Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why You Should Care? with Bobby Machado
We kick off this new Digital Marketing Series on SEO with an introduction to SEO. Who should care and why they should care. Bobby talks about why we want to focus on SEO for the long-run approach to driving traffic to our website. SEO is a must if you have a business webpage. Check back for Episode 2 On-Site Strategies to Increase Visibility.
About our guest:
Bobby is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Signa Marketing, CEO at Sector 7 Apps, and a partner at Quick Job Products with his brother Cesar Machado.
As a kid, Bobby always had an interest in business such as providing landscaping services, training horses, or reselling “Tang” back to his parents during 5 grade. His experience in the digital world began when he taught himself how to code websites in high school, which turned into a way for Bobby to make money on the side while racing motocross, which remains as one of his passions to this day.
After he stopped competitively racing at the age of 22, Bobby decided to focus his full-time efforts in web development as a freelance web developer, which then introduced him into the digital marketing world. Being the analytical and creative type, Bobby developed a passion for digital marketing and data.
After working at an automotive digital marketing agency as a paid media specialist, managing a little over $300,000 per month in Google Ad spend for several auto dealerships in the United States, Bobby combined my passion for business and launched Signa Marketing.
Signa Marketing currently makes up about 70% of Bobby’s time and he enjoys hosting a Signa Marketing show named “Blueprint”, in which he answers any and all user-submitted questions on how to market their business online. New episodes are released on Signa Marketing’s YouTube Channel.
Overall, Bobby enjoys being immersed in anything “digital” that has a positive impact on people and humanity.
Signa Marketing Website
Listen to more episode of The Business of Business Podcast here
Full Transcript Below
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. I’m Roy. Hey, we’re going to introduce you again today to Bobby Machado. He is with Cigna marketing. We are going to start our second series. It’s digital marketing series, and we’re going to talk about SEO. We’ll have about four episodes. That’ll help step us through this process and already in our pre-show talk, I’m already feeling beat down. Uh, this is one area that I know that I struggle with. I know a lot of people do, you know, wondering what is the right thing to do? Um, how can we do it better? And so Bobby, we appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us and talk about this. This is going to be a great series.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (00:40):
Oh, absolutely. No happy to do these. These are always
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (00:43):
Fun. Okay. Well, great. Well, um, I guess let’s talk about, you know. In this first episode we’re just going to get with the basics, is that, you know, what is SEO? Why should we even care about it? And some of us that have trouble spelling SEO, you know. How, how are we going to be able to carry this out? So we’ll just let you start at the very beginning and go from there.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (01:05):
Awesome. Sounds great. Yeah. So, so why SEO? So, uh, at the end of the day. If someone has a question, a need, uh, especially if it’s an urgent need or anything like that, uh. It is, I mean, almost second nature now to just go to a search engine to find your answer or the help that you’re seeking for. And so that’s why from a business perspective, um, as business owners.
If we’re looking for really efficient ways to get in front of our end consumer and, uh, in a channel where there’s high urgency, we need, you know, that lead is hot or warmer in that sense. Uh, then that’s why search engine optimization can be so powerful for a business because you’re actually getting in front of, uh, users organically that are actually actively searching for your product or service or the answer to the issue. Um, and so that’s why SEO is so important and why it can be so beneficial for businesses.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (01:55):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think also too, you know, maybe 10, 12, 15 years ago, it was much more simple because, you know, you, you may be one of the few people in your space and I think this is why it’s grown to be so important is that there’s just so much noise out there that we have to be able to separate our good content that’s meaningful from just the noise and the clickbait of other things that are out there.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (02:22):
Oh yeah, for sure. And, and search engines. I mean, that’s why they’re there, they’re always constantly making updates to the algorithm now literally on a daily, even testing portions of it and so on, because their end goal is to meet the end consumer and the end consumer is to start. Sure. Yeah. So the more relevant and Quaker, uh, that these answers can be given to an end user. And that’s how the search engine knows it’s doing a great job.
And so, um, and it’s always looking at human behavior of how, how us humans are, you know, trying to figure out these issues or find the right provider or stuff like that, that they can better match, you know, our though. So yeah, but that’s why SEO is so important because, but it’s also why, you know, a lot of businesses that get into SEO, uh, find it maybe difficult to get rankings and stuff like that from because, uh, because yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a market a lot. There’s only 10 positions on the first page of Google and everyone’s fighting for them.
So, uh, so that’s why it can get pretty competitive. And so it comes down to understanding, you know, what are the key factors that when you be focused on as business owners to make sure that we’re placing ourselves in the best position to attain rankings.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (03:30):
Yeah. And I think it’s a good time to say this, and we will probably mention it through all these episodes that you really need to listen to honest, uh, ethical people like Bobby when they give you advice, because I think they call it black hat, but, um, if I’m wrong, but there’s so many people that will try to tell you how to take a shortcut or how to buy your way, not, not actually purchased the top rankings, but actually do some other things to try to help you gain SEO typically. And I’ll let you expound on this Bali, but typically those things will backfire on you and you will end up in Google jail where they just won’t send you any traffic.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (04:12):
Yeah. Well, there’s certain tactics like, um, I mean, there’s, I’ve been like geographic farms or stuff like that, where you get a bunch of, you know, inflated fate, organic traffic to hit your site, um, because there’s certain factors that an effort for that. So for example, just for context, you know, when, when you’re starting to get rankings and traffic organically and, uh, and, and historically you see a page having the low bounce rate rate, uh, people that answer that page start to navigate to other pages of the website, et cetera.
This is what we call historical analytics that search engines do analyze and see that, you know, okay, we gave traffic to this page, um, and we actually saw the performance. That’s actually positive. So therefore we’re going to start to rank it even higher, right. It compounds like that. So if you’re doing a traffic farm of fake traffic hitting the site, which is going to be a hundred percent, most likely bounce rate, they’re going to leave.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (05:06):
And it’s a compound effect negatively where Google says, okay, where does this a ton of traffic, but it’s really hitting the page and leaving. So this page is obviously like something’s bad here. And so that’s why it’s, it’s important not to practice this back black hat strategies, or even stay away from the gray hat where it’s, you know, where you’re trending in the middle, uh, strategies it’s the, the right way is, is difficult. It takes a lot of time and resources, but that’s all we call it digital PR because you are naturally truly trying to build your, your online PR, uh, in that sense. And that will last for a long time. It’s not something that would just go away tomorrow type of deal. So, yeah,
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (05:45):
And I think you make a good point. This is something that we need to start today and, and build is going to take some time to get everything dialed in and we just have to stay on top of it. But if we do the right thing and follow good advice, uh, you know, like you’re going to give us through this series, then we should be able to, you know, rank higher to the higher, closer to the top than what we are now, for sure.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (06:09):
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s something that from day one of your business, you want to start thinking foundation wise, am I building, at least it started building the foundation from an SEO perspective the right way, because it always costs more money and resources to have to fix things in the long run will make that even, even if you’re on a tight budget, make sure that you’re starting at least on the right foundation, because over the longevity, it is going to be much more efficient time-wise. And then of course it was budget wise too, when it comes to SEO, in terms of people will ask, okay, or business owners specifically in this case, you know, who is it for?
Do I need to be investing in SEO? Um, my answer is if you have a product or service, uh, that, that, you know, people are actively searching for online, then you need to be investing in SEO. Organic traffic is one of the most efficient forms of traffic out there. Uh, and it’s something that once you get rankings and you’re, you’ve nurtured that, um, authority to, to, to attain those rankings and that traffic, I mean, you’re getting traffic while you sleep. Uh, and so that’s why it’s it’s efficient. Um, and that’s who it’s for is for business owners or anyone to have something of, to provide, uh, and that, uh, that they know that people are actively searching for it. So that’s who SEO is for.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (07:24):
Yeah, because it’s changed, you know, I think back in the early days it was build it and they’ll come B because they’re just, there wasn’t that much out there, but nowadays that’s totally not there. And I, you know, we had a site, we were working on that we prematurely put up and it got zero traffic.
So I mean, I, I can attest to the point that if you don’t dial in your SEO and do some things you need to do that people will not come at. You know, we, we had zero hits on it, we weren’t ready and we, you know, eventually took it down. But we found out that it had been posted for awhile with nothing going on. So it’s, I can’t stress how important that watching your SEO is going to be to drive traffic. And if we’ve got a web presence at all, that’s exactly what we put, put our web pages up there for us. We want some kind of attention, some kind of traffic.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (08:15):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s all forms of, of traffic. There’s paid traffic, there’s email, referral traffic, or social media referral traffic. And then you have organic SEO in terms of, uh, organic traffic. And so all these channels of traffic, you’re, you, you’re always making sure that it’s matched to business schools or at least some type of objective. For example, if you have blog posts that you’re ranking high to attain top funnel traffic, you want to wait to nurture that traffic to capture it and convert it into somehow.
I mean, are you going to convert it straight into a business lead? It could happen, but most likely you want to nurture it. And at least maybe go on a, on a date first up in a value. It could be a lead magnet of a checklist, uh, an ebook or something to provide free value. Uh, but that’s how you start to build a relationship. Because if you even convert organic traffic with lead magnets, then you can get their contact information, get them in an email sequence and nurture them from there now. Uh, and then, you know, go all the way to marriage, which is the sale. Yeah. Right, right. So, yeah, it’s, it’s really mapping now and, and thinking about, okay, these traffic channels, how am I going to convert them to the end goal? Yeah.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (09:26):
So where would we even begin with this process?
Bobby – Signa Marketing (09:30):
So, so starting with the, the process is identifying your market on, on search engines. Uh, one of the main way to do this of course, is through keyword research, because what you’re trying to do is identify what are the Mo the most, what are the most likely, you know, the keywords that a user is searching for that’s related to my product or service or, or, you know, answer if it’s a blog post. Yeah. You’re answering something and see how much search volume is behind it, because that’s how you’re able to vet, okay. Is there interest around this topic or is there a need around this? You know, how many people are searching this key phrase per month?
And a one free common tool to use is Google keyword planner that you’ll find in a Google ads account, and you can get a historical keyword data of how many people are searching a certain keyword and see how competitive is to how competitive it is, um, from a cost per click standpoint, um, because that’s also an indicator to, if the cost per click is pretty high, it means that you have advertisers buying it, which is the inclination, like indication that it’s a value that it’s a, it’s a keyword that has some buying intent behind it.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (10:39):
So you want to start doing with keyword research because keyword research is what actually drives the decision making of content of which pages should exist, which pieces of content should exist, et cetera. Um, and so it’s always going to start from a keyword research standpoint, but using a tool like keyword planner is, uh, definitely very common. If you want to take it up a notch and use the paid tool, uh, tools like SEM rush or age refs are really powerful for doing keyword research as well. Um, so if you want to take it up a notch, those tools are, are, uh, available to them.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (11:12):
Okay. Awesome. Well, uh, this is going to be our first episode. We’re going to do, um, three more and, uh, you have anything else that you want to add before we, because I was just going to rattle off these other topics unless you have something else.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (11:27):
Yeah, no, actually I think that this, this wraps up the introduction to SEO. We’re going to pick up where we left off with the keyword research aspect and how that drives the on-site up positions.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (11:39):
Okay. Yeah. Great. We’re going to, the next episode will be onsite SEO, and then we’ve got offsite. SEO will be episode three and then episode four will be re optimizing or redesigning an existing site. So please stay tuned in what we’ll do is release these on Thursdays, on our kind of our off cycle with our major episodes. So also want to say, go back. Uh, we, we did four episodes on YouTube advertising and so go back, check those out. Uh, they were probably in the month of, uh, coming through the month of February. So, uh, Bobby as usual. Thank you very much. Uh, tell her about the, how of course they can reach out and get you there at Cigna marketing.
Bobby – Signa Marketing (12:22):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Roy. Uh, and so if you have any questions or anything like that at all, um, we’re actually able to answer questions even in public form, through a YouTube show that we call blueprint. Um, you can find us and submit questions through any of our social media channels, just at Cigna marketing, uh, is our handle on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. And we’re more than happy to take questions and I’m always able to provide them on the show.
Roy – The Business of Business Podcast – Digital Marketing Series 2 Episode 1, SEO Introduction – Why you should care (12:47):
Okay, great. Well, thank you, Bobby. We look forward to talking to you again next week. Of course, this is the business of business podcast. You can find us@wwwdotthebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com on all the major social media. And of course these episodes will be released on YouTube as they become available. So until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.
Signa Marketing Website
Listen to more episode of The Business of Business Podcast here