The Slow Burn: Raising Website Ranks Via SEO with James Parnwell (Episode 131)

Chris Schwager: Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast, where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day-to-day communication for marketers, entrepreneurs, and clients. Watch and listen to the world's best video strategists, business leaders, and communication experts to supercharge the way you sell, market, and teach.

Brenden Kumarasamy: How would the world change for you are an exceptional communicator?

Dr. Greg Schreeuwer: You said it the way you said it, cuz that's the way it needs to be said in the moment.

[00:00:23] Chris Schwager: Open your mind to the potential of video.

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Sian Jenkins: The whole idea was to create bingeable content.

Chet Lovegren: This guy actually made me a video. He took the time. That's probably the type of support and care I'm gonna get. When I'm paying these people a lot of money for their product.

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Andrew Zbik: Within 24 hours of opening that email we could tell they are watching that full 20 minutes.

Todd Hartley: And video's the most powerful tool for convincing and converting. So we are in the driver's seat.

[00:00:54] Chris Schwager: With practical tips that will help you become a better video market. This is the Video Made Simple podcast.

[00:01:10] Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we'll re fashion your perception of video by presenting practical ideas to change the way you do business today. Our guest is James Parnwell, the founder and director of The Online Co, a digital market agency that helps businesses build their online presence and gets websites organised, specialising in searching and optimisation to help them rank organically on Google.

[00:01:34] James is an online marketing consultant, Google AdWords expert, SEO expert, and Facebook marketing specialist with over 25 years of experience and is also our SEO specialist too. So I'm totally going to, uh, reap what I can from all of his expertise here today as well. Anyone with a business website needs to nail down their SEO.

[00:01:57] It's so important that your business is easily searchable and ranks first on Google, and that's why we have James here to help us understand how SEO works and how to make your website more visible so you get more people watching. Your videos. Here's our chat with James Parnwell.

[00:02:22] Did you wake up one morning, James, and go, I'm gonna be an SEO expert. How did you get started?

[00:02:26] James Parnwell: Well, my background's actually in marketing. I did a degree in marketing, and ran a number of businesses and found myself in the digital marketing space after kind of 13 years in my career. Actually start on Google ads, so SEM, not SEO, and not long after was dabbling in SEO. So it has a really terrific mixture of creativity and strategy and data, which really clicks a bunch of switches for me. So that's how I found myself there.

[00:02:56] Chris Schwager: Why do businesses not invest as they should. Why do they get it wrong with their website optimization?

[00:03:04] James Parnwell: How do businesses get it wrong? It's complicated. That's the easy answer. I was at an SEO conference. I was there with Rich, our SEO manager, and the first guy got up and he talked for 40 minutes about all of his SEO ideas and recommendations and how to do it. The next guy got up and he said, I disagree with everything the last guy said and started to tell us a whole bunch of different things.

[00:03:25] So the industry's not settled on what's right and what's wrong. The Google algorithm, which is the thing we're all trying to make happy, is top secret. It's buried away in Google Plex there in California. Nobody knows what it is. The whole industry is reverse engineering things to figure out what it is. So we, we have some really good ideas. Google make announcements about what they're doing. Those are now announcements are deliberately vague because if you can gain the system, there are people that will. So that's the first reason why people. Uh, getting their, uh, SEO wrong and potentially if they're doing it, potentially throwing money down the toilet. That's, uh, that's the sad news.

[00:04:09] Chris Schwager: If you are running a successful business, you are not SEO optimising your website. I mean, it's impossible, right? To do what you do and not be taken away from your job. So this the concept of, of doing it yourself, giving it a crack, I'll see how this goes, is really does not work. Right?

[00:04:27] James Parnwell: Uh, yeah. There's one in a thousand. Somebody who's now, I don't know, they've now got a financial advising practice and they used to have a tech background who's like playing with it at night cuz they like to. The other 999 just got no chance.

[00:04:41] Chris Schwager: If you have a website and it's not optimised like. What are you doing? Right? Would you agree?

[00:04:48] James Parnwell: Yeah. So you are always optimised for one term. That's your brand. So if you type in your brand name Ridge Films or The Online Co, we come up first, which is good. Like so people find us for our brand name, but if they've never heard us, heard of us for any other reason and they're typing up video production or digital marketing.

[00:05:04] Yep. Yeah. It's not optimised. Absolutely not.

[00:05:07] Chris Schwager: How does SEO impact website ranking?

[00:05:11] James Parnwell: So that's the goal of SEO. If we can get Google's algorithm to like our website more, our rankings will increase. If our rankings increase, then more people will see us in the search results. If more people see in the search results, more people will click and come to our website. If more people come to our website, we'll get more leads in sales. Right? That's the process. But rankings is the first step. It's not the goal, it's the means to the end. It's not the end itself. And I, and I guess that's a, that's a thing with SEOs talking about rankings, rankings, rankings. Yes, it's important, but if you rank and you're not getting clicks, this doesn't work. If you're getting clicks and you're not getting. Conversions or leads at the end. Well, that's a problem too. So you've actually gotta think holistically about the business and how it's gonna communicate what it's doing right throughout that process.

[00:06:00] Chris Schwager: What's the percentage of businesses that have websites that don't do anything?

[00:06:04] James Parnwell: I couldn't tell you definitively, but it's got to be 75, 80, 85%. It's gotta be most of them.

[00:06:11] Chris Schwager: And you know our case in point, right? Like if you're sitting there and a bit embarrassed, oh yeah, I haven't engaged in SEO company and our website does jackshit. Just rest assured that was us. That was us about six months ago. You know, we, we migrated to Kajabi. Forgotten, you know, that, that this thing was a dwindling, you know, platform. Great. Looked great, you know. Good messaging, blah, blah, blah, but was completely redundant as a lead gen tool for the, for the reasons of not being searchable.

[00:06:45] James Parnwell: So you just, you just touched on something there, Chris. You talked about it being really good looking and it, and it is. Your website looks great and you guys are in video, so it probably should, right. But this is what we do. We build websites for people. The problem is you gotta build it for Google as well. It's not either or. It's got to be both.

[00:07:02] Chris Schwager: Beautiful.

[00:07:02] James Parnwell: Because if Google doesn't like you, people aren't gonna find you and you're wasting your time.

[00:07:06] Chris Schwager: Beautifully said. Okay, so let's talk about videos. How do videos improve visibility on Google search?

[00:07:12] James Parnwell: Yeah. Okay. So in the algorithm there's over 300 factors. Again, it's top secret. We don't know if it's 305 or 375, but there's all these factors. One of them is that Google likes to see videos on pages. We know that as internet speeds have increased, that the quality of video improves. People can go on their phones using 5G or 4G, and they can watch videos. So Google will give you a plus for having video on your page. It's one of many factors, right? It's not the only factor, but if you've got video on your page and your competitors don't, well, you've gotta one up on them.

[00:07:48] Chris Schwager: Mm mm so what's your take on video SEO? This is controversial to a certain degree, but you know, it is relatively, I mean, explain it first because I don't . The average person wouldn't know what video SEO is. Give us a bit of a rundown on what it is. Why it's important.

[00:08:06] James Parnwell: Now, can I clarify your terminology there? Are you talking about using videos on your website or are you talking about optimising in YouTube?

[00:08:13] Chris Schwager: Well, let's do both. Let's do both. Cause I think that, I think people would appreciate both. And I think most of businesses are definitely in the game of hybrid as well. So they want to maximise the opportunities, not only on their site, but across YouTube for, you know, that organic passive search as well.

[00:08:29] James Parnwell: So if you create a video, you are gonna put it on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Yeah, you're gonna embed it in your website. You're gonna put it everywhere. You can send it on emails. Videos, take time. They're expensive. You're gonna want to use that asset.

[00:08:43] Chris Schwager: Unless you're using the DIY Video Program, by the way, but, we'll, we'll get to that in a sec.

[00:08:48] James Parnwell: That's a different, different topic. If we rewind and we ask ourselves, what is the purpose of Google? Why is it there? It's so that people can find the things they want quickly. That's kind of it. Now YouTube is the same except we're serving up video instead of uh, webpages, but the intent is the same. Now, I don't know, you're probably not old enough, Chris. Do you remember bad old days of search engines and you had Ask Gs and you had all these other funny things and you'd type in a result and you'd get garbage?

[00:09:21] Chris Schwager: I know, I know I look young, but yeah, I do remember those.

[00:09:26] James Parnwell: Yeah. You type in, shit know you wanna find a local mechanic and you get a result for download music or you'd find just junk. So people were gaming the system and rubbish results were turning up. And the reason why Google dominated is that they got rid of that and they give you the thing you want fast. They've done that piece better than anything else. Now, I know I'm, I'm getting back to first principles, but you've gotta think about this when you're making a video or doing SEO, what is it that I'm giving to my customers and can I give them the best information? Because if I'm giving them the best information, Google will figure that out and rank you at the top. That's gonna go for video SEO. It's gonna go for video and webpage hybrid SEO. It's going just for, just for webpages. This comes back to intent, right? People are jumping into Google and they're typing in words, but there's something in their mind that they intend to solve in that problem.

[00:10:24] There's usually two basic intents. Information. They wanna learn something or transaction. They wanna buy something. That's basically it. Now. If you go and read it up on this, there's people that are breaking into subcategories, but don't over confuse it. If I want some information, I'm, I'm learning something or I'm researching to buy something, I just wanna find that piece of information. I wanna type in some keywords and I want Google to give it to me in the first page. Ideally in the first two or three results. I don't really wanna spend hours crawling through pages and pages. So how well am I doing that? And if I need Google to. If I need video, sorry to explain that better.

[00:10:59] Is there video on my page? Is there video in YouTube? Google knows, by the way, they serve YouTube results straight into Google. As well. So the question is, you know, what is the question I'm trying to answer? And then how well am I answering it to real humans? And then how have I sort of picked that up and put the keywords in and put the information in and made it load faster and all the SEO factors needed in order for people to be able to find and access that quickly.

[00:11:26] Chris Schwager: We'll be back in a short moment with James Parnwell and James is right. Video can be expensive. So do you hack at it on your iPhone? Or do you go through the arduous process in some cases of cost and resourcing and liaising with a professional video marketing. And if you are sick of setting up your own video equipment and all the tech hassles that come with producing your own videos, then there is a more streamlined way to present yourself professionally on your website rather than a crappy quality webcam. And you can do it from the convenience of your desk. It's called the DIY Video Program. The DIY Video Program allows you to create course content, send personalised sales, video and emails, record regular videos, social updates, and look and sound amazing in every video interaction with a single push of a button. You get professional gear and all the video coaching and editing, you need to supercharge how you sell, market and teach. Learn more and go to ridgefilms.com.au/diy.

[00:12:30] Does video quality matter in getting organic traffic?

[00:12:34] James Parnwell: If you're curious, jump on Google and ask that question. Right? You'll get a result that says, yes, 4K ranks better than 1080p. Then the next one says, there's no evidence to prove that there's anything, right? I'll come back to. Am I solving a problem for a human being? Am I answering a question? Well, if the 720p version is giving better information than the 4K version, Google's gonna give the 720p version. That's the whole crux of the algorithm. That's the whole point of it.

[00:13:04] Chris Schwager: You're relating quality to resolution, which is an interesting way to, to look at it. I guess in my world, does quality mean, have you shot it on your iPhone or have you got a slick looking film style ad that you're running, but it's a compelling argument that could go around and around.

[00:13:25] James Parnwell: Google potentially doesn't know. It'll know the resolution, but it potentially doesn't know the production level. Don't forget, Google's a robot. It's not a human. It's not a school teacher giving you marks. It's just an algorithm going, yes, no, yes, no. This is better. This performs better.

[00:13:38] Chris Schwager: Yes.

[00:13:39] James Parnwell: Comparing all the results and throwing someone. Someone out at the top.

[00:13:42] Chris Schwager: Where are you at with TikTok?

[00:13:44] James Parnwell: Our client base are not using TikTok very much because their target market aren't really using it. The barrier to a standard business is how am I gonna produce all these videos in a cost effective way to keep feeding the beast? Now your DIY studio's gonna go a fair way to answering that problem. But if you've gotta get a production company out to shoot a 30-sec video, it's gonna cost you four grand or whatever. And that's, you post it and it's the algorithm's done with it. Like the chewing gums lost its flavor after a day. How many of them you gonna do, right?

[00:14:17] Chris Schwager: I love it.

[00:14:18] James Parnwell: You've got a problem.

[00:14:19] Chris Schwager: I love it. I love it. I love your analogies. You know, one of the things that that brought me to James is I've dealt with SEO companies in the past over the years, and James' explanation with use of analogies was the way that he actually got me thinking differently about not only SEO, but about them as a company to be able to communicate to somebody that doesn't understand the thousands probably of tasks that go into SEO, and nor do I want to, right.

[00:14:55] That's why I'm, I'm employing The Online Co to do this for us. But when it comes to the crunch of us having to understand something like the analogy of the second draw in the kitchen, that makes sense to me and I can visualise that and I can understand that. And just so that I'm not leaving my audience out, James, gotta explain the second draw bro.

[00:15:18] James Parnwell: The junk draw!

[00:15:18] Chris Schwager: Please. Please take him through it.

[00:15:22] James Parnwell: I don't know how many people I've spoken to about the junk drawer, but everyone goes, oh yeah, I've got that drawer. It's that stupid draw underneath the cutlery drawer that you put everything in the house, you don't know where else to put it, right? So you open it up and it's full of rubber bands.

[00:15:36] Pencils and skewers and scissors and whatever other bits and pieces you got in there. The, the analogy is that Google's algorithm comes to your website, and if you've got 50 pages, it sees the junk drawer. It's like this page is about, I'll continue the analogy, right? This, this page is about scissors, but this one's about wooden skewers. What's this website about? Just the, it's just a junk drawer. And, um, it, it struggles with the theme. Now, Google wants themes. It wants to, how can I group these together so that I can see if this website has authority on a topic, and can we trust it? It's their expertise. And so what we then want to do is figure out what those.

[00:16:24] Groupings are called, we call them silos. We wanna silo all the topics together In maybe three, it's usually three, but sometimes it can be five or even more silos. At the example on our website is we have a silo called SEO and all of our SEO case studies, all of our articles, all of our podcasts around SEO. All sit under the SEO silo. So Google comes along and says, oh, The Online Co, it's not a junk draw, it's like the top draw. It's got a section for knives, and that section is called SEO and it's got 78 pages on SEO. Uh, they all relate to each other and link to each other, and no helping. It goes, oh, you guys are, we are gonna rank you up for that cuz we understand.

[00:17:08] Chris Schwager: Love it, love it, love it. And if you still not clear on the second drawer, then make sure you reach out to James and he'll give you a whole bunch more analogies to, uh, yeah, to, to help you through it. All right.

[00:17:23] So what can businesses do with regards to taking action with SEO to rank better?

[00:17:31] James Parnwell: I would encourage something pretty basic, and that is to start thinking about your customer, if you can. Actually, one thing that we do in, in one of our processes, our playbook process is actually to get our clients to think of their favorite customer. You know, the customer that pays on time, that's easy to work with, that's of a decent size, and you think, man, if I could have another a hundred customers like that, life would be awesome.

[00:17:56] And then write that person's story. Who are they? You know, are they married? Are they single? What age are they? Do they have a dog? You know, what do they do on the weekends? You just sort of understand them, but then start talking through their problem. What is it that there was going on in their life that you solved? Um, how is that impacting them? And then how do we solve it? Right? Then you've got a story. Now let's call that person Mary, right? We now understand a human being and what it is they're going through, and then we can start making content for Mary. Not for my customer, not for my, um, my, uh, you know, group of amorphous people that are out there. Oh no, I'm writing to Mary. So I'm gonna create social media content to Mary. I'm gonna write blogs to Mary. I'm gonna create videos for Mary. Now, once you get that bit sorted. And you can start, you can start digging into the technical side. You make sure all the keywords are on your page. Make sure your website loads quickly, make sure it looks good on mobile. Make sure your contact forms and everything work and that, that process, all, all those sorts of basic things. But then you can start putting more written or video or imagery onto your pages to help Mary. I could write a blog that answers one of Mary's questions. Um, We can, uh, yes, start developing content for maybe where Mary lives, so local SEO content, but essentially that there's a human being at the center of the process that we're trying to communicate with. And if we can communicate to her, Better than our competitors. Then we're gonna go up in the rankings.

[00:19:35] Chris Schwager: So you heard it first here, guys. You heard it first. Get your second draw sorted and help Mary. That's it. Alright.

[00:19:46] So you mentioned, I think, search engine marketing earlier. How does SEM differ from SEO?

[00:19:53] James Parnwell: So SEM or Google ads, other ads you see at the top of the search. So there's four at the top. There's usually a two or three at the bottom that's paid, right? Mm-hmm. So you can pay to bid on keywords, and then you get your ads at the top. This has been around 22 years now. I think it started year 2000. Uh, a lot of people have used it. A lot of people have. Well, everybody's seen it. It's a completely separate process to SEO. They don't impact each other at all. Mm-hmm. , I know some people ask that there's absolutely no link. Been doing this 13 years, you can't pay on Google ads and then get a boost in SEO. It just doesn't work that way.

[00:20:34] My, my advice with this is that when SEO works, it's one of, if not the best lead generation tactics there is. It's fantastic. But, and it's a big but, when it doesn't work, it could be an absolute waste of money. So what you need to do is some research. There's a Google keyword planner that'll allow you to do the research before you go in, and you can get a sense of how much it's gonna cost per click, how many clicks you're gonna need for a lead, how many leads that's gonna get you, and you can essentially project your return on investment before investing a cent. Then it needs to be executed right. And And I would argue that you're gonna struggle to execute that right as well. Yeah. In the same way that SEOs complicated. SEM's complicated as well. There's a whole lot of nuance to it. Just pr, you're not gonna pick it up as a hobby in a hurry.

[00:21:22] Chris Schwager: Do you think in the last 20 years, like these are real specialty areas that cannot be facilitated by the organisation itself. And I, and I say these specialty areas, given web dev, SEO, video, um, social media, four big ones that come to mind at the moment and something I used to say years ago is no real possible way you can do those equally as, as good and effective to you know, consistently improve business results. Would you agree?

[00:22:00] James Parnwell: I would agree, and it really depends on the size of the business. I, I would think if you're a solopreneur and you are just starting out, I'd actually encourage you to do some online courses and get your hands dirty.

[00:22:10] Chris Schwager: Good.

[00:22:10] James Parnwell: And get an understanding, right?. You're not gonna be able to afford us. It's just gonna be outta reach. Okay. Not that we're super expensive, but you know, if you're starting off and you're just trying to get your first sales, have a crack. There's gonna come a time somewhere around maybe four or five staff. You pro you probably do have the budget to get someone to do it. Now some people are gonna get the receptionist to do it, or the operations manager or the HR person. So they're gonna get someone in their organization to have a go. Um, that's probably a false economy. Probably just costing yourself leads and costing that person time where you could pay us what is now not a lot of money compared to their wage. It's just to get it done right and get it done right first time.

[00:22:54] The next issue is that you want there to be a marketing person and there's no individual anymore. We work with a lot of marketing, um, managers like CMOs, chief marketing officers, and these people, these wonderful people are expected to know everything, and, and they do. They have a strategic understanding of it, but they can't do all the things you said. They can't do SEO, which comprises technical, SEO content, SEO, backlinking, user experience, web dev, local SEO, keyword research. I've just touched on one. Let alone Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, , Twitter, uh, TikTok, you know, or I haven't touched on, on the different paid and organic. Like, it's just, there's no way they can do it all. Mm. So that there's no one person. You need to hire a team. And essentially when you hire a team, you're gonna get a few hours from a, an SEO content person and a few hours from a technical person, a few hours from a social person, and they're gonna pull all of your campaign together in in a short amount of time that would potentially take you all month and you get an inferior result cause you don't really know the nuance of what you need to do.

[00:24:09] Chris Schwager: Very nice. Nicely said. So does the algorithm change for paid ads and organic searches?

[00:24:17] James Parnwell: So the algorithm for organic searches is changing a little bit every day, and then they do major algorithm updates few times a year.

[00:24:27] Um, there's a, there was a major one called the core web vitals update that went off last May. Uh, it's around load speed. Um, Google's generally pretty good when they'll say something like, look, your load speed matters, but we're not gonna penalise you for it. But in three years time we are. Okay? So lots of notice, get fix up your load speed and then the date comes. May, bang! If you load. If you're loading slowly, you're dropping back in the ranking, so, so that's an example of a big one.

[00:24:57] The Google ads algorithm, it's. It's a different beast. It's actually an auction. So you bid against other people for a keyword at a time of day based on a number of factors. Uh, there's the quality score. I won't get into it, but there's a number of factors that mean you might come first, second, third, fourth, and, um, and that, conceptually, has stayed quite similar for 20 years. The execution has changed, the type of ads, the extensions, um, and the different ways you can show them has, has changed. But, um, there's a lot of transparency about how the SEM or the Google Ads process works, and there's no transparency about the SEO at all much, so it's, it's very opaque.

[00:25:40] Chris Schwager: James. It's, I'm outta questions and I think given the amount of information that you've supplied to our audience. I think that's probably a great simple , non overload, um, sort of area to stop. But I do have one controversial perspective that I'd like to share with you. And I remember a good friend of mine who's also a, a successful business owner, uh, was, was and probably still is quite jaded about SEO from his perspective not delivering results. And he is got a, he's got a pretty unique, well, when I say unique, probably hard to search for type of business. Yep. How do you, and I'm sure it's, it's a case where you don't necessarily meet those types of people cuz otherwise, you know, why would they, they wouldn't be coming to you.

[00:26:35] But I suppose to a certain degree, I was caution cautioning the, uh, interaction that we initially had, based on previous experiences, and this is going back since we were outsourcing to India and you know, then tried someone local and kind of gone through a whole bunch of kind of like stepping stones to finally find a good one.

[00:26:58] But what do you think is your secret source of winning, I guess, the hearts and minds of people that have had a negative experience with SEO and how do you sort of overcome and swing 'em around?

[00:27:10] James Parnwell: Yeah, so I think the key word here is transparency. Um, if you're paying money each month and you really dunno what's going on, and then the phone isn't ringing, or you know, the leads aren't coming through, uh, you're gonna stop and you're gonna say, that didn't work.

[00:27:27] So, so what we do is we work to put together a 12 month plan. . So then you know what's gonna happen every month for the next 12 months. Then we report on that using video report each month. So then you know what we've done. We know what worked, we know what didn't work. We know what's missing from the strategy, and we know what we're gonna do next.

[00:27:45] So then there's transparency there, and then you got a dashboard which shows everything live. So you can go and see all your data live, um, and it's, and it's all just there. And then of course, you could just call us or email us and ask questions, but, um, which I do, I think that's the, which you do. Yeah. I, I, I think the issue is spending money on a mystery box.

[00:28:10] Chris Schwager: Yeah.

[00:28:12] James Parnwell: Why, why would you do that?

[00:28:14] Chris Schwager: Yes. Can I, can I add something here? Because I'll talk on behalf of my experience, but obviously the first interaction with using stories and analogies rather than data and, you know, even facts I guess to a certain degree wasn't something that interests me and with regards to reports also did not interest me.

[00:28:35] And I'm a visual guy and, and I think it's important to note that most, I would say probably a lot of people wouldn't give a shit about the reports. And, and in that level of detail, they want the video and they want the explanation regularly as to know that they are having incremental improvements on a monthly basis, even if they are just the, so like we, we, we've only been going, working together for a short period of time, right?

[00:28:58] So it's not like, shit, man, the Pandora's box of organic lead flow is just flooding us and the whole world's changed. Right. We understand. And to your point, uh, laying that foundation and understanding and getting us clear on the 12 month plan. And not making promises, I guess, of, of quick wins. Um, which I gotta say marketing in, in its essence, you gotta hang on. It's gotta be a test and measure exercise, and you've gotta have a prolonged period of time that you're gonna test it for, right? That is the basis, that is the basis for everything you do. Don't just, you know, try. Uh, an SEO company for a couple of months and goes, oh shit, they have a charge, da, da da. Now there is a, there is a point to the servicing, and I think that is the win that I think all of these companies like yourself will, will always, uh, have ad an advantage on that if you're able to clearly articulate in layman's terms, the small, if any improvements that the, that the work that has been done is, uh, Is leading to then I think that in, its, in its, uh, rawest form is at least being helpful and communicative, as you said. You know, being transparent and opening it up and going, Hey, this is actually where it's at. We're not gonna bullshit you. This is the way it is and it's slow. And we told you it was gonna be slow, but at the moment we're just, we're just, we're just siloing. We're just putting things into perspective.

[00:30:23] We're just getting the second drawer organised. We're not ready to to start going optimal super drive. But you can do that, right? Like you have a service that will enable you to really ramp up the ramp the, the, uh, activity earlier, which is not something that we've invested in yet, but tell us, um, tell the audience a little bit more about that.

[00:30:44] James Parnwell: You're gonna essentially pay your SEO company for some hours, and if you're paying them more, you should be getting more hours. So this should more, should be getting done more quickly. Uh, I mean, we talk about marketing, taking time. SEO is is not the quick game. If you want the quick game, you should try Google ads. Um, Google ads, you can get leads. In the first month it's, but, but SEO, we talk about four to 12 months. Sometimes it's quicker, sometimes it's slower. It depends on so many factors. You know, the state of the website that we inherit, state of the market, what, what are the competitors up to? There's a whole stack of things.

[00:31:18] Mm-hmm. . . But yeah, getting that, uh, 12 month plan rolling and, and then investing at a level that you're comfortable with. And then, like you say, just communicating monthly to say, well, this is what we've done. This is the results we've seen. If it's good results, then, right. But if it's not good results, well let's be transparent about that and ask why? Was there uh, was there a change in the algorithm? Was there an election or was there a war that started or, or was there something, um, that we need to adjust in our strategy? And in that case, what are we doing next? But just, um, yeah, just transparency about what's, what's happening.

[00:32:01] Chris Schwager: I think that's a great area to wrap up and if you are looking for quick wins, I would say ads are, are a compelling next step, you know, and take it from us. We've done exactly that strategy by investing in LinkedIn and TikTok ads, despite not really knowing the opportunities of TikTok, just so that everybody's clear, has been an overwhelming lead flow tool with unexpected results of people that say, well, let's just say I didn't really think they are on TikTok.

[00:32:39] But they're out there and they're usually hitting it on the weekend when they've got plenty of time on their sleeves. So we usually have a big influx of leads on Monday morning to kind of sift through. But it's surprising there's businesses like you on TikTok right now, and they are reaping the rewards of that platform. And it's something to, uh, keep on your radar, perhaps it's not something you wanna do right now? But keep it on your radar because the wave, I believe, is definitely on its way, and it's only just through us being able to promote the DIY Video Program and, and all the other stuff is just pouring some energy into that. It's been a, a, a great benefit for us, and I'm sure you as well.

[00:33:23] Now, James, how do people, what's the best sort of next step for people to reach out to you?

[00:33:30] James Parnwell: Yeah, it'd just be cool to have a chat, so if you jump on, onto Google, type in The Online Co. We'll come up. Um, there's a button there, red button book, a quick chat.

[00:33:39] Just jump on there and we'll make a time and we'll um, talk through how we can help.

[00:33:46] Chris Schwager: Well, Ridge and the team, uh, are all really, really gun experts. These guys are at the top of their game and they know their stuff. So, uh, do what? Uh, James said, get into it. Get call 'em up and they'll take care of you. Uh, thank you for coming on the show. By the way, I appreciate your, uh, your last half an hour. It's always been insightful and really clear for our audience, which has been great.

[00:34:09] Improving your digital presence by getting your SEO right can not only benefit your website ranking, but get more people watching your wonderful videos that you've built and lead them to making better and more informed decisions.

[00:34:20] Thank you for tuning in. That's all for this episode of the Video Made Simple Podcast, and see you next week.