Removing Google Analytics Results in a 47% Page Speed Increase?, AI Prompts to Improve Your SEO Rankings, Google Cutting 30k Jobs, and Creative Ways to Grow a Podcast (Without Experience!)

0:00All right. So we are going to talk about if removing Google Analytics results results in a 47 % page speed increase. So this is something I saw from a friend that he tweeted this out. His name's Eric Van Holds. And he has a company called Beard Brand. And funny enough, Eric has a beard, right? And so they sell stuff to manage your beard. And so here's what he said here. Google Analytics pixels have been removed from the website. It feels so liberating. Major bumps in our page speed. Mobile went from 38 to 54, okay, out of 100, right? The higher the better. Desktop went from 63 to 93. three. That is immense.

0:38Right. And, um, and then, so he shares all these screenshots and then all these people are posting. And the only thing he's using now, Neil is Shopify analytics. So he's not installing Clicky or any of these other analytics tools. It's just Shopify analytics. That's it. And so I, I, I put something here. I'm like, Hey, I'm going to check back in like a month or two. I'm curious to see how it might not do anything, but it might affect your search engine rankings. We'll see. Well, you can just remove Google analytics. If you want to do a test and just look at your search console traffic. You can do it first.

1:07I can do it on, actually, I'll do it on one of my sites and see if it has an impact on rankings. That's a good test. I'll do it on probably like 20, 30 sites. Cause we have so many. He was like, I doubt it'll have much effect. I'm like, I'm just going to check in a month or two and see. And then someone else responded here. It's like, if you increase your performance, even minimally, it should increase your rankings, not because of performance, but because of your user experience is better, which is a fair point. Yeah. Speaking of SEO, I want to end up breaking down my favorite prompt that I've been using for a while now.

1:35Why is Eric so handsome? I haven't used that prompt, but I'm going to try it out to improve my SEO rankings and you can end up doing the same thing. So most people get this wrong. Like whenever you do a Google search, you'll find that sometimes someone ranks above you and you're like, man, my content's so much better. Why are they ranking above me? This doesn't make sense. You know, and what people don't realize and Google has admitted this publicly and they admitted this to the DOJ in their words, they do not understand documents, they fake it. In other words, it's hard for Google to understand content quality, they fake it.

2:10So just because someone has better content in your opinion or the mass audience's opinion, it doesn't mean Google sees it that way. So what I like doing and I take this prompt and it's a two-part prompt and it works with BART. It does not work with ChatGPT. I also like using it with BART because BART is more up to date. So the prompt is, you, well, first off, you go and Google a term that you want to rank for. You need to have a webpage already on this term if you don't go and create it. But first off, Google for the term that you want to rank for. Go take some of the top results and say to Bard, can you tell me the differences between the content on this page?

2:46You're inserting the URL of a competitor's ranking high and this page. And you're just taking another URL of another competitor who's ranking really high on page one question mark that's it you end up putting out the prompt google will break down or barb will break down the differences in the page and everything they see and it'll give you ideas on what you need to do to make your content better it'll also help you find the gaps of where one content piece that's ricky maybe number one is not doing that number two is doing and vice versa so then you can cover the stuff that each of them are missing out on so that way your page can be way more thorough in the eyes of a robot or AI or machine learning or whatever you want to end up calling it.

3:26And then I'll do a second prompt. And this is what I tell Bard. I pretty much say, and I'm repeating the first part again. Can you tell me the main differences between the content on this page? Insert the URL of a competitor that ranks above you. And this page, insert the URL of another competitor that ranks above you. Pretty much the same two URLs that you use above. And And then after analyzing both pages, can you tell me how to make the content on my page better on my webpage? These prompts are one after another, right? For the same thing. So I did the first prompt that we talked about. And then the second prompt, that's all that.

4:02Plus I end it with, here's a URL from my webpage. So you insert the URL of the webpage that you want to rank for the keyword. So in essence, what you're telling Bart is the reason you're having it in two prompts, the first prompt when you're having them compare two web pages it gives you a lot of feedback the second prompt you're having to compare two web pages and you're also having it analyze your web page on the same topic and telling you what you should do better the reason you want to do two separate prompts when you combine it into all one prompt bar actually doesn't give you enough of analysis on the two competing urls it's too um it lacks in word count and uh you're letting it think this is a really important this and chat gpt has also said this in their guide right like you need to give the prompt time to think and then because you separated it you're letting it think more yes and that gives you better results that's why i'm asking i try not to have prompts that are too long when they're too long of prompts it ends up coming up with stuff that i'm not looking for and eric's spot on part of it is because it needs to think so it gives them time to analyze and then do each thing separately, right?

5:11Because it's a computer. Computers aren't instant. The second thing is I found that when you go too in-depth with your prompt, they only show you a limited amount of word count. It doesn't matter what you end up telling them, how long you want it. A lot of times they don't follow your instructions on word count and they just make it as short or as long as they want. But when you do multiple prompts, you get many more words or much more of a thorough analysis, which then ends up giving you more content to figure out what you need to do with. Yeah. And ultimately it's a conversation too. So you get better results.

5:41Yes. Do you want to continue with these three, four, five prompts? Sure. That was just one of the latest prompt I use for SEO, but you can actually go cover some of the prompts if you want. I'm just trying, you have a lot of prompt ones in here. I'm trying to mark which, which one. So I'm going to, I'm going to continue on here. So So this one will probably be quick too. So I don't know if you saw this, but Google is set to cut about 30 ,000 jobs and most of them are in sales. And I'm like, man, like how much this is like AI is like a very deflationary technology. And I'm like, man, costs are going to come down for like people doing work.

6:15And like a lot of these salespeople are being cut too. I'm like, and we talked about software margins probably being squeezed down now because people are just going to be able to build software quickly. And so, I mean, this all ties in with the AI stuff that we're talking about. like the talking about mid journey version six. Now what used to probably cost a couple hundred dollars for like a nice, really nice blog post image now is like, will cost you a few cents, like, or like a fraction of a cent to do it. But also Google doesn't need sales reps for a lot of their stuff. And the prime example of this, there's tons of salespeople involved in Google AdWords or Google ads, but companies spend money on ads based on profitability.

6:52Like I've sat down with a lot of Google sales reps and we're having lunch and they're just like, yeah, look at this. What can we do to help you with your next quarter goals or next year? How can we spend more? And they ask all these questions. It's like, I don't need a sales rep for this. All I need is someone to tell me how I can continually improve my campaigns and what you guys are seeing that we haven't tested or we're not seeing. And if we can get a better ROI, I'll spend double, triple, or as much as you let me spend as long as it's profitable and the ROI works out within the metrics we're optimizing for.

7:20You know what I'm telling my company this year? I'm like, hey guys, like, you know, what matters at the end of the day is truth, right? So like, okay, like you feel like we're doing really well. How well are we really doing? What kind of, what kind of ROI are we providing for our clients? Oh, but also like, how well are you doing individually too? How well am I doing? Like everything comes down to truth at the end of the day. And I think 2023 now leading into 2024, we're going to get a lot, a lot more truth from people and a lot more people focusing on results instead of all the, like the, the dilly dallying stuff.

7:47On a side note, did you ever end of hiring that salesperson that came from one of the starting on monday oh cool yeah and we have someone start this week strategy side do you have a big sales team no no if funny enough we used to have so many sales reps we've cut down our sales team to maybe a half to a third of the size that it was globally and uh it's even better well we've shifted from people just trying to sell to be more consultative and helping and this is like the goal isn't to sell the goal is to figure out how you can help people and that produces results. And what we've also found out too is sales shouldn't be depending on the product or service you're selling or the price point as well.

8:25It shouldn't just be a salesperson selling. It should be a team sales, at least in B2B and enterprise in which people from different departments are trying to figure out what problems companies are having and how we can all help together to solve them. You know how I look at it? I look at it as like, we're just talking about in, because Neil and I both have service businesses, right? At the end of the day, we're the doctors and we're supposed to point them in the right direction. Like you don't go to a doctor and say, Hey, like what injury should I heal today? No, it's, it's more so like, what are the issues?

8:53What are the challenges you're facing right now? And then here's the right solution. The practitioners are going to do the best job. And interestingly enough, this guy that starting on Monday, he, he, he has a VP of sales background. Like he's going to build out the sales team, but like, he's not a practitioner. He's like, but I only want to hire practitioners. Right. And the company that he came from, even though he was like the best salesperson there. Funny enough that you mentioned they had a sales team of like 30 people. They cut it down to like three people and they still did amazing at the end of the day.

9:20So there's two takeaways there actually. Yeah, and then on the flip side, I know a lot of people like Vivint, the company that ended up selling solar and alarms based out of Utah. I think Lehigh is where they're headquartered at. They have tons of sales reps and the models worked out for them. And that's why I clarify with like it depends on the type of product you're serving. for alarm systems or something that's$10,$20 a month or$50 a month, you may need just a brute force, large sales team that's going out there, knocking door to door. But if you're focusing on enterprise, not really. Yep. All right.

9:55What else do you have? So, you know, I know this is a podcast and you have in here. This is actually from, these two are from the fans. They ask these questions. We have two things that we want to wrap up this episode with on. Number one was how to start a podcast with no experience. And number two was creative ways to grow a podcast. Yep. So we'll start with the creative ways to grow a podcast first because we've done this a couple of times. So actually, Neil and I were doing a trade with two podcasts. One is Marketing Against the Grain, which is the HubSpot marketing podcast, which has the HubSpot CMO and then the Zapier CMO.

10:33And so Kieran Flanagan and Kip Bodner, I believe. And then we're also going to be doing a podcast swap with Perpetual Traffic. And they're the guys that – it's actually two agency guys as well. Ralph Burns and Qasim, I believe. I forgot his last name. But we're actually – they're going to be appearing on our podcast, and then we're going to be appearing on there. So it's going to take a little more work, but we'll see how that goes. And so my point of saying all this is that we do these impression trades. I could give you an example with the HubSpot one, but we're also just doing the guest appearance on both.

11:06Yeah. Yeah, it's the best way to grow a podcast. I think there is no better strategy other than to do trades. Or like also the other thing, I don't know if I told you this, but we're also partnering, like I'm talking again with LinkedIn Podcast Network. I'm talking again with the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, talking with HubSpot Podcast Network. We used to be part of the Entrepreneur, right? Podcast Network. It drives a lot of views. They, I think they're interested. So yeah. Dude, I was telling you the other day, Jeff Fenster was telling me how he gets like hundreds and thousands of views. No, you brought it up.

11:33So I emailed and I'm like, yeah, let's meet. So I think you emailed right when we were recording too. Yeah. And then what was the other thing on the podcast? How to start one with no experience. So you tell me on this because I was actually bad. You were the one who actually started our podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been podcasting since 2014, maybe late 2013 or so. So maybe 11 years. And when I started out, I had no experience, right? The main thing for me is like, okay, by the way, This is like pre Tim Ferriss podcast. But there's a guy, our mutual friend, Andrew Warner, Mixergy, remember?

12:10And so he was actually the Tim Ferriss before Tim Ferriss. He was interviewing a lot of entrepreneurs. And I was like, man, this is really amazing. I'm like, you know, there's nobody really interviewing tech people from like a marketing and business standpoint. And I'm like, I think that's what my angle is. And then so I started Growth Everywhere, which is now called Leveling Up. And I just started interviewing people. And I think if you're going to do a podcast, you have to have some type of angle, right? So there's a good example of a guy, David Perel. He's had Marc Andreessen. He's had Chamath Palihapitiya.

12:38He's had Tim Urban, Tim Ferriss. These are all very popular authors or maybe investors as well. And his podcast is called How I Write. And he mostly talks about writing, right? For marking school, the angle here is Neil and I are both operators, but we're also marketers too. And we can share a lot of experiences and stories too. So that's our angle here. And it's like, it's every day basically, right? Monday through Friday now. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work.

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14:53Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer? Launch your site for free at Framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's Framer.com, promo code MS. Framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. For leveling up, my angle is like I've done over 400 of those. These are now two-hour interviews where it's like business, it's personal growth, and it's marketing. But that's my angle. and so I think if you're going to start something you have to have an angle and you have to be passionate too it's not just the angle because if you don't like what you're talking about you're not going to create enough episodes where you're going to keep going to get the track that's a major thing right people like oh yeah let's just start a podcast and I see so many they started for maybe five or ten episodes and they just give up because the passion was never there in the beginning yeah and there's somewhere like they have a nice setup and everything they're bringing nice guests but I'm like man your heart is not in it you just want to you just want to get views at the end of the day.

15:47But me, I'm genuinely curious. And we get to nerd out on this stuff. So it's stuff that we actually like. Dude, when's the last time you checked our podcast analytics? Yesterday. Okay, I haven't checked it in over 30 days. I have to give you the new login. I didn't even know it changed. But either way, we do this podcast not because we want to see our stats go up. It's nice, don't get us wrong, but we love doing it. And that keeps us being consistent. We've done an episode every single day for how many years straight? Seven, eight years. And then we ended up switching our model to five episodes a week, longer format.

16:19It takes more time instead of five minute episodes or 15 minute. So it's quite a bit more time from us, but we do enjoy it. And another thing to just keep in mind is when you're starting off a new podcast, you don't have to have the best setup. When we started off, we didn't have the best setup. What's a software that people should use? Microphones? Dude. Okay. Let me, let me tell everyone that's the first setup we had and now here's our setup. So when we started marketing school seven, eight years ago, I would go to Vegas, record summertime at Neil's place. We use a Blue Yeti and we're sitting right next to each other, right?

16:54Blue Yeti is like a$100 mic, so it's not that expensive. And we recorded on his laptop and he turned the AC off because it was too loud. And so it would get really hot and we start sweating. And like that's how we started it. My first podcast, I used a Blue Yeti as well. And I had like a little backdrop, but then like one part was like missing. and then I wear like a single grain shirt and I had like spiky hair back then. So like if it's not embarrassing the first time, like you're waiting too long. And I want to double down on Neil's point too. Like if you're not also, if you're not continuing to learn and you're not getting better yourself, your questions are going to suck and the podcast is going to suck.

17:31So like even us doing this podcast right now, like the formats change. Neil brings ideas, I bring ideas. It actually holds us each accountable to bringing it. And if you don't have an audience, you can just hit a lot of people up and ask them to be interviewed. A lot of people say yes. Your normal podcast, when you put out an episode on YouTube, and then the one you put out with the Hermozys, what was the difference in view count? It was like 35 times or something? Oh, my God, yeah, 35 times, yeah. Because my YouTube was on the recovery, right? Each video would maybe get 200, 500 views or something like that.

18:02Alex Hermozzy was 74 ,000. Layla's at 44 ,000 right now. And I have a new one that's rising really quickly right now that's about like 40 ,000 too. Yeah. Yeah. Just shows interviewing people can also help you get way more traction during the early days. But that's it for this episode. Please make sure you rate review this podcast. We love the five stars. Thank you for listening. And hit us on YouTube.