This is a clip of Stephan’s interview about Stephan Spencer Rocks the Podcast on Interview Connections.
I’m here with Stephan Spencer. Stephan, how are you rocking the podcast?
Well, I love getting onto just in front of the camera or in front of the podcast mic and either sharing my wisdom and experience around SEO or e-commerce, online marketing, or I love getting guests on my shows to talk about like biohacking, life hacking or marketing. Yeah. And you, so SEO is your big topic. You wrote a really large book about SEO. Yeah, I co-authored The Art of SEO, which is a thousand pages. It’s seen as the Bible of SEO, and it’s in its 4th edition. So it’s a lot of work to maintain the book, but it’s well worth it.
I’m sure that you have to maintain that because, you know, SEO is constantly changing, and it was very funny. I had to share the story about the podcast movement, and I had a booth at the podcast movement for Interview Connections. Stephan was there with some people as I was packing up my booth, and I was about ready to bring it to FedEx. I had this big box, and he’s like, “Hey, Jessica, I want to give you a copy of my book,” and he hands me this thousand-page book, and I was like, “Are you joking right now?”
It was really heavy. Did you take it, or did you say I’ll pass? I don’t remember.
I did. Well, I probably did because I really thought you were joking. Well, gosh, how many of those were you carrying around the conference?
Yeah, I usually get them shipped because they are pretty heavy. So I had probably a dozen that I handed out at that conference.
That is hilarious. And so everyone’s like, “Thank you for adding five pounds to my bag on the way home.” It was really funny. It worked out because I had a box that I could ship. I was shipping a box anyway, but so that’s just a fun story. We had a really good laugh. So, you have two podcasts. What are they called?
Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized.
Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized, and how are they different?
Well, Marketing Speak is all marketing-related. I’ve had Jay Abraham on and all sorts of online marketers like Neil Patel and John Lee Dumas on. I’ve had Jared Spool, a usability expert. So yeah, just all sorts of marketing-related topics and experts, and then my other show, Get Yourself Optimized, is all about life transformation because I went through a big one myself.
So if you go to the Optimized Geek website, which is GetYourselfOptimized.com, you’ll see it on the About page, and after me, you will be shocked. I think I showed you a photo of what I used to look like.
So, I went through a big transformation. I want to share with the world what I learned, how I went through that journey, and the kind of experts that I aligned myself with joining masterminds and going to seminars and everything.
I probably spent half a million dollars on self-development over the last five years, so I wanted to distill all that into a show by bringing the experts who made a difference in my life onto my show. So I’ve had Byron Katie on that. For example, Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof Coffee Guy, who’s amazing, and Dr. Daniel Amen, who wrote Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. So, I got some great guests.
Wow. And how are you leveraging your podcast to grow your business? Have you seen a link between the two?
Well, it’s more of an open door for me. I don’t typically get sales leads. Like I’m a consultant. I help companies like Chanel, Zappos, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Sony to get higher rankings in Google. And they’re probably not listening to my podcast, those kinds of companies. But that’s okay. It’s a way to build relationships with really cool movers and shakers in my industry and related industries. So, it’s more of a tangential effect.
That’s awesome. And you’ve gone on some podcasts as well as a guest expert. You get interviewed. Talk about how that has been. You know, is it the same kind of thing where you’re not necessarily talking directly to people who are your clients because you’re working with these bigger companies? So when you’re a guest expert on podcasts, are the effects kind of the same where it’s, you know, brand recognition and exposure, but not necessarily direct sales leads?
Typically, it just gives me an opportunity to get my own podcasts out there as well, and it’s just part of my overall media exposure. So, I’ve also been focusing on TV. I’ve gotten on nine TV appearances this year. I have a tenth one coming up next week. It’s a national one. And so this is all part of a bigger initiative.
My main goal is to have a New York Times bestselling self-help book next year, and I want to be on Good Morning America and/or The Today Show. So, being on podcasts, TV, and radio are all part of that strategy. And I’ve been on a range of different types of podcasts. You guys have booked me on some different podcasts, ones that are about buying, selling, and building businesses like Built to Sell.
I’ve been on that, talking about selling my agency. And that was in 2010. I learned lots of lessons from that, and I shared them on my podcast. I talked about it on a social media podcast. I’ll forget which one that was because I have a social media book as well called Social Ecommerce.
Is it also a thousand pages?
No, no, no. That one’s a little easier to read. It’s, I think, under 300. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So, it’s not quite as daunting. I even have an under 100-page book. Wow. So, I have a third book. All these are published by O’Reilly, and that one’s called Google Power Search. So that’s a really easy read. That’s how to find anything on Google.
Oh, cool.
Confidential business plans forced research reports that normally cost thousands of dollars. It’s all at your fingertips if you know the right search queries to type into Google.
Oh, I got to get that book.
Yeah, that’s really helpful.
Yeah, we do like, you know, that, that really does sound like an interesting book, especially for, you know, for our team and Interview Connections. One of our main skills is searching and finding podcasts, and there are thousands of them. When you just go to iTunes or Google, like podcasts in this niche, you’ll see a little, you’ll see some, but then you have to search in different ways and be creative with your searches. So it sounds like that book would help us then kind of search Google differently. So that’s really cool. What was the name of that book again?
Google Power Search.
Okay, awesome. And any last tips for people who are getting into podcasting either as a host or a guest? What would be a couple of your tips for them?
Well, your website’s really important. So if you can, especially in terms of your Google rankings, that’s where you’re gonna get the visibility. It’s not iTunes, Stitcher, or anything like that. It’s your website, so make sure that you’re not only getting, let’s say you have a guest who’s coming on to your show, get them to commit to blasting out to social media about them being on your show and all that which is obvious but also ask them to link to the episode from their website to your website.
Yeah. How do you handle that? How do you handle that ask? Because I’ve heard from some different people, they don’t. They feel that, as guests, they don’t like it when podcasters require them to do that upfront. So, how do you ask them to do that while still maintaining the respect of them being your guests? Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, so a great way to do this is to ask them in the conversation either before or after you’re doing the recording.
So it’s not like when you schedule them like, okay, you have to, like in email like you have to do this. You wait till you’re on, and you have some rapport with them, and it’s a verbal ask. Okay, great, I like that a lot. Cause yeah, most people are gonna say yes, and the tone is lost in email. So, I like that you asked them about it on the call.
That’s great. Yeah. And that’s so helpful. Like the backlinks are, I just did a video about, hey, one major benefit to doing podcast interviews is when you’re a guest on someone’s show, you have a backlink to your site, which you know that that’s great for SEO.
Yeah. So the best time to ask is either right before, during, or right after the episode has been recorded, but in that same session, the second best time is after you’ve noticed they haven’t linked to you. So anytime, right, so you can go back on all your previous guests and look to see if any of them are not linked to me.
Yeah.
And then go and reach out to them and say, “Hey, you know I’d love for you to. I see you have a media page or press page, and my podcast has been getting some traction since I’ve been on TV. I’ve talked about the podcast on multiple TV networks, and so forth. I think it would be beneficial for you and for me if you included the episode on your media page or on your press page.”
Absolutely. So, I’m going to wrap this up here. What is your website, Stephan? Where can people find you online?
Yeah, so Stephanspenser.com, which also links to my two podcast shows and includes a ton of resources around SEO and online marketing, social media marketing, et cetera. But for my two podcast show websites, I have the Get Yourself Optimized website, which is GetYourselfOptimized.com and then MarketingSpeak, which is marketingspeak.com.
Awesome. Thank you so much for watching this. Thank you, Stephan, for being here. If you want to learn how to get guests for your podcast or work with us to be on shows, go to InterviewConnections.com. Thanks for watching, everyone.
