Welcome to Conscious Millionaire Podcast, show number 549, with my featured guest, Stephan Spencer. We’ll be discussing how to get top authority ranking in Google. And I’ve got a great gift for you today. It’s worth $126. It’s my Fast Track Training. To get the Fast Track Training over 16 videos, audios, and downloadable PDFs, go to ConsciousMillionaire.com forward/member.

Hello, this is your coach, JV Crum III, and welcome to you from wherever you’re listening. This is the show for business owners and coaches who want to reach their first million if you want to create a big impact and big profits. Then today’s show will give you coaching strategies and insights on not only how to grow your business bigger and faster, but how you can make a bigger difference as well. And a big thank you to our listeners and friends in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Los Angeles, California. Now, you’re going to want to stay tuned because we have a great show for you today. 

My featured guest is an expert in SEO and social media, and we’re going to be discussing how you can get to the top of Google ranking as an expert authority. And a reminder that later in the show, our guest has an amazing business-building gift for you. So stay tuned for that and the conscious questions when our guests will reveal his three golden nuggets and a big success he achieved that changed his business and life. Now, help me welcome our featured guest. 

He is an SEO expert and bestselling author with three books published by O’Reilly: The Art of SEO, Social ECommerce, and Google Power Search. He founded the multinational SEO agency Netconcepts in 1995 and sold it in 2010. His clients included Zappos, Sony, and Chanel. He hosts two popular podcast shows, Get Yourself Optimized and Marketing Speak. My guest today is Stephan Spencer. Stephan, thank you so much for being on the show.

Hey, thanks, JV. It’s great to be here.

Well, you know, you and I have; we seem to be having very parallel lives. We met at Podcast Movement. Then, we were both at the World Domination Summit. And here we are doing the podcast together. So we’re on a constant trail, and we both bought both of those for next year. And hopefully, we’re gonna meet up at Social Marketing Media next year as well. So, you know, we seem to have a lot in common, but you know, in terms of your life and who you are, how would you describe yourself in your own words?

Well, I’m just on this journey, just discovering like everybody else. I don’t think of myself as an expert. I just think of myself as a learner. In fact, one of my top five strengths, according to StrengthsFinder, is being a learner. So, I’m constantly learning. I’m a seminar junkie, as you can probably tell.

We run into each other in all these conferences, right?

Yeah, we’re both probably gonna be there.

Yeah, I, too am a learner. First and foremost, I’m all about waking up in the morning and having personal growth. I wanna learn something every day. And if I’m not learning, I’m ready to leave personally because that to me is I think what life’s alike. And I think that’s why you’re here listening to the show today, is that you wanna learn from Stephan and the conversation that we’re gonna have. So, let’s dive down. If someone wants to get to the top of Google. Now, when we say top of Google, does that always mean the top 10? Is that what you’re talking about, or how would you define it?

Right, because if you are not on the first page of Google, you’re pretty much invisible. Page two is only looked at, maybe, and it’s under 5% of the time. Even the first half of the first page of Google is where you need to be because if people have to scroll to find you, you’re much less likely to be clicked on. Now, there are gonna be some paid listings that are probably will proceed with you. And that’s just a fact of life. Google has to make their money. So you’d spend a lot of money if you decided to play in that world. It’s called Google AdWords.

It can be very effective if you know how to do it well, but it can also cost you a great deal of money. And the moment you stop spending money is the moment you stop receiving traffic from the paid advertising part of Google. So what I’m talking about is the free organic listings, the unpaid listings, and, ideally, the top half of the first page of Google.

Okay, and so by the top half of any page, you’re talking for a keyword or a keyword phrase.

Yes, and not just any keyword phrase, but a keyword that is relevant to your business, that’s popular with searchers, and number three is that it’s actually attainable for you to achieve a high ranking. You don’t want to go after keywords that are going to be great for your business, highly relevant, and very popular, and there’s just no way that you’re ever going to rank for those particular keywords because they’re just ultra-competitive.

Okay. So those are the three criteria that you’re looking for. So, if somebody wants to get up there and be recognized as an authority, what’s the first step they need to do in order to start that journey so that they’re going to have that top ranking?

Well, the first step is to identify which keywords they wanna rank for. So, using those three criteria, identify which keywords are gonna be the most effective for you, and you’re gonna use a tool that’s gonna identify the popularity level of these different keywords. You can use a free tool like Google Trends, which is available at Google.com/trends. You can put multiple keywords in there, like different phrases and have those be all charted out compared to each other so you can see whether the singular or the plural is more popular or one verb tense over another, one synonym versus another. 

You can use paid tools like Moz Keyword Explorer. You could use SEMrush, and you could use Google, which has another free tool, but it’s kind of not free anymore because they recently changed the rules about it. It’s called the Google Keyword Planner. And it’s primarily for AdWords advertisers. So, if you’re spending money on Google AdWords, you get to use it for free. If you are not spending money with Google AdWords, then you get a very limited version that gives you rough ranges of numbers instead of actual hard numbers. And so it’s not a very useful tool unless you’re spending money with Google AdWords.

Okay. So, how many different keywords do you want to go after? You just want to go after one? Are you going to make this a multi-keyword, keyword-phrase journey that you’re going to take?

You wanna go after as many keywords that are as relevant as possible because if you think outside the box, you’re going to be able to get people from your ideal target market coming into your site. Let’s say that you’re selling baby furniture, for example. You’re an online retailer of baby furniture. You don’t wanna just go after the obvious keywords like baby crib and baby cribs and bassinets and baby bassinets and baby bassinets, et cetera.

You also want to go after keywords that are a little bit farther afield but still relevant in that they bring in your target audience, in this case, an expectant parent. And what would be the most popular keyword that an expectant parent would be typing into Google? Probably baby names.

Wow, so if you have the crib, then I’m just kind of jumping ahead a little bit. You might even want to have a free lead gen on how to choose your baby’s name.

Exactly, and not just a page about baby names with a lead magnet available for download, but also a resource area where you could target different, not head terms like baby names, but torso terms or long tail terms, things like baby name meanings, baby name definitions, overused baby names, cute baby names, baby names that will get your kid pummeled in the schoolyard when he or she is older, you know, those sorts of keywords. You can attain a ranking for some of those torso terms sooner and easier than you could by going after the head term of baby names. That’s ultra-competitive. 

But knowing that baby names are the ultimate goal and that you’re going to create a portfolio of keywords to go after. And those include baby name-related terms, and because the expectant parents are the ones that are gonna be coming in on that, by having a page dedicated to cute baby names, for example, you stand a chance for ranking for cute baby names. Now, you have to get links to point to your site that will be contextually relevant and from important authoritative sites, et cetera. We’ll get into that. How do we get links? But just starting with this idea of like, what keywords do I even care about ranking for? Will help set you on the right trajectory.

So what I just heard, and this was great, Stephan, you might have 20, 30, 40, 50 keyword phrases. You could have a large number.

Thousands. You could have tens of thousands of keywords that you’re going after. Yeah. I mean, I’ve worked with clients, even small businesses, who have had thousands of keywords that they’ve targeted.

I know that if you’re listening, and I have the same question. When does that get overwhelming? Because you’ve got to set up some priority as to how you chunk it down and go work on it, right? Because you don’t have 40 hours a week to do this.

Right, so you would group these keywords. Let’s say that for even numbers, you have a thousand keywords.

Okay.

You might create 20, 30, or 40 different keyword groups. So, in AdWords, they’re called ad groups, but when we’re talking about SEO, we’re just talking about keyword markets. So they’re groupings of keywords, kinda categorized. And then we’re going to be able to kinda chunk it down that way so that we can say, well, I’m not really targeting baby names right now. There are 50 keywords under baby names that I could target. Let’s start with three or four, right? Let’s start with the baby name meanings definition sorta angle, and then we’ll go to, like, cute baby names or adorable baby names sort of angle later once I have more time to build out this area even further, but you start somewhere.

If you divide it into 20 groups, let’s say there are 50 keyword phrases per group, and each one of those groups will start with, I’m just assuming, some kind of a root phrase, perhaps.

Possibly. Not necessarily. Yeah. So, the idea here is you’re just going to pull from this long list that’s grouped a list of keywords that will give you content opportunities to go after. So you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. So let’s say that you decide that I’m going to create five new blog posts a week and I need to know what I’m going to be writing about ahead of time. These topics should be based on keyword research and not just like pulling a rabbit out of my hat. 

I’m not going to just guess what I’m going to write. I’m going to actually do the research and figure out that, oh yeah, this is popular, or oh no, this is not popular at all, so I’m not going to write about it. That’s going to inform my decisions about what content I’m going to create and build out on my site. It’s also going to inform my decisions around my navigation structure my taxonomy of my site.

So once you’ve got the keywords, you’ve got your groups. What’s the second thing you’re going to do?

Yeah, so if you don’t have links pointing to your site that are authoritative, trust, trusted and trustworthy and important, you’re not going to rank. It doesn’t matter how much content you have. It doesn’t matter how SEO your site is, the backend, the content management system and all that. It doesn’t matter because no links equals no rankings. How are you gonna get links? You’re going to become a valued member of the online community, and in particular, the blogosphere, because bloggers link to other bloggers. 

They don’t link to faceless companies that barely have a picture of their management team or whatever, and don’t let you in on their unique personality. Now, a conscious millionaire is not gonna be like that. A conscious millionaire is going to be willing to be out there, vulnerable, giving, sharing, and transparent, right? So I would think that your listeners would be much more amenable to starting a blog and saying something that’s heartfelt and real and not just, hey, check out our booth at XYZ Trade Show. 

Here’s a picture of us in front of our booth. Come and get a discount or something. Nobody cares about that kind of blog post except maybe your CEO. The people who care about, uh, what you blog about are going to be the ones who resonate with the message that you’re sharing. So recently, for example, I’ve blogged about imposter syndrome because on one of my podcast shows, Get Yourself Optimized, we had an episode pretty much dedicated to that topic of imposter syndrome, and I was inspired to write a Huffington Post article about it. 

So if you create something that’s really valuable, it has nothing to do with SEO or social media marketing or e-commerce or online marketing at all, but I’m giving back, and I got a lot of really nice comments and feedback about that article and about the episode. That’s how you get links. And if those links are pointing to your site, let’s say that your blog lives on your main site, that’s gonna increase the authority, trust and importance of your overall site, including your product pages, your category pages, your about us page, your homepage, everything benefits. It’s the rising tide that lifts all boats.

Okay, so can those blogs be video-based, or do they need to be written?

Absolutely can have video blogs, but you want to augment that with some sort of commentary written that Google can sink their teeth into, the Google bot spider can sink its teeth into because although video is important for ranking on YouTube, which is the number two search engine and of course that means you have to upload those videos to your YouTube channel in order for you to rank in that number two search engine of YouTube, but then you put the embed of that YouTube video on your blog post, you write some commentary around it.

Some text that’s compelling, valuable, interesting, and worth linking to, even if somebody doesn’t watch the video, they’d be compelled to link to it because it’s so amazing and remarkable. And when I say remarkable, I’m using Seth Godin‘s definition of remarkable, it’s worth remarking about. So it just has to have something about it that’s worth remarking about Purple Cow. Every blog post, every article you write, every quiz, personality test, listicle, buyer’s guide or how-to, whatever it is, viral video, comic, everything that you create should be remarkable, worth remarking about otherwise. Why would people link to it?

So before we wrap up, we will go to the gift giving and the conscious questions. What would be a third thing that someone could do, Stephan, in order to move their site up to that top one to five on the first page?

Yeah, so there are a lot of technical things that can be done. Now, I don’t want to overwhelm your listeners with geeky stuff. I’ve got a nearly 1,000-page book on that.

983 pages, to be exact.

Right. And so. There’s a lot of geeky stuff, but let me give you a couple of really easy things to do. One is to sign up for Google Search Console, which is a free tool. It used to be known as Google Webmaster Tools. You verify that you’re the site owner, and then you have access to all these wonderful reports, things like search analytics that shows you which keywords you’re getting impressions on and getting clicks on, where people are typing in these keywords into Google and either seeing your listing and hopefully also clicking to get to your website.  So you get reports like that and Googlebot spidering activity and all sorts of great data. You’ll get notified if you get hit with a manual penalty, which is called a Manual Action. 

There’s a lot of reasons why you need to have a Google Search Console account. Another thing that you can do is start using some of the tools out there that will give you a sense of how effective your site is not just from a technical level but also from a link-building level or link analysis level and so forth. For example, you could use Google’s mobile-friendly test to see if your site is mobile-friendly because if it’s not, you will not rank well in Google mobile search when people are on mobile devices. And that’s more than half the time people are searching on mobile devices on Google versus on desktops.

You want to use their free tool Google’s free tool called Page Speed Insights. So just Google for that, and you can put links in the show notes to all these awesome tools and Just see if your pages load quickly. If not like, you’ll get a numerical score, and you’ll be either in the green or the yellow or red zone. Definitely, you don’t want to be in the red zone because if your site is slow loading, then you’ll get a rankings hit demotion, and people will not convert once they’re on your site because they get irritated and just don’t wanna wait for your pages to load. Then for checking to see how authoritative and important your site is, use a tool like Open Site Explorer or Majestic. You can put in your site, and even if you don’t have a paid account, you can get numerical scores on maybe one or a couple of different sites per day before they cut you off for free usage. And you can see, oh, my numbers aren’t looking so good. I need to definitely work on building my authority or trust.

This is great. We’re gonna have links to these on the show notes, which you can get at ConsciousMillionaire.com. Just put Stephan Spencer, that’s S-T-E-P-H-A-N, Spencer in the sort box, the top blue box for find a podcast, and the show notes will automatically come up.

Stephan, what is the gift that you have for everyone listening today?

Right, so I have three books. The Art of SEO is one of them. Social Ecommerce is another one, and Google Power Search is the third. So I am going to gift one of those three books, and it’s the listener’s choice which one they want. So, if they prefer to become an expert searcher on Google, Google Power Search would be the book for them. If they want to become an expert on social media marketing and leverage that to drive online sales and lead generation, then Social Ecommerce would be the book for them. Or if they want to get to the top of Google, then of course, The Art of SEO.

Well, and this is incredible that you’re going to be able to get one of these books. This is a $40, $50 value. You’re going to get it in electronic format, and you get to choose. Just go to ConsciousMillionaire.com. Click on the gold image that says free gifts and go in. You’ll see the image, the gift image that says free copy of a Stephan Spencer book. That’s an incredible gift. Thank you so much, Stephan. And now it’s time for the Conscious Questions. Stephan, what is one of your biggest successes, and how did it change your mindset about what you and your business can achieve?

Well, one of my biggest successes was I got this crazy idea that I could go live in New Zealand and I had run the business for four years by then. I decided I’d never been to New Zealand. I decided I’m going to move halfway around the world to New Zealand. I applied for residency. I got in. I became a permanent resident without ever having stepped foot in the country. And I moved my family halfway around the world there. I was able to retain my clients. I had some really great, well-known clients like Bird’s Eye at the time. I was thinking, you know, maybe it’s 50-50 shot if they stay with me or not because here the founder of the company is moving halfway around the world.

They stayed and in fact, it was a huge business benefit in that I was able to hire top-notch talents, pay them very competitive salaries that were top salaries for the New Zealand market, give them interesting projects to work on that were overseas-based projects. It was a huge win. I lived there for almost eight years and moved back to the States in order to start the process of selling my business.

Wow, congratulations. And Australia and New Zealand kind of have a special place in my heart. I’ve interviewed for so many. So many people have been on the show from there. I’ve been on a lot of shows. So I know that you had a great time in New Zealand and that gave you a base in Asia so you could travel. That’s right, in a good location. You can travel everywhere.

Yeah, it was enriched in my kids’ lives. It enriched. It was just so amazing, and I have lifelong friendships with some New Zealanders now. Has a special place in my heart. And I have permanent residency. I could go back anytime and live there. So the naysayers told me, you need to move to the Bay Area. That’s where everything’s happening. And I said, no, I’m going to move to New Zealand, and it may be the end of my business by doing it, but I’m going to take the chance. And I did. And it worked out fabulously.

So, what are three golden nuggets you could share that you’ve learned as an entrepreneur that would help any business owner or coach become more successful?

Well, let me give you, first off, a social media-oriented one because we’ve been talking so much about SEO, but we haven’t really talked about social media. So, protect your presence on various social platforms because if you snooze, you lose, right? So, I don’t know, for example, if you’ve checked your brand name, Conscious Millionaire, and your name, JV Crum, and JV Crum, you know, the third, on various social platforms, like the not just the obvious ones, but the lesser known ones like Glass.fm, and Vimeo, and Spitli, and so forth. Go to those sites and sign up for usernames with those brand names because you want to protect them. 

You don’t want somebody else to go and swoop in and grab them. The easiest way that you can check to see if that name is available is a tool called NameCHK.com. So, I’ve used that tool myself to lock up my name on different social sites. I mean, the obvious ones you’re gonna start with are things like Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and so forth. But you probably already have those. The second and third-tier ones are the ones you wanna look after. Another tip is to have a morning ritual that puts you into a mindset for productivity, success, and so forth. 

I do affirmations, I jump on a rebounder, like a little trampoline, and I do all these different things to like meditate and connect with my higher power and to get a bigger picture, which allows me to be a lot more effective throughout the day. It definitely has a negative impact on me if I skip that stuff and just jump straight into a sales call or something. And another tip would be to always look to add more value in every communication that you have. Let’s say that I’ve submitted to a prospect for SEO services like an audit and link-building strategy and some ongoing retainer work. 

If all I did was reach out and say, “Hey, I’m checking in. You know, it’s been two weeks, and I haven’t heard anything yet,” but it doesn’t add any value to the relationship. That doesn’t move the relationship forward. So, a great thing to do is look to add value to every communication, whether it’s via email, phone call, or voicemail message. So what could you do instead of just say, “Hey, checking in, you know, any movement on the decision-making process, find something that would add value.” Like, “Hey, I was looking at your website, and I found this problem, this misconfiguration, and I thought I’d let you know, and, you know, I’m here whenever you have questions about the proposal.”

Great, those are all great and very specific pieces of advice, which I would expect out of Stephan. When you’ve got a 200, I’m sorry, a 953-page book, which I happen to own a signed copy of, which I want to thank you again for that. You know how specific someone is. And I appreciate that being trained as a tax attorney, being a systems guy. You know, the details are really where it’s all at. You know, that’s going to make the difference between success and not being successful. You know, again, I want to say what a great book, The Art of SEO.

 We’re going to have a link to that on the show notes, along with Social Ecommerce and Google Power Search. In addition, I just want to remind you that by going to Cons, click on the big gold image at the top of the page that says free gifts. Go in, and you can get a free copy of a Stephan Spencer book. Any one of these three books, you can get an electronic copy of. That’s a 40, $50 value. So I really encourage you to do that. These are incredible books. They are the top of the top books in this area. And so, Stephan, what is a book that you would recommend?

Right, so I love reading books. I have a massive list of books, like, I don’t know, 500 long list. But one of my favorites that I’ll mention is called The Tools. And the reason why I would recommend it is because there are five tools that are talked about in this book. It’s a personal development book. And it takes a very unique approach. It has these tools that were developed by this expert psychotherapist. I’ll just say that tool number two changed my life. It allowed me to reconnect with a family member that I had cut out of my life for 20 years. I reached out to her after using this tool. It’s just a visualization exercise. 

It was really powerful. I was able to connect with love and forgiveness and with the fabric of creation using this tool. And after that, I gave her a call out of the blue. She was so surprised and grateful to hear from me. We spoke for an hour and then a couple months after that, she came and stayed at my condo for weekends, met my kids for the first time, and she’s been in my life ever since. So what a great book. There are five fantastic tools in that that are profound.

So Stephan, what does consciousness mean to you?

I think it means intentional. Intention is everything, right? So I take Kabbalah classes and it’s not about, one of the precepts of Kabbalah is that having the right intention is what matters.

Whatever the behavior is, the results or the action that you take is not nearly as important as the intention that you had while doing that thing. So if you are intentional in everything you do, and that’s actually one of my affirmations in the morning, I’m intentional in everything I do. If that’s the case, you have no downtime. Downtime does not exist. You don’t just plop yourself on the couch and turn on Netflix. You decide to schedule a Netflix binge episode on such and such date and to involve your loved ones and pops and popcorn and so forth. Your intentional in everything you do.

And what’s the legacy you want to leave Stephan?

Legacy of love.

I love that. Is there a cause you’d like to give a shout-out to?

Oh, there are so many. I’m on the board of the Impact Network that builds schools in Zambia. The way I got involved was that I was on a Tony Robbins platinum partner trip to Zambia, and I was just so touched by the people there. We did a contribution day. Then just by coincidence, but you know, there are no coincidences, right? So a month later, I, at another event, completely unrelated, meet a guy who founded a charity called the impact network that builds schools in Zambia. I’m like, oh my goodness, I had just been to Zambia and worked on like fixing doors and painting walls and stuff at a school and ended up donating enough money for them to build a whole new school in Zambia because I was looking to figure out a way to build my own orphanage and I couldn’t figure it out and I just met the right person at the right time and then I became a board member and stuff. So, ImpactNetwork.org is a great organization.

I want to thank you again for listening today; you’re the entire reason we do this show. It’s to bring you great guests like Stephan, The Art of SEO, his book. You can get a free copy of that or any one of his other books by going to Cons, click on the big gold image that says free gifts and go in, and you can click on the gift image to get a free book from Stephan. I want to thank you again for listening and I look forward to connecting with you on the next episode. Conscious Millionaire Show and podcast, and Stephan, thank you so much for being our featured guest today.

Thank you, JV.

Thanks for listening to Conscious Millionaire, the show for entrepreneurs and coaches who want to increase profits and make a positive impact. The host, producer, owner of the show and broadcast media make no claims that the strategies and information discussed on the show will result in profits and may result in losses.

The opinions and advice from guests do not necessarily represent those of the owner, staff, management, or broadcasters of the show. No legal, accounting, or financial advice is made in this show. You are advised to seek counsel on matters related to your business, financial investments, or other legal matters from licensed advisors.