Why Most E-Commerce Sites Waste Their Traffic (And How to Fix It)

We are joined by David Schmer. David, thank you so much. Absolutely. Good to be here, Edward. You have a really cool background. Thank you. Thank you. I got a nice uh home office set up in my basement and uh yeah, I appreciate it. Well, I meant a background in terms of what you've done, but you also have a cool home office background. I totally miss that. Um thank you. Thank you for the compliment on on the background. It's a cool It's a cool home office background. Yeah, I like it. Thank you. You've uh can you share can you share what you've done with uh with the listeners? Yeah, absolutely. So, uh a little bit about me. So, I my background is in accounting and finance and that's what I went to school for. When I graduated college, I went and worked at a consulting firm for seven years. there. I was doing mergers and acquisitions, business valuation, did a little bit of litigation support, but really learned a ton about business. Now, what I'll tell you is e-commerce has always been a part of my life. I grew up on a farm in Iowa. Very early on, we started ordering parts for our tractor off eBay Motors, and I had this aha moment. we can spend a half a day driving to the John Deere store or in two or three days we're gonna have the exact part that we need uh show up on our doorstep. And so uh you know that was my early exposure and then all through college I bought all my buddies textbooks and sold those on half.com which was an Amazon platform. And so I've always had an entrepreneurial itch and so throughout my time at the consulting firm I wanted to do something different. I wanted to go out on my own and run my own business and that's what I did in 2017. I started a pet supply company and have been doing that ever since. Uh in parallel to that move, I started a podcast called Firing the Man, uh which documented my journey from leaving the corporate world and being self-employed. And so, uh since then, uh I have acquired a couple companies. Um, I've sold a couple companies and currently I'm the CEO of a build, growth, scale. It's a uh Shopify optimization company. It's been around for 10 years. The owner, Matt Stafford, was one of my mentors and somebody I really looked up to and uh was lucky enough to join the team as CEO in 2024. Matt came on this show last year and he we had such a great that was one of my favorite episodes and it didn't get the as many views as some of my other episodes but I still think to this day it's one of the most useful episodes that I have done that episode with Matt and I've I have personally shared that episode with lots of friends who are starting new businesses because this he just shares this is what a landing page should look like. This is what a landing page that converts should look like. And everything that he shares works so extraordinarily well. And it's not like special like there there are things like oh have a phone number. No matter what type of business you are h have a real have a real phone number. Most people won't use it but it's going to build a lot of trust. Write when you have a successful purchase ask what's the one thing that almost stopped people from buying and you will get the freshest most actionable insights from that. like it there's just so much good stuff that he shared and you but you also you did uh several successful Amazon businesses too, right? Absolutely. Yeah, I would say I have made more sales on Amazon than I have on Shopify and uh definitely have expertise there. Um, the pet supply business was built on the back of Amazon FBA and uh, it's, you know, I I am still active in the Amazon space and so it's when I think of a well-rounded e-commerce company, Amazon's got to be part of the equation. Um, you know, it may not be your your primary source of income, but it is a big enough marketplace that it's hard to ignore it. This method of marketing is so effective, I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept using 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 landing page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO. A customer said, "We spent nearly 18,000 in the last year and a half on marketing and SEO through different agencies locally, and that did nothing. We decided to take the leap on the compact keywords course. We're now getting about 6 to eight calls per day on a good day, which is just unheard of." Another customer said, "Give it to a junior employee. have them follow it exactly as Edwards laid out. You don't have to do anything and you're going to gain a six-figure SEO level employee just by having them go through this course. 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. There's this concept and we're going to talk about Amazon as well, but going back to websites, there's this concept. This is what Matt came this is what Matt shared his first time on the show and he said most websites actually get like plenty of qualified traffic. They just don't know how to utilize that and and they do a most sites really do a poor job of converting and it and that people think that oh my gosh, I need so much more traffic. Actually, you just need to convert. you can conver you can you can convert a lot better and so I want to start with this question I want to ask you when you look at an at an e-commerce site what are the first signs that organic traffic is being wasted um I would say we're looking for a simple path to getting to checkout and that is something that I think a lot of companies miss um your your homepage is is to display your collections and and but we want to get that customer to check out as quickly as possible and we want to decrease that customer's risk. Now let me talk about this a little bit. If you when you buy anything you are there's a little bit of risk that you're making the wrong decision and that is as the AOV goes up that risk is higher and usually the consumer derisks by getting their questions answered and that's something that I think a lot of people are overlooking is like the the importance of FAQs um you know in in apparel like having really great sizing charts that's like can make or break an apparel company. Um, and so, uh, making sure that that all of the person's questions are answered, uh, by the time that they get to checkout to to de decrease that risk as as much as possible. And so, uh, I'll give an example of this and it's a project that we have been working on at Build Grow Scale this week. Um we one of our clients has six years uh of customer service emails uh over a 100,000 emails. What we did was and you know using an AI tool exported all of those and they're not just general questions like historically we would have gone to a website like answer the public and it would have given you like some general questions that people have on a particular product. It was super helpful. Neil Patel put it out is a great website. I've used it a ton. Uh, however, these customer service questions were actual questions about actual products from this exact company. And we were able to see how frequently a certain topic came up and and rank them. And so, you know, on our product detail pages, we are able to address the concerns of the customer uh in an FAQ section, which is huge. And we put them in order of most important to least important. And so what we're trying to do on every website is is decrease the customer risk and make them confident in their purchase when they arrive at checkout. How did you export all of those emails? We have a team of 25 developers that I would put up against any other developer team in the world. Um they're smart far smarter than than I am at this. Um, and uh, to be honest, I don't know the tool that they use to to export that. Uh, however, what I will say is our company has been an AI forward company for since I've been there in 2024 and and well before that. We spend an outsized amount of time on training and staying up to date on the new releases. I will say we've been going pretty deep on Claude and Claude co-work. And man is there some incredible output that that that system has. Things that we're doing now I never would have anticipated were even possible 6 months ago. Like what what are you doing? Um so the one of the my favorite things that I like with Cloud Co-Work is is you can form these connections where you can tie it into a a Shopify store. For instance, the Shopify analytics, you can tie it into Google Drive. um you can you can give it a lot more context and and one of the things that you know if you think of most companies um one my own included in this is you start a company set up an initial folder structure uh that folder structure doesn't always stick you have employees that don't follow the folder structure things can become a mess however there's really valuable things sitting in your Google Drive I would argue that most companies have $100,000 of just uh avail available income that's sitting in their Google Drive that if they took action on it would be really really helpful. And the with co-work is is make those connections where it'll go through and scrub um all of the documents within a particular folder and uh it has that much more context uh when it's it's giving recommendations. So, can you share like what are some what's some great output that you've gotten from you said it's cloud co-work that you're using to do this? Yeah, absolutely. So, um one yesterday we uh took a bunch of reports out of QuickBooks. So, I'm a retired CPA um and I love Excel and I I'm a big advocate of of net income being the highest priority. you buy groceries with net income, you don't buy it with revenue. And we were wanting to put together a uh presentation for one of our shareholders and was able to put together a great slide deck just by connecting it into QuickBooks. However, then we just started interacting with it and saying what, you know, what's some lowhanging fruit? Like what are some expenses that we could eliminate or decrease? And I went through all of the subscriptions in the company and it said, you know, this is available in a silver, gold, and platinum. You're paying for platinum. Do you really need it? Uh why don't why don't you entertain gold or um this this particular subscription you pay by users? Why don't you log in and make sure that all the users that you're paying for are still active at the company? And just through that exercise, uh, we cleared out about $1,000 of just SAS products that we were either had too high of a plan, were paying for seats that that we didn't uh need, and and this exercise took 30 minutes. I mean, it was it was quick. And I think a lot of business owners, that's something that they'd kick the can down the road on. Um, looking at a P&L is not exciting. Uh, reviewing credit card statements at the end of every month is great business hygiene, but it's something that sometimes gets ignored in the hustle and bustle of running a business. And, uh, being able to scrub through all of the data within QuickBooks over the last year and and exposed some some blind spots that we had was great. And, of course, it made some suggestions that we looked into and we're like, "No, we're we're great there. We don't need to make any adjustments." But um of the list of like 15 that it brought up, we uh probably took action on four or five, which amounted to a,000 bucks a month over, you know, the course of a year. That adds up. Yeah. Yeah. Also, I like what you were saying about I I should be doing this more about about getting insights with the emails that you get. Every email that comes through a contact form on edwards.com, I have it going to different Google Sheets with Zapier. And I don't know, maybe there's something better than Zapier that I could be using, but it works really well. Uh I this isn't I this is this doesn't capture everything because I don't get full email threads from Google Workspace, but I do get the initial questions and there's a lot of data in there. And I can give any one of these spreadsheets to Claude and just say, "Yeah, give me some interesting insights." And that's something that I should be doing a lot more, a lot more often. Um, yeah, one other thing I I want to add is is I've been leveraging voice mode a lot more. Uh, I find like e-commerce, you you tend to sit a lot uh at your computer mulling over reports. And one thing that I've been doing is is having more conversationalbased analysis where I will upload a bunch of files and I'll hop in the car and go get a cup of coffee and and talk back and forth. And I ask very, like you suggested, very open-ended questions. What are some interesting observations that you have here? And one of the things that I found, especially, you know, if you've started your company from scratch, you can't see the forest through the trees. Uh there are there are things that are probably blatantly obvious that uh are maybe not obvious to your customers. You think they aren't, they're not. And and so I I've been utilizing that a lot more. And it's it's just more of a personal preference. But at the end of that conversation, when I'm away from my computer, I'll say, "All right, put this into a downloadable PDF uh and save it into this Google Drive folder. That way, I can reference back to it in the future." Um, to where I have I have the ability to have all of my thoughts and data in one spot, but when I'm on my cell phone or on my computer, it's it's centralized. I'm going to ask you more SEO specific questions in a few moments, but what you said there I think is pretty important, which is a lot of business owners miss what their customers care about and and this could be things with landing pages, this could be things with their marketing. And so because your company has consulted so many businesses, what are the most common things that you see that companies miss on in regards to just their website in general? Yeah, let's let's talk let's talk about their website or even what customers care about just things things where you see a pattern across businesses that are missing it. Yeah, absolutely. So I would say there are some like generally best like best practices examples of best practices that would help help any website. An example of this would be putting your phone number at the at the top of your homepage. That just it's a trust signal at the top and that's something that we we've tested and people that gives people faith that there's there's real people behind this. And I think in the there have been enough internet scammers uh that maybe I'll do that. I I'll put it actually in the uh in in the heading navigation. I didn't consider that. Test it. And and I think that that's something that uh you know is going to help just about everybody. Now there are there are certain like company specific recommendations. So for instance like we've done quite a bit in apparel. There are some recommendations on sizing charts and whatnot and apparel that we would, you know, are only relevant there. Now, um, what what I would also say is like your your homepage is to to display your collections. You want everything in your top bar to be revenue generating. So like the the about us, put that in your footer. Um, it's not a money maker. Put it in in your footer. That absolutely. And so I would also say, yeah, you want everything in your in your heading navigation to be money generating. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, another thing that I think companies miss out on and is crossells and upsells. And that's something that you you know if you have enough data um you can see what types of of products your c you know in absence of cross sales and upsells what types of products people are buying together and that analysis has gotten even easier with AI. you know, look at all of the orders I've ever made on my Shopify website and make us make three suggestions for upsells and three suggestions for cross sales. And that's something that, you know, I think a lot of people get hung up on on conversion rate, um, AOV is just as important. You know, to the extent that that visitors on your website from some sort of paid media source, you want that to have as high of ROI as possible. And so if there are two products that naturally fit together, um you you you would want to be doing cross sales and upsells. And I I I'm a big believer there. And that that moves the needle on profitability quite a bit. So you managed uh how many like hundreds of how hundreds of SKs, right? Like so many. And and I'm assuming that SEO would must have been a pretty big part. a piece of it and and what I'll tell you is it's over at this point probably over a thousand SKs. Most of those have been on Amazon. Um and I I But even Shopify sites what's that? Even even Yeah. Yeah. I And so SEO has has been a a big part of that. I can and I I am not an SEO expert and I just want to make that that clear which is probably that's but that's okay if if you're someone where SEO has worked to get you customers to get you sales right right no absolutely that's what matters you don't have to you don't have to have everything by the books and perfect I want to hear what's worked for you and what's worked for uh the for the companies that you have consulted yeah absolutely so Um, on the SEO side of things and and if you have a company that has an Amazon component, uh, there's a high probability that you're you're doing PPC, it's just a a pay-to-play platform these days. I it's hard to compete at all on Amazon without PPC. And one of the things that you you get from that process is relevant keywords. What's relevant to my product? And that's something that when you're uh optimizing Amazon titles, Amazon bullet points, backend search terms, um the important keywords there tend to be the same important keywords that are coming out of Google search. Um I would say the same would hold true on like search volume and and search demand. And so to me that's something that when you are operating an Amazon business, you don't want to operate it in a silo. the data that comes out of that, you know, you're interacting with consumers and uh you've got consumers both on Amazon and on your Shopify website. And so when you're setting up titles, bullet points on Shopify website, having that data at least as a starting spot is is incredibly valuable. And so I would say on on SEO, you're not starting from scratch. Um you are you you have a solid base of keyword research coming from Amazon. And I think that that's something that a lot of Shopify sellers miss out on. What have you seen um with Yeah. So, what have you seen in terms of Shopify brands that are really killing it with SEO? What I would Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about one particular client right now who is I think there's a return of the blog and the importance of the blog. If you would really get Yes, I I do believe that really, especially on and I think it's for there's certain brands where it it makes a lot of sense. For instance, this is a an automotive company that sells DIY kits. Um, it's a product that sells for $2 to $4,000, very expensive, and people are doing a lot of research on that prior to their purchase. Um, both on, hey, am I going to be able to install this or what are the benefits of it? It's pretty expensive. And if you look at that website and the importance of the blog, it seemed like in say 2020 to 2023 or 4, having a blog was a great SEO play. And you you could probably speak to this more. It seems like there there had been a little bit of a decline. What we're doing um now with this brand is publishing daily blog articles. And I think with AEO um you know the AI discoverability of a website um they need to crawl web pages and they need to gather information. I think the blog is a a great place to do that. Now if you have a website that's selling sugar cookies um there's not a lot of decision-m that needs to go into buying sugar cookies. um maybe there's some cool recipes or something, but I I think there are certain brands where it's not as big of a fit. But that is something that we've seen a big boost in in organic traffic and on this particular website. And as you look at the cost of paid media, Facebook ads, Google ads, Tik Tok ads, they're trending upwards. And so the value of that organic traffic is is greater and greater every day. As you know, not all organic traffic is created equal. You can have organic traffic that's for unrelated terms. You can have organic traffic that is forformational terms. You can have organic traffic that is for commercial terms where people are literally looking to buy. And the thing about a lot of uh what and maybe you're doing something different, so I'm I'm very curious with blog SEO, what a lot of people do is they just answer questions. with blog SEO and these questions maybe they can get them some top of- mind awareness where it's like oh yeah I've seen that brand before or oh yeah yeah like uh oh I need to replace some art in my car and this I got this answer from this website it was cited in chatpt yeah let me ask about that but the thing is it's very low converting compared to commercial terms so what type of blog content are you making? Are you doing very top offunnel or are you doing more bottom ofunnel blog content? Um what we're doing is I would say we're following a similar strategy on on the questions and then and let's talk AEO and and why that I think this is a good strategy. Most interactions with Chad GBT, Claude, you name it starts with a question. Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. it it's it starts with a question and when we're putting out blog content um starting with that same question or very similar question on that topic I think is is relevant. I would also add that when we're looking at different types of paid media there are certain paid media that is informative um people are looking for information um and our Facebook ad is is giving that information. What we would want to do is not send them to a sales page, but send them to a blog where they can get more information about what we're talking about. And I think that builds builds trust with the customer and I I really do think pays dividends. Now, if you if you think of, you know, comparing an e-commerce store to a brickandmortar, like what's a really good brickandmortar experience? Well, it would probably be a salesperson that answers all my questions. Like, that'd be a good place to start, right? Um and I I think the website needs to be looked at in a similar way. Um you're trying to provide the best customer experience you can and answering questions um any and all questions that they have is your job. Now uh because you don't have that salesperson there to actively listen um and and respond to their questions. Uh you you need to answer those questions elsewhere. could be through your blogs, could be through a chatbot that you've got tied into a database with a lot of data. Um, there are a number of ways to do that, but answering answering their questions, I think, is incredibly important. Can you share what a conversion path would look like through with this strategy through something like Chat GPT or Google's AI mode, Gemini or Perplexity? Yeah. Um, sure. Um, I'm I'm I'm thinking about adding a particular part to my diesel truck. uh what's that going to do to my gas mileage and how hard is it to install? Okay, those are kind of two separate questions. Chat GPT is going to scroll. Um hopefully it's going to provide some relevant links or it's going to provide you an answer and it's going to site those and cite those. Um some people are going to move on, some people are going to click on those links and and learn more. Um and that's where you have the opportunity to give author you are giving authoritative advice. You're coming to a diesel website. you're getting an answer from a diesel tech. Um, wait, hold on for a second. Is this Are you saying that the person asking this to ChachiPT is actually going to the website to get the answer or are they staying within ChachiPT? I Well, I I think you're going to have that's going to fall into two buckets. So, you're going to have people that stay within Cad GPT. They're going to get their answer and they're going to move on or and there's a conversion path for them or ChatGpt is going to site their sources. There's going to be some people that want a little bit more and they're going to click on that and and learn more. But let's let's stay with that first bucket. Um, they get their answer. It's going to improve uh your fuel economy and it tends to take 2 to three hours to install. Um, okay. Is there any videos that you know are that show installation? um this person may be wanting to uh see do I have the tools that it takes or I just want to watch somebody do this to see if I'm capable of doing it right um you may be you may have embedded video on your website may send them to a YouTube link but you are you are again having the opportunity to be authoritative in this space um and then and then you get to the end of that and uh all right I'm confident that I can do it I've identified the benefits of this particular product. Um, where's a great place to buy one? And Chat GT Chat GBT is going to throw out a number of of items. Sometimes if you ask for three, they'll give you three. What I found is they're they do a pretty good job of sharing the love with multiple companies um, and you know, giving comparison charts and whatnot. Now it is gathering all that information from your website and and so you know when it's making that comparison chart on say the size or fitment or price um you need to have that on your product detail pages for it to return an answer and and so and chat GPT wants to return the highest and best use answer and so that would be an example of a a buyer's journey and I I go back to the example of having having answers to their questions, like making this the best customer experience possible. And so I think the blog's making a comeback. I really do. And you know, AEO is a relatively new topic, but it is I think the the essence of it is the same is giving customers information and answering their questions and providing helpful and useful content. Have you seen a lot of actual users wi with uh doing doing top offunnel blog SEO? Have you have you your team has your team or the client been looking through Google Analytics and being like, "Oh my gosh, yeah, we're getting all these human visitors that aren't bots engaging with this content. We're seeing the paths where they're going, excuse me, where they're going from these articles, these top offunnel articles. Have you Have you guys looked at that? Yes, we have. Yes, we have. And And again, I think on on products that have installation setup that aren't simple, if you're buying a water bottle, it you don't like I this to me this isn't going to work in the That makes sense. That makes that makes sense. Where if it's if if installation isn't simple, it is likely that AI will get it wrong. and and and I can see a lot of people actually wanting to go to a site to get to get answers and then once they're on the site then it becomes very easy to move them into the funnel. That's the the reason that a lot of people uh are staying away from doing blog SEO now is because most people just want to get their answer within chat GPT and move on. But you're right, with installation that isn't simple. They're going to watch a YouTube video. They'll go to they'll actually go to to a specific blog post to read it. And YouTube SEO is amazing as well. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And so I I I think it really depends on the brand and and you you've got to kind of try to put yourself in the shoes of of your customer and see, you know, is this a complicated buying process? Are there going to be a lot of questions? Typically with high more expensive items, that process is a little bit uh long and drawn out where the the customer is going to require more information to get comfortable with their ultimate purchase. That's interesting. Yeah, that makes that makes sense with the more with the more expensive things or sorry with the more complicated things because yeah, I mean ChachiPT messes it up all the time. I mean, even with SEO, if you ask Chat GPT how to do SEO, it's going to give you it's going to regurgitate a million things that won't actually move the needle. It's going to to tell you uh that you need all the schema. Like actually, one of the top things that Chat GPT will say is you need like FAQ schema. FAQ schema hasn't worked for literally years. And just a month or two ago, Google deprecate announced that it is officially deprecated even though it had actually hadn't worked for years. But chatbt, it'll just regurgitate the most common advice. And so with more complex things, AI gets it wrong and people actually want to go to pages. I I agree. I agree. Now what I will say is that the getting it wrong if we map it out if we look at a year ago like uh I if you were engaging with you know with an LLM it was very common to get just a garbage answer that just something that didn't make any sense but didn't understand you go 6 months ago that was a little bit less and and you know as we sit here talking in June of 2026 it still happens without a doubt um but I I think how much or do you think it's going to get I mean I think the sky's is the limit. Yeah. So if you believe that how come you keep why even continue to invest in top ofunnel blog blog content? Why not just go why not just go all the way on the bottom? So So I I'm I'm very uh I'm actually very very anti- top of funnel on on this podcast with most things. There there are niche there are circumstances where it could matter. um nuanced circumstances. For example, like you said, complex implementations where AI is likely to get it wrong. That's a nuanced circumstance where top offunnel content could actually matter. You get people onto your site and you can move them into your funnel on your site. With that said, when when it's time to actually do a conversion prompt on Chat GPT, you can see the things that it actually goes and searches the web with. You can literally or or or you you can actually like rightclick and inspect and there's a very straightforward simple method to actually see what ChachiPT searches and it's searching for example a comparisons compare this brand to this brand and so the very simple thing to do is you actually just put up content your brand compared to this brand and a lot of a lot of a lot of brands are doing that now they're and like you said comparison tables they really do work and so the way that I think about SEO with a lot of brands is you could take your time and effort and put that into blog SEO that's just going to answer a question and then people move on or you could take that same time and effort and capital and put it into the keywords that are actually going to bring conversions. And now like I said there's plenty of nuance circumstances and people will disagree with me on this as well. I've had SEOs come onto the show, top SEOs, who actually are like, "No, you want those citations in AI. You want people to see your brand name." And that creates top of- mind awareness. That creates that actually makes your brand uh more trusted and you and you want that and you want to optimize for that. For me, I'm I'm just like I think the best way to make money is to target people who are literally looking to buy right now. and you're a conversion guy, so I don't know, maybe this resonates with you. No, I I would I would generally agree with it. To me, it's hard to give blanketed advice that stretches across every website and every company in every industry. And and so I I think there's instances where that's correct. And I think there's there's instances where where focusing more on the top of funnel makes sense. And and what I would say is is there are tools out there that allow you to test this where you know our differing opinions don't matter. Uh this is a you testable AB uh topic for you know a a software like Intelligjs which we we use quite a bit. What's the software called? Intelligjs. It's a great great split testing software. I'd recommend it to anybody. Um, and so, you know, having a question like this, to me, I opinions don't matter as much as the output of the test on that specific brand. Yeah. I I mean, it's it's Yeah, I'm just saying I think in every niche, I'm open for a debate on this. I I I don't mind. I And like my goal is to my goal isn't necessarily to be right. I get things wrong all the time, but I I believe that pretty much in every niche, maybe maybe that with the exception of like, okay, maybe like high fashion where it for people to spend more money, they you actually have to have a brand name. Like you that's like fashion like you got to have a brand name. Okay, fine. But in a lot of niches, people are literally doing searches or prompts where they are ready to purchase something and they or they they know what they want. They just don't know the brand that is going to give them what they want. And so if you if you find this language like you said using tools and you could you could use SEO tools to find this language finding the language that people are using when they know what they want but they don't know the brand that's going to give them what they want and then making content targeting that language. You're the brand that shows up which and that's by the way that's why I like um a lot of people will say that SEO is dead. I think SEO is the most incredible marketing channel because of that because you don't have to spend money on ads to reach people when their wallet is in hand. You literally can just put up the con. You can find using data like you said finding the things that people are searching when they are ready to convert. Give me an give me an example of of uh buyer is ready to purchase keyword. Okay. Something like um very simple something like voice notes for dentists or emergency roof repair Austin. things like things like that or uh like retile roof services Austin like retile roof services Bronx or handmade artisan ceramic mugs like it it's and and but let me tell you the crazy thing this sounds basic most people when they do SEO they don't know to actually put all of this put to actually take these keywords and just put them in these very four simple places which is the page title, the URL slug, the H1 and the beginning of the first sentence. A lot of people think that you need to have the most authoritative website ever. You actually you just need to a lot of people have a good baseline authority already. A lot of businesses because like they're active businesses, they've they've submitted their businesses to directories because they've wanted more people to discover them. they they've shared it on so they have social media accounts, they've shared on social media. They they've done a lot of things in the past where they actually have enough backlinks, enough baseline authority that all they need is more relevance for the keywords that people are literally searching to buy their products. And a lot of people don't even know to do that. And and then when when people are actually going on to Chachi PT and doing and then like you said making making comparisons between other top brands depends on it depends on the niche. Like if you're handmade ceramic m handmade artisan ceramic mugs, you probably don't need a crazy comparison table between com competing brands. But but that but then when people go to AI to actually say like this is what I'm looking for, AI does a web search with the language that you put your content up with and then it comes across your brand and recommends your brand. Yeah, let's use voice notes for Dennis. The first first example, right? So that's that keyword voice notes for dentist is super that buyer wants a program like that. They're going to probably click on the first thing that comes up and sign up. Now in and when you're working with your paid media company like you have that keyword and it it takes them to a checkout page, right? Um now and there's a supply and demand for keywords and at some point the supply of people that are going to search that are going to run out. Okay. Now, there's also people that are going to say, "Are is Voice Notes for Dennis HIPPA compliant?" Okay. Well, let's let's send them over to Topfunnel blog article. Um, what's the best voice notes for Dennis? Well, let's take him over to a comparison chart blog article that compares ours relative to our competitors. And and I think when you're you're wanting to maximize the ROI of a company, of course, you want to go after those those high buyer intent messages. But one of two things is going to happen. The supply of those customers is going to run out or uh the price of that keyword relative to how much it converts is you're going to reach a point where you're at break even or underwater from a you know, there are certain keywords it doesn't make sense to bid on. they're simply too expensive. And even if you do convert, you're converting at a wass and you know, that's not the name of the game. And and so I think there's I I think there's room for both. And I think if you're working with a good paid media agency, those are the types of conversations that you're having is we're not just having a conversation about keywords. We're having a conversation about like high buyer intent keywords. we're having uh you know longtail keyword and and phrases that are more questionbased and I think having a spot for both of those makes sense. And one of the things I love about paid media is it's trackable. You can you know you may have a hunch uh that's wrong. It happens all the time and that's okay. Yeah. Expand expanding the TAM I think is a different type of thing. Um expanding like growing growing your TAM is something different. But why can't you have one of these conversion based SEO landing pages where you literally answer I mean this is your job as a content creator as a business owner you this is this is your job to say and I'm speaking to other business owners this is this is your job to figure out what these searchers actually want and so you would right there on you would write on your page this is HIPACO compliant here's why this is HIPPA compliant um or this is and here's a comparison it maybe maybe you've seen you've actually looked at data and seen people who are searching voice notes for dentists, they don't even care about competing brands and you don't need that comparison table. But but if for people who do then you put up separate content for people who do. Um and but the thing is like we're talking about paid media. But this is organic. This is organic SEO. These are you don't have to pay for these keywords. You just have to you just have to have the backlinks and to put up the page and and then you and then you rank and and it's free. That's free bottom off ofunnel traffic. That's in It's insane that people can do that. That's like uh I'm like I'm I constantly every day am hyped about this. That's why I have a daily SEO show because I'm a madman who's like I can't believe that this marketing channel exists. What is going on with the world? This is insane. This is amazing. It's abs, you know, in a well-rounded e-commerce company, SEO has got to be part of your strategy. I mean, absolutely. I I fully fully agree with you. Um that I would push back a little bit on it being free. Uh oh, yeah, sure. I mean, but like sure, get going, you know, getting getting authority. It t it also takes some time and so you know that's you're you're going to have monthly business costs. Uh I would say the thing about these bottom ofunnel SEO landing pages actually for e-commerce e-commerce landing pages bottom of funnel SEO landing pages are even shorter than like SAS. So the typical bottom ofunnel SEO landing page is around 415 words. For e-commerce it might be half of that. It it really does not have to be long. So like let's say it's e-commerce like how long does it take to create a 230word page really not a lot of time at all getting the back links that takes more time. However there like like any business can be smart and savvy to where they're getting other websites to link to them. Maybe you have business partners or maybe you have like you have businesses that you collaborate with. They can link to you. You submit to relevant directories. Now you're getting links from these relevant directories. You're thinking of interesting stories to pitch journalists either in your niche or outside of your niche. They're linking to you as well. You're an expert in your niche and you're answering journing journalists who have questions using helper reporter out or source of sources or featured.com which is rebranded to connectively. So, I will I still will say it's pretty inexpensive and if especially if you are a business that's doing this yourself, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, absolutely. And and one of the benefits that is, you know, it is essentially evergreen, right? It it is, you know, if you pay for a a Google search term, you have an atbat, you either convert or you don't. that money spent and it's gone. You're never going to have another app bad again. It's And if you look at a, you know, a website that's well optimized for SEO that will continue to pay dividends. You may, you know, pay an agency. David, let me let me tell you, I like I made a landing page so many SEO landing pages for keywords like voice notes for dentist. I made these. This is when I discovered like how incredible bottom ofunnel SEO was. I did this in like 2019 and 2020. Most of these pages are still ranking number one for their target keywords and continue to bring customers. It's crazy. Like it's evergreen. That's evergreen. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's a that's a piece of SEO that I love. And and on the flip side, that's one thing about uh you know, Google ads and Facebook ads that I kind of hate uh is that it is a oneandone. Um, you know, I I look at what we spend on ads for some of our businesses and and ask myself where could I, you know, where could I put those dollars to work uh a little bit harder and um, you know, SEO, AEO, I do think is a good place. I want to ask you, uh, you've so you guys have done like a lot of a lot of really cool CRO tests, right? Mhm. What have you seen create the biggest lift? Um, yeah. What what what are some things that have created I was going to ask for organic traffic specifically, but honestly it doesn't it doesn't matter. It could be paid as well. What have you seen make what have you seen have the most dramatic results? And then and then and then the second one would be like what has surprised you? Let's see. I'm trying to get to a good example that would be broadly applicable. What I would say is we typically are starting at our checkout and working backwards. Um, and I think that when you're testing, that's something that's incredibly important is is starting there and and and working backwards. And so, um, you know, in terms of Yeah, I I don't have a great answer to that right now. Well, the the phone number is interesting. I'll also I I I also should add this just uh came into my mind with the bottom of funnel SEO landing pages. These are very qualified visitors who are coming and and finding them through Google or through AEO or GEIO and then you do retargeting to these visitors because you know that they are literally interested in what your brand offers and so like yeah it's I mean uh it's it's crazy. How about Okay, how about how about this? What what are some like super common reasons that uh aside from like okay you didn't answer the questions with the FAQ you didn't think of that what are some other common reasons you've seen that visitors are not buying uh not optimizing for mobile and that's one that I think is really still in 2026 you're still seeing that absolutely absolutely and I think that it's something that most web like for the entrepreneur that builds their first website themselves, which I think is very common, right? You're starting a business, you're bootstrapping. Um, most of that work's going to be done on desktop. And I think Shopify is getting a little bit better of of showing that mobile preview, but yet you would be shocked at the number of people that are not optimizing for mobile. And you know, if you look at buying behavior, it's it's trending in the direction of, you know, mobile be being more and more important. Uh more and more people are on their phones buying. They've got their credit card tied into Apple Pay and it's a pretty seamless transaction. And so, um I think that's that's one that is, you know, if you're listening to this, pull up your website on your cell phone and see how it looks. get get go all the way to checkout. Don't just look at the homepage. Have you seen uh I Shopify did that big announcement previously where people could buy through chatbt? Do you remember that? Have are you seeing a lot of are you seeing a lot of conversions happening with AI outside of like blog content or like what are you seeing there? Actually, I I don't think I have seen that announcement that that you're that people are making buying decision. Yeah, they have or they're checking out. I think so. I I think actually a checkout was happening right there within Chachi BT, but I'm not sure if they ever made this live. Uh it was like this big announcement that went viral and I like uh and oh, it's as you know, as with everything, it's like everything's going to be a slow roll out. not everyone's going to get it immediately and then like maybe maybe during that slow roll out they say ah this isn't really working let's not let's not even do it. Um, I'm I'm really I'm I guess I'm more so curious how have you seen aside from like blog SEO, how have you seen uh because you've been in e-commerce for so long, how have you seen Chachi PT, Perplexity, Gemini actually change the buyer journey or is it just blog SEO? And that's fine. That's fine too. I'm curious like being in this game for so long. I I do want to I'm going to answer that question, but there is one thing I want to circle back on on the the uh Chad GBT checkout uh which I'm not aware of. Uh however, they have Jad GBT has just released an ads platform which is uh we are beta testing on one of our brands had mixed results. We're only about 10 days in. I will say as a consumer of that information, I am a little bummed out. Uh it did seem like it was a place to go get unbiased answers um and not answers or recommendations to the top bidder. And I do think that that skews at least there's a a a perceived um skewing of what may be recommended. And you you've seen that happen on Amazon a lot where your top six ads are all sponsored and you they may not be the best products, but they're the people that are paying the most for that keyword on that day. And and so I anyway, that is a news in the industry that I it's too early to say, but I'm interested to see how it plays out. Open AI has said that the ads do not bias their answers and that it's they're very clearly separate as ads. Are have you seen that um be the opposite? I'm I'm super curious. I haven't. We're and again we're 10 days in on testing it and to be honest with you when I compare it to our face like rorowaz on Facebook and Google ads it it hasn't um it it is not performing well. Now, typically when you're rolling out Yeah. Um, which is now, uh, when you roll out ads, there's a series of optimizations that you need to go through and, um, we're just, you know, low budget, getting things off the ground. But, uh, you know, talk to me in a month. I'll have some better updates on how that's going. That's that's interesting cuz a lot of people were like, "Oh my god, when new ad platform is launching on on ch, it's going to be it's going to be a complete blood bath." like when Google had ads, when Meta had ads, and yeah, you're like, h, it's not. It seems like once a year we get hit with this. You know, Tik Tok ads were really big about a year ago, and um it seems like there's the the people that arrive at the party first tend to get some cheaper conversions and then more people pile on and the markets reach equilibrium for supply and demand for keywords or topics or whatever it may be. And so, you know, that was our thought on this play is, you know, let's be one of the first people of the party on this ads platform and see what we can do. Um, and uh the jury is still out on how that's going to perform. I I haven't heard actually I'd love if if uh anyone in the comments can share if they've heard great ad performance stories with Chachi BT because I have not I have not heard anything anything there. Yeah. What what should listeners steal from Amazon and apply to their own websites immediately? Uh customer feedback um on a particular topic or on a particular product and it could be your own product. Uh it'll give you good ways on how to iterate and make your your design or packaging or whatever it may be make your customer experience better. However, uh it doesn't need to be your own product. They can be your competitor's product. If you're thinking about launching a new product uh in a specific niche and you're working with a manufacturer on coming up with a design, if you're not reading the one-star reviews on Amazon or using an LLM to scrub the low, you know, one and two star reviews on Amazon, I think you're leaving good feedback on the table that is essentially free. And so I want I wish it had a handle, the the zipper brakes, um, you name it. I mean, it could be whatever. But if you know, when you're interacting and getting your first initial product samples, you want to hit all of the, you know, you don't want to launch a meto product. You want to launch something than what's, you know, better than what's commercially available. And if you can address those issues on your first round of of product, you're going to come out ahead um relative to, you know, letting your manufacturer make the decision. So, they're going to manufacture what you ask them to do. And so, you've got to be in the driver's seat on design and and certain specs that are very important to you to have included. I made some Tik Toks about something that Matthew Stafford said about reviews and actually these Tik Toks went viral. People found it to be really interesting. Matt, do you do you know Matthew Stafford's take on twostar reviews? No trust. He said yes. He said it's the best. Those are the best reviews that you can get because you respond to the people see that you have a helpful and friendly communicative response to the two star reviews and people trust you so much more. I fully agree with that. I fully agree with that and that's been one that we've tested and the data backs that. David, if an e-commerce founder just has 30 minutes today to improve uh to improve their landing pages and to to actually get more from the traffic that they are already getting. They have only 30 minutes. What should they do first? Make sure your phone numbers up at the top of your page. Uh download your orders report. plug it into an LLM, establish what would be some good cross-ell and upsell opportunities. Uh, take a look at all your negative reviews, see if there's opportunities to add information to your product detail page that answers some of your customers questions. That's awesome. Something that I do is I have a short code for phone number. So, I write in uh I just write like Ster Media phone number and then on the front end it'll autopop populate with my phone number from the back end. And that way if the phone number ever gets spammed and I have to change it out, I can just do it from one place. And that way it that way if I change it out on the back end, it populates across the entire website and I don't have to go into each individual page to change the phone number. And it's uh super easy. Anyway, David, thank you so much. Where should everybody find you? Check us out at buildgrowscale.com. All right. Well, thank you. Yep. This is episode 1,67 of the Edward Show. 167 days in a row doing this podcast. If you watch us 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.