My SEO Sucks, and Why It Doesn’t Have To: How To Generate More Leads and Profit For Your Business with CEO Chris Porteous on Episode #0245

Chris Porteous [0:00]
This is Chris Porteous from myseosucks and you’re listening to EA Interviews

Intro [0:05]
EA interviews, Episode 245 inspiration, transformation success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario for tuning for today’s expert authority effect interview.

Mario Fachini [0:19]
Do you want more leads and traffic? Does your SEO suck? I know mine has in the past. And I want to dive right into this. I have Chris Porteous on the show today. And he is from MySEOsucks.com. We’re gonna be diving in how to get you more leads and traffic and what to do to fix all your digital assets, online properties. And not to just have it as one part of your marketing funnel, but company wide. I’m going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [0:49]
Every business needs a book, including yours, visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that’s freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com.

Mario Fachini [1:04]
Here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Porteous. Chris, how are you feeling today?

Chris Porteous [1:09]
Great. Thanks for having me. Marissa,

Mario Fachini [1:12]
I want to ask you what is so important about SEO? I’ve heard some people say you need to have everything dialed in. And I’ve heard other people say, you know what, I don’t even mess around with it. What’s your take on it?

Chris Porteous [1:25]
It’s absolutely fantastic. I mean, if you talk to the guys and like the page search face or paid marketing space, they kind of look at SEO, like why would I want to spend, you know, 3, 6, 9 12 months kind of building out a content marketing, SEO strategy. But ultimately, what you’re doing is you’re building a moat around your business. So the more content you build, the better repurpose, you know, being promoted on Quora and other avenues, you start really kind of building a business that’s reliant on organic traffic, which builds you know, higher value asset gets you leads coming in over time, and really builds like a really nice kind of passive lead generation strategy.

Mario Fachini [2:04]
Now, you said a few key words there, I’m gonna dive deeper on you, building a moat around your business and passive strategy. Let’s start with the moat. Why is this important?

Chris Porteous [2:15]
Well, building out like an SEO or content strategy is much different than a traditionally kind of paid AdWords type strategy. With content, you’re building out content, you’re building out these 5000, 10,000 word guides, you’re kind of putting that across the internet, you’re building videos, putting on YouTube, repurposing, and social email marketing, you start building those funnels. So what happens is, it becomes much more difficult to replicate that process, than it is to run a paid type strategy. And that’s where the moat comes in. So when you’re building out this content, the more you build, the more you’re targeting, the more you’re hitting, it becomes much more difficult for competitors to meet, and kind of build similar type strategies without, you know, spending a lot of resources and a lot of time on it.

Mario Fachini [3:02]
So what I’m hearing here is that the paid strategy isn’t bad, necessarily. But anyone can duplicate it, you can grab the headline, you can grab the title, you can grab, make a funnel, and just start putting money at it and getting traffic. But once you turn that off, you’re kind of done. What you’re proposing is building a moat around the business, which is a longer term game plan. Because you’re not going to do this overnight. Is that correct?

Chris Porteous [3:30]
Yeah, exactly. Paid strategies are absolutely fantastic to start with, you can get a lot of data from it, you can see what’s working, what’s not working. And you can kind of scale that and then produce a content or an SEO kind of organic strategy based around that over time.

Mario Fachini [3:48]
So the other thing you were talking about was passive strategy. Why is passive, so just great.

Chris Porteous [3:58]
Well, I use the word passive. I mean, it’s like for example, with the four hour workweek, it never happens. I mean, everyone’s trying to get to that point. But it’s, you always end up putting more on your plate and keep on building it up, etc. But what’s great about in the context of inorganic or a content marketing strategy, is once those funnels are built, unlike paid search, they keep on running, running basically on autopilot. Yeah, you’re going to want to kind of continue scaling up, continue growing it, continue improving it. But ultimately, once that content is produced, you have that digital PR link building strategy in place. Even if you were to spend zero resources going forward, you’re still going to have that organic strategy in place and it’s still going to be generating leads and new business and revenue.

Mario Fachini [4:47]
I’m glad you brought that up because I consider my show very much in the same vein, and I treat every single episode like it’s a work of art because you might listen to it three years from now, you might have listened to it five years from now. But if you have that one piece, you know, in the terms of a show, you have the episode with your business, you have content, you have the blogs, you have all the different things you’re mentioning. But I love the idea of you talking about building a moat around it. Because the more you have out there, yeah, I can give you all my funnels, I can give you all the ads and say, here’s what we’ve run. And you can throw some money at it and put all that out there. And it’s all well and good. I highly advise paid advertising. But I also like SEO because I’ve got stuff on YouTube, I’ve got stuff all over the internet from over a decade ago, and there ain’t no way you’re building up over a decade or two of stuff, probably in even over under a year. I mean, you need a pretty significant team working around the clock, maybe you could pull it off in a year content wise, but it’s just a ton of work.

Chris Porteous [5:58]
Exactly. And what’s great about that, like taking your shows, and example, you know, being on YouTube, you may be on Vimeo, you’re on other different mediums as well as you know, different podcasting sites, people are searching for you either organically not just for you, but maybe you didn’t interview on someone in the SAS marketing space, or the local SEO space. And people are searching those keywords, and they could stumble across your podcast. So like over time, even if you stop any marketing, your podcast is still gonna be getting visitors every day.

Mario Fachini [6:30]
That’s huge, that’s inspiring. For me, that’s a huge value add just for anyone with a podcast. But speaking of the expert authority world here, all business owners. I mean, it’s like why wouldn’t you do something that lasts? You know, here’s another thing that last passed you, not just oh, I can do it this year, and get the benefit for the next couple of years. But it’s like, what do you do after you’re gone? What if you want to sell the business and exit? You still have all those assets working for you? So where would you say is the best place for someone to start? If they go? This sounds like a ton of work? I know it’s gonna be a ton of work. And that’s why I’ve put it off. What could we do to get them thinking right now, but today’s the last day, I’m gonna put it off because I now see all the benefits. What’s the first place they should start?

Chris Porteous [7:24]
Yeah, no. And then for sure, first and context, they’re one of the challenges. When you’re saying why don’t you do this, we have our own internal processes for myseosucks. And every time we produce a guide, it’s you know, 6000 word piece, it’s going through QC, we get quotes from other authority kind of leaders in the space, we do a video, it gets promoted, it goes onto our Facebook group, there’s email marketing, we’ll find out like, it ends up being 40, 50, 60 subtasks. Just to do one guide. So I can see that being very daunting for a business owner who’s already tapped out especially, with COVID, and everything else going on. You’re dealing with so many different things right now. And this is just one extra thing to throw on your plate. So there’s definitely a challenge there. And I met with a company yesterday, absolutely fantastic, very well run business. They’re in the finance space. They wanted to start content marketing, or SEO, they didn’t know where to start. And I recommend let’s not dive in here. They’re kind of pre market fit. And suggested why don’t we take the overall theme there in the option space. And let’s build a really kick ass guide on options trading. So I mean, you have six to 8000 words, we’ll hit different targets, different keywords, different strategies. And we can take that content and repurpose it later on. But at least we have a starting point. So for a business owner, I always recommend, kind of dip your toes in it, find one or two things that you specialize in, and that you know very well and produce a really great piece that you would want to share with everyone inside and outside of your business.

Mario Fachini [9:09]
So you’re saying to do a guide.

Chris Porteous [9:14]
I use guides as an example. But any type of highly engaging, I love long form content, and that’s our specialty. We moved away from 300 to 500 word blog posts about a year ago and we really kind of focus on building out these five to 10,000 word guides that are very in depth, especially with the way Google’s algorithms move, focusing on quality and really kind of showcasing experts in the space and leaders building. These guides are a great way as they’re highly shareable. You can incorporate quotes, information, videos, infographics, etc.

Mario Fachini [9:50]
Testimonials.

Chris Porteous [9:51]
Highly shareable and then you can also testimonials are absolutely fantastic. And you can just kind of break that into pieces and share it on others or repurpose it later on potentially parts of it on Quora, maybe snippets on social media or turn part of into a video. So that’s why I really like guides. And it kind of showcases you as an expert in your field.

Mario Fachini [10:18]
So what has Google shifted off? You’re saying you don’t do short stuff anymore and 300 to 500 words, I wouldn’t say is super short. But what has shifted over the years from going from let’s just say 1000 words or less to six or 8000? words? Because being a publisher, I hear six 8000 words, I’m like, It’s like a quarter of a book. I mean, t’s pretty significant. That’s no joke right there.

Chris Porteous [10:49]
Yeah, absolutely. Ultimately, it comes down to search intent. So for us, like we’re targeting top of the funnel type keywords. For example, we did a guide recently on SAS marketing. And if you look at the intent there are people looking for information and resources on SAS marketing, whether that’s SEO, content, understanding, churn, and other types of metrics. It has a different intent. So we want to really make sure we’re hitting that and we’re adding a lot of value add, and we’re being seen as a leader in that space. So that’s the approach we take. But again, you are different, it really depends on the intent. If it’s a product page, you’re not writing a 6000 word product description, that would just be next to impossible. And it wouldn’t even necessarily satisfy Google’s intent. So it all comes down to intent, what people are searching for, what they’re looking for, and then building content around that intent.

Mario Fachini [11:48]
What would you suggest for a product? If someone does have a product that’s listening right now? And they’re going, wow, six to 8000 words, that’s a bit much would you? Where would you say you should aim?

Chris Porteous [12:03]
I never like to look at word count. Again, it really goes back to intent. Like we use some really cool tools. out there. There’s market views, there’s phrase clear scope, where you plug in your keyword, and it would recommend a word count based on the top kind of 30 pages ranking in search.

Mario Fachini [12:22]
So it could, depending on the product, don’t say 800. Or it could be 2200.

Chris Porteous [12:28]
Yeah, or product, it could even be 50 or 100 words, just a quick description, maybe people aren’t looking for content, or images or looking. Yeah, it’s all over the place. And it really depends on the intent, but for the content itself. And let’s say you have a product site, great things you can do to satisfy, maybe you’re not trying to rank for a specific product, but a certain kind of niche or category, you can build listicles, you can build like a, you know, top 10 x y, z, for example. And that could be like a three to 5000 word guide that looks at the kind of top 10 products in the space, what they look for, what you want to look for, when you’re buying it, where you can buy it, and kind of be as in depth as possible.

Mario Fachini [13:17]
Excellent. So other than guides, is there anything else you could recommend that someone try out? In addition to the guide, or in place of it?

Chris Porteous [13:32]
Yeah, absolutely. You’re doing a fantastic job on the video marketing side. Thank him for using his podcast, you’re kind of repurposing it. No, absolutely. And it goes back to building that moat. It’s just so difficult, like the time you put into it, the equipment, the setup, getting the processes down the bookings, like it’s very in depth. And that’s also a great way to market. We have clients who are publishing three, four videos a month, alongside long form content. And what we’ll do with that is we’ll put those videos on YouTube, we’ll translate them, we’ll build chapters, we’ll have a nice intro outro. And we’ll market that on the same long form pieces of content, as well, on Quora, and other avenues, and it works really well. YouTube videos, especially rank, are much more naturally in search, depending on what keywords you’re trying to target and hit. So there’s a lot of opportunities there and a lot of low hanging fruit. You know, for a business owner, maybe they don’t have time to write out a three or 4000 word guide, if they’re a roofer, for example, on you know how to install or repair a metal roof, but they’re comfortable doing a 20 minute video showing them do it, which ultimately for users that could be much more valuable.

Mario Fachini [14:56]
And yeah, just might come up with a lavalier, get a drone, get some drone footage and You’re good to go.

Chris Porteous [15:03]
Oh, absolutely, you’re really escalating the production value there.

Mario Fachini [15:06]
It’s actually easier.

Chris Porteous [15:08]
I just do it simple. Yeah,

Mario Fachini [15:09]
You know, especially if someone’s on a roof, I would not advise trying to balance and then trying to get the shot like, hey, like, it would be 10 times safer to use a drone. And then you could just use a wireless lab. And I mean, that’d be easy. And then you could just work normally, because that’s the thing, when you’re shooting, like, even now, is the whole reason I have this on a boom arm because I can still be natural, but still be capturing it the way I want to. Because let’s be honest, most people don’t walk around with a camera and a microphone on them. 24 seven, I don’t even do that. So it’s like, not just how can we get the best shot? But also, how can you do it where you can still come across as natural and be comfortable in the environment? Or the subject? So you’re saying the videos are another thing, just like the guide?

Chris Porteous [16:05]
Yeah, absolutely. It’s another form of content. And if you look at how people are consuming content nowadays, podcasts are growing at a rapid rate. I think 161 million Americans listen to a podcast monthly or something like that now. And then with this work from home and everything else going on, it’s just only growing from there. So the way we’re consuming content is much different. Long form content ranks well, it’s not ultimately the best option depending on the search intent and what people are looking for. But if you compare that with videos, it could be even like a one or two minute audio clip of that long form guide, you start putting that all together, you start seeing really remarkable results.

Mario Fachini [16:53]
Well, I appreciate you for sharing the insider success secrets. I want to know how you get into this?

Chris Porteous [17:02]
You know what I have? I’ve always been an entrepreneur. When I was 12 years old, I built my first website. And it was kind of a model after Dell’s website where you could go pick out all your computer parts, click buy, and then I would ship the computer to you. I think my first few I didn’t build right and they like broke, when they got shipped it was a disaster, but I kept on going with it. And so I was always entrepreneurial, even as far as you know, I could bike to the store and buy products and resell them. In university, I had a fast growing macro finance blog. And then after university, I started a cardboard furniture business where we built the world’s largest cardboard beach. We did projects for the Swiss government, the Canadian government, a lot of stuff for the corporate USA. And we’re doing a lot of cool innovative things there. And I never saw myself as wanting to be an entrepreneur, it just kind of happened. I saw these opportunities and like, oh, this is really cool. I want to jump into it. And now how I got into SEO is I built all those businesses, ultimately on search marketing.

Mario Fachini [18:18]
Oh really?

Chris Porteous [18:18]
Like if this is working for me. Yeah, it’s always been the core of every business that we built. Even how we attract our clients is all through search marketing. So we drink our own Kool Aid. We build these processes

Mario Fachini [18:33]
What flavor?

Chris Porteous [18:34]
Our own businesses, and then Oh, I got to go with grapes. Definitely, definitely the top there. And, yeah, ultimately, what we do for ourselves, we scale for our clients. So we’re not trying to do something different for ourselves, because you see a lot of companies, they treat their own businesses, like their baby, but then for clients are doing what is considered kind of bare minimum, we use the same processes, we’ve scaled our processes across our own affiliate sites, our own lead gen sites, as well as our clients, businesses.

Mario Fachini [19:10]
I love that you do that, because I’m very much subscribed to that also, if I haven’t done it or taught someone. I’m not going to be like, oh, yeah, you should try this, this and this and this, and this, everything I’ve done.If you’re asking how to publish the books and or even the podcasting now, it’s like, here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what works. Here’s the reason why. Well, I heard XYZ. I’m sure it works for them that way, never done it. can’t recommend it. But here’s what I advise. So that’s great that you’re doing it for yourself. But that’s also astonishing. When you said I built my first website. I was like, Yes, so did I. But it wasn’t an e commerce site. And then you were selling computers on top of that. It’s pretty complex.

Chris Porteous [19:59]
Yeah, I don’t know how it got to that point. But it was a great learning experience, that’s for sure.

Mario Fachini [20:06]
I’ve designed and built computers, but I never in my life was like, oh, yeah, I’ll do it for you too. I think maybe my sister, like a decade ago, offered it for my niece and nephew. But I’ve never promoted exactly what the warranty is. What do you do in three years? If you know someone turned it on the wrong way? Well, now you’re on the hook for you know, it’s your fault, because you’re the one who built it, right?

Chris Porteous [20:34]
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely one of the things as you know, I was 12, 13 years old. I’m not thinking about, you know, warranties. chargebacks you know, expansion revenue. Logistics , operations, MRR scaling it? Exactly.

Mario Fachini [20:53]
No, that’s cool, though. I started my first business at 12 and sold it to start this one when I was in college. So I definitely get it. Yeah, definitely not thinking about all the stuff I was. I definitely wasn’t thinking about all the stuff I am now but there’s part of me where it’s like, I kind of wish I could just go back and just be like, ignorant and bliss, because I just went full throttle. And it was like, ah, who cares? What happens? And a lot of the times it was good. There were a few times it wasn’t. But it was just so much fun. I love starting stuff up because it’s just like you see this, even when I started this show, it was just like it’s brand new, it’s fresh, I get to do everything I learned, I get to incorporate this time around instead of 10% I’m running in with 160%.

Chris Porteous [21:45]
Exactly. You get molded after what you’ve learned in the past for you from your other businesses, whether its successes, failures, everything you do. And that’s why experience is so valuable. Everything you do is a learning experience in one way or another.

Mario Fachini [21:59]
Yeah, that’s a great attitude. And I’m glad you’re looking at it that way. Because some people are like, oh, I failed two, three times and give up. It’s like, yeah, it’s the fourth time that you would have nailed that. It’s a tough one. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know what I’m choosing. So let’s talk about your clients. What’s your biggest success story? Or who or…

Chris Porteous [22:22]
So I actually they’re my first client that I did, or worked on SEO for back before I was kind of doing SEO for my own, you know, finance sites, affiliate sites, as well as that cardboard furniture business. And a friend of mine is like, Hey, I have a client, they’re looking for SEO, are you interested? And I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing. I knew the basics of SEO, I was doing it myself. But I’ve never actually done any account management for I’ve never liked how do I price this? What’s the scope, like what’s involved here, I, this is my first time kind of going into it. They were a local law firm based out here in Toronto. And when I started with them, I believe there were three lawyers, and I remember going to their office, it was super small. They were burned by multiple SEO firms in the past. And they’re like I went in very honestly, are very truthful, transparent, here’s what I’ve done. Use someone who’s gonna work really hard, you need someone who’s going to be like, who’s going to be through that, not just an agency who’s kind of just doing ours and hoping for results. So they brought me on and you know, from there, they have gone from, you know, three lawyers at the time to I believe they’re 50 Plus, they’re one of the most well known kind of recognizable brands in, in Canada, we’ve done a great job scaling them, SEO, you know, I like to get credit for, you know, all that growth. But obviously SEO is just one part of that. But where they did a really good job was saying, you know, what we This was back, you know, four or five years ago, the digital space is going to be it’s at the time it was growing much. It was growing quickly. But it’s going to be huge. This is going to be by and large, our largest marketing funnel. We want to go full throttle on it, and they invested heavily into digital, they made the right moves and they were able to scale much quicker than any of their competitors.

Mario Fachini [24:22]
Well, good for them for you know, the growth and good for you for just being you. Because there’s a lot of people who could have said, you know, we’ll look at the short term, but you still got them as a client, and no props to them for making the right decision and going you know what, let’s look into this. Because that’s the thing everyone goes, Oh yeah, I wish I would have bought stock in Google. When they started, it’s like, you need to be real in sync with someone to trust them at the right time. And that goes both ways. That really goes both ways. So props to both of you.

Chris Porteous [25:00]
Oh, I appreciate that it’s in the SEO space, it’s tough. Most of the clients we work with have been burnt, two, three times. And it’s really tough. If you’re a local business owner, you’ve already hired two or three agencies, you’ve been burned, no results you spent, potentially 10s of 1000s of dollars. It’s disheartening. And you’re like, do I want to stick with it? And ultimately, it works. If you’re investing in the right areas, even within SEO, it does work. Is that payback? But it’s really tough finding those people in the space who know what they’re talking about, and know how to kind of build and scale an agency that’s going to drive consistent results for clients.

Mario Fachini [25:42]
What would you say to someone who may have been burned before, which is probably everyone that’s been in business at some point. I mean, even if you’ve been in six months or a year, I’m thinking back to my first six months, and it’s like, yep, three times. So I don’t think it’s so much how long you’ve been in business. But what would you… because I don’t see SEO going anywhere. The internet is nothing new, but it’s also not going anywhere. It’s still data, images, text, and video. It’s all data. But you know what I mean, there’s only a few core components. And SEO, I’d say is kind of important.

Chris Porteous [26:21]
Yeah, absolutely. The biggest thing for business owners. Again, when I talk about building the moat, you can hire an SEO agency who is doing, technical SEO, which is kind of tinkering with your site, some changes to meta descriptions, meta titles, maybe a little bit of link building, which are mentioned on third party sites, but they could be low quality, it could be something on a directory, or, I’ve seen links on very low quality porn and adult sites. And like, this isn’t good guys, like, who do you hire, what’s going on? And ultimately, that’s what even you know, Google’s trying to get away from when they’re ranking businesses and focusing more on content, high quality mentions. So as a business owner, like SEO works, it does, but it’s like how are you leveraging those resources, or you know, your spend your budget, and if you’re investing it in really good quality content, whether it’s videos, long form pieces of content, or digital PR, you’re getting mentioned on?For us, we try to get five to 10 mentions on really high authority new sites every month, whether it’s like, keep.cmm, Active Campaign MailChimp like well known recognizable sites, regardless of what you know, Google’s algorithm does or what search goes, those high quality mentions can never be taken away.

Mario Fachini [27:47]
Especially when you’re dealing with the age domain, right?

Chris Porteous [27:52]
Exactly. So you combine that with the brand itself, you can have featured on in your signature you Have you even featured here, check out our recent article here. If you have videos like, what you’re doing with SEO, you should be able to want to take that and cross promote it and kind of use it across your business, not just looking at SEO as a separate component. And that’s where you’re going to have the most success.

Mario Fachini [28:20]
So doing the cross promotion, not just a one time deal.

Chris Porteous [28:24]
Yeah, treating SEO is a core of your business versus we hired an SEO guy, he’s handling it, we’re good. It should be all different kinds of channels working together to leverage what you’re doing on SEO sites to leverage that content you’re doing. Leveraging the digital PR, you’re doing the outreach and everything else and bringing it all together.

Mario Fachini [28:47]
Okay. Got one more question before we go to something fun. Well, this whole thing’s fun. I don’t know why I say that. But we’re gonna go to a different segment. And you’ll see in a second that, whatever. So my question is for someone that’s listening, and wants to say, you know what, this sounds good. I want to invest more in SEO and like you said, digital, clearly, nothing’s going offline anytime soon. What percentage of their marketing or what percentage of the overall budget the profits, how much do you think someone should be allocating to say, here’s what’s really realistic. But I will get a result from it. Because like you said, If someone’s been burned, they don’t want to go, here’s another 50, $100,000 at this or even 10. But at the same point, I know some people do well, I tried to use that $100 coupon Google gives them and it’s like, Why put $100 a month at it? It’s like, I don’t know if that’s the solution either. What’s your take?

Chris Porteous [29:50]
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve seen a lot of our clients. Before coming on board, they put a much higher value on a bus ad or a billboard or radio or TV, and they have no problem spending for example, here, I can’t speak for rates in different cities. But to get like a 32nd ad on the local news could be anywhere from 30, $500 to 5000, for a 30-second view, and you have to do that multiple times, daily, weekly keep on hitting you over the head, so that message resonates with them, you’re not necessarily even targeting the right customer with that. So a lot of companies are fine with traditional media buys that we’ve done some media buying in the past, multi million dollar budgets. But the digital side of it, especially organic, might only be one or 2% of that. And ultimately, that doesn’t make sense. So I like to look at, breaking out, depending on the size of the business, what they’re doing, breaking out digital versus traditional. Maybe it starts off as you know, 40%, digital 60% traditional, and over time, it becomes 60%, digital 70%, digital 80% digital. On the SEO side, specifically, it does cost a lot of money to produce, like think about your podcasts,there’s equipment, there’s time, resources, editing, if you want a really good product, it does take a lot of resources. So to build a 5000 word guide, you might hire someone, if you don’t do it yourself, someone might take them a week to produce that content, that you want to share that with a video and these other kinds of things. And that guide might end up costing three to $5,000. But ultimately, if you’re you know, let’s say you’re a lawyer, and that guide brings in, three to five leads a month. The value is there.

Mario Fachini [31:54]
Yeah, especially if the average sale is probably two, 5, 10, $1,000. I would just no matter where you’re at, I can’t imagine that being less than that. I mean, on average, 200 to 500 an hour for an attorney. So if they’re not doing stuff for just one hour, generally unless, you know them and it’s a favor, in which you still have to pay them. But you know what I mean, they put you put them on retainer, and it’s Europe in the 1000s, right off the get go. So that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate you breaking it down. Because, again, no one likes to get burned. But also when you get three proposals from three companies, one’s 10, grand one’s 20, one’s 30. It’s like, I have no clue. What’s the difference? If they can’t articulate it? Sorry. So that makes sense.

Chris Porteous [32:45]
Yeah, Absolutely.

Mario Fachini [32:47]
So the fun thing I was talking about. Yeah, got it. The Wheel of Whatever, forgot to put it in front of me. But that’s fine. So my question for you is, oh, that’s a good spin. We’re gonna let that baby go for a minute. Don’t fall, man. That’s like real good, better than my rollerblade bearings. Okay, that’s not gonna stop anytime soon. So I’m going to stop it. My question for you with SEO is what is something you haven’t tried but you really, really want to because you think it will work?

Chris Porteous [33:30]
Is this from my perspective or…?

Mario Fachini [33:32]
Like with marketing and SEO? Is there something like cutting edge that you? You know, you’re like, wow, I could really see this being something big over the next few years, but it’s not traditional or mainstay right now.

Chris Porteous [33:46]
Yeah, right now, SEO focuses, or at least, what us and tradition and your traditional agencies would focus on is, search in Google, but I think things are becoming a lot more decentralized. So building content on 10, 15 different platforms. So I have this idea of core marketing, so let’s say I want to rank for personal injury lawyer. I would scrape maybe the top 50 questions for the site, Quora.com and then the keyword Personal Injury lawyer, scrape the top 50 questions, and then provide comments for each of those questions. Basically promoting yourself, the value, maybe a guide or resource page or something like that. So doing a lot, not just in search, so not just backlinks, not content, your site, but treating SEO as a lot more decentralized and kind of being everywhere. Because ultimately, if you look at where SEO is going, it’s a lot like media buying if you are everywhere on the street, so you’re on the buses, you’re on the billboards. Everyone’s gonna know who you are. And that’s the equivalent of what Google is trying to do in search. So the more places you are, the more places you’re found, you’re going to rank a lot higher. So that’s something that we’re putting more emphasis on. I think that’s the future of SEO, not just optimizing for one search engine, but looking at the user the searching stuff, you know, with Open Graph with Facebook, are they searching on Quora? Are they searching, you know, on new platforms.

Mario Fachini [35:23]
And Amazon too.

Chris Porteous [35:25]
Oh, absolutely. Amazon’s I would guess at this point, they’re probably the second largest search engine. I haven’t looked at the stats, but I know they have an awesome marketing platform for promoting your products.

Mario Fachini [35:38]
Yeah, I’ve talked to my author clients about that in different audiences. Because you’re absolutely right. With Google, it’s no longer if I’m on Google, I’m good. It’s like people are on YouTube, Facebook, social, Twitter, they’re all over the place. And Google. And the thing I’ve said in my own presentations is, people can search for you in all these other places. But if they’re searching on Amazon, they’re gonna buy. You don’t go on Amazon, just randomly looking at stuff. If you’re on Amazon, you’re buying something, which means cash, you can search for the days long and everywhere else. But it’s an interesting tidbit, depending on what you’re selling, but especially with books. It’s like, do you want to, you know, obviously, you want to be doing all of it. But it’s like, it’s something to consider like, you’re saying the billboard placement versus the bus? What depends Who’s your demographic? If you know, it’s the buses going to get you better results here versus the billboard over here TV? And I don’t know how any of those would just, this is me. I don’t know how any of those would smoke anything online right now. But you know what I mean, that ultimately comes down to your demographics. But that’s an interesting point you’re making? Because Google, Google’s great. As far as search goes, they’re not the only game in town anymore.

Chris Porteous [37:04]
Yeah, absolutely. But the challenge becomes like for us as an agency, how do you scale that? It’s tough enough for clients to have, you know, a healthy enough budget to rank and search, then you want to apply these different engines and kind of different strategies, and it, you know, those costs increase quickly. So we’re really big on how we can scale that across different mediums? Using one piece of content? How can we take that and scale it? versus just focusing on one kind of medium?

Mario Fachini [37:36]
Yeah, and you’re doing the right thing, because you focus on the one you can scale, and you’re going to get 10 times better results than doing a little bit on all of them, because you’re not going to go deep enough to get that traction. And I think that’s what a lot of people lack. There’s so much opportunity. It’s like, well, where do we start? But then even after you start, it’s more important, where do you stay? Yeah, you can do all 15 of them. But do you need to?Do you want to?

Chris Porteous [38:07]
Yeah, absolutely.

Mario Fachini [38:08]
So we’re gonna thank our sponsor, and come back for more. That’s what I should say is more fun. The Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [39:47]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Chris, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Chris Porteous [39:54]
I’m ready to go.

Mario Fachini [39:55]
Alright. 60 seconds or less answers. I have a couple of questions for you. And the First one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Chris Porteous [40:05]
Fastest path. Depending on your business, it would be sales, nothing else matters. Even if you don’t have product sales, reach out, get feedback, get them on, see what they’re looking for. Maybe give them a discount for, you know, a pre-sign up whatever it is, but that’s definitely the quickest way.

Mario Fachini [40:26]
Right. I love it. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making, and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Chris Porteous [40:37]
For at least looking at, like my clients, as well as prospects is not treating SEO as part of their business, but treating it as just like one facet of their overall marketing.

Mario Fachini [40:53]
Very true. Yeah, I’ve been on the wrong side of that before my bad. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Chris Porteous [41:07]
The easiest is just reducing churn. Ultimately if you have high churn low retention rates, you’re going to fail. Even if you’re not in a recurring revenue model, if you’re ecommerce, building out a product, doing whatever you can to get the customer coming back, making sure they’re staying on. And the easiest way to do that is building a real awesome, customer experience team. Someone’s reaching out to them, someone who’s staying on top of it, somebody makes them feel like not just a client or a number, but part of the team.

Mario Fachini [41:39]
Very, very good. Because ultimately, you know, it’s the people around you, they’re gonna be supporting you for the years to come. It’s not just a transaction.

Chris Porteous [41:49]
Absolutely.

Mario Fachini [41:51]
What books would you recommend to an expert authority world that have made a difference in your life?

Chris Porteous [41:58]
This is a little basic. But for me, the one that kind of changed my life. And what really led me to build this SEO agency was a four hour workweek. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but ultimately, everything there holds true for me after reading that, how can I outsource my job as quickly as possible? And that’s been my obsession, doesn’t matter how complex it is, how can I build processes? How can I keep on scaling it and get me out of the business and more kind of handling strategy, you know, long term initiatives, building up processes, and worry about more of the high level stuff?

Mario Fachini [42:34]
Excellent. I think that’s everyone’s goal. Where would you like people to learn more?

Chris Porteous [42:41]
You can visit, we have two websites, actually, you can visit mySEOsucks.com on there, we cover basically any type of SEO kind of resource you’re looking for, whether it’s keyword research, content, marketing, digital PR, you know, social media promotion, all that. And then we have an awesome SEO platform where you can actually buy, you know, one off deliverables, content, links, SEOcampaigns at searchi.io.

Mario Fachini [43:11]
Excellent. Well, Chris, it’s been a pleasure. I thank you for your time and sharing your wisdom.

Chris Porteous [43:19]
That’s great. Thank you so much for having me today.

Mario Fachini [43:20]
All right, expert authority world. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. And God bless

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www.EAInterviews.com [44:03]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EAInterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience links to the resources we mentioned in more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.