Boost Your DTC Marketing with SEO & CRO: Expert Strategies from Andrew Maff

Unlock new revenue streams and elevate your digital marketing game with my latest episode on direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategies. Promising to boost your e-commerce sales while slashing customer acquisition costs, this episode is packed with actionable insights. 

Join me as I sit down with Andrew Maff from BlueTuskr, who reveals the secrets to driving more conversions with well-structured blog articles and targeting buyer-intent keywords. Learn how seven and eight-figure DTC brands optimize their blogs to not only attract organic traffic but also convert visitors into customers. Andrew shares practical tips on conducting CRO audits, adding custom banners, promoting products, and incorporating effective pop-ups and sidebars, ensuring your blog acts as a powerful conversion tool.

Navigating Google's ever-changing algorithm can be challenging, but we've got you covered. We discuss the importance of producing high-quality, well-researched content and the role of human oversight in AI-generated writing. Andrew Maff also dives into the common friction between SEO and CRO teams, offering strategies to balance these efforts for optimal results. Whether you're leveraging Shopify's features or refreshing old content, this episode is a treasure trove of actionable advice for e-commerce businesses aiming to enhance their digital marketing strategies.

Guest Links

• BlueTuskr
• Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:42

Would you like to unlock new revenue for your business? Direct-to-consumer or DTC marketing strategies may sound like old news, but do you truly grasp their transformative potential in reducing customer acquisition costs and boosting your e-commerce sales? And I don't care if you're B2C or B2B. There is a way to use the strategies that we're going to go through today, so we're going to dive into expert insights with Andrew Math, a seasoned pro in SEO and CRO. From the latest Google updates to creating high converting content, you'll discover actionable strategies to elevate your digital marketing game. We're going to cover this and lots more, so stay tuned to this next episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Digital social media content, influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, vlogging, tiktoking, linkedin, twitter, facebook, instagram, youtube, seo, sem, ppc, email marketing there's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got neil on your side, because neil shaffer is your digital marketing, marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach and this is Neil Schaefer.

Speaker 1: 2:17

Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, and welcome to episode number 367 of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. Before we get to today's interview, I always like to cover the things that I'm following in the industry of digital marketing. Not a lot of news this last week, but the things that I am focused on that I want you to focus on are number one the Google SEO leaks. Hopefully by now you're aware of this, but there was a formal Google SEO algorithm search engine algorithm engineer who leaked a number of data points about how the Google algorithm works, and since then we've started to see a lot of blog posts that have analyzed what the engineer leaked and then are recommending steps to write SEO content according to those leaks. So obviously, the algorithm is always changing and I believe the leaks are from a little while ago, but it's still really insightful and if you want to get a feel for the things that you should do to better optimize, I would definitely check out one of these posts. One that I recommend is called how to Write SEO Content According to the Google Leaks. You can find this on the Foundation blog post, which is foundationincco.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Other interesting news is that we knew that this was coming, if you are involved in video marketing and do anything on YouTube. Up until now, you've probably used my recommended YouTube tool called TubeBuddy to A-B test YouTube thumbnails. In other words, you know, create multiple different versions of thumbnails, as if you're creating an ad with different ad variations in terms of the ad image and the copy. In this case, it's just an image, and then you're testing what does best in terms of colors or features, or what have you, and then it'll automatically TubeBuddy will just automatically choose the winner based on the criteria you give it, and that'll help you optimize your click-through rate for your YouTube videos when they appear in search on the screen. What have you? So now YouTube is now officially allowing creators to test multiple video thumbnails. So this is a new feature that is currently being tested and I assume at some point it's going to come out to the entire platform. So this is something. If you haven't been doing it, you should. And even if you're using TubeBuddy, it still has a heck of a lot more functionality than just what Google is going to offer you through YouTube, but nevertheless, it is exciting news. Google is going to offer you through YouTube, but nevertheless, it is exciting news, and YouTube is. You know we thought that this was going to come earlier, actually, because they've been talking about this since man VidSummit of last year, I think, but it is finally coming, and it's good news to be a YouTube creator, so definitely check that out.

Speaker 1: 4:57

And just on the topic of AI, it's really interesting because LinkedIn is now using AI to streamline your job hunt For those of you that might be in transition, that LinkedIn is using AI to assist you in creating personalized job application materials, suggesting job opportunities and providing tailored recommendations. Now these AI tools automate time-consuming tasks, making the job search process more efficient, helping users find relevant positions more quickly, and I love this approach. And it's just another example how, just like the internet itself, ai is going to be naturally embedded in many of the things we do. And while last week or last episode, I went over the 21 different ways in which I use ChatGPT, it's great to see you know not just other marketing tools vendors, but social networks what have you embed this technology to help its users with very, very specific tasks? So, once again, another reason why, if you are still feeling a little bit late to the AI game, listen to that last episode, number 366, on the 21 ways that I use ChatGPT and hopefully you will find something there to inspire you to use AI a little bit more than maybe you did the day before. And that's really what it's about incremental usage, muscle memory, finding ways, imagining ways in which you can use it to up your game and to stay competitive, not just in the job market, but in the business market, for your business as well.

Speaker 1: 6:25

So today's interview is going to be with Andrew Math. Now he is a DTC expert. He works with a company called Blue Tusker. He'll talk a little bit about that in the interview, but we're really going to focus on how blog articles and the features that you can add to them drive more conversions and not just traffic. How to focus content creation on keywords at a buyer intent, not just informational keywords and areas on your e-commerce website to add additional copy to improve SEO rankings without sacrificing conversion rates. Now, this is very D2C focused but, as I said in the teaser, even if you're a B2B company, we can still be using the same concepts right to make sure that we are optimizing our blogs, our SEO, more for conversions than just mere traffic.

Speaker 1: 7:24

The endorsements, which took a little bit longer than I would have liked, but I want to give these influencers and other authors the chance to read the book and give a thoughtful endorsement, so willing to wait a little bit more time for that, and creating images for the Kickstarter campaign has taken a little bit longer than I'd expected, but I am hoping that these things are going to wrap up in the next 48 to 72 hours, in which case I will be able to go forward, finalize the interior and the back cover of the book and finally request Kickstarter permission to launch the pre-campaign, and then I can introduce you to that landing page so that you will know the first moment that I launch the campaign and that you can get your hands on my upcoming book. All right, so, without further ado, let's jump right back into this interview with Andrew Math from Blue Tusker. You're listening to your Digital Marketing Coach. This is Neil Schafer. Hey everybody, neil Schafer here. Welcome to another live stream edition of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 1: 8:22

E-commerce is still a critical piece for many businesses out there, and when it comes to e-commerce marketing or, these days, the focus away from Amazon and the way for us to directly sell to customer ie DTC, direct-to-consumer e-commerce marketing there is a lot of work that you need to do and of that work, something that doesn't get talked a lot about, I think, in the e-commerce space. We've had previous guests a lot of talk about Facebook ads and what have you. A lot of things that don't get talked about revolve around SEO. So today I'm really excited to have an expert in the space. He is the host of the Ecom Show podcast. He is also the CEO of the e-commerce marketing agency, blue Tusker, andrew Maff.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Andrew, welcome to the show. Hey, neil, thanks for having me Appreciate it. Now I'm excited to get into the topic today. I've had previous guests, like I said, talk about the topic. Before that I want to get started. I've talked with e-commerce marketing experts that have different backgrounds. Some have had their own product, some have worked at big DTC brands and have sharpened their axe there. So, andrew, tell us the backstory of how you got started in all this.

Speaker 3: 9:30

I've been in eCommerce digital marketing for a little over 15 years now. My father actually acquired a small business that was just brick and mortar at the time and he wanted to bring it on online and so I was like that sounds really cool. So I actually worked in his warehouse for a while and then joined him, and so that's kind of where I learned in the beginning. Then in college I was actually in a touring band. I was a drummer and we needed a marketer as well, someone who could handle doing promotions and things like that, and I was like I have most of the experience and so I started there.

Speaker 3: 10:06

I then started an agency in college that was kind of around retail and hospitality Merged. That exited. That went in-house for several years with multiple I was at the time two different eight plus figure brands, d2c sole marketer in-house. So I spent all my time juggling different agencies and different contractors, then left that started another agency. We exited that in late 2019. And I started Blue Tusker in early 2020 with the concept of having an agency of agencies, simply because of the issues I had when I was in-house.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Awesome. Thank you so much. Two interesting things. I was smiling because I also play drums and I also was the marketer. I mean, this is in Japan, early internet days but I was the one who put up our website, who printed out all our flyers and everything that's so funny. I'm curious the timing of Blue Tusker of 2020, was it in any way related to a response to COVID or was it just coincidental timing?

Speaker 3: 11:05

It was just coincidental. We actually started in January, technically Gotcha, so we had exited another agency in late 2019. And it was also a full service e-commerce agency and left there relatively quickly, started in January of 2020. And within about a year or less we ended up getting a majority of our clients back and even some of the people that work there. So it kind of got dissolved from the people that had acquired us and I've basically started it up all over again.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Nice. So I'm sure you work with lots of different types of brand seven figure, eight figure, if not above and I'm really curious. Obviously I want to interview you because you brought up the topic of SEO, which I'm a big fan of, and I also believe in the e-commerce space. It's not given enough love. So why, of all the things that we could talk about today in terms of e-commerce marketing for DTC, why SEO? Let's start there.

Speaker 3: 11:58

I'm always a big fan of SEO because to me it's you're building the asset right, specifically for DTC the way I see it. If you're building the asset right Specifically for D2C the way I see it, if you're going to exit one day, whether you're an Amazon seller or you have your own website, really the only thing that you have is your profitability, your processes, the people that you have, that kind of stuff. But what other assets can you have that are very valuable? One is obviously going to be like an email list, so if you have a good community to work with, your valuation is significantly higher. But another is the amount of traffic that you're able to get to your website because you can pixel those.

Speaker 3: 12:31

So I always use an example of if I was, let's say, a D2C fishing company and a company that did hunting wanted to acquire me, my audience is going to be really aligned with theirs. They could just drop their pixel on our site and be able to expand their other business. So when they go for an acquisition, people start to look at what other assets does this company have? And then you look at the obvious. Let's say you're not looking to exit, having that organic traffic coming in and letting people just get introduced to the brand that way really starts to reduce your customer acquisition costs over time. So you're not so reliant on CPC, and if CPCs keep going up the way that they've been doing every year, it's not going to be very feasible for a lot of people. It's just forcing more inflation online. So by having an SEO approach, you're not so held to that.

Speaker 1: 13:16

So I think thank you very much. I think, theoretically, a lot of people sort of they get it but they'd never seen an action, or they don't know how to track it or they're doing it the wrong way. So, on that note, before we set up this interview, you were talking about how seven and eight figure DDC brands structure their blog articles and the features they add to them to drive more conversion and not just traffic. So traffic is great, but a conversion is even better, right? So take us behind the scenes of what that looks like.

Speaker 3: 13:45

I always say you can't pay your bills with organic traffic. It's a vanity metric. Yes, you can retarget them and that kind of stuff, but if you can get them to convert, you can get them to convert. And the one thing that's always very interesting that I find is you do work. We will work with people all the time that actually do have a strong focus on SEO and maybe they're getting a lot of traffic, and if it's mostly non-branded traffic, there's a good chance a lot of that's going to their blog. So if the first place that someone lands on your website is your blog because of what they were searching for you, it's kind of ridiculous to not put some kind of elements into your blog to get people to convert. So I'm a big fan of CRO as well, because I think investing in your website also helps reduce customer acquisition costs over time, improves retention, et cetera. Nine times out of 10 blogs as a CRO strategy are completely overlooked, and so we love doing Right. When we get started with people we're working with a new brand. The first thing we do is we'll actually do a CRO audit of just their blog so that we can look at do you have? We'll make little custom banners, that you're not going to run ads on your own website, but you can make them so they look like yours. So let's promote a product, let's promote a collection page. Certain apps will give you the functionality to change them all on each blog that you do. So if you're having a sale, let's put that front and center.

Speaker 3: 15:01

The pop-up that you have, is it relevant to the blog that you have? Is it got any kind of gated content? Do you have a sidebar where you want to feature certain products? Or maybe you have some kind of gated content you want to offer there? When people come to your blog, they're really there just to learn something. Your bounce rate is still it shouldn't be too high but the amount of time that they have on that actual page is not very long. They're only there for a few minutes trying to find an answer. They're not reading your massive article. So to have stuff on there to try to get them to convert is really important, so that you're not solely focused on organic traffic. You're also focused on how do I get them to convert or at least get their email address.

Speaker 1: 15:40

That's so true. Obviously, if you're in the B2B space and you're doing blogging, you might be having more lead magnet types of things, but I always find it funny when so many companies don't make use of their own internal blog within the text of placing those things that look like ads. Don't know why so many people don't think about that, but I think that approach is awesome. I love the personalized approach based on the content topic that defines what those things look like the sidebar, the pop-up and, once again, I don't think a lot of companies go that far into that. So, based on doing that, I always say the success of the SEO is the traffic, but if it's not converting and obviously there's a hard convert and a soft convert the hard convert is to become a customer, the soft is that email. How do you balance those two things? Obviously, we want to promote the product first, but how do you balance that if they don't buy the product, at least get their email address? When you construct this CRO strategy, yeah, when we're looking at just blogs.

Speaker 3: 16:34

For that specific example, I will typically lean more towards getting gated high, so it could be more likely that they're willing to convert, and it could also depend on the article. If the article is written and the keywords that you're targeting do have a bit of a higher purchase intent, then I'm going to lean more towards like let's push them to product, let's push them to collection page. Maybe I give them 10% off their first order or something classic like that. But if it's something that's a lot more informative and it's a little bit more top of funnel, then I'm going to ease into it. Then I'm going to look at more of that soft conversion, gated content. To your point.

Speaker 3: 17:27

This is a relatively standard practice for B2B marketing and it's always something that I found shocking at D2C sellers. They just don't do it. Their blogs are just they're not structured correctly. There's a couple H tags and that's it. There's no links, there's no imagery. People think that I'm just going to write all these words and throw it up on a blog and I'm going to start to rank really well. But if you're not breaking up copy and you don't have any images, you don't have bullet points, stuff like that. It's hard to read and so you get this high bounce rate. You're not going to convert anything. There's so many different things where there's just not a focus on the way your blog looks and functions, let alone the copy that you're putting up there.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Right, and I've worked as a fractional CMO. I work with a lot of different industries and I've worked with some e-commerce minds and it's always they don't get the blog. But it's funny going through what you just mentioned. I guess even if they don't hard or soft convert, they're still pixeled in. So there's still that potential right At a worst case scenario, which once again, is another benefit of the blog.

Speaker 3: 18:27

Yeah, exactly, you can have those keywords that you're going after that have a very high intent, right. They have a purchase intent or they're clearly looking for information that's relevant to your product. But what a lot of sellers don't think about is you can also look at how do you just attract a relevant audience, right? So, for example, we've done a lot of work with this beef jerky company and we're putting out like two or three articles a week that really don't talk about beef jerky very often, but it's kind of a keto-friendly snack and so it also kind of comes into exercise and take care of yourself. It's a travel snack. So we're doing articles about hiking and outdoor events and different snacks to take to games, and it's very, very high level.

Speaker 3: 19:09

But all I need to do is attract a relevant audience and then either my gated content or my retargeting ads are going to pick up and do the work from there. So it's a much more top of funnel approach. But a lot of D2C sellers will be like what do I need a blog for? My audience isn't reading blogs, but that's not accurate at all and pretty much everyone is reading a blog. It's just a matter of what is the content you're putting out, and is it very high, like top of funnel, where you're putting out, and is it very high, like top of funnel, where you're just trying to bring in a relevant audience, or are you writing it to try to get them to convert? Because there could be two very different things.

Speaker 1: 19:41

Yeah, I agree 100% and, on that note, another thing that we discussed was how to focus content creation on keywords that have buyer intent, not just informational keywords. So can you go a little bit, and I think that's that's really where the rubber hits the road when it comes to SEO, but can you talk about or elaborate on that a little bit?

Speaker 3: 20:00

Yeah, exactly so kind of like I mentioned with some stuff is really top of funnel, others is not. It's got more of a purchase intent. So let's go back to the fishing one, the fishing example I had I don't know why, I don't fish very often so let's say you're a fishing company and you sell bait, right, or you sell fishing lures. So you're writing an article about the top X fishing lures to catch sea bass, right? So that is a very clearly high intent. They're trying to find fishing lures. So that one's got a higher intent. So that one you definitely want to make sure you've got. You know little like we'll do like custom banners over to products or to collection pages If you want to have some kind of incentive like hey, try one of these lures, get 10% off, that kind of thing, those are fantastic.

Speaker 3: 20:49

But we focus really heavily on on a relatively like traditional pillar approach. So basically you write a significantly longer article that is very a ton of information in it, and then it's broken out into all these different sections and then we make other articles that expand on those sections. So basically you're writing one big piece, you have all these other little pieces that link to the pillar piece and you focus on driving traffic to the pillar piece, your page authority for the smaller blogs goes up. And then, with that pillar piece, let's say that part of it was the best lures to use when fishing, and one of those was specific to sea bass. So that's my tiny little blog that I've got. Now I've got all my product links to it. So the more that I can improve the page authority of that page, my products page authority will also go up.

Speaker 3: 21:38

So when you're looking at words that have a higher buyer intent, you really have to make sure that that's where you're layering in promoting certain products, linking to certain products, because if you can get the ranking of that article to improve, your products will go along with it.

Speaker 3: 21:53

So it's really an approach to get your products to rank better, because we'll get questions all the time about should we be having 2,000 words on our product pages, and I personally don't think that that works very well at all. Yes, you can do it and yes, from an SEO perspective it might get you to rank better. But the issue is, when you load up that much copy on a product page, it's extremely overwhelming. The consumer feels like there's so much information here I don't want to read it, but I also feel like I'm going to miss something important. So they just don't buy it at all, so it'll hurt your conversion rate. So, product pages while you make sure that they're written for a keyword perspective so that you can try to get them to rank, you've got to walk a really fine line so that you can try to get them to rank.

Speaker 1: 22:38

You've got to walk a really fine line so that you're not hurting your conversion rate. Yeah, and I love that you also mentioned the unsung hero of SEO, which is internal linking, of actually making it easy for people to get from your blog to the page but also giving them that SEO juice should that blog post rank. So, yeah, excellent advice. I wanted to ask you and I guess because of the timing this is March 15th I don't think we could have a conversation about SEO without talking about the recent Google updates. So and this is the first time that my site, actually the first two times over the course of more than a decade that even my site has taken a hit.

Speaker 1: 23:07

So we had the Google helpful content update, obviously last fall, and then we had the most recent sort of anti-spam update, and I suppose if you're always writing great content for humans with personal experience, personal opinion, then you're not going to have any issues right, but unfortunately in business that doesn't always happen all the time. So I'm curious what you have seen. Have you seen any changes? Would you change any advice that you're giving based on what's been going on? Because there's certain industries, for instance, recipe bloggers, I know, that rely on ad revenue, have really taken a hit, and that's obviously if you have a lot of ads in your site, and most DTC brands would not have ads on their sites. It's not an issue, but just curious if you've seen anything.

Speaker 3: 23:49

Yeah, we've definitely seen a handful of clients already where they got hit and others where it did the opposite and all of a sudden they were scaling up over the past week. So it's still very new that we're trying to figure out like, all right, how is this going to shake out? Every time Google does something, though, like this, it goes up and it goes down, and then it kind of levels out a little bit. Everyone panics for a little while and then they forget about it At the end of the day, though, it's still really funny to me, because it's a very common thing, for all marketers is like how can I hack this system Right, quick?

Speaker 2: 24:22

wins.

Speaker 3: 24:23

Back in the day it was little tricks of the trade you can do with Facebook. Amazon sellers had more little things that they thought they could do that were like kind of gray hat, like all the time and every single day. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people that still implement strategies like that and don't realize that if you just play the game correctly, you're in a much better position. Every great, every large company you think of all the Fortune 500 companies, all these big guys from a marketing perspective, they're not sitting there trying to hack the system. They're not getting black hat backlinks, they're not doing these weird drive traffic to a page that's a blank page but auto redirects and it gives you like it's ridiculous. All that stuff is so wildly unnecessary and so if you're writing bad content or if you are just spamming a ton of ridiculous keywords into an article, you deserve to get hit. Fine, let them fall. You have to be putting out quality content and I know that this is going to come up.

Speaker 3: 25:28

It's the same conversation we have with AI all the time Sometimes. Yes, we absolutely use AI because it's quicker. It allows us to speed up the research. From a writing perspective, it's great. However, you still have to have a subject matter expert overseeing the writing process. You still have to have a traditional editor who's editing everything and ensuring that you're following the brand voice guideline and all that stuff. You still have to have people back double checking, research, linking to correct places, implementing it into your website correctly with the proper structures and imagery and breaking it up so it's easy to read.

Speaker 3: 26:04

There's so many other aspects outside of the AI thing that everyone's like why do I even need articles anymore if I can just do AI? Go ahead, go do AI for a month and let me know how that works out for you. It does look good. It does sound good, but it's like, looking at which I'm sure you've seen, like the AI videos you just know it's a little off. It's like there's something that makes you uneasy about it. That's how I feel about if you just let AI write the article and just leave it as is. It's like it's kind of uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 26:42

Yeah, and I think, if we look back at history, this is obviously one way Google is trying to control every company on earth just AI generating tons of content and throwing it up there. It's just interesting, because my content doesn't do any of those things you talked about, and I'm sure other companies get hit and yeah, it'll be interesting. And I agree that if you're doing the right thing from the first part, you just keep doing what you're doing and over time it'll adjust. I'm a big believer in that. I don't think the algorithm or Google hates any business in particular, but they want you to create helpful content.

Speaker 3: 27:08

You should be creating helpful content, so yeah, yeah, and I find it's also with just refreshing your content. That's another issue that I find so many people they write a blog, they publish the blog and then they just move on to the next one. And Google likes it when you refresh things. So, like to your point, our site. There was a handful of articles that I saw in the past week. They all took a hit, but they're also articles that we haven't updated since like 2021. So I looked at it and was like, yeah, I kind of understand it. And then there's other ones where we've refreshed them recently, like in the past few months, and they went up.

Speaker 3: 27:41

So it's kind of a matter of like, so many people write articles and then they just publish them and go ah, we didn't rank for that word, let's move on to the next one. But really, what you're supposed to do is focus a specific article on a specific keyword and then just keep tweaking it and keep adjusting it. You're going to write your other articles that are relevant to it and linking, and there's a lot of other technical aspects that go around that. But you can't just write one for a keyword and it doesn't work out and you move on to the next. You have to constantly be refreshing it, constantly be adjusting it, pulling reports, seeing what you've got to adjust so that Google likes to know that it's fresh, new content and you're keeping an eye on it, as opposed to just pumping out a ton of stuff that ChatGPT did for you.

Speaker 1: 28:21

Yeah, and I think it's also interesting. I don't have a DTC site, it's more of an information site. I'm a speaker, consultant, author, right, so I tend to have a lot of listicle posts, but a lot of listicle posts about technology, and what I've noticed is specifically in these sorts of like I'm looking for an AI paraphraser, or like influencer marketing tools I'll give that as a great example and in the past, in the top 10 results, there'll be a lot of articles like top 15 influencer marketing tools or what have you, and I've seen a lot of those keyword phrases that used to have a lot of those listicles.

Speaker 1: 28:55

Google is just not showing listicles anymore, it's just showing companies, right, and I'm wondering if Google is realizing that the future of the search engine is pay to play. Is those companies that they want to pay up? They're starting to give them a little bit better search engine results so that they see the value of the traffic. I don't know, it's just my own personal feeling when I see that Obviously this comes down to search intent and how they rank things based on search intent, but definitely some significant shifts and that might explain why some companies are actually seeing an improvement in their traffic. So we'll wait and see. That's just my personal theory. No data yet, but I do feel that this was a pretty significant the first in like a bird panda on that scale of change age.

Speaker 3: 29:34

Yeah, I mean, there's proven stuff around. If you're running a good amount of Google ads and all of a sudden you were to stop them, you're going to see your organic traffic fall. And that is. You could theorize it's Google just knowing that they're not getting money from you anymore and so they did it. But there's also just a matter of less page views, less traffic to the site. Your bounce rate might not be as good. There's less activity on your site. So from a ranking perspective, that's what Google is looking at. So you start to fall. It makes a lot of sense. Google is starting to show more companies to your point, as opposed to listicles. You could argue that maybe it's because those companies are probably running a pretty good amount of Google ads and spending a good amount of money and getting a good amount of traffic for it, and so they're like you know what we actually know the best influencer marketing tool out there, because they're paying us to say so and so they get increased. You get theories around that, but then you start looking at longer tail keywords and you find different approaches to it. But it'll be interesting.

Speaker 3: 30:37

Every time they do a big update like this, there's a really big shakeup. I remember one in fall. We had a client of ours that just when Google did the update in fall, we had a client of ours that just threw us in a panic. We were like, ah crap, it just tanked and then in a week they were completely back where they were and trending back in the right direction, and we didn't do any major changes.

Speaker 3: 30:59

So it was kind of a matter of it was extremely drastic, which is why I remembered it, because I was like I don't know what google's doing, but like it's sometimes it's just a matter of like, wait it out and let the algorithm kind of shake itself out, because it's almost like they put in new rules and then they almost do like a reset as well at least that seems to be how it feels a lot of times. So sometimes I'll just let it like let's let it sit for a good like 30, 60 days and see what happens and then see if there's anything else we need to change. But nine times out of 10, google is simply putting new rules into place to make sure that you're putting out quality content. So as long as you're always focused on that, it'd be fine.

Speaker 1: 31:37

Yeah, as you're always focused on that, it'll be fine. Yeah, and to your point, I often see, before these big changes, I often see a little spike in traffic, then a huge drop and then a level off and it seems okay. When I see the spike in traffic, I want to celebrate, but I have a feeling the change is in the air, like when we have hot weather. Here in Southern California I used to call it earthquake weather because we tend to get earthquakes on hot days.

Speaker 1: 31:52

So anyway but yeah, it's really interesting and I mean, obviously you have AI and you have the competition from them that's also in the background here but yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens over time and we really don't know what's going on. I also take this as an opportunity because I think there's the content quality, but I think there's also this you know, the EEAT and just the trustworthiness of the website. Like, do you have a cookie management software, which I actually never had, and I'm sort of embarrassed about that. So I started implementing that and really looking at the top sites in my niche that didn't get hit and then saying, okay, what are they doing that I'm not doing, and using this as an opportunity to improve not just the content but also those infrastructure pieces or the user experience. So so, yeah, it's all good, we learn from these algorithm changes for sure, and hopefully we improve yeah exactly.

Speaker 3: 32:38

That's why they do them. At least I think yeah, so exactly.

Speaker 1: 32:41

I think they are there to educate us. So one other thing we talked about at a micro level about blogs and SEO keywords, and one other thing we want to talk about today is taking a step back areas on your e-commerce website to add additional copy to improve SEO rankings without sacrificing conversion rates. It sounds like getting the best of both worlds. So I'm curious as to what your strategy is there behind that.

Speaker 3: 33:06

So that kind of is a little bit about what I was mentioning too with the product pages. You can add on more copy to try to get your product pages to rank better, but if you add on too much it can really hurt your conversion rate. I know everyone who's listening to this podcast right now. If they Googled something and they went to a page and it was all copy unless you're Googling a certain novel and you found it, there's a good chance you're going to be really overwhelmed. You're not going to want to read it. You can't skim through to try to find the exact answer you want by just headlines catching your eye. So too much copy can really hurt your overall conversion rate.

Speaker 3: 33:44

Now this is where SEO and CRO kind of combine and typical of every marketing strategy, they all overlap with everything. But this one is where it can get a little interesting because so for us specifically, we're a full service agency, so I have a team that just does CRO, I have a team that just does SEO, and sometimes they butt heads and it's simply because SEO wants more words on the page. Cro teams tell them like uh not happening, so like it's comical to watch it, but like you've got it on a product page. Let's say, right, like. You'll get people like, oh, I'll just, I'll stuff up the product description. Like, no, no, no, no, you don't want to do that. What you could explore, though, is maybe down below, towards maybe where your reviews are at, add in like an FAQ section with, like an accordion option. So if they want more copy, let them have it, but that way it's on the page, it's getting indexed, but you're not forcing it on them.

Speaker 3: 34:36

The thing that came to my head, though, when you first brought that up nine times out of 10, I'm looking at their collection page, right, so the page where all their products are listed, before they get to their product page, adding additional copy underneath the products, right? So let's say, you're shopping. You're looking at we can do fishing. Again, you're looking at lures. You've got pages and pages of lures, right. So down at the bottom, you have the paginated like oh, there's five pages of lures here Beneath that. It's usually just it goes right into your footer. So, nine times out of 10, underneath the pagination and above your footer, we're going to add a good chunk of copy.

Speaker 3: 35:14

We might do like a paragraph or two, but then we might also layer in FAQ.

Speaker 3: 35:19

We might layer in, like some like more like branded areas with imagery and copy and even though, like, if you upload like a heat map to your website and you take a look at, like you know where are people going, they may not get down there, it's going to help you from an SEO perspective because you have more terms and more keywords on that page and, depending on the words that you're using, typical SEO structure you want to have internal links, maybe you want to have outbound links. You know you want to have specific call-outs. That's another great spot for you to link to specific articles that you're mentioning or other products. So there's areas on your D2C site that you can get to rank better from an SEO perspective. You've just got to tread lightly so that you don't hurt your conversion rate and typically the ones that have the highest intent that you want to make sure are showing up are going to be your product pages and your collection pages. So that means you've just got to be careful about overloading with too much copy.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Yeah, I mean, even getting to the battle between CRO and SEO is a positive thing that you're seriously looking at both issues, so that's good. But yeah, it's funny because, for those that don't know, shopify CMS will just automatically create this collections page and it becomes an integral part of your website and it's sort of like these category pages on WordPress that become pages that you have the ability to add text, you know, on top of that before they show all the posts once again for SEO, I never thought that about collection pages, so that makes you know, a lot of sense, but obviously if you have too much, then your conversion goes down. So you need that. You need the yin and the yang right, that perfect combination. So that's really awesome advice, andrew, I really love you know to all of my listeners.

Speaker 1: 36:52

There's a lot of people that pitch me to want to come on this podcast and you know, obviously, andrew and I this is the first time we've ever talked, but I try to do my best beforehand to really understand what their thoughts are, what value they can add, and it's really awesome talking with an Truly knows his stuff, as I think you all hear from our conversation here. So, andrew, yeah, really love the talk. Just real basic meat and potatoes. Real straightforward, easy to understand advice, obviously based on a lot of experience. Tell the listener how they can find out more about you, your podcast and your agency. What types of customers you're looking for. How can they contact you.

Speaker 3: 37:28

Yeah, bluetuskercom, it's B-L-U-E-T-U-S-K-R. We are a full-service marketing company for e-commerce sellers. We basically act as like an outsourced marketing department. For the most part. You can find out more about me let's say LinkedIn, obviously, andrew Maff, I also andrewmaffcom is easy enough, and all my social stuff is on there. The Ecom Show podcast it's a weekly podcast where I interview different D2C sellers and other experts in the industry, and we also have the Click and Conversion newsletter, which is a weekly newsletter that I co-author. That goes out on a weekly basis, kind of an update of what's going on in the e-commerce industry, specifically more on the D2C side, and that's relevant for people with their own D2C sites Amazon sellers, walmart sellers, pretty much everything from an e-commerce perspective.

Speaker 1: 38:12

Awesome, we heard it right there. If you're in, if e-commerce is your thing, you definitely want to hook up with Andrew. Follow him on the socials, listen to his podcast, subscribe, subscribe to the newsletter and if you're looking for an agency, definitely reach out Andrew. This has been awesome. Any other advice? Just looking at as the year goes by, we obviously have the SEO part, email part. We have paid advertising, paid media. We have organic social.

Speaker 3: 38:40

Any other sort of trends or advice you'd like to give our listeners.

Speaker 3: 38:43

Really, seo and CRO are the two things that I always find to be something that most sellers don't take a strong enough focus on, and mainly, in my opinion, it's because, specifically paid ads, it's money in, money out.

Speaker 3: 38:55

You get quick wins. It's like gambling, but SEO and CRO are going to reduce those customer acquisition costs over time. So your paid advertising will actually perform better if you start focusing on your SEO, getting in organic traffic and CRO making sure that the traffic you are getting is converting better. If you start focusing on your SEO, getting in organic traffic and CRO making sure that the traffic you are getting is converting better. So investing into your website's improvements over time and building that website into an asset to me is significantly more important than just pouring gas into Google ads and Facebook ads and TikTok ads, if TikTok survives, ads and Facebook ads and TikTok ads if TikTok survives. And so it's just a matter of focus on the future as well as the present, so that you're thanking yourself later on down the line, because SEO and CRO take a long time to start to show their face, but once you start, you're going to be really glad you did.

Speaker 1: 39:46

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, and I just hope that more eCommerce business owners would listen to what you're saying and the world will be a better place.

Speaker 1: 39:54

And to me. I mean, it's about building an asset. And the Facebook ads, the Google ads, just do not build assets so you might be successful today. There's no guarantee you're successful tomorrow. You don't own any of that, but you own your asset, your content, the traffic optimized. So all great advice. Andrew, thank you so much for spending your time with us today and looking forward to connecting again in the future. Thanks for having me Appreciate it. All right, I hope you enjoyed that interview.

Speaker 1: 40:19

I love bringing on different experts. As you know, I tend to bring on other influencers, other authors and other experts that you know. I have a lot of people that reach out to me. In fact, just FYI, I just wrote this the other day, but just this year, right as I record this, it is June 15th, 2024. And I have already had let's see here, I've already had 75 people reach out to me this year and I only interviewed 25 people a year and I prefer to interview, like friends of mine that are also fellow authors and fellow influencers in the industry, like you've heard in past episodes. So I'm really selective as to who I bring on, because I want to make sure that they offer you the absolute value, and I think Andrew definitely did and, by the way, at the beginning I covered some of this industry news with you.

Speaker 1: 41:09

If you want to stay up to date, that news actually came from what I just shared in my weekly newsletter, so obviously you can stay tuned on a weekly basis for this podcast. But if you want to get the email version and you want to get more industry news and also my latest updates in terms of my latest YouTube videos and blog posts, make sure you sign up to my newsletter. It is neilschafercom slash newsletter. Hopefully you know how to spell my name, but, just in case, n-e-a-l-s-c-h-a-f-f-e-rcom slash newsletter. Alrighty. Well, that's it for another episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast.

Speaker 2: 41:43

This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schafer signing off that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your Digital Marketing Coach.