SEO Workflows That Accelerate Speed and Cut Headcount

Let me tell you about some SEO workflows that 10x your speed and save on headcount. I don't think we've talked about this before. Have you guys been doing this? We, um, we've been building out these agentic workflows, right? And what that means is, let's say an SEO manager. So an SEO manager has a lot of jobs, right? There's keyword research, there's technical work, there's competitor analysis, there's all this stuff you need to do, right? And so first we map out all the jobs to be done from an SEO manager. Okay, don't worry, I won't bore you. And then the next step is, okay, within those jobs, what do we need to do? So for example, with SEO, you need to update, consolidate, prune in your content, right? So we made an agent for consolidating content. So it'll scan your Google Search Console and then next it'll look at the URLs and look at relevant URLs and it'll figure out what to combine. And then it'll say, okay, push this to a human so a human can quickly review and then it'll push it out. And then it'll just keep moving through other workflows that we have. And then what's happening now is we're 10x-ing our efficiency and we're getting to save on headcount because all of this is thankless work, right? Finding the right internal links, all these things. So a lot of people talk about AI agents. We're making these agentic workflows and that's how it's been speeding us up and speeding clients up on our side. So yeah, have you guys been doing it?

We have, we've been doing it for a while. We created an internal application called Scout years and years ago, and it's been doing things like crawling Google Search Console or analyzing analytics on a daily basis to find new keyword opportunities, plugging them into keyword tools, coming back with a list, looking at which ones are top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. But yeah, we've been using technology, machine learning, AI, whatever you want to call it, for a long time to just produce efficiencies.

Yeah.

Because at scale, the biggest thing you have is it's hard to hire amazing people who can continually produce the same quality of work and output each and every single time. And the way around it is, of course, you interview and you have really strict processes, but you also build technology that creates kind of like a handicap that just levels up the whole team.

Yeah. The way ours works is basically on the internal links, it'll basically, once we approve it, it automatically changes them on the site. And the same thing with like meta titles, meta descriptions, all those things. So it'll change them at scale. But I think the right move, and we probably agree on this, is you still need a human in the loop. I think people still think like there's 2 ends to this right now. One, if you put too many guardrails on an AI, it becomes too robotic. If you don't put enough guardrails, it goes off into like craziness. So if you have a human in the loop that's kind of in the middle, then you can get the best of both worlds.

Yeah, like what we do with Scout is when it comes to title tags or meta descriptions, it constantly looks at which pages are decreasing in click-through rate and which ones are increasing. And it starts learning from the changes that have caused pages to increase. And it makes recommendations for title tag and meta tag changes to all the pages that have gone down. But then a human has to approve it before it rolls out.

Got it. So are you guys rolling it out on your end or is Scout rolling it out?

Both, combination, it depends on the customer.

Got it, cool. All right, so actually just might dovetail into the next one, which is talking about old marketing that still crushes today. So this is going to be a marketing school classic.

All right, what's the biggest one that we see crushing it is still using boring old business partnerships. Think of like affiliate commissions, but instead of affiliate commissions, I partner with you if you just do SEO and I just do pay-per-click and you cross-sell your customers to me and I cross-sell to you. It's like a version of affiliates, but for marketers and you're not paying out commissions, you're just cross-selling.

That's a pretty easy outreach, huh? You just say, hey, hey, I have some leads for you. You know, do you want to work? Do you want to chat about it? And that's basically it. And it's like a 30-minute phone call, maybe less.

Yeah. Another thing that we've done with the partners is you create pages on their website about your service offerings and they create pages on your website with their service offerings because both sides get organic traffic. They also collect leads. It then helps both parties generate more leads for those services.

On our end, and we've talked about this, but events do really well whether you're throwing a lunch or a dinner or you're speaking somewhere and you're having, you know, the event people setting you up with people that you want to talk to that fit your ICP. So Neil and I were both speaking at HubSpot Inbound and we're both speaking at a conference in Germany. And the one in Germany, This Is Marketing, they're setting us up for a dinner in Frankfurt. So it should be cool. And I think it just always like, One, throwing your event goes a long way and you can throw mini events, right? They can be like breakfast or lunch or whatever. And then you can throw a happy hour or you can throw like a larger event, right? It just depends on how much you want to spend on it. And then also taking max advantage if you're going to be speaking at an event, because there's always a lot of amazing people there.

There's always a lot of amazing people. I love events. I still think it's one of the best places to learn marketing. Another strategy that we end up doing is, and this is old, but We crawl the web and we look for people who are running VWO and Optimizee scripts that are in our space, and we take screenshots of their websites on a daily basis.

Interesting, why?

So then we have a log of all the tests that they're running.

Oh, okay.

And then when you have a default that's been there for a week or 2 or a month—

It works.

And it stays and it's not a test anymore, usually you should look at the old variation and the new one and then see, oh, we should consider testing this as well.

Yeah, that's interesting. So I mean, you have all that data and you could probably put that, ingest that data into something else and basically say, hey, like, this is the— these are the new patterns that are working in the last 90 days or 120 days or so.

Or we just take that data and just implement it for our clients and keep it to ourselves.

Yeah, well, no, I'm saying you can do either way. You can do it privately or publicly.

Yeah, we have it. We just have it privately.

Yeah, got it.

And we're seeing it for different industries. We do it for clients in different sectors and things like that.

Dude, I mean, today I was talking, um, there's a guy I, um, Well, actually has to be anonymous. So basically he was telling me that he was getting emails for like $1.50 a pop and email marketing— email marketing still crushes today, right?

Yeah.

Not enough people think about email marketing. We talked about copywriting a little earlier today.

I think it's so—

the art of copywriting is so magical. And then when you apply it to email marketing, to me it's just like you get to ring the cash register every now and then with email marketing. And if you can acquire emails for $1.50, $3 a pop, I was talking to a guy today. His agency can get emails for $2 to $3 a pop, and some people have been working with him already. I'm like, okay, we'll give you a shot, $2 to $3 a pop, because we have— you have a high LTV service. I have a high LTV service. Why would I not do that? Yeah.

So yeah, it's just a question of are they running the right targeting? Because if they, if they get you just tons of email addresses of businesses that are just into startups and they're starting their first company, they just launched a website. Yeah, you're going to get them on your list, but it's going to be hard to close them.

They're highly qualified. So I talked to a handful of people they worked with and they're all highly qualified. So I'll let you know how it goes.

Yes. And Eric did something right there. When you're interviewing an agency, look for who their existing customers are and talk to them. It'll give you great insights on their service and the quality of their work.

I got to take a minute to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. This is a peer group for agency owners. Think YPO or EO, but for agency owners. And I just wanted to read you a couple of testimonials. This first one comes from Carrie, and we asked her, what do you like most about the group? She said, having a group of people to discuss and bounce ideas. The leads are great too. Yes, we share leads in this group as well. This one from Aliyan, he says, the ability to really post whatever I want and need and the group responds. Great experienced members. Getting a lot of insights from conversations with other members. Getting a lot of value from sessions from Eric. Getting advice from others as well. And so if you want to grow your agency faster and you want a peer group to to do so, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. This is a group that both Neil and I created. And our hope here is to create a vibrant community of agency owners and do a lot more with it in the future. So again, marketingschool.io/agency, and we'll see you inside.

So we internally analyzed 41 D2C sites, and we looked at what percentage of their customers came from the people visiting their site the previous year. A whopping 3.8%. Not a lot, but that's crazy to think about. 3.8% of these D2C ecommerce sites, of their current customers on every month, a monthly basis, new customers visited their site a year prior. Hmm.

Oh, you put were, were people. So were people who saw the site over a year ago. I mean, that makes sense to me because like, okay, for example, I have my showerhead, Jolie. You know what that is? It like filters your water and everything. It's like just to make sure you're not spraying your body with like bad water. Um, but I, I would probably refresh that like once a year, once every 6 months or so. So I wouldn't think about it until like it's time. Yeah, it kind of makes sense.

No, but, but forget you refreshing it once a year. I'm talking about you visiting a random website like Jolie, never buying their product.

A year later, you go to their site and buy their product for the first time.

I do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think a lot of us do.

And the important lesson from this is 3.8% may not seem like a big amount, but it all adds up. And what marketers need to focus on is not just attract new people, but maintain relationships with your visitors because you don't know when they're going to purchase. Now, if these 41 D2C sites did a great job of email sequences, building relationships, helping them out, I bet you that number would be a lot higher. Some of them do, the majority of them don't do a good job of maintaining relationships with their visitors. Almost all of the 41 sites that we looked at do a great job of maintaining relationships with their paying customers. But if you built better relationships with your visitors, even if they didn't buy, over time you'll generate way more than 3.8% in sales.

You have one over here. Is it worth submitting your business to the Inc. 500 and for other awards?

I've been seeing a lot of people releasing news clips like Inc. 500, check out this award, or, you know, best places to work.

Yeah.

And I haven't really seen it help with any form of marketing.

Like you may get a link here or there, but those links aren't really that useful or relevant.

And you're on a list of links with a ton of other websites.

So it's diluted because they may link out to another 100 sites or 500 sites.

We're just not finding Getting these quote unquote awards that look cool where you can put a badge on your site really helping that much with driving more revenue?

Yeah, I think a lot of those are vanity. The only ones I've ever cared about, and even this is debatable, are the best places to work awards where like if there's some that really matter, right? You got the Glassdoor ones, you have, um, there's a great place to work company out there. I think it's like, it is a reinforcement that, hey, maybe this culture is pretty good. And so, those are the only ones that I might care about a little bit, but even then, it's kind of shaky.

And the best places to work badges and awards are very important in a good economy when the market is tough and you can't find enough employees because everyone is hiring. In a bad economy, I don't think they're as important like right now because people will just take jobs.

By the way, it's harder to win those awards too in a bad economy because so many people are getting And so maybe the companies that are the best during that time maybe aren't the best, because that's a company that's like super, super, like maybe super stable, because startups, usually tech is usually very like, it can be unstable in bad times.

Yeah.

And I wasn't laughing that people get cut. But I totally agree with you. The moment you start cutting, people are worried, and you're gonna have one of the worst ratings ever.

Yeah.

But the businesses that don't operate from a financial standpoint and they're not responsible, they can be really terrible companies to work for. And I've seen a lot of startups do this. Yeah, because then they're just like, oh, we're almost out of money.

Well, would you rather had 100 people working for you and then 6 months later you're out of money and then everyone's out of a job, or you had 100 people working for you, you cut 30, and you can figure out how to sustain and now you can go for another 5 years?

You can live another day.

Yes, the extra 5 years, it still sucks to cut 30, but those other 70 people will have a job for a much longer period of time. And you're taking some pain for some gain.

But it's like, which one's the, the better of the both evils? And in some cases, it's better to keep feeding 70 mouths for 5 years than it is to only feed 100 for 6 months.

And by the way, like, you'll have to take the blame for the 30 people that you had to let go and they'll hate you. Bless you.

Excuse me.

Thank you. They'll hate you. They'll write negative reviews. And, um, but that's what you signed up for. And it sucks, right? It's, it's— you never signed them up to, to be in this position. But, um, you have to, you have to sacrifice for the greater good, um, or else you're gonna affect 100 people.

Yes.

The number one challenge for businesses is hiring. And more specifically, the number one thing I get asked for all the time is, Eric, Where can I go find an amazing marketer? And the reality is right now, when you think about the world, we have inflation. That also means wage inflation right now. And it means that when it comes to hiring talent, you can't spend as much as you would have in the last couple of years because it's just become too cost prohibitive. And so we've partnered with one of the best offshore recruiting firms when it comes to marketing. They've been a great asset for us, and I believe that they will be a great asset for you. All you have to do is go to Again, it's marketingschool.io/hire to learn more. You can fill out the form there and we're going to place you with the best marketing hires that we can help you find.

And on a final note, Anthropic with their Claude, they're releasing an enterprise plan to compete with OpenAI. I don't know if you saw that.

I did see that. Are you paying for it?

No, I was actually hoping you were paying for it to get feedback.

I haven't started using it yet, but I will tell you that Related to Claude, because a lot of people are using Cursor AI. Did I tell you about that?

Yeah.

Did we talk about that already?

Yeah.

Okay.

So yeah, I haven't used Claude Enterprise yet. By the way, we pay for OpenAI Teams, but I don't see the benefit of it quite yet. I think the benefit of it would be like everyone's kind of sharing their information into one thing. So it's building like your own little internal LLM. But I haven't used it. Have you? Like with OpenAI's team?

I haven't done OpenAI's team. And I haven't used Claude Enterprise yet. What I've found is when we talk to a lot of organizations, even people within our organization, a lot of people are using OpenAI. They can actually get a lot done with the free version of ChatGPT, and most people don't even need a paid version.

Really? Do I use OpenAI quite a bit on my phone? I just ask it questions.

Do you use it?

Do you find yourself using it quite a bit?

I don't have it on my phone.

Some, some, um, some people's kids, they, they don't even know what Google is anymore. They just like ChatGPT.

Wow.

How are your kids with like Emma?

What does she use?

We don't give them devices.

Oh, that's very good.

Too young. Very good.

We have them read a book or play puzzles.

Very good. You don't have to do— ChatGPT on your phone is amazing. I can like, I can do like a quick financial, like, oh, here's how I want to structure this deal over here. Here's the numbers over here. Or like, hey, how much body fat percentage should I be at? Right? It like does all these things. And then I take a picture of my food. How many calories is it? What is it? What's in it?

Right?

Gets everything pretty good.

I think you more optimize your life. And I'm more like, I just try to eat somewhat healthy. Or even like deal structures, going back to the business stuff. I get an email and people are like, here's this deal that we're looking at. Here's the overview. Here's why we like it. Here are the pros. Here's the cons. Here's a potential deal structure. Let us know if we can proceed or not. Yeah.

And it's just, I spend most of my time on the phone talking to people and closing deals.

How many, how many hours do you think you spend on the phone per day?

4.5, 5 on phone calls.

Yeah. Yeah.

At least 4.5, maybe 5.

Yeah. That's not, I mean, that's a good amount, but I don't think that's insane. You know what I mean? Yeah. But okay. What do you think you spend the rest of your time on?

Uh, getting work done.

Emails? No, there's a lot of routing for you now, right?

Emails don't take more than 30 minutes a day for me.

Okay. What else?

I read a lot.

I probably spend 3 hours a day reading.

Wall Street Journal.

Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC. I read a lot of space stuff.

Space stuff?

Yeah. What space stuff?

Just about the universe to my children.

What?

Oh, for your kids. Okay, that makes sense. So that's your story. So, so you get to learn while you're reading to them. Oh, what a scammer. You're not reading about like knights or like princesses and all that. You're just trying to learn while you're teaching them. Wow, that's actually pretty smart.

When I'm home, I probably read like 45 minutes worth of space stuff to him a day.

What the— okay, that's amazing.

So like about black holes and everything.

What? Okay, tell me something about black holes.

No, no, no, I am not that smart. Okay, and by the way, most the articles on black holes, even books on black holes, it's like people talking about alien life. That's how much really we know. Like, they don't know much about it.

Yeah.

But it's just interesting to read. And the goal for me, the reason I read a lot of space stuff, and, uh, is A, I would love it if my kids were into space for their careers, and B, I would love for them to live on another planet.

Wow. That might just happen in their lifetime. All right, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency. It is now application only. So you can't even pay to get in if you wanted to get in now. You have to apply. Um, and so that is it for today, but other than that, we'll see you tomorrow.

Bye.