EP14: Featured Snippets Success With Sean Kerrigan

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Podcast Transcript

Intro: Welcome to SEObits, the podcast that helps smart business owners jumpstart their SEO strategy. Tune in each week for fresh SEO insights and actionable tips that will help you improve your site’s SEO one bit at a time. Now, here’s your host, SEO Trainer and Consultant, Rebecca Gill.

Rebecca Gill: Welcome back to another episode of SEObits. Today, I am taking a little bit of an off-track with our episode and I wanted to bring on a new friend I have named Sean. Sean and I met through my private Facebook group which is called SEO Launch Pad, and it’s basically an SEO group that I started a couple of months ago in the spring and I wanted to be able to help people and provide some insight on SEO and answer some questions and things like that.

And Sean joined the group and had posted in there about some success he had with SEO and I was really excited over it because he has made some great strides with his SEO education and his results. So I thought it would be a great opportunity to bring him on the show and just kind of have a chat about his SEO journey and use this as an example so that everybody can understand that what I preach about everybody being able to be – to be able to do SEO and really make some headway is true.

And I decided that I want to bring people on to show this and give examples of it working because I really think it’s important for the listeners to have this in their SEO journey so they see what’s possible and it’s not unattainable because SEO is possible.

So with that said, Sean, thanks so much for coming on the show. I’m so glad you’re here.

Sean Kerrigan: Thanks, Rebecca. And I’m really excited to be here as well. It’s so nice to be chatting with you after I took your course, your voice is nice and familiar. It’s that relaxing, comfortable SEO expertise that comes with what you do and I’m excited to be here. Thank you.

Rebecca Gill: OK. So let’s start by giving the audience a little overview of who you are, physically where you’re at, and what you do.

Sean Kerrigan: OK. My name is Sean Kerrigan. We’re located – our company is called The Update Company. We’re located in a place called Cumberland, British Columbia, which is located on Vancouver Island which is off the west coast of British Columbia on the lovely Pacific Ocean.

Our focus is essentially tourism organizations and small to medium size businesses around Vancouver Island but also in British Columbia and across the country as well. We’re a small firm. We’re about 8 people in the office and we do pretty much everything that anyone needs for online digital marketing from website development to some social media management, email templates, things like that. So, we’re pretty much a one-stop shop but we do cater to smaller clients out there.

Rebecca Gill: Perfect. So now, let’s start with how long you’ve been working with SEO and kind of a little bit of your journey because I know from talking to you that you did – double in a little – a while ago and then kind of moved off a bit to do other things. And now, you’re circling back. So, kind of bring us up to date.

Sean Kerrigan: Sure, yeah. I began my journey with SEO starting back in 2008 and then I was only focusing really on small aspects of SEO when I was doing more freelancing for web design services. And then I did a bit more when I was hired to teach and intro to digital marketing at a local college here in Comox Valley. But mostly, I was just focusing on providing good meta titles, descriptions, and helping people understand about how the search engines work and how they might improve their own website ranking. So, it was very basic at that point.

Then in 2014, I joined The Update Company, a digital marketing firm as a project manager. And during that time, I found a lot of our clients were looking for SEO for the websites we were building them but we are outsourcing this service and always seem to be really underwhelmed by the results, the reporting, and the accountability from SEO providers out there that our clients had hired.

So, I proposed to the company that I take on SEO full time and build this area of the business. We saw a real opportunity here. But before we began offering SEO full time, we really wanted to make sure that we were prepared. I needed to get up to speed on the current best practices and feel confident in my ability to deliver results to those clients.

So in January 2017, I began devoting about half of my workweek for the next three months to my SEO education. And by March of this year, we felt like we’re ready to really start bringing on new SEO clients. And by April, we had signed enough new clients that I went full time SEO which is fantastic. It has been over four months now and I truly, Rebecca, am really loving it.

Rebecca Gill: That’s awesome. I love SEO. And I had a period where I kind of moved away from it because I just was really burnt out with it and clients. And now that I’m doing education with it, I have that – just that like waterfall of love for it again and I want to share it with everybody.

And the things you said, it was funny because there are three key things that I took away. The one was that when you were working at the local college and you’re trying to teach people about SEO, it was more basically it was basic and just kind of understanding how it works. And that’s because so many people just don’t understand it. They think it’s like this magic ball and mystery. And it’s really not when you start to break it down.

The second thing was that you tried to outsource it, which I did myself. I tried for a while to get additional help and I was bringing in clients that I couldn’t just support myself and just like you, it was a nightmare. But just by the time that you train this third party to do what you wanted in your process, they’re like gone or you get someone who doesn’t deliver. And that’s definitely an issue and that’s why I love teaching people how to do their own SEO or even if they do outsource it, they’re more knowledgeable about what they’re buying for services and they can monitor it much better.

And the third thing that you said is that you went full time with it, and I think that is awesome because that just shows that there’s so much – if you’re a developer, there’s so much business out there for quality SEO people because there isn’t a ton of us and that’s awesome. It makes me very happy and proud that you’re doing it and that you’re being able to help other people, and that’s just awesome.

 

So OK. So you found me I think through my partnership with iThemes, right? And you were part of the SEO Summit I did. I think it was in January of this year.

Sean Kerrigan: Yes, that’s right. I think it was actually in April, the one …

Rebecca Gill: OK.

Sean Kerrigan: Yeah. And it was – iThemes, we’re a user of all their tools and really helps our company runs smoothly and the client websites as well. So when they said there was an SEO summit through one of their training seminars, I jumped right on it and that was your course.

Rebecca Gill: So Cory Miller who is the founder of iThemes is a personal friend of mine but we were floating in a pool one time at Cabo through CaboPress and he was harping on me about me starting to educate people on SEO and launching a course and then the course moved into summits with iThemes. And it has been really wonderful for me to have that outlet because obviously, I sell some courses and some summits through iThemes but it’s also his customer base that he has had for so long, they are getting this education too. So it has been really a good win-win for everybody. And we’ve had great feedback from the summit and I love the fact that you were on it and it was beneficial for you.

So, what was – before you did the iThemes summit, how – because I know that shift you were thinking a little bit, what were you thinking – what was your thinking and your thought process on SEO before?

Sean Kerrigan: Well, saying that I taught it back at a college, the intro to digital marketing, I had enough knowledge to, I wouldn’t say make it dangerous, but I had an idea of SEO being keywords, good content, internal linking, no black hat stuff, that kind of thing. So I always had a good idea of what SEO was but for me, I’m a process guy. So I hadn’t really come up with the how as in how to really improve client rankings and how to apply the best keywords. And then really decide on which one of those to focus on.

So, we were like how to implement the kind of strategy to provide the highest ROI? So all these sort of keywords that I knew, the buzz words, they’re out there. I understood them but how to actually implement all of this for the client, for me wasn’t something I had really put a lot of thought into. So that was kind of my idea before. A good idea but not a good way to implement it.

Rebecca Gill: I think for me that was something that Cory Miller helped pulled out of me from iThemes because as we sat and floated in that pool together, just chit-chatting and he was asking me questions and it’s that process. And I just kind of looked at him with a blank stare when he was asking me questions because in my head, I had been doing this for 15 years. That process is just ingrained in me.

And he goes, “Rebecca, people don’t have a process. People need your process like it’s clearly working.” And he goes, “You clearly have it down. You’ve been doing it for so long.” He goes, “That’s what people need is the process. They don’t need you to do it for them. They need the process.” That was a shift for me.

So now that you’ve gone through the summit and it kind of helped augment your existing knowledge that you had for SEO, how do you view SEO now in this stage of your journey?

Sean Kerrigan: Well, knowing that the training that you provided at that SEO summit provided me with the how that I was missing. I know that I could have come up with all my own SEO strategy documents and templates for onboarding for clients. But you walked us through all those processes as you mentioned that Cory had you think about in the pool and taking that into course, your successes, your mistakes, how you improved on them for future projects, everything you taught in that course really accelerated me very quickly from being moderately prepared I would say for my new role to being very well-prepared.

And taking what you taught and using all the previous experience allowed me to custom-tailor our own company SEO offerings for each client based on their goals. And so, I really feel like the 9 hours spent with you were extremely valuable for me and it really shifted my thinking around SEO and the how and also the what.

Rebecca Gill: I wish I could record you and have my husband listen to you because he thinks that it’s surprising that anybody wants to listen to me that long. He told me one day when we were first married, that was a long story, but the gist of it is he goes, “I don’t want to listen to you for 25 minutes. I can’t imagine listening to you for 8 hours.”

Sean Kerrigan: And to pay for it too.

Rebecca Gill: Yes. But apparently, he doesn’t have much interest in SEO. So I love the fact that your – one of the things that you said there which is a great takeaway for people listening is the process is important and while you can eventually find your process, it is great to have a little bit of help along the way especially when you have someone who is willing to share with you their ups and their downs.

And I’ve been very open about me getting booted off of Google when I first taught myself SEO because I don’t want other people to go through the same pains that I did especially when I speak in person and people ask questions and there will be questions that will literally get them booted off Google and like don’t do it. Don’t fall down the trap that I’ve been and it’s not a good one. I don’t want you to do it.

So the reason we’re doing this discussion today is because in SEO Launch Pad, you had posted some wins that you had with SEO and that’s what caught my attention and I was so happy about and I would love for you to give that story to everybody and kind of let them know what the win was and how you got there.

Sean Kerrigan: Oh, yeah. Thanks Rebecca for asking with that. And it is something that I’m quite excited about and quite proud too. The office here, we definitely have enjoyed the success. So I’ll tell you a little bit about it.

So from – we have this client that we’ve been working with for about 8 months and he is actually one of the clients that pushed us into the SEO realm saying, “I really want you to work with me on SEO.” And we would say, “Well, we don’t really offer that. We outsource it.” “No, I want you to work with us.” Well, OK. Then we can do it but here is where we’re starting at.

So, he knew right away that I was at moderate knowledge but was going to be improving on my professional development with him as our client. And he was totally OK with that. So, he has an online store which sells to Canada, US, Europe. And he sells to Northwest Coast native art and jewelry. He has been around for quite a while.

So I took your course. And after it, I was thinking about the idea of those content silos you discussed. And so coming through keywords and Search Console and keyword tool finder with that idea of content silos, I started seeing this bit of a pattern that I thought I might tap into. And it was about a few pages on the website. They have organic traffic for people looking for information about native animal symbols or totems. It’s a very popular search term compared to say, searching for a gold piece of jewelry.

So thinking I might be on to something, I wrote a mini content strategy around each spirit animal in first nation’s culture. And I believed in my mind that I could get majority of these on the first page of Google Canada and Google US. So that was my goal, to get at least one of those on the first page.

But once I actually implemented the strategy, the results, Rebecca, completely exceeded my expectations. I watched as 19 of the 22 pages, he specifically focused on one animal totem had moved into position zero in Canada, the featured snippet, the holy grail. I was very excited.

A month later, Google US gave us 20 featured snippets. And as of last week, we had 32 low to medium traffic keywords in position zero for the US.

So it was just a really uplifting experience telling me that I was on the right track with what I was doing and with SEO, with these and other SEO work I’ve done on the side, so you can get lots of position zero results but does it actually translate into business? That’s where our client is the most keen to know about.

So, there has actually been a substantial increase in site visits since I rolled out my new strategy. There has been 112% increase in paid views, 83% decrease in the bounce rate compared to the previous year. So we’re now on track for one million page views for 2017. So it’s a really exciting time for him and for us.

Rebecca Gill: That is awesome. So for people out there who are not really familiar with the featured snippets and position zero, let me just kind of give you a little bit of background. So Google has something that’s called the Knowledge Graph. And part of the Knowledge Graph is – or the Knowledge Graph is just basically Google’s way of connecting people, places, and things together and better understanding how they all relate to each other.

And so, when you go to Google and you do a basic search, a lot of the times now, you are having elements of this Knowledge Graph come in and provide supplemental data in addition to the regular search results you see or part of one component of that Knowledge Graph is the featured snippets and Google will take the featured snippets, pull something out of a website and put it in the search results and it’s above all the other organic rankings and that’s why we call it position zero.

And Sean’s right. It is the holy grail of where you want to be because not only are you listed at the top, it has pulled information out of your site, plop it there so people see it right away. They can’t miss it. It helps bring traffic into your site and it’s really going to adjust the overall branding because the visitors of Google are continuously seeing your name and your content and your URL pop up in front of their face. So it really does some good brand recognition.

And being able to get that many with the strategy that you had is really an achievement and it shows that you look at things like the featured snippets and that position zero and the usage of the Knowledge Graph and people make the assumption that only big brands can have that, only big companies and large SEO teams. But that’s false. Anybody can get there with a good process and having good content and doing the right things that they need to do.

So, I love the fact that that worked for you. And I do have a little mini course that’s free on the Knowledge Graph. So in the show notes, I will link over to that. So if you are listening to this podcast and you’re unfamiliar with what that is and how it relates to search, you can go learn more.

So now that you have augmented your SEO knowledge, you have gone full time into SEO from the project management space. You have made some huge wins for clients and your firm is obviously now offering SEO as a service. Tell us kind of a little bit about the types of SEO that you’re offering because there are a lot of different things that you can have. I know people come to me and will say, “Oh, I just want you to link build for me. Oh, I want you to do Facebook ads.” Everyone’s version of SEO and what their skillset is definitely vary.

So, tell me a little bit about what you and your firm are going to offer moving forward?

Sean Kerrigan: Yeah. So being a smaller focused agency, we realized that we only have a certain amount of resources within our company. But saying that, with that comes very personalized, when you work with clients, a very personalized experience.

We have a lot of experience in the social media realm, pay-per-click ads for Facebook. And we understand that realm very well. Now, when we sort of think about where we’re going to go with the SEO side of things, we’re going to really go as deep as necessary. We want to continue to develop our SEO offerings. I want to continue developing my expertise. And we would love to have one or two more employees to our SEO team as our client base allows as we build it out. And we see that happening definitely in the next one to two years.

Having these results with the native art gallery, really allows us to provide a solid business case to prospective clients to say, “Maybe it’s not 32 results in the position zero but what does your business need?” And having that real, individualized strategy for us is very important. We don’t want to just have that boiler plate, “This is what we do.” And you’ll get maybe in two positions on the first page.

If we want to make sure we’re working with the client to figure out what their business schools? What are they wanting to get out of this as well? And then helping them get there.

Rebecca Gill: So do you see yourself obviously doing probably keyword research and competitive research and some site mapping and on-page optimization, do you see also writing content for clients or taking their content and optimizing it for them?

Sean Kerrigan: No, we do both. Like currently with the SEO clients we have, some of them trust my writing because I have been writing for a long time online for about 10 years. And as you know, Rebecca, it’s a bit of a different piece than writing for anything else.

Rebecca Gill: Yes.

Sean Kerrigan: Yeah. So writing that website content, I enjoy the fact that I can research different areas. Like one day, I might be developing a strategy for a paving company and writing some content for them about ash fall paving. And the next day, I am writing for a wedding crate company and they’re selling crates across Canada.

So, it really depends on the client. But we always feel comfortable being able to do that and helping them with understanding because as a lot of people know, most of our clients don’t seem to know how to write for the web, they’re creating for brochures and offline marketing.

Rebecca Gill: So it’s funny. I don’t actually write content for clients. They write the base and then I will make web-friendly and SEO-friendly and things like that. But I always joke that when you‘re an SEO consultant, you have the most random, weird knowledge. And that’s because you bounce from client to client and you have to really understand what they do and the nature of their service or their product offering to be able to optimize their content.

And I mean I go from things like marijuana grower insurance to public restrooms to medical and healthcare over to IT and enterprise software. Like that bouncing around. I have like all of this weird knowledge in my head that probably no one ever wants to know that I will carry through with me in life. And that is the nature of working in SEO and helping clients. It’s just funny.

Sean Kerrigan: Well, we’re created in your parties, Rebecca. I’m sure.

Rebecca Gill: Yes, but as long as it’s not my husband sitting next to me.

Sean Kerrigan: Exactly.

Rebecca Gill: So as we close out, I know it’s really hard to find a company that offers both SEO services as well as content writing. So I would love to kind of throw out there the ideal client for you and your firm and like what’s a really good fit for you because I’ll, in the show notes, link over to your site. And if people have that type of fit or that type of organization, I would love them to be able to track you down and potentially hire you for services.

Sean Kerrigan: Well, thank you, Rebecca. That’s great. Whenever we start working with a client, we really believe that working with clients that have a good, solid understanding of their business and what motivates their customers, that’s really an ideal client for us. This client should also be able to be ready to scale their business as it grows with more online traffic. So if they’re selling widgets and we can bring more visitors to their site, can they actually meet the demand that that increased surge, that increased traffic brings?

So, that’s scaling and a decent monthly budget as well because it does take time and it does take the efforts of a good team. So a good SEO budget, a monthly budget is really important for us to get results.

Working closely with clients for me, that’s why I’m in this business, that’s why I’ve always been in this business because I love meeting new people. I love being involved with different projects and seeing businesses grow and seeing successes.

So for me the clients really become friends. And with friends, you begin to understand what their goals and objectives are, not just from a business point of view but maybe from a personal point of view as well. So we really focused – set out on developing a strategy to meet all those goals and objectives. And when we understand our clients, we just become part of that marketing team with them.

So whether it’s increasing online sales, building membership in their organization, promoting stakeholders or increasing brand awareness, through all those things, we believe that SEO can help reach their goals and objectives. And The Update Company is definitely here to help and I would love to chat to anybody even if it’s just a chat about any project you have going on out there from an SEO point of view or a content point of view.

Rebecca Gill: So, if you’re and end user or a business owner or a marketer and you’re listening to this podcast, here are some good takeaways from what Sean just said.

So, not everybody in the SEO industry is slimy and sneaky little salesman, I know that we have that persona because there’s so many – just over the years, there has been a lot of black hat stuff that people have done and shortcuts that have gotten end users in trouble and websites banned where people promised to do work and they don’t actually do it because they’re outsourcing and things like that.

So here’s how you stay away from it. You look for the things that Sean just said. So he is focused on goals and results. Not his goals and results, your goals and results. What do you want to achieve with the SEO services and what’s important to you? Because really, it’s more than just website traffic. It needs to be targeted. It needs to be specific to what you do and that it’s really going to make a tangible change for your organization or for your business.

And then the other thing he said was he needed somebody with a reasonable budget and time. And that’s because SEO does take time. The people that promise you gimmicks and quick fixes and say, “Oh, I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry. We’ll do it all for you. You’ll see results right away.” You can’t trust those people. That’s because that’s not the way SEO works.

It is hard work. It’s putting yourself out there and doing good and making a number of small changes that are incremental that together make huge results. And that’s who you’re looking for, someone like that, someone that you can trust and someone that really wants to be your technology partner and work with you as part of an augmentation of your marketing team. And that’s the kind of things that Sean just said when he was speaking.

So Sean, one last question before we go. I believe SEO is fun. I believe it’s challenging and I enjoy kind of the cause and effect of it and the change it makes for clients and how it can really improve their business when they put an effort into the process along with me.

Now, that you’ve kind of jumped into it full time, I’m assuming you also love it because otherwise you will go crazy. So what is your current view of SEO and are you as crazy as I am?

Sean Kerrigan: I think so, Rebecca. As you know, when other people in the office, we have our developers and we have our designers and we have our social media manager and they all look at me and say, “You really like this?” And I said, “Yes. I love it.” For me, it’s both. It’s both fun and it’s challenging.

For me, we have to all come to work 5 days a week or whatever your schedule is and what brings me in the office every day is that challenge. And that’s why SEO is really a perfect for me. I’m challenged in different ways with different clients. I’ve already talked about writing different content for different clients.

For me, work has to be fun. And I have to say that it’s fun and rewarding. I mean it’s really fun when you watch a client’s rankings climb and the client calls you up and says, “What have you done?” But not in a bad way.

Rebecca Gill: Yeah, yeah. For sure. For you, like you are the perfect example of why it’s fun for me and why like – so the Facebook group that I launched, it does take time, right? I not only curate content in there and make sure that the members are getting lots of details and what’s happening in the SEO industry in the world, but I also try to answer personal questions that they’re giving me based on sites or whatever their challenge is at the moment. And it takes time.

But when I see people like you saying, “Hey, you know what? This is working.” I just didn’t give you fish, I taught you how to fish or improve your fishing skills that will last you a lifetime. That’s amazing and that’s the thing that I love about the internet and I love about online education because it just – it does really shifts and it produces great rewards and personally, it’s like to me, it’s rewarding. It’s fulfilling.

And like you said, it makes you want to come in and do your day’s work because you know at the end of the day, you’ve made an impact. You know you’ve made a difference. And that’s the way that I view SEO.

Well, Sean, I truly appreciate you joining me today. For everybody who is listening, again, on the SEObits.fm, I will have show notes for Sean’s interview and links over to his website and some of the other things that we referenced.

And if you enjoyed this podcast, I would love a review on iTunes. And we will be speaking with you next week as we come back and continue our SEO journey together. Thanks so much for joining us today.