This is Stephan’s podcast appearance on the Kara Goldin Show.

I am unwilling to give up. I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to make sure you get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out knocked out. So, your only choice should be to focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. So join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go.

Hi, everyone; it's Kara Goldin from the Kara Goldin show. And I’m so excited to have Stephan Spencer here with me to talk all about SEO and his book. And overall, I’ve just found his journey so interesting. I was actually on Stephans' podcast show, and I guess it was a couple of months ago. And I’m losing track of time. But we actually met through I call him the amazing Joe. We’ll talk about that a little bit.

But let’s just talk a little bit about Stephan. And he is really considered, the more I’ve dug into him, the SEO master and marketing expert and his whole life has really been focused on not only building a company and becoming an expert, which I’d love to talk more about today. No, he was going to become an expert in this or not. And sometimes I feel like people just set a set way on their journey. And then they just figure out what they’re really good at, which maybe comes easily, or maybe it’s challenging along the way.

But then they have these aha moments, and with Stephan, he ended up co-authoring three books, one of them that is, all three of them are a monster, I should say. But one of them is just so incredible: The Art of SEO. If you don’t remember any of the other titles, please go and get the art of SEO; it will be very useful to you.

And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But its other books are Google Power Search and Social ecommerce, too. Stephans has worked with many, many amazing clients, including Zappos, Sony stores, Quicksilver, and Chanel. And very, very excited to have him talk on the show. Because I always share with people that if you are not a lifelong learner, then you’re bored. And that is so much of what Stephan talks about is, I think really going to challenge your brain a little bit and get everybody thinking, and we can all benefit from it. So welcome.

Thank you. And you know, the expression comes to mind when you are describing. If you’re not learning, you’re, you’re bored. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. That’s another expression I think is very important to keep in mind. Because, yeah, I’m excited for each day to come. I wake up, and put my feet on the ground. And I say to myself, today is going to be a great day I learned that from BJ Fogg, who I met through Genius Network, which is how we met. And yeah, that little habit just sets me off on a wonderful start to my day. Then, I look for opportunities to grow, learn, and become better. It’s fun.

I love it. mindset attitude. There’s so much there. So let’s talk about how you get started. How did you become the SEO guru and really the focused person for SEO for so many people and so many brands?

Well, it was a coincidence. I think that kind of culminated in a shift in my path. I was studying for a PhD in biochemistry. And while I was doing that, I just built some websites. This is back in 1994 when the web was brand new, and when I started, it was the same year.

Oh, yeah. Same year as that. You know, the internet. Right. So interesting.

Yeah, we were using the Mosaic browser back then. Right?

Yeah, crazy, crazy time. And so for those of you who are not at, let’s break down SEO for those of you listening. SEO is kind of this important thing that they should know about, but they don’t really even know what it is.

Yeah, well, search engine optimization is a way to provide a better first impression to your potential prospect to your potential customer, before they even land on your website. Because the most likely path they’re going to take to get to you is by typing your name or your brand or the services or products that you offer into Google. And then they’re going to see a set of search results. That’s their first impression.

Then they click, hopefully, on your webpage and search results, and then they land on your site, and then they get a second impression. But you know how important the first impression is, and you’ve blown it. If you haven’t done good SEO to make sure that not only are you ranking highly in the search results for the keywords you care about, but also that all the other stuff that especially for brand results, brand SERPs, search engine results pages, for the brand results that appear, you want to curate all of it.

If you search for my name, for example, Stephan Spencer, you’ll see that everything on page one is either stuff that I have written, or was written about me that I can influence or, you know, I had some involvement in it being written, or it’s Yeah, just basically, appearances, TV appearances, or my author page on Amazon. Like, these are things that I had a hand in, rather than just leaving it to chance.

So that’s really important that you can curate the results. And even if, let’s say, there are some detractors going after, you know, haters, hug your haters, as Jay Baer says, and the title of his book, but if you have stuff negative about you on the search results for your brand, you want to push that off onto page one. And the way to do it is to have other stuff that outranks it. So this is an opportunity to actually move your opponent’s chess pieces, not just your own, which is amazing.

So it’s a strategic mindset shift to think, Oh, this isn’t about tags. This isn’t about getting links. Yeah, those are tactical elements to it. But in the book The Art of War, Sun Tzu said, “Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.” So if all you’re doing is trying to get all the tactics, right, you’re missing the huge opportunity to implement strategies, and when your competitors implement the strategies instead of you. And you’re just in the tactics; that’s when you just get slaughtered on the battlefield.

Absolutely. And it’s not just about it; you just touched on the competitors. So especially as it relates to brands, and I think that, you know, people think, oh, I’ve just got to focus on, you know, getting my brand up to the high levels, yes. But you also have to watch what competitors are doing, because maybe they’ll actually be grabbing that search and sending it back to their site, which is obviously, I mean, not a not a good thing. And you know, maybe you, as a CEO, were not really thinking about it, but you could be losing a lot of traffic.

Yes. And to think about your indirect competitors at the same time as the direct competitors, because usually, the direct competitors are not nearly as clued into SEO as the indirect competitors, and who are indirect competitors. They are potential affiliates, not just a view, but of your competitors. They could be site owners who are just trying to monetize their content. What used to be called back in the day was that MFA sites are made for AdSense sites where they’re just content plays. It’s a publisher that’s monetizing through Google AdSense, other platforms, programmatic advertising, or whatever else you have.

And they could be making millions of dollars; I actually have a client who’s a seven-figure earner who is making it all through ads and through affiliate links. And I’m not sharing anything out of school because they’ve actually talked about it. On my podcast on Marketing Speak. It’s Chris Parker, and the site is whatismyipaddress.com has about 8 million unique visitors a month. And they’re in the seven figures now. So that’s exciting times. But those are your competition. They’re much more savvy than your direct competitors, typically. And so if you’re trying to reverse engineer what your direct competitors doing, you’re missing the big picture.

You have to reverse engineer Google and what they’re doing and what they’re cooking up. Right. They’re implementing artificial intelligence all over the place. And you have to reverse engineer these indirect competitors. Because anybody who’s outranking you in Google is a competitor for the keywords that you care about, even if they’re not direct keywords who what you are. But they’re reaching your audience, and I like to say that you want to fish where the fish are not that I go fishing or anything.

But if you want to land more fish, if you want to catch more fish, go to where the fish are. And I give a quick example. Let’s say that you have baby furniture as part of your offering in your product catalog. Maybe that’s all that you do for baby furniture, right? The obvious keywords are things like baby cribs and baby furniture, baby bassinet, bassinet, etc. The problem with that is they’re pretty far along the buyer journey by that point. It’s it’s a very competitive search; it’s sure there’s a lot of competition, and it’s difficult to rank for.

And there isn’t nearly the search volume that you would expect. If, on the other hand, you go earlier into the buyer journey, up the funnel, to where people have maybe just figured out from the first ultrasound that their baby is a boy or a girl, What are they going to do as soon as they get home? They’re going to hop onto Google, and what are they going to search for? It’s not baby furniture. What do you think they’re going to search for as soon as they hop onto Google? Gosh.

I should know this having four kids. But, um, maybe maybe a site to actually buy it.

Okay, so if you’ve just found out the baby’s name or the baby’s gender, and you’re like, Okay, now we have to figure out names, right? So if they’re searching for baby names, and you’re like, well, that’s great. They’re gonna figure out the baby’s name. No, no, no, there’s an opportunity here. If you’re selling baby furniture, and you go after baby names as a keyword, which has orders of magnitude more search volume, compared to some of these other keywords that you were targeting, you’re going to get almost 100% expectant parents who else is searching for baby names.

Nobody, only expectant parents, only your exact target audience. So what you’re looking for these opportunities, that are essentially the baby names, equivalent keywords for your industry. And one of the best ways to find those keyword opportunities is to reverse engineer your indirect competitors.

Very interesting. So, in my life, we actually knew names way before we had family names. So we weren’t necessarily looking in the same way. But I’m with you. And I do believe that’s what the majority of people are actually looking at. And yeah, and how do you think it varies? For a brand versus an individual? So you know, if you’re looking at Kara Goldin versus, you know, a company-like hint, what would you say are some of the key things that are different in the SEO kind of journey?

Yeah, well, what I find is that most people are neglecting their personal brand. They’re focusing on their company ran, and I was guilty of this. Back when I was building, my first company, I didn’t worry about my personal brand, so much, it was all about the company’s brand. So Net Concepts. And I realized after selling the company, like wait a second, that was a problem, because now that company has gone to other hands. And I’m left with just my personal brand.

So the personal brand is the only brand you take with you to the grave, companies come and go. Hopefully, you have an exit strategy, because any business that’s not got an exit strategy, you’ve got a very expensive job, you’re self-employed, you’re not a business owner. So if you have an exit strategy for your brand, that’s great. But there is no exit strategy for your personal brand. And that’s the one that tends to get neglected.

So if somebody’s searching for your personal name, think about this first impression that they’re going to get in the Google results. What does it look like? Does it just look like your LinkedIn is number one when it should be, your company’s website?

I mean, your personal website should be number one. Is it that you have a knowledge panel over on the right-hand side, but it says that it’s unclaimed with a button at the bottom that says claim this knowledge panel, or do not even have a knowledge panel over on the right-hand side. So, people will judge you based on that first impression. And they think that you’re a big CEO or your big business owner or entrepreneur.

Like, but these results don’t really reflect that. There’s nothing happening over on the right-hand side. Now the person who’s searching may not even know that it’s called a knowledge panel, but that doesn’t matter. They just know something’s missing over there. They search for some other CEO names, and boom, there are some fun photos, links, ads, social chiclets, book covers, and things like that. Where’s that for you? And also, if they see that there’s not a lot of impressive stuff, you know, you weren’t interviewed on CNN, or Forbes or whatever. And it’s just like social platforms, or maybe even just other people’s stuff because you have a common name, or maybe somebody else more famous than you have the same name as you.

And so most of the stuff that’s showing up isn’t even you. That’s a problem. That’s that’s that’s you not having control over your own personal brand. presence in Google the number one search engine. So it is important to maintain, this presence and brand and build it out over time. And if you don’t even have a personal website, how are you going to really control your brand voice over time, your personal brand voice, because just having a page, let’s say an about the founder page on your company website, doesn’t cut it, you need a separate site for you personally. And if you have a book or multiple books, each book really should have a separate website. A book should have a book website. So I’m kind of opinionated about this.

No, no, I love it. So let’s say, for example, this interview, right? You’re like, it’s going to be up on the Kara Goldin Show. And then it links from my link, it’ll link to, you know, this: What would you sort of owning your own brand do with this? Because you obviously don’t necessarily want it all going to, you know, my site, right? You want to bring it back to yours? Maybe that’s not a great example; maybe it is. But what would you do as a brand owner?

Well, that is a really, really thought, thoughtful and thought-provoking question. If I’m a guest on somebody else’s show, I, first of all, want to be very respectful of the fact that they invited me onto my show; I’m not going to try and poach their traffic. So I don’t want to take traffic away from your episode, show notes page, or destination page on your site, I want to actually promote it and drive more traffic to it. One way I do that most people don’t bother to is I have an interviews page, a press page, essentially. But for podcast interviews, as well, on my StephanSpencer.com site.

So if you go to my press page, which has not just TV appearances but other types of appearances, articles, and so if I’m interviewed for whatever, ad week or something, well, that one actually, I was a columnist for it. But you know, some other magazine that I’m interviewed, I’ll put it there. But I also every podcast, I put an image of the podcast, cover art, and a link to that episode on their website because I want them to receive the traffic I want them.

I’m not worried about Oh, that’s a reciprocal link. That’s very short-sighted, like, oh, they’re linking from their show notes to me, I’m not gonna be stingy and not link back to them. That’s very short-sighted. And it’s it’s stingy. It’s just staggering. And, yet, you can also get further leverage out of these appearances, whether they’re on podcasts or TV or whatever.

As an example, you might have a sizzle reel that incorporates little snippets from different podcasts and TV appearances, especially if it’s got the lower third with the TV station's logo. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of sizzle reels that just go from one person to another person to another person, introducing the burden, “ And next up, we have Kara Goldin. And here is Kara Goldin. We’re very excited about Kara Goldin,” and it just goes from next to next in terms of appearances.

So you could do something like that. But would I take the entire podcast episode transcript from your show from the interview that you did with me and put it on my site? No, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t I that feels icky to me. Now for my own show. I definitely take the transcripts of the interviews that I do and turn those into long-form blog posts where it’s not just a big wall of text. But it’s something that reads like an article. It’s engaging and visually stimulating because we insert lots of images. And we’ve got pull quotes and click-to-tweets.

And every time a book is mentioned, a book cover with a link to that Amazon page for the book, it just looks like a really interesting article. And people love it. People who don’t have time to listen to a podcast will scan through or read an episode like that, and they won’t read a traditional transcript that looks like a wall of text. So that is a really great SEO tip. And it works incredibly well. I end up ranking for guest names for topics that we talk about and so forth. For example, Scott Donald, who’s the CEO of Happy and a member of the Genius Network, I rank on page one for his name. And it’s because I interviewed him, and we had a great conversation and just the process of how we create these show notes pages, causes that page to rank really well for his name. It’s a win-win for everybody; just always think it's a win-win situation.

Yeah, no, I think that that’s super great advice. And I feel like one thing I always talk about being an entrepreneur is this idea of, if you don’t enjoy kind of doing puzzles, right and, and creating kind of what-if scenarios, but also continuing to build. And I think, frankly, that’s what SEO is; it just takes time, right, to actually build it, continue, focus, and all of those things. What does take time, but and that might dissuade some people, but it’s it’s an asset. Unlike if you’re doing, let’s say, paid search or paid social, the moment you turn off the advertising dollars, you’ve turned off the spigot in terms of your leads and sales. So that’s a problem.

With SEO, however, it’s an asset that will continue to pay dividends, month after month, year after year. So if I stop, let’s say, link building for six months, all the previous work that I had done prior still ends up bringing me traffic through that six-month hiatus. I mean, it’s better if I keep doing link building, but if I just go dark, no more link building no more. I could stop podcasting for six months. I don’t recommend that. That’s called pod fading. Don’t do it. But if I did, I’d still get lots of SEO benefits from all the work I’d done previously.

So, in the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, he talks about assets versus liabilities, and an asset puts money in your pocket month after month. You can’t say that about paid search or paid social. It’s only working as you’re paying for it. So I think that’s an important distinction.

I love it. So I was on your podcast a few months ago, and it’s called Get Yourself Optimized. And by the way, it’s excellent. It’s such a great podcast from which to learn from so many different people. You have amazing guests on there, too, Stephan. So I enjoyed that you asked me about goosebumps challenges. And that was something that no one had ever asked me about. So now I get to ask you. So talk to me about your goosebump challenge your favorite one. So it’s one coming up in your life as well.

Well, I get goosebumps all the time. It tells me that I’m connected. Like I’m plugged in. Because I look for guidance. Intuition is this basically the creator speaking in and whispering in your ear, and if you pay attention, you get goosebumps. So just today, for example, I knew that I needed to help this stray cat. And there was my guidance. It was like my spiritual GPS told me that I needed to do this, and turns out that stray cat probably would have died without my intervention.

And you know, there’s an expression that I heard many times, and I didn’t realize that comes from a holy text until just recently, but it’s if not me, then who and if not now, then when. So this poor cat. I wish we would see it every week when we go to this appointment, and we’d bring cat food in. We’d feed it; it had dry food every day. Other people would make sure it had food and water. But we’d bring what cat food cans. And this last week, it wasn’t there. And this week, it was just really acting weird.

And turns out, it has some sort of, I don’t know, it’s like a pelvic, or hip issue where it can barely walk. And it was really dehydrated, so I took it to the vet. Now it’s overnight at events, and it’s gonna get an X-ray tomorrow, and whatever the procedure is to bring it back to health, I’m going to pay for it. And that’s just how I wish everyone would roll. And I can’t say that I used to do that in the past; I probably would have just done it. Oh, I hope somebody takes care of it. And it wouldn’t have been me. But now it is me. And I just don’t know if that’s an exact answer to your question because I didn’t get goosebumps, but I did get guidance. Yeah, there you go.

I love it and experience that you don’t have every day, and I will only make you a better person, I think, along the way. So I Love it. Love it. So AI, I hear so much about AI and how, you know, it’s definitely getting integrated into people’s businesses, even those that are not technology businesses, how do you see AI changing the landscape for SEO?

Well, it’s changing the landscape for everything. And everybody is going to be incredibly affected. So every listener right now needs to pay attention to AI. I was at Abundance 360 earlier this year. And or no, it was actually while virtually I was attending, but this was a year ago now, in January, that I was present in person. And I heard Pyramid Peter Diamandis say that they’re going to be two kinds of businesses by the end of the decade, those businesses that are using AI at their core, and those businesses that are out of business.

And I don’t think that’s hyperbole. I really don’t think that we need to think differently as business owners because AI is going to change every aspect of business life and human interactions. But we can’t lose our soul and our humaneness in the process. But we do need to be aware of the implications. So, for example, let’s say that you have a copywriting team or just a copywriter that’s helping you with whatever, you know, stuff, email newsletters, web copy, etc. Well, now there are tools like conversion.ai that will write an entire blog post for you, just by giving it a topic or posing a question.

You could, for example, use GPT3, which is generative transform platform three, which I think is what it stands for. It’s from Open AI. With that technology, you can just ask it a question or give it instructions. And it will create a work of art, essentially, whether it’s a written word, or it’s an image or whatever. So, for example, if you Google Elon Musk, GPT three poem, you will find a poem written by an AI, the GPT three AI, and it is hilarious and thought-provoking and clever and witty; it’s just amazing. Yeah, so Elon Musk, GPT three, poem or something along those lines, right?

And you will find that the instruction to GPT three was to write a poem in the style of Dr. Seuss about Elon Musk and include stuff about rockets and Tesla and so forth. It comes back with the most clever, well-written poem in the style of Dr. Seuss. And here’s the stanza from it. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do I’ll send my Mars rover to Red Planet, you.”

What, I love it.

Brilliant. I love it. So if AI can already do that, you can say, hey, I need a weekly blog or blog post, or I need a weekly newsletter, and I just want to hire a copywriter. Now, maybe you don’t need to hire a copywriter. Maybe you just need to put the right inputs into a tool like GPT3, and boom, there you go. So that’s just one small aspect. Imagine how much of business is going to be disrupted completely.

So in a space. Yeah. And so, let’s just take the specific question that you posed about SEO and AI. There’s really only one way to outsmart an AI. And you have to think about Google being one of the most plugged-in advanced AI-based companies in the world. I mean, they bought DeepMind and incorporated that into their business. They bought Boston Dynamics, and now they’ve got the Terminator robots and everything like it’s crazy. What Google Alphabet really is, the parent company and all of its child companies can do with all the AI that they have. So how do you get smart and AI?

Only one answer with another AI. If you’re not playing with AI to get your rankings up higher, you’re going to be left in the dirt. Yeah. So there are tools that are AI-based. Muse is an example of an SEO tool that has AI, but most SEO tools will need to have AI in their toolset in order to be relevant even for just a short period of time. As a business owner, or you as a marketer need to know what the capabilities are for these different AI tools and how you can even write your own internally; AI-based using things like GPT, three, or even IBM Watson is another thing that you can essentially rent time, inexpensively from. Yeah, it’s just amazing. It’s a brand new, like Brave New World. And I wouldn’t be intimidated by it; I would just be excited by it and just dive in.

I love it. So you have a ton of experience in social media, obviously, on rankings, but how is it really changing, or how much social media has changed in the landscape? The world over the last few years has been dramatic. But you’ve got a course around this topic, too, that I actually would love to take the viral social media for massive traffic, one that I think is pretty cool. And I’ve talked to a few people who have taken it, and they’ve said that it’s it’s pretty darn interesting. And they’ve learned quite a bit about hashtags, etc. What’s your couple minute pitch on the course?

Okay, well, thank you for those kind words. I think that it, again, is very important to be strategic, rather than tactical start with his strategies. And the best way to do this is to think about how can I create something that is viral-worthy or buzz-worthy. Because if you don’t have something like that, then you’re essentially, you know, putting lipstick on a pig. And that that won’t work. So what is the right strategy depends on the topic space, the industry, etc.

You might have a lot of wiggle room to do kind of off-brand things or like be snarky or punk somebody or whatever. And then there are the very conservative industries where they can’t even put testimonials on their website. So it depends on you know, how much wiggle room you have. But let’s say that you do have some. And you, first of all, need to figure out what the topic is. If you already have that, then you just put in let’s say, a Google search on that topic Plus, I would add that if we’re trying to figure out who and what is viral-worthy

 We need to go to a source that has dialed this, and they figured it out and who better than BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed just nailed it. I mean, they’re worth over a billion dollars. Clearly, they’ve figured something out in order to be that successful. So we’re going to put in the topic, whatever that keyword is, plus the site:buzzfeed.com. No, no space after the colon. So what this search result will show you is a whole bunch of pages on the BuzzFeed website. Articles mostly that are about the topic. Let’s say that we’re trying to talk about, I don’t know, let’s say I mean flavored water is yet to That’s too specific. But if we were to broaden it a bit to bottled water, there’s probably some funny stuff online about bottled water. But Yeah, we could pick entrepreneurship, but I would. That’s very, very broad.

I like the bottled water. Sorry, I like the bottled water. So we do bottled water.

Yeah. Then the site colon buzzfeed.com, and then the colon character buzzfeed.com. And it doesn’t have to be BuzzFeed. I really like BuzzFeed. And the kinds of headlines or topics, and titles that you’ll see are going to be usually pretty good. But there are plenty of other viral sites like Distractive, Five Viral Nova, board, and Upworthy, that you could do the same thing with. Okay, so here are a few examples. I love it. The bottled water you could be that you buy could be full of plastic particles. Oh, that’ll freak some people out, right? Now, you might think well, that’s a little too heavy. I want stuff that’s humorous, you know, entertain me with funny stuff. Well, you could then do something like water, funny Sitecore on buzzfeed.com. And then you’ll find other types of articles and 21 water-related memes that are just too good. Oh, that’s pretty good. Now, I’m not saying copy and paste these headlines and do your own version of the article. That’s a little lazy. And it’s not technically it’s not copyright infringement. If it’s just a title, you can’t copyright a dozen words, but it feels lazy and just not good, karmically speaking, to do that, but it’s the inspiration for the hook.

Once you’ve, you’ve dialed in what that hook is. So let’s say it’s water-related memes. Or here’s another one people on TikTok are spilling water on their babies. And okay, I have to click to see what the rest of it is. So that’s another way to bait people don’t give the full headline, or make sure it gets truncated in the search results. So they have to click to see the rest of it. That sort of tactic is creating a curiosity gap. That’s very important for the headline or the title data curiosity gap. If you give the punchline in the title, nobody bothers to click to read your article. And we want people to actually go to your site.

So here’s the title, people on TikTok are spilling water on their babies. And the reactions are incredible. That just gives away just enough to maximize the curiosity gap and make me want to click so that curiosity gap is that tension that you feel at all, right? All right, I’ve got to click on that I’ve got to see what that’s about if that sounds really, really good, and that you need to become masterful at in order to succeed in social media. And just generally, on the web, you need to be a master of creating a curiosity gap. And it’s not just in the headline, it’s everywhere. Eugene Schwartz, who wrote Breakthrough Advertising many, many years ago, explained that the job of the headline is only one thing, and that’s to get people to keep reading.

That’s it you’re trying to sell your product or service in the headline just keep them keep keep reading. And so if you write headlines that do that, and maximize that curiosity gap, that tension that they feel like they have to leave by clicking and reading more, or just continuing down the page. you’ve nailed it. And so that’s got to show up everywhere. newsletters, websites, social media, everything, even when you’re speaking in YouTube videos and on live streams and podcasts, think in terms of those kinds of sound bites and creating curiosity gaps. How can we keep them hooked?

How can we have open loops that we don’t yet close, so they have to keep listening, kind of like the TV news? Back in the day? I remember when I still watched it, they would bait me the whole time. And coming up with snacks. Soon is the dog who reads Braille and is like Okay, all right, I have to watch that. I have to watch that. And, of course, it’s the very last segment I’m just so angry by the time that the the entire men’s rights Yeah, but they do it on purpose because they want to bait you and keep you watching all the horrible dark news. Until finally, the feel-good story.

I love it. So real quick hashtags, what is the magic hashtag? I mean, along those lines, what would you say is the magic piece on hashtags?

Okay, well, first, you need to know what hashtags are trending that are relevant. So there are ways to see hashtags. For example, if you go to Twitter’s homepage, you’ll see what the trending hashtags are, but that’s too general; if you’re trying to get specific into your niche, you need to be able to use a tool that tells you the hashtags that your audience is using. If you use those same hashtags, you’re where your audiences are, and you’re fishing where the fish are. The tool I would love to use to do this is Sparktoro. 

It’s actually founded by co-founded by my co-author of The Art of SEO in the first two editions, Rand Fishkin, who also founded Moz. The tool is incredible. What it does is you can specify, for example, competitors, and social media handles on Twitter, you could specify their website address, specify their name, or you could specify just a keyword. And then say, people who follow this person or this account, people who now just type these words in as the or they include these words in their bio, on Twitter, whatever, or in their tweets or, or social posts, people who are, let’s say, watching certain YouTube channels, you can specify all these different things and say, show me that audience.

And not just show me the audience. Like I don’t, I don’t get to see the names of the people, right, that would violate privacy. But what I can see is that are they listening to podcasts? Right? Which podcasts? Are they listening to it? What YouTube channels are they subscribed to and watching? What social accounts are they following? And what websites are they visiting? it’s mind-blowing. Oh, and by the way, what hashtags they’re using? Isn’t that cool? So if they’re using a certain hashtag, and I didn’t know about it, I can just start using that hashtag. And now I’m suddenly visible to that world of people because they’re using that hashtag. They’re seeing what other people are posting with that hashtag. And now I’m in I’m in that group.

So the net of it is you shouldn’t be using the same hashtag over and over and over again, either. Oh, you should probably stop.

Except there is an exception. If you’re trying to build a brand with demand generation tactics, you’re trying to get people interested in something that they haven’t been interested in for a long time. So Rand Fishkin gave this as an example. In one of his blog posts, Mr. Rogers, as a search keyword, was very stagnant for many years and didn’t get much volume beyond what you would expect. You know, it’s not like he’s around anymore. And his show is not exactly, you know, on the reruns or whatever. But a documentary about him came out. Wonderful documentary. I love that. It created all this demand. He was a wonderful soul. Mr. Rogers is amazing, amazing.

I actually have his former neighbor on in a few weeks, and yeah, really, he did the PBS documentary that you’re talking about; there was the movie with Tom Hanks, and then there was the documentary. And so the gentleman that came out with that documentary is, is actually coming on my podcast in the next couple of weeks and talking. Catch that one for sure, Stephan?

Well, I know there are no coincidences. Any coincidence is actually a divine intervention. So the fact that you’re having, like, that connection is really amazing. Okay, so that particular topic of Mr. Rogers suddenly spiked in search volume, and also related keywords because of all the demand generation that the movie was doing in the documentary and so forth. So if you could think in terms of I want to create that kind of buzz for my thing, it doesn’t have to be a movie it doesn’t have to be a book can be a product launch, it could be whatever. Then you might have your own hashtag, or if you’re trying to create a movement, right? I love but otherwise, grabbing it, looking at SparkToro, or just to try and figure out what other people are doing is great. 

I love that. This is amazing. And where can people find you?

 Oh, StephanSpencer.com is my main website.

Lots of videos and recordings of past webinars and conference presentations and so forth there. Lots of free stuff, free downloads and articles and everything. And I have two podcasts. So Get Yourself Optimized is one that you mentioned that you had been on, and I’m very passionate about that has nothing to do with SEO, even though it sounds like it. It’s all about being your best self, really like biohacking, entrepreneurship, spirituality, and relationships. I’ve had such incredible guests, and Carrie, you’re one of them. My other show, Marketing Speak, is mostly about online marketing, but I also want to show you how to do outside-the-box marketing and get incredible returns from it. So marketingspeak.com and getyourselfoptimized.com.

I love it. Thank you so much. And thanks, everybody, for listening. And definitely give Stephan five stars. And thank you so much for coming on. You were just so much education for everybody. And, like he said, there’s lots of free stuff. So, definitely check out his website, too. And it’s something you could spend all day in. And now you gave us a few other places to go to SparkToro and lots of other places to go spend your days and your weekends just going and checking everything out.

Thanks again, and everybody joins us on the Ken Coleman Show every Monday and Wednesday. I also just launched a new series called Author Talks. We talk to all kinds of authors on LinkedIn live at least once a week. We’re nailing down a day, actually, a specific day, to do it. But we’ve already had a couple of amazing people and look forward to so many more coming up as well. But thanks, everyone. Have a great week. Bye bye. before we sign off, I want to talk to you about fear. People like to talk about fearless leaders.

But achieving big goals isn’t about fearlessness. successful leaders recognize their fears and decide to deal with them head-on in order to move forward. This is where my new book, Undaunted, comes in. This book is designed for anyone who wants to succeed in the face of fear, overcome doubts and live a little undaunted. Order your copy today at undauntedthebook.com and learn how to look your doubts and doubters in the eye and achieve your dreams. For a limited time. You’ll also receive a free case of Hint water. Do you have a question for me or want to nominate an innovator to spotlight? send me a tweet at Kara Goldin and let me know. And if you liked what you heard, please leave me a review on Apple podcasts. You can also follow along with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn at Kara Goldin. Thanks for listening.