Benefits of SEO Marketing

Episode 103: Benefits of SEO Marketing, with Corey Morris

Benefits of SEO marketing is something the business owners should learn. Let Corey Morris be your guide on the benefits of SEO marketing.

My guest on this episode of Sell With Authority has spent nearly 20 years working in strategic and leadership roles focused on growing national and local client brands with award-winning, ROI-generating digital strategies.

Corey Morris is President and CEO of Voltage, a powerhouse in the digital marketing sphere and has a deep understanding about the benefits of SEO marketing. Corey is not only a VIP contributor to esteemed publications like Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land but also the author of the eagerly anticipated book, Digital Marketing Success Plan, set to release later this year.

We dive into the mystic dark magic voodoo that search engine optimization sometimes feels like — and we dispel some myths.

Perhaps even more importantly — we highlight the strategies and tactics you and your team should focus on for 2024 — and beyond.

Because if you do — you’ll attract more right-fit prospects into your agency’s sales pipeline.

And what we discuss will also help you score some more wins for your clients.

If you take and apply the insights and wisdom Corey shares during this episode — you and your team will raise the bar in how you help your clients when talking through the benefits of SEO marketing and where it’s headed — and — you can use it to fill your sales pipeline and roar through 2024.

What you will learn in this episode about the benefits of SEO marketing:

• Why aligning marketing efforts with business goals wins over simply tracking metrics
• The critical difference between being perceived as a valued partner versus just another vendor
• Secrets to overcoming commoditization in marketing services such as SEO and website development
• How Voltage’s application of consistent SEO strategies leads to undeniable inbound leads
• The importance of creating engaging content positioned for various marketing channels to drive targeted business outcomes
• In-depth discussion about the benefits of SEO marketing so that many business owners will not be taking it for granted

Resources:

• Website: https://voltage.digital
• Facebook Business: https://www.facebook.com/voltagekc
• LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreymorris/
• LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/voltagedigital/
• Twitter Personal: https://twitter.com/coreydmorris
• Read more about the benefits of SEO marketing in this blog from Voltage

Additional Resources:

• Website: www.predictiveroi.com
• Visit our newly expanded Resource Library
• Join us in our free How to Fill Your Sales Pipeline Facebook Group
• A must-read blog for business leaders regarding the benefits of SEO marketing and many more

 

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Full Episode Transcript

 

Welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner looking to sell more of what you do so you can grow a thriving, profitable shop, they can weather the constant change that seems to be our world’s reality.

 

Well, then you’re in the right place. Do you want proven strategies for attracting a steady stream of well prepared, right fit prospects into your sales pipeline? Yep, we’re going to cover that. You want to learn how to step away from the sea of competitors. So you actually stand out and own the ground you’re standing on. Yep. We’re going to cover that too.

 

Do you want to futureproof your business so you can navigate the next challenges that are going to come your way? What. Absolutely. We will help you there as well. I promise you, each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights and tangible examples of best practices. Never theory from thought leaders, experts, owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do.

 

So I want you to think practical and tactical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests built a position of authority and then monetized that position by growing their audience, by nurturing leads and yes, by converting sales. But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around, there they were with a helpful answer to an important question so their prospects never, ever felt like they were a prospect.

 

I also promise you, every strategy that we discuss, every tool we recommend, will be shared in full transparency so you can fill your sales pipeline with that steady stream of profit clients who again, were never, ever made to feel like one of your prospects. Okay. Before I introduce you to our very special guest expert today, I want to take a moment to tee up the topic.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Corey Morris’ Introduction

 

So today’s guest expert and I are going to dive into what we like to call your Predictive, the mystic dark magic voodoo that sometimes search engine optimization feels like. And we’re going to work hard to dispel some of those myths today. And perhaps more importantly, we’re going to highlight the strategies and tactics that you and your team should focus on for 2024 and beyond.

 

Because if you do, you’ll attract more right foot prospects into your agency sales pipeline. But that’s only if you apply what we talk about and you take and apply it on yourselves. As you know, you should. And what we talk through today will also help you score some more wins in your work alongside your clients. Okay, I get it that that is a very, very tall order.

 

So to help us chart the course and to navigate through all of it, I invited Corey Morris, president and CEO of Voltage, to join me as our special guest expert. In addition to leading his team at Voltage. Corey is a VIP contributor to Search Engine Journal and a contributor to Search Engine Land, Forbes, and other publications, where he shares his digital marketing insights.

 

Corey is also the author of the forthcoming book entitled Digital Marketing Success Plan, which will be available later this year. I promise you, if you take and apply the insights and wisdom Corey shares during this episode, you and your team will raise the bar in how you help your clients. When talking through where Scott is headed, you can then use what he shares with you to fill your own sales pipeline in Raw through 2024. So without further ado, welcome to the Sell With Authority podcast, Corey. 

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Corey’s Path and Journey

 

Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to talk today. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you, too, and for you to share your insights and wisdom with our audience. So thanks for saying yes. Before we dive in, I’m sure what’s going to feel like a barrage of questions that I tossed your way.

 

Take us behind the curtain and tell us a little bit more about you and your path and journey. So, a couple of minutes of context. I’d love to know more about your story, And then we’ll dive in. Yeah. I have been in the digital marketing agency industry for nearly 20 years now. I started out, knowing nothing, coming straight out of college and working on the digital spin off of a more traditional small agency.

 

Early within a couple of years, after learning some HTML and doing things before of websites were open source, moved into SEO and so I nerd it out heavily, got some training, and certifications in Southern California from one of the the OGs in the space and just started going really deep into organic search. Was leading that function for the first agency I worked for, and eventually landed at voltage.

 

And here I started the digital marketing team with the email marketing background I had with the web, as well as informally having led a paid search team. It was a nice, more rounded background. I saw the integration of channels and marketing more than the siloed aspects that I had been living in as the, as where the future was going.

 

So took on a more broad digital marketing role. We grew it from when I was the sixth employee here to, you know, but it’s easy to grow when you’re starting at zero. So, we could say infinity, but that’s not really fair. But I had a chance to grow that function and what was originally voltage was originally founded as a creative agency.

 

We moved, and morphed into a digital agency. And, fast forward went through a process where a succession plan with the previous owner wrapped that up in 2022. And now I’m charting the course for where we’re going for the next decade as we narrow our focus and talk about that a little bit more in a bit, too.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Diving Deeper Into Organic Search

 

That is awesome. Okay, this might sound a little fundamental, but I think it’s going to be helpful. So when you mentioned really leaning into and doing a deeper dive into organic search. So why organic search, like, what was it about like you were on the surface and then doing that dive in. Why organic search versus the many other, you know, strategies and so forth.

 

Why organic? What stood out? I think the range of things that factor into how a site ranks, you get your hands dirty in a code with technical layers. It requires strong content and engagement with users of your site, not just with robots and search engines. And it’s a living, breathing thing. Actually, a perspective that I had never really thought about was shared by one of the leaders in the space, Bill Reynolds.

 

I think he shared it just recently on LinkedIn. And it struck me because his point was that SEO is much different as a discipline because everything happens in public. Everything that you do is seen. And your competitors can see everything you’re doing and reverse engineer as well. And that’s fascinating. There’s not a black box. There’s not, you know.

 

Yes, there are algorithms and there are 100 different ways to get there. There’s not one right answer, and it’s a process of becoming Bruce Clay, you know, shared with me early in my career. It’s at least a process of becoming least imperfect in the eyes of a search engine. Instead of getting it all right and being perfect.

 

And so there’s a lot of interesting aspects to it with the complexities. And while we can know all of the best practices, it’s being able to be strategic enough of having your own approach and applying them to your site or your client sites. In my case, as well. And so, I think there was always a challenge to me early on where it’s like, this could take a year to get there.

 

It takes a lot of hard work, and it takes a lot of short term actions to get to the long term ROI and payoff. But having that ability to organize it, process through it, be strategic throughout. Attracted me to it. Yeah. And I really respect how you said apply and you were talking about the least imperfect in the eyes of to become the least imperfect in the eyes of the search engine.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Pulling The Lever on The Best Practices

 

And then you’re talking about applying them once, once somebody knows what the best practices are with the recipe as it is, then about application pulling those levers over and over and over and over again and doing it consistently over time. And you guys eat your own dog food. I mean, your website is fantastic. You guys get inbound leads consistently as a result of the search, but you are constantly doing the work and pulling those levers right?

 

Yeah, absolutely. Because if you take your eye off of it short term, then you just push out the timeline of the opportunity to test something. I mean, the word optimization is in full, you know, the acronym. And that’s a little bit of a challenge to as things, you know, before I even became the big story, the constant was changed.

 

Dark engines are changing their algorithms. I went to an event at Google’s headquarters years ago that was aptly named the Google Dance because that was the nickname. It was a social event that became a joke or play on, but it was the nickname that was given by early SEOs before my time, when they would see Google pushing out an update to the algorithm and then pulling it back.

 

And so they called it the Google Dance of all this. Launch it, see how it changes the search results and push it back. Now, obviously everything is way different now. It’s much more complicated as, you know, machine learning is integrated and there’s no one, engineer. I have heard this said years ago at a search marketing expo event by a Google engineer that there’s no one person who can actually know the algorithm because it’s so dynamic and how it’s built.

 

And so there’s so much there that, you know, there are iterations to do. And I’m glad you brought up the, you know, optimization part of it and the refinement and the levers to keep pulling. There’s a fine line in the balance of knowing that you’re going to in this you’re committed to this and there’s optimization and we’re going to keep iterating on it.

 

But it’s also not just for blindly following a checklist of best practices. There has to be a strategic element to it. In fact, my most recent article for one of the publications is actually two of them. I hammer on, for search engine land the dangers of checklist SEO and just following a checklist and thinking that you’re going to get to the promised land of where you want to be.

 

And then the recent one for Search Engine Journal is on, you know, the commoditization or feeling of SEO as well. And they both hit on similar themes of like when you’re, you know, you can do all the technical things and follow, I’ll do all the good things. But in the absence of a balanced strategy, you’re not going to get where you want to go.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: The Strategic Element to SEO

 

Amen to that. So let’s lean more into the strategic element. And you sort of gave us not necessarily book ends, but you gave us two ways to, like you mentioned the dangers of the checklist SEO totally at that. And then also the commoditization when you remove or when someone removes the strategic element, and we’re just checking boxes and not really thinking about, like, why and then how does this impact the brand or is that just in one market versus another.

 

So tell us a little bit more about when you say there has to be a strategic element to it. Tell us more about that. Yeah. You can spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of resources just for your own brand or on behalf of your clients to not get to the ROI point.

 

And it seems elementary and basic that I’m going to talk about goals, setting goals, identifying resources, and having a plan. But if you’re going to commit to or you’re committing on behalf of clients, getting clients to commit to doing SEO, and with the understanding that it could take months, about a year before you get to break even an ROI, you want to give yourself the best possible chance you have to get there and not spin your wheels.

 

Or go through iterations where you’re targeting you know, the wrong keywords, the wrong topics, the wrong part of the funnel, whatever it might be. So, you know, if you take a few days, or a few steps upfront that, you know, will help give you the best possible chance down the road, I suggest you pause and do that and not fall into the trap of, well, it’s optimization.

 

So we’re going to just keep iterating until we get it right. But how much patience do you have for investing and iterating to get it right versus trying to give it its best chance out of the gate? Okay.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage 

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Setting Expectations for Results to Show

 

So this is really, really good because I like when you mention goals and then what are the resources and then have a plan. Whether intentionally or whether you intended this or not, I immediately went to setting an expectation like when you said, you know, it could be months or a year or so forth.

 

So give us your guidance here. Would love your expertise around how best our audience agencies, just like yours, can best set expectations when they’re sitting in front of a client. The client’s like, yeah, I want to be the number one in Google for these really amazing keywords. Next month. So, help us better understand your point of view around properly setting expectations.

 

Yeah. I use and it is directly into the topic of my book and you know, the initial process we go through, I immediately start talk, you know, shift the conversation to I don’t possibly have an in conversation and first touchpoint or even after we’ve talked before, we’ve done the research and done the deep dive together.

 

I don’t have the answer. Right. I can’t tell you, what the level of effort with no auditing, no research will be to be where you want to be. And so whether it’s organic search or even paid search, it’s dangerous to just start throwing out benchmarks or make assumptions and this is not saying clients aren’t sophisticated.

 

They are right. They know their audience in most cases better than I do on the surface. But at the same time, that doesn’t always translate to, you know, being able to understand all the factors of where they are as a starting point with their site, what their content might lack, if the terminology they’re using actually matches up with their target audience, and to make sure that’s all in alignment.

 

In many cases, you know, I call those like the CEO keywords, right, are the ego driven keywords I want to rank for this. You know? But if I’m a car and I don’t have any car dealer clients. So full disclosure, this is not a real scenario. But if I was a car, you know, I’m in Kansas City.

 

So if I wanted to rank for a Kansas City car dealership, I would not, you know, maybe, you know, at first blush, I might think I want to rank for cars. You don’t want to rank for a car. Well, you would know, we would take that if you could monetize that. Right. But you want to rank for the bright context of a keyword and you get that.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Figure Things Out as You Go

 

Right. So, yeah, there’s you may think it’s the perfect phrase or topic or cluster of keywords for you but if it’s not really linked to your brand and search intent, which is really the key of everything, and the bridge there, if the search intent isn’t right, then it’s not going to matter. You could get number one for cars and not be able to monetize that at all.

 

And how much investment did you spend on that? Well, to your point with the Kansas City based car dealership, if all of a sudden people in Maine are getting that car dealership in their search results, you know, that might be really great for the ego piece or the numbers piece or so forth, but it’s probably not going to drive units sold.

 

Is that what you’re talking about with respect to. Exactly. Yeah. And so goals aren’t just I want to be I want to you know, goals have to be connected to a business outcome. And that’s where, I’ll admit it, I learned the hard way, the really hard way that, you know, one of my first stories of where this clicked for me a long time ago was when I was, New Thought.

 

I knew, and I did know book knowledge of SEO, and I was able to successfully get my client right within a few months on the keyword phrases that we targeted. And I go into the meeting and I’m excited, we’ll just call Bernie the attorney. And we, I go through walking through this beautiful report before we have real time dashboards, but this beautiful snapshot report and everything is green and up and to the right.

 

And yet he lets me go all the way through my, my walk through the report. But I told him something was off and we got to the end. He’s like, wait, that’s great, you know? But none of these green metrics have rankings, increases in traffic, even the conversions that you’re showing there for form submissions led to a new case or a new client.

 

So it doesn’t matter. And so it’s often a whether it’s bureaucracy, politics, structure, access to information and the messiness of things in our own organizations or especially on the client side, that if we don’t get deep enough into understanding all the way through the true business outcome, we’re leaving a big gap there and dots that need to be connected by someone else who may or may not connect them, or when they do connect them, realize that we spend a lot of time and effort and their dollars and that get to the business outcome and even if all the other stuff looks good, or maybe you accidentally landed, some business outcomes could have had been tighter. 

 

Could it have been more on point? Again, that’s not rocket science, but this is hard work to get that deep. But you want to get that deep early on. You don’t want to wait till you’re six months in and I talk with my team about this and I give this example of what it’s like.

 

We have the power to know. And so I want to be able to write absolute statements and have the data show it then to answer any question with I think and that’s unfortunately the position we sometimes put ourselves in by just starting somewhere, make progress and we’ll iterate or we’ll figure it out as we go.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: It’s All About the Results of Your Work and How It Will Move the Business Forward

 

I think everything you just said there goes back to the strategic element. If we’re just aimlessly wandering through the wilderness and haphazardly pulling levers and not really understanding why or to your point, we haven’t really thought about it. Yeah, but if we do this, is this going to result in the burn delivering the business outcome? Are you just referring to?

 

Because that’s the only thing that matters, like green on things that are not vital still gets you fired. What the client cares about are the result outcomes. How did all of this effort move their business forward? Right. Yeah. Well, and I’ve had examples as well where I had a prospect come to me who, you know, we have a great conversation.

 

And then he’s like, all right. He’s like, full disclosure, I’m talking to another agency. They told me that I should spend $7,000 a month on Google ads. What do you think I should spend? And I’m like, I’m out. Even though we’re Google ads, you know, everybody’s certified here. We’re a Google partner agency, and it’s a part of the mix for most of our clients.

 

I don’t know if it’s even the right channel, let alone how much you should spend. And so let’s take a step back and let’s analyze, you know, your goals and your targets and work through a strategic process that looks at putting anything you can throw out there. And let’s put it all on the table and find the right mix of how these channels work together or don’t.

 

And then allow, you know, before you spend a dollar that Google is going to take. And agencies will make it, whether it’s working or not. And that’s, you know, refreshing, but sometimes challenging too, especially if your mind’s made up that I want to do Google Ads. It’s where I want to go, but it’s that moment or I’m out. 

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Start Working

 

Let’s take one step back before we try to take 2 or 3 steps forward, because we know where, you know, the risks involved of where this could go and go wrong. Very quickly. Again, I love this business level thinking that you’re applying to these client scenarios. And because I think in our business agencies, in the agency business is what I’m trying to say, like when a client says yes and they’re excited, they’re like, you are the partner that I’ve been looking for. You get it?

 

Do you understand me? When can we get started? Whether we’re talking about creative or other aspects of our business, we want to be helpful. And so we roll up our sleeves and start doing stuff. And I think what you’re saying is, wait a minute. That’s awesome. Like, relationship wise. Awesome that a prospective client has now become a client and they’re so excited to be working alongside your team.

 

Yeah. But then now that it’s yes, it is time to roll up the sleeves. But it’s time to start with the strategic element first. So we’re not aimlessly wandering through the wilderness. Yeah. So that’s a really great context query. Well and I mean it’s hard I mean, I admit this, I’ll be the first to admit this. When someone has a stack of money that they’re putting on the table and they say, I want this thing.

 

And I do the thing, it seems like it’s hard to have the discipline to take that step back and not rush into it. And at other examples, I see and in that case that I just shared with that prospect, what was interesting and why that other agency was rushing in is because that’s all they do is paid search.

 

And so they’re one solution to every problem. I’ve got one tool that’s a hammer. Right. And maybe we needed a scalpel. Maybe we needed something else. And I get it because we specialize as well and have a focus on areas. But so I fully understand the challenge there. And there are times where, you know, you see it clear as day, and that is probably where you’re going to end up.

 

But you want to do your due diligence because if you don’t have documented goals and benchmarks and KPIs, it will bite you later because you talked a moment ago about expectation setting. And on the client side, expectations shift and people don’t remember the things that we said. Or they’ll remember the maybe different context of it. Or go back to a we don’t ever want to go back to a scope of work.

 

We’d rather have a documented set of KPIs that we’re working toward naturally, especially in SEO, that takes time. When shiny object syndrome comes up. You know, we’re launching this new product, we’re targeting this new audience. We have this new service line or this is a trending topic in our industry. Let’s go target that. Okay. Did we pause and go back and revisit our KPIs and our goals?

 

Do we go do some research on this new topic? Did we figure out if this takes priority over other things that maybe we’re six months into really honing in? No one wants to get to the end of the year and be like, okay, where’s the ROI? And then hear what sounds like a bunch of excuses with no, no real substance to, you know, why we zig zag all over the place and didn’t really get any of them complete?

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Getting Through the Process

 

Yeah. So good. So, when you and I were going back and forth about this conversation, when I was like, oh, I would love to have you on the show so we could talk about some, you know, the 3, 4 or 5 things, with respect to search as we step into 24, that you think that agencies in our community should be paying attention to, so that they can raise the bar with their own clients and then also use it to, fill their own sales pipelines, which, of course, is our focus here on this show.

 

So as we’re going through this conversation about the strategic, you know, element, I’m wondering if that’s the first thing. So like, if there were 3 or 4 or 5 things that were going to talk about with respect to search for 24, is the strategic element like is that first like build the strategic element.

 

Is that the first step? It definitely is. So I’ve got what my team is, have we challenged ourselves. And so what in my book that you mentioned that’s coming out. And giving away essentially in that our initial process, our first 90 days and it because there’s no rocket science in there or magic sauce that nobody else does, like just being disciplined or being able to get through the process and understand the things that you could and should do to set yourself up for the best possible plan and success you can have, arrives at the Digital Marketing success plan.

 

In my eyes. But my process starts with strategy, and it’s, we’ve given it the acronym, the START planning process. And the S is strategy getting on the same page. This is where ideas are cheap. You haven’t put dollars into Google or Facebook or LinkedIn or any other paid digital media. You haven’t invested in web development. I.T content writing, any, you know, compliance, any of the things that your industry and when I, when we look at clients may focus on or have as part of the mix, you haven’t invested your you’re just investing and making sure you get it right.

 

You’re not investing in actually putting dollars behind or you know, the expectation of ROI, producing activities. Strategy is absolutely critical, especially when we’re in an era where they’re more shiny objects and change is coming faster than ever. We have to be able to have objective sources of truth of what we’re working toward, even if they change and we have to have a balance of having plenty of agility in it, too, in our plan and in our strategy.

 

And not, you know, blindly, you know, work a plan for a year and hope it works out and not adapt along the way. But there is so much need to have a documented strategy and plan. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this because literally just yesterday we were having a conversation with one of our clients inside, private clients, university.

 

And they had an app with a prospective client that on the surface, it looks like it’s going to be a right fit. Both like, personality wise, culture wise, all those types of things, scope of work wise, what the client is looking for in that kind of stuff or whatever. And immediately the conversation goes to deliverables and the execution of things.

 

And what’s missing are the things that you just described. And that’s what we talked through during this conversation yesterday is we’re like critiquing the proposal and that kind of stuff and giving them some insight. It’s like, guys, we gotta elevate the bar. So you are paid for your smarts. So they see that you are bringing a strategy to the table, that there is some thought behind the content that you’re going to later suggest that they develop as part of this process.

 

But if we just bypass that and then and then you wake up six months later and go, oh, for Pete’s sake, why do they treat me like a vendor? Because we behaved like one. As opposed to if we follow the START acronym, like what you’re talking about and strategy is first and always remains part of the whole thing, then you truly have a high level relationship that moves their business forward right?

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: Tactics Ahead Of Strategy

 

Absolutely. It reminds me of another story. So, the story I call is tactics ahead of strategy. The T in my in-start planning for me is tactics. Okay. But having strategy ahead of tactics in your initial planning as well as a healthy relationship between the two ongoing. 

 

Because I had the client come to us and when before we it was actually the very first conversation and and what they were frustrated with their current agency about and they were doing paid search was they went into their monthly meeting every month, would see the keywords, see their KPIs, see the performance and be like, well, what about have you tried this keyword or this topic? 

 

And after 3 or 4 months of that, they start questioning who’s leading. You know, the agencies. Like, that’s a good idea. I’ll put that in there this time. It’s like, who’s up, you know, operating and who’s owning the strategy or tactics ahead of it. And again, you know, especially in the case of Google Ads where there’s ten grand a month that they were spending.

 

I mean, that’s a high pressure environment for testing. And having a lot of wasted spending inefficiencies. Based on the fact of, you know, again, we’re going to pull the levers and do the tactics and just implement this thing and figure it out as we go. Yeah. In, you know, not putting tactics ahead of planning. And so in this strategy, sort of the or excuse me, in this story, the red thread that comes through that is in all reverses and you tell me if I’m tracking with you, is that when you do start putting tactics ahead of planning and you don’t put strategy first, you lose the strategic seat at the table and become a vendor.

 

 You do and to. Yes. And when you’re a vendor, you’re not. If we’re set up with average or around average, you know, hourly rates, we’re a really expensive vendor, maybe the most expensive one they have. If all we’re doing is tactic and implementation and production level work. And I say that with most, most agencies don’t, you know, don’t go into it that way or want to be put in that box, but are we putting ourselves in that box?

 

And perception unfortunately, is reality, even if we’re doing the best checklist and the best things, if the cumulative some of those is not ROI or their business goals, we get fired anyway. Well, you and I have been around in this business a long time and you know that if we’re not consistently owning that strategic seat when the invoice hits their inbox.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage

 

Benefits of SEO Marketing: SEO Is Always Evolving

 

I guess we got a couple of good ideas. So maybe we’ll do it another month. Yeah. Not awesome. So a strategic element if that’s going to be first. And then you just gave us some context around tactics which were super valuable. What are a couple of the other things that you think that agencies need to be mindful of with respect to SEO?

 

As we’re thinking about 24 and beyond? Yeah. So the word balance is important. I mentioned, you know earlier how much things are changing constantly, like, oh, I have actually, I was challenged by some other agency owners last year right after the emergency, you know, blow up of AI and Etsy and everything else and they’re like, you guys are kind of doubling down on SEO.

 

Do you think it’s going to go away? And I, you know, sure it could. There’s always the risk of that. There was a risk of that before I. How many articles have been written saying that SEO is dead right now? It’s just clickbait, right? But it hasn’t died. It’s evolved. But if it finally is on its last leg and dies, and we’re optimizing for search generative experience or something else, fact remains that there will always be a brand or a potential client who wants to be found by their target audience and needs the assistance and expertise and a strategy to get there.

 

Yep. And so that is a constant. So whether we’re still, you know, as if SEO becomes a data term that gets retired and we do something else, we have some other type of optimization or channel that emerges. 

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: Learn And Understand Where SEO is Heading Towards

 

Great. I’m all for it. If it just evolves like it always has. And it takes on the AI side of it, great. But, the reason I talk about balance is having enough balance to be on the leading edge, enough of what’s happening and understand where it’s going. So you don’t become a dinosaur as an agency and your tactics get dated and left behind, but at the same time, doing what works today and staying disciplined and focused on that.

 

So don’t you know, you don’t want to bury your head in the sand, but you also don’t want to chase the shiny objects so much that you lose focus and don’t have the ability to, you know, to drive results for your clients. Okay. I got like three questions going through my head at the same time, which is kind of dangerous because I’m not a very good multitasker.

 

But when you said like, even if SEO were to go away and I like how you said SEO hasn’t died, it’s just evolved. But let’s just be super pessimistic and say ten years now it goes away. Whatever. But you underscored that what’s never going to go away is being found by their target audience.

 

And you know, a few minutes ago you’re talking about search intent. And I literally put in my notes, one of the pages of my notes was search intent. That leads to the content strategy, right? Like you have to have a great content strategy. You can’t optimize for errors, obviously, and then pay attention to search intent, but most importantly, have a great content strategy because if you don’t, you’re never going to be found by your target audience no matter what tactic.

 

That’s a little degrading to call SEO tactic, but strategy and tactic, right? So it’s like being found by your audience is always important. And caring about their intent however they got there is always important. Right? Absolutely. And so we, you’re actually, you know, you haven’t seen this. We did not talk about this full disclosure before the start of the planning process.

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: Identifying Creative Content Web Assets

 

But really the third step is application. So that’s it. Yeah. And that is understanding in the wild how to get it phased out properly. Identify all creative content web assets. Make sure this party is ready before we invite people to it and how we’re going to build it. So it’s full funnel thinking or customer journey or what, however you want to map it out and look at it for yourselves or your clients.

 

And it’s critical. I mean, contact thankfully, context matters and we’re way past the day of days of, you know, focusing on keywords and search engines. And now with AI, hopefully they catch up and fully understand at the level we need them to. I joke about, you know, we’re going to see a lot and we are already seeing a lot of junk before we see really good stuff again.

 

It’s making sure that you understand how to be found. And so many of those things aren’t necessarily good for SEO and a lot of other marketing channels. And even if it’s someone who you already have in a sales funnel and you just have great content that’s engaging, written for your target audience, and you give the right context as well, and your authority position and your relevancy on the subject matter to the search engines by default. Through that, it’s going to engage, it’s going to be on brand, it’s going to be uniquely positioned, and it’s going to engage your audience, whether they came in as a referral or whether they found you cold from a search engine. 

 

It’s going to serve you across the board and not just for SEO or your paid media landing pages or your other marketing tactics or channels. This is so fantastic. Okay, so I know we need to come in for a landing here. We’re getting short on time, but let’s just, if you don’t mind, can we round out the acronym, your Start acronym, because you gave us strategy, tactics, application.

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: The Digital Marketing Success Plan

 

So what is the R in the T. Yeah. So the R is reviewed. And that is where you build the system. Make sure that you have your reporting and KPI house in order. And again, sometimes this can be hard because if you define the business goals upfront and the strategy, you’re not just sitting behind your marketing metrics in your dashboard, but you want to get into CRM or ERP or e-commerce data and be linked up all the way through.

 

And sometimes that can take a while, because now you’re getting into other areas that are outside of marketing teams and maybe into it or third party providers on the behalf of your clients, to get in. And if or if nobody owns a CRM, you might have to take a little bit of ownership or bring in your own expertise or your own partners to help sort through that.

 

But getting your house in order for measurement, getting ready to go. And then T is transformation. That is where we are. We are making sure that we have a full schedule and mapped out plans. We know, you know, again, there has to be plenty of agility built into it, and checkpoints. But you can’t change everything every day.

 

You won’t be able to control enough variables or have enough data to make strong decisions for your ongoing strategy and optimization, but you also need to have this mapped out because, again, as I mentioned earlier, you might get two months in and then a new initiative comes or somebody, an executive does a drive by and says, what about this?

 

And then you didn’t get the full context and you can go chase that thing or that keyword or that topic or objective without coming back to it. So having a timeline and having your transformation plan out is critical. And at the end of that start planning process, we arrive at what I call the digital marketing success plan.

 

That’s where you have whether it’s on a word document, or you have it in slides or you have it in bits and pieces everywhere. Having that documented objective source of truth to come back to any time a triggering event happens, hey, we should try this thing, or this competitor just changed the industry, or Google changed everything you have a plan to come back to.

 

And you’re not just it’s not on somebody’s head or it’s not emotional, it is objective. And we have to revisit it to make sure that we stay on track when we get months down the road, you know, digital marketing success plan, you know, so we should write a book on that. When I’m working through it, I’ve got the first draft.

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: Time to Take The Initial Steps

 

I’ve had a chance to share the topic at a couple of industry conferences where I spoke on it. Yeah. And it’s not a sexy topic at all. I but I don’t mind being known as the plan guy or being, you know, driving people nuts with, you know, you have to have a plan. And I’m not telling you what you know, what needs to be in it.

 

And whether you’ve got a great initial process already and maybe there’s a nugget in here where you take something that I do or my team does and plug it in and make yours even better. As an agency, or if you’re just starting out from scratch and it’s like, hey, we want to just get more, you know, a lot more robust and take these initial steps for the reasons that we’ve talked through today.

 

You know, not wanting to get down the road that far with clients and share with them that their best interest is to take a step back and start with a plan and emphasize their strategy first. Yeah, I’m looking forward to reading your book and I’ll put it in the category of leadership. And here’s why.

 

I mean, we’ve all heard probably ad nauseum, the axiom of, you know, management is cutting the forest super efficiently and cutting the number of logs and maximizing output and that kind of stuff. And, leadership is climbing up to the top of the ladder, being able to see and say, no, wrong forest. It’s that one over there. And so, you know, I think that that’s what you’ve given us here in this conversation.

 

We certainly talked about the things to pay attention to as it relates to search for this year and beyond. And then you broke those down. So, that was the leadership piece. And then you break those down into elements that we can take and apply. And I’m really, really grateful for that. There was a lot in this conversation.

 

So I know we covered a lot. But before we go in, before we close out and say goodbye, Corey, is there anything you think we might have missed? Any final advice or recommendations that you’d like to share? And please share with our audience the best way to connect with you? 

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: Final Advice from Corey

 

Yeah. Thank you. It’s been. I could nerd out for a long time on these topics, and so it’s been a pleasure being here.

 

I think one thing that we didn’t really touch on but, you know, when I think about a lot of the things I’ve made, all of these mistakes, like any of these learnings and any of these stories, this is not me sitting here in a position where I’ve got it all figured out or or I’m judging any others.

 

I’m not, I again, I’ve made all these mistakes at one point in my career and what’s really challenging to me and you talked about it up being the valued partner and what we bring versus the production and or vendor is we see, and the data shows that if we look at any number of studies of the tenure of CMOs getting shorter, so our clients not being in those seats as long, the perceived commoditization of these marketing channels, SEO has been around a long time.

 

So, as you know, paid search and email and all these things and so, so many people claim that they do it and they do it. I trust that they do. And there’s so many great experts in this space. But why have been burned so many times by agencies who give them checklist level SEO, or it’s a one line item of many and it versus being done at the level of expertise that they want and deserve.

 

And so the perceived commoditization or real commoditization in many cases of the service and it being okay versus great and driving to business outcomes versus marketing metrics is so important. And I know that so many other agency owners and I have lamented about, you know, attrition rates and churn over the past year or more. And I don’t know that we’re, you know, that, you know, there’s some macroeconomic things happening there.

 

But I don’t know that we’re all, myself included, doing everything we can to give ourselves the best chance to be that valued partner and breaking through the whole perception of commoditization. And well, anybody can do SEO. Anybody can build my website. Yes, they can. And I mean, I’m probably not the right fit for everyone because I don’t have a cookie cutter approach.

 

And so there are definitely cases where I do not have the right partner. And it’s just so hard to have some of those disciplines be able to position yourself as not the commodity and then deliver on that. Okay. Remember how in the green room we’re talking about golden nuggets and and we’re going to pull some other golden nuggets out of this conversation and share those, I think you just absolutely crushed it through this entire conversation.

 

But what you just said, I thought was literally gold that you said two minutes ago and you said driving the business outcomes versus marketing metrics. It truly is super smart, because we can all get wrapped up in the analytic dashboards and fall in love with the green. But if we’re not doing what you just said, driving the business outcomes versus marketing metrics, we still get fired, right?

 

Yeah, yeah, you can do all the right things, but if they don’t add up to what that ultimate goal is, it doesn’t matter. You might be able to stretch out a relationship, but it’s not going to end up. Or even if the client leads you down a path of I don’t care about that. Someone who’s gonna care at some point, somebody is going to ask the question, and we don’t want to leave it in.

 

I love financial people, I love CFOs, but we don’t want to leave it up to someone who’s not a marketer to look at the check they’re writing and versus and ask those questions. Who’s further removed from it? That’s a failure because we’ve not demonstrated the value throughout the organization to that point. Fantastic. Best way to reach out and connect with you, Corey?

 

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Benefits of SEO Marketing: How to Connect with Corey

 

Yeah. So, my agency site, voltage.digital, that’s our website. Just launched a new website. Would love any feedback anyone has there, but, go check out what we do there. If you want to learn more about the book, I outline the process for the Digital Marketing Success plan to arrive at one, and the start planning process at DMSP.

 

And again, it’s a digital marketing success plan. So DMs speak, if you want to just nerd out with me on a personal level, you can find me at Corey morris.com as well. And see what I’m up to over there. But, I’m happy to talk with anyone through any of those avenues. No strings attached. And love to again hear any feedback on anything you think we’re doing right or think we could improve as well.

 

Awesome my friend. Thank you. And okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to the words of wisdom that Corey shared with you, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take this take and start using his acronym, Start and working through everything that he shared with you, putting it into practice.

 

Because when you do, you will accelerate your results using Corey’s words, business outcomes, which is absolutely awesome. And Corey, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I’m grateful that you said yes to come on to the show, to be our mentor and guide, to help us raise the bar in our businesses, onward to that next level. Thank you so much, Corey. Thank you.

 

Learn more about the benefits of SEO Marketing by checking out this blog from Voltage