Inside SEO Notebook: SEO Newsletter Tips with Steve Toth

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Inside SEO Notebook: SEO Newsletter Tips with Steve Toth
Host: John Wright
Guest: Steve Toth
Published: Thu, 01 Aug 2024 10:00:00 +0000
Duration: 45:11

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

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[00:00:00] John Wright: I think, um, you know, personal brand has been huge in my life. Um, it's been something I've mostly committed to like over these last five years, I've had a couple of months where I've, I've dipped out a little bit and took, taken some time off or whatever. But in general, I would say it's been a pretty consistent effort. And I think consistency is really everything. Like when I, when I started SEO notebook, um, you know, I was, I knew the idea was good, but like, I didn't really have any experience in doing this. Stuff. And, um, there's a guy, um, named Dirk Diggy. Um, he was like buds with Glenn Alsop and like, I just knew him through

[00:00:39] John Wright: like the social social media. And I had a conversation with him like prior to starting SEO notebook. And, you know, he just offered me this, like one really important piece of advice that was, if you don't email weekly, people are going to forget about who you are. And if he didn't tell me that I probably would have started a biweekly newsletter and not been as successful.

[00:01:04] Steve Toth: I'm John Wright. And you're listening to affiliate BI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by staff.

[00:01:15] John Wright: Welcome to the affiliate BI podcast. Today we're chatting with Steve Toph, who is the founder of SEO notebook, uh, which I'm a big fan of. And he's also running an event called SEO IRL in Toronto, which I got a ticket for and Steve, welcome to the show. Hey, John, thanks for having me excited to be here.

[00:01:33] John Wright: So how much time are you spending creating your SEO notebook? And I asked that because I'm a content creator for the B2B side. But what I think is that you're, I'm guessing you're putting in a lot of quality time, making an amazing product that people talk about and link to. And I think maybe your answer might give some insights to people on the affiliate marketing side. Yeah, for sure. So maybe I'll just start with just for those of the watchers who are familiar with SEO notebook, what it is exactly. Um, it's a, it's a newsletter, but it's not like a roundup newsletter. So essentially what I do and have done for the past five years is, um, create

[00:02:11] John Wright: like one actionable piece of strategy. Um, and then email that to my list on a weekly basis. So I've been doing that for five years now, which means I have over 250 actionable strategies that I've sent out. And, um, you know, hopefully like by this point, we're almost at 20,000 subscribers, so I'm doing something right. And, um, you know, in terms of like how much time I put into this content, um, it can be as little as 30 minutes, or it could be as much as like almost two full working days. Um, it just really depends on, uh, you know, what I'm doing and how I'm inspired.

[00:02:49] John Wright: Uh, you know, last week, what I did was.

[00:02:53] John Wright: It created a spreadsheet that essentially pre-populated a bunch of URL strings for tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush and other tools like sightliner, copyscape, archive.org, and essentially what you just do is put your URL into your domain, into the tool. It then prepopulates all those URLs for you, which you can just open in a bunch of tabs and kind of get like a nice high level overview of how your site's doing and like, you know, very specific screens at Ahrefs, like what are my new backlinks, what are the keywords that have declined, what are the keywords that have risen and stuff like that.

[00:03:30] John Wright: And you know, that note was just basically like an idea I had in the shower. And it was very quick for me to put that together, like maybe only an hour. Uh, but you know, when I'm, when it comes to things like, you know, um, creating AI bots and stuff, you never know how soon those ones are going to go and honestly, they can take a very long time to get it right and cause a lot of frustration and I've had things where like, you know, I've lost my, um, my change history on like certain bots and like had to go back and like, you know, go back and try to fix stuff. So those ones can definitely be a bit more frustrating and I am more

[00:04:08] John Wright: cognizant to give myself, you know, extra time when I am, you know, creating a GPT bot, but for example, um, one of the ones that was relatively like not too bad, maybe only took me like five or six hours, uh, was, um, creating a GPT bot that analyzed Google patents. So what I did was, um, I uploaded the Google leak, uh, to the backend of the GPT bot and then basically had the bot, you know, analyze a Google patent PDF, um, against sort of a structured way of looking at the whole thing.

[00:04:45] John Wright: So, you know, pulling the abstract, looking at key concepts, et cetera. And then, um, also comparing what was in the patent to the leak as well. And, uh, you know that, um, it does take a lot of trial and error, but, you know, I learned so much when it comes to prompting, I think trial and error is everything, um, you know, when you're trying to achieve a certain thing and you know, you're just kind of like constantly refining, um, you can just learn so much that way and, um, you know, that, that bot, yeah, like I said, maybe took five or six hours, but, um, the AI stuff, I always like, you know, uh, like if I'm, um, have the weekend, I always tell my

[00:05:22] John Wright: girlfriend, like it's going to be like potentially a little longer than I can really anticipate. So she likes it when I don't, when I'm not doing GPT, but I don't think it's a good. So did you ever write a note and then it takes five hours and then you realize it's not going to work and then you just scrap it and throw it out. Oh, absolutely. I'm asking for a friend. Yeah, no, seriously. I'm like, that's a very valid point. Um, last week when I, I mentioned, I came up with that note around, uh, pre-populating those URLs. That was actually because I had failed on a GPT bot earlier than that. So I was trying to create a bot that would predict whether or not page

[00:06:01] John Wright: could be shown in Google discover. And like how likely a page would be to be shown in Google discover. And I had, you know, lots of really solid criteria that I was evaluating the page against and all kinds of things. But, you know, when it actually came down to testing it with my own data and looking at the pages that I knew for sure, shoot, showed and discover, and then the pages that I knew absolutely did not show and discover the bot was just a complete complete failure. So I never released that, that GPT bot. And like, I'm always very, you know, cognizant of like, you know, my

[00:06:36] John Wright: success is tied to, um, how much I can, how much value I can provide through SEO notebook and, uh, you know, I'm never going to release something that I don't think is good or as delivering false positives and stuff like that. So that was unfortunately, you know, probably four or five hours down the drain, uh, when I finally realized that this thing just wasn't reliable in terms of predicting Google discover. And that's totally fine. I just moved on to the next thing.

[00:07:05] John Wright: Damn. Uh, going straight into technical SEO, um, I want to ask you what is keyword verticalization strategy, um, and asking this because you mentioned that you did some of this work for consulting, uh, for mapped in, and I think it's fresh books. So I just want to know if you're able to share examples of that. Yeah, for sure. I've done it for mapped in fresh books, significantly. Outline lots of different companies. So essentially, um, this verticalization strategy and actually I'll mention one thing that, uh, it's not live yet, but I have a five part email

[00:07:43] John Wright: series that really goes into depth with this. Um, I will be launching it on SEO notebook. And if you subscribe to SEO, notepoch.com, that's probably the best place you can hear about it. Where literally go into dissecting the whole strategy in detail, like from, from five different, in a series of five different emails. But, um, essentially, you know, when there is an industry that target a company that targets several industries, um, there's oftentimes like a really good, um, opportunity for SEOs to, you know, create, um, the one page on, let's say, um, invoice templates, like at fresh books, and then, you know, uh,

[00:08:22] John Wright: targeting invoice templates for contractors, for lawyers, for graphic designers, and even things like file types for PDF or Excel for Google sheets and, uh, you know, essentially.

[00:08:35] Steve Toth: Verticalizing your content across these different industries, um, you know, for mapped in that was indoor maps for malls, for offices, for stadiums and stuff like that, um, you can really build a lot of solid relevance with Google. Um, and you know, when, when you have people who are searching for a very tailored solution, like I don't want just any invoice template. I want one for a graphic designer. Um, you end up actually having a much higher conversion rate because the thing that you're offering them, uh, is, you know, specifically relevant to them.

[00:09:14] Steve Toth: So I would say like you obviously like, shouldn't just like, you know, create, a page about graphic designer, invoice template and not make it, you know, just be generic. I would, I wouldn't suggest that I would suggest basically making it as tailored as possible.

[00:09:30] Steve Toth: And you know, we've done that on sites like signaturely.com, which is a site that I helped launch actually in 2020. That just doing extremely well, um, since then. And, um, you know, we created contract templates. So we actually created literal contracts for, you know, wedding plan, our contractor or photographer contract and stuff like that. And, you know, actually offered a real piece of value to all those, um, you know, different, uh, verticals. So, you know, when that's a online signature software. So obviously, you know, people who are looking for that kind of stuff for in the market for, um, you know, getting a legally binding online signatures.

[00:10:09] Steve Toth: It was another great opportunity for that type of strategy. Yeah. It sounds like middle or bottom of funnel content with high intent. Yeah, exactly. So the, what, you know, when we did, um, or we did invoice templates, that was a really unique situation just because, um, you know, if you look at a company like fresh books or quick books or zero, the total addressable market for those companies is absolutely huge. Um, you know, just freelancers and contractors around the world. Right. Um, and, uh, and that also translated into extremely high volume keywords.

[00:10:46] Steve Toth: Uh, just because there's so many people looking for a new voicing solution. Right. So if you can, yeah, find a vertical opportunity that is a company that is you know, pretty much mass market, like you could say that fresh books is B2B, but you could also say that it's B2C when you're talking about like freelancers and contractors, um, when you can kind of marry those two things, it can be like, you know, such a huge opportunity, but even on a smaller scale, you know, like when I've been working with mapped in now for over four years, um, you know, there's not that many people looking to make an indoor map, but, um, it is, like you said, it's, um, you know, it's high

[00:11:24] Steve Toth: intent and, you know, people are like, wow, well, you know, I have a stadium and I really need an indoor mapping solution. This page tells me all about, you know, how to do that and, you know, shows me that you've done X, Y, and Z stadiums. Unfortunately, they, they can't say that they have, uh, worked with certain professionals orts leagues. Um, unfortunately we can't, we can't use that, but they have. Um, but you know, like just basically what I'm saying is like, when you see that custom tailored landing page, your conversion rate is going to be a lot higher. So even in the case where, um, mapped in isn't super high volume, it's still very much worth it to do that kind of strategy.

[00:12:02] Steve Toth: It sounds like it's kind of similar or related to programmatic SEO, just maybe a little different. Yeah, it could, it could be for sure. Like, uh, uh, the, you, you can take a programmatic approach to that. Um, but I would say that, you know, if it, you kind of have to weigh like what, what your resources are, right? So let's say you're doing, um, you know, contract templates and, uh, you want to take like a chat, GPT contract to everything, or you literally just want to like swap out industries as placeholders across all these different

[00:12:39] Steve Toth: things, like you can do that and take more of a programmatic approach. Uh, but I think ultimately you have to look at like, what are your resources? What's the potential payoff and you know, either invest in, you know, human written content or human AI content that's human edited and just like have a little bit more of a, uh, sales slash copywriting angle to it than, than just, uh, you know, straight find a place.

[00:13:04] Steve Toth: And going into more of an example, like for what we do, we have a directory of affiliate programs across many different industries and we have a lot of rich data behind it and I'm wondering if there's a right and wrong way of doing programmatic, I'm assuming the wrong way is doing so much maybe AI or low quality or thin content that you, pages that Google says, Hey, you're just basically blasting the internet here. But I'm just wondering if there's like a best structure to, we've got, um,

[00:13:32] John Wright: a main page that's affiliate programs and then it's like the industry, but then it could be the industry in relation to a country or in relation to a commission type, so what would your thoughts on that be? Yeah. I mean, I think you can certainly rank with the very like, you know, programmatic, low efforts, uh, content. It all just really depends on your competition, right? So if you're the first, um, site to go after, you know, a particular, um, strategy, like a particular keywords in your niche and, you know, all you would need is just basically irrelevant page and, and you would rank, but I

[00:14:09] John Wright: think, um, you know, over time, I mean, you're going to obviously have competitors and by this point, like it's also improbable that you're the first to do something on the internet. Um, so I guess, you know, when evaluating the approach that you're going to take with that, um, you really need to look at the competition and, and kind of gauge what, how much effort is going to be required to, to rank.

[00:14:32] Steve Toth: I think I'll have to do a bit of research on the search intent, but I can say that some of those examples where you go super deep, haven't really been touched and I'm kind of surprised on it. So because you said be the first, I think I'm going to put that as high priority without a doubt. Yeah. I mean, like you, you can, like I said, if, if you are one of the early trail blazers in NUC, you really only need like, you know, your title tag to be relevant in your age one, like that's that's, that would get you there. Right. But I think maybe, um, you know, one important point there is like, even if you are able to get to a very like, you know, advantageous position, um,

[00:15:10] Steve Toth: by with minimal effort, uh, you shouldn't just let those pages be. You should make a, make a concerted effort of like, at least evaluating the performance every six months and making adjustments.

[00:15:23] John Wright: I agree. I like to think that building a product is helpful, like applying it to, um, affiliate sites and to help them survive and thrive, but maybe not everything could be an affiliate product. So what else do you think, you know, just putting, you know, a pretend affiliate hat on, what do you think affiliate sites can do? That's not always a product that's going to help them, um, survive.

[00:15:45] Steve Toth: Well, I think the one big obvious one is an email list. I mean, I can say for myself, like even not being like an affiliate first, my affiliate revenue through my email list is pretty solid. Um, you know, the more captive an audience you have, the higher quality list you have, um, the more you're going to be able to blast out relevant offers and, uh, really monetize that way. So, you know, that also, uh, you know, it's obviously the landscape is changing quite rapidly with what types of affiliate, what type of traffic affiliate sites are going to expect. But, um, if you build that email, let's talk your tofu content, that's ranking.

[00:16:26] Steve Toth: Um, you know, you, you essentially create like a really viable channel for you to earn a lot of revenue.

[00:16:33] John Wright: I would also say that like, it seems counterintuitive, but from what I have personally seen, you know, um, like really successful affiliates are now offering consulting, like literally because they have proven themselves, um, to be, you know, super successful. They've got a few flipped sites under their belt, like they have, you know, cred, uh, in the industry. And, um, they're actually just offering consulting to two clients. Right. So, I mean, that's my, um, you know, main revenue sources is SEO consulting and kind of hybrid agency work, which is what we do.

[00:17:12] John Wright: And, um, you know, I can tell you that like, as long as you know how to sort of choose the right types of clients and you know, a little bit about client management, um, it can actually be like an amazing, um, you know,

[00:17:27] Steve Toth: focus for you, uh, really like, you know, I know, um, you know, a friend of mine here in Toronto, um, Alex, uh, savvy, I don't know if you, you know, him, but, um, uh, you know, he, he flipped a site in the mattress industry for over a million.

[00:17:42] Steve Toth: And, um, now he's really looking at, you know, consulting as being, um, you know, one of his primary income sources, right? Because he has that track record and he has that credibility. So, um, you know, I think, you know, through creating content that demonstrates your expertise, um, you're going to be able to attract, uh, those types of, um, of clients. So, you know, that would be, you know, I would say the most lucrative opportunity if, if you're asking me, but I'm also biased because that's what.

[00:18:15] John Wright: It might be biased, but I think it's a perfect example of going, what is the value of a single user or a single clip? Like I've talked to a lot of, uh, SEO personalities and they basically say when they go on YouTube, they might have 200 views and people think this person's not making any money, but what you can't see behind that is the invisible DMS that lead to, Hey, I want to talk to you. What are your rates? And then, you know, once you have that experience, um, you know, the, the quality is kind of implied in the price.

[00:18:42] John Wright: Yeah. Um, once people kind of see, you know, you like to see a personal side of you, like, you know, I've gotten amazing clients through podcast appearances that, you know, and on my own website, I even have like a press section. You may be watching it through that right now in the future, but, um, you know, I even have a press section that just has all my podcast appearances. And, you know, I, I've had multiple clients say that they've discovered me through podcast. I've had clients tell me that they've discovered me because someone else mentioned my name on a podcast. Like, you know, so there's the thing about, um, you know, inbound marketing

[00:19:21] John Wright: and all that kind of stuff is it's really impossible to predict, you know, where your next lead is going to come from. But, um, you have to kind of take the approach that, you know, you're sowing seeds and eventually those seeds are going to spray and, you know, start paying back to you. Um, you've just always got to kind of be planting them.

[00:19:41] Steve Toth: I want to go back to what you said about newsletters. Do you think that by having a newsletter audience, that when you post something and let's pretend it's going back to your website, that it's kind of like an indirect signal for Google that says, Hey, we have real traffic coming back and you're not fully dependent on the search traffic.

[00:19:59] Steve Toth: Yeah. I think that's definitely potentially a very positive sign. Uh, you know, when you say, you know, you don't really have an email list. You have a Gmail list is what you really have. Right. So you're, you're, you know, Google's like keeping tabs on how many people are replying to you, what your open rate is and all that kind of stuff. They would never do that. I think, yeah. Um, the, you know, you, you, you essentially, yeah, have like, you know, a new traffic source. Um, it really legitimizes you. Um, you're, you know, you're, when you have a new post, you're blasting it out and you're getting a bunch of, um, you know, traffic. It's just like social media traffic to you. Right. Um, yeah.

[00:20:39] Steve Toth: It's, uh, you know, there's obviously not in Google plus anymore, but, um, you know, I think Google has a good idea about which websites and you know, have legit like natural signals like that. And which ones are, you know, just expressly for the purpose of ranking and banking.

[00:20:56] Steve Toth: Then similar topic on newsletters. Do you think people should care about the SEO value of their newsletter or maybe care more about the social value? Because, I mean, we have tools like Beehive and, uh, like there's ConvertKit and some of them, they're not always websites. They're kind of like, they might be a website, but they don't really seem to care much about being indexed or being SEO optimized. So what's your take on that? Well, personally for me, I don't even launch any content on my website. I keep it all in the newsletter and through Notion, right? Part of that is that like, you know, I really give away my best stuff on SEO

[00:21:31] Steve Toth: notebook and I don't want like it to be always out in the open all the time. Right. And it's also hard to optimize for certain things like nobody's searching for, uh, you know, Google path, man, Eliza, GPT, right? So I personally just take the like social, um, uh, and just content first approach to all that and, uh, and don't really try to rank things. Um, and yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that it's like not a wise thing to do to try to rank for, um, you know, on page SEO tips or best loot building strategies or whatever you want kind of right for.

[00:22:09] Steve Toth: But, um, I would say for a newsletter audience, um, they want to like, they appreciate good copywriting. Um, they appreciate brevity, uh, getting to the point and then, you know, sometimes when you're trying to optimize an article a little bit, it's a bit counterintuitive to creating the content that way.

[00:22:29] John Wright: That makes sense. Cause I mean, like just another example of my side where it's like, okay, I, maybe I want to have a community for my audience, which is affiliate marketers. Then, you know, what are the options? There's Facebook where the Facebook page could rank itself, uh, but the content inside might not rank. And then I could use discourse as a forum, which is more of an SEO playbook. But I'm just wondering if you think the tide has changed where people don't really care about these old forums. Maybe they're actually going, I want to be in a community where I want to be anonymous or private, it's not in your business.

[00:23:03] Steve Toth: Um, the, the, the, what's the question there though, sorry, the question's more like, you know, you have two options, like whether it's a newsletter or a forum where it's like they're kind of community based and you can either care about the SEO component, or you can say, I don't give a damn. And I'm wondering if the, like the trend for people, especially, um, the younger generation is they're not really caring about, Hey, I found this as a discourse forum that's fully indexed in Google. They're finding it in maybe Facebook communities or more like discord, telegram, that sort of thing. Right. Um, yeah, I think, uh, actually like, yeah, even like stuff like

[00:23:40] Steve Toth: WhatsApp channels are probably a pretty underrated source of traffic. Considering, um, you know, how ubiquitous WhatsApp is and how easy they are to set up and just blast out your content through there. Um, and you know, probably a very, also a very pincimate channel in terms of like, you know, reaching your audience through something that they don't really consider as like, uh, you know, a Facebook or Twitter, um, feed. Right. So I definitely think there's, you know, other channels that, uh, that can, you know, help basically, um, propel your, your content in your brain.

[00:24:16] Steve Toth: And I also think that, um, you know, even though like SEO notebook is somewhere around a DR 50 with like no conscious link building, there's also like certain spaces are so saturated, right? Like you look at like, even like a guy like Matt Diggity, right? Um, it's hard for his blog to complete compete against, you know, search engine land and search engine journal and all those, you know, really well established sites for like SEO tips and tricks and stuff like that. So I'm not saying that Matt's not doing a good job with his site. It's just that, you know, even somebody of that stature is going to have a harder

[00:24:53] Steve Toth: time, uh, you know, ranking and competing in such a saturated market. Right. So, um, I think, you know, if you're going to go that route, I mean, I would try to mirror somebody like a Brian Dean. Um, you know, if we did obviously back link code.com and, uh, you know, put tons of effort into a very low number of pages, right? So his, uh, guides for really, you know, off the charts in terms of, um, you know, how in depth and thorough they were pinned, you know, he also wrote, I think at least, you know, before he sold the seminar, sure, not sure now.

[00:25:32] Steve Toth: Um, and you know, all those pieces, all those articles, like on his own, right? Um, to keep the quality level super high. So, um, if, if you are looking at, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, a strategy, like to try and rank and get views that way, I would be like really selective with what you do and like, make sure that, you know, you know, exactly who you're up against and that your quality is top notch and also, you know, develop a solid brand for yourself, cause that's also going to really help. You just basically set up my next question, which is you, Steve Toth, uh, Matt Diggity, um, Brian Dean.

[00:26:10] Steve Toth: I mean, these are all personal names and it's kind of like, you know, who, who do I want to actually look up for, um, people in the SEO space for thought leadership it's, I do run across articles like search engine land and things like that, but, um, it's kind of like, you know, I think this is why your notebook is as popular and why people follow Matt's, uh, blog and Facebook posts and YouTube channels. Do you think, uh, this is, um, Google and everything else. People are just always naturally gravitating towards people. Yeah, definitely. I think, um, you know, personal brand has been huge in my life.

[00:26:47] Steve Toth: Um, it's been something I've mostly committed to like over these last five years, I've had a couple months where I've, I've dipped out a little bit and took tickets of time off or whatever, but in general, I would say it's been a pretty consistent effort. And I think consistency is really everything. Like when I, when I started SEO notebook, um, you know, I was, I knew the idea was good, but like, I didn't really have any experience in doing this stuff. And, um, there was a guy, um, named Dirk Diggy. Um, he was like buds with Glenn Alsop and like, I just knew him through like the social social media.

[00:27:25] Steve Toth: And I had a conversation with him like prior to starting SEO notebook. And, you know, he just offered me this, like one really important piece of advice that was, if you don't email weekly, people are going to forget about who you are. And if he didn't tell me that I probably would have started a biweekly newsletter and not been as successful. Um, so, you know, I think, um, people look to people, um, versus, you know, just thinking that, you know, Moz is an authority or SEJs and authority or whatever.

[00:27:58] John Wright: And, uh, and, and then on the flip side of that, if that's what you're trying to do, um, like consistency really is everything. And obviously you have to pair that with like super high quality content and really give it your all. Um, but if you're, if you just decide to like, if you don't have like a,

[00:28:18] John Wright: uh, a tight schedule in terms of like our consistent schedule of, of when you're wanting to share, you will just be forgotten. Like, you know, you're not special. That makes sense. I would agree to that in the sense that I've been doing podcasting for a year and a half straight. I don't miss a week. My newsletter was biweekly, but it's kind of becoming every three weeks. And I pay attention to a lot of people that you and a couple of other friends that have weekly newsletters and they just seem to get stronger because you're consistent, you're always top of mind. So, um, good lesson for me. And I think good lessons for a lot of other people.

[00:28:52] John Wright: Yeah. I mean, um, like I said, if I didn't get that piece of advice, I might not be, you know, as successful as I have been with, with SEO.

[00:29:01] Steve Toth: That's good. Um, I, I've studied a lot of some of the most successful affiliates in iGaming and outside of iGaming, and I try to look at patterns of like, what do I see as part of their success? And I think a lot of times SEO is a part of it, but I think other parts of it are brand and one thing that I started noticing when looking through like, okay, who's working for these companies? Like what are the jobs they're hiring for it? And one that starting to come as a pattern for me is like product, had a product, product owner. Um, what is your take on it? Do you think this is something that a lot of like everything in digital marketing people might be overlooking?

[00:29:38] John Wright: Yeah. I mean, like, you know, product people traditionally are the ones that, um, help under help the company understand its users, right? Like where, you know, achieving that like classic like product market fit. Right. Is it there, isn't it there? Um, and you know, those people have that, like, you know, hopefully they have that ability and they have that experience to really, you know, understand like who the different people are that, that, uh, that frequent the site and, you know, what are their needs, right? So if, um, you know, and they, and they will, they, their job is not to.

[00:30:17] Steve Toth: Like, you know, do the SEO per se, but their job is to guide the, the site in terms of like what it actually produces to meet user needs. Right. So, um, yeah, I think it's an incredibly important role and, you know, in the way that that kind of marries with SEO is like, well, what are the landing pages that are going to meet the user needs, not just like, you know, being a product person and saying that, you know, our freelancers need double entry accounting and that's, that's something that we really need to do to get more market share, right. But it's like, you know, what, what, uh, what front facing assets do we put

[00:30:53] Steve Toth: on the site to help attract those types of users?

[00:30:58] John Wright: Next question is, I want to know if you can share one or two notes from your SEO notebook, whether it's recent or in the past five years where you're working on something and something just kind of hits you and you're like, wow, this is unreal. You feel like you've discovered like a, I don't know, a cheat code or something. Uh, what's one story that comes to mind that you just say, this is unreal. This is an amazing story or a case study. Yeah, there, there's a, you know, there's, there's a few, like I really, I know when I have something like based on how excited I am about that week. Um, and you know, usually I do a pretty good job of giving myself the time to really figure out something that, you know, I, I want to publish.

[00:31:39] John Wright: Um, and, uh, this was a while back, but, um, what I, what I realized would be like a really good way to kind of like achieve like topical relevance, which obviously parlays into topical authority would be to like Google a keyword. Right. So Google a keyword, let's say like car insurance. And then you look at like, what are the top sites that are ranking for car insurance? So you might see things like GEICO, all state, Liberty, mutual stuff like that. And then from there, like perform another search that is a site search for

[00:32:16] John Wright: site colon GEICO.com car insurance site colon, Liberty, mutual.com car insurance. And then basically what you're seeing there are all of the articles on that website that, um, are helping it be relevant and ranking for that head trim of cards, right? So, um, you know, just evenly that like little insight there is like a really quick hack, I mean, you can, you can scan account a million ways, like you could do gap analysis, you could do all these other things, but in terms of like just sheer

[00:32:51] John Wright: speed and efficiency of understanding, you know, what articles are causing a site to rank for super high competitive terms like car insurance, um, I love that one. So, uh, I recently, uh, I, I, I, I put that on YouTube and it did fairly well. And then, uh, I recently republished that on LinkedIn a few weeks ago and it did very well as well. So that, that one comes to mind as a, as kind of an interesting one. Um, I don't know, I have like just a lot. Um, I'm looking at my, my things here. Um, I'll let's just see what else.

[00:33:31] Steve Toth: Oh yeah. This one I really liked as well. Um, I called it a why Google is the goat keyword research tool. Um, so basically what you would do is like you'd start and like, I love using the Google SERP in case you haven't noticed to do keyword research. And, um, what, what I, what you start with is like Googling a keyword, like best mortgage rates.

[00:33:53] John Wright: And then once you've Googled that you go back up to the search bar and start typing things like what is, when does, what more and, and, and Google, because it knows you just searched, uh, best mortgage rates starts to give you things like what is a mortgage tracker, what is jumbo mortgage, what is a good credit score? And basically starts to try to anticipate the types of questions a person would ask directly after asking best mortgage rates into the search age. Right. So, um, that one's are really fun one.

[00:34:31] John Wright: And, uh, on SEO notebook, essentially what I did was, um, I shared a list of interrogative words, which are those like words that begin questions like what is, when does, can you stuff like that? And, uh, and the amount of amazingly relevant keywords you can get to something like best mortgage rates after doing that exercise is just insane. And it's also something that we've automated completely at my agency. Um, but you can even just get started on your own, just doing it manually. So let me, those last two tips, what I think you're going to get is you're

[00:35:08] John Wright: going to get reverse engineer, what the big companies are caring about. Like, so if you use Geico as one example, you're going to pick, why did they create 40 pages around card insurance? Yeah. And how relevant are those pages? I think it goes without saying, you know, you got to assume that some of these larger companies have invested a lot of time in a market research and they wouldn't really keep these pages, uh, for the hell of it. I think they're, they're creating these things because they're one testing and two, um, understanding the value that could be like high conversion, maybe lower volume. Yeah. I mean, there's just going to be also very obvious pages like, you know,

[00:35:44] John Wright: first time driver card insurance or a student car car car, best car insurance for students or, you know, things that you may just know have on your site that are like, obviously like monetizable pages, right? So, um, even if you don't go the full, like I need to, you know, recreate, um, the best of strategy between Geico all state and Liberty mutual, you can at least get some ideas of, you know, bottom funnel landing pages that you can then produce.

[00:36:13] Steve Toth: A challenging question. Uh, just putting you on the spot, what would you do for a company, whether it's a Philly site or SaaS company, it doesn't matter where people are problem aware, but they're not solution aware.

[00:36:26] John Wright: Um, I guess, uh, like problem. Okay. So they are, I'm just, they know of a pain point and they can't articulate it.

[00:36:38] Steve Toth: Yeah. Oh, um, I actually, I actually know, um, a really good, uh, um, strategy for this. So in your Google search console, there is a wealth of data that I don't think enough people really leverage. And, um, actually this isn't, no, this is not to answer your, your thing. Cause it's like, what I was going to say was listening, you're having a search console. Let me, let me just go here for one second in Google search console. There is a wealth of data. Um, and people might be describing your product in a way that you actually aren't even aware of.

[00:37:15] Steve Toth: So using synonyms for things like system tool platform, software app, um, you, and you basically look at all your keywords that use those different, you know, SAS qualifiers, you can get like, you know, a multitude of new ways that people are actually searching for your product. Um, so those people, you know, it, it may be a case where like they don't actually know if something exists and they're like, you know, um, you know, like a PowerPoint for, or like, you know, apps like PowerPoint for your phone or something like that. Right.

[00:37:53] Steve Toth: Like maybe, maybe they don't even know that, that this, that this exists, but they're trying to describe what they want. That's the type of, um, uh, strategy that can kind of uncover those keywords. Um, in terms of like, you know, um, uh, solution aware, those people are still going to have questions that they're trying to solve, like how do I do X or, um, what, what's the best way to do Y? Um, you basically try to put yourself in the shoes of a user and like the common things that they encounter, um, and, and then go after that.

[00:38:32] Steve Toth: Um, there's other strategies whereby like you can even look at like, you know, error codes that people get in certain platforms and like start to optimize for those and like, you know, mention your competitor. So there's, there's all kinds of things, um, that I think, you know, and around that sort of sphere. Um, but in terms of like your specific question, I would just basically try to optimize for the questions that a person has, like, how do I do X or how, you know, what's the best way to do Y? Um, and then, and then just go from there. That makes sense. I mean, I was listening to a podcast on Chris Walker who does B2B sales,

[00:39:12] Steve Toth: think it's revenue vitals. And he talked about, uh, how do you, how do you solve this where it's like you've got problem aware, but not solution aware. And his answer was like, he didn't say topical authority, but he kind of implied that he said, you know, be the person that people go to when they think of your, your core topic where they can't articulate those questions. And I think it's difficult for people on the side of the business to go, how can I even know what they're looking for? You know, I think that requires, uh, like a little bit of intelligence, emotional intelligence to kind of go, I need to think like a user and it's not easy. Like here's an example that I just thought, right? Like say you're LMS, you're learning management system and somebody

[00:39:51] Steve Toth: wants to create a course and they're like, what's the best way to teach X or what's the best way to create a course? Like, you know, do I have to create a PowerPoint or do I have to film it or do I have to upload my thing? No, there's actually like real solutions that, you know, like kajabi or whatever that, that, uh, that make the whole process easy. So, you know, trying to figure out like in the process of a person who. Wants to create a course, but isn't really familiar with, with LMS tools. Like what are the different challenges that they're, um, you know, trying to tackle, right? Are they saying that, Oh, I have to create this on YouTube or whatever.

[00:40:30] Steve Toth: Like, you know, there's, there's all sorts of, um, all sorts of different avenues you can kind of target to get in front of that person. Yeah. I think in my situation for what we do with our software company is we don't have a lot of examples of competitors that have already mapped out that whole space of what content to create. So we had to kind of uncover it on our own. And I think just by talking to affiliates and, uh, trying to create some content around it, I think that's where we, we had some accidental discoveries. And in our case, it was creating some content that we didn't really know what was going to work. And then realizing, Hey, how did you hear about us? Well, I was looking how to build an API to connect with this affiliate program and you showed up.

[00:41:09] Steve Toth: Like, great. It's well, I wish we could have known that from day one. One of the other, um, like really key things, especially that I notice with my B2B clients is we'll always ask them, like, what are the common questions that your salespeople are getting asked over and over again, and basically try to optimize for what those are. Right. Cause you, you can't really oftentimes like you, oh, you find those types of keywords in search console, but, um, you know, the, the sales people at these companies, um, they basically got their own list of common questions. And then there, you know, obviously their answers to what those questions are to effectively handle them.

[00:41:49] Steve Toth: And, uh, that can be a really great resource. Um, if you can tap that.

[00:41:53] John Wright: And last question is, what do you see, uh, the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

[00:42:00] Steve Toth: Um, well, I think, um, you know, getting your finger on the pulse of where Google is going, um, I think that it ultimately, we're going to have to brace ourselves for murkier data. Um, and I mean, I think that trend has already been going for a long time. Um, in terms of not having the complete picture of what's going on, like, you know, with AI overviews or, you know, you may have a number one ranking, but you may not even be above the fold anymore. Okay. So, um, stuff like that, that I think you've basically got to prepare yourself,

[00:42:38] Steve Toth: um, for, you know, having, you know, murkier data than, than ever. Um, but at that said, like, you know, murkier, murky data is definitely better than no data. And, um, and, you know, using tools, um, you know, like yours or, um, like Looker Studio and bringing in different data sources and really trying to make something meaningful, uh, is, you know, stuff that we do for all the sites that we work on. We have an amazing data analyst on our team, um, who essentially creates, you know, dashboards, custom to whatever, um, site that whenever the site really, you know, wants to track or needs to track.

[00:43:16] Steve Toth: So that's a local business site. We've got coal rail in there. If they're hub spot site, then we have a hub spot or all those types of things. Um, but I would also say that like, um, you know, having the data as one day, but, you know, actioning on that data is a totally other thing. And, uh, and you, uh, you have to basically have, you know, a good team in place who's going to be able to harness all the things that you're tracking. And, you know, do the digging, right? Because, um, a while back I worked as a product advisor on keyword.com. Um, bringing in a share voice feature into that tool.

[00:43:56] Steve Toth: And, you know, it's great to have shared voice. It's great to know, you know, where you stand, but, um, if you don't actually, you know, look at the sites that are beating you out and share a voice and are able to kind of reverse engineer that and, uh, you know, bring your site up to parody, then what's the, what's the use of having that data? Right? So I think just, you know, getting, getting the best data that you can from all the, all the different sources that you can, and then having it, having a team that actively, you know, optimizes against them.

[00:44:24] John Wright: Awesome. Uh, Steve, thank you so much for doing this. Um, obviously we're going to put everything in the show notes, but how can people get ahold of you? Well, SEO notebook.co is the best place. Um, and then I would say follow me on LinkedIn, because that's where I'm most active. I'll add that. And of course, uh, just another shout out to SEO, IRL.com, which will be in Toronto. Looking forward to that. Steve has a lot. That'll be October 4th, uh, 2024 in Toronto. So I will see you there, but I hope to see others as well.

[00:44:53] Steve Toth: Thank you for tuning in to the affiliate BI podcast. I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more listeners.