Scaling up from being an SEO freelance consultant
Okay so perhaps you’re an SEO freelancer.
Working job to job, helping clients on a small scale.
But you have big dreams.
You’d love to run your very own SEO agency.
But the thought of setting it up and managing all the ins and outs leaves you cold.
The risk is huge and let’s be honest, SEO agencies often don’t have the best reputation out there!
So how do you overcome all this and make your agency honest, legitimate and profitable?
Today we’re going to answer all this and more.
Tune in to learn
- How running an SEO agency differs from being a freelance SEO consultant
- Darren’s tips for starting your own SEO agency
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Why so many agencies get a bad wrap, and how to improve your reputation
- Big changes in SEO – what has happened in the past, and what’s coming up in the future
- Darren’s top DIY SEO tip
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About Darren Jamieson
Darren has been in the field of digital marketing since the late ’90s, and has worked with brands such as Sony, the NHS, the Environment Agency and as the in-house web designer for GAME.
After co-founding Engage Web in 2009, the company now handles the digital marketing campaigns for clients ranging from small, local businesses, to global brands across the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Fun fact: Darren once stood up a huge film director for a meeting, before he was famous, and he wanted to work with him. It was only years later he saw his name again as the director of a TV show, and every subsequent film he releases is like a dagger through Darren’s heart.
Connect with Darren Jamieson
Useful Resources
- Free webinar: Increase your website traffic (and sales)
- The Ultimate SEO Checklist
- Free SEO Nibbles Course
Transcript
Kate Toon:
Perhaps you are an SEO freelancer working job to job, helping clients on a small scale, but you have big dreams. You’d love to run your very own SEO agency, but the thought of setting it up and managing all the ins and outs leaves you cold. The risk is huge. And let’s be honest, SEO agencies don’t have the best reputation out there. So how do you overcome all this and make your agency honest, legitimate, and profitable? Today we’re going to answer all this and more.
Hello, my name is Kate Toon and I’m the head chef at The Recipe for SEO Success, an online teaching hub for all things related to search engine optimization and digital marketing. And today I’m talking with Darren Jamieson. Today, I’m talking with Darren Jamieson. Hello Darren.
Darren Jamieson:
Hello, how are you?
Kate Toon:
I’m very good. It’s about 2:00 AM in the morning for Darren. He’s still in his pyjamas, but he is ready. He wears a suit jacket to bed. Darren has been in the field of digital marketing since the late ’90s when he was only six years old and has worked with brands such as Sony, the NHS, the Environment Agency, and as in-house web designer for Game. Well, that’s quite cool. After co-founding Engage Web in 2009, the company now handles the digital marketing campaigns for clients raging from small local businesses to global brands across the UK, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Fun fact, I bet this is going to be a doozy. Darren once stood up a huge film director for a meeting before he was famous and he wanted to work with him. It was only years later he saw his name again as the director of a TV show. And every subsequent film he has released is like a dagger through Darren’s heart. I love that missed opportunity.
Darren Jamieson:
Oh, massively missed opportunity. I always get asked that question. If you could go back and give yourself advice to your 18 year old self, instantly I know exactly what I would do.
Kate Toon:
Really. What were you doing? What made you stand him up? What was your better offer?
Darren Jamieson:
Oh, it was trains. It wasn’t even a better offer. It was trains, not to go look at trains because I like trains.
Kate Toon:
I was going to say, that would be sad.
Darren Jamieson:
It was to get the train home. There was a TV series in the UK called Beadle’s Hot Shots hosted by Jeremy Beadle.
Kate Toon:
I remember. Whatever happened to Jeremy Beadle?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, he died.
Kate Toon:
Sorry, Darren.
Darren Jamieson:
It’s all right. He’s not been making a lot since then. There’s this programme called Hot Shots where you send in spoofs that you make and I made a Batman spoof and an Indiana Jones, Julian Clary crossover spoof, which was Julian Clary’s Indiana Jones. It was probably the funniest thing we’ve ever done. But the guy who’s editing these programmes for Beadle’s Hot Shots asked me and me mate Steven to go down to the studio when they filmed it because they used to film them in front of a live studio audience, not like now where it’s all just edited and…
Kate Toon:
Canned laughter.
Darren Jamieson:
Canned laughter. They had budget back then. When we walked in, this guy been edited my films. He recognised me and he recognised Steven and he said, “Oh, come and meet me in the bar after the taping of the show because I want to talk to you about season two. I want you to make some stuff for season two.” And he’d even sent me a script to film. I’ve got it around here somewhere. He sent me a spoof script he wanted me to film because he liked the way I filmed stuff. But we had to get the train back from London to South Wales and we missed it. And he was like, “Let’s just go” because TV shows take forever to record. And we stood him up and never saw him again. And it was years later I was watching this TV series called Spaced with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and I recognised the name of the director after about the third or fourth episode. And it was a guy called Edgar Wright who then went on to make Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and Scott…
Kate Toon:
Oh yeah, big name.
Darren Jamieson:
…Pilgrim versus The World and Baby Driver and Last Tango Soho, I think it was. And I stood him up.
Kate Toon:
Well I know that Edgar listens to this show on a regular basis. Edgar, if you’re listening today…
Darren Jamieson:
I hope you do.
Kate Toon:
It’s all right, I’ve got him, I will send them the show. We’re good mates. If you had met Edgar then you wouldn’t have set up an SEO agency. See what I did there, trying to get you back on track.
Darren Jamieson:
True. You’re absolutely right. I wouldn’t have, I’d be somewhere else right now.
Kate Toon:
You’d be far happier and have a much better life. But we’ll move on from that. Let’s get into today’s topic. So we’re talking today about SEO agencies and for some people that is their dream. For many others, being a freelancer is all they want to do. But the agency model is not an easy one. If you have been working as a freelancer, let’s start right at the beginning. What do you think the main differences are? Obviously maybe the scope of clients and things like that, but if you would to say, “Okay, the difference between being a freelancer SEO person and working in an agency or having your age own agency,” what would you say the core differences are?
Darren Jamieson:
It’s interesting, cause this is an argument that crops up on Twitter quite a lot and I try not to wade in because I know the majority of people that are having this argument on Twitter are freelancers. And it’s almost like the tenants and landlords thing. If you are a landlord you don’t want to get involved cause people can look at you and go, “Oh, you’re one of them.” But the issue tends to be people who work in agencies or are freelance will look at what the client actually pays for their marketing each month and they’ll say, “Oh, well I could do it for far less than that,” or, “I’m expected to do these hours and that’s what they’re paying for. They’re not getting the same.”
And the big difference, I think is, that when you’re freelance, and I’ve been freelance, so let me state that straight up, I’m not making this up from a perspective of, I don’t understand. When you are freelance or when you are working for an agency, there are so many other factors you have to take into consideration for where budget for a client or where overheads for the agency go and that’s the thing that you don’t necessarily realise. So when you run an agency and you employ people, you are responsible for their salary whether or not you’ve got clients. So every month their salary comes first, you have to pay them. That’s the big thing. So if there’s no new business coming in, doesn’t matter, you got to pay them. If you lose a big client or a big contract, doesn’t matter, you got to pay them.
Whereas when you’re freelance, you only get paid for the work that you do. You take a holiday, you don’t get paid. There’s overheads of the office, there’s insurance, there’s national insurance, there’s pension contributions. So many things that you have to pay for and understand as running a business that you don’t get to do as a freelancer. And in many ways the freelancers are a much more romanticised view because you’re not running a business, you are not part of the problem, you’re not part of the man, you are the underdog battling against the system in a way. And there’s that kind of Robin Hood attitude towards it. Whereas the agency owner is the big fat guy that sits in an office and doesn’t speak to his staff and doesn’t know anybody. And he’s a little bit lecturous and he’s a little bit lewd and he’s from-
Kate Toon:
You’re making this sound amazing, Darren.
Darren Jamieson:
I know I am. I’m speaking from past experience.
Kate Toon:
I know, well having worked for lots of advertising agencies and being a freelancer myself, I feel it. I think there’s lots of benefits to being freelance. You’re much more nimble, you can not work, work. Obviously you don’t have that weight of responsibility. I, like you, have many staff now and it does bear down on you, that pressure. But obviously there’s lots of advantages to an agency, not just for the SEO themselves, but from a client perspective you’re generally getting the hive mind if you get an agency. You’re getting more than one person touching your account, you’re getting more. You’ve got your account manager maybe, but there’s six or seven people. There’s 10 or 20 people who you could work with all with different skill sets.
There’s strategists and implementation people and people who just focus on keyword research and people who only work on local SEO. And as a freelance SEO… SEO is vast. Having done this podcast and had maybe 300 guests on it, to know everything about everything is pretty hard. So the benefit for the client often, with the agency, is that they have that wealth of choice. What do you think the benefits are for the client?
Darren Jamieson:
That’s a really good point actually because if you are in house working for a business, you are the whole source of their digital marketed knowledge. That’s it. It all rests on you. And if you decide you are not going to investigate a particular strategy, then that client’s going to miss out on that particular strategy. But when you are running an agency, so long as you are taking it from the attitude that we do, that you’re hiring people that are better than you, you’re hiring people that have more of a passion, if you like, than you do.
We’ve got some great people, we’ve got some proper nerds. And I mean proper, proper nerds. And they love it. One guy takes days off to go to digital marketing conferences in his spare time. I’ve never known that before. He just likes to do it. And because you’ve got that passion, that enthusiasm for it, for all the different aspects, that as a client coming to an agency, you’re buying into that you are getting the different experts in different areas. Well as I say, if it is just a freelancer, it’s just what they know, what they believe in.
And I’ve spoken to freelancers before in SEO and I’m thinking of one in particular who doesn’t believe in content. He doesn’t believe in content, he doesn’t believe in blogging, he doesn’t think it has any purpose in SEO. And anyone who hires him, I’m sure he’s great from a technical standpoint. I haven’t seen his work but I’m sure he’s great, but anyone who hires him, he’s completely missing a huge part of SEO because of his own personal prejudices for whatever reason against something that’s massively important. But with an agency, you shouldn’t get that.
Kate Toon:
You should get that mix. And I think the thing is as well, we know you mentioned Twitter, which, it’s a place of arguments, it’s a place of craziness sometimes. And I’ve been in the SEO space for a while like you and there’s also this reluctance to show any kind of uncertainty. If you ask a question, people will jump on you and be like, “Why are you asking that? You should know that.” I remember in forums, Google had forums back in the day, asking questions and people using that as material against you. And as you said, people are so like, “I’m camp backlinks, I’m camp content, I’m schema, schema schema.” And people, they get their pitch forks and they rally and as you said it’s really… But equally, it’s really hard as a freelancer to be across everything because it’s changing all the time.
There’s new updates, you’re testing this, that and the other and you’re still trying to serve clients. Whereas often an agency will have at least some people who are dedicated towards research and keeping on top of trends. And you also have that lovely thing where you can ask your colleague and say, “Hey, I’ve been trying this strategy with my client. Does that work for your strategy?” Without that fear of looking like a fool, because no one in the SEO world wants to look like a fool. It’s quite a peculiar little world, the SEO world, isn’t it?
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah, it’s very much perception, isn’t it? Funny you mentioned about the Google forums, I remember when I worked at an agency, we had a lot of SEOs at the agency and one of them did ask a question on one of those Google forums about a specific problem that the client was having. And because he was using the account for the agency, so it was obviously his email or his user name out there, he just got a load of abuse. So, “Why are you asking that? You’re meant to be working for an agency, you’re meant to be an expert. Why are you asking?”
Kate Toon:
“You should know this.” Oh, I had people screen grab my questions and use them as a basis for a blog and be like, “Kate Toon asked this question. Really? If she’s an SEO…” Oh my God, people can be right bitchy. People think it’s women but it can be just as much men. But anyway, let’s move on. Starting your own agency, to some people, would just be overwhelming. Some people, it’s hard enough to even get a VA to help you or a subcontractor. You started an agency during a recession. It must have been pretty tough. Would you give some tips, maybe like five top tips for somebody who’s thinking today, that they would like to scale. If you’ve only got three, it can be three or it can be one. What do you reckon? 17 please. 17 tips.
Darren Jamieson:
Right. Very quickly. 47 top tips. Number one, I would say, doing it ourself is very difficult. It’s much better if you can go into business with a partner. But when I say that, obviously it’s got to be a partner that you like and trust. So it could be a life partner, it could be somebody you worked with at a previous agency before. But where a lot of people make mistakes, particularly in web design or SEO, is that they go into business with somebody who does exactly the same thing they do. And if you go into business with somebody that has the same skills, interests and abilities as you, you are going to struggle because you need somebody that has complimentary skills.
So if you are a creative ball of chaos like me, you need somebody as a business partner who is very proceduralized, who is very organised, that knows how to keep in track, keep on track projects and keeping track with the invoicing, cause that’s important when you’re running an agency, invoicing. A lot of freelancers make a mistake with that and they don’t do it regularly and they don’t chase it up. Keep on track with client relations and communication. That’s really important as well. So do that. Go into business with somebody with complimentary skills.
Kate Toon:
Find a yin to your yang.
Darren Jamieson:
Find a yin to your yang. Yes. Communication, I mentioned it there. It is vital. I’ve seen loads of talks on this and I’ve experienced it myself many times, most clients leave agencies because of poor communication. It’s not because of the work you’re doing, it’s not because you are not getting them the results, it’s because you are not conveying those results and you’re not conveying the ROI that the client is expected. You’re not talking to them in the language they understand, cause most SEOs unfortunately are quite techy and they will often talk to clients in a techy way that the clients do not understand. And if you are talking to them about things they don’t know, they’re not going to ask, they’re just going to leave and go to somebody that speaks their language. So communication is absolutely vital.
I think the most difficult thing, and this is where we got it wrong first time is your first hire. Your first hire is absolutely critical because if you are taking on somebody on a full-time salary, you are responsible for their wage, you’re responsible for their family, responsible for their mortgage or their rent, you need to make sure that you can cover that. So you shouldn’t be taking somebody on as a hire until you are at the capacity where you can’t do anymore. So if you are getting in work at seven in the morning and you are leaving at seven at night and you’re working weekends, then’s the time to get a hire. But what that person does is important as well. You need them to take the tasks off you, which allows you to do other things, not to do more of what they’re doing. So if you are copywriting for example, there’s no point you hiring a copywriter in your agency and then you continue in to do more copywriting because you’re just compounding the problem.
You need to be out there then getting more clients in to actually allow that to happen. We took on, I think our first hire was an editor, a content editor, and he wasn’t the right person. Luckily we found that out quite quickly, got the next person in who was perfect and was brilliant and continued working for us for years. Even after he immigrated with his wife to Canada, he still worked for us remotely for many years after that. It’s brilliant. So your first hire is absolutely critical.
Kate Toon:
All right, I’m going to stop you there cause I want, Oh yeah, I know you have 47.
Darren Jamieson:
Oh 47?
Kate Toon:
I know, I know but I think we might flip it over. So I love that. So maybe starting with someone who I can trust who’s got complimentary skills. Communication, I think we’re going to come to this in the next question as well. And then considering your first hire. Some of the common mistakes. I was going to say, communication I think is the biggest mistake I see SEO agencies making, that they talk, obviously there’s a lexicon in SEO, it’s called schema. You know can call it something else. You can call it structured data but sometimes you have to use the relevant term. But agencies that try and bamboozle clients with fancy words and complex ideas because then it edifies them and makes them look smarter. And the client just goes, “Oh well you sound like you know what you’re doing, take my money.” But that will only last for so long because after a while the client starts to feel, “I’m paying this much a month and I don’t really understand what I’m paying for.”So I think that’s the most common mistake. But I’m sure you’ve got a few others. What do you think are some other common mistakes that maybe you made at the beginning? You’ve mentioned one, but do you see other SEO agencies making?
Darren Jamieson:
I’ve got to touch on that cause you said it, cause I think that is really important. When you said, “I don’t know what I’m paying for,” and the lack of reporting, it comes under communication. That is the most common thing I hear from people who work with other agencies. I didn’t know what they were doing. I don’t know what I’m paying for.
Kate Toon:
Or they do reports and they just don’t make any sense to the clients. It’s a beautiful three-page report explaining this and it’s like, “So what? What does this mean? Are we making more money? Let’s see the bottom line.”
Darren Jamieson:
It’s incredible, cause considering a lot of SEO agencies do content, as they should, when you’re producing content, the important thing we’re producing the content is to understand who the person you’re producing it for is. And it’s not the client, it’s the client’s target audience. And you need to know how they speak, how they communicate, how they like to receive content so that you produce the content in a style that best fits them. It’s the same when you’re talking to your clients. You need to produce the reports in a way that your client wants. There’s absolutely no point giving them a 48-page document which talks through all the complicated on page stuff and technical work that you’ve done, when they don’t care. They want to know how is it affected them, how is it improved their results, how is it going towards the KPIs that they’ve got?
Talk to your clients in a way that they want to be talked to, not the way that you want to talk to people. Cause as you mentioned, it raises you up, if you use lots of technical jargon. It doesn’t. A confused mind doesn’t buy. So whether you are pitching for a sale for a client or whether you are giving them a report, if you are confusing them, they’re just going to leave.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I remember, it’s a mistake I made early on. I was doing keyword research for a big pet food brand and I wanted to show them all the work I’d done. At the end of the day, the keyword phrase was something like dog food. I’m joking. A bit more complex than that. But it had taken a lot of research to get to the point where we’d ended up with these 20 or so keywords for these particular pieces of content. And I was showing them that competition, click through pages of pages of stuff and they just didn’t understand. And I could see their eyes glazing over at the end, but I wanted to justify my efforts. And I think that’s the other thing because a lot of SEOs, especially in the early days, it’s quite thankless and clients need to be educated on how long things take. And also there’s a lot of work that goes in the early days technically optimising the site, choosing the keywords, optimising, that shows no results for a while and you’re desperate to show the client some things.
So I think often there’s that over egging of reports to try and justify the fee. But as you said, I love that, “A confused mind doesn’t buy.” So reporting and communication is one mistake that SEO agencies make. What are some others that you see them making?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, one thing I think we’ve been doing for a long time, which is a mistake and that’s something that we’ve been failing to do and that’s educating the client. And it’s something I’ve only recently, in the last year or so, become aware that it’s important to do that. If you are taking on a client for SEO to improve their sales leads, whatever it may be, whatever their target is, you need to educate them in what you’re doing and why you are doing it. Because if they don’t know why you are doing something, they’re not going to understand it and you’re going to get pushback from the client. If they don’t appreciate how you’ve done it and why you’ve done it, then somebody else can quite easily go to them and go, “Oh they’re charging you that, are they? Oh we can do that for this.”
And the whole educating the client up front means they are less likely to make a really stupid mistake on their website. For example, and there’s a couple that’s spring to mind, and they all evolve around the same thing, redesigning the website and erasing all of the content and not telling you, is a huge thing I’ve seen many, many times. And if the client had been educated on, “This is why you need this, this is why it’s important, this is why we’re doing it, look at how it works,” then there’s no way they would’ve touched that.
Because there’s one client I’m thinking of that moved to another agency for a redesign of their website cause they did all their branding and that was fine. They did a really good job of the branding. It’s a nice website. However, they didn’t want the content export, which was probably a thousand or so pages, produced over a decade, which had featured snippets for all of their pages and they said, “No, no, no, they don’t want the content. We’ve spoken to the new agency and they said they don’t want it.” “They’re doing your SEO as well though, aren’t they?” “Yeah, yeah. They don’t want the content.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, yeah. They don’t want it.” If that client had been educated, there’s no way they’d have gone. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll just delete it.”
Kate Toon:
Because if they could backwards, justify a reason, but if you don’t know… Obviously all I do these days is teach SEO, I don’t have any clients and I say that my courses produce the best possible SEO clients. Cause I remember when I started out, people were like, “Well if you teach people how to do it, you’re going to take away our clients.” It’s like, “Nah, I give you perfect clients who appreciate how long it takes to create a great piece of content, amplify it, build backlinks, the back and forth of building one really good backlink with a great media source.” It could take hours but you don’t know until you know.
So I think education is a huge piece. And just the assumption that everyone gets it. And some people come on my course and they barely really understand that this is a browser and this is a search engine. They’re talking about, “So, name me a search engine,” and they’ll say, “Safari.” And I’m like, “No, that’s a browser.” And they’re like, “What’s a browser?” And it’s like, “That’s the thing you look at the internet through.” Now that sounds really patronising, but you don’t know what you don’t know. To us that’s just obvious. But you don’t know what you don’t know. I love that. So education is a common mistake. Come on, there must be others. What others do you think there are?
Darren Jamieson:
Oh yeah, there is a big one. And that’s not knowing when to say no, because there are clients we’ve… When you first start an agency or even as a freelancer, you’re hungry for clients, you’re hungry for business and you’ll take on anything that comes to you. But there are certain times when, you call it Spidey-sense, if you want, call it a little tingling in the back of the neck when you think, “I don’t think we should work with this person.” And when you first start, you don’t have that because you are just desperate for all business and you want to prove yourself. But you need to get to that stage as quickly as possible because there are certain businesses, certain clients, certain personality types that you shouldn’t be working with that are just going to be a drain on your energy, a drain on your mental health. They’re going to drain your resources and they’re going to walk away and they are going to slag you off.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, you’re not going to win anyway. You’re not going to win.
Darren Jamieson:
No. There was one a while back, where I had the meeting in the office and I think it was the guy that owned it. He was a older gentleman and there was two other people in the office, a man and a woman. And this guy mentioned, “My staff, they understand my little quirks, they understand when I say something.” And he gave an example and it was pretty racist and I got the impression that he quite openly throws casual racism around the office and his staff tolerate it because he owns the business and they really haven’t got any choice.
I should have known at that stage, “No.” But we took him on because they’re quite a big brand. And it was probably a week or two weeks later, we had a girl in our office who was work experience and she was the daughter of one of our best clients, but she was a graduate, so third year degree. She answered the phone to this guy phoning in and because she didn’t know who he was, instantly he gave her a mouthful over the phone and we got rid of him at a few days after that. I should have known before it even got to that.
Kate Toon:
Recognising the red flags.
Darren Jamieson:
Spot those red flags and think, “Do you know what? This guy’s not a good fit for me. I don’t want to work with him.” Understand that and accept it.
Kate Toon:
It’s hard to say no, isn’t it? But you’re so right. Also, I think some clients are really potentially hard. The expectations they have for the budget they want to pay is just unrealistic. And that can be hard to turn… “I want to rank number one for dentist Sydney or plumber Sydney,” classic. And it’s like, “Well we can achieve that, but it’s such a competitive space that you are going to need to do this, this, this and this and it’s going to cost this much,” and they’re not going to want to hear that. So sometimes turning clients down because they simply do not understand what it’s going to take to achieve the goals that they have or their goals are just crazy.
There’s lots more we could talk about there, but we’re talking about things that SEO agencies do wrong. And I do think, unfortunately SEO agencies do have such a bad reputation and there’s a brief period, I don’t know if people still do it, where a lot of SEO agencies were not calling themselves SEO agency. They were calling themselves outbound marketing agencies and inbound marketing agencies, simply because they have such a bad rep and we all still get, I’m sure you get them too Darren, the emails, “Greetings of the day. I’ve had a look at your site, I found 47 mistakes. We can get you number one ranking and you don’t get those from accountants, you don’t get those from hairdressers or vets, but you do get them from SEOs. So why do you think SEO agencies get such a bad rap?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, I think one of the main problems is that, as you say, a lot of clients don’t understand SEO and don’t know what they’re doing. SEO agencies don’t report what they’re doing. But there’s so many people doing SEO, obviously they’re not SEOs, they’re not SEO agencies. That’s the problem. You get web designers, and I’ve seen this myself, web designers who design a website, they put the website live for the client, the client comes back to them a week later and says, I’ve heard about SEO, can you do that for me?
Kate Toon:
Can you put that on my site for me?
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah, put that on my site. Can you just put the SEO on my site? And the web designer will have a look online and you’ll read a blog. It might be one of yours, it might be one of mine, but he’ll read a blog and you’ll go, “Oh, all right, well that sounds quite straightforward. Yes, I can do that for you. That’ll be…” Pick a random number out the air and add a naught onto it and then the client, “Oh yeah, thank you. I love that.” And then the web designer won’t do it because he doesn’t know what to do. So nothing will happen. I am absolutely adamant that the vast majority of SEO done like that, nothing ever happens. So clients are paying for nothing.
Kate Toon:
The SEO packages. I’ve had over a thousand people and I must have reviewed hundreds of sites and a lot of them, they’ve done SEO because they’ve installed the Yoast plugin. They haven’t put anything into the plugin, they haven’t added a title tag or even changed any of the settings. But they’ve installed Yoast. So that’s, tick, SEO done. And that’s your $597 SEO package, thank you very much. So how can we improve that reputation? I guess, it’s just as you mentioned, education, communication, sharing results, hoping that the… I do think it’s a little bit less Wild West than it used to be. 10 years ago or so when I got into it, it was pretty Wild Westy. I’m not sure it’s quite as bad now. What do you think?
Darren Jamieson:
I’d say it’s better now, because Google’s better.
Kate Toon:
Yes, it’s not as easy.
Darren Jamieson:
Oh, exactly. It’s not as easy. Back then you could…
Kate Toon:
You literally just plop a keyword in white text on the background and you were done. It was brilliant.
Darren Jamieson:
All the dodgy crap that people used to do, used to work. That’s the problem.
Kate Toon:
Annoying.
Darren Jamieson:
So people kept doing it and that became SEO. And then as Google started filtering different things out that didn’t work, things stopped working again and then people lost all confidence that SEO ever worked. And people would say, “Oh SEO is dead. Google hates SEO.” No, Google doesn’t hate SEO. Google hates the crap that people are doing, that it wasn’t able to detect and now it is. And there was quite, I’m going to name them, there is a big company called 1&1 Internet, huge brand. They’re a web hosting company by trade and they’ve got their web design package called 1&1 IONOS, which is advertised on TV all throughout the UK. I don’t know if you’ve got that in Australia as well. They’re a German company, huge brand. And they advertised on TV that your website package, it’s one of those template ones, like Wix where you pick the website design, you pick the images, you pick the text, bang, your website’s live in about five minutes. On the TV ad they said includes SEO. I am not kidding you.
I called them on this and asked them, “What does that mean, it includes SEO?” And they replied to me, this whole conversation was via Twitter and they’re saying that it includes the SEO keywords. “What do you mean by it includes the SEO keywords?” And they, “Well, it’s in the meta tag keywords.” “Oh, so that’s what you mean when you say it includes SEO?” So people buying the package are sold on the concept that this website, which is like a pound a month, whatever it was, includes SEO. Wow, that’s brilliant. Because they’ve inserted a meta keywords tag for a list of keywords but we all know that that doesn’t do anything. Google completely ignores it. But that’s why SEO’s got a bad rep. People mis-selling it, people claiming they’re doing SEO when they’re not. And when you’ve got a huge brand like 1&1 Internet advertising it…
Kate Toon:
Are you going to get me sued Darren, for this? I’m going to have to beep it out. I’m already joking. I’m only joking.
Darren Jamieson:
I always skirt on the side of being sued, but I know what I can and can’t say.
Kate Toon:
No, it’s all good. I agree. We’ve got a bit of a bad rep, that I think we’re working to improve it. And as you said, I think education is the key to all of it, which is good because that’s what I do. So let’s switch back into talking about how SEO has evolved. We’re old salty sea dogs on the SEO oceans. What do you think? We talked about how Google is slowly getting ahead of the black hatters and making the internet surfer bliss. What do you think? I’m only going to give you three this time, Darren, not 47. What are three big things you think have changed in SEO over the last 10 years?
Darren Jamieson:
10 years? What year are we on now? That goes back to 2012. 2012, that’s about the Penguin update, wasn’t it?
Kate Toon:
Yeah, Penguin. Just after Panda, I think.
Darren Jamieson:
I think the big one I saw was obviously links. Back in the mid two thousands to 2010, 2011, every time you went to an SEO conference, an SEO talk, there were so many link sellers there and they were open about it. They were absolutely open about it, that they would take… You know how it works, links everywhere, thousands of them. And when that happened, which I think was 2012, and a lot of agencies that were building their whole premise on this link renting, lost all their client’s rankings overnight.
Kate Toon:
It was a big deal. A lot of sites just dropped out of the… It was a huge… That was the biggest one I think there’s been, to be honest, that’s the one that seems to take the longest to recover from. Yeah, I agree. That was a huge one.
Darren Jamieson:
But it was how these link sellers adapted and I was stunned by the balls to do this. I went to the same conference again, I think it was the year or two years later, and this same link seller was there, but they charged people to remove the links. They were charging people to remove the links. And I think, well that is… So it’s like your whole business model’s completely gone up in smoke. “Haha, haha, no it hasn’t.”
Kate Toon:
Oh my gosh. All right. So links. What do you think was another biggie?
Darren Jamieson:
Probably, I think, user intent is a big one because back in the old days, keywords was very easy. You just stick a couple of phrases on a website and then there you go. But now it’s more about, “What is the person that you are looking to get to the website actually looking for and what is it that they want to do?” So you need to have a full understanding of why that person is going there so that the content and the path that you put them through on the website actually matches what it is they want to do. Because Google’s become so clever, it now understands that. It knows what people are looking for and it knows why they’re wanting to go there. So it’s changed it from a, “Let’s just slap some content on let’s just slap some keywords on and then surely we’re going to be okay,” to, “Right, now we need to understand why we’re doing this.”
Kate Toon:
Yeah, it changed it from, “What are they searching for?,” to, “Why are they searching for it?” And I think, I’m really into content and copy, that’s my background and I love all the tech stuff too, because it’s much more black and white. But I think the linguistic capabilities of Google with Hummingbird, which is that one and MUM and BERT and it’s mind blowing, really. These days you can put the most seemingly unrelated collection of words together and the result you get back is just stellar. And the understanding now of how a preposition or a pronoun completely changes the meaning of the search. I think that’s wonderful. So the language processing I think, is a huge change. We’ve got links, we’ve got language and intent. What would be your third? You can only pick one more. And there’s so many to pick from.
Darren Jamieson:
There are so many to pick from. But I think because I come from the web design source myself, I think I have to go with mobile.
Kate Toon:
Yeah, I was going to say responsiveness, that was a biggie.
Darren Jamieson:
But the fact that mobile long ago now, I think it was 2014, eclipsed desktop search. And it’s so huge. It is so huge. The fact that, I think it’s 98% of people who use Facebook, use it on a mobile. And there’s something high eighties or low nineties percent of people exclusively use it on a mobile. We’ve got one girl that works with us here. Until she’d worked for Engaged Web, she’d never used Facebook on a desktop.
Kate Toon:
Oh, it’s a different generation. But it’s funny, I was literally reviewing a site today and I’m like, “When was the last time you actually did anything on your site, on your phone?” She’s like, “I’ve never done that.” And I’m like, “Just load your site on your phone now.” And she was like, “Oh my God.” And I’m like, “Yes, yes. That’s what I’m talking about.” You literally can’t check out properly on your phone because the things cover each other and you tap too hard. You can’t get your thumb over the blooming button. So it’s surprising that it was so long ago and yet so few people consider that when they’re a lot… Especially DIYers, they build it on their giant Mac. It’s beautiful, great contrast. But then you’re trying to check out at Tesco five o’clock with a screaming kid and looking at a phone and the contrast is awful and things are popping up and… Yeah, I love that. Sorry, I got carried away then. It’s my pet hate Darren.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah, well that again comes down to people not understanding who their site is for.
Kate Toon:
Yes, yes.
Darren Jamieson:
We’ve had that before. We’ve had people that say, “The website doesn’t look exactly right on my screens.” They’re on a desktop, 800 by 600 resolution or something. And all they’re concerned about is that it looks right on their screen and everything is in there.
Kate Toon:
So long as it looks right on the CEO’s screen. It has to look right on the CEO’s wife’s screen.
Darren Jamieson:
Hundred percent. So they may as well just get a printout of it and just stick it over the moniter. That’s all it really matters for. That’s not who’s using the bloody website, it’s your client, it’s your target audience and they’re using a bloody smartphone.
Kate Toon:
Yes. Get with it. So with those, I love those. So links, intent and responsiveness. So what do you think is coming up. I think obviously the big changes we’ve had quite recently where, Core Web Vitals and then we’ve had Google MUM and then we’ve had the Google friendly content update. What do you think is coming down the pipe? I just had John Mueller on the podcast last week and I asked him, I said, “Go on John, tell us.” And he’s like, “I can’t.” But he’s great though because what he said was, “Look in the forums, look what everyone’s complaining about. What do they not like? Everyone hates popups,” and suddenly the intrusive interstitial update comes out. So he’s like, “Look in the forums. What are people not enjoying at the moment?” And that’s often a good indication because we are looking at those too and we are seeing these problems with websites on a much larger scale. You’ve looked at six sites, they’ve wound you up. We’re looking at 600,000 sites. We see the trends. So he wouldn’t tell me. But Darren, what do you think is on the horizon?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, for years now people have been talking about voice search, about how that’s going to be the next big thing. I don’t think it is. I don’t think that’s going to happen. There’s a big change at the moment going on with Google Business, which has been renamed like a hundred million times.
Kate Toon:
17 times. It’s so annoying.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah, it’s frustrating when we… Oh, you’ve run courses. You must have to change all the stuff.
Kate Toon:
It every time I have to update it. Every time something moves a pixel to the left, I have to update everything. It grates.
Darren Jamieson:
Yeah. Well it’s undergoing huge changes at the moment. Cause it’s all going to front end editing rather than back end editing for Google business. I was literally doing a talk the other day and I was looking for button and it had gone. It’s like, “Why are they in the process of changing this now while I’m doing this document? Thank you Google.”
Kate Toon:
Just to spite you, Darren, they knew you were starting and they were like, “Quick.”
Darren Jamieson:
They’ve made me look a fool by doing this.
Kate Toon:
That was their whole goal.
Darren Jamieson:
That was their whole goal. But I think the fact that Google’s investing so much effort in changing that now and that the posting aspect on Google business is becoming a big thing. The fact that you, you’re basically allowed to shove products and events in the middle of your Google listing when people are doing your brand search, I think there’s going to be some big additions to that. I think Google’s going to put an awful lot of emphasis to that, which is good for small businesses, cause obviously it’s very easy to set up and if you do a course like yourself for example, you can actually do a Google business page in the space of an hour, hour and a half and it’s all there and you can compete with the big boys. So I think that’s probably going to be giving the power back into small businesses.
Kate Toon:
Power to the people. I like that. I think the next big thing is going to be accessibility. We’ve had a lot of UX changes. I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure put on sites to improve things like contrast and readability, and offering multimedia for people who have hearing and sight difficulties. So you can’t just have your podcast player, you have to have your transcript or you’ll be rewarded in some way. And accessibility, that improves people who have dyslexia, it helps people with dyslexia and improved fonts and not so much silly, crazy fonts and all that kind of stuff. I’m really hoping that that becomes the next big thing, to make websites more accessible for everybody. So let’s hope both of those things happen.
Darren Jamieson:
Basically keep those wacky web designers in check.
Kate Toon:
Yes. I miss the days of the little ticket tapes going across the top of the website. I miss that. My site used to have flames up the side doing that, for no reason. I was a copywriter. There was no reason. I think I had red hot copy or something brilliant like that, but I miss my flames and my ticker and my Flash. Do you remember Flash?
Darren Jamieson:
I do remember Flash.
Kate Toon:
Flash was great.
Darren Jamieson:
Used to be Macromedia Flash.
Kate Toon:
Yes, it was so good, WYSIWYG. Anyway, we’re getting sentimental. Obviously you’re an agency and you only work with big fancy clients. I’m joking, you work with lots of different clients. But to the DIY SEOers at home, if you could give them one tip, one actionable tip, nothing abstract, one thing that they could go out today and do that would actually help improve their website, their usability, whatever, what would it be, Darren?
Darren Jamieson:
I think the most important thing would be to understand why you’re doing it, because a lot of clients say things like, “I want to rank on the first page you Google for this keyword.” And that’s not actually what they want. People come to us and say, “Can you do us a Facebook ads? Can you do us PPC?” And that’s not what they want. It’s, “What do they actually want to achieve?” And it’s not, they want somebody to run their Google ads. It’s usually because they want more leads in a particular area. They want more clients or more sales in a particular area. Understand why it is you’re doing it, who it is you’re doing it for and what it is they want. And if you know what it is that somebody actually wants, what they’re looking for, you are in a much better position to give them that.
So ranking on the first page of Google for a particular keyword is not the goal. It’s not the goal at all. Unless you are the kind of weird business owner that’s got a real stick up your ass about a competitor and you want to rank above them so that you can go to swanky business meetings and go, “Oh yes, we rank number one in Google for black widgets.
Kate Toon:
It’s always widgets.
Darren Jamieson:
I know, it’s always widgets. If you give a specific example then somebody’s going to go, “Who’s he talking about?”
Kate Toon:
I always use Piglet jumpers as my example. I want to rank number one for Piglet cause it’s so obscure and people are like, “What the hell is she talking about?” I love that. Maybe improving your ranking isn’t what you need to be doing right now. Maybe you can stay exactly where you are and improve your click through rate. Maybe you need to improve your homepage so people don’t leave it immediately. Maybe you need to get more loyal customers, existing customers, rather than trying to attract new ones. I think you’re exactly right. Think about the why and that will lead you to what you actually need to do rather than just doing stuff because you’re already on Twitter and someone said, “Oh, turn everything green today.” And then Google changes their mind and says, “No, we changed our mind. We’re not doing that now.” And you’re like, “Oh my God,” which they tend to do.
Darren Jamieson:
If your website doesn’t convert, then getting a higher ranking, getting more people isn’t what you want.
Kate Toon:
Exactly. Just more people won’t convert. It’ll be more depressing. Darren, I have loved talking to you. Where can we find out more about you and your SEO agency?
Darren Jamieson:
Well, our agency’s called Engage Web, so that’s engageweb.co.uk. I have a podcast where there is more ranting and just general sort of shouting that goes on like this, which is the Engaging Marketeer. You can find that on Amazon, Audible, Spotify, Apple, the usual podcasting type places.
Kate Toon:
The usual spaces.
Darren Jamieson:
Usual spaces. Or you can follow us on Twitter or Instagram or all the other things at @EngageWeb.
Kate Toon:
And you’re also @MisterDaz, M-I-S-T-E-R-D-A-Z, on Twitter, if you want for follow Darren directly.
Darren Jamieson:
I am. But that’s more complaints and transformers. So if you want to see me argue with people, then that is the…
Kate Toon:
I do. I absolutely do. So that’s what I’m excited about. I’ll be going there right now. Thank you so much, Darren, for coming on the show.
Darren Jamieson:
Thank you very much.
Kate Toon:
So that’s the end of this week’s show. If you have questions about setting up an SEO agency, why not head to my I Love SEO group, on Facebook and ask them there. We do regular Q and A’s every month now as well as SEO roundups, audits and provide lots of tips and advice as well. So at the end of the show, I like to give a shout out to one of my lovely listeners and today it’s Katrina Pace from New Zealand. And she writes, “Fantastic. Full of gems of wisdom. Definitely a must listen to.” Thank you very much Katrina. And thanks to you for listening. If you like the show, we would love some ratings and reviews. You can leave them on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you heard the show, and we’ll give you a shout out. And don’t forget, you can check the show notes and full transcript for this episode at The Recipe for SEO Success, where you can learn more about SEO agencies, check out Darren’s useful links and leave a comment about the show. Until next time people, happy SEOing.
