AJ Frey | How To Get On the First Page Of Google

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And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel: Hello, and welcome to the publishing for Profit Podcast. This is your host, Joel, Mark Harris. We are on episode number 16, and today we are interviewing a very good friend of mine. I’ve known him for many, many years. A Frey. He is an SEO specialist and a technician. He owns the company, rad websites. He obviously builds websites as well, and we dive deep into SEO content and how to get your business ranked on Google.

So if you want to know all about SEO, this is the episode for you. Hi AJ How’s it going?

AJ: Joel, how are you?

Joel: excellent. I want to start off, you were just in the news on CBC and I think a couple of other newspapers about your animal food bank. Can you tell me what that is and why you started it?

AJ: Absolutely. I’m happy to, the animal food bank is a project that my wife and I started just before Christmas, last year. we were downtown Kelowna and, and she, she saw this guy on the street with this dog and she loves dogs. she’s like, Oh my God, I’m going to go pet that dog. So she ran across the street and, and, and talked to the guy and pet the dog.

And of course, made best friends with the dog and still remembers the dog’s name to this day. It was Odin. and you know, we went home and she was actually really, really fraught and, and, and distraught about how he fed his animal and not with any judgment, but just like, that must be really difficult. I wish I could help him.

You know we had a few good conversations about what we could do and, all of a sudden we were starting an animal food bank. it took off really, really quickly before Christmas. Cause that’s a tough time for everybody. And, you know, we had a fairly, fairly good static growth, I guess, in the Okanagan region.

And, and then COVID hits. And we had a surprisingly friendly COVID model. we then ended up in a partnership with the SPCA out of the sea, and then as well as the Ontario SPCA, Smucker’s jam has made donations. that’s been really amazing. then from there we went back to Winnipeg. This was pre-COVID and expanded out to Winnipeg.

So then we were covering the Okanagan, as well as, as, as part of Manitoba. and again, an area that is really making good use of the food bank and the programs that we’ve set up. Nicole has an operations background, and so she set it up in a way that runs it as a business, as opposed to a charity.

But everybody’s donations that come in. If you make a donation of $100 to the animal food bank, every single cent of that donation is actually spent on food, for an animal. And she goes, as far as. Itemizing receipts for people who’ve made donations and sending them back saying, this is who you helped.

Here’s a picture of the dog. she’s, she’s really made it quite a cool experience, for everyone from the volunteers through to, you know, the, the volunteer admin team, which is basically me and her. the community has really shown its love and support. and in all areas, we just expanded out into Calgary and in all areas, the community is, has really rallied and gone.

yes, let’s do this. And so, we’re seeing donations come in. We’re seeing lots of requests for help come in. and at any given time we’re. God, I don’t, I don’t even know. I think we’ve put through more than 20,000 pounds of food, to animals in need and families in need to help their animals, since December and that number’s growing.

So, yeah, it’s, it’s been cool project that continues to grow and expand, and it’s kind of taken on a life of its own.

Joel: What, response have you had from the community? I guess locally and in BC?

AJ: it’s been outstanding from, from day one. The community wants to help, neighbours want to help neighbours and that’s been amazing.

Joel: And you’re recently expanding it. You, I think you’re, you’re building, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re building two new sites, kind of based on the animal food bank. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Oh, sure.

AJ: You’re getting an exclusive here now. part of, part of what we’re doing, is trying g to really grow a network of support for people with their pets.

There is as, you know, a need for fostering, for people who actually are going through something in their personal life, but they want their pet back. And that maybe something addictive addiction related. that could be something medical where they’ve got to be in the hospital for surgery and you know, some, some recovery time.

Right now, if you, if you go down to any of the current organizations and say I’m going through something. They make you surrender your pet. and for a lot of people, their head is their emotional support. It’s their best friend, it’s a member of their family. and so in order to, you know, take care of a surgery or deal with it.

Personal demons or whatever you’re going through. A lot of people will choose not to and continue to live with their pets because it has so much meaning. And so we’re trying to put together a couple of organizations that allow people and I can’t share the URLs just yet. We’ll have to do a follow-up podcast for that.

But that allow people to, one say, Hey, I need help. and fill out a form saying this is when I need help. And oftentimes it’ll be instantaneous. I mean, if the police show up at your house, cause you’re in an abusive relationship and you need to get out and it’s you and your cat sitting on your front porch.

You need somebody to show up and take your cat so that you can be escorted by the police to where you need to go to be safe, and know that you’ll get your pet back. So we want to make that something that, Canadians can, can look forward to, I guess it takes a load off knowing that your neighbor or somebody in your community is going to look after your animal and that when you’ve gone through what you’re going through, you’re going to come home and your best friend is going to be.

Joel: For sure. Yeah. I think for most, for a lot of animal lovers, I don’t know for most, but their pets are definitely they’re their best friends. Right. And they, they have such an emotional attachment to them. I know we are looking after a dog. just a friend’s dog and we are so attached to this, this dog and, every, you know, every, every time it’s like, when is he coming back?

When is he coming to visit? Right. So, you know, pets are amazing and they’re such a, you know, they’re so such treasures really?

AJ: I agree.

Joel: The reason why we have you on the show is you are the owner of rad websites, which is the most amazing name I’m sure. But can you tell, tell us what the Genesis of your company is?

Why and why, why did you choose that name?

AJ: We’ve been around for a long time and we’ve done a lot of hard work for a lot of different people. and we stayed hidden for a while and it was on purpose because. We were trying to make sure that our clients were getting the best of our work and the best of our attention.

And so when a client would say to me, why can’t I find your stuff on Google? I’d say, cause I’m working on making sure they can find your stuff on Google. And I said, when I want to be found on Google. I’ll start working on my own stuff. And, and literally, I worked that way for seven years where I ran a small agency, just me and a couple of friends work in a way. And as we grew, it, it just kind of morphed and, and, and, and changed. And so, yeah. I decided that I would own it. and instead of hiding and going, you know, you can find us over here at this specific URL, which is a mistake.

A lot of people make online is I have a cool URL, but only people who know it can find my business. we decided to just. Hidden on the nose then, and yeah. And say what we’re good at. And we’re rad at doing website sites and we’re rather than doing marketing and SEO. And so I did a quick check to see if we could have read websites and there was, and so we, we, we ran with it and we’ve had a great, great response.

Our clients love it. we’ve got a, I think a cool fun attitude online. but we can actually go so the distance and do the ultra-professional websites that enterprise-level clients are looking for and professionals they’re looking for. and yeah, we won’t shy away from the mom and pop shops who were on a budget and still need something online.

We want everybody to have not a good website say, but a rad website. and so that’s what we strive to do for everybody, regardless of. Whether you have the most exciting content in the world or you’re selling mortgages and it’s really dry content. We can, we can give you that boost that you need to set yourself apart online.

Joel: Yeah, I think the difference, that I see and, and, and I think, I mean, you, you said it brilliantly is you, you give the client a fun and exciting and not. Too serious, but it’s still go the extra mile for them. So it’s, it’s not super serious, but it’s fun. And it’s a fun process for them to go through.

That’s my take on it for share. I mean, and so you don’t come from a marketing background per se. You come from a quality assurance. If, if I’m. if I remember correctly, can you tell me about, like, how did you get into building websites and how did you get into marketing and, and what drew you to this line of work?

AJ: It’s interesting because technology has been a lifelong pursuit. I’ve been, been playing with computers since I was a little kid. And then I was in the eighties when, you know, little kids were playing with computers yet. and, and then, like you said, as I grew up, I ended up working in the energy sector, at a technology company and the focus was quality assurance and automation for several years.

and so I got very, very good at knowing what. User experience should be like what the end user’s going accept and not going to accept as far as look and feel goes and workflow, which proves invaluable in, in, in the online space for web design and marketing. as well as, just learn how to put good intricate systems together.

what ended up getting me into websites and marketing was I actually. kind of hit a glass ceiling with quality assurance and automation. I was working at an executive level and had a team of 22 people and loved every single one of them. And when I went to talk to the president and the vice president of the company and say, you know, what are it’s terrible?

And I know we have an internal team and I know I’m not part of it, right. To be, let me, let me take this over. This is what I want to learn and do next. was, was doing their marketing and their website. and I’d always had really, really, good success with this company, in what I was delivering and what I, and so they let me basically jump into whatever projects I wanted to historically.

And I was about year eight years or nine into working with them and said, this, this is what I want to do. And they’re like, no, no, you’re too good at their quality assurance and automation. We, we, we don’t want you working on the website. We’ll just leave that there. so I abruptly quit my job and started a web development company and taught myself everything about designing websites, and, and started doing everything myself, originally out of the gate.

I had a friend that I had met on a trip to Guatemala. and we had come up with a genius idea of, of a way to, really, work around the clock together because we were in different time zones. And so we worked together on the very, very first iteration of what became rad, years ago it was called Claire and it was with my buddy Gregor’s answer, over in Slovenia.

but, but we used to basically just hand off a button. So I would work all day, on a project and then we had four hours of crossover work. And then he would work what was my all night, but his all day. And then we had four hours of crossover work. And so we found that we could deliver on projects where the scope of work was, you know, fairly large and the timeframe was three months and we’d get it done in two and a half weeks.

and clients were like, how’d you do that? And I’m like, we’re working around the clock. And so quite literally. Yeah. And so. Gregor went on to develop several cryptocurrencies and is doing a lot in, in the European Union to progress technology and banking. And it’s really quite amazing. and, and I stuck with, with the web development and then got into the marketing side of things because making a pretty website is one thing.

but making a pretty website that people can find is what’s really important. And so I spent years working with a few very, very top-notch professionals. one of whom is, and, and learned everything I could about how, how online marketing works. And, you know, I’ve been working with it in a lot of different ways for a long time, because I’ve always played with technology.

So I go, as far back with SEO is being able to just add and remove a space on somebody’s website. And qualify that as a change that you go like to see. and I remember being so sad when they changed that, because that’s what I do now, man. Like I had written a script that took care of it for everybody and all of a sudden I had to log in to everybody’s stuff.

and so it’s, it’s come a long way and, and they’re always changing everything. And now, you know, I subscribed to most of the Google updates that I know when they’re making their algorithm changes so that I can, you know, tell clients to brace for things that are about to happen online. and that even though their SEO report this month might say they’ve dropped dramatically.

Everybody on the internet made have dropped dramatically that month. we’ve had. I think I’d say unprecedented success with most of our clients. they allow us to do the work that we’re good at so that, you know, we can generate revenue for them and find the clients that allow them to do the work.

They’re good at it. and so most of our clients get out of our way. And, and when we say this is what needs to be done, they go, great. Let’s do that. and often times we’ll even, override clients on decisions that they think they want. because just because you think you want this, it doesn’t mean anybody else actually does.

and the trick is making sure you’re doing what everybody wants, not necessarily what you want. It’s a fine line and a fine dance. I find with web design and with marketing, it’s the most, interesting way I’ve found to be creative in the technical space, without being like a, an image manipulation specialist or something like that.

I liked that, you know, what I envisioned for a client with a client is what we can end up delivering. and I joke often, If you’re a member, had my ride with the exhibit. I joke often that we’re like that. I have a team of amazing people. someone comes to me and says, this is our idea. This is what we want to do.

We sit down, we scope it out with them. We go, this is what we’re going to take your website from. And we’re going to make it look like this. And then they go, Oh my God, that’s amazing. And then I literally get out of the way and hand it off to my incredible team. they take the gauntlet, they come back and I have the honour of running back to the clients and going look at what we did for you.

and they’re always in a way by, by what we’ve done. And we, most of our feedback is, Oh my God. My website is red. And so that brings us full circle back to how we got our name. Right.

Joel: what sort of technology did you tinker with as a kid? What stands out?

AJ: Oh, the thing that stands out the most to me was, was actually learning to code when I was a child. So the very first thing I very first computer I had was a Commodore one 28. So it was, you know, right around the Tandy and the Commodore 64, but it was the new, like super memory computer, because it had 128 kilobytes of memory. and what happened is I was, I think it was eight years old. and my parents went out on like a date and we had a babysitter.

And she was upstairs doing her homework all night and the floppy disk drive on the front of it, like the box. That was part of the thing. Didn’t close. And I was really upset because I wanted to play my little, there was like this rollercoaster race card game back in the day. I don’t want to play it. And I couldn’t.

So I went down to the basement and I got dad’s tools and I took the entire $10,000 brand new common, or one 28 apart and had it on the floor and like 10,000 pieces. and my parents came home at like 11 or 12 o’clock at night and of course lost their mind. That’s right, because as a child, you can’t fathom what $10,000 is, but it’s a lot of money.

I just knew that I had upset my parents. And so after they yelled and yelled at and promptly fired babysitter, I snuck out of bed after they went to bed and put everything back together. Now, all that ended up being wrong with the floppy drive was like a little rubber runner had come off the thing.

And so by the time I got that back on, everything worked. they got up in the morning and it was all like a bad dream. Right. The computer was sitting back on the desk. It totally worked. I was all like what happened last night? then I spent the rest of my childhood in computer camp. and can you hear a camp in the eighties was some guy who knew more about computers than some other guy there wasn’t a lot.

I tended to kind of run around my teachers a little bit. and, and that was, it’s always fun. Cause I was always like, why am I in this class? Like, am I in this class? and then I got a tutor when I was probably 10 or 11 to learn to code and GW and GW basic. so I’d sit around and make my computer talk to the house.

And I like booby trap my bedroom with like, The little radio transistors that I connect to the computer so that if a wire broke the computer roots screen, your parents could never figure out how to shut it off. That’s the, and then like a normal teenager. I, you know, I did my homework on the theater.

I was one of the first kids in school who was allowed to do that. Because my handwriting was atrocious. so my parents fought with the schools to be able to have me do my homework and type it up. Cause it was all OB data printers and dot matrix back in the day. And so like, your sister clearly did your homework and it’s like, Nope, I did it.

I can tag. so as a teenager, I ignored most of my technical gifts just cause I was out being a teenager. and when I was in my early twenties, I had a, I had moved out to Vancouver and had a job washing boats on Granville Island. and I kept noticing all these really rich people would just take computers off the boats and throw them in this dumpster.

And I was like, What, and this is right around the time of Limewire and everybody getting their emails. So it’s like 90, I don’t know, six 97 in that area. And, and, and so I started. Dumpster diving at the end of my shift and pulling out motherboards and chip sets and Ram and taking them home, and, and built this Frankenstein machine on like my desk at home.

And then my friends managed to figure out what I was doing. They come over and they’re like, what’s that? And I’m like, watch this. I can download music online and they’re like, shut up. That’s okay. Kubrick, you didn’t have a case. Right. Everything just sat on my desk. The power supply was plugged into the motherboard.

There’s just wires everywhere and then so through, from 20 to 28 I basically. Did dope computers for people, friends and family, again, not knowing the value of the knowledge that I actually had. Right. I’d build your computer. You’d make me dinner. I was like, yeah.

And then, yeah, when I was around 28, I got into quality assurance and automation. So it’s been a lifelong journey of all the different things in technology that have caught my attention. and, and the last 10 years has been my favourite in the, in the web design and in the marketing online.

Joel: That’s really cool story. Thanks for sharing that. Have you always wanted to do your own thing and become an entrepreneur?

AJ: I hate being told what to do.

Joel: Yeah.

AJ: And so entrepreneurs do. And so I didn’t realize this until I had a few jobs, you know, it would always really get under my skin because these people would be like, I just didn’t like the way people talk to other people generally.

and, and, and so when people would be like, you need to do this, I’d be like, I really don’t. and, and that got me into more trouble than I thought. I’ve, I’ve always kind of been an entrepreneur at heart, but I don’t think I recognized it until I was in my, probably late thirties. that’s when I was like, Hey, wait a minute.

I’ve been doing this for a long time and I really want to do this, do this well. Okay. And so that was when I decided, like I said, I left the job that I had and went all into. I’m going to do web design and marketing. And hopefully it works and, and, you know, I’m here nine years later, it’s working. So, and interestingly enough, this is fun story to some of the people that I used to work with who have no interest in having me in web design or marketing.

I have since come back to me and asked for web design and marketing help. and so I kind of find that super sweet. It’s

Joel: Kind of like a full circle. Isn’t it?

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

Joel: So let’s, let’s turn to the marketing. what, you know, we, we talked about SEO, I believe briefly. What is, can you explain what SEO is and why it’s important?

AJ: Sure, absolutely. I’m happy to do that. So SEO stands for search engine optimization, and basically to, to make it simple. It’s. Telling Google, where to find you. I used to joke that, I’m just a glorified librarian. So if you let me pick the title of your book and where to put it in the library, everybody will find it.

and, and that’s, that’s really what Google is. Google’s a giant library and, and, and SEO is really the Dewey decimal system of the future. It’s how we catalogue and organize the internet.

Joel: And so what are some things that companies can do? you know, obviously they, they know that this is important, but that maybe they’re, they’re not ready to hire a marketing agency like yourself.

W is there stuff that they can do by themselves to boost their Google ranking?

AJ: So there’s a lot of, of out of the gate, things that you can actually do to set yourself up right. the best and I think most valuable one is choosing a name that’s relevant to what you’re doing. if you’re, you know, in the flower business, don’t call yourself Daisies Daisies.

It might sound super clever and your name might be Daisy and you might love it. but if Vancouver flowers is available or BC flowers is available, that’s going to give you that edge over Daisies Daisies. where you’re going to actually, without doing a lot of work, you’re going to at least sell one more thing of flowers then daisies, daisies ever will, because people are going to type into Google.

I’m looking for flowers in this area before they’re going to type into Google. I’m looking for Daisy’s dates. that being said, JZ Stacy’s is a perfect client for us because they’ve already named their business. and so coming up with a marketing strategy of how they actually capture, I need all the flowers in British Columbia or Alberta, is what we’re really, really good at.

But if you’re just starting out and you want to give your business an edge, just, you know, do some consulting and, and find a great domain name. Don’t pay a lot for it. I’m not saying go and spend $5,000 on a domain name. there’s still a lot of really good domain names available for Canadians. and, and so spend, spend, you know, 150 bucks on a consultant to buy your domain name.

It’s going to cost you a hundred or 150 bucks. and that’s really going to give you that jumping off platform that you’re looking for without hiring a marketer.

Joel: What are some of the biggest mistakes you see? I mean, I think you mentioned one, but I mean, you know, the hundreds of clients, probably thousands, Ida, that you’ve seen, what are, what are the biggest mistakes they’ve made and how do you go about fixing them?

AJ: That’s a great question. what are the biggest mistakes that are made? I think some of the biggest mistakes that are made. our literally through clients and experience. And so that will probably resonate with a lot of people because I think anybody over the age of 50 has a slight, fear of technology.

If, if you tell me or anybody younger than me to go do something online, they’re going to go do that. If you tell anybody older than me to go do something online, it’s become a chore and it’s going to stress them out. and so some of the biggest mistakes, I think I’ve seen people make in my life age group and above, is literally just blindingly accepting what they’re told, at an agency.

I always encourage people to talk to us and then talk to two or three other companies to really feel out what their needs are, because just because I resonate with you on the phone and, and, and we’re a good fit. Doesn’t mean that I’m the best agency to run your project. And I want my clients to want to work with us as bad as we want to work with them.

So I want them to not make the mistake of just highly trusting. I want them to actually go out and contact some, some competition so that, you know, they, they get a feel for, for what they’re getting with it that’s versus what they’re getting with somebody else and make the best choice for them.

Joel: And content obviously plays a big role in SEO.

Can you tell me a little bit about that? What sort of content should be put out, to help with SEO?

AJ: Absolutely. So SEO is a, is a huge beast. as you know, and, part of, part of it is the behind the scenes massaging of, of helping people. you know, find your, find your site and find your content. And so in that comes the content strategy, the content strategy is literally deciding.

Where your audience is and what your keywords for your business are. What this does is this helps us to basically come up with, article titles that your audience is looking for. so if you give me the keywords for, of roofing and, and Ben Coover and affordability and trustworthy, I can come up with a number of different variations on those, where we’re talking now about affordable roofing and DC.

Affordable roofing and whatever geo-located area we want, or just affordable roofing. we may have the domain affordable roofing. And so now we’ve got that plus our articles that we’re going to write around, you know, this is, this is why, it’s good to use our agency affordable. We’re trustworthy and we’re capturing those keywords.

And this is an ongoing process. Basically what happens is. We capture 10 keywords. We’d come up with maybe a hundred different titles of articles that a client could be writing. They’ll capture anywhere from say 10 readers a month to, upwards of a thousand. and those are the big fish. The upwards of a thousand are rare.

But those articles once published, and optimized pull in those users month over month. So if you spend $150 on an article and it’s pulling in 10 users a month, You’re pulling in 120 users a year for that $150. So you’re paying, you know, a dollar 10 per lead. If, if you get an article in there that’s goning pull in a hundred or a thousand users.

They find a big fish it’s pulling in that month over month. If you publish 12 articles a year, that just say 10 of them are 10 users a month, and two of them are a hundred users a month. you’re, you’re really pulling in a huge amount of users by the time you’re starting. Your second year of SEO, you’re looking at close to four or 500 users a month.

And you’re still publishing. so this increases, we have. All kinds of secrets, awesome tips and tricks that go into it. But one thing I do like to tell people is that publishing is a cumulative thing as well, where you’re, you know, everything you’re spending, you’re spending and investing in your business and it’s going to come back.

And so after say two or three years of publishing, let’s actually say to, we have a year’s worth of articles and we’re starting our second years worth of articles. Well, we can look back at our original years worth of articles and we can go, Hey, is it time to update these? And then we can republish those articles.

And so now we’re publishing two a month, one updated, and one new, and this catalyst again, carries on with those users. We’re increasing our user base month over month. And by year three and year four, we’re running, you know, four or five articles a week. Three of them are updates. Two of them are new. We’ve really made it difficult for anybody else in this area.

And we’re speaking about roofing right now. So now we’ve made it difficult for anybody else to come into the roofing area, without spending a lot of money to try and keep up with our publishing schedule. That’s happening organically and we’re publishing new articles still one or two a month. so because you know, you get to a point where you’ve been doing it for long enough.

You, you literally control. That piece of the internet, if you’ve done it. Right. and as long as you update and maintain your content, you will keep sending users therefor, for the answers they’re looking for.

Joel: What role does time play in SEO?

AJ: Time plays a really interesting role because depending on the content. If you’re, you know, publishing the trailers for movies that are coming up this week, the timeline on your, your SEO is literally weekly. and you need to be publishing and optimizing and sending all the exact right signals to Google. So that as a user, I can sit at home and watch the movie trailers.

I want to see this week and make a decision about which movie I want to go to. if you’re, if you’re doing something, more long-term where you’re. Just trying to draw clients in, to convert into a store or see you at your office for services. Your timeline’s a little longer because you’re actually.

Even the movie site has had to set up an establish themselves as the movie set, the setup and established process is where most people get scared and drop FCO. It’s generally a nine to 14-month process where Google’s not even paying attention to what you’re doing until Monday night at month nine.

Google’s like, Hey, they’ve put out nine articles. This, this year. And, and they’re still doing it. I’m going to keep checking out their sites. And now all of a sudden, you know, Google’s, Google’s paying attention. And if you continue to do, do the things they like and, and, and adjust, it works in your benefit very quickly.

But it does take, like you said, a good deal of time to get that setup and going. That’s why at the end of the first year, it can get exciting because even though you may not have seen a lot of forward momentum in your setup. You’re following year, you’re publishing two articles now while just continually buying one new one and Google’s paying attention.

And so now you’re getting some traction and you’re starting to get those conversions and you’re starting to make new strategic decisions with us on, Oh, well I want, I want leads. And I would like to actually. you know, talk to people, maybe part of what you want to do is engage people on social media, in order to do, to buy your product or service.

And so the, the lead conversions from SEO can be targeted to send that stuff really to any landing page. any part of your website. Anything that you need to generate user awareness.

Joel: I think that’s really great information for share. So you hire a whole bunch of writers to help without with the content, you know, me being one of them.

what do you tell your writers to think about in terms of, you know, how long these articles should be? How, how many keywords they should have in them? And, you know, what sort of, content, should they be producing?

AJ: Fair enough. Good question. We actually, you know, specified depending on what the client has requested for a package, but a general packages, approximately, you know, 10 keywords for the business that we’re going to target.

and we’re generally going to write about a year’s worth. The articles thousand words, a piece, and that’s 12 articles and that’s literally so that the owner of the business doesn’t have to worry about a publishing schedule or anything like that. We handle it all. So it’s very seamless. and then I tell, my very, very talented team of writers, whom you are one of, to basically sit down and, and, and interview the client, find out.

We try and extract the essence of, of what the client views their business or idea as, because that is what enables us to, speak as them and present as them online. and I think through years of, of experience and practice, we’ve become very, very good at that, especially you and I, that’s why, you know, for the most part, when we’re doing the client research and evaluation, it’s you or me so that when we’re setting up those campaigns, we’re already in that creative space where we’re like, this is what the client wants to project.

Okay. And I’m going to help them project that, and you know, I think we should actually Pat ourselves on the back here, we’re, we’re very good at what we do. and, and we have a very, like I said, very talented team. You’re the lead. and for anybody who doesn’t know this, and I’m sure most of your podcast audience knows Joel is a published author and clients love hearing that we have a published author on, on staff.

Joel is also a, a journalist, and, and a writer and he loves it. And so he’s in his element, in the space that we have with them, with clients. And then to complement that we also have another journalist, Marianne who’s working with us and, and you know, she’s a writer and she’s published as well.

And that level of professionalism is something I think most people who were writing their own blogs or hiring company that just fires out articles, to write their blogs is missing. Is that personal? This is who I’m. Who’s actually conveying the message. We’re good at. And so thank you for helping us.

Joel: Well, thanks. No, thank you. I appreciate those words. I think if I can add that most, marketing companies, they. Deal with the technical side and they leave the content to the client. And, and I think that’s to their detriment because the client doesn’t really no he’s he or she is too busy running their isn’t is getting sales on all of that.

But having a team of quality writers, I believe makes all the difference. And I think that’s what makes a rad. Really rad is, is, you know, that’s part of it for sure. There’s other parts, of course.

AJ: Awesome. And I think too, thank you for saying that, but I think too, part of what we’re really good at is understanding that clients get busy.

And so I won’t and you won’t, and I don’t think anybody on our team will actually wait for a client response longer than a couple of days before we’d action. Something. at an executive decision level and gone, this is what we’re going to do for that client. you, you can attest many times over the years where we’ve published unapproved articles for clients that they come back six months later and gone, Oh, Hey, I’m ready to read those articles.

And we’re like, well, we’ve already got Google’s attention. Cause we’ve been publishing for six months. Let’s update those articles now and carry on.. It’s okay. It is what it is, I guess.

Joel: I’m, I’m a roofing company and I’m ready to start marketing. I’m ready to start SEO. What I come to you, what is sort of the first steps you take to, to engage me?

AJ: Well, basically the first steps, prior to COVID, we’re always, let’s sit down and have a coffee or a lunch and meat, but with COVID now we’re doing things a little differently.

we have an intake form, that we’ve developed over the years, through several, different intake forms that we’ve kind of used and, and made this, this really great. It’s like basically 12 questions that once a client answers, we can start researching. We can start thinking like them. Cause we’ve found what they like and what they don’t like.

And we’ve, you know, conceptualize that. and so that’s, that’s the first piece then from there basically. what I do is I try and take that information and take, whatever interview process we’ve had. And I come up with kind of the master design of this is what that client wants their site to look like.

Whether they know it or not in 10 years, I’ve only missed the Mark twice. And so again, I like to pat myself on the back for that really annoys me when I missed the Mark. but I’m, I’m really good at getting a feel for this is what this client wants to present. So once that’s done, then basically I say to the client, I need your help.

So if you’d like to give me this information great. If not. We can actually just research the information and have you verify it. So then the client goes, okay, cool. You know what? I’m really busy. Can you guys do it for me? We go Sure. So then we fill out their contents and we, they build their site generally a three to five-page site.

That’s ideal for Google. You can get away with a one-pager, but you’re going to want to grow that. we set as you, you know, everybody’s foundation and base up so that they’re scalable and growable, and that we never have to say to a client, Oh, sorry. We didn’t build your site to do that. If you decide.

Two years from now that you need a store on your website, guess what? We can put a store on your website and you don’t have to rebuild the whole thing. If it’s been up for two years, you might want to do a bit of a redesign, but again, your site is built to handle a scalable growth, accelerated growth, marketing growth, e-commerce growth, whatever you want to do.

Joel: And in terms of marketing, what sort of reports do you, I want to dive into this a little bit. what sort of reports do you present them with, or, or signs, that you, that you look for when you engage a client?

AJ: I guess really what I’m looking for. when, when I engage a client is. Is one, are they ready for what they’re asking for? so a lot of clients will be like, I want to be busy. Okay. We can make you busy. And then I can literally map out in a year, I’m going to be pushing this much new, new business through your door.

Can you handle a hundred new, a hundred new clients a month, with your candle business? I sure can’t or I sure can is the, is the response at that point. and so a lot of times, clients think they’re ready for unprecedented growth too. and, and, and then they have to take a pause and then they call us and they have, this is good.

I love this feedback AGA we need to slow it down a little bit. I can’t actually, you know, sustain the growth. I need to look after the new hundred clients I’ve got here. What do we do about that? And so, again, we’re not going to change our strategy as far as like publishing and things like that. But what we are going to change is how much, you know, traffic we’re specifically driving to that one area.

So this may give us an opportunity to focus on a new division of the business or a new idea that the client has that they’d like to experiment with. There’s all kinds of different. Choices that are, that our client can, can make our job is to help the client make the right choices. and so we’ll let a client say all day long, this is what I want to do.

And we’ll, we’ll always say, okay, the right answer is always yes, because in, when you’re in an online space, we can do what they want to do. it’s a matter of cost and it’s a matter of strategy. And so even though the answer’s yes, when we actually get into save the fifth month of, of the campaign, I might decide we’re renaming three things on the website based on what we’re seeing in our reports.

And, and, you know, we update the redirection and everything that goes along with that. And then we tell the client, we’re no longer saying this on your website. We’re now saying this and they go. Well, I really liked it when it said my name up there and it’s like, yeah, but nobody’s Googling that. So we’ve decided to actually put in this term related to, you know, roofing, the candle business, whatever your, your area of expertise is.

that’s going pull in that extra little bit of traffic and help you carve out your niche.

Joel: Awesome. Well, AJ, thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate your time. If somebody wants to reach out to you, what, where is a good place to find you?

AJ: thank you so much for having me on the show.

This was a lot of fun. I really appreciate the opportunity to, to tell my story. if somebody wants to reach out, we have a few different avenues. If you want to talk to the animal food bank, health and animal food bank.ca is our, is our email address. if you want to talk to me specifically, AIJ at rad websites.

and if you, if you want to start a project and are interested in getting a website going, send me a message at sales, I’ve read websites, I monitor everything still. I’ll see it regardless of where it gets sent. but I think those are the best ways to reach me right now. Awesome.

Joel: Thank you so much, AJ.

AJ: Awesome. Thanks Joel.

Joel: Thank you for listening to publishing for profits. Please like and Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.