James Dooley: We was actually ranking number one for all of our keywords why have you not tried to uh run agencies where you do client SEO why do you only do your own websites everyone's jumped on the AI bandwagon thinking this is the solution to miss scale ins sites The Helpful content upd seem to have hit a lot of genuinely good sites reviews play a role in local rankings before you've got to be be able to do PPC Facebook ads YouTube ads Twitter ads Facebook retargeting I don't I don't want people to come onto my website and come off my site and not inquire and me not retarget them on Facebook Facebook retargeting is the cheapest form of kind of getting people back to your site that there is it's ridiculously cheap we provide the best service that there is in the UK cuz we guarantee him a return on investment do you see many penalties in local and League generation SEO if they I can improve who I am as an individual and improve my output any my stuff so po I'm going to use it if it doesn't improve it then I'm not going to use it.
Hey guys and welcome back to the channel and welcome back to another episode where I'll be interviewing entrepreneurs and experts from around the SEO World in today's episode I've got someone who's back on the channel once again you asked for him in the comments as for always he's super popular please pleas welcome to the channel James dly ladies and gentlemen doing yeah I'm doing good thank you I'm glad you came back for another episode I know the in the last episode we had a lot of people that wanted to ask follow-up questions and just get a lot more out of it because they're always looking for a lot of business insights because I think you're one of the few people in SEO that's probably entrepreneur first and SEO second uh whereas most people are SEO first and entrepreneur second right right um and I think that gives you a lot more insights into business and sales and all sorts of things that most seos naturally lack let alone you know actually having any sort of knowledge around and stuff so thank you for coming back on I think the first question that I want to just jump straight into um and it kind of talks about that is at what stage and what reason and this is also asked by one of the one of the comments well what stage and what reason did you diversify your business because you started in the construction Niche I think primarily and then moved into every other Niche that's profitable on the planet it seems.
Unknown Guest: Yeah yeah so I mean diversification came from initially we was in need of leads obviously inhouse for our own construction company which built playgrounds um did like fencing flood lights built tennis courts sports pitches and stuff like that um and the diversification came from we we was actually ranking number one for all of our keyword and it got to a point where we was trying to think how could we still grow even though we thought that we'd absorbed I mean back then 15 years ago it didn't you didn't have all the keyword research tools like you have now you didn't have all the knowledge of doing the alphabet suit method using chat GPT to help you with new topic ideas h r sem rush like they we didn't have all the tools so when we thought we was ranking for obviously all of them knowing hindsight we wasn't but the core the core keywords was ranking for and we I always called it shouldering niches so what else if we got other businesses busier could it complement our business um and that's how the diversification came there wasn't any business plan being set up to say right we're going to become the biggest leag generator in the UK bar on um it there wasn't a plan for that it just kind of evolved and we got landscaping companies tacking companies construction companies we got all those to become busier and obviously as part of their work was building the sports pitch and we was then able to do the surfacing and stuff like that on there um and that's how it just grew in and just one thing led to another and some some kind of um where 's wanted to convert into a football pitch they needed finance and they was asking me who like you said I'm more of an entrepreneur than I'm an SEO and they were saying do you know anyone that can help with your Finance so I was like yes I do and I didn't but I'm like I'll find someone so then it just LED from one thing to another and you start speaking to someone that does finance and that can lend them money that might be for the business and then they say oh if you can get me more of these type of inquiries then obviously from there then um we we could get Kickbacks and then the Kickbacks became more profitable than actually the construction company now don't get me wrong the Construction company's grown to a level where we never thought it could it's um it's gone from half a million up to million pound but that's how the diversification came so in in being recommending what i' for other seos to do I would start very Niche and i' stay in your lane to start with before you start expanding become the expert in let's say Plumbing or electricians or Roofing or whatever it is become an expert in that and you'll start finding as you go down a rabbit hole sub niches within Plumbing that that's profitable um and then from there then if you want to go bigger and you want to have a large team then diversify but I would I wouldn't diversify unless you've got a large team and you know what you're doing like I'd say my biggest problem with e these interviews Charles is everyone wants to create shortcuts and there's no shortcuts to doing it right you've got to do it right and to do it right you need to have a a decent team otherwise not only will the SEO not work and you're not find the right kind of niches sub niches to go into you also won't find the right clients that's going to service the leads in the best possible way.
James Dooley: Yeah I completely agree I think the only shortcut that you already have is capital hacks right so things that you can immediately kind of use to grow your Capital but that's not going to cause any sort of longevity or any sort of uh massive growth in terms of large businesses and scaling and stuff right that's only going to allow you to invest into more assets and things and stuff so I want to kind of talk to you about why didn't you ever do client work why have you not Tred to uh run agencies where you do client SEO why do you only do your own websites have you not ever found it easier to just kind of sit back and collect a 10,000 pound a month paycheck off you know 200 300 companies in the UK.
Unknown Guest: Well to be honest with you I mean that that is a great question to ask of why why not the SEO agency rout as a opposed to the lead generation and the rank and rent model route and the the truth of the matter is so many times at the very start of the journey we got asked can we rank their websites and we actually started and it was probably only for about seven or eight months we actually started doing SEO for for other people's websites and it just became an absolute logistical nightmare where they wanted meetings um and back then it wasn't just doing a zoom meeting they wanted face to-face meetings which slowed us down of what work we could get done they wanted nice glossy reports and some of these reports were wasn't like how much more traffic and how many more leads and how much more like return on investment that they made these was generally with marketing people that they wanted to look good to their bosses not really delving into what money do they make which is what a business owner wants and when you was dealing with these marketing managers they was more like yeah but how many new Twitter followers have you gained this month and I'm like gaining Twitter followers doesn't matter right but then we started to fall in we started to get some big clients that had uh brand protection officers within the business so anything that we wrote with regards to content it needed to get signed off by them and it was coming back with like little tiny can you change this can you change that can you change this before you know it we was only uploading like one maybe two articles a month but you'll know as much as me you need topical Authority you need to be scaling content as quick as possible obviously not too quick that you get penalized but you need to be scaling content and scaling links and we was being held back by clients and the main reason why we started to say do you know what let's just build a website let's just do exactly what they want which is to generate leads for x y and Zed and let's not have all of this I need a brand Protection Officer um I don't like the color of this button can you do this can you do that we don't need to explain everything of what we're doing and why we're doing it and that's why we moved away very quickly from the SEO agency model but if you don't know how to rank websites then you you will struggle with our in with doing what we do we are very good we've got an in-house testing team we're very good at generating the inquiries that that turn into a return on investment for clients and if you can't do that then the so Agency Route is a much better kind of play for you if you know how to rank and know how to bank very quickly then the rank and rent model is is a better solution in my opinion and I think the the time frame as well you can set up an agency and and get those those skills and develop everything a lot faster then you can run tests and and long form you know experiments and niches and and rankings and all sorts of stuff right that's a massively a long form and capital intensive game whereas you can set up an agency tomorrow with $50 literally right with just you know registering your company and a domain name and some cheap posting.
James Dooley: Yeah um so how are you dealing with argm updates as of filming this today it's it's uh just being released that the core and spam updates for March come out but I want to talk more about hcu because it seems to be more impactful so far hopefully not a you know future daming those all to help with with some crazy update that's that's going to kill us all but um how are you dealing with updates do you specifically have any ideas around uh how hcu has affected content sites and how it's affected Affiliates and how you would how how you guys have been reacting to it.
Unknown Guest: Yeah for sure I mean the helpful content update in my opinion in September was especially in the affiliate market and display ads Market was the biggest update I've ever seen since since I've been in it for 14 15 years and they still probably 95% of the websites still haven't recovered they're still in a negative ranking State um and it's hard to get out of a negative ranking State until you build back up momentum and obviously you then start getting into a positive ranking State and it's so difficult to get yourself out of it and the main way of getting out of it is um like the next algorithm update that comes along the next core algorithm update so I think a lot of people obviously we're talking about this and we're only two days in from the the double update that's just happened there's no data out there that sites have recovered yet and stuff like that there's obviously there's a lot of sites that been penalized um they all seem to be um manual kind of penalties against public case studies and stuff like that or where it is just pure spam so in my opinion um Google obviously trying to come after like parasite SEO people that uh they're not they're definitely not coming after AI there's so many sites with AI that still and I know we still new into it so many sites that are absolutely still booming with AI content apart from the public case study ones that have been here or the ones that are using an AI tool that's just not quality that they're just churning out content not internal linking it um the the the context of of the page it's just it's just it's just it's crap if you're being honest with you like and do you know what some of these people are just everyone tries to shortcut the ways of doing stuff and now everyone's jumped on the AI bandwagon thinking this is the solution to miss scaling s sites at a rate of knots but you still need to have an SEO putting the prompts in uploading it internal linking it Silo structure being good trying to make it multimedia Rich adding videos adding images in there and stuff like that and making it good for the user so like this helpful content update is you should be doing helpful content for the users my only issue is and it a bit of a kind of bearing against Google is the helpful content update seemed to have hit a lot of genuinely good sites there wasn't AI written that people have put their blood heart and soul into it for many years and they've been hit and replaced with Reddit and and some of the Reddit forums that was ranking was just absolutely garbage and and they've got a problem obviously um and I mean I it's I I've got a lot of time for obviously Google's made me over the years they've made me a lot of money I've built out a lot of sites that are ranking in Google and I feel they are genuinely trying to do everything that can for what is best for the user and and they have got a massive issue with regards to seos just doing copycat content and I think the biggest issue was and what they've been trying to factor in is everyone's obsessed with getting the number one rankings or the number two rankings and correlating against those articles and Google's point is if someone clicks on number one result and doesn't like it and then clicks on to number two result and it's the same as the number one result they still don't like it and now they get to a point where they don't like gole because Google have keep presenting them with the same article but just slightly varied up and almost doing like what you used to kind of preach about 15 years ago they're spinning the article that's all people are doing they're just doing spin rewriters of articles that saying the same thing the same 10 affiliate links that are on there so them trying to mix it up by putting some user generated content in like Reddit I think it's a good thing to have some sort of sites like that but mixed in with some affiliate sites as well um but I just think they've gone too far with it um and I think now the I think this double update I think it's the first time I might be wrong here I think it's the first time they've ever done a double update together and I think it's bad that they do double updates because you never know what's going on like you could you could be level and go I've not been hit I'm absolutely fine but you might have been hit with one and jumped up with another and you don't know but he's still stagnant so correlation doesn't always mean causation and when this double penalties that are coming out or double kind of algorithm updates coming out you don't know whether one could have like you might have slightly gone up and have done really well but one of them you might have tanked other one you might have shot up load so it's um but I feel like they've had to do it they've had to make a statement out there there is so many spammers and scammers and stuff out there where people are using AI for the wrong reasons um Reddit knows being manipulated big time but don't know what they're going to do on that front because obviously there there's certain Investments that they've done with Reddit and stuff like that but in might what in back to your question The Helpful content update what I've been doing is trying to make certain that I'm looking through the content and saying is this helpful I'm kind of listening to what they're saying and saying is this helpful for the user and I'm not just doing it for because what Google says and what Google does is too completely different things but actually is it is it actually helpful for the user because if it's not it's not going to convert anyway so like genuinely from a bus wearing my business heart if if it's not good for the user it's not going to convert if it's good for the user and they're going to be it's internal link to lots of other articles and you do have topical Authority well away again from Google's topical Authority if you can get people from the top of the funnel keywords and getting coming down and you ask and you're answering all the questions that they have that they come and make an informed decision because of the information of what you've done via several articles well you've just changed that person from top of the funnel informational type post to buy him from you or inquiring with you that's what real businesses should do that's a sales funnel so people might want to call it topical Authority but I'm calling it on my own site I want to try to get him here to convert in here and it's a sales funnel so yes it's meaning cover the topic in its entirety and all the rest of it but make certain it's bloody good content do you know what I mean so that's kind of what I've done and I'm not just wearing like said I'm not just doing it wearing Google's heart to kind of follow exactly what they're saying I'm doing it for the user which is the most important part of why I've created the site in the first place.
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Unknown Guest: So we do use AI quite a lot now obviously we're trying to integrate AI more and more um we're not replacing any humans with AI at present but we we're allowing AI to supercharge what they do so their output so um like mid journey and Del and um Adobe Firefly and all them they starting to use all the right tools um to be able to create amazing images better than images than my initial graphic designers was doing they're able to put the right prompts in and create these images that I'm like Blown Away by wow this is incredible um so on that front from an image point that they're doing it um we're crunching the data a lot more using AI so like lead nurturing and stuff like that um that's been a massive part um like we've had several different data scientists coming in to work out what sites how much we spending on certain sites and what is our Roi but also longterm Roi because obviously there's times in certain industries let's say mortgages for example you might not get paid on a mortgage lead for seven months because it takes a while for everything to go through where if it's like a repair Niche or an emergency Niche when we was crunching the data we're like repair Niche and emergency Niche are the most profitable niches that you can go into no you just get paid faster on them it's not that it's the most profitable nich just you can almost get paid up front yes not a problem I come out today it's going to cost You2 200 as a call out charge you've got to pay it now if it's only cos you1 for the lead and you're getting paid 200 straight away You're Going wow that's an amazing return on investment but some of the others might only cost you 50 pound for a lead but you might make ,000 pound but it might take seven months to get paid so we've kind of been working on a lot of that data and on the lead nurture inside for for AI um the the truth of the matter is yeah we we've got o over a thousand websites um including like um the test day at sites and stuff like that and we've got a big team like we've got we've got content writers we've got editors we've got now prompt Engineers we've got graphic designers we've got videographers we've got developers we've got technico team um obviously I've bought like certain agencies like seero which does um content and does um they've got like if if I needed an overflow of content writers they've got content writers um in invested in certain other tools um I bought B link doctor that does a lot of disos on behalf of like Rick laas got all of his processes try to improve upon his processes and make it even better from wearing an SEO heart to make certain that I'm not just dis avoing links that might be powerful um that opened our eyes then to what is good links and what is bad links what are trusted links what are toxic links because previously we used just do Dr in traffic and and think was Advance because we might do Dr trafficking relevance where now we can kind of look at certain other parameters of toxicity and Trust as well which which help with our buying um or us earning the links um we're trying to do a lot of um with regard guyss to AI now crunch a lot of data and make a lot of linkable assets and then actually outbound outbound linking sorry um reaching out to people that have linked to articles that might be four five six years old um and getting those and we've had really good success with doing that there's other linkable assets you can create with AI like calculators and stuff like that so AI is just allowed us to flash track building these amazing linkable assets that people genuinely want to link to that you don't then need to go and try start buying guest post or Niche edits or stuff like that um and all that's all that's coming within it so in in as in answer to your question yeah it's a difficult it's difficult to keep the culture um You've Got A Min a middle management kind of team you you know all my team obviously so like all my when you first came in and you was training up like Dan Elliot Amelia Lucy and Scott and people like that they've now been with me for 11 12 years they was apprentices they came out of school and was apprentices on 4500 pound a month um and in the UK that is like absolute pittance you know what I mean it's pennies but that's how they started and now they directors of the company um they've grown massively they've built up their own assets um they've evolved as individuals and they've all now got like vas and people that work underneath them that they've trained up and they've developed um to help build the sites out and stuff like that so I don't deal with every single member of Staff within the company I kind of try and deal with the middle management system and they've all got kind of eight nine or 10 members of Staff underneath them um but it's difficult mate it's not I'm not going to sit there saying it's really easy to go and build out a thousand sites that Rank and dealing with all the different clients in all the different Industries it's it's tough um you've got to roll up your sleeves you've got to work hard you've got to make certain that your C your not only your customers are happy with what they're getting out of it otherwise they're going to keep wanting meetings um but also your staff are happy and generally speaking we moved our our model moved into the rank and rent model very quickly because is our customers love the model and when your customers really like it and they make a return on investment then your staff start to have good relationships with your customers the customers AR ringing you up morning they generally ringing you up with new niches or can we can we build on this if I give you more money can you do x y and Zed and they're always positive conversations so I think that's very important if you if you are doing let's say client SEO and you wasn't ranking or they've been hating and stuff like that and you're still trying to get three four five 5,000 a month out of them it that must be a hard sell because they the traffic's dropped and you're still trying to get money out of them where for us a lot of them only pay on a back end and on a conversion so they only pay when they've made profit and that's where we can guarantee a return on investment and for that reason we've got happy staff which then means sorry we've got happy customers which then means we've got happy staff and it kind of all evolves from there.
James Dooley: Yeah your your um Team level confidence really depends on your client success rate as well right so yeah the amount of clients that we've had before that are you know phoning up immediately three days after you've hired where are the results you know things like that and stuff and you're trying to get your team to just be try and get set expectations try and be that but also they they're confidence just starts to go down if they continually have clients phing ight so you want to be making sure that you're selling and expectations or cost clients or team everybody um do you use pbn hosting because because you have so many different sites right how are you managing IP address CDN are you using some of pbn Hosting provider.
Unknown Guest: We use um majority of sites are on cloud like use cloud fly at the front end um but yeah we've got different hosting um we don't use any pbn hosting we're try and keep everything on the premium front of Hosting um we try and just do what a real business does um the end of the day so like we want to make the last thing I want is my server to be overr and was getting 500 errors do you know what I mean because that just absolutely kills the site so instead of cheaping out and paying 51 pound a month on hosting per site we spending a lot more but I'm happy to spend I don't I think it's something like5 6,000 pound a month on hosting um so it's it's a it's a big chunk of what we paying but they've got lots of different um yeah lots of different hosting providers for different indust and stuff like that we try not to have any specific like pbn hosting and stuff like that because we just don't want a pbn network being taken down and then us with our money SES being taken down as part of that so again I don't really some people kind of ask me oh could but I can get it cheaper for you I'm like I just don't want the hassle it works um clients are happy it never goes down um it's protected with Cloud flare at the front end so it's full cash and stuff like that um so if it does come up with any negative o kind of hits and stuff CLA Flair can kind of help on that front and I I mean you know me I'm not very technical of I'm being honest with you mate I just know that I just don't want to cheap out and I prefer to get premium hosting where I just don't want any 500 RRS otherwise you my technical team are going to get right roasting off me.
James Dooley: Yeah fair enough um so you're you're using Rank and rent quite a lot right is it easy because a lot of people seem to you know do these crazy titles about how you can set up Rank and rent sites in 15 minutes and it's the easiest business model in SEO and you can make $155,000 a month you know with three websites and things like that um I don't think it's that easy and I I know that local SEO is a lot lot lot easier than um traditional SEO where you're trying to rank for SS and e-commerce keywords and and CPA keywords and things like that but is is the rank how how how are you finding the rank of rent model in 2024 specifically.
Unknown Guest: So so the rank and rent model I would say right and I think this will surprise people I would say the rank and model is 10 times harder than traditional SEO right and let me try and explain that to you and I'll explain why Rank and rent you need to rent you need to rank the website before you can rent it right so you need to be doing everything that you know with regards to traditional SEO but then you could then go and do all that work and it could be the wrong type of inquiry that you're generating so you genuinely need to dig down with your client and not just chase the highest search volume keywords it's where do they make money and you need to get one of your salespeople to speak to them several times over to try and extract information about them extract product codes extract specification information because if you want an architect to specify you they're not going to type in something very generic they're going to type in the exact like they want a a free male self-leveling epoxy resin floring solution do you know what I mean they know exactly what they want right and you need to understand and cater for those because they're big clients and it could be a big job where if you are just doing garage flooring for example they might just type in garage flooring if it's if it's domestic and residential but you need to understand the whole logistical where do they make the money and you need to break that down and sometimes dealing with a business owner and asking them no but where do you make your money they feel awkward in answering that question and you but you have to get that information with him and they're like well why do you need to know that I'm like because I'm trying to get you the leads that make you the most money which will provide us the biggest Kickbacks I don't want to give you lots of leads that are like small jobs that you don't make the money on so not only have you got to be good with traditional SEO and ranking it you've also got to be good at dealing and speaking to business owners several times over build trust and build a relationship up with those business owners you then need to know how to rank it but then also certain industries it might not even be SEO the main source of you're generating the leads it could be Facebook ads it could be PPC it could be at certain times of the year so prime example next week in the um the betting industry you might be wanting to run ads like Twitter ads YouTube ads Pinterest ads and stuff like that because chelton Festival is only on for one week do you know what I mean so when it's only on for that one week yes he's all right it's good to try and rank but actually that that week gets dominated by Google news right Google News takes over pretty much the first page so are you good at ranking in Google News if you're doing like something that's specifically for a specific time or an event youve got to be good at ranking in Google News you've got to be good at display ads you've got to be like being seen on other people's websites and holistically you've got to be be able to do PPC Facebook ads YouTube ads Twitter ads Facebook retargeting I don't want I don't want people to come onto my website and come off my site and not inquire and me not retarget them on Facebook Facebook we Ting is the cheapest form of kind of getting people back to your site that there is it's ridiculously cheap so I need I need people that are good at social media ads it's not just and also and this is absolute facts and people can try to deny it all the want getting people coming back to your site or getting traffic from external s is through to your site in my opinion is the number one ranking Factor above all but you still obviously it it's a bad statement to probably say that you still need content you still need links but traffick and behavioral signals is key so if holistically I can get traffic from different sources going through to my website I've ranked websites with I would put I would say is mediocre content could be better I've ranked it by getting a lot of of traffic from different sources I wasn't even meaning to be ranking it in Google but because the amount of traffic it got from Twitter ads YouTube ads Pinterest ads PPC and all the rest of it and those behavioral signals it started ranking for terms that the words weren't even on the page and it's ranking for those terms and it's like wow Google are way more intelligent than you just thinking oh I've not got this word on a page I need to put it on the page like behavioral signals and and traffic is is also a big factor alongside good quality content topical Authority and back links do reviews play a role in in local rankings at all um so we used to try to do um gmbs um and what we used to try to do is we'd speak to the client and say can we do a gmbb at your address now if they've already got a gmbb at their address you can't then go do a secondary one um unless it's in like a different category and stuff like that but Google have become very very very stringent on the maps listings to the point where literally loads of genuine gmbs have been taken down right and we had someone we had two actual people fulltime in doing gmbs and ranking gmbs that was just consistently going back and forth with Google with real gmbb saying you're taking our sight down right I need you to go and do a video then going to do a video right I need to I need you to do um a bank statement or electricity bill state I'm just like do you know what the amount of work involved in keeping a real gmbb all wasn't worth the I mean don't wor you can generate a lot of leads via gmbs and in your question in answer to your question of does reviews help reviews help a lot on gmbs but we've just moved away from it ourself because too many times they just get taken down too many times even real reviews so like we we had these little like cards that we'd give to customers and um whenever we like whenever I customers was doing a job we was asking them to send like a WhatsApp or an email to say get your client whether it's a school or a head teacher or whoever it is once we've done the job if you're happy with the job get them to go and leave us a genuine review right but majority of these people didn't even have Google Chrome and a Gmail stuff set up in schools so they was logging in for the first time setting up the account leaving us a five star review and probably never left another five star review anywhere online and it just they just look fake do you know what I mean but there was genuine like head teachers of schools that was leaving us a review but I can see why Google was going this person here has just just randomly set up a Gmail and set up an account and then just left one five star review and not done anything else since so there was all getting taken down but there was genuine reviews so gmbs and reviews we've kind of stared away from I'd say if anyone wants information on that speak to like Milo or Brock and all those guys over in the in the states they they crush it on leag generation of gmbs and stuff but it's not really something longterm that we want to get involved with so you said that gmbs and gmps get taken down quite regularly do you see many penalties in local and lead generation SEO um I never used to but I've started to see a lot of sites get D indexed and I've started to see a lot of sites um just just B the whole site are just the home it seems to be just the homepage remains indexed and all the other Pages get the indexed and I feel like with regards to some of these classifiers if you've G and got 200,000 pages on a site and majority of them are genuinely not good quality then Google's just going to go I it's just index blow and I need to get this out of my index so yes there has been a lot of sites being de-indexed in local luckily we've never had any and the only reason why I think when that had any is we try to build proper bu we we put genuine videos on there we put unique images on there from the clients um we link through to our clients we say who it is that's going to do it someone goes and fills in a a a a form on let's say carpet cleaning in Manchester and when they fill in the form they'll get a phone call within a couple of minutes and guess who's ringing him a carpet cleaning company in Manchester so is that is that helpful full content yeah absolutely it is we're delivering what the user wants which is they want some carpet cleaning being done in Manchester and a carpet cleaning company in Manchester is is ringing them up if you want a mortgage a a traditional let's say first time buy a mortgage in London well we've got mortgage brokers in London so when you go and fill it in on that page a mortgage broker from London goes and gives him a ring and is that a good user experience for them absolutely it is where some of these people are they're doing these Mass page local sites even and they're just spamming it with ISO medine ad frve um Google ad sense and why are they doing that because what they've done is they thought that ranking went or lead generation was very easy and actually trying to find a client listen to this one I we do a lot of ours on a pay on performance and paying conversion so what we're telling them is listen Mr client you don't need to pay anything for the website you don't need to pay anything for Content anything for any back links anything for any SEO any PPC that we do you don't need to pay anything for any Facebook ads you don't need to pay anything for any videos that we create for you you don't need to pay anything for you don't even need to pay for the leads all what you do is pay for the conversion are you all right with that so many of them even when we say all of that are like sounds like a scam and we can't even sometimes it's difficult to try and even give it away so some of these people are trying to get into rank EV and trying to sell leads or rent out a website that's not generating that many leads well good luck to you because you know what a lot of business owners get 10 emails a day saying I rank you number one in Google or do you want leads we provide the best most exclusive leads that there is on the marketplace they get spammed with it every single day so they don't trust you and the the truth of the matter is that's our biggest pain point that even though we deliver in my opinion the best service that there is in the UK we only deal in the UK but we provide the best service that there is in the UK because we guarantee him a return on investment right even though we do that there's still a trust point for the first three or four months they just feel like this is a scam and it's like trying to get around that it's not a scam is very difficult because we genuinely are trying to get them the best quality leads that there is and for them to make money otherwise we don't make money but it it people just Spam them every day on the emails I rank you number one and and do you want leads but we're trying to do the lead nurturing we're trying to make certain with segment leads so if someone's a mortgage broken but they only want to deal with mortgages over2 200,000 pound well that's all we send them if these are a mortgage broker but they want to deal with bad credit mortgages for a terrist house which is 80,000 well that's what we'll send to them as well so we we'll try to always give the leads that they think they're best at converting and to do that you need a big database you need lead nurturing put in place we've got a call center as well so if there's a lot of leads that are being been generated we've got certain imagine this we've got certain mortgage brokers that only want leads between 10 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. any lead after 4 pm they don't want it just don't want it like how how' you deal with that do you know what I mean but then so then what you'll turn around and do is what if I'm in a mastermind sometimes and they and they and they're doing lead generation I say to him what would you do there they went I won't have him as a client I'm like but the point is between 10 and 4 o'clock they're the best client that you can have they convert the most you make the most money out of them between 10 and four so you're being slightly naive as a business person in not having it but then you've got to have systems set up that at 401 the the segmentation of the leads it goes somewhere else have you got that database and that system that allows you to distribute leads at certain times of the day for where they convert the best if not well good luck to you because you're going to struggle and the the last question kind of follows up perfectly there with you uh how how are you attributing all of these leads when you're doing this kind of scale of lead attribution and making sure that you're actually getting paid out by so many clients and so many different vendors and things that you're working with so everything's tracks with regards to how many leads how many leads so how many so because we've running a lot of ads as well as well as doing the SEO everything needs tracking from the very start of how much the website cost how much content's gone into it how much links have gone into it how much Facebook ads uh PPC Twitter ads YouTube ads everything right all the costs need attributing to a site right and then how many Impressions and clicks that we're getting and then how many inquiries that we're getting and then they'll have on their end which kind of normally we try to do it via an API they'll have on their end a certain database if they've not we make them a Google sheet right which we can talk to the Google sheet which feeds back via like zpo I think there's one or two others that we're using as well that feeds back into our database to see how how many Impressions how many clicks how many how many leads how much conversion and they sign a cost an an estimated cost of what they think that that lead is worth now even whether they convert it or they don't convert it they just assign what they think that lead is worth which feeds back into our systems to say whether it's good or whether it's bad then with the physical what they pay is we we've got like um Business Development managers that are speaking through to them and we know in certain markets that if you're getting the um the subprime mortgage leads on average it would be around 25 pound a lead is of what we should be getting so as long as we're getting on a back end more than 25 pound a lead where some customers we might be getting 60 70 80 pound on average a lead but they don't they don't pay per lead they're only paying okay we won this job is 1,000 or we won this job as 800 pound as long as when we're working it back it kind of assigns to more than what we're happy to get per lead then that's fine but then we've then got to segment them of being like that's a subprime lead but if we know that they put more filters in place like we only want it above 200,000 pound and we only want it in London area that lead price might be2 200 pound a lead so if they're not giving us 200 pound a lead then they're not good enough at converting our inquiries because we've got to like Kurt philli at convera he obsesses over conversion rate optimization so go and get a website and if he can improve that um website by 1% and it's getting lots of C um that that could add 203,000 onto your bottom line um literally just by changing some colors of buttons the text that's on the buttons the wording that's above the button which then kind of incentivizes them to click it that's all great and that's is what seo's obsess over about conversion rate optimization but where I went back when I said Rank and rents probably 10 times more difficult than traditional SEO on top of all that we've got to be be tracking conversion rate of how good that customer is even though he says he's good how quickly do they ring them up how good are how good is their sales team at converting those jobs and stuff like that and we've got to start doing attribution and is it better for us to do more lead nurturing like should we instead of sending like a quick contact form to to fill in and we better doing like a long form piece of content and then like a multistep form and getting more information out of them than just a quick form well if I spoke to Kurt Philip Kurt would say no just do the quick form um 10% more convert with a quick form or whatever than asking it 20 Questions yeah but at the back end if I ask them the 20 questions and they fill it all in the conversion after they've gone through this big quiz and how I can segment them leads a lot more might be worth a lot more to me so even though it might be less conversion rate on the website the conversion rate at the back end could be that they're wereth five six seven times more money then if it's just a quick form that we don't know what kind of like let's say they're in debt and we don't know what debt level they're in or they they want a mortgage and we don't know whether they want a 50 Grand mortgage or a 300 Grand mortgage we might not be able to sell it to our premium mortgage broker when we should have sold it to them or passed it through to them do you know what I mean so these um there's a lot more to it than what meets the eye um can you do it by creating mass AI content and hitting it with citations and links and get and get inquiries absolutely you can um can some make people make good money by doing that absolutely they can is that what we do absolutely not like we we we've done it now for over 10 years we listen to the customers and I think sometimes it's an seo's worst nightmare because they like they like not speaking to clients they like just doing affiliate and display ads that they don't need to speak to anyone where we've got a hungry team and the culture is that they'd prefer to pick up the phone and speak to him than they would send an email because they want to know this information and sometimes having that conversation with someone can abstract new key words that we didn't even know about sometimes they're on the phone they go I thought you knew that and you're like no because you've never said it before I'm like I don't I don't know your niche as well as you know your Niche um so yeah that's in a nutshell what what we do and how we set it all up.
James Dooley: Yeah I think you you made a really good point there about having more data and data is the has been the biggest commodity in the world for a long time now and I think going into an AI powered future the more data that you can extract from your Niche your leads your website everything is going to make you more powerful more efficient better at your job better at your game better at your business and and at the end of the day better profit generate than all of your competitors so trying to extract and build that data now and setting it up for for the future is what is going to set a lot of people apart in my opinion as well.
Unknown Guest: Yeah also also you've got to think of certain stuff like no we've had we've had the data now for 10 years and it's our data that we own right that we know that two years down the line after someone's took out a mortgage we know that person we then can follow that person up to say are you looking for a remortgage have you seen the interest rates of what's happening at the moment you might want to get a remortgage that's not SEO they've not retyped anything back in Google we're reworking that data knowing exact time stamps that they've not filled in a form anywhere but we basically made them aware or it might be 18 19 20 months in we might just start just not asking them anything about the REM marage we might start going by the way you know about this with the interest rates by the way you here's our predictions of what might be happening next year oh by the way here's a mortgage calculator next minute before they know they're going oh we might be looking to move us or oh two years is up for our fixed rate mortgage which we already knew it was because we was the initial ones that did it can we now do that then there's other bits where the people on the for that are selling a mortgage might be able to cross sell them life insurance because life insurance when you first get a mortgage let's say you and Min decide to go and get a mortgage together that's probably the time where you might decide together to do a joint life insurance policy so we can cross that into life insurance if someone's taking out a pension at that time they might also be going like all right normal obviously in the pensions there must be 55 plus if they're looking to maybe transfer any pensions or do anything like that if you're 55 plus you might also be looking um at like funeral Insurance to have have your funeral be pre prepaid you might also be looking for um maybe Equity release you might be looking to release some Equity out your house for your daughter's getting married or you want to do that perfect cruise with a family we've got this data now that allows us to absorb and use that data for inquiries that they didn't even inquire about and and that's key as well and that's where data for us and where sometimes where we've got to keep looking into it a bit further going well actually this data is worth more than that data so it's not just about how much is it per lead on PPC and how much can we sell it for there's lots of other moving parts and if I'm being honest with you there times where it blows my mind where AI is working out and crunching this data and it's telling you that this is worth more than that and I'm like no that's worth more than this and it's like no this is worth more than that in Long in like the lifetime value and I'm like all right you now when you start sitting down and looking at it you're thinking we can scale that out a lot more but we didn't because we just thought it was almost break even stage and then when you start getting that date and you're like actually if I get a lead for 50 Quid and I'm selling it for 50 Quid or on average I'm getting back Quid it's worth it because I know that they're going to want this again and I know that they want that again so obviously you'll know like SAS and stuff like that that's why the value of SAS or like databases they're obviously worth a lot more of a multiplayer than a traditional SEO site or affiliate site you might only to get two or three years for an affiliate site that because every bit all them businesses are from zero every month where if you've got a big data set if all my websites tank tomorrow I could generate a lot of inquiry still from the database and the paid ads and everything else that I do I kind of tried to make certain that I diversify as much as I can that if one income stream or one kind of traffic stream went down and still fine obviously I don't want any traffic stream going down but I'm still fine to do it and I try and build what real businesses would do.
James Dooley: I I also really like how you kind of said in there that you've already let AI augment your decision making and it's allowed you to be way more efficient and way better at that and I think that that's really signs of the future right and I think that that's um a massive endorsement of allowing these Technologies to make us way more efficient way more profitable everything on the line so I I really appreciate you coming on I think you've blown my mind and everyone else's mind on here with just so many knowledge boms here and we could probably do you know a five six hour podcast if we really really wanted to and I've still got questions here that I wanted to ask you to but we'll have to do a third episode long down the line is there anywhere anyone can find you online.
Unknown Guest: Um yeah I've got James d.com um and in the photo there it links to all my social profiles I'm doing quite a bit more on Twitter and on YouTube at present um trying to be omnipresent everywhere to be fair um and probably the biggest statement at the end of it is with regards to what who who we are as a business is that we're big enough to trust but small enough to care and we've still got that business hunger to make certain that all of our customers get a return on investment key which keeps our our clients happy which then keeps our staff happy that is key to everything as of our success and certain people are trying to shortcut trying and just do one what Google wants you to do which is helpful content but think of it for the user right and longterm you'll win on that front and two listen to your customers and do what that where how they make money if they're not making money if they're saying they're not making money they're probably not so listen to them and adapt your skill and like you said we're big enough to trust but small enough to care that we will adapt all of our strategies like you just said there with AI if AI can improve who I am as an individual and improve my output or any of my stuff's output I'm going to I'm going to use it if it doesn't improve it then I'm not going to use it but if it does I want to be the best version of myself and I want my staff to be the best version of themselves they can be.
James Dooley: Well app I appreciate you coming on thank you once more I'll see you guys next episode peace peace.
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