SEO, Domain Authority vs Customer Authority w/Jamar Ramos

Join me as I sit down with the brilliant Jamar Ramos, a seasoned expert in SEO and multi-channel marketing.

Key Insights:

1. The Role of SEO:
   • Jamar emphasizes the importance of SEO but clarifies that it’s just one piece of the puzzle. "SEO is just what you do on the technical side of the website. It has to be about multi-channel marketing," he states.
2. Customer Satisfaction Over Domain Authority:
   • One of the standout points Jamar makes is how customer happiness can drive success even if domain authority fluctuates. "The reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as your domain authority goes down is because customers are happy with you." 
3. Understanding Your Audience:
   • Jamar urges marketers to always consider their audience. "Think about the people. Who is at the end of the telephone line of our marketing services? What do they need?" 
4. Iterative Product Development:
   • Speed and adaptability are crucial in today’s market. Jamar advises, "The biggest piece of advice I can say is: be ready to iterate on your product as quickly as possible. Get your product out there as soon as possible. Even if it's not perfect."
5. Effective Communication, Transparency, and Honesty:
   • Authenticity is key when reporting metrics. "We have to be careful how we talk about the numbers. And we have to be careful about how we report on the numbers and always tell the truth."
6. Simplifying Complex Concepts:
   • Jamar shares his expertise on making complicated ideas accessible. "The best way to be an expert at something is to be able to take a gigantic concept and boil it down to something that anyone, a non-practitioner even, could understand." This approach not only builds trust but also broadens the reach of your message.

Call to Action: Don’t miss this episode if you’re looking to elevate your digital marketing game! Listen now and start applying these strategies to see real, measurable results in your business.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as
• 0:03 your domain authority goes down.
• 0:04 Is because customers are happy with you.
• 2:21 The Journey from SEO to Multi-Channel Marketing
• 5:42 Understanding Client Goals and Marketing Strategies
• 8:33 Iterating and Improving Your Product
• 13:01 Qualified Traffic vs. Lead Traffic
• 14:45 Managing and Excluding Irrelevant Traffic
• 16:09 Fashion Budget Dilemmas
• 16:19 Digital Marketing Agency Hack
• 16:44 Troubleshooting Traffic Spikes
• 17:59 Understanding Domain Authority
• 19:28 Google's Business Model
• 20:58 SEO and Customer Satisfaction
• 22:57 The Importance of Honest Metrics
• 24:26 Iterative Testing and Feedback
• 25:15 Multi-Channel SEO Strategies
• 30:59 Conclusion and Contact Information

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jamar Ramos: The reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as your domain authority goes down. Is because customers are happy with you.

[00:00:06] They love what you're giving. They love seeing your stuff on social media. They love seeing your content. They love your product. And so they're going to keep coming back. 

[00:00:13] And that's probably a lot of happy customers who shop with you before. 

[00:00:17] Who are coming back to shop with you again, repeat. Repeat.

[00:00:20] You're going to see these tools say all your domain authority isn't high and all that stuff. 

[00:00:24] It's yes, but my customer authority is high.

[00:00:26] Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show. The podcast dedicated to empathy driven, brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence. 

[00:00:41] Thank you so much for being here.

[00:00:43] Let's jump into another great episode.

[00:00:45] I'm here with Jamar Ramos, who is a multi channel marketer extraordinaire, and you are in for a treat today, my friend.

[00:00:52] Because he is going to break down some of the most complex topics of SEO and marketing.

[00:00:57] No, just kidding. But he's breaking it down into a way that I know you're going to love and enjoy and understand. 

[00:01:02] And most importantly, be able to apply today. So thank you, Jamar. Thank you for coming on The Simple and Smart SEO show podcast. 

[00:01:09] Jamar Ramos: Thank you for having me. 

[00:01:10] Crystal Waddell: I have a variety of questions to ask you.

[00:01:13] Is there any special designation or title you want me to-?

[00:01:17] Jamar Ramos: I would say multi channel marketer.

[00:01:19] Cause I'm not an SEO proper. 

[00:01:21] Like I did SEO earlier in my career.

[00:01:23] I've got a blog post that I'm working on right now. About how, we need to stop thinking about SEO as a channel and think about SEO as organic marketing.

[00:01:32] Because SEO is just what you do on the technical side of the website. And if all you're doing is technical SEO at a certain point. 

[00:01:40] You run out of things to do. And you run out of new people that you're bringing in. It has to be about multi channel marketing. 

[00:01:47] In all the stuff that people are saying about S. G. E. and overviews. 

[00:01:52] As people want to be the first out there to tell you how to do it right. 

[00:01:55] They're ignoring what Google is telling us. Forget about plans and check boxes and all of these best practices. 

[00:02:04] Think about the people. Who is at the end of the telephone line of our marketing services? 

[00:02:08] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. 

[00:02:09] Jamar Ramos: What do they need?

[00:02:10] Stop thinking about what your list is and how you go down it. 

[00:02:14] Give the people what they need. And Google will reward you for it. 

[00:02:18] They'll also reward you if you spend a little money on the paid side. But shh. Don't tell anyone that. 

The Journey from SEO to Multi-Channel Marketing

[00:02:21] Crystal Waddell: When you mentioned that you started as an SEO. 

[00:02:24] Could you give us just a brief overview of your journey to becoming, from SEO to multichannel marketer? 

[00:02:31] Jamar Ramos: Of course. So I was potty trained with books. 

[00:02:35] Like my mom could not get me to sit down. So the only way she could get me to focus was to hand me a book.

[00:02:41] So books have been in my hand since I've been two years old. 

[00:02:44] And so I grew up just voraciously reading.

[00:02:46] I think about it now, walking back from high school out of my kitchen window you can see my high school, high on a hill. 

[00:02:52] And so I would walk back, it was maybe 15, 20 blocks, and I'd have a book in my hand. And I'm walking across streets, reading books. 

[00:02:58] Not paying attention to traffic or anything, because these words are more important than my life, apparently. 

[00:03:04] And so I decided I wanted to go to college.

[00:03:06] Get an English degree. Because I wanted to be a writer. 

[00:03:08] And I thought, that's how you're a writer. Without reading of how anyone else became a writer. By the time I graduated in 2012, it was all the vanity press stuff. 

[00:03:17] So people were self publishing. And I realized, there's not going to be a lot of immediate survivability money in this.

[00:03:23] So I better get a real big boy job. 

[00:03:26] And so I found a company that was looking for content writers and Editors who had an SEO background. 

[00:03:32] I had no idea what SEO at that point was. So I Googled it.

[00:03:35] Not knowing that Googling SEO was doing SEO. And so I read a little bit about it. And I went into the interview and I just told the truth.

[00:03:42] I said, Hey. 

[00:03:43] I've got all these years of training to write and edit. I don't know anything about SEO. 

[00:03:47] So if you train me up on this, we can add those two things together. And I can be the perfect person for you.

[00:03:54] Luckily, they bought that. And so that's how I entered into the digital marketing world. And I realized SEO just wasn't for me.

[00:04:01] For me, it's boring. 

[00:04:03] I don't, when I look at HTML code, I can mess with it. 

[00:04:07] As long as I have the base. And I know where I'm going to. And I have a little bit of time. 

[00:04:11] But I don't see it. And see the matrix. Like I just see a bunch of letters and wingdings and everything. 

[00:04:17] So. I wanted to get back into content writing and found a job where I could do that.

[00:04:23] Took over social media for them as well.

[00:04:25] And realized, I like that combination of things. 

[00:04:28] And not really realizing that was my start as a multi channel marketer. 

[00:04:32] Where I was helping come up with the blog ideas, facilitating them, getting them out to people in the company to write them. Editing them, publishing them.

[00:04:41] And then promoting them across all of our channels and figuring out how do these things work together?

[00:04:46] And I think of it like Legos. If you don't have the guide, if you don't see, okay, these pieces go together. All you have is the pieces in front of you. 

[00:04:56] And the box that shows the final picture. How do you put that together? Trial and error. You just figure it out. So you figure out what piece goes here, what looks like this.

[00:05:04] And so to me, that's all marketing is. A bunch of Legos without the steps. 

[00:05:08] And you have to figure out how do I go from this scattered wasteland of individual pieces. Into this beautiful millennium Falcon that I wanted to build for $500. 

[00:05:19] Crystal Waddell: It's so interesting that you say that. I totally agree with the pieces being there.

[00:05:24] I've never thought that there was actually a picture to envision. 

[00:05:27] That gave me an example of like how those pieces should go together. And in the middle of it, I have trouble putting things in order. 

[00:05:34] And so the trial and error really speaks to me. But the seeing the picture is even better.

[00:05:40] It's like, where do you find that picture? 

Understanding Client Goals and Marketing Strategies

[00:05:42] Jamar Ramos: For me, it's, if you're working externally. What are the client's goals? 

[00:05:46] They're always going to say, we want more money. Okay. That's a given. So I always say, okay, outside of more revenue, what are your top three goals? 

[00:05:53] What are your KPIs that you're monitoring?

[00:05:55] And for me, that paints the picture. Okay. So you want to get revenue first. You want to get. More qualified traffic to your website. 

[00:06:02] Then you want to get more qualified leads from that traffic. Then you want to get people funneled to your conversion pages. All right. 

[00:06:09] I've just painted the picture right there.

[00:06:11] That's how I can start figuring it out. Then I can say, okay, what's the order of operations has to be? How do I get people here? 

[00:06:17] Do they already have a lot of top of funnel traffic that I just have to start figuring out how to get to the middle and the bottom of the funnel?

[00:06:24] Or do they just have what I like to call window shoppers, people who are walking by their internet storefront. Have no idea who they are what they sell, but just go, ooh. 

[00:06:33] That's a nice shiny object and then walk on by.

[00:06:36] Okay, that's another data point. If you just have window shoppers, first, I have to get them to stop and see your brand name. Because right now they're just seeing the shiny objects in your storefront. 

[00:06:46] I got to get them to recognize this is what you do. Then I got to get them the next time that they walk by your store, instead of just looking in the window to see what your storefront looks like. I got to get them to walk in.

[00:06:55] So always asking about goals. What does the client want outside of revenue? And they'll tell you exactly what that final picture should look like. So then you can take that wasteland of misfit pieces. 

[00:07:06] And start putting them together. And there's going to be trial and error and there's going to be failure.

[00:07:10] In that failure is beauty because sometimes you figure out okay, this piece really should go here. But for the stability of the thing that i'm building, it's got to go here.

[00:07:19] So that's why I hate when people say " best practices." because best practices, yeah, there's A sandbox we all have to play in if we don't want to be Black hat marketers.

[00:07:27] But best practices need to change and morph. Depending on who we're working with. What niche they're in. What their comp set is. 

[00:07:35] If they're a startup. A small to medium sized business or an enterprise business.

[00:07:39] All this stuff needs to change, but too many people just want to rush in and say, Oh I've got the best fit for you because I worked with these people and it's okay. 

[00:07:47] It may work, but those people are different than the people in front of you.

[00:07:50] So respect that difference. Even if it's 1%. That 1 percent could be the difference between your marketing taking off. Or your marketing plummeting back to earth. 

[00:07:59] Crystal Waddell: Okay. So I have so many questions about everything. I want to start with this one, though. 

[00:08:06] With entrepreneurs, because that's a lot of who the audience is of this podcast. 

[00:08:11] I noticed that a lot of times their offer. Or what I call their perfect product, is not clear to them.

[00:08:18] They're still in that development stage. So, it's like what advice do you have there from, an optimization standpoint? 

[00:08:24] What business advice do you have for someone who's really not even quite sure what's the best thing for them to sell, what they should double down on in their marketing?

Iterating and Improving Your Product

[00:08:33] Jamar Ramos: The biggest piece of advice I can say is: be ready to iterate on your product as quickly as possible.

[00:08:41] But also be willing to hold off until you have the data from your customers that say, Hey, this is where we want to take it. 

[00:08:49] Because sometimes our ideal product that we're selling and what our actual customer base wants to buy. Are diametrically opposed to each other. 

[00:08:58] And we need to be willing to say, I want to listen to the audience, or we need to understand that.

[00:09:03] If we're pushing the product that we want to sell, that might push away a lot of that audience and potential, buyers away. So we have to be careful. We have to respect. 

[00:09:12] Crystal Waddell: So what's the fastest and most practical way to find out and iterate? 

[00:09:17] Jamar Ramos: Get your product out there as soon as possible.

[00:09:19] Even if it's not, Perfect. 

[00:09:20] If it's the minimum viable product, that's fine. 

[00:09:23] As long as what you're putting out there is not going to make people mad. Ask people questions. 

[00:09:27] Tell them, Hey, this is my MVP. Put out a form there. Hey, I'd love to get your honest feedback. And there's going to be some people who... digression.

[00:09:34] So in my writing courses, there's one time where. I had to give everyone a manuscript, it was like 15, 20 page story. 

[00:09:43] And they would put notes on it and hand it back and it was all anonymous. So you couldn't get mad and go, why'd you give me this? 

[00:09:48] And so someone on the manuscript on every one of the pages. In all capital letters, wrote BORING.

[00:09:54] So you're going to get some people who are going to not give you helpful feedback. 

[00:09:57] But even in that you can understand and say, Hey, you know what? This person really didn't have anything but anger and vitriol for my product. Without ever really trying it. 

[00:10:05] Ignore that and just go. Even if you put out a survey for 100 people. 

[00:10:09] You get 50 of them who give you good feedback.

[00:10:11] That's amazing. Because within that, you're going to be able to say, okay, this is what people want. 

[00:10:16] And you can triangulate that to see, okay. What are the top three things that people are saying together? 

[00:10:20] Okay, they want these three new features. Let me build those in. They want these two new features. 

[00:10:25] Let me build those in.

[00:10:26] Crystal Waddell: Okay, so even more practical: where do you build a survey like that? How do you find the hundred people to take it? And how much does something like that cost? 

[00:10:34] Jamar Ramos: Oh, Google Forms. It's always free. Free 99 is my favorite. So putting together just a form.

[00:10:39] And when people are buying your stuff, when you send them that, hey, thank you for the purchase, send them that survey.

[00:10:44] Hey, thank you for the purchase. I'd love to get your feedback on the product as you're using it, because that's going to help us iterate. And move forward. And if you give the feedback, here's a 10, 15 percent code off. 

[00:10:56] So that way. You're getting that feedback loop. You're giving them a reward for doing it. And you're also giving them a reason to come back. 

[00:11:04] So you're retargeting them in a free way, and you're getting them to come back later.

[00:11:08] So all of a sudden, you're building in that habit of coming back for your product, giving you feedback. 

[00:11:12] And then eventually people will start giving you feedback for free. Oh, hey, I've been a customer since your beginning. 

[00:11:17] And I love this version of the product. But I'd really like it in blue. I got you. I've got blue coming out in the next six months.

[00:11:23] I'd love for you to be a tester. So that way you can start building up those proselytizers for your business. 

[00:11:28] And as you get bigger, you have those people who are going to go on social media. Oh my God. I can't wait. 

[00:11:32] Crystal told me about this new thing she's getting ready to release you guys. 

[00:11:35] If you thought that version two was great, wait til you get to version 3. 5. 

[00:11:39] And, you just get that again. The snowball effect of people loving what you're doing. And then it's a little bit more hands off later. 

[00:11:45] The marketing is done by your customers. You just have to keep building that product that they love. And they'll market it for you. 

[00:11:51] Crystal Waddell: Oh man, I'm working on something right now for Pinterest.

[00:11:54] So as you're saying this, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. 

[00:11:56] And it's also liberating to know that you don't have to create the perfect thing to start with. 

[00:12:01] You know what I mean? 

[00:12:01] I know that it sounds ridiculous even to say out loud. 

[00:12:04] But it probably has stopped me before. From even trying to present what I had. 

[00:12:10] Because I was like, Oh, it's, I know that there's some deficiencies.

[00:12:13] I'm not exactly sure how to fix it. So I'll just keep it and hold on to it. When in reality, if I would have shared it. 

[00:12:18] There might've been people who would have said, Hey, this is how you can close that gap. Or even, recognize a different need that would have made it better anyway. 

[00:12:26] Jamar Ramos: Just think of any company who's doing a shareholder call.

[00:12:30] We think that what they're getting on that call to say is their finalized stuff and everything. And they have a great vision. 

[00:12:36] The thing about the shareholder call is it only has to be true as the words are coming out of their mouth. 

[00:12:42] The next day they could change everything they say on that shareholder call.

[00:12:46] So they're even putting out stuff that's imperfect. 

[00:12:49] So if these people to their shareholders may change in 24 hours, give yourself permission to change as well. 

[00:12:57] Crystal Waddell: Oh my gosh, you've made my day. I can just go around and float, for the rest of the day. 

Qualified Traffic vs. Lead Traffic

[00:13:01] Crystal Waddell: So it's something else that you mentioned because you were talking earlier about traffic. And I love how you, you separated qualified traffic from lead traffic. 

[00:13:09] Because honestly, I had lumped those two things together.

[00:13:12] And again, that makes it more difficult because it's okay, I'm getting more qualified traffic, but. 

[00:13:17] Why are more of them not converting? 

[00:13:18] Maybe because I need to separate those a little bit more.

[00:13:21] Jamar Ramos: Sometimes I might go online and I might look for suit jackets. A couple of months before I need it.

[00:13:27] I'm still a potential lead. I'm just right now in the consideration phase. 

[00:13:33] I'm looking around. I'm pricing. I'm trying to find, ooh. I know I want a nice floral pattern for this spring wedding. 

[00:13:38] So that's what I'm narrowing down my options. I'm narrowing down the companies that I'm going to.

[00:13:43] Then it is up to those businesses and companies to retarget me. Give me the right ads. 

[00:13:48] Understand what I'm shopping for, get my size.

[00:13:51] Be able to say, okay, Hey, he's looked at our website two, three, four different times.

[00:13:55] He's almost ready to buy. Here's 15, 20 percent off. 

[00:13:59] Or Hey, we found these other styles that you might be interested in. Keep me thinking about you. 

[00:14:04] And in the end, I'll become that qualified lead. And I'll convert with you. 

[00:14:09] But you do have to make sure you're leading me down the buying funnel. Which is why multi channel marketing is what's important.

[00:14:15] If we only have one channel and one touch point, if they're not on that channel, They don't see us anymore. They see our competitors. 

[00:14:22] They see other people who are in the space willing to touch them at that touch point. It has to be email, social media, content, SEO to make sure your website is running fast.

[00:14:33] If you can differentiate where your traffic is coming from. It makes it easier to get those people, take them from Lookie Lous, to qualified leads. 

[00:14:41] To converted leads back to qualified leads again. 

[00:14:44] Crystal Waddell: Okay. 

Managing and Excluding Irrelevant Traffic

[00:14:45] Crystal Waddell: So there's a couple of things that I want to revisit again there. 

[00:14:48] When we're talking about window shoppers, and those that may eventually become qualified leads. 

[00:14:54] Or, just completely irrelevant traffic. Is there a way to exclude irrelevant traffic? 

[00:15:01] Especially you think about like conversion rates. And you have so many visitors come in and maybe they're just like there for a non commercial reason. 

[00:15:07] Is there a way to troubleshoot that? And distinguish between the non customer and the the potential customer?

[00:15:16] Jamar Ramos: There's many different ways. I think it all depends on how early you are in your business. 

[00:15:20] If you're a startup, you're going to want as much traffic as possible. Especially if you're testing. 

[00:15:25] If you're in a high traffic niche, like e commerce. 

[00:15:28] You're going to need to figure out, okay. Who out of all these millions of people are going to be our buyers.

[00:15:33] If you're in a more regulated, smaller space. Let's say like cryptocurrency. 

[00:15:39] You're not going to have as big of a pond of people to fish in. 

[00:15:44] So it's going to be easier to figure out. Okay. There's not going to be as many Lookie Lous here. 

[00:15:49] Because there's not going to be a lot of people who really care to know about cryptocurrency. If they're either not in the niche are not about to invest. Other than those two buckets.

[00:15:59] Like I'm not looking at cryptocurrency a whole lot. Are you? No. So it's, you're not going to get those window shoppers because it's not that interesting. 

[00:16:07] But I'm a window shop for fashion at all times. 

Fashion Budget Dilemmas

[00:16:09] Jamar Ramos: I might be out of my fashion budget for the year. But I'm always still going to look cause I'm interested.

[00:16:14] Cause you'd never know if you sell me the right thing and be like, Ooh, I like those pants. I might have to go over budget to get those.

[00:16:19] Another great example. 

Digital Marketing Agency Hack

[00:16:19] Jamar Ramos: So when I ran my own digital marketing agency. We were on WordPress. And we got hacked. 

[00:16:25] And some people put 200 pages of gambling content on our website.

[00:16:31] So all of a sudden we saw a spike in traffic. In our traffic, we went from two to 300 a day to two to 3000 people coming a day. And it's Oh, this is awesome. 

[00:16:40] Where's this coming from? Oh, it is these pages that got put on. 

Troubleshooting Traffic Spikes

[00:16:44] Jamar Ramos: So to your, how do you troubleshoot that? That might be something. 

[00:16:48] If you see all of a sudden a spike in your traffic, start looking around.

[00:16:51] Did people come onto your website? Did they do something? Did you put out a piece of content that may have spiked traffic for a certain subset that you don't really need? 

[00:17:00] We had a, how to become a hairdresser blog on our site. 

[00:17:04] And people were searching for that. And it got a featured snippet. There was nothing we can do with all that traffic.

[00:17:09] So eventually we're like, we have to deprecate that piece of content. 

[00:17:12] Because it's bringing people to the site. It's killing our conversion rate because none of these people are going to ever convert with us. 

[00:17:18] So just looking into what traffic is coming? Why are they coming? And where are they going? Is it to a page we didn't put up?

[00:17:25] Is it to a blog post that's all of a sudden bringing extra people? Or is it, after three years, all of our marketing stuff finally hit that tipping point. 

[00:17:34] To where people are paying attention. Where we got accidental virality.

[00:17:38] Where we kept hammering our message and hammering our message and hammering our message.

[00:17:42] And finally, It pushed everything over and we got that snowball effect. Of this person heard about us who shared it with these two people who shared it with these eight people. 

[00:17:50] And that's the virality we got after 10 years. What is the big Sean? I guess it took 10 years to be an overnight success. 

[00:17:57] Crystal Waddell: Yeah.

[00:17:57] Yeah. I love that one. 

Understanding Domain Authority

[00:17:59] Crystal Waddell: So we were talking offline, about this idea of Vanity metrics. And made up terms in SEO. 

[00:18:05] And, one of the questions I was asking you was like, okay. 

[00:18:08] Why would it be possible for someone's domain authority to go down. When not only their traffic is going up, but their revenue is going up?

[00:18:18] And so I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on that. 

[00:18:21] Jamar Ramos: Oh, yeah. It's domain authority. It's something that the tools give us. 

[00:18:26] That our customers don't care about. Like the idea that this two to hopefully three digit number in the back end. 

[00:18:34] Like that's for us as marketers and it's a more directional thing.

[00:18:38] What the domain authority our customers are looking at is, does this website give me the content to help me make an informed decision about my purchase today? Does what I purchase make me happy? 

[00:18:48] Does what I purchase come at a price point that I would come back and purchase a replacement or a renewal version of that product later?

[00:18:55] Does what I buy and the company make me feel good? Do they talk to me and respect me? Those are the things that build up the actual domain authority that I, as a marketer, care about. 

[00:19:07] I've stopped looking at Ahrefs. Similar stuff. 

[00:19:10] Sorry for all y'all who work there listening. I love y'all. I appreciate your tools and what you do.

[00:19:14] I wouldn't be the marketer today without them. But I would like for us to stop thinking about that. And start thinking about what helps the people. 

[00:19:23] Because right now. Google, in order to make money, is giving the power back to our customers.

Google's Business Model

[00:19:28] Crystal Waddell: Can you explain that? 

[00:19:29] Jamar Ramos: Oh yeah.

[00:19:30] Google, before. Used to have do no harm in their text. And they took that out once they started making a whole lot of ad revenue. 

[00:19:38] Because you're going to accidentally do harm as you're testing with all that stuff. 

[00:19:44] And I know there's going to be plenty of hot takes at me for saying that. But, right now, Google is out for ad revenue.

[00:19:50] That's why all of the organic listings that are important are now pushed down to make space for all of the ads. And all of the extra questions that people are asking. 

[00:20:00] The more money we spend with Google, the happier they are. So in the end, we have to think about what we can do for the customers organically. But also understand Google's business model.

[00:20:11] And instead of getting super mad at Google all the time, yes, I said it. We have to understand how we can work within that framework. Okay. 

[00:20:19] We know that for these search terms, Google is probably making a lot of money on the paid advertising side. 

[00:20:25] Should we put ad dollars in there? 

[00:20:27] Yes. 

[00:20:27] We want to make sure that Google sees all the signals, but if we know that there's a lot of money on the paid side, what can we do extra on the organic side that will make the customers happy. 

[00:20:38] Because Google can't ignore what makes the customers happy in the end.

[00:20:41] Because that's going to make them more money. Because the ads are going to be seen by more people. More impressions, more cost per click, all that stuff.

[00:20:47] So there's still ways to game the system in a very white hat way. 

[00:20:52] By looking at, okay, where are the customers going? 

[00:20:54] How can I help them organically to make sure that my list happens? 

SEO and Customer Satisfaction

[00:20:58] Jamar Ramos: And to go back to your deeper question. 

[00:21:00] The reason why you can see your revenue and traffic go up as your domain authority goes down? Is because customers are happy with you.

[00:21:07] They love what you're giving. They love seeing your stuff on social media. They love seeing your content. They love your product. And so they're going to keep coming back. 

[00:21:14] And that's probably a lot of happy customers who shop with you before. Who are coming back to shop with you again. 

[00:21:20] Repeat repeat.

[00:21:21] You're going to see these tools say all your domain authority isn't high and all that stuff. 

[00:21:25] It's yes, but my customer authority is high. And in the end, that's what's going to bring me the stuff. 

[00:21:29] Because customers don't have those little tools that say, Oh, your domain authority is 81. 

[00:21:33] And this is over here.

[00:21:34] I guarantee you, if you surveyed 100 people. Who don't work in digital marketing. They couldn't tell you off the top of their head, what the domain authority of Verge is. 

[00:21:43] But I guarantee you, if you survey a hundred digital marketers, most of them can tell you after the alligator incident. 

[00:21:48] What the domain authority of the Verge website is.

[00:21:51] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Oh, that is just so beautiful. And it's so true. And because I came into the SEO world, not as an SEO. 

[00:21:59] Not even as a marketer, but just as a learner and a a practitioner, I guess you could say. Because I have a Shopify store. 

[00:22:06] I realized I was like, some of these things just don't make sense.

[00:22:09] Or. If they do, it's just not relevant to my particular situation. 

[00:22:14] And I'm trying to be careful about, saying, Oh, that doesn't work or that's not right, or whatever. Because it could be right for another industry. 

[00:22:21] I don't know all industries. But one of those things was domain authority and helpful content.

[00:22:26] I would see different things happening, and I couldn't quantify it. The way that most SEO tools would quantify something. 

[00:22:33] And so like you, I started to question the tools a little bit. And then I started to triangulate what each of piece of data was saying. 

[00:22:42] And then tried to make it relevant to my business.

[00:22:45] And that's what I try to do for other entrepreneurs and small businesses. 

[00:22:48] Because I feel like they get so distracted by these metrics. That don't actually pertain to their business. I see you shaking your head. 

[00:22:55] So I just wondered your thoughts on that. 

The Importance of Honest Metrics

[00:22:57] Jamar Ramos: It's people want numbers. They feel better with numbers. But I think that, and you were talking early about hearing me on with Mordy and Crystal.

[00:23:05] And the thing that I talked to them about is dangerous levels of honesty and transparency. 

[00:23:11] And we need to be able to tell people like wrap them on the knuckles, like the nuns. And say, no. This is not the metric you should be looking out for. 

[00:23:20] And tell them why. 

[00:23:20] Again, going back to all the stuff that people are putting about AI overviews.

[00:23:24] In the race to be first. We forgot that the most important race is to be correct. 

[00:23:30] And sometimes in order to race, to be correct, we have to look at our client and we have to tell them hard truths. Like you're looking at traffic. 

[00:23:39] That's great. But if I can get you a million people visiting your website a day. And yet only one person a day converts.

[00:23:46] Is that traffic important? 

[00:23:48] But if I get you 1000 people coming to your website a day and 500 of them convert per day, that traffic is much better. Yes, your traffic is lower, but we've gotten you to those business qualified leads who are higher converting than all of the People who are just walking by your internet storefront. Looking in and saying, Oh, that looks cool.

[00:24:07] And then walking by. So, we have to be careful how we talk about the numbers. And we have to be careful about how we report on the numbers. And always tell the truth. 

[00:24:16] Yes, your traffic is down, but that's because we did things to make sure we're getting in front of the right market. 

[00:24:21] And as traffic has gone down, conversion rate has gone up.

[00:24:24] This is why. 

Iterative Testing and Feedback

[00:24:26] Jamar Ramos: I think that as people are talking about AI. Always remember there is a human element, AI can do a lot of things to help us, but AI cannot tell those stories to people. 

[00:24:36] It cannot look that person in the eye and say, Hey, I hear what you're saying. I hear you think that this is important. It's actually not.

[00:24:42] These are the things that are important and it's actually tied to your revenue, because these other things as well. 

[00:24:47] We can make those connections and tell the story. AI can help us beautify it. And simplify it. But we have to be able to communicate it. 

[00:24:55] Crystal Waddell: Absolutely. Beautify and simplify. Those are the two top ways that I use AI in my own, or large language models or whatever.

[00:25:02] And also to brainstorm, and clarify. That would be another one that I'd add in there. But you're so right. We tell the story at the end of the day. Okay. Thank you. 

[00:25:10] Because we only have a short period of time left. 

[00:25:12] I'm going to jump to some of the questions that I had. 

Multi-Channel SEO Strategies

[00:25:15] Crystal Waddell: How can SEO be integrated with other marketing channels? 

[00:25:18] Cause we've talked a little bit about Instagram and SEO. A little bit of email marketing.

[00:25:21] You've mentioned paid advertising. I really haven't gone into that but could you share an example of a successful multi channel SEO strategy? 

[00:25:32] Jamar Ramos: Oh, God, so many. Cause I'm so successful. No it's for me, it's again, Legos thing. How do we put all of these pieces together to make them a reality? A fully functioning experience for the people who want to shop with us? 

[00:25:48] Like Okay, we have a website.

[00:25:50] We don't always have to tinker with it in the background. We don't always have to Look at lighthouse. We don't always have to look at core web vitals. 

[00:25:57] We don't always have to look at our page speed to say, okay, we're 88 today. How do I get to 89? It's like you know what 88 that's plenty fast enough. Yeah, what can I do there?

[00:26:06] So it's making sure that Okay, what is build mode? What is test mode? What is iterate mode? 

[00:26:14] Build mode is when you're first starting. Okay, I've got to get my website up. I've got to make sure that I've got my social media handles and all that stuff. Okay, I've got all of that. 

[00:26:22] They're interlocking, interconnected.

[00:26:24] All right, test mode. 

[00:26:25] Putting the content out there across social media, starting to say, Hey, if you want to be a part of our newsletter, here's our newsletter thing. 

[00:26:32] Starting to really get the people talking to us in different ways, talking to us by coming to our website. By shopping with us. By, as we talked about earlier, giving a survey feedback. By talking to us on social media.

[00:26:45] I worked at an e commerce company where. As doing their social media, I was also part of their escalation process when people were unhappy. 

[00:26:51] What does that look like? How do we talk to people on social media to say, Oh, you got something wrong with your product? 

[00:26:57] You know, let me return it. What was going on?

[00:26:59] Do we hear a lot about that? Okay. There may be something in the manufacturing with our product. Let's fix that. 

[00:27:05] And then iterate mode. After we've built, after we've tested and got all that feedback. Okay. What are the top three things that we've heard and all of the feedback? That would make the best business sense? That would make the best sense to bring us in revenue.

[00:27:19] Those are the things we're going to fix first, because we probably have a thousand things we want to iterate on. 

[00:27:25] But we can't do that because you're a solopreneur, correct? 

[00:27:29] Crystal Waddell: Yes. 

[00:27:29] Jamar Ramos: So you've only got a finite amount of time in your day on top of, okay, I want crystal time and I got to do family time. I got to split my day into thirds already.

[00:27:38] So you can only work on your business for so much throughout the day. Throughout the week. Throughout the month, throughout the year. 

[00:27:44] What are the things that are really going to do? What is the 20 percent of work that's going to have 80 percent of change on your business? Those are the things you have to focus on.

[00:27:53] And then once you've iterated that you're back into testing mode, all of this, again. Buying funnel. The way that we build and fix our businesses, all of this is just iterative. It's always three pronged approach. 

[00:28:04] And then you go back to that first prong and you start over again. And going back to simplify. 

[00:28:09] We just have to simplify everything because we get so grandiose with how we talk about things.

[00:28:15] We want to be the experts and we want to sound like the experts. 

[00:28:17] But the best way to be an expert at something is to be able to take a gigantic concept And boil it down to something that anyone, a non practitioner even, could understand. 

[00:28:28] Crystal Waddell: Oh, that is amazing. 

[00:28:29] And I just want you to know, I feel so seen, breaking life down into thirds. Thank you for that.

[00:28:37] And so you're talking about systems in the back end. And then another thing that you said, from a solopreneur perspective. 

[00:28:43] Iteration and testing. Like testing to me has been a kind of a bad word. 

[00:28:47] I love iteration, but testing has been a bad word because it's and even in e commerce, I think it's true for a lot of businesses, no matter how big you are. 

[00:28:53] It's like testing needs to happen quickly. And sometimes concurrently, with other things.

[00:28:58] But the experts will say, test one thing at a time. And I know that's important for isolating to find out what's working. 

[00:29:05] But do you have any, specific things to look for when you're to test multiple things at a time? 

[00:29:11] Jamar Ramos: If I'm going to do anything, multivariate testing, it's usually email marketing.

[00:29:16] That's where I'm going to do more testing. But also it's for me, it's the way my mind works. If I split things in too many ways, I can't figure it out. I can't understand it. 

[00:29:27] There's too much disparate data and I personally don't see the story. Other people, it might work for them. 

[00:29:33] But for me, the reason why I'm willing to only do A, B testing. Is because I need to see what does A do?

[00:29:39] What does B do versus the control? 

[00:29:42] That's the only way that I personally can break it down. And also, I'm okay with a little bit of a slower test. Because I know that, for me, the quick thing is going to be the iterating and the feedback loop. 

[00:29:55] I want to make sure that, for me, the testing takes a little bit longer because I know in the end, that for me is how I'm proving out that I'm doing my best. If it's testing for a client, if it's testing for something that I'm doing for, customers.

[00:30:08] If i'm doing the best for them if i'm giving them enough time to look at something and say hey I like this. Hey, I don't like this. I like this for these reasons. I hate this for these reasons. All that again It's just such good information for me to then say, okay when I iterate and give you the next version of it It's going to take all of that feedback into consideration. 

[00:30:25] And it's going to be even better. And you're going to see that i've implemented this stuff. And also i'm going to tell you, Hey, this is version 1. 5. 

[00:30:32] The more that we again Take that feedback and then communicate to the people who gave us that feedback. Hey, I took your feedback in. We made these changes. It's ego bait. 

[00:30:41] This is how we turn people from detractors to proselytizers by telling them, Hey, I listened to you.

[00:30:46] And this new version of what I did is based on something you said. 

[00:30:49] Oh my God, thank you.

[00:30:50] Crystal Waddell: Exactly. Oh my gosh. Exactly. 

[00:30:52] And the three words that you said, see the story. Like you need to be able to see the story. 

[00:30:57] I'm gonna hold on to that. 

Conclusion and Contact Information

[00:30:59] Crystal Waddell: Since we're out of time here, why don't you tell people how they can find you. And what you're doing right now, career wise. And how they could connect with you.

[00:31:07] Jamar Ramos: Awesome. So if you didn't hear in the beginning, I am Jamar Ramos. You can find me. I'm back on Twitter at Jam Ram 33. That's J a M R a M and the numbers three, three. I'm trying to get back into that and make it a more positive place again. Although it's really fighting back against me. 

[00:31:25] You can find me on LinkedIn, Jamar Ramos.

[00:31:28] I post more there. Career wise, if you're hiring and looking for a lovely, wonderful, charismatic multi channel digital marketer, go ahead and reach out to me. Cause I'm looking.

[00:31:37] 

[00:31:37] Crystal Waddell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Jamar Ramos.

[00:31:40] You have been amazing and such a pleasure to talk to. 

[00:31:43] And I'll catch you next time. 

[00:31:46] ​