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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
If we sign a client, how do we come up
with the right content strategy for them?
And then how does that
engagement evolve over time?
How does the content strategy shift
as you start working with the client,
as you start to get learnings?
And what made us want to do this as an
episode was that it actually, the lessons
that we're going to be talking about here
apply outside of just our agency, we will
tell it in terms of our personal stories
and our experience, because that's what
we do, but it actually applies regardless.
So if you are just doing content
and SEO on your own, you will
naturally go through this evolution.
You want to prove the two
critical parts to content and SEO.
If you're doing it in the way that
we advise, which is to get customers.
So the two critical parts are ranking.
Can you rank for these target keywords?
And how long does that take?
How high does Google seem to get
you in a reasonable period of time?
It's ranking.
In the second half.
Is conversion.
Okay.
Today we want to talk about the
multiple different stages of
content and SEO and the evolution.
This is something we've
been thinking about a lot.
It's near and dear to our hearts
right now, because we have, um, a few
clients, many clients now that are
pretty far along in the engagement.
And so they've reached what we're going
to talk about is kind of tier three.
And, um, but we keep as per our
monthly updates, getting new clients
and those are starting the engagement.
And so they are, what we're
going to talk about is tier one.
And what we have noticed And
you articulated this better
so you can describe it.
Is that like, I think our mindset early
on, definitely when we started the agency,
which is seven years ago or something
now was like, it's just one thing.
Like we have our bottom of funnel method.
We have our method that gets leads
better than normal people doing content
that just gets traffic and no leads.
And we're just going to apply it.
You're a big, you know,
we're apply or apply today.
We'll apply it in 12 months.
We'll apply it in 24
months, 36 months, whatever.
And what we've noticed, especially
in the past few years is actually the
engagement starts to look a lot different
when you're three years in, even two
years, even in a year and a half, it
starts to look a little bit different
than it does in month one or month six.
Yeah.
I mean, I can expand on that.
I think some people, when they
see our agency, just think, Oh,
you have a productized service.
So that means.
The strategy or what you actually
deliver to each client doesn't change.
And that's not true.
So what stays constant is
the number of deliverables.
So the number of articles or the
number of keywords that we target per
month, but the strategy can differ
a ton based on the type of client.
So if it's a SaaS business
versus a service business, what
stage of the company they're
at, are they just starting?
Is this someone that's been doing
content for a really long time?
And so we kind of wanted to talk
through what that thinking is.
If we sign a client, how do we come up
with the right content strategy for them?
And then how does that
engagement evolve over time?
So how to, how does the content strategy
shift as you start working with the
client, as you start to get learnings?
And yeah, I think it would
probably help to just talk through
different client scenarios.
Like, What happens when a client starts
with us and they're just starting out
with content marketing and they don't
really have a ton of content versus we
have some companies that have thousands
of articles or they've gone after
hundreds or thousands of keywords and
we're now starting to work with them.
And so how does that engagement
shift or what is, what is the content
strategy differences for the different
types of businesses that we work with?
Yeah.
And what made us want to do this as an
episode was that it actually, the lessons
that we're going to be talking about
here apply outside of just our agency.
This, we will tell it in terms of our
personal stories and our experience,
because that's what we do, but
it actually applies regardless.
So if you are just doing content and
SEO on your own, you will naturally.
Go through this evolution.
So here are the three tiers.
Tier one is the beginning.
When you're first going after
your first few target keywords,
an underlying assumption in this
discussion is going to be that you are
going after a decent amount of these
being bottom of the funnel keywords.
If you're just like doing, this is going
to be a bit of an aside, but like, if
you're just doing content, kind of the
way that we say, Is non optimal that we
fix and we are a solution for, and our
process is a solution for of just like,
you know, you're, you're producing,
you're more interested in, in the content
calendar and some sort of volume of
publications and you're picking keywords
based on like search volume, and you're
just trying to accumulate traffic.
A lot of what we will
talk about does apply.
It's not kind of as important because
you're just kind of like adding more
content to get more traffic or whatever.
Um, what we're talking about is like.
If you are using content and SEO very
carefully and strategically, and each
ranking you get is very business valuable
and losing it is a big deal because
you were getting customers from that
ranking, then this very much applies.
And that's the situation we're in.
Every time we get a ranking for a
client, almost every time, it's like
that thing is producing leads, trials,
demos, sales form, fills, whatever.
And so maintaining that as important.
So tier one is.
Just proving out the process.
Which is the first few months
for some companies that can last
six months, plus nine months.
Maybe it shouldn't really
last you into a year.
You should move into tier two, which
is scaling, which we'll talk about
in a second, but that tier one is,
um, actually let me just quickly
say, I think tier one is just simply.
How, how quickly and how easily can
you generate rankings and conversions?
It's, it's just getting an under, like
setting that baseline for each of the
clients that we work with or each of the
companies, like how long is it going to
take to start getting those first page one
rankings based on a few different things,
based on the domain rating of the company,
the content that they published before,
um, the topical authority of the site.
Um, yeah, and, and sometimes you can have
all of those things working for you and
you still go to publish something and you
don't get rankings as quickly as you would
have thought, or the conversions don't
come as easily as you would have thought.
And so we'll talk through why
in some of those cases and, and
like what we're looking for.
Yeah.
So, um, just to recap or just
to foreshadow, it's going to be
tier one, start and prove out the
basics, tier two, scale tier three,
maintain and continue to scale.
So tier one, you want to prove the
two critical parts to content and SEO.
Um, if you're doing it in the way that
we advise, which is to get customers.
So the two critical parts are
ranking as Benji said, can you
rank for these target keywords?
And how long does that take?
How high do you, does Google seem to
get you in a reasonable period of time?
It's ranking and tier and the second half,
the thing, the second metric, let's say
that you want to prove out is conversion.
Obviously, if you get the ranking
in like that, that first one,
the first thing you want to prove
out, you're going to get traffic.
That's why I'm skipping traffic.
Of course, if you get, I mean, unless
you're ranking for a keyword with no
volume, that's like a whole other, you
need to do a second episode on volume
thing, or some, some, some online
chatter about search volume, but anyway,
You're, you're going to get traffic.
So that's why it's like, doesn't matter.
You, the ranking will equal traffic.
That's the, the question mark that
you need to prove to yourself is,
and does that traffic convert, which
you should Google pain point SEO.
If you need a refresher on this.
Which is a, the, the, the, the way that
that's what it is a, um, commentary on
the keyword you selected and your products
value proposition, or kind of like how
compelling your product is in that space.
And we can give some examples in a second.
I know I'm being very theoretical
and how well did you write the piece
to convey those value propositions?
And, and the goal of tier one is
prove the process start to finish.
I'll let you go into specifics
on either ranking or conversions.
You can pick one, I'll do the other.
And then, but I want to just say
like, first from like, kind of
like a political, like intercompany
perspective and your like psychology
perspective, this is really important.
I think a lot of people are just
like worried about the scale part.
Like I only get to the total
number of leads, but like we found
as an agency and outside vendor.
Getting that first few things where
you're like, we targeted, you know,
enterprise it software, we are ranking
number three for enterprise it software.
And.
Look at this demo.
And that demo came from that just doing
that and not worry about scale, like
showing, like, start to finish the
whole thing, working, pick the keyword
we ranked for it, and that thing led
to demos that has a huge psychological
boost on us, on the client, which is
usually like our point of contact.
Who's our champion.
And then on their bosses, the leadership,
whatever, who's like signing the checks.
And that's true.
If you're not us.
That's true if you're internal, like
you're the marketing hire or whatever,
and you're reporting to executives.
That's also true, I think.
If you are by yourself, if you are a
founder doing this by yourself, initially,
like you just, there's like a self, it's
like, you're your own board of directors.
You need to convince, because if
you're not convinced, you're going
to end up doing that kind of like
marketing shiny object syndrome you've
written about this long time ago.
You can Google shiny object syndrome,
grow and convert of just like, if
you're not convinced yourself, you're
going to be like, nah, and then
start chasing some other tactic.
And so that's why I think tier one
is really important in my estimation.
Yeah, I think you hit on a good point,
which is, I think people immediately
jumped to trying to figure out how to
scale their content marketing program.
And you need to step back and just
figure out if it's going to work.
And so maybe let's talk
about what the first.
Six months of our engagement looks
like, because in our mindset,
the six months is really just
about initially proving this out.
And so in our engagements.
We start off by doing kickoff sessions,
typically with sales product or anyone
who's customer facing just to learn about
the business, try to figure out what the
differentiators are, what the pain points
of the customers are, all that information
then gets taken into the content strategy
that we're going to do for the company.
We've talked a lot about SEO so far, but.
As we've talked about, and we just
recently published a post on, there's
also sometimes that we do a disruption
story right at the very beginning
to try to drive results quickly.
If there's enough differentiation
in the business, regardless of the
different or the disruption story or
the SEO part on the on the SEO side.
What we're really looking for is
to figure out if we publish a piece
after we publish without even building
links, just where does that rank?
And that, that ranking position
typically gives us a good indication
of what future keywords that we should
go after, how easy it's going to be
for us to rank on an ongoing basis.
And it kind of just dictates that
content strategy going forward.
And so typically what we would want
to see after we publish, let's say
the first three to six posts is.
That the pieces are starting to rank
somewhere on page two or page three.
That typic, uh, after the first few
months, so like right after publishing
within the first month or so after
publishing, we're really looking to
see if the pieces that we published
rank in position 20 to 30, sometimes
we'll get lucky and I'll immediately
go on the first page, but that's more
of an indication of a company that's
been doing content for a long time.
They have a strong domain authority.
They have topical authority on
whatever topic we're writing about.
And so that that's a little bit more
rare, but yeah, if something's ranking
right after publishing without links
in position 20 or 30, typically a
good indication for us that we should
be able to move those pieces up.
Now there are some extreme cases
where it's a brand new site.
Or, uh, they haven't been publishing
for a long time or, or it's just a
competitive space, a competitive space
or a competitive keyword as well, where
we publish something and it immediately
goes to 50, 60, or sometimes it just
doesn't even show up in Ahrefs or
whatever we're using to track rankings.
I think a quick example to, to
make what you're saying concrete.
So just hold your train of
thought of where you are going.
Is like the keyword matters a lot is what
I was thinking when you were explaining
like where you're going to rank.
So for example, if I just continue
on the it thing, just because like we
don't have any clients that are going
after that keyword, so I can kind of
freely discuss it without worrying
about revealing a client's strategy.
So like, let's say you do have some
kind of it security software and I'm,
I haven't done the keyword research
for this, but I can kind of guess,
cause we've done so many similar ones.
Something like.
IT security software, enterprise
IT security is going to be probably
really competitive because I'm
guessing those deals are worth a ton.
So there's probably a good chunk of
VC backed startups that are spending
a ton of money on both the organic
and paid search for those keywords.
And, and let's just assume for sake
of this discussion, Those are very
competitive, big domains, VC back, huge
number of links, blah, blah, blah, right?
Like, and the organic side is really,
um, competitive for that on Benji's
story on the ranking side, that
one month he mentioned to make sure
you're on page two or three, maybe
it's two months, maybe it's longer.
So then the other part of keyword
selection, and I apologize if you
were going to go here anyways, is
If I was the listener, I'd be like,
well, then what do I do is you try
to look for slightly longer tail
keywords with still have buying intent.
And we've talked about this
in a couple of our posts.
Pain Point SEO talks about the three
categories of buying keywords in our
estimation category keywords, which
is what we're talking about, like it
security software, that's your category.
And then competitors and alternatives.
We're going to leave that aside
for a second and jobs to be done.
There are these nuances
inside category keywords.
For example, maybe you sell it
security software where the software
can be on premise, not on the cloud.
So if you add that qualifier, something
that was a really competitive keyword,
that's like it security software or
enterprise it security, you could
add on premise it security software.
And probably the amount
of competition plummets.
So then you have, and I want you
to speak to this because I don't
know if I have a direct answer.
And I don't know if there
is like a clear answer.
How do you think about in, in that
tier one, where we're saying tier
one of content and SEO is just
prove this out, start to finish.
How do you think about choosing
between getting an early start
on those competitive keywords?
You're like, listen, I don't care.
Enterprise it security is,
is software is competitive.
That's what we do.
And my CEO is like, we
want to rank for this.
That's what you're hired
for or something like that.
Versus let's get the early quicker
win by some longer tail modifiers,
like on premise, blah, blah, blah.
That maybe you could rank earlier.
How, how should they think about.
That's a good question.
So when we, when we compile the first,
let's say three months of ideas,
when we start an engagement, what
we're always looking for is a mix.
So we, we don't want to over index
on just one type of keywords.
So for, in your example, it
would be the category keywords.
We don't want to go after three months
worth of different variations of the
category keyword, because exactly
what you say, you could come up in
a situation where this Industry that
you're in is extremely competitive.
And even if you publish 6 pieces
going after different variations, that
that category can be so competitive
that none of those pieces might
rank in those first few months.
And so when we're thinking
about putting together a content
strategy, we typically do.
A mix of one category keyword, one
alternatives keyword, and maybe a couple
of jobs to be done keywords and, or a
category keyword with a more specific
clarifier, like you're talking about.
And what we want to do is
publish, like, let's say four of
those in the first two months.
So we typically do one piece in the
first month and then three following.
And so those first four keywords,
we would want to see a mix.
And then what we're looking
for in Rank Tracker is just.
Which ones seem to have an easier
time ranking and that will kind
of give us an indication on Which
keywords to focus on more in those
first few months of the engagement
and then which ones are going to be?
More difficult to go after.
So in the example that I was kind
of sharing before, let's say we
published a category keyword and it,
it didn't even make it in rank tracker.
Like it's just not even showing up.
That tells us, okay, the category
keywords are probably going
to be a lot more competitive.
So we might have to go after
a jobs to be done keyword.
Some like long tail, how to keyword,
or like you said, we might need to
put a more specific clarifier on.
The category keyword that
is easier to go after.
And then, so that is going to be
a thought process going forward.
If, if we start to see that the
rankings are not really taking hold
and they're really competitive.
If, if they are in that 20 to 30 area
that tells us, okay, we can, we can
actually compete in this area and
we'll start to just do more of those.
And so again, kind of like how we
talked about in the video on hiring your
first marketing and test and measure.
This whole first stage is just testing.
It's, it's testing different
keyword frameworks, putting things
out there, seeing how they rank
and that will indicate to us.
Should we do more of these or
should we maybe focus on a slightly
different framework going forward?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's important.
Like, I think there are some people
that are like, let's just go for it.
Like we go after our biggest ones.
And I think it's just for that, I
would say, just trust us across,
I don't know, dozens and dozens
of clients over six, seven years.
Like you, you need those wins.
And even the small wins are
the ones you can point to in.
The hard discussions with leadership
about whether to continue, whether it's
working, like those questions are going
to come up and you need those kind of like
case studies of like, look at this, even
though the volume is small, look at it.
It worked all the way through.
We got this demo, not demo from it.
Um, yeah, that's a good one.
Conversions.
Yeah.
I was going to go there next to you.
So I was going to say, okay, so
you start ranking for things.
And our, our goal is to get every single
article that we're publishing on page
one, and specifically in the top three
positions, because we've just seen without
getting in those top three positions, it's
really difficult to drive conversions.
And that's typically when conversions
start scaling, but there are also times
where we start ranking for something.
And even though it's ranking in
position one through three, it's
not really driving conversions.
And that, that kind of indicates something
else to us that there's typically a
deeper problem beyond just content.
There's either some problem in the
way that the product is positioned.
It's a big deal.
I'm just going to cut to the chase.
Like if you're ranking in tops
one position, one, two, and three.
For a keyword that kind of obviously
has buying intent for your first
few keywords, there should be no
debate whether there's buying intent.
It should be really obvious if you
sell it security software and you're
ranking in positions one, two, and
three for it security software or any.
Modifiers added to it.
And since I don't know much about that
space, I just kind of made that up.
We can turn it to something
that we all know, like CRMs or
something like small business CRM.
If you're, if you make a small business
CRM and you're ranking positions one, two,
and three for small business CRM, and you
cannot measure, you're not measuring any
conversions directly attributable to it.
I'm just, I'm sorry to like overblow it.
That's kind of a big deal.
Go ahead.
Yeah, there's just a,
there's a deeper problem.
So we, we try to solve for
that upfront, just when we.
Vet clients were typically trying to see
that they have some cold channel that is
driving leads to their, their business
already that, that meaning, like if they
have Google ads going and they're kind
of targeting the same keywords and that's
converting, then content should work.
If you don't have that, and let's say
you've grown your, your business fully
off referrals or your network or something
like that, you kind of run the risk of.
Running into this problem that
we're talking about here, which
is you, you can start ranking
for things and it not working.
And the reasoning is because the, the
website could be unproven as a sales tool.
So in the referral example, you
could be getting introductions to
leads through your network or through
someone who's promoting you and they're
explaining the value of the business,
uh, for you essentially, and they're,
they're going into way more detail.
And.
You could get to the website from
cold traffic, someone who hasn't
had the business explained as well.
And the website just doesn't really sell
the value of your service well enough to
to convince someone to sign up for a trial
or whatever the conversion action is.
And so what we're typically
looking for in the stage 1 is.
One, do your articles rank?
How quickly do they rank?
That will determine what
keyword, what mix of keywords
that you go after going forward.
And then two, do things convert?
And if not, we typically have an internal
discussion in terms of why, or maybe we
just question whether this is even a good
client for us because if we're ranking
for things and it's not converting, That
there's usually a bigger business issue.
It it mean it, it can mean that the
value proposition is not great or
there's other commentary in that
market that the client doesn't have
a great offering in the market.
There's just better tools and that's
something that's, we take a lot of
care vetting carefully in the first
few sales conversations, um, and
even in the email exchanges before we
even get on the phone with a prospect
who wants to work with us because.
For us in our position, we want
clients to last as long as possible.
See some of our early
videos in this series.
Um, and if it's not converting,
they're not going to last that long
because it's not generating ROI.
And although everyone thinks their
business is good and their offer
is good and their product is great.
It's, it's not true.
Some of the products are not great.
Um, and, and I want to touch.
So, so that's, that's the, the big.
Potentially like a big, ugly reason why
that that would be like a big problem.
There's a second problem that you did
not mention that we sort of don't worry
about because we're very confident in our
writing, but it could be true for some
listener who's doing this themselves.
Your writing could be bad.
Like, you could have written
well enough to rank, so your
writing is good for Google and
its algorithm, but not for humans.
And what do I mean?
You rank.
That means you like, you know, you
did your ClearScope or whatever,
like you got your on page SEO down.
You, I don't know, your backlink
thing is good, and your topical
authority is good, or for whatever
reason, like, you've satisfied Google.
Great.
But now you have another job, which is
to convince the humans who are Googling
this presumably bottom of funnel phrase,
small business CRM, enterprise IT security
software, whatever, to choose yours.
Not choose, but maybe start
a trial or request a demo.
And we have seen many things ranking
where when you read it as a human, you're
just like, what the, like, what is this?
Or it's just, maybe it's not even
what the, but you're just like, like,
it just kind of seems like ho hum.
It's the same, the features and the
benefits are the same as everyone else.
It's like this joke that Benji and
I make on, on service businesses
of, um, development shops.
Every, every, every software development
shop has the same thing that they'd say
that sounds, they think sounds unique,
but actually everyone else says it,
which is like the difference is we take.
Your ideas from the beginning from
sketches, and we like prove it out
all the way to launch and you're
like, wow, like super unique.
And then just Google your
other five competitors.
They say the exact same thing, right?
That's an issue is like, maybe your value
prop and your differentiators and just
like your competitive in the marketplace.
It's just not good.
And like, this is just not going to work.
That's a big issue.
It's a product market fit issue.
But also even if you have product
market fit, if you don't write.
The content well and sell the
product well and highlight the
right differentiators, etc.
And the piece isn't written well,
it's not going to convert that well.
Potentially not really.
And we have some stuff happening
now where we are rewriting some old
stuff that's ranking for a client
and it's starting to convert better.
Um, and we've done that.
We have engagements where clients have
asked us in addition to our normal
Process of producing new pieces to go
back and update the articles ranking that
other people that they've hired in the
past have written to kind of grow and
convertify it to sell their articles.
And we've seen conversions show up
where there weren't any per previously.
So those are two big things.
Well, and in that case, it's
not even just updating old
pieces to help it rank better.
Updating old pieces to help sell the
product better because the writer
didn't do a good job of articulating
the value props and the differentiator
and setting up the piece well.
Or they just didn't sell.
There's like a ton of people who
just are not doing bottom of funnel.
They have the old fashioned
way of content marketing where
it's like, give, don't ask.
And they're just like, I'm just
going to give how to advice.
And it's like, weird, it's like
inappropriate to sell the product.
And they're like, of course, it's
not going to convert if you're not
actually mentioning the product.
So that's tier one.
Again, to recap, Two things you're
trying to check off on tier one.
Number one, ranking, how fast
can you, how high, et cetera.
How long does it take?
How many backlinks does
it take, et cetera.
Number two, conversion.
Once you get the rankings, of
course you're going to get traffic,
but how well does it convert?
Um, and then that can start to
give you an idea to move into tier
two, which is scale, and that's
kind of what everyone wants.
They want to get to this.
Which is what's the top of number.
How many, how much can I grow my
pipeline, my demos, my free trials
a month by if I invested a lot in
content or if we ranked for a hundred
keywords or something like that.
So, um, I will approach scaling from
a numbers and estimate perspective.
I'm curious to sort of pass the baton to
you and say like, does anything change or
you're just doing tier one over and over
again, uh, in tier two, or how do you
think about like kind of strategy and, and
approaching kind of that, okay, we have a
few, Oh, I should say the way, you know,
it is like, okay, you like have a few
pieces that have proven both things out
in tier one, you got a few things in the
top five spots, top three spots, and then
you're starting to measure some demos.
It's working now.
What to some extent things don't
change and to some extent they do.
So I can kind of walk through
the thinking, but yeah.
So you, you've put out, let's say the
first four or six pieces and you're
trying to figure out what, what topics
either have an easier time ranking, what
frameworks have an easier time ranking.
And then in combination with
which articles or topics have high
search volume and high intent.
So obviously as.
We are trying to focus on the
keywords that have both high
intent and high search volume.
Um, just because if we can find that
combination, it usually equals higher
conversions, uh, in the long run, but
there's also other factors to take
into consideration, like time to rank.
So for in the example earlier of, of
let's say a category keyword, that's
ranking in position 20, 30, or 50 plus.
Those keywords might take six
months, three to six months
to get that to the first page.
And so even though that keyword has
high conversion potential over the
long term, in the short term, it might
not drive anything for the business.
And so as we're starting to think about
scaling, we're still thinking of a mix of
content ideas because there's going to be
content ideas that you can publish that
are super high intent that maybe other
companies haven't really targeted because.
The, the search volume is lower than what
they would typically want to go after.
But if we were to publish that
piece, it can rank on page
one within a month or two.
And so that piece will drive an
immediate impact to the business.
Whereas some of those, those heavy
hitters that we like to call them
could take months to start to rank.
And so as we're thinking of scaling,
we're taking into consideration
just where the pieces are ranking.
How long it's taking to move them up
into those those first pages and and
really thinking of the combination of
ideas that we can start to move the
overall level of conversions higher.
The other aspect is
the link building side.
We've talked about this before as well.
This is somewhat of an art
and somewhat of a science.
We don't tend to build a ton of links
to each piece after we publish them.
Again, it's this test and measure approach
where we'll build one link to each piece.
and see how much that one link moves
the ranking position of that piece.
And that will also give us an
indication of how easy that piece
is going to be, uh, to move up.
And so it's a combination of figuring
out what keywords, where keywords
rank without links, and then how
easy they are to move up with links.
And it's the combination of both of
those two things that's That give us a
better idea of what content ideas that
we should focus on on an ongoing basis
and what we're going to pitch to clients.
Yeah, I think that there's a dance
there on the first part of what you
said of continuing to do some of the
easier wins, even if they are maybe
lower volume and or less competitive
in order for you to keep the kind of.
What results flowing, the growth going
to keep the results moving up, because
if you don't do this, and let's say you
focus on all the competitive stuff first.
That first six to nine months could look
really bad from a conversion perspective.
You could start to generate rankings
and maybe you're seeing a ton of your
rankings in position 20 and 30, but from
a conversion perspective, as we said
before, unless they're on page one or
in those top three positions, you're
not really driving conversions for them.
So, If you're an internal employee, or
if you're an agency trying to report to
your point of contact or your higher up,
even though the rankings are starting to
move and you can show progress, you're not
really seeing the results of conversions.
And so.
You could get a lot of pushback from
your client or your internal stakeholders
saying, what, what's going on?
Why isn't this working yet?
And so the combination of mixing
in those high intent ideas that
are less competitive to target
is really important to keep the
overall conversion graph going up.
Yeah, the funny thing I've noticed
human psychology wise is that even
if you're deeper into scaling.
Like, it's not like,
where are the results?
Like you, you've had some, you've
already ranked for a few and you've
already proven out that, like, and
you've gotten some conversions from them.
Like, good results set the
expectation of continued good results.
So even if you have good results for the
first six months, if you're like, if you,
you know, the last couple months just did
some of those long term pieces, you're
going to get this lull all of a sudden.
Where you had published a bunch
of like real competitive ones and
you don't get any more growth.
And then like the powers that be, whether
in our case, it's like the client, but
even if you're in house, it's your VP or
your CEO, or if you're by yourself, it's
you, your own expectations of yourself,
the powers that be start to get spoiled.
And they're like, why
is the growth stalling?
What are we doing wrong or whatever?
And so you have to like explain that away.
So it's always good to keep stuff
that they're continued growing.
I did want to talk about this could
be, this is a place where you can
start to build out something we often
do for clients, which is some kind
of basic estimate and growth model.
If you need to, if you care.
So a few things on the quantitative side.
First of all, I realized halfway
through this recording, um, we're
just assuming, you know, how
to measure these conversions.
Um, we can point out in the show notes, I
guess, Benji, like where to look at that.
But I think if you Google GA4
grow and convert, you can find our
how to measure conversions in GA4
article, like a written article.
Um, and I don't know if we
have, and we have some videos.
We have old, old, old videos.
Yeah.
You could go look through the
YouTube as well on GA four.
Yeah.
But in short, like you, you should be
measuring conversions, whether it's in
GA or whether it's through like some
other tool HubSpot, blah, blah, blah.
Like on a multi touch basis,
like not just last touch, it
shouldn't just be same session.
You're going to be undercounting because
there's going to be people who Google
this kind of content and then they
take another session or two or more.
Um, to come back and later request a demo.
And you want to make sure
you're getting credit for that.
Um, but scaling, estimating model,
a few things, basic level at some
point in kind of this tier two phase,
which is not well defined, we're
not like, six months have passed.
We are now in tier two.
Like no one says that, right.
Um, we're, we're creating these
tiers for, for this recording to
help people understand the different
phases and how to think about it.
Um, but when you're starting to scale.
The first thing is we start to now
report on, measure, look at ourselves.
Just number of conversions
per month, a graph.
If you don't do any fancy model,
just the graph tells you a lot
visually graph it because the visual
graph helps you do a few things.
Number one, if you have an uptrend,
it's kind of like good, you know, pat
yourself on the back, like things to like
show the CEO and power, whatever, like
there's like a visual element to it, but
it does this other more subtle thing.
When you inevitably get a slight
downturn, a graph helps everyone
and the kind of human eye and the
psychology behind it, see that the
overall trend is still positive.
And that's something that drives
both you and I crazy, is that there
will be clients, like speaking of
people getting spoiled of success,
is there just like, well, but why,
like this was going up or whatever,
like, you know, it was happening.
Um, and, and the last
month has been a downturn.
That's also, there's also some
reporting stuff we advise on our
team is like, everyone tends to be
like last month, we got X this month.
It's why.
And I've been like coaching a lot of
our team of like, there's going to be
fluctuations, it's insane to assume
something like search marketing is going
to have this totally consistent trend.
This is life.
It's going to be up and down.
And so there's a lot of times where
we'll rank number one for a piece.
And it'll drop to number three or
it'll drop to number five randomly and
nothing is wrong Yeah, nothing's wrong.
And then and then the client comes
to us and they're like what's what's
wrong This has been a piece that has
historically driven a ton of conversions.
It dropped out of that position one What
should we do and and to us oftentimes
the answer is nothing let's let's
just wait and see because Google is
often testing some stuff or there's
a new article that's get published.
There's new competition that comes
in the SERP and it can push you
out for a short period of time
and then you can bounce back.
And so I do think your point on looking
at the engagement holistically or over
a longer timeframe is really important
because if you have monthly check ins
or you're, you're, you have one to ones
with your, um, Your manager and you're
focusing on this month versus last month.
There's always a lot of
fluctuations that are going to
happen from a traffic perspective.
Like I know people had, people got hit
with the Google update in, in March and
there might've been a period of decline.
And then maybe now the traffic has
started picking back up and you
could make the mistake of thinking.
something's completely wrong with our
strategy and we need to completely
change everything or a piece drops out
of position one for a month and you're
like, Oh, we need to update this piece.
And if you have the bigger
picture view of just, okay, maybe
a couple pieces declined, but
overall our rankings going up.
If so, like let's, let's see how this
plays out over a couple of months instead
of just jumping to the conclusion that
we need to immediately do something,
or you might have one month that's
down on the conversion front, but if
the trend is overall up and it can
bounce back in a couple of months,
again, it's not a reason to freak out.
And I think if you're measuring things
only on a month to month basis, it can
make you do things that are actually.
Negative towards your, your progress.
Yeah.
It's weird how many companies run
marketing like they are, um, Like some
industrial factory operation, you know,
like they, like, they read some like
business book from some, like, you know,
like Peter Drucker, what get with measured
gets producing 1200 products last month.
And then for some reason,
the factory got shut down.
We're only, you're not, you're
not like an oil refinery.
That's like every day they're
like looking at these scales and
these like dials or whatever.
But everyone like runs their company
that way, or like CMO types do it.
And they're just like.
Did you hit your numbers this month?
And then that gets like passed
down to rank and file, um, or
agencies or something like us.
And, and, and you need to be
able to like fight that back.
So number one thing is graph it.
Then you can also start to do
some like long term estimates.
I can't describe all
of this in this video.
Maybe we can do, you can
ask in comments or whatever.
I think you have videos that
have gone into this in the past.
Yeah, I've had videos that gone into
it, but just like real quick, you can
start to do some things like this.
Like, and I'll just say verbally
what you should start to look at.
How many conversions.
Per month, are you getting, um,
on these pieces, like by piece,
regardless of the search volume.
I know it doesn't sound right, but
promise me I have the spreadsheets
to back up this statement.
There are trends we've seen that it's
like, we've seen demos have a real nice
relationship to just number of page one
rankings, regardless of search volume.
I know that goes against a lot of
things that like SEO people say, I
don't care what they say, because I have
the numbers to back up my statements.
Number two, you can look
at conversion rates.
You're smiling because I just, I'm very,
I'm very like confrontational right now.
Um, you, you, you, you could look
at conversion rate to start to
get some estimates as well, right?
Okay.
So like when we get a certain amount
of volume for these pieces, traffic,
you know, what's the conversion rate?
Is it 2%, 5%, 10%, whatever.
And yes, you can get 10, you can get 15,
um, percent conversion rate from organic
traffic to, To, to demos or to trials.
Um, you can start to look at that
and just start to do some back of
the rough of the envelope math.
Like, okay, if we have, you know, five
pieces ranking the top few spots, all
with search volume in the hundreds, let's
say per month, and that's creating 15,
20 directly attributable free trials a
month, you know, you can do some rough
back of the envelope and be like, well,
if we want to hit a hundred, that's going
to require 25 pieces, And you, it's not
going to be perfectly accurate, but you
can at least set reasonable expectations.
So if leadership is like, we
need you to hit 2000, you're
going to be like, whoa, whoa.
Like we have five page one rankings.
They are our best keywords by
definition, because why wouldn't
we have gone after those first?
And we have 20, we're not getting to
2000 anytime soon, like, just like slow.
Like we need to like set expectations.
You can do those like big
picture expectation setting.
Um, and start to look at that.
The other thing you can do is start to
roughly calculate ROI, figure out how much
a demo or a free trial is worth to you.
The way you figure that out is how much
is a first year client, like paying
customer worth to you, it's worth
a thousand bucks, so let's say, and
then our trial to paid rate is 10%.
So the trial is worth a hundred bucks.
So then if a piece is getting you five
trials, it's getting you 500 bucks of
revenue a month, roughly on average.
I mean, you can start to like roughly
go to those numbers and be like,
how much pipeline is this driving?
Like in tier two, you can
start to play with that again.
I can't cover that in full detail here.
There are other videos, but.
That's something that you can like
start to realistically get a sense of.
Just keep in mind that like, as you
do this, those, the numbers and the
inputs you have itself get refined,
like your conversion rate is going to
change as you get some more data or
whatever, but that's, that's tier two.
And then something that we've been
thinking about a lot with a bunch
of clients recently, tier three.
Let me, let me set the stage.
This is.
Over a year into the engagement.
This is you have 20, 30, or in our
case with some clients over 100
page one or top five rankings, then
something very interesting happens.
Which is you need to start
defending your rankings, updating
your pieces, and maintaining.
And we had to learn the lesson of
that takes just as much, if not
more effort, than publishing new
pieces to get new rankings did.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I, I agree with that.
I think the engagement shifts a lot and
I, and I don't think people think about
this enough because I think when people
hire us, they, they automatically think
new content, new content, new content.
And what we've noticed is a year,
two, three years in the engagement.
You start to see a lot of those
rankings that historically were in
position one, two, or three start
to decline and decay over time.
Uh, a number of reasons for that one,
the intent of the, the query changes.
And so when you wrote the piece,
Google interpreted it as one meeting.
And now that meeting has
slightly changed over time.
And so you need to
update the piece to them.
Better satisfy the, the, the
current search intent to, um,
you just have new competition.
So a lot of people will see your
content strategy, like your competitors.
They'll start to say, Oh, this
company is starting to really
kill it on the content side.
We should just mimic
exactly what they're doing.
And we've seen this happen a number of
times with clients that we've worked with
where their competitors, you all of a
sudden start to see them showing up for
every single keyword that you've targeted.
And then it becomes a really competitive
game of just out content, uh, out,
out doing them on the content, them.
Exactly.
And, and, and we're
coming up with a new word.
She's not making this up.
Like SEO software is
kind of made to do this.
How many of these Ahrefs and SEM
rushes of the world talk about
their competitive analysis tools?
Like so much of the SEO culture
is about analyzing the heck out of
what your competitors are doing.
So if you start ranking for
the most competitive keywords,
people are going to notice.
And even though most people
don't do content and SEO the
way we do, they chase traffic.
And you'd be like, Oh, but they're
doing the traffic chasing way.
And I'm doing the grown convert method.
That's fine.
You know where they're going to notice
you in paid because paid search does
go after bottom of funnel because
paid search people are not stupid.
They know that they're paying for
each click, so they need conversions
and then they'll start, people will
start to notice that we have seen
this literally like rando competitors
that we thought were not a big deal.
Publishing every single post,
just like we did for our clients.
Same style, same structure, same
methodology, just total copycat.
The last factor that could potentially
impact the need to update things
is Google algorithm updates.
So sometimes an update will come
and it just completely changes the
meaning of different queries or the
organization or what it values more.
Uh, and so that could also be a
case where then you need to go
back in and update certain pieces.
And so, yeah, all this to say the
engagement after a year or two really
shifts from new content of three
articles or however many articles you do.
Some of our clients, we do way more
than that, but as a baseline, just the
number of articles you're producing,
we start to shift more to like half
and half, or maybe even sometimes
skewing, like Two thirds of the content
that we're doing on a monthly basis.
It's just updating old posts and
why you could say like, well, why
would a company pay you to do that?
You already created, uh, an article.
Yeah.
It doesn't mean that you did a bad job.
Yeah, no, it's just like what,
what's valuable is the keywords
that you're going after.
And so if, if you historically had
a piece that was ranking number one,
driving a hundred conversions a month,
and that drops to position five, and
now you're only getting 25 for that.
Like.
It's way worth it to go back
and update that piece to get
that conversion volume back up.
The fact that it dropped, it
means you didn't do your job.
Well, I mean, I just gave three different
factors of reasons why it's dropping.
I mean, that has nothing to do with you.
It has nothing to do with if
you, if you historically ranked
well, it has nothing to do.
With like you doing a bad job, if
it never ranked, then I could make
that argument that there's probably
something wrong in your process.
But if you've historically ranked on
first page, and especially in those
top three positions for a keyword and
you've dropped and not ranking, isn't
moving back up, you're going to need to
do something to get that ranking back.
And again, I think from a business
perspective, you need to think about how
valuable that keyword is to the business
after a year, two, three, four years
into engagement, there might not be.
A ton of new keywords that you
could go after that are going to
drive that hundred conversions.
And so for you, it's way more worth
it for you to spend the time to go
back and update that piece that has
historically converted at a way higher
rate than most of the pieces that
you've done than go after a new piece.
And so the engagement switches from Okay.
We can continue growing
overall conversions by going
after some new articles.
Again, at this point in engagement,
there's probably not a ton that have
really high conversion potential.
So two things might happen.
We might go after very long tail keywords,
or we might just start moving up the
funnel and going after higher traffic
things at this point in engagement.
And then simultaneously going in and
making sure that we can continue to own.
Uh, our most valuable keywords
from a ranking perspective.
And so that is kind of how things shift.
And, and one thing I'll make on this
point, just in terms of defending
the rankings is the writing.
I do think the writing
is really important here.
Cause what we said about competition
coming in and just copying you, if you
have really unique content or you have.
well argued arguments inside of your
pieces, your intros are different, you're
speaking from first person experience.
It is a, yeah, it's, it's, it's much
harder to unseat you and where we
see People get unseated a lot more is
when you're, you're producing content.
That's just kind of the
same as everyone else.
You're creating the same
list post as everyone else.
You go into the SERPs and you're
analyzing the keyword and you're, you're
seeing what everyone else has done.
Everyone's done 20 top
content marketing tools.
And you're also going to do maybe
21 top content marketing tools.
But when you, you, you're
like, Oh, just that one more, I
swear we're going to beat them.
But yeah, it's typically not a number of.
software, uh, that you live,
it's not a number of tools
that you list in your piece.
It's, it typically has to do
with what information are you
providing that no one else is.
And that that's what
typically helps you to rank.
And so I would refer back to the video
that we did, I think two or three
videos ago, where, where Davis walked
through interviewing someone and then
just differentiation in the article.
I think that is very, very important
when it comes to defending the rankings.
And when we're, when we're going back
into an old piece and we're updating
it, that is kind of the lens that
we're looking at this through is,
okay, what unseeded us and what.
Is the reason that we think
that they're unseating us.
Like, is there some new
information that they provided?
Is there a different section?
Did they take a completely different
approach to the article than we did?
And it's, it's a lot of that thinking.
And so, yeah, for a lot of
our clients, they're in the
stage three right now where.
They are where like our whole engagement
is, is around maintaining rankings.
So getting old rankings back and then
simultaneously going out for new pieces.
The other place that stage three can
make a lot of sense or come into play,
even at the beginning of an engagement
is if a content client has been doing
content for years, they've, they've
done content for five years, they have
thousands of articles on their site.
This would be like a HubSpot
or something as an example.
And then you got hot.
Well, no, HubSpot is extreme, but
it is, but, but that's an example of
a company that has tons of content.
There's probably no new bottom of the
funnel content ideas that you can go
after, but the value of each of their
keywords is immense and so it would be.
Taking the same framework that
we have of what are the most high
intent keywords for their business?
Where did they historically
rank for those pieces?
And can we go back and update some
of those pieces to either better sell
their product and, or, um, get, get
the rankings back because someone
unseated them for some reason.
I'm going to make a semi controversial
statement and tell me if you disagree.
The fact that we're saying you have
the engagement moves to maintaining the
rankings when you have a ton, 30, 40,
50, a hundred, and you're also saying
correctly, and this should be obvious.
Like you're not going to in year three,
you're not going to have the same level
of like obvious bottom of funnel keywords.
So like each new piece you produce,
even when that thing ranks is not going
to convert as well as the first few,
because like, you don't have like when
you're at the keyword 150, there's not
just these like go perfect intents for
someone Googling for your software.
You took care of those keywords in the
first 10, you know, first 20, first 50.
Um, does that mean That there's almost
a natural kind of maximum conversions
a month from organic or SEO that after
a while, growth becomes harder because
one, you got to put some of your
resources into defending the old rankings
you had instead of getting new ones.
And number two, all the new ones
you're getting are by definition,
not going to convert as highly.
And there may be a period where you're
like, we've kind of maximized SEO, but
it's, but it's a good problem to have.
Yeah, no, I agree.
I would say yes, yes.
And no, like you're not going
to be able to grow as quickly.
So in those, those first two to three
years, you're probably looking at a
graph that does look like a hockey stick.
And you're starting to see conversions
really grow, especially if you're
starting content from scratch.
Yeah.
If you're five, 10 years in the
content and you've gone after
like all these bottom of the
funnel, it's going to level off.
Like I can imagine like HubSpot, like
their, their traffic probably looks
pretty steady over the last five years.
I mean, maybe they're acquiring
new domains and they're doing
other things to grow, grow traffic.
Uh, but yeah, overall,
like growth will level off.
Like there's things that you can do.
So again, we, we say
bottom of the funnel first.
And move up funnel.
Again, the highest conversion potential
ideas are going to happen at the
bottom of the funnel, then the middle
of the funnel, and you still might be
able to grow traffic a ton, but even.
If you're going after these really
high volume keywords that have less
conversion potential, yeah, you can
still grow traffic, but the overall
conversion volume might not go as
quickly because you're going after
keywords with lower conversion rates.
And so kind of going back to
some concepts that we've talked
about in our other videos.
Yeah.
At this point, I would still keep
investing in content because again,
you need to maintain those rankings.
You don't want conversions to
start dropping from this channel,
which can definitely happen.
You can, you can go from
thousands of conversions, have
it drop to like half of that.
And then someone higher up as
being like, well, what is going on?
This channel has historically
driven this much.
You don't want that to happen.
So you don't want to stop
investing in content.
But at this point, you might want to
start thinking about, okay, I don't
think the growth from this channel is
going to be as high as it was previously.
Like maybe our entire business was
growing off content up until this point.
Maybe now I should start thinking
about what other channels I
should start testing and where
that future growth can come from.
And I think it's as simple as that.
Yeah.
And some other commentary,
I'll say the vast majority of
companies are just not doing this.
So like, don't, don't be like, Well,
you know, like, can I, can I just
say this, this is going to be kind
of a silly analogy and you're going
to kind of laugh at me, but like,
you ever talked to someone about like
lifting weights or working out and
they do this thing where like, well,
I don't want to be too muscular.
I think that's like a
gross look, you know?
And you're just like, that's you.
I mean, kind of joking, but my,
my comeback is always like, how do
I, it's like, how do I come back
from this without being insulting?
Like, right.
Like, and Benji's pretty well built, but
like for most people, you're like, That's
a good problem to have like you should not
worry about being too fit You know what?
I mean, and it's kind of like
that where people are like,
well, what are you saying?
There's like a top line like, you
know where my SEO results will like
maximize you're like Yeah And that
would be an amazing problem to have
and the chances of you being anywhere
near that are very low Every company's
GA we see every company's like a traps
and they're like a search profile to
see They're, they haven't done this.
They haven't systematically knocked
off their bottom of funnel keywords
in the middle of funnel keywords.
So like, if you get to a point where
you're three years in and you have
hundreds of rankings that are prioritized
by buying intent, as you could best
guess, you know, your best hypotheses
of the keywords that are going to buy.
Right.
That are going to have buyers that is,
and then you're seeing results level
off from your hockey stick growth.
Like, congratulations.
Come to San Jose.
Like, we'll go out to dinner.
It's on me.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, congratulations.
Like, it would be fun.
That's a good problem to have.
So I don't think that
should like dissuade anyone.
And then, and then yes,
what Benji's saying happens.
Like, we live through it, which is then
it's kind of a big deal to executives and
leadership when that starts to move down.
And, and like Google and life, it's
like, there's going to be competitors.
There's going to be
movement in search intent.
There's going to be algorithm updates.
You've got to start maintaining that.
And that's how it moves.
So I just wanted to say that going
back to your geminology, I think
it's a good way to think about it.
If you, if you were lifting weights
for two, three years and you had,
and you were out of great physique.
And then you just stopped all of a sudden.
Yeah.
You're going to have a slow
decline over, over time and
you're not going to look the same.
Yeah.
You might be well built at the time,
but like eventually your, your muscles
are going to go down and you're
not going to be as physically fit.
And it's the same thing when you're
thinking about SEO, it's like, yeah,
you, you could have spent all this
time and effort building up, uh, the
amount of traffic and conversions again.
You get, and then someone, someone
internally is like, well, or are we, we're
like, I think we're kind of like maxed
out in terms of like new opportunities.
And like the focus shifts more to let's
just maintain the growth that we have.
And like, yeah, you can still
have growth, but it's not going
to be as drastic as the beginning.
It's not going to be like when you
first went to the gym and you've
never worked out before seeing
that impact that you immediately
have, where you start to see muscle
definition show up and stuff like that.
You're like, wow, this is amazing.
I'm seeing so much progress.
Like over time, you're seeing incremental
growth and it's the same thing here.
But if you just completely stop
doing it, which is like, some people
have had this mindset of like,
okay, we've gotten to this point.
I'm just going to stop.
And then nothing's done internally
to maintain those rankings.
And then a year or two later, you're
like, why did I lose all these rankings?
I was, I was at number one for
all these different things.
It's like, I've been sitting on
the couch eating potato chips.
Like, why don't I look like I did before?
I wonder why.
And the other thing I'll say
where like the, the workout
analogy kind of breaks down.
Cause we're talking about business that
when you get a ton of rankings and you're
like, Basically like kicking ass and SEO.
It's those are really valuable, like those
rankings are really business valuable, so
it is a high value activity to maintain
those because losing those means you
lose your new customer acquisition.
So, and people don't think
about that because you're right.
People think money, money, give like
budget to marketing should equal growth.
But the reality is budget to, to SEO.
And then they think SEO
is kind of like free.
Like I gave it, I get the
ranking and I have it forever.
They get paid this kind of leeway.
You assume if you pull back
paid spend, you're paid.
Uh, trials or pre signups
are going to go to zero.
Obviously there's some of that in SEO.
It's not as SEO is way better, right?
Because you don't have to spend every
dollar, every click all the time in
terms of like that, like dollars in
dollars out, but you're going to need
to do something and, and I'm, what I'm
arguing is it is a high value activity
because if you really maximize this,
you're getting a ton of results from it.
You've got to keep maintaining that.
And it's not like, it's
not like that hard.
You don't have to update
a piece every month.
That's ridiculous.
It's just like, you need to
kind of keep up on all that.
Um, yeah, those are the three tiers.
Let me just recap.
Tier one, prove things out to yourself,
to your bosses, to your clients, whatever.
And so do a mix.
Like you plant the seeds for some of
those really valuable keywords that
could be harder, but also do some of
the lower wins to prove two things.
Can you rank how fast and does it convert?
And how well tier two scale, start
picking off keywords systematically
and doing that mix category, keywords,
comparison, and alternative jobs to
be done, read pain point SEO to learn
more about those three and start to
just accumulate rankings and wins.
Spread your backlinks out
and just kind of grow that.
And then at some point, I don't
know, did we even tell them when?
30 rank, page one rankings, maybe
20, 30, like double digits, 50.
Yeah, I don't, I don't
think there is a point.
I think it's just when you start to
see rankings decline or stagnate.
That's one stage three kicks in.
Yeah.
Stage three.
And it's actually, it's
not, uh, this is not binary.
It's like, you're still doing new content.
It's some mix of stage
two and stage three.
It's like, you're going to start to
maintain rankings and monitor that.
Use your SEO software to monitor
them, um, and make sure that it's,
and then use your analytics software
to monitor the conversions as well.
Um, and, and then you have to start
maintaining while going after new ones.
If you're doing all three of those
and you've made it to three, you're
like, you're doing a great job.
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