceries, you're doing an E commerce, all that stuff. Yeah, you're going to have to be on the cutting edge to a certain degree with this stuff. Not talking small business, we do a lot of small business work. It's almost a benefit to us that we do medium as well. But both of those types don't typically need to be on the cutting edge. So we get to see this stuff being perfected by our highest echelon SEO agencies that have to get this tomorrow or they lose the client and then we see that trickle down effect and go oh good, that works. Thank God. Because I hate being on that cutting edge. That's just too much stress. So I, at least I see that there's going to be some trading. We're going to have to be looking at both areas. It's going to be like we have different search engines for different things and Google's going to have to keep the classic at least universal search view available for many, many years.
- [27:03]
Jim Hedger
Remembering they're still going to be using it until they find something better to. I don't know, vet their generative responses against, to ground their responses against. They're still going to be using their 10blue link search engine because that gives them their order of things. This is the relative order of what's right according to Google.
- [27:24]
Ross Dunn
You don't believe AI mode's just going to take over in a couple years?
- [27:26]
Jim Hedger
Well, it might, but again, what is it going to score veracity against? What's it going to score? How to say this, it always needs to ground itself in a static reality, because unless we come up with another, another model besides large language models, it's always going to be an Alphabet soup of predictive responses. So. And those predictive responses may be right 999 times out of a thousand, but they still need to vet it against some algorithmic judgment of reality. And that's the 10 blue links. That's kind of what they're doing now. I don't see why they won't continue that.
- [28:13]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I mean, I, I just, I, I don't, I don't think anything we know right now is just. I mean, we, we're trying to go with what we know right now, but I do believe that there's going to be so much change in, in that perspective of what they're doing that we don't know really what's going to be two years from now, because it's still going so freaking fast. Especially with the Stargate and all that stuff launching. Just a cool name, by the way. I'm such a nerd. That thing's crazy. You know, 500,000 Nvidia chips will be running at that place when it launches. 500,000 over 1200 acres. What's that?
- [28:48]
Jim Hedger
Just. Can you imagine the smell? It'd be awful. Burnt leather.
- [28:54]
Scott Vanack
I'm going crazy now. You started this. And I'm trying to think of what Buddy's name was on Stargate.
- [29:00]
Ross Dunn
Richard Dean Anderson.
- [29:01]
Scott Vanack
Ah, thank you. I had Dean. I couldn't get the rest of it.
- [29:04]
Ross Dunn
Yes, yes. I was totally Guyver fan. It's like printed on me. Guyver is half the reason I got in this industry. I don't know just anything about messing with stuff.
- [29:16]
Scott Vanack
But we are, we are digital MacGyvers. Look at that. We brought it back.
- [29:21]
Ross Dunn
Yes. That made my day. All right, well, let's take a quick break. We come back, we're going to talk a bit, a little more. Well, guess what about SEO? We'll be right back. Welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunst, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my company's senior SEO, Scott Vanack. We're joined today by Jim Hedger, SEO expert and owner of Digital Always Media. I almost got that mixed up with one I just looked at. Okay, so what was the next question here, Scott?
- [30:12]
Scott Vanack
Well, we're getting more to basic SEO here, but maybe not. You know, we use Semrush a lot. We use Screaming Frog a lot. But you know, including AI stuff. What are your go to tools like? Do you use any go to tools that maybe our listeners haven't heard us talk about yet? I mean, unless you've listened to all our episodes, you probably don't know everything we've said. But I'm just curious if you might have any tools out there you want to add to the arsenal.
- [30:39]
Jim Hedger
Screaming Frog and Sight Bulb.
- [30:44]
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- [33:12]
Jim Hedger
I don't know if you guys use Site Bulb, but it's a much. It's a great little web crawler and auditing tool. Fast and a great price point for independence.
- [33:26]
Ross Dunn
Truth. Yeah, I do remember using that a few times. I think I even suggested Scott try it a few times. I'm not sure if he did. He doesn't listen.
- [33:34]
Scott Vanack
We were doing a lot of audits before. We haven't done audits much like we do the odd one, but when we were doing a lot of audits, we were using Site Bulb quite a bit for a while.
- [33:42]
Ross Dunn
Oh, good, good.
- [33:43]
Scott Vanack
But you know, we, I think we stopped subscribing to it because we just weren't doing a lot of audits anymore. So it doesn't make sense. I mean, I mean it, I guess it makes sense for our current clients, but when, you know, when you're working on a 100 page document for a client, you want all the tools you've got at your disposal, right? You want to find every piece of information from every angle. So you use a lot more tools when you're doing that. For sure.
- [34:04]
Ross Dunn
Yeah.
- [34:04]
Jim Hedger
I'm using a new tool. Do you guys know Ryan Jones from.
- [34:08]
Ross Dunn
Sapient on the name maybe, But I'm.
- [34:12]
Jim Hedger
Like, yeah, he's got a new tool called Serpicon which takes a look at how open your pages or site is to AI crawlers. Serpicon.
- [34:26]
Scott Vanack
Oh, that's cool.
- [34:27]
Jim Hedger
He's in his beta phase right now, so insanely low price point for an incredibly useful tool.
- [34:35]
Ross Dunn
Love it. Yeah, there's always some great stuff coming out and it's nice to get some idea of what people are using. I've been big Fan of. Sorry. You go ahead, Scott. This name's going to escape me. I'm ready. All right.
- [34:49]
Scott Vanack
Well, I was going to say, especially with AI coming out, there's just 100 new tools every single day. And how do you try them all? You can't. Right. So you have to talk to Jim and find out what Jim's using and.
- [34:59]
Jim Hedger
Use his tool in your neighborhood. Remember Dr. Evil? Yeah, she's still around. Renee Gagnon is working on a really cool tool. Again, reading your page as your site as AI agents and ajastic agents would urge you, Ross or Scott, if you're still in contact with Renee or urge you get in touch with her and talk to her about it.
- [35:28]
Ross Dunn
She actually had a question about the tool. I haven't got back to her. She had sent it to me a couple days ago. I've got to get back to her.
- [35:33]
Jim Hedger
Yeah, right.
- [35:34]
Ross Dunn
I've been talking to her about it. I haven't looked at it or anything but looking forward to seeing it. She always does amazing stuff.
- [35:40]
Jim Hedger
Yep.
- [35:41]
Ross Dunn
Really creative brain, Dr. Evil. Indeed.
- [35:45]
Scott Vanack
I forgot about that reference. It took me a second to even know what you're talking about.
- [35:48]
Ross Dunn
It's.
- [35:49]
Scott Vanack
It's a long, long time back.
- [35:52]
Ross Dunn
Oh my gosh.
- [35:53]
Jim Hedger
She's got a reputation.
- [35:55]
Ross Dunn
She does.
- [35:57]
Scott Vanack
And then some. Yeah.
- [35:59]
Ross Dunn
So do you have any tips for small business owners or new SEOs on how they can get their feet wet if they're just starting out?
- [36:06]
Jim Hedger
Okay, number one, the age old tip. Don't panic. It's going to take time. Be very. You know what? Be simple. Keep everything simple. One topic per page. Do the learn the basics of SEO and follow them. Follow them like a religion when it it comes to making pages and making sites. Market the living heck out of everything that you're doing on social media. Use Reddit, get into long form writing, get into use substack, build links and again, be prepared for a long, a long ride. But if you are and you and you're consistent, it'll be a rewarding ride. Or it should be.
- [37:01]
Ross Dunn
You mentioned building links and that's always a interesting subject. I find many SEOs have different ways of doing it and different lines of ethicalness or even how much they care about it. What are your thoughts on like any kind of small business, building links is atrociously hard, usually because they have such limited time. But what sort of links do you think are even worthwhile building these days?
- [37:31]
Jim Hedger
I think building this is a really hard answer because it honestly depends on the size of the website and the sector that they're in and who they're appealing to. Links are a measure of trustworthiness and number one, the links should be relevant to the concept or the context of the page that they're linking to. That could be a site wide relevance or a specific page or article relevance. I'm really into writing long form content that gets distributed across other people's websites and linked back to the original site. I'm also into hiring companies. I'm not going to mention any companies on, on your, on your podcast, but what they're doing in north Northern New York state is still pretty cool and still very effective.
- [38:45]
Ross Dunn
And so these are ones where you buy links, you mean?
- [38:47]
Jim Hedger
Well. Okay. What Boykin and Smarty are doing is still useful and effective.
- [38:52]
Ross Dunn
Right? Gotcha. Okay.
- [38:54]
Jim Hedger
So, but that's for large scale when you need to get a large number of links. Otherwise write content that people are going to link to. That's the old fashioned way it works.
- [39:04]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. And one of the things I always mention for anyone who's a local business is definitely be active in your community and if you can keep your radar, your antennae up and look for places that have websites and say, hey, you mind providing a link for this help I'm providing you? If you're donating or you've done a lot of work for someone or whatever, all those things do help. And they show that hyperlocal relevance that frankly play a big role in confirming that you're an authentic business and that you have authority in have earned the right to rank as the wonderful Dana Lucadu always used to say it's, it's.
- [39:42]
Jim Hedger
Been a long time since I've served much smaller businesses and it's also been a long time since I've lived in a smaller city that actually could be considered communities. But you're absolutely right. Be part of your local chamber of commerce. Take part. They, they say that nine, that nine out of ten is just showing up. So that's the deal with building links in your community. Like Ross said, be there and ask for something back for being there. And in more of a meta publishing thing, show up through your writing, represent yourself and give people a reason to link back to you.
- [40:23]
Ross Dunn
Cool. So one other question is what, what fascinates you these days? What, what gets you excited about SEO that you, you would like to share if we haven't already covered it?
- [40:37]
Jim Hedger
That's a hard question. I'm actually having a hard time being excited about SEO because I'm very disappointed in Google. I used to think that by making information available and I thought SEOs that had a big part in this, that we were building a ecosystem that would be reliable long into the future. And that made me very excited. I love the idea of communicating. I still love doing webcology. This is a thing in SEO. Being on your show right now is a thing in SEO that makes me really excited. Passing on knowledge makes me excited. But right now I often feel like we're working for the bad guys. We're working for the betterment of the bad guys. And that doesn't excite me. I mean, you know, my character Ross kind of ticks me off actually. But the technology is insanely interesting. Maybe this is an incredibly awful patch we have to go through so that our kids could have a much better world. That that would excite me. If you want Star Trek, you gotta wade through the swamp to get there. I want Star Trek.
- [41:53]
Ross Dunn
Thank you. That's really good. So you also mentioned that earlier that you're more of an SEO to SEOs. Can you explain that, what you're doing these days?
- [42:01]
Jim Hedger
Okay, yeah. So I've been around for. If it was anybody else, I'd say I've been around forever. But you've been around longer. So I've been around for almost forever. And I'm really well known by almost everybody who was in the industry 2010 previous. Like anyone who in the industry 2010 previous knows who I am. Like almost 100% guarantee that. And they are running agencies, they are director level at many of the large corporations now. And they need a second set of eyes. Often they, they sometimes get incredibly complicated problems that they would love to devote themselves to, but their role doesn't allow for that. And their SEO team doesn't have the experience to be able to figure it out. So I've been getting a lot of gigs of just absurd problems like what the hell is that?
- [43:03]
Ross Dunn
Oh, you must love that.
- [43:04]
Jim Hedger
I totally do that. They're wet ball of string puzzles that you gotta meticulously unravel until you get to the prize. And once you get to the prize, the payoff is so incredible. I've got one right now. I'm doing a massive audit with Fortune 10, I think. I don't know. They're big, very big company and oh my God, say the numbers. The scale is mind blowing. And that's really exciting. Like when you start seeing things, when you start measuring clicks in the millions or tens of millions a day, that's kind of freaky because the numbers get really numbers and behaviors get really weird. Then I guess, you know what it's always been about human behavior. That's always been the exciting thing.
- [43:51]
Ross Dunn
Cool. Very cool. Well, one thing I want to, I'd be remiss not to do is thank you so much for recommending me to do this show back when you were working for Webmaster Radio. What a fantastic turn that has become. It's one of my favorite things ever to do. And thanks to you, I became even closer to John Carcutt before he passed away. And for years and years we just became best of friends. And that wouldn't have happened without that. So thank you.
- [44:16]
Jim Hedger
That was by far the best decision I made when I was, I was program director at Webmaster Radio for about six months and that was by far the best decision I made.
- [44:24]
Ross Dunn
Thank you, man. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure and it's so cool. Now I get to work with Scott, who's also my best bud. So it's just great. And we get to just tear into each other all the time. It's perfect.
- [44:35]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, the stuff the listeners don't get to hear, you know, if only they could hear the before the show conversation and all that. But, but you don't. Sorry, sorry, listeners. You don't get to hear it.
- [44:46]
Ross Dunn
No, no, that could be a Patreon thing actually.
- [44:49]
Jim Hedger
That would be, you know, that would be good. I would love my co host, Christine and I have, I mean we care about each other deeply, but we have arguments like crazy before the show. We're going to cover that. No, you're not going to cover that way. That would make good radio.
- [45:04]
Ross Dunn
It would, it would. You just might get people buying in. Well, thanks so much for joining us today, Jim. I'm really glad you could come on. And it's a perfect way to celebrate 500 episodes. And I was saying I can't imagine how many you've done. I know you never did the counting like I decided to do year rounds ago, but must be in the 750 to 1000 range now for somewhere between.
- [45:26]
Jim Hedger
There we think we're in the 8 to 900 range. But there's a whole last year that Webmaster Radio has an archive somewhere.
- [45:34]
Ross Dunn
Oh dear. Yeah, okay.
- [45:37]
Jim Hedger
But it's been a great trip, eh? What a long three decade career. Long trip.
- [45:43]
Ross Dunn
Yes, yes. And I want this to continue going awesome for us all until a year old. So retirement soon, but very soon.
- [45:56]
Jim Hedger
Oh, I am so looking down the barrel of it and I'm loving it.
- [46:01]
Ross Dunn
We got another 15 years probably at least. So it's like, oh gosh, please, please, got to find our niche. All this AI is going to be interesting.
- [46:08]
Jim Hedger
Maybe 8 to 10.
- [46:09]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, as long as Ross doesn't retire before I'm ready to retire, we're good. Because if he goes first, I guess I'm forced into it, so I guess it's not all bad.
- [46:18]
Ross Dunn
I don't know. I'll just get you to run everything.
- [46:21]
Scott Vanack
Oh, that sounds like the opposite of retirement.
- [46:25]
Ross Dunn
Well, on behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and my company Sydney or SEO Scott Van Ach and our special guest Jim Hedger, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a Show Notes newsletter you can sign up for at SEO101 radio, where you don't have to miss a single link and refresh your memory of a past show at any time. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes, which air twice a month on WMR fm.
- [47:02]
H
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