This episode dives deep into the oft-enigmatic world of search engine optimization. Join us as we explore the intricacies of SEO with the insights of Kyle Roof, a co-founder of High Voltage SEO and the brain behind the innovative Page Optimizer Pro method.
Kyle's unique approach has set him apart as a luminary in the SEO field, offering actionable insights and tactics that B2B marketers can employ to enhance the online visibility of their brands, products, and services.
A Fresh Perspective on SEO Tactics
In this episode, Kyle shares a valuable tip: optimize for your competitors' problems. He illustrates this approach with an example of a bank optimized its content for the fees charged by its competitors, providing answers and positioning itself as a fee-free alternative.
This tactic can be adapted across various industries, highlighting the importance of focusing on your solutions by leveraging your competition's problems.
Taking Action Over Contemplation in SEO
Kyle emphasizes the importance of action over contemplation. Many marketers spend time scrutinizing their websites without making tangible changes.
He advocates a hands-on approach, encouraging marketers to focus on one SEO aspect, master it, and then move on to the next thing. This iterative process can lead to significant improvements in site visibility and ranking.
Measuring SEO Success
Understanding the health of your website through SEO metrics is crucial. Kyle points out that a healthy site continuously gains new keywords and impressions. That growth indicates that your SEO efforts are directing more "foot traffic" to your digital storefront.
Words of Wisdom
Kyle concludes with advice that resonates both professionally and personally. In SEO, just being slightly better than your competitors can lead to significant advantages. You don't need to be perfect, he advises... just slightly better than your competition.
He also encourages individuals to immerse themselves in environments where they can connect with people who have achieved their goals, fostering personal growth and learning.
* * *
Check out the video for more details, and the full podcast (link below the video) for the entire insightful conversation.
Don't miss future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.
Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 74
- Live date: March 11, 2024
- Episode link: youtube.com/watch?v=g2zwizB_-tA
- Original podcast episode: Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers: Kyle Roof on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Guest's social media profiles:
- Twitter: @kylebot1997
- LinkedIn: Kyle Roof
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:
"From the #mpb2b Community" links referenced in the show:
Transcript: Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers, With Kyle Roof
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I'm super excited to bring you another episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week's topic is all about Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers.
So, if you're ready to get your learn on, buckle up and let's get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I'm your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Kyle Roof.
Kyle Roof, is co-founder of High Voltage SEO, an international SEO agency. Over the years, Kyle has developed and fine-tuned a method—Page Optimizer Pro—to test whether single variables are ranking factors in Google's algorithm.
The method was officially granted a patent in January 2020, validating Kyle's techniques and distinguishing him from other SEO professionals.
Page Optimizer Pro uses a ranking factor scoring system to indicate the most important things to optimize on your page for more traffic and better rankings.
Kyle has presented at many popular annual events, such as Chiang Mai SEO, SEO Spring Training, Sydney SEO Conference, inOrbit, and many more.
Now, remember the clips of Kyle Roof today are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode, and if you want to listen to the full interview with Kyle Roof and myself, make sure to tune into the Marketing Smarts podcast, link to the full show will be in the description below after the live show ends.
Now, in this episode, again, I'm talking with Kyle Roof about Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers.
In this first clip, I wanted to ask Kyle Roof what is a cool SEO tip or trick that most people are not leveraging in their SEO strategy.
Kyle: Yes. I've got a good one for you. Your competitors will not optimize for their problems. Years ago we were working with this bank, they were a brand new bank and they were going up against all of the big banks, going up against Bank of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, and all of those. We had to think, How can we compete against Wells Fargo or Bank of America, they've been around forever, they're huge and they have marketing departments that are quite large.
I realized that none of those banks optimize for their problems, so we could put up pages for when somebody gets a fee on their checking account and they're like, "What is this fee," as they anger type, we had the answer for that. Now, we did not disparage Wells Fargo whatsoever, we simply answered the question of what that fee was, then we said, "Do you not want that fee? We don't charge it." We were number one for most of the banks and their problem terms, we had the featured snippet for that.
They ended up taking it down because the legal department got a little sensitive because it's banks. But you can take that to non-legal levels. In just about any situation, there's probably an error code or a widget that always breaks on a certain thing, or something that needs to be fixed or stuck that gets onto your competitors, and you can probably optimize for those things.
Give the answer, give the fix, and then ask them if they're tired of that because you have the solution.
Are you optimizing for your competitor's problems?
Heck, are you in return optimizing for your problems so they are on your site instead of your competitors?
Did you hear the tip here? It was an answer, it was not slander around the problem
Are you talking about the pros and cons or problems around your services and your competitors today?
Put the answer to that in the chat pane or let me know on Twitter using the hashtag #mpb2b and, of course, tag me using@georgebthomas.
We'll get back to Kyle Roof and his thoughts on Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers, But first, I have to ask...
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mptoday - That's mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now, it's time for one of my favorite sections...
In The B2B News - Where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips we find on the Google news tab related to you and your B2B business. This week, the title is ...
B2B SEO: A Complete Strategy by Carlos Silva
SEO is one of the most important customer acquisition channels for B2B companies. Having strong organic visibility across all stages of the buying cycle is a proven way to accelerate growth.
But how do you start putting together a B2B SEO strategy?
In this guide, we'll break down B2B SEO best practices. Specifically, we'll look at:
What Is B2B SEO?
The Difference Between B2B SEO and B2C SEO
A 7-Step B2B SEO Strategy
So, what is B2B SEO? To read this article, check out the link below when the live show is over.
So let's get back to Kyle Roof and his Marketing Smarts podcast episode.
In this clip, I wanted to ask Kyle Roof to talk about the website, SEO, staring at it or taking action on it.
Kyle: The big one is just from a framework perspective. Worrying about your site and doing SEO on your site are two different things. People will spend hours staring at their website doing nothing, hours. They'll feel like that was a big day, I did eight hours of staring at my website. You could have written an article. A well-executed mediocre plan is way better than an excellent plan that has nothing—gets nothing—done to it. Don't stress about it.
You're going to hear all these great ideas, I could do this, I could do that, we could have this section on your site, we could do this. Just get one thing going and grind on it, and you're going to do so much better than all of those great ideas. You go to the conference, then you do this. You listen to that webinar, you're going to do that. You bought this software to do this thing. Let it go. Choose one. Get on it, start grinding on it, and then make that part of your schedule. Once you have that going, move on to the next thing and get that part of your process going.
It's so easy for everybody just to worry about things, the analysis paralysis, chasing shiny objects, they're all symptoms of the same disease and at the end of the day, that's not getting anything done on your site.
Are you getting things done?
Are you captivated by ideas or are you taking action in them?
Stop chasing the shiny objects!
#GSD
We will get back to Kyle Roof in a few minutes but first it's time for some ...
Dope B2B Learnings From The Vault of MarketingProfs Articles
That's right, It's time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer.
Article one this week is: Tech, AI, and Marketing: The Evolution of SEO Strategy by Chris Rodgers
SEO has gone through countless phases since search engines first came on the scene and gained widespread commercial use: from the early days of keyword-stuffing and webmasters' controlling the SERP via volume link-building to the more recent era of tools- and technology-driven approaches.
Ironically, in 2023, traditional marketing is more important than it has ever been in SEO.
Everyone has access to tools, AI, and technology, and any intelligent human willing to put in the time and effort long enough to gain real-world experience can learn to execute SEO.
What really matters is revenue and ROI. That's what adds value to businesses.
Article two this week is: Ethical SEO and Competitor Monitoring by Scott Buresh
When a company undertakes a search engine optimization program, whether it is performed in-house or outsourced to an SEO service, most of the attention (and rightly so) is focused on the company Web site.
This is the one aspect where there is a feeling of control—once a Web site is released into the wild, the company will have to see how its site fares against all the other Web sites out there, whether the other sites are using ethical SEO tactics or not.
Apart from changes made to the company Web site, the assumption is often that the company and, if it is using one, its SEO service, has zero control over what appears in search engine results. However, this is not usually the case.
Want to keep learning more? If so, check the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to Kyle Roof... Let's dive back into this conversation of Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers
In this clip, I wanted to ask, what does SEO success look like? How do we know our site, our strategy, and our SEO is headed in the right direction?
Kyle: It's important to understand that a healthy site gains keywords and impressions, meaning it is constantly getting new keywords coming in and the impressions, the views of the site in search engines continues to rise. That's what a healthy site does, so it is gaining keywords and it's gaining impressions. If you're not, that's a sign that you have an unhealthy site. If you're stagnant or if you see things start to drop, something is going on there, and that's something that you want to address.
I think a really good analogy on this is that if your website was an actual storefront and there were people walking by the store, what SEO can do for you is increase the foot traffic, it can increase the amount of people that are going in front of your store.
People measure clicks, for example, and they measure conversions for sure. Those are very important metrics, but it's really hard to guarantee that somebody is going to click, that somebody is going to walk into the store. But what you can do, something that you can proactively work on is the amount of foot traffic that you're getting. That's demonstrated in gaining keywords and gaining impressions, and those are the two main KPIs, I think, for a very successful or a very strong SEO strategy.
Is your digital storefront doing what it should?
Are you working on the foot traffic by gaining keywords and impressions?
We're going to get some words of wisdom from Kyle Roof here in a few minutes but right now, it's time to turn the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yep, time for ...
From The #MPB2B Community
We searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversation to bring to the masses.
So, first, make sure you are using the hashtag, and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.
Then, we'll spotlight you or your crew on the show. This week, it's ...
MarketingProfs but, because I spy a friend of mine, AJ Wilcox!
The post goes a little something like this...
Unlike some social media sites, LinkedIn is starving for authentic content.
Which means your personal organic posts will get up to 10x more views, comments, and likes than a company's post.
10x is a huge difference—and can change the ROI of your ad spend.
So how do you combine these ideas of getting more interaction on organic posts… while using advertising dollars to reach more people?
AJ Wilcox, Host of The LinkedIn Ads Show, shares his favorite method in this clip from B2B Forum 2023.
For AJ's secret, watch the video or read the transcript now ?? https://lnkd.in/gjvjJqcS
And for more outside-the-box thinking on your marketing, join dozens of marketing experts sharing their outsized results—and how they got them—with attendees of B2B Forum 2024.
We'd love to see you there this November.
Don't delay—B2B Forum tickets are currently the lowest price they'll be all year!
#mpb2b #b2b #b2bforum #ads #linkedinads #linkedin
But you need to check out the description and click that link to check out the post and read or learn more!
Marketing Smarts viewer, I have to ask... are you going to be next to get the spotlight?
Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro-tip, it won't hurt if you tag me in your post as well I'm @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
OK, let's kick it back to Kyle Roof and some words of wisdom around this topic of Unraveling SEO Secrets for B2B Marketers.
Here is what Kyle Roof wanted to leave us with ...
Kyle: Okay. This kind of goes back to you hit on something earlier, which is something that I completely agree with. It's kind of the idea of if you're getting chased by a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy also running from the bear. You don't have to be perfect in SEO. You just have to be this much better than your competitors. One tick, one whatever above, that is all you need and you beat them.
Don't get that this has to be the perfect strategy or this has to be the greatest thing. It doesn't. You just have to be that much better than your competitors and you'll beat them by a mile because then they get eaten by the bear.
On any strategy, I wouldn't get stressed about is there a better strategy, is there something else we could be doing when you're focused on this. As long as you're this much better than your competitors, you've got it. That's kind of the marketing strategy one.
The life one that I would say is think about the thing that you want and then think about the people that either have it or are doing it, and then go to there and be present. So many people just kind of stay, they're thinking about where their life is at or, "I would like to do that thing, that person is doing the thing that I want, that person has the thing that I want." What you need to do is get up and go to that place and be present in that community, and you will see [that] life changes for you.
Are you faster than the bear?
In other words, are you this much better than your competitors?
Don't get lost in perfection!
Get focused on 1% better!
Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know, use that hashtag #mpb2b on whatever platform you are joining us on.
