Episode 79: The Art of SEO with Stephan Spencer – Transcript
Rennie Gabriel 00:09
Hi folks, welcome to Episode 79 of the Wealth On Any Income Podcast. This is where we talk about money tips, techniques, attitudes, information, and provide inspiration. I'm your host, Rennie Gabriel. In past episodes, we spoke about how to create never-ending seen customer feedback solutions, merging psychology and technology, how to measure the level of pleasure based on where you spend your money, how to track your money in 5 - 10 seconds, what to look for on a net worth statement to see how close you are to Complete Financial Choice®. And last week, we had Jeff Mount talking about Dynamic Mapping process for your money. And today we have as our guest, Stephan Spencer. Stephan is an SEO expert, founder of the agency, Net Concepts, and best-selling author. He has three books published by O'Reilly, the Art of SEO, Social eCommerce, and Google Power Search. He's optimized the websites of some of the biggest brands in the world, including Chanel, Volvo, Sony, and Zappos. Stephan hosts the podcast, Get Yourself Optimized, and Marketing Speak. Let me say it this way. When I say he wrote the book on SEO, I mean, he wrote the book that folks like Jay Abraham rely on. Stephan, welcome to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast.
Stephan Spencer 01:40
Thanks, Rennie. It's great to be here.
Rennie Gabriel 01:42
Well, let's get started with some questions. Tell me, you know, I kind of figure out what you do, but why do you do it?
Stephan Spencer 01:52
I love reverse engineering: algorithms, systems, technologies. It gives me pride and I don't know, just a sense of accomplishment to figure out a black box. Something like the Google algorithm. Or when I was a kid, I figured out how to scrounge a satellite system before everybody had one. And I basically paid nothing for it and installed a 10-foot dish in my backyard. So which I got for free. It was a big eyesore in the neighborhood. Anyway, so I love figuring stuff out. And if there's no manual, that's even better. So I actually created or co-created that manual, which became the Art of SEO. And that book is in its third edition, soon to be in its fourth, and it's over 1000 - well no, almost 1000 pages right now. That may be over 1000 by the time we're done with the fourth edition, but our publisher, O'Reilly, has warned us don't go over that. Because the bigger the book, the fewer copies sell. You know, it's a little daunting to get 1000-page book in your hands.
Rennie Gabriel 03:02
Yeah, I get it. And, I could see that you have fun doing, I mean, you're earning a living doing what you enjoy as a human being.
Stephan Spencer 03:12
I do. And I'll tell you, though, it's not all of what I'm supposed to do on this planet, right? I'm not here to just optimize people's websites so they rank higher in Google. So it's also a means to an end. And if I can help amplify people's message and their reach, if I can help them have an even greater impact, that's fantastic. So I work through people and their missions to fulfill my mission in part, and then also I have my own spiritual mission that I'm working on to at this point - the self-help book I'm writing and all that.
Rennie Gabriel 03:50
Yeah, we're going to touch on that. And it makes sense, because, you know, my podcast is about money, but 100% of the profits from the work I do are donated to charity. And so the work I'm doing is helping to raise other philanthropists. So it's not just about oh, you know, let me talk to you about money. Yeah, I understand, Stephan. It's a bigger picture than that. And along those lines, tell me about the cause that's most important to you.
Stephan Spencer 04:21
Yeah, so I've been on the board of Impact Network for, I think it's five years now. And I do a lot of work with them, supporting them. For example, every year, I donate a full comprehensive SEO audit that they auction off on Charity Buzz, and it's a $35,000 value, all in, and I put that much effort into it as if they were a full-paying client to me. But none of that money goes to me. Whatever the winning bid was, that goes to Impact Network. Yeah, it's just a nice way for me to give back in a way that adds value in multiple ways to multiple people. So it's a win-win-win.
Rennie Gabriel 05:11
Yeah. From what I understand they help build schools and provide private education. And this applies to children in Africa, right?
Stephan Spencer 05:21
Yep, specifically rural Zambia. And the way I found out about them, I believe there are no coincidences. So when you just have this chance meeting, or it just happens to be at exactly the right moment. I'd just come back from a Platinum Partner trip to Tony Robbins's Platinum Partnership. I was part of that. And I had come back from Zambia, just the week prior. This was in 2011. I'm at a different mastermind, and I meet the founder or co-founder of Impact Network, which, as I said, operates in Zambia. What? I was just there! And we spent a contribution day, at a school, rebuilding desks and painting classrooms and so forth. This can't be a coincidence. I'm going to help you guys. And so I donated enough for them to build another school back then. And since then, you know, multiple, multiple times have I donated that kind of money directly, and then through Charity Buzz, you know, that kind of impact and also donating services to them, to help them with their internet marketing. So yeah, it's a great mission. It's not the only mission that I participate in. There are other nonprofits that I support, but that's one that's near and dear to my heart.
Rennie Gabriel 06:45
Terrific. Thank you, Stephan. And so, well tell me about your target market. So who are the people that you're looking to support? Besides like Volvo and Zappos?
Stephan Spencer 06:54
Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I used to be so, I don't know if this is . . . I'm just going to be vulnerable, I guess, and candid with you and your listeners. And say that I was kind of full of ego when I was younger, and earlier in my career business journey. And I really wanted the big names. In fact, back in 2002, or one or something, I actually donated or gave a full SEO audit to Target, target.com, in exchange for a testimonial, and use of their logo. And that was fantastic. That really jumped us forward. But now I recognize that it's kind of an ego play to get all these big name brands. I don't need that anymore. I want to focus on companies, organizations that are doing good in the world that are revealing light, either through the work of the founders or executive team, or the products and services, or all the above. And that's way more important to me now than it being a recognized household name. So yeah, I kind of, that was a phase. Yes, I can say Sony, Volvo, Zappos.
Rennie Gabriel 08:16
Yeah. But I've been there. Yeah. I mean, I did work with Toyota Motors and various city governments and bankruptcy court, you know, this stuff people know about, but it's like, that's not where it's at for me, either. It's helping the people. One of the expressions is, the saddest thing is a broke philanthropist.
Stephan Spencer 08:39
Yeah.
Rennie Gabriel 08:40
And I want to help people who want to be philanthropic get there financially, because that's really where the power comes from. So it sounds like you and I have been on and are on this, a very similar path.
Stephan Spencer 08:54
Yeah.
Rennie Gabriel 08:55
Let's talk about, let's see, well, you're willing to be vulnerable. So what would you say was your biggest failure, and what insight did you get from that?
Stephan Spencer 09:06
Okay, well, I've had plenty of failures. If you're not failing, you're not actually moving forward. Because you're not putting yourself out there. Right? Failure, it's not win or lose, it's not succeed or fail, it's, you're succeeding or you're learning and who doesn't want to learn? So, yeah, all growth happens outside your comfort zone. So the thing that comes to mind, I'll share super-quick two examples. One might seem like, oh, that's no big deal, but then the other one definitely would kind of shake anybody to their foundation. So very early on in my career and journey in my business, I was not really able to afford much marketing or actually any marketing. I was up to my eyeballs in student loan debt. I had dropped out of my PhD. program. And I decided to just hang up my shingle as an internet marketer. Didn't have any training in business or anything, but I knew how to kind of figure things out, as I alluded to earlier. So fresh out of the Master's Program that I did finish - that abandoned PhD - I talked my way into an event, How to Market on the Internet - was the name of it - and it was a $2,000 event. I got in for free, but I was a volunteer, and they gave me the job of mic runner. And that job meant I had the mic, and I was a cheeky 24-year-old. So as I see these big name people on stage, giving information that I thought was incomplete or inaccurate, I decided to start chiming in because, you know, I had the mic. Which is not okay. If you're the speaker, or one of the panelists, and you get this upstart kid, essentially, chiming in, and adding his two cents worth, that can get irritating. So I got de-invited to day two of the event. But I also got two really big clients from that. I had a stack of business cards from that event of all these people came up to me afterwards saying, "You know more than the panelists. It was really impressive." And two of those accounts ended up being worth a half-million dollars each, customer lifetime value. That's a million bucks that I wouldn't have gotten if I hadn't stuck my neck out like that, and done something that's socially inappropriate. I mean, in retrospect, I recognize the value of what I did, and I wouldn't change it for the world, but I was embarrassed, sheepish about it. And I didn't share this story for probably 20 years. So there you go. I don't know if we have time for another one. So maybe that's enough.
Rennie Gabriel 12:02
Not necessarily. But I think that's a great way of saying you can stick your neck out, you can be embarrassed, you can even be ostracized, and it can still pay off. But let me ask . . .
Stephan Spencer 12:16
And the irony of it all was to not even two months later, the same conference organization that put that event on, contacted me to invite me to speak, share, and do a post conference workshop at how to market educational programs on the internet. And that launched my whole speaking career. Clearly, the conference organizers didn't talk to each other. The one at the other event would have said, no, don't even touch him with a 10-foot pole.
Rennie Gabriel 12:42
Yeah, right, that works perfectly in the world. Let's talk about what are the common mistakes that you see that your prospects are making around SEO?
Stephan Spencer 12:51
Yeah, there's so many. And it's not that anybody's being negligent, probably, right. Sometimes that happens. You hire a rogue SEO company, and they're building low quality links. And that gets you in a hole that takes a while to dig out of. You have to clean up your link profile, because you've got all these toxic links, and so forth. So that's negligence or - on somebody's part - not necessarily yours, it could be that you just didn't know any better, hired the wrong kind of company. But oftentimes, what happens is, it's just a matter of not knowing what you didn't know, or the developers, the whoever's working on your website, right? Content creators, just not knowing what they don't know. And that could include targeting the wrong keywords, it could include misconfigurations of the website. Like, for example, a 404 error page, you know, not found.
Rennie Gabriel 13:51
I've seen those.
Stephan Spencer 13:52
Doesn't return a 404 status code in the code, right. Not in the HTML, but before in the, in the server response, that should send a 404 status code, not a 200, which is okay, not a 301 to the homepage, or a 302 - those are redirects to the homepage - but a 404. And that little misconfiguration makes your site look like it has no end to it. It is an endless boundary-less website that just goes on forever. You can make up a URL and you don't get a 404. Right, so your website.com/blah blah, blah, whatever that blah, blah, blah, is returns a 200. And that's a mistake that I've seen, even really big companies make. So yeah, there's a lot of little technical things to check when you bring in an SEO expert. Yes, you can read the book and try and figure this out on your own. But there's also another book by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy called, Who not How. So it's a lot easier just to get the right "who" and they come with the "how" rather than you trying to add yet another hat that you have to wear and figure out the "how" yourself.
Rennie Gabriel 15:05
Yeah. And one of the things that kind of annoys me a little bit, and if you want to address it great, if you want to pass on it, it's okay. But a lot of times you get emails from people who talk about being SEO experts, and how they're going to have you rank on the first page of Google. And, you know, they're going to, I don't know, whatever they're going to provide. How legitimate is the people who say, I can put you on the first page of Google? And what the heck does it mean anyway?
Stephan Spencer 15:38
Yeah. So on all counts, turn and run. You get an unsolicited email, turn and run, all right, because if they have time, to cold email people that they have no idea who you are, like, it's just from a list or something that they scraped from the internet or something, they got too much time on their hands. The really good SEOs are busy. And so that's one warning sign, unsolicited email, right. Second warning sign is, we'll get you to the top of Google. For what? What keywords? If it's for, "Rennie Gabriel is a superstar". Nobody is trying to target that. Because nobody is searching for that. So I could say I made you a page one ranking right here for this five word phrase that nobody literally is using. Yeah. So that, it's ridiculous. Now, if somebody tried to rank page one for super competitive keyword, like laptops or something like that, yeah, good luck. Because unless you're, I don't know Dell, or Apple, it's just not going to happen. So that is a very unqualified statement for somebody to make. We'll put you on page one on Google as if it's the front page of The New York Times. It doesn't work that way.
Rennie Gabriel 17:09
Thank you, Stephan.
Stephan Spencer 17:11
Well, by the way, there's a great way to learn about the quality of an SEO person or agency, just simply go to my website, stephanspencer.com, and grab the SEO BS Detector, which is a free PDF download. It has a bunch of trick questions in it that you can slip into the interview process, like, "Tell me your process for optimizing my meta keywords." And the only right answer for that is, "What? Meta Keywords, those never counted in Google".
Rennie Gabriel 17:45
Uh huh. Yes.
Stephan Spencer 17:46
If they say, "Well, yeah, it's not as important these days as used to be, but here's what we do." Again, turn and run.
Rennie Gabriel 17:53
Perfect. Thank you. So do a favor and send that to me so that I can add it to the show notes. And I was going to ask you what one valuable free resource you could offer - that sounds like one of them, for sure - but is there anything else that someone ought to check out on your website?
Stephan Spencer 18:13
Yeah, so there is another companion document, to this SEO BS detector, and it's called my SEO Hiring Blueprint, the 7-Step Process to Hire an SEO, so that not only end up with a good SEO, because you've qualified them through the trick questions, but also, before you even have a conversation with them, where do you go to find these folks? And what kind of job requests or RFP or whatever do you put out there? So that 7-step process is helpful as well.
Rennie Gabriel 18:47
Terrific. So tell me what - this is probably, this will be our last question - but what are you currently working on?
Stephan Spencer 18:53
Oh, yeah. So I'm working on a self-help book. It's called Living in a Friendly Universe. And subtitle is, Skeptics Guide to the Unseen World.
Rennie Gabriel 19:05
Cool.
Stephan Spencer 19:06
Yeah. So I'm working on that. It's not out yet. But I am very passionate about helping people to connect with their Creator, with the fabric of creation as well and just be more spiritual. And it's just - it's amazing to know that you're guided and protected and loved unconditionally. And I was agnostic for the first 42 years of my life until I had my first spiritual awakening in India. And then I had another big one last year. And I just want people to know that they're not alone.
Rennie Gabriel 19:48
And there is something that's beyond our physical bodies.
Stephan Spencer 19:51
Yes.
Rennie Gabriel 19:52
Thank you. Thank you, Stephan, for being on the show and being vulnerable. I appreciate that.
Stephan Spencer 19:58
You bet. You bet.
Rennie Gabriel 19:59
And to my listeners, thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the Wealth On Any Income Podcast on your favorite platform. And please rate, review and subscribe. And if you'd like to know how books, movies and Society programs you to be poor, and what the cure is, then log on to wealthonanyincome.com/TEDx. You'll hear my TEDx talk and can request a free 27-page roadmap to Complete Financial Choice® and receive a weekly email with tips, techniques, or inspiration around your business or money. Next week, we'll have Chris Williams talking about how to launch a profitable mastermind group in less than eight weeks, and building something before you even know the market wants it. Until next week, be prosperous. Bye bye for now.
