Hey SEOs, here's how to grab your bag (of $)

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP'S Up. Aloha. Mahalo for joining the SERP'S Up podcast. We're pushing out some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the head of SEO brand here at Wix, and I'm joined by she who is always on the money, our head of SEO communications, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello, everybody. I hope that you are securing all of the bags and collecting all of this spondoolie and all of the dough.

Mordy Oberstein:

What's that sound? I hear like a jangling in your pockets or something as you're... Oh, that's your money. That's your coin. That's your money. I like because the audience has no idea why we're doing this yet. They're like, all right, you guys are talking about money.

Crystal Carter:

Money.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking of money, give us your money. The SERP'S Up podcast is brought to you by Wix Studio, where you can not only subscribe to our SEO newsletter over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also supplement your income by selling your custom apps and widgets inside of the Wix Studio app market.

This, as we talk, how to negotiate your salary if you're in the SEO or digital marketing space that you can get top dollar. How to go about ensuring you get what you deserve. Never too late? Can you renegotiate? The end, the idiosyncrasies of salary negotiation in the SEO space. To help us make a withdrawal from the proverbial ATM, Carolyn Lyden will join us in just a bit.

It's a two-for this week, by the way, as Nick Leroy hops on to talk about how you can pitch your projects to get the client to sign on the data line and into your bank account. Just in case you're not a salaried employee, or if you're in-house, by the way, we'll talk how to pitch your projects so you might get that raise. And of course, we have the snappies of SEO News and who you should be following on social media for more SEO awesomeness.

So bosses and managers beware. Episode 117 of the SERP'S Up podcast is here to help your employees line their pockets with a little bit of extra dough.

Crystal Carter:

I was going to say, I think spondoolie is my favorite euphemism for money. I just like spondoolie, just-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's underused.

Crystal Carter:

Skrilla. Skrilla is also very good. I like that one as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Also underused. Wow.

Crystal Carter:

Right? Paper. Benjamins, benjies. Hundies, I like this as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, so usually we do a little intro like why this topic's important and blah, blah, blah. I feel like we don't need any introductions why this topic's important. It's important so you can pay your bills, which is why Carolyn Lyden is here to help talk about making more money. Hey Carolyn, how are you?

Carolyn Lyden:

Hi. I'm doing well. How are you?

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm good. I need some tips. I hope my boss is listening.

Carolyn Lyden:

Me too. I hope everyone's boss is listening because it's not just the job of the person negotiating, I think. It's also the job of managers to be good managers and advocate for their employees.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely.

Mordy Oberstein:

What utopia you living in?

Carolyn Lyden:

One that I am creating for us all.

Mordy Oberstein:

Here, employee, take more of my money.

Carolyn Lyden:

Well, happy employees stay.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's true.

Carolyn Lyden:

And perform better.

Crystal Carter:

Well paid employees stay.

Carolyn Lyden:

Yes.

Crystal Carter:

That's something that I think is crazy because you have these situations where people are like, "Oh, I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise. I'd like a raise." And then they get headhunted or they get offered a new job and then suddenly the person's like, "Oh no, we can counteroffer." And you're like, "Where was the money last year when I asked you? How are you suddenly out of pocket now? What's that about?"

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's bad vibes too.

Carolyn Lyden:

It is bad vibes to be like, "Cool. Was I not valuable before someone else wanted me?"

Mordy Oberstein:

I had that, by the way. I asked at a previous job whom I shall not mention, I asked for a raise and they said no. This is a long time ago. So if people are trying to look at my-

Carolyn Lyden:

I was going to say, people know where you've worked, Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah yeah, you got to go back. And I'm like okay, I'm, I'm going to leave. I'm going to leave. And I found another job and they said they're going to pay me this. And then they finally gave me the money, which sucked. It was a lot of work.

Carolyn Lyden:

Magically popped up out of nowhere. Where did it come from? Who knows?

Mordy Oberstein:

There was a leprechaun and there was a rainbow and a pot of gold, and-

Carolyn Lyden:

Someone came across it and they were like, yay.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah.

Carolyn Lyden:

I was going to say, this is designated to Mordy, this rainbow pot of gold.

Crystal Carter:

But this is a topic that you've covered as well for a little while, and you've been fairly outspoken on this. Why did you start talking about this? Why were you like this needs to be said? What made you want to have those conversations?

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah, so actually a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I worked at a company called CallRail, and I started essentially their ERG group for women. So I started this women's circle where women could get together to just talk about all the different things that we wanted to talk about from like when people are like, "Oh, how do you do it all? How do you have a job and have kids?" And it's like, "I don't do it all. We're suffering here. Help."

But one of the topics when I surveyed the people who joined the group that they really wanted to talk about was salary negotiations. So I just said okay, I'm going to dig in and do all the research and present what I find based on this. And so that's what I did for our first women's circle session when I was at CallRail, and a lot of people were really into it. They were like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know, not only all these statistics, but the fact that if I don't negotiate, I'm sort of starting my entire career behind and losing millions of dollars over my lifetime potentially by not asking for what I'm worth. And also doing the work on the back end, the research to make sure that I am asking correctly or what my market worth is."

So hearing that feedback and then taking it to a wider group of women and men and people in the SEO industry, I was like okay, this is something that we're all unspoken about it. We're all just secretly not talking to each other, not our colleagues, not our managers. We're just pretending we know how the system works. I didn't know how the system works, so I was like all right, we need to be talking about this a lot more and putting the information out there for everyone.

Crystal Carter:

Do you think that people are embarrassed to talk about salaries and money? Do you think that that's why we don't talk about it?

Carolyn Lyden:

I mean isn't that one of the three things you're not supposed to talk about is money, politics and religion? Because yeah, it's-

Mordy Oberstein:

Wait, wait, I talk about all three of those things. You're not supposed to talk about those?

Carolyn Lyden:

I mean, I talk about them too. This is why people don't follow me on... People follow me on Twitter and then immediately unfollow. They're like, wait a second. I thought you talked about SEO. I'm like nope, that's not what you're here for. I love it when people follow me for SEO stuff. Like I can see they have SEO in their tag and I'm like, "You're going to immediately unfollow," which is fine.

But yeah, I think it's a taboo topic, but also in America and in probably a bunch of other cultures, we associate our salaries with how much we are worth as individuals. And there's almost a deeper thing to be like I am worth less than you as a human if I make less than you. Or you also see it when you find out, rightfully so, that people at your job, if there is salary transparency, when you find out the one jerk who never works on the projects, who's like the person who's always like, "Hey, can you do this for me?" makes way more than you. And you're like what the heck? I'm working harder, I'm doing more, I'm providing more results than this other person, and I'm worth less than them?

So I think there are a lot of interpersonal social issues around it, and I think some companies are doing a good job of laying out the transparency of this and being like, "These are the tiers we have. These are the levels. Here's what is expected at this, you know, tier two." Individual contributors, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or whatever. So there is that transparency to understand what it does take to move up and what's required of you so you're not in one of those positions, but I still think it's something that everybody needs to be advocating for, which is why at the beginning I said managers should be listening too.

Mordy Oberstein:

Do you think there's any idiosyncrasies about all this in the SEO space or in the digital marketing space? Does it play itself out differently? Is it universal? How does that work?

Carolyn Lyden:

I think this is an interesting question because it takes me back to 2020 when COVID first happened and everyone was like, "All right, we're trying to figure out our budgets here. Things are changing. I'm not sure if I'm going to have money for the next whatever." So if you're a vendor or someone in SEO or even in digital marketing, where do we pull back?

I was a freelancer, I had my own business then, and it was interesting to see who accelerated money into SEO versus who pulled back and what their end results were. And I think it now plays in still too to the salary discussion now. So if your company or your clients can see the value that you're bringing to them, they can see, "Okay, this is where we do need to invest that money." But I think it's almost like a bigger communication issue about our industry to the wider market to display that value.

I feel like I'm rambling on about it, but I've noticed that a lot of people don't... If you don't understand how SEO works, then it's hard to see the value in it to then understand why it's important to continue to invest in your employees or your projects and things like that too and improve that investment there.

Mordy Oberstein:

I wonder if it's getting more difficult because you have all this chatter around the Google results not being great anymore, and Google kind of feels like a little bit of a sinking ship lately just from the optics of everything. And then you have the LLM search engines and like well, those get market share and blah, blah, blah.

So it kind of feels like it might be a little bit harder to make that SEO value sell right now, which I wonder if that means maybe broaden your skill set or broaden SEO as a topic a little bit more into the wider digital presence they can offer you. I don't know.

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah, I've been talking to a bunch of different people in my organization and outside about expanding their mindset because I think so many people are... We're in it so we know what SEO actually is, but so many people still think it's just putting the keywords on the page. It's 2024, and I still get people who are like, "Will you look at this document and SEO it for me?" And I'm like, "No, you should have talked to me before you even created the document."

So I think that so many people still think that's what it is. And I feel like my whole career at many organizations, and this is involving your stakeholders, but zooming out and talking about this is a search ecosystem. We're not talking about Google. We're not talking about ChatGPT search. We're not talking specifically about Bing. We're not talking about anything with a search bar is a search engine sort of thing. We're zooming out and seeing how all of these things work together to optimize our presence in those places or optimize how we show up in those places too.

So I think zooming out and having the ecosystem talk, which is kind of an ongoing conversation sort of helps out in that way because yes, I think too many people get zoomed in on... We all have had the people who are like, "Oh, I really love this one keyword, and we were number one and now we're number three, and oh my God, fix it." And you're like, "Okay, cool. When you search this next week, it's going to be different. So stop searching the same words over and over and then telling me when they drop once."

So the same conversations we've been having for a long time, but really involving those weird things that are coming in now that we're all just still kind of learning about too. Like I know people that use ChatGPT exclusively.

Mordy Oberstein:

Really?

Carolyn Lyden:

And they just have search conversations with it. And it's more because it's a conversation, not just a blop, here's the result, and then researching. It's saying, "Okay, here's what I'm looking for." And then they pop up whatever answers, and then you say, "Okay, we're on the right track, but I need something that's more geared toward automotive industry," or something like that. And, "Okay, cool, that's really helpful, but I need things that are doing XYZ." So being able to have that conversation I think is really interesting. So how can we take those use cases and those models and put it in our bigger search ecosystem?

Crystal Carter:

But I think also that you've touched on a few things there about the variations in what SEOs do, right?

Carolyn Lyden:

Correct.

Crystal Carter:

So you might have somebody who's an SEO lead, and you'll see lots of jobs that are SEO lead, but what an SEO lead does at one place might be completely different to what an SEO lead does at another place. And one of the other things that's tricky as an SEO professional is that a lot of times you're fairly self-taught. Like you can get certifications. We have a great course for instance on the Wix SEO Learning Hub and we talk about technical SEO and keyword research and client management and client engagement. But a lot of the stuff, for instance, like ChatGPT search and new platforms as they emerge, new ways of training, new ways of training on different technology, the SEO for your particular tech stack, those sorts of things, you'll very often need to learn yourself and need to learn how to learn it for yourself. So though you have the SEO lead here and SEO lead there, they might not have the same skillset.

How do you find that when you're thinking about salary negotiations and even... I think Nick Leroy's going to talk about pitching, but when you're thinking about salary negotiations, how do you quantify the value of your skillset? So let's say you spent all that time learning the TikTok algorithm, which oh my God, if you've done that, please tell me. But let's say you spent all the time, how do you say, "This is worth this much more on my salary. I now have this skill and it's worth this much more for this business." How do you connect those two things?

Carolyn Lyden:

I think it's understanding business, looking through the job description, which is sort of where the front end work in job hunting is, and seeing what they're looking for, what they actually need, and seeing how your specific skills apply. I also don't... Sorry, everyone, I don't know anything about TikTok. I signed up for it, and then I logged on and immediately was like I am deleting this app from my phone. So, sorry.

Mordy Oberstein:

Not to switch directions completely, but because something that's on my mind I wanted to ask you about, because I think it's like the thing that people always get, I think, stuck on is how far can I push it? Because if I push it too far and I'm negotiating, then maybe I'll get a no. Or maybe they'll think that this person's too aggressive, whatever it is, but you also don't want to be walked all over. How do you know and how far can you actually push the envelope when negotiating your salary?

Carolyn Lyden:

I think that ties in a little bit to what Crystal was saying too. So doing the research, listing out what your... I hate the word soft skills, but the interpersonal skills, the cross communication between departments, listing all that out, seeing the alignment between what you can do, what the job description is, and then doing the research to determine okay, other jobs that are equivalent to this that have these exact skill sets are offering XYZ right now.

This is a tangent. I've been seeing so many jobs that are like Senior VP of SEO, it's like 80k. And I'm like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Stop. This is not equivalent unless I guess, I don't know, you can live off of $0 while you're doing a hundred hours of work a week. So that is an example of where it's totally not equivalent, the salary is not equivalent to the job role that they're asking. So doing that research to see what else is out there.

Actually, on Nikla Roy's site, I wrote an article about salary negotiation SEO, and this is actually a really good use of ChatGPT. So I did a couple of tests for jobs that had the salary band listed. I took the salary band off and I copied the title and the job description and the skills they required and all that into ChatGPT, and if it was remote or based somewhere, and I said, "What would you assume the salary band for this role is?" And it was pretty spot on to what they were offering. So I wouldn't only use ChatGPT for this, but you can also put in all your skills there and say, "All right, are these one-to-one? Am I going the right direction here or am I going to over-ask for this?"

So I think seeing what else is out there using the tools that you have to your advantage to see where you can push a little bit. And honestly, start the conversation with salary expectations. So if you go in and you get the initial interview, you can just say, "Hey, I know this is a great company and you're known for paying really well. I just want to know what the salary band for this position is." So you can start off by knowing okay, they're going to offer me 30k less than I'm getting paid now, so I'm not going to finish this interview. I'm not going to waste my time. It's okay to start with that.

Crystal Carter:

Sometimes, I see though that the salary bands are huge. Like I've seen sometimes where the salary band is like 50,000 to 175,000 or something like that. And it's like those are two different tax brackets. Like what are we talking about here? So if you see that, I'm not even sure what that even means from that company.

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah. So I think one, companies are trying to get around state laws that require them to... In the United States, I think Colorado is one state where you're required if you're going to post a job there to list the salary band. And so they're trying to get around that by being like oh... I saw one the other day that was like 31k to 299k. And I was like okay, this is a joke.

It also means there are more people that are going to apply, so they have a larger pool to pull from. And it also means that... So for example, when I previously worked at Oracle, they had like individual contributor and manager level. So there were essentially step levels for things. And the government is similar, the federal government in America. If a role is anywhere from like a step three to a step seven, it could be all the way from 50k for the entry level of a step three all the way to the top level of a step seven, which is why they're sort of having these huge bands.

So they're expecting that potentially you could come in at a lower or mid-level skill-wise. Maybe you only have five years of experience in the industry. They could get someone who will be at the top of this role in the next five years, but isn't right now, and they're expecting you to be able to grow into that. Or if they just want someone who's going to take it, hit the ground running, hire someone at the top of the level. That really screws the applicants over because you don't know.

So I think it's, again, understanding where your skills fall, what they're asking for. If you look at a job description, and please do not wait until you have 100% of the qualifications to apply. Apply with 50%. There are people out there getting jobs in the current American government that have no experience. So YOLO, no imposter syndrome here, just apply. If you meet a certain set of the criteria, apply, but don't expect to get the top level of the salary band if you don't have all the experience, you haven't used all the technology they use, those sort of things.

Mordy Oberstein:

So you get in, you're whatever, level three, whatever employee, and I don't even know what that means. And now it's a year later and you feel like okay, fine, I feel like I just acquired 10% more of my skill set this year. How do you renegotiate that? Or can you renegotiate that now?

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah, I think you totally can. I think first things first, look at your job description when you started the position and add everything that you now do that is additional into your job description or things that have changed. And then you can do the research to see okay, equivalent jobs that are doing this sort of thing, like I started as an SEO and I was just doing optimizations, but now I'm also doing reporting, now I'm also doing content strategy, now I'm also taking care of some of the technical stuff. You can do research and see what other jobs have these responsibilities, what are they getting paid? What are their titles?

Crystal Carter:

I had a situation where they hired a bunch of people who were the same job role as me, same pay as me or whatever, and then they had me train all of them and I was like, no.

Carolyn Lyden:

I had a friend, a very dear friend of mine recently that her company hired somebody. I think they're getting ready to... They were a startup and now they're growing beyond startup phase. And they hired somebody who's now a senior VP of whatever. And she got laid off and they were like, "Oh, before you go, will you tell us how you did everything?" And I was like, "Do not fucking tell them anything." They fired you. You don't have to train them on...

Crystal Carter:

No.

Carolyn Lyden:

How that works. I was like, throw up deuces and leave.

Crystal Carter:

Here's my invoice for my time, my freelance, which is double what you paid me before. Thank you.

Carolyn Lyden:

Exactly.

Mordy Oberstein:

Or here's how you do it, but it's all the wrong advice.

Carolyn Lyden:

I mean, you're more devious than I am. I would just be like, I don't work here anymore, so sayonara suckers.

Mordy Oberstein:

Speaking of sayonara, before we start to sign off, here's a good pivot, where can people find you to learn more about whatever it is you post about on social media, which is not SEO?

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah, I am on Twitter @CarolynLyden. I recently had to start protecting my tweets because random bros were rude. But feel free to follow, and I will approve you if you're not a meanie. And then, I don't know, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I don't do anything on LinkedIn, but...

Mordy Oberstein:

Did everybody really do anything on LinkedIn other than just post random stuff? Myself included.

Crystal Carter:

No, everyone's thrilled. People are thrilled on LinkedIn.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm thrilled that you're excited and congrats on your new apple pie that you bought.

Carolyn Lyden:

Oh yes, please. I'm a pumpkin pie person, not apple.

Mordy Oberstein:

I'm all pie.

Carolyn Lyden:

I how I feel about hot fruit. You know?

Mordy Oberstein:

All right.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Pecan pie, though. Pecan pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Pecan pie, key lime pie, custard pie, pumpkin pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, pineapple pie.

Carolyn Lyden:

No, no, no, no, no. Those are hot fruits.

Mordy Oberstein:

What? Cherry pie?

Carolyn Lyden:

Cherry pie is hot fruit.

Crystal Carter:

What about pineapple on pizza?

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, obviously with the …

Carolyn Lyden:

I'm not mad at it. I mean, I would eat it.

Crystal Carter:

It's hot fruit and tomato and garlic.

Carolyn Lyden:

Well, that's valid.

Crystal Carter:

Combination.

Carolyn Lyden:

Listen, when somebody offered me a piece of pizza once and it had pineapple on it, I wasn't going to say no. Like if Mordy was like, "I baked this apple pie with love in my heart," I wouldn't be like, "Fuck that." I would just eat his apple pie. But I would not make-

Mordy Oberstein:

Throw it out behind my back.

Carolyn Lyden:

But if someone was like, "Carolyn, make a pie or make a pizza," I wouldn't do hot fruit on them. I'm not a jerk. I would eat someone else's if they offered it to me.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's a hot take on the hot fruit thing in pie.

Carolyn Lyden:

I mean, listen, maybe I am a jerk. I don't know.

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, you clearly have no taste in pie.

Carolyn Lyden:

No, I don't. That's okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right. Thanks

Carolyn Lyden:

I mean, of all the desserts, I wouldn't choose pie, but yeah. You're welcome. Happy to talk about pie anytime.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, cheesecake though?

Carolyn Lyden:

I hope that everyone here gets their slice of the pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

Wait, before I say goodbye... Oh, that's good. That's good. But you don't put cherries on cheesecake?

Carolyn Lyden:

No.

Crystal Carter:

But those cold fruit.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but pie doesn't have to be hot. You wait for the pie of cool down. It's not hot anymore.

Carolyn Lyden:

But you have to make the fruit hot to make it a pie.

Mordy Oberstein:

But if you put it in the fridge, it's not hot anymore. It's cold cherries.

Carolyn Lyden:

But it's mushed.

Mordy Oberstein:

So the mushing is also a problem now.

Carolyn Lyden:

Yes. I have texture issues. This is why I say all the time that eating is annoying. I wish I did not.

Crystal Carter:

Are you team Huel? Are you somebody who's just about Huel?

Carolyn Lyden:

No, I don't do Huel, but if I could just consume nutrition via liquid, that would be awesome.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, we're off the rails. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Follow on social media. Put the money in your bank account, everybody.

Carolyn Lyden:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Kaching.

Mordy Oberstein:

All right, so thanks so much again, Carolyn. Make sure you give her a big follow on social media. But now you might be wondering, "What about me? I don't have a salary. What money advice do you have for me? Help me line my pockets." Not to worry friends, we have a special guest to help make sure that your pitch to your clients turns into Benjamins. And if you're in-house, by the way, how to pitch a product to your boss, same kind of thing. Anyway, welcome to the show, Nick Leroy as we move across the funnel frontier.

Hey Nick, how's it going?

Nick Leroy:

Hey, Mordy and Crystal. How are you doing?

Mordy Oberstein:

Good. You're fresh off an overtime win that you barely pulled out, but-

Nick Leroy:

Hey, we take all victories that we can get here. It's just like Google SERPs. We don't complain or ask questions, we just take the win.

Mordy Oberstein:

They asked Mike Tomlin, the coach of the Steelers, after one of the games, "How do you rate the offense?" He goes, "W."

Nick Leroy:

I like it. That's exactly how we're working on the Vikings front is it's not sexy, this is no Patriots offense like that. Patriots of old, I should say.

Crystal Carter:

For those of you who are tuning in from outside of the United States, they are talking about American football, which is not to be confused with football, which Americans refer to as soccer. And yes, go team.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm rooting for you, Nick. Nick, before we get started, pitch. What do you got? SEO Jobs. SEO for lunch. Nick Leroy Consulting.

Nick Leroy:

Yeah, I'm working on a whole bunch of things. So real quick, my pitch. Hi, I'm Nick Leroy. I am a freelance SEO consultant. I have been doing this for about five years. Previous to that I had been agency-side. So if you're looking for a fractional director of SEO or just even some advisor work, check me out nickleroy.com or Nick Leroy Consulting is my company.

If you want to stay up for some SEO updates, I have a weekly email, SEOforlunch.com. And last but not least, where we're going to chat probably more, is SEOjobs.com. We finally have an alternative to the evil Indeed and LinkedIn job posts. No more are we going to be typing in SEO and getting a JavaScript developer with one little data point that says "SEO a bonus". So check out SEOjobs.com as well.

Mordy Oberstein:

Nice. Love all of it. So you're the right person to tap into. We're talking, "Hey, okay, client came, they asked me to draw something up, I have a pitch. How do you get them to sign the dotted line and open up the wallet?"

Nick Leroy:

So that's a fantastic question and I'm going to-

Mordy Oberstein:

Thank you. I thought of it myself.

Nick Leroy:

Oh no you didn't. We know Crystal force-fed it to you. There's no way you came up with that good of a question.

Crystal Carter:

It was my idea.

Nick Leroy:

Exactly. It's all Crystal. So my only asterisk to this is I'm never going to use "it depends" officially, but it's going to be different for every single type of company. Me as an individual consultant, I only need a handful of clients at any point in time. Whereas if you're a mega agency, you're probably signing daily or weekly what I take on for an entire year.

So my personal experience when it comes to selling is, and I am going to make salespeople just like shudder in saying this, is I'm almost the anti-sales guy. I'm trying to convince everybody why they shouldn't go with me. Because for me, I am in a unique position where because I can only take on so many clients, making sure that it's a really good fit, they have a really good appetite for buying into SEO is there as well as just the resources. So I'm interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing me.

And what it is it's self-preservation. Again, I had mentioned earlier that I had done agency SEO for 10 years prior to going to my own. And I think all of us know what it's like to be handed a client and be like, "Great, they signed last week. Go do SEO." And you're like, "With what?" It's like you just don't see the vision.

So I realize that's a very long answer to it, but for me, the biggest headline or H1 as some people would say, is literally interview your clients just as much as they are you because I find that it builds a lot of trust and it shows that what that relationship looks like on day one versus jumping into a conversation simply saying, "Give me, give me, give me."

Crystal Carter:

When I was working agency-side, we would kind of do this during the audit process. And audit is fairly straightforward, but what we'd find was in the conversations with them, if I was like, "Oh, can I get access to this? Oh, can you share this data with me? Oh, who's the best person to speak to in your team about that?" Like the kinds of information you might need from the team. During that process, really that's when you're seeing what it would be like to work with this person over the long term.

And that also, you talked about resources, which is so important when you're talking about what you'll be able to get over the line when you're pitching, like when you're talking to them and they're like, "Oh, we don't have somebody who does that. I've been doing all of that for the whole time." And you're like okay. And then they're like, "Oh, we have another agency that works on that part for us." And it's like okay, that's interesting as well.

So when you're trying to pitch what will be relevant for them, taking that time to get to know them well will make a big, big difference. And as you said when you said what resources, you will pitch a different solution for somebody who has in-house implementation teams. Like let's say they have a bunch of marketing executives that can just crack on and you can just give them a list and be like, "Update these pages, change these links, do that." And they're like, "Great, wonderful," and they can crack on. Whereas if it's one person who... If it's like owner-operator or something, you would give them a different thing. You might give them a list of consultants that can help them to do the implementation for instance.

But absolutely. Getting to know them should be core to how you're pitching. And the trust part is great as well, because even if you're interviewing for a job, the person that asks the good questions back, that's the person where you're like oh, they were paying attention. Oh, they actually care because they asked good questions.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the beauty of the negative marketing thing, right? Sorry. You're building trust like, "Hey, I'm not going to take your money. I'm not going to jump right into this. Let's make sure it's a good fit," actually and counterintuitively in a way builds that trust. So I like that.

Nick Leroy:

Oh, absolutely. And the thing that's crazy too is the amount of times I've told people like SEO is not going to be a fit for you. It's amazing. You can also make people champions for your brand. All of a sudden they're the ones that are commenting on your posts or sharing your name for other people. And it's simply because you could have taken the easy 1,000, 5,000, $10,000 a month for however long they're willing to let it go to ultimately fail, which doesn't make you look good or them. Or you can kind of win them over as an individual, a super fan if you will, up front, which yes, doesn't always pay the bills, but I have found that typically doing the right thing in that aspect pays dividends tenfold down the line.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People will know you're a stand-up guy, and they'll also know that when you actually do recommend them, that you genuinely mean it. You're not just saying, "Yeah, yeah, you definitely need to have this brand new thing on your website and stuff. You definitely need to implement this," I don't know, chat box feature or something. "That will help you drive leads, and I'm going to charge you this much for it or something." They'll trust your recommendations and also trust that you're not wasting their time.

Because as you said, time is money. For you, you also don't want to be wasting your time with people who maybe it's not the best fit for them, maybe they'll be unhappy because the results won't be what they expect because it's not a good fit for them. Like you said, SEO isn't always the best fit at every business stage. And so if they're unhappy then unhappy clients are stressful clients. Like they're calling you... Right?

Nick Leroy:

Well, and as cliche as it sounds, Crystal, it's like for me, again, speaking that... You know, I'm working with maybe four or five clients at most, and I'm looking to truly be a partner. And of those clients, I have two of them that have been with me for four years out of the five years I've been freelance now. And that last point you made about a not very stressful engagement. These are the people that I'm riding the roller coasters with, and they are bought in. And it's a lot easier to maintain and keep existing clients happy that are bought in and have resources than it is to turn over new clients that are just going to sit there for six months and then be like, "We don't get SEO. You know, it's snake oil. We're out."

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, that's really the whole problem with the whole getting them to sign the deal, put their name on the bottom line, whatever it is. That whole question is a faulty premise. I mean it's good for podcasting, it's good for radio, but it's a long process. It's a relationship. It's a whole build. It's a whole lead-up. It's a whole slow burn until you finally land the client. It doesn't happen in one shot with this "sign on the dotted line", which I think again is the problem with the premise of that question is it makes it seem like it's an instantaneous one-time thing, no problem.

Nick Leroy:

So Mordy and Crystal real quick, you'll appreciate this. And I don't actually mean this as a plug, even though it will inadvertently be. But we are in a situation, no surprise to you guys, where there are a lot of really good salespeople that can sell anything they want. And our industry has gotten a little bit muddied because of that. So what I have done is I actually created an advisor services where I have CEOs reaching out to me.

And I'll just use, for example, I have one that recently reached out to me and said, "Nick, I just inherited this team, this company. I'm the brand new CEO. I'm paying $18,000 a month for SEO agency services, but I have no clue what the heck they're doing and I just genuinely don't engage well with them. And we have nobody internally now that can basically gauge whether we're getting the value or not." So my service is I'm coming in and being an advisor. And the first thing I did to build trust is I told the CEO to her face, I was like, "I would love to help you. $18,000 is a big investment, so you should have high expectations, but also realize while there's as much of a chance of me calling these individuals out for maybe not doing as great of work as they could, it may very well be your team is not executing on your part of the agreement." So I was like, "As long as you're okay in a situation for me to say your kid is ugly, you have to allow for that."

And I've always kind of pitched it as almost like an insurance policy. I hate that it has to exist, but this is where we are in our industry, is people are able to sell dreams and then they try to execute with checkbox SEO, which does not work today like it did five years ago. So now I am trying to keep a fairly low retainer just to be able to come in and be the true advocate or brand champion for SEO, and unfortunately it just means holding other people accountable.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, it's definitely the case. And again, this goes back to when you're pitching and when you're thinking about how much it's going to cost and how much the lift is on your site, you need to know are they able to do the thing? So if it's an $18,000 retainer or something, if it's the case that every month, let's say... Because sometimes in SEO as an agency, you don't even have access to the CMS. You're making recommendations, you're looking at documentation, you're looking at all that sort of stuff, you're making recommendations, but sometimes they don't implement. And sometimes they need the dev to implement or sometimes you need the team to implement.

So if you have the case where this person's like, "Oh, the SEO team is not doing any good," like you said, if they're also not implementing, then when you're pitching in terms of the bottom line for them and whether or not the ROI is there, you also need to understand whether or not they're willing to invest on their side as well. So, so, so important. And I've definitely seen that.

And also sometimes the alignment is incorrect. So sometimes maybe the SEO is going for traffic or downloads or whatever, but maybe the CEO actually wants a different outcome. So sometimes it's just that no one's told the SEO that this is the important thing we need to be driving people towards. Maybe they're just doing their best, and maybe that needs to be moved along as well. So when you're thinking about the pitching and you're thinking about the ROI and how it's going to be valuable, it's definitely good making sure that they align as well.

Nick Leroy:

Yeah, and it's funny Crystal, because actually right now I have two advising clients, and it's each side of the spectrum. One is just making sure that the agency is doing great work and guiding them, getting the most for what they're being paid. And then the other side, they have an internal SEO team where some of the leadership just maybe don't have the right expectations. So I am being the guy that's just not afraid to speak the truth and tell them what they don't want to hear, but it's really championing that team because they're just going in circles so it just goes back to what you're saying.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's kind of what I feel it means to be a consultant, right? You're coming in and you're telling them what they need to know that they don't see.

Nick Leroy:

Exactly. No, and unfortunately it requires having the conversations that are uncomfortable. I mean, the amount of CMOs and CEOs that I've had to say, "Your expectations are completely irrational or for the budgets that you're doing," and it's like just help them contextualize. It's not about being a jerk. It's just you don't know what you don't know. And if someone in a CMO or a CEO role has so many hats that they're wearing, I don't even expect them to know everything about SEO. That's my job to help them understand.

Mordy Oberstein:

Let's say people don't know where to follow you and they want to know where to follow you. How could they know?

Nick Leroy:

Yeah, how could they know? They could do a Google search and check me out on Twitter, X, or I just joined Bluesky so-

Mordy Oberstein:

That's the new hot thing. Bluesky.

Nick Leroy:

Yeah, exactly. And I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, so definitely follow me there. Nick Leroy SEO on LinkedIn.

Crystal Carter:

They should also join your awesome newsletter, SEO for Lunch.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Come on Nick.

Nick Leroy:

Yeah, look at that. See, look at that. I'll just have Crystal and Mordy promote me. They do a better job than I do.

Mordy Oberstein:

Look for Nick out there on social media. Check out SEOjobs.com and SEOforlunch.com and Nick Leroy Consulting. Sorry I'm confusing all your URLs together.

Nick Leroy:

Thank you guys. I love talking about careers and freelancing and making money and spending money. Who doesn't? So definitely looking forward to chatting with you guys more as well as anybody else in the industry.

Mordy Oberstein:

Cha-ching. Catch you next time, Nick.

Once again, thank you so much, Nick. Make sure you give Nick a big subscribe on SEO for Lunch, check out SEO Jobs and Nick Leroy's own consulting. So much Nick, but check out all of it, please.

Crystal Carter:

There's some great stuff. He also has a great webinar over on the Wix Partners channel where he talks about lots of the things he was covering about qualifying leads and making sure that clients are ready for that and stuff. So he gets into that in a lot of detail, so highly recommend checking out that deep cut.

Mordy Oberstein:

Absolutely. You know who also talks a lot?

Crystal Carter:

Who's that?

Mordy Oberstein:

Barry. Barry talks a lot. He's been talking for 21 years. As we're recording this, we're coming right off the 21st anniversary of SEroundtable.com. Barry, that's a lot of talking. A lot of passionate talking from Barry Schwartz.

Crystal Carter:

So much, so much. I listened to a podcast with him and the team from Google and they were talking about how he started RustyBrick when he was 14 years old. Little Barry Schwartz.

Mordy Oberstein:

Did he have the goatee back then? Do you think he had the goatee?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know, but I feel like rust accumulates over time, so maybe he was just a regular brick then. Maybe that was before he became-

Mordy Oberstein:

He was like a regular brick.

Crystal Carter:

... the RustyBrick.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, but by the time 20 years from now, he'll become a crusty brick. You know, I once had a fake social account called Crusty Brick.

Crystal Carter:

That tracks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I tried to get some engagement on it, but it didn't take, I don't know why. But it's Crusty Brick. Anyway.

Crystal Carter:

There we go. Bring it back.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. Anyway, here's the real RustyBrick with some... Well, it's me covering him with some snappy SEO news.

Snappy news. Snappy news. Snappy news. I got a juicy one for you, but I'm going to make you wait for it. For the not so juicy one, from Search Engine Journal from Matt said the LinkedIn report reveals most in-demand marketing skills. LinkedIn released a whole report. I wouldn't say a whole report. It's not like it's a huge deep dive. It's basically a couple of paragraphs and an infographic, but one of the things they showed was that marketing-related job postings on LinkedIn increased by 76% year over year. Yeah. We're back baby.

Okay, next up from Search Engine Roundtable, from the Barry Schwartz, Google Search quality rater guidelines gain 11 new pages. I have not read all 11 new pages, and I highly doubt I will. I will wait for people to summarize them so I can read them. Thank you, Lily Ray.

On Thursday the 23rd of January, Google updated the Quality rater guidelines PDF document. Barry says the last time this was updated was back in March of 2024, so that's 10 months ago. Barry did the math. I didn't. So if that math is wrong, blame Barry. What's changed? Barry writes that Google changed the page level quality lowest and low sections, and that was to better line with Google's web policies. We've seen a lot of change in Google's web spam policies. We've seen a lot of changes in the web spam policies over the last year. I'm looking at you, Parasite SEO.

Okay. They also expanded on guidance related to assessing minor interpretations and intents and minor changes throughout, Barry says, updated rating ranges, removed outdated examples, fixed typos. Huh? Fixed typos. That's strange.

Okay, and last but not least, and here's the doozy. From the Dan D. Goodwin, man of integrity and character. HubSpot's SEO collapse, what went wrong and why? So basically, the SEO community has been abuzz with HubSpot, who was once the gold standard of content, getting crushed, absolutely crushed on the Google SERP. They've lost a ton. I wrote it in a LinkedIn post, they lost all of their search traffic. I meant that hyperbolically, if you read that post, like, "They didn't lose everything, Mordy." They went from 13.5 million organic hits or traffic hits from organic search to 8.6 million. It's a huge drop-off. That data is per Semrush, by the way.

Everyone and everyone in SEO are losing their minds about this for various reasons. I don't want to dig into the mudslinging that's going on. I really don't like that. It actually does really bother me personally. I know people are also slinging mud. I wasn't referring to slinging mud at HubSpot. I was referring to other mud slinging, which I don't like. Why would you want to throw mud? It's icky. It's gooey. It's gross. Throw a snowball. Snowballs don't hurt and they're fun.

Anywho, there's been a lot of mud slinging also or stone throwing at HubSpot. "This is what they get for doing this and what they get for doing that," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I also don't think that's super mature. You could look at what HubSpot did and learn lessons from it. I don't think people at HubSpot were like, "Yeah, let's ruin the internet with garbage content." I'm not even saying their content was garbage. What I do say, and it ties into my post that I wrote, I'll link to that in the show notes with the show out in the Wix Studio SEO Hub about brand being first and brand being primary, that if you don't have strong brand identity, you might end up kind of all over the place. You might end up not being focused or targeting the right audience, and it might impact the overall quality of your content. I know this is an SEO podcast and saying this is heresy, but if you lead with an SEO-first content strategy, it inevitably leads to a decaying quality, it inevitably leads to a decay in topical focus, and it inevitably... If I say inevitably one more time, I'm going to lose my tongue, inevitably causes you to lose your focus audience.

What's happened because, and I think it's kind of the real cause, is that it's worked for so long, companies have to double down that SEO-first content strategy. So I don't blame anybody. I want to say this. I don't know what happened behind the scenes at HubSpot. I don't work for Hub Spot. I have no clue. We're all kind of just speculating. With that, and I'm not talking about HubSpot in this case necessarily, because again, I don't know what happened behind the scenes at Hub Spot. What I do know is this idea of a SEO content-first strategy is slowly decaying. It's something I recently talked about on an SCJ webinar also.

You have to have a brand-first strategy and fit the SEO content into that because again, you can't escape this reality of the content quality decay, the content audience decay, the content topical focus decay. It's inevitably what happens. So I urge you to take a different kind of focus because maybe it seems like Google is really catching up here. Also, it would be really nice if Google were to just come out and say, "We're really catching up here," so we don't have to sit here and speculate on the SERP'S Up podcast in the snappy news.

Barry's not actually crusty. He comes off as a little crusty, but he's actually not.

Crystal Carter:

No, he's all right. And he also has a limited amount of time that he likes to engage with folks at conferences. So he came to Brighton SEO San Diego for one day. He was there for one day. He flew in and flew out on the same day from New York to San Diego.

Mordy Oberstein:

And then he showed up by the next morning on no sleep for It's New. Like me and him recorded It's New, which you should also check out if you're listening to this. It's our daily SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, do that, do that. Great tips.

Mordy Oberstein:

And he wasn't crusty about it at all. He was happy.

Crystal Carter:

No he was happy-

Mordy Oberstein:

Well, happy by Barry standards.

Crystal Carter:

He was happy because he was able to go back home. That's why he was happy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, make sure you check out our It's New series with Barry and Greg Finn Mondays through Thursdays right here on the Wix Studio SEO Hub, and on the RustyBrick YouTube channel, which brings us to our follower of the week, which this week is Zoe Ashbridge, who has been a former guest on this very podcast.

Crystal Carter:

Yes, Zoe is fantastic. So he has a great TikTok account where she talks about-

Mordy Oberstein:

What? What's TikTok?

Crystal Carter:

TikTok.

Mordy Oberstein:

TikTok.

Crystal Carter:

Yes. It's a place where they make clocks. No, I'm kidding.

Mordy Oberstein:

Oh, really?

Crystal Carter:

So she has a great TikTok account where she talks about freelancing and her freelance journey, and she talks about money. She talks about money and how you get paid from clients, how you navigate that whole situation. She's really, really frank and really, really clear about it. And cannot shout enough, if you're going on that journey, if you're getting into the freelance space, if you're setting up your own shop, then go and check out Zoe's TikTok account. So follow her on TikTok. That's our follow of the week. I think she might be our first TikTok follow of the week.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I got to make sure to put a TikTok profile in the show notes. I'm going to mess that up. All right.

Crystal Carter:

I know. Okay. It's fine. Let me see if I can-

Mordy Oberstein:

No, I'm making a note right now in the show notes, my show notes, not the actual official show notes. Those are not released yet to-

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, so she's @ZoeFreelanceSEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Okay, show notes. Zoe. I got to go to TikTok. Ah, that's going to be difficult for me. Okay. I'll do it for you, Zoe. To be frank, it'll be hard for me. By the way, I never understood that. Is like frank this very direct person who is always like no facade with Frank? He's Frank. You get the real deal from Frank. Why don't you say like, "Yeah, to be Tom," no, but it's to be frank.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I don't know. It's also like, "Bear with me." Why do I have to be a bear? And I think the bear with me is spelled bear, B-E-A-R, like I think it is.

Mordy Oberstein:

Because maybe originally everyone was dressing up in bear suits, like "bear with me", and everyone's dancing in bear suits.

Crystal Carter:

Maybe.

Mordy Oberstein:

Everyone bear with me now.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's bear with me like B-E-A-R, and I don't wait for bears. If I see a bear, I'm running. I'm sorry. I'm not waiting.

Mordy Oberstein:

To be frank, I really need you to bear with me here. I don't want to be Frank, by the way. To be frank, I know some Franks, and the one in my mind that I'm envisioning, I do not want to be Frank. Sorry, Frank.

Crystal Carter:

The Frank I'm thinking of is Frank Sinatra. He was all right, I think.

Mordy Oberstein:

I don't know if I want to be Frank Sinatra. I mean, I want to have his fame and fortune. I don't know if I want to actually be him. Does that make sense?

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Mordy Oberstein:

He was a little rough around the edges, and his liver seemed to have issues.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. That's-

Mordy Oberstein:

On that happy note, thanks for listening to this SERP'S Up podcast. Are you going to miss us? Not to worry. We're back next week as we dive into your inbox with a look at how email marketing impacts SEO in 2025. Look for wherever you consume your podcasts or on the Wix Studio SEO Learning Hub over at wix.com/SEO/learn.

Looking to learn more about SEO? Check out all the great content and webinars and our SEO course at the Wix Studio Learning Hub at you guessed it, wix.com/SEO/learn. Don't forget to give us a review on iTunes or a rating on Spotify. Until next time, peace, love, and SEO.