Optimize Your SEO Strategy for Long-Term Success

intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Virtual CPA Success Show for creative agencies. The go to resource for agency owners looking to scale their business. Join us every week to stay ahead of the curve and position your agency for future success.

Joey (00:00:15) - Hey y'all, Welcome back to another episode of the Virtual CPA Success Show. I'm your host for today's episode, Joey Kinney, joined by Jody Grunded. Hey, Jody, How are you doing?

Jody (00:00:24) - Well, I'm going to point something out real quick here. Joey, you spelt your name wrong if you had to D instead that it'd be perfect.

Joey (00:00:30) - You know, I will bring that up with my parents next time I see them and just let them know that they did make an error 36 years ago when they did this and that. It's been pointed out and noted for the record.

Jody (00:00:42) - You're just off by 1 letter, that’s it!

Joey (00:00:44) - Between you and me and Jamie. I mean, we've got the J squad coming to the things poor producer Rob is having to keep us all straight.

Joey (00:00:53) - And I, you know, don't blame him for having to struggle with the similarity of the names there. Well, I'm really looking forward. I really enjoyed today's episode. We were joined by Brandon Leibowitz of SEOOptimizers.com. That's SEO optimizers. And he joined us today to talk about all things SEO and how to increase your SEO and work within the algorithm and the analytics to increase your company's presence. What was your main takeaway from the show today Jody?

Jody (00:01:25) - Yeah, I think the consistency is the big part. He mentioned, you know, when I'm putting articles out there, content out there, don't just flood it with fluff, you know, don't flood the market with fluff, you know, really have really good content. So if that means dying it down a little bit, improving on the quality of your content, I think that was the big takeaway for me. We've been doing it, like I said, SEO for a long time, since 2004, 2005, somewhere in that ballpark.

Jody (00:01:50) - And we've always been consistent with the content, which I think is really important. But I think the quality so the, you know, having video, having, you know, articles, having books, ebooks and all the different things that go into it, having social media, you know, that sort of thing. I think that just having it all bundled into one thing and not just going one thing where you're just blogging and that's I think the quality of the content was a big thing for me. How about you?

Joey (00:02:15) - I love the thing he said right at the very end about how SEO optimization is the long term play. You're not going to solve your problems immediately just by getting SEO optimization. You've got to be committed to this strategy. You've got to be committed to putting in the work and again, focusing on the quality, not just the quantity, which is tough. We can control quantity. We can't always control quality. And I thought that was a really good nugget right at the very end for business owners who are wanting to, you know, increase their online presence because as you know, the Internet's not going away.

Joey (00:02:49) - It's only getting bigger and more robust and more important in the business world. Well, we hope you really enjoyed today's episode. We sure did. And as always, be sure to check the show notes. There's a great little link that Brandon left for our audience. It's going to be linked down in the show notes where if you have any questions or want to talk to him about how SEO optimizers can help you in your business, there's a great little link there with a gift that he personalizes for you and opportunities to talk with them. So be sure to check that out and we hope you enjoy the show. 

Joey (00:03:20) - Okay. So looking back at kind of where SEO has started and now evolved into, when I got started in my career in public accounting, it was in the early 20 tens, which was about a little more than a decade ago. How is everything changed in SEO since like our beginning understandings of like, this is the most important thing you can do to get your business out there and kind of go through the fluff of what you'd find on a Google or something like that to where it is now, where I feel like we have to be maybe a little bit more targeted with our SEO.

Brandon (00:03:53) - Yeah, but that's there is no constant. There's only change. Google changes every single day. They're algorithms. So what works today might not work tomorrow or worked yesterday might not work today. So that's what just try to keep up to date with all the changes. But really what Google is changing is just looking for quality versus quantity. So in the past it's just trying to put out as much content as possible, trying to build as many what are called backlinks as possible. But now it's not really the number of backlinks for the number of content, it's the quality of everything. So focusing on high quality content, high quality articles, blogs, podcasts, whatever type of content you're putting out there. So try to put out maybe like ten a month, focus on two high quality ones a month, and same with the backlinks. Just focusing on quality because Google is just really trying to clean up spam and have a good user experience for everyone. And the way that I do that is by cutting out all the fluff and the filler content and things like that that aren't really relevant.

Brandon (00:04:47) - So that's probably one of the biggest changes that's been going on is the overall algorithm is pretty much stayed kind of the same, not the same, but similar to what they're looking for, which is keywords and the coding. You send signals by getting what are called backlinks. But in terms of what they're looking for, in terms of the content, the keywords, the backlinks, all that stuff, it's changed how they look at all that stuff. But still, overall, the hierarchy is focused on putting on good quality content on your website. That way Google knows what keywords you're targeting and then build that trust up by getting what are called backlinks. Getting other websites to talk about you. Backlink is a clickable link from another website that points to yours. So let's say you're reading an article in the LA Times and there it says Brandon Liebowitz, and you click on it and it goes to my website. I'd be getting a backlink from the LA Times, so focusing on quality backlinks and quality content.

Jody (00:05:40) - Yeah, it sounds like backlinks has been a big thing from day one we started doing the SEO.

Jody (00:05:45) - Probably back 2004 ish, somewhere in there and even back back when we were doing it. We the big thing was what do we call the service that we provide? You know what is it, what's the terminology? Because back then there wasn't really a terminology for what we're doing, which is virtual services. And so when we came up with that term or basically decided, Hey, that's the term we wanted to use, there wasn't anybody on the web using it. So we're like, Well, that's great. We're going to be number one and we work for number one within like a week. But that really tells you that no one else is searching for it, right? Because, you know, that was there was no one out there, no traffic at all. And then over time, we saw the traffic was picking up. And in order to stay, number one, we had the right content articles like on a pretty much a daily basis. We blogged daily for probably ten, 15 years.

Jody (00:06:31) - And then we started incorporating other stuff like you're talking about like the social media, the Instagrams, the Facebooks, the LinkedIn's, all the different stuff like that. Again, to stay relevant. And we found that, you know, just because of the content you're putting out, like you said, we really haven't changed a whole lot. If you were to Google search us right now, we would still be number one. Any 1 or 2 or three anywhere in the United States, you know, and that's that's pretty cool. But what I'm worried about is I'm worried about things changing so much with like ChatGPT coming in, you know, is it going to be relevant, you know, five years from now? You know, all that extra work? In our marketing department, we spend probably almost 10% of our revenue in marketing, and that's including our marketing manager. We don't do any paid ads at all, but it's all based on SEO and based on thought leadership and materials and the people that, you know, create that content.

Jody (00:07:28) - You know, you feel that, you know, five years from now that it's going to take a left hand turn and go a different direction. Or do you think, bye bye, keep doing what you're talking about and doing what we're doing is the right way, right way to continue on.

Brandon (00:07:44) - That is a tough part. I wish I knew what was going to be in the future, but it changes so quickly. No one new ChatGPT or AI is going to be coming out and taking such a strong market share and just taking hold of. Everybody so quickly. But yeah, we'll just have to see what the future holds because they might incorporate into search results or who knows what's going to happen. They might just give you the results. But for now I still keep doing what you're doing, but it's really tough to predict what's going to happen in the future because it just changes so quickly and it's so dynamic and things just come out of nowhere really fast that it is so.

Jody (00:08:18) - So stay the course is what you're telling me.

Jody (00:08:20) - Stay the course, spend the money, do the content, you know, the content marketing, you know, continue doing what we're doing. And then as we see ChatGPT becoming more of an influencer in that area, then we may have to pivot a little bit and incorporate that as another tool I guess in the toolbox is kind of what I'm hearing. Is that sound right?

Brandon (00:08:40) - Yeah. For the time being, I won't make any drastic changes or stop doing all that stuff because who knows what's going to happen. Maybe ChatGPT is a fad and it disappears in a few months. Probably won't, but you never know. So I want to just be like, Let's just shift gears completely and change our whole strategy when who knows really what's going to happen. It's so tough to predict with everything nowadays. It just changes so quickly.

Jody (00:09:03) - Oh, for sure. What's your view on pay per click versus SEO? And what if I'm going to have a marketing budget? You know, what should I be constrained focusing on? Or should I not even worry about it depending upon where my SEO is at in that, you know, falling in the of, you know, in the advertising world there.

Brandon (00:09:25) - Yeah, I mean, but that's, you know, it'll bring you traffic. But no matter what, whatever type of traffic you're sending to your website, you're going to get that bounce rate where usually about half the people that come to your website leave because they're just not finding what they're looking for or your website loads slowly or doesn't look good on mobile or whatever the reason might be, but people are going to hit that back button. So I like to run remarketing ads where you follow people around that didn't convert on your website, keep yourself top of mind and really get those multiple touch points because especially with higher ticket items, you need multiple touch points. No, I'm just going to go to your website and make a big purchase. I mean, some people might, but majority of people need you to build that trust up. And the way to trust that with people is by having multiple touch points so that you're knowledgeable, credible, trustworthy. So they go to your website and they leave and hit that back button.

Brandon (00:10:13) - Then you can follow them around with banner ads and offer them something free. Maybe some like a free e-book or a free course or something to get them into your final, get their email address, start sending them emails, get their social, get them into follow you on social so they can see you on social and really get those touch points to build that trust up. But in terms of cold outreach with paid ads, it works, but it's just expensive. And that's where you just got to make sure that you're getting a positive return on ad spend that you're making more than you're putting in. And if you're making more than you're putting in, I would say there's no real reason to turn it off as long as you're staying profitable. But definitely, definitely, definitely, like three marketing where you're following people around that didn't convert on your website because they're all warm leads. It's warm traffic, it's not cold outreach, and it just really helps you keep yourself top of mind.

Joey (00:11:00) - So you mentioned something earlier that I think is really interesting that I'd like to dive into a little bit.

Joey (00:11:05) - So Jody kind of alluded to it earlier. When he was first getting started. It was content, which speaks to your thing. It was all about quantity. And quantity is something as a business that you can control, right? You just sit there and say, well, we need quantity, so we're just going to crank out a bunch of content. Quality is a lot harder to prove, right? Because there's a subjective element to quality. So question number one, how is the algorithm determining quality? And then follow up number two to that. If someone is struggling with the algorithm and struggling with the quality of their content, are there tools that they can use to improve the quality, to improve their, you know, I guess performance within the algorithm.

Brandon (00:11:51) - With quality Google is looking for it's called eat…EAT experience, expertise, thoughtfulness and trust with your content. So they're just trying to make sure that you are knowledgeable. You seem like an expert in this content that you're providing depth, provide real life examples and just really try to prove to them that you know, that you're knowledgeable and you're not just writing some filler content just to throw something up there, but there's not really tools that could help you put like real life examples in there.

Brandon (00:12:21) - There's tools that could say, Hey, you should put these keywords in this content. Like let's say you're writing an article about the best umbrellas for rain, and there's tools that will say, All right, if you're trying to rank for umbrellas for rain, you might want to put keywords in there like rain, umbrella, rain, umbrellas, rain, storm umbrellas. So we'll give you like a bunch of different keywords that related to your content, but that's not going to build that. So there's depending on what type of tools you're looking for, there's some tools that will help out with that stuff, putting those keywords in and finding synonyms and plurals and variations, what you can do with the Google keyword planner, but there's also tools that will scrape the top ten results. Look for trends of what keywords are commonly popping up. For all these articles, I'm ranking on that first page of Google, so you can try to incorporate those onto your website. But building that expertise, experience, authority and trust really has to come from the writer themselves, putting real life examples and just really not just putting a bunch of filler content, but kind of going or going deeper into those topics that really provides value to the reader, because really what Google wants is you to provide value.

Brandon (00:13:30) - They want you to give a good user experience and provide answers to questions that people have and not just give them a bunch of filler content just to try to beat Google's algorithm.

Brandon (00:14:40) - You should create a page on your website about pest control and how you help them out and then create some blog posts about that and interlink the blog posts altogether and interlink them to that service page. And that would help Google understand and read and see that text on your website and then hopefully start to rank you. But you still probably need to build backlinks to get that trust up. But at least you're putting that text there. And if you don't have that text or that content on your website, then Google is not going to know because they're just a robot and they really need you to spoon feed them as much information as possible. The more you give them, the easier it is for them to really understand, know and rank you for the correct keywords. But if you don't give them that information, then they're not going to be able to guess.

Brandon (00:15:20) - So you have to really spoon feed them and give them that content on your website to let them know that this is what you're offering. You do a press release about that on third party sites, but really need to put that content on your website somewhere.

Jody (00:15:33) - So you really have to have that. You have to have the website put together first before you can actually before you should actually start pushing the content out there. Content without the website's not going to really get you in traction. That's kind of what I'm hearing. Is that sound right for SEO?

Brandon (00:15:47) - SEO is search engine optimization, which means ranking websites on the search engines. And if you don't have a website, then there's not much you can really do. You can build your name up there by getting like third party sites to talk about to you. Or you could build a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, but those aren't really yours and you don't own any of that stuff. And these are just third party sites that you don't really have any control over.

Brandon (00:16:08) - But with your website, that's what you own and you get full control and that's where you can put yourself out there and brand yourself and put yourself out as an industry leader and let people know that you are really credible experience that's worthy, and you can put all that on your website for people to find ways.

Joey (00:16:24) - Yeah. So now I have a site and I probably have had a site forever. Most companies have websites, right? And so we have to have certain pages for that. So let's say I created the pages, Now, I identify myself as pest control and I start writing articles. What would you say? And maybe videos, you know, really going at it. If I was really putting a lot of effort into it. When would you think I would really start seeing traction? Would it be I know there's no the formula is not known, but would you say six months, three months, a year, nine months? What's a tip? What's a typical time frame that you would actually start seeing some results from it? Because I know it's not going to be instantaneous and everybody wants something instantaneous.

Jody (00:17:05) - And obviously that's probably not the key, but maybe it is. What's your thoughts on that?

Brandon (00:17:11) - It just comes down to the competitiveness of those keywords. So whatever keywords you're targeting. The more competitive it is, the more time it's going to take to rank up there, because it really comes down to backlinks. And the more competition you have, the more backlinks all these websites are going to have and the more backlinks that you need to build. So if you're a brand new website just starting off, you don't have any backlinks. It's going to take a long time to get that trust up. But if you've more established, you've been around for a long time and you just haven't done any website, but you've been around, you've had a website for like ten years, it's built up a lot of trust to Google. Then if you start building backlinks, you're going to get that traction much, much quicker. But it's tough to say it's not really a one size fits all. On average, it takes about six months, but it could take a lot longer.

Brandon (00:17:55) - It also takes a lot shorter depending on how much trust Google already has to your website, how competitive those keywords are that you're trying to target. That's why you can find something more niche and unique that's going to help you speed things up and get up ranking a lot quicker versus just more broad and generic terms. But like, let's say you're like pest control in Los Angeles, a lot of competition, a lot of pest control companies out here versus if you're some small city where there's maybe only five other pest control companies. It's not going to be as tough because there's ten spots on that first page of Google. So if there's only five companies that it should be a lot easier to get up there versus somewhere that's really saturated and diluted and hyper competitive. It's going to take a lot longer because those companies are going to fight for those top ten spots. They don't want to drop down off that first page of Google.

Jody (00:18:42) - That makes sense.

Joey (00:18:44) - You mentioned something earlier, and I have to preface this a little bit, where I have a complicated relationship with social media.

Joey (00:18:50) - I still love to tell people I got Facebook back when you had to have a.edu on your on your email address to get it. So that's how long I've been using Facebook since the beginning. Um, how important is integrating your social media to your content on the websites and using that as an avenue to start building trust?

Brandon (00:19:10) - Yeah. Google wants to see that you have a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, all those are just kind of what a normal business would have in terms of being active. They can't really see how active you are on all those platforms because Google is blocked from most social media sites except for Twitter. They partnered with them like eight years ago so they could read the tweet. So if you like, search for like Walmart or Target or any big brand, you'll see the most recent tweets in big boxes on Google search results. But if you search for Target, you'll see their Facebook just on link to their Facebook page or link to their Instagram. So they're not able to see beyond that.

Brandon (00:19:49) - They have a page. But having a page is something that a normal business should have and would have. And they could also see how much traffic is being sent to your website from Facebook or Instagram, but they can't see really who sends it. So if you have a big influencer that shares your content on Facebook and you're getting a thousand people to your website every single day from Facebook, they're going to see that traffic from Facebook. They're not going to know that from you or for some from someone else, but they're going to see that traffic, those social social signals, what they're called. So you definitely want to send traffic to your website for social media, but it's having a big following or how active you are that doesn't really have an impact on the algorithm nowadays. But again, Google could see YouTube because Google owns YouTube and they can see Twitter, but other than that, they can't really see social media because they're all somewhat competitors with one another that they don't want to Facebook doesn't want Google. See what they're doing because Facebook is really trying to push those videos.

Brandon (00:20:44) - Google owns YouTube. They're trying to push videos and they don't want to help each other out with the video content. So they're going to kind of block each other. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook or TikTok, which is all primarily videos. All those platforms don't really work together. But the traffic that's sent to your website from those platforms definitely has a big impact.

Joey (00:21:04) - So it could be a strategy there of saying like, we need to figure out who we're targeting. And you know, you mentioned some backlinks and things like if you get linked from The New York Times or the, you know, the LA Times or one of those major periodicals, if you're getting them to notice you through your social media traffic, that's how you can use that as a decent strategy to get your name and get your message out there. But not specifically through that. It's through the connections you're making using that social media as a tool.

Brandon (00:21:34) - Yeah, it's pretty much the traffic that they're sending to your website. So whatever traffic is being sent to your website from Facebook, that's going to help you rank higher because that's like a social signal.

Brandon (00:21:43) - It's like a trust that this platform, Facebook has sent you 100 people today was like, okay, that means that you must be somewhat relevant possibly on Facebook or it's just a bunch of fake spam, but it might be that you're trustworthy and that a bunch of people are talking about you. So they're going to be like, okay, let's reward you a little bit by giving you a little bit more trust because we see that these social signals are coming in.

Joey (00:22:09) - It reminds me. It reminds me a lot almost of like how we visualize blockchain, right? Where blockchain is basically just like all of these other people are verifying this socially, whereas with this, it's the same type of thing. We're all building trust in this algorithm based on the number of social signals and cues. So it's really interesting how it's all integrated together.

Brandon (00:22:30) - Yeah. I don't know too much about blockchain, but definitely, definitely. It's all linked together though. That's a little bit. 

Jody (00:22:38) - Yeah. That was an accounting jargon thing that Joey threw out there, so don't worry about it.

Joey (00:22:45) - It's fine. I just. I love to make connections between like, my world and the accounting and how we can kind of integrate it with all these other things. And it's speaks to a larger general trend of what I think people are looking for, which is when you think back to how the Internet has progressed, it has been a deluge of content. It's just content, content, content, and everyone is looking for the same thing, which is how do I know what of this is trustworthy and what I can do? So we've got 2 or 3 different avenues for all doing the same thing, which is we're looking to our peers and we're looking to our networks to help us verify what's good and what isn't and love how it's kind of all integrating together and moving in the same direction.

Brandon (00:23:25) - Mhm. Yeah. Google's looking for those trust signals as backlinks, which are like votes saying, oh, we trust you, we think that you're relevant, you have some good content out there. So it's all about just getting those third party trust signals up.

Brandon (00:23:37) - And once you get those trust signals and Google is going to reward you by trusting you and ranking you for your keywords or ranking you higher, then it's all about putting those keywords in the correct places so they know what keywords the ranking for on your website by reading all that code.

Jody (00:23:52) - That sounds great. Hey, Brandon, kind of switching gears a little bit and talking more on the finance side of things, you know, and kind of bringing in the marketing department itself. Let's say that you're approaching because you've been doing this for a long time, since about 2007 or so. Correct. And, you know, if you're looking at a company that's, let's say, $5 million in revenue, let's say that they don't really have a marketing department because they're the owners wearing several hats. And the owner is typically the marketing slash business development person for the longest time. And they're finally giving that over to either an individual or a company like yourself. You know, how much should they typically spend in a marketing budget to let's say they want let's say they got some pretty aggressive growth goals.

Joey (00:24:37) - Let's say they want to double their size every 3 to 5 years or something of that nature. What would you recommend if you're going into a situation like that on you know, hey, whether you're hiring internally or whether you're hiring a company like yours, you know, how much should they be spending typically?

Brandon (00:24:55) - Yeah, I would say maybe allocate 5 to 10% of your revenue to marketing, but it's really not a one size fits all. It's kind of tough to just say this is going to help you out because it really comes down to the competitiveness of that industry. The more competitive it is, the more they have to spend on advertising and marketing, the less competitive, the less we're going to really need to do to get up there. And it really all comes down to those backlinks for the most part with SEO and try to figure out what needs to be done to get you to rank higher than your competition. Because let's say your competitors have 1000 backlinks and you only have ten backlinks and you have to spend a lot of money in writing, building these backlinks by writing articles and doing blogs, press releases to podcasts, to interviews, to sponsoring trade shows, whatever it may be.

Brandon (00:25:41) - But you have to spend a lot of money because these backlinks, some of them are free, but most of them require some time investment, which time is money, and you're going to have to invest that in there to help you build those backlinks and get that trust up from Google.

Jody (00:25:55) - Yeah, because I'm a huge advocate of spending money in marketing. I mean, I really am. But you've got to see the results, right? So we've spent traditionally between seven to probably 11% in marketing on a typical year. 7% being the low. And, you know, I would say 11% only recently because we're ramping up and we're trying to really have some really aggressive growth goals. So I truly see that. What do you tell a company like that that hasn't spent anything in marketing? You know, how do you, you know, how do you go into a situation like that and, you know, try and convince them, you know, that, hey, here's how if you want to grow, here's what you need to do to spend.

Jody (00:26:36) - You need to spend the money. How do you approach situations like that?

Brandon (00:26:41) - No, that's how it's really just showing them the search volume of keywords. So whatever business they're in, I say, All right, if you're a dentist, here's how many people search for dentists near me and your specific city. And then the search volume using tools like the Google keyword planner, things like that. So you can see on paper how many people actually search and how much potentially miss traffic. They're missing out to you by letting their competitors take that traffic away from them. But that's really the best way is to show them that search volume for those keywords and let them know what they're missing out on potentially.

Joey (00:27:16) - What tools do you have to validate the success of the funds that you're allocating towards SEO optimization and other marketing tools?

Brandon (00:27:28) - Now SEO that's probably Google Analytics and Google Search console are the two free tools from Google that will show you how many people search or how much traffic you're getting from Google Analytics. I'll just show you everything you want to know about your traffic, where it's coming from, how long they stay on your website, what pages they visit, tells you a little bit too much information.

Brandon (00:27:49) - It's like data overload. And then Google search console is just all about SEO shows you what keywords you're ranking for. It'll show you what position you're in. It'll show you any technical issues or errors on your website, broken pages, the loading pages, things like that. So it's a little bit more technical and both of those are probably great ways to measure it. Also, you could just measure what position you're in month over month, week over week for your keywords so you could track that as well. And those are probably the best ways to track the success of an SEO campaign.

Jody (00:28:22) - Yeah Brandon, you've got tons of knowledge in SEO and marketing. Tell us a little bit about your company and, you know, successes, failures you've had, you know, give us a little flavor of you.

Brandon (00:28:34) - Part of my company is called SEO Optimizers and we focus mainly on SEO. Do a little bit of paid ads because like I was saying earlier, unfortunately most of the people that come to your website are going to leave immediately.

Brandon (00:28:47) - So you got to keep yourself top of mind. And running those remarketing ads works really well to have those multiple touch points. So with SEO works with tons of clients over the years, one recently that I'm working with is A, they leased cars out and they've been around for a long, long time. They just haven't done much with their SEO. So one and they're both just a couple backlinks and really just restructured their website and within a few months they just shut up to the first position or first three positions for almost all their keywords, but they've had their website for like 25 years or something like that. So they've had a long time to build that, that age up of that website. They just didn't send the right signals and they just had a website that was tough to really understand and read and figure out what keywords they wanted to rank for. So fixing all that, fixing the coding and just building a couple backlinks really shot them up right away. But that's more of the rarity. Doesn't usually happen that quick.

Brandon (00:29:42) - Usually it takes a lot of time because most websites are not 20 plus years old, most are just like a few months or a few years old and just doesn't trust a website. That's a couple of years or a few months. It's really tough to build that trust up. So the longer you've been around, the more trust it's going to help or you're going to have in, the quicker it's going to rank. So there's ways you kind of bypass that where you could buy old expired domains. So if one of competitors goes out of business, you can buy that domain and pretty much use that as your website. You don't get to choose your domain name then. But that domain name, if it's been around for a while, has some trust built up to it. So kind of help you skip that waiting period of just waiting and waiting and waiting for Google to trust you. But that's not always a best situation because then you don't get a control of your brand name and things like that. You just kind of at the whims of some other company's name out there.

Brandon (00:30:31) - But that is one shortcut that could kind of help things out a little bit.

Joey (00:30:36) - Sounds great. And then how would they get hold of you if they wanted to reach out?

Brandon (00:30:42) - That's anyone that wants to learn more. I created a special gift for them. If they go to my website at SEO.optimizers.com that's SEOoptimizers.Com forward slash gift. They can find that there along with my contact information and a bunch of classes I've done over the years I've thrown up for free. So you can see step by step how to do of stuff that we talked about. And also they want to book some time in my calendar. I'm happy to check out their website from an SEO point of view and they could book some time there as well.

Joey (00:31:15) - I should also say to your I've been stalking your Instagram and or not your Instagram, your LinkedIn in preparation for this call. And you do have a lot of really great articles and resources on your LinkedIn that were very helpful for me, just kind of clicking through and seeing how that was going.

Joey (00:31:31) - So I wanted to let people know that as long as you're okay with us, sending folks to your LinkedIn really enjoyed some of the content you put on there.

Brandon (00:31:39) - Yeah. Now, definitely. Yeah. I'm active on all the social media sites that they just search for my name, Brandon Leibowitz. They'll probably find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, all those platforms and they can see the content that I'm putting out there. And yeah, just trying to offer value and provide it, provide a bunch of useful tips and techniques to help you just get that free traffic from Google.

Joey (00:32:02) - Very cool. So we one of the things we usually like to do is obviously we've spent a lot of time talking about technical work things, but we usually like to end the show with something a little bit more fun and kind of off topic to let us know who you are as a person. And Jody, I'm not sure if you've got a question, but I've got one queued up. If you're okay with me going, 

Jody (00:32:21) - Go for it.

Joey (00:32:22) - So this is obviously going to air a little bit later in the year, but we're recording this a couple of days after the Labor Day holiday. And it got me thinking. And Brandon, we can start with you on this. What is your favorite way to recharge away from the office? What sort of things do you like to do? Do you like, you know, beach vacations versus mountain vacations? What some How's your favorite way to recharge when you're not thinking about optimization?

Brandon (00:32:49) - We'll probably go down to the beach because I live in LA and the beach is a mile away from me, so it's pretty easy just to walk down there, get away and just hang out by the beach and relax. And it's probably one of my favorite things to do is go down there pretty frequently since I am so close. Got to take advantage of it, but got the mountains up here, could snowboard, could hike and like skateboarding and like traveling, like going to concerts. But the beach is just so close by that it makes it so easy and accessible.

Brandon (00:33:15) - And that is probably my favorite place to be.

Joey (00:33:17) - One of the things that my cousin used to do when he was at UCLA for grad school and he knew I was in undergrad at Kansas State and he would strategically do this. He would look at the weather and see when Manhattan was below freezing and he would just take a screenshot of him walking to campus and flip flops and shorts and send it to me. That's what it was like. I understood. I understand now I get why people live here year round because it's just gorgeous all the time.

Jody (00:33:44) - Kindred spirits here. Yeah, we're definitely kindred spirits on that. We living in Fort Lauderdale now, we the beach. I'm real close to the beach as well. So I would say just being outside doesn't necessarily have to be the beach, just kind of relaxing because I do a lot of speaking engagements where I'm traveling all the time. And it seems like that day after I'm kind of getting over the or the conference. Hi, You can say, and I just like that rewind, you know, wind down time, you know, just kind of doing the same thing, just taking the day off, going to the beach, walking around, hanging out in the sun, you know, like I'd say definitely beach.

Jody (00:34:20) - I would say definitely. It's a must, you know, actually going from conferences and or times that are highly stressful of any kind.

Joey (00:34:28) - Yeah. I don't know what it is about the water and the waves, but it just relaxes people. And I, we, I obviously live I do not live in the near water. I live in New Mexico where we do have a beach, but it's just the river when it's dry, which is right now, you can go walk out and jump across the river. So I have to say, you know, when I can get to a beach, it's fantastic. But for like daily kind of getaway type stuff, like I really kind of am drawn to the mountains and if I'm not above 8000 ft, I'm not particularly happy. So, you know, kind of getting up into the pines and especially in the summertime because we had a really hot summer here this year. It was really nice to be able to kind of get up and get into the pine trees where it's, you know, still in the 50 and 60 in the morning.

Joey (00:35:12) - Even in the summertime, that's really for a bigger guy, That's that's usually where I usually find my peace and solace. Usually there's a river, too, with a fly fishing, you know, set up as well. There you go. Yeah. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Is there any wrap up thoughts or things you'd like to pass along to the audience?

Brandon (00:35:34) - I would just say be patient with that SEO. It takes time. It's not immediate. So if you want that immediate traction, paid ads will get you up there quickly. But over the long term play where you have to just build it up, build it up and build it up and keep building it up and don't get discouraged if you're not seeing that result or the results right away, because it does take time and it unfortunately could take a year or more. Sometimes it could take a few months, but most of the time it takes a lot of time building that trust up with Google.

Brandon (00:36:01) - So just keep working at it and don't get discouraged if you don't see that immediate results.

Joey (00:36:06) - Perfect. Well, thanks very much for joining us, Jody. Thank you as well. It's been a pleasure. And we're looking forward to the next episode.

Jody (00:36:14) - Thanks, Brandon.

Brandon (00:36:15) - Thanks for having me on.

intro (00:36:17) - Enjoy this podcast. Visit our website SummitCPA.Net to get more tips and strategy for achieving business success. We're here to be a resource in this ever changing industry.