SPEAKER_00 0:00

I used to feel bad when I say to clients, guess what? Your website's crap, we're gonna have to rebuild it. I didn't say it in that way, but you sort of infer that. But the number of times we have to do that is is more often than not. Um, and they're devastated because they they've just spent all this money and it looks great, but it doesn't function.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Welcome to the Agency Hour Podcast, where we help web design and digital agency owners create abundance for themselves, their teams, and their communities. This week we're joined by Simon Major, CEO of Practice Edge. Practice Edge are a healthcare digital marketing specialist agency delivering SEO, Google ads, and web design to healthcare and medical professionals. Simon's also an ex-chiropractor. He knows that world very well. He's also a member of our Mavericks Club Mastermind and he's become a very good friend of mine over the last four years. And in this episode, we're diving into what Simon calls the Scooter Acronym, which his team uses to get great results for their clients. If you're a nerd like me, you're gonna love this. I'm Troy Dean. Stay with us. All right, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please welcome back to the Agency Hour Podcast, Mr. Simon Major from Practice Edge in Melbourne. Hello, Mr. Major. Hey Troy. Welcome back. How are you? Very well, thank you. Very good. Now, for those that missed the first episode, uh, or for those who are new to our world, just tell us who you are, what you do, and what we're doing here.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

So, yeah, Simon Major. I'm uh running Practice Edge out in Diamond Creek in Melbourne. Been doing that for the past uh gee, I suppose 10 plus years. And uh we're predominantly a search-based marketing agency servicing the needs of healthcare providers. Um but we also do quite a bit of work overseas as well in the States and there other places like that. So um, but largely uh an SEO agency. Um, Google Ads and SEOs is predominantly what we do with with a lot of web development stuff as well to support that. So that's our prime focus. And you were a chiropractor before you got the chiropractor. Yeah, I spent my first 15 years practicing as a chiropractor and wanted something that allowed me to leverage myself a little bit better. And um now we've got a team of we've got a team of uh 26 people. Wow. Yeah, and uh most I think we've got about 15, 16 in the office uh here, and the other 12 are over in, or or 11 are over in um Philippines. Are you got bunk beds in the office now so people just work? Yeah, we've actually run out of room. When we first got down here, we we rattled. Um we rattled in this place, and uh since uh over the last few years we've we've got to the point where now we have to do um desk sharing so that we can fit everyone in. We can't have everyone in on the same day.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

So you're like the bank now, they have like a 60% capacity, and not everyone can come to work on the same day. Pretty much some people work some people work from home.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Do people work from home? Yeah. Yeah. So we have we have a sort of like a um uh what do you call it, three days in the office and two days at home, and it seems to work pretty well.

SPEAKER_02 3:13

I think even people working from home, like I can't work from home anymore because I have two kids under the age of seven, and I'd kill someone if I worked from home. Um so I love being in the office now, but I even think people working from home, what I'm hearing is people do want to go back to the office a couple of days a week because they miss the camaraderie, they miss. 100%, you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah, I think that's really important. And the other thing too, like we had our SEO meeting is so we have an SEO meeting once every month. Um, and basically what we do is we put some tables down the middle of the office, and everyone turns their chairs around and and joins in so we can fit everyone in. Um and we set up a camera and whatever for our remote team. And we just join in and and uh we just discuss SEO for four hours and talk wins and strategy and different things like that. And um you can't do that remotely. It's not as easy, it's very difficult, it doesn't flow as well. Um, but having that sitting there and just you know listening to the team talk and strategize is uh very powerful.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

That's great. Uh now the reason this is I think is important is because what we're gonna be talking about today is a bit of a framework that you have uh developed for getting great results for clients, and I think um, you know, one of the things about having a team that is remote or partially remote is the the you know communication is so important and people the the problem and I've heard this cliche a lot and it's so true, the problem with communication is thinking that it's taken place. So you had a conversation in your head with someone, but you haven't actually had it with the person, right? And so I think frameworks are a really key part of I'm such a big fan of frameworks, a really big part, in fact, in a very nerdy way, just as a little sidebar, I'm actually trying to develop a framework for how to develop frameworks because I think framework, there is a thought process that goes on to develop a framework. I think frameworks are so important to communicate consistency across a team. Because if you're all just working around a kitchen table, you can just shout at each other and kind of get it done, right? But when you start working with remote teams, you need to have consistency. So why have you developed we're gonna unpack your your scooter framework in this in this episode? Why did you develop this framework? What was the problem that you were trying to solve?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

So if if we go back to the start when I first taught myself how to do SEO, which was a long time ago, probably you know, 12 years ago, um, and I would listen to people online and I would it was it was really the wild west when it comes to SEO. It was very, very early days. There wasn't a lot of information around. It was when Google Page Rank was still um a predominant um ranking indicator. And links were were very unknown. It was, you know, the more links the better. It didn't really matter about quality. So I I had to sort of learn and teach myself. And what I've found is that as the team has grown over the years, is that it's becoming extremely difficult to convey knowledge to people that aren't otherwise trained in SEO. Uh, they might have digital skills, but they don't necessarily understand the nuances of being able to, you know, work and deliver what is really important. And that comes with time and experience. But sometimes, you know, it's not always as easy to you know remember and do things. So my role um uh up until recently, now I've got an SEO lead, but my role has been to really help with the training and to make sure that people, when they came on, can fulfill what I believe is the most important thing uh when it comes to running a business, and that is to deliver the promise. And so for me, when I um take on a client and I still do the sales calls, uh, I have a conversation and I make a promise, I expect that to be delivered. And so the transference from me to the team means that I need to make sure that they're delivering what they do. And and look, part of that was the reason why we developed this software suite that we've also developed as well, because I need to be able to look and see what was going on in an instant. I need to be able to have a look and monitor what was going on. And I just couldn't do that without having a tool in front of me that allowed me to do that. So it's a natural progression that you start to think, right, how do I actually um break it down into simple steps that give people the option to be able to say, oh, okay, I can go back to that. Have I done these things? If I do these things and I do them well, then I'll ultimately end up with delivering the outcome that we're expecting. The client demands or or expects.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

This is a huge problem for uh agencies who are growing, freelancers who are going into the studio model or agencies that are growing their team is because initially the agency owner is the one that does everything, makes the promise to the client, knows what's possible. Yep, you know, if I talk to an agency owner and I was going to coach them one-on-one for 12 months, I I know exactly what to do, right? But I we've now got a team of coaches and navigators that I'm and I'm not even doing sales calls anymore. So it's like, how do you get that promise on the front end to match the deliverable? And this is why a lot of agency owners get stuck and don't hire people because they're their thinking is well, no one I know what's possible, no one else is going to be able to do it the way I do it. And so the consistency and the congruency with our clients now is I'm making the promise so I can deliver it. But as soon as someone else starts delivering it, there's a mismatch between what I'm promising and what the team's delivering. And it is very difficult to transfer that knowledge through because everyone's got their own way of doing things. And so that you know, every time you introduce someone new into the conversation, there's another weak link that can potentially break. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

And the other thing, too, and part of the reason for this was because you know, we we had this really detailed asana process that outlines all of the different things that need to be done, and and we add to it all the time. We find there's things that have potentially been missed or not done in the way that we expect them to be done. And you know, it evolves over time, but a process only goes so far, and there still is that level of accountability in terms of thinking through strategy and really understanding what that ultimate goal is. And I think sometimes, you know, it's easy to get sidetracked into just doing tasks and not thinking about outcomes. And so what I wanted to do was to be able to just go back to basics and have a conversation. If something's not working, if I need to sit down with someone, I want to be able to sit down with them and say, right, let's look at this. Can you honestly tell me that you have covered each of these areas to the best of your ability and you're delivering them in the way that they need to be done? Because if you do them, it's a simple, it really is that simple. If you do them and you do them well and you've got great strategy, then you will deliver the result.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

Cool. So you developed this scooter framework, which you've been working on for a long time. This didn't happen overnight, right? No. Um what what walk us through it and let's unpack each each part of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So the four key elements to to SEO, right, which is um on-page, off-page, content, and technical. Everyone sort of talks about that. Um, but then I started to sort of think, okay, so how do I fit that in with all of the other elements that need to be there? So I thought we have to fit strategy in there. So strategy forms the S, right? And then the other thing that I thought of was, okay, so scoot is is sort of halfway there. And I thought, what about scooter? You can jump on your SEO scooter and you can deliver this result, right? So then I thought, okay, so one of the things that I are going constantly about is doing things with excellence, right? So it's about looking at can I do this to the absolute best of my ability, or what is the best practice that can be done when it comes to each of the elements of SEO? And then the ultimate goal is to deliver a result once you've done that. So strategy is the S, content on page, off page, technical, done with excellence, delivers results. And it's a really clear and simple way for people to remember exactly what they need to be doing when it comes to SEO. And if you do those things, you do them well, then ultimately um you can't fail. Um, sure, there's going to be challenges, but um, I think what most people do when it comes to SEO is they they apply tricks without thinking too much at the start and understanding exactly what the the ultimate goal is, you know. And that's where the strategy part comes in. It's why it's the S, it's why it's the start of it all. Because if you just do tasks without having a strategy behind you, you'll end up with mediocre results. And so for me, and and this is how we always pitch to clients is that we we we're trying to find an angle as to what is missing with their website, and then that forms the basis of the strategy, and then everything else that follows beyond that is essentially just addressing those those gaps. Um, and I always talk when I'm talking to clients, I'm always talking about what is the competitive gap. Where are you now? Where is your future state? What's the gap? How do we build the bridge? Um, and that's that's the plan that we use, and and outlining that um that plan of attack is is very, very powerful for clients because they when when you can articulate the problems within their business or within their online profile um very clearly by just having a glance at something, they understand that you know what you're actually doing. Um and it was interesting the other day, uh Adam, my partner in America, we were talking to a client and I was showing them the results of a competitor insights audit that we'd done. And as soon as they saw what I was presenting, he started finishing my sentence because he knew that that was the problem that he had. Um, and essentially what it was was that they were trying to rank everything on their homepage instead of having you know sub pages with with where we could create the relevance on those internal pages. Um, and so as soon as he saw that, he it instantly he understood what the strategy that we would be taking was. And and his big concern is, okay, so that's the strategy, but am I going to lose traffic? Because everyone else tells me that I'm going to lose traffic when I play with my SEO. And we said, well, when you're ranking at 24 and 76 and 58, I wouldn't be too too much worried about traffic. It's all upside as far as I'm concerned. Because once we fix these things and and get a foundation right based on having a solid understanding of strategy, then it's just, you know, follow the follow the road.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Follow the bouncing ball. A lot of people don't understand strategy. When I first started out, I I didn't understand strategy, right? I I was guilty of what I think a lot of people are guilty of, which is, and it's no one's fault, it's just that you know you you don't know what you don't know. I think that you know, I was guilty of just copying tactics that I saw online from competitors, just going, oh, well, they're doing that, so it must work. What you don't see online is the underlying strategy that's driving those tactics. So for the beginner, for the newbie who may not understand what strategy means, can you explain what what is the difference between a strategy, say for example, a strategy for um a podiatrist, right? What how what's the SEO strategy for a podiatrist versus the SEO strategy for um you know an e-commerce store or an SEO strategy for uh a coach or a consulting firm? Like what how is what what what what what is strategy exactly?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Okay, so the f the first thing in in sort of unpacking that is understanding um where the traffic might be. So for an online coach, it's probably going to be very, very different to what it is for a um podiatrist, because the way that the audience will be looking for those people will be very, very different. So someone like like when I found you, I didn't necessarily know that there was a coach available for digital marketing agencies. I I stumbled across you on social media, which is where you do most of your marketing. However, um, if I was looking um for a you know podiatrist or something like that, my first instinct is not to go to social media, it's to go straight to um to search, right? And you do and it's a local-based search because you're trying to find someone local. So I think the first part of strategy is when you're and when you're looking at a client is understanding where that person is particularly likely to find their traffic from. So that's the first thing, right? And strategy is saying um, you know, you're probably not best suited for an SEO strategy, or you're probably more suited for a search strategy. So understanding where that traffic comes from is probably the most important thing. The next thing, um, if we're talking about like a service-based business that actually generates leads from online, and the great thing about SEO is that largely um it is all very similarly based around keywords. Um, and so for me, I'm a foundations guy. So everything comes from having a solid foundation, and that comes from understanding what people search for, um, and then basically creating an environment where you create the relevance required to attract those people to your website. See, social media is a push strategy, um, whereas SEO and search is a pull strategy. So very, very different strategies. Understanding the difference between the two is critical when it comes to being able to market to people. And I think you know, part of the problem with a lot of you know um junior SEO agencies is they'll probably try and um run an SEO campaign for someone in the wrong space and not get the results that they're looking for. Um so having clear expectations around what you're likely to expect is the is the first part of the strategy, um, but then establishing the foundations of a campaign so that you can come at it from a uh a very, very much keyword focused. Like people often say ACO is dead or it doesn't work or whatever, and that's just absolute crap. It is always going to work. Um, it's just how we get it to work is very different. But people will always go to a search and they will always type in keywords because there is no other way other than sticking in front of audiences, like we do on social, that you can actually connect someone's intent of question with the data that's at that's there. So in a long way to answer your question, um, strategy is is about understanding um how to connect what someone's looking for with the service and products your client might offer, and then working out the best possible way to do that. And doing that with a clear understanding of keywords, um, and then creating an environment that is actually able to pull those people to your page is the most important part of the strategy. And that comes down to content, it comes down to you know, your on-page, it comes down to structure. Structure is so critically under underlooked when it comes to SEO. The number of times we get websites from you know web developers that have completely missed the mark when it comes to building a website with proper structure is and we have to rebuild it. And I yeah, you know, I I used to feel bad when I say to clients, guess what? Your website's crap, we're gonna have to rebuild it. I didn't say it in that way, but you sort of infer that. But the number of times that we have to do that is is more often than not, um, and they're devastated because they they've just spent all this money and it looks great, but it doesn't function. It's got three H2Os. Just making sure that you have um set an environment that is going to deliver the the the ability to communicate to the person looking for the service and product.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

So the strategy is is uh the plan of how we go what we're going to do and how we're gonna do it to achieve the goal, right? Correct. Um okay, so let's talk about content. Uh is you know how like I think one of the things that c where clients get stuck, and then uh effectively where the agency gets stuck is that the clients don't want to produce content. Um how much content do they need to produce? Um most clients don't want to do things like make videos or produce, you know, or or don't have or you know, don't have the bandwidth or the budget to produce beautiful, you know, photography or podcast episodes, or you know, so how much content is required and and the obvious question is how much is AI augmenting that or disrupting it, or is AI just making it worse?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

So how much content you need is based on how much content your competitors are doing. So if you're in a space that that has you know huge volumes of content um and you've got thin content on your website, you can't expect to rank. You're not competitive. Um, whereas if you're in a space where you know there's a lot of not a lot of competition, the content's typically poorly done, um, that's a great opportunity. And that's what it comes down to when you analyze. So um, you know, let's look at your website, for instance, right? You have thousands of blog posts and things like that. If you want to be seen as an authority, um not only do you have to produce you know volumes of content because that's what your competitors are doing, but also um for your um potential clients when they hit your website, if you've got thin content or it's poorly written or it's not you know um interesting, then that that forms an impression of what you offer as a business. So the content, like we had an example the other day of a physio that came to us and uh he had uh poorly structured website, and uh you know, if you went to you had to find where to get to the service pages, when you eventually got there, there was one sentence on you know, easy or something like that. It's like he he's not gonna be competitive. If I'm looking for someone to help me with my shoulder and I get one sentence, whereas the competitors have you know volumes of content, then that's how much content you need. So, you know, the thing with SEO is it's not about you don't have to beat everyone, you just have to beat your competitors. And so look to your competitors for the amount of content that they're producing and the quality of content they're producing. And if you want to go toe-to-toe, then you've got to have content that is as strong, um, video that's that's strong, and images that reflect exactly what you're doing. Because if you don't, um they'll beat you every time. Because you know, your your clients are the best, um, you know, they don't even it's unconscious what they do when they evaluate your website, but they evaluate it for quality and they evaluate the the the way the content's written um all the time. When it comes to AI, AI isn't the problem. The problem is um people using AI uh just straight out of the bot, right? And not Reading it or not modifying it or not curtailing it to the way that it should be done. I wrote a whole heap of um of AI content um before Christmas on specific topics that I wanted to address. Um and I was really careful how I did it, and I I put in big long descriptions and I got the content back and I edited it and and I read it and um it came out really good. So it's not about, I mean, garbage in, garbage out. If you give a one-line sentence and say, write a 1500-word blog post on Podiatry, you're gonna get something that comes back, it's generic and crap. But if you actually spell it out and say, look, here's how I want you to structure it, or use a tool that helps you structure it, then you're gonna get a much better quality output. So if you if you write AI content, not a problem, just make sure that it's relevant and comparable to what your competition are doing. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

The our our mate Timbo Reed, I'm just uh uh I'm just googling because I wrote an article based on your advice last year. Um that's not getting any search results, but we went from um there is one uh ideal client avatar, is the phrase that I experimented with. And uh we we went from like being completely invisible to uh position 12 in about two weeks. Yep. Um and that was that was AI largely AI content, but it was very heavily prompted and and a lot of thought and effort went into actually, you know, who the client, who the target audience is, and what the purpose of the article is and what we want them to do. And our mate Timbo Reed says something. He's been doing a keynote presentation. Timbo Reed's a podcast, it's got a podcast called The Small Business, Big Marketing Show. You should definitely check it out. And he's an absolute bloody legend of a bloke, Timbo. He's a ripper, he's a ripping bloke. And um he is also a keynote speaker, he gets paid to go around and talk to corporates because he's just he's just a you know, like he's just a charismatic fella. He's got an amazing voice, he's a big fella, he's a big cuddly teddy bear. You love, he's got a great energy. I love spending time with him. And he had a presentation, I can't remember what it was called exactly, but it was I'm paraphrasing. It was basically be helpful, right? Like the the your whole content marketing strategy, your whole marketing strategy is for him in his mind is like just be helpful. And I think with content, I think the number one thing that people can be thinking about is how can I just be the most helpful insert what I do here to my local community. So if you're a chiropractor in Diamond Creek, you go, well, how can I just put con how can I put content out that is the most helpful to the local community so that if they're struggling with any kind of issues, they might not even need to come and see me. They might I might be able to give, produce like a an infographic of exercises they can do at home to relieve lower back pain. And if they can do it at home and not come and see me, that's a win because I've been super helpful. They're gonna remember me for life. I'm gonna have a fan for life and they will refer their friends in the future. So I think a lot of people overthink the content strategy.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

And I think the rule is just be as helpful as you possibly can. I and I think the other thing too is that if you can almost have a conversation with someone about what's going on in their brain, and you can um relate clearly to what it is that they're going through and and the experience they're having. Like, say for instance, um uh if if a podiatrist is talking about uh plantar fasciitis and they say, you know, do you wake up in the morning and and when your foot hits the ground, it feels like you've you know stepped on a sharp rock or something like that. That's how people feel, and they go, okay, yeah. And then there's it ease as you move throughout the morning, and then it sort of you don't notice it till night time, and you get home and your feet ache, and you had that conversation with people, and they say, Oh, he really understands what I'm talking about. He must have experience dealing with this. Yes. Um, and so that's the that's the sort of way that we try to write content. And look, we don't write content anymore. We have a a very experienced content team do it for us, um, and it just saves all the hassle for us to have to do it, but it comes back. Um, and there's a framework that's used for that. Um, and the framework basically takes people on that journey. And so we we use um a tool called Surf Resio, uh uh, which I explained to you before Christmas as well. And Surf Resio is amazing. And so we get scores now, so we can grade our content objectively against what um what the competition are doing. So you go to page one for the particular keyword, um, and then you you take out the the results that aren't necessarily relevant, like Wikipedia or anything like that, or the directory site, you take those out and you compare your content directly against those of your competition, and you get a score and you see where you sit. Um, and so if your content ranks uh well and it's got all the right keywords and the correct keyword density and whatever, then happy days. But if it doesn't, it'll tell you what you need to include in order to make it better. And so, you know, trying to use these acronyms and and these methods of of getting you know all the things done that you need to do to deliver the result is part of of just making sure that you can quantify the the work that needs to be done and do it in a way that's um you know scalable with um with with multiple people across multiple clients.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Okay, so we've got the strategy. The strategy informs how much content we're gonna need to produce and what type of content we're gonna need to produce. One of the things I've learned is that, and something that we're starting to experiment with is so great. Now there's a great blog post that's ranking uh around ideal client avatar. Let's just turn that blog post into a YouTube video, an educational, helpful YouTube video, and then embed the YouTube video on the blog post. So add more media to the blog post and hopefully make it better than the competitors, right? So we have the content. Talk to me briefly about you know, on page, off-page, and technical. I'll completely transparent. I don't understand the difference between on-page and technical. So just walk walk me through like the the high-level version of on what do we need to do on page.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Okay, so on on page is about your the way that your page, um, the meta titles, the tags, the headings, um, all of that stuff, right? So it's it's about the alt tags that you use in your images. It's about the signals that you give to Google about what your page is about. Now we we learn a huge lesson before Christmas um about this, and it was it was something that I I did in a um a talk with the the Mavericks a few days ago, or a couple weeks ago it was actually. And and basically what we learnt was that on-page titles, um, whilst keyword research is important and gives you the right indication, the most important consideration that you've got is what are the SERPs using to relate to that particular keyword. I'll give you an example. So um it might have been um websites for okay, the the keyword research came back, websites for chiropractors or something like that. And when we went to the SERPs, we found that it was actually the the keyword that Google was choosing and and preferencing was um chiropractic website design, something like that. Um and so what we found was that not always is it um do you use the keyword that comes out of out of Google keyword planner, whatever it might be, um, as the primary keyword on your page title. So the on page, as soon as we made that change, we jumped from you know low results to page one um pretty much overnight. Um and that's on page. On page is incredibly powerful if it's combined with really great content. So great content defines what the page is about and creates you know interest for the user. The on page is how you relate that within the search engine. So the page title, the page description are what are found in Google search results. And the page title is probably one of the most important elements that you can do with your on-page. But then it's also about having one H1 heading, um having a hierarchy of headings, H2s and then H3s and H4s, H2s, H3s, H4s. Um, and then having all the other things like schema markup and um alt tags for your images and just that structure on the page, right? That's that's what on page is. Um and then your off page is about authority. There's two things that drive SEO, relevance and authority. Relevance is making sure that the content and the on page relate specifically to what the audience is looking for and what the content is about, and and authority is how well that page is interlinked from other websites and the score that's given by third-party tools or whatever, we use page authority. Um, but the backlinks that come to the page give that page the authority and the ability to be able to rank. Because if all things are equal and both pages have similar relevance and similar on page, how would Google rank pages um by importance? There'd be no way to do it. So they have to have relevance and they have to have authority. And get those two things sorted, and that's going to solve most problems with SEO, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:07

So an author authority, someone explained authority me once is like if you imagine being in an art gallery for a local artist who's who's having their first exhibition, and you walk in and there's a you know half a dozen people there, and you don't recognize anyone, and that's all cool, it's all fine, and you're there to support them because you might know them, or you walk into an exhibition and and it's packed, and you're there's a bunch of celebrities there, and you see, you know, Eric Banner's in the room and Tony Collette's there, and they're all pointing at the paintings going, Wow, isn't that amazing? Instantly that person's got more authority. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Yeah, that's right. It's it's a I mean, it's a little bit like um, you know, if you start a new restaurant and it's got no no reviews and and no one goes there or whatever, it doesn't have any um any real sort of no vibe. Yeah, yeah, it's that's right. It doesn't have that um that level of um you know authority or or relevance that you need. So people won't go to it.

SPEAKER_02 31:58

So off pages off pages basically backlinks and right, okay.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

And that's a whole other story. I mean, that's a seriously um It's still the Wild West, isn't it? Oh well, it's not so much Wild West, it's it's just you can get your fingers burnt really bad. I mean, you know, we spend fortune on links, um, and but it's about buying the right quality links, but we also build links, we also, you know, um do outreach on our own account. Um, and look, it's it's you know, when we've got a team that does that stuff, um, and that's where you can really, really um do some damage um if you're not doing it the right way. So, you know, for us um it's about objectively increasing your authority score. And so, say if we take someone on, and this is part of the the audit that we do, if we take someone and and and you know they've got a an authority score of one out of a hundred and the competition's got 20 or 30, well then we know that it's gonna take you know better part of six to nine months to generate that level of authority before they're gonna be competitive because we can increase their relevance, that's easy. That gets done within the first two months. But the authority, and sometimes that takes a little while. Like we work with a lot of um, you know, some some of the tradey stuff that we do, we might be working with the local tree fella. Um, and you know, he um one of the guys that we took on recently, he he's he came to us, his website was hacked. In the end, we had to actually switch domains because his domain was so tainted with these bad links that had been hacked for two years and he hadn't noticed because his previous web company wasn't looking at his website. Wow. So we fixed his we fixed his um changed his domain name and uh within uh I think a day um we just re rebuilt the website on the new domain. Within a day we got rankings for the keywords that we were waiting three months to rank previously. And then over the next um probably four months we built the authority backup of that that domain, and then he's ranking everywhere now. So yeah, it's just it's relevance is is important, authority is what drives um the on-page and the content. And then the technical aspect of it. I mean, that we all see the the um the audits that uh SEO people sprue, you know, and they say, Oh, we'll do a do an SEO audit for you. And typically that's a technical audit, and they come back with 3,060 problems, and pretty much none of them have an impact on um on the SEO. And I mean, some of them might, but the problem is that there's no strategy behind um the website as it is if you just fix technical problems because it's not focused on on necessarily the keywords. Um, you know, if you don't add a keyword theme or you don't understand what keywords you you're vying for, technical audits don't do any value. That they they sort of assist the work that you've done with your with your content and your your strategy.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

So, what are some of the things that I'm gonna tackle during technical SEO versus on page? What are some of the differences?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Look, it's gonna be things like site speed, um there's a whole site speed. Um I'm just trying to think now of all the technical things that the guys work with. I don't really do that stuff anymore. But they'll look at like responsive or or Yeah, responsive things. Um you know, they'll look at um, you know, um caching, um, what how Google caches um control budgets, things like that. They'll look at a whole heap of things that um that come into play. And so it's across, it's not just a particular page, it's across the whole site. Yeah, it's across the whole site. And and really they there's I mean, we run a um uh Href's um technical audit, and it's got I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 different things that they'll run through, and they'll get a score on that, and then they they basically look at that score and then they'll address the things that need to be addressed. Um so yeah, look, the technical side of things is is is is probably one of the easiest things to do because um it it's done using a tool identifying the problems, and then they fix those problems, and then they can run the tool again and get another score and see where it's at. But um, you know, technical is not a hard thing to do, it gets managed by our overseas team uh largely. Um, and you know, it's it's done every three months. They run a technical audit and they just make sure that nothing's getting out of control and that you know the site speed and crawling and um you know those sorts of things is all under control.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

Okay, so we've got the strategy, we've got the content, we've done the on-page, we're we're we're doing some off-page, we've done the technical uh fixes. Talk to me about excellence. This is this is tricky to uh because it's very it's very subjective, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 36:46

Look, it is, it is, but it it's it's a little bit like um you know you can you can do anything with excellence, right? You can you can you can do a quick job and washing your car, or you can do a really good job and wash your car, right? Um you can um look what what we're what we're aiming for is what's best practice, right? What what what what do we need to do in order to be able to deliver the absolute best that we can in each of the areas that we're meant to be doing things in. And so um excellence for me means that your page titles have been structured in a way that is you know relating to your your keyword research, relating to what the CERPs are telling you, relating to what the competition are doing, and that they're generating results. Um it's making sure that the content on the page, the layout of it is is perfect, that the internal linking is is done in a way that um you know it has diverse anchor text. And it's it's just done so that there is that level of care and attention, that it's nearing perfection. Um and it's done with thought and care. And I think that's that's the thing that for me defines excellence. It's about making sure that you really gave it your best and that it's not half-assed, right? Um that's what unfortunately happens a lot of the time, it's what we see a lot of the time. Um, and you know, when we do a post-mortem meeting with a campaign, the thing we say is, well, what went wrong? If we lost a client, we say, well, what went wrong? What could we have done better? Where could the where could the process have been improved? Um, you know, what what was missing? Why did the client leave? You know, was the communication up to speed? Was the reporting up to speed? Was the campaign managed properly? Were the rankings good enough? Were the conversions good enough? Um, we look at all of those things and and try to understand if there was something that we could have done better but didn't do, um, and how do we get better for next time so it doesn't happen? And that to me is what you know, pushing constantly for generating the best possible outcome. Because as I said initially, it's all about you know delivering the the outcome, delivering the promise. Um, and if someone's left, then we haven't done that. Um, and we need to do better.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

And I think I think we're in an interesting um inflection point in time because you know, on one hand, everyone's trying to be more productive, more efficient, you know, everyone's trying to, you know, be more profitable, um, get things done faster. But on the other hand, and AI is definitely helping us with that, but on the other hand, I feel like there's a you know, a lot of people are just ticking things off the to-do list and say, well, that then, you know, it's done. And what what you're saying is that, and I'm reminded of um Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a great book I read a long time ago. And one of the things he they talk he the author talks about, I can't remember the author's name, but one of the things he talks about is you can you can feel quality in a product. Yeah. And he defines quality as someone who has taken the time to put a lot of love and care into producing that product. And it's the same with services. And so on the one hand, we want our team to be more productive and more efficient, but we also want them to slow down and just think about what they're doing and not just tick stuff off and take care. Because I think care is the is the key word, isn't it? Is is I've done this with excellence because I've taken the time to care about the outcome and care about what I'm doing, so I don't have to come back and fix it. Because if you don't have time to do it right the first time, you're not going to find time to fix it the second time.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

This is this is one of this is really interesting because it's one of my other things that I often say to my strategist. I say, okay, so you've sorted your strategy out, the content's done, tick, the on-page is done, tick. Don't go back and do them again. If you do them properly the first time, they're done. They're done for six months. All right. The only time you need to look at them is if the results aren't showing the impact that you expect them to be doing. But if you've done strategy, content, and on page, what's left then is building backlinks, high-quality backlinks, making sure that you're technically sound, um, which is managed by the overseas team, and then just monitoring the results and the outcomes that you're getting. And so essentially with an SEO campaign, the vast majority of it should be front-loaded within the first two to three months. And then after that, it comes down to building really good quality backlinks, um, and then just making sure that that's what's pushing the relevance. The authority then pushes the relevance, and you've done it all properly because you've sorted it out from the start. And that's that's how the sort of the plan works in terms of you know, the acronym it it's you get your strategy right, you get your content right, you get your on-page right, tick that off. And we have a milestone at number at month two, and we have an audit on that, and we say, has this been done with the highest level of of excellence and quality that we can expect? Because at that point, I don't want people going back and revisiting poor on-page or content that was crappy to start with if they're not actually um, if they haven't done it properly in the first place. So that to me is is how you ultimately should be running a campaign. You do the best that you can in the start. Um, the and and and and hopefully when you've done that, you're delivering great quality outcomes towards the latter end of the campaign.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

And then excellence is is subjective, but there are you can your your uh software, your internal software that you built, your RTC school, you can actually see, you know, it's very quick for you to sort of dial in and say, okay, well, I can see something's been missed here. And so it's just a matter of constantly communicating to the team that this is what excellence looks like.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

Right. So excellence can be quantified. Um, it can be quantified by results and it can be quantified by churn. Yep. Right. So um, you know, we um we we grade our and we're just doing this at the moment, actually, we're just revising our our scorecards. But what we aim for is that 90% of our campaigns are what we call green light status, and that means that clients happy, campaigns running along well, generating conversions, um, rankings look great. It just looks looks like it's running on fire. 90% have to be green. The other thing that we ask for is that using our software is that um 90% of our campaigns have to be generating a positive result. When we add all when we add the rankings, traffic, and conversions together in a in an algorithm, um we want a percentage score that that reflects that level of excellence. That has to be greater than 90%. Um and then the only other thing that we ask for is that you know the churn rate is low, right? So if the churn's low, you know, around about 3% is is the standard that we aim for, um, then we know our clients are happy. And and so I believe that excellence can be quantified. Um and we expect that. We we don't stand for that level of nonsense. We're having a new thing this year, which we call um um constructive confrontation, um, which is where if someone's not delivering that, then we have a conversation and we outline that that expectation. Now we've been it's been difficult to have that conversation with labor shortages and things like that. Um and you know, people don't like to be confronted, but at the same time, I believe that that is the pathway forward. I think that's the way we need to be um communicating and that we need to be having conversations with un un you know uneasy conversations and saying this is not good enough, this has not been done. Um this should have been done, it's an expectation it's done. Um, and thankfully, you you know, we're at 85% now, green light, right? So we've got five percent to go. Um that's great. I can tell where everything's at. And then look, of those, you know, we've got about five percent that might be, you know, sort of struggling a little bit. Um, everyone's got campaigns that struggle. Um, no one gets 100%. SEO is not an easy game. Um, and more often than not, it's because something along the line hasn't been done properly and we need to go back and redo it again. And so if we have those checks done in the early stages, then that's when we can make sure that uh those things are unlikely or less likely to happen. Yeah, love it.

SPEAKER_02 45:33

Okay, and then around out the acronym results, how do you measure results or more importantly, how do you report the results back to the client? What do they see that lets them know, hey, you guys are doing a great job.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Yeah, so there's a couple of things. The first thing is that our software generates a report for people, which is it's look, it's a very um similar report to what most people provide. Um, it shows traffic, it shows conversions, it shows you know where the what the search data is, the rankings, all those types of things. It goes through and does those things, and there's a there's a sort of like a summary that the strategist gives. Um, and then the the the strategist is also expected to um communicate with the client either um you know most likely through phone, um, but sometimes they're really hard to get onto. So you know, like a video message or a um an email will suffice. Um, but that's that's how they communicate. So, you know, ultimately what we're trying to do is we're trying to say, here's where you're at, this is the conversions you're generating. Um, and we can tell, you know, from from you know the reporting that we do how well things are moving. Um, but it's it's nothing better than than being able to get on the phone and have a conversation, say, hey, you know, this is all moving really well, happy with everything. Um, is there anything else we need to be doing? So on and so forth. So yeah, just the the reporting has to happen. I mean, the the the funny thing is a lot of the reports that we see from other agencies come back, like I saw one the other day, and it had their um had their keyword rankings without volume. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. So you're reporting on, you know, there was about a hundred keywords. There was no volume next to them, and they're all these reasonably good results, but they're all these obscure long tail keywords, and I thought, they're not getting any traffic for any of those terms, and there's no relevance in terms of how important they are. And so sometimes the reporting that people give, I feel, is substandard, and I think that's something that you know, you get a really solid chance every month to make an impact with your clients, and that comes from having an open conversation uh about this is where you're at, this is what you need to be doing, and this is what we've tried, and this is what we're going to do next month.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

Love it, love it. All right, so the scooter framework strategy, content on page, off-page, technical excellence, and results. We're gonna we're gonna have AI write that up and stick it in the show notes underneath.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Um you've learnt it in in a heartbeat. That's how it's how you do SEO.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

I'll never forget it. I'll remember it, I'm gonna go back to the street.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

And that's why that's why we did it, because it's so simple. Yeah. And as I said it just a little while ago, is that you get to the SCO tick, don't have to touch those again because they're all sort of set, and then just keep working on the other things and and and it will it will give you the outcome that you need.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Hey, if you're as excited about this as I am, when I first started out as a freelancer, the way that I got to recurring revenue, the way that I got to 10 grand recurring revenue quickly was selling SEO to local clients. And I didn't, I mean, I knew a little bit about SEO and I started out doing SEO, but very quickly realized that I didn't want to actually be the one clicking the buttons and pushing the mouse around, right? So I found a partner uh who did SEO for me and they did an amazing job. And I had agency analytics back in the day, it was called my SEO tool when they first launched. I had that set up to send out all the rebranded automated PDF reports to my clients every Monday with a little email that was templated, so it was completely hands-off, and I had a company uh offshore who were doing all the SEO work. So if that sounds interesting to you, one of our uh partners is E2M Solutions. They are based in India. Manish is uh the founder and CEO of E2M Solutions. They have 180 staff working out of their uh head office. They're an incredible uh white label WordPress development SEO and content writing agency. You might want to check them out because it's a way of uh filling a gap, getting some extra capacity in your agency. You can then learn about SEO, you can go sell it to clients, and you can have Manish's team do the content, do the uh, you know, do the on-page work, do the off-page uh SEO. Uh they don't do, um, I don't believe they do backlinks at this stage, but if you just want to get started doing SEO for local clients, definitely check out Manish uh and his team at e2msolutions.com. We'll put a link in the show notes. They are a uh the exclusive sponsor of the agency our podcast. We're very grateful for the partnership. They're continuing to partner with us for Mavcon, our live events this year. So we're very excited to keep working with them and to be hanging out with them again. We'll put a link in the show notes. Go check them out. I think you get a discount for the first month if you want to take them for a spin. We've got a bunch of our clients who are using them and getting great results. So go and check out e2msolutions.com. What are you most scared about with AI? Like are you fully embracing it? Do you have any do you have any uh we we use it? Because I know it's like six months ago, you kind of like a half glass, half kind of not sure if it's half full or half empty.

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Look, you know what? I always think that that quality will always um outstrip quantity. And I think what's happening at the moment is Google will will look and understand. And I think, you know, it's great to use it as a tool, but I I'm not too concerned, and and I think it's actually going to go the other way, where people will opt for having someone that does um work um with the assistance of AI to keep the cost down a little bit, but ultimately having someone think about what it's doing because AI is just rehashing other ideas that are out there, right? It's not necessarily that's right. That doesn't matter. You can't derive if if you asked Google, if you asked AI to come up with a strategy for your client and you followed that um aimlessly, good luck.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

That's right. That's right, because what it's doing is like, and I've done this, I've I've developed uh, you know, I tested out like write me your strategy for a new YouTube channel that I'm gonna start, blah, blah, blah, blah. I read through it and I'm like, it's really good, actually. There were some things in there I hadn't thought of, and it was really good, but I was like, it's pretty generic. Yeah. There's no nuance. There's no US, there's nothing specif, there's nothing specific. No, I can't go back and say, but you know, give me some insights around this. I the one thing, I've been saying this for a long time. The margin I think is moving to the strategy and the relationships. That's where the margin is in business because AI, the strategy piece will always come from another human being understanding, as you said, understanding your problem, being able to articulate your problem, proving that you've got experience and that you know what the right pathway is, right? Um I I think about I think about the GP model all the time. You go to the GP with some symptoms, the GP's job is to is to assess the symptoms, is to diagnose the root cause and then prescribe a strategy for you to fix it. The GP doesn't actually fix anything. No. He might send you to the chiropractor, he might give you a referral to a specialist, send you down to the chemist to buy some medicine, right? Well, a lot of that the deliverable stuff can be done with AI and augmented with AI. But the con that consultation with the GP, that's never gonna go away.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

No.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

And that's what our role is, I think, as strategists, as consultants, is to sit with a client, do the the analysis, the diagnosis, and the prescription.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Step one, strategy. That's right, exactly. And that's why that's why I think that um yeah, AI will be used as a tool, but I don't think it will ever replace a human um for these types of of things. I just I can't see it happening. It'll get better, but I mean, if you rely upon like I mean, I drive a Tesla and it's meant to have autonomous driving, yeah, I would not trust that car no way. Because my habit to trust it nearly ran me on the other side of the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't. So, you know, AI is good and AI will help, but yeah, um, would I put my hands on my life in its hands? No way.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

No.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah. Same, would I put my business and my livelihood in in AI's hands? No way.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

No, no way.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Uh hey, thanks for coming back to the agency hour for the second time around. Not a problem at all. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And uh thanks for your contributions to the Mavericks community. Uh, if you want to get in touch, reach out to PracticeEdge. Uh, I think it's just practiceedge.com.au, right. Based here in Diamond Creek in Melbourne. And uh look forward to hanging out at MavCon coming up in a few weeks in February and then uh some live events later this year. Very good. Thanks, Joy. Thanks, Simon. Cheers. Hey, thanks for listening to the Agency Our podcast and a massive thanks to Simon for joining us. I'm looking forward to catching up with him again at Mavcon in June, which is happening on the Gold Coast here in Australia. It's our in-person event in Australia later this year. Keep an eye out for that. Our virtual Mavcon is coming up in February very soon. Check out agencymavericks.com slash Mavcon. That's M-A-V-C-O-N. Short for Mavericks Club Conference. Uh Mavericks, agency Mavericks.com slash Mavcon for the details. Okay, folks, please don't forget to subscribe and please share this with anyone that you think may need to hear it. I'm Troy Dean, and remember, mosquitoes are attracted to people who just ate bananas.