Podcast With Steven Schneider

Avoid SEO Pitfalls: Must-Know Content Strategies Revealed with Steven Schneider

Show Notes

Uncover the secrets to avoid SEO pitfalls with these must-know content strategies designed to help you rank your website number 1 in search engine rankings. In this step-by-step guide, Steven shares insights from his SEO journey since 2017, revealing how SEO strategies for 2025 can drive more organic traffic and help you achieve a #1 ranking. Through engaging discussions, you'll learn how to craft high-quality, high-intent content, master the art of content clustering, and understand the significance of site structure to enhance user experience.

Whether you're a beginner or an advanced user, this video provides practical advice to optimize your WordPress SEO and boost your online visibility. Stay informed with the latest SEO trends and techniques that are crucial for your success in the ever-evolving digital world.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:34 - Evolution of Content Creation

02:05 - Early Challenges and SEO Approach

03:27 - Content Process at Trio SEO

07:33 - Trio SEO Success Story

08:48 - Determining Content-Length

10:24 - Peak Content Production

11:26 - Editors vs. Writers Debate

12:40 - Importance of Native English Writers

13:47 - Niche Coverage in SEO

14:31 - Refreshing Content Strategy

15:43 - Productivity Hacks for Quality Output

16:25 - AI Integration at Trio SEO

17:20 - Business Impact After Google Core Update

17:56 - Critical SEO Strategies for the Future

19:22 - Ideal Blog Content Publishing Frequency

20:25 - Forming a Content Strategy

21:40 - Hub and Spoke Strategy Explained

23:55 - Integrating Strategy into Blog Writing

28:30 - Biggest Content Mistakes

31:50 - Effective Channels for SEO

32:45 - Collaborating with Agencies

33:26 - Best Advice for SEO Beginners

34:10 - Favorite SEO Tools

34:40 - AI in Content Generation

35:05 - Maintaining Strong Company Culture

36:10 - Must-Read Book Recommendations

37:50 - Finding Steven Online

38:22 - Where to Find Steven

38:25 - Outro

Transcript

Introduction

0:01 welcome to the agency Insider podcast today we are joined by Steven Schneider founder and CEO of triu Steven has made

0:08 significant strides in the SEO World particularly as the CEO of triu today we

0:13 are excited to dive into his journey insights and the future of

0:20 [Applause]

0:25 [Music] su wel welcome to the podcast Stephen

0:31 it's pleasure to have you here thank you I'm excited to be here yeah so uh you have been into the

Evolution of Content Creation

0:38 SEO game I guess since 2017 yeah yes and how has your uh and I

0:45 noticed you started your work building affiliate websites initially right so

0:50 how has your approach to content creation evolved since you first started building affiliate

0:56 websites wow yeah so I think that the biggest thing is just the the level of quality that we've had to upgrade across the

1:02 board I mean over time Google is just getting better and better at cracking down on uh spam sites and we all know

1:08 that sometimes they get it wrong and so I think that just over time as you create more content you have to really

1:13 level up your game and just make sure there's way more checks and balances to succeed an SEO so were you making these

1:20 affiliation n websites for yourself or for the client uh for myself so I had two partners and we owned about 40

1:27 different sites and at our Peak we were scaling to about 3 to 400 articles new articles per month and yeah we we scaled

1:34 it up to seven figures it was a pretty pretty fun run so did you made an exit or these sites still exist no we didn't

1:42 exit uh we got hit with a couple of Black Swan events one of them being covid and um you know like spam updates

1:48 stuff like that so that was kind of where we saw it was a good time to step away from the affiliate world and then I

1:53 kind of stepped away from that company as a whole and then that's when I started Trio SEO with Connor Gillan and Nathan hirs so did you start a trio

2:01 about a year ago coming up one year okay okay so what challenges did you faced in

Early Challenges and SEO Approach

2:08 the early stages of career and how these how did these experience shaped up your

2:13 uh approach for SEO today yeah I think the the biggest thing at least from The Experience side of

2:19 Trio SEO was the shift between owning all the sites and kind of being able to have full control over anything and just

2:26 being agile and now kind of switching to more of a client facing role with agencies and just there's way more brand

2:32 guidelines and adherences with how we publish content with clients making sure it fits within you know what they want

2:38 it to be deemed publishable so I mean just kind of putting in better systems and more quality checks and checkpoints

2:44 along the way um because back in the day it was it was very scalable very easily so Trio is more into the content uh part

2:53 of the SEO right correct so what what exactly does the trio SE do yeah so we

3:00 have we focus on two things um it can either be strategy plus briefs or we'll do like a full 100% hands-off content

3:07 package and that would be strategy plus writing or uploads and Publishing and all that kind of on page stuff but it's

3:13 strictly just content and really high quality focused High intent so bottom of

3:18 funnel trying to get content that actually converts and focus on just that at

3:23 scale okay so do you do you also so this content is mainly for the client blog

Content Process at Trio SEO

3:29 site correct yeah so we yeah so we we do all the work on behalf of clients and log into their site and they own all the

3:35 content at the end of the day um and it's on their site driving organic traffic back to their brain okay so do

3:41 you so H so how does the process works when a client comes to you and ask for

3:47 Content so so is is there a initial brief which happens or is there a

3:52 direction you take Bas because you mentioned bofu so I'm sure you create content for different part of the

3:57 funnels as well so how does that uh initial interaction and initial uh

4:03 discussion happens yeah so we always start with the discovery audit before the client signs and that just kind of allows us to like you know figure out

4:09 where they stand and then once they actually are get onboarded the onboarding process just filled with a lot of information about learning about

4:16 their brand their ICP the customers like their goals tones Etc and we pretty much

4:22 just do a deep dive from that side while also doing more key research and then we kind of merge those two together and

4:28 kind of figure out what topics and where they fall in that funnel and then from there on out we create a 90day Sprint

4:34 and that's going to be based on say they're doing seven articles per month so it' be 21 overall and then we meet

4:39 with them and help prioritize the topic so that they fit with their goals and then from there on out it's just a

4:45 matter of kind of you know divide and conquer and keep the ball in motion but yeah we're very collaborative in the early stages so that the clients can see

4:52 that we're on the right track and it's where they want to go and it's extremely bottom funnel High intent we don't want to dist drve meaningless traffic so when

5:00 you do these content do they I mean of course content only will not generate uh

5:07 traffic and ranking so is there any other push you guys do or do you ask clients to basically what I'm saying is

5:14 if the website doesn't have an authority no matter how much content I generate it's not going to generate uh traffic

5:20 yeah yeah for sure so that's that's kind of the benefit of doing the discovery audit first we have backlink Partners

5:26 but we don't offer that as a service so we're very upfront with clients from the start just to make sure it's a good fit

5:31 like we've denied a handful of clients just because they want to rank in a say Finance Niche and they're dr0 and we

5:38 just know that that's not going to work so we know we're not going to just take people's money we're business owners first and entrepreneurs who have had

5:44 success with SEO and so we know the long-term struggles of getting SEO to work well and so for that reason we want

5:50 it to be a win-win and so the discovery audit is not only for their benefit but ours as well to see can we actually make

5:57 this work and if yes then we'll move forward but if not we're just transparent and be like hey it's better

6:02 if you guys go build back links for you know a couple months then come back to us and we can focus on content

6:08 completely makes sense because a lot of companies think content just from a sales perspective okay we'll do seven

6:13 writeups for you a month I mean if it doesn't get Valu so where that's where customer come back and say I got the

6:19 best writers but I got no no business no sales and that's where

6:25 yeah go ahead yeah please please go ahead I say like another important part part two is we focus on just like really

6:31 strong like site structure and I think that that's one of the things that most people Overlook too is just the uh you

6:36 know like ux and cro and internal linking and kind of the things that we at least have control over so it is kind

6:43 of like a two-way street but yeah to your point like back blings definitely move the needle at the end of the day so

6:49 yes and uh recently there have been a trend of digital PR of course what digital pr1 angle is create a Content

6:56 which is uh which has lots of stats and everything and when Journal Google it they finds it so you got back links and

7:02 of course some Buzz is created so do you do those type of content as well if it

7:08 makes sense for them we'll definitely offer it but I me just looking at like knowing statistic keywords those are

7:13 usually higher difficulty to go after um it really has to make sense with their domain Authority and making sure that

7:18 they can actually have a a fighting chance to get that in the top 10 uh because we don't do any Outreach it just

7:24 really has to be like do we think that there's a high probability of them ranking top five for this and if not not

7:29 then there's probably a better way to allocate resources okay makes sense now uh can

Trio SEO Success Story

7:35 you share a success to story where your content strategy significantly improved

7:41 clients organic traffic yeah I mean we've had a couple clients where you know they've wanted to see the SEO

7:48 benefit they know that is a long-term investment we have one client in the uh mergers and acquisition space who has

7:54 just completely exploded with Organic traffic and started getting leads through Audits and you know kind of

7:59 referrals from that sense and um what we did in that approach we just went after a traditional hob and spoke approach

8:05 going after mergers Acquisitions exits and kind of all the content within that space and then to really hit it more

8:11 bottom funnel like I said more into the like how to sell XYZ company or you know more of the nitty-gritty stuff and then

8:18 just kind of work that into the client's offer and said you know how can we meet the the reader on that side of things

8:24 and over time it's been been working really well and um the surprising fact about that too is that they have like a

8:30 dr7 and it's not really something that you would expect to see so it was kind of a fun surprise from that sense uh we

8:36 knew that there was some opportunities just went after unique keywords but the fact that they are kind of a growing

8:41 Authority in the space I think really gave them a level up in that sense so um it's been fun to watch so when you

Determining Content-Length

8:48 produce content uh again what kind of a so let's say you got a Content you got on a discovery call you decide you want

8:55 to create a wofu Content like you mention now do you how do you go about

9:01 deciding the length of the content and everything do you uh so is there a

9:06 process which you have for that which you can share with our listeners yeah so we look at the search intent first I

9:12 mean obviously if it's a quick you know FAQ type of question then it's not going to be a 3,000-word article so it really

9:18 just depends on what the topic is to begin with um and then we just build the outline based on what we see in the data

9:23 and what we can look at in HFS and other tools and see what makes it feel like it's optimized without it going to long

9:30 and we do a lot of just kind of like Mental Math like if sections are two or 300 words and we don't want to add 20 of

9:35 them for examples um I think it's just more about being realistic and what the the reader is expecting and how we can

9:41 meet them on that because no one wants to read a 5,000-word article and that be answered in five other words so right so

9:49 you mentioned you at one time managed uh 40 affiliate website yeah so so uh I

9:56 mean because a lot of times what happens is once you have scaled to a lot of websites the biggest challenge becomes

10:03 is the scaling the content so so what were the biggest challenges you faced in

10:09 scaling content production I'm sure they were across diverse niches right yep

10:15 yeah it was all across different niches so what were the challenges and how did you overcome those while prod

10:22 producing and and first question is sorry how much content were you producing actually every month for those website at that time I think got I mean

Peak Content Production

10:30 anywhere from 300 to 400 total across all Sites per month so I mean give or take it was anywhere from some some

10:37 sites you know had five pieces of content some had 10 maybe some had 20 it was kind of split up overall but the

10:43 biggest thing I think is just having a good system where everything communicates well and it's very efficient and that's kind of where we

10:50 were able to succeed so quickly with Trio SEO is that I pretty much just took that existing system from The Old

10:56 Company copied it over like we work with air table so having air table set up very effectively with zap and

11:03 automations and all that sort of stuff um it just makes the whole entire process very routine and everyone knows

11:09 their their step in the process um and we also had a team of 30 you know kind of working on this thing so it wasn't

11:14 like it was just me and you know two friends doing it it takes an army for

11:20 sure so you had 30 people uh before or you have 30 peoples now previously when

Editors vs. Writers Debate

11:26 we were doing that many that much content yeah I think now our team is around um coming up on

11:32 10 okay okay so so B so in these people do you believe more in having an editor

11:40 job or do you believe in writer understanding and being more reliant on a writer with true SEO we've been

11:47 actually switching toward more full-time writers which is where instead of working on a contract basis uh we're

11:53 trying to bring writers in and actually make them more ingrain in the culture and they can have more of a buy into

11:58 clients and they can can actually learn the brands it makes it a lot easier because then they have Mastery over that

12:04 and so we found that it's good to have a couple full-time generalist writers and then maybe specialty writers expert

12:10 writers when technical niches come into play but yeah that's the bigger it's also easier to manage you know you're

12:15 not working with 30 writers compared to you know maybe five or six so um that's kind of the how we operate that sense

12:23 okay so more writers of you are based out of the US um they're kind of all over we don't have any us writers we

12:28 have some in the UK um we have some in India Pakistan Philippines kind of like

12:33 you Eastern Europe Western Europe so I mean it's kind of it's it's definitely global global team from that front Okay

Importance of Native English Writers

12:40 so the number one question or number one problem me being in India face is when people say we need native English

12:47 writers so you get these CS how do you overcome that objection we just let the

12:52 content speak for itself you know we we try not to you know we don't if people ask like we're not going to lie to them

12:58 we're very trans expent with our clients and that's what we kind of pride ourselves on but if someone's reading an article and they're like hey who wrote

13:04 this we'll tell them but usually I mean like our team is good we have everything's 100% human written

13:09 everything's 100% human edited obviously we use things like grammarly to help us out but we give our team a lot of access

13:15 to tools and resources that allow them to succeed so at the end of the day I mean if the content performs well and it

13:20 reads well being nitpicky over stuff like that usually means that the client is just nitpicky in general and seo's on

13:28 a good front for them because if you're kind of getting hung up on the nuances of stuff like that um it kind of it

13:35 holds you back I would say so you know you kind of have to let the results speak for themselves and if it works it works and if it is still tied to the

13:42 brand and the tone and all that sort of stuff then you know you kind of have to let it do its

Niche Coverage in SEO

13:47 job right right so do you cover all niches or do you specialize in certain niches or so we prefer to work with like

13:55 B2B SAS products specifically in like the e-commerce space e-commerce or Amazon we have a couple clients that are

14:01 in like the the Amazon tools space for sellers but we're not closed off to any niches so to speak it just really

14:07 depends on one if there's opportunity and two do we need to hire an expert writer like we had just an audit this

14:13 morning for a niche that is far beyond me very technical and I just knew immediately I was like this is something

14:19 we like cannot not have a writer on so we have to go and kind of scout someone in that sense right right right and uh

14:27 do you believe also so in the importance of refreshing the content oh yeah absolutely we do updates about every six

Refreshing Content Strategy

14:34 months uh depending on if either the client had content on the site before us that wasn't performing well or if like

14:41 say that we did an article and it's a little bit more challenging to rank for we'll revisit it and just kind of give

14:47 some fresh fresh content to it and kind of touch it up just so that Google kind of sees it as a kind of upto-date

14:52 resource yeah updates definitely move the needle and we kind of take that in consideration can you walk us briefly

14:57 through your process for identifying and updating outdated articles yeah so the

15:04 biggest thing is just taking a look at what the expected value of it should be and where it currently sits you know if

15:10 something's ranking top three or it's ranking first like I'm not going to touch that article but if it's ranking

15:15 maybe ninth or if it's ranking 12th or maybe 15 or 20 then that's definitely

15:21 kind of showing me signs that hey this missed the mark for some reason obviously there's things like back links

15:26 and difficulty that come into consideration but just kind of taking a look a versus B at the content are there

15:33 any gaps in this content how can we Spruce it up and how can we make it better than the top breaking

15:39 pieces okay yeah makes sense now of course content creation can be time

Productivity Hacks for Quality Output

15:45 consuming what productivity ha hacks have you discovered that help you and your team maintain high quality output

15:54 without sacrificing quality so the biggest thing is really just breaking up each stage of the process into almost

16:01 like an assembly line where everyone knows their job and they can become really really specialized in that task

16:07 and then over time as mass redevelops you just become faster and more efficient at it so something that might

16:13 take you know two hours we'll break it up into three tasks so it's actually easier to

16:20 divide and conquer okay all right let's talk a little bit about the future of su of course with and everything so it

AI Integration at Trio SEO

16:27 becomes important I mean none of my podcast fin finishes without Ai and SE

16:33 so I have to bring it in so AI is of course rapidly changing the content landscape so how is triu adopting its

16:40 services to incorporate AI while maintaining quality and originality so we don't do any AI

16:47 content we're still against AI from the sense that we don't want to jeopardize our client's Brands but we look at AI as

16:53 a tool so you know we use things like grammarly which has AI functions in it we look at shbt for like questions or

17:00 how we can improve brand briefs and tone um but when it comes to the content itself that we're publishing we're not

17:06 going to put it on the site so that's really just comes down to trying to incorporate more into our tool stack and

17:12 our Tech stack instead of it becoming like a reliant dependency in the process okay so so after the Google uh core

Business Impact After Google Core Update

17:21 update in March uh did your business see an uptick or a downt because lot of

17:27 affiliate websites I mean a lot of people lost hope in SEO kind of so how

17:32 was the business after that yeah so thankfully we don't have any affiliate websites that was just from The Old

17:38 Company years ago but all of our clients saw uptick in traffic which was great to see um you know I think that that kind

17:44 of speaks to the Quality that we're putting out there and just kind of like the core basics of what we're following through on but yeah it's always it's

17:50 always a little nerve-wracking you never know what's going to happen during a Google update right so given the constant

Critical SEO Strategies for the Future

17:57 evaluation of SEO what strategies do you believe will be critical for businesses to focus for the next two three

18:04 years I think it's just becoming better at the basics I think that people try to always look for the new hack or try to

18:10 figure out ways to find shortcuts when really SEO is based on Mastery of the fundamentals I still think that

18:16 backlinks and things like PR are going to be critical just as Google tries to figure out you know who's who and

18:23 getting votes of confidences but when it comes down to it I think at the end of the day you really can't reinvent the wheel for SEO and so that really just

18:31 comes down to who can do the same thing over and over again and be patient enough to see the the

18:37 results right right right and given the constant evaluation of strategy SEO what

18:42 strategies do you believe will be critical for business to focus in next two three years I'd say podcasting is

18:49 great I'd say you know creating networks and Partnerships they also resultant backlinks and then I would say site

18:55 structure is great you know people are always going to be happy with a site that is fast and works well on mobile

19:01 and just considering the user experience of all content like if the site feels clunky and feels like it's outdated uh

19:07 it's really going to be a turn off to people so how can you bring your brand into the future and allow people to feel

19:13 and interact with it like it should be okay and uh uh when you are uh do so

Ideal Blog Content Publishing Frequency

19:23 when you are doing content for blog or clients so what's the ideal frequency for publishing a block content as much

19:31 as possible it should be yeah yeah I know it's not one one rule for all but still yeah so our minimum is seven per

19:38 month we found that that's kind of a good if you're going to look at content over a longterm time Horizon that's kind

19:44 of a sweet spot we we will do lower packages for custom if if needed but we don't recommend going below five I think

19:50 that if you go below five you really have to extend your time Horizon um and just kind of think long term but I think

19:57 as soon as the content's ready just publish it don't try and schedule it don't try and delay it and also don't

20:02 try and make it perfect you know there's people who have redlined a lot of documents from internally on our side

20:08 and clients who have to have the perfect product before it's uploaded you can't have every comma perfectly plac or every

20:15 apostrophe perfectly placed it's just not realistic so yeah get the content publish it see how it reacts with Google

20:21 and then kind of update from there right now so uh how do you form

Forming a Content Strategy

20:28 content strategy for a business so we take a look at just kind of their ICP and you know all the kind

20:35 of like psychology metrics that I just recently mentioned but I think when it comes down to it we look at traditional

20:40 Hub and spoke approach and siloing content into clusters it just always works well especially when you have

20:46 great internal linking on the site and so going after categories and seeing if there's any subcategories or secondary

20:52 keywords within that and then just making sure that everything fits well so if you're publishing content don't do

20:58 sporadic content make sure there's a cohesive strategy to it and then kind of set out down that

21:04 path so do you believe in topical issue I do I think that it's essential I

21:10 think that it's more about where the goals are aligned with clients you know some clients come to us and they're say

21:16 hey like you know we already have a lot of bottom funel content and we just want to spread awareness and so from that sense they're like almost dedicating

21:22 time and resources to building topical Authority so I think it really just depends on where the business is at and

21:29 where they want to streamline their organic traffic and then from there it kind of depends on where they see

21:35 themselves five plus years in the future you you spoke a couple of times

Hub and Spoke Strategy Explained

21:40 about Hub and spoke strategy of course for our listeners if you can define a little more what exactly when you mean

21:47 when you say Hub and spoke strategy yeah so Hub and spoke strategy is pretty much a like siloed or a clustered way to go

21:54 about your content so you'd have pillar piece or one like ultimate topic say if

22:00 it's uh like onpage SEO would be like the ultimate guide on onpage SEO and

22:05 then obviously on page has broken down into like internal linking or you know

22:11 images or all the kind of basic fundamentals of that category and then you would write sequential articles

22:18 covering the topics in that and then link them all together so it's more about how can you cover micro clusters

22:24 of categories in great detail and then make sure that they're all inter Wen it connected and then kind of move to the

22:30 next one so over time your site becomes an authority in the space and you actually become an expert on each topic

22:37 and Google sees that and then you rank better so so just for the listener

22:43 understanding the first piece of content let's say on page SEO this this is the longer one right correct yeah and then

22:51 you keep on generating the related content for example for internal linking or images so does this content all gets

22:57 published time or over a period of time well since you kind of since we always

23:03 try to focus on bottom of funnel content first it's hard to do all of the content at once because some topics may be top

23:10 of funnel some may be mid so it really just ensures that you're not leaning too far out of the Hub I would say so you

23:17 know go after the bottom funnel and work backwards so you know it is best to publish that ultimate guide first but if

23:24 the ultimate guide is top of funnel then it's probably not the best use of resources so as long as you're not doing

23:29 content on on page and then you're going to off page and you're doing one on back blinks it from that sense it feels a little bit more scattered so okay so

23:37 it's like create a longer page on page provided it's the bottom of the funnel not top of the funnel and then go on

23:45 creating the content which is close to it correct and then of course doing internal linking amongst them right of

23:50 course yeah okay all right now uh so so

Integrating Strategy into Blog Writing

23:56 how is the how is strategy integrated into blog writing to attract leads I

24:01 know you said you for that merger and acquisition client you plugged something for the lead but how exactly do you do

24:08 it for all the blog writing pieces you do or for some and how is the strategy

24:14 integrated so yeah we we really work on nurture sequences and lean magnets and making sure that there is a point of

24:21 entry for the client to at least capture any traffic and kind of bring those

24:26 visitors into their internal CMS and so for example like if you just have a Blog article it might be pretty

24:33 difficult just to convert them to a high paying service Straight from that blog but if you can get them into a

24:38 newsletter and you know nurture them over the next couple of weeks through random emails you kind of buy them into

24:44 the brand and they feel more comfortable so instead of us directing leads straight to the source of pain we might

24:51 direct them to a newsletter or a download or a lead magnet and so from that sense it's more about how do we at

24:56 least bring in the customers and then pass the Baton over to the sales team or the VP or whatever the CMO is working on

25:04 and then they can kind of nurture them for the on and convert them eventually so do you do you follow uh

25:11 some of these yeah so we have a bunch of Sops we have sop lead magnet we have a

25:17 couple more can you show our listeners because I think your website has very nicely laid out all of this oh yeah your

25:25 screen right yeah so you can see here like we we have this uh free SEO sop

25:31 toolkit how do we reach to this page pretty sure you can just Google SEO I me

25:37 what I meant when a user lands on your website so this is a popup or how does this come up this is an actual page on

25:43 the website okay so this is Trio SEO slops and this ranks for the for SEO

25:51 Sops so you can see here like if I'm looking for SEO Sops we're ranked right

25:57 here so download our free SEO you know toolkit and then from here we would be able to kind of get people into this

26:04 lead since this is a form we could also include this as a popup or an embedded form with any of the other content on

26:10 our site and then from here on out this is now going to send them an email sequence where they can download our

26:16 Sops and then also works them into a multisequence email where they're getting more up to dates about the

26:21 business more case studies all that sort of stuff okay this is very interesting so just because most of our audiences

26:28 agency owner so that is why I said that having a lead magnet is something which

26:35 every agency should have on their website so yes and so when you do blogs

26:40 also do you create those lead magnets there yeah so um the lead magnets are more of like exit intent popups we try

26:46 not to be intrusive but yeah we do it for just joining our newsletter in general we have one for the Sops like

26:52 you saw we also have like a SEO budget calculator that we've built like digital assets work great too that's more of

26:59 like a um estimate your monthly cost and kind of get a free audit as a result so

27:04 I mean we have a bunch of different ways to funnel leads into our CMS and then from there on out we have email sequences set up and does this lead

27:12 funnels works well for you yeah it's just great to kind of build that trust in that sense um we've had you know

27:20 people that don't convert immediately to an audit but you know over a monthong period they'll actually sign up for an audit just based on being ingrained to

27:26 the newsletter so it's just more about how do you build trust in your brand and then over time as the trust is built

27:32 people will initially click or the other thing too is that they might not be ready to sign up today maybe they don't

27:38 need SEO Services tomorrow but as a result of them being in your nurture sequence next month they might need it

27:44 randomly as a result of you exactly brand recall is there if you're in their inbox every single week

27:51 you're top of mind for them so um it's just about how do you stay connected with your ideal customer so that when

27:57 the time comes they know that you're the go-to yeah that that's actually a very

28:02 good advice because right now what happens is all the agencies they think okay all we should do is pump out 3,000

28:10 words three writeups every week and we'll get traffic and we'll get because because what Google Now also says it's

28:16 not about the traffic it's about what happens once the customer or a visitor lands on your page so that is also very

28:23 important and you need to have the intent based content as well yeah right exactly now uh so so we talked about how

Biggest Content Mistakes

28:31 good we can do and how well we can do all these content now what are some of the biggest article writing mistakes or

28:36 producing content mistake which you often see business owners doing or web Masters yeah so there's two that I try

28:43 to True will live by till the day I die so the first one is not answering the not answering the search intent quickly

28:49 and concisely so my favorite example is there's nothing worse than looking up a recipe article and being bombarded by a

28:56 thousand words of content about you know cooking and going to the grocery store and getting the recipe it's like I just

29:02 want the recipe just give me the recipe so the first one is like at all of our blogs we always start with an

29:09 introduction which is standard and then we always go into a tldr a two long didn't read summary and that's just

29:15 going to be a quick snippet to build trust and so if it's like a how-to guide we'll give just the answer right there

29:22 and then obviously we'll give it a more in-depth answer below which could be 500 plus words the first thing is just

29:28 making sure that when people go to your site for an answer or for information

29:33 give them the answer they might leave within seconds but a majority of people will want to learn more but if you're

29:39 just burying the answer in content then they feel like they didn't get what they came there for so the first thing is

29:45 just building trust the second thing is stacked onto that which is your eat metrics I would say your experience your

29:53 authoritativeness the trustworthiness and just kind of all the things that Google has been kind kind of screaming

29:58 since day one is do you feel like this is an authoritative figure do you have an author bio does your author bio and a

30:06 real person like ours I link to my LinkedIn and I let people know that hey I actually am a real person I'm not like

30:13 a bot or Ai and just kind of making sure that it feels good like I said I feel like that's overlooked where people just

30:19 are focused on content and traffic when really if that traffic doesn't have a

30:24 good experience the people aren't going to trust you and sales is based on trust at the end of the day so right I think

30:31 ux and how people engage with that content if you just spend a little bit extra time on that like you'll see a

30:37 massive Improvement overall okay okay now since you mentioned uh author bio

30:43 and everything obviously the next question would be do how much do you believe in eat and do you follow that

30:49 process while writing yeah 100% I mean it's it's uh if Google tells you it's

30:54 important why would you not focus on it it's kind of my like argument to that

31:00 lately Google le we do not tend to trust that much after the Google right but I

31:07 think that at its core you have to remember that you're writing content for actual humans at the end of the day and

31:13 if you're e is still based on the principles of showing showcasing your

31:19 Authority trying to build trust on page trying to display that you are an expert in the space like that's never going to

31:25 be not a good use of your time so especially with how templatized websites

31:31 are nowadays like if you have a good blog layout like ours then all of that is just you replicated across your site

31:38 so it's a very easy one-time task to invest in a good design and then from there on out it's it displays across the

31:46 board right so on your website or on your business so which is the uh uh I

Effective Channels for SEO

31:52 mean in terms of getting leads which is the most uh which is the biggest channel

31:57 is the organic or I know you were active on LinkedIn as well so which channel works for you right now and has those

32:04 channel changed in last few months yeah it's actually direct like either through

32:09 just mentioning it on LinkedIn or like my partners Connor and Nathan they have like pretty big Network outside of

32:15 LinkedIn and just like a big Network in general from their companies so usually it's Word of Mouth through that sense

32:20 okay the the website itself Trio SEO is still growing like I said we've only been around for a year and we have a

32:26 dr30 and so so like it's it's still getting there but from a sense of like

32:32 natural organic leads like we know it's going to be a multi-year long investment we're not quite there from an organic

32:38 sense but um it's kind of all a multi you know kind of facet strategy amongs

32:44 on everything but yeah biggest one is definitely direct or word mouth right now so do you work with agencies as well

Collaborating with Agencies

32:51 um yeah so we work with right now we have a partner right now um who's actually a client of ours we do they are

32:58 web design so we add content to their site and then we also leverage them in time of need for if our clients need web

33:06 design work or if their stuff if they need SEO work so yeah we definitely try and look for partners and kind of good

33:12 relationships we're also exploring things with like PPC agencies right now uh we also offer white label services to

33:19 agencies so and we're always open to the conversation and kind of seeing how we can make it a

33:24 win-win okay okay now uh what is the best piece of advice for anyone uh

Best Advice for SEO Beginners

33:30 considering SEO you would give I mean in today's uh after Google update

33:36 so yeah the big biggest thing I would say is focus on podcasting if you are comfortable doing that and have a

33:42 network to do so it's the best way to build back links build relationships uh you get content out of it it's like this

33:48 win-win-win scenario uh the other thing I would say is be patient like if you

33:53 are looking at SEO and expecting it to be a 30-day quick win game you're wrong

33:59 it's just not like that uh you have to be able to think in months and years not in days and weeks and so um those are

34:06 definitely the two biggest things I would say and you mentioned you use a lot of tools earlier so what are your some of

Favorite SEO Tools

34:13 your favorite tools with you and your team which you use every day yeah we use air table for everything it's like our

34:19 main base for those who are familiar it's kind of similar to notion we use slack every day I use HRS I live in HRS

34:27 Google search console Google analytics um even though G4 is not the best but

34:32 that's kind to of a whole different conversation yeah I mean it's the basics I mean there's really no reason to you

34:37 know kind of steer away and try to figure out what's what's new okay so the content which you write to produce do

AI in Content Generation

34:43 you do some checks with the AI so do you use any AI tools to check the AI content

34:50 generation yeah we use originality doai which is um that checks for AI it checks

34:55 for plagiarism it also does kind of originality score just to see like how off base it is and kind of seeing like

35:02 the originality of it like the name says okay now of course the SE industry

Maintaining Strong Company Culture

35:08 is highly competitive and somebody starting uh agency in last one year are very less heard ofly I mean keeping

35:15 today's scenario so how do you maintain a strong company culture and ensure that your team stays motivated and hi up the

35:23 cve we really focus on just having quality team meetings that are built on

35:29 getting to know each other rather than making it more of a employee employe relationship you I think that it's one

35:36 of those things where you can feel like you know people and you know like in our slack Channel we have a channel for

35:42 sharing pictures and like what are we doing on the weekends and kind of like letting it build into more of a

35:48 friendship relationship than just a I'm doing a job relationship so I think as long as we can continue to treat people

35:55 with respect and be friendly with them and ask the same in return uh you can build a pretty strong culture and you

36:01 know people buy into the company and they buy into the vision and that's really important for us as we're kind of on our

36:07 mission okay and uh any any must read books or website recommendations um

Must-Read Book Recommendations

36:13 let's see here I'm a pretty big fan of atre's blog it's probably not a very common answer but I think the atre just

36:20 has great content if I'm ever looking to I'm trying to learn more about local SEO right now like I think that that's going

36:26 to be a good opport in the next couple years if people can really double down on local SEO so I'm just trying to learn

36:32 as much as I can about that and like Nathan gosh is also good there's just so many good people out there I sck to LinkedIn a lot for a lot of my like

36:38 up-to-date news stuff and following you know agency owners and SEO people and Founders in the space that are kind of

36:45 like always on the button when it comes to news and Trends okay and are you a book reader or

36:53 no yeah I actually just read this book I like it's uh called the value of

37:00 SEO by Andrew Holland have you read this one no I I just took a interview of

37:07 Peter who wrote product based SEO which is a okay yeah and I was with Nathan

37:15 gosh also who wrote the book The SEO so those two books are also highly rated I

37:20 am here to go through this book because I try to get some of the authors of the books also on the show that helps yeah

37:27 yeah this one's good this is actually Andrew is someone I connected with on LinkedIn and this book is all about it's

37:33 pretty much a compilation of his LinkedIn posts like so it's very quick

37:38 easy to read but really high impact content so it's kind of like the best thing for your buck is kind I looked at

37:44 it so I think it's available on Amazon yeah yeah so I I'll put for my listeners

Finding Steven Online

37:50 the link in the comment section below all right so thank you so much step for sharing your insights and experience

37:56 with us today it's been a pleasure having you on the show where can our listeners find you online and learn more about your work

38:04 yeah I'm really active on LinkedIn I post daily you can find me just look up Trio SEO T Rio SEO you can also Google

38:11 my name I'm pretty active you know elsewhere but uh yeah linkedin's the best spot yeah I think that that's kind

38:17 of where I hang out most but yeah you can also go to the website and you know reach me there

Where to Find Steven

38:22 too okay uh and thank you to our listeners for tuning into the agency inside a podcast uh be sure to check uh

Outro

38:30 Steven's work and of course connect with him on LinkedIn. I've seen some of the posts are really quite valuable and worth learning from. Stay tuned for our next episode. Until next time, thank you!