2049 – Building Trust and Traffic: The Role of Personal Branding in SEO Success with TrioSEO’s Steven Schneider

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1:05With us right now, Stephen Schneider. Stephen, you are the CEO of Trio SEO. That's TrioSEO.com. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, Josh. Excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah. Well, give us an overview of your work. And obviously, you've been in the SEO world and content world for a long time. So do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about the impact you have and who you serve and work with? Yeah, I'd love to. So we work primarily with B2B and SaaS founders and working with SEO content specifically. So we don't cater to technical SEO or backlinks, although we do have enough experience to kind of offer some tips and tricks.

1:44And we really focus on high intent, bottom of the funnel traffic for blog content. And what that means is working on a strategy that will bring ideal customers, not meaningless traffic and work on an ROI focused SEO content strategy. Yeah. All right. So this being that this is what you do all the time, where are we at? Give us a state of the union on all things SEO. Again, we're getting toward the end. We can kind of see the end of 2024 in the distance. For some of us, it can't come quick enough. But, you know, where are we at with SEO? What's trending right now? Obviously, AI has got to be massively impacting the work you do.

2:28And then again, I think prognosticators that are looking at Google are probably giving some advice right now. Give us the 411. Where are we at? Yeah, I mean, ChatGPT and AI are definitely changing the game. I think that people are always going to look for the path of least resistance and look to looking at AI and be like, how can I get more bang for my buck? How can I get more content for cheaper? How can I get results faster? We take the opposite approach. We're kind of a contrarier thinker in that mindset. and look to play by the book. We look to not cut corners. We want to play the long game and make sure that results are sustainable.

3:04And so when we consider the kind of landscape of SEO in 2024, everyone thinks it's going to be dying and it's dead and out. But we kind of see the opposite. We think that Google is really going to take into consideration quality brands, authoritative brands, and those that actually look to offer real value to search intent and make sure that people who are searching for things on Google get met with high quality content that is backed by expertise. And so that's kind of where we come in and how we can kind of offer that and help people get their sites and brands in a good position to kind of meet all the criteria that Google is looking for.

3:39Yeah. Well, it's curious, right? Because I think that, you know, what we've been seeing from Google is Google's just, when you go to Google and want information, I think the trend is that Google is just going to give you the information without having you needing to click on three or four websites to scroll through blogs to find it. I know certainly in my own behavior, I just don't use search as much. And so, again, when you're talking about just shifts in consumer behavior and then what Google is looking to do, this changes the game. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that what people kind of often forget is that if you think about your website, almost like an iceberg where you have this portion of your site above water, but really below the water is really all that depth.

4:29And so that's kind of what we look to offer with blog content and making sure that as we're adding, you know, 10, 20 blocks per month on your site, making sure all the strategy works, it's cohesive and can be picked up by Google. That's essentially the part of the iceberg below the water. That's what Google recognizes and can crawl your site and determine determine where your expertise lies. And so although the search trends might be shifting more toward TikTok or Google or wherever they might be, there's always going to be a time and a place to have a growing brand and to have an authority presence within your industry.

5:01I don't think that's ever going to fade away. And at least from the business owners that we talked to, they're never going to be like, I don't want to be an expert in my space. So I think that if we look at it from that perspective, there's always going to be a time and a place to work on becoming a better brand authority amongst your competitors. Yeah. How do you intersect with social? So we primarily don't work with social. We offer the blogs and stuff like that can be used on social. But I think that as a part of a marketing strategy, it has to be a part. It has to be integrated somehow. But I think that social is more from a personal brand perspective.

5:40I think that's one of the biggest opportunities nowadays is to, as a CMO or a CEO or C-suite, is to grow yourself as a personal brand and then try to attract people and an audience from that perspective. And then you inherently build in more trust and that just carries over into how you're building lifetime value across your brand. So I think that social has a major play as a division of a strategy. But yeah, it's just a whole different game. It's fun to kind of see it evolve. Yeah. Stephen, what do you recommend for, let's say you're just hanging out with business owner friends And let's pretend that for whatever reason, hypothetically, they're not allowed to work with you.

6:22But they ask you the question and they say, Stephen, how do you hire a great SEO agency? Because I think any of us who've been around for any length of time, we've hired contractors on that side of things. And maybe it was good at first. Maybe we didn't see the results. It's just like we've all had, I think, probably negative experiences. And some of us have had good experiences. How, what advice do you give for hiring an SEO professional or an agency? Yeah, I think the main thing is to just do your due diligence and look through the case studies, look through all the kind of like no brainer things that you should be doing.

6:59Results are hard because obviously those can be imitated. But I think from our perspective, we are entrepreneurs first and we've built businesses of our own. Like before Trio, my partners, Connor Gillivan and Nathan Hirsch, they scaled a$5 ,000 investment to a$12 million annual revenue machine that they exited and actually sold to an SEO agency. So from that perspective, like SEO is ingrained in their DNA. As with mine, like I co-owned the portfolio of 40 blogs and we scaled that up publishing three to 400 articles per month. And so outside of just static case studies, which can be chat to be teed, we are entrepreneurs.

7:34We practice what we preach and we have that expertise to back it up. And so I would look for someone like that who can say, hey, I know this like the back of my hand and I've used it on my own businesses and I'm going to apply the same strategies to yours. What would happen, just curious, if someone said, because you'd mentioned like three to 400, but let's say that someone, one client, one blog wanted to in 30 days come up with 300 articles that were mostly written by ChatGPT and they put them in their blog. What do you imagine would happen over the next six months if they did that? Yeah, I think you'd see a dramatic jump in traffic.

8:18There's no denying that, but I don't think it's sustainable. I think that at some point, the lack of quality would catch up or the fact that maybe they're not all connected properly or they're just kind of a shocking approach and Google would catch onto that. So while Google's testing the waters and seeing what works and what doesn't, you'll see traffic, but it's not gonna last. It's not gonna be a sustainable approach should be probably just wasted all that time. Yeah. You know, I think the old adage is, listen, I'm sure you're brilliant. You're not going to fool Google. Google knows everything that you would never even think to do.

8:55They already know that and they can anticipate and they can sense when you're trying to pull one over on them. Again, likely, I think historically, you know, you hear a lot of short term, maybe you can fool Google, but then Google looks at what happens to, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they're really aware of human behavior, right? And so what are actual users doing? And if users are just bouncing off your website, because it's just crap, that's a more, I would imagine a more valuable data point for Google than the number of words. Yeah, I mean, number of words kind of gets you like a foot in the door sort of perspective.

9:39But yeah, time on page is a massive attribute of how valuable that content is. If someone is, you know, if you're say 100 people visit your webpage or blog and 90 % of them are on that page for two to three minutes reading it top to bottom compared to someone who's on it for 20 seconds and leaving, those are going to be massive data points for Google to be like, wow, I'm going to showcase this really extremely valuable piece of content over the competitors. So yeah, I mean, Google, they have some pretty sharp people working there. I wouldn't try to cut corners just to kind of get an upper hand on their side of things.

10:14Yeah. So Stephen, when it comes to when you work with your clients, what does that engagement typically look like? How do you begin? How do you set strategies, so forth? Yeah, so it all begins with a free discovery audit. And what we do there is just kind of like peek under the hood, get everything up and running to make sure it's a good fit for both sides. We're pretty picky about who we work with and want to make sure it's a good fit from the start. And then once we kind of start working with them, we'll do a more in-depth audit. And that's about 10, 20 plus hours of keyword research. We take a look at their existing content, take a look at the competitors, all the kind of natural nerdy SEO stuff that you would expect.

10:51and then we take a look at the keyword opportunities and put together a 90-day sprint based on where we think they want to go, based on what they can achieve and then we meet with them because we always like to say, no one knows your business better than we do. We don't know it like you do. You have an upper hand on that perspective. So we'll come to you with the data. We'll come to you with our gut feeling and then we collaborate from there and then see it through. So we like to look at it as a SEO partner rather than a, hey, here's the only way forward. But yeah, it's a pretty collaborative process from start to finish.

11:24And then, Stephen, once let's say you're producing great content, you're getting some love from Google, and these folks that might be visiting your client's website, they're pretty high caliber people. Um, what do you see as best practices for getting those folks, uh, from just being some content reader to truly engaging and connecting with your client? Cause obviously if that doesn't happen, then, you know, that's, we're kind of missing a big part of, uh, what we hope to create. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the best way to convert those browsers into buyers is to continue nurturing them. And so it's best if you have a newsletter sign up, maybe you have an exit intent pop up, maybe at the top of your page above the fold, you have a CTA that was pointing back to some sort of lead magnet, some sort of like low barrier to entry offer that allows you to continue the conversation and then work them into that nurture sequence post article.

12:22But from there on out, it's pretty hard just to convert someone from a blog straight to buying a high ticket service. And so there should be a lot of kind of nurturing going on, continuing that conversation. Maybe you're trying to get them on social where you're more active. But yeah, it's definitely an ongoing strategy. It's not a one and done kind of like once you have the traffic, it's perfect from there. But yeah, those are some of the tips and tricks that we often try to leverage. Yeah. All right. So I suspect that you have resources that you make available. In fact, I know you do because I'm on your website, including a free audit and consult.

12:57Do you mind for a friend that's listening? And if they're, again, maybe they're researching you and now they're listening to this podcast and they're kind of in that consideration stage, what would you recommend that they take advantage of you? I mean, you've got some great SOPs. You got a lot of free stuff that you give away on your website. Your website, by the way, is trio.seo.com. T-R-I-O-S-E-O.com. What would you recommend for folks? Yeah, I mean, if you're interested in services, we always start with that discovery audit and that just kind of outlines where your pain points are, the solutions we can offer.

13:29We go through some user experience and conversion rate tactics. We're not specialties or experts by any means, but just from owning businesses and working with different clients, we've kind of developed what our best practice is. So we'll run through that and kind of say, here's where you need to improve. We'll take a look at your keyword opportunities existing and where we think you can go. and then kind of like summarize that in like a little bit of a easier to understand you do the digest summary. And then from there on out, you know, we can work with you on like the SOP side if you wanted to download that and kind of get your feet wet.

13:57Many people think that they can tackle DIY SEO, which is great if you want to take a stab at it. We're very transparent in all our processes and our advice. And so we try to offer that as kind of like a, hey, do your best. And if you want to lean on us, we can kind of continue the conversation from there. So yeah, I always feel like more information is always best. Yeah. No, I like that you do have kind of a done with you tier that's about 50 % of your regular full service pricing. So if someone is feeling a little handy and you want to get your hands dirty and just follow good advice, I do like that you've got that offer as well.

14:32Okay. Trio SEO.com. There's a big orange button that says get a free audit and consult, free SEO audit. If you hover over resources, you're going to find a bunch of like SOPs, your newsletter, your blog, and you've got some good articles there. Like any good SEO firm, you've got a very good blog. Thank you. Well, fantastic. Well, again, Steven Schneider, co-founder, CEO, thank you so much for joining. It's been a good conversation. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.

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