Erin Sparks: 00:00:11 Hey, welcome back to the Edge. Would you be embarrassed if your SEO efforts that you did last month were on a billboard? Would your work actually bear scrutiny? Ethics in the SEO field, that’s the big question today for our audience, which our guests will help us answer along with how do ethics play a role in the day to day work of an SEO strategist and what is the moral code for proper SEO strategy. Today on the Edge.
Speaker 2: 00:00:41 Your weekly digital marketing trends with industry trendsetting guests. You’re listening and watching Edge of the Web, winners of Best Podcast from the Content Marketing Institute for 2017. Hear and see more at edgeofthewebradio.com. Now, here’s your host, Erin Sparks.
Erin Sparks: 00:01:04 So welcome back to the show. Hey, it’s been a minute or two since our last live show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening to us as well on all of our podcast platforms, iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Spotify and numerous others. If we’re not where you need us to be then how in the world are you actually listening to us right now?
Erin Sparks: 00:01:24 That aside, if you want us to be on a particular player, just contact edgeofthewebradio.com and let us know where you want us, and we’ll come to you. We’re broadcasting from Edge Media Studios, located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Every week we’re bringing you the news from around the world, cutting-edge digital marketing news and trends, as well as talking to some of the best marketing influencers from around the planet. Check out our recent shows over at edgeofthewebradio.com, that’s edgeofthewebradio.com.
Erin Sparks: 00:01:53 We’re sponsored by our title sponsor, Site Strategics, which is also our parent company. And we are the pioneers in the agile digital marketing techniques and strategy, and that’s basically results-based marketing that is nimble enough to be able to adjust very quickly because data is data, right? Got to be able to read it and also steer by it. So go over to Site Strategics, S-I-T-E, strategics.com, and be able to jump in there. Hey, give us a quick shout. Be happy to talk to you for a free hour consultation to isolate and maybe look over some possible action items that we could do for you or you could do for yourself. So go over there or just call the number 877-SEO FOR WEB, or 877-736-4932.
Erin Sparks: 00:02:38 I’m your host, Erin Sparks, I’m the owner of Site Strategics and founder of Edge Media Studios. And the reason we do this, and we tell you every show, but for the new listeners and watchers coming on, we want to make sure that you understand why we do what we do. So we religiously are putting out our show each and every Thursday at 3:00 PM Eastern. And we prep for the show each and every week. We want to make sure we are demystifying, debunking some of the myths that are out there in the digital marketing world. We talk about SEO, obviously, we also talk about social media marketing, video marketing, conversion rate optimization, everything in the digital ecosystem that you, as a digital marketer, can execute for your company or your client.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:20 But we also do this selfishly for ourselves because we want to keep our powder dry. What is it, swords clean, powder dry? Swords sharp, powder … I’m mixing my metaphors already. I’m just spilling all over the place. Point is we want to keep ourselves educated and digital marketing is happening at a breakneck speed. So it’s almost like you have to do something like this to capture what’s happening and be able to process new techniques, new things that are happening on the digital marketing front.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:49 I want to introduce Jacob Mann, our studio creative producer. Jacob, you in there?
Jacob Mann: 00:03:55 Here I am.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:57 You weren’t ready for that, were you?
Jacob Mann: 00:03:58 No, I wasn’t. Sorry.
Erin Sparks: 00:03:59 You don’t even have your camera set up. Literally. We talked about this.
Jacob Mann: 00:04:03 No, I don’t.
Erin Sparks: 00:04:05 No worries. Hey, Jacob is man in the booth here, and we certainly appreciate his time and efforts and we want to also introduce our guest on the show. This guest has a particular relationship with me that is uncommon in the digital marketing field. PJ Christie, founder and CEO of Search & Convert. PJ, how the heck are you doing today?
PJ Christie: 00:04:27 I am having a great day, thanks. I’m all loaded up on tacos and caffeine and couldn’t be a nicer day here in Austin, Texas.
Erin Sparks: 00:04:34 My gosh, yeah, coming out of Austin, Texas. And actually my parents hail from close to Dallas, Texas. I don’t think you knew that, but the point is I’ve known this guy for over 30 years, ladies and gentlemen. We’ve been in the SEO industry and the digital marketing industry for almost three decades. Right, PJ?
PJ Christie: 00:04:54 That’s right, that’s right. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erin Sparks: 00:04:55 What the heck is wrong with us?
PJ Christie: 00:04:58 We got to start somewhere and we got to stop someday. I don’t know what else to say besides.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:04 Way to be as diplomatic as possible. PJ and I go way back and it’s great to be able to meet up with a friend and a colleague who’s been in the industry as long as we have, because we certainly have seen a lot in the SEO field. And we’re going to unpack really a core concept that has beleaguered the SEO industry, and that’s the ethics question inside of SEO. So, with that, we always start with our news section. I really want to get to this conversation but we got some trending news that we got to jump into. PJ, you ready for this?
PJ Christie: 00:05:39 Do it.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:41 All right, roll that beautiful bean footage.
Ron Burgundy: 00:05:43 Do what God put Ron Burgundy on this Earth to do, have salon quality hair and read the news.
Speaker 2: 00:05:50 This week’s trending topics.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:53 Get the reference there, PJ?
PJ Christie: 00:05:55 I do.
Erin Sparks: 00:05:57 Okay, we’re just going to get this one out of the way. PJ and I used to have some pretty dramatic hair. PJ literally had a … I don’t know how to best describe it. There it is, right there on the camera. My gosh. Look at how long … It actually got longer than that.
PJ Christie: 00:06:17 My God, where did you find that one?
Erin Sparks: 00:06:20 Hey, we’re full of secrets and tricks over here. And I was pretty much a moose-head and I think I still am if you see what I do to my frock every time. But we’ve got that in the back channels here. But let’s jump into the news. Actually, that was a news item, that’s our first news item.
Erin Sparks: 00:06:39 All right, from Search Engine Journal, from Matt Southern, 50% of small businesses do not have a marketing plan, according to a survey of 350 small- and medium-sized business owners. 50% have no marketing plan for 2019. All right, does that surprise you, PJ?
PJ Christie: 00:06:59 No. I’m actually surprised it’s that high from the small business owners I know.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:05 I would beg the question what is defined as a marketing plan?
PJ Christie: 00:07:08 Yeah. If you’re saying that the plan is written on a Google doc or a piece of paper that they could pull out of a drawer, no, it’s not.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:17 If they’re doing that Facebook thing and it’s-
PJ Christie: 00:07:22 That’s awful.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:22 Translating as a marketing plan. So, according to this survey, their marketing efforts are actually falling to the wayside. 25 of respondents are unsure how they plan to grow their business in 2019. 55 of small business owners spend less than 5% of their annual revenue on marketing, and that’s way under what you should be spending on marketing, and that’s not bias or nepotism, I’m just saying that is industry standard.
PJ Christie: 00:07:48 I agree. We always advise 10%.
Erin Sparks: 00:07:50 Yup, absolutely. Spot on. Over 58% of SMB owners spend five hours or fewer on marketing every week. And that’s understandable because they’re doing what they got to do, right? [crosstalk 00:08:03] 86% of respondents would rather spend time on their business than spending time on marketing, and we truly understand that.
Erin Sparks: 00:08:12 But here’s the deal, go back in time in the dot-com era, but even in 2010, we had statistics that were … I can’t remember the percentage but it was such a low percentage of businesses that actually had websites.
PJ Christie: 00:08:28 Well, yeah. Even as late as 2010 for sure.
Erin Sparks: 00:08:32 And it kept on going. So there was a continuous slow adoption of digital marketing. For small- and medium-sized businesses there’s a lot of challenges. One, marketing plans from digital agencies can be overpriced. Again, teeing into the ethics concept here. But at the same time they don’t give it enough time that if they do engage in a marketing plan with an agency or have somebody in-house, they don’t-
PJ Christie: 00:08:57 Their window for success is so small that they don’t really … They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
Erin Sparks: 00:09:03 Right, exactly. So there’s a level of education and maturation in the SMB marketplace that we certainly … We see it as a lagging indicator but we certainly are expecting, and I’d love to see more embracing of digital techniques, long-term techniques as opposed to some instant silver bullets that businesses may consider.
Erin Sparks: 00:09:27 All right, so from Search Engine Land, hey, check this out, we were just talking about this before the show, Google updates the search quality evaluators guidelines. Last week, Google actually updated its search quality evaluator guidelines, I don’t know how many times I can actually repeat that, for the first time since July 2018. Now, we actually talked to Marie Haynes several shows back, and she actually rolled out some great information about the guidelines. But this is pretty important because they hadn’t updated it for close to almost a year now.
Erin Sparks: 00:10:00 So PJ, we were talking about this as it relates to SEO. What’s your takeaway from the guidelines that Google has … They’ve had it publicized for several years now.
PJ Christie: 00:10:12 Sure, sure. If you’re watching Google Search Console, like I am doing obsessively, the signals that they’re sending are really clear, that Google is sending. It’s about the mobile experience. They want to make sure that impressions and click through rates are there for the organic search results that are showing up. You’re talking about a company, Google, which is really a company that matters for SEO, they own Chrome, they own Android, they own Google Analytics. They’re really paying a lot of attention to the actual performance of the websites. And if your site is performing, then what they’re really looking for is if Google had their way, they would provide one result and it would be the exact result that everybody is looking for. The way that they’re going to derive that is through metrics like bounce rate, click through rate. That’s just what they’re doing.
Erin Sparks: 00:11:09 Absolutely. And further in this article, something that we’ve talked about with a couple of recent interviews, the EAT concept. If you’re not familiar with that, that’s expertise, authority and trust. It’s now included inside of page quality. This wasn’t the case for the entire time. EAT has been a natural, organic concept in SEO world. But it’s finally being adopted inside of that. So, in fact, there’s a highlight right there on the screen referencing an explanation of page quality. Visa is a credit card company with a high EAT that offers services for credit card, banking … High plus and highest is an appropriate rating. So they’re actually training their raters to actually start embracing expertise, authority and trust.
Erin Sparks: 00:12:00 Now, that’s that next level of brand and content and authority that is not a flick of the switch. Very similar to good organic SEO. So there’s a whole other set of methodologies that are about to be unpacked here in digital marketing to enhance EAT, right?
PJ Christie: 00:12:19 For sure, and especially I’ve been keeping up on this topic called “Your Money, Your Life.” “Your Money, Your Life” is saying that if there’s a health component or a wellness component to what you do, they are actively going to go and find the most authoritative source there. And if your site is not the most authoritative source in your market, then you’re just not going to be seen.
Erin Sparks: 00:12:42 You’re absolutely right. And it goes towards the naturalness factors that cannot be spun. And that’s what Google is looking for. Long ago it was getting tricked by word spam and inbound links. It’s sloughed off those type of tactics, black hat tactics. EAT doesn’t look like it’s ever going to be able to be black hatted because by its very nature of authoritative citations and accreditations into one’s industry, you can’t fake that.
PJ Christie: 00:13:16 Yeah. But even in the realm of e-commerce, if you’re trying to do shopping ads or get your Google feed verified, now I’m talking about the ad side more than the organic, you have to have a customer service page, you have to have a phone number, you have to have a returns policy. All of that is good practice for a business and yet you could pull up 10 sites of companies within a mile radius of where you are right now and there is no return policy and there is no phone number.
Erin Sparks: 00:13:46 Yup. So we highly recommend going through the raters guidelines and adopting these things. It’s not going to hurt anything, folks. It’s certainly going to help how you’re evaluated. If Google is saying it, I think we all know by now, you better get it adopted.
PJ Christie: 00:14:05 And if your web developer or your designer is not paying attention to these guidelines, then they’re probably not servicing you as well as they should be. I would take it one step further. [crosstalk 00:14:16] There’s a lot of professionals outside of SEO that are just not thinking about your best interest if they’re not building in those authority factors [crosstalk 00:14:26]
Erin Sparks: 00:14:26 I put an asterisk there, if they are aware of these guidelines. Because we wouldn’t want to attribute maliciousness or-
PJ Christie: 00:14:35 Incompetence, yeah.
Erin Sparks: 00:14:36 Yeah, but some of them just don’t know what’s happening. And the guidelines have been out for about six years now. So this is not new terrain.
Erin Sparks: 00:14:45 I’ll tell you what, something that is new, we just got wind actually on Friday of a recent change to email service provider, and not at all actually disparaging the company. But there’s a big change at MailChimp. MailChimp attracted extreme criticism this week when it became clear how its new marketing services would actually impact its core email offering. Jacob, I’m going to actually ask you to jump in there, because you’ve been actually interacting with the author of this article. Give us the skinny on what MailChimp has done and what ramifications that could mean for service companies as a whole. This is pretty extreme.
Jacob Mann: 00:15:27 Yeah, so it looks like they’re going away from a lot of the current models they have, trying to get away from, I think, a lot of the more free setups. The biggest change that I saw was they are no longer counting your subscribers but they are counting your audience. And so someone subscribes to your list, and then unsubscribes, they are still counting as one person on your audience. So if you are purging a list or have a lot of unsubscribes or everything else, that audience will continue to grow.
Jacob Mann: 00:16:02 And the debate in his article, and I’ve seen other people discuss, is can you archive people? MailChimp says you can, and if you archive them then it doesn’t count against your audience. But then other people are worried about the implications of the laws overseas and if you archive it then will it prevent that person from accidentally resubscribing and everything else? So some people may not want to archive. So then you’re just going to have this audience that grows out of control. As opposed to maybe your mailing list is always 1,000 people, but now your audience is 5,000, and next year it’s 6,000, and so on and so on. So it’s got some people frustrated.
Erin Sparks: 00:16:38 The whole audience billing methodology is what was brought to people’s attention. We use MailChimp, and it’s a fantastic tool, but that type of billing formula has a lot of barbs in it. PJ, what do you think about this type of change in billing formulas for an EMS company?
PJ Christie: 00:17:04 I find email in general problematic. If you’re not doing a double opt-in, then you’re really … The worry is that you’re alienating your base. I don’t use MailChimp, I haven’t done email marketing tactics for my own business since 2009.
Erin Sparks: 00:17:26 It’s changed a little bit. Did you know that?
PJ Christie: 00:17:29 I think that for me, I don’t really have a sales team, it’s just me. I’m doing my own customer acquisition. And if I’m putting my potential customers on the defensive by reaching out to them frequently, then I’m really not servicing my own business very well. If I had a sales team, they would probably be telling me, “You got to do weekly emails, monthly emails.” But that’s just not my business model.
Erin Sparks: 00:17:58 No, absolutely. On behalf of clients, there certainly is a relationship component to their existing customers that is certainly stoked by email. And not getting into the nuances or the schema of email marketing, but the formulary of what they’re doing, this whole audience thing, boy, sounds like an overreach. Don’t you think?
PJ Christie: 00:18:18 Well, MailChimp is overreaching. I can tell you that I’ve been given lists myself, back to the topic of ethics, where someone purchased it, they load it into MailChimp, they give me the feed, I load it into Facebook Audiences and after the Cambridge Analytica, Facebook Audiences, they’re just like, “Nope. We’re not going to let you target these people.”
PJ Christie: 00:18:45 Yeah, I think it’s … Yet MailChimp, in the sales of it, I don’t mean to disparage MailChimp, it’s a good product and a lot of people do well with it, but they’re talking about the ability to use your audience to do re-marketing in Facebook and Google Ads. It’s problematic.
Erin Sparks: 00:19:04 You better believe it. We’re going to have the article in the show notes, all these articles in the show notes. Please check those out because there’s always news coming out of this show, but we certainly want to point out, with this show, ethical references. Because, man, there’s a number of them we’re talking about today.
Erin Sparks: 00:19:25 Last on the list, I had to squeeze a fourth one in, the FTC takes action on companies barring consumers from writing negative reviews. Now, I don’t even know how in the world this is happening here. Included in contracts, on agreements, that bar your customer from writing a negative online review is not only a bad form but it’s also against the law. So last week the FTC issued orders against three businesses for including illegal non-disparagement language in their contracts with consumers that attempt to limit negative reviews. This is the first time the FTC has actually taken enforcement action against the use of disparagement clauses that violate the Consumer Review Fairness Act.
Erin Sparks: 00:20:07 So, highly recommend digging into this article. So the basics is that these companies were basically trying to legally hold people from giving any type of negative review in the space. And this goes towards our EAT discussion and certainly goes into our ethic discussion today. But PJ, what are your two cents’ worth on that particular ruling?
PJ Christie: 00:20:32 Well, the FTC, I applaud their overall effort and their overall mission, but I’m not certain that this is where I want them spending their time.
Erin Sparks: 00:20:44 You better believe it, because this is a slippery slope. Because if they get into the space of-
PJ Christie: 00:20:52 Policing free speech. They’re not really policing free speech in that sense, they’re really trying to uphold a level of fairness in the user agreements, which I am a big believer in clear user agreements. But there’s bigger fish to fry right now at the FTC.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:13 Absolutely. The penalties are minor for this if the company agrees to file ongoing compliance reports. When the FTC issues a final [inaudible 00:21:22] or any additional violations will result in civil fines up to $42,000.
PJ Christie: 00:21:28 Which will hurt a lot of the small businesses.
Jacob Mann: 00:21:29 That’s per incident.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:31 That’s per incident.
Jacob Mann: 00:21:32 Per incident.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:33 That’s certainly going to take away that percentage that you’re putting towards your marketing efforts, right? Stay away. Don’t do that.
Erin Sparks: 00:21:41 Along that, just to chime in there, we don’t know how many small business owners and marketers actually listen to the show, but never solicit a review with a transaction. Do not ask for this, give a review and give a gift card or gas card, do not do it. These are the kind of things that can get you in a world of trouble. Not only legally but also in the space of this EAT realm and the SEO realm that we’re in. It’s going to look bad on you as soon as Google sniffs that out.
PJ Christie: 00:22:12 Sure, yeah.
Erin Sparks: 00:22:13 All right, so all this and much more over at edgeofthewebradio.com. You can follow all the trending topics as well as all the links to these articles. Please jump over there and check it out as you see the different shows coming through. And we certainly want to have you jump in and sign up for the newsletter. The newsletter from the Edge is free of charge and we’re piping all this news, all the hot nuggets of information, right into your inbox, as well as talk about who interviewed and who’s upcoming on the show. Just wanted to make sure that you knew about that. Text to the number 22828 the word, “EDGETALK,” you can do that. Don’t do it while you’re driving please. You can also go to edgeofthewebradio.com and sign up for the newsletter right there at the top of the page.
Erin Sparks: 00:22:59 All right, follow all the trending topics and much more over at Edge of the Web Radio, but now let’s deep dive with this week’s featured guest.
Speaker 2: 00:23:07 Now it’s time for Edge of the Web featured interview with PJ Christie, founder and CEO of Search & Convert, Incorporated.
Erin Sparks: 00:23:16 Dude, the deep voice guy introduces PJ.
PJ Christie: 00:23:20 That’s gravity.
Erin Sparks: 00:23:21 He’s got some clout. All right, PJ, we’ve known each other for a long time. I want to introduce you to our listeners. PJ Christie is the founder and CEO of Search & Convert, Inc., and refers to himself as a reluctant CEO. PJ actually works with business owners and agencies to provide SEO, PPC, landing pages and web analytics. So that’s the official bio right there. A reluctant CEO. Why are you a reluctant CEO, PJ?
PJ Christie: 00:23:51 It was just never my goal. When I think back to the start of my career in the digital field and where I am now, I always wanted to just be … I would have been happy to just be a freelancer. I really like the freelancer model where I do work, you hand me a check, I do work, you hand me a check. There’s something really pure about that model and having that direct connection with my clients.
Erin Sparks: 00:24:25 There’s a value of the service that’s direct right there. You’re getting appreciated as well.
PJ Christie: 00:24:31 Yeah, if somebody is thoughtful enough to hand you a check to do work, I have always taken that very seriously. They trust me to do work on their business, they trust me to guide them through important decisions about marketing and about their optimization.
PJ Christie: 00:24:55 To say why I consider myself a reluctant CEO, I never took a business class, I didn’t get an MBA. I’m not particularly good at hiring and firing people. But I have a … Here in Austin I’m considered one of the top SEO providers and there’s just a point where a business needs to be built around that. But I’m also the sole owner of my company and I can tell you this, if I were interviewing CEOs and somebody with my background came and turned in his bonafides for the position, I wouldn’t hire me. And yet I’m the only one dumb enough to do it. So that’s what I mean.
PJ Christie: 00:25:39 And coming from this mindset where I’m really interested in doing direct work for pay, there’s a lot of time that has to be spent when you’re the CEO of a company, so much … There’s just so much-
Erin Sparks: 00:25:57 Annoying work. Let’s just call a spade a spade. It’s annoying work. It doesn’t connect to the passion of why you started a company to begin with.
PJ Christie: 00:26:04 Exactly, exactly. So for me, I’ve got a great time, I’ve got a fractional CFO, I’ve got a financial ops, I’ve got an account management team, I’ve got service providers to plug in to do work, they always have my back. There is some stuff that I just can’t find a person more senior in SEO than I am. So I continue to do my own SEO work. I think that a lot of people don’t really consider the CEO as the lead service provider, and yet here I am. That’s just the model that I have.
PJ Christie: 00:26:42 I’m not certain if I’m going to be CEO of this company forever. Somebody told me once that the best job to have in any company is the VP of business development. So maybe someone is out there who’s going to take over as CEO and then I can just go to have a cushy account to take people out to dinner and then just swoop in [crosstalk 00:27:04]
Erin Sparks: 00:27:05 So the true PJ is shining through here. He doesn’t want to do all the paperwork. He wants to schmooze.
PJ Christie: 00:27:13 I like to talk about this stuff.
Erin Sparks: 00:27:15 Yeah, absolutely.
PJ Christie: 00:27:17 But really I love my clients, I love the work that I’m doing. I derive a lot of personal value out of it.
Erin Sparks: 00:27:23 So, this begins our conversation here, because you and I both have a passion for this particular service inside of digital marketing. From what you’re talking about and what you’re saying, you can hear that PJ wants to take very good care of his clients and wants to be able to provide the best value. Where we’re going to open up here is understanding the history of SEO particularly, and what has happened in the world of ethics over the years. Give this a couple back stories of how you perceive SEO and then we’ll come up to today’s date.
PJ Christie: 00:28:10 Yeah, sure. Well, SEO is something that I found myself getting into by accident. We were building websites there in Indianapolis when I was with Smallbox, and people were saying, “That’s great. But nobody can find us.”
PJ Christie: 00:28:27 And so we were doing this great work and our clients were asking for the visibility, but when it came for us to put a piece of paper that said, “This is the five things we’re going to do to improve your SEO.”
PJ Christie: 00:28:39 They would say, “Yeah, I don’t want to spend $500 on it.”
PJ Christie: 00:28:43 And so there at Smallbox, what we began to do is just we began to throw three to five hours of free SEO into every project that we did. So we’re talking about 2007, 2008, and as we were doing that, what was interesting is that we would put at the bottom of the screen there, “Indianapolis web design Smallbox,” and before you knew it we were number one for Indianapolis web design because it was a lot of juicy backlinks.
Erin Sparks: 00:29:15 Yeah, it pissed me off actually. Keep on going.
PJ Christie: 00:29:19 Yeah. We were competitors but we were friendly competitors.
Erin Sparks: 00:29:24 Absolutely.
PJ Christie: 00:29:24 It was always so much business around SEO that it wasn’t like anybody in the industry was going hungry for lack of work.
Erin Sparks: 00:29:33 Right, right, right. Absolutely.
PJ Christie: 00:29:35 But so then the funny thing that happened is that once we were number one for Indianapolis web design or any of the many, many permutations of it, we ended up with a sales problem and the phone was ringing and it was my job to pick up the phone, answer, talk to people about the kind of business that they wanted to do and, of course, you know what they were looking for. But honestly if we would not have had the robust sales approach at the time to take advantage of that number one position that we had achieved, Smallbox would have remained a small niche provider of web design services.
PJ Christie: 00:30:15 And it was a unique time. We were able to grow to being … I don’t know what any of the numbers were, it’s been so long, but we definitely made our footprint. We definitely made our presence known in that market. But it was also at the time, you’re talking about how things have changed and where we are now, you have to point to an actual search term that led to an actual sale. Back then Google didn’t consider all of the keyword searches private. Of course I’m saying stuff that you already know, but for the benefit of-
Erin Sparks: 00:30:48 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Keep on going.
PJ Christie: 00:30:50 Other people who are in here. Once it became more difficult to show this keyword, this sale, this interaction, I think that people began to wonder again what is really the value of SEO? What is the right amount that I’m supposed to be putting into it? Because they couldn’t actually show any longer the sales. The e-commerce companies couldn’t directly show the sale from that term.
PJ Christie: 00:31:17 And that’s really when I began running ads, I had already been doing SEO for five years. So it made a lot of sense for me to move into ads, where I could provide a little bit more transparency into your spending this, you’re getting this out of it. I’m one of the few people who will run the organic campaigns alongside the paid campaigns. And that gets us to where we are now where you’d begin to be looking at issues of multitouch and first click attribution, last click attribution. That’s really where I set myself apart in my approach today.
Erin Sparks: 00:31:57 There is an absolutely natural pathway to advertising in the PPC space. And there’s also a great testing ground for terms to be able to turn around and be able to build an SEO campaign against that. But the SEO as an industry has gotten a black eye for numerous years about being considered snake oil, ethereal, that a business owner just doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know what you’re doing and thus can’t trust those numbers.
Erin Sparks: 00:32:35 We also know that there’s been a lot of malfeasance, for lack of a better word, in this industry for a long time. A lot of black hat stuff. A lot of things that have taken down sites. In fact, there was even, about 10 years ago, Google was actually penalizing the companies, the clients of certain SEO companies, and if it knew that you had actually gotten work from that you were getting sucked down in the whirlpool as well, deindexed sites. There was such an unethical execution because it was gamifying. People were trying to hack the system and find that exploitable trick or technique.
PJ Christie: 00:33:19 Effective techniques that were rendered ineffective through intentional decisions on Google’s part.
Erin Sparks: 00:33:26 Absolutely. Google was a bit late to the game, but as soon as they started seeing it and they started investing time, all of those spammy techniques truly got swatted down through all the different algorithm changes and the penalties that came from it. For our audience there’s a back history of SEO and what has transpired. But getting to today, there is still this stigma inside of SEO and there’s also a lot of ethical quandaries of how you should do it and what you should do in the marketplace. So you’ve been talking about ethics in marketing but specifically ethics in SEO. Can you give us a key concept of why there are challenges in SEO as opposed to other digital marketing platforms or digital marketing techniques?
PJ Christie: 00:34:27 Sure. Well, I think that there’s a number of people that say that they know SEO. And there is no certification. I’m certified in Google Ads. There is no certification for SEO. And I think that that’s fair. There’s no certification to play guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band either. And so it ends up-
Erin Sparks: 00:34:52 I like the parallel though, that’s a good parallel.
PJ Christie: 00:34:55 Yeah. I played guitar in a rock ‘n’ roll band.
Erin Sparks: 00:35:00 Absolutely.
PJ Christie: 00:35:01 But just as an example, when someone comes to me, I see the proposals that my competitors are pitching. And one of the reasons why I sometimes get that benefit is because the people trust me in the sales process because I’m so straightforward. I’m looking at what’s in their Google Analytics, I’m looking at what their opportunity is. I’m doing the due diligence on the research side. And then they can’t believe the kinds of prices that I charge when they say, “Well, we were just getting ready to sign on with this company and it’s a six month agreement and it’s $3,000 a month and they tell me that they’re going to do a content strategy and they’re going to write all these blog posts.” And the thing is they never get around to doing all that work anyway. But they certainly get you on autopay and paying those checks. The autopay is one of the red flags [crosstalk 00:36:06]
Erin Sparks: 00:36:06 Absolutely. And that type of back story that companies now have, they have predominantly … Again, we talked about it, 50% of the businesses don’t have marketing plans. But of the other 50%, they’ve been burnt by SEO companies for a heck of a long time. I’ve come across companies that have tried three or four different organizations and coming up goose eggs on a regular basis. So there’s right now a money grab and it’s housed in the concept of digital marketing, but they try to pull through a core concept of SEO and content and they’re just not delivering. So there is a larger concept of continued abuse of clients out there that, one, aren’t educated, don’t know what they’re supposed to be getting, don’t know how to vet the companies that they’re actually working with, don’t know how to measure the results. But they’re being exploited again and again and again. So with this-
PJ Christie: 00:37:18 You just got to walk in to the same room that your low quality competitors walk into and at a certain point it’s up to me as a business owner to say, “Hey, look, I’m different. I’ve been at it longer. I’ve got a longer track record. I don’t need to do those tactics and the results that I get can easily be understood by you if you, as the business owner, are willing to go into your Google Analytics and look at everything with me.”
Erin Sparks: 00:37:48 Yeah, there it is. You got to play from the same hymn book, right?
PJ Christie: 00:37:51 Yeah. So often you talk about the small- and medium-sized businesses that don’t have any marketing plan, the thing is is nobody is going to come in and save your small-, medium-sized business except you. There is no SEO person who is going to sell your product for you. All that they can do is just get you the visibility, give you the chance to compete.
PJ Christie: 00:38:19 But that business owner still has to compete and if that business owner is looking at the results and saying, “Well, I’m number one in my market for my brand, people come to my site and we’re just not turning them into customers.” Is that on the SEO or is that on the business ops? I think it’s the business ops. Those owners really need to take their own accountability for their results. Some of them don’t like to hear that.
PJ Christie: 00:38:49 I sit down at the same table and the last guy who was in there said, “Yeah, well, we’re going to increase your traffic by 40% and that’s going to be a linear result on the conversions that you get.” They never even talk about a privacy policy or a no spam policy attached to the contact form, or any of the number of trust factors that go into the web design. And so they bring in the SEO at the last minute to try to fix problems that were created by the designers or by the developers. Again, it’s the business owner’s responsibility.
PJ Christie: 00:39:31 I think that to the extent that sometimes SEO gets a bad rap because there’s people who are saying that they do it that don’t know how to do it. But more importantly it’s not built in the foundational web development for designers, developers and business owners.
Erin Sparks: 00:39:50 Amen to that. Amen to that. Literally basic principles of SEO, the basics, making sure your headlines are there, making sure the meta descriptions there. These are basic, basic, basic concepts.
PJ Christie: 00:40:00 I’ve had three times this year, Erin, and I’m not joking, where the developer has launched the site and just didn’t uncheck that box that says [crosstalk 00:40:07]. What are you supposed to do? Where’s the snake oil?
PJ Christie: 00:40:15 I come in and I say, “I will uncheck that box for you for free.”
Erin Sparks: 00:40:18 There it is. Unbelievable. And I think I was talking over PJ. For our listeners, there’s a little box inside of WordPress that tells the bots not to spider the content. You’re absolutely right. And whenever sites get launched like that and you see on the Google Index that the robots can’t spider this particular site and you don’t know why you’re just not being seen, you got to look at these basic things in this era. It just gets ignored by developers. So there needs to be basic SEO education in place there.
Erin Sparks: 00:40:54 We’re experiencing a lot of charlatans still. We’re getting clients coming across the board that still reference engagements of, hey, I’m paying $300 a month for this person or this particular engagement and we’re running around with our hair on fire going, “Do you know what you’re getting?”
Erin Sparks: 00:41:15 And you talk about this in a presentation about different roles that SEO has, one of them is the physician role. And we use it as an analogy here all the time at Site. Many times the SEO role, you’re actually reviewing and seeing the patient, which is the client, and seeing a lot of problems with what they have and what they’re showing to the world. And you bring that to the client and there’s a decision that needs to be made. And if the client doesn’t embrace your audit, your review, and say, “Hey, there’s some deep work here that needs to be done,” and all of the sudden the client doesn’t care about that. What do you do as an SEO? Where is your ethical line there?
PJ Christie: 00:42:02 Well, I’ve got one right now where through no fault of their own they have a lot of pages that are being automatically generated from a database, scores and teams. And so I ran an audit and they had 200,000 identical title tags. It’s going to be an expensive technical problem to solve. I think that it’s easier for a company to say, “I don’t really see how that’s hurting us. I don’t see how 200,000 duplicate title tags is hurting us.”
PJ Christie: 00:42:39 And all you can say is, “Once you embrace technology and fix that problem, it’s just a little bit of software that can fix that problem for good, and then also retiring pages whose value is no longer existing. The league is over. Everybody’s gone home, they’ve all moved on with their lives. That page can go away. And it focuses your SEO on your most important pages.”
PJ Christie: 00:43:08 But it’s hard because the SEO is as much technical as it is creative. If we’re going to content our way through the problem then we also need to technical our way through the problem too. And it really just takes a balanced approach.
PJ Christie: 00:43:28 So, for me, the kinds of clients that do well with my program, the one that I’m referring to, they’re like, “Great, let’s just get in there and fix it.” And then the ones who aren’t are probably going to move on to maybe a lower cost provider that tells them a little bit more about what they want to hear. That’s fine. I think that there’s room for all kinds of businesses, all kinds of providers.
Erin Sparks: 00:43:52 Absolutely, absolutely.
PJ Christie: 00:43:54 I’m from the, you talk about agile, fail fast, learn quickly and move on. If somebody has hired me and they think that they can move on with a better provider, I say move fast. Just rip the band-aid off and go.
Erin Sparks: 00:44:11 Absolutely. We’re talking about the education of clients and of businesses that hire. There is a role you play to educate a new prospect of what to expect. Again, you’re debunking what lies have been told in this space is that SEO is not a short-term gain. It’s not a game to be able to get out there and get something very quickly. You got to build trust, you got to build authority, you got to build value out there. Whenever a company is trying to build business quickly, SEO, although it’s going to be a high payoff they just don’t have time or they’re going to hire somebody that promises them that they can get into certain spaces with a sizable risk to the domain they’re working on.
PJ Christie: 00:45:00 Yeah. I was just having a discussion online in my community and another freelancer was asking the question, “My client is asking what’s the ROI for organic search.” Again, these are just SEO providers, they go back to their usual responses of you need to see the data, you need to see what their baseline performance is.
PJ Christie: 00:45:26 I came in with a long view of it. Given a long-tail, all SEO can be revenue positive. All organic SEO dollars spent can be revenue positive. It’s a question of is it one day, one month, ten years? They can all be considered positive as long as the business proves itself viable for the amount of time that that window is open. I like the idea that SEO is the kind of thing that will grow and build versus ads, which evaporate into dust as soon as someone clicks on it.
Erin Sparks: 00:46:07 It’s either renting or owning it.
PJ Christie: 00:46:09 That’s right. I’m a renter myself, personally I’m a renter. But it helps keep my expenses even so I can afford to run this business while I know exactly how much money I need to make each month. [crosstalk 00:46:25] People who own homes, they have their hot water heater blow up or [crosstalk 00:46:30] call the landlord. Yeah, given a long enough tail, all organic SEO, I believe, can be positive ROI. But that business has to be viable.
Erin Sparks: 00:46:43 You’re absolutely right. When it comes down to not only best practices or executing good best standards SEO, how does an SEO hold them ethically whenever they’re asked to do certain things that challenge not only reasonableness but being asked to do certain things in the SEO world based on who you’re actually doing the work for and seeing some dishonesty out there? You gave a couple examples about expunging criminal records for clients and being able to push down certain-
PJ Christie: 00:47:27 Yeah, that was a big one. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Erin Sparks: 00:47:29 So give us some dilemmas that an SEO can find themselves in and what should they do in those spaces?
PJ Christie: 00:47:37 Yeah, well, first of all, I was not born into a family that had a lot of … A strong foundation of ethics. In that sense that there’s an ethical code that goes along with being in the military. There’s an ethical code that goes along with being a physician. You have to commit to holding up to certain standards. My family were hippies and all my heroes were rock ‘n’ rollers. I wasn’t very well suited to ever initiate a discussion about ethics in any sense.
PJ Christie: 00:48:19 I only began doing it when I realized that South by Southwest occurs here in Austin every year and I’m looking at the titles of these presentations and most of them are just the same stuff, year after year. It’s the same topics. And I was like, “Nobody is talking about how to treat their customers fairly. Nobody is talking about how you want to build a website and at the end of the client says, ‘That’s awesome. What do we do next?’ Instead at the end of it they’re like, ‘I hope I never have to do that again.'” There’s reasons for that. I began to look. Where are the guidelines for people, not just in SEO but in marketing broadly, and then applied to SEO specifically?
PJ Christie: 00:49:10 The amazing thing is that the American Marketing Association has a code of conduct and not one person has ever read it. I hope that we can share the link to the American Marketing Association code of conduct because this is our hippocratic oath. These are the rules that we’re supposed to live by. The first three that they offer as ethical norms is, first, do no harm, foster trust in the marketing system and embrace ethical values. If you’re in SEO, what does do no harm mean? It means don’t use these black hat tactics that are going throw your clients into the secondary index, because a lot of SEO people don’t even know what the secondary index is. They don’t know the difference between black hat and white hat tactics.
PJ Christie: 00:50:05 Fostering trust in the marketing system, Erin, this is what you and I are doing right now. We’re trying to run right at this problem that we’re perceived as snake oil salesmen in this industry, and we want to begin to foster trust in this by pointing out the difference between harmful tactics and successful tactics.
PJ Christie: 00:50:28 And then the third one of just embracing ethical values. This starts with us as men, us as humans, as being the kind of humans and business owners that our children can look to and that our communities can look to and that our clients can look to. And understanding that the core values of honesty and responsibility and fairness and transparency, this is right out of the American Marketing Association’s codes of conduct. And I would venture to say that if you ask 100 marketers, 100 of them have never even looked at or digested the meaning of this code of conduct.
Erin Sparks: 00:51:08 We were actually part of the American Marketers’ Association for a lot [crosstalk 00:51:11] I’ve never seen it either. But it sounds fantastic and it should be embraced and it should be championed by top evangelists in the digital marketing space, especially when it comes down to SEO. It comes across into social marketing and other tactics that can actually really be of harm. Yeah, we are certainly going to have that link out there.
Erin Sparks: 00:51:39 PJ, there’s this other factor of responsibility to yourself as well as an SEO is that taking on business that will force you into breaking some of those mandates that you just spoke of. When do you pull back? When do you-
PJ Christie: 00:52:04 How do you say no, right?
Erin Sparks: 00:52:06 Yeah. They’ve got a $10,000 check for you and they just want you to push down some negative connotations about their religious organization, right?
PJ Christie: 00:52:14 Okay, yeah, fair enough. Well, so the way that I do it is when I’m doing customer acquisition I ask myself four questions. The first is, is the project interesting? Because if it’s not interesting they can find someone else. I am busy enough. Through having the reputation and being the service provider that I am, I’m busy enough where if a project isn’t interesting then I don’t have to do it, which is a great position to be in.
Erin Sparks: 00:52:43 Fantastic.
PJ Christie: 00:52:43 And, honestly, not everybody is in that position. It’s easy, I have the privilege of being in that position and there’s a lot of people scrambling around who are like, “I’ll take a project that’s not interesting.” Go ahead. Go ahead and you can have this one.
PJ Christie: 00:52:57 The second one then is are they ethical? For that it’s I look at it as there’s two ways of looking at that question. First is situational and then the other one is foundational. I think that foundational ethics, we know them when we see them. That’s that part where your gut says, “This doesn’t feel right.” These are foundational things where it’s like, I don’t agree with … I’m not a consumer of porn, just to throw that on the table.
Erin Sparks: 00:53:29 I was going to ask you that actually later in the show, so you beat me to it, PJ.
PJ Christie: 00:53:37 I’m not particularly political and I don’t really ascribe to any single religious affiliation. For me it’s easy to say foundationally if you’re asking me to do that work, it doesn’t feel right, I’m not really into it. But the other part that’s, I think, a little bit harder to go with your gut on is this idea of a situational ethical problem.
PJ Christie: 00:54:04 Something situational might be someone is backing up the money truck, as I like to say, and saying, “Here’s the money, do this thing.” And then I have to ask one of my … I’m working on it, I have my team. Maybe my team has a reason why they have a foundational objection to something that’s been done or something that we’re being asked to do. I’m not going to get their best work if they’re being asked to work on something that they are actually opposed to. And so I think that there’s a part where when you’re running an organization with multiple team members, you have to go to them, and I do it one-to-one because it doesn’t really work to ask five people in a room, “Hey, what do you think about” [crosstalk 00:54:50]
Erin Sparks: 00:54:50 You can’t really do that in the group, can you?
PJ Christie: 00:54:52 No, no. It’s not fair to the people around you. An example that I like to give for situational is I had a client and I was just a role player, I was not the main guy. I was brought in by a friend and someone who I respected and the client was using bikinis basically to sell a product. I’m not thrilled with trying to use sex to sell Hi-Fi audio equipment. I realize that it can be effective to use that tactic but we had the client convinced that it was a luxury brand, you don’t sell luxury through bikinis. They bought in our strategy, we’re going through the strategy of really going for a more mysterious effect, which builds this luxury value.
PJ Christie: 00:55:47 Well, in time the strategist who came up with that was my friend who brought me in, they eliminated this person and they wanted me to take over her responsibilities. I didn’t necessarily think through the ethical part of what was, in legal terms, she was being circumvented. Now I have a policy of non-circumvention on projects but here I was doing what I thought was best for my company, thought what I was doing was best for my client. And it was only after having that discussion with the person who had been circumvented that I realized I am in the middle of a situational ethical dilemma and it matters what I decide to do next.
PJ Christie: 00:56:40 So I break down that second question about is there a foundational reason to not do something, is there a situational reason that makes this not feel right or that complicates it. Because I will choose a colleague or friend over a paycheck any time. That’s just the way I’m wired. And it’s served me well.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:01 Very good.
PJ Christie: 00:57:03 But the other two questions are just can we be effective and do we need the money. Because sometimes if you really need the money [crosstalk 00:57:11] through some of those situational problems and figure out other ways to, in this case, cut in a percentage of the deal to the person who’s been wronged. There’s always money fixes a lot of problems.
Erin Sparks: 00:57:27 So certainly cultural ethics when it comes down to business and in marketing. Again, [inaudible 00:57:33] wrap up the SEO’s ethical dilemma is because there are going to be scenarios in which no one’s going to know what you’re doing besides you and you know that you can actually turn that dial and rain manna from heaven on that client. And that’s where it really gets down to … Because all the other digital marketing techniques are overt. They are consumer-based, they’re digestion of content and imagery and you can’t get away with much that’s salacious and what have you.
Erin Sparks: 00:58:09 But SEO tactics, literally you can do that in the dark of night and be able to get away with something that most everybody is not educated about to even call you out on it. And that’s one of the things that grinds my gears in the SEO field because we see it all the time, even today with such penalties that are out there on links and spam. You see that come across and you know they knew what they were doing. And you know that in the realm of algorithm era that we have right now, penalties galore, to do that to a client just for a quick check is abhorrent and you want to be able to get that education out to be able to run litmus test against these companies that are out there and have those small-, medium-sized businesses armed with the truth.
PJ Christie: 00:59:05 Yeah. [crosstalk 00:59:05]
Erin Sparks: 00:59:05 I was on a soapbox there.
PJ Christie: 00:59:07 We all have to operate within a community of providers. And to the extent that we can elevate our own industry, the work that we do, the types of things that we’ll say yes to, the kinds of results that our clients can expect, we are in a community that will be positively impacted by our own standards, by holding ourselves to high standards.
Erin Sparks: 00:59:35 Absolutely. I certainly want to reflect on the AMA standards. I think that’s a great place to be able to call attention, almost like a touchstone, for digital marketers. Look, we do have a bible, we do have a mandate to work from. And it should be part … for companies hiring agencies, they should be asking that question. Do you know of these particular principles? That’s great information, PJ.
Erin Sparks: 01:00:06 I know we could probably have a conversation for the next five hours about these topics. But from a wrap up standpoint, what can you do … How can you guide SEOs that are getting challenged with certain dilemmas? There’s a paycheck out there, they know that they can shortcut. Give us a few words of wisdom to summarize what we’ve talked about today.
PJ Christie: 01:00:31 Well, please take me as an example that it is possible for you to not just, as an SEO, hold yourself up to higher ethical standards but you can also lead conversations with clients and with prospects around your ethical standards. The really great thing that happens is when you hold yourself to those higher standards and begin articulating them, I believe in karma. The great thing that happens is that your prospects and your clients respect that, they elevate themselves when you are having these conversations. They elevate themselves to your level and the people that you’re talking to, they elevate themselves to your level. It produces benefits that you can’t predict.
PJ Christie: 01:01:18 I’m here to say that my three biggest clients that I’ve gotten have come in because they are concerned about the ethical execution of search engine optimization. And I say, “Guess what? I’m the only person talking about it.” I’m the only person in my community who is standing up and speaking in front of people, telling them how to avoid using coercive tactics, how to strive for the needs of their clients. Just the ability to hold your ground, make that statement with confidence. The people who you’re surrounded by will see that, they’ll respect that and they’ll respond with their best selves. And it will bring out the best in you too.
Erin Sparks: 01:02:02 It’s very similar to the long burn of SEO. You got to wait and it will foster great results. If you’re ethical, yeah, you won’t get the short-term turnaround on cash, but it will benefit you long-term.
PJ Christie: 01:02:16 You’re going to make room for the right client who will come in and appreciate your effort.
Erin Sparks: 01:02:21 There you are. Very good. Well, PJ, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you today about this. This is a very important topic that does not get that much focus at all. We want to always wrap up with our guests asking a couple quick questions. What really bugs you about your industry right now? We had an hour talking about what bugs you, but specifically what bugs you about your industry?
PJ Christie: 01:02:47 I’m really at the point where nothing bugs me about it anymore. I’ve really created my own reality.
Erin Sparks: 01:02:53 Wow.
PJ Christie: 01:02:55 I’ve built a great ecosystem of high quality people that come through. The part that I wish would change is for business owners to put the responsibility for ROI on the service providers and not accept the responsibility for their own … They don’t know what to invest, they don’t know what the ROI should be, they’re not looking at data. That’s the big one. There’s so much data available that a business owner or a service provider who is not looking at the data is trying to go by their gut. It’s a recipe [crosstalk 01:03:32]
Erin Sparks: 01:03:33 Responsibility for the business owner to know what they should be measuring. And honestly it’s on them to be able to have that knowledge as they’re interacting with different digital marketing firms. Conversely, hey, what excites you about your industry right now?
PJ Christie: 01:03:49 My God, this is the most innovative time to be in digital marketing. There’s no question about it. Of course I’m on the ad side, I’m seeing so much innovation on the ad side. Seeing so many good products that come along that give you access to data. So many good platforms that within five minutes you’ve suddenly got the same data that the big boys are using.
PJ Christie: 01:04:12 We’re in a place where there’s so much consolidation at the top, you’ve got these large companies who are just this big footprint on top of everything. But it’s never been more democratic for somebody to come in with a well run operation compete because of innovation and data.
Erin Sparks: 01:04:30 My gosh, the tools now are amazing and they’re no longer out of reach and they all have great unique perspectives if you know how to read them. Some fantastic data, especially Majestic. Majestic is incredible from an inbound link perspective, as a side note.
PJ Christie: 01:04:52 I’m loving Raven Tools. I’ve re-fallen in love with Raven Tools again. I’ve got this really great tool that we built right on the Google API. Again, technology and innovation, with these APIs there’s a lot of great information out there if you just know how to query.
Erin Sparks: 01:05:10 Absolutely. Well, to finally give you a little bit promotion, is there anything that we can promote for you right now?
PJ Christie: 01:05:19 Just if you’re looking for a company that cares about you, give us a call. I use the Bill Murray tactic, you call me and leave a message and give me your pitch, and if it sounds interesting I’ll call you back.
Erin Sparks: 01:05:37 You have created your own reality over there, haven’t you?
PJ Christie: 01:05:39 I know. Well, Austin is the people’s republic of Austin here.
Erin Sparks: 01:05:44 Very cool. Well, we certainly want to give our listeners how to get a hold of you. On Twitter, your handle is searchn, the letter N, convert, Facebook, Search & Convert, LinkedIn, search-and-convert, and Instagram-
PJ Christie: 01:05:58 So much consistency.
Erin Sparks: 01:06:00 I was going to ask you about that. And Instagram, Search & Convert. Final words for our digital marketing audience today?
PJ Christie: 01:06:07 Just elevate and enjoy the benefits.
Erin Sparks: 01:06:10 And don’t wait 30 years before you connect with your friends.
PJ Christie: 01:06:14 That’s right. When I get to town, I want you, me and Karen to go out for dinner. I got some nice restaurant clients downtown [crosstalk 01:06:22]
Erin Sparks: 01:06:23 We love to have you, PJ. Thanks for being part of the show today. We certainly want to champion our guests on a regular basis. Thanks to everybody listening to Edge of the Web Radio. Special thank you to our colleagues at Site Strategics for our ongoing production. Be sure to check out all of the information over at edgeofthewebradio.com, that’s edgeofthewebradio.com.
Erin Sparks: 01:06:45 We’re going to be talking to a couple guests here next week. Jacob, who are we talking to? That’s right, Jenny Marvin, we’re going to have Jenny Marvin from Search Engine Land on the horn with us next Thursday.
Jacob Mann: 01:07:00 We’re going to be talking about machine learning and automation.
Erin Sparks: 01:07:03 That’s right, machine learning is going to be the topic. So you want to check in. Jenny’s never been on the show before and we’re certainly eager to have her because literally we’ve been speaking through her articles for the last seven years. So it’s going to be great to be able to have her on board. Thanks for listening.
Erin Sparks: 01:07:17 Be sure to rate us and review us out there. We love to have your support and that’s how we get our name to the top of the list. So let us know how we’re doing, be sure to join the newsletter and we’ll talk to you next week. Do not be a piece of cyber driftwood. Bye bye.
