Quote from: ergophobe on July 08, 2019, 06:38:17 PM
Followup - I wrote back to her and told her I had forgotten we even had a video and that it was created because we had housed some documentary filmmakers and they did it for us as a thank you. She replies

QuoteOh wow, glad they created the video. We literally you tube almost everything regarding our vacations so we can make the most of them. I found it before I contacted you and was happy to see it there.

NOW that makes you wonder: what other opportunities are on YouTube for even more brand exposure!

Quote from: Drastic on July 08, 2019, 01:03:18 PM
I am pretty sure no one goes to insta/fb/youtube to find a local plumber.

You should ask or watch consumers' behaviors before making assumptions. Ask neighbors, family, and friends on their behaviors when looking for something. You'll be surprised at the different points of views and drastic different older generation of people have versus the younger ones have with answers to your questioning. I've seen posts "Hey anyone know a good local plumber?" in group chats and FB posts even though Google is literally one click away. Study the audience.

It wasn't too long ago that when the internet was just getting going people echoed "No one is going to the internet to find a local plumber when they can just open up a Yellow Page".

Remember people thought the internet was a fade back then. How many small businesses betted on the Yellow Pages being around forever?

If you catch yourself echoing the past you are bound to repeat it.

Quote from: ergophobe on July 07, 2019, 04:23:51 PM

QuoteMy argument with "Websites are Dead" is as SEOs we are just concentrating on the "push traffic" part to our website, yet the audience is consuming content on these other platforms and YOU TOO can create content within those platforms to grow your brand without necessarily needing to only "push" the traffic to your site.

How does one decide where the balance point is between those extremes?

Just start off with 1 new channel every 2-3 months. I would suggest YouTube since it's the 2nd largest search engine and SEOs might be a bit more familiar with that. Look at the competition and what they are doing. Absorb what they are doing, and learn about using YouTube in-stream ADs (the ones with the skip option are great cause as an Advertiser you don't pay if a person presses skip but you can still get your branding in within 5 seconds).

Then start brainstorming content pieces, and put aside a monthly budget towards it, $250 for example. Any business that can't afford $250 a month for market is dead anyways, so start off small and target your audience by testing ADs against channels and also keywords they typed in Google.

For example if someone typed in "Buy A iPhone" into Google who lives in New York City, then later on went to Youtube and started watching videos on another topic, you can have your add pop up "Hey New York City! Looking to buy a new iPhone?? We've got you covered". That level of super-targeting works, and will get you better conversions than just a vanilla broad AD.

But start off with 1 platform, learn it and start experimenting. Once you can turn that $250 monthly budget into profits, start experimenting with another platform with another $250 marketing budget. It should get to the point you have to hire individuals to simply run the YouTube operation, and then IG operation if things get overwhelming with revenue and profits. I go over this a-bit in the OP article that was linked to, near the action game plan section.

But don't spread yourself thin. Right now at SERPWoo we are going after the YouTube crowd, while still studying the IG and other platform activities of our competition and what the audience is talking about. We feel YouTube is going to be the faster bang for our bucks, and once we got that wrapped up into it's own weekly scheduled operation with video production, advertisement, and new content creation, we'll move on to FB, or IG next. We are a desktop software so FB with desktop makes more sense.

"Step by step walk the thousand-mile road." - Miyamoto Musashi

Quote from: Adam C on July 05, 2019, 11:24:31 AM
"Just browsing":  facebook, instagram, medium, Google Discover

Facebook: There are hundreds of thousands of Facebook groups for different niches. It's now where communities gather for information, education, and entertainment. It's not just browsing. There are tons of "SEO" Facebook groups we all know about, the reason why a ton of forums are dead now. People login to connect with communities, industry members, and the audience. People create Facebook groups to create a closer relationship with their audience which then leads the audience/member to trust the advice or direction more. It's part of the social-proofing element of marketing, it works.

Medium: That's literally another blog output platform that shows up within the search results. No different than StackOverflow. You can put content within that platform to get your message to the segment of your audience that exists within that platform.

Instagram: When people are bored they browse but there is also the "search" function where people search for topics they are interested in, to get content. For example people that are into lifting weights will search for Instagram people that give advice WITHIN the platform whether it be slides or videos.



Your audience is still searching for their topics of interest within those other platforms that you are labeling as "Just Browsing". They are not just getting their answers from Google.

My argument with "Websites are Dead" is as SEOs we are just concentrating on the "push traffic" part to our website, yet the audience is consuming content on these other platforms and YOU TOO can create content within those platforms to grow your brand without necessarily needing to only "push" the traffic to your site. Obviously things like eCommerce will at some point need to get to the shopping cart, but there is nothing stopping you from creating valuable content on those platforms to at least get your brand's in front of the potential audience, instead of just relying on Google to send organic results.

For example as a plumber, you should still be listing yourself in the Yellow Pages (if they are around in your area), but you need a website now-a-days, you need to be within local Map Packs, and now you need to be within the other platforms cause people are "Youtubing" plumbing, they are "Instagraming" Plumbing - and using social proof from content within your Instagram profile to make a decision, and yes there still are people "Googling" plumbing as well.


There are 919,000+ posts on just the #plumbing hashtag alone. If you were a plumber isn't that something that might be worth taking a look at?

Quote from: Brad on July 03, 2019, 09:38:09 PM
1. Website is the one platform you have total control over.

Correct, but if your audience is not on your website then it doesn't matter how much control you have. You are getting your audience from Google with SEO at the moment. You can be also getting your audience from Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and thousands of other websites directing traffic to your website. You can also be getting your audience from non-internet marketing channels as well.

But when people come to your website, if they are filled with a 101 annoying intrusive situations, well you get situations where the audience rather be within APPs and other platforms. The end goal of having a presence on these other platforms is for SEOs not to only rely on Google, but also realize the Safari App is hardly used.


The majority of people using the internet aren't using a web browser. Just look at the APP usage of your family and friends. So if your brand (website) only exist in the Safari App that means you are becoming irrelevant to your potential target audience. If you have zero presence on YouTube, yet the attention and time of your audience is on Youtube 3-4 hours a day, you better believe your competition is on YouTube. And your competition is creating "How To" videos and "Guides" for your industry and your audience is watching them there. Your competition's brand is staying relevant, while you stay buried in the organic rankings waiting for someone to "Google" a problem.

Really think about it - do you really think in 5 years from now the organic rankings are really going to be mostly "text" based? 10 years from now? REALLY?

The only constant is change, and that includes evolving. Go where the audience spends most of their time to get them back to your main site - that's good, but if you are still waiting around for SEO traffic, fine. There are people that still look in the yellow pages for solutions too, they still exist.

Quote from: Adam C on July 03, 2019, 02:21:24 PM
which is the reason SEO/Search is alive and well and not going anywhere for the time being.

Until Google decides Video content is worth more than the written content to the audience. I was around when "Maps" were introduced into the organic rankings and SEOs crying about that cause their "pizza shop" directory got hit.

YouTube is the second largest search engine, so not having a presence on that platform means there are tons of people on YouTube searching for "How Tos" and using the platform to educate themselves on different topics. In my scenario I'm tripling down on YouTube since Google tomorrow can push all the "text" organic down and just start ranking YouTube Videos.

They've already started putting out guides on how to make better YouTube videos, and if people aren't reading words already, they are look at visuals: Create a How-to Video Action using templates.

I'll be the first one to tell you that I've completely missed the ball on how powerful YouTube is. Then when you couple that with the audience on YouTube for hours at a time, being able to target them based off of past queries (Google and YouTube), if you aren't in the arena you are missing the boat.

And then there is Voice, where people aren't going to have 10 options for results. They'll get Siri, Alexa, or Google Voice giving them a singular result. It's about consumer behavior, you see more and more people using Airpods and voice to query things like buying new products and services. It's only going to continue growing cause it's more convenient than "searching through the top 10 results" for an answer to a question.

Quote from: buckworks on July 02, 2019, 08:10:54 PM
Welcome!! 

Thanks mate!

Thanks for posting the article! I'm happy to see a forum still kicking and active!

I'll say one thing about this, before I wrote the article I was using my phone and happened to look at the App usage and then it struck me, WTF, I hardly use Safari. I had been consuming a ton of GaryVee for the last several weeks and that light bulb went off in my head that if we as "SEOs" keep just trucking on we'll become irrelevant like the Yellow Pages.

I love studying my competition and recently did a "competitive audit" and created a one-off "competitor voice" spreadsheet of how many users each competitors is reaching within the different platforms using the tools I have available. I noticed all the top competitors that people talk about are ALWAYS posting new content on each of the major platforms weekly. The platforms being YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Medium.

Their content game is somewhat week, but since they do have the presence they own the space in the minds of the customers and potential customers simply cause they are sending drops of water into the ocean daily. Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum all the dead competitors hardly blog once a year let alone once a month or once a week. Their social game is nada, and therefore the "seem" dead cause they aren't active in the landscape.

When you step back it's not hard to see the situation, you either put out more and more content on the platforms where people give more and more of their time and attention, or you die. If you have to wait till someone "Googles" a problem for you to show up, meh, that's not proactive at any level. So this was a wake up call to not only the SEOs out there but myself as well, it's time to evolve.