Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Hi and welcome to episode 42 of the WP Innovator Podcast. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Thank you, big band. Okay, this episode is pretty awesome. We have Rebecca Gill on the line today. She is talking all about SEO, and that is something that I’ve got to be honest, that even a year ago I may have been known to have said the phrase SEO is dead, but I know I’m wrong. I’ve been figuring that out over the last year, and it has been so great to get Rebecca on the line. I don’t know why I keep saying on the line. It was through Skype. But anyway, it was great to get Rebecca on the podcast. For her to just open my mind and obviously your mind on SEO, on strategy, tactics. It’s freaking incredible. And I’ve got to admit, I’ve signed up to her course as well, which is fascinating. It’s not cheap. I’ve got to admit, it’s not cheap, but it’s a brilliant course and it’s something that I would recommend you go and look at.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m not on any affiliate link or anything like that. I just know that this is a brilliant course that you should probably be looking at because she gives you some really, really good stuff. And she’s doing this from the opinion of an SEO expert who actually has deep, firm convictions about what she’s doing because she’s learned it, she’s tried it, she’s tested it. So go ahead and cheque those out as well on DIYCourses.com. Anyway, I’m going to shut up because this was a really rambling intro. I apologise. Have a wonderful day and enjoy the show. Hello everybody, this is Lee here at the WP Innovator Podcast, and today we have in the house Rebecca. Rebecca, how you doing?
Rebecca
I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me on.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Hey, it’s an absolute pleasure. I’m a little bit starstruck, to be honest, because I’ve read quite a few of your things in the past and I always get nervous and a bit butterfly before I get to talk to people that I’ve read a lot of their content on in the past. So like, I remember I had Kim Doyle on and I was just like, oh, hello Kim. And then she was like so wonderful. I was like, oh, what was I worried about?
Rebecca
She’s a great person. She’s funny.
Lee Matthew Jackson
She is so funny. And I listen to her every week. We’re off on a tangent already, aren’t I? Sorry.
Rebecca
Rebecca.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So it’s Rebecca Gill and it’s so good to meet you. I’ll do the this is your life, and then I’ll hand over to you. You are the founder of Web Savvy Marketing, and you’re an SEO instructor at DIY Courses, and I believe you’re the founder of the SEO Bootcamp as well.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And there’s a young man called Chris Lemmer, or Lamar, or however the hell you say it, and he said this once. He said, Rebecca is an expert in SEO, not the trick stuff, but actual strategies for integrating best practises with WordPress. She can help you think strategically about content and SEO, and that’s pretty That’s a pretty cool testimonial from a really, uh, well, heavyweight in, in the WordPress industry, someone that we all really, really respect. That is so cool, and we’re honoured to have you on the podcast because this is WordPress and SEO, which are two of the biggest subjects that people have fed back to us recently on what they want to hear about. So, um, I’m gonna shut up, and do you mind just giving us a bit of an introduction to yourself and a bit of your background?
Rebecca
Sure. So, um, again, my name is Rebecca Gill. I founded Web Savvy Marketing, which is a Michigan-based digital agency back in 2009 in the heart of the recession. Um, the firm does, uh, custom web design and development in WordPress. We do, um, uh, a lot of SEO consulting work. I have, uh, 8-hour online SEO course at DIYSEOcourses.com, and then we have an upcoming bootcamp with SEObootcamp.com that’s happening in January. And then the other portion of our business is Genesis, and we have a large selection of stock Genesis child themes that are available for sale on our website.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So you keep pretty busy.
Rebecca
We keep pretty busy, yes. I like— I believe in diversity, so we diversify our offering and keeps us healthy.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that’s good. I mean, you started presumably with the agency just to build websites.
Rebecca
I actually founded the agency to do SEO consulting, and then I realised really fast that no one had access to any of their websites and they couldn’t actually, you know, make changes that I was recommending. And then I went from there and added in web design and development into our service offering so we could help them along with that process.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And is that something you’re still doing now? You’re still doing the end-to-end kind of from the inception of the website right through?
Rebecca
Yeah, about 50% of our business is custom development, you know, mixed with SEO built right into the project.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And has it always been— I feel like I’m grilling you here— has it always been just WordPress-specific SEO? Or have you kind of covered the whole range?
Rebecca
When I first started the firm, we were going to do both Joomla and WordPress because I knew Joomla and WordPress and I was familiar with them. But I quickly realised that the Joomla backend kind of freaked everybody out from a user standpoint and they were much more comfortable with WordPress. So I dropped Joomla really quick. I stayed with WordPress and I’m really thankful that I did because of the market growth and the community. It’s just, it’s been the best decision.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got to admit, I haven’t heard much of Joomla recently. Is it still going?
Rebecca
It is going. It just has a smaller community, you know, of users.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
Rebecca
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. I remember when I first launched my agency with my first agency years and years ago, I tried using Joomla and even I couldn’t work out the backend.
Rebecca
I mean, I got it, but I’m not normal. You know, I’m not a normal user. I like technology and I like digging into software. So yeah, I may not be able to code, but I am a geek.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah. Oh no. Well, that’s, that would be Kim as well. She’s also very similar, isn’t she? She’s not a coder, but she loves to play with the tech. Yes.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So at what point did you kind of realise, obviously you started off the agency SEO and then obviously built websites as well to help facilitate that because otherwise it’s like kind of trying to do something with a hand tied behind your back obviously.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
When did you kind of diversify onto the other streams? How did kind of Genesis come about and all those sorts of things?
Rebecca
So we were beta users for the Genesis framework itself and I actually built a website using it before it had child themes and that website’s still sitting out there in existence where I hacked the Genesis because it was a theme at that point. We started with a framework and I quickly realised it was really solid and, you know, just was a good decision for our team. So, you know, we jumped on that right away. You know, we were one of the first agencies focused on Genesis. And then the DIYCourses.com website, that launched in, I think, January of this year. And that was kind of some prodding from people in the community. Corey Miller at iThemes was a huge push, you know, for me to do it. He’s like, you got to get that out there. You know, you have, you have knowledge, you need to share that knowledge with people. And this is a great way to do it. So, and I knew, learned the LMS plugin from doing the themes. So, you know, we whipped that up pretty quick and I spent a couple months writing content and launched it in January. And then the SEObootcamp.com and that upcoming workshop is just new.
Rebecca
We just opened that up at the end of August for ticket sales.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. So the DIY SEO that just so people can go cheque that out, it’s DIYSEOcourses.com. That’s DIYSEOcourses.com where you’re going to get some amazing insight from the brain of Rebecca Becky girl, that’s pretty cool. Speaking of your brain and SEO, how did you get into it in the first place?
Rebecca
I worked for a software company. This is, you know, my, my nerd coming into me. I was working for an ERP software company and we competed against people like Microsoft and Oracle and SAP and we had a really good product, but no one knew of it and we didn’t have a lot of money. And if we got ourselves in the door into a sales process, we were winning like 90% of the time. The problem was we didn’t have any leads. And we didn’t have any money to hire anybody because every, you know, the money the company, that kind of company makes, it gets thrown back into development of the product. It’s not going to marketing a lot of times. So I just taught myself SEO and, um, spent a lot of extra hours, you know, I mean, I was getting paid for a 40-hour work week and I was spending 60, 70 hours a week learning SEO and applying it to the website. But we grew our, um, traffic to the website substantially and we increased sales, uh, what was it, 400% in 2 years. And the majority of that, like the vast majority of it, was based off of the SEO leads that were coming in because they’re so targeted.
Rebecca
You know, that’s the thing that people just don’t realise about SEO is, um, to fill your, your lead funnel and your sales funnel, SEO is awesome because it’s highly targeted, you know, content and users that are coming in and they already know that they, they need your product. You know, they’ve already self-qualified themselves. So it makes the whole process of sales and onboarding and closing really a lot easier than any other marketing channel.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I feel like you’re saying something that I’ve never heard before, because I’ve got to admit, I’m probably one of those SEO sceptical people who know I need to get my ass into gear and start sorting it out. But I’ve always thought that SEO was not necessarily super targeted. So can you please slap me across the face and tell me why?
Rebecca
So here’s, here’s a great example. Okay, I could market myself for WordPress or for website design, right? And we could try to go after all of that type of business and I could show up at all different types of events and I could cold call website design. I could do all this kind of stuff. But if I put a page up that’s WordPress specific and if I show up at the top of Google, which I do for WordPress website design, WordPress web design, WordPress design, those kind of, all those kind of phrases, Now those people have already picked WordPress. They’re my exact target market. They’re looking for people like me. I don’t need to convince them that WordPress is the right solution for them. They already know that. So that makes them very targeted and very specific, a very solid match for me. So it makes the close process and the whole sales process much faster and much easier because they’re already bought in. They’ve already, you know, they’re already WordPress-focused. That’s what good SEO does. And a lot of people lose sight of that because they go for really generic phrases. They don’t rank, and that’s not the right way to do it.
Rebecca
You have to start with your target market. What do they need and what do you offer to help solve their problems? And you take that and you put that into an SEO process.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I am utterly amazed. I just tested this. I’ve tapped in WordPress web design. There you are, the second result. That’s amazing because—
Rebecca
and I’ve been there for about 6 years.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Uh-huh. So on the video, mic drop. That’s amazing. So you’ve managed to keep that. So how much maintenance is involved in that then? Is it like you just set it and forget it? Because I know Google changes all the time.
Rebecca
Have you—
Lee Matthew Jackson
do you have to review that?
Rebecca
It’s not set it and forget it. However, if you— I view SEO like it’s a process and it’s like the foundation that you’re creating, right? So, and I have a— like my course has got It’s my— it is my process. And it’s from, you know, research and, and planning and, you know, strategically picking things that you’re going after, your execution, and then, you know, checking where you’re at, reporting and rinsing and repeating what’s working. You’re right. And fixing what’s not. If you do that right, you don’t have to do all of this monthly stuff ongoing. And because you don’t need to, right? You’ve already done— you’ve built the solid foundation and now the rest is just putting yourself out there. And for me, that’s like coming on your podcast.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah.
Rebecca
Right, you’re good. You’re going to link into one of my sites and it’ll get me exposure, and all of that helps with my ongoing efforts. I don’t— I don’t, um, I, I— we don’t have a lot of clients on ongoing maintenance with SEO because you don’t need it. You need to build a right process in, get them a good foundation, and then if they’re doing the right things with marketing, it comes naturally to them.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So guys, I just want to encourage you again, diyseocourses.com. I kind of feel like I want to press pause right now and just go sign up this course. Seriously, I mean, you’re the first SEO person I’ve ever met that actually says, oh yeah, type in this. To me, that feels quite a generic term of WordPress website design. I was like, you’re going to have to like spend a billion pounds to get on the first page of Google for that. And look at you there. That’s amazing.
Rebecca
Yeah, I think WordPress design, we’re on page 1 still too, like maybe towards the bottom or something, but we’re still there. But that’s why, you know, I mean, do I allocate time monthly to try to keep those up? No. You know, I just do marketing and marketing helps reinforce what I’ve already built with good SEO.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You’re kind of like 6 or 7 down the list on WordPress design as well, which is really phenomenal. And as well with, with the evolving market, WordPress kind of owns 25%, I think, of the internet now. It doesn’t own it, but you know what I mean. Websites are running— 25% of websites are WordPress. We’re getting tenders in as an agency where the client is saying, and please, can you make sure this is built or powered with WordPress, etc.? So for you to get those keywords is phenomenal, and I am highly highly jealous.
Rebecca
But that’s like my, you know, the education I do with clients is how I got there, right? I’m taking it, it’s the same thing I did with my earpiece software 15 years ago. It’s that same process. You just apply that process to different businesses, different industries, and different websites.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That is phenomenal. So with regards to targeting, I mean, that still to me seems quite generic as well. I mean, I do hear that people will go right down to targeting locations of people. So you could say, I know, web design Northampton, which is where I’m based. Is that the sort of thing you’re recommending as well, kind of targeting things, people down to areas and that? Or do you know of any other way of targeting with regards to the sort of— like, I know my avatar, it’s an agency, a design agency owner, but I can’t for the life of me think of how to put myself in that person’s brain and what they might be searching for to try and get that what feels to me quite specific type of person.
Rebecca
Yeah, I, I think the reason that I’m so focused on that is because I was in software and because, you know, we were selling $100,000 system at a minimum and people had pain points, right? There was a reason why they were going to buy new software and it’s business software, you know, it runs their entire thing. And once you started to think of things that way and say, okay, well, what are their pain points? You know, and like if you’re a manufacturer and you produce food, lot control and recall management is a pain point, right? Before people go to buy new software, they start Googling around and searching for things that are causing them problems. So that’s the first step. And the nice thing about that is if when you get that granular with SEO and you produce content for them at that level, you reach them very early on in the buying process, and therefore you set up expectations with them where they’re drinking your Kool-Aid, they’re thinking your process, your Kool-Aid, and then everybody else they start comparing you with you’ve been the thought leader for them from the start. They’re comparing them to you and a lot of times they’re failing because they’re not using the same approach.
Rebecca
And so I’ve always used that. I used that back in the software days. I use that now. I don’t do it as good now because I’m really super busy running the agency so I don’t spend a lot of time on our own SEO, which is, you know, I hate to admit that but it’s true. But I mean that’s— so that’s the granular and it’s, you know, from a location standpoint that, you know, the local SEO is really important if that’s the area that you service, right? Service that local area, it is really, really important. If you’re a dentist or a doctor, you know, or a lawyer, you want to have that geographical preference. It’s— that doesn’t mean that you throw your location all over your web pages. That’s not the right solution. But there are things that you go through to make sure that you’re scoring well in a local geographical area.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Is again phenomenal. I can think of content that I’ve done in the past, and you are right, I’ve I’ve written one piece of content, for example, about how to help the client give a better brief for a web project, and I found that that’s been one of the highest converting posts for me, not with regards to SEO, but the highest converting to people then signing up or getting in touch with me. People are landing on that post, they’re reading that, they’re sharing it, and they’re also communicating with me. I didn’t realise that I may have accidentally already been doing this. but not actually recognising that it is those pain points to pick up on. Because I’m trying to think about, oh, I want to find an agency owner of an agency with about 20 people in it. I’ve not actually been thinking necessarily of his, his or her pain points all the time, and I could probably reel off 20 in about 5 seconds.
Rebecca
And you can find them in emails and, and requests for proposals and conversation notes. I mean, they’re all over. It’s just you need to look at what you already have in-house, and those details are there.
Lee Matthew Jackson
This is awesome. So I’m going to try not to pick your brain too much because I do feel a lot of this is going to be in the course. And I’m going to remind people, diyseocourses.com. I reckon I’ll have already signed up for this before this, this episode goes out. So I’ll let people know how it goes in the Facebook group, which you can find on leejaxondev.com/group, and we can talk about how awesome this episode has been so far. Alrighty, I’ve got a big question for you then. Okay, you run like a million things, so yeah, that sounds like a big challenge in its own right. So to date, what has been your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?
Rebecca
Um, I would tell you that it’s, it’s the mental challenge, um, of not being able to focus on what I love doing, right? Because I’m an agency owner, I still have to worry about employees and, um, receivables and payables. Do we have enough money to, you know, to run payroll today? That’s the things that you end up worrying about. Are projects launching like they should? Are they on time? Is client staying on budget? You know, I mean, are we within scope and are we making them happy? Is the design meeting their requirements? So, um, that’s not necessarily the things I like to worry about. I like to worry about marketing and, um, you know, SEO and sales. I love helping in the sales process and helping find a solution for people. Right. And then my team now executes that solution, but, um, not being able to focus on those cores, the things that really make me happy, that’s, that’s my biggest struggle, I think. And it has been for the last, I would tell you, um, probably 4 years. And the more that you diversify and the more that you put out there, like, you know, the other things you’ve got going on, the more frustrating I find it, right?
Rebecca
I’d love to go create more, more courses and add-ons to the courses. And I have a bunch in my head, but I just can’t get the time to allocate to that. So, you know, that’s, that’s probably not the challenges and the struggles you were thinking of, but that’s mine. That is my biggest one.
Lee Matthew Jackson
To be honest, I feel like bursting into tears because you’re talking about my life there. Yeah, that is exactly the same issue. You know, you’ve got worries of payroll, I’ve got the worries of projects. I love working with my clients, I love building sites and that, but like you said, it’s connecting with them and solving the initial problem and trying to find a way of getting the team to be at that level where they can almost manage all of that, you know, all of the ongoing process themselves to free you up to do all those amazing ideas. I can only just barely have enough time to do this one podcast, and there’s about a billion other things I really, really want to do. And they seem like they’re just over there, like I could just grab them if I didn’t have to go down south to a client meeting to keep the ball on something rolling or get another project done. It can be so frustrating.
Rebecca
My saving grace has been our project manager, Mary. I’ve had her for about a year and a half and she’s got it down. She comes to me when she needs my help or she needs my involvement. But with outside of that, she’s just got it. You know, clients are happy. We’re not even— we have one client, we’re not even through launching this website and it’s a huge, huge project. And they’re like, okay, well, we know we hired you for this, our secondary website, but now we’d like you to build our main website. You know what I mean? So I know she’s doing a great job and clients are happy. And so that’s helped, you know, I think, you know, so for agencies out there, if you don’t have a Mary, you need a Mary, you know, that you just know has got it going. You know, she’s just got the process. Everybody needs a Mary. Everybody needs to marry. Now I need someone to manage all the operations, you know, and all that, the other things that I don’t want to have to worry about.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So no, that’s true. We, we got help from Dan Connors, who has helped us with our project management, kind of helped train us with the project management. But yeah, at this point we’ve not yet employed a full-time project manager, so that’s definitely next. And thanks for sharing that because that kind of validates, you know, our next step, which is looking for that project manager. I’m making an arraignment about I had the process down already, right?
Rebecca
Very, very solid process. It was what I had been doing for years, but having someone to be able to execute it and you give them the template in Basecamp and they’re just like on, right? I mean, they just hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it, hit it. It’s been— it’s made a world of difference for my sanity and for our business.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That is pretty awesome. So is there any products that you’ve used as an agency that’s helped facilitate all of those processes?
Rebecca
Um, Basecamp, and we use Basecamp Classic, and it’s because we have so many projects, right? I mean, I’ve got 200 legacy projects in there, and I’ve got, um, you know, 25 active projects at any time. That’s why— so that’s why we use the legacy Basecamp, because visually it’s easier to manage that, that large workflow. Um, but I couldn’t imagine life without it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that’s interesting, Basecamp Classic. So I’ve got some clients that use Basecamp Classic, and I originally thought I hated it, but over the last probably 3 or 4 months we’ve been working on that, I found a few cool tricks like creating a little bit of HTML in the task so that you can put like little flags and etc. So just playing around with it to make things a bit easier to, to view. So we’re, we’re kind of getting on with it quite well, and I’ve stopped using Basecamp 2. As nice as it looks, I just found it a little bit too simplistic. Have you got any third-party integrations with Basecamp Classic, or are you just using it vanilla?
Rebecca
Just using it vanilla. We tried to integrate it, um, I’m trying to think, with a couple of packages, but it just didn’t produce anything of value. It was quicker for me just to manually just move stuff over and, you know, and bill at the end of the month for stuff.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that makes sense.
Rebecca
And then we do do time tracking.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Okay, uh, yeah, yeah, all of our time tracking.
Rebecca
Yeah, yep, it’s— there’s an add-on and it’s a really weird name, but it works great.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, that’s good. And then, so I mean, it’s fascinating to get— I love getting agency owners on because it’s always great to find out, you know, how they work and it helps other agencies who are up and coming, you know, learn. How do you— you talk about the leads that you’re getting from SEO. How would you manage those leads? Is that just an email and someone manages that email or do you have any specific CRM software that you guys use?
Rebecca
So that’s a funny thing. That was a discussion on Twitter recently. Yeah. Justin and Chris Lema, and the conversation was, what CRM do we use? And the funny thing is, is that my old software, you know, the old company I used to work for, I specced out our CRM system. Yeah, you know, I helped spec it out, I helped test it, I trained people on it, I set clients up on it. I don’t use a CRM today.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No way.
Rebecca
But it’s because, um, you know, back then sales were 9 months. You had to have a CRM system to manage all of that communication over 9 months. We don’t have a 9-month sale process for, for us, or or SEO leads, they close usually like in a week and a really long timeframe for us is 3 weeks. You know, so they come in, I either qualify them out or I qualify them in and then we push through the process, sales process and they sign. You know, so I don’t, I don’t really have a CRM that I use because it just doesn’t seem like I need it, which I hate to admit that, but it’s true.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s fine. I think we come from very similar backgrounds. I was a Salesforce administrator. I used to write Salesforce out CRM add-ons back in the day, many years ago for a previous company. And I’ve written CRMs as well in WordPress for other customers, which has been awesome because obviously I know how they work. But the weird thing is, is I’ve never gotten on with using them myself.
Rebecca
No. If I had a salesperson, right? If I had a salesperson working for me and I needed to see what they were doing, I wanted to cheque their call status and their interactions with the customer, I would absolutely have one because I know from managing a sales department and, you know, managing the cold call process best guess, it’s needed, right? But that’s, it’s me. We don’t have salespeople. They talk to me and, you know, I know what’s going on.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, within 2 to 3 weeks, hopefully they’re going to be in Basecamp Classic because you’re already getting Mary to sort out the next few weeks of their project. So, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. But it’s always interesting. I’ve got a few people who’ve used different CRMs and it always tends to be that we sign up for these new tools really excitedly. We use them for about 3 minutes and then we end up paying for them then for sort of like 12 months realising we haven’t actually logged in for ages. So I’ve had to take some of Troy Dean’s advice recently, who’s been saying things like, you know, unsubscribe from the emails that you’re not like happy to receive. And also just knock on the head all those applications that I’m paying for that are meant to improve my productivity, but I’m not actually using, but I can feel better that I’m paying for it, but not actually doing anything with it. So a little bit ridiculous. I’m embarrassed to admit that. So you’re obviously a WordPress geek. How did you get into WordPress originally?
Rebecca
Um, my— the old company I worked for, we had Joomla website with a WordPress blog add-on. And once I got in there, I was like, oh, is this cool? This is just like my ERP software. There’s all these things in here and I can do these plugins and I can add more functionality. And that’s how I got involved. I was hooked as soon as I got in. I mean, yeah, full on hooked.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And is there a particular plugin that you’ve had a love affair with for many years or a new plugin that you’d love to give a shout out?
Rebecca
Yeah, my love affairs are with Gravity Forms and LearnDash. And we have that, you know, we use them a lot. I use Woo a lot, although I don’t love Woo as much as I love Gravity Forms and LearnDash. You know, I just, Carl just creates a really great product with that. With Gravity Forms, and Justin is the developer of LearnDash. And not only is he just solid and knows the education industry, and that’s his background, I mean, he just creates a good product. And, you know, and just, he’s got great features that he’s adding on, and that’s what I use to run the course. I’ve got Stock Genesis themes that, that use it as well. So I mean, those are my two. I love them. Thank you for developing them.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, we’ll have to tweet at them as well so they can get this, uh, your thank you to them. With regards to Gravity Forms, I love Gravity Forms. Is there anything particular that you guys might use Gravity Forms beyond just the standard contact form?
Rebecca
See, now I can’t even answer that because the coder coding team would do it and I’d have no idea. I just put the to-do in that says I need XYZ to happen in Basecamp and then it magically appears. So Yeah, so I don’t know. I mean, the reason, one of the reasons I love it so much is that when you hand over a website to an end user, they can add new forms, they can make changes, and they are not relying on a coder. And I hate being, having anyone relying on us or a coder or having to change code. You know, I mean, that’s, that takes away the spirit of WordPress, which is empowerment. And, you know, same thing with SEO. I want to empower people and that’s why I love it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s really good. I feel like I want to make that the title of the episode about empowering people. That’s really cool.
Rebecca
Yes, that’s what the beautiful thing is about WordPress and about SEO, because you are empowered and then you can reach anyone anywhere across the world.
Lee Matthew Jackson
With regards to kind of a handover then of a website, are you guys doing anything in regards to ongoing contracts like doing website updates, sorry, the plugin updates or anything like that?
Rebecca
We do. We have a number of clients on maintenance. We don’t require it, but the majority, now that we offer it and I actually I put it into the proposal, right? When I send over the website design proposal, it’s just an optional add-on if they want it. I would tell you we’ve got like a 90% rate of acceptance for maintenance now that I’m actually, you know, selling it. I wasn’t selling it before because I didn’t have the staff in place to be able to manage it. But now that I do, people definitely want it. And, you know, hacking’s gotten so out of control from outdated software. And, you know, we are a target as WordPress users. So it’s definitely needed for a lot of users.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s true. I mean, I feel like WordPress has become the Microsoft of CMS because it is now so widely accepted, it becomes a bigger target.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s not any less secure than any other platform, but because people know about it now, it’s like, right.
Rebecca
And it’s the users that generate the problems with admin as user IDs and their website URL or the company name is the password and they’re not updating anything for 2 years. I mean, that’s the issue. It’s not WordPress. It’s not A lot of times the plugins, it’s that. That’s just lack of education.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Absolutely. Guys, if you want to cheque out Rebecca, it’s rebeccagill.com. Just to learn from somebody who’s now getting a 90% acceptance on maintenance packages, I really feel that there’s probably a few people listening who just wanted to go and sign up to your email list. Because currently I don’t get a 90% acceptance. I get most clients saying, oh, that’s nice, and then never actually calling me back for a particular maintenance package.
Rebecca
Well, the word— the hard part is, is we didn’t offer it before. And then I was at Cabo Press and I was talking to another developer and he said, oh no, 50% of our revenue comes from maintenance. And I just sat there and I was like, oh, what was I thinking? So yeah, I shifted. And then, you know, and now that I’m offering it, I realise people really want it, you know. And I was doing a disservice to clients before by not having that upfront and available for them.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s good. Inspiring. Thank you very much. I have a question then for you. Tell me all about SEO Bootcamp. How did that start and what’s it all about?
Rebecca
Well, that was another Corey Miller. You know, it’s good to have friends and Corey’s always, he’s, you know, his saying is go far together and surround yourself with people who lift you up. And he’s definitely one of those people for me. He is a good friend and, you know, you’ve inspired me to do the course and he’s like, you really, we should have a, we should have a workshop. It’d be so fun to have people in person. You know, I’ve learned so much about SEO from you. We need to get this out there. And so that’s kind of where it happened. And then he says to me, you need a Patty. And that’s his— one of his employees who’s just a wonderful woman. And I said, I think I got a Patty. That’s Carrie Dills. She can help me with this.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes.
Rebecca
You know, I don’t want to— I can’t allocate my team to do this because I need them running the business and doing the projects. And Carrie was— she’s a good friend and she was, you know, ready to jump on. And, and then, you know, we kind of brought Corey in and to be the happiness engineer and make sure that, you know, the users are engaged and, and experience is good. And he’s perfect for that because I’ve worked with him with SEO and he knows the process. And yeah, he’ll be— it’ll be a good event. So that just kind of all started in August and whipped up and got the website, the venue booked. I went and bought the domain, got a logo made, all within like a couple of week time period.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes, that’s the great thing about WordPress.
Rebecca
I’m a get-it-done kind of girl.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Get it done. I like the logo as well. It’s cool. I like the font of Bootcamp. I don’t know what the font is, but I just like that style of font.
Rebecca
That’s our graphic designer. She does great work.
Lee Matthew Jackson
She’s awesome. That’s incredible. So who’s your ideal target audience then for the SEO Bootcamp?
Rebecca
So it really spans from bloggers to small businesses with, you know, website owners to mid-market companies that have internal marketing teams that, you know, want to have more empowerment with their SEO. The person it’s not a good fit for is someone who is already very well knowledgeable in SEO and has their own process defined that’s working. You know, they don’t, they don’t need my process, right? But it’s the people that don’t but that want to figure out SEO and want to be able to do it on their own or at least have a good knowledge of what the consultants they’re doing or they’re hiring are doing. So that’s who it’s a great fit for. And I mean, the whole, the whole goal is to empower people. Give them a process that works that I’ve used time and time again. Give them that process and do it interactively. So it’s the same material that’s in my course, but instead we’re gonna do it interactively. You’re having homework before you come to boot camp. You’re gonna have exercises in class that we’re reviewing. You’re gonna have homework that night, you know, at the first night of boot camp.
Rebecca
You’re gonna have homework the second night of boot camp. And, you know, because I want it to be a deep dive, you know, I want, I want people to walk away and say, I can do this, I can make 2017 awesome. And so, and that’s the goal. That’s the goal right there is to educate and empower people.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Educate and empower people. If you want to cheque this out, it’s seobootcamp.com. If you’re in the area of Dallas, Texas, that was terrible. That was the closest I could get to an American accent, but you’re going to be in Dallas, Texas, which all we know is for is for the amazing soap opera where someone was asleep and woke up and the dead guy was in the shower.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s the only thing we as Brits know about Dallas is your TV series. But anyway, if you want to go find out, get a deep dive, as Rebecca said, into SEO, then go and cheque out that’s seobootcamp.com. And again, absolutely love that logo. Nice and simple and just dandy. And I’m presuming this is one of your themes that you guys did.
Rebecca
This is actually no, SEO Bootcamp is not our theme. It was an event theme. Like I said, this was, we wanted to get it up and could I have had my graphic designer create me one for this? Yes. Did I have the time to do that? No. We were swamped with other projects at the time and I’m like, no, we’ll just go buy a theme, give me a logo and it looks pretty good. It does.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Let me just pick up on that. I think I want to encourage people, listen, we’ve got a lot of agencies and web developers listening and what you’ve done is brilliant. Brilliant. And what you said is brilliant because I can be guilty of this. I feel like I have to create everything I put up online. And that just takes an exorbitant amount of time. And you just said you could have your graphic designer design it. You could have your team code it.
Rebecca
Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But that’s going to take ages. Whereas you’re saving days, hours, weeks just by going ahead and buying a tried and tested theme and getting it online. Just putting something. You can maybe invest next year if this goes crazy. Yeah, cool. Cool. Yeah, then you might want to invest.
Rebecca
But right now, yeah, we’d love to repeat it and have it in a new location. If that’s the case, then maybe I’ll, you know, invest with creating a custom theme for it. But right now, this will serve its purpose.
Lee Matthew Jackson
It’s— it works fine. And I just love the fact that you’ve got a happiness counsellor. How does that work? What’s a happiness counsellor?
Rebecca
And, well, and who is more happy than Corey Miller?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I mean, there’s a happy picture.
Rebecca
Everybody loves him. Everybody— he’s just— he’s always like— and like I said, he’s always there to try to boost people up and to make them, you know, better, right? And he’s actually— he’s hosting a Q&A webinar tomorrow through iThemes that’s gonna talk, walk through bootcamp, what to expect, that type of thing, you know. And that’s his idea, was let’s educate people on what to expect, because again, he wants them happy when they come. And that’s, that’s his focus. And so he’s perfect for that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s cool. And iThemes produce such amazing plugins. It’s—
Rebecca
they do. They’re good people.
Lee Matthew Jackson
What an amazing backing for those guys. The backup plugin especially is very good, especially with Dropbox integration. I know a lot of people rave about about that. So obviously, we kind of talked about your, your plugins you like to use. Are there any particular blogs, resources, or people that are significant influences of yours that you would recommend people go cheque out?
Rebecca
I suspect you’re about to say Corey Miller, but yeah, well, he’s great from an agency standpoint. And I know that iThemes— well, so I’ve been doing webinars for iThemes for, I think, since December, SEO webinars, and we’ve been doing them monthly. And it’s just a free service that iThemes has been offering. But they also have this, this great toolkit, I think is what it’s called, for developers. So if you’re a developer and you’re starting out, I would definitely recommend you go and look at that. It’s, yeah, it’s called Toolkit. Yeah, I guess called Toolkit. That gives you a bunch of stuff, and I think it includes the training, but you can also buy the training separately. So 8 hours of professional WordPress training, and it’s just, you know, because Cory was one of the the, you know, the early people in WordPress, and he’s grown such a successful company, and he is so ethical, and he’s just, you know, focused on doing the right thing for the customers. He’s a great person to learn from. So as a developer, that’s a recommendation I would suggest. If you want to always have up-to-date information on SEO, I would recommend you follow Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz on Twitter because both of them are extremely good with pushing out quick bits of information on what’s happening in real time.
Rebecca
So do I have to subscribe to 200 blogs to know what’s going on with WordPress? Honestly, I don’t. You know, I have my core knowledge that I’ve had forever, and I watch things, what’s happening with the search engines, but I also watch those guys closely because they’re pushing that, those tidbits out. And if I see it, then I, then I know I need to go investigate it further.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So Danny Sullivan and who, sorry?
Rebecca
Danny Sullivan and Barry Swartz.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Barry Swartz? Is that like Schwartz? Schwartz.
Rebecca
Schwartz. S-C-H-W-A-R-T-Z.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Schwartz. I’ll make sure I get that in the snow notes— show notes. If you’re driving and you can’t remember that spelling, I’ll get these into the show notes as well. So that’s Danny Sullivan and Barry Swartz. That’s real good. And it’s true what you say, you know, follow the people who are sharing great information rather than than trying to fill your brain with a billion WordPress blogs because there are literally a billion, I imagine.
Rebecca
Well, and you know, I mean, from an SEO standpoint too, Yoast creates some really good content and they have really good information. It can be over the heads of a lot of people because the Yoast team is so technical and they are such a deep dive, you know, but they’re a great educational source too. And that’s why I kind of like to round out, you know, the information that you get from the search engines directly. So that’s one other thing. If you have never downloaded and read Google’s Getting Started Guide for SEO, you need to. You know, that’s the one thing that we’ve done as an agency is make sure that we stayed focused on SEO to build our brand and to build our traffic and our lead funnel. You can learn a lot from that PDF because it tells— they tell you what they want. You know, they’re giving you the basics, they’re giving— they’re educating you because they want you as a website owner to do the right thing. So that’s another great source of information.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. And also you’ve got your own download as well, I believe, The Beginner’s Guide to SEO over on rebeccagill.com, which I downloaded. And it’s practically like a book, but it’s small enough to consume because like I said, I understand a little bit of SEO, but it’s— I’ve always been of the mindset that it’s not important. I just need to build the sites, et cetera. I’m sorry. Don’t—
Rebecca
It’s a dagger in my heart.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’m sorry. But you have made me see the light. No, I’ve been slowly but surely seeing the light over the last year, especially with the launch of the podcast and realising how content actually does drive your SEO. It does drive people coming in. And I’ve been known to eat my words about SEO because originally I thought it was just unreachable for someone like me that I would never be able to do it.
Rebecca
Yeah, not at all.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Exactly. And there you are, an empowerer.
Rebecca
It’s farming versus hunting, right? A lot of developers and agencies are used to hunting. They’re used to going after. Prospective clients and always like beating the pavement. You don’t have to do that when you have SEO. You farm, you create good stuff, and stuff comes to you. It just grows organically and it continues to grow over time. It’s not like pay-per-click, that’s cocaine for marketers where you spend all your money and it’s gone, you know, poof, in an instant. You know, you’re, you’re planting seeds and you’re nurturing it and it’s growing and you’re getting that, those rewards month after month after month.
Lee Matthew Jackson
My favourite saying, cocaine, pay-per-click cocaine for marketers.
Rebecca
It is. I have been saying that for years and that’s what I feel like it is.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve never heard that. Hopefully you don’t feel this is a dagger in your heart because what I’m admitting to being is a hunter for many years thinking I had to go out and it’s only over the last year, year and a half where I’ve been creating content that I’ve realised that actually I really need to get my head around as an agency SEO for my own business. Obviously, that’s only ever going to have a positive impact on my existing clientele as well because I can pass those skills on to them and help them out as well. Because very often they’re like, do you do SEO? And I’m like, no, you need to find an SEO expert. And I’ll like palm that off.
Rebecca
You can offer it as a service too. That’s an additional course that we have is once you take the main course, you can take a secondary course where I talk about offering it as a service. I give you tips, I talk about pricing, that type of thing. So there’s, you know, that’s, that’s just a value add that developers can have because once they understand it and they know how to apply it, they can do it as part of the development and then they can help clients on an ongoing basis. With content generation and optimisation and things like that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s perfect. Again, doaseocourses.com. You got a lot of websites.
Rebecca
I’ve been busy.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, this has been fantastic. You’ve opened my eyes, you’ve inspired me and excited me about SEO even more than I was before the conversation, which is great. So I love to wrap up the, the podcasts with just kind of a parting piece of inspirational advice from you, something that an agency can kind of grab onto and apply to their business today?
Rebecca
Or, you know, I would tell you to, to take Corey Miller’s advice and surround yourself with people who lift you up, right? People who empower you, who enrich you, who make you better as a better person and a better agency. And I think— and the WordPress community is filled with people like that. Um, you know, once you find those people, stay close to them and give back to them, uh, because it comes back tenfold. And I think every time I’ve given free information or free advice or offered to do something for somebody, it comes back to me tenfold. And it truly does. And that’s, that’s, that’s the mantra that we kind of go by. It’s why I like Cory and I like iThemes. And I think that that’s just, it’s, it’s pure goodness.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So that’s Cory Miller, there’s you, Rebecca Gill, there’s Kim Doyle, there’s Carrie Dills, there’s Chris those sorts of people are just groovy, great, really nice folk. They are. They’re encouragers, they’re empowerers, and they’re not drainers. Because sometimes we hang around with drainers, and that ain’t good for business or for your sanity, is it?
Rebecca
No.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome.
Rebecca
No, it’s not. It totally leaks out all the goodness and all the energy from you, and it makes you unsuccessful.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I feel like you’ve just poured lots of really cool, exciting goodness into me, and I appreciate it. I’m best asking, and I’m really excited to go and take your SEO course, which is cool. And I’m going to let people know how that goes as well. Before we go then, what’s the best ways of people finding you and connecting with you and following you? So Twitter, the best website to go to first?
Rebecca
Yep. My website is RebeccaDill— RebeccaGil.com is my personal website that links over to my other web assets. On Twitter, I’m Rebecca Gil. Facebook, I’m Rebecca Gil. LinkedIn, I’m Rebecca Gill.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s good. I mean, does that mean you got your accounts really early before all the other Rebecca Gills got in there?
Rebecca
I did, yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Or are you just a unique name?
Rebecca
Well, and you can Google me. You just Google my name and I’m going to dominate like the first 3 pages of Google.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, you are an SEO. I hope you do.
Rebecca
Yes. And Google knows that. They suggest Rebecca Gill SEO at the bottom of it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Really? That’s great. And you are all the pictures as well on Rebecca Gill. You’ve just come up and you preview, you know, it gives you the preview of images.
Rebecca
Yeah, well, there’s some doctor out there and she’s just clogging up the search results. My daughter goes, can you get rid of her? I’m like, no, I can’t get rid of her.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Oh yeah, doctor. Yes, Rebecca D. Gill.
Rebecca
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yes, there you go. No, that’s awesome. I’ve got the most generic name ever, Lee Jackson. So if you put my name in, in the UK, my company comes up on the right-hand side on Google Places, which I’m very glad of. But if you otherwise, you know, I don’t appear anywhere. I don’t think I think the podcast just creeped in there. Last week, but before then it was Lee Jackson Amps, Lee Jackson Maps. There’s an author called Lee Jackson who’s written crime novels, of which I went and bought so that I could go and pretend that I wrote them. When people come around the house, I’m like, yeah, my book, do you like it? Hey Rebecca, you’re awesome. Thanks so much for being on, and I’m so glad we met because I’m going to be following— I’m going to be following your— well, I’m on your email list already, already, and I’m following you on Twitter as well. So I can’t wait to hear what else you get up to over the next few months and years. So thanks again and have a brilliant day.
Rebecca
Thank you so much.
Lee Matthew Jackson
All righty. Bye. And there you have it. Episode 42. Larissa is currently looking at me with a big grin on her face because she knows how many times I’ve tried to record this outro. Anyway, guys, episode 43 is going to be great. We’ve got Chris Van Patten, who will be in the virtual studio sharing his storey and his journey with WordPress. He is a full-time WordPress developer, designer who has also branched out into the software as a service space. So it’s a real fascinating story, and the guy is so freaking wise, he drops value left, right, and centre. So I’m looking forward to sharing that one with you next week. Have a wonderful day, folks. I think I’ve forgotten to mention the Facebook group, so just go ahead, LeeJacksonDev.com/group. Let’s all have a lovely chat in there, and I’ll tell you what, the last cat picture now was ages ago, so come on people, where’s the cat pictures? Okay, keep innovating!
Rebecca
Bye!
