SEO Attribution Is COMPLETELY F**CKED

The headline here is SEO attribution is completely effed, right? Because all you're getting now, like you're getting way more impressions now, but you're not getting the clicks. And so what, what should you do about attribution, right? Let me tell you one thing. No, no, gimme the, the cookies real quick. Okay, so anyway, the cookies over here, guys, I'm not getting paid to say this. Everything's sourdough, right? These are healthier cookies, right? Like they have all these healthy ingredients. I bought this off of, I, I, I, I can't even attribute to who tweeted this, but I bought 6 bags instantly. And then Neil just ordered 6 bags over here. I, I ordered 6 bags. I bought 6 bags when I landed in Miami for my event a couple weeks ago as I just got the bags. And these are, I'm like, healthier cookies, sounds amazing. That robot vacuum that I was telling you about that scans your whole place, that's about to arrive, right? I bought that for $1,200, but someone tweeted it and then I read a Wired article and I bought it. You cannot attribute that. I bought a Starlink Mini last week. I sent you the link to it. Why did I send it to you? 'Cause there's a discount. So Elon retweeted a discount for 50% off. I'm like, done, discount.

But you gotta pay a monthly fee.

I'm not going to pay the monthly fee. I can cancel. I can come and go for the $50 a month or $100 a month or whatever it is. It's not a contract.

Or do you have Wi-Fi or cell service on your iPad?

No, I'm too cheap.

Oh, so I do that.

Yeah, I'm too cheap.

I always do it because if I'm doing like a webinar or something and we have like 5,000 people and I get disconnected, I have a backup.

Oh, how fast is it?

It's really fast.

Like, did you run it on fast.com?

Here, uh, if I actually disconnect from Wi-Fi right now.

Well, while, while you do that, I, I think the point of what I'm saying is that, you know, that the quote, remember in the 1800s, one guy, a really rich dude was like, you know, um, half my marketing works. I just don't know which half, right?

Yeah.

And that, that's, that's okay. It's, it's, by the way guys, this is called marketing school, but marketing is a subset of business. Business means doing a good job for your customers. And marketing is that supports that. It's not marketing first, then business. Go ahead.

It's fast. So the download, it goes from 18 to 40. So it's somewhere in that range.

Not fast enough.

But it's fast enough for like a webinar or anything that you need to end up doing on it. I can stream Netflix, no problem.

High quality?

Uh-huh.

Really? Wow. Well, still.

This is the download speed here, but we're in a steel building right now. The moment I go outside, the reception goes bad.

But my point is you can't attribute this stuff, right? Like you just bought it the way I bought it. It's like you just, you just, And I'm not saying don't think about attribution, you should. But I think the problem is 10, 15 years ago, especially you and I like working in tech, I think we over-index on trying to attribute every little thing. Yes. And that over-obsession actually ends up costing you. You over-optimize. And I know for a fact, cuz you and I open Google Analytics every day. I, it was an unhealthy obsession. Yeah.

But dude, going back to the cookies and attribution there, I, Eric was like, oh, this is the company. You just go to their website. I Googled everything sourdough. And I could not find their website. And he's like, dude, just use the QR code on the back. And their website was like everything-sourdough-co.com. It wasn't even in the top 10 when I Googled it. I'm like, this is just terrible. But I was able to scan it and then buy it. But I agree with you, attribution is getting tougher and tougher. And I think that's going to be the way it's going to continue moving forward. You have a vacuum that cleans your whole house. You're going to test it out soon. Let me know if it works.

You're for sure going to buy it.

Um, but I saw on Instagram little mini goat carts that work inside your house.

Goat carts?

Uh-huh. And they're called like, uh, like Kid Cleaner Cart or something like that. I'm getting the name wrong, but I know it has cleaner in there. And it has a mop attachment that you put in the front. And it puts like a Swiffer pad at the bottom. So when my kids, I got 2 of them, one for each. So when they zoom around, it goes 5 miles. I have wooden floors. It straight up sweeps up everything on the floors.

Did you buy it?

I've had it for a long time. I saw an Instagram video of it. It was like $200-something each. Bought 2 of them. My kids use it probably for 20 to 30 minutes a day. They clean up the house, sweep up like all the dust and everything without me doing anything. That's great.

That, see, that could be attributed though. So we're not saying, guys—

No, but how's it attributed? No one knows because I saw it on Instagram.

It was on Instagram Shops or an ad?

No, it was just an Instagram video of someone showing—

Oh, it was an organic post.

And then I just Google it and I found it on Amazon. And then I go from there, but there is—

3 touchpoints, look at that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when I Googled it, found it on Amazon, and then from there I picked one. There was tons of different options, bought one of them.

So our point here is guys, like, don't worry. Like, yes, you should. We're not saying don't abdicate tracking. You should keep tracking whatever you can. But also don't over-index on tracking too much. And I, so when they say SEO attribution is completely effed, maybe, maybe not, but like, you know, do what you can, but then focus more on creating a good product and getting more word of mouth.

Dude, but attribution, if you look at analytics, a lot of it's been not provided for ages.

Over 10 years. Yeah.

Use, I don't know how long, but it's been a long time. Use Google Search Console to get more data. It's hard to get exact conversion data for specific keywords. Uh, it's easier to get conversion data when you're actually bidding on the keyword and you can see it. And a lot of the studies we've done, we look at AdWords data to figure out which keywords organically convert the best.

And by the way, like sometimes when I listen to some of these e-commerce podcasts, like, like they start using all these, uh, mixed media modeling, incrementality testing and all this shit, right? And I'm just like, that sounds all cool, but you can't try to over-index over. And it's like these, it starts to become this science, right? Um, and, but business is, there's, it's part science, but it's also part just delivering good value and being good to your customers and listening to your customers. So you gotta do both.

Yes. But I get why large corporations do the media mix modeling because when you're spending $100 million, $200 million, totally. You want some data.

I'm, I'm talking about the e-commerce companies that are not even these large corporations that are over-indexed. You're like, you're too small to over-index on this stuff.

I agree. Yeah. And even the large corporations, they do all this stuff.

Yeah.

Part of it is science. Part of it is gut feeling and art. And then it's just going from there.

It's not or, it's and, right?

Yes.

I think too many people have gone for or and that's what it is. So that's why I say, look, website traffic is going down and like attribution might be going down as well. But you know, that is your opportunity. And I think, what is this? Rand Fishkin, I think he popularized like, we're in this world of zero-click marketing now. But that is your opportunity to do well on YouTube, for example. Like we're spending more time on optimizing on YouTube. That's your chance to do better on other channels, better on email, maybe owning your audience as well. And so there's a lot of opportunity and it's very much a blue ocean when it comes to doing hard work. It's a red ocean with the easy work, right?

Yeah.

So do the harder stuff and you'll be in a blue ocean, which means less competition.

Yes.

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And I look at things like SEO, whether it's search everywhere optimization or the traditional SEO, you got to do this stuff to be top of mind and have your brand out there. If you don't, you're going to end up losing revenue. And I look at digital marketing turning into television advertising.

Hmm.

When you think about television advertising companies for so many years, even right now, I know there's companies like Tatari that help track in when people have internet-based or connected TV. to try to say, oh, they watched a commercial, then they went to your website and converted. It's not exact, but it kind of works. But I look at this whole model here of the traditional old-school TV advertising where companies did it for a very long time and just got their brand out there. This is why companies like Amex or Nike or Mercedes—

Coca-Cola.

Or Coca-Cola have done so well. Their brand is just out there because of all the years of just pushing Brand-related marketing.

Yeah, dude. We can come back to Google on YouTube in a second, but I just got this one.

So Palmer Luckey was doing you know Palmer Luckey, the Enduro guy, who's also did Oculus.

Yeah, so he sold Oculus to Meta, and so he so I have this quote in here. I think he was doing an interview with Peter Peter Diamandis, but let me just read this to you because because you had a blog post on this a very long time ago. Okay, so you you see Trump here. He's with one of the sheiks, right? I think this from Saudi Arabia.

So what is the the sheikh wearing?

That's. Doha. Doha. Doha.

Okay.

Qatar. Okay. So what is he wearing?

He's wearing sandals.

Okay.

And similar to what I'm wearing right now, but mine are black.

Yeah. Okay. And then Trump's dressed up really well. Right. And Trump usually will wear like a suit.

So the point is for them that is dressed up.

Yeah.

But that's not casual. So they have different versions of that clothing.

Yeah.

It's more so because it gets 120 degrees. They tend to wear all white.

This part's fine. I think this is funny to me. I like, and I'm sure the sandals are nice and they're really expensive. Right. But Harshdeep Rappal says, if you have enough money, no one asks you if you have a business suit or shoes. And then Palmer Luckey is like, this is definitely true of my experience. And then Palmer Luckey, he's got like this goatee. He's like always wearing shorts and stuff, right? Yeah. Um, but point is, you know, we've talked about this before. Like, don't get me wrong. I think you and I, we like nice things. Let me establish that we like nice things. But for the most part, like I'm usually wearing like yoga clothes. Um, and then you're wearing like a yoga, like, uh, Vuori.

I wear Vuori and Buck Mason. That's my daily outfit. So.

The, the, the thing here is, does dressing nice make you more money? I think it depends on the industry that you're in. So if you're doing real estate or if you're like an investor and not like, yes, you should probably wear like a suit all the time. Right. Um, but it doesn't, it just depends on the industry that you're in. Um, but I think what we found is that dressing nice, at least for me, I'll speak for myself, doesn't typically make me more money cuz I, I have, you know, I have the cool suits and all that type of stuff, but I hardly wear it cuz it's just not comfortable to me. No.

Do you actually have suits?

Yeah, of course. I have like, I have like, usually you're supposed to have a couple go-tos. Like, that's what I have.

I bought one recently and it's my only suit.

Really?

Yeah.

But you had so many.

I don't fit in them anymore.

Oh, that's right.

I've gained like 10 pounds.

Yeah, but you used to have a lot. I remember your Vegas closet.

Like 20 to 30 suits.

That's a lot.

And tuxes and stuff like that.

That's a lot.

And then sport coats and jackets and all that stuff.

Yeah, you gave me one. I still have one of your sports coats, the Tom Ford one, right? But so, The point here is, and by the way, you used to have a stylist and everything, and now you don't care as much anymore. Like, I think this stuff is still nice, but you don't care as much.

Dude, so I was, you know, we both shop at Brunello Cucinelli, right? I think that's probably my go-to store. I'm assuming that's yours as well.

It's the best.

And before, you know, I shopped a lot at Loro Piana. I think the majority of my wardrobe is from Loro Piana, Tom Ford, probably next. Brunello is the newest brand, but I've been shopping with them for a while now. And I would say those are probably the 3 main places, you know, where my clothes are from.

So you want a discount on it? One of our mutual friends, because he's so good with people, can get a like a 40-50% discount on Brunello.

I don't really buy much anymore.

Okay, see that? Just let us know in the future.

Yeah, so, and this is where I was getting to. You know, I've been working with, uh, some of the same people for so many years, and some of them know that I end up spending money on clothes. Like, a lot of my Loro hoodies are like $4,000 or $5,000 a pop, but they look like $20, you know, just casual hoodies.

Yeah.

And I wear them not because of the brand. You can't see the logo, you know, unless you— I take it off and it's on the inside and it's just a tag. Um, I wear them because it's soft and they're super comfortable. And I have a lot of the same ones in case, you know, kid spits up on it or one rips. Yeah, one rips. Um, but going through that whole process, I've bought a lot of fancy clothes. And, you know, a lot of people I work with always tell me, you spend all this money on clothes, you don't really wear any of them. And I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, if you look at what you really wear, you wear— I tend to wear Viori I don't know what they're called, like yoga pants, right? Well, let's call it $100. And I have one for every day of the week. It's the same exact color, looks exactly the same. There's no difference. I just have duplicates of them. And I wear these Buck Nation t-shirts, which I don't know how much they cost, $20, $30, $40, $50 max. And I have 20 of them in my closet or 30 or something like that. And I buy 'em like once or twice a year, but they're just like, you have all this nice stuff. This is all you wear. And you usually put a sweater on top. that's typically blue or gray in color, and it's Loro Piana, and it's just a standard normal looking sweater that I may have spent $1,000 something to $4,000 on. And I tend to wear the ones that are $1,000 to $2,000 the most because other than the hoodies, the hoodies are expensive, but they're just the most comfortable. And they're just like, you start shopping at Brunello and Tom Ford, like you wear none of it. I'm like, oh yeah, this is a good point. And I started looking at how much I'm spending on shopping a year. I didn't go back long enough, but I was looking at my credit card statements. Call it on average 20 grand a month for clothes. I don't really wear any of it. So over the last few months, I just cut it all off and my closet is still the same size. And when I look at what I actually wear, because I'm, you know, really paying attention now to what I pick, no joke, I wear like 3 or 4 sweaters, same white t-shirts, same pants, same shoe, and that's it. And I don't wear anything else in my closet even though I have it. And I've gotten to the point, because I still speak a lot, I have these like gray dress pants from Loro Piana. They won't make me any more of them because they don't have the fabric anymore. And I've— I have like 12 or 13. But you know, I was talking to my wife and I was like, do you think I can get away speaking in very Yoga pants. And she's like, don't go that far.

Why not? And look at what Gary Vee wears when he speaks.

Dude, that's what I was saying. I was like, but why can't I? I don't want to wear dress pants anymore. And you know, because my business is global and we're in so many countries, in certain countries, like in Asia, like when I go to Hong Kong, everyone dresses up. So in certain countries, I would feel more uncomfortable wearing the yoga pants, but still I'm like, why can't I? Who the crap cares?

Well, your sweater's nice enough, so how are they gonna know, right? That, that's my perspective. 'Cause usually you're wearing a nice sweater up top and the other stuff is just yoga and your inside's still a Henley. Um, and by the way, when you look at Gary, like he's always wearing a hat, right? He's always wearing like a t-shirt or whatever. And so like he is just, that's just who he is. And so my point is we've gotten older now where maybe that stuff might've mattered when in our 20s. I just don't care anymore.

Yeah, that's true. I think I should just try speaking at conferences and wearing yoga pants.

Yeah, I thought you've been doing that already.

No, I wear the Loro Piana dress pants.

But these look the same to me. I'm sorry, they look the same to me.

No, but they're slacks. You can tell that they're slacks. They have a crease in the middle.

This is how much I don't care. I just, I just, to me, you look the same because also guys don't care too. Yeah, guys don't care. But here's, here's what I want to call it too. Like, um, so yes, Neil had a blog post a long time ago. This is like, uh, in our mid-20s or so. On how he spent X amount of dollars and it made him this amount. But like, it wasn't like a huge amount at the end of the day, right?

It helped. It was revenue, not profit that I made. So I'd probably still say it was a loss because if you look at how much I spent on clothes, when you're generating revenue, there's expenses on that. But the big thing I would say when I did that article and I did that experiment, times have changed. Back then, more people dressed up than they do now. I think we've gone to athleisure wear culture.

Well, it's because tech made it cool, right? A lot of tech people, Mark Zuckerberg just wore whatever. But now Mark Zuckerberg is wearing nice things.

Yeah, but if you look, that article is more than 10 years old.

Yeah, right.

Uh, athleisure wear wasn't as popular as it is now.

It was starting to become, it was, it was on its way up.

It was on its way up, but it was nowhere near where it is now. And especially in the corporate world, people were not wearing athleisure wear.

Yeah.

Now they wear athleisure wear. Um, and then the other thing is, and I would still say this is relevant when you're younger, I think it matters much more than when you're older. If you're an entrepreneur and you're 18 or 20 years old, people look at you differently than when you're 30 or 40, right?

You've gotta make a good first impression.

Yes.

In your 30s, 40s, you could just tell the way you carry yourself in a conversation. Yes. They can tell whether you've been there or not. Um, so like it, it's, so does dressing nice, like, does it make you, like, for us right now, it doesn't necessarily, I would, I wouldn't say it makes us more or less. I would say in our younger years, probably it does. Um, and you kind of have to prove yourself in your earlier 20s, right? Here's what I will say though. If you want to get 50% off from luxury brands like a Brunello or a Loro Piana, so one of our mutual friends does this. The way he does this is he basically becomes really good friends with whatever store associate. And he's tipping them all the time on the side, right? $1,000 gift here, $5,000 gift here, $4,000 gift here. And then whenever he goes to buy things, he buys a bunch at the same time. And that's how he gets 40, 50% off. 'Cause a lot of these sales associates, they get a big discount. And so if there's one thing that he stands out with, it's always becoming really good friends. Like whenever we go to a hotel or whatever, he's always pre-tipping a lot. And I actually stole this from him. So there's, um, there's this, uh, health network thing that we've used and I actually helped his daughter, oh, his, um, his friend's niece actually with a rare condition. So I went through the YPO network and then, um, they have this health thing, right? So I reached out and then what I did on the side was I was like, I just copied what he did. So I just sent like a couple thousand dollars on the side and then boom, she's taking care of us with everything. And they got that health condition that was super rare taken care of. Oh wow. And he, and then I told that mutual friend and he's like, oh my God, that's so genius. I was like, it's not genius at all. I just copied you. So this goes all the way around. It's just like, Sometimes if you just take care of someone else first, it's the rule that you learn from the book Persuasion. If I give you something by default, you feel like you owe me, right? Which is why like I never want you to buy me something and I never want— you never want me to buy you food or whatever. I just don't want to owe you. Like psychologically, that's just how it is.

On a side note, I just looked up Dharmesh Shah HubSpot speech. I wanted— I was just curious to see what he wore.

He doesn't wear anything special.

He just wears usually like—

A t-shirt.

Agent AI t-shirt. Sometimes it's a collared shirt, like Kind of buttoned up, but not like fully. I don't even know if he tucks it in.

Yeah.

Uh, but you can see a t-shirt underneath.

Yeah.

And yes, he is like 100+ times more successful than I am. Uh-huh. Uh, congrats to him on owning OpenAI shares.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

He's gonna crush it on that one.

Yeah.

Uh, but I was like, wait, I should just probably start wearing t-shirts and yoga pants for everything. I'm gonna just start trying that out instead of dressing up at all.

Why don't you just have a shirt that says search everywhere optimization?

No, I like my Buck Mason t-shirts.

You know, um, Tim Soulo from Ahrefs wears a lot of t-shirts. I like wearing it. Like, I wear his t-shirts, by the way, the Ahrefs shirts. They're nice.

He dresses up though.

He does wear a blazer on top of it.

Yes. And his shoes are Zegna Second Skin shoes.

Yeah.

Like $1,000-something a shoe.

Yeah. Well, he does well. He does well.

Yeah, he does extremely well.

Yeah. Um, all right. We will see you tomorrow. Please don't forget to rate, view, and subscribe.