What Big SEO Agencies Do Differently: Lessons From Omnicom’s Former Head of SEO

You were head of SEO at Omnicom, the most valuable marketing agency by the most valuable publicly traded marketing agency by market cap. And you were head of SEO at Omnicom. I called you the king of SEO because that is pretty much the most prestigious SEO job that somebody can get is head of SEO at the most valuable publicly traded marketing agency. Uh, and you are a mentor of mine. you're my old boss. Um, and this is your second time back on the podcast. And so I'm Dude, I'm so happy that we're doing another one of these. Yeah, man. Me, too. Honestly, when I I think when we first did the, uh, you asked me to be on your podcast, uh, you were still like building your, you know, your content, how you're going about it. And I think watching you since then has been pretty incredible. I think some of the people you've gotten. I think I get my SEO news from you now, honestly. Wow. I I I I struggle looking at I I struggle looking at some of the things that I see on LinkedIn or just people it's the same thing just a rewarded it's u while look I think a lot of what I too is not reinventing the wheel it's repackaging the wheel you've repackaged in a way where it is actually for practitioners I strongly believe is tangible actionable and also insightful like I think there's so many people that talk about SEO in such a way that I'm like you guys are saying the same thing like it's the same thing and it's not necessarily like that helpful especially if you're a practitioner right like you and I like it it so I'm not sure who they're talking to but you are talking to the people right like the people who are doing this and like my my heart met that is that is getting to me thank you I mean look you you know you you mentioned what you wanted to have this episode on and like even what cuz last time you didn't even send questions. I just we just rift, right? Yeah. And um while it was good and I had a great conversation with you, I realized like there was things that I know you were trying to fish out of me that I just didn't necessarily realize you were trying to fish out. Well, sorry. I'll give I'll give the preface. So, this episode is basically it's it's what small SEO agencies can kind of learn from the biggest marketing agencies in the world like an omnicom. And uh that's what this episode is about. And so, yeah, I sent you the questions before. Actually, I think we could just we could just start with like that first question, which was like, what is one thing that a small SEO agency could adopt tomorrow from enterprise SEO packaging? And I think I said this last time in your um in your last when I was last on. I think the biggest thing as I'm building my own business, I realized how easy some of my interactions with uh potential clients has been because of my packaging, right? Uh like three people have said, "Wow, this is like really uh welldesigned and beautiful." And I'm like, "Thank you." Uh I I realized that the reason they're saying this because what they're also getting from like whoever they're all talking another person they're talking to, they're probably just not sending him something that is like looks good, doesn't actually explain it. It's maybe what I think some uh as smaller agencies do is that they don't package it well. they're send an Excel sheet or whatever and it's I don't know if I was a client side and I w didn't know SEO or if I'm paying someone to do I don't want that. I want it to be I'm paying you to do it to pay you to do it. We had we had all of these like they weren't big arguments but they were small arguments and you were telling me to like fix things on the decks that we were sending out. we were working together for clients and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, like I like why do I have to put all of this work into how this table looks and how this graph looks and you're like, "Do it like this." I'm like, and and you were right. And it and it was it looked so much it it looked so much better and it elicited so much better responses. Packaging is very important. And like think about it. We I think a lot you might have heard this phrase SEO is an art and science, right? I thousand% agree with it and I think I'm so I get look I maybe I might be wrong thinking that it is some that's a common thing people say but I truly believe it is an art and science. We're looking at user engagement, how people use your website. Yeah, if a website looks like it's made with crayons, why would you use that website? You know, unless you're a child. If you had to explain to somebody who had a small SEO agency, how do I improve my packaging? What would you what would you tell them? So, this is a purely SEO or we're talking like they're just a small agency. Pure SEO. Pure SEO agency. And they're small. They're they're they're small. Maybe it's just them. Maybe they have a few people. One of the big things is that I think when you're small, one of the cool things you can do is to showcase uh your bespoke knowledge base, right? I think that's where the smaller agencies actually have quite a bit of opportunity, especially if they're combating a larger agency or a larger group. I think one of the big key call outs I hope your audience, especially some of the ones that do own SEO agencies, are consulting, you can bat for you can bat for the clients that a big agency has if you understand the big agency's gaps. Because I when you're a big like an omnimp yes they have SEO but they have everything else right where from a media paid search you name it and I think one of the big ones is that like one thing I saw a recent post on LinkedIn was a lot of SEOs um from a career standpoint right especially an agency don't necessarily get to the next level of something besides after leading it because it's um the the whole point like a lot of like my peers outside of SEO have done great and I think it's because like they have this like this systematic view of like of managing this dollar amount is the key to success right SEO is never like when you think about from a budget perspective it's not the biggest budget doesn't mean that whatever you're spending on SEO is not going to have a tremendous impact but because of that I think it's thinking through like packaging is to spell out some of that, showcasing why this can do this. This method of marketing is so effective, I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions, how, what, when. Compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are actually looking to buy. These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work, too. The average Compact Keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO. A customer recently said, "Each lesson is dense with information. You're giving years worth of experience boiled down into 15 to 30 minute lessons with no filler or fluff. I feel like I'm gaining a new superpower. Compact Keywords is about setting up an SEO funnel that brings you sales for years and years and years. It works with AI. It's less work than traditional SEO and it makes way more money. You can get it now at compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast. showcase like look at look at your client quickly figure out what the key things that you know who they are and then build a story around that a lot of SEO is storytelling we're telling people to build content blah you know right why I remember I remember you that was something that you stressed when we were working together was the element of storytelling and how you wanted and how you turned every presentation and every call into a story I think it's because we were hitting these like you know we have no clicks we have so many ways you lose attribution right so part of is showcasing how these things are interconnected and I think SEOs and at least agencies I worked at it is probably it is a thing we have to get really good at doing and I'm not saying that everyone is good at doing I'm not sure if I'm necessarily good at doing it but I've had success by doing you know by saying yes if this works like this this should have an impact here, right? If you're ranking, if you're, let's say, if you're getting the AI overview, an LLM result, great. That's a brand impression you're getting. What what could that translate to? It could translate to direct traffic, translate a few other ways, but if we're not spelling that out for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how you're quantifying your own success, right? Like there was times where I I think through like one of my favorite things was like looking at thousands of keywords and I think sometimes it's valuable. Most of the time it's not, right? Especially if you're a smaller brand. But like for a large brand it makes sense because you can see from a um topical topical place how they're shaping the whole view of it. Right? I would categorize these keywords in these ultra granular buckets. Right? you would have a head turn but like you know one category where we could go 10 levels deep but looking at the nuances because one you know if you look at um I'm trying to think of a example so it makes more sense u educational luxotica is that what you said sunglasses and glasses right so there's you know there's the general you know styling part of it styling what kind of glasses you can wear but then it there's the whole meta the whole medical health part of it which is eye health. Those are two different things, right? Styling and versus eye health. If you bucketed all those keywords in one thing, you just call it eye stuff, right? You're not getting a real view of like who is in doing well in that space. But if you break it down as granular as possible, you can actually find opportunities to fight out like a WebMD for example because like WebMD might not actually rank for these medical things, but this is where you can build content around to build that um topical authority around that. Yeah, I mean I don't know if I necessarily want Lux Lux to do that cuz that'd be you know they sell product. They could but they could for some for some terms. They could for some terms, but you and but and and you're right. It's like this is how we can take on these huge name competitors by by taking their SERs and look how they're underperforming in these SERs and we should be outdoing them. And then actually by ranking for these terms, it becomes easier to rank for these relevant terms. And then you say, what are the downstream effects of this? Well, you know, the prompts that you care about in LLMs, they're going to the web and they are finding these pages that we are making. I mean, I think one of the some of my early wins when we worked together, right, was figuring out how to get quick answers, right, because it took the it took the largest amount of screen real estate. Uh, you weren't getting served ads. That screen real estate part where the AI overview exists, same same length as the quick answer. And um one thing that was really interesting about that is that this is probably the if you look at it analyze it in such a way where you're seeing it um able to break it out where it's like okay our competitors aren't doing this it's just non-direct competitors like you know the publishers I'm not saying like a brand can necessarily always outrank them but there are small opportunities where like that you know that little push does affect the grand scheme of things. I know we had a brand where actually uh it was around styling something. We we got that quick answer. They be they were that quick answer that part of that um SER result for years. But that that alone drove so much traffic and then we saw their um direct traffic go up from that. We saw so many different correlations, right? Even their paid search part uh that were related to the styling area, those became more efficient. We saw click-through rates go higher, right? It's I think if you're just if you are a smaller SEO agency that's just doing SEO, I think that become attributing to like paid search becomes a little tricky because if you're not managing it, I don't know how you would do it, right? Unless the you know, whoever is managing will give you that data. But there's ways to like I think you know, you and I talked about it like SEO at its core is so can be so pure, right? And um it is like the marketing for the people if it's not over done. And I think you know Lily Rays does it really well. about Google uh in your last episode with her um is that yeah, Google's force is going to shut down the tactic that is working too well cuz like people do abuse it and like I think a lot of SEO gets this awful stigma because people abuse tactics and like overuse them, right? And I think that's where I also feel the same way which is why sometime like I try to have a general track where I want to take my clients wherever and it's like yeah what are we giving back to the user? Are we giving anything back? If we're not I don't think we should be playing like this. And I think u sometimes you just kind of go hard in that tactic part. Um, but yes, I think it's really thinking through with when you're looking at content is like we have a lot of the tools if you're at an agency to look at it in this way. It's just taking that work to really thinking about it in a way where it is looking at it not just one view, right? What what is something that a that big SEO agencies do that would completely surprise smaller agencies as in a tactic-wise or uh would you if you give me an example which you're any honestly anything that would completely it doesn't have to be a tactic a tactic would be very interesting tactic if if you can think of one or just operations what is because I mean I I would assume that a lot of listeners have not worked at the omnicoms of the world at the densus of the world uh and and they're just curious like what is it like? So it could be an answer like that or if a tactic as well. Tactics are everyone loves tactics. I love tactics. Yeah, I think it's probably there's a lot of resources that you know we can get at an agency, right? Big agency. um like a lot of pitches I my team and myself while we did do a lot of work for them we also held help from like the tools like their people would send us data that wasn't weak couldn't pull from the tools themselves you know ad hoc for us and that itself was a time huge timesaver um I'm not sure if that's is this going in the right direction yeah this is great question this is great I think I think that's one thing I'm learning as I'm building my own business and trying to figure out like Okay, what tools do I need? Because like at the agency side, for the most part, we had access to every tool, right? Minus a couple because like, you know, they were too similar, whatever, and they were competitors. But like like SEM Rush, we've all everyone we we had we had age, we had all of it. What was what was the most expensive SEO tool that you were using and how much was it? I mean, it's probably going to be one of the bright edger conductors. um their average cost last time I remember like bright edges um if you're not going through an agency or going solo is like $3500 a month. Um and conductor I believe is the same but don't quote me on that. Um, but we were spending a ton of money with Bright Edge and they I really, you know, I also worked there for a short time and I I like the I like the tool like as an SEO I have a track I have like my own uh checklist I go through, right? Like I think those tools really help you look at the competitive landscape really well and the data accuracy. So like you know search volume has been something that everyone talks about. We don't we haven't had it for a hot minute. Um, when I take on a new client, I just take a look at their website, see if it's usable both on mobile, and this is just like the quick 20 second review. The 20 sec, if they don't pass the 20 second review from a technical standpoint, then I actually start putting them in tools. They pass 20 second review, it's more of like, okay, I can revisit this tech the technicals a little later. Let's see how they're doing just from a topical standpoint. And then I, you know, use whatever tool to see what the keyword landscape looks like, what the top areas are. Um, and if it seems like they're not doing well, you know, part of it is like figuring out, okay, maybe I need to plug in both, look at content and technical because like maybe technical is preventing them from ranking, you know, so on. But it starts with a it's a 20 second check. I I try not to like waste my time going too deep in one thing because I think a lot of the you know, as I'm consulting and your non-enterprise clients, it's a timing thing. you they want to see impact sooner than later and you know while you have enterprise clients um wanting the same thing they have the luxury of being massive right like a proctor and gamble is proctor and gamble um like they have the luxury to say like ah which is why like you know many times when we were working at I prospect we would just say like why aren't they implementing because they have the luxury of taking their time to do that right because they're making money from other avenues other you know places um other channels think you know enterprise at the enterprise level we have the luxury even enter like at big agency send recommendations like okay they didn't do them but like I when I was at Omnicmp that my big thing was okay I need you guys to do these recommendations because I'd like to win some awards I'd like to like get more money from you guys but if you guys aren't like doing like so like you know I think one of um yes I I know what a CDN is I can tell you that the things I've learned to get it implement like to get other imple I had to learn how to deploy CDN networks and optimize against that I don't think many SEOs actually have have done that themselves right because I had one client that was using like three CMS's an e-commerce platform to make that effectively work like their solution was a little extra it was a good solution I gota say but in order to make it work. I needed to understand how to deploy CDNs and see the different ways I can make certain parts of this efficient. Did it help SEO in some capacity? Yes. But who it helped was the product owners and the developers on that side. I help solve them where they can then allocate time to do the thing I'm asking them to do. Well, actually that's a very important question which is how do big agencies actually get SEO changes implemented inside huge companies because it like you said it can be very challenging and anyone who's listening who has had uh who has had enterprise clients knows that this is this is an actual legitimate challenge. I think be so this one's a tricky one. I think um I think a lot of big agency folks there's so much liability attached into what you can do, what you can touch for a client, right? um big agency folks like I I wish we were more open to playing around on the back ends of our clients sites like you know it's not as um that there's liability in that if we make the mistake they will sue us blah blah you know that's a thing that an agency doesn't necessarily want to do so part of it is just like now that with the LLM you can find documentation on just about anything much more easily than you know um you know just like figuring out how to become a master of Stack Overflow and like looking through that. So I think one of the big ones is just arming the people that are implementing this with enough breadcrumbs to get it done. I think too often we say page speed sucks. Okay, why does it suck? like what can okay we can tell them like these you know the whatever file JavaScript is not it's too much whatever right but do we know what that little JavaSc file is what is it doing for that site like if we don't necessarily understand it right we can't tell them to remove it like that might have a core functional like HBO HBO Max they were a client yes they're a streaming service there's a lot of little elements that they're using that no other website will use need to use be because they're not stream they're not a streaming service right what what's what's the biggest implementation battle that you that you've seen you think battle or like the like battle or achievement like there's things battle and achievement um honestly a lot of it has been actually this one is it's a it's it's one that I did multiple times over um but it took me a while to figure it It's like it's the rever it's the subdomain element right a lot of subdomains I think a lot of people build a subdomain thinking this is this is this is it this is the perfect this is this is the only way we can implement a blog whatever right and I think if that was the only way to implement a blog for a this is a hypothetical right the blog um I I need to figure out how to make this part of the like.comblog how do I do that and then I had to learn about reverse proxies understand then educating people about reverse proxies. It took a few trial and errors with different rounds of clients to figure out how to visualize articulate what a how to im deploy a reverse proxy so that we don't have so if it's has to live in a subdomain at least make it for the user that it they don't see the subdomain and it would took a few times like and I know like sub reverse proxies might be the easy thing there it's an easy thing to do now maybe I don't know I haven't actually looked into I'm going Um, but that reverse proxy is a serverside trick that puts it, you know, as a directory. And I think that's something that a lot of people, it took me a while to figure out how to say this simply without the jargon to get people, oh, you know, to get a developer to understand what this is cuz like I realized that was like one of it's not necessarily a hard thing to do, but there because of like the chain of commands, the different if you're a global client, right? Like it's just a little more tricky. the more simpler I figured out how to simply say it cuz like every everyone has their own ways of you know the their server ends and stuff. I can't I don't know what that looks like. So I had to figure out how to simply say for them like that makes sense to them. I think that's that was probably when I feel really proud of actually figuring out how to say it simply and how to get that implemented if that is ever needed. Um cuz like you know when you have an e-commerce brand or whatever like their focus is selling right it's it's like their e-commerce platform of it is so much more important than having a blog but we know like you know blogs do help content giving you know explaining why this this is whatever product um and why this brand is the authority is helpful it gives users trust so on um but here's the thing Google doesn't you know Google says and we saw from one of their leaked documents, subdomains are supposed to be were supposed to be treated as se uh the same website, but the fact is they never have been. It's always considered a separate website. Yeah, you lose so much traction because of that. Like you're diluting your own authority because of that subdomain. And I think that was one of the things that I needed to figure out because like at the time blogs were really effective and helpful, right? Um, I think it's we've shifted a little bit and it's not you don't not ever you don't really need a blog. It's just having good helpful information is the thing. But regardless, if you don't have like let's say your e-commerce doesn't have the flexibility to put content pages easily up, great. This could be a solution to do that as long as you have a section of your site where you can browse it. Do you think there's a code red at the big agencies now because of AI and automation and we need to fire our SEOs uh and and and replace them with agents? To what extent is this a reality do you think? I don't think so much. Um, I do think like the big agencies are getting better because of all this, but like I think I haven't seen too much movement from the big agencies SEOs, right? Like that's the thing. I think uh teams have actually gotten actually bigger, right? I don't think it's because it's being necessarily pushed out um to the LLM to do the work and Gentic and agents and whatnot. I do think that luckily for SEOs is that a lot of this whatever's at the the uptick on LLM and whatever it is all core principles of SEO and SEOs are just they're in a weird dilemma where they're like okay I guess we can't call ourselves SEOs anymore um even though they want to because it's feels the same right um so I think they're in a good place I don't think they're in code red I think for other things they're in code red for sure, right? There are certain other I'm sure there's other teams that are getting impacted that you can automate much more freely, much more easily because Yeah, I see AI AI written copy all the time on large enter with large enterprise companies and it looks really lazy, too. It's like the people that they're hiring are not even doing a good job. It's it's comical. I don't know if you were in the subways, but like Sketchers did this whole like I don't know why they thought this was a good idea, but like all their ads were AI slop. Oh my gosh. But like people started writing AI slop all over them because it it was that it was like, you know, the cartoony look. It looked like the image gener uh the generative stuff that comes out when you download one of those apps and see what you look like as an anime character or whatever. I'm like, "Oh my god, why does how is a brand like Sketchers doing this?" Um, you know why? I'm going tell you why. I'm going tell you why. It's because of packaging. It's because the the agency that they hired, they probably used a lot better packaging than they used in the um in their AI ads. Or maybe they or maybe honestly or maybe they used like AI packaging that to us looks very sloppy but to the to the people who hired them maybe it looks new and fresh because they're not actually getting their hands dirty. Yeah, I think you're that you're very much right about that. Right. It's like look I think the reason you know as I was coming out of retirement last time we spoke you got me out of retirement by the way so full credit to you. Did I? I was. You did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I realize how much I enjoy doing what I do and talking about what I do cuz like a lot of the stuff that people are talking about now and how to influence, like I've talked about it in the past like before all this stuff was out and I'm like, "Okay, I need to come back in the ring." The principles of how I approached SEO are the same things that these things can do, right? They apply to that. like you're the one who made me you're the one who brought up I you know hopefully one one thing I'm hoping to achieve in my consultancy is actually getting some emphasis back on the search experience optimization cuz like I really think that's what it should be called more than ever right it's the experience we're we're optimizing against and that experience is not just on the bings and the Google's not the LMS it also includes YouTube right YouTube is the second largest uh search engine out there still I think Right. Um, and if it's not, correct me if I'm, you know, can correct me. It is YouTube is number one a lot more. Um, and I think that's why I think this is where I think a lot of people are using buzzwords, right? They're getting fixated on certain things. And, you know, I don't know if you recall this, remember voice search? like how like that was that was the hot I mean look don't get me wrong I that's how I sold a lot of SEO by saying we're trying to activate against voice search what I was doing is optimizing against quick answers and in some capacity that was voice search with Google but not necessarily Alexa devices um I feel like this is almost another version of that I think there are so many people that aren't when you're an executive at a larger brand. I don't think you're a normal consumer. You're consuming and buying things very differently than your general audience. And I think it's just it's one of those things that I like I think back at Sketchers like dude do you even like you know the whoever green lit it I'm like how did you get think this was going to be because they don't buy their own products. They don't you know they're they're not whatever a line of um demographic sketchers plays in. I don't think it just necessarily the exec plays it right. I think that's why some of this stuff comes out. The way it does. What What is something that uh this is I think this this question might actually shock a lot of listeners who are not familiar with enterprise SEO. So, and and with the omnicoms of the world, what what is something that clients pay big agencies for that isn't actually valuable? Um, I think it's like where do I start? There's a lot of where you could start. I mean, I think dashboarding I'll say dashboarding I think is silly. I think dashboarding is probably like, you know, getting the getting a team to spend money to dashboard. like I'm like well okay we have a sure it's nice to have everything in one place but I can tell you from usage across like the you know the different a you know omnicom densu like no one like the client really doesn't never use the dashboards they don't use them but they spend a lot of money building these things out um and I think it's one that yeah I think that's one that it's like we there's So many of the I'll tell you one that I think I'll tell you one that I that I from from my experience when we were working together would be it would be the sight speed optimizations because a lot of the times the sites were fast enough and the the little changes that we would make would not move the needle as much as as just finding better keywords to target and targeting better key and then targeting them in a better Okay. That would move the needle more is is having I think yeah better SEO in that in that way than page speed. So I agree with you to some extent, right? I don't I wouldn't I think at some one of the things I tried to do at Omnicon is not sell a client something they didn't need. Right? So for example like if it was a page speed or whatever like that would be positioned to a client that actually need it. Like at least I tried to do that right in some cases like some clients did get the whole look if they needed if they need it. I'm not gonna say like because sometimes you actually go and load a page and it takes you know 5 seconds to load or 7 seconds to load. What was what is happening here? But other times it's it's loading pretty fast but we're like okay how can we shave an extra couple of milliseconds off of this? I mean then you know then at the big agency the reason why some of this how do I say it's like it's like uh you're it's a different league. The clients that you're sometimes working with are in different they're in a different league. No, but that's what I'm saying. I'm saying sports perspective. But this is this is just with the question which is what is something that clients pay big agencies for that isn't actually that valuable. And my argument for that for for that would be it would be page speed optimization because a lot of the times the the page speed is fast enough. I don't know because I I actually might disagree with you on this one. I don't think because like some of the clients I've seen that how do I say this? I think when you're working with a PNG you're not only working with a CMS you're working with like things that no not many people have to deal with like their fulfillment technology. there are other things that connect into certain things like you know HBO same things that they're they had things that no one else has to deal with. So I think it's one of those things page speed I do I think again like I said I don't try to sell it if it's not necessary and but like I think the way you've experienced is because like you sell a package which includes it and it's something like you're like why am I doing this? Their sites already fast and I think that's that's what your dilemma is. I don't think a lot of the deliverables and stuff we do or the things are all if you take them out from the client just in general, they're great things, right? I think the but the problem is we sell all of it all at once. Right. I think that's where I think you're saying you're saying you're saying we sell it so we have to do it. Correct. Yeah. And I'm saying and I'm and I'm saying that the question was what is the biggest Sorry. what what is something that clients pay big agencies for that isn't actually that valuable because the thing is you're selling lots of different things and there are things in there that are a lot more valuable than that and that's that's all dashboarding truthfully dashboarding like doing doing dashboarding and things and you know by the way I I just want to say for anyone listening I'm not saying page speed isn't important page speed is very important if it is not fast enough if it is not fast enough it is very important but it but a lot of the times it is fast enough that's I'm I'm done. I'm done with that. That's all I'm trying to say. No, I Dude, I get you. And I think like like I said, I think from your experience, it's because we sell the whole package, right? I think we never customized package unless it was asked to be customized, right? And I think I just started customizing, you know, when I got when I went to Omnicom was to make it very bespoke, focus on them. And I think that's why I had so many wins is because we did tackle and had so grew our client's business or whatever it was. Um I think the dashboarding part is one that the reason it sounds simple but because a a client is asking for tying all these different streams of data together different platforms we end up spending they we have to spend so much time but also dollars to get it to actually be useful and even when it's useful we see that it's no one is really using it or looking at it the say in the way that we want them to. Truthfully, that's the one I think that's that's the one where I see so much time getting wasted on across the board pulling in different teams and is the money suck that could be probably put into somewhere else, you know, built actually building a content versus needing a thing to look at data, right? I think that I I think you can showcase data in so many different mediums. A dashboarding or real-time dashboarding, I don't know if it's necessarily needed. Um, usually if there's certain data points I want to look at live, I I know where to look for them. I think most clients do like cuz we did see they're so logging into Google Analytics. I'm not sure why we needed to tie in Google Analytics plus, you know, SEM Rush APIs and all this and stuff that they're never going to actually use. But, you know, whatever. It's someone's getting paid. Ben, let's let's hear it. Dude, you actually uh you mentioned that you had a lot of wins and you did. You had an absurd amount of wins when we were working together at Denu. Crazy wins at Omnicom. Crazy wins. What is something that caused you to win more than everybody else to to win more? And by wins by by the way, for people who don't know, wins it means that you won clients. Not not just that, you won implementation battles. you you you won clients on sales calls. Um and then you would do great work for clients. So yeah, all bait the whole package. You kept clients too. Our craft is our craft, right? We're the ones spending whether for a nine to you know 9 to5 or whatever time period that's we're only spend like our SEO or marketing we're spending that time right to expect like to expect that you can say the things that it took you eight hours to learn expecting that you're going to get this teach someone the same thing they're not going to spend eight hours to learn that so it's figuring out how to simply just execute how to say this is going to impact you this way and this is how it's going to benefit. Uh I think that's a big thing I've I've learned. It's that's why packaging is so important. If you're sending them a you know a client I don't know 15 tab Excel sheet I'm not sure what they're I don't know what they're going to do with it. But if I can explain to them doing these recommendations will put you ahead of your competition because they're they're kind of doing them not doing it well has been really effective. Same thing goes in regards to pitches is that part of like what made me successful in pitches and winning new clients is that I took a deep understanding of what whatever I was pitching to, who their cl who they are, what their product or service is, but also their comp competitor and finding the com competition's gap. Um, and it's creating I got really good at creating urgency with them, right? showcasing like you know we had a forgot it was um it's a it's a it's a fast food brand in like the Midwest is there there's none in New York so that's why I'm thinking of their names um but one of the things is like they when during the pitch process they said their aspirational like competitor was Chick-fil-A and I was like okay I looked at Chick-fil-A I'm like okay let me tell you why SEO is important because Chick-fil-A didn't think it was important let going to show you. And all I had to do was showcase like how much their traffic and rankings dropped because Chick-fil-A made a bunch of like weird URL changes that they never translated, redirected, and their traffic tanked for months. And I'm like, this is why, and it was like, truthfully, I didn't have to put too much together after that. I'm like, this is why you guys need SEO because if you're planning to do a redesign all this stuff, like do you guys understand there are ways what you need to do? And that was it's figuring out what mo what can create urgency with whoever you're talking to, right? I think that's the thing. I think yeah, if you're able to find what how to create that urgency, I'm not everything becomes rather easy. But like if like if we think it's urgent, why can't we communicate to them and for them to understand that urgency? And that's really a skill that I I I think everyone can kind of try to practice and have their own version of it, right? I think uh I I'll say this. I don't think my way of always urgency always works, but it's for me nine out of 10 times it has landed and I've gotten clients to do the thing I needed to do and also be able to get um the wins I've had, right? Because like at Omnicom when when we're pitching a client, we're not just pitching SEO. We're pitching like to spend their media blah blah and it's a lot of dollars. So I need to be able to create urgency in a short amount of time in a pitch, right? Because a lot of the other team's urgency is like we are going to make this efficient. We can manage your money. Mine is like, "Okay, you guys need us because you guys are messing up this way or your your competitor is doing this so much better than you guys." Like, we need to like be able to create that urgency. And I it's worked that making creating urgency really helps in my selling process and I think most selling process truthfully. Last question. So, you're starting you're starting a new business first 90 days. We were talking about this one first. What is what is your first how long ago did you start your new business? Last month, February. All right. So, what is the next what is the next two to three months going to look like? And then what do you envision the next year looking like? Sure. So, like um by the way, congratulations cuz I told you for a long time that you should be starting that you should have your own business. So, I'm I'm very happy to hear that. have you have and look um I credit a lot of what I'm doing right now to you. I think you're the things you've done, the way you've helped businesses grow is pretty amazing and a lot of it hasn't been like you're asking people to even when your early podcast realized you were giving so much useful information out and like actually helping people and I think that's been fantastic and I'm hoping you know as I build my own thing I can take on a lot of what you've done and I like kind of figure out like you know your your swagger to it. What are some like specific what are some specific moves if people want to learn while what is the head of SEO at Omnicom going to do because they want to learn from you? There are people Yas there there are people who are a lot younger than both of us who are just starting their journeys. I I was messaged um actually was I think it was on X or maybe it was in the comments of this someone who said I'm learning SEO in college. So there's, you know, we have we have people who are experienced like you who listen to this show, but then we have people who literally they're they're in school and they're just starting and they're hoping to learn. What can they take away from the head of SEO at Omnicom? Sure. I mean, I think one of the things you can do is uh try to learn the common platforms of things. Like one of the big ones I I learned after it became pretty popular was Figma. Figma was like a game changer for me to figure out how to showcase certain UX and UI to things that would impact SEO. And I'm not necessarily a designer or a UX, right? But because of that, like it might not seem related, but it totally is. like things like that. Um, also like I said earlier, don't try to overoptimize. Like if you're doing SEO though, my the principle at least for me is and I think for you Edward too is like give something back to the user. Like you're asking the user to be on your site, look at your site or list, you know, take in that you're the authority of some capacity. is to go and stick with that, right? And be have that mentality. But I think it's there's so much research. There's so much so many things out there from a learning perspective. I think if you're starting out, build your own website. You know, I built my first website when Geio Cities was out. I know that's a long time ago, but like I still try to do some of this stuff just to implement and see how things work. Um, build your own website and try to get it to rank. You will learn so much. Try to rank. And for the young agency folks, just get understanding of all the different CMS's out there. I think that's the big one that I see gap wise across um, anyone that's doing this for someone else besides themselves is that they don't they know the general things to do. But sometimes it might be a CMS limitation or some technology limitation, right? But if you understand what um the technology at some capacity, yeah, I think you'll have better traction in implementing and doing SEO. What's the uh so you said you're starting this new business with your wife and by the way congratulations. You just got married. Thank you. Um yeah, so I mean Jess has been you know she you know we have a you know 10-year-old daughter and I think prior to us getting married she was living a restaurant life. She was an executive chef. Um, but being an executive chef means you you work really crazy hours. So, raising a child is really hard. So, as I saw her kind of reshaping what she wanted to do in the culinary world and what, you know, she was testing a lot of different things out. She's also trying to build content now. She's doing private chefing, catering. We're evolving and, you know, one of the things, you know, some of her friends have even come up to me that own restaurants that have kind of just I've given free consulting to without realizing it. I'm like, why don't I just kind of why don't we just do this together? We can consult. You'll still do food and, you know, do a 360 and we're still kind of shaping what that means. Um, but it's been fun. I think that's where SEO can touch so many different things and you can provide SEO um out, you know, in ways that I didn't really think about. And I think, you know, I learned that um in 2024 when I worked with that musician because I didn't optimize a site. Um I optimized messaging. I optimized other people's websites and it still had the same, you know, the approach was the same. Yes, I was doing some of that. I was doing a few. By the way, like for people listening, we're not going to say the name of the musician, but it is probably one of the top 30, one of the top 10 musicians in the United States. One of the top 30 in the world. Like, if we said it, everyone would be like, "What?" And you were doing SEO for them and you were doing it with this big controversy. And I can't say any more than that cuz I might have even given away more already. But yeah, that was that was crazy. It was a fun time. It was a fun time. And I think it was one where like also like some of my principles about SEO kind of changed like as a big agency. Here's the other thing. We doing reputation management is really really tricky. Um liability whatever. But I think that's also one of the reasons I didn't like necessarily doing it as a consultant either because like unless like I really believed in something and that's the two times I've done it. I've it was awesome. I you know like the 2024 thing wasn't it was kind of reputation management but it was also strategy. It was also it was combative reputation management. It was I wish we could maybe maybe in like 10 years from now we'll be able to talk about I don't in 10 years because I think with reputation management like if you're good at it no one should everyone the thing is like everyone knows what it is like if you look at musical controversies that happened in 2024 then you will and you just look you'll be like probably okay I'm I'm not going to say anymore hey you know what you should think about Um, so, so I I just, uh, we just started, it's a vibe coded SAS and I got someone who is a super smart, great marketer, and I said, I want to fund you. I'm going to pay you an extraordinary salary and you are going to get 20% of this business. Uh, and and we split the profit 50/50. And so if the person leaves then like whatever the the profit that I get the or whatever the the overall profit is he he gets like 20%. What however it works out. Um but while the person is working on the company he's getting like 50% of the profits anyways and and while we start I am paying his very good salary. And so the whole philosophy with this was let's try to find a niche where people don't want to build their own software that also will not have great SEO. And I'm not going to say what that niche is because I don't want everyone coming into my niche and I don't I don't want I don't want to create extra competition. But I feel like there now there is a lot of SAS and software within cooking and restaurants, but I've looked at that space before and I can tell you that the SEO is not that great. And so what I'm trying to tell you is like you can use cloud code or Google anti-gravity, make something amazing, use Jess's connections to get early awareness and backlinks as well. valuable backlinks because I know that Jess has the connections to get insane backlinks and then just because you are a phenomenal SEO like it's like we talked about take away market share from competitors in the space with a vibecoded SAS because they're probably not doing SEO properly and you know how to do SEO and the big players they might be moving really slow like we talked about that is probably like if you wanted to to crush it I' like that's what I would push you into that's like I bet you there's a crazy opportunity for somebody like you in there is we have been thinking about it in the same exact lenses you have right cuz like but here's a key things like understanding the economics of like high-end restaurants not everyone makes the Gordon Ramsay dollar like the average executive chef I think maxes out like $120,000 So, like this is what I mean is like understand like I'm learning the category. Make it cheap. Make it cheap and just grab everybody with SEO. All right. Maybe we have a separate call on this and you tell me. Dude, I'm telling you, you I'm telling you, you can do it. I've looked I've looked at the the restaurant SAS space and I've looked at the SEO in that space. People people might say it's competitive probably because they're going after top offunnel keywords, but if they're going after the actual keywords that get users that that literally cuz this is what the space is. The space is I need a piece of restaurant software that can do this. I am going to go to Google and write in my use case or I am going to tell chat GPT what I'm looking for and chat GPT will search the web with my use case and then your conversionbased SEO landing page page targeting that use case comes up and is recommended. You know what I learned today from PromptWatch? These conversionbased SEO landing pages are literally getting cited 30% of the time for these bottom offunnel queries. That's it's 29%. That's crazy. And so Edward, I I love you, man. This There's an insane opportunity. So, well, look, I'm listening to you. I'm all ears. You have my eyes like Okay. I mean, like, is this similar to I mean, I feel like this is kind of how you when you were pitching at me the your strategy with how you But this is the same this is the thing on my shirt. It's compact keywords. Yeah. This is what I'm saying. bottom of funnel SEO landing pages. Oh, okay. I will just look at the talk talk to Jess. Ask her like what some of the top uh what some of the top pieces of restaurant software are. Go look at their SEO and you will probably see that a lot of their purchase intent keywords are not being targeted properly. Ah, I see what you're saying now. Okay. Okay. I was almost thinking about you wanted me to target like the restaurants, but you want me to go after the SAS. That's a that's a great idea. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This wide open like they cuz they don't know that's a space where they a lot of the big players don't know what they're doing with SEO when it comes to these hyperspecific use case keywords regard like around actually looking for software. Yeah, I that's I will have a conversation because we were have been like the way we've the consulting has like the easy one consulting has been like for friends that are opening restaurants from a restaurant group, right? I never really thought about going after a you know food specific or culinary specific s and she has all the connections. Come on, dude. You can one you can get links you can get links from top restaurants. You can get links from big food magazines and and restaurant magazines. Oh my god, dude. It's so easy. It's And you can make it yourself using anti like we made this whole software within the niche that we're in. We made the software ourselves. It looks great. It feels great. It doesn't look like a typical like we designed it using uh using Google Stitch. It doesn't look like a cookie cutter vibeccoated SAS. It's like, and I know you, you're an artist. You can do all of this stuff. Yas can do all of this stuff. Yeah. Well, dude, thank you. Um, the opportunity, what I'm trying to say is the opportunity. I'm looking at it right now. You're thinking about it. You're think the wheels are turning. You're like, "Oh, shoot. He's right." Well, I was I was like, the way I like the way I have looked at it has not been this. I was looking maybe at the wrong place, but this is now I never really considered this cuz you're not going after these top offunnel keywords with like blog posts. You're doing the strategy that my strategy which I've showed you the thing for anyone listening thing on my shirt compact keywords you were doing that. No 100%. I know what those pages look like. I've shown them to you many times. I think the the word in the culinary I was looking at restaurants, but this is totally I don't know how to say words right now because my thoughts are racing. This is a really good idea. I am excited. Yeah, I'm excited for you. Y, thank you for coming on the show. Compact Keywords is awesome. For anyone listening, honestly, I remember when Edward did this, I'm like, dude, why aren't you just making a course on this? It like actually really valuable and useful. like you've explained it really easily and I'm glad you finally did. I'm glad I see the reviews. So, dude, and anyone listening, it's good. It's really good. This is the one thing that many people like it's the selling part. This is something that really showcases how to like actually SEO can move the dial or the needle for um transactional things, transactional uh areas where you should be playing in as well. But I'm telling you, you can take like look at what the look at the bad SEO that the players are doing. Find those purchase intent terms and you will see that they are being undertargeted. What does that mean? That they're not being put in the page title or they're not being put exactly in the page title in the H1 at the beginning of the first sentence and or they're being they are being targeted, but they're being targeted with blog posts that don't match the intent of the keywords. You see that all the time. Yeah. you're somebody who understands it. So, thank you again for coming on the show. This is episode 994 of the Edward Show. Thanks again to my guest, Yas Hog. Yas, all of your links will be in the description for the show. For anybody who wants to find you, if you watch this episode on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.