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Strategic SEO context and amplifying excellence with Kevin Wiles image

Strategic SEO context and amplifying excellence with Kevin Wiles

S1 E4 ยท Untitled SEO Podcast
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27 Plays8 months ago

Some people are born into SEO greatness, others have SEO greatness thrust upon them. Okay, so nobody believes that. But the journey that leads people into SEO is always fascinating. Out of all the people we've spoken to, Ben's journey easily covers the most miles.

From buying a one-way ticket to New Zealand, through frankly terrifying adventures in hreflang for a multinational, Ben has covered more ground than Frodo Baggins.

Just doing a bit of SEO is never enough, for SEO to really kick ass you need to be strategic about it, and that's where creativity comes in. This topic runs like a golden through through this episode of the Untitled SEO Podcast.

In this fun conversation our host Andrew Laws and Ben also discuss the joy of technical SEO and the increasing importance of creativity in SEO.

Find Kevin on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinjwiles/


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Transcript

Introduction to Season 3 and 'Live Action Networking'

00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to the Untitled SEO Podcast. My name is Andrew Laws and I am your host. In Season 3 of the podcast, we are doing LAM, which is Live Action Networking. I've been an SEO for 25 years and one thing I've noticed is that SEO people aren't always that good at speaking to each other.
00:00:17
Speaker
Sure, we might bump into one occasionally an actual real offline networking event, but we're a bit of a rare breed. So in this in this episode, I've got somebody I don't know.

Kev Wells' Journey from Gaming to SEO

00:00:31
Speaker
Well, I don't know very much about, I should say. I know you work in SEO and we're going to have a nice old chat. So honored guest, would you like to introduce yourself, please? Yeah, sure. So I'm Kev Wells. I have been in SEO
00:00:45
Speaker
pretty much since I left college, I guess like every SEO has got their own unique story and a lot of people will say, hey, I fell into it. But I generally did, I fell into SEO when I left a gaming course, which in hindsight, probably should have stayed in gaming. And I have previously was head of SEO at Halfords for four years before making the jump to go into consultancy. Head of SEO at Halfords, was that your, sorry, there's a sort of a gap I can see. And first of all, I think there isn't,
00:01:15
Speaker
There is common ground between the world of gaming and SEO. There absolutely is. So what was your first role after you left college?

Creativity Meets Technicality: Why Creatives Enter SEO

00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually went into graphic design and sort of like website design. And I guess my first, I wouldn't really call it SEO back then, which was like, you know, white text, white background directories on your own website type scenario. But I went and helped a local suit hire company that was selling like three piece dinner suits on eBay at the time.
00:01:44
Speaker
Um, to basically they didn't want to pay fees on eBay anymore. So like we want a website. Um, and that was really my first experience of like, is this actually a thing or is it just people winging it? Um, and then, yeah, from there, I went back into the creative graphic design, um, element and didn't probably, I say. Fully start my SEO career until I went to a, um, I went to a boutique agency in Stratford, uh, called TMWI that still exists today. Um, and that I guess is where SEO.
00:02:14
Speaker
had just become a proper term within the marketing landscape and people were actually getting careers and it was like, hey, companies should probably spend money on this stuff.
00:02:23
Speaker
It's amazing how many people I speak to have creativity kind of very, very much in their past, but in their origin story. And you are no exception. I mean, why do you think so many people who are creatives get into SEO? Because it's supposed to just be data and black and white. Yeah, I honestly think that like, I always look at SEO that has three core disciplines, right? Like
00:02:48
Speaker
You still have, for me, you still have the traditional technical SEO content and then sort of digital PR and link building as we know it today. And I think definitely within digital PR, you need that creative mindset to not only look at data, but then come up with some creative that's compelling to sell that story to journalists, whatever. But I think on the flip side of that, like I'm a tech SEO, that's where I started. I'm terrible at writing content. But I think you need creative ways to solve development problems, right? Like if you
00:03:15
Speaker
When I look back, when I was at Tim de Rone, we worked with Nestle, for example. As you'd imagine, they have massive web stacks, they have different sites for different brands, and within that, they have different demo agencies, and different brand managers, and different red tape. As SEOs, you just want to keep things moving, and I think that's at the point you need to put that creativity into use to say, oh, there's this problem with Canonicals, and this is how we could solve it. Or at the time, the big thing was injecting things through Tag Manager, for example, to overcome dev resource.
00:03:45
Speaker
I think it's helped. It's not perfect, but I definitely think you need that air of creativity rather than just looking at a problem black and white, being able to step back at it and say, what's the 60% that we could get there by doing this, while the other 40% is potentially being worked on in a much bigger sprint plan, for example. Yeah, that's an absolutely lovely way of describing. I think the creativity comes into play in quite a big way when you're looking at the market and you look at the market that you're appealing to.
00:04:12
Speaker
because all markets move differently and having that kind of mindset of let's just look for the cool thing, let's look for the thing that moves it forward. That may absolutely make sense. You mentioned kind of being a tech SEO.

New Zealand Adventure and SEO Migration Management

00:04:25
Speaker
Now, I know many people who are tech SEO, and I think I'm leaning more on tech than other things. But you've done some projects that quite frankly would terrify me. So tell us about the New Zealand project.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, so the backstory here is I, after a very drunken night out, decided to book a one-way ticket to New Zealand. One way. How bad was that night out? It's quite heavy. One that I don't regret, but I do regret the money I spent on the Sambukas. But I was at my can at the time and I decided that I was going to go to New Zealand.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, booked a one-way flight and then start to outreach to people in New Zealand to say, hey, let's network. And then if I liked New Zealand, the plan was to always go back and work there. The head of SEO at the time was like, I'm actually leaving my job in three weeks. Why don't you just interview here and take my job? Which was like, cool, that wasn't the plan, but sure, let's just roll with it. So I went over and the end of the time had basically realized, I think a lot of big brands have started to realize, which is like, within SEO, you kind of need some governance and some sort of center of excellence that SEO can be managed from.
00:05:36
Speaker
And the reason they had started to look into it was they had a New Zealand across all different territories. So they had like Russia, Poland, UK, France, et cetera. The issue then arises that some of those markets are doing things that can't be controlled. So they're potentially buying links that were a bit shady because they were questionable sites or Google's algorithm was further behind than say in the US and UK. So they had decided to try and wrap that all up and bring all those sites into one domain.
00:06:02
Speaker
which was a huge undertaking and the reason that was is like they can then pull resource and budget from all these 96 different countries and territories and agencies.

Challenges in Global SEO Projects

00:06:10
Speaker
96. And I actually checked a few years after and I don't think they ever finished the project and unlikely some of that is
00:06:23
Speaker
Mobile First became a thing, but in other markets, Mobile First is actually really low penetration still. So those sites probably then wouldn't have worked as well for that user. But nevertheless, we undertook that project. And I think a lot of it with anything in SEO is a process, right? It's like understanding the URLs you need to map, top traffic, top linked pages. And then it's working with engineering teams to say, what's the solutions we need to put in place to scale this stuff? Inherently, there will always be issues because
00:06:52
Speaker
let's say last minute holidays exists on New Zealand, but doesn't exist in Russia, for example, then hreflang shouldn't be on those pages because hey, one version doesn't exist. And after that, it was just trying to put a methodical process like they didn't launch them all at the same time, they had a staggered process, which was like the saving grace. And it was just then working out like the tasks that need to be done to maintain rankings in each market. The caveats that which was unique for New Zealand is like the cleanup of some of those sites because they had been
00:07:22
Speaker
building questionable links at that time, because in that market, they could get way of it. But wrapping up into a global .com domain, they were never going to get away with having that much spam on that domain and maintain those positions. And the rest of that was just process, templates, process, and a multiple approach. So you came into this project, as it was starting or as it was just starting?
00:07:48
Speaker
Yeah, I probably came into it about six months after they'd already started kicking off that project and the data and stuff, which isn't the worst migration project I've come into. I've come into one literally a month before it's about to launch and they're like, Hey, we're going to consider SEO. And I'm like, before it's very, it's very, very risky. But again, I think like, you know, SEO is, I think a lot of the time are, we have a process and we know the things that need to be done to maintain traffic or drive traffic.
00:08:16
Speaker
But the reality is there's certain things within that remit that probably aren't deal breakers. We talk a lot about an SEO about four or four pages and it's bad for user experience. But the difference here is if it's on a 100,000 page website and there's 10,000 broken, sure, big issue. If it's a 10 page website and there's one broken and it's an SME, probably much less of an issue. And I think it's the same when you get bought into something late on. Most CMS platforms and Salesforce and Magenta and
00:08:46
Speaker
do the basics of technical SEO. Okay. And unless they do something really bad, like, Hey, I've no index the whole site at the last month, you only then really need to focus on the big, heavy head of things, right? The redirects, the content, the page titles, that sort of stuff. Um, and then the rest can, as bad as this is, and I'll probably get hated for this a little bit is a lot of that you can then do as an afterthought, right? And then try and maintain those relationships. Cause the other thing is the friction points you create with developers who are under pressure to launch that project.
00:09:14
Speaker
And then you get that SEO coming in with the sort of like, you can't do this, you can't do this, don't do this, don't do this. That doesn't solve anything within SEO either. It doesn't at all. And the relationships, one of my, I have a developer on my team and part of the reason for that, part of the fact he's fantastic, should he actually listen to this, he needs to know that, is that I didn't want to, I've always been very wary of being someone who's an SEO that becomes an island.
00:09:40
Speaker
because I've seen it so many times before kind of externally where the devs end up just getting frustrated with the SEO because the SEO is, to be honest, sometimes backing basic human understanding. And fortunately, the number of godlike SEOs is diminishing really fast. But when I first started, for example, it was all kind of
00:10:05
Speaker
personality nonsense marketing still is people like Neil Patel. I'm not the world's biggest fan of and what I like about what I think is causing that side of SEO to die out is that SEO is now considered an essential part of a lot of processes. We haven't got a higher level, different with SMEs, a higher level. We haven't really got to fight our corner quite as much. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of like, okay, well, this needs to happen. This needs to be in place. It's almost
00:10:35
Speaker
Just an efficiency, if nothing else. Yeah, and I think a lot of that has come probably a little bit of maturity within internal businesses. I remember all the interviews and the place I've been, it's like SEO has sat within those companies in some weird places. So like some companies it's sat within marketing, but then it's not sat in e-com where they actually do the front end and the text and the category development. In others it's sat within IT. In others it's sat as its own function.
00:11:03
Speaker
within that, then you're fighting because each of those teams have their own essentially P&L or like resource, and you're trying to pull them to do things. And I think it's like, the best approach I've seen is this like hybrid model where SEO doesn't really sit in the traditional structure, i.e. like you want to speak with merchandising to make sure e-commerce categories are merchandising, that's cool, like that's probably going to be e-com. The same with like, dev, sometimes that's an e-com or it's in IT, so like you need to have that hybrid approach. And then marketing has their own
00:11:32
Speaker
different approach for like emails and above the line stuff. And I think you kind of need to be friends with all those teams as much as possible to get as much buy-in.

Building Relationships with Developers

00:11:40
Speaker
Um, but then also like realistically, it shouldn't be, I think sometimes the biggest wins I've had haven't been like SEO wins. They've been, Hey, we're doing this campaign or we're launching this product. What can we do to make it better from a business perspective? And then SEO comes and says, Oh, cool. Like don't build it in JavaScript, for example.
00:11:57
Speaker
a couple of years ago, but don't build it fully in JavaScript because at the time, Google wasn't going to render that stuff. It's like, cool, we didn't know that. That's a good heads up. And everyone wins. And there's some awesome stuff, I think, as well. SEOs have changed over time, right? There's lots of people now that have been hardcore through and through SEOs that have now started to move more into that. They can be the bridge between SEOs and devs.
00:12:22
Speaker
pronounce his surname wrong, but I think Adam Gantt or Gents, for example, was previously at deep core, then Luna then left and became a consultant. He's rolled out like this awesome, essentially like, I guess course learning platform of like how to bridge the gap between developers and SEO and build those relationships, which I think, to your point, like through and through tech, SEOs and developers like to sit in the office or in their bedroom or office with their headphones on and just get stuff done and don't want to engage with people. It doesn't really work with SEO because
00:12:51
Speaker
it's hard to explain what you need on an email. It's much easier to talk on a phone and stuff. But like, inherently, like, I will sit with my headphones on most of the day and try and avoid meetings where possible. And I think that's just like a through and through dev thing, right? There's not many, many out there that are like, super sociable and outgoing and want to do that sort of like account management stuff at the same time. I think I think find it get finding the good account managers is, it's probably the hardest the hardest role to recruit, because we are
00:13:19
Speaker
by nature, a lot of us are geeks. And I don't think the, I just, no big shock there, like big, I'm not going to use that in the headline or anything. But I think a lot of us are still in it because we do like the techie side of it. And SEO has kind of had a PR, it's had an image problem since day one.
00:13:38
Speaker
that it's either sort of super, you know, super silliest kind of without us, you're not going to get anything. Or it's seen as like some sort of cloak and dagger thing, which is something I've always, always fought, or, or kind of sold on if you don't do this, and you'll get punished by Google, which is another thing I will stand up in a crowded room and argue about the fact that doesn't exist.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I don't really have an answer really. I'm just pointing at a problem and prodding it. But yeah, I think more people, I think, because we're so brand new, perhaps in 20 years time, we'll look back and go, oh, thank goodness that dedicated SEO client managers has become an industry in its own or something. I don't know. And Google doesn't help, right? Like when you look at things like when they came out with the site speed stuff and they were saying it's the biggest, most important thing you could do.
00:14:33
Speaker
then they did call web vitals and then they changed some of the metrics. Like those things don't help because you instantly get SEOs who are like salespeople who want to do the sales stuff side going to clients who don't know any better because they're not SEOs being told, hey, your site speed is 30 out of 100. It's terrible. You've got to rebuild your whole WordPress platform because this is just going to end your whole business. But in reality, like for SME sites, it's not a deal breaker. And I think that's where like,
00:15:01
Speaker
Google doesn't help themselves in trying to get that stuff portrayed and then SEOs themselves don't really help either because like SEO size B is the biggest thing going fix on it and it's like cool but what you're asking for is me to refactor every line of code and that's not an easy lift and you can't show me the ROI benefit for that's like why would I go and do that? I agree entirely and it's not helped by the fact that sometimes Google themselves when asked a direct question about something go
00:15:28
Speaker
I don't know, but you've really hit the nail on the head. I've always really, really tried to market myself or my agency as it is now positively and not through fear because SEO to me is a tool for, I say this all the time, it almost has a cliche, but it's for amplifying excellence.
00:15:50
Speaker
It's not for polishing the turds and it's not to keep yourselves from being struck by lightning by Google. Google, I think to be honest, Google sometimes are doing their best to be clear, but just doing a really poor job. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, there's, there's mobile encampments and then there's lots of people on Twitter that I say out Google that post where one bit of documentation says X and the other bit says Y and they directly conflict with each other and contradict each other. Like that doesn't help because one developer reads one thing and another developer reads another or
00:16:20
Speaker
vice versa SEOs. And then suddenly, in a room of trying to solve a problem, you've got different bits of information that people have read that then is causing that conflict. And I don't think we'll ever get around that, unfortunately. I think that's where things being able to test and prove the model or have case studies. And again, there's some good portals being built of just like a bank of case studies that you can use. I think that's where that helps. But like, site speed has always been the big one, because it's so easy to go into a tool and say, hey, look, it's read out. It's completely red. It's terrible.

Is Site Speed Critical for SEO Strategy?

00:16:47
Speaker
Fix it. But not knowing the what's in the wild, like,
00:16:50
Speaker
what's the actual uplift. It's just a good way to, particularly to smaller companies, it's a good way for salespeople and some of the other SEOs to go, your site's rubbish. And then they come in, oh, we can rebuild your website because we're also a web design agency. And like two words were on stone. We now got the web design project and SEO. And then inherently it's not any better because they've installed 20 plugins on WordPress and made it even worse. I got the worst one I ever did. I worked on a site last year. I removed, bear in mind, removed
00:17:20
Speaker
64 redundant plugins from a WordPress site. 64. Anyway. It's so easy, right? It's so easy because like, you know, you want a feature and it's like, oh, cool. Well, there's a plugin for that. Let's just install that one instead of getting there to build it by hand. And that doesn't help because those things are so easy to go and get. You don't have to go into like theme forest and there's a plugin literally for everything. There is, but what you're, what you're talking about reminds me of bringing things back around to creativity again, because
00:17:48
Speaker
everyone, I'm holding my hands up to a podcast, which is really unhelpful. Okay, just imagine, imagine a steel ruler listener, and I'm going to hold a steel ruler. Although I imagine, okay, if you know what they look like, so I'll put that back down. Everyone's got that, that amount of resource. It doesn't matter if you are Virgin, who can spend, God knows how much they spend on SEO. It doesn't matter if you started a donut shop and you've got, you know, a hundred quid a month to spend on SEO.
00:18:15
Speaker
The real skill of SEO isn't necessarily understanding every single possible aspect and an option. It's knowing how to get the best result out of the resource you have, whether it's hundreds of millions or whether it's a tenner. What's going to do it? And if your site, so you've kind of got me onto something that gets me fired up now that, yeah, the site speed thing is important, but it's also important for user experience and blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, if you're
00:18:44
Speaker
competitors have horrendous websites, and they're worse than yours, and yours is marginally faster, then you might, you might want to look at something else first. Yeah, I think you want to look almost anything else first. Yeah, I think you're hitting the head though. Some of that is like, as SEOs, we have all these tactics that we should go and look at their end guidelines and posts and all this sort of stuff. And I think the key thing that I had as a learning curve when I went to health, which was like, there isn't a lot of useful
00:19:12
Speaker
and actual detailed stuff of how to build the commerciality into like SEO. I'm like, okay, a strategy isn't tactics in a deck of like, we should fix size, we should fix four fours and we should build fast navigation. And like I spent quite a lot of time doing the SEO MBA from Tom Quitslow about like how you should actually build a strategy that gets by and to your point, and then it doesn't matter. This, you've got the same amount of resource, but like when you actually look and the SEOs go away and actually look at the strategy and where the area of opportunity is,
00:19:40
Speaker
they actually know then how to get results. Whereas I think a lot of the time we look at a site, we run it through like Siteball, Screaming Frog or HRS or Semrush or any of the other tools and say, all these issues need fixing. Go and fix them without really the clear plan of like, do they? And it's the same when you get flagged in search content, right? Like Google pings you a notification to say, you've got schema invalidation issues and it's like one page and your site's 10,000. It's like, is it an issue? Like it's one page, like is it really gonna move the needle?
00:20:08
Speaker
I really hate the change to the way that search engine notifications are done now. I hate it so much. It causes me so much, not grief, but just unnecessary conversations with clients because the whole language of new issues prevent your site being indexed. For one thing, they're never, I really did want to swear that they are almost never new issues. And I'm considering just
00:20:37
Speaker
creating a meme to send back to clients that just says, task failed successfully. Because the biggest one always is, these pages aren't indexed because they're set to no index. Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the same. I honestly had it the other day where a client emailed me a screenshot and said, we need to look at this. It's failed. And I went to Search Console. And it's a page that is now a product that's now at stock anyway. But the other part of that is like, the issue wasn't actually an issue. It was a warning. But for a client that doesn't know about SEO, they just get the notification like,
00:21:07
Speaker
schema validation is invalid. So then they just go, oh, there's an issue. The SEO team aren't working hard enough. And it's like, it's not an issue. It's a false negative. The thing that really bugs me, and this is, this is so petty of me that, you know, I'm connected to, I don't know off the top of my head, lots of search, search console profiles. So because I don't want all those emails coming through, but because I do need to keep, keep an eye on it.
00:21:30
Speaker
I've set up a system where every notification I get, I basically convert them into an RSS feed that we then have running in Slack so that me and my team can all just go look at it and go, okay, okay, just see it coming through. And they've changed the subject line for almost every single notification now to there are new issues.
00:21:50
Speaker
preventing your pages being indexed? Like, no, I used to be able to just scan the RSS list. Yeah, and see if it was actually an issue. No, now I have to click on them. Thanks, Google. You've made me click things. And it's those sort of things that like, you know, yeah, there's lots of ways you can get around that and stuff. But like, it's those sort of things that don't help the industry as a whole, right? It's those false negatives or those like scam and we're into things that
00:22:15
Speaker
Google this sounds like, we're going to have to look at the deprecation of universal analytics. It had that massive pop-up banner with the world is going to end timer. It's like, yeah, I understand that you need to do that stuff. But like, GA4 as a product wasn't great anyway. So they focused way more on the clock than they did on the actual product. But you look at those things, it's like, that doesn't help anyone. Because for the uneducated person that's not an agency or not an SEO or not an analytics person, it just looks like someone who's about to blow up on their website rather than just
00:22:45
Speaker
Hey, you need to migrate to this, click this, click this, that'll give you the basic implementation. Um, so I think sometimes Google is send me to blame, but then as SEOs, we've also not helped the industry and it's coming a long way, right? It's, it's improving, but there's still lots of stuff out there that's like misleading or misaligned or conflicting signals from different documentation that for anyone new getting in the industry, they're like, where do you turn to actually find
00:23:11
Speaker
the genuine truth of what should be done to drive traffic. This is one of the things that makes it really difficult to market yourself or your agency, because you and I are both entirely on the same

Beyond Technical Fixes: Context and Strategy in SEO

00:23:21
Speaker
page there. I always say, if you're going to read any advice about SEO, for one thing, be wary, because it's advice. Look at what the writer would gain from you reading it. And at the same time, I'm saying, hey, look at my content.
00:23:40
Speaker
So what I'm doing at the moment is I'm trialing, just kind of saying, look, I found something that I think is interesting. And if you're a business owner, I think this article on SEO is interesting because that puts in that filter that says there is no one truth. There's no one central point of truth for SEO. It's all, look at this stuff. And it's always been the same, right?
00:24:08
Speaker
And all of that, I think that we just spoke about can be mapped back to the same thing. What I speak about quite a lot in SEO is like context is key. And there's like, you know, the site speed, the canonical, all the errors that you get. It's like, are we talking? What's the scale of the issues and impact? And then being able to actually put the context behind it, like how important it is to go and fix it. Because again, devs are clever people, right? And they'll be the first to come back and go, you're asking me to spend a hundred hours refactoring loads of JS code, but you can't even tell me what that actually is going to do.
00:24:37
Speaker
And then you're arguing in meetings to say you want to get it done. And it's like that sort of stuff. Like Google doesn't help because there's no, you know, PPC, it's easier to put forecasts together where of SEO, the SERP is different for every keyword and all that sort of stuff that makes it impossible to then put the proper like impact and stuff to that context. I'm amazed that it's still so
00:24:58
Speaker
It's still such a problem. I didn't lose a client because they were never a client, but somebody I was speaking to said, look, we're not going to work with you because you can't guarantee results. I'm just like, if someone guarantees you results in SEO, don't work with them. I can see where they're coming from 100%. Yeah. And that's the problem though, right? There's still sites out there and agencies out there that have the meshing of a week and guarantee SEO results 100%.
00:25:25
Speaker
And on the average user, it doesn't matter if then the output of that is actually like, we can guarantee you position one for a keyword that's like eight words long, has zero search volume, which you could guarantee. But for the customer, they just look and go, oh, cool, you can guarantee it. And that's the sort of language that I think we're bad at as an SEO is like guaranteeing things, which realistically, no one can guarantee anything in search because Google tomorrow could release an update that they probably will never get to this point, but something that where they actually can understand all the AI driven content and then
00:25:54
Speaker
penalize all those sites, right? And then you've guaranteed stuff that you can't now quantify. And how do you undo that? But that comes down to the SEO industry is just as a collective, we have to do better. Well, that's why I use the message of Amplify Excellence. I worked with a business coach. And when I first started working with him, he described how he looks for clients. And he said he looks for people who, like a tennis coach would, he looks for people who are doing really good stuff.
00:26:25
Speaker
And with a bit of guidance and a bit of coaching might be able to up their game. And I think that's the kind of client I look for with SEO. I want to work with people who are really enthusiastic, you know, really have their team and the community at their heart in the US as part of their growth. And this is why I think ESG policies, I roll about ESG at the moment, but I think now it's really, really important. It really is.
00:26:52
Speaker
I don't want to work with somebody who's going, oh, I can't look at the size of the margin I've got on these products. If I could just get to number one, I'd take over the world. I'm not really that interested. I don't know if I'm putting off any potential clients listening to this, but no, I want people who are doing really well and just need that little. That boost. Yeah, that boost. Yeah. And it's, you know, particularly as well, like from all the stuff and the clients I've worked with, the clients that usually have a
00:27:20
Speaker
better understanding of SEO and the impact and how long things potentially take or did take back then. Those are the clients that you don't have then those conversations about like, why aren't we ranked for this keyword? Why aren't we ranked for that keyword? Or like, why has it taken so long? Because they actually understand SEO rather than the other clients, which is like, well, we can get number one with PPC tomorrow. It's like, you can, but they're completely different marketing channels, like different approach and stuff. And those clients I find you'll always be chasing the emails of like,
00:27:49
Speaker
Now we've got to respond as to why we aren't number one within a week of taking on that campaign and so on and so forth. Those will always exist sadly. I was doing a bit of blue sky thinking a little while ago and I thought if the phrase SEO didn't exist, what would I

SEO as a Collaborative Growth Engine

00:28:04
Speaker
prefer? What would be what I'd want to call what we're doing? And I'd want to call it a collaborative growth engine. Yeah, agreed.
00:28:16
Speaker
We're not going to sit in the dark room and just hammer this stuff out for you. We can't. There's no way I'll ever know as much about any industry or niche as any of my clients do. I need your collaboration. I absolutely do. Cool. Yeah, agreed. Perfect. That was a nice ending, I thought. I don't mean the thing I said. I mean the stuff you said. Kevin, I really appreciated this phone call. I thoroughly enjoyed it. No problem. Is there any thought you'd like to leave us with as we wrap up?
00:28:44
Speaker
I guess just, you know, as I said, like the learning and testing thing is, I think is crucial to SEO, but also just don't listen to everything you read on SEO Twitter, I guess. That is a very good summary. Okay. I'll put links in the show notes so people can find your website and it only remains for me to say, well, thank you once again. And I'm going to say goodbye. Would you like to say goodbye? Thanks all for listening.