BluShark Digital 0:00
Welcome to the SEO insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.
Seth Price 0:11
Welcome everybody thrilled to have you back for another episode of The SEO Insider. Today, I have an old friend of mine, Thomas Rudy, welcome, Thomas.
Thomas Rudy 0:18
Thanks, Seth, thanks for having me happy to be here.
Seth Price 0:20
You know, look, we had the pleasure of working with you earlier in your career, watched you go on to start an agency work inside Bazinga. Now off to something real exciting that we’re going to hear about today. It sounds like it’s been a pretty cool journey.
Thomas Rudy 0:35
Yeah, it’s been great. I mean, like anyone else, especially lately in the, in the digital SEO space, it’s been wild, but having a lot of fun, trying new things, and, you know, finding success still in SEO, but other areas too. So yeah, and, I mean, you know, we worked together a decade ago, stayed in touch, obviously, done some stuff, kind of like shared success stories and shared some practices along the way. So I’m happy to talk to you about those too. So.
Seth Price 1:03
Well, we’ll, start, we’ll start there. You know, when you look at SEO today, you talk about it being a wild ride. You know, how have you seen stuff evolve? Like, you know, you’ve been in the, you’ve been in the trenches. You know, first working with my mothership law firm, and then, you know, with, you know, dozens of clients, and then, you know, later, morphing into sort of the corporate world, for lack of a better term. Talk to me a little bit about how you’ve seen the digital marketing landscape evolve over that decade.
Thomas Rudy 1:33
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think one of the, one of the key things, I was just talking about this the other day is, I feel as though, in the past, you could, you could share a strategy, and you could openly share that strategy, and you kind of, you wouldn’t care, because you realized there was still a lot of work behind that strategy. Now it seems as though people are getting a little bit more tight-lipped with what they’re doing. They don’t want Google to follow it. They don’t want other people to catch on and abuse things. So nothing is as, as straightforward as it was before. And I think there’s a lot more experimentation going on than there was. Even, I mean, even, like, 2018, 2017, so I think that’s, like, been the biggest thing that I’ve seen. And depending on, you know, like, what format of SEO you’re in, you know, like local versus, like client side, or a lot of stuff in the affiliate space, everything’s acting a little bit differently these days. And, you know, like forms too, everything’s a little bit different, but, but definitely, I think, like the tactics that you would once share and kind of like openly share, because, you know, you can just outwork somebody. I’m seeing a lot less of that now.
Seth Price 2:40
So I’ll posture a theory on that, which is, many things that work, they have a window, and that window gets shorter and shorter with AI, machine learning from Google. As well as, you know, there are things that are done that move the needle. That may not be what Google wants, if you’re, if you’re chasing the algorithm. And I’ll use an example that always stuck with me from where, probably when I first met you, was guest blogging, right? The concept of guest blogging is not a bad thing, right? You know, you put content on the web somewhere else, it links back to you, it shows authority, but like everything else, if taken to the nth degree, it starts to create things that, if you, if Google is looking at, how do you give a good user experience? It’s filling the web with nonsense which would then, and I feel like, you know, going back then, it took a number of years, but it got to the point where, you know, Google’s pronouncement from their then speaker of spam would be like, it wasn’t that you didn’t want guest blogging. You just didn’t want spam guest blogging, if you actually had something to say that the algorithm is trying to figure that out. Is it similar to what we’re dealing with today with AI in that AI is great. It can help do things more efficiently. If you go and you post a Tiktok about fire all your content writers and use it. Just use AI, and it fills the web with crap. Google’s going to immediately try it. So that, to a certain extent, what we’ve seen, because during that same decade, social media has taken a different light, where you put an idea out there, and all of a sudden the world, not just your little circle is replicating it and doing things for good or for bad, and so that all of a sudden, when Google, if you’re the one of a few, 1% of people doing something, Google doesn’t care. But if everybody’s doing it, so to speak, it becomes a problem, and they actually work to adjust it.
Thomas Rudy 4:40
Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen almost a complete lockdown of, like, the group that I would work with prior, and we share secrets and tactics. I’m going to share one today that I think is kind of interesting. Again, like, I think it’s easy, I think it’ll be easily abused, so I’m comfortable sharing because I think it will eventually go away. But, yeah, I think that’s been the biggest difference. And quite honestly, I think because there’s a lack of sharing, a lot of people don’t know what’s going on, and they’re kind of just spinning their wheels with old tactics. And I think the people that are actually getting out there, and, you know, pressing buttons, trying, I mean, Seth, you were probably one of the biggest experimenters ever. Back early in the days, you know, you were constantly trying things, not just because, you know, a consultant told you to do it, or another friend told you to do it, but just to see if it would work, and then you replicate that. So, I mean, I mean, like, yeah, that’s the big thing. I think the other thing that I’ve seen just a huge like downward spiral, is just in the affiliate space. I mean, people are just getting blown up all the time. So, you know, I don’t know if it’s the best arena to be in. If you asked me if I were to start an affiliate site from scratch today, I’d say, don’t do it.
Seth Price 5:49
It’s funny. I know, one of the areas, I just never played that game. A lot of people do really well with it. I’ve spoken at the Affiliate Summit, and it’s cool, and there’s a place for it. I’ve just, you know, it’s one of those big risk, big reward. You know, if you figure out how to get in some of those niches, it can be incredible at the same time, generally, you don’t have much of a connection, nexus to that and that if you either go all in and you become an authority, or you have a lot of risk out there as one of those intermediate players.
Thomas Rudy 6:21
Yeah, in that same vein, one thing I have seen, especially in the affiliate space, is, you know, similar tactics, but changing channels. So to say so, a simplistic version of that will be, a lot of people are experimenting with Pinterest traffic in that arena. In my world, like running with, you know, some of the financial media sites, a lot of it is syndication. So you can get sort of, like the same outcome from revenue that you had prior through SEO, but in a different format. And, you know, depending on where you’re syndicating to, there’s different levels of intent.
Seth Price 6:53
Well, without giving away your state secrets, what are you excited about? Generally? I mean, you’ve been sort of multi- you’ve been a multi threat, right? You’ve seen the SMB clients. You’ve seen the big financial advice client, and you’re playing some somewhere in between now. But like, what does excite you generally?
Thomas Rudy 7:14
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think the thing that excites me the most, and this might sound like it’s self-serving to Google, although it’s, I take everything Google says with a grain of salt, is you will probably start seeing interesting sites win. Like I think that is what’s going to come about the most. Not everything is going to be, you know, a regurgitated, regurgitated article. Not everything is going to be a best of listical, I think you’ll start to see a little bit more creativity, some more user-generated content. That would be my prediction of where I think things are heading, and you know what I think will win, and then also just the different platforms. And I’ll, I’ll go into this little hack that we produce, and found some results with through Chat GPT, but I think that there’s going to be a broad sort of like reshuffling of what SEO people used to do on different platforms to garner some of that same traffic. And so the tidbit that I’ll give away today, because it’ll probably get shut down if it’s not already, was we figured out that we can update Chat GPT’s memory with a with a premium account, and depending on you know what you’re conversing about, you can, you can give a little hint of who to mention in the future. So for us, PrintBindShip. 3PL provider, commercial printer, you know, like we’re a mini Amazon, so to say, we layered in a bunch of questions, asking, you know, who’s the best books on demand printer? And we would say something like, actually, we heard that PrintBindShip is the best. And it would say, memory updated. And then we’d be getting these inquiries from customers, and they’d say, this is how I found you on Chat GPT, which is really exciting. You know, it’s like brand new platform. It’s still, in essence, a search engine in a lot of ways. And then we were getting tangible results by doing something really simple. Again, that’ll probably be, get abused to that. And I’m sure that aspect will go away if it’s not already away. I’d have to, like, you’d have to open it up right now and see if it still does it. But I would say I’m most excited about kind of, like, new frontiers of where things are going if Google loses market share, who’s going to replace that? People are searching more on TikTok. Like, how’s that going to look with the next generation? I think there’s a lot of things that, you know, are kind of like shuffling.
Seth Price 9:27
We just don’t know, right? You got, you got antitrust pressure coming in. You got, you know, I see, you know, I see, like, a third-party search engine that’s, like, saying that they value privacy, paying for TV money. Is that going to move the needle? I don’t know how many people really care that much, some people do. But you know, Yahoo didn’t seem to figure out how to beat it. The question is, will there be some sort of AI search result that is better and look, you’re seeing it. I got to say I’ve noticed in the last month or two, the AI results giving me answers to questions and reading information off websites. So I think it’s kind of replaced the rich snippet in a way, that I don’t see the rich snippet coming back, that they’re essentially using AI for that, so that when you, you know, if I wanted to find out if the hotel I’m going for winter break is dog friendly, and I just Google the property abd that, and it’s giving me the exact words from, crowdsourced from that website, without having to dig all the way into it. It’s, it’s getting there. And the question is, you know, will Google, who’s playing catch up, be able to be, because they have both? I mean, we clearly don’t want AI results for everything, and there are certain things where you want that curated result, at least for now. The question is, will the AI results become so compelling and or better with OpenAI that the Google product will be at a disadvantage? Or are people already at Google, and as long as they provide the bare minimum of AI and it’ll grow and improve over time? Is that enough?
Thomas Rudy 11:28
Yeah, one thing I’d be interested to hear your side of this, but I find myself using the AI products a lot more, especially for simplistic answers where I don’t want to click through websites and I’m happy to pay that $20 subscription to, you know, OpenAI to do that.
Seth Price 11:28
Right, what I’m saying is that you’re paying the 20 bucks. Not that many people, I mean, people are doing it. Don’t get me wrong, but the mass population is not. If it just becomes integrated into the Google result where you get both at once. Like is that, you know, Google doesn’t want your 20 bucks a month. They want your clicks, two clicks pay for your month of subscription. So, you know, the question is, are you getting enough, or do you need, you know, like, I go to, for me, I’m old, but I go to, you know, search Chat GPT, for specific text, presentment of answers, versus for search queries. I find that the integrated of, like, if AI does it great, but if it doesn’t, I want valuable answers, and I, I think the piece that we are, like many things, if you look at Google’s Play and again, I’m still bullish on Google. I don’t think they’re going away anytime soon, but that, if you look at everything they’ve done, it’s taking away search traffic, right? You can now book a flight, hotel, reservation for just about anything directly from the Google interface. And the fact that you don’t need to go to the Hyatt website to get information off of it, you’re now restricting that much more. So I know that as an SEO agency, you know there is going to be friction, because vanity metrics, page views are going to go down. I don’t see it changing the monetization, but with the rich snippet, there was the click-through directly to the website. We don’t always have that currently, at least with the AI results. And so is that one less place where the rich snippet was something you fought for to get, you know you’re not. You still want to be that result, and it’s good brand, and maybe somebody’s going to find you that way, but it’s one more step removed. Google’s keeping that traffic to itself, and you have to go another step to make that to do that transaction.
Thomas Rudy 11:28
Well, I’d be curious of your perspective on this. Like, obviously, I’ve worked in the local SEO realm quite a bit, and even recently I mentioned, you know, with my cousin, the clinic, the medical clinics by you guys. But I mean, local SEO seems like the one that’s been the least affected in the past five or six years, compared to, again, like the, you know, these big affiliate sites that I’ve worked on, or?
Seth Price 14:02
Right, because you like, a lot of the like, well, we still fight for SEO because it’s a component of the local search, that authority. You know, you know, there are 20, I’m making this up, but 20 monetizable pages on the site, and everything else is support or super long-term keywords. Whereas these affiliate sites are trying to rank for a gazillion different things, and those page views are significant. There’s still money terms, I’m sure. But the affiliate world, and I feel that in the local search, for the most part, you know, whether it be legal, medical, home services, what have you. You’re generally dealing with a business. And while some people have gained having a business, generally that business has some stickiness and trust and brand within the Google algorithm. Whereas these affiliate sites don’t have that extra stickiness. It’s a site, and that, as you sort of alluded to, it gets more and more competitive. People take more and more chances. And you know, as you know, it’s a risk, reward balance, and that, as people you know say, well, I don’t know what happened to my site. Well, you just added 50% AI content to your, to your pages, like people are doing more aggressive things when it’s not something that if it’s burnt, it’s the end of the world. Now they don’t want to burn their site, don’t get me wrong, but that people are much more aggressive generally. When it’s not that brand, you can’t, it’s very hard to rebrand a law firm, or even harder to rebrand a medical practice if you were to burn through that site.
Thomas Rudy 15:43
Yeah, sure.
Seth Price 15:44
And so it’s fascinating, like, you know, the, we’re not seeing the manual action penalties that we would see way back in the day when you and I first started working together. At the same time, we are seeing fluctuations in traffic and what Google’s allowing to be seen, and that they’re not saying, hey, you’re penalized, but they’re, you know, call it what you want. If your traffic has been cut in half or 75% that’s pretty substantial. Now, if you, if you, are there people who are playing by all the rules, so to speak, that have that happen to them, I’m sure. But you know, knowing that space, it is a very cowboy-centric group that are doing some wild things. So even if you’re the agency holding the bag, it’s rare for an affiliate guy just to be like, oh yeah, I’m gonna let whatever you’re doing stand. They’re doing all sorts of nonsense, because it is so hyper-competitive. And you know, as Google gets better, they identify some of that stuff and don’t reward it.
Thomas Rudy 16:43
Yeah, actually, the AI component is really interesting. We had a client that we worked with for a number of years before I exited my agency, and then afterwards, they brought everything in-house, and they went to a complete AI content model. And you know, we grew them from zero to maybe just under a million a month of sessions, and they just got chopped off by this latest algo update, maybe in half. It’s the first time I’ve seen something that I’ve been like, really a part of where they did an aggressive AI strategy, and then, you know, that kind of came tumbling down. I wonder if you see the same thing in local SEO.
Seth Price 17:19
And you do, I’ll give you an example. I mean, Google didn’t want Regises. And I had friends in California that were doing 3 Regises, yeah, and it didn’t take much for Google to tie virtual office addresses and/or suite numbers to, you know, when you type in a street address and it’s a Regis, it pops up as a Regis. So I think that you would see very quickly. This started a couple of years ago. The algorithm just wiped those out. And like everything else Google does, it’s extremes. I still remember, I believe you, when you first came on board, Google decided exact batch domains, you know, were bad, and it actually hurt Price Benowitz, or it wasn’t Price Benowitz itself, but one of the sites that we had, I think, was like Maryland criminal lawyer,
Thomas Rudy 18:10
Yeah, there was a variety.
Seth Price 18:11
And the traffic dropped for like, a couple weeks, but they said, You know what? That’s not the result we want. Because some people who have exact match domains do have the goods. They just want to get rid of the affiliate guy, or the guy who was, you know, just basically had a one-page website in order to get traffic for that term, and they just had to put more restrictions in it. So, you know, as you play the game, I think, like most things, it’s a balance. And look, I talk about this regularly with clients, with friends. You know, if you’re doing a home reno, and you decide not to pull a permit for something, it’s your risk, right? You know, if there’s a fire, it’s on you. If there’s a flood, it’s on you. If it’s meaningless, it’s not you know, again, you can choose to have that risk and know that you have to live with the results. But if you’re, if you’re doing this to resell it, or rent it, the risk calculus changes dramatically, because, God forbid, there’s an electrical fire and you don’t permit it, right? You have massive liability that could just ruin your life. And so is it likely? No, but is, is following the rules going to insulate you from that. It’s sort of like, you know, our whole criminal justice, if it’s risk reward and that, as, as I see it, many of the techniques, take your client that went all AI, you weren’t supporting that. You’re like, hey, I know there’s massive risk here. I’d like to see it as a case study, but I, you know, you could, let’s say that client was doing it. Another client, I heard they’re doing this. Can you do this for me? Like, what are you gonna do? It’s, there’s a certain liability, and putting on my lawyer hat, you almost can’t waive, because the moment it doesn’t go right. Oh, I wasn’t fully informed. I didn’t know. Like, what are you gonna do? A video taped, you know, Maya culpa from the person? I get what I’m asking you to do is dangerous and likely to fail. Or not likely to fail, but likely to have serious consequences if Google-
Thomas Rudy 20:06
It’s almost like the new link building, like, there’s like a black, gray, and white hat to AI, as there was with link building. You know, that’s another topic to go into now too, but-
Seth Price 20:14
No, but look, look content. We see it every day, right? You go 100% AI, like, you’re seeing stuff like, I, agency friends like, oh, we’re going all AI, I’m like, good luck with that. If you’re figuring out how to use it to embellish or increase or better your content, great, you know. And like, again, is it, you know? Is it going to get to the point where Google can’t detect it? Maybe. But you also sort of, like, look at it and you know that you know one of the things about local search, you know, is, and actually, not just local, but any search, let’s say, from the legal space, is that you need to have the same page of content for gazillions of different locales. That yes, there’s some different laws per state, but within a state, it’s splitting hairs to get that original content, you have to do original content. You don’t want duplicate content. So you’re left with that. And I think what you’re burying your head in the sand is, yes, there’s a certain method that’s AI detectable, but how much is it just regurgitating something very, very similar? Because it’s, this is not like, this isn’t magic. It’s taking it from somewhere else. And you know, if it spins the words too much to use the old black hat technique, it’s going to be nonsensical, and you’re gonna have issues. And if it doesn’t spin it enough, you’re gonna have duplicate content. So, like, there are ramifications. And look, there are people that are much more aggressive. There are people that, like, during COVID, when I was not traveling, were like, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna get on the road and and be out there and be free and do business with people who will see me and those of us that were more conservative and said, you know what, we’re gonna wait for this to pass before we’re jumping on planes. You know was, was that, it was safer. You know, history is written by the victor. Had that person had some sort of pulmonary issue they didn’t know about. They might be dead, but they didn’t, and they lived, or the ones that didn’t aren’t here to tell the story. So it’s like much of, the longer I live. You know, history is written by the victors, if you do it and it works, God bless. And if it doesn’t, you’re sitting there with the company that had a payroll for $12 million of revenue, and all of a sudden you’re, you know, well, under six, and you’re, that’s not a good place to be if you’re trying to make payroll.
Thomas Rudy 22:25
Yeah. Well, I will say this, we, from our agency, you still have a left, maybe a few dozen leftover local clients that, they’re more hosting clients than they are SEO clients. But, you know, we did some citation building and some basic stuff, and for a lot of those, we did AI for the whole site, but none of it was really article formatted. It was all, I mean, like stylized landing pages. Haven’t seen anything really disruptive there, but it’s, again, it’s not really like an aggressive push, or like a, you know, like a behemoth site, like your guys Price Benowitz site, nothing in that arena. So anecdotally, I mean, you know, your small mom and pop shops, like, we have plumbers, tanning salons, roofers, things of that nature. I have not seen any of those drop. But again, we’re not, we’re not pumping out content. We’re not-
Seth Price 23:13
Right, and they’re like, look, as you go down the pecking order, they’re in the least competitive spot. And there are points where, if you do like, if they have, if they have Thomas Rudy doing their work, and they get enough reviews that can do them good for a while.
Thomas Rudy 23:27
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Seth Price 23:29
You know, that’s not going to be true of a personal injury firm in the middle of Houston, but it will be true for a flower shop, because no one’s putting the effort to take them out, right? And I think that the bigger issue is, you know, proximity and how Google has continued to redefine that. And in one respect, I mean, it’s just like, you know, they have morphed to the point where, near me is added to almost every search.
Thomas Rudy 23:59
Yep.
Seth Price 24:00
Essentially. And that’s great in one respect, but I also like, I’m, I’m always there’s certain things I think about, is it really a good user experience, versus if we’re-
Thomas Rudy 24:11
For like the legal industry, probably not. Would you drive 15 extra minutes to get a better attorney?
Seth Price 24:11
Right? And especially when you may not ever go to the office. So I kind of call BS on that. However, if you want your stock price to go up, and you allow, and you make it harder to get organic clicks, and you force people to paid, then, then you’ve sort of figured that out.
Thomas Rudy 24:30
I mean, that’s another interesting tidbit, too. Talking with somebody recently, and they shared a screenshot of just the the ad prices and where they’re at now, I think it was, I think the term was exact match phrase in Google AdWords or Google Ads is $255 a click. Was the average for the, for just the click. I mean, that’s-
Seth Price 24:52
I mean, it’s, and that’s why the LSA was such a game changer, because it was, it allowed you to have in the very expensive click area, a way of monetizing traffic with some more, with more control. And I, you know, very fascinating to watch that play out. And, you know, the the idea that they’re now tightening the screws, and not really before, was like, oh, if it’s not, if it’s not a legitimate call, we don’t want you to pay for it. And now ehh, you know, if our AI thinks it’s okay, then you have to pay for it. So there it’s just each of these is, you know, that means your stock price goes up three ticks more because you now have, you know, a large, you’re charging more for the same thing. Now, are they gonna be able to, you know, as they leverage AI, will they be able to drive more traffic, maybe. But, you know, I’m a little cynical on that.
Thomas Rudy 25:46
Are there any sort of, like, extracurriculars that you guys are doing in your agency that would maybe, like, fall outside of the realm of, I guess, like traditional SEO, paid marketing.
Seth Price 25:57
Like, what type of you know, are you-
Thomas Rudy 26:00
I mean, like, a simple example, like billb- like in our, in Detroit, there’s billboards everywhere for attorneys.
Seth Price 26:06
We don’t rep, no, people do billboards. People do TV or radio. And I, you know what I have seen. And this is not new. I think it’s about three years old that Google, look, two things. One, when we’ve talked about this offline, Google rewards their paid traffic positively in the SEO world, not talked about a lot, but it’s obviously there. They could very easily, if you were taking the old style of TV or newsroom and advertising department, they could easily not put that in the algorithm. I don’t think there’s any doubt that there is a thumb on the scale. When you do paid search, where traffic comes through, you’re out of the sandbox faster for a new site. There are benefits to your site of Google paid traffic, right? So what we saw, starting about three years ago was that brands really resonated, and that they were giving a push, algorithmically to those brands. And I think some of that has been shown out as those leaks have come out. We can’t tell a lot, those leaks. Oh, we’ve got all the answers. We got none of the answers. But, you know, there from what we’re sort of deciphering the idea of brand is, and this is not it’s it’s been played out, not that we needed the leak to tell us this, but that we are seeing that for a couple reasons, right? One, I think Google is favoring it. The click-through rate means that they see this as more favorable. And for a guy who does do some TV, radio, I don’t have any billboards for the law firm. I can tell you that it is almost impossible at this point to determine monetization from that offline media. That offline media almost has to be put in a brand bucket. I hate brand. I love it, and you need to have it, but I hate it because it’s the what you put for everything that doesn’t work. Oh, it’s good brand building. And I’m like, if you brand all you want, but if you don’t need money, you’re out of business. So-
Thomas Rudy 28:08
The attribution is impossible, essentially.
Seth Price 28:10
I’m sorry?
Thomas Rudy 28:12
The attribution is impossible, essentially.
Seth Price 28:13
The attribution is impossible. And at some level, it’s-
Thomas Rudy 28:17
Google-
Seth Price 28:18
[Inaudible], You know, it’s not like they’re sitting with the, with the phone next to the TV. They now have a phone in their hand, which means they’re going to a website. And so there are, you know, there are pieces to it, but when at the end of the day, we are seeing that if, five years ago, the biggest advertisers on TV and radio poo-pooed the digital agencies. They’re now the best customers because they get the integration of the two. And it sucks. Because before you know, guys would say, hey, those TV, get their money from there, and the small, nimble guys get their money from, from just from digital. It’s much, much harder, and I’m seeing more and more players that started just digital, including both, but as you alluded, it’s virtually possible to do the attribution.
Thomas Rudy 29:07
Yeah, and we and in our world, especially in the speaking from the financial media perspective, and we have those same conversations behind doors. But you don’t want to be the one that comes out and says, you know publicly that X company is beating you because of a bigger brand. And you can, you know, spy through their AdWords and see they’re spending a million dollars a month, you know, credit card offers, or whatever it is, even though they’re affiliate. So, I mean, shared sentiment there. I think I obviously don’t have any, like, definitive proof of that, but I think it’s, it’s definitely something that we-
Seth Price 29:38
Well, I mean, I think it’s, it’s, there are things that I’m confident about, things that I’m not, like. We’re seeing a pretty strong correlation there.
Thomas Rudy 29:46
Yeah,
Seth Price 29:47
And look, and there are also examples the other way with local search, where some of those big, big, big TV advertisers have terrible reputations, and that stuff doesn’t work either. So it’s a combination of the two.
Thomas Rudy 29:59
If I were a betting man, I would say it’s absolutely some sort of correlation toward the organic performance.
Seth Price 30:06
I loved your tip on Chat GPT, fun stuff, whether I remember, I was at one event years ago and they talked about, you know, doing directions to your office every day and have a bunch of people do that, I went and did it. And was there some benefit, some benefit maybe. But, you know, it was, what else do you want to leave our audience with that you’re willing to share that you’re having fun playing around with and that might be a place to put some resources?
Thomas Rudy 30:32
I mean, this is going to be incredibly self-serving, but the group that I work with PrintBindShip as a side note, they’re an interesting client slash relationship with me. I’m there. I’m their CMO, because they’re, they have a benefit from both the local SEO side and more of like the National, what I used to call enterprise side. So we do a lot locally with them, from an SEO perspective, and a lot nationally with content. But one of the products that they have, that we’ve, we do for ourselves, which we found success with. I think I’ve talked to you about it. We have a retargeting mechanism where someone can go on your site, they click allow a location, and since we’re a commercial printer, we can get a postcard out the door. So although that is offline media, there is attribution there. You can do it.
Seth Price 31:18
No, no, that’s awesome. And I it sounds like it’s morphing into the email world as well.
Thomas Rudy 31:23
Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s, we’re seeing incredible return on ad spend for, you know, a wide variety of clients. I mean, the home services one is really easy, if you think like you’re spending a buck 50 on a postcard that goes out and your, you know, your roof is $40,000 really easy for attribution there. But even just e-commerce clients, things of that nature. So we’re doing a lot of stuff with software as it relates to capitalizing on the traffic that you already have, right? So for us, we get about 20, 25,000 visitors a month, not what I’m used to. I’m used to the millions. But for this group, a client can be worth a substantial amount of revenue, so it’s important to be able to try to maximize that, and probably in your, your arena too. I think Price Benowitz gets a ton of traffic for a law firm. You know, each one of those visitors is potentially, you know, a great contribution to the company.
Seth Price 32:16
As you’re saying this, because all these ideas sound great until you think about how much traffic you have. Because I’m thinking like, if you could just take, taking your current company and squeeze that orange more, that the people that have planned on your site but choose not to take action could make your company 3, 4x what it was, if they so chose, right? There are people out there. So the next question is, are you able to target two specific landing pages so that you aren’t you know, you aren’t just getting the person who’s coming for the scholarship on the site and this and that. And as you start to dig down where you’re like, okay, my avatar client is here using this tool, or whatever. This article where you can get rid of the riffraff and get to the meat, that’d be pretty cool.
Thomas Rudy 33:07
Yeah. The way the software works, you can target a wide variety of things, including, you know, destinations on the site, time on the site, different click-throughs, different sources. You can even do, like, you know, really interesting stuff with geography and where they’re at. And in some instances, too, we can capture the phone and the email of those individuals. We could do residential business, multifamily. It captures quite a bit of data. It almost could be its own self-serving product as a data company.
Seth Price 33:36
And it’s, and at some point that that will get, as you sort of said too public, the wrong person is going to get a postcard. It’s going to go to somebody on, like, the House Committee for privacy, and next thing you know, it’ll be out. But you know what, what I love is, and I think you’ve been amazing at over the last decade, is looking for that, that advantage, using it, leveraging it, and being mindful that it has a shelf life, and that when it’s not working anymore, you move on to the next thing. And that’s, I think, what’s put you a step ahead of the curve along the way.
Thomas Rudy 34:06
Yeah. I mean, it’ll be interesting to talk with you about law, but we have done quite a bit of work on all the legalities surrounding, you know, public records for postcards, you know, all the various different compliances, our group is HIPAA, SOCT certified. So we think we’ve done a good job there. Actually, it’d be great for you to take a look at it, and then, you know, there’s a there’s obviously, like, an opt in to it as well. The user has to prompt a dialog in order for the script to run. But, yeah, I mean, like everything marketing is a moving target, especially now. So there’s some things that are really tried and true. Honestly, I think, like the work that you guys do at BluShark, the local stuff, in a way, I’ve almost been tempted to get back into it, especially in the medical space, as I’ve told you. But yeah, I mean, like, there’s, there’s a ton of challenging work ahead, and, you know, I think, like the people who are using these new tools, being creative. Trying to show value in return for their customers, will be the winners. So I think you’re going to have to evolve a little bit. I mean, that’s, and that’s like anything else, you know, it’s not just marketing, it’s all forms of, you know, like work, so, but yeah, I think there’ll be wins, you know, I’ve you see all these, like influencers, SEO influencers. I mean, you’re kind of one now, Seth, but in the space, you know, I know a lot of people who’ve never, never even tweeted that are doing very well with SEO. So I’ve always gone back and forth on, should I put more out there? Now-
Seth Price 35:33
Interesting, because some of the biggest names, they’re like, there are a lot of very learned people, but people who are the biggest names that make amazing, compelling videos, they’re a funnel to a very expensive agency. That turns out to be nonsense, because, as you know, the actual work behind it is really, really it’s always a balance, right? You want to be able to evangelize and let people hear what you’re doing and how you’re working, so that you become a desired person to work with at the same time, you don’t want to take your thumb off the actual business operations.
Thomas Rudy 36:01
Yeah, no. I mean, like I said at the beginning of this call, I mean, the podcast, the I was always happy to share and talk with people, because I just felt like I could outwork them anyways.
Seth Price 36:10
And you still can. So-
Thomas Rudy 36:12
Yeah, so there’s a change there, I think, because everything’s a little bit more secret. So maybe, you know, maybe we’ll start sharing more from our side of things, but definitely very heads down at the moment in terms of trying new things and like seeing what that next edge may be.
Seth Price 36:25
And I think that’s because there, as you sort of said, there’s certain areas where fundamentals continue to work and you’re looking for, what do I do around the edges?
Thomas Rudy 36:33
Yeah, absolutely.
Seth Price 36:35
Well, Thomas, thank you so much. This is great. Let’s not make it 10 years before our next catch up, I’m kidding. We speak to you semi-regularly, but please stay in touch and thank you for being on here.
Thomas Rudy 36:47
Cool. Yeah, it was awesome. I appreciate the time. Thank you, Seth.
BluShark Digital 36:50
Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand’s online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital’s website.
