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Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the Agency Trailblazer Podcast. This is your host, Lee. And on today’s show we are talking with John Locke of LockeDown Design, and we get to learn how he locked down his niche. Yep, that was a complete play on words and definitely a dad joke. I’m proud of it. Now sit back, relax and enjoy the ride Before we kick off the show, here is a word from our sponsor.
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Lee:
Welcome to a conversation with me, the young Mr. Lee Jackson. And today we have in the studio, or at least the virtual studio, Mr. John Locke from Lockedown Design. How are you this very early morning for me slash late evening for you.
John Locke:
I’m doing excellent. How are you?
Lee:
I’m doing all right. I think we were chatting earlier. You’re a night owl. I’m a morning owl. This is my magic hour where I get loads of stuff done. And for you. Is this where you do lots of work or lots of chill time? What does a night owl do? I can’t actually imagine because I’m fast asleep by now. If I was in your time.
John Locke:
I think I’d do some of my best work. Uh, between the dinner hour and about 11 p.m.. That’s kind of when I, uh, finally wake up and get energised.
Lee:
That’s amazing. After a good mint. See, I’m the complete opposite. After my after my evening meal, I’m like, now I’m all sleepy. And I’m, like, trying not to hint to my wife that I’d like to go upstairs for an early night and have a sleep. And, uh, and then she’s like, rolling her eyes at me saying, oh, you’re so old, guys. If you don’t know who John is. Me and John have known each other for, oh, two years now at least. Yeah.
John Locke:
About two. Yeah.
Lee:
And we first met on the WP tonic podcast, of all places. I think back then you were the co-host of the show and we’ve hit it off ever since. John specialises in SEO and it’s an absolute pleasure, mate, to have you on the show, because I want to learn all about your business, your journey with with SEO, with WordPress and all of that good stuff. But I guess the the very first question we should probably ask you is, could you just share a little bit about yourself, what your business does. So and I know maybe throwing a favourite colour, um, your favourite drink or anything like that. Just some nice information to give us a picture of who Mr. John Locke is.
John Locke:
Yeah, sure. I’m just a typical 47 year old that, you know, grew up in the 80s listening to, uh, heavy metal and hip hop. And, uh, when I was about 39, I decided that I wanted to start my career in web development. Up to that point, I had never even coded a site. Uh, so, you know, I studied, you know, web design in between shifts at the Wonderbread factory and, uh, and then, uh, a couple of years later, I was, uh, working for myself. And that’s where I’ve been ever since. Uh, so I did a lot of work for subcontracting for agencies, building out websites, building out WordPress sites, different things of that nature. About a year ago, I kind of put more emphasis on SEO because I can always do the websites and, you know, build those out as well. But that’s kind of what I’ve been focusing on for, you know, about a year now.
Lee:
And that’s just the SEO, the absolute focus on SEO. We’ve been building the websites for a lot longer as well. Um, with regards to getting into web design, then, uh, what was the course that you did?
John Locke:
I, uh, took courses through the University of Phoenix. Uh, at that point, um, you know, I don’t regret it. I could have probably done it in a more cost efficient way. I know that that tree house came out, um, about the time that I was, like, already underway.
Lee:
So about ten years ago now, isn’t it? Uh, eight years ago?
John Locke:
Yeah, I think they were, I think vitamin, uh, about ten years ago. And then they became Treehouse. Yeah. But, um. Yeah. Yeah, I guess pretty close. It was about nine years ago. Uh, but yeah, University of Phoenix kind of just kept me on the path I did. Treehouse. I learned from online tutorials a little bit of Code Academy. Uh, code school. Um, just all those things.
Lee:
The thing I tended to find about universities here, at least in the UK, is they do a lot of courses with regards to technology, etc. but a lot of the information was horrendously out of date. So for example, when I was doing my IT course, they were still talking about really, really old systems and mainframes etc. and we had windows 2000 server and you know, there was so much information that was different that I needed to still learn once I got into it. Was that the same for you with the university there, or were you quite lucky in getting some really good current information?
John Locke:
No. Same thing here. And the problem is, is when it’s an accredited school, the curriculum has to be approved by the. I think it’s like the regional college. There’s different like regional, uh, boards that approve accredited colleges. And so it’s a process that takes about three years minimum to get a curriculum approved. And of course, web development and marketing and all those things move at a much faster pace. So it’s always going to be a little bit out of date if you go to community college or some sort of accredited college.
Lee:
I mean, I think that was a bit of an understatement. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it does, doesn’t it? It’s incredible how fast things change. I mean, even the WordPress landscape, you know, three years ago, Beaver Builder was a company called Fastline. They were a web agency who’d made their own, um, drag and drop system to expedite their website delivery. And slowly but surely, we’re filtering it out into the WordPress world. You know, now they are one of the biggest players in WordPress. WordPress is completely changed. Gutenberg is on its way. It’s incredible how fast things are changing. And then we’re talking about online marketing. I can’t keep up with it at all. You know, I there’s something new bots is it bots and messenger marketing and all that sort of stuff seem to suddenly have appeared out of the blue, etc.. And it’s just this constant battle, isn’t it, of trying to keep up to date with what’s going on around you. And that would probably be a great question for you.
Lee:
How do you keep up to date with everything that’s going on? Because SEO particularly is a changing beast, especially when you’re at the mercy of Google. They change their minds, don’t they, about their algorithms. I remember a few years ago there was an algorithm change that put a whole load of SEO companies out of business because they used to do things that didn’t work anymore. And how do you keep on top of all this?
John Locke:
Well, For starters. You know, I keep up to date with, you know, what’s being circulated in, you know, the SEO news. And there’s particular people that will follow in SEO that I have a high level of respect for, like Ryan Stewart from Webers and now from the future, uh, different people like that. Uh, Rand Fishkin from Moz. Of course. But part of it, too, is, uh, focusing on SEO for my own clients has allowed me to have my fingers in the dirt more, and so I can see what things have an effect and what things don’t in, in real time, a lot more.
Lee:
So you’ve had the opportunity really to suck it and see, as it were, on behalf of your clients, to build up your own understanding of what’s going on out there in the world of SEO, without necessarily always having to rely on everything external, following people, but learning as well yourself through trial and error and finding what works best.
John Locke:
Yeah, and I think that’s one of the big it’s one of the upsides. And one of the downsides of SEO is I think everybody has an opinion of what SEO is. You know, I run into a lot of prospects. They’ll have an understanding of SEO that’s from 2001 and that’s.
Lee:
That’ll be me then.
John Locke:
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee:
Sorry. Carry on.
John Locke:
Uh, but yeah, definitely. Or people who, you know, just kind of regurgitate what they hear. Um, but I think anything that you have a theory on, you have to put to the test, and you have to test it in the real world, that there’s not a whole lot of substitute for that. So.
Lee:
And with SEO, I mean, when you put things to the test, how I mean, how can you put things to the test, I imagine. I imagine a client can’t come to you and say, right, I need you to do my SEO and here’s some money. Give me a report in two weeks because that’s impossible, I assume. You know you’re going to try something. It’s, I assume, going to take two, four, five, eight weeks, I don’t know. And then you then have to try and work out what to do next. I mean, how long is an average commission, I guess, for SEO, um, to allow you to successfully test things.
John Locke:
So when it comes to testing, I’ll test it on something that I own first, like either my own site or, uh, like a side project site that I have before I go and put it, you know, put that on a client site. But what you’re saying is very correct. Google does seem to have a delay on if, say, if you did something and made some changes, it usually takes a couple of weeks for them to, you know, alter the rankings. Some things might even be like longer as well. Um, a friend of mine, Tim Brown, shout out from Hook Agency. Hey, Tim. He, uh, he had a theory that, um, the. When you first build a link to a page, uh, Google, uh, times that, and there’s kind of a delayed reaction. So it starts counting down from when it first detects the link going to that page. So, uh, it that definitely seems to be a thing, because I’ve had pages on my own site where they just kind of were flat.
John Locke:
And then after a long time, like months and months and months and months, like they started to pick up and I made no other changes to them. I didn’t build any additional links or make any content changes. So yeah, there might be something to that that’s intriguing.
Lee:
And so does that mean, though, that you have to when you’re onboarding a client, explain to them, hey, you are in this for the long haul with me. This is not a quick fix solution. You can’t just invest in a in a couple of weeks of work. This is a a long term. Or can people have a couple of weeks of work with you and then walk away and reap the benefits for some time to come? How does that work from a guy who’s never sold SEO? I’m actually intrigued.
John Locke:
Yeah.
John Locke:
So that’s a great question for people who just okay, so a couple of weeks usually is not going to get it done. So if people don’t have a lot of money to invest, what I will sell them is an SEO audit. And it’s not one of those generated reports like you run it through some site and beep boop, beep boop. It gives you like some, you know, spits out some stuff that, you know, you could figure out on your own. I actually go through their whole site with a fine tooth comb and, and there’s sections I have, uh, a whole standard procedure for doing that. Just checking out different things that need to be looked at. And then I’ll give them a whole report and usually be like 40 or so pages. And, and then if they want to do that themselves then they can. But usually they’ll have me implement it later on down the line. So if I have an ongoing client, I’ll the thing that I usually tell them is, let’s sign you up for six months and you will definitely see improvement.
John Locke:
But you know, if you’re just trying to do like a month, it’s usually not going to do anything because even the changes that you make at the beginning aren’t going to show up. Because like I said, Google has kind of a delayed reaction, and I think that is in part to keep people from really quickly making changes and then seeing if it goes up or goes down. I think they do. They have a lot of fail safes in their algorithm to keep people from, you know, quickly testing things like that. Now, sometimes like this one that rolled out on August 1st that you might have heard stuff about, it’s more like a far reaching update. It really seems to be hitting a lot of different industries. But I in my theory, what I’ve seen is it’s really focusing on who’s got the best content, and that’s really what it’s about.
Lee:
So that’s um, that’s true. I think I don’t have the best content anymore because we moved down just after August from like near number one for WordPress agency to further down the front page. I was devastated. So I’m gonna have to improve my content, man.
John Locke:
Well, I think with that.
John Locke:
Well, I can tell you for for a generic search like that, if they’re just search, if you’re just searching WordPress agency or web design agency or whatever, a lot of it’s going to be localised. Meaning if you don’t have a city or a country modifier.
John Locke:
It’s just gonna like about 70% of the results are going to be whatever’s in the area. And then the other 30% is going to be the the biggest brands, maybe in your country or just all around. So.
Lee:
Well, I’ve noticed that we rock the top. Um, for local. So for, for kind of design agency locally when you are searching from this area um, we’ve got, we’ve got that good old local SEO going on by accident. You know, it wasn’t on purpose. And we’re at the top of the little Google Places block there. We get tonnes of inquiries that way, which is nice. Uh, so. But yeah, the, the actual kind of more globalised where we’ve gone on and gone on to the google.com and we’ve gone on to us VPNs to see what’s going on out there. And we’ve certainly moved around quite a lot, but we don’t really do anything, which is terrible, I know, but I kind of rely on the fact that we’ve got this podcast and a WordPress group, etc., to to get my name out there, but, uh, SEO is certainly something I think I’ve had several SEO people on now, and every single time I confess that SEO is something that I’ve never really spent much time on, I know the importance on.
Lee:
I’ve sold on the importance of it. And yet, you know, and I presume this is a problem many of your clients have, I’ve never really had the time to just sit down and work out either what I need to do, or sit down with someone and say, right, please take over because there’s so many things going on. Um, so I guess that leads to my next question. You know, I’m imagining a lot of your clients are very busy. Um, like me. You know, I’ve got tonnes going on. If I was coming to you as a as a new client. Just saying. Look, I really want to rank well and start generating leads, having a freaking clue what to do. And also, I’m dead busy. How can you help me? I mean, what would the relationship look like? Would you have to turn me away because I’m too busy to invest time in my SEO? Or would you be able to help me out in some way?
John Locke:
No. I’m usually able to help people out. And. But what you’re saying is correct. People that I run into, business owners, they’re almost always too busy to actually create content. That leads me to something that I want to bring up to you in just a second. But, um, definitely the the businesses where the people are too busy to handle the website themselves. Those are the clients that you want. Absolutely, 100%. Those are the clients you want. You don’t want the people who are, uh, don’t have enough to do. And. Yeah, but, uh, yeah.
Lee:
So start experimenting.
John Locke:
Yeah, definitely. Um, but yeah, like I said, the the SEO audit, if they have Google Analytics set up or if they have Google Search Console set up, I’ll get access to that. And it makes it a lot easier. But if not, I’ll use tools like Ahrefs. I lean heavily on that. Um, if they’re going for local SEO. All use Moz local and KW finder. Those are the ones that I lean on pretty hard, but a lot of it is just like looking in Google. Um, and part of what I look at too, because sometimes people are trying to rank for stuff and it’s, you know, they want to rank for this term. But, um, let’s say the whole first page is it’s all something that’s not their business or it’s not people trying to sell a particular thing. And so that’s one of the suggestions that I’ll make, is you need to have, you know, this type of page, like an informational page or, you know, whatever the case is, you want to go with the grain instead of trying to go against it.
Lee:
Yeah.
Lee:
So and is that the point then when these busy clients are like, well, I can’t commit to creating that content or do they just buy into it, realise they’ve invested with you and then somehow produce the content for you? Or do you start to develop that content for them?
John Locke:
Know and see. That’s the thing. That’s where a lot of people feel with SEO. And I think you see that with a lot of SEO consultants is they will get clients and their clients are just too busy to, you know, even if you gave them the topics, even if you gave them the keywords and say, make, you know, here’s the list of like the content you need to produce, they won’t get it done. So you really have to know their business enough to be able to to write about it in a way. Now, if they have like a marketing person or if they have a marketing team, if they have a couple of people in there, then it makes it a lot easier. But probably initially, at first they’re not going to have that, and you’re going to have to do the content because people just don’t want to list the stuff to do. They want you to do it. So.
Lee:
So that leads perfectly. Then on to my next question. And it’s with regards to knowing the client. So you said there that knowing about the business or knowing the client is really important, because that means you can create some of that content. Obviously, you can give them what you’ve created and ask them to sanity check that, etc. but I imagine, therefore, if you had tonnes and tonnes of clients from loads of different industries, that would be a complete nightmare, because you’ve got to understand all of these different businesses and tonnes and tonnes of work in. Now, I noticed a few, maybe a few weeks back when I was taking a look at your site before this interview, that you’ve changed some of the wording on your site to be very specific to a particular industry, and I’m assuming that may be part of a plan to niche down to businesses that are similar. You speak their languages, you understand how they work, etc., so that you can provide them a a more customised service where I assume you’ll be able to create that content.
Lee:
Was that part of the plan then to start to just reach out to those because you were predominantly kind of local SEO, weren’t you, for a long time.
John Locke:
I was, uh, but now I’m focusing more on SEO for manufacturing and industrial firms, mostly, uh, companies that are turning out, uh, products either as original equipment manufacturers or they’re producing industrial equipment for for sale on the market. So that seems it seems to, uh, keep me from spreading too far out when it comes to that. So I can definitely give them a hand if I’m ever in a place where I feel I’m in deep water with content, then I’ll, you know, tap them on the shoulder and, you know, try and get some content from them. But it hasn’t happened too, too much. So.
Lee:
No. Apart from when you were dealing with a physicist.
John Locke:
Exactly right.
Lee:
That would be so cool, wouldn’t it?
Lee:
It would seem.
Lee:
I don’t know. Some really clever physicists is like. Right, I really need some good SEO where we’re going to be discussing, uh. And I can’t even think of anything that sounds clever. I’m just going to give up on that joke. I’ll just give a quick what’s in my head.
Lee:
Why not?
Lee:
Well, I mean, with regards to this decision, though, this is quite a scary decision. You ranked or rank really well for local SEO. You and me were chatting before we started recording. You were saying you were getting quite a lot of of local business, etc. you made quite a big shift. I mean, you’ve redesigned the site. I love your site. I love the fonts. We talked about that as well, didn’t we? Here we were. Yeah, we were having a little bit of a font conversation. I think this is a common a common conversation for designers, isn’t it? Oh, what fun did you use there? Oh yeah. Well, I like this combination. So we totally geeked out before this call.
John Locke:
Oh, yeah. You definitely. Yeah.
Lee:
You’ve you’ve created a great looking website. Absolutely. Love what you’ve done. Um, but like, like I said, you’ve made a very big shift. I assume that has affected your ranking as well. What sort of leads now and what sort of traffic are you attracting now that you’ve made these changes? And now that you’ve specifically put that bold statement where you’ve stuck your stake in the ground and you’re saying, hey, manufacturing companies. So if a local company hits you and they hit the first page, they’re seeing something about manufacturing companies. Um, how has that affected the leads that you’re generating and the traffic that you’re attracting?
John Locke:
Excellent question. So for the backstory, for about two years, I was ranking number one here in Sacramento, California for WordPress, web design and WordPress development and giving that up to try and rank for, for, you know, SEO for manufacturing was definitely a that was like the last step of just like saying, I’m just going to let that go because that’s what I want to rank for. But I will tell you this. The leads that I was getting for people who were googling for WordPress, you know, design or WordPress development, sometimes it’d be okay, sometimes they were, you know, not so okay. They were, you know, more like a lower end of the market.
Lee:
Well, that was polite.
John Locke:
Yeah. So, so but here’s the interesting thing. And this is something that went into this decision too, uh, of killing all my subcontracts and, um, you know, changing what I was positioning around. Uh, it was all really scary. But here’s the result. As soon as I did that, I got some local leads. And that led to a lot of the business that I’ve had this year, uh, because I did a really great job for the people that I did get, and they gave me some referrals. So that’s been awesome. Um, uh, but I’m getting leads from all over the country. I even I had somebody that was in talks with for a while that came from China. They were a manufacturing plant there. They wanted someone to do SEO for them. But the the person that I was talking to, I think they were like the son in law, the CEO. And he said, I want to go with you, but the CEO, they want to go with a firm from India because and they went with them, somebody like that before, because I looked up what happened to them in SEMrush.
John Locke:
And I could see by the backlink profile that they just got a bunch of spammy links. And I told him, like, hey, you can do that. But, you know, here’s what’s going to happen. And so, you know, they haven’t really made any progress. But it all came down to money because it was just, you know, that’s what they kind of had expectation of before. That’s what their prior experience was. But the thing that’s really awesome is, is I am getting leads from outside my geography. I am not dependent on living near a big city. And that was the thing that I talked about about a year ago with my wife is like, you know, we because she doesn’t necessarily want to, you know, live next to big city. Um, and we want we might want to move, you know, at some point or, you know, be close to, you know, different, uh, members of her family that are in other parts of the country.
John Locke:
And I was always like, oh, man, I don’t know. I’m so scared. I don’t, you know, we’re not going to be near a big city. Like, the closest city is going to be like 200 miles away. I don’t know if this can work. So pulling the trigger on this really, actually, I think in the long term is going to help the health of my company a tonne because it’s it’s not about being near a city, it’s about being good enough to attract people and being known for something that you put in a stake in the ground for That’s, you know, there’s a handful of other companies doing it, but not a tonne. There’s enough to where you know that it’s a viable market because I see other people doing it. But I don’t see, you know, 80 million companies doing it. So it’s like, well, awesome.
Lee:
I imagine as well with local SEO. I mean, if I run a search for local SEO companies here in our area, I’m in a small village, but we are surrounded by lots of bigger towns and cities, right? There are hundreds of SEO companies all competing for my eyeballs. Whereas when you do put your stake in the ground and you find a niche, you are competing in a much smaller pond, aren’t you? With regards to, you know, there are fewer of you available. Manufacturing companies have very specific needs. They have very specific terminology. They work in very specific ways of which your average Joe or Jane would not necessarily understand unless they’ve had experience. So this now Elevates your position. It elevates your value to that market. And like you said, it opens you up from just your local area and surviving locally, trying to attract attention there and perhaps not getting the best leads to now being a global player where companies from around the world China. How cool is that? Can, can can approach you and say, hey, uh, we’re interested in working with you.
Lee:
I mean, just to kind of echo that when we stuck our stake in the ground with WordPress for agencies, for designers, you know, instead of also taking on general work and just saying, no, we don’t design anymore. We are just developers for designers. You know, we’ve we’ve had I had a call this morning with my Australian client. So we’ve got clients around the world. It used to be that we were building local websites with people with very little budget, and being a really nice person or a stupid person, I would, I don’t know, I think I was probably quite stupid. Some of the prices I charged originally, I.
John Locke:
Think, oh. No, I got you. Beat now.
Lee:
£150, I charged once. Um, but yeah, you know, from the local kind of leads that were just really difficult to, to find the people who had the budget, it was I was more, you know, being really kind to lots of local people. Now I can charge some really good prices to some businesses all around the world and give them an amazing service. Um, go on then. What have you got me beat on? Did you beat my £150?
John Locke:
Oh, no, I was well, not not really, but I did my very first website that I ever did for a client. I put posters like flyers up around town, like downtown. Don’t ever do that. Uh, but, yeah, I’d done some, like, ridiculously priced websites. Uh, yeah. So.
Lee:
But then we all have to get started and we all need to go on that journey, I think. I don’t know if I’ve said it before on the podcast. I’ve certainly said it to friends. I think sometimes we have to do these things just simply to learn what not to do, because you can listen to the podcasts until you’re blue in the face and hear all of this great advice, but sometimes it doesn’t sink in until you’ve actually done it and you’re like, oh crap, that didn’t work. I need to raise my prices, or I need to change the way I’m doing this. And that’s unfortunately the sort of learner I am. I wish I could learn from other people’s mistakes, but for me, I kind of have to make the mistake and then I’ll learn from it.
John Locke:
Yeah, I I’m agreeing with what you’re saying. You can read what other people tell you to do, or watch videos or take courses or whatnot, and that’s all very, very good. But when the time comes to make changes in your business, you’re going to feel it in your gut.
Lee:
Yeah, absolutely.
Lee:
And there is that fear, isn’t there, as well. I imagine you, when you made this decision to significantly change the content on your website and significantly change what people see when they very first land on this page. You know, I’m seeing the word manufacturer and industry several times over. I’m imagining there was was fear. And, um, how did you tackle that? Because it’s a big choice. I have conversations with people saying niche down and and you can see that they’re scared to they waffle.
John Locke:
They waffle. Um, it’s something that I read like a long time ago. I’m not even sure where I read it or who knows.
Lee:
yeah.
John Locke:
And it was something to the extent of if you fear it, you should, you know, walk toward it instead of running away from it.
Lee:
Unless it’s a cliff edge, unless.
John Locke:
It’s a cliff edge. Because here’s here’s the thing. I mean, look, life is life is short.
Lee:
Yeah.
John Locke:
You know, if you don’t go all in, you’re never going to know. And that’s the thing I tell you to like, you know, when I, when I first went out on my own to and this was, um, like I said, I was like 40 years old. This is around 2012, and I was trying to land jobs with agencies around here, and they would interview me and they would say like, you know, uh, you know, what’s what’s your goals? And I said, eventually, I want to run my own agency. And, uh, you know, it would just never work out. And there was just, you know, one day where it was like, you know what? I am not going to, you know, I felt like I was waffling between trying to get a job and running my own thing. And from that day forward, I was just like, I’m going to run my own thing and I don’t care. I’m just, this is what I’m doing.
John Locke:
I’m not trying to get a job with somebody else. And ever since then, the business has. That’s when the first point where it really started to turn the corner, um, like, you know, about 5 or 6 years ago. So, you know, anything like that, you have to go all in. You have to trust your gut. Sometimes it’s the wrong decision. But, you know, you could always go back and, you know, you know, change if you if you really, really need to. But if you don’t take a risk, if you’re going to do something, you have to be all in. You can’t be like half in. You’ve got to be all in.
Lee:
Totally agree. I saw I think it was a meme or a gif or something the other day, which basically said better to say oh well then what if.
Lee:
Yeah.
Lee:
So, you know, if you try something and it didn’t quite work out, oh well, it’s fixable. You can do something about it. You can try something else. But if you never try it, there’s always going to be this. Mm. What if I had of and that I think sucks more.
John Locke:
That’s what I’m saying. You know what if, if this web design and marketing and building websites thing doesn’t work out, I could always go back today, get a job in a bakery making bread, frying doughnuts. I’d be more than happy.
Lee:
Except nowadays you wouldn’t need a hairnet. No, no. Same here folks, that doesn’t. It all fallen out. That was pretty harsh. I’d realised after I said it, I apologise.
John Locke:
That’s okay.
Lee:
We’ll have a hug later.
John Locke:
No. We will. We’ll hug it out.
Lee:
Thankfully, we know each other well enough to be able to banter. Well, I have a question then with regards to this. You felt the fear. You did it anyway. That’s actually one of my favourite books. I’ve mentioned that a few times. Yeah. Um, but how did you pick your niche?
John Locke:
Uh, so that’s a really good question. You know, I had a stutter stop about two years ago where I was maybe about two and a half years ago, where I was trying to niche down on e-commerce sites, and it just didn’t work out for whatever reason. It just it just didn’t work out. Um, I looked at I wanted a business, business like sector where, okay, these places are making money. It’s not like, um, you know, like a a life coach or, you know, or whatever. It’s something where it’s a legit business and they’re they have revenue coming in and they there is a need where they need SEO. The majority of them, and there is a handful of them that are spending on that. And there’s companies that already exist in that sector that are doing good. And I’m going to be honest, like last part two, there is like a lot of optimism that was happening at that time around, uh, manufacturing. I don’t know if it’s still the same right now, but at the time, definitely there was like a lot of optimism, hey, there’s going to be like, uh, more money or, you know, uh, tax cuts here in the US or something.
John Locke:
So people spend it on marketing. So I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to go all in on that. And the way I feel now, though. But exactly what I said is and our mutual friend Jonathan said this to me too. He said you should like market to the people in, uh, you know, the UK, uh, with the manufacturing thing. I’m like, oh my God, you’re so right. You’re right. Because that’s the thing. You if you have a speciality and you’re good at it and you can prove it, and you got the case studies and it’s not just you saying like how awesome you are and you got the proof, you have the receipts, you’re like, here’s where they were, here’s the traffic they got. Here’s the revenue that they banked off of that. Then, you know, you can you can market it anywhere. So that’s that’s what I want to do.
Lee:
So let me recap or try and recap. So you obviously you did you did what we said which was try something. And if it doesn’t work try something else. So you did you niched down into e-commerce didn’t work. That’s fine. You didn’t. You know, nothing terrible happened. You just had to try something else. So there you go. There’s your first step into Niching is trying something, and if it doesn’t work, it’s not the end of the world. You know, we can live off some tins of beans for a few weeks whilst we recoup our funds and all of that sort of stuff. And I’m saying that because me and my wife have been in that exact situation before where weathers that, you know, we’ve come to the end of the money because something I tried didn’t work. But we can still eat, we can still scrape by. So, you know, it’s never the end of the world. There’s always a way forward. And I hope and, you know, remember, folks, there is the agency trailblazer Facebook group agency trailblazer.com/group.
Lee:
If you are just feeling stressed out just go in there because there are loads of wonderful people in there. Um, to to support you because I know some people are having a difficult time and, and and we’ve been there. But with regards to the niching then you pick the industry because you had some experience with those people. You recognised that that was an industry that you could you could help that there were plenty of them around the world and that, um, that were spending as well on SEO. There were people within that industry who recognised that they need to attract traffic and generate leads. You’ve put in an rfqs, I presume that is that like a request for a quote or something like that request.
John Locke:
For a quote?
John Locke:
Yep.
John Locke:
So you used the language. Yep.
Lee:
Hashtag nailed it. So well. You’re using their language as well. So but you’ve recognised that people are spending. And the cool thing about what you’ve done is and John highlighted that from WP tonic. Was it that you were chatting that our Jonathan. Yeah. Cool. Um he’s he’s highlighted and you’ve kind of shared that. How. Because you have done this and you’ve now built up clients in this industry. You’ve got these case studies which which is awesome. You can now tackle any part of the world. You could focus on the UK. But the other cool thing is, is that me and you have had this conversation. I remember you now as the SEO guy for manufacturing companies. So the next manufacturing company that I meet, either out networking or through a friend or whatever, and they’re having a conversation with me about generating leads or whatever it is, because I always ask any business, you know, how are you generating leads? How’s business, that sort of thing. From those questions, it’s clear they’re not doing well with their our website.
Lee:
I’m going to be thinking of you, John, because you’ve put your stake in the ground. It’s really obvious what it is you do, and it’s really easy for me to remember and really easy for me to see who your target audience is. I think this is something that I’m always banging on about, and I’ve never invented niching it was I never used to niche. I tried to be all things to all men. It’s just that I kind of saw the light too, and and niched down. And it’s made a complete difference because for us as a local business, yes, I get global business, but we still get tonnes of local business as well because I network. Everyone remembers me as the web developer for designers. So every time someone meets a designer, they’re like, oh, have you met Lee? And I get emails every week from random people who are like, oh, such and such was telling me that you do development for designers. It would be great to meet for coffee.
Lee:
Um, because again, put the stake in the ground. We’ve got the receipts, like you said, to prove it, because we’ve we’ve done the work in the industry and, and people now recognise us. And it just opens up so much more, um, than we can possibly imagine versus trying to water down our language to appeal to everyone because we’re scared of missing out on all the opportunities that might be out there. Well, let’s shift gears then. We’ve we’ve covered Niching to death. Now, I’m pretty sure we’ve convinced people. And again, head into the Facebook group. John Rocks around in there as well. And let’s have conversations about Niching. I know there are people who are struggling to find their niche right now. I’ve got some local friends as well that I’ve met up and had the same sorts of conversations with, so feel free to hit John up or follow John as well. You can find him on LockeDown SEO. Com but also you can find him on the socials as well.
Lee:
But you know finding your niche is is I think a really important thing could be a productized niche, it could be an industry niche, etc.. But let’s just switch gears, mate, because we did talk about content way, way back. And um, I’d love to know, um, you and me met on the WP tonic podcast. If you don’t know what that is folks, you can check that out on Epitonic.com. I think it is. Let me double check w WP tonic com. Hopefully I’m not going to send people to a rude website or something. Don’t go to WP tonic.com because that’s someone else’s website.
John Locke:
WP dash tonic.
Lee:
Yeah, yeah. Go wp-tonic.com. Um, head on over there because Jonathan Denwood a very handsome, slightly lying there. No, he’s gorgeous. Really very handsome. Jonathan Dunwood hosts the WP tonic show. It’s a it’s a weekly show. Two shows a week, I think. And, uh, he does interviews. He also does, um, roundtable panel discussions every week as well.
John Locke:
Those are awesome.
Lee:
And they are really good fun. And, uh, John picks sometimes the most random of subjects. Me and you were just jointly on one just last week, weren’t we?
Lee:
Where? Yeah.
Lee:
I have no idea why he picked those, but anyway, it was just a good laugh. Um. He loves he absolutely loves it when we all tease him. Don’t know why, but that’s because we all love him, I guess. So, um. Yeah. No, it’s a really good fun show to to to listen to. WP hyphen tonic.com. Um, could you just take us back into why you jumped on that show? Um, all those years ago and you were a co-host for some time. So how did all that come about? Why did you do it? Um, was it a business decision or was it something else?
John Locke:
I’ll tell you. Okay, so this is how it started. The very first time that I ever heard of WP tonic. Uh, Jonathan and Bill Conrad, who was co-host at that time, they had just started. They were maybe less than 20 episodes into it at that point. And Sally Getz, who, uh, is the leader of the East Bay, uh, meet up in Oakland, California. Uh, she has been around since day one with that show, too, but they came in to the Sacramento, uh, WordPress meetup. They were looking for different people to be on the show. And if you go back to the very, very beginning of that show, like in 2014, you’ll see that they had different people that were on that show, you know, here and there they approached different meetup leaders and different leaders in the WordPress community. But they had seen me give a talk at that particular meetup and they asked me on there. And so I was reoccurring character as a reoccurring guest on the tonic, uh, since, you know, fairly early on and I think it was around 2015, 2016, I’m not sure, but I did about a year, uh, run with Jonathan as co-host.
John Locke:
That’s when he started going from one episode to two episodes per week on the tonic. And he has another podcast too, that he does for his SaaS product, uh, the male Rights Show. He actually does three podcasts a week, and he’s been doing that for like three years straight.
Lee:
The man’s a legend.
John Locke:
He is. Uh, but yeah, so I did. I co-hosted with that got to meet a lot of cool people in your you included. Um, and so I’m still a panellist on the Friday show where there’s a big panel, there’s a deep bench of people that show up from time to time yourself. Uh, other, you know, people. Um, but I kind of took a step back because it was just, I, I was doing a lot of work, um, behind the scenes. I just needed kind of a break to, like, focus on my own business. Kim Schibler took over. He’s got a new co-host now, but, yeah, that’s how it started. Like Jonathan Bill asked me, and I just kind of stuck around and it’s it’s really weird that you mentioned that, though, because a lot of people that do know me in the WordPress community or just in the web community, uh, overall, they first heard of me on the WP tonic, uh, podcast.
John Locke:
There’s a guy down in Trinidad, uh, Angel Jones, who interviewed like 1400 people. He’s.
Lee:
Oh, yeah.
Lee:
He’s just been travelling around the US, hasn’t he?
John Locke:
Yes, he has, but.
Lee:
He live.
Lee:
Streaming.
John Locke:
But he was like he, he first heard me on the tonic. So you know it’s it’s pretty cool show. Yeah.
Lee:
Well I mean you did kind of not answer the question though.
John Locke:
Oh I didn’t oh.
John Locke:
It was a business decision. Yeah. Yeah.
John Locke:
Basically. Yeah.
John Locke:
Yeah, it was.
John Locke:
A business decision. I mean, honestly, I’m not trying to get like WordPress famous or anything like that. I yeah, I, you know, it really doesn’t matter, but but, um, you know, honestly, if I had just been in the conversations with the, the different people and just gleaned that knowledge and nobody had ever heard those podcasts, it would have still been 100% worth it, because.
Lee:
Exactly right.
John Locke:
Yeah.
Lee:
No, you’re exactly right. I think I’ve confessed on this podcast that I think I learn probably more running this podcast than anyone who listens to it, because I get to talk to people like yourself who just, you know, they share their knowledge. But I get to ask the questions because actually, secretly and selfishly, I want to know the answers. And it’s like getting this free consultancy all the time, which is phenomenal. And if no one ever listened to the show, then I would still come. Come away from this with loads and loads of knowledge and a great network of people and new friends, which is awesome. Um, but yes, I think with WP tonic it’s definitely a it’s a bother isn’t it? It’s it’s actually also for the fun of it because, uh, John is so very self-deprecating, um, and does love a good laugh and loves it if somebody makes fun of him or equally, he makes fun of someone else. Like, he’ll he’ll very often try and tease me as well.
Lee:
Never any good at it, you know, because I’m, I’m way too, way too sharp for him, I’m afraid.
John Locke:
So I respect Jonathan because I respect him. Because, you know, he’s out there grinding it out. And that’s what I’m saying. He he don’t quit. He just grinds it out. Um, definitely a show that has its own flavour. Very unique. Doesn’t sound like every other show. Uh, definitely. You’re going to get something different from that show than you are from, you know, everything else.
Lee:
So I absolutely agree it’s a very good way of putting it. Definitely a very unique flavour and in a very good way, I think, because it’s got that, that very natural conversation, uh, especially the panel discussions. It is very different from a standard interview, isn’t it, from an interview flow. We kind of go all over the place, but from that it’s really good fun just for entertainment value alone. It’s hilarious listening.
Lee:
To the stuff that.
Lee:
We all say, but equally out of that always comes a lot of really good information. And it’s funny, Gutenberg seems to be one of the most popular conversations. You know that system that people love to hate and hate to love? It’s, uh. Yeah. So anyway, that’s, uh, this this feels like it was a paid advertorial for WP hyphen. Com, although it wasn’t paid. We just love it.
Lee:
So there you go. And shout out to John. Um, we won’t tell him. And let’s see if he listens to this episode. Yeah, yeah, let’s let’s test him. I do I don’t listen to all of his episodes. The guy just puts too much content out. Yeah, right. Right. So we have gone on a journey with you, mate. We’ve found out all about how you trained yourself to become a web developer. You found your your strength in SEO. You took a massive decision over a year ago to niche right down into, um, into the manufacturing industry. And you’ve explained how, you know, if you feel fear, do it anyway. Have a go at it and see what happens. You tried that with with e-commerce. That didn’t work. That’s fine. So you went on into manufacturing and you’re growing from success to success, and you’re attracting now global business, and you’ve got an exciting future ahead of you, of which I’m really excited about mate as well.
John Locke:
So I love you, man. Thanks.
Lee:
Well, that that was a fantastic episode, and I’m really happy to have been a part of this and to have learned more about you folks. You can find out more about John on Locked. Locked down M s no sorry, LockeDown or I will get that wrong. Lock down SEO com. That’s l o c k e d o w n seo com. Again, though, all of these will be in the show notes, so you can just go ahead to agency Trailblazer Comm. Check out the podcast and you’ll be able to click on any of these links in the show notes as well.
John Locke:
Can I give one more shout out to I’ve been doubling down on my YouTube channel. It’s been long dormant. I am, uh, going really hard on that, and I’m committing to doing at least one video a week. Definitely as many as I can put out, but at least one per week. So if you want to get some SEO tips for free, uh, come and check it out. I would love to You answer some more SEO questions, drop them in the comments, and I’ll, uh, I’ll make a video just for you.
Lee:
Well, that’s youtube.com forward slash user forward slash John J. Locke. I will throw that in the show notes as well, and you’ll recognise the channel because of his lovely, handsome picture he’s got on there. That’s a really good cover art, I like that. Yeah, I’ve never quite nailed the cover art for YouTube. I just gave in and lobbed up the podcast one and just left it as is. But yeah, lots of content. And you heard it here first or second or third. I don’t know how quickly you heard it, but, uh, he’s committing to at least one a week. Did you say.
John Locke:
One a week? One? That’s a brand.
John Locke:
Promise.
Lee:
A brand promise.
John Locke:
Yeah.
Lee:
Woo! No pressure then.
Lee:
All right.
Lee:
So we’ll get those in the show notes. Are there any other places you’d like to connect with people before we boot you off the show?
John Locke:
Uh, you can find. Well, you can find me on Twitter. I’m at LockeDown underscore. If you’re on Mastodon.
Lee:
Uh, what?
John Locke:
On Mastodon. It’s like the it’s it’s like Twitter but better. Twitter. Yeah. It’s, uh. Yeah.
Lee:
Educate me.
John Locke:
It’s it’s like this new thing. It’s decentralised. Yeah. Uh, yeah. It’s it’s interesting. Yeah. Come check it out. Um, I’m. I’m locked down there. So, uh, locked down at mastodon.social so you can find me there.
Lee:
Spell it.
Lee:
Mastodon. Is it.
John Locke:
Uh.
John Locke:
Mastodon?
Lee:
Mastodon. Oh, mastodon.social.
John Locke:
It’s like toots instead of tweets.
Lee:
Toots. That sounds like farts.
John Locke:
Yeah.
Lee:
And then what was the what was the username? LockeDown. Was it lock.
John Locke:
Lockedown at Mastodon dot social.
Lee:
Oh lockedown at is it. Yeah. Oh so this is weird.
John Locke:
So yeah. Yeah yeah like.
Lee:
Twitter. But I’m trying to figure out how to search you. This is hilarious. How do I find you then? On this I can see people’s toots coming out, but, uh. Oh.
John Locke:
You must be on the federated timeline.
Lee:
Oh, the what? What?
John Locke:
Yeah. It’s like a whole new world. It’s like Twitter, but it’s this whole new world. Yeah.
Lee:
Oh, is it proper geek stuff? Look at this. Yeah. Okay, well, you can find him if you can work out how to find him. Yeah. As lock down. As lock down. Um. On mastodon.social. Good luck. If you can find him, I think I’m gonna have to sign up for an account mate.
Lee:
And follow you and this one out.
Lee:
I’d much rather toot than tweet, if.
Lee:
I’m gonna be honest. Yeah. Me too.
Lee:
Exactly. I mean, I I’m pretty sure I’ve got IBS, so anyway. All right.
Lee:
Mate, thanks for your time.
John Locke:
Oh. Thank you.
Lee:
You’re awesome.
Lee:
Have a have a wonderful evening. Take care. Bye. And that wraps up today’s show. Don’t forget, we have the agency trailblazer community on Facebook over on agency trailblazer.com/group. That’s our free community where we can have conversations. A lot of the conversations are about WordPress because WordPress powers 30% of the internet, and it’s really cool. If you are an agency owner, you’re feeling stressed, you’re feeling frustrated, you need a private place to have a conversation and some access to me for some help. Then be sure to check out our paid community over on agencytrailblazer.com. We do monthly masterminds where we have conversations that are led by you, the community, and we have in there as well, content that we’ve been producing over the course of this year, stuff from our own agency, from our own experiences, and also from guest contributors. So be sure to check that out. On agencytrailblazer.Com, we will see you in the next episode.
