In this episode, I introduce myself, Carolyn Holzman, and ponder my love of being an SEO, how a courier introduced me to Google My Business and a few other things. This podcast series is for independent business owners, marketing managers or other SEOs for the purpose of humanizing an often misunderstood industry.
I take a little time talking about the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the general conception of SEO to independent businesses and why that might be. Is it because this unregulated industry is untrustworthy or is it because most businesses don’t really know what SEO is or what they are buying and maybe projecting onto the SEO on the other end of the phone?
Look for weekly episodes through 2021 and soon, there will be a way to submit questions and comments. Stay tuned.
Carolyn Holzman can be found on Linkedin and contacted through the media company website – AmericanWayMedia.com
Podcast website – https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/
TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome. My name is Carolyn Holzman and you’re listening to confessions of an SEO. Now I know you’re thinking, why would an SEO want to confess? Well, frankly, I see that this is more of like love letters. I love SEO. I love the strategy. The problem solving on a high level, using data to describe, to cipher how the algorithm and their filters work. And just in case for those who are listening, who don’t know what SEO is, it stands for search engine optimizations, how to take a digital property that exists, but doesn’t rank for anything or, for much at all and how to modify it so that it interacts better with the search engines and a search engine. Most of time that means tangling with Google. So the purpose of SEO is so when people are searching for things that they want or need, and they may not know who they want to get that from. They find information that answers their particular question or need. And SEO is how businesses use that relationship between the website and the search engine to deliberately place their information in front of their perfect prospect. Now, as an SEO, I’ve worked with local businesses, national companies, international companies, and e-commerce sites. So to explain the situation as to why a company would choose not to advertise, if they want to be on page one, they could just buy an app. But most of the time, there are 10 spaces on that first page of Google. And especially the more competitive the term is, not only does the price of the ads go up, but the target on that first page is getting smaller and smaller. And when I talk about targets, I’m talking about that first page. And when I say it’s getting smaller, it’s because it’s becoming filled up with ads and maps, and very often less than the 10 results that you would normally see on a resort, a search results page, we call those SERPs, search engine result pages. Now the pages on that page are naturally showing there organically. And that’s how we, as SEOs referred to them, you have ads, maps, and then your organic results. So those are the listings that are showing in the organic portion of the page. Those that are showing, they’re not showing because they paid to be there. Now. They might’ve paid somebody like me or an agency, or maybe they have an in-house team where their job is to ensure, things are done to make sure their page shows up on page one when people are looking for what they do and, and in general, that’s what SEO is. Now. I’m only sharing these details to put them into context. The reason I created this podcast, this isn’t a place to get SEO tips, although I’m sure a few will slip through, I want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. The SEO industry out of the gate has a black eye. We’re always operating behind the eightball when it comes to getting clients. And when I say we, I mean the really good ones, the ones that know what they’re doing, they want to help. And obviously in return, generate an income from that ability to move sites within Google and being. And so, so now I’ll be honest with you. I think there were people out there and they go get clients first and they don’t have a clue how to rank in Google or, or anything like that. They just want to generate revenue for their own business right now. I don’t want to say that to scare you. By acknowledging that, I also want to let you know that the industry is primarily unregulated, Google doesn’t regulate SEOs. In fact, they really don’t like us. And part of the reason they don’t like us is that at the end of the day, all Google (really) wants to do is sell you ads. And they don’t want you to naturally rank at the top. They want you to kind of be a little okay, but not so okay that you don’t go to them for ads.
And like I said before, Google ads are getting expensive and they have actually for awhile. And we also all use Google, right even us as SEOs. So it’s where we get our information and, and it’s pretty well woven into modern life. So we’ve got an SEO industry it’s unregulated, and there’ve been a lot of business owners who unfortunately not gotten what they wanted or were promised when they worked with SEO companies.
And I’m not pointing fingers. I just simply want to say that they might not have even known what they were buying. And to me, I think that’s a shame. And so I do believe that the purpose of this podcast is in part to permit a peek behind the scenes, talk with the issues are now I suspect this information might be helpful to business owners and marketing managers. There are people who have teams of SEOs. And I think this is also for independent SEO’s and those who are learning on the side. A lot of the time we do so much work by ourselves that when things like an algorithm update happens, we think it’s all on us and business owners feel kind of gypped because they think it’s something they’ve paid good money for that got wasted. And that why we may think or feel that on either side as an SEO or as a business owner, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true.
And this podcast, I really want to throw a lifeline out there to either the business owner or the SEO so that, you know, you’re not the only one I think at the end of the day, the honest conversation that has to be had is that an SEO may know how the algorithm works, but they’re not in control of when the algorithm changes. And when an algorithm changes, you know, it could take two weeks before we see the fallout. I’ll, I’ll talk more about that in a future episodes, but I just want to say that that’s the reality that none of us, if we don’t, own Google, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a good impact on a business. So anyway, I think these are the people that this podcast is most likely to benefit. I also think that by sharing my SEO journal, journey and goals in some way, this can help humanize the SEO industry.
And I do think that some people also do podcasts because they’re trying to get clients. And I just want to make it really clear. I am not taking on any new SEO clients. this podcast is really, as I see it more like love letters to the SEO industry and to those businesses who want to know more, but don’t know who to trust or how to evaluate, let’s say an SEO proposal. So here’s my story. I got it. I did SEO 11 years ago and I was at a conference. I owned a local media publishing business. So whether it was an audio CD or DVD, either rom or film, if it was spoken word as instructional materials, it really didn’t matter. I would take a master the content and the artwork and create multiple identical copies that were what we call retail ready. I was really helping people create their own businesses, whether they were artists, musicians, bands, film companies, whatever.
And they had a product now, they might’ve played live shows and, you know, premiered films, but ultimately end of the day, what they sold was a physical product. I’ve always loved growing other people’s businesses. And I I’ve done so by helping provide them with good information, quality products and customer service. And when I realized I needed to market my media publishing company, it was one day there was a courier that came in and they were looking at the wall and I had, all the CDs and the packaging displayed and they were looking at all of that. Their jaw dropped. And, and he said, I didn’t know, there were two companies in town that did this kind of work. And I said, well, what would cause you to say that I’ve been in business for almost like 10 years I mean, I was just really like, what do you mean
And, and so then he was like, well, online, it looks like there’s only one company in town. And, so I said, well, we’ll show me, you know, so, and bear in mind, this was in the late nineties, early two thousands. So he was like, well, it’s on the computer nap had computers everywhere. I said, well, show me. And so he showed me Google and he typed in CD duplication, Austin, low and behold, it looked like there was only one company in town doing it. So I said about figuring out how to make that machine more accurate. And I know a lot of business owners feel that way when they look for what they do and they don’t see themselves and they’re thinking this isn’t right. So I started a lot of questioning and talking to people and I ended up, it was a weekend, a sort of group of presentations in the industry.
They call them pitch fests, meaning everybody gets up, says what they want to say. And then at the end they say, Oh, by the way, everything that I’ve shared with you, you can get a copy of in the back of the room. So it was a three-day event, traveled up to Dallas with some friends. And I, I guess I was, I was kind of like business depressed and yeah, those are air bunnies that you heard. I felt like my, my clientele was getting older and older and I was frankly getting tired of talking about loose, shrink wrap. So I didn’t know why I was there other than to find people who might need duplication for their spoken word products, the things they sold at the tables at the back of the room. And, and I did feel like there was something else that I needed to be doing that could make work more fun.
Everything got started and there was a gentleman sitting next to me over the weekend and he was sniffling and coughing and sneezing, and he was sick. I felt bad for him. but I was trying to stay away from him to be honest. And, the last day, I had, I kind of had my fill of people who were talking about, you know, talking about writing information publishing. So like, if you want to learn how to groom horses or things like that, the idea was you could sell enough of these books, what they called eBooks that you could create. And, and so, and through the revenue generated from that, you could have the lifestyle that you wanted. So it was the last day. And I’m pretty much like going. Nope, Nope, Nope. None of that’s for me. It’s interesting.
Yes, but, but not for me. And so on the last day after lunch, the last presentation before they released us to go to our cars and drive home, I saw the gentleman who’d been sitting next to me, was standing up on the stage and he introduced himself and it turned out he was the SEO speaker for that weekend. I could feel everybody else in the Otter auditorium kind of like slumped back in their seats, like, Oh no, not as CEO. And they just were just not interested, but everything he said made me sit up. And that whole auditorium, I think I was the only person leaning forward. And no one had ever really explained that, you know, SEO was more like problem solving. I’d never really seen it. It never been explained. And the problem to be solved was I want my business to rank when people who don’t know me need the service I provide, he actually had a pub in London and he wanted his business to rank for a pub in a certain area.
So he explained how he did it. It was fascinating to me because I thought, well, what’s the difference between his pub and my company. I mean, I could search for what I do as well. So in the end I made my way to the back of the room, basically asked if there was anything in that black bag for me, because I knew my search volume keyword was so competitive. If I didn’t add the city name next to it, there probably wasn’t any way I could drink nationally. And he assured me that it could be done and we made an arrangement and he would train me one-on-one. so for a year we did this on Skype and we used my media publishing company as a Guinea pig. It took about 11 months. Then my reality began to change. Now, I know I said 11 months, but, that is the nature of SEO.
And it was at that point, as things began to change that I became a business owner. I could no longer work in the day-to-day of everything of my business, the phone was off the hook. It was insane and wonderful. You know So not only was I ranking nationally, I’m sorry, not only was it ranking locally, I was ranking nationally on page one. That was a real difference. So no matter where anybody searched in the U S using Google, there was my company there and all the big dogs on page one companies, then I was fairly certain had in-house SEO teams. And there was a little me banging away early in the morning through late at night, actually competing. And I was able to hire people and it worked out great. I loved it. And while I love the success of the business, I slowly came to realize that what I loved was the problem-solving that led to success the moment before the moment.
And I loved the ability to make a difference. When I look back on everything, the SEO conference speaker, his name is Gareth. Oh, and by the way, the other thing that he said that really got him excited was whenever he worked with the client to help their business, he knew he was making sure that there was food on the table that the kids, the business owner and those of their employees could have music lessons or summer camp, and eventually an education, whether it’s a vocational college, but the point being that he was their dreams come true. The whole reason why some of us start a business is that we have a dream. We feel that whatever it is, and this is something we’re supposed to do, and it’s going to be good for our families. And it’s in that vein. When the downturn of 2008 happened, there were a lot of businesses not doing well.
I was getting stopped by the other, my, my business neighbors in the business park, who also wanted to know what my secret was. And then I saw how I could not only help my own business, but perhaps I could help others. Now there are all these reasons why I could have chosen not to share this last part, but there’s another, one of the reasons why I’m doing this is that I’m preparing a course on voice SEO and part of that. And part of that training material, there’s a podcast component in it. So I wanted to make sure that I was walking my own talk and he can’t really talk about doing things like podcasts without actually doing things like podcasts. So I hope you’ll stay with me. I hope you’ll enjoy it. It’ll be a series of stories I’m going to publish every week.
Thank you for listening to this. Week’s confessions of an SEO. This is Carolyn Holzman signing off, see you in the SERPs.