Welcome to Stick Like Glue Radio, the only podcast dedicated to helping you create your dream business so you can live the dream lifestyle that you want and deserve. Yes, success is not only possible; you deserve success. And now, welcome the dream business coach, Jim Palmer. Hello there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Stick Like Glue Radio. This is the only podcast dedicated to helping you create an everlasting bond with your customers so they stay longer.

Spend more and refer more. Those are always great things in any business. I’m your host, Jim Palmer, the Dream Business Coach. As always, I’m committed to helping you build a more profitable business faster. This week, we have a special guest: web marketing virtuoso Stephan Spencer. Let me briefly introduce Stephan, and we’ll bring him right on. Stephan Spencer is a respected SEO expert, author, professional speaker, and founder of the SEO agency Netconcepts, which provides practical, information-rich, immediately applicable seminars, workshops, and webcasts on issues that profoundly impact the success of their online presence. He is a seasoned presenter at many conferences around the globe, and I’m excited to pick his brain. I always love having smart people on the call. How are you doing, Stephan?

Hi, Jim, good to be here.

Good, let me just first, so a lot of, most of the people that listen to this are entrepreneurs, and they’re always interested in the journeys that we all take to become self-employed. What did your journey look like? Where did you work before, and when did you start out on your own?

Well, I was studying for a PhD in biochemistry, and I decided the Internet would be a hot place to be. It was at the second international World Wide Web conference, and in 1994, I met some of the guys from Netscape. I remember meeting Rob McCool, who was the creator of what ended up being the Netscape server and then Apache after that. So he’s the inventor of Apache, which most web servers on the Internet are running on. And I was starstruck. I’m like, wow, this internet thing, I need to be hopping on the bandwagon. And so, a few months later, I dropped out of my PhD. 

I did the extra bit of work to get a master’s, which, of course, I don’t have any use for. I have a masters in biochemistry, but I haven’t used that at all. But yeah, it was fun to just kind of jump in headfirst and figure out how to run a business without ever having had any marketing classes, any business experience, any business training, or anything. I just kind of winged it and didn’t have any funding either. Here’s a funny story: I figured out that if I was just going to be really tenacious and cheeky about it, I could bypass a lot of the hard yards that people go through, like you could get funding or whatever. I talked my way into a $2,000-a-person conference called How to Market on the Internet.

This was 1995, and I was a broke college student who just dropped out. And so I got in as a volunteer. I was a mic runner. And then, because I had all these answers, and I was so smart, and I was 23 years old and pretty cheeky, I just started chiming in and helping the panel answer the questions because I had the mic. And I ended up getting a bunch of business cards that day. I got two major accounts from that, and they ended up two spending over a million dollars with me. So that was my funding. Of course, by the end of the day, the conference organizer had uninvited me from attending day two. But, you know.

You’re shining up the panel there, I guess, right?

I pretty much was, yeah. I think I picked off some important people in the Internet industry there, like a guy named GM O’Donnell, who founded Modem Media. I kind of upstaged him as the mic runner. Oh well. I’m glad I did it because that launched my whole career in business, and I didn’t have to get any funding.

Well, Stephan, a million dollars is not a small amount, but even in the early 90s at 23, 24 years old, I mean, that’s some serious cash. I guess from what may have appeared to be, you know, maybe you were like looking at the Internet with intrigue, and it was kind of new and kind of like the wild wild west that must have solidified your if you had any apprehensions about leaving behind your biochemistry degree that must have fixed that right?

Oh, of course, but at the time, I didn’t realize it was going to add up to that amount of money. I just knew that these were decent-sized companies that were, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year. There were two of them who signed on with me, and they just wanted me to build their website or redesign it. I’m like sure I had a little portfolio of sites that I had built for fun just on the side while I was a grad student, and that and my tenacity and smarts allowed me to win those two accounts that added up over the course of a couple of years three-four years to be a half million dollars a piece.

Wow. You know, I’ve interviewed some other SEO folks over the years, and a question I’ve never actually asked, but since you got in so early into the whole Internet and just the, you know, back when it was in its infancy, I’m just curious, when did the term SEO even become known? I mean, how did you? I’m sure it wasn’t like, you know, search engine optimization wasn’t something you did when they were so brand new. When did that term come about?

Yeah, it was more in the latter part of the 90s. So, I started my agency not as an SEO firm but as a web agency. And that was in 1995 when I started. And maybe three years into it, I started getting really into SEO. So, I’d say by 97, SEO was a thing. But it was very crude. In those days, when you had search engines like Infoseek and so forth, you just made some meta keywords and stuffed a bunch of keywords in that hidden tag, and you’d be golden. And it’s just kind of ridiculous. Looking back on those days, I made separate pages for each search engine and tweaked them to fit the different things that each search engine was looking for.

It was all duplicate content. So, it was just really bad. Ridiculous what we did back in those days. But pretty quickly, I realized that that didn’t make sense, that I needed to be thinking not just about what works now but what works three or four years out, kind of forward-thinking and future-proofing at the same time. Early on, I got the idea that Google was getting huge, and that’s where I really focused my energy.

Even in the early days, when it wasn’t clear that Google was going to be all-powerful, I figured that there’d be some sort of rap sheet that Google would keep on us. And if we tried to get away with stuff that didn’t really look legitimate, maybe it worked for a while, but then later on, they could most certainly reverse engineer. What we were up to and kind of put a black mark on our records for it. So even if it was discovered a few years later and a great example of that, nothing to do with SEO but is an Internet thing is on Wikipedia, people would edit their own articles, the articles of the company they worked for and so forth and that’s against the conflict of interest guidelines in Wikipedia. 

And they thought, “Oh, I’m being clever. I’m logging in anonymously.” Still, your IP address gets associated with that edit on Wikipedia. Then some, I think it was a grad student actually in Greece who wrote a tool called Wiki Scanner that connected the dots and said, “Oh, these are the anonymous edits, these are the IP addresses of the anonymous edits, and these are the owners of those IP blocks, and oh look at that, this owned XYZ corporation. And on such and such date and time, that IP address owned by that edited XYZ Corporation article paget. And so then there were all these bloggers that just went on a witch hunt looking for people who were editing their own articles.

And this was potentially years after they thought they got away with murder, going in and editing their own articles on Wikipedia. So, the same idea applies to SEO. Like you think you’re getting away with murder doing all this sketchy stuff that works today, someday down the line, they’re going to be able to kind of turn through all that big data, figure out what you were up to, even though you got away with it at the time, and put a black mark on your record.

Wow. You know, I was doing a little research for the call, and I know you got something called Seven Secrets to Hire Google Rankings. Can you share some of those with us?

Sure. Well, it’s more like major steps to get to the top of Google. For example, you need to get all your pages indexed, which means you need to get into the big database. A great way to frame this if I could kind of paint a visual in your listeners’ minds of a funnel. At the top of the funnel, you have pages that are getting crawled by Googlebot. Googlebot’s their spider, their robot that traverses the web. Exploring all the web pages, following all the links. So getting crawled is a necessary prerequisite to the next stage in the funnel, which is getting indexed, meaning that you end up in Google’s big database. So just because you get crawled, I don’t know.

Let’s say you have a 10,000-page website, and maybe 80% of those pages get crawled by Google. Just because 80% got crawled doesn’t mean that 80% are going to get indexed and get into the database. A chunk of those pages may not get into the database at all because they look like low-value pages, or they look like duplicates or what have you. So, just because you got crawled doesn’t mean you got indexed. And, of course, not everything you have gets crawled so you need to make sure you get fully crawled all 10,000 pages. Then, as many of those pages as possible will be indexed, so that’s the next stage in the funnel. Deeper down into the funnel, so as it gets narrower and narrower, you’ve got to get these pages to rank.

Just because it’s in the big database, the index, doesn’t mean that it’s going to show up on page one or somewhere where people are going to see it. People tend not to go to page two. It’s like 95% of the time, people don’t go on to page two on the search results. So, getting ranked. You have to get ranked. And then, just because you’re ranked doesn’t mean that you are actually getting clicks. So people might see you in search results with some horrible listing that people just are turned off by. As I remember, years and years ago, Starbucks had an issue with the configuration of its website, so it required cookies to use its site. And Googlebot doesn’t have cookies enabled.

So, what is the page that would be served up by Starbucks.com. The Starbucks home page had this error message: Cookies Required. That was the title of that page. And that’s what showed up in the search results in Google when people Googled coffee and Starbucks and things like that as just a really bad look. So you wouldn’t want to have a repulsive type of listing like that that would scare people away. And then, just because you got clicks doesn’t mean you’re going to get conversions, meaning you’re not necessarily going to get sales if it’s an e-commerce site, you’re not going to get email sign-ups, if it’s just an informational site where you have an email list as the primary action for people to take. Right, so you’ve got to assume that you’re going to have some bleeding at every stage in the funnel. So you’ve got to optimize each step. So that’s a really good way to do it.

A framework for people to think about. They need to make sure they get adequately crawled and indexed, rank, and get the clicks so they optimize the appearance of their search listings. Then, they have a compelling website that drives people to a primary next action. It’s not like a whole bunch of shiny objects, and there’s no real focus for people to take that one next step. So that’s a lot I know in a very short period of time, but it’s easier if you had a visual to see that. Hey, this is audio.

Yeah, well, what do you mean by how to check your Google Pulse? Is that something the average entrepreneur can do or not?

Well, there are some tools that will help with that, and it’s just a matter of knowing what those tools are. So yeah, if you’re just an entrepreneur and you’re trying to figure out if you’re doing the right things and things are working well with your SEO. Of course, you’re going to have some sort of analytics in place. If you don’t have Google Analytics, it’s like trying to drive a car without having any visibility of what’s in front of you. I don’t know; it’s the middle of winter, and you didn’t bother to scrape off the ice. That would be really scary.

So, have analytics going, like Google Analytics, which is free. Have Google Search Console set up, which is, again, free. And a lot of folks don’t take that step. They have analytics, but they don’t have Google Search Console, which formerly was called Google Webmaster Tools. And that gives you a bunch of different additional insights into, like, for example, what keywords are bringing traffic into your site, what keywords are bringing people to see your listing but they don’t necessarily click, and just different kinds of crawl reports and things that show the health of your site. So that’s two real no-brainers. But then there are these third-party tools that will help with just diagnosing different issues. For example, maybe you have a really slow-loading website, and that’s not good for SEO, but that’s not good for conversion.

People hate having to sit for a page to load. So, use a free page speed tool such as from Pingdom. There’s this thing called Full Page Test. Free tool. You just put in your URL. It’ll tell you how long it takes for your home page to load. Also, there’s a free Google tool called Google Page Speed Insights that will give you some insight into what’s going right and wrong with your page speed and give recommendations on things to do.

There are a handful of different tools that I recommend people use. Some are paid tools, and some are free. You want to check to see if you have authority in the eyes of Google. If people aren’t linking to your site, then you’re done. I mean, it’s just like you are DOA, dead on arrival. You’re not going to be able to rank, no matter how much fantastic content you have or how well-written it is. How well optimized everything is, the architecture, and everything could be just spot on on the website, and nobody’s linking to your site. It’s like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody heard it, did it fall? 

Well, in the case of SEO, no. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t amount to anything because nobody’s linking to your site. Thus, Google looks at you as essentially a leper. You’re untouchable. So, get some links, and a way to diagnose what’s going on with your authority is to use a tool like Majestic.com, LinkResearchTools.com or OpenSiteExplorer.org and just get a sense for your authority score and each of these tools has different metrics that approximate Google PageRank metric that’s an internal secret metric that they don’t share of how authoritative, trustworthy, and important your site is. And each page has separate PageRank scores. So, use one of those tools. You don’t even have to have a paid account just to get the metric from a tool like OpenSiteExplorer.org. You just put in your URL, and it tells you that your page authority on your home page is, let’s say, I don’t know.

Ten out of a hundred, that’s horrible, absolutely atrocious, and you’re not gonna rank. You’re just not, and unless it’s some esoteric term that nobody searches for except for you, like kitchen electrics, I had a client years ago, Kohl’s department stores that they were just obsessed with ranking for that term because that’s the industry term for small appliances like food processors and blenders and stuff and they were on page one for Kitchen Electric’s whoop-de-doo, you know, as their CEO, essentially, the only one searching for that term.

Nobody searches that term, right?

No, I mean, nobody’s ever used that in a sentence that I know of.

Yeah, exactly. So are you kind of, is your bailiwick like the back end, like all the stuff you’re describing, or, because I wanted to ask you about like opt-ins and things like that, or do you get involved in your agency on the, I guess that would be called the front end too, or?

Yeah, so I do all of that. I’m known as an SEO expert. I also have a great deal of expertise in conversion and marketing funnels, e-commerce, usability, and a number of other areas. But what I’m known internationally for is my SEO because I kind of wrote the book on the topic. Well, I co-wrote it. It’s called The Art of SEO. It’s its third edition, to a thousand pages, published by O’Reilly. So that’s a beast of a book, and if you want full training on SEO, that’s the book to read. Yeah, it’s daunting. It’s a great doorstop, certainly.

Let me ask you this then, just get your opinion. I mean, I remember in the day, it was actually not that long ago, but three or four years ago, you could put up an opt-in and give a special report, or two or three special reports, fancy pictures, makes them actually look like books, their PDF downloads. That doesn’t seem to be cutting it anymore. I don’t think people. I think people are so resistant to putting in their name and email just to get a special report. Do you have any knowledge about what’s trending a little better? What’s maybe more exciting in exchange for an email?

Yeah, so what works better is, I mean, ultimately, you need their email, or you need them to be on a retargeting list. We can talk about retargeting in a moment. Still, the idea is if we can get people to get enticed by some valuable piece of content that they don’t have to opt in for as the first point of entry, you’re gonna have a lot more success with that because people are jaded and they’re sick of. Basically, it’s a bait-and-switch sort of thing. Oh, this thing sounds really awesome. They’re scrolling through their Facebook newsfeed, and they click on it, and it’s just a squeeze page.

It’s just an opt-in, and they have to give their email address to get any useful information out of that page. This is very frustrating. So, if you can put some valuable content in front of the user first and then offer something even more valuable after that to take them to the next stage in the marketing funnel or sales funnel, that works better. For example, let’s say you’re doing Facebook advertising. I don’t know, a really valuable guide or how-to or something that’s just completely free and in the clear. It’s just like a really extensive blog post. 

They don’t have to download a PDF. They just read the post. And what you’re doing behind the scenes is you are dropping a retargeting pixel. So now you can retarget them, meaning that you can put another ad just for those people who have been to your website. And say that, all right, they’ve been to my website, they’ve already gotten some value hopefully through this ad that provided a great how-to, completely free and in the clear of the blog post. Now, let’s give them something that requires an opt-in. So we’re gonna promote some sort of checklist, worksheets, buyer’s guide, something that’s a downloadable PDF, and they have to opt in in order to get that. You’ll have much better uptake.

Because this is their second interaction, second or third or whatever interaction with you and not just their first impression, the first impression should not be a take but a give. Right, that makes good sense. So what are you gonna do to give immediately? And that’s what people just don’t get. They’re like, I need to get something from my visitor. I need to get that email address. I need to be able to continue the conversation. Yes, and you need to give it before you can get it. I mean, it’s just, that’s just good karma.

Love that, love that. Hey, Stephan shared a ton of good information. I’m looking forward to diving through a thousand-page book at some point. Man, how long did it take you to write that?

Years, yeah. We started in 2008, the first edition came out in 2009, updated it in 2012, and then again, just last year in August, the latest edition came out. And each time, it’s almost a fundamental rewrite; each time new chapters get added, and a bunch of new tools, a bunch of tools go away, it’s just a constantly moving target. Yeah, and if you don’t wanna be overwhelmed to that degree. If you go to my website, stephanspenser.com, I have a bunch of PDFs, guides, worksheets and so forth. I also have a bunch of SEO myths. It just astounds me that there’s so much mythology still on SEO.

People just say something with so much authority and emphasis that people believe it, and it’s just crazy the stuff that’s out there still. So that’s a great download. There’s also an SEO Hiring Blueprint if you’re looking to hire an SEO agency or a person and either an employee or a contractor. It’s really valuable, and there’s a BS Detector that you should grab, too, with some trick questions to slip into the interview process. Of course, all your listeners can just hire me and know they’ll work with the experts. But StephanSpencer.com.

Awesome. Stephan, thanks so much, man. It’s been a really enlightening experience. There’s so much to SEO. And gosh, it just changes all the time. But I greatly appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thanks for having me. It’s been great.

My pleasure. Hey, folks, that wraps up this very special episode of Stick Light Glue Radio with Stephan Spencer. Remember, Stick Like Glue Radio is the only podcast dedicated to helping you create an everlasting bond with your customers so they stay longer, spend more, and refer more. I’m your host, Jim Palmer, the Dream Business Coach. I’m committed to helping you build a more profitable business faster. Watch for another great episode of Stick Like Glue Radio this time next week. Until then, keep taking action, keep moving forward, and don’t ever, ever, ever give up.

Hey, go out there and do something nice for somebody today. Take care everybody. For more information and free resources on how to create your dream business, connect with Jim Palmer, the Dream Business Coach. And be sure to check out Dream Business Coach TV, powerful two-minute videos filled with Jim’s unique smart marketing and business building advice. 

That’s www.dreambizcoachtv.com See you next week for more Stick Like Blue radio. And remember, success is not only possible, you deserve success.