204. Tsavo Neal on how to get more clients through your website with SEO

I always was on the, on the, on the hunt for how, how could I make marketing easier? How could I raise my fees? How could I become, uh, an authority in, in an industry or in web design or, or SEO in general. And I think Philip Morgan's work really inspired me at a relatively young age to specialize. And his work is all around. Declaring a niche and being proud and public about that niche that you serve.

And one of the main things you do is you look back at the clients that you've worked with and you think about, um, who you enjoyed working with, who has the money to invest in your services, who actually has problems that your expertise can solve? And when I looked at my past client list, it was, uh, I really liked working with consultants, independent consultants, small consulting firms. I'd only worked. , maybe two or three of them. But selling to them was easy.

Working them was relatively easy. Uh, they had no problem investing in my services and they had problems that I could, that, that my expertise could solve. So pretty early on I decided to kind of go from web designer to. Websites for consultants and I found it made it much easier to win projects and, and find projects and find clients, and ultimately allowed me to transition working outside of Upwork, cuz that's where I got most of my client work back in like 2015.

Into getting clients through, through my website and getting clients through LinkedIn, uh, because I kind of started to become known as the websites for consultants guy. Um, and then at some point I wanted to transition out of doing done for you client work. So that's when I started to think about how could I. Put what I do into a, a step-by-step process where instead of me building the websites for them, I could either serve them in a, uh, done with, with you model.

So sort of like in a, in a coach or advisory sense or, um, a purely, um, do it yourself model where I give the consultant everything they need to, to do it themselves so that I, I launched my consulting website template. I think the first version was 20 20 17 or 2018. Um, and now that's my primary core offer is a, a basically, um, done with you and done and do it yourself product to help consultants write, design and market, uh, their consulting website to help them get more clients.

So that's kind of a, a high level overview of my background and, and what I sell today. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, that's really interesting. So that's kind of at the crux of what we, we teach around here is how do you get out of trading just your hands work for saying, okay, I'm really good at now at, at doing the work. How do I then take what I know, package it into products and services? And so you've done a really good job of that, uh, on your website, on tsavoneal.Com.

You've got a few different offers. You've got your template kit, which is a template for consultant websites. and then you've got another variation of that, which is your, you know, template kit plus plus you, you help and coach people with that. Talk a little bit more about those two options. Did you start with just the product and then add the coaching option after that? Or, uh, like how did, how did those two come to be and how, how has that been so far?

Yeah. Uh, it's quite literally like, um, done with you is the coaching option. Do it yourself. Is the, is the no coaching option. So I started out selling only the, uh, do it yourself option. Um, but I found that I, I ended up providing coaching and support just kind. People would reach out once they bought the kit and they needed help with it. And I was just providing that support and advice kind of ad hoc for free. Um, but that was super valuable and it, and it, it did take time.

So I figured I would charge for that and create a, uh, a done with you option without getting too, too involved in the actual, like copywriting, setting up the website. Cause I, I know I didn't. Jump in there and start fiddling around with WordPress, um, or, or writing copy for them in that offer itself, I would eventually branch out into doing some more done with U SEO O and copywriting services. But yeah, it began as a totally do it yourself offer.

And now I'm kind of modifying it, getting more involved, um, to help people, um, get the results they want, which is a website that, um, gets them clients and with some people. They just need a bit more hands on help, um, than the do-it-yourself version offers. So I'm happy to provide that help, but it has to be at a higher investment on their part. Cause I'm, if I'm gonna be doing more work, then I'm gonna require a, a bigger invest investment from them, obviously.

Uh, but when I first launched it, it was just, it, I think it was. 197 bucks and I would just kind of offer ongoing email support for, for no, no fee. Um, but as I've become, you know, better at what I do, I'm, I'm charging more for it and I'm under understanding more about pricing and how to, how to charge for my services and my expertise.

Cuz I think when you first launch something, you don't really think of your, of emailing the client and providing them your expertise or loom videos as, as, as valuable. Cause you just don't know that. , your expertise is, is quite possibly the most important and most valuable thing that you offer. So, uh, yeah, started with the do it yourself and now it's, it's, um, done with you, with the, with the higher priced option.

And I even have some workshops that are, um, done with you and even some, um, done for you type of type of offer. So, Kevin C. Whelan: Okay. Well, I've got a lot of questions that I want to unpack there.

Um, so when you, when you raised your prices from 1 97 or whatever it was to, I think it's 4 97, and maybe it'll be different at some point, but, um, have you, did you notice an increase or decrease in sales, or was it sort of, and I don't, I'm sure you're not tracking the conversion rate on the landing page, but how did, how did that go with the. there was basically no drop in. There was only an increase. I I, I marketed it more and I got more sales.

So there was no real pushback around the price. Um, so as I, every time I do raise my price, I make sure to make the offer more valuable. Um, and when I did launch that version two, which went from 2 97 to 4 97, um, that's when I, when I, when I, when I put the course in there. So it's an actual course of. Doing everything I do for my consulting website, how I wrote it, how I built it, how I marketed it. I put it all that into a course.

So it's not only just the kit I added in the, the course as well. So there was only an increase in sales because I became, uh, and I, and I'm becoming a better marketer, ev with e every iteration of the product. Um, but yeah, I didn't, I didn't notice really any pushback and I never have noticed any pushback on price because I make sure to. Make it more valuable every, um, every time I update the product.

Kevin C. Whelan: I guess, and it also gives you an excuse to, to communicate to your, your email list that's saying, Hey, this, this price is going up. I'm adding more value. Do you, do you do that preemptively and say, yeah, totally. Yep, Kevin C. Whelan: it now, you'll get all this additional benefit for the next version kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. I make sure that people know that, um, if they invest before a price raise, they get the. The, um, the, the, the lifetime benefits.

Um, and it, it, it, it, it incentivizes people to invest earlier rather than later. I don't really like doing like huge price cuts cuz I feel like that harms the, the previous buyers. So I do do deliberately do campaigns saying, Hey, I'm gonna raise a price, invest now, and you'll get those future benefits. So if they're incentivized to invest earlier, in the earlier iterations of the. Kevin C. Whelan: And do you offer them lifetime access to additional versions of the product?

Yeah, where it makes sense. So like updates to the course? Um, absolutely. But like, they're not gonna get, um, a lifetime or, or one year of email coaching. Um, just cuz I can only offer that to people who invest, invest more and they understand that. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So, okay, cool. Yeah, that's always the thing is I've heard there's kind of two models.

One is you get the product and then there's a, a version 2.0 coming out and maybe, maybe past clients can buy an upgrade and uh, or you just say you buy it once and then it's yours forever, including all the future improvements and rewarding your customers along the way. So you've taken that latter approach then it Yeah. I much, I much prefer that approach. Kevin C. Whelan: Got it.

And so one of the other things about your, your products is that you, you kind of have an op, like an always open cart. Have you thought about open closed cart? And this may tie into your marketing strategy, which we'll get to, but like, meaning like, okay, this is available now, you do a launch, you know, and then it closes and there's a wait list. Oh yeah. Um, I have considered it. It's just not something I know much about.

I do kind of like the evergreen approach, which is something that I kind of do where. I've done big launches with, with clients and they're just a, a, a ton of work. Um, they can be very lucrative, but like the amount of work that's required is, is immense. So I, I kind of prefer the evergreen oppo approach.

I think they're trade-offs to each, but, um, my whole funnel is basically, um, seo, email marketing, like, like a five day email course, and then I pitch my product and then just an ongoing weekly, weekly newsletter and that, that's doing pretty. Kevin C. Whelan: Got it. We're gonna unpack that a little bit. I just wanna, uh, talk about your products a little bit more. So you've got, you've got that product. How, how many of those do you sell per month, roughly? On average?

Um, I probably sell eight to 12 of those per month. And I, and I really only spend. 25 to 50 minutes a week on, on this business. In terms of just marketing the, the template kit, I really only do seo, um, and the rest of my time is spent on done with you stuff. And then, um, a little bit of done, uh, done for you for, uh, a few select clients. Kevin C. Whelan: Got it. Okay. Yeah, that's a great return. So you're looking at about five, six grand of, Yep.

Kevin C. Whelan: we're not gonna call it passive, but you're, you're looking at five, six grand of kind of revenue that comes in larger from seo. And we'll get, I mean, maybe you can talk to that. Uh, so you spend most of, in terms of marketing, you, you build art, you do articles, you do your newsletter. SEO is your core, is your core strategy with with backed by email, right? Yeah. I, yeah, I think, and I have pretty strong opinions about this, but I think SEO is.

Um, by far the best marketing method for consultants. I think every marketing method has, its, has its tradeoffs. Um, and I'm open about those tradeoffs. You know, SEO is a longer term investment. Um, you do kind of have to be well positioned in order for it to work. Um, it, it requires just the boring, sometimes unsexy work of writing and editing, that's like the core piece. Uh, but once you do. Dial in a good process for it, and you do consistently, um, the returns are immense.

Like I, the, the main article that markets, sa O'Neil dot com is an article called Best Consultant Websites, um, which I recently updated, Kevin, you're in that, uh, but that sends, you know, five, 6,000 people to my website every month. and it sends X amount of leads every month who go through my email course. And I wrote that back in 20 20 17, and it's still the primary method for how I get traffic at clients to this day.

So it just goes to show you that you can write something five years ago and it'll continually benefit you for years to come. I don't know if you can say the same about, uh, Twitter, uh, a post or a LinkedIn post that you make, you know? Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, not at all. That's, I'm a, I'm really a strong proponent on building on your own website. So you build that, you know that domain authority. You build your own authority, at least as a home base. You can distribute wherever you want.

That's a good thing, but, . Um, yeah, and I don't do any seo. It's funny you do that. Like my, my primary focus is building relationship via email. And so, uh, but I know that I need to get more into SEO this year because it, like, like you're saying, like you, you write one knockout article and that's perfectly aligned with, with your, with your product. And then now you've got five, 6,000 people that.

To some percent of them, obviously a small percent, but some percent walk in off the street and never heard about you. $500 for the product is low enough risk that they're willing to take a tr a shot at you and, uh, promotes consultants. That's nothing relative to their, their, their broader revenues. Right. If you're doing, if you're, if you're in any way established, Mm-hmm. Kevin C. Whelan: so that's a, yeah.

If to spend, if you were to spend the money on Google Ads, you would not make anywhere. I mean, it would be, it would take all your. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you said you don't do seo, but you do publish and that's, that's half the battle, right? Actually writing and publishing your thoughts, that's gonna get you caught, that's gonna get you in search engines without you doing seo.

But SEO is a piece you kind of add around that and, and on top of that to, um, help your writing get picked up by, by search engines. So you are doing some of it maybe. intentionally, but writing is, is most a battle, in my opinion. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah.

I don't have a problem with writing, but it, but sitting down, and like you said, it's a, it's a bit of a, an onerous process to get, figure out what keywords you wanna rank for and then to, to go in depth and to write and, you know, it has to be the most authoritative answer to that question and a good answer to that question that people are searching for. Mm-hmm. Kevin C. Whelan: And you've also got a book. So you have a book, um, productize Yourself. How's that Selling?

um, it doesn't really sell that much because people, instead of buying the book, they just buy the, the kit, which comes with the. Kevin C. Whelan: Okay. It does sell a couple every month, but I find that it, it gets less sales than the, the, than the, than the, than the offer that costs 10 times as much. Because that's like a, that's like a super do it yourself, meaning you just get the information, but you don't get the, the templates or, or, or the, the step-by-step instruction.

So I find that most people just prefer to buy the kit over the book. Kevin C. Whelan: Interesting. And so on your, I'm on your website template kit. Right now you have two options, the kit or the kit plus, um, coaching. Um, you don't put the book on that page, so obviously people are, you know, there's no like third option that's like 40, 49 bucks or whatever for the book.

Yeah, I mean, you can buy the book standalone, but I just try and funnel as many people to the, the, the, um, the template kit, cuz that's, that's the, that's the most profitable, that's what I enjoy selling the most. Kevin C. Whelan: Interesting. Okay, cool. All right, and so, so you, let's talk a little bit about your SEO approach. So you, so you've. , um, you've, you've, you also do services for this, actually, let's maybe focus on some the service component of that.

So you've recently, you told me that you, that you do some services, they're not really, um, you don't like focus on them on your website. Uh, but, but tell me like, okay, how does the services work? Do people come to you and ask you for stuff and then you upsell them and just sort of threw conversation onto your services and, and what services do you.

Yeah. So. Um, the, the, the first thing people need to do if they want to get clients to their website is write and design a, a a, a lead generating consulting website. But once you have that website up, then the next battle becomes the, the marketing phase. How do you get, how do you drive traffic to your website? There's, there's many ways to do it. . Um, but SEO is my favorite way, as I said. So I was thinking this was, I mean, I think I first created this a year ago.

I'm having this issue where clients will set up the website, um, but then they don't know how to market their website. So what can I do without actually doing it for them? Um, how can I. Kind of offload my knowledge into their head of, of the ways that I actually market my business. And that was SEO o. So that's when I really started to break my SEO process down into five primary steps. Again, I didn't want to do it for them, uh, but I, I, I thought about, you know, maybe I can do.

Five 30 minute Zoom calls, add in some support and just kind of teach people my, my SEO process. So I had a client who had this problem. They were interested in SEO o So on the fly I kind of figured, what can I offer? What can I, what can I pitch this client to help them get a result? Teach them seo, but not just like teach them it. Actually, I want the, I wanted the offer to result in something tangible like an article. So, I just put down my thoughts on paper.

I put together an email, um, a price that I'd be comfortable with, basically, um, what they'll get, what it'll do for them, and the investment required. It was, they'll get, um, five calls with me. um, each one dedicated to a step of my SEO process. Uh, and most importantly, they'll get an article and we're gonna kind of co-write an article.

They'll do the writing, they'll do the editing, but they're gonna have, uh, my help kind of advising and editing, uh, the, the article and, and advising over the entire process. Um, and it, it sells really well to people who buy my kit, but want to add in the marketing piece and they want my help rather than trying to figure out SEO on their, on, on their own. Um, because I've been doing SEO really intensely for the past. Three years now.

Um, I'm a lead content strategist at Consulting Success as a, as a contractor. So I ha I handle, um, the consulting success blog, all the content writing, all the content, uh, determining what we write and why. So that's a big part of it as well. That's how I kind of honed my skills, um, by doing it. Um, so ex four hours a day. So that's how that.

Kevin C. Whelan: Wow. So it's, it's nice that you have that anchor client and so you, so that's kind of like a service, but you don't offer that for more people. So we're not gonna call that a service. It's kinda like an anchor, anchor client. And then you do these productized gigs in addition to that, plus your, plus your products. Mm-hmm. , you got it.

Kevin C. Whelan: And so you have these, these five calls, and I think you were, I don't know what the price will be, but in the range of maybe $2,500 for the five calls kind of thing. Yep. $2,500, uh, for the workshop. It's a one-on-one workshop, so I work with them and I, I, I basically, it's not just teaching them my process, which I do. We actually do some keyword research together. We, we pick a keyword for them to write that would be really valuable for their business.

We outline it together. Um, we have a, we have a conversation about it, which I transcribe and, and give it to them as their first draft, and then I teach them my editing process. And then the, the final call is, how to do on page seo and then publish and promote the article to get some initial traffic, because SEO can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to actually show up on search engine.

So I wanna make sure that once people do produce this valuable article, um, there's, there's, there's so many other ways to market it other than seo O So that's, that's a ba that's a basic outline of how, how the, uh, the process is with that workshop. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Very cool. Can we dive into that a little bit more, and you can kind of talk about those sort of stages. I think the first thing you said was keyword research. yeah. Research, I think.

I think that's probably the most important. Probably the most fun phase of SEO is once you get a tool that'll show you, um, how many prospects, for example, are searching for best consulting websites. And then you see it's 2000 people per month are searching for that. And then you see the keyword difficulty, um, is, is 10. So it's actually realistic that you can rank on the first page. And, uh, I use ATFs for this.

Um, I'm, I'm in there an hour and a half, 90 minutes a day just typing in keywords, typing in ideas. But if you actually know. , you take a phrase that you wanna rank for and you know how many people are searching for it and you know the difficulty of, of what it would take to rank for it. It just makes it so much easier to conduct like a, a, a, build an editorial calendar and, and build out a real content strategy cuz most consultants, they just kind of write randomly without that data.

And there's nothing wrong with that. I think you absolutely should. Material that has no volume just because you're passionate about it or it's a, it's a strong point of view or it's, it's more of a branding play. Like you, you can and should do that, but if you do want to get traffic to your website organically from Google, um, starting with keyword research and using a tool like HS. Is, is, is par, is is key. Kevin C. Whelan: So that's your first step.

I, I will go back to the, the, the, the, the, your, your prior. Requirement, which is tight positioning, which is like step zero, but tell me about that. Why is that important? Yeah. So if you wanna write, uh, an article on marketing, you type marketing into ats and the difficulty is 99, the global volumes, 300,000. But, um, you're not gonna rank for that, right? You're competing with HubSpot, you're competing with billion dollar companies with a marketing team of, of a thousand.

And it's just, it's highly unlikely that you'll rank for marketing and you type in marketing for consultants. You see, you see the global difficult, you see the global volume. 1000 and the keyword, difficulty seven. So, no, the global volume is not super high, but the, the difficulty is not high. And since you're a consultant, um, and you provide marketing, um, for consultant services, you don't really need 300,000 people cuz you're not gonna work with thousands of clients every year.

You're gonna work with, you know, 10, 20, 30. So tight positioning is, allows you to enter. Longer phrases into a trust or the tool to find keywords that might have a lower volume, but also have a lower difficulty. And if you are a one person team or a five person team, like you're not gonna have the resources to battle HubSpot over the marketing keyword. But marketing for consultants as a keyword, that's something that's doable for a solo consultant. And you can.

relatively quickly and start seeing, you know, relevant organic traffic to, to your website. So that's what, that's where positioning comes into play. Kevin C. Whelan: Go. So that's, we'll call that subzero. And obviously if the content you, if you have good positioning, then you're gonna know who you're trying to attract, which makes your content sub specific and then, and then you're writing seo. That's content that's specific to the audience that you're trying to attract.

And then they come to your website and they say, oh, this is like oddly enough exactly what I'm looking for. And then down the rabbit hole they go. Okay, cool. So first one being keyword research. And I think you've talked about things like, you know, keep your difficulty under a certain level and keep, you know, maybe your, the keyword volume over a certain level. Is there any kind of general guides you kind of look for using tools like at. Yeah, ats.

I like a keyword difficulty if I'm writing on a newer site to be from zero to 10. and obviously the, the, the tighter you're positioning, the easier it is to find keywords within that, that range. And then a volume. I like anything 30 or more. So 30 might not seem like a lot, but if you do rank number one for a key for an estimated global volume and, and underestimates, right, um, you can expect 3, 5, 10 x the amount of traffic.

If you do rank number one for that and you only really need a couple of leads, um, Per, per week from each article to, to make it worth the investment of actually, of actually writing it. So those are some hard and fast rules that I like to follow for, for newer sites. For, for more authoritative sites, you can, um, just forget about keyword difficulty. I've ranked for someones that. Cure difficulty of 50. Um, even best consultant websites is I think between 20 and 30.

So, uh, a lot of factors come into p uh, into play, like topical authority. Just Google recognize your website being around a specific topic and, and are you publishing, you know, things that, that prove you're an expert on that topic. Uh, back links are super important, um, which I don't do my, I don't really manually do. I think if you write content well enough, it'll attract back links on its own. Um, but yeah, all that, all that's super. I. Kevin C. Whelan: Okay, cool.

So that's, those are great rules of thumb, at least to give people the, a sense of parameters so they don't feel overwhelmed when they, when they go into a tool, uh, like hfs and then say, well, oh my goodness, where do I even begin? Um, so you got keyword research and then I guess what's, what's, what will be your second part of that, of your, say SEO kind of process? Yeah. So the next thing comes, uh, outlining and.

Like if you try and write an a a cuz like every, with every article I write, I want to make, I want to attempt to do the best article on the internet on that topic. Um, but to do that from a blank page can be very intimidating. So outlining gives you structure. If you think about like a book, uh, the keyword, the keyword research would give us the title of the book. , the next step to make, to make the writing process easier is to create like an outline of that book, the book being your article.

So, I have a, a, a often I'll use like an intro and then I'll do like, let's say it's, it's about, um, sales consulting. I'll, I'll use the five why's and how, what is sales consulting? Why invest in sales consulting? Um, how to do sales consulting. PR provided your sales consultant. Then you want to kind of inform the, the buyer about how sales consulting works.

You can do a g an article on the Ultimate Guide to Sales Consulting intro, five Ws and, and how, um, and then a conclusion with the C T A, um, given what they've just read, um, give them. One or two action steps to implement what they've read. One of those should be to reach out to you for consultation. Could be a, a newsletter, CTA a, but basically outlining makes the writing process, um, much, much easier.

So, uh, I like to break that out into, its separate, uh, a separate part of the, of the SEO process. Kevin C. Whelan: Interesting that you said you used the five, uh, five Ws, you know, where, why, when, so that's just a way to kind of frame up the content. So like, you know, what, what is this? Why is this important? How do people use it? So that that creates, that kind of framework, creates an authoritative, uh, approach to covering all the angles. Is that kind of the, the Yeah.

Yeah. And that's one, that's one approach. Obviously you would, you would add in your own case studies, your own unique points of view, um, your own examples that will really help, um, make it more in your voice. , but that's just a, a general approach you can use for like an ultimate guide. There's also like a listicle like I've done with my best consultant websites.

Um, but yeah, those are just a couple different formats, but it's, it's, it's really about the, the angle you want to take and you, you get an intuition for this once you do a lot of SEO and a lot of keyword research. You take a phrase like, , uh, marketing for a consultant. And you wanna think about what's an angle I could take on this? You know, what, what's the user intent? What are they looking for when they type that into Google? Um, and something like that.

I would, I would, I would do the ultimate guide approach. Um, the ultimate Guide to marketing for consultants. Make sense, step by step, uh, really in depth. Uh, and think about what they get as a result of reading, um, your article, what they'll be able to do, um, from your inform. Kevin C. Whelan: Interesting. Yep. Okay, cool. And so that's outlining, and then I guess the next step is writing.

Yeah. And that's, um, that's where it gets, this is where, you know, entrepreneurs, they get excited about seo. They got the titles, they got the outlines. But when it comes down to like writing and just sitting down and getting the words on the page, um, it's, it's, it can be quite challenging. In my, in my workshop, I found that most consultants are more, especially if they're busier, they prefer to just. Kevin C. Whelan: Mm-hmm. why I transcribe it and I, and I send it over to them.

And that, that is the writing phase. A lot of like, I think it's really important to separate writing from editing, so when I'm writing I'll forego grammar. I'm just trying to get. The words on the page. I wanna felt the outline. Get all my thoughts on the page. I don't try to, it's hard because I, I am a bit of perfectionist and I, and I used to edit while I write, but if you can be disciplined and write that first draft, forget about the grammar.

I know people who even don't even use capital letters. They're just, they just wanna get the words on the page all over case and then they'll clean it up after. But yeah, I mean, for writing, I think the Pomodoro technique, um, really helps doing, doing it in 25 minute chunk. Maybe doing one section of your outline per day. Um, and you can just really, really break it down and try and make it as easily and easy and seamless as possible and remove as much friction.

Um, doing things like locking your phone away in a, in a kitchen safe, all of that will help you just sit your butt in the chair and, um, get the words on the page. And that's probably the hardest thing, uh, about the, the process is the writing. Kevin C. Whelan: And yeah, I mean it's certainly when you're doing long form, I find like short form for me is I have an idea of an impulse and it's something related to what I'm working on.

And I just write about it, stream of consciousness, and then I'll go back and edit it and hopefully, we'll, hopefully we'll refine it. Um, but, but the idea of like sitting and writing like a, I don't know. How long do you recommend writing an article? Your articles? I don't, I, it's not so much about time. It's more, I would say, it's more about word count. Kevin C. Whelan: I'm sorry, word count. yeah. Yeah. And the, I mean, the quicker you get the, the faster it'll take.

But I like to, and it's highly dependent, but if I'm trying to write the best. Article on a topic, it'll end up being around 1500 to 2,500 words usually. Um, that can change depending on, on the topic. Some they don't need to be, but that's just something I like to shoot for, um, in my, in my own articles, if they are trying to be the most in-depth article on that topic. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. And I guess that's the goal, right? Because there's no point of being number seven in Google, right?

If you're gonna do this, if you're gonna invest your. I think Google genuinely rewards the best content because they can tell by like, how many people came back. You know? And if you have Google Analytics installed, probably unofficially, they see how long are you spending on, on page or are you bouncing? And, and uh, yeah. I think that's the one of the reasons like having your own case studies and not bringing in your own expertise.

So it's not just functional, boring content, like it's, it feels like this is written by someone who actually knows their stuff. Um, really good mindset. Okay, so you've got, you've got keyword research outlining writing, and then I'm guessing editing is Yeah, and I think, I think editing, in my opinion, is the hardest part of the process because that's the, that's the real writing part. I mean, with editing, what I'm doing is I'm making sure that.

. Every sentence, every first of all, every paragraph is in the right order. I wanna make sure that every sentence is in the right order. I wanna make sure that I'm using the right word for in every single sentence, the precise word. And I'm, and I'm basically going through that algorithm. For my article, and that's editing. It's, it's very like cognitively demanding if you're doing it like that.

And it often involves writing the same sentence 10 times, picking the best iteration of that sentence, making sure that it's in the right spot, every word is precise. Then onto the next line. So that's, that's editing, that's, that's might be the hardest part if you're doing it properly, but that's how you really improve the readability. Um, you respect the reader's time by, by making it easier for them to read. So they're stressed, they're on their phone, they don't have time.

They're reading your article and they're still finding it easy to read, invaluable. So editing is really where you, where you do. Kevin C. Whelan: Got it. Yeah. Um, and when you're editing, do you look, are you, are you trying to get a number of keywords? Like do you try to stuff secondary keywords, like, or is every article written for one?

Like what's your thought on keywords after the head, after the title I, I really, I don't pay too much attention, um, about using the keyword in the article besides the url, the title, and maybe once or twice in the H two tags. Other than that, I'm not thinking about secondary keywords. I just try and explain things as clearly and as naturally as possible, and I find just by doing that you'll rank. many more keywords than just the one you target.

But in terms of like manually trying to hit 2% keyword density and all that, like, I, I don't pay attention to that at all, and I don't, I don't see any evidence for that. It's even necessary anymore. Kevin C. Whelan: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I think edit, like I always say, editing is like, writing is like 80% editing, you know, because like, uh, and, and people are kind of always surprised by that.

Even my short articles, often I'll spend more time editing by like a margin of two or three, like 80% of my time. Uh, so it's interesting you say that. Um, and then getting it over the line is important, getting it published, getting it on your website really key. I guess that's the next, the last step in your sort of five parts, is that kinda like final optimizations and publishing kind of thing and the o distribution. Yeah, so I kind of, it's step five, publish and promote.

Uh, we have OnPage seo, and that's kind of the, the, the final things that you do that I just mentioned. Um, making sure the, the, the, the keywords in the title, it's in the url. Um, adding, adding an image or two, try and use original images. Um, and, and Yost SEO is what I've, what I use for WordPress sites. Real simple gives you Kevin C. Whelan: you use the the pro version or no, I only use a free. Kevin C. Whelan: the pre.

Yeah. But it's, it's, you know, adding the meta description, um, including the H two tags and, and it's, it's pretty simple stuff, and you can learn it in, in an afternoon. Um, Kevin C. Whelan: you put the focus keyword in the box just to give you a little score? do, Yeah. I do that and I find that works well. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then dis Kevin C. Whelan: you to do all the little stuff. Sorry, like it reminds you like add alt, you know, all tags or descriptions for your images and.

Like that's one of the benefits of yos is it forces you to be a little more disciplined with your prac, with your practice, which is great. Makes every bit helps, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, it's, I mean, again, the most important thing is your, your writing ability and how easy the, the article is to read and understand. But the on page SEO stuff is that final 10 to 20%.

Um, that just makes sure that it's, it's understandable by search engines and it gives you a, a higher chance of ranking and then, uh, distribution. So that's just thinking about. , how can you get this article out to as many people as possible to get some initial traffic to it? Uh, because you can't expect it to rank on search engines immediately. I mean, if you have a higher authority site, you can, I've seen, you know, some sites get articles ranked in a couple hours, even on the first page.

Um, but until then, You know, it's sending it out to your email list. It's writing a social post. It's asking people, asking other people in your network to share it. Um, it's all these little things you can do just to get that article in front of, in front of anyone really, and getting people to share it. So yeah, that's why I'll send an email to my list when I write a new article, um, blasted on, on, on social, asked people to share it.

I don't do any link building, but some people, uh, some people do that and it does, it is an important ranking factor. Uh, but it. getting that article out before you expect search engines to, to, to rank it. Kevin C. Whelan: and you don't have to submit URLs to Google anymore, right? Like you, once you give them your site map and search console, like do you, do you I, I do, I do that, I do that. Um, especially on newer sites.

I've found that with more, with more authoritative sites, you don't have to do that. Google will, will, will, will crawl them early, like within a day. But on newer sites, I find that it, it helps, um, it helps get them picked up quicker. So I do, I do submit mine manually through Google Search Console. Kevin C. Whelan: Got it. Cool. Okay. Um, uh, one like meta example of back links, which you don't do, but indirectly.

So obviously if the content's good enough, people are probably gonna link to it, it's authoritative, that kind of thing. Um, you, you had your top 30, uh, best consultant websites and why they have them 2023. You've updated it. Um, The cool thing about that is like, I'm always a big fan of like, if you want people to distribute your ideas, if you can feature people, it's a great way to naturally get them.

Whether, if you're a local business and featuring the local businesses around you is like the time best place to eat or whatever. Next thing you know, they're sharing it. They're linking to it on their blog. They're putting their newsletter. Um, so you don't officially do back links, but any other tactics like that that help accrue back links. Using data is, is, is a really powerful way if you, if you type in consulting fees.

Um, with my, with with, with consulting success, we did an article around, Um, consulting fees and what really boosted us above our competitors was doing like an original study or survey on consulting fees, asking our list using SurveyMonkey, um, some questions about how they set their fees, um, what's worked best for you. And that really pushed us above our competitors.

So we're, that's, that gets a ton of traffic every, every month, but anytime you can include original data that will also help you attract links naturally. We even had some of our biggest competitors. , um, link to link to that post, um, because we had data that they could use to make their article better. So yeah, data and featuring other people is the really only two ways that I've, outside of just writing really good stuff and really helpful stuff.

Um, those two sort of angles to take on content, content I've seen really help attract back links naturally, but I've never. . I mean, maybe a couple times I've asked for them and done like, there's like, uh, like it's like 4 0 4 0 4 page link building where you like literally hunt out websites that, that are linking to broken pages and you offer them like your own, your own website as a, as a replacement. It's just super, super time consuming. Um, the, the, the hit rate's super low.

It's like a full-time job and I just prefer to, to, to double down on, on writing ability and content. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. And I guess watching how your, your posts are performing, if they're number five, is there something you could do to improve the headline, add more content, tweak it, improve it, you know, Yeah. Yeah. I think updating older posts that are in that five to 15 spot, um, is one of. Things that move the needle most for, for my own seo.

Um, cuz they already are picked up by Google, but they're just, they just might be missing like a section or just they need to be rewritten or they need to match u uh, user intent or they need like a case study or a video. But improving content that's ranking decently well is probably priority number one. And, and could even overtake writing brand new content from scratch. So yeah, updating. Those, those mid-level posts making them better. Um, is, is, is a, is a, is a great SEO play.

Kevin C. Whelan: Love it. Cool. So how often do you write these articles or how often do you aim to. yeah, so for my, for for savo neil.com, i, I, I only really focus on best consultant websites, so I update that, um, a couple times every month. Um, for CS Consulting success, I do, uh, two articles per. So they're very in-depth articles. They're, they're often targeting hard keywords. Um, there's a lot of features featuring clients and, and, and other experts.

Um, for a new site of mine, B G J Equipment, which is a, a hobby site, I'm writing anywhere from one to two posts per week. Um, so collectively I'm involved in. , you know, one or two web 1, 2, 3 posts per per week. Uh, but it, it's dependent on, on, on the niche, on your goals.

Uh, but generally for a consultant who, who wants to take this seriously, I think starting with one really good article a month, um, in a year you'll have a 12 sort of marketing assets that are, that are moving the needle for your business. And, and once a month is like, is nothing. You can do 25 minutes a day of writing and that'll give you. One article per month for your business. So yeah, Kevin C. Whelan: And so going back to your own website, you said you just update the best consultant.

every, like, what'd you say? Every few weeks or months? yeah. Every, every few months I'll add more people to it. But, um, the, the, the, the better play for me there, since I already ranked for the primary keyword, is to focus more on the, um, the email marketing. Focusing more on upselling and, and really now helping my clients get results and then, um, marketing those results through my email list rather than going for maybe a keyword.

Cuz like best consultant websites or consulting websites doesn't get a lot of search volume. But it is enough to get, um, a good amount of revenue every month from, from the product and, and, and ultimately through upselling to, to other aspects of, of, uh, marketing, uh, elite generating consulting website. So, Kevin C. Whelan: Interesting. Okay, so, uh, why not do one article, one new article a quarter? Like why, if that one's working so well? Yeah. Kevin C. Whelan: Why not is just time like.

No, it's a good question. Um, if you like, I've, I've hunted four keywords around consulting websites and there's just not many yet. So like, maybe like consulting homepage would get like a search volume of 10, and I'm already ranking there with best consultant websites somehow because somewhere on the web, on the page, someone mentioned their homepage or whatever. So there's just not a ton of search volume around consulting websites enough where it, it makes sense to, to do a lot of SEO for.

because I already own, I think, the most valuable keyword for, for my niche of, of consulting websites, which is best consulting websites, right? So I can use that time and I can use that to write a weekly, um, email newsletter. I can invest that time in doing the workshops with my clients, um, and, and in other ways other than seo. So cuz it gets around five or 6,000 visits a month, that should be enough for me to monetize and, and, you know, sell eight to 12 to 15 templates per.

Kevin C. Whelan: And so how many, like how many newsletter subscribers would you say you get Um, I've got, right now I've got around 3,500 total, and every month it's between, I think one 50 to 200. So, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good amount and I, and I find that the highest ROI for me is being consistent with, with my newsletter. Um, so that's, that's why I'm spending that, that, that amount of time on this particular business.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. And so I've been a subscriber of your newsletter for a long time. Um, why don't you publish the content from your newsletter onto your blog? That's a good question. Um, Kevin C. Whelan: I. I think it, for me, it might just be my obsession with seo. First of all. I probably should, uh, but I just Kevin C. Whelan: have like the opposite, like I'll publish the equivalent of what you do. Just like on my blog and like, Yeah. I actually don't have a good answer for that.

I probably should, but it's probably just my sort of o c d around s e o and like following my process, it's tough for me to, to publish something without following this process, just cause I know it works so well. Um, but no, it's a, it's, uh, I should do more non SEO related articles. It's probably connected to the fact that I don't post too much on social media. Uh, I, I might do more of that. And if you do use social media, it opens you up to.

writing more, um, not using seo, but like, like you do, like, you'll just write what's on your mind and share that and it, and it works well. Um, and you don't, yeah, again, you don't need to use seo, but that's just the process that I'm most comfortable with and where I've seen most results, so. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. It's just funny. It's like, doesn't compute like to me like there's so much value in your email and you wouldn't really know unless you subscribed.

And, uh, but it, yeah, it's, it's funny as you as an SEO minded first person, um, yeah. I mean, yeah, you've got a great newsletter by the way. People should get on there and subscribe, uh, sal neil.com. There'll be link in the show notes as well. Um, I have one last kind of question for you around. Audience pages.

So let's say you have, let's see, your, your, um, you do website like, you know, marketing for consultants or something, and then you're like, well, I, I think we kind of, we touched on this as an idea briefly, and maybe you can talk about it in other cases, but like it consultants websites for it consultants. Like, have you, you know, have you, have you seen it work really well when you start to create essentially audience niche like sub subpages, either as services or as.

Where I've seen it work well is with. Case studies on the Consulting Success website. So we get a good amount of leads from people who go to an article. In the article we'll mention a case study will link to a case study that, that the URL sales consultant or IT consultant, and then that person is reading about a, a consultant that's in their industry. And that case study will push them into booking a call. So these don't get a ton of search traffic. I haven't really experimented with it yet.

I haven't really done, like, I, I might look into this after this cause I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll pop open ATS and, and, and google IT consulting website and then I can write an article on how to, how to structure an IT consulting website. Um, so I think it, I think it definitely would work. I would just have to know the search volume, are people searching for it? Uh, but if they are, it would absolutely be like a killer, uh, a killer post because it is so targeted. I think.

Um, obviously like, yeah, consultant. is, is a, is a niche, but marketing consultant or IT consultant is like super, super specific and I think people, people appreciates, um, specificity, Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah. The smaller you go, the, maybe the less return you get per effort. But, uh, the long tail, once you add, stack up a few of these things. And really the mindset here is that you're, what you're doing is you're creating an asset.

So every time you do one of these articles, it's an asset that's gonna last. Yep. Kevin C. Whelan: like you've talked about this one being five years old. And so, uh, I think that's the way we wanna be thinking. The whole mindset that I have is like, how do you take your expertise and create assets out of it? Whether those are knowledge products, whether those are like courses and whatnot, or articles or templates or resources or examples.

Um, that's the, that's the way the leverage, right, is assets. Like that's the main around your Yeah. And that's why it's my favorite marketing method. That's why I think it beats all other marketing methods, because like you said, it is creating that asset.

. Um, it is extreme long-term thinking, but um, once it does start to work, like, uh, it's like, it's like having little miniature use, crawling the internet and, and having conversations with people while you're going for a walk or, or doing your hobby and like your, your articles and you're thinking being crystallized through art, through, through your website are, are doing a lot of work for you. And that's the core of, of what I teach in, in, uh, in my own business.

Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It's a great mindset to have and uh, I think a lot of people don't, can't think long term like they can, but they don't realize that yes, it's gonna cause you pain to create this thing once, but then in theory it, it pays you forever. Like you're, imagine you had $5 a click or $2 a click on, on your thing. You, you're spending the range of 10 to $25,000 per month for the traffic you have from one article. Mm-hmm. Kevin C. Whelan: And, uh, amazing.

Yeah, there's even like a really cool, um, blog ROI calculator where you type in like your, your lifetime customer, customer value, how much traffic you're getting from, from this article, and it'll show you like what that article is worth. I just saw this the other day. It's su super, super cool, but, um, people just should, should know that, you know, you might not, might not get it rewarded immediately, but over time like these, this will be the best marketing that you do.

Kevin C. Whelan: You've inspired me. Svo, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be working on my, uh, my SEO and I'll, I'll probably be talking to you about that a little bit more. Um, thank you so much for, for being so transparent with your numbers and breaking down your business model. I think you've got a really fun and interesting one.

A good combination of you're doing some done for you, you know, and, uh, you know, with your anchor client and the, and also with your, uh, with your hybrid model, which to me is like a guided done with you program where it's not just. We'll write it together over two calls, like it's like five structured calls.

You're learning, you're transferring your knowledge, which probably will turn into a product at some point that you can, through all these questions and answer, you'll refine it through doing it a a bunch of times. Meanwhile, you get to sell it at a high ticket, so you're effectively earning over 500 an hour, um, selling a few of these things. And maybe there's a product thrown in on top.

Mm-hmm. Kevin C. Whelan: Um, and yeah, you've got a really well dialed in meth methodology that's working really well for you. And then, uh, you mentioned quickly that you've got BJJ equipment.com for brail Brazilian jujitsu equipment as a side project and hustle. So, uh, curious to see how that pans out. I know you're just getting traffic and I think you're starting to get a little bit of maybe affiliate income Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, I think the other day I did $35, um, in one day.

So if you expand that out daily, like that's starting to, to, to, to make a dent and it's, um, I think that site is interesting because the domain name is still, I think it's 0.8 and it's already outranking huge websites because. Of the content. Like all I think about is how can I improve my writing skills and then communicate, um, what I'm trying to say as, as, as, as, as well as possible. So that site's been, been gaining a lot of traction, which is great to see.

Using what I, what what I've shaved here, sha shared here. So it is kind of an industry agnostic, Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah. I love that so much. Um, well thank you so much for your time. So I guess the best place to, to find you would be on your website, sil.com. TSA V o n e a l.com. Uh, where and where else can people find you if you, if they're on the socials? Uh, you can find me on Twitter. I don't post much on Twitter.

Um, I might, I might, I might start doing more social, uh, but basically my website, my newsletter, and uh, yeah, that's the best place to find me LinkedIn as well. Kevin C. Whelan: Cool svo. Really appreciate that. I'll put all those notes in the show notes and um, yeah, thank you for opening your methodology.

That's, you know, there's way more to it obviously, so if, if you found that valuable, obviously working with SVO would be great cuz you get the end result of a really well dialed in SVO grade stamped, approved article as well as lessons that you can use for yourself. And all of your clients, if you are a marketing consultant especially, that can be a really, really valuable skillset set to have, which makes it, uh, just a no-brainer in terms of roi.

And those are the things I look for when I make investment decisions in courses or coaches. I look for things that are specific to my needs and can pay a dividend for a long, long period of time. And that's an example of just leveling up your business. So I highly recommend checking out Savo, and I've known him for a couple years, so it's nice. Um, nice that we get to chat again. So I really appreciate you sharing everything so far today. Appreci.

This was awesome and I look forward to seeing your, your progress with seo. Kevin C. Whelan: Yeah, you'll hold me accountable to it. We're gonna make, I'm gonna make some moves this year, I promise. Thank you, svo. Thank. Kevin C. Whelan: And that's it. My friends. I hope you enjoyed this podcast with Tsavo Neal. I know for one, I am going to be thinking about how do I go and create the most authoritative most valuable, interesting article.

For something that I think is going to help people find my website organically and begin that process of attracting some of that natural inbound search engine traffic that. Good stuff without having to spend money on ads. And I know it was going to be a little bit of a long process. I know it's not going to happen right away, but I'm definitely going to be thinking about how do I create that authoritative long piece of content that can rank for a long time on Google.

So that's what I'm going to be working on. I hope you're inspired to do the same. I hope you've seen how it's possible to generate five, six even. You know, tens of thousands of dollars in potential revenue through search engine optimization, and then be able to apply this to your own client's work as well. So you may not be an SEO specialist, but maybe you're a marketing consultant in some way.

And you want to do a little bit more SEO for your clients, or at least advise them in some of the high level ways they can approach SEO. I think Tsavo's strategies and techniques around choosing the keywords around the level of competition and the search volume gives you a really great starting point to help your clients figure out what keywords they should think about and how to go about trying to get more traffic to their website through highly ranking organic content.

If you like this stuff, Saba. Actually did a workshop for members of Mindshare. And so that training, that full, comprehensive walkthrough of how he uses H ref to find keywords and break it down into. Uh, write an article and edit everything and publish it all. We went really deep into all the details. He basically showed everything that you could possibly want to see in terms of. Actually using the tool to get these pieces of articles written.

Uh, so if you want to get part of that, that's, that's content that you'll find inside the Mindshare community. You. I don't over to kevin.me/group. And you'll I find it all about the community. Basically we meet once every other week and we do a live monthly training with either myself or a guest expert every month. Usually it's on the business side of what you do. Although sometimes we're trying to improve marketing skills like copywriting in this case, SEO.

Uh, so you'll get a good combination of business and marketing skills. That'll make you a better strategist, better advisor, better freelancer consultant, and otherwise. So head on over to kevin.me/group and check it out. And otherwise, if you liked this content, please share with a friend. Do you know any other consultant marketer? Freelancer. Agency owner who would get value from this kind of content, send them on over, send them over to, uh, kevin.me.

And you'll find a link to the podcast somewhere on the website and get it on your podcast player. And that's how you can. Help make this message go further. So I'll leave you with that. My friends stay well and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.