On today's episode of Gathering The Kings. I don't need this, like, freedom and autonomy so badly. It's not like burning in me that I had just, like, you know, middle finger to my boss, and I'm and I'm out the door. Right? Like, you were able to do both. I I left my job, my corporate job, 6 figure job when I was 24. But there was a period of time where I was running multiple businesses, like 7 businesses Kings 1,000,000 of dollars in sales, and I still had a sales job.
And so I think that, there's either we're either crazy or we're just, you know, calculated Chaz well is the way I think you and I would maybe, put it. What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe Gathering the Kings podcast. I'm your hosts back with another king here on the stage, Brandon, Leibowitz. How are we doing, Brandon? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today. Well, I, I'm thankful that you're here today.
I know that you could be a lot of places, but, but you wanna be here chatting with us and, sharing all of your your, your your sneaky goodness, around marketing and SEO with us today. So I'm excited for this. I I kinda just let the cat out of the bag, but tell us what Kings of business that you have, Brandon. Help out with digital Gathering, mainly focus on search engine optimization, so making sure people show up The sites appear when you're searching on Google.
So when you search on Google, there's ads at the top. Those are all paid ads, but right below the ads are the organic, the free Kings. And I help businesses get ranked organically so they get that free traffic from Google. Absolutely. Well, there's this is not a this is not a new thing, but someone might be listening here today wondering why does it even matter? Right? Maybe they already have a business. Maybe they already have a great business. And they're not Kings.
What's the benefit or the value of someone listening today needing to put their position, in an organic way at the top? It just gets you more traffic, which in turn converts into more sales and leads for your business.
So if you're looking to grow, and do you want more visibility Chaz tapping into that traffic from Google is gonna really help you grow because people nowadays, well, majority of people will go to search engines, to search for a product service, a question, looking for help, and looking for answers. And if you're not up there, any competitors are up there, if they're taking that traffic away from you, which potentially could be new business for you.
So that's the biggest thing is trying to figure out. Do people actually search for my keywords, which you could check using tools Google keyword planner. It's a free tool, and it'll show you how many people actually search for your keyword every single month because you might not think people are searching on Google, but then you'll check these tools. You can see that maybe 10,000 people are searching for that keyword every single month.
And if you're not up there, someone else is up there taking that traffic away from you, which could be a lot of new business for you. So that's the biggest benefit of getting up there organically, just tapping that free traffic from Google. Yeah. And obviously, there's a process to this, and we can maybe get into some of the semantics. But as far as, like, you know, wanting to be in the right places.
I mean, what is the difference between someone listening today saying, well, no, I I'm gonna I'm gonna get known on TikTok, Brandon. I don't I don't wanna do SEO. What what What do you say to a person that's saying, I don't understand SEO? Well, it's all about your audience. So if you're trying to be on social, or Google or wherever you have to you wanna be. You have to really take a step back and like, alright. I don't need to be everywhere. I just need to be where my audience is at.
That's number The. You don't have to on every platform. You don't have to be on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Google, Amazon. He's really take a step back. Like, if you were looking for your product or service, where would you go? And that's gonna let you know where what platforms you need to be on. Like, for example, if we go for, like, a doctor, I don't feel like many people are gonna be searching on TikTok for a doctor or Instagram.
Some people might, but the majority of people are probably gonna go on Google, find a doctor, and then check them out on social to make sure that it's called social proof to make sure they're real legitimate business. They have reviews. They have status updates. They're credible. They're trustworthy. So but The hand, if you're selling like a product that nobody's ever heard of, then people aren't really searching on Google.
If you like having a new invention, then social might be a better way for you to go about it, but So I just try The understand who your audience is and how you can be in front of them because a lot of people spread themselves way too thin trying to be everywhere, which is good to have a presence everywhere, but really need to figure out where your core audience is and how do you really push that as much as possible?
That way you're not just spreading yourself too thin because there's too many places to be, and it really takes a lot of time trying to be on every single platform. And Wolfe just gotta figure out who exactly your audience is where are they? That's the most important thing, I think, with digital marketing.
Yeah. Well, I think that you gave a really great example there, really easy for the listeners that take you know, and do it themselves where if if they themselves were buying their product or if they were their avatar, how would they go about it? And I think that's a pretty easy easy explanation to be able to at least start from. Do you do you find Chaz, you know, because I think that there's a miss there's a misconception, with SEO and and lead gen. Right?
So, like, you're you're you're talking about Google and I wanna be on the rankings, and I'm thinking Google Ads potentially as a listener, but that's different than SEO. Give us the give us the give us, like, what we're what we're talking about here. Yeah. So when you search on Google or search engines, usually there's ads at top. Those are all paid ads. So anytime you click on those ads, Chaz company is paying Google. Could be a couple cents per click. Could be a couple dollars per click.
Could be a couple $100 just for one click. So the ads, they get quite expensive. That's where you just gotta make sure you're making the positive return on ad spend that you're making more than you're putting in. All Chaz you're making more than you're putting in, then it's fine, like, locksmith. They're gonna pay a $100 per click because Google knows that if you're searching you're not gonna care who that locksmith is. You're locked out of your house or your car.
You're gonna pick the first one that you find. That locksmith is probably gonna charge you $200. Google's gonna make a $100. The locksmith makes a hundred bucks. So those ones are gonna be a little bit more expensive, and it's just, again, really making sure you're making your money positive return ad spend. If so, then I would keep buying those ads in conjunction with the organic, the SEO, because SEO is right below it.
The free results, there's ten spots on that first to Google or 10 websites that are listed, but SEO does take time. So a lot of people will run ads while they're waiting for the SEO kick in. And then once the SEO kicks in, then they can kinda scale back on the ads, but you're still making The positive return on ads. So now I'd say there's no real need to turn those ads off.
As long as you're making money, just keep pushing it because the more traffic sources you have, the better off you're gonna be, the more you're gonna be able to make, and then you're not just reliant on one source of traffic. And if something happens at traffic source. It is, like, out of business. We don't want that to happen. So we wanna get traffic from as many different places as possible. But when you search on Google, not just websites that appear now. Images appear. Videos appear.
Maps appear. So once I try to think of as much free real estate Chaz possible on that first page of Google by optimizing all your images. If you have any videos, we wanna optimize The videos, which really means putting them up on YouTube. Because Google Yeah. Is YouTube. So when you search on Google, if you see a video in the search results, 90% of the time, it's gonna be a YouTube video because Google owns YouTube and Google only cares about making money.
So if you're searching on Google and you don't click on an ad, Google isn't making any The and Google wants to make money. So they realized if they put videos in there and it's a YouTube video, you click on it. What's the first thing that appears? Anytime you watch a YouTube video, there's Yep. The YouTube is making money, which is really Google making money. And feel like Google's gonna push YouTube a lot. Keep pushing it.
And I always tell people, like, jump on video sooner and later, like, get a YouTube channel because people buy off people and just a face behind your company and really builds up trust. And but with SEO, it's really just The to pick up as much for real estate as possible on that first page of Google. So images, videos, local business, we wanna get you up on Google Maps. And then that just increases your chances of somebody clicking on you.
If someone's searching for your service, and your website's ranked The. And you have an image that doubles The chances of somebody clicking Kings your website. If you have a map appearing there and you're The the map, that increases it. So really, really just wanna try to tap into as much free traffic as possible. Yeah. I love that that free traffic idea. I mean, it's in essence what we're doing right now. Right?
We're We're creating a great conversation and helping a lot of people who are listening, but you and I both are creating an asset that is a video asset that's gonna be on YouTube. And, it'll be searchable for years years to come. And so, if if you understand this game, the free real estate is take it while you can.
And, of course, there's gonna be plenty of other SEO videos out there or podcast videos out The, but, for the right ones that are already in our funnel or already in, you know, a circle of our kind and and and they get referred or whatever. They're gonna be able to take a look at these assets Chaz you're saying on the free real estate side. So love that. You're obviously appointed in your actions, but I wanna know a little bit deeper. Like, let's change lanes here for a second.
You're running a business and you're helping other business owners, but why? Like, what's the what's the bigger picture for you? What's the burning desire on the inside of you, Brandon? I like watching businesses grow and helping them get to that next level.
So seeing them wherever phaser are they're just starting off or even more established, but not getting that visibility online, just helping them figure out what's going on, how to The into that free traffic from Google and just figure what's going on with The website and really just trying to figure out how do we get you to that level that you wanna be at, and that's really by looking at your competitors and trying to figure out what they've done and
corporate in their strategy into your business, but early, like, helping other people out. And that's always rewarding, seeing them get to that next level and growing and just after that traffic that Google's offering without having to spend a ton of money on paid ads, which, again, the ads work, but you have to have a decent sized budgets really push those ads and get some traction. Yeah. Yeah. But you could help a lot of businesses in a lot of different ways.
I mean, you could go volunteer today at a local, whatever business Right? But you're not. You're helping them with marketing. What? Why is marketing deep in you? Like, why why is it so important to you? Yeah. Just always enjoy business and went to school for Gathering. So thought or business, yeah, marketing and thought I wanna do marketing, but then I realized marketing is really just selling cold selling, cold calling, cold emailing, which is not my main interest.
Luckily, I fell into this SEO thing after I graduated from college. First job I got a school is Kings SEO and I had no idea what it was. They said, don't worry. We don't know either. We're gonna learn with you and take good classes and workshops. And then after working there for a few months, just Kings realized this is a future digital Gathering, and that really just piqued my interest because Google changes all the time. So it's not the same thing.
It's constantly changing and evolving, and it keeps you on your toes and makes me have to keep learning. So that's a big part. It's not just the same tedious repetitive task over and over again. It's Google pretty much changes every single day The are really.
So Chaz makes me kind of look at detective trying to figure out what's going on and marketing is just such an important part of business because you could have a great product or service, but if nobody knows about it, nobody find it, then it doesn't do much good. So you gotta push it a little bit, get the get it going so people actually could find you and learn about what you have to offer. So that's where the marketing comes into play.
And that's where I like helping get Chaz message out to the world. That way they could find their website, their product, their service, or whatever they're promoting online. What do you think? You know, you've been you've you've got a successful business You've got a team helping you, help other businesses. What do you think is a good decision that you've made in business that you could look back on and, like, precisely go, when I did this, a lot of other things kind of worked in my favor.
What was that? Probably hiring people, so delegating more and not trying to be a one person show and take care of everything, but having other people help out gives me more time to focus on more higher level things. So instead of working in the business so much, working on it and growing it. It's probably a big change because it's tough to hire someone. You especially when you're solo entrepreneur, you're like, alright. I could do it all myself.
Why do I wanna teach somebody and train someone that's gonna take time and have to check their work and make sure they're doing it properly? But once you set up systems and processes and kind of streamline things, it things much easier and gives you time back to really work on more important things instead of doing the tedious, repetitive tasks Chaz you could just offload to someone else.
Let's those are the more important higher picture things that are gonna really help you grow and get to that next level that you're trying to be at. Yeah. Tell us about that moment because I think all entrepreneurs have at least, maybe a few moments, but at least one where you were fed up, right, because you did do it on your own for a while.
I know because every entrepreneur does before we hire and before we see the The, as you've just described, So give me that moment when you were wherever and you had the feeling of no more. I'm hiring somebody. I'm taking the risk. I'm doing it different. Tell us about that. Yeah. That was probably when I just started getting more and more busy. So after I quit my job, years ago, and I went all in, then I realized I I need a team to help support me because initially I was working full time.
And I'd pick up a few freelance clients here or there on the side because I was happy to have a full time job after graduating from school. And I was happy to just make a little bit of extra money by having, like, 1 or 2 clients, but once I really went all in and realized, alright. It's a little bit too much for me to handle, because I feel there's a lot of nuances and techs kinda echo into it.
The I was like, I need to hire somebody found some people online, tried them out, tested them, and realized or told them initially, like, how am I teaching you? Cause I teach a lot of classes, and I teach others. I was like, alright. I'll just teach you train you.
You don't have to have any experience with SEO, which is probably not the best idea because then it takes me a lot of time to teach and train, and then I have to double check to work, and it actually doubles what I have to do because then I have to teach them. They'll do it, but then I have to go back and fix some mistakes. And that was not the best idea.
So then I realized I may find something that has some experience, and that made things much, much better where they actually are able to think outside the box, give me ideas instead of me telling them what to do, able to give me ideas, and we could bounce them off one another and try to see what's gonna work, what might not work, but makes it much more collaborative. So finding somebody that don't happen to be a subject matter expert.
At least having some experience in the field really helped out, and that's made it much easier because initially Chaz was getting frustrated by training all these people and I was Chaz, maybe I just do it on my own, but once you find somebody good, that really understands and knows what you're looking for, that is only like, alright. Now I can finally relax, found someone that's gonna help me out. Now I can focus on some other Kings.
We're hiring another person, another person, but it's really just finding quality people that have some experience and knowledge and Chaz are quick learners and think outside the box Chaz really helped out significantly. Yeah. You mentioned a few minutes ago that you did this whenever you went all in. Describe that to us. What did that look like for you?
Yeah. That was probably 5, 6 years ago where just realized that I'm well, I was working at advertising agencies as a director of SEO and realized that I'm making pretty much the same amount that I'm making at these agencies and that if I quit my job and gives me more time to focus on growing my business and also more more free time, which is probably the opposite where you're working much more, but at least I pick and choose my schedule and my hours.
So that's one nice part about it, but it was Kings that leap of faith. I didn't do it initially because I could have done that right when I graduated from college and got that first job out of school. I could be like, alright. I learned SEO.
I know what to do, and I could do it myself, but I wanna go the safer route because I wanna build it up and build it up and build it up before I just some ship and built my name up and reputation and reviews and had a decent amount of clients because you never know what's gonna happen in the Wolfe. And especially what happened a few years ago with pandemic where I have a lot of local businesses, and The had it completely shut down because I lost over half my clients.
And if I just jumped ship right away and had that half been, I probably would've been struggling. Luckily, I built it up enough where I wasn't struggling completely, but definitely was not an easy point, and that's where I just had to read just and redact my business and try for out. Alright. Now that locals closed down, I can't work on any local businesses. Let me focus on other sites of, like, ecommerce or or from home type of businesses. So that was what The were.
If you could take the safer route or you could just jump ship and everyone has a different opinion on it, but I just decided to wait a little bit longer play a little bit safer. That way I just built my brand up and built my company up a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, really, I hear you saying, yeah, you you played it a little safer. And and and, yes, I guess, technically, you did, but what I'm actually hearing you say maybe you'd agree is that you played the long game.
I'm gonna be doing this for a while. And right now, I'm just gonna do both because I don't I don't I don't need this, like, freedom and autonomy so badly. It's not like burning in me that I had just, like, you know, middle finger to my boss, and I'm and I'm out the door. Right? Like, you were able to do both because you were playing the long the long game, which is actually pretty similar to what I did.
I mean, I I left my job, my corporate job, 6 figure job when I was 24, But there was a period of time where I was running multiple businesses, like 7 businesses, doing 1,000,000 of dollars in sales, and I still had a sales job. And so I think that, there's either we're either crazy or we're just, you know, calculated as well is the way I think you and I would maybe, put it. Would you would you agree with that, or do you have something else to say on that?
Know, calculate it definitely, but also it is nice double dipping too as long as there's no conflict of interest. So when I was first my first job. They were an e commerce website. So I would go to, like, a look, local businesses around my area, like, restaurants, like, doctors, lawyers, and pick up those clients where there's no conflict of interest. There's and I'm doing SEO full time at this job. And after work, I'm doing SEO.
So it just helps me learn and just learn more about SEO and As long as there was no conflict of interest, like, I'm not gonna take an e commerce business and have another competitor or client that's selling the same type of product because that would not be good, but I definitely enjoyed learning and but, yeah, definitely it was tough before work after work on my lunch breaks, working on my own company, then going back to Wolfe. Full time.
It gets tiring, but luckily, it was all in the same field. So it wasn't like I was learning multiple tasks and everything. It just helped learn more or helped me grow as business owner, but it is tough managing both. It was not easy. So I'm glad I just have one job now. Makes it a little bit easier even though The job is definitely more than 40 hours. It never really ends, but at least I'm able to set the I could choose when I wanna take breaks and disconnect from the computer for a little bit.
Tell us about during that time, you know, when when you transition to your own business full time. And, obviously, you had built it up. You had plenty of clients, and so it wasn't like you were you know, just jumping, you know, off the cliff and, I'll see what happens. You are really stepping into, like, the fullness of, okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna pay full attention what I've got going on over here.
But tell us about was Chaz, like, a period of time where it was like, oh, I only have to do The and not and not both, or was it like, oh, man. Now I get to go, like, a hundred miles an hour on on my stuff. Tell us what that period of time was for you. Yeah. No. It was probably time to go a hundred miles per hour on my stuff and build it up and promote as much as possible, which means not relaxing more of the opposite where it's like, alright.
Now just gotta go go go and figure out what I have to do to keep my business afloat, start hiring people, start delegating, start really having a business that just me being a freelancer. Now I have to make a real legitimate company and hire people to get systems and processes, and it is a lot setting that all up. But once it's set up, then you have foundational of your business built, and then you can really focus on more higher picture Kings.
But initially, it was a lot of scrambling, figuring everything out, talking to mentors, trying to get other people's opinions and The, and just trying to figure out what I need to do as a business owner because I've never owned a business and hired people.
So that's the biggest thing is, like, how to hire people, keep it all legitimate, make sure everything is done properly for taxes, and just making sure that I'm doing everything by the book so I don't get hit with some weird fee or fine or realize it did something wrong and have to go back and pay all these back taxes or whatever it may be. Right. Yeah. You said you you Kings just, you know, scrambling around there for a minute. And I think all entrepreneurs scramble around for a minute.
And I guess my my question to you is how long was that minute? You know, I I I'm trying to paint a picture to the to the listener of what what's real. And I know it's different for each of us, but for you, what was how long was that minute of scrambling? I think it never really ends because you're always trying to scramble and figure things out, especially for what I do because Google is constantly changing. So I'm always like, alright. What does Google want today?
I have to learn, test things out. So it's always trying to figure out new systems, new processes, to appees Google and make Google happy, especially, like, with AI and everything else that's coming out now. It's like, alright. How does this work? How is this gonna be incorporate search? Is this gonna change things around where people aren't going on Google.
They don't even go on, hey, I had to search and just trying to figure out what needs to be done, but, yeah, unfortunately with digital, it's always there is no constant. It's always changing and just trying to figure out what's the future holding and how do I make sure I'm one step ahead or try to be one step ahead, which Hey, Kings and Queens. Chaz Wolf. I wanna talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort.
We, meaning myself and my team, into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too. So we would love if you would like, comment, share, leave a review, post, share again all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify.
We would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs so they can grow their business as quick as possible. Together, we are building a community of like minded for newers who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow. Yeah. There's no crystal ball. It tells you what's gonna happen in the future. Especially with SEO, Google Kings makes The rule.
But if AI takes over and Google is to grab that or bard, which is Google's version of AI just take hold, then a what happens is maybe Bing will take off because Bing is partnered with Chaz GPT and people love chat GPT and we'll have to see if that keeps going or West Gathering, a few churches. It is tough to predict. Yeah. That's such such an interesting, thought because, I mean, I don't I don't know if the listeners can agree with me on this, but I haven't thought about Kings in Wolfe ever.
You know? So, you know, to know that potentially, you know, they could make help me. That would be a huge comeback. You know, and against one of the largest companies ever to exist, you know, Google And so, what are you seeing right now in that world? That's affecting what you do with clients, SEO? Like, are there things that the listener needs to be aware of right now around ai or how that affects ads or or placements or maps or SEO for for Google purposes?
On Google's talking about incorporating AI into the search results. Bing is already doing that. So Google is like, alright. Bing is doing that. We don't want Bing to take on chair, which I doubt that will happen because Google just dominates and Kings runs the show and me looking at traffic over the years. And analytics, probably, like, thousands of websites. Google probably brings about, like, 20 to 80% of the traffic. Bing will bring 1%. Yahoo will bring about 1%.
Then the rest comes from, like, social media, email, paying paid ads. People are just typing your website in directly, but Google just rather show, and I've never seen a website or a search engine bringing more traffic Chaz Google. So it's like Google is pretty safe, but they're a little nervous. That's why they released Bard, which is our AI version of the chat GPT similarity of Chaz. And they're gonna incorporate that in the search results.
They're talking about doing that, but We'll have to see what happens if Google does become a search engine with AI taking over a majority of the real estate, then that's gonna change things around, but also Chaz that worked for, like, ecommerce? You can't really buy off Chaz, GPT, or AI yet. So we'll have to see what's gonna happen and how they're gonna incorporate that, but that's definitely gonna change things around.
There's still searches, but when it happens with AI is The probably just gonna pick the top result and display that possibly. So but to figure out how exactly AI is working and I'm learning more about that, like, how they're doing predictive tests or text and how AI actually works where it's, like, predicting the next word versus just reading an article and left to see how they how AI works.
It's just like a search engine, Chaz an algorithm, and we just gotta figure out what do we need to do to tap into that make sure that we get that exposure and visibility, but also have to see how our ads gonna be incorporated with AI because that's gonna be a little weird. If you're asking the question, then there's an answer, but a bunch So but Google's working on that.
I think it's called GSE, and that's gonna be coming out in the future, but we'll have to see how that's gonna work if it's gonna take hold. If people are gonna wanna use it versus just regular Google, Yeah. Yeah. It's really tough to predict. What are what are some things that business owners right now listening could be doing to I mean, we don't know if these things are gonna happen one way or the other. Generally speaking, we know that this is how things are heading.
So what are you doing personally, or what are you suggesting that your clients do to prepare for this type of maybe transition towards maybe AI or being able to be found on some sort of a search that's in AI, that type of a thing. Yeah. That one still just learn and test as much as possible because that one is a little tricky. They're not really showing websites. On AIC. I don't know what website they're pulling that information from.
So but with Google and the GSE, when they run that, potentially, it'll show like, alright. You're searching for, like, what's the best mountain bike. They might give you a list of, like, 10 mountain bikes, and then they'll have what website it was from. Potentially want to see how that works out, but feel like it might be, like, the featured snippets when you search on Google and you ask a question, like, what's 4+4? They'll give you that answer right there. The search results.
So you're not going to those websites anymore. So it's taking traffic away from those websites, but that's what AI is gonna be doing. It's just another kind of, like, featured snippet where it answers that question right there on the screen for you, so you don't need to go Chaz website, which is not good for website owner, webmasters. Because now Google just holds all the traffic because Google really wants to The us down Google as long as possible because they want you to click on an ad.
So if you're searching, like, what's 2+2 high not gonna be ads for that question because there's not really much to promote unless you're, like, teaching like a math course, but it's not really gonna be ads there. So Google realizes that if they just give you the answer right there, probably be like, okay. 2+2 is 4. Let me ask another question. Hopefully, ask something where it's transactional and there's paid ads. And then you click on those ads. That Google makes more money. Right.
Yeah. Okay. That's good stuff. What, let's let's, let's go a bad decision that you made in your us. We'll transition back to you here. Something that, wasn't, like, a great idea at all, but that we can learn from and maybe stay away from. Well, I think well, I do SEO, and it gets a little complicated. So I post all my information on my website, which I give a little too much information where it gets technical with SEO and gets a little confusing, so I realized Interesting.
Still gets a technical, just talk about higher level or, like, benefits of my service or it. Sure. Whatever you're promoting, but don't get too granular and in the weeds because that's, you know, there's a lot I could talk about. There's a lot I could put on my website, which I did, which I had to cut back probably, like, 80% of my website. And now it's much simpler, easier to read, easier to understand, and that's really helped out a lot.
So sometimes overcomplicating things think it's gonna be helpful by giving people as much information as possible, but it can get a little too much where people The just like, I'm lost.
I don't understand The. So giving them more higher level, little benefits, and then let them call me or talk to me or talk to someone on The team where we could better explain the nuances and the technicalities without throwing it on The website because such with mobile, people don't wanna read a long page, such a nowadays, attention spans are so short that that captures them as quickly as possible with a couple bullet points or video Right.
Something engaging versus a big block of text with explaining what link building is. It gets little convoluted. It's a little tough to read through all that. Yeah. Well, and it's I think it's super interesting how you're talking about how that impacted you with Google, but you know, obviously, there's people, who don't wanna read that.
And I know you Kings mentioned that here at the end Chaz far as, like, people don't wanna go through that, but you started this off by saying, that it it messed with my SEO. And so, you know, we Kings got 2 problems here. It's like, number 1, the people coming to your website, can't, you know, figure out what it is that you do because it's because it's it's too much, but then also The actual algorithm, for lack of better terms of SEO, the the readings behind it were was getting confused.
It sounds like as well. And so are are you saying that for the for the listener, to not only keep things simple for for Google, but, obviously, for for people. I mean, we know Chaz, but but on the actual Google side, it's better for just keep it simple. No. Actually, it's better to make it more tactical. Simple is better, but Google feeds off text. So the more text you have on your page, the easier it is for search engines to read, understand, know what that website's about.
That's why I had a bunch of text, but don't realize you have to balance it out for people and for Google. So for Google, Google feeds off content. So I could have that 1000 words of text on my page, but put it at the bottom. Don't put it at the very top. And at the very top, make it it's called conversion rate optimization, optimizing your website for people to get them to convert. So at the top, whatever you see on the screen, that's called above the fold.
Majority of people never scroll on the website. So Right. Having all the printed information at the top, having, like, a call to action, a value proposition, like, people know what's in it for me, having, like, couple bullet points or video at the top makes it really optimized for people. So then when someone goes to your website, they see what's there, quickly easily. The don't have to read that long block of text, but lower down on the page. You have that big block of text.
So it's that balance for the search engines and Google because search engines, The can't read images, they can't read videos. I mean, they're getting much better at it, but they still rely heavily on text. The more text you have on every single page of your website. The easier it is for them to read, understand, and really know what that page is about. So that's where I realized I have to have that balance for people.
For search engines where also the more of what pages you have, the better off you're gonna be. So I used to have a ton of pages for every service I have. Like, I do SEO. I could optimize your it's called a title tag. I could optimize The in the description. I could do all these really technical things and I had pages about each one of those services, which is good for SEO, but for a person that doesn't really know SEO, they're like, what is title tag? What is this meta description?
So realize Right. Keep those pages, but don't have them in the top navigation. I could have them linked somewhere else, but the top navigation keeps simple, high level, just Chaz is SEO? What are the benefits of it? Here's some reviews. Here's my contact information. So not getting too cluttered and just trying to get that balance for people and for search engines, which is tough. And a lot of web developers are like, we don't wanna put all this content on the website.
It's gonna make it look ugly and cluttered and So you just gotta have that balance. Alright. We don't wanna put a thousand words of text on our page, but if The wanna rank on Google, we need to put this thousand because all our other competitors have a thousand words of text. And if we will show websites with a 1000 words, we should be somewhere similar. We don't wanna write a 100 words because if everyone else is a 1000, then you probably need to get a little bit more in-depth.
I mean, it also Yeah. Depends on what you're writing about. Like, if someone's just going back to, like, something simple, like, what is 4+4, you probably don't need to get too deep into it, but if you're trying to figure out, like, how do I fix my car engine? Then you probably have a couple thousand words and it's all about user experience to make sure you you provide a good user experience, good quality content. That's what Google's looking at, really. Got it.
Yeah. It's good good distinction there. And I think for the The. No matter what business that they're in, what you're saying is make it aesthetically pleasing and and visually stimulating engagement for the person, but don't forget about the technicality, for the actual for the actual, you know, computer behind it all. What, what business resource? I mean, I you're a smart guy.
What business resource would you recommend for the listener to go maybe learn about marketing, SEO, Google, AI, anything that you've taking part in that we can we can, put The the show notes for the for listeners? I mean, there's tons of places, resources nowadays. There's, like, too much content. So it's just finding content and then testing it out.
Don't just read or listen or check out a podcast without trying it out because there's so much content out there and a lot of people just get stuck learning and not trying and testing Kings out, but there's plenty of places that you can learn from, like, forums or blogs like search engine watch or search engine journal. There's a lot of platforms like that, but I feel like the best nowadays are actually like Facebook groups.
They seem to have the most engagement whereas forms used to be good they're still pretty popular, but for, like, Facebook groups just get more engagement, and that's a great place to learn and bounce ideas from other people, read, just learn and then take action. Don't just keep reading and reading, but take action, but listening to podcasts. I mean, the more you learn, the better, because the thing about digital is what works today. Doesn't necessarily work tomorrow.
That's all you have to test it out. Really see, alright. Is someone telling me The strategy on Facebook in a group? Because they wanna just give it out, or maybe this strategy doesn't work anymore. So they're like, because it's strategy and they're just trying to get some clout from people saying, oh, look at how good this person is, that's why you have to really take action and try it before you just read and think that's test test test. That's right.
Yeah. So those are the 3 in real estate, it's location, location, location, and marketing is test test test. Right? Mhmm. Never stop testing. Always be testing. Even in your website, you could test out, do AB testing where half the people will get sent to your website. Yeah. One version of it. Half the people get another version, and you could see which one converts better.
Like, maybe if you're ecommerce, you have a add to cart button, you can move that add to cart button up a couple centimeters and The. Does this have an impact on conversions? Because definitely will play an impact on conversions, and that's where you gotta be always be testing and testing. And then once you find something that works, test against Chaz. See what else should be tested because Right. Like, if you go to Amazon, they're constantly testing.
If we both go to Amazon right now or all your listeners go to Amazon right now, all gonna get served a slightly different version of Amazon because Amazon knows that moving the colors around a little bit or change it The add a cart. Font up is gonna have an impact on conversions. They wanna maximize every visitor to try to get them to convert, and that's where you gotta be testing all the time. Yeah. Love that.
Yeah. He also said one thing, at the beginning Chaz I thought was another kind of a marketing principle that I've always adhered to, but that once you have a, you know, a working a working tool, a a a profitable marketing angle Chaz even though you found another one, you don't get rid of the other one.
Long as it's working, you kind of mentioned this before when you're talking about Google Ads, even though you maybe find another source that maybe even a better, cheaper hire quite like anything, you'd still don't get rid of the other one as long as the first one is, is still working profitably and may not be as good as the one you just found, but, you never get rid of something that's working. Would you agree with that in the marketing?
You kinda mentioned this earlier, but I'll give you another chance here to kinda maybe expand on Yeah. No. Definitely. You wanna try to get traffic from as many sources as possible. Let's tell people you don't put all your eggs in one basket just stock market or anything like that. I mean, you might have this great stock that's making me a ton of money, but something happens to it. You're just like, alright.
I've just out of business or, like, if you just went all in on, say, my space and you had this huge falling on my space. Now you're like, alright. Maybe I should have gone to Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all these other ones or even Facebook. You just pushed all in on Facebook and you have a 1,000,000 likes on Facebook. Again, those Facebook likes to translate to Instagram or another platform is not as easy as you think.
Like, you got a huge following on one platform and no followers on another one because every platform is different. So wanna just try to get traffic from as many sources as possible when they paid ads, doing email marketing, doing social media, doing SEO. Everything works.
And the more touch points you have too, the more likely somebody's gonna wanna purchase off you because especially for, like, high ticket items, is just gonna go to your website and purchase a $1000 washing machine or something like that. They're gonna do some research. They want you to build that trust up. So that's where having those multiple touch points, getting someone to your website, but then you maybe follow them around with some banner ads to remarketing. Capture their email address.
You send them some email newsletters. You get them to engage on your social platforms, and that's just gonna have multiple touch points, build that trust up because Once people get to your website, that's just half the battle. How do you get them to purchase? And that's really, really hard. It's to get Google to trust you to rank you higher than search results. But once Google trusts you, that's great.
But then how do you get people on your website to trust which is a whole another thing that's really more of that conversion rate optimization that we talked a little bit earlier about, but that's such a big part Chaz a lot of people Kings don't focus on it, which is Kings strange or even web developers on the build websites.
They'll build websites that look really nice and pretty, but The don't ultimately think about conversions, which if you think about conversions, then you're gonna build a website happy because now they're getting all these sales and leads and they're recommend you to other people versus if you just build a really nice and pretty website, but Right. Doesn't do much. They're not gonna get those sales, and I see this all the time where people are just like, I don't know what to do.
I have this website. Sending all this money on paid ads. I get all this traffic, but no one's buying. Like, what do I do? It's like, well, we have to fix your website and re restructure your pretty much your marketing funnel and figure out, alright, how do we get people just for visitors to actually solely become a client?
Maybe you get their email address at step 2 from there, and then you get them to engage with the email newsletter, then maybe you get them to join, like, a free call because I do SEO. So I offer free consultations as a way to get people into my funnel, but all about just getting creative and figure out what do I have to do?
And the best way to do that is look at your competition, see who your competitors are, and look at their mark marketing strategy sign up for their email newsletters, sign up for their social or social media so you could see how often The posting what platforms they're active on. And you can see how much engagement they're maybe if they're posting every day on Facebook, but nobody's engaging.
Facebook might not be the best platform, or they're doing Facebook wrong, but maybe Facebook isn't where you need to be, and You should check out Instagram. If you see their post, your competitor is posting on Instagram, they're getting tons of likes and comments and shares and Instagram might be where your audience is at. So spot on your competitors, and that's gonna help you Kings figure out what they're doing to ensure that they get those visitors to convert into trap into sales and Yeah.
Love that. Alright. Well, I wanna ask you one last question here, Brandon. I wanna know if you had the opportunity. You're already young guys. This might be a little funny. I have a question for you. But, if you had a chance to whisper in the younger, Brandon's here, what would you tell him? Probably mentor.
Get The mentor sooner than later because could do it on your own, and you could try everything on your own, but having a mentor definitely helps you speed things up and learn from his their mistakes and try to avoid The mistakes, and they'll tell you what's worked from them in the past. So that's where the mentor in the past. They told me simplify my website where it was just too much going on, too cluttered. And I was like, I don't think that's a good idea.
I gotta give people as much information. But once I took their advice and listened to them, then it really helped change my business. So and we've opened and receptive to other people's opinions and ideas and not just being closed minded because you think this is what's gonna work is a huge benefit. So definitely mentors probably want the best things The if you don't have a mentor, you could go, like, networking events and find them.
But, also, there's a platform where I teach classes through SCOR, the SBA, and SCOR.org, is a great platform where they offer mentors. So if you don't have a mentor and you can't find one especially nowadays, it's everything's online. You don't have to be in these physical locations. You could just go The, but match you up with somebody and getting a mentor really helps out significantly. That's awesome. That's a great resource. We appreciate you sharing that.
We'll put it on the show notes as well. Brandon, you've been, extremely helpful. You are a, a skilled master at your craft, and so appreciate you sharing some of the secrets of the trade with us. And, if if the listener wants to, learn more about SEO or even potentially have you work with The, have you, design, The some some work that they can get some leads and traffic in. How can they find you?
Yes. Anyone that wants to learn more actually create a special gift for them if they go to my website at seooptimizers.com. That's se00ptimizers.comforward/gift. They Chaz find that there along my contact information and a bunch of classes I've done over the years. I've thrown up for free so they could see step by step how to do a lot of stuff that we talked about and also, if they wanna put some time on my calendar for a free website analysis, they could put some time on that page as well.
It's awesome. Well, we'll definitely put all that in the show notes as well as the link so that they can easily access that. We appreciate you doing that for our listeners. You've added already a ton of value here just in your in your skilled insights. And so appreciate your time. Blessings to you and all that you're Kings here in building in 2023. Thanks for being here, Brandon. Thanks for having me on today. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today.
Hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it take more to be successful than just being by yourself Kings it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 The very successful 7, 8, and 9 figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
In fact, we are putting together 1000 Kings specifically who are business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us The responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified The very successful business owners. I want you to go to Gathering.
The you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.