Decoding the Search Engine Mysteries: Insights from an SEO Expert

All right, here we go. So this is Revenue Roadmap where we talk about sales and marketing for local entrepreneurs. I'm Anthony Karls, president of RocketClicks.

Yeah, well, uh, first off, thank you for having me, uh, I'm excited to be here and talk SEO, um, at a high level. I got into SEO because, I mean, truthfully, it's so, it's so big, the, the scale of the, the problems to solve an SEO, the fact that it is, it appears to be a black box, um, I'm, I'm a problem solver. and I love having that big problem to tackle.

Nice. Yeah.

um,

a little bit about, talk a little bit about the black box. Cause there's a very paid media is very different than SEO. And like, you kind of just hit on a, an interesting thing, the black box. So what does that mean? Like, why, why do you call it a black box?

well, the, if, if you are not engaging, uh, if you're, if you're not in SEO consistently keeping up with the changes and monitoring the changes, the impression is, oh, this is a system that no one knows the rules. No one knows why any, anyone ranks higher than anyone else. No one knows, Google doesn't tell us it's, it's a secret.

Yeah. So it's a game without rules.

It's a game without rules. And, and, know, Google does guard it as a secret, but that doesn't mean it, it is actually a game with no rules. It very much has rules. Um, part of the problem scenario there is, is figuring out, Hey, what, what are they truly, and how, how can we

So how long have you been in the space? Cause I think that's pretty apt description of kind of the game, quote unquote, that SEO is. So how long have you been, how long have you been playing this game? Right in your own rule book.

Somewhere in there. So a, about a decade of Google algorithm updates under my belt.

Um, so why did you, so why did you get into marketing as a career specifically in SEO, you talk a little bit about who you like, your problem solver, like game without rules. What about marketing generally?

Well, I, uh, in a, in a previous life was a small business owner. So there's just sort of like being in that mindset of like. help small business owner, um, make money. And I, I just, I love, I love behavioral aspect of marketing. I love connecting with people. So it's just, it's a natural, it's a natural space for me. Well,

Awesome.

so the, the, the problem is, is information and, and searchability of information. Basically we needed a library system. We needed a library system to the web as it was expanding and growing. We need to be able to find things on the web because I mean, prior to a decent search engine, you're relying, you're relying on people tipping you off that there's a, there's a cool website over here. That's not, that's not efficient. That's never going to fly.

yeah. I mean, that's kind of how the internet was like way back when, right. We had different page boards that had a whole bunch of links that would What you just said, the information prior to a search engine that worked.

yeah, it was, it was all very accidental. Like, like whether or not you found something was a complete accident and the need popped up to index the web, which is to say, like, we need to categorize that the web, we need to put it into, put these websites into categories. We need to be able to find them some way that is valuable, without you knowing what they're called. And, and, and based on, based on the way people search, which is for, you know, to answer a question to

So like how, what's the base level information that you think about as it pertains to like how that problem was solved? Cause it's, it's a, it's an engineered solution. They didn't like, they applied something that was like, how did they go about solving the problem? I guess that's a good, that's a better question. Yeah. So

off, they hired a lot of library scientists. So when I think about the web as we currently know it and, and Google, as we currently know it, these, the, the, I mean, Yahoo at its inception, not currently, but like Yahoo, they took a different route and it's worth. Telling they literally had librarians manually indexing the Internet and qualifying what, what should be ranking higher in Yahoo search. Like it was a manual process. They hired librarians, librarians to index the web.

you said it's from, they hired a lot of library scientists that Yahoo did. Um, and then they were manually doing this and then Google, Google, Google, Google. Took that, took that idea and made it into a Algorithmic process. They engineered it. So,

it into, uh, an algorithm called PageRank, which is not technically what it is now, but is still the, the heart of the system. A

so for all of us, for all of us that grew up before the internet was like the most important thing in the world. We used to do a decimal system. How, how relatable is that to, to what they engineered?

hundred percent relatable. To what they engineered with categories for types of information or types of searches. They are, they're deliberately categorized and then that library is curated by the algorithm. And, I, I mean, like I think about search the, the search results pages as being a card catalog. literally think in terms of paper and ink card catalog, somebody sat down with a typewriter Punched it in, how I view the categorization of the

Yeah.

internet. And it's

So why is that important?

Oh,

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

it's, it's important because really tells you that some very key things are important. If you want to get on the board, if you want to get in the index. You need to do some very specific things. doesn't, we haven't even touched on quality yet. Just getting in and that's 60 percent of the battle. Just getting where you, you intend to be. So if each page on your website is a book that needs to be indexed.

Yeah,

Um, if you don't have the, the base, if you don't, if you don't start from, from the understanding of what is this and how should it work from like, uh, like a library science engineering point of view, um, You can, you're, you're really subject to a lot of magical thinking. I'm just like a lot of random spaghetti at the wall. You, everything is. It's very random.

Yeah.

Maybe it'll work. It depends. Um, you, you'll probably hear that a lot. Um, and, and I think beyond that, uh, you're more apt to trust every soundbite from Google. Uh, from, um, SEO or proclaimed SEO experts from, um, brands selling you something, you're just more likely to trust everything you're being fed, and it's not really grounded in any sort of, you know, Logic, like you need that, you need that, that frame of reference. And then it's, it's like, it is simple.

And like, so the, what's interesting about that is if we think about library science and how libraries have cataloged books and information. That's really old. That's really, really old. So it's basically applied, applied information architecture from an engineered perspective, but like using a lot of the same rules and principles that exist in libraries that we still have in our local communities today. I haven't been to a library recently.

I think it's, it's unlikely, but, but if you are. using like a counting cat or like

Yeah.

those library systems. They are small internal search engines and they function on the same principles.

Yeah. Awesome. So, all right. So let's answer the big question. So why is this important? Why is it, why are search engines understanding what they are and what SEO, what SEO is because SEO is essentially like helping the internet understand, um, helping the, the indexing portion of the internet, understand what your book is about. Um, why is it important for you to, why is it important for you to understand this so that you can drive revenue online?

well, it's important to understand it because like, if you are, if take a moment here with that, important to understand it. if you are making random decisions about your search strategy that aren't grounded in, is, does this page rank for the right keyword? So the, the, what I intend to sell or what I'm positioning to sell, if it's a service or a product, does it rank where it should rank? I need to be making decisions about The content on my website to say, does this support that page?

Yeah. Cause you're probably not ranking like, and if you're not ranking,

or maybe you're ranking for, um, how to tie your shoes. If you sell shoes, you should be first, maybe concerned that you rank for shoes for sale. And

makes sense. Um, all right. So you seem really smart. That's what our audience is going to think. I'd be like, Oh, well, this, this smart man's telling me lots of smart things, but I don't know what he's talking about, which is fine.

well, I, I think the step one is revenue, like no have a baseline for revenue and be tracking revenue across all sources, but. Organic sources specifically. Um, ranking, if you're not talking about ranking, um, you're likely, likely getting sold, uh, um, uh, the snake oil, so to speak, ranking is incredibly important, so you should be moving up, but not just generally moving up, you should specifically be moving up on your product. Pages that sell something.

Makes sense. So I should be really looking at, do I, A, do I understand what those keywords are, am I getting updated on where they're ranking and what the progress is, is over time. Um, if I'm hearing, what are the, some of the things that I might be hearing if this isn't going well? Like, what would I be, what would I be hearing in those scenarios?

if it's not going well, rankings not being discussed, I can almost guarantee that, um, maybe you're hearing about impressions, but without ranking, if you're hearing about those things, kind of with one without the other impressions and ranking, there's likely. Not value.

Yeah.

ranking.

So something I could ask as the business owner, local entrepreneur is how does this help me achieve my revenue targets? So if I ask that of my SEO, that's probably a good question. And if they can't connect that, I might have an issue.

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Cool. Awesome.

Um, rocket clicks. com. just, uh, fill out a form.

Nice. So and I know you'll be there specifically on a web dev project and some of our SEO Clients they might see you and they'll get a celebrity in her introduction. So appreciate it. Thanks Nick

Thanks for having me. Yep.