Hello, this is Joshua Cape Johnson. Today, we're going to discuss the next generation of SEO. We're going to help you with some strategies, not just tactics, but strategies for a game plan of how to protect yourself in the online marketing digital space for you as a small business owner. We're also going to give you a tool that we use on a daily basis for our marketing campaigns and we think this can really help you.
Before we get into that, I want to talk to you about something that's really been bothering me. It's called Google. You see, Google has literally put small business owners on the edge of the cliff of broken eggshells. Now, I just want you to visualize that.
Literally, small business owners are at risk. Even if they're not trying to take shortcuts, they're at risk. Here's what I mean by that. Taking shortcuts in online marketing, trying to rank inside the Google search engine, there are shortcut ways to do that, which I call turn-a-burn SEO.
It goes kind of like this. You go out, you find SEO firm that doesn't know what they're doing. You pay for a couple hundred bucks a month and 45 days you're ranking on your first page and you're super happy. But come 90 days later, you're asked with penalty with some type of email from Google spam team saying that you have crossed their boundaries basically.
It's kind of in a nutshell, that's what they tell you. So let's turn to burn SEO model, business model. There's nothing wrong with doing that if you're trying to market your business in Google in 2009. But this is 2014 and there's definitely different strategies.
We as a business owners have to implement. And so the thing that's horrible about the position of where Google is at right now is that it's still, their search engine is still the most coveted source of traffic for small business owners. We all know, you know, if you've been around in a digital space for any amount of time, we know that ranking in the Google search engine is just awesome. It's a great source of traffic.
Why? Because it's crap, man. It's people going and it's not just a big banner on the side of a highway. It's not interruption marketing.
It's people going out and certain, like literally they want to find you. And so being positioned well for the particular search phrases that these people are looking for, whether it be a service or a product, if you're positioned well in the search engines, we all know that that traffic is the most awesome. It's awesome. But there's a problem with that because it's so coveted, it also has an effect, you know, a backfire with it.
Number one is that Google has really kicked up, like their search engine's got really smart. And this is both good and bad. The thing that sucks about this is that they're ranking and favoring big corporates, big, big sites like Home Depot, Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, things like that. Okay.
SlideShare, SoundCloud, things like that. Okay. Those are huge authority sites that they've decided, oh, well, we're just going to rank these because we could trust them. Even though these inner pages that they're ranking may be SEOed with cheap 2009 SEO tactics, even though these inner pages might be spammed, might be pushed with negative SEO, even though these inner pages that Google's choosing to rank are on a much cheaper budget, even though these inner pages are getting away with murder, they decide to continue to rank them.
Okay. Enough of the rant, but like honestly, if it wasn't for a microphone here, I would have like really screamed, like my voice would have gotten a lot more grower. We're growly there, but I'm working on a little, anyway, okay, enough of the tech calories. I'm a little teed off with Google because of the way they favor sites.
Now let's, let's back up. And okay, so I just had my little rant about authority sites at the ranking. But what about you and me? What about the small business owners got a small marketing budget every month?
And we, you know, we know that the yellow pages don't work. Long gone is that strategy. We know that newspapers are horrible for marketing. We know we looked at them in the newspaper anymore.
If they do, they're 80 years old, you know, I mean, and if they do, they're not, you know, come on. So you've got Craigslist and Craigslist is super picky. You got to constantly update your ads, you know, twice a week to make sure you're holding your position up at the top. They no longer allow you to track your links.
So if you're referencing your site anymore, last time I checked, I couldn't bet a short URL and there to track, which as we're, I couldn't even do split testing at Craigslist anymore. So that's, that's lame. So where does that, you know, that leaves us with paid advertising or organic search and everybody knows that we're coveted, the coveted Google organic search. And come on, let's, let's get real here.
Yahoo search engine being search engine. They're not necessarily bringing us great, you know, authority leads anymore. That's long gone. That ship is sale.
So, so we're, we're left with Google, Google search engine and you and me, you know, we're watching, we're in a search engine. We're looking at our coveted keywords, you know, the keywords that we know have tons of traffic. Let's say you're a dentist and you're in San Francisco, you want to rank for San Francisco dental services or San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco dentist or San Francisco family dentist, you know, all those coveted keywords you'd love to rank for. And maybe you did at one time, which is even worse and some more painful it now than ever.
Maybe you even, maybe you did rank for that keyword. And now you can't and it's kicking you off because you just, you know that, hey, you once had those keywords, you were ranking top three and life was good, man. You were ranking, you were kicking it. The phone was running off the hook and you were getting tons of clients.
And now you're left with managing those clients that you once got at that time, you were ranking, but you're not getting as much new business as you would like to anymore. And so you're frustrated because you're like, you know, you don't know what SEO firm to hire. You don't know what kind of content marketing plan you engage in and it sucks. Okay, just going to come out right out here and say it sucks.
Matt cuts. I'm talking to you, pal. You are a politician. You tell us to do one thing, but you allow these authority sites to completely break your rules and get away with it.
What's up with that? Oh, well, just to prove that we don't actually do that. We're going to take one case, JCPen and we're going to penalize them just to show that we do watch out for authority sites. Okay, I got one one notation for you, Matt.
Cuch you are lying. Okay, now listen, little disclaimer there. I didn't call Matt cuts a liar. I just say that he lies.
He plays a politician's tool once in a while. He's obviously a much smarter guy than most of us. I have a lot of respect for him in some areas of his, you know, what he does. But I definitely dislike the way he plays the media.
And hey, anyway, it's Google. It's their search engine. They can do what they want to do. But listen, enough of the frustration.
I'm let's I'm going to go to a question here. We got from Bill Williams from Vancouver, Washington. He says, what do you think is the best type of SEO strategy for 2014? Well, Bill, you know, I've got a great answer for you.
And I'm sure Bill, you're probably in the same situation as a lot of us where you were maybe at one time ranking and you're wondering how to rank or you just come out the case, you just opening up shop, you're kind of a startup and you want to know what the best strategy is for the digital space. Here is just some basics. Okay. Here's okay.
So get out your paper. It's just right for 2014. All right. You need SEO.
You need a great SEO firm that knows what they're doing that is not spamming sites. That's not pushing out a bunch of automated spam, automated spun content, pushing out tons of backlinks and just blazing your site to get it to the top within the first 45, 60 days with just 100% focused on tactics and not focused on long term strategy. That is the worst type of SEO company that you can hire. I know because I've humbly been there.
I've been that SEO company. We have applied tactics and we're focused on soul tactics and ranking clients quick. And you know what? Those are not long term strategies and they're not good.
Okay. Been there a long time ago. We have been there and done that. It's not a good SEO firm to hire.
So you need an SEO firm that knows about long term strategy. You need a content marketing plan and a social media plan, Bill, talking to you, Bill and Vancouver Washington, talking to you, you need a great SEO firm that supports a content marketing and a social media foundation. So you can't long on the days where you're just applying SEO tactics. Okay.
You've got to make sure number one, you've got to make sure that your on page SEO is great, that your site has a great quality score, that you have trusted classifiers, you have citations on your site, your content is unique. You're using images, relevant images inside of your content, that there was a blog that you're pushing out fresh content on a weekly basis, daily basis, preferably. And you have to make sure that your content is engaging. You long on to the days that you just you just pump out content that is only authoritative and relevant and informative.
You have to add engaging in there too. So there's four things that you have to make sure that you're applying to your content marketing strategy. So I kind of shifted into your content marketing back to the SEO, just make sure you're on page is good, make sure you hire a good SEO firm and knows how to do in Belling King. Okay.
Make sure that they understand the concept and strategies behind long term strategy with the support system of content marketing and social media. So back now, let's get back into content marketing. You need four things. You need something that you need a post when you post your content, you need it to be authoritative, relevant, informative and engaging.
What do I mean about engaging? Well, I like to call something called the seven levels of engagement. Let's talk about that real quickly. We'll get into another podcast episode where we go, we dive into those seven elements, but real quickly we've got video.
We've got audio. That's two content, three images, four downloadable files, five social media, interaction and engagement, six, seven is our assess, syndication, adequate, uh, adaptability or friendly. So those are the seven levels of engagement. We want to make sure that when you're, when you're applying your content marketing strategy, make sure that your strategies, that you're not just focused on pumping out content, that you had engagement there.
Why? Because people are picky. You want those things to rank for different types of things. See, the user query based search engine, Google wants to rank different assets on the first page.
What I mean by different assets, I mean, they don't, they're not just going to rank content. Those things are way long gone. They, if you look on any search keyword now, you're going to see maps, you're going to see content, you're going to see images, you're going to see video, you're going to see downloadable files, you're going to see slideshow, you're going to see, you're going to see all kinds of different types of visuals. And so make sure that you're, you're giving Google what it wants, give the people what they want.
Okay. Make sure your content is not over optimized over SEO. Don't write for the search engine anymore. That's, that's done.
Okay. Right for the people. Okay. Now that you have your content marketing plan in place, make sure that you're supporting it with social media.
When you're done publishing a post on your, your beautiful post on your website. And by the way, do not post your beautiful posts on Facebook first or Twitter first or plus one first or LinkedIn first. Do not give your best content to the social media sites. Okay.
Give it to your website first. Make sure that the people know the search engines know the bots know and everybody, the hot tire digital space knows that that content is yours originally. And your website is your home. That's your home base.
Okay. You can't play baseball without launching off the pad first without launching off the home base first in order to get home. Okay. You don't start at third base to get home.
You have to start from home to get back to home. Okay. So what I mean by that is when you publish your content, publish it from your website first, then on the next day or they could be the same day. It's okay.
Then on the next day, go to your social media channels, your sites and post, uh, reference your post. You know, if you have something to say, uh, how we treated our patient and, you know, and, and gave them in Viseline, uh, you know, anyway, okay. So if you're a dentist, how, how we filled our cavity on our client and, you know, so let's say, okay, I'm, I'm, this is a horrible example, Josh. Come on.
I can't come up with a title for you as a dentist. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Uh, how Jim had an impossible situation and how we, how we treated it with Invisalign.
Okay. So there's a kind of a title next week. I promise you better titles. Uh, so you got that title.
Okay. But when you go to post it on your Facebook, make the title a little bit different. Hey, you know, and speak just in one person when you're doing social media. Don't speak to the, to the crowd.
Okay. Cause nobody wants you to speak to the crowd. They want you to speak to them personally. So speak to that one person.
So speak to Bob about Jim's story, um, and about what you wrote about and reference your site when you post a Facebook and you post it to a reference, your site, okay. And speak directly to one person, always be, uh, uh, always have the mindset of like, you want to bring traffic back to your website. Okay. Cause that brings traffic that brings, uh, that brings, uh, good visual, better visuals for your people.
It gets helps people get on your email list, it brings visitors into your site, which helps your search engine rankings. It helps the overall balance of your content marketing strategy. It brings people back. It gets people to trust you.
See, it helps people look at your site and they visit you about this page. Sometimes you might even get somebody to contact you and it might lead to a sale or a client or, or, or, or, or just, you know, at least brand name recognition. So just make sure that you're, that you're, you're, you're starting from home to bring them back home, which is your website. Okay.
Home base is your website. Um, so I think that's it. Uh, you know, content marketing doesn't have to be in a possible situation. You can use your smartphone for it.
Uh, I use my iPhone and I have these specific apps that we can get into later, the specific apps that we use, uh, to, to build our content, to, to, to create great audio files and video files. Heck, you'd be surprised that the type of the quality of video that you can get just straight from your, from your smartphone these days. The quality of audio is crazy that you can get just from your smartphone. If I had one tool left, uh, for, for the rest of time to do my content marketing and my SEO and my social media, it would be my website.
My iPhone hands down my iPhone. And, uh, I mean, that's in seriously, you know, if, if I had to choose just one, one tool, it would be that. Um, so become an expert and authority in your field. And the only way that you can do that is not by just hiring SEO firm.
It's not just by doing social media. It's not by just doing content marketing. It's about having all three of those in place so that you're ready when that the market comes to you. You look like you're an authority.
You are the expert. You are the authority. And look at, listen, you don't have to hide your trade market secrets. Okay.
Give out your best content. Okay. If you use a specific tool in the dentist in the dental business, if you use, if you are favor, if you just favor crest, you know, then just say it. If you favor a specific, um, I don't know some of the tools that you use.
If you favor just some of those things and then to come right out and say it. If you're a real estate agent or a lawyer and you favor a specific platform for your CRM, come right out and say it, guys. Help the other lawyers because I guarantee if you're doing content marketing, there will be other lawyers that find you if you're a lawyer. If you're doing content marketing SEO and social media, there will be other dentists that find you and that look up to you if you're a dentist.
There will be other, uh, there will be other law firms and real estate agents that look that find you be the expert, be the authority in your market. And last but not least, uh, before you do your content marketing, all that, you want to know where your markets coming from. This is very obvious for any type of sales, any type of product, any type of marketing that you're doing. I know that, you know, if you're a real estate agent, if you know, if you're any, any one of these small business owners and plumber, pull guy, whatever it is, you are.
You know, it's hard to think, you know, sometimes it's really hard to get out of the mentality of just running your business, running your business, running your business. And so it can be kind of overwhelming at times to think, oh, I, I've got to, I've got to be this SEO content marketing guy now. Wait a minute, thanks a lot, Josh, for overwhelming me. I mean, so, okay, we obviously provide services for that and we can help you with that.
But if, listen, if you're on a tight budget, don't overwhelm yourself. Just market, research your market a little bit, use your smartphone, get up, get up a basic website setup, and listen, it doesn't have to be rocket science. Okay, you can do this. Right?
It just takes consistency. So the tool that I recommend for, for doing market research is called Jaxi, at least I, that's all I pronounce it, it's J-A-A-X-Y dot com. And it's a great, it costs us 20 bucks, but you can use it, I'm pretty sure they've got like a free trial or something. But really, you know, if you just pay 20 bucks once and use it and dig around and get as many keywords as you can get, I find that this tool is a lot easier to use than Google's ad keyword ad planner.
That, that thing is it, it, it, it over what, talk about overwhelming tool. But if you use Jaxi, it's very, very simple. And though you just punch in a keyword and our key phrase and it'll literally pop up a ton of great keywords of traffic and it'll also pull in some relevant keywords and you can kind of create like a project and then export it to a CSV. And then once you're done, you're done, you can cancel your membership.
So 20 bucks, you get your keyword research done, you know, and maybe, you know, six months later, you realize, oh, you know, maybe I want to target a pocket niche market inside of my market. Then, you know, go back to Jaxi and use it again for 20 bucks, but really 20 bucks investment to get the keywords that you need to find out where you're starting before you start your content marketing, your social media plan, it's worth. Guys, don't, don't target the wrong market. If you're, if you're a broker, don't try to, you know, sell something else in the real estate market, you know, target your, your specific pocket niche, you know, if you're just family dentist, don't try to target all the other dental services.
Don't go against all the other big guys. If you don't have to target just the family dentist keywords. Okay. So I think that's it.
This is Joshua Cape Johnson. And I hope that helps you with your frustrations. I want you to know that there is a way there is, there are strategies and don't just focus on tactics. Don't hire SEO firm that's just focused on tactics.
Don't hire just at content marketing firm that's just worried about tactics and just applying, you know, post to your blog. You don't, you've got to have strategy. Okay. And the next strategy on top of all of that type of stuff is obviously paid platforms.
And the number one paid platform that I recommend is Facebook. Facebook is hands down the best advertising platform in the world that the world has ever seen, that the digital space has ever seen hands down. You can still get cost per clicks for very, very cheap there. It does take some, some, some, some extra strategy to do it right.
So I do strongly recommend, you know, at least researching a little bit or hiring a firm for your Facebook marketing, paid marketing. But as far as having kind of like an extra background insurance plan, Facebook is definitely number one on my list outside of the organic FCO, the content marketing, social media, management, all three of those together, kind of the background support system behind that would be definitely Facebook. So I think that's it. We'll see you next week.
And thanks so much for listening. I hope you find some encouragement from this recording and I just bless you with a great week. It's Tuesday and have a great week and rock it up. Bye bye.