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This Transcript was Auto-Generated, it may still have some minor mistakes!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
website, people, business, SEO, content, google, agency, reviews, leads, keywords, site, business owners, spend, big, questions, opportunities, brand, page, month, niche
SPEAKERS
announcer, David Finberg, Amr The Internet Guy
announcer
online with Amr the internet guy stream it today on your favourite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology, getting a headache, pulling their hairs out or buying expensive software
Amr The Internet Guy
Welcome to a new episode of online! Today, my guest has been building websites since the age of nine. He has also founded a digital marketing agency in Colorado back in 2015. Since then, he has generated 10s of millions of dollars in revenue for his clients. David has a passion for growing small businesses through data-driven ROI-centered strategies. He defined success as doing what you want while making a positive impact on the lives of others. In this episode, he will be sharing with us his experience, as well as tips and tricks to get extra performance out of your website. So without further ado, let’s meet David Finberg. How’s it going?
David Finberg
Hey, it’s going great. How’s everything with you?
Amr The Internet Guy
Oh, good. Thanks. So would you like to tell the audience who you are, where you’re based, and what you do.
David Finberg
So my name is David finberg. I’m the founder of peaks digital marketing, we specialize in web content, SEO, and web design development. And today, we’re going to share some tips and tricks and resources for you to help get more performance out of your site or get your hands on someone who can help you take your site to the next level. And of course, I’m or whatever you would like to like to direct us to our game. So we’re going to bring some heat.
Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect. I like that. So the first thing like when I was looking at your website, the first thing that caught my attention was the snow Of course. That’s why I was asking you earlier, or you’re in Colorado because like you know, I see Colorado and then I see snow. And you can make the connection. But it’s because it’s peaks, right? And then I’ll write on a play there on the little bit. And you name your packages, Everest and peek at Everest. This is very cool.
David Finberg
Thank you so much. Yeah, the summit branding. You know, when I when I started peaks, it really just started as an as, as this idea. And the foundation of that was like reach your summit, right? Everyone’s to get to the top get to page one. And of course, it’s a journey to get there. Right. And so, you know, had some, some great, you know, help and feedback and, you know, friends and family members and just came up with peaks reach your summit. And yeah, you know, we named all of our packages after you know, expedition mountain near Everest, right? And just really played into the branding on that, which is,
Amr The Internet Guy
I like that. You’re saying everyone wants to be on the first page of Google? Does the first page of Google take everyone?
David Finberg
Write? It really doesn’t? This is a fantastic question. Really only 10% of websites, right? Or 90% of websites aren’t gonna make it to page one, which is, you know, maybe an oversimplification. But you do the math, the rough numbers are right, there’s only 10 spots on page one, and how many Yeah, 1000s of websites or millions of websites, right, billions of websites out there. So you really need to be competing at, you know, almost like this Olympic Olympian level to be able to achieve page one that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to train like an Olympian, it just means you need to be scaling the right processes and content and best practices across your site.
Amr The Internet Guy
As a small business owner, that scares me a little right? Because it means that I’m competing with the big guys with deeper pockets. So what can a small business do in order to compete without having to go broke?
David Finberg
That’s a great question. You know, everyone says niche down to scale up, right? niching niching, niching. So, you know, when we look at someone’s budget, whether they have they’ve got, you know, tons of money that they want to put into their campaign, or for people that are just getting started or maybe haven’t spent anything yet and are looking to dip their toe in, right, what are those best opportunities and so it really starts with research, getting an audit, getting some kind of game plan of appears the keywords, you know, whether you’re in Denver, Kalamazoo or Florida, right, Miami, different, you know, cities and states, you can actually see what the search traffic is for those states. And what I would do is focus on more longtail keywords, right? So if you’re a physical therapist, you know, in Idaho, you would put like physical therapists, Idaho, right, don’t go for like just physical therapy. And that’s a very basic, basic one. But it starts really with the research of what are the low hanging fruit opportunities and what are the more aggressive opportunities and of course, right people with big pockets and nationwide brands, they’re gonna go after the bigger ones. But where you want to start is get the snowball rolling, right and so start ranking well for certain, you know certain terms that are less competitive in your local niche and then expand and as you gain more backlinks and brand mentions and improve your content, improve the speed of your site, and there’s about seven different SEO areas which we can dive into, before the end of the podcast, that basically you want to, you know, just start to go for the ones that are most relevant and be highly relevant for those searches. And then from there, you can always expand out once your site has a little more affinity, as has some history behind it. Right, then there’s time to go for the bigger terms. And truly, you know, keeping your focus niche down will allow you to gain some results without breaking the bank.
Amr The Internet Guy
For someone who’s like kind of starting out, or, or maybe I don’t want to say the word new, but like, again, it’s a small business. And maybe the website itself is new, is like two or three years old at most. Some of them are even brand new websites, because many business owners now they branch out and they have different business streams. Like one of my colleagues is a CPA, but she also does coaching. So these are two separate websites. So the coaching website is brand new. Yes. What would you advise someone with a new website like, what’s their starting point, because what I noticed as well is that it’s very hard for them to come up with content. And as we always say, content is king. But I find many business owners are either scared to write or, I don’t know, for some reason they don’t want to write. And I keep telling them, okay, if you don’t want to write as in sitting down to type, dictate your phone, then they like do do like speech to text, your phone can do that, and then just purify it, like go and edit it, here, here and here. And then once you’ve done that, at least you’ve got like kind of the framework of your content, you can then give it to an editor or whatever you want to do, like if you need the help. But many people like I feel that many people think that they need help in terms of somebody to write for them. But the problem with that is, in my opinion is two things a is going to be expensive, if you’re a new business, or startup, B nobody knows your business like you. So you know, in order to kind of, I don’t know, sit with a professional who’s going to write for you, you got to kind of induction indoctrinate them into your bit like they have to kind of live with you on like, for a day, you know what I mean? Like do absolutely shadow you or something in order to understand what’s your world, like so that they can write for you. And you’ll pay for that. So it’s not a, you know, I always say just get something out. And then he can get some SEO help. But at least write something, but I don’t know, you probably have like, many more points that, you know, are important for somebody who’s starting up.
David Finberg
Definitely, yeah, a couple important points. So I think your your, you know, when you’re looking to make a website, it’s a great time to think about content, right? So the content and the visual imagery of the website should coincide and complementing each other, right. So whether they’re reading or they’re scanning, or they’re looking at the pictures, they they basically have this uniformity and the language that’s being spoken to them, whether it’s the text or the imagery or the headings, right, and so typically, you know, if you’re going going to go the paid route, or just kind of get that, you know, instantly out of the way, it’s important to work with someone or firm like, you know, that’s going to onboard properly and create almost like a messaging guide and be able to take in a shorter time period, your tone messaging values differentiators, right, all of these different kind of pain points and messaging and put it all together in a concise package and be able to basically draw from inspiration from this message and guide so that’s, that’s one area that is gonna cost more, right. So typically, if you’re doing a website, see if the firm will, will help you with the content, make sure that they do some sort of content interviewing, there’s some expectation set here. You know, when anytime that that our team is looking to create content we sit down, we really get a understanding of, you know, the value props, what the owners like, what the experience is like we go visit that business, right we take photos, so it is a very in depth process. For for people that you know, that might be a little bit overkill. If you’re just starting out, maybe you’re, you know, not looking to get a custom site developed and you’re looking for some actionable tips and tricks right now, to help you better to encourage better SEO and get better results out of your content. Think about the five questions so you really what you’re doing. And every bring up a great point about the sales process right and really falling you. No one’s gonna be able to sell it like you. Yeah, so what we want to do here is digital, you’re basically transcribing the in person sales process. So I love your point about having your your voice transcription on just record yourself on the phone with the client. Yeah, right or record a client in front of you. What are the five questions that you are asked most common most frequently, right, commonly asked questions. So whether you’re selling websites, or widgets, or you know, whatever it is, right, there’s probably five to six core questions that people tend to ask. So that’s really what we want to think about is like, not only do we do we want the low hanging fruit opportunities, like making sure there’s a heading with a keyword in it, right. So if you’re a Tulsa, Oklahoma dog groomer, right, putting in at the top of the page, you know, dog grooming in Tulsa, right would be another tip, right? Making sure that you’re above the fold content has some keywords, it’s got, you know, it’s qualifying the user. So the user clicks, right, they’re then rewarded with, you know, this experience of, you’re going to add value, they’ve hit the right page. So you have the keyword at the top of the page, I have a little intro statement about, you know, hey, we’re, you know, dog grooming service, we offer the best rates, or, hey, we offer the most comprehensive service, right, putting some of those differentiators and pain points. You know why you’re different, maybe you’re not different, and the only thing is different is really the culture or the experience that they’re going to get their products, you know, comparable to everyone else. There’s all these different angles. But think about those five, no core questions that people are going to ask like, you’re just digitizing what you’re already doing. Or your sales phase, are you going? Yes, yeah, and transcribe that, right, I think is really awesome to talk about just getting it down on paper doesn’t have to be perfect, you can clean it up, you can spruce it up. And then you’re bringing something to a content team, which, you know, really makes the turnaround time a lot faster, and makes it more seamless. When you when you have a you know bulleted list or even, you know, just some of the tone and language that you’re using, that people can draw inspiration from as they’re, they’re helping build it out.
Amr The Internet Guy
So there are a couple of things that you’ve mentioned one now on one a little bit earlier that I want to demystify a little bit for our listeners, the first one when you said above the fold, so I think many people don’t know what that means, which is what you see without scrolling. So guys, when you hear the word above the fold, it means when you land on a website, on the homepage of a website for the first time is exactly what you see, without having to scroll down or click or do any action that’s above the fold. And that’s many people call it the prime real estate area, because that’s your few seconds to grab the visitors attention. And sadly, many people get it wrong. Like, I don’t care. I don’t care about the word from your CEO or whatever, like I don’t really care, I come to this website and looking for info, if I don’t find the info I’m leaving. So you know, it’s not about how beautiful your website is, is what it when it talks, what it’s saying to me. And that’s the important part above the fold. It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it has to I always tell people, okay, if you have an old website, because usually people come to me to redesign and redevelop an old website that has, you know, come to the end of its life. And I say, okay, cover your logo with your thumb. So put it on your computer screen covers a logo, right like that. Now, bring somebody somebody else, like you know, a colleague or a friend or someone from your family, and just without them seeing the address, like the the URL or the logo and ask them, what does this page mean to them? Like, you know, if they know what it is, if it speaks to them, if it tells them? What’s your business, like, what, what you do, if they get to know what you do, then at least that part above the fold is a success. Right? We don’t need to change the messaging, we would probably change the design, the look and feel but the messaging stays there. If it doesn’t speak to the user, you need to change the messaging it needs to speak to the user. Absolutely. The other one you mentioned and I’m going to let you explain it yourself because you’re going to be 10 times better than me. I think Did you say long tail? Yeah. You mentioned telltale? Yeah.
David Finberg
So long tail is, you know the best way to think of keyword phrases, the short tail terms and long tail terms. So short tail term could be Like enterprise SEO, right? It’s very short. It’s very few. There’s only two words in that, right? Whereas you could search like, best enterprise SEO Services, right? That’s four words, or in the local context, like if you’re thinking of local business, right? could say, like massage therapists, or it could be massage therapists in Denver, or certain neighborhood within Denver, capitol hill or right, Rhino or lodo. These are just different, different places in Denver, right? And so shorter tail terms, when when you have less keywords in the search query tend to be more competitive than a longer tail term. And so a lot of people make, you know, they look at the volume and they say, Well, I want to rank for massage therapists, because it gets 3000 searches a month. I don’t want to
Amr The Internet Guy
how deep are your pockets? Right?
David Finberg
It’s like, Well, okay, well, maybe you’re going up against Massage Envy or some of these other bigger players, right? franchises, yeah. franchise who has much deeper pockets, right. And so the beauty of this is, there’s still a way to play, right, and it’s starting on a local level, right? It’s like conquering your local first. And if you can hold a hold ground in your local, now you can start to take a little bit more in a little bit more and organically, you know, expand, right, but don’t get too It’s kind of like going to Vegas or something right? or playing cards. Everyone wants to win the jackpot. But really, the people who are winning the jackpot probably are starting with smaller small wins smaller ones first, right? So that’s what I like to say is don’t get too greedy, right? Try to start with something smaller first, something that you should have said something that’s a little aggressive. But don’t don’t go to too big. Yeah, that’s a big mistake. Unless you’re going for a national campaign or you, you really have the website, the commitment for a smaller local business. We want to try to stay away from that and utilize Google business as well as another great differentiator.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yes. as well. This is Google businesses very, very important. And I think many people do not realize that it exists. Yeah, it’s gone over. Like, guys, put yourselves on the map and say, like, what map google map? So like, how do we do that? I say it’s just Google My Business. It’s, you know, I mean, I have helped a couple of people, just, you know, not as a business or anything. It’s just like what we’re discussing here. I said, Okay, you know, what, just log on to your regular gmail account, click there, and then just start filling in. Yes, company name and what you do and whatever, and then save it, and put the address and off you go. That’s it. And a lot of people don’t even realize that if you don’t put your business, sometimes Google has it anyway, right? And then you realize that people are leaving reviews, good or bad. They aren’t even aware of. Like, yeah, I’m already talking about your business, but you don’t know about it, because you didn’t, you know, you’re aware that there’s Google My Business
David Finberg
100% it’s such an underleveraged platform. Now a lot of people do leverage AI, for those of you that are still there, like what the heck is a Google My Business, if you ever search for a restaurant, you ever see, you know, the first three search results have their reviews, they have their phone number, their name, their address. So it looks a little bit different than like a website listing in the fact that it shows you the reviews. So to your point, it’s it’s super, I’d say it’s non negotiable at this stage, if you’re a local business with a brick and mortar store, or even a service based business, you can still have Google business, it’s great for getting more reviews, it’s great for uploading photos, and just being active and showing your community, you know what’s going on. And is also another lead generation, in addition to your website, they kind of go hand in hand. So your Google business and your website are kind of intertwined. If you want to think of it like that, like, what’s on your website is what’s going to help you rank on Google business. So if you don’t have landing pages, for each of your services, you’re gonna have a much harder time with your Google business to rank, you can still rank on it with Google business was a good idea to start thinking about what are the core products and services? Do we have enough content, you can also go into Google businesses like a extra tip and create content. I know our business owners, we don’t like to go and create our content. You can have someone create content, or optimize your Google business listing with content and if it’s SEO optimized content, you just start to really you know, Google’s I love their own profit, right? Yeah, yeah. So
Amr The Internet Guy
So YouTube Google My Business, anything like it’s not just keywords on your website, but anything on any Google network will help you
David Finberg
100% and, and the goal is to make it not like SEO should be the icing on top of the cake. Right? It starts with great content, and then you can put a couple keywords in Yes. Right. Don’t go crazy trying to put every keyword in there because you know how best to be natural. Yeah, natural. Yeah. So yeah, I would, I would highly encourage you guys, check out Google business, if you haven’t already. If you’re not, you know, going in and making sure that, you know, you’re you’re responding to reviews and, you know, uploading photos, and, you know, having opportunities to put some original content on there, things like that. It’s a huge value add.
Amr The Internet Guy
So here’s a good question. If I’m blogging on my website, do like, for example, I do have a plugin that when I write a blog post, it can automatically post it to Google My Business. And I’ll let it do that. So that it’s just like, it ends up in two places, but am I harming myself by having the same content in two places? I’m a big
David Finberg
proponent of go original, as much as you can, right? You know, it’s, it’s good to maybe put a call to action, excuse me on the blog, or you could say, hey, read our news blog posts.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, that’s what I do. Like, I have like a little paragraph, just to, you know, make it sound like, like, build anticipation, like, Oh, I want to know more. And then I have learned more you click you come to read the article on the website. I think Google kind of like a summary sort of thing.
David Finberg
Okay, cool. Yeah, I would say, you know, kudos for that. I would say you want to do original content, right? Want to write original content where possible. Now Google is a little more forgiving than like, let’s see. Yeah, content website that’s really going to impact you. So I think of a citation Google businesses technically citation. Okay,
Amr The Internet Guy
so that’s not bad. It will take them to your website.
David Finberg
not terrible, you will get extra boost. If extra brownie points I should say. If you want to create original content, like you put the blog with maybe have an original intro paragraph, maybe
Amr The Internet Guy
text that Yeah. Okay. So that text that goes in the intro is not actually written on the post itself exists. So there is absolutely no duplication.
David Finberg
Exactly. It’s just another opportunity shouldn’t make or break. You know, if you’re, if you don’t want to do that, if you want to go extra, it’s just so
Amr The Internet Guy
hard to keep creating content.
David Finberg
So, you know, there’s there’s always people willing to help, we’re willing to help. Yeah, I get it, man. It’s I mean, he
Amr The Internet Guy
said, step by step process. So the first thing is you got to create some content for your website first. And then the next step, you think, what are the networks do I want to be on? And okay, here’s another one. Websites versus social media. Which one is more important? I mean, for me, when I have my favorite, yeah, you you would agree with me, right? website and
David Finberg
social media, too. You know, you want it to be omni channel, right? So regardless of where they visit your social media, your website or write your email newsletter, or write a press release, you want it to all sound look and feel consistent. So it’s familiar, whether they visit your social media, and then visit your website or vice versa, right? Some people are going to visit your social media, and then visit the website, other people are gonna visit the website and then visit social media. So there’s no replacement for either right? You need it. Up until this point, there wasn’t even a question as to whether you need a website Nowadays, people start to think, well, I’ve seen business owners launch just on social media is the problem. Yeah, right. On the other end, you’re missing out. Right? What if you could have even more relevancy and more authority and credibility. And so that’s where I think you need both.
Amr The Internet Guy
And you don’t have much control over social media, you can get banned, you can like, you know, you can forget your password and it takes some time to recover it or whatever. I don’t want to say the word hack, because I’m not trying to scare people. But you know, many people who have been playing some of the games that appear on some of the networks, you know, like, I don’t know, the game that asks you, oh, which color is your favorite color or whatever, and they just like it’s kind of a social engineering.
David Finberg
It is they’re, they’re designed to give you some kind of unique experience. That’s obviously a pre canned message that people like to see what they land on and that’s great, but to your point is Critical I mean, especially, these are third party companies that are not bound by the same rules as maybe some of the bigger I don’t know,
Amr The Internet Guy
where is the app like, maker like, you know, they could be not in your same country not bound by your same privacy laws or whatever. And that’s, I mean, I’m not saying social media is bad social media is great. But it shouldn’t be priority number one in your marketing Arsenal, I would say your website is priority number one. And then you have all the other elements that feed into your website, like we mentioned, Google My Business, and there’s, you know, YouTube, and all the other social media platforms. So if you’re creating as a business owner, if you’re creating content, the first bucket for your content to go is your own website. And then after that, you can share the same message and, you know, places and Thank you, David, for that brilliant tip. Because you know, you can do the citation, like an original citation for the share. So this way, the text of your posts, isn’t shared anywhere else, it’s just on your website. And then you’re directing people to click and come to your website, this this way, you’re in full control, it’s your website, you’re on it. And, you know, you can measure everything through Google Analytics. So it will, it will even tell you, where people are coming from, what did they click in order to arrive here. And that makes your life a lot easier than having your shop on, on Facebook, and your marketing on Instagram and something else on, you know, and you don’t have it all in one place that you can analyze, understand and change, take action. So with SEO, this word like is very elastic, search engine optimization, and I think many people also get scared of it. Everybody wants to do SEO, like I still get these questions by email, almost. It’s not daily anymore. But weekly, I would have either an existing client or a referral, someone who I met who are asking me, do you do SEO? And my first question is usually, what do you want to do in SEO? Because people just hear the term and like, everybody wants it, but they don’t know what it is. So I want to kind of make it easier for people to understand. What is it that every business needs there in relation to SEO in I mean, it’s not just to be on the first page of Google because many people can’t afford, you know. I mean, you can do it organically. You don’t have to spend a lot of money, but it’s either money or time. But the thing is, it’s not just the first page of Google, but it’s just to optimize your, you know, your presence on the web, so that Google can see it, and propagate it to people who are searching. And at the same time, kind of, you know, leaving your mark on the web. So what do you I don’t want to ask, what do you need to do, but like first, like, what is it like, what is it that’s what’s inside the word Seo? Not from a technical perspective, from a business perspective.
David Finberg
So SEO is is a commonly right search engine optimization people call a million things, sem search engine marketing, SEO, by SEO is typically what I boil it down to just creating a great experience for user regardless of whether you want to be on page one or page two or page three, by the way, you’ll still get some traffic, because
Amr The Internet Guy
when you start you’re not anywhere yet, right? Yeah.
David Finberg
Right? Right. So you’re starting from from scratch, right? And over time, you’re going to move up. And so what it really comes down to is, what kind of content do you have? What kind of reputation do you have? What is the experience of your website visually? Like? Are people enjoying their experience? What kind of credibility do you have? So like, are you qualified to talk about this content, or your doctor and your chiropractor, you just like to talk about Chiropractic and you’re not a chiropractor? Right? There’s a big difference. Yeah, about credentials, right? It’s about making sure that we’re presenting people, the whole goal of Google and search engine optimization is present the user with the right information, right. So it’s great content, right? comprehensive? Did you talk about everything that there is that a user user has question about? Or do you just cover a couple of things, right? are you presenting users with the pros and the cons or just the pros? Right? Are we really giving users a digitized version of our in person sales process or is it just Just a portion of it, right really want to nail that. From there? It’s how does your content is visually compelling? Right? So is the design of the content match the quality of your brand? Right? Does the look and feel of your site compliment your brand? Or does it make it look less credible? Right? So that’s a big one is website website and whoever designs your website and how they build it, it matters, right? The third would be like the experience. So is it super fast? Is your website fast? Or is it slow? Is it hard to navigate? Are there challenges for people to get to where they need to go? That’s a big one, right? is you’re gonna have this really great, amazing site, and then it’s slow, right? And guess what, we are impatient nowadays. And so if a brand’s websites really fast, you automatically and you know, this is a third, kind of like, subconsciously, we think this brand is going to be better, right? They’re going to be quick, with their websites slow, maybe their services slow. Maybe the process can be slow for me to get to even pay them or whatever it is, right? Get through the experience of the business can be slow. So right, we need content, we need a great clean website, we need a fast experience with very easily digestible, right. We’re all very right brain. Where’s the call to action? Do you have button? Yeah, I have things that are guiding people. What I tell people is have a goal for each page, right? Whether it’s a call or a sign up, there should be one conversion action. So what is that? If you’re a CPA and you do cold coaching, like, right? CPA is going to have one goal, which is sign up for accounting services, coaching is going to be fill out a form, right? Whatever they whatever the flow is. And then the reputation management, right? So often we go when we were going to a restaurant, like what’s the review? Right? Did they have a bad review?
Amr The Internet Guy
Indeed? Or do they have five stars? Everybody has five stars?
David Finberg
Everyone got five stars? That sounds Yeah, we’re only having 10 reviews. And it’s like, yeah, these
Amr The Internet Guy
are the employees.
David Finberg
Right? So you have to really sample and maybe you will go on Yelp or you go on Google. Yeah. Then you go. Right. So reputation management is so important. You don’t expect perfection. On the other end, like this is a great, you know, people like to they buy from other people that they know. And so what’s the next best best thing other people in our communities that I’ve experienced? Yeah. So the last one is what you call backlinking, which is a little more advanced. It’s basically a vouch from one site to another. So let’s say you’re out in your home depot, and you bump into someone you say, who’s the best plumber in Dallas? Yes, they were in Dallas, and they’re like, Oh, you gotta check out Bob’s plumbing or like, cool. you bump into someone else at the checkout. He said, Hey, you know, Bob over here told me, you know, you know, Bob’s foaming is the best one, you got any good plumbers, and they’re like, I gotta check out Bob’s. So you’re like, wow, two people. Just everybody’s saying that. Yeah. Right. So it’s kind of like that’s how backlinks work right? There. vouchers are links from one site to the other. So if we have vouchers from credible people in your niche or within your community, linking back to your site, saying, like, hey, go check out, you know, Bob’s swimming or whatever, you know, insert your business name there, that can take longer. It’s outreach, it’s adding value to other communities, right. You know, even podcasting, there’s some backlinking that happens. So there’s, there’s different ways to do to do backlinking. Right? The most important thing is get all the free links. You can right Google businesses, a backlink, your Facebook pages, backlink social media is back. And these are free. Anyway, I make these right. So if you focus on these things, right, content, reputation, how’s your site? How’s your site design? Does it need updates? Does it have all the right content? Is it fast, right? secure? Is it secure is Hey, do
Amr The Internet Guy
you have an SSL certificate? Or does Google Chrome say hey, you know there’s a risk to visiting this website?
David Finberg
Absolutely. scaring people off because your site Yes, cobwebs on it, and you forgot something? You know, that’s, that’s what guys like, like, are gonna take your, your SEO to the next level. Just having some of these things in place, allow you to even compete without SSL, you can’t even compete anymore. So
Amr The Internet Guy
yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s, it’s a given because I don’t get it. why many people still don’t have SSL. I would say in most cases, the business owner doesn’t know it would be the web girl or the web guy who, you know did not advise them. Or maybe they they then they realize that there’s an extra cost that they didn’t want to pay at the time. But it’s costing you business now. Like if you leave it, most reputable hosting companies would give you a free SSL certificate. If you’re still with one of these companies, and you don’t want to move these companies, we’re still selling SSL for, I don’t know, 50 or $100 a year, and you don’t want to move your hosting, and I don’t know why you want to stick with them. But if you still do pay and get it, like, it’s, you know, without it, people are going to be scared, just in the, in the beginning, like, you know, maybe early 2000s SSL certificates used to be only for ecommerce. So where you are required to put any details, it had to be secured, but nowadays, it became the standard of a website. And I don’t know, many people would have seen that already. And when you open it in Google, or or, you know, Microsoft browsers, you will have like a red notice that says, go at your own risk. And it’s like, the website is clean, like, we know, it’s clean, like, you know, it’s a client’s website. But you know, you don’t want to scare people away like that, just because you didn’t want to spend some money on the SSL certificate. So it’s very important. And as David is saying, it also affects your SEO, you’re scaring people and you’re scaring Google,
David Finberg
we’re all scared, and we don’t want to see a warning, right? And neither would would any of you guys. So you know, encourage you, like there’s a certain cost, you got to pay to play on the reverse. And you’re going to recoup that back as people visit and have positive Exactly. And it’s an investment. And it’s something where if you’re not playing here, it’s not too late, but you want you know, I would just say, and it’s important to get going. So whether it’s SSL or web updates, or right, making sure that your site is is you know, has a good call to action and everything is clean, you know, having good webmasters 100% great place to start. You know, Amir has, you know, multiple skill sets, you need to find someone like him that can really help you manage the website, keep it up to date, make sure that people aren’t being scared away by any warnings. Also make sure that, you know, things like your Google business, like there’s so many different areas where to start, right. And so you almost need someone like him, or if you’re you’re really, you know, looking to hire that SEO firm, great, you can hire an SEO firm as well. Either way, you need some, some eyeballs on this to make sure that you know things are in are in order and your customers reputation, you know, perception of your reputation and of your brand is positive.
Amr The Internet Guy
One of the questions that I always get, and it was one of my experiences as well. Very recently, I started doing ads like I in the beginning, I didn’t want to do that I didn’t have money to spend on ads, but we’ve had a government grant. And luckily, you know, they would cover a portion of what you spend on ads. But the only trick is, you have to use a local company within your province, you can’t use even another company in Canada, or anywhere in the United States. So I ended up using an agency it wasn’t the first agency but in the process, when I spoke to three or four different agencies, man, that experience wasn’t positive at all, like, I don’t know, like that people were not so convincing about how they’ll help my business. And I barely could get the information about the return on investment. Like the the biggest problem is that many people who work for agencies, how they pitch things to you, makes it look like all they care about is your retainer. And it was really, really hard. Like I chose one agency, we just started so I can’t really tell what’s the ROI yet I gotta give them up to three months, you know, for everything to pick up and, but at least the language they use and how friendly they were, was a little bit better than some of the other agencies. So I wanted to ask you a is the word agency scary to people like an agency, it’s something big, and the guy who’s going to sell me is not going to be the guy who’s gonna do the ads or, you know what I mean? Like I’m gonna I’m going to end up speaking with five, six different people and get lost in the process. We are really like, you know, why would agencies have a relative rotation? Do they have a bad reputation?
David Finberg
So you know, agency can be a savior or they can be someone that’s that, you know, is driving all Thomas’s spend, right, yeah, opposite end of the spectrum. And so there’s a lot of snake oil. salesmen when it comes to agencies, and you’re right, sometimes you’ll talk to someone who is a salesperson who doesn’t actually know the product or doesn’t do the research or the team doesn’t present that salesperson with their correct research ahead of time. And so there’s, there’s good and bad, right? For every, you know, 10 bad agencies, there’s a couple good ones, right, and vice versa. And so it’s important to really establish kind of like that foundation of trust with them. And then something that’s going to happen over the course of as you said some time, right? Very few campaigns are like, wave a magic wand and you’re just swimming in leads, right on the reverse end, you should be able to see data and conversion metrics around these events. And so if they’re running paid ads to a form, they’re running paid ads to a phone number, right, you should be able to see who’s opting in? What were the keywords that are most successful, and over time, be able to start to trim some of the fat away from, you know, the initial test mode, which there is a test mode, right? Whether it’s SEO, yeah, words, on the reverse. And you’re really need to have the trust that like they have experience, and they’re going to be able to take that budget and do something with it. Anyone can really set up an AdWords campaign, right?
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah, you can set it up for yourself, but it’s not going to be that successful. You need the experts to actually target it right? And to, you know, optimize it for you. Otherwise, you can I mean, many people can just go in and, you know, I’m running my own Facebook ads. Now I’m unhappy with the results. I’m not spending much, but I’m still spending some money, and I want to see an ROI. So, exactly. It’s kind of like Yeah,
David Finberg
yeah, it’s, it’s, you should be seeing some measurement of ROI. Early on, right? And so that’s where you, it’s like, kind of like hiring an employee. Right? You can hire a good one. You can hire bow, we can hire one. That’s okay. Right? Sometimes you just right, it feels like gambling. That’s the crazy part is to a lot of people feel Yeah, gambling. So like, what peaks does is we’re, you know, we’re a little bit higher end of a service, right? You’re getting two or three team members, we’re month to month. And so the proofs in the pudding, right? If you’re not, for whatever reason, God forbid, knock on wood, you didn’t get the result, right. You’re not locked in where a lot of places will lock you into the contract
Amr The Internet Guy
that you can’t cancel it was in two months, or three months or a year or whatever.
David Finberg
Exactly. And it’s so, so frustrating to it’s kind of like buying a house like you don’t Yeah, really live in it for a day you just write you sign up. And so I would encourage you to do this is
Amr The Internet Guy
a great tip. Actually, if you’re if you’re researching agencies, you guys like you can, one of the things you look at, is there a lock in contract? Or are there month to month? Because obviously you don’t want to be locked in? I mean, if you’re locked in with the right agency, kudos, but if you’re locked in with the wrong agency, you’re locked in. So yeah, what are like let’s, let’s, let’s end with this. What are the tips for how to select the right partner to work with?
David Finberg
Okay, tips are, they should be presenting you with some kind of data upfront, so that they don’t have to do a whole deep dive, I big show a little goodwill that that goes a long way. If someone says hey, how much is your budget? That’s the first thing out of their mouth. Maybe there is the
Amr The Internet Guy
first thing out of 99.9%. Right? How much you’re gonna want to spend that’s like, spend on what you haven’t even told me what you do yet. Like,
David Finberg
I think there’s there’s some qualification, right? Just like any business on the reverse. And a lot of people it’s straight to well, we started this, this is cool, great, great, right? But you want to get a feel for what kind of client range? If you’re trying to spend 15 $100 a month in there, really a three or four grand a month agency, you’re automatically Yeah, not gonna be a big, you’re gonna be low on that totem pole, right? So you don’t want to not and these are totally made up numbers, right. But like get a feel, yeah, where their budget is where your budget is. See, if you’re fitting Don’t try to put a square peg in a round hole just because they have good reviews on the reverse. And don’t go too small, like someone who’s 500 bucks a month might be good. They might not be as good as someone who’s 750 or 1000. Right? And so how much value because you could spend three grand on something over three months. And if you didn’t get any leads, right? didn’t really matter. But if you spent four grand and you got 10 leads now that’s a much different story. And so just get a feel for for what their commitments are like what kind of clients they work with. Ask them like, What’s an ideal client for you? Yeah. Do you have any packages for people getting started or if they’re more aggressive, right? Like here’s where we really want to be. Can you show us what an opportunity with you might look like what a proposal with you might look like. And from there you can really get an estimate on like their affinity for the niche. Their competency and affinity, in addition to like, what their ballpark and price point is, if you’re, you know, talking apples and oranges, it’s probably not going to be the best fit for right now. And And lastly, you know, you want them to come to you with some recommendations and strategies, right? So they should be asking you questions around your products and services to better understand and be able to uncover all the opportunities in your market and select the best ones for your business, as opposed to just here’s a list of keywords
Amr The Internet Guy
exactly on how much you are willing to spend by by, yes,
David Finberg
we partner, right and help you they should just be presenting you with levers to pull. And then we see some great opportunities here. We see some great opportunities here. And closing that loop, right. And so if there Yeah,
Amr The Internet Guy
so here’s the idea, guys, like, because this is very important, David, and thank you for mentioning it. It’s, and I call it a partner. And you know, that’s not haphazardly. It’s a partnership because me as a business owner, basically what I want is leads, that’s it, like, the reason I’m paying is that I want to sign up more paying customers. So the return on investment is leads is not just merely traffic, it’s not about, hey, let’s put some ads there to draw more people to your website. And then at the end of the month, they give you a report that says, hey, we’ve increased your traffic by, I don’t know, 200x. Well, brilliant, but nobody bought anything. Maybe my landing page sucks. But you guys, it’s your job to tell me that where I’m drawing, the traffic is wrong, something needs to be changed in order for that traffic to convert. So it’s kind of a partnership, we use our experience as an agency to get you more leads. That’s it, basically, in a nutshell.
David Finberg
I don’t think I could have said that better myself. That’s, that’s perfect. Get a feel for them, like trust your gut, sometimes when Yeah,
Amr The Internet Guy
people look at the reviews asked around, look at the projects they’ve done.
David Finberg
And ask them say, Hey, can you? Can you prep something for me and show me some of these opportunities? instead of like, well, how much is your budget? you automatically know that they’re not? Yeah, right. Yeah. And they’re like, sure, right.
Amr The Internet Guy
So you’re saying the best partner or the most suitable partner for you would be an agency that actually did their homework. They looked at your website presence, they looked at your social media presence, they looked at your content, and they already have ideas on how to improve?
David Finberg
Exactly, it shows them that they’re willing to do some work for you up front without getting paid in a goodwill effort to establish themselves as a thought leader and also earn your business.
Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect. And I mean, the million dollar question that everyone, everyone is asking normally, how expensive is it? Okay, you’ve touched on it. And and, you know, one of the things that I got from my experience of trying to vet different agencies was the budget because, for example, I had set my budget to a certain amount that I wasn’t willing to increase, at least not in the beginning. And I told the agency that I’m working with right now, if you convince me otherwise, but you’re gonna have to convince me, if you convinced me Otherwise, I’ll do it. And they talked return on investment. And they said, Okay, let’s say your budget is Whatever, let’s say $2,000. Right. And for $2,000, we can give you 10 leads. But for $3,000, we can give you 25. So would you not upgrade from two to three, because sometimes this is exponential, it’s not just you double the amount that doubles the leads, you can sometimes double the amount, it triples the leads, you know, because it’s about reach. And there is an algorithm that so many other things involved there. But business owners get scared because they think I think the problem is almost everyone got burned from the
David Finberg
shady. shady, Marcy. Oh, yeah.
Amr The Internet Guy
Oh girl across the world, and you keep paying a small amount, but it’s like five $600 a month with zero return. And now this good agency that looks good, and they know what they’re doing, but they want me to pay $2,000 a month, and suddenly I’m scared because I’ve already been burned. So how could we put people’s mind that is, you know, in what comes to that budget?
David Finberg
You know, the goal is to not feel like you’re gambling and what I tell our clients I said, Look, we’re month to month, we we’ve got years of experience doing this, we’ve got great reviews. I’m not gonna say that I can wave a magic wand and make everything perfect because if I would, I would you know, I’d already do yeah Right, you’re really looking for someone who’s competent, who’s a partner that’s going to help you figure things out. And so, you know, there’s always as you said, right exponential, there’s kind of that like that sweet spot. And so you know, if it’s month to month, there’s no risk, it takes a little bit, right, you got to pay to play on the reverse. And you should be able to see within a relatively short amount of time, if that goodwill is being returned on with in the form of leads, and right, the primary metrics of success, future calls and phone submissions, and right, making sure that your sales, team overdue, right, making sure that you’re closing those leads into the right type of leads, more or less, right, like within that first initial period, you should start to see some results, you should start to see some things moving and might not be in the first week, it might take a month, month and a half. If you’re getting into month three or four and nothing’s happened. It’s kind of like a holdup, right? pump the brakes, let’s slow it down. Maybe we’re not working with the right partner, or maybe they’re not getting the right feedback. Let’s you know, they should have some numbers to come to you with of like, here’s how many calls we got this month. Here’s how many clicks to your form, right? Here’s some of the clients, you can even track offline conversions. There’s a lot of really cool stuff you can do. So the data is it’s there. It’s making sure you work with an agency that’s bound by that data, right and hold themselves accountable to the data, not saying that the data is always right. But that’s the process, right? Yeah. A lot of agencies that don’t have those processes, it’s very difficult to like, quantify what’s working and what’s not. And so that’s where you get into trouble where, hey, I was paying, you know, this company overseas, and they ran my AdWords or I was paying this local guy or gal and they ran my adverts. I really didn’t get it. I really don’t know if I got any. Yeah, so
Amr The Internet Guy
that they lose faith in AdWords itself. Not Yes.
David Finberg
Not the end, it should be the partner and yeah, getting a better partner. Yeah, there’s a lot, there’s a lot to unpack there, I’d say, you know, see, see if they have any use cases, see if they have some experience, if they’re using data, they’re setting up conversion tracking, right? If they’ve, they’ve had some success in this industry or niche before. And making sure that they’re held accountable every month, just because you don’t know doesn’t mean like what you should know is what they call CPA cost per acquisition, right? Yes. How much does it cost to make the phone ring? And if you can talk that language, you can talk AdWords and Seo? And so don’t feel intimidated? If you should? Shark Tank? And Shark Tank? Yes.
Amr The Internet Guy
I feel no your cost per acquisition, you can be on Shark Tank.
David Finberg
That’s right. In short, if you’re spending $2,000 on marketing, and you got through, you know, two calls.
Amr The Internet Guy
Yeah. And you got to know also what was the what’s the lead worth to you. Because if you convert, like, for example, an average website is about $2,000. Right? So a lead is worth $2,000. So if you’re spending $2,000 to get one lead, you’re barely you’re breaking even It’s not wrong, but you’re not making money, right. But the idea is, if you’re spending $2,000 to get 10 leads of $2,000 each, your ROI is tenfold. So you know you’re not going to close every lead that comes your way so you probably close two or three of them. So this leaves you with $6,000 worth of business for $2,000 advertising is three acts. So that’s what we’re talking about.
David Finberg
Yeah, well said. That’s perfect.
Amr The Internet Guy
Perfect Mr. finberg any parting words?
David Finberg
I really appreciate the opportunity to be on on the show and love the questions. I hope this added a bunch of value to everyone listening. If you’d like to check us out, we’re peaks PE a k s digital marketing comm or you can find me on Instagram, David a finberg to get some SEO tips and news and trends, things like that. Our thanks again. I really enjoyed this conversation and as a pleasure being on
Amr The Internet Guy
Thank you, David. And for you guys, all the links. I’m gonna post the notes when this episode goes live. Thank you, everyone before you go, thanks for listening. And if you need to check your website’s performance, head to our website, www dot human talents.ca and you can get the complimentary website review. So that’s human talents.ca. And right over there you find a button to book your complimentary review. It’s a no strings attach review and you get a video of your website being reviewed with actionable items that you can do on your own. Thank you and see you in the next episode.
