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Welcome to "Be Human," the definitive podcast for B2B leaders ready to catapult their 7-8 figure enterprises into new realms of growth through digital marketing. Hosted by Danny Murawinski, a seasoned digital marketing maven and former professional snowboard coach, "Be Human" offers a unique blend of insights that merge the art of relationship-driven sales with the science of digital scalability.
In a world where authentic connections reign supreme, learn how to finesse the critical human experiences at the heart of your sales, amplifying them digitally to resonate with your Ideal Customer Profile. Each week, we dissect the anatomy of successful sales relationships, crafting offers that not only speak volumes but are poised to echo across the digital expanse.
Danny brings over a decade of experience, connecting B2B ventures with giants from Fortune 500 companies to professional sports teams. His consultative prowess, honed on the snow slopes, now aims to elevate your business strategy through deep dives into the humanistic elements pivotal to relationship-building, alongside cutting-edge digital marketing strategies, tools, and techniques.
Join us for conversations with executives who've mastered the art of growth, navigating their B2B companies to towering figures. "Be Human" is more than a podcast; it's a weekly masterclass in leveraging genuine relationships for exponential digital growth. Tune in, and let's redefine what's possible for your business together.
Danny (00:00)
What's up, what's up. Welcome to Just Be Humans, the definitive podcast for business leaders who are looking to grow their business through digital marketing. And they've built their entire foundation on relationships and relationship driven sales. I'm your host, Danny Murawinski. And in today's episode, I'm going to talk about human centric SEO and what that actually is and how we can actually apply that to our current SEO strategy to see dramatic results. So let's jump right in.
SEO, search engine optimization. Most people hear that term and they think that this is a technical process. We get caught up in things like alt tags, meta descriptions, keywords, key phrases, search engine results pages.
we get so caught up in search engine marketing, even, you know, like all these places where we think we can tweak all these things, backlinks and all this stuff. And don't get me wrong. Yes, there is relevance to all of that, but if your content that you're trying to push out there, is it doesn't have value to give back to the audience that's consuming it. It doesn't matter what technical things you do to it.
you will not rank. So let's kind of go into where these search engines originally came from and kind of dive into a little bit of that history. So when the internet first started showing up, they just started popping up everywhere. You had to just type in the exact URL that you wanted to go to. There was no way to actually search for what was out there on the internet. Google and others, Yahoo.
Ask Jeeves. Anybody remember Ask Jeeves? That's how old I am, right? A couple others like this, they all started coming out. And what they did is they sent out what's called spiders or bots to scrape and index web pages. So the way that that works, right, is this little bot would go through each one of the different pages associated with a given web page, it would tag it and index it and its own repository.
So when you typed in a search word or search term, such as catch up near me or something like that, it would go through its index and be like, okay, this is what this is where the closest catch up is to you. Right? So that was the original intent of search engines, right? And to this day, it still holds true. The differences is that now in 2024,
What we're looking for and what we resonate with as consumers of this is relevance. Relevance is the most critical component and relevance is directly correlated to human centric behavior. So what does that mean? Well, we're in an election year. I guarantee you that if I did a whole spiel on Trump versus Biden or Biden versus Trump, and I went down that political rabbit hole,
there probably be a lot of attention that got brought to this particular podcast. Good, bad, and ugly. There's a reason why people say there's money to be made in controversy. The, the reason why money is to be made in controversy is because when controversy is around, typically most people have some type of an opinion on it. Therefore, if you put out an opinionated piece supporting one side versus the other,
you're going to get a lot of attention. Why? Because it's relevant to you in that time. So we need to treat SEO the same exact way. And this starts all the way back to the type of content that we're producing in the first place. So there are plenty of tools that you can use. You can use key Google keyword planner. You can use things like SEM rush H a H a H a H refs.
and other tools to get an idea of what people are searching for and how much are they actually searching for it. But that's only one small piece of the puzzle. So you actually have to dive into a little bit of human psychology and understand why people are actually searching for this. What is the intent behind it and how can you produce content that's actually relevant to them? So that's a wide variety of different things that you need to do. Everything from
looking into, you know, cultural things that are happening right now. And maybe it's localized to a specific geographic area. It could be a demographic thing. You know, what are the 20 year olds consuming over the 40 year olds? And so on and so forth. There's a lot of things that come into play around this, but the gist of this is, is as you mind this data and you understand what is trafficking, what is trending, that's a good starting block to understand where you can become relevant.
So this is a very simple, easy exercise. One, maybe you've done, maybe you haven't. Why don't you type in a search query that you believe would be something that you would like to rank for? So it could be cookie shop near me, if you have a cookie shop restaurant, right? It could be how to create X, Y, or Z. It doesn't matter what that search term is. The point is, is go look at the results.
Before you click anything minus the ads, cause the ads are a different topic for a different day, but those obviously get ranked higher cause it's a paid placement. Go down below the ads and then take a look at the headline and the little description underneath of it. That's the meta description. So the headline and the meta description that is called your SERP or S E R P gin results page, that little box.
is the first piece where we are trying to capture attention. So when you type in your query and you look at that relevant to your business, what is trending at the top? Because whatever hits at the top may not be at the top tomorrow because it may become unrelevant. And these algorithms, whether it, and this is true for search, it's also true for social. Everything right now is based on relevance. Why? Because everything's shifting.
from a follower driven algorithm to a relevance consumer driven algorithm. Because they realize that more people will come back to the platform if they're seeing things that are relevant to their life, they're going to go back and look at it more. That's probably why you've noticed your feeds and social media and things like that are starting to change. You're seeing a lot more content. That's not just your followers, but a lot of people that you don't follow, you're starting to see show up in your feeds.
Cause everything's shifting towards relevance. So that's step one is type in your search query and look at the titles and the meta descriptions, consume them, especially the top 10, because the top 10 is going to be on the first page of Google. That's where about 80 % of all clicks happen is on that first page and the top 10 results. So look at that top 10 and then ask yourself what's missing there. What would you like to see?
As a consumer, do the same thing when you're searching other things too, not just specific for your business, but when you're using Google in general, it's a practice that I've been adopting. It's been super helpful as I craft our SEO pushes and what we do for our clients as well for ourselves, but start to look about what kind of contents out there that's currently that the algorithms are saying is currently relevant to the world and what's missing. Where's a piece that you can add to that? Okay.
That's kind of step one that's going to help give you a foundation to then create content that you can then push to hopefully get it into that relevance phase. So after you've done your baseline research of understanding what's being shown around your given niche, then you need to start to practice creating content. Now, when you create these pieces of content, yes,
it can drive revenue. It drives a lot of revenue when you're in the top search results, right? We think that's pretty common. We know that. And typically we want to buy SEO or employ SEO or deploy our own strategy to SEO because we want to make more money back to our businesses. So that's the generalized stretch that we do. We discredit the fact of why people are going there in the first place.
That means that we need to create compelling content where every sentence, the intent of the next sentence and sales folks that are listening to this, you'll appreciate this. What's the number one goal for any meeting, any sales meeting that you take to get the next meeting, right? Same rules apply when you're writing a book. What's the purpose of one page of that book to get you to turn the page to the next? Same rules apply here when it comes down to SEO.
So you need to create content that's compelling and engaging. I like to use the framework framework hook value payoff, which the hook is typically telling the audience what they're going to get. So even if you reference this podcast, right, I referenced at the very beginning, the hook to this podcast was I'm going to tell you how to do human centric SEO. So that's the hook. The payoff is going to be towards the end of the podcast. As you start to understand how we actually apply that, right?
So we need to think about our hook when we're writing content. And that's just telling people what you're gonna tell them. You've probably heard this saying before too, tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them, right? Same concepts apply here. So what's gonna be that hook? That's typically your title and then the meta description is a small snippet, 180 characters is all we need to elaborate a little bit more on that hook.
just give them what the next steps are going to be if they can if they click to consume. So once you've delivered that part of it, let's talk about the structure of your content. And I can guarantee you that you consume web content this way. Most people do. So if I produced a long form article, what I'm going to do is first scan through
the chapters or the headers or the table of contents, whatever it is, I'm going to look through what I'm about to consume and hone in on a particular section that I'm interested in before I actually read the very first word of the long form. So we need to be strategic with our H twos or our second headers, right? Our H one is right below the title. That's the hook. The title is also part of the hook. And then you have your H one, which elaborates on the hook.
then your H twos is how you structure it. Think of it like an outline. Remember those outlines we used to do back in high school, grade school, so on and so forth, right? It's the same concept, right? So we want to give very clear descriptions for what each piece of the content is. And those hooks or those headers, those H twos all need to align back to the same hook. A great example of this is listicles. If you haven't heard of them, that's where it's like top 10, right? Top 10 ways to clean your kitchen. Top 10 ways.
to refinance your car, top 10 ways for this, top 10 ways for that. We see all that all the time, right? It works very effectively because we're giving them the entire plan and someone can go through and consume just the H2s alone on the top 10, right? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. And they can then get a good idea of what this content is and then make the decision if they're going to stay to consume even further. So be strategic on that. When you create the content, make sure,
that every single one of those headers are helping answer towards that hook. Now the true answer within the hook should come towards your conclusion where you're actually giving away the antidote, the header. That's the payoff to the hook. That's rewarding the audience for being there and staying on page for one, two, maybe three minutes to consume the content.
Okay, so that's the way that we create this to be value forward. So yes, the h1 h2 meta tags, all that other stuff. Yes, it's relevant. You do need to have a technical understanding of why that matters. But it's more important that you apply it to the human set centric model and understanding how we as humans consume content. We don't want our time wasted. How many of you have been on a web page where you go through the article and you're like, didn't get my answer.
And you go back to Google and you search again and you search again. And then now with chat GPT, you just go to chat GPT and ask it. Right. So you got to remember that when we're creating and producing content. And by the way, you can 100 % leverage AI to help build this, but you got to train your AI model to understand that you're not necessarily trying to drive a direct sale. Rather you are trying to bring something back to the audience and grow and nurture that audience.
So once you've gotten your baseline structure of the title, your meta description, which is a little bit more of an elaboration telling the audience what's next, right? To play off that hook. And then you have your H2 set out. You might then take it a step further. So if you have a particular section that you can break down into three subsections, that's where you can apply H3s. So all of these headers that you're applying in there, they all ultimately are relevant back to the original content.
Because as the bots scrape this stuff, that's how the bots are also consuming it. Why? Because that's how humans consume it. Okay. It's not done just strictly for the business model. It's also done because that we're it's replicating how we consume it. So it produces more relevance and that way you keep coming back. So that's why these things kind of matter as you break it down, then you get into the actual content itself and it's got to be compelling. It can't be repetitive.
It can't be redundant. It's got to be something new. You got to compel the audience to want to read the next sentence and you got to give them a good reason to consume the entire article. That's going to increase time on page. Time on page is what Google ranks as relevance. They look at the IPs and how much time they're spending there. Here's a very simple example that I like to share with folks, especially an exit build as we're take on other SEO clients. I explained to them,
I don't have to do a single technical thing on the backend. I could literally create a text document with a white background with just plain text. If I publish that piece of content and let's just say 1 billion people look that piece of content up and of those 1 billion people, 500 million spend 10 minutes on that page, please believe that that particular piece...
even though there's no technical backing whatsoever, we'll be ranked at the top spot for every single keyword and key phrase inside of it. Why? Because all of a sudden that becomes relevant. So we need to keep that in mind as we structure this. Now, do I recommend that you do that? No, I don't think that that's a good play at all, but it's just used as an example to show you that it's about what people want to consume. That's where we got to keep the focus. When we look at SEO, yes, you want to rank because you're a small business.
And you want to rank for your B2B offerings and your IT services and this, that, and the other. Of course you want to rank for that. You want to be positioned as the thought leader because it's going to drive more revenue. I totally get it. And I'm not discrediting that, but you got to start thinking about this in the way of what people want and what people are going to actually consume. So as you structure that content, that's where like writing actually matters. Being creative in your writing actually matters.
You can use AI to support that 100 % because your AI, I like to think of AI, especially in copywriting as almost like my virtual assistant, right? It's almost like my brainstorming assistant. If I hit writer's block or anything like that, I'll turn to AI to help me craft it. Sometimes I'll even let AI, if it's good enough, I'll let the AI system craft it entirely. And if I train the AI thread well enough on my business and my audience, which is doable through prompt structure and prompting,
then you can actually build a very, very positive chain where you can just start to generate more and more AI content and it will be picked up. We've seen it time in and time out. And I will put the caveat on this. I know a lot of you that are got their eyebrow raised that AI and how the algorithms are adjusting for AI content. The truth is, is it's, it really doesn't matter. And I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand with our clients. I've seen it with our own business.
We've used AI content and it's put SEO through the roof, not because the AI content's that much better than mine or humans, but because it's producing relevant information that the humans that are consuming it, it matters to them and they care about it. So you absolutely can use AI to support this. You just need to do it in such a way. You do need to review the content and make sure, does this actually resonate? Is this relevant?
to the target demographic that you're trying to associate this with. And that's the other piece you gotta realize too, right? Who is this content for? It's not just for everybody. We all know who our ideal customer profile is. And if you don't know, I highly recommend that you do that. But typically our ideal customer profile is some type of demographic, right? Some type of job title, some type of business that they're in, some type of decision -making role.
some type of pain point that we know most of them have and we know that our solution can solve. Right? So that's part of what we need to build this for. And then when we produce the content, this is where I highly recommend that you give away your secret sauce. Right? Most businesses like, they got to do business with us before we tell them our processes. Wrong. Give them it. Why? Because they're going to do it.
on their own and they're going to find out because of their pain points that they don't have the time or the bandwidth to do it. They're going to likely then come back and hire you because if you can give them something of value, they apply it and make it actionable. They will ultimately build trust with you. And when they realize that they're not, they don't have the bandwidth to fully execute on the thing, then yes, they're going to come back and hire you for services over top of others. That's part of building that trust. And this is all focused around.
bringing this value for content back to them and truly trying to help people. That's where you need to be keeping the focus on empathy, caring, help, kindness. That is the foundational blocks to building content that's going to become relevant. So I hope this kind of helps you guys break down the SEO landscape, especially if those of you that are looking to purchase SEO services.
SEO is probably one of the most expensive digital marketing services out there. Packages typically range between like 3000 to $5 ,000 a month, sometimes more than that, depending on the level of the business and the size of the website and so on and so forth. But you got to keep in mind, right, with this process, why we're doing it. And you have to be able to make sure that that's very clear with the agency that you select to support your SEO, that they are aligned with that.
because if you're just having them throw it up on some type of listing site to get you a hundred backlinks, those backlinks won't matter because the backlink needs to be relevant to the content. For instance, if you have a pet shop and you're trying to get your pet shop to rank in the top spot and you think a backlink strategy is going to work, which for those of you, by the way, just to catch you up real quick, backlinks is kind of Google's way of measuring popularity. So there's a thing called an authority score for your website.
So think like the biggest websites out there, Forbes .com, things like that, right? They have a very high authority score. So Forbes links your site, it's going to bump your juices because the algorithm is going to go, reputable source, they're recommending this, this must be relevant, right? So that's one strategy. So that's why oftentimes we think about these backlink strategies and you'll get pitched at all the time, especially in these expensive SEO packages. But you got to really pull back the onion on that because if they're just sending it off to some link building strategy where,
basically it's just a listing that they're going to link it back to you. You're going to get shitty backlinks and those backlinks aren't going to be relevant to your content. So in that pet shop example, if all of a sudden I'm getting backlinks from a shoe store, right? There's not much relevance to that. And the algorithm is going to pick up on that. And guess what? So is your audience, because if you're shopping for shoes and you're on a shoe page and you see a backlink and it's like, that's interesting. And you click it and it goes over to a pet shop and you don't own pets.
You're going to bounce off that page. That's why all this stuff matters. It's got to come back to the relevance to your audience and where they are actually getting value from it. So let's pull the thread a little bit further. I'll give you a practical example for the pet shop. All right. So most people have in the pet world, a dog or a cat, probably the most common too. Right? So maybe what you do is you put together content that helps people understand how to train their dog.
or even how to train their cat. Maybe you have litter issues, right? Maybe your cat's starting to, I had this problem myself where I had two cats, two male cats, they were competing over the litter box and they started peeing all over the house and cat urine's terrible, right? So in that moment, if I was looking up a place to go buy cat food and I happen to come across an article that was talking about, hey, use these five things to get your cat to stop peeing in the corner. And I applied those five things.
And now all of a sudden my cats, both cats are using the litter box and it was some great little idea. Guess what? I'm going to go give them business. Why? Because I just built that relationship with them. I'm going to remember where it came from. That's the idea behind this guys. It's where can you build these ancillary pockets of value around what you your core offering is to bring value back to the audience. And here's the other interesting thing about this and a great little example for
how, what an actual sale is. So I had this question asked to me and the first time it was asked to me, I fumbled on it. I couldn't answer it correctly. Right. And the guy goes, what's a sale? I was like, transfer of value. He was like, Nope. A sale is to simply to get somebody to move. I was like, huh? So literally I've used this before where I've sat down. I was, I'm explaining this example in person with people. I'm like, Hey, do me a favor, pick up your phone.
As soon as they pick up their phone, guess what? That's a sale. I got them to move. The same rules apply here when we're doing SEO content and we're doing value for content. That's why tangible, like actual tangible actionable items matter because those people, if they apply what they're learning, they will move on that. You will get the first sale and that
all it takes is a series of those movements, a series of those micro conversions, those micro sales until all of a sudden it's starting to change their trajectory, change their life. It's real people. This stuff is real. It does change our behavior. And as we do a series of those sales, and if it's keep, if it keeps coming from the same source, they're going to come back and do business with you. That's the way this stuff works. So,
If you're pushing SEO content to push your features and benefits of whatever service or product that you're doing, this is where I I'm telling you guys start to give them a playbook. Start to give the audience that you're targeting some type of a playbook to help solve and mitigate their problems. If it's a SaaS business that you're working on, let's say you're building stuff on, on the cloud, tell them about.
a function, a microservice of the cloud that maybe they didn't consider. That's really easy for them to apply to their business that might solve whatever problem that they're dealing with or whatever problem you're highlighting in the content. If it's social media, give them a tip or a strategy on how to go about social media and make a compelling post. So on and so forth, right? Like you go down the line with this stuff. It's exactly what I'm doing right now and hopefully giving you guys some tangible as actionable items.
on how to apply this to your SEO strategy. So that's the big gist on this. It's keeping the human at the center, understanding human attention, understanding human behavior, and then trying to bring value back to them, trying to help. If you can start to try to help, it's just like if you're meeting in person, it's just like if you're at a networking event. If you're trying to build a business relationship in person,
likely you're going to try and help them in some way, shape or form to prove trust or value, whether that be referring them business or it be coming in and giving them a free consultation or it be a free audit or whatever the case is, right? That's why we do this stuff is to try and help to ultimately drive them back to the product. But the first step is to try and help. We need to treat SEO the same exact way. If you're not focused on becoming relevant,
to your audience, you will not rank. It's that simple. And the same rules apply. If you're not relevant and a face to face sales interaction to that audience, you will not sell. So hope this kind of helps outline for you guys. As you look at the landscape, please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments. If you want to learn more about this, you can hit me up directly. I'm happy to share some more insights and take a look at what you guys have going on.
But the point of the message here is, is keep the human at the center of all of your digital strategies and build it for that one person that it's going to help because one is too many. If it helps one person, there's other people like them that it will help too. You will naturally start to attract that audience. As that becomes more relevant, you will start to move up in the rankings until you hit that ideal position, that zero position, right? Where you're now defining what the query is. So again,
This is just be humans. The definitive podcast for business leaders who have built their businesses through relationships and are looking to digital marketing to scale. I am your host Danny Murawinski. And just remember guys, just, just be humans.