The Podcast
Show Links
- eBike Generation - https://ebikegeneration.com/
- eCom SEO Formula Course - https://www.ecomseoformula.com/
- Use the code 'SOLUTIONS' to get 15% off the course
Help the Podcast
Transcript
Scott:
Hey everyone, Scott Austin here. And for this week's episode of the Shopify solutions podcast, I have a guest who owns his own Shopify store called e-bike generation. And what I love about this store is that it's very focused on a niche, right? A lot of people say there's riches and niches, and this store definitely proves that. And the store is owned by John Murphy, who is now gonna tell us how he got started in this space. And tell us a little bit about yourself, John.
John:
Well first of all, thanks for having me, Scott. This should be a good conversation. I got started with eBike generation really, as a means to get out of the day job. I just, I wanted to figure out, I went down that rabbit hole of how to make money online. I read the four hour work week and thought, that sounds easy. So I'm gonna go do that. And then I got into, I came across drop shipping and I went down that rabbit hole of research and, you know, what's the right product. And that was back in 2017. So it's, it's been a song of a long discovery period and steep learning curve. But the store's doing really well now. And I've learned a lot along the way.
Scott:
So to be clear, you are drop shipping all your products in your store today, correct?
John:
Yeah. So I'm an authorized dealer for a bunch of us brands that sell e-bikes that, you know, produce e-bikes and I'm a dis I'm a reseller for them. And I don't actually produce anything of my own.
Scott:
Like you say that that's, that's the dream a lot of people online have, and you see all those, you know, Lamborghini videos on YouTube where, you know, give me two hours and, and you've got a Ferrari kind of BS but you've actually done it. Right. And I've most of the stores that I work with today, right. They're selling their own products. And I also have some that are reselling, but they're also stocking inventory. The, the true drop shipper is not that common. And, you know, to be clear, you are successful. Can you give some numbers just to show how successful this business is?
John:
Yeah, sure. I mean, like, so drop ship margins are not great, but oh, I can, I can give you all the numbers. So I, I, it was, it was pretty steep. So like I started off in, in 2018 was my first full year of sales and I did about 330 K in revenue, but very small, maybe like 10% margins in profit, but by 2020 I was doing over 3 million, same again in 2021 was around a 3 million market revenues, always revenue. And then this year, this year has, has completely the breaks from kinda like driving with the brakes on e-com is a different space. Now, compared to the last two years,
Scott:
Did you notice that the breaks hit your business in June? Like the rest of my businesses did or did it happen earlier for you?
John:
No, it happened, it happened yeah, it was earlier, it was like February or March, cuz March, usually when I, when my sales start to pick up and they just kept flat lining, really, it was just all very stagnant. So it seems to be, be, it seems to be, you know, not just me and everybody else I've spoken to. Just it's the new reality, I think for now, I think we just got really comfortable with the inflated numbers <laugh> over the last two years. But I'll still do like a, I'll still do a couple of a million in revenue this year. So it's it's not all bad.
Scott:
So you've got a six figure sorry, seven figure drop shipping business consistently for multiple years now. And yeah, I can totally see where your business is, the ultimate social distancing machine. Right. So that's why here, you were probably really successful during the times of COVID, but it's, it sounds like you have a really good engine for customer acquisition.
John:
Well, I, I, I have, as, as you as you mentioned earlier that I, I do have it's very niche. So even though I sell e-bikes, I don't just sell e-bikes. I sell e-bikes to hunters in the us. So it's, it's like a niche within a niche. It's very specific I'm, I've sort of created a space where hunters feel like it's their e-bike store. You know, I understand them. The messaging is all very hunter related. If you go onto the website now landing page, like the homepage looks like a hunting website, doesn't look like a heat bike store and that, and that didn't happen overnight that, that, you know, that was multiple iterations. And over time it's become more and more hunter focused, but it's you know, hunters really feel like that's the store that they, they feel comfortable getting their hunting equipment from and not just run off the mill every day e-bike so it's it works. Yeah. Works pretty well.
Scott:
Yeah. So we're gonna talk about the design of the website in a second, but let's go back to 20 16, 20 18 when you're first generating this idea and this business, how did you decide to get into this niche of a business? Cause that, that to me seems like the really smart strategy is you have somehow figured out a focus area that I'm assuming didn't have a lot of competition where you could really shine.
John:
Yeah. And, and there is a lot of research that goes into it. So there, it was a bit clinical, you know, it wasn't like I, I didn't, I didn't ride an eBike until I think 20, 20 myself. So I was, I was selling them for three years before I'd even touched an e-bike I'm Irish. I live in Italy, so I'm not a us hunter. So I'm very detached from the, from the actual thing. So I'm not a us hunter that likes e-bikes and that it was just a natural fit for me. There is a process you can go through. And I, I went and studied a lot online. I took a few courses and if you wanna get into what's, what, like what the drop shippers in my space would call high ticket drop shipping, where like, we're not, we're not going onto Ali express sort sourcing some sort of a fidget spinner and then, you know, selling it for $20 and then trying to sell the crap out of it until the fad runs out.
John:
And now we, we, you know, we, we tried to create like an actual business, fine suppliers, and there are certain criteria during the research. Like for example, there's probably like some like 10 or 15 different things. And if you can, if you can get like according a green flag for most of them, it's probably a good niche. For example, if the product is expensive. So over a thousand dollars, because obviously like with drop ship margins, best case scenario, maybe gross margin is about 30%, but it's usually somewhere between the 10 and 20% realistically. So obviously the, the higher value it is the less you need to sell to make a certain, to make a good living so that the more expensive, the better let's say, if there are enough suppliers, so you can UN cause not everybody and not every supplier will want to work with somebody that won't hold stock.
John:
So there needs to be enough suppliers that even if you don't get them all on board and sign up as a dealer for them all, you still have enough suppliers to work with to actually, you know, launch the business shipping, for example, is another important factor. The bikes I sell weigh anywhere between 70 to 120 pounds. So that's it's very expensive to ship those ship, those bikes. So that's actually not a good thing in my favor, so that wouldn't have been one of the, that wouldn't have ticked the box, but if you can find something that's smaller and lighter and that's easier to ship domestically, then that's a very good thing because it's expensive, it's light and it's not very, it's not very expensive to ship because usually the shipping will come out of your margins. There's also if you, if there are not a lot of other people Al already drop shipping the product, then there's not a lot of competition, so that's a good thing. So there are lots of these criteria that you can look for and see how many of them take the box and the more boxes you can tick, the more likely it is to be as successful in each two start,
Scott:
No, all that criteria sounds really like smart. Like you're saying clinical in the way, you just research it in that process. I'm curious if there was like some aha serendipitous moment where like, you've, you had never heard of e-bike hunting or something, and then you saw it and researched and like, was there a door that just opened up and said, this is the one for you and the sunshine down? Or was it more of a, just slow, arduous process?
John:
It, well, it was a, it was a bit of both. So when I decided to pick e-bikes as my niche, I'm in Italy, I live in Italy, but I was wanted to launch the store in the us market, but I wasn't using a VPN to check for websites. So for one, one of the ways to check, to see how many comp, how many competitors are in your space is to go to Google, shopping and search for electric bikes for sale and see how many supply, see how many drop ship stores show up offering, you know, their ad. Well, I wasn't seeing any view any of the us ads because I wasn't in the us. So I actually needed to see like 90% of my competitors. And I thought, okay, this is, this looks like a really good niche. There are a few stores, but not that many.
John:
So turns out that everybody had the same idea as I did. And I hadn't done my research very well, turned out to be a very competitive space. And about a year later, I figured I have to do something to differentiate myself because all of the stores were, we're all selling the same thing with the same stock photos, same product descriptions, same price. And we all just look the same. So I figured there, there need to be a way that I can differentiate my store from everybody else. What I was noticing was was that some of the, the better quality bikes and more expensive bikes with higher margins were the bikes that were made, let's say by hunters for hunters is what they would normally say. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> which they are there more hun, more hunting, geared bikes, higher end, more powerful, bit more robust, more sturdy, and had a higher price tag. So it made sense to try go down that route. I, I wasn't, I didn't even know if that was gonna work because cutting out potentially 90% of your audience is a scary thing to do. And but now looking back at it, it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in the business.
Scott:
I totally agree. When I first saw your site, when you reached out to me, I was super impressed how focused your site is. Right. And, and to me that was the genius. Like it's not, e-bikes, it's, e-bikes for hunters. Yeah. And you're, you're absolutely right. You're probably taking out more than 9% of the market, but now you're talking really authentically to the one market you're going after. And, and that's the thing I, I think you're doing really well in, in switching gears a little bit, you know, and moving up to today and, and, you know, the specific thing that, that I wanna talk to you about is now I realize it is, you know, when you reached out, you'd said, oh, you know, I've got this really good SEO customer acquisition strategy that I've developed. And I wanna share with people. And what I realized when you were talking is when you said, you know, 10 to, if you're lucky 30% margins from your drop shippers is with most of my clients are manufacturing their own product. They're investing 25% of revenue into customer acquisition in advertising and all the other efforts. Right. And that's just a good, you know, ballpark number 25%. Well, if your profit margin is 10, you can't do those normal paid customer acquisition channels. And is that, is that the reason why you focus so much on SEO?
John:
I wish I had that insight, but no I was kind of backed into a corner. So back in, it was 2019, mid 2019. I got banned in the same week from Edwards, so I wasn't able to run shopping ads on Google and I wasn't able to run ads on Facebook either. So I wasn't able to get, get customers to the website and I wasn't able to retarget them on Facebook afterwards. So when you, when you learn how to do like, like high tech drop shipping or re retailing for, you know, in e-commerce like I do, when you, when you take a course customer acquisition is you launch a store, you run Google shopping ads and you get your first customer, and then you figure out what works. And then you scale on that when all of my traffic dried up, I had to, I just had to find another way.
John:
So that's when I started stalking affiliate marketers, actually there was, I started listening to podcasts like niche pursuits with Spencer, hos, Doug Cunnington all of these guys that have these affiliate websites that make commissions on Amazon. And because their whole strategy is they have to rank content organically and get people to Amazon. Otherwise they don't have a business, they have a blog, it's a hobby, they were producing content ranking on page one, or they were out of business. So I started joining all of their Facebook groups, listening to their podcasts and figuring out how affiliate marketers do it. And then I just adjusted it for e-commerce now creating the sort of content that they do. But instead of sending somebody to like an Amazon product page, I would send them from a blog post to a product page. It was a little more direct.
John:
And I had to be a little bit more clinical with some things like the, the way back links were going from one page to another, but I just had to try and learn what they were doing. And then I started applying it to my store and I just started treating it like, this is the only I'm gonna get customers. So I have to do it really well. And over time, I, well, I, when I went from in 2018, when I did just over 300 K in revenue, that was with pure ads, mm-hmm <affirmative>. So my margins, as you know, were like 10, between 10 and 15%, but I was spending to get that traffic on Google shopping and retiring on Facebook. Then in June, when that traffic went away, I started getting some organic traffic and I ended the year 900 K in revenue. And then in 2020, I did 3.1.
John:
So in the arc of 2018, when it was only paid traffic to 2020, it was only organic. It was 10 X, the revenue mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it does take time. And it, it, it is a very slow burn, but it just compounds over time. I wish I had the idea to do it up front and, you know, get a new, let's say customer acquisition channel, because I, I didn't have the margins. It was, but it was literally because I got, I got the, the band hand hammerer came down on me. And I was just forced to find a way or go outta business,
Scott:
Curiosity question, did they ban you because they equated hunting with selling guns and was like one of those they classified your site improperly type of issues that I've seen happen.
John:
No, actually, I, I, I would've to I, that, that seemed, that does seem like the most likely, but it turns out that Google's shopping policy, electric bikes is a violation of their shopping policy because they, they class electric bicycles as vehicles, like as in like ATVs Jeeps, mm-hmm <affirmative> cars, motorcycles, those sort of things. And, you know, later on Google shopping ads under anything that's classified as vehicle and electric bikes, even though electric bikes are street legal and they're considered bicycles in most us states, Google shopping. Doesn't agree. So oh, wow. So that's why Google banned me. And within like four days, Facebook banned me. And that was, that would, that would hurt a little, a little more because I felt like I was, it was, it was a bit like entrapment in Shopify. When you make a, when you create a new product inside of Shopify and you're, you've got Facebook, your Facebook channel connected to your Shopify admin.
John:
You you'll get like a little notification and Facebook will prompt you to boost that post or that page, you know? So it's like, you're not like running ads to it, but you're putting maybe $20 or $50 behind it to just get some traffic to it immediately. And I created a brand new product. It was a tiny little folding electric bike. Facebook said, Hey, why don't you boost that? You know? And so, so I like, I, I, I shared the new product on my Facebook page and they said, Hey, boosted for $20, you can get X amount of visitors. So as soon as I boosted it, they banned my account <laugh>. But with Facebook, they never even told me why I got banned. So
Scott:
That is crazy right. To, to not know. So you had a business that was doing a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue and overnight the two major platforms, which let's, you know, be honest, take up 99% of internet advertising probably for different reasons ban you. So then you are up a Creek without a paddle. What did you do next?
John:
Well, I sat on the sofa for about two days trying to figure out how I was going to make this work, because I'd already, I'd grown very resentful to my day job. I was still work. I was working in in GE in finance and I hated it, and this was my ticket out and it just started to work. I was thinking, well, I'm not really there yet. I haven't matched my salary, but if I just keep going, I can quit my job. And just as I was about to quit my job, all my traffic went away. So I basically just sat around and I was just depressed for a couple of days. And I figured I'm gonna have to try and figure this out. So I reached out to people in e-commerce that were doing high ticket drop shipping, but that were doing, they'd been doing it for a lot longer. And I knew that they were, they knew how to get organic traffic because I'd saw them comment on in Facebook groups and stuff. I basically just annoyed them on Facebook, Facebook messenger. I was just saying, look, how much for and a half an hour of your time name, your price.
Scott:
So you were willing to pay them?
John:
I, oh yeah. I, I was I, one of them, one of them, I paid another guy just became like a mentor to me, like I used to pay him for coaching and now we're friends, we're in the same mastermind. But basically I was just how much for your time. I'll just, I'll ask you questions. If you don't like the questions I'm asking, or you think they're silly, or you don't wanna give me information, just end the call and I'll, and I'll pay you anyway. You don't have to refund me. No, you know, no strings attached.
Scott:
Yeah. I, I I'm really impressed by that because, you know, on the internet, it amazes me how many people want, you know, free advice and even worse than that, they, they want you to like, do code for them for free. They're like, here's my website. And you go code that for me for free. Thanks a lot GE being in, you know, in an industry where, you know, my expertise, if I'm an expert, is, is my value. It just amazes how many people want it for free all the time. And I'm just impressed that you went out, you know, and, and approached them saying, you are the expert. I wanna learn from you, let me buy your time. Right. Cause it's, it's, it's worth it. Kudos to you.
John:
Yeah. And, and I've noticed that I've, I've, I've tended to do that every time I'm sort of stuck in a corner. And I don't know, I don't know how to get out. I will do that. And it's always, it's always been beneficial. It's never been a waste of time, even if I went a different way you know, considering what they said or what advice, even if I chose different path, I felt like I had more clarity about making the decision, you know? So it was always a good idea to do that. I've never regret it.
Scott:
Yeah. That's a good, best practice, you know, I'm sure you're gonna have a lot of 'em here, but that, that's just one of, 'em like reach out to the, the experts and, you know, offer to pay them for their time, because it's gonna be worth it to you down the road. And, and that's how you're gonna get their attention.
John:
Yeah. And, and these are, you know, these are people that, you know, like I look up to and want to be like, and I want to achieve the same things that they've achieved. So it's also good to have that sort of connection as well.
Scott:
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> in the early days you realize that your traffic's now dead, you're starting to research some things you're talking to some experts. What, what were the next steps in your, your SEO journey there?
John:
It was creating content that would rank on page one and get traffic to, to the blog. And then eventually then get them to click through to the product pages. Because if I didn't, wasn't able to run ads to product pages. I was gonna have to get them their other in another way. And so I, I kind of made a hybrid version of the affiliate marketing method of creating content to highlight like best expert Y for example, is a good one. And then just getting people to those product pages organically that way. So it was, it was really about just creating content that ranks that people are looking for using like buyer intense search terms, like best electric bike for hunting, for example is, is a, you know, is an important one for me, or, you know, El best electric hunting bike, or, you know, tho those sort of things writing content around them and writing other content that would then support that content. And that was really just the beginning. There's so many levels to it. There are a lot of phases, but the, the very, the very beginning was just creating content that people were looking for. That would answer all of the questions they have while they're doing their research. Before they pull a trigger. I wanted to be the place that people, the person that they found when they were going online, looking for the information. So, so that's what I did.
Scott:
Did you in, in the researching of the keywords, you know, I'm sure you used Google AdWords for that, or just Google search for that. Did you then look at how competitive that space already was on the listings and say, oh, I can beat that. Or, you know, or was there a lot of competition or where you just happened to be in a blue ocean area, you know, and then you knew you'd be able to, to be competitive there.
John:
Yeah. I, I kind of created the, I don't wanna say I created the market because that, that's not exactly right, but it was definitely a blue ocean scenario because in 2019 electric hunting bike had zero search volume in Google and on a HFS. And, but I knew people, I knew hunters were, were curious because the brands that were selling them, but they were putting lots of money behind advertising their brands. They were going to trade fairs and hunters were really taking an interest in, in this new novelty concept of using an e-bike because it's quiet. It doesn't leave a center trail. There's no gas emissions giving away scent. It's quiet. It can cover a lot of terrain carry gear. And there's lots of, lots of benefits, but hunters weren't really aware. So the brands that were building the bikes, they were putting a lot of money and dollars in, you know, in investment into getting the concept in front of hunters.
John:
So I knew hunters must be going online, looking for it, even if the search volume wasn't there. So I started creating the content for those search terms that I knew were there, even though the numbers weren't backing it up, mm-hmm <affirmative>, for me, that was a very good thing because I was the first one to do it. And two, three years on, I'm still ranked number one. And number two for those search terms. Yep. When you look for best electric hunting bike or e-bikes for hunters I'm always at the top. Now, when I write extra content, I do look at search volume and other keywords. And I do look at how difficult it is and how easy it might be to rank. But in the beginning, it was really a case of my gut tells me that hunters are looking for eBikes. Even if the search volume results haven't caught up with that behavior yet. So I just went for it.
Scott:
That makes total sense to me. It is totally blue ocean, even though the, the Custers weren't demanding it yet, you, you saw that there would be demand. Like one of the things I'd tell my clients all the time is if you're gonna try to be SEO competitive for the term diamond engagement ring, go home. Right? Because that space is already saturated beyond belief, and you're never gonna get even into the first page on diamond engagement ring, if you're a small player, right? Yeah. I'm amazed at how well my clients can do. And my clients, you know, you know, the size of your business and smaller kind of thing, how well you can do in search. If you find the right niche in the right focus area, stop going for the, you know, the, the diamond engagement rings and go for the, you know, custom diamond engagement ring using, you know, Emerald accents or whatever kind of keyword.
Scott:
And then you can be more competitive just like you, you know, you started off on e-bikes and no, it's too competitive. Oh, I'm gonna do e-bikes for hunters. Right, right. That focus, you know, like you were saying before, like, oh, I'm, I'm, you know, ignoring half the planets. Like, no, you're not gonna try to appeal to the half the planet who doesn't wanna listen to you because they've got so many other options out there you're actually being way more authentic and you're gonna get much more attention from a small population instead of no attention from a large population.
John:
Yeah, absolutely. And I noticed that once I, once I identified hunters, as my audience, everything was easier. My messaging, my email marketing was instead of saying, Hey, like for example, a classic example, abandoned cart sequence. First email usually is like, Hey, you left your, all of your items in your cart. Really generic. Right. So you can't, you can't be very specific mm-hmm <affirmative> because you don't know who you don't know. If it's like a, somebody that looks wants a com a commuter bike to go to the, the office, somebody that's going to be doing, like doing some sort of extreme sports off road riding, or some some elderly person that just needs a little help getting around town and stuff. So you don't know who your audience is. So you try to be everything to everybody and you become very vanilla. But when I started talking to hunters through email, it was you left your electric hunting bike behind.
John:
Yep. When you, when you purchase an electric hunting bike, it's gonna, it's gonna be a game changer for your next hunt, you know, add an e-bike to your arsenal and you'll have no SC trail. You can check trail cameras in, in a fifth of the time you would've spent on foot go, you know, you can access roads that you can't go with your ATV. Like, it was very, very, very, the metaphor. It's very sniper rather than, you know, shotgun. So and, and, and that proved very, very effective. Cause I could talk to them. They understood that. I understood them. So, and, and that, that cuts a lot deeper than just, Hey, you left your thing in the cart.
Scott:
Yep. Now, going back to your early days of the SEO, what, what I heard you said was you were going to, you were creating content and putting it in blog articles and why on Shopify, we have four page types that we could put SEO content on product collection, page and article. Yeah. Why did you pick blog articles for your starting point for your content?
John:
What I was seeing was was that on Google, all of the page, one results were all blogs. And in, in, in my niche specifically, they were all like best X for Y or top five for 2020, top five X for Y. And it was all those Listal type articles. So if Google is rewarding, those type of those, that type of content with page one rankings, then why try to rank a product page to go against it? Because Google's already telling me what it considers good content. So I gave it, I just gave it what it, once I just tried to do it better. That doesn't mean I didn't concentrate later on collection pages and product pages. They're also very lengthy and very meaty with meaty word, word, word, content wise, but Google was rewarding blogs. So I gave it a blog
Scott:
That is absolute genius of an answer. <Laugh> cause somebody like, well, why would you do what everybody else is doing? Like, why wouldn't you do what the successful people are already doing? Like why'd I pick blogs cuz that's what Google's listing. I I've never heard an answer so simple, but also so genius at the same time, I love that. You mentioned before, you're not living in America. You're not a hunter. You hadn't been on an e-bike up at this time. You were 2018. I think you still haven't been on an e-bike. How did you create this content?
John:
Oh, just research in the beginning I was wearing all the hats. I was writing the emails. I was answering the phone. I was doing live chat. I was the one fielding all of the questions, you know, I'm trying to sell e-bikes to hunters. Hunters will call me and they'll talk to me about hunting stuff and e-bike stuff. And it's you learn the stuff pretty quickly. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and when I started answering the same question a lot on the phone, I realized in the beginning I was like, great. I'm not afraid to answer the phone anymore because I've probably gonna know the answer because I, I answered the phone like 10 times a day, but then I realized, yes, I am. I I'm more comfortable answering the question, but what if I give them the answer? They don't even have to pick up the phone, you know? So I, so it became a sort of source of content for me. What should I write about, I'll write about what people are asking me about. So while I was still able to answer the phone and, you know, answer those questions in life chat, there were people that weren't picking up the phone, they were just looking for the information online and now I was giving it to them in content form as well.
Scott:
I think the key there that is really important is you actually talked to customers. It's amazing to me when I, you know, talked to store owners who literally never get on the phone with their clients or their, their customers. And it's like, how, how can you not talk to your customers? And I guess you had like a, a phone number that they, they could yeah. That I see on your website right now you have a one 800 phone number right on your top bar on every page of your website. So you're definitely inviting your customers to call you which is a really great trust sign, but it's also a really great customer research tool for you is what I'm hearing.
John:
Yeah. Because, well, that's, that was also how I learned about e-bikes and how I learned about hunting because I had to answer the question. So I had to find the answer with e-bikes. It was easier because there are certain, the components are that are either X or, or either Y and the performance is based. So you, I, I, I got a very deep understanding of electric bike components and things pretty quickly just because I put myself in that market. So it wasn't too complicated and also writing like 200 product descriptions. You get to learn, you know, what all the product, what the content, or, you know, what the, what the components of the bikes are and stuff. But it was very valuable talking to the hunters themselves, cuz they were talking about why they were considering the bike. And that's what makes really good content because those are the things that people are looking for on the internet.
John:
Like, you know, will an e-bike climb to 10,000 feet or where, you know, do you know how long does an eBike battery last on a full charge because obviously they don't wanna get stuck out in the woods. Yep. While I answer all these questions over the phone, these are also really good things that I think, well, you know, this is gonna make a really good article. I, because I, because I was, there was no degree of separation between me and the hunters looking for free eBikes. It was all very like, like drinking from a hose were all the information. So it would've been harder if I'd had just, you know, checked out and had somebody just answer live chat. I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have made that sort of connection.
Scott:
Yep. And, and you were also willing to just listen, right. It's amazing how your customers will tell you what they want if you just listen. And that's a really powerful skill that not everybody has
John:
Also some, some of the things I do also ask the question like in an Indian abandoned cart flow or in other email flows where I'll say, well, you know what are you looking for in the bike? Like what, what do you plan on using it for why are you looking for any bike in first place? And people will genuinely like, they'll reply to the email and tell you, and that actually gives you more information and it might even be able to direct, help you direct them to the type of product they need. Because obviously if you go onto a website and you see, you know, huge, different price range and you're, you're still sort of fresh to e-bikes and you don't really know the difference between a $1,000 bike and a $7,000 bike, it can all be very overwhelming. So just by getting that sort of feedback, whether it's over the phone or whether they reply to an email, it's very insightful and it just makes you better for them.
Scott:
Yep. Makes a lot of sense. So you're creating these blog articles based on things that customers are telling you they wanna know about and looking at what you know, people are searching for in those terms. And you're researching and you're writing this content yourself, what is a, what is the con, what do you have any like content best tips and tricks for creating a blog article, like length type of content you put in it, images, video, those kind of things.
John:
Sure. we usually, I would go back to the initial research of what does Google reward by putting on page one in, in my case, because it's very, you know, it's, it's, it's an e-bike for hunters. So it's, the keywords are usually around, you know, what is the best e-bike for hunters and that the sort of content answers, those questions are best e-bikes of 20, 22 or the best electric hunting bikes for, you know, for X type of activity. So what I would do is I would go to see, like, let's say, let's say I was going to start today and I want to sell an e-bike and I go onto, I would go to Google and just look for electric bike or best electric bike. And I would see what, you know, what is content, what is Google already rewarding at? You know, with page one status.
John:
And I would look for the commonality and there's usually a commonality. It won't be one press release, one product page. There's usually some sort of a consistency to it. In my case, it was listical type of content, but it, that's not always the case. It could be more of a buyer guide type of content. It could be something very informational. Recently I was helping another store owner using what I do in my strategy. I was trying to show her how to do it. And she has a very technical product where it's a very expensive, reverse osmosis water filtration system for your home or for your office. So it takes all the like bacteria and impurities and metals out of the water. So there's a very steep technical learning curve. So the content was obviously shaped around educational rather than what are the best reverse osmosis machines for 2022, because mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's just, you know, that's just not what Google's putting on page one.
John:
So it really depends on your niche. So if, if your niche on page one for your main keyword is listicals then you know, okay. List of goals is what Google rewards is good content. Now what's the content like, are they answering questions? Are they, can I answer more questions in a better way? What's the word count? Can I make it bigger without just making content for the sake of content? Because at the end of the day, if you see what's ranking of page one, the type of content and the quality, you just follow the type of content and make it bigger and better, more helpful answer, more questions. And if that includes some sort of explainer videos inside that content great, because Google also likes likes video content now as well. So it's really just, what's working, do it bigger and better
Scott:
Two things I hear you say in there, right? The best quality content, right? That's the first one, but the other one is look at what is applicable for your space. And I think this is the thing that some store owners get stuck on is they're like listen to John's best practice for his hunting e-bikes and apply that to their industry. But what I hear you saying is don't apply my exact techniques or the exact execution that I'm doing, apply the techniques, which is researching your space and understanding your customers and how Google is operating in your niche, and then do that better than your competition. Excellent. Don't just do what I'm doing, you know, from an execution, do what I'm doing from a process standpoint, which is understanding my industry and my customers and servicing their needs.
John:
Yeah, exactly. You got it. Right. Because not every niche is the same and you know let's say customer behavior towards getting the information. Google is different. So if people are looking for, you know, like, like the, the information about it, a very technical thing, you know, list of goals won't work and then you just need to approach it in a different way. But so you just look to see what Google wants to present to people and then just do it better, more quality, be more helpful. So, yeah. So it's just everything in the kitchen sink goes into the content.
Scott:
And how long do you think it would take to create one of your best of breed blog articles? You know, are we talking, is this an hour's time or is it a week's time, you know, give, give me an expectation of how long it takes to create quality content.
John:
A really good, let's say skyscraper piece of content, which would be the one that you wanna rank on page one, nowadays people have caught on to the concept that like more words does help as a ranking factor as long as it's good content. So usually you're going to be in the, in the re anywhere between three and 6,000 words and it needs to be well researched information, and you're gonna pick content, you're gonna pick products to sort of highlight in the content. And then you're gonna answer questions like literally kind of like have an FAQ section where you find out what questions are being asked online. And there are places to find those questions. And then literally just answer the question right there. So Google may even just take the snippet of that question and present just that question, if you can do it well, and you like writing and writing comes natural a week would be a good time, but I know people that will spend a month working on like a really epic piece of skyscraper content, just because they wanna, you know, they wanna have all of the best imagery and they wanna make it really, really in depth and answer every question possible.
John:
And so, you know, it depends like if you, if, if you are in a brand new niche, no competition, and the like what's ranking on page one is like an Amazon listing. You could probably get away with like a thousand words, answer a few questions, have some really informa, really helpful information there. And that will probably do a job. And most niches now are competitive and you just need to put in the work to just you know, do it better. So ideally I've seen the average seems to be 5,000 words long a week or two of content creation. And, and then that's just, that's just like the beginning of phase one. There's so much more to do then afterwards.
Scott:
Yeah, yeah, no, I think the the one to one week to one month expectation setting of this is the, the time and energy you're have to put into one blog article to be ranked, you know, on the top page, if you're lucky, you know, top listing that might be eyeopening to some Shopify store owners, you are thinking that this is a lunchtime activities. Like, no, this is more of a full-time job. Right? How much of, of, you know, your businesses staff effort? I dunno if it's just you or other people, how much of your time is spent creating content? Do you think what percentage of the store staff's time goes towards content creation?
John:
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna shock you now. But zero I've gone. <Laugh>, it's been a few months. I haven't actually created any content, but when I started giving up some of the responsibilities I, you know, I, I have a customer service team now doing a great job. I had a, I had a writer up until recently and they were putting out about, they were putting out four pieces of content a month or one a week, but a good 1500 word piece of content that answered a very specific question. So whatever will, whatever that would be like, you know, how long is, how long does an e-bike battery last or how, how, how, how far can you travel on a full charge, those sort of questions? Can you transport an e-bike, you know, on your trailer, you know, any of the, those sort of things. So maybe about one piece of content a week, because the, the, the concept is if you can get your main piece of content to page one, everything else, you write links to that skyscrapers to give it more cred, basically. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so it all, every, every other piece of content should have a function. It's not just about occupying the blog space in Shopify. Cause there's a blog section.
Scott:
Yep. You for a while had a full-time person doing nothing but creating content for a couple years. Sounds like,
John:
Yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah.
Scott:
Okay. In all this SEO effort, as you started doing it, you know, I'm sure the numbers are probably different in the beginning. How long did it take time for you to see results? And now that it let's just call it more mature process, how long does it take time for you to see results?
John:
In the beginning? When I just started writing those first two or three pieces of content are still ranking at the top of Google. Now I wrote them in mid 2019. And I saw, I, I saw traffic to those pieces of content about three months later. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that's because I was going after a keyword that no, not many people were going after, because I wasn't trying to rank for a best electric bike. I was looking, I was going after best electric bike for hunters. So but if you're in a, a competitive space, it could be six months before you get like, like a respectable amount of traffic that a piece of content mm-hmm <affirmative> and it could happen in a month. Just depends on so many factors. If the content is really good, if there are not a lot of big players already on page one, because well, up until recently, anyway, there were, there were 10 spots on page one, and it's a zero sum game.
John:
If you get onto page one, it's because you did better than somebody already on page one. So you've had to remove somebody from page one cause of what you do, what happens is in the beginning, if you've never wrote, if you don't regularly produce content for the website, Google isn't coming by regularly to crawl your website, to check for new content. So you, you, you tend to, it takes a, it's kind of like rolling a ball up a hill. You know, it takes a long time and it's slow. But once, once Google starts to recognize, oh, every time I come back there, there are new pages to crawl. I'll just come back maybe more often. And then you can start ranking quicker because Google is actually coming by and crawling your website more frequently because they expect to find new content. So you're trying to train Google to realize that, oh, okay, this, this, this website generally does put out more content frequently. So that's why bloggers will say it's it's about, it's also about regular, you know, publishing of content because you're also telling Google, Hey, come back, I've got more content for you to crawl.
Scott:
Do you ever go into search console and say, Hey, I got a new page for you. Go index this one, please.
John:
When I'm concerned that when, when I feel like I really want this page to, you know, to start getting ranked quickly, I will like if it's a very important piece of content or if there's a page that I've generated and it's a very helpful resource and I'm hoping, you know, it's gonna do well, I will go into a search consult and I'll request the indexing. But I wouldn't, I can't say I do it for every blog post. Cause I know eventually, you know, in a couple of weeks it's gonna start getting a little bit of traction and then it'll, you know, nature will take its course.
Scott:
Yep. If you have best quality content, it takes months to see results. Which means if you don't have best quality content, you don't see the results. Right. I get that. Is there a curve to that, you know, traffic that you get, does it peak and then go down over time or does it always continue to grow? How, how do you have to like keep creating new content to expand your reach? Or do you keep creating new content to keep number one on the keywords you're doing? Does that make sense?
John:
Yeah, so my goal is to always be in position one for, for Google and I, I can also there's a, there's also another thing I do to try and occupy many spaces on page one indirectly, which is we, we can get onto, but what I would, what I do is I will go in and optimize the piece of content. So it's fresh. And maybe I add a few more questions that people have started answering, asking. I'll add those questions to make it more helpful. And I'll maybe, maybe update it with different products. If you know, one product goes out of style or a, you know, gets discontinued and I'll replace it. It's not like a one and done thing I will go in and, you know, update it and improve the piece of content. But then there's all of the other pieces of content that I'm creating.
John:
I'm also linking to that one piece that I want to keep in position one, because if I've got a hundred pieces of content, all on electric bikes for hunters, but 99 of them are linking to one piece of content. Google understands which one is the very relevant piece of content. And then that gets pushed to the top. And that's the one Google will choose to present when people are searching. So that's the sort of link structure that I, that I use. So every piece of content has a purpose, even if it answers a question and it could rank independently, it's also sending signals to Google that the skyscraper piece of content, the main one is the, is the most relevant piece of content on my website. That is obviously that is a clear topic, you know, like authority on the, on the topic.
Scott:
Yeah. What I I've learned over the past couple years, cause what I just say at SEO was, you know, it was all about inbound links. If you don't have inbound links to your store, you know, stop trying to play the SEO game. And I think what's happened in the past couple years is Google has gotten smart enough and evaluating quality content by the content. It no longer needs the external voting of the external links. So today I, I think it's easier for a store that doesn't have, you know, thousands of external links to rank really well, cuz Google's judging the content, not the links I've also, you know, understand that that internal linking strategy becomes really important. And how do you on your look? So you have your skyscraper content and let's call the other concept, supporting content. How on the supporting content, do you link to the skyscraper content? Is it just a little link at the bottom that says more resources?
John:
It can be anything that just comes naturally in at the end of it or it could be, or it could be like if I use it could be like a throw away line at the end where it's something, something like if you wanna know which, which e-bikes, we, we, that made the list for this year you know, here and then use a hyperlink to link to the other piece of content or if it just fits naturally somewhere else in the piece of content where I mention electric content bikes, I can just hyperlink it and, you know, link to the, the, to the skyscraper piece of content. Yep. So it's, it's that sort of internal linking that, you know, it just, it just really helps Google more than it helps the reader because we don't want, we don't want readers to bounce from blog post to blog posts. We want to get them to a product page as quickly as possible. The linking is, is specifically so Google will understand what's re what's the most relevant.
Scott:
And I use a flex theme for most of my stores and I just built a section this week, which is, you know, in the flex theme, the the article sections that you get show the most recent articles and it doesn't let you pick them. So I just built a section where the store staff can pick one or six, however many, they want articles that they wanna promote on this page. So they have more editorial control. And that would help, like in your strategy where like, no, everything's gonna point to the skyscraper. Everything's gonna point to the skyscraper. That makes a lot of sense. But you have to, you have to build some tools or do it manually to do that. Cuz most themes, just give you the time based list of blog articles.
John:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and even, even in my theme, I use also I use turbo, which is the same out of the sandbox. And, and also if I, if I go into my blog today, I'll see like the most recently published two or three articles, which is fine because I also do try to send a, a signal to Google about which, which piece of content is more relevant, not only by internal linking, but per, but by creating a kind of a, a very shallow click depth on the website to get to those pieces of content. So what I do is at the very bottom of my homepage, I've got two or three pieces of content and those are my main skyscraper pieces of content. So from the homepage, you can land on the, on the, on those blogs with one click, instead of it being like blog page number seven, because I wrote it like two years ago. Cause the more times you click the longer the click depth, the less relevant Google understands that that page is. So I put it sort of hidden on the block, on the, on the, on the homepage. So I have that shallow click depth, but I'm not distracting people that are already on the website.
Scott:
No, that, that makes total sense. The way I always say it to my clients is your blog articles are meant to drive traffic to your store. They're not meant to engage customers that are already there, right? That that's your collections and product pages you want them on. So which my next, you know, question for you is on the blog page, how do you get them out of research mode, which is in my mind what a blog article is for in, into shopping mode.
John:
Basically what I try to do is I try to answer every question that they might have, so they don't have to go and research further after they've read my piece of content. So I, I do literally try to put them in a position where they now have all the information they need to do to make a purchase mm-hmm <affirmative> and in the content, I will then give them pieces of like a product, like a, like a, a little small section of the product, put an image, the title a couple of the, like the, the, the featured benefits and then a very, very clear, visible call to action. And it's usually like, check the price or see full specs here. And it's like right out of the affiliate blogger's playbook where it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an image, but it's an image of a button that says, like click here, for example, you know, like a big orange button mm-hmm <affirmative> and as a clickable button.
John:
And that links to the product page, because what I want in one of those examples where I pay people to get their information I booked an hour call with with a Dogington who's a very successful affiliate affiliate marketer. And he also has courses and students, I had him just sort of tear down my, my blog content. And he was like, and he looked at it and he immediately said, how do people know where to click to go to a product page? And I said, but the title is hyperlinked. I'm like, okay, great. If I'm on a, if I'm on a desktop and my mouse turns into a finger, I know that. But if I'm on my mobile, that doesn't happen. I have to know that's a link and you have to assume people are, don't understand. So make it a big orange button that says click here. Otherwise they're not gonna click. And once I start doing that, my click through rate to product pages just jumped because I took the, like, people were reading the content, they were scrolling. But some of them just scrolled up over the product because they were like, okay, that looks great. Now I'll maybe go and look for our product. Whereas they didn't realize that they could just click something and then immediately be on the page. So I just made it visibly very clear for them to come to that conclusion.
Scott:
Yeah. I, I'm a big fan of now I'm looking at your website right now and you have obviously hunter green camouflage, you know, color scheme going on, which makes total sense of space. And you're, you're using what I'm gonna call hunter orange, right? Hunters wear orange vest. So you don't shoot each other.
John:
Exactly.
Scott:
Total aside. I love the way that the add to cart button, when you hover over, it goes from orange to camouflage. That is just too freaking cute, right? Yeah. It, that fine touch is like, you know, I'm sure your, your audience finds that super authentic and kind of fun
John:
That was the Kurt Elster's idea.
Scott:
Oh, really nice. Nice to match his little camouflage blazer jacket. Right,
John:
Exactly.
Scott:
And here, you know, what I love is that orange sticks out on a field of green and camouflage, right? And I'm a big fan of the add to cart button should be the brightest, most obvious button on your page, you know, and I'm looking at your, your product page and it is the most, obviously you got two different add to cards cuz you got a bundle of functionality. Also, you know, I'm also a fan of not using that same button color for other buttons, right? There's the call to action button, which is usually add to card on a product page, but on your blog it's check prices. And it's very obvious on your blog articles. Like you're saying, you've got these bright orange buttons that say check price. There's nobody's gonna get confused by that.
John:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and that was the concept. Just make it stupid, simple.
Scott:
The disrespectful way I say it is assume your audience is stupid. Yeah. And you'll never be wrong. The respectful way I say it is assume your audience is really busy and multitasking, so you've gotta make it really simple for them. And either way you look at it, it's it simplify things, make it obvious. Don't be complex. Don't look, your site is I'm not gonna call it sexy. Right? Because it doesn't have flashy things going on that are trying to entertain me. It's being very straightforward, very functional, very here's the facts. And you know, I think that's great, right? I'm none of that is, is a negative at all because the purpose of your store is to sell electric bicycles for hunters. And you've realized that these people need to be educated in certain ways. So the education is a means to an end to sell electric bicycle. And, and a real example of that is when I look at your blog articles, they're, they're very research oriented and very related to your space. What I don't see and, and correct me if I'm wrong here is articles about like the best gloves for hunters to wear.
John:
Yeah. No, very, very, very little of that.
Scott:
And I've, I've had a lot of clients who like, you know, like we, we sell a, you know, a shoe, so we're gonna talk about everything about feet. I'm like, no, you're not about feet. You're about shoes. Right. And you, and that's, that's what I like that I see in your content. It's about electric bicycles for hunting. It's not about hunting. It's not about, about electric bikes. It's, it's so focused and you're not, you know, I have one client who they get a ton of traffic to their website from SEO and none of it converts. And I'm not, I'm explained to like, that's because your articles have nothing to do with your products. Right. They're completely unrelated. Like they, they have an, they, they sell, you know, foot stuff or, you know, insoles kind of thing. And they'll have an article about the 10 best vegetables for a healthy diet. I'm like, how are you gonna get from 10 best vegetables for healthy diet to insoles for your feet? You, you cannot make that connection.
John:
I could generate a lot more traffic if I, you know, like I know if I hire an SEO agency, they're gonna, they're gonna do keyword research. They're gonna find a bunch of keywords that I could rank for that related to hunting. And they're gonna say, look, you've got loads of traffic. I'm like, yeah, okay. But these guys aren't shopping for e-bikes, you know, they're, they're looking for the next camouflage jacket or whatever. They're not my customers.
Scott:
We talked a lot about the, the content and you know, I just gonna summarize it and be authentic and have best of breed content, which is easy to say hard to do. What sort of things do you do on your site for technical SEO are, you know, are you looking at alt tags and, you know, naming of files and JSON LD, what are you doing from the technical SEO standpoint?
John:
Yeah. So in the beginning, I didn't understand anything about technical SEO, so I didn't do any of it. I kind of, I ranked on page one, despite my lack of technical SEO application, I have gone back and, and improved on all of that. So I do in the content itself, I do use H tags, very very consciously where I want to, you know, put a little bit of weight behind certain keywords.
Scott:
So ex explain that. What do you mean when you say H tags? What are you doing there
John:
So well in Shopify, the, the title is automatically given H one status, I'd say so that's like, that has the, that gives the most weight when Google is crawling because it crawls between it reads what's the H one tag and the H two and H three. And it gives a little bit of less weight as you go down. So if I want to use, let's say there's a, there's a question in, I, I wanna add a question inside the piece of content. I would, I could write out the question and it could be how much do e-bike electric hunting, bikes weigh. And that's the question. I'll make the question, maybe a H two tag or a H tree tag to give it a little bit more weight in Google's eyes. And then I'll answer the question and I'll use the keyword again. So it, it's just, it's just a way of me being able to introduce the keyword more often.
John:
And in one of the two, in one of the two scenarios, I've, I've even given it like a H two. So it's, it gives a little bit more weight behind it. And what could also happen then is if Google if somebody answers asks that question, even if my piece of content doesn't rank, I'm the question and answer may be featured in the featured snippet section. So it's an another way of getting people to content. So I use hedge tags to kind of emphasize they like the paragraph headings, but I will use them in a, sort of a strategic way that I could try. If, if it makes sense to put the keyword in there, I will try to do that. Obviously I won't do it just all over the place and make it messy, but there's a little bit of intention behind it.
Scott:
Are you doing anything with the micro data beyond what the turbo theme gives you out of the box?
John:
No, because I, I don't, I really don't like playing around. I, I do have a guy on, on, on, on my team. Who's a lot smarter than I am. And he recently has gone in and optimized some of those blogs and they visually look a lot different. And there some, there is some, some code that he put in there. He basically wrote the code himself. So the, so the layout of the page itself has a little bit of a little difference and he just then applied that same layout to a few of the blog posts, but we're really just experimenting to see if that helps or if it slows down the page, does the actual layout increase, click through rated product pages, but it's but that's a, that's a kind of a new thing. So we don't know up until a couple of months ago, they were all very standard blog. Like anything that we could edit inside the actual text box, that's where we did everything. There wasn't any magic behind the liquid.
Scott:
Are, are you in an online store? 2.0, version of turbo or are you a pre 2.0
John:
Yeah, no pre pre yeah,
Scott:
If you had sections anywhere, there's so much more, you can do an article pages. It's absolutely a blast or it's just easier to do it. You're probably doing the same things inside of your email description right now.
John:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we'll all end up switching eventually
Scott:
Online store 2.0 first came out. I told all my clients, you know, it's, it's wonderful. It's great. I absolutely love it. Which is all true. Don't think about it, right. It is not worth upgrading for, at all. Just keep running your business. I think we're gonna get to the point really soon where I'm actually gonna be probably not this year, you know, 20, 22, but 2023. I'm probably gonna get to the point where I'm gonna recommend people. It's AC the gains are worth it because not only is online start 2.0, awesome. But it's getting more awesome over time. But we're also EV the whole ecosystem is learning better tools. The apps, like you're just, it's a much more capable story. It's it's almost night and day it's it's, it's way more dramatic of a change than I thought it was gonna be before it came out. I'm, I'm super happy. It's it's but still for you, it's now worth upgrading yet. Cuz you've got so much young cuz it takes so much time to upgrade, but the, the gains you get when you do, it's sort of like if you were on like w commerce before and migrated to Shopify, how different that feels online store 2.0 is almost that level of, wow, this is awesome.
John:
Ah, okay. Okay. So yeah. So the next time I have to upgrade yeah.
Scott:
When you do it right, you should do it for other reasons. Like you're constrained by certain things, but you're gonna be so pleased when you, you actually do. Okay. So on the, the technical SEO side of things, are you doing anything with images and image, naming video? Are, are you thinking about images and videos as separate objects in the SEO world that drive traffic also?
John:
So I, I do, I do try to give all the images a like a very clear descriptive name of what's on the image. So it's because there's also the accessibility aspect to these images as well. So like there are blind people that are having the computer read out the name of an image. So they, they know what's the screen sort of thing. So I do try to be descriptive in that way. And I will, where, you know, most of my images are of electric hunting bikes. So I will try to use the, the keyword in the image title as well. But I would, I would like, for example, an image could be hunter in woods standing beside his electric hunting bike, for example, that could be an image title. Yep. So that sort of thing, it wouldn't be man on bike or image four, seven X JPG, for example. I do try, I try a little harder than that.
Scott:
Yeah. Well, and the, the trying and thinking about it, you know, nothing's perfect in, in this highly manual, you know, put together, you know, Shopify sites that we all build, but at least trying is probably more than most of your competition is doing. So you're ahead of the game there kind of thing. Yeah. So we talked about, you know, your overall strategy, which I'm gonna just gonna summarize is best of breed content. Like I said before, that's easy to say hard to do, but you actually found a niche that was more blue ocean, where you could be best of breed and for a while you were, you know, cuz you're the only one, but now there's more competition out there, but you've stayed ahead of them and outpaced them. So you focus more on content and quality than trying to find the silver bullet technical SEO trick that people are looking for. And I think that's the right thing. Cause I don't think there is a shortcut. I think Google is way smarter than any of us. Any little trick you think you can do. And there might be some tricks you have, they're only gonna be short term until Google figures them out. And they're really just looking at the quality of your content and judging things by that, with all the different, you know, data that they have like time on page and all that good stuff, they, they know more about our stores than we do.
John:
And the, the longer, the longer this, this, this plays out, the smarter Google gets and the, the, the more natural language it's gonna be able to understand. So only good content will rank. So like short term gains or tricks or hacks or tactics, they're all very short term and they could end up hurting in the long run because you're not going to then go and invest the time in doing some proper research and creating good content.
Scott:
Yeah. I actually went to an SEO course, or, or seminar one time and this is like 2011 and they were actually preaching building 1000 WordPress sites that point to your, your skyscraper site kind of thing. And that, you know, that was a class like that they were teaching is like, you know, the thing that would get you banned in a second today, right? And even, you know, you know, 10 years ago could get you banned pretty easily, but they were espousing that as the strategy to success where that's a very short term shortlived thing. And you've got that, that total white hat mentality of we're in this for the long game. And when we're, we're doing that right,
John:
When you get banned by Google and Facebook and SEO is your only acquisition strategy, you wanna do it properly. You do not wanna be cutting corners or playing with fire's true because when, when, when Google organically shuts you down, it lights out.
Scott:
Yeah, yeah. That, that is absolutely true. I hadn't thought about that aspect. Like you have to be more cautious than most people because this is your only option. I'm sure we could go more into the execution cuz you have so much knowledge about this and, and you've already alluded to like, you know, that's the way we did things back then, but we're smarter now. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but we're, we're getting short on time. So I just wanna shift gears and talk, you know, really quickly about how do you measure SEO success?
John:
Well, at the end of the day, you know, I'm doing it to be able to, you know, it it's, it's, it's, it's how I make money. It's how I live. It's how I don't have to get a day job. So for me, it's how effectively can I get people to the site that a small percentage of them will make a purchase? So most SEO measured would be website visits. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> but that's a kind of with e-commerce it's not really like that because like we said earlier, you can write lots of content about slightly irrelevant things to get lots of traffic. And that's great if your goal is to run like ads, like ad sense or, you know, ad drive and monetize a blog with display ads because you know, then, then that would work. But with e-commerce it's there has to, the end goal is the funnel needs to be, get people to, to the, to the website, get them onto a product page and then just try to be as optimized as possible to get a conversion. So at the end of the day, it's it's, it's just about, you know, how successful the store is because when your acquisition is SEO, that's kind of how, how I measure success.
Scott:
I'm gonna summarize what I think I'm hearing you say and say that you are revenue and the trend of revenue as the metrics of success for SEO. Is that accurate?
John:
Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty much yeah.
Scott:
The reason I, I bring that up is a lot of people, you know, site conversions are really important number, what happens is, and I literally had this conversation this week with one of my clients where he started investing in SEO two years ago and his revenue has grown every month for the past two years, the trend line is going up. It's awesome. His conversion has tanked in those two years, it's gone from two and a half percent to 1% and he's worried that the store isn't performing well. And what I was explaining to him is, well, the nature of your blog articles and the best of breed content that he's building and doing really good at you're drawing in more traffic, but it's less qualified. It's higher up the funnel. Yeah. So your site conversion, rate's gonna be lower, but you're bringing in more overall people and converting, still converting some of them and therefore you're overall sales and revenue are going up. So even though your site conversion's going down, that's not necessarily a sign that you're doing things wrong. Of course, if we can get that to go up, that's a great thing also. Yeah. But it's just the nature of the spreading that, that net wider from the content standpoint where you're gonna draw on some people that are higher up the funnel and you just be looking at more of your bottom line metrics of sales and, you know, average cart size and, and revenue and those kind of things.
John:
Yeah. Like my conversion rate is 0.15%.
Scott:
Oh my God.
John:
And if I, if I can do 3 million with a 0.15%, it doesn't really matter what that conversion rate number is because it's successful. Obviously I would like it to be like a 0.5 or 1%, cuz that would be completely game changing. But the nature of organic traffic, isn't like, I'm here to buy here's my credit card. I just need to find the right page. People are researching and I want them to find me when they're, when they're ready because they've, you know, I've given them the information in the past and you know, it's a very long, long buyer curve, especially with the prices of the bikes that I sell. So yeah, I'm okay with that.
Scott:
Like a jewelry store I've worked with, you know, high end jewelry stores who were, you know, thousand five, $10,000 products with 0.1% conversion rate. And I was gonna say that there's two things there, right? One is your traffic is SEO. Two is your price point is five to $7,000. And those two mean you have a low conversion rate, but a successful business, right? Yeah. So the, the, the Uber point there, you know, I'm trying to get the, our audience here to, to understand is know your business really well because for most e-commerce businesses, I would say the conversion, rate's the number one thing we should be looking at. But in some e-commerce businesses, it's not because your business is different than all the other ones it's unique, just like most of them are. And you need to like, look at your business and figure out what metric you're gonna be looking at. If you can only look at one or a few of them, and that's just, you know, one of those functions of knowing your business really well.
John:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously I do try to improve my conversion rate, but if I'm trying to improve my conversion rate and I'm also trying to increase organic traffic, they kind of like, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> level each other out, so yep. So, but yeah, it doesn't keep me up at night.
Scott:
That's great to hear you took all this knowledge. So you, you built, you know, one store that's doing absolutely fabulous. You're now an expert in this thing that most people consider like this hard to achieve SEO. Everybody loves the idea of SEO, right? Free traffic. I don't have to do anything, you know, just sleep all day and you know, drink all night and I get all this money kind of thing. And you know, you're, you're explaining to us, it's not that easy, but it can be done. What are you doing now with that knowledge?
John:
Last year I was supposed to travel to Lisbon and I was supposed to give a talk on how I do, you know, like several multiple, multiple seven figures with organic traffic. It was the very first time I put all of the, the strategies that I do and I actually documented them cuz I had to try to explain it to somebody. And it was like people were coming from all over the us from all over the world to Lisbon to see this explanation. And then C shut down Portugal and the event didn't happen. And I had a coach at the time and said, John, you know what this is is? And he says, you've basically built this, the, the, the wire frame of an SEO course for e-commerce just record videos behind all of this knowledge. And then, and then you've got a course and I didn't do it for about six months because I just didn't, it didn't, it felt a little, I don't know, it kind of felt icky or something.
John:
You know, trying to get people to buy my course sort of thing. But once I did it once I did it and people started, you know, signing up and saying, oh, this is fantastic. Now at least I know what I'm supposed to do because it takes so long to figure out, even if the work you're doing is actually gonna pay off because it's a long, it's a lot of slow burn. It's better if somebody has a roadmap. So basically I've documented a roadmap. And now I have a, like a small course for SEO, for e-commerce stores.
Scott:
That's awesome. That's all I love the way, you know, you're giving back to the community, but also, you know, you charge for it. It, because, you know, knowledge, you know, is worth something just like you were paying people early on, you know, having a course out there is a great way to do that. And you know, multiple revenue streams, right? You're an expert in econ or an SEO use that in your store. And you also have another revenue stream from a course using that exact same knowledge, right. Diversification. It's a really smart strategy. Where can people go to find that course
John:
E-Com SEO, formula.com and the course is pretty, it's pretty in depth as well, because it's not just about creating content. It's about getting affiliates to sign up for your program and occupying more spaces on page one and sending you their traffic instead of sending to Amazon. And there's a lot of sort of other, other factors that play into organic traffic. And it's oh, we could have a call about each <laugh> each, each type of, and we still wouldn't cover it all, but yeah, there's a lot in there.
Scott:
Yeah. That's awesome. I'll include a link to it, the show notes and you have an offer for our audience.
John:
Yeah, I do. If if your audience wants to check out the course and they use the code solutions and they get 15% off the course.
Scott:
Awesome. I'll include that in the, in the show notes also. So John, I, I am super impressed with how much knowledge you have in this space when you first, you know, approach me, you know, your, your email is super, super humble and like, oh, that's a nice guy. It sounds really cool, but I'm just amazed at how you just casually walk through this conversation of absolutely genius execution of this SEO stuff. There's multiple times in this, you know, past hour that we've been talking, I'm like, wow, that is really, really insightful. Most people would be, you know, jumping up and down, like pointing the finger themselves, look how smart I am. And you're just like, this is just what you do. You look at how Google's ranking things and you know, you just do what they, they want kind of stuff like it's a really elegant genius you got going on there. So, so kudos for that.
John:
Thanks. I mean, it's not rocket science, it's just a lot of it is just about trying to figure out where to get started. You know, that, that's the hardest thing with SEO. There's so much information about there, but, and the people are, are, are teaching SEO. They, they actually try to make it sound really complicated or agencies will make it sound like you wouldn't be able to do it without them. And then they have a huge retainer, but if you have the time to do it, you can do it. It's really not hard. It's just, you just need to know how to implement it. And there are close to a hundred students in the course now. And you know, if, if I think in a, in a, in, in treat the six months, some of those recent students will start ranking on page one for their niche. And then, then it's a, it's a game changer for them.
Scott:
Yep, yep. That, that's awesome to hear. So any last parting thoughts before we sign off here
John:
Just that SEO, isn't a black box. It's not a mystery, but if if you do have the time and you do, you do put it into SEO, it will take time, but the rewards will come.
Scott:
That's awesome. That's a great summary. Thanks for your time today, John.
John:
Thanks, Scott.