Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer podcast where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello there. Welcome back. We are continuing our interview season, interviews 2.0, and we are continuing our interview with Brandon Lebowitz of SEO optimizers. We left sort of a cliffhanger last episode. We were talking about AI engines for writing content and some of the things that are out there that are essentially robots that will generate things and try to build out sites and a way to expand your content without truly expanding your content. We're going to dive right in, continuing that conversation, talking about ways that people game the system for search engines, and then we will continue on talking about all of the other topics. I don't want to spoil those too much as we continue talking with Brandon. That being said, let's get right back to it. Yeah, it's like those captures where it's like, you know, prove you're not a robot kind of stuff. It's like, you know, prove you're not a spammer of some sort. Yeah, but even with those captures, there's tools for a dollar. They'll solve a thousand captures for you. So it's everything that is like little hacks and weird things where people have figured out how to game the system. So I'm sure people are going to try to figure out how to game the AI bots. And Google is going to be a back and forth battle where they just keep trying to figure out how to fight it, which is what they've been doing since 2013 when they had this Panda update, which was focused on content, making sure you have good quality original content. Because even back then, people are just copying content from one page to another. And Google didn't really care too much about the quality of content. I mean, they did, but not as much as they do now. Yeah, and I was I've been around it long enough. I was with some of those help build some of those sites, which is like, well, take this and replicate it, change a couple of names and then, you know, boom, it's 400 articles or 50,000 links and things like that. You know, it's basically just click bait stuff. You mentioned testing, you know, you keep up, make changes, test it. There's some some tried and true or really valuable testing tools to to be able to say, hey, am I if I'm making an improvement on this page as far as SEO goes or am I not? And then maybe those things that takes a little bit of time, like a bake in time for it, is you know, what is your typical time frame that you're that you should test your changes? Yeah, I'm not sure if there's any tools that will help you with that, but usually like looking at Google Analytics will show you traffic or Google Search Console so you can see or just tracking your keyword rankings. That's probably the best. So using a tool to track what position you're in on Google. But other than that, there's not really any real tools. And it's really just testing ideas out. Sometimes you'll let it run for a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a couple of months, maybe years, because with SEO, it does take time. And if you're building a new website just to test something out on, it's going to take a while to get those rankings. You don't want to test stuff out on your main website or find websites, because if you do something wrong, you're going to get penalized. And that's the last thing you want to happen to your real website. So getting just random domains that you don't really care about and testing on those is going to be the best way. But time frame just varies. It could be indefinite where you're just constantly tweaking and making little changes. Yeah, it's just one of those stories. I guess there is definitely a sort of an art to it as well and understanding and some patience to say, well, we can give this a shot, see how this works. And especially when you're I mean, it's I guess there's two ways you can approach it is one sort of as you alluded to, the people that are are trying to game the system and trying to find a shortcut or to fool Google. And then the other side is where you're trying to say, OK, what is it? What's the spirit of their rules? Because that's what I want to follow. I want to be there. And I think a lot of cases you do you want to have like I want to be a site where the people that want my product know that I'm here. They think about me and they come here and buy my product. It's like I don't want to get a bunch of people here that don't don't care about whatever my product is or my content or my service or whatever it is. And so, yeah, it does sound like it's just one of those that you got. You almost have to, I guess, for what you do, you have to you just have to really enjoy that, I guess, really, it's that marketing side. I mean, I guess that's what it appeals to you from your background, is it's really it's like, how do I get how do I get eyeballs and then you make sure they're the right ones? Yeah, yeah, that is amazing. Get that visibility, get the eyeballs on content and get Google to trust you. And then once you get people to your website, then I get people to trust you. So they buy off you or call you or email you or whatever that conversion will is that you're trying to focus on. Exactly. I mean, that's I guess that's the way it goes back to, you know, the original, whatever the first business was, it's like, hey, you got to get the right people, get to get the customers you want at the right time. Another thing I want to one of the things that's been popping up in the lab and maybe it's been around longer than I noticed, but in the news, there's or tech news and stuff like that, there are there are these search or these browsers like Brave and some of these other and I'm trying to think of a couple of the names that are particularly some that are like are. Are trying to do the Google thing, but without as much giving as much information to Google, some of these that are like built to be private browsers and stuff like that, with so much in the in the SEO world that is Google based, do these things, do they ignore SEO? Is there a different approach to SEO or is there is that change? Maybe has that changed the game for you when you're trying to get people to hit, you know, to show up in search engines? Obviously, it's something other than Google. Or even if it is Google, I guess it'd be something where there's less information about the the searcher than before. Or do you even care about those just things you're like, well, that's outside of SEO. Yeah, that's more outside of SEO, but each one of the search engines has their own algorithm. So user behavior before and after when they're searching and browsing doesn't really affect. Well, it affects what you see on Google because Google looks at your search history. You're going to personalize it, but it doesn't really affect SEO. Like, I'm not going to be able to see what websites you're on, where you're visiting, all that stuff. Google keeps that top secret and all the search engines don't share that. Or they hash out the numbers and anonymize you. So, you know, if they were leaked, they wouldn't know who they were, hopefully. But all these search engines have their own algorithm. So each one is going to be slightly different. And they're all nowadays. I mean, no one really knows how any of them are. Google doesn't even know how they work because of machine learning. AI just learns on its own. But what matters is who or where is your audience? Like when I look in Google Analytics and other tracking tools. And this is me looking since 2007 at thousands of websites. Google brings in 20 to like 80 percent of the traffic usually. Bing will bring about one percent. Yahoo might bring one percent. DuckDuckGo might bring half a percent. And then all these other ones might bring less on that. Then social media will bring traffic, email marketing, running paid ads, people typing into your website directly. But Google just dominates. And I've never seen another search engine bring more traffic than Google ever. Google always brings the most. I've never seen Yahoo bring more than like maybe two or three percent of your traffic, which isn't that much, unless you're a big corporate website, bringing 10,000 people to your website, then one percent is a lot of people. But if you're only getting 50 people to your website or 10 people to your website today, one person or one percent, it's not really enough to say, let me focus on a kosher or duck, duck, go or any of these newer search engines that are out there, because it's just so low that search volume. But if that's where your audience is, you need to be where your audience is. That's number one. That's interesting. So, yeah, I guess I didn't realize the numbers were that skewed. I knew that Google was was and I think it's everybody knows that Google is the dominant search engine. I mean, but to that, it sounds like unless you like said, unless your customers are like very heavy duck, duck, go people or being people or something like that. It sounds like it's almost not worth it to even they're not even worth consideration. It's like, you know, if you want to get traffic, focus on Google and that's it. And is that sort of how you you guys approach it? Yep. That's how everyone that does, I see, for the most part nowadays, does it. Unless you're in like China, where it's like Yandex or another search engine might be bigger, but for the most part, Google just brings in so much traffic that it doesn't make sense to focus on anything else other than Google, because they're not going to bring you any traffic, unfortunately. These other search engines. Now, that's actually a good you mentioned Yandex is that one that and I've seen I think I've even registered with that at some point is. And I don't know if you've got experience with that or not. Is that something is it sort of similar to Google as far as trying to get yourself ranked? Is it some of the same kinds of things or is that a completely different animal? I mean, they're all different algorithms, but they have similar things. I feel like if I was creating a search engine, I would want to copy what Google did because they became so successful and then put my own spin on it. So I feel like that's what they're all doing is going to do the same thing. We'll get content, look at backlinks, look at all these other factors. Mobile speed, but put their own little tweaks and they all have different weights that they put to each one. But I feel like if it's working for Google, that's something that they should be copying. Just like with SEO. Whereas on that first page of Google, we're going to look at their backlinks and try to replicate them, because if it's working for your competitors, it's more unlikely to work for you. So why change the system if it's already working? But if it's not working, but Google works pretty well. That's why everyone goes on Google because they provide really good search results. So I feel like all the other new search engines are going to. Copy Google and then maybe have a new idea, but I'm sure Google has thought of it already and tried it and tested it. That makes sense. Yeah, I guess that is that is one of those. Hey, you go with the, you know, go with the winner and that's probably going to trickle down to a lot of those, you know, the big guys. And then it'll trickle down to the other ones. And if it doesn't, maybe they'll catch up and then it'll show up anyway. So, you know, go for the one that gets the best, best value out of it. Yep. Yep. That's the best way to look at it. When you get into a situation with a customer, how do you you know, like sort of like somebody comes to you and says, hey, I've got a site. I need SEO help. I want to I know that I've heard that I need to be number one on a search engine. How do you how do you sort of start that conversation as far as they, you know, they they've given you basically, I want to be number one on for this term. And let's assume it's not something like, I don't know, cars or something like, you know, some super, you know, general term that, yeah, everybody would love to have that, you know, to be that number one. But even if they're in a pseudo or even a deep niche. So how does that conversation go to to get started on you being able to help them out or them being able to help themselves? Well, it's always a start with the website analysis, evaluating their website versus the competitors, seeing who's on that first page of Google for the keywords that they want to write for. See, I'm looking at how much SEO the competitors have done versus their website and what the disconnect is. And really looking at the backlinks. How many backlinks do you have versus the competitors? Because that's what ranks websites. So that figure out how many backlinks your competitors have on average, how many backlinks you have and how we could get you to their level of getting a similar number of quality backlinks, because it really does come down to those links. You have a is that something where when you're trying to generate those or help them build out those backlinks, is that something again, is that sort of like this, maybe there's industry specific checklist or maybe a general checklist or something that's more custom for each one is where you really have to look at what their competitors are to try to figure out, OK, here's where you are. Here's where we need you to be. And it's a it's almost a unique person to each customer list of here's what we can do or what you need to do to to get to that point. Yeah, I would avoid any checklists or anything that anyone says. Here's the sites that you need to be on, because Google reads everything on the Internet. And Google doesn't want you to do SEO. So they see a forum saying here's 20 sites that will get you ranked. They're probably going to penalize those sites or devalue them or put a no follow tag or no index for the backlinks. That way, they don't count for SEO because Google doesn't want you to game the system. So anywhere where it's too easy, I might it might temporarily work. But it's not going to work in the long term because Google is going to catch on, see it and devalue all that stuff. But it's really looking at your competitors and seeing what they've done, because whoever's on that first page of Google, that is your competition. They're ranking. They've done something right to be on that first page of Google. Skipping over the ads, but the organic results and looking at their backlink profile. You'll be able to see what backlinks they have. And one by one, you look at each backlink and see, is this relevant? Is this authoritative? If so, then try to go after it. But if it's some obscure, weird site, maybe in the foreign language or not related at all to the topic, then I would probably skip that backlink because it's not the number of backlinks anymore. It's the number of quality backlinks that you have. With that, and you mentioned Snowen is because we talked earlier about using ads as a way to get traffic, so like a shortcut to get you as opposed to SEO, you can go the ads route. Is there because I have talked to people have thought this is there a. A value and having ads for a while where it would it would somehow trickle into your SEO and maybe improve that. So if you said, hey, I want to get I want to do better in SEO, but I don't think I can get there and I need ads to help me sort of like, you know, start getting things moving. Does that make any sense? Or is it one of those where they really are two separate approaches, I guess, to getting to getting customers? Yeah, and the Google ads will not help out your SEO, but your SEO will help out the Google ads to make them cheaper because the way it works with Google ads is a time you search on Google. There's going to be ads at the top. If you click on those ads, that company is paying Google. Could it be a couple cents? It could be a couple of dollars. It could be a couple hundred dollars per click. It gets very, very expensive. So if you optimize your website and landing pages or every page on your website that you're sending to pay traffic to, then Google says, all right, instead of paying, let's say, a dollar per click, we're going to drop it down to ninety nine cents a click because your website is well optimized or that landing page is optimized with the keywords in it. So it'll save you some money. And in the long run, if you're spending thousands of dollars a month or daily, it's going to really help out saving you that couple cents. But if you're only spending like 50 bucks a month, it's not going to have that big of an impact. But over time, you'll save a little bit. But the ads running paid ads is not going to help you rank higher on SEO. And we will pause there and we will come back and do a wrap up episode. Next time around, we will wrap up our interview with Rand and Lebowitz. Hopefully you've been taking some notes and noting that he's got some great ideas here. There's some great suggestions. It may seem almost like common sense, but I don't think they are utilized often enough. You know, the idea, if you want to organically create traffic and bring people to your site is you need to have useful content. You need to have something that appeals to them. And when you have people in the form of backlinks that are reputable sources, that are people that are the kind or, you know, sites and organizations that are the kind that people go to and say, hey, can you point me to something related to this topic? Can you point me to good content? When those sites are pointing to your site, then it makes sense that you're going to get better traffic. You know, if you've got a friend that everybody goes to for advice, if that person advises them in a specific direction, then that would effectively show up higher on a search result for that person. Or when you ask that person that question. Same thing with Google. They're going to look for respected sources. And if you are referred to from those respected sources, you're going to show up higher in the search engine. And of course, you can always sort of short circuit that if you want. You can pay to get people brought to you. But at some point, that's going to, you know, that's one of the things that you have to keep paying to keep bringing people to you. Yes, you may get return customers and things like that. But Google as as a search engine is not going to offer you, you know, they're not going to like bump you up and say, oh, you know, sometimes you pay us to send traffic. So sometimes we're going to throw you some freebies. It doesn't work that way. They're still going to work their search engine the way it should be. And that way, it's just more above board. Everybody understands when they are getting a search result and when they are being sold to in the form of an ad. That being said, let's wrap this one up and we'll be able to come back next time and wrap up this this specific interview. But don't worry, we have plenty more coming as the season progresses. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. One more thing before you go, Develop-a-Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. 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