When he started at YouTech, it was more of a web design company than a marketing company, and Michael was one of the only employees who did anything in marketing. He did social media, PPC, SEO, content writing, and everything else that fell under their digital marketing umbrella.
Today, Michael is joining us to share some of his ninja marketing skills. He will walk us through how he scaled the growth of the business and share what he learned along the way.
Initially, they would throw something at the wall and see if it stuck. If it did, they would keep on doing it. If not, they would try something else. They were very successful and managed to grow the site from absolutely nothing to 500,000 hits a month, mostly organically, over about four years.
Anyone starting on a brand new website on a brand new domain will not have the SEO or brand recognition to grow a following immediately. Social media was less congested back in 2015, however. And you could grow a following organically just by posting content. So Michael was pumping out new content on social media every day, and the people who liked it would start following the page. If any content did exceptionally well, they would augment it by putting some ad money behind it to bring in lots of hits and grow their email list. So, in a sense, they used viral marketing to help them grow.
Back in 2015, when the Black Hawks won the Stanley Cup, Michael had an article ready, and he posted it just as the Black Hawks won the cup. The article got a lot of attention on social media, and it got shared everywhere. YouTech got about 200 000 hits right away from doing that, so they used the same strategy several more times to grow their following.
It was primarily their SEO writing about topics that people are searching for, answering questions, providing higher quality content, and taking care of the technical SEO that helped them grow sustainably over approximately four years.
Michael’s ninja skillis SEO. To help you leverage your online presence and boost it, he breaks SEO down into three categories:
- The content side. You need to put effort into the content because Google is very good at sniffing out content with low effort.
- Technical SEO. (Your site speed and how search engines read your site.) You always want to make the search engine’s job as easy as possible with this piece. Michael recommends that you focus on uploading smaller sized images.
- Link building and authority trust. Search engines use links as a strong signal for trust. So they have to be quality links, and some benefit needs to arise from having created the link. That is the hardest part of SEO for Michael because it involves finding websites in your niche that aren’t competitors. The best way to do it is to create great content that people will naturally want to link to and then hope that it happens organically.
Tangible outcomes that will result from great SEO:
- If you are in an industry where you are doing any advertising, you should consider that you could rank number one for the terms you are betting on, that are expensive, and you’re spending ad money on. You could come in just below those ads, organically.
- SEO is a long-term investment, so after about two years in, you will start reaping the benefits of it.
- SEO is a great strategy that can get new customers through the door for you.
Michael recommends SEO for any business.
The biggest mistakes that people tend to make when trying to leverage a strategy are:
- Not having a cohesive strategy.
- Not understanding which keywords they should go after.
Ultimately, you will need to tie all the business outcomes you are looking for back to SEO.
Links and resources:
Michael’s website
Michael’s Youtalk Marketing Podcast
