The Promise of SEO: How to Literally Print Leads

A lot of people lose sight of the promise of SEO. If you are a business, lose sight on the fact that [music] if you are investing in it properly, even if you are a new site, in a relatively short amount of time, you can literally print customers, you can print users, you can print leads calling you up. This is the promise of SEO [music] that so many of us forget. And the consequences of losing sight of this promise, it's terrible. It's that you have a graveyard of abandoned companies, wasting your life chasing success when you didn't realize that success was closer than you thought. You just had to stick with it. The easiest example to give with this episode is just let's say that you are a new website. But even if you are further along your journey and you haven't invested that much in search engine optimization, this is still easily applicable. But okay, let's say you're a new website. This is where a lot of people get lost. Most people stay in the new website stage because it honestly takes a little bit longer to get results than people originally estimate. And so what happens is people aren't getting results fast enough and they abandon their projects. But really people just weren't doing things right in the first place. Aspiring SEOs and marketers were not doing things right in the first place. So this is what I recommend. I talked about this on episode 149 of this podcast. The fastest way to get SEO results. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Incredible episode. All right, just put up three pages targeting easy keywords all within a hub page or just link to these three pages targeting easy keywords from your homepage. By easy, I mean keywords where other websites are not taking these keywords and putting them in their page titles, H1s, URL slugs, and beginning of the first sentences. And you actually go and do that. Find keywords where your competitors are not doing that. And you go and do that. And you also want to find keywords that have a little bit more action intent. Not purely informational keywords. Purely informational keywords. These are having their clicks taken away by AI overviews or by chat GPT. People just getting their answers from AI and then not even going to your website. You actually want to rank for keywords that are going to do something for your business. So action intent keywords, voice notes for dentists, emergency roofing repair queens, broken boiler repair, Tribeca, you know, I don't know how many of these keywords that I just gave as examples are undertargeted, but these are examples of keywords where the intent behind them is high. People who are searching these things, they are looking to take action. They are looking to use something or to call up a business. So just put up three of these pages targeting easy keywords. And then what you do, and this is where a lot of people get tripped up, go on a public relations and a link building campaign and go hard. And don't focus on meaningless links. You of course you want to start with foundational links. So social media links, directories. These are things that a real business getting started would do. And you need to look to Google like you are a real business. And you want to behave like you are a real business, too. We're building a foundation right now. We're building a foundation like the buildings behind me from which to scale from. And if if you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcast, I'm recording this on a Manhattan rooftop and I have Midtown literally directly behind me. Incredible view. I would encourage you to go to YouTube and check it out. So, you start with the foundational links, but then you're also focusing on links that will bring you referral traffic. People actually passing from the back links that you are getting to your website with interest to take some sort of action on your website. Why are you focusing on this? Why is this important for SEO? because it's what real businesses care about and you are a real business and you are behaving like a real business and Google loves when businesses behave like real businesses instead of meaningless SEO machines where brands are focusing on vanity SEO just like vanity SEO could be literally getting a backlink that doesn't matter or ranking for a keyword that has low search volume that is alsoformational that isn't even seen by your ICP. So focus on having back links that bring referral traffic and on brand mentions. Brand mentions will help you get branded searches. People going to search engines and searching your brand or searching reviews of your brand. These are things that happen to businesses that are real. There are a million ways to build backlinks like this. I've made so many episodes on this. You literally can just Google how to build links Edward Sturm and there will be so many episodes on tactics to do. This is literally episode 1 155 of this podcast and I have made probably dozens of episodes on how to build backlinks. Now the problem with this stage with building links, building authority in your topic which is called topical authority. The problem is people here give up really fast. Success comes slower than people expect. They get demoralized. they get shiny object syndrome and mistakenly think that they need more content or a better idea or a new product iteration or something. They don't realize that it doesn't take that many backlinks, especially if you're going after keywords that aren't being targeted by other websites, but you still need to get some meaningful links, links that pass referral traffic and have a natural backlink profile. If you're a brand new business with a brand new website, it could take a few weeks or or months of focused effort, but you will get there. And that's where people get caught up. You will actually get there if you are focused on building links that would actually improve a business. And you're focused on putting up pages that retain organic visitors. This means pages where a visitor comes from a search engine to your page and is satisfied enough with your page that they're not going back to the search results. or if they are going back to the search results is to search something else because they got their answer from your page or they did what they were hoping to do from your page. You're making pages like that. Pages that result in satisfied searchers. I talk about this on episode 1,51 of this podcast. Most SEO copywriting is killing your rankings and costing you sales. It's about how to think about search intent, the intent behind a search, and how that informs what you're writing on a page is like. So now you've gotten your three pages, your initial three pages ranking. This is what you do. Now you put up six more and you continue to build links again. And if it sounds like a pretty obvious cycle, that's because it is at the beginning at least. And then one year after starting, if you focused on links that pass referral traffic and you focused on brand mentions and you focused on satisfying search intent and you're using varied ways of link building to keep a natural backlink profile, what is possible is really crazy because you can literally print leads because you are targeting keywords that aren't that competitive but that do have a lot of intent or maybe you're just more authoritative than other competitors because you're getting these back links that are building your authority. You have built a strong foundation like these buildings behind me and then you can scale more and continue to strengthen and widen your foundation. Something else is pages that rank and have satisfied searchers actually generate authority for you. So you're getting authority from your pages, you're getting authority from building real links that pass actual interested referral traffic. And then you start to scale and you hire a dedicated person to do different types of press. you're active on social media, giving you more branded searches, making backlinks you've gotten that are a little bit more meaningless more meaningful. The thing is, if you get a lot of backlinks that don't have referral traffic, but you are getting some branded searches, that's great, too. That looks good for Google. You're retargeting your organic leads using paid. So, you're finding out who is most interested in your business because they're coming with qualified searches from organic and then you are retargeting them with paid media campaigns. You're using a newsletter or a podcast or a YouTube to promote linkable assets to get more links. You are diversifying your marketing so you don't entirely depend on SEO while simultaneously building your SEO foundation. You have a stronger foundation and you can scale higher. You can grow your business off SEO more. And you're using SEO to inform all the other parts of marketing because SEO is evergreen. The goal is to have a business that is also an SEO informed media company. And I want to make more podcasts on this concept, but it's said it's a business that is an SEOformed media company. Because if you are constantly putting out SEO informed media, you are strengthening your foundation, your authority to go after more competitive keywords, more competitive high intent keywords or low intent keywords, but keywords in your niche that have more search volume that are being targeted by bigger players and you're becoming a big player yourself. And then you're putting up high intent SEO landing pages and you are literally ranking on page one or position one in hours and you are staying there for years compounding. That is evergreen. I can't even tell you how many high intent SEO landing pages I made in 2019 where other people have not come along and targeted these keywords and I still rank number one for these keywords and they bring me leads every day. And if you're building your authority right, you can rank so fast. I literally outrank the New York Times and Forbes, they were ranking for a keyword that I wanted to rank for. They weren't targeting the keyword properly as I'm describing. The New York Times was number one. Forbes, I think, was number two. I took the keyword, I put it in the page title, URL slug H1, beginning of the first sentence, probably in the metad description, too. And within hours, because I had built adequate authority, I was ranking number one for that keyword. Because I had built adequate authority and the New York Times and Forbes, huge players were only partially targeting the keyword. People get tripped up in the foundation stage and they give up because they can't see the forest for the trees or they can't see the city for the foundation. And so I wanted to make this episode to remind you why you're doing SEO and what is possible. It is crazy that SEO even exists. It is literally a free marketing channel. Yeah, you're putting in some money into press or building links, but not a lot. And you can build links for free and people do it all the time. You can make a linkable asset for literally no money or maybe a couple of dollars in AI credits and use that to build authority and have pages that satisfy intent and build authority off of that. And again, get customers for free, get users for free, get warm, warm leads for free. It's crazy that just by methodically focusing on improving your topical authority in the ways that I described, you can not have the best product, not really be viral, not be lucky, and still have an incredible business. So, I think SEO is really cool. That's a promise of SEO and doing it properly. Don't take shortcuts because you're playing the long game. Don't And by shortcuts, shortcuts that goes that obviously go against Google's rules or that feel spammy to you. If it feels spammy, it probably is spammy. And taking shortcuts puts this promise at risk. Avoid that stuff. And focus on having a real business that's getting real referral traffic and brand mentions and all the stuff that we talked about. The promise of SEO is incredible. And if you're worried about AI, people are still going to AI with high intent. And because you're doing the things that I talked about, AI is recommending your business. If you want to learn how to find these keywords, these very high intent keywords that I've been talking about on the show, I have a entire search engine optimization course on it at compactkeywords.com. It's 13 and 1/2 hours. It's how to find these keywords, how to make pages for these keywords, how to build backlinks, good backlinks, how to structure your site for these pages, how to do a technical audit, so much more. And people are loving the course and you're going to love it, too. That is at compactkeywords.com. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I love making podcasts in cool locations. And you know what? This is no different. I love it. I love it here. If you're listening on Spotify Alpha Podcast, I am literally holding up my laptop that I'm recording this on and just showing the city of New York off. This is episode 155 of the Edward Show. 155 days in a row doing this podcast. No days missed. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. [music] If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. Let's get it. Let's get some crazy SEO results. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.