Playing the Long Game: Why Real SEO Success Takes Strategy, Patience, and Purpose

Transcript

Mary (00:51)

Today we're talking about something that every business owner and marketer really needs to hear. And that's really why the long game at SEO matters more than ever now in today's marketing landscape.

Winnie Youger-Rash (01:01)

We've all seen the temptation, quick fixes, shortcuts, AI generated content, AI generated SEO that promises results basically overnight. But in digital marketing, the row ends come from strategy, patience, and consistent efforts.

Mary (01:18)

So to dive into this a little bit more, we've invited someone who's been leading SEO teams for nearly two decades, Tyler Brown, Senior Director of SEO at Big Leap. welcome. Before we dig in, would you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your journey, how you ended up here, and how your approach to SEO developed over the years?

Tyler Brown (01:37)

Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me. By the way, it sounds weird to hear the two decades, but I don't think I'm that old. At least in my brain, I'm not that old. Yeah. So I've been in the digital marketing space since 2008 and it really was just me getting my feet wet at that point and not exactly know what to knowing what to do with life. And so I started actually at an agency in the sales department.

Mary (01:43)

I I know, I feel that.

Tyler Brown (02:04)

And I found out I was a little too nerdy for sales and I was building websites on the side and optimizing them and finding out how they really work. And then I moved within Teams really quickly within the agency. So I was working on an account management team. I was doing not only SEO, but local SEO, paid search, getting involved in paid social. And so that's where I really found.

of how my passion was making things happen for clients. And ultimately felt like the organic game was more for me. I felt like it was very creative, but also very technical, which is kind of where my brain goes oftentimes and where a lot of people will pull me in. yeah, that's a little bit about me. And just fast forward to today, and I'm working with Big Leap, an agency that

Mary (02:44)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (02:55)

Mainly does SEO, also quite a bit of paid search. And we're really digging into the AISCO space as well right now. So it's ⁓ been a fun ride.

Mary (03:03)

Yeah,

cool. Yeah, and things have changed a lot. I'm sure you've seen the gamut of things changing in the marketing realm. But SEO kind of really begins with long before you ever published anything. mean, SEO really starts before you actually get that content on the page. It's about the foundations, what we've learned, that website structure, site speed, having a clear strategy. So...

What are some of the first steps you take when starting with a client, like when building a new SEO strategy with the client from scratch? How do you start that process? What does that look like?

Tyler Brown (03:36)

Yeah, it's a good question. And honestly, Big League doesn't do a ton of like ground up website building brand new brands. but I've done quite a bit of it over the years. And one of the things that we've found is, is really key to even just starting something is like having your brand identity, like established, you know, who you are, you know, how you talk to your customers, you like,

Mary (03:42)

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (04:04)

have that foundation of, solve a problem and here's why my customers come to me. And now I'm going to tell everybody about it ⁓ and not hiding behind a website or just, I'm busy. It's really like getting yourself out there, getting your brand out there, being your own biggest brand advocate. And then there's a lot of other building that goes along with website and content. How do we approach that?

Mary (04:10)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (04:29)

That type of stuff.

Mary (04:30)

So like from a perspective of who your ideal client is for Big Leap, like tell us a little bit about who your ideal client is, know, what their expectations, what your expectations are for them and how that strategy would work from that perspective then, how, you know, you work with your ideal clients at Big Leap.

Tyler Brown (04:46)

Yeah, we mostly work with established brands, so medium to enterprise-sized businesses. We will work with owner-operator-founder situations, but generally more on the multi-location side of things. ⁓ So we work with marketing departments. We work with

Mary (04:57)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Winnie Youger-Rash (05:01)

Okay.

Tyler Brown (05:08)

We work with, you know, C-suite to get things up and running and maybe they're looking for kind of a CMO type agency to kind of take them to the next step. That's the type of stuff that Big Leap is really dialing in on and is our bread and butter.

Mary (05:21)

Cool.

Winnie Youger-Rash (05:22)

was just going to say we get a lot of people coming in that realize that that fast fix that they were kind of sold in some kind of marketing is not going to fix what they want because we do also have a lot more of like private practices and smaller group practices is what we kind of normally focus on. What advice do you give your clients, especially those bigger kind of C-suite clients when they want the results now, but we kind of know that with SEO.

It is a longer game. does take time. How do you explain that and kind of put that in perspective for people?

Tyler Brown (05:57)

Yeah. You know, most C level execs are going to be pretty dialed into the fact that do you want to rent the house forever or do you want to own the house? Right. This is a conversation of do you need short-term results? And that's okay. A lot of businesses do need short-term results or are you willing to build the house? do you want the long-term effects of what SEO can truly do for your business?

Winnie Youger-Rash (06:08)

Does sense?

Tyler Brown (06:24)

And it could be a mix of those things, right? You may, it's like your mortgage from the bank, you can't afford the house yet, but you're gonna rent some space on Google with ads, for example, and then you're investing in the future on the SEO side. And that's ultimately, I think the way, you know, business owners should be thinking about it. But it's tricky when you're behind the eight ball and you've got to make results happen.

Mary (06:35)

Yeah.

Yeah. And do you find that it's more with like the C-suite, do you find that it's more difficult to like get them on board with the long-term stuff because of the, they want that ROI right away? Or do you feel like that's something that is an easier conversation to have?

Tyler Brown (07:03)

I think it is an easier conversation to have with medium to large businesses because they already see the value in it, right? Maybe they've done a little bit of it already. We had one client sign just barely, but they're doing very well, right? And they've been in their business since, I don't know how much I'm able to say at this moment, but.

Mary (07:09)

Okay.

Right.

Tyler Brown (07:27)

They've been in the business since 1996, right? They're not brand new to this, but they've never really done like true SEO and really built for the future. And that's like a prime opportunity for us, right? It's like, okay, they're seeing results because they're naturally just a good business. They have a good product, but ultimately they need someone to take them to the next level and really build things out.

Mary (07:29)

Yeah.

Right.

Really?

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (07:44)

Absolutely.

Mary (07:48)

Right.

Tyler Brown (07:54)

not only target Google, but target the other AI services that are coming up what seems like daily.

Mary (07:58)

Mm-hmm.

Awesome.

Winnie Youger-Rash (08:00)

I have a question about kind of the dangers of shortcuts because you SEO there's in the market, there's a lot of kind of what I would consider kind of shiny shortcuts of like links, scams, not scams, but AI tools that'll create, you know, links for you and that sort of thing. And we've seen firsthand with some of our clients how detrimental taking the wrong shortcut.

can be, they've gone somewhere, done a shortcut, come to us and been like, now I'm getting all of these clicks from another country that this is making everything go a little haywire. These approaches are obviously tempting because it kind of entices them that they can see results quicker and being patient.

can be really hard for those companies that do need to see something quicker, but they also want to build the house. Do you think there's any, mean, there's those obvious costs of like something goes awry and you can kind of like see it right away. Do you think there's any like long-term or hidden costs for taking some of those shortcuts that don't build a really solid, I like that analogy you gave of the house. It doesn't build a solid foundation.

Tyler Brown (09:12)

Yeah, for sure. We've seen so many examples of this over the past, like you said, two decades. And it's really been kind of an evolution, right? Google is essentially trying to cut out spam. They're trying to make it so people who take shortcuts and put stuff out there that isn't a high quality don't win. And that's a good thing because the businesses who do it right

Winnie Youger-Rash (09:28)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (09:37)

when in the long term, right? But you could lose out on some initial short-term gains. So back in 2011, 2012, people were using blog networks to build up their link profile, build up their authority, and it worked. People were ranking number one all over the place. But a lot of people also noticed that there's a lot of spam within search, that users don't continue using search when

Mary (09:53)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (10:06)

the results are full of spam. So Google's job is to cut that out as quickly as they can and reward real marketing, real businesses that are providing a great experience online. And so we saw some backlash from that in 2013, 2014 when Google's handing out manual link penalties, which then caused businesses all over. There's so many examples that are probably still relics online.

to lose all of their positioning within Google. And then those businesses went to not only agencies, but people who have been in the business for a long time and said, can you dig me out? Right? And it became an investment to get rid of the stuff that they did for the short-term wins. And so like we worked with

Mary (10:45)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (10:46)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (10:56)

So early Big Leap 2013, 2014, which is around when I started with Big Leap, that was a chunk of our business was helping people dig themselves out of the manual link penalty and out of the hole. And so it became like paramount for us to build the right way for our clients, even though there might be some short-term gains that you could build right now, but it's...

Mary (11:04)

Mm-hmm. Out of holes.

Right.

Tyler Brown (11:23)

potentially not going to be the best for your business in the long term.

Mary (11:27)

I really like that because I think that is important to think long term, to think long game. I know that we tell a lot of our clients that when you're doing consults, when you're looking for a business that's gonna help you with SEO, always look for those things where they guarantee results or they guarantee certain things or they're telling you for sure it's gonna happen in this many days. Those are some red flags that we look for.

Winnie Youger-Rash (11:28)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (11:49)

Yeah.

Mary (11:51)

when we're talking to our clients about who to work with. So how do you suggest businesses spot red flags? Because you guys are obviously invested in doing things the right way. So what would you say to a client that's like, how would you spot red flags about a business that maybe you don't want to use that tool or maybe you don't want to do that? What are some red flags that you look for?

Tyler Brown (12:13)

Yeah, for sure. That's a good question. And I think, yeah, it's tempting, right? The guarantees, ⁓ number one, in four days or whatever it is, is it's enticing, especially when doing it the right way can require a decent investment, right? This isn't, it's not cheap to build websites and build things the right way and build content and have real

Mary (12:19)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (12:20)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (12:31)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (12:39)

you know, real helpful content that you put out there. In fact, Big Leap earlier this summer put out a how to hire a digital marketing agency, seven steps to success. And we actually have like a ton of these recommendations within that blog post that's like.

Mary (12:50)

Awesome.

You'll have to share that with me and I'll post

it with our resources.

Tyler Brown (12:59)

Yeah, for sure. Be happy to. And so it's a little bit of what you can look for and what you can expect. We have a whole series that goes along with what to look for. I would say those red flags are someone who is overconfident. They're promising. They're guaranteeing. It seems like they're shortcuts. And if you're not sure, ask for case studies. Ask for.

Mary (13:05)

Okay.

Okay.

Tyler Brown (13:23)

⁓ real companies that they've worked with that you can talk to that will ultimately let you kind of suss things out a little bit better than just taking it at face value, right?

Mary (13:33)

Mm-hmm.

Winnie Youger-Rash (13:34)

Yeah, that's

Mary (13:34)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (13:34)

a great idea. I've had people ask me, know, is using AI to help write content or generate ideas, is that considered a shortcut when talking about like not taking shortcuts? And my answer is normally like, it can be if you don't use it correctly. Do you think, what is your take on AI? Do you think it can be used in a healthy way to help build SEO or do you feel like it's being

more used for shortcuts right now.

Tyler Brown (14:04)

I think probably 80 % of people are using it for shortcuts right now. big leap stance on it is we absolutely use AI. if you don't use AI, you're leaving, you know, some efficiencies on the table and potentially some, some awesome analysis that you can do and all that fun stuff. But our approach is what we call human centered. So we don't put anything out unless it has been.

Winnie Youger-Rash (14:07)

There.

Mary (14:14)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Winnie Youger-Rash (14:28)

soon.

Tyler Brown (14:31)

reviewed and edited and fixed by a human, you would be surprised or maybe you wouldn't be because you're in this space. But maybe those that are listening today, you would be surprised how much misinformation is inside of the content that you generate with AI. like we're customizing models to help us do this building and research and outlines and all that fun stuff.

Winnie Youger-Rash (14:44)

Yeah.

Mary (14:47)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (14:57)

And the custom models we build still are up to specs ⁓ from a human centered approach. we are, yeah, there's so many people that are kind of hacking the system or they think it's the, the best possible possible option. Maybe they don't want to go hire a full-time person and they're just plugging things into AI and publishing what comes out. And I'm here to tell you right now, it's kind of scary, especially

Mary (15:01)

Mm-hm.

Winnie Youger-Rash (15:09)

Mm-hmm.

Agreed.

Tyler Brown (15:25)

Yeah, especially seeing some of the businesses that Google has sandboxed because of AI published sloth is what we often call it. And I know this space is kind of terming it that too. That is just clearly not helpful.

Mary (15:37)

Yeah.

Yeah.

And with us working with healthcare practitioners, with mental health practitioners, you know, and that your money, your life category on Google, we try to stress that even more because Google takes that really seriously. If you're working with something that's going to impact somebody's life, you know, their mental health, their financial situation, whatever, you have to make sure that your content is accurate, is backed up, is legitimate. You can't be just randomly

typing things into chat GPT and throwing it up on the screen and being like, well, chat GPT knows what it's talking about. It's all good. So we do talk a lot about using those tools responsibly and making sure that, you know, you really use those to help generate the content, but not just rely on it to tell you everything you need to know. You're the expert, you're the human. You should be doing the checking on the work. So

How do you, when using AI, how do you incorporate that? Cause you guys are really brand centered, you know, that's a part, important part of what you do. So how do you make sure that your AI generated content? How do you utilize that to strengthen the brand voice?

Tyler Brown (16:45)

⁓ that's a good question. So we actually are testing right now with custom AI models that are fine tuned to our client specifically. So we have, we have a client that has over 80 requirements for their content of things they can or cannot say. And so we're building that into a model that actually what happens is we will write a piece of content. Most of the time a human will be doing that.

Mary (16:55)

Awesome.

Really?

Right.

Tyler Brown (17:13)

And then we'll actually like put it into the custom model that we've trained to tell us what potentially we're overlooking or what we're missing or what, because we have an idea of what their brand voice is and how they want to sound and, and speak to their audience. the fine tune model will actually come back with points that we should consider within the content. doesn't fix it for us. It doesn't write the content for us, but it ultimately becomes.

Mary (17:20)

What's missing? Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Like your brain. Yeah.

Tyler Brown (17:41)

Like an extension of our brain so

that we can, cause as an agency, you're managing so many different clients. How do you keep all 80 rules for each client in mind? And so we kind of have these checks and balances in place that help us to remember those things and really avoid fatigue for our writers so they can do the fun stuff.

Mary (17:50)

Yeah.

Yeah, we just had someone on here who was talking about one of the things that they utilize AI for is to help navigate that answer fatigue, that question fatigue, that fatigue you get by writing this, know, writing and trying to figure out everything over and over again. So chat, or AI can come in and kind of help alleviate some of that, that stress. I like that. That's really cool. So, ⁓

Winnie Youger-Rash (18:08)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (18:19)

I know I've been reading a lot about brand strategy becoming even more important now with AI and even sometimes more important than actually getting like click through, you know, having that brand presence, that visibility is really becoming, you know, across different, different, you know, areas like social media, your website, your, know, having your brand all over the place, more channels. So how does that really, how does that strategy really connect with that long-term SEO success that

that overarching brand value that you guys talk about adding.

Tyler Brown (18:50)

Yeah, it's funny. We actually wrote a blog post about this back in the summer as well. It's called brand versus performance marketing. Isn't the real debate. It's the execution gap. And ultimately what we're seeing, you know, a lot of people are on one side or the other. like, we build brand and that's what drives us. And then, you know, many marketers are on the other side. Like we are performance marketers. We are,

Mary (18:53)

Nice

Okay.

Right.

Right.

Tyler Brown (19:17)

We are measured, our success is measured by specific KPIs and sales and leads and dollars, but we are suggesting that there's ⁓ a combination of the two is actually like the most ideal ⁓ route for a business, especially in the AI era. We're finding that AI favors established brands, figure, right?

Mary (19:21)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (19:41)

Surprised, surprised that established brands that have a positive reputation that people talk about positively online and that like AI is confident that they're going to be recommending a good experience to their users. so yeah, there's, we could probably, this is probably a whole other podcast topic for sure. Yeah. And we actually have.

Winnie Youger-Rash (19:42)

Which makes sense.

Mary (20:02)

whole podcast on its own.

Tyler Brown (20:06)

a few guys within BigLeap that are brand guys. we are specifically, if we are talking to a medium-sized business or you'd be surprised, even sometimes our enterprise businesses that are not dialed in on the brand side, often struggle on the performance marketing side. So our suggestion is pack to the basics. Learn how to talk to your audience. Learn how to really build value.

Mary (20:09)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Winnie Youger-Rash (20:25)

interesting.

Mary (20:30)

Right.

Tyler Brown (20:34)

in the sales process and your performance marketing will kind of follow along. will perform much better if you lead with your brand first.

Mary (20:43)

Yeah, I think that's what I've been reading. That's what I've been seeing a lot. And that's what we've been trying to really focus on here as well as that combination. You know, it's not it doesn't have to be black or white either. Or, you know, it's really about pulling all of these things together to make a cohesive strategy that kind of incorporates all of these things to, you know, get the.

the most robust picture of everything. So overarching, not just, know, KPIs, not just one thing, you know, how many clicks am I getting? Some people think that that's the end all be all, I'm not getting any clicks. my God, everything's horrible. But you know, there's a lot of other things to look at. So I really liked that perspective a lot about just, you know, looking at the big picture.

Tyler Brown (21:15)

Mm-hmm.

Winnie Youger-Rash (21:25)

If you had someone who was just starting out, kind of discovering their brand, because that wasn't something they'd put kind of much effort into, do you have like a top suggestion on where to start or what they should kind of be thinking about first?

Tyler Brown (21:39)

Um, if you've ever heard of a story brand before it's, it's, um, been along for a long time. Uh, that's honestly some of the building blocks that we use in a lot of cases, right? Taking story brand and saying like, who are you? What problem do you solve? And you become the hero. Um, yeah, if you're not familiar with story brand, there's a whole book and, and, uh, tons of resources online.

Mary (21:42)

Mm-hmm.

Winnie Youger-Rash (21:43)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (22:04)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (22:04)

But I think the idea of learning who you are, positioning yourself with customers, it's fairly nuanced, right? There's a lot of things you can be doing. But ultimately, think understanding who your audience is and how you solve their problem is the magic.

Mary (22:14)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Winnie Youger-Rash (22:25)

I want to bring it back to AI for a second because I do think that is such an important hot topic right now with it, especially this year, just exploding and changing and constantly evolving.

Mary (22:22)

we go.

Winnie Youger-Rash (22:38)

So we've talked a little bit about to use AI along like an extension of your brain rather than to like replace your brain. But we've also seen that people are using AI to get content out just faster to try to get more content out there. But we've also seen that faster doesn't always mean better.

How do you view, where do you think AI is going long term with SEO goals? And do you think it is gonna change how much content you should be putting out? Or do you think it needs to just be able to be used to improve your content and that sort of thing?

Tyler Brown (23:15)

Yeah, it's forced. I believe it's forcing content creators, business owners to talk about the things that they can't talk about, ⁓ which is your approach, your secret sauce, your creativity, your new ideas, your actually even pricing in specific industries. There's still some like

Winnie Youger-Rash (23:24)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (23:24)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (23:37)

lack of understanding of pricing in a lot of industries. So I think it's just raising the bar for quality content, honestly, which, you know, we can't hide behind. Like you have, you have to start talking about pricing. You have to start talking about the real stuff, the stuff that matters because AI cannot replicate that. And I think, I think that's a big part of what we're kind of starting to run into.

Winnie Youger-Rash (23:41)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (23:46)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (23:52)

Yeah.

Mary (23:54)

Yeah.

awesome.

Winnie Youger-Rash (24:01)

Absolutely.

Tyler Brown (24:01)

Did

you have some other questions within that? There were some layers there.

Winnie Youger-Rash (24:04)

Yeah, I kind of threw a lot at you at one time. Do you think it's going to change how much content is required to put out? We have kind of a set suggestion of how often to put out content and that sort of thing. Do you think AI is going to force Google to need more content more often?

Mary (24:25)

Or do you think it's just going to still be about the quality of the content? Like putting out quality, consistent content is still going to be what matters.

Tyler Brown (24:26)

⁓

Winnie Youger-Rash (24:28)

Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler Brown (24:30)

Yeah.

I think it really is more about the quality content, but you know, like this goes back to our conversation earlier, if you publish a ton of content right now and it's AI generated and there's some relevant stuff in there, you will likely see some results right now. I can't, I cannot vouch for how long that is going to last for you. So, ⁓

Winnie Youger-Rash (24:46)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (24:48)

Yeah.

Right.

gonna last. Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (24:55)

Absolutely.

Tyler Brown (24:56)

So I think it is potentially a balance of, sure. This does allow us to move a little bit faster. This does allow for more information processing. And so if you can amp it up a little bit as a result, but still maintain that quality, then I think you find the real ⁓ benefit, the sweet spot. Yeah.

Mary (25:03)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

this sweet spot. Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (25:20)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (25:21)

And I like that. I do think the AI adds value. think, like you said, it can streamline processes. It can help solve problems. It can help strategize and, you know, come up with things. But I think that that human creativity still has to take the lead. It still has to be, you know, human centered. You can structure a page all day the way AI wants to read it. But if it's not, you know, connecting with your audience, you're still going to have

you know, just content sitting there and not serving any purpose. ⁓ Yeah, absolutely.

Tyler Brown (25:49)

Yeah. And if I, you if I could add one more thing on top of that,

users are becoming smarter. Uh, they, if they see that it potentially looks hollow or like it's AI generated, or I don't know about you, but seeing those Sora videos, like the fake AI videos on social media kind of drives me nuts. Uh, and so the user is 100 % being programmed to ignore.

Mary (25:55)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (25:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, absolutely.

Tyler Brown (26:18)

some of AI because they don't, they don't like AI. Like maybe they do because it makes their job easier, but generally they don't like the output. It feels hollow. It doesn't feel like a real person. And ultimately what users are going to start to crave and what they're already starting to crave is that real human interaction is the, like the real helpful content that only sometimes business owners can provide or

Mary (26:22)

Right.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (26:46)

marketers obviously working with business owners that can provide that.

Mary (26:49)

Right.

So I think that, do you think, I'm just curious, do you think that Google is at a place with its algorithms, with its structure, that do you think it can recognize genuine high value content that's created by AI and content that's created by human? I'm just curious if you think Google can tell the difference. Because we get that question a lot from our clients. If I just create AI content, am I going to get?

Winnie Youger-Rash (27:13)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (27:16)

deemed by Google and we always talk about that quality content. It's more about the quality, the depth, what you're offering. Do you think Google can tell the difference between AI generated and human content?

Tyler Brown (27:26)

Yeah, whenever I have a Google rep in the room, tell them to close their ears when I talk about subjects like this. They regularly overstate their abilities to filter spam. your question, like, do you think they know? Not always, right? I think they're learning too. their spam team is...

Winnie Youger-Rash (27:30)

Ha!

Mary (27:37)

Yeah. Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (27:39)

Absolutely.

Mary (27:43)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (27:50)

absolutely building and learning and finding what is quality, what is not quality. And that's why I say it's not a matter of like, if, but more when, like if you produce bad content, publish it online and rank for it now, it's likely going to catch up to you because Google's number one responsibility.

Mary (27:55)

Right.

when.

Winnie Youger-Rash (28:03)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (28:06)

Eventually it's going to catch up with you. Yeah.

Tyler Brown (28:12)

is to cut out spam from their search results so that users continue using their platform. And Google is scared right now. They are moving faster than they ever have before. And there's a reason, right? ⁓ And so, yeah, Google employees can now unplug their ears, but it's always a fun conversation. oftentimes, teams within Google

Mary (28:14)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (28:36)

don't even know what the other team is doing or like that's how fast they're moving. They don't have time to the spam team and talk to the paid team and like they move much quicker than you'd think. And it's because it's mission critical right now to continue being the platform. I actually do think they are still the best platform, ⁓ but that could be upended really quickly. We see that with how quickly chat GBT is growing and other platforms as well.

Mary (28:38)

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So I think that that again, that stresses that whole mindset of doing it right from the beginning, know, starting just don't risk it. Don't take the chances. Just do the right thing from the beginning and build the foundation. And in the end, it's going to pay off for you because you're doing the things right. You're not going to have to worry about Google coming back and doing a gotcha on you or people looking at your content and being, you know, this is all robot written. I don't even want anything to do with your brand.

Winnie Youger-Rash (29:10)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (29:27)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (29:33)

So if you could give like, just looking on everything, just if you could give like one piece of advice to business owners that are trying to come into this, know, building that strong brand, that online presence in the AI world that's moving so fast, what do you think that some of your, one of your best pieces of advice would be? Just do it right from the beginning. I mean, what, what do you think?

Tyler Brown (29:55)

Yeah, be genuine, right? Be a real person. And it will show through. And I think a lot of that is, yeah, do it right from the beginning. If you're looking for shortcuts, you might find them. But then you'll potentially regret it. And so I know budgets aren't unlimited. And so that's why I say just be genuine.

Mary (29:57)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (30:18)

who you are in, let's say patient or someone, you're genuine in those appointments or interactions with your customers. I would say just move that online. have the content online that answers the real questions. Have the real customer experience online and you'll win for sure.

Mary (30:31)

Yeah.

I like that. I think that resonates with our client base really well because we encourage that authenticity and that connection with potential clients to build trust before they even get to your website. You want to be building that trust with your brand, your name, what you're putting out there. So I like that.

Winnie Youger-Rash (30:44)

I like that a lot also.

I say quite frequently, write like you're talking to your ideal client, because that's when they're kind of in their most authentic self as far as representing their business, which that seems to take some stress off of people when they're trying, when they feel like writing, especially like a blog is daunting when I tell them to focus just. We even suggest using like the speech to text because.

that kind of gets out of the head. We work with a lot of people who are still stuck in kind of like a graduate school writing. And they feel it can be very daunting to switch to that blog writing. So I love that you emphasize the just being kind of genuine because that's, think, really important.

Tyler Brown (31:39)

Yeah, for sure. And even just using the speech to text and then like running it through an AI model and telling it to like help you restructure it and make it make it industry are interesting and digestible and all that fun stuff. Yeah. I love that.

Winnie Youger-Rash (31:43)

Yeah, exactly.

Mary (31:45)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (31:53)

⁓ Do

you have any questions for us?

Tyler Brown (31:56)

I'm just so curious, like, does the future look like for the podcast? And are there any future topics that you're really excited to cover? And I need to become a listener at this point, it sounds like.

Mary (32:08)

I think, you know, yeah,

Winnie Youger-Rash (32:11)

you

Mary (32:13)

we try to like balance it out with like, you know, we're all about building those human connections, you know, and stressing that that's a big part of SEO is building human connection, building authenticity through your brand, through your connection. I think some of the I think we're excited to really dive into some technical SEO in the future. You're talking about the importance of schema.

Winnie Youger-Rash (32:19)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (32:34)

We know why that's becoming even more important with AI and things like that. Having our technical guru Sterling on here to talk about some of those things for small, because a lot of small businesses know nothing about that. You know, especially like the group practice owners that we work with, they, they're not technical. They don't know those things. They don't know what local SEO is. They don't know any of the things. So it's really just diving into the AI world a lot, doing our research and, and helping our.

Winnie Youger-Rash (32:59)

Hmm.

Mary (33:01)

know, focusing on helping our smaller businesses use AI to the best of their ability to make things easier for them. Take some of the hats off, you know, streamline some of the processes, do things like that. So I think that that's really where we're leaning towards in the future. But we still like to have fun. We like to have nonsensical topics that aren't really revolving around SEO necessarily, but. ⁓

Winnie Youger-Rash (33:23)

Yeah, I would say I'm

going to go the opposite direction. We haven't done like a personal one in a while. And we normally try to like do quite a bit, obviously on the SEO and AI, but we try to have some that are just about like personal and like connecting with your team and that sort of thing. And I'm excited to do some of those coming up because we haven't got to do one of those in a little bit.

Mary (33:29)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. But we just have fun. It's just it's nothing. We don't take ourselves too seriously very much. If you could listen to some of our blooper reels, it would we might have to make a blog about our blooper reels at some point or a podcast, because I think that would crack some people up because some of the things that go on behind the scenes are pretty interesting. But.

Tyler Brown (33:45)

Yeah, that's fun. That's fun.

Winnie Youger-Rash (33:50)

Ha

Tyler Brown (33:56)

Thank

Winnie Youger-Rash (33:56)

Yeah.

Tyler Brown (34:05)

But

Winnie Youger-Rash (34:05)

Great.

Tyler Brown (34:06)

that's funny because it goes back to being human. There's AI-generated podcasts that are out there right now. They can't be funny and interesting and mess up and laugh about it. So I think honestly that's one of the best ways to connect with your audiences. Really just be real.

Mary (34:09)

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (34:10)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (34:16)

That's crazy to me.

Yeah.

Winnie Youger-Rash (34:20)

Yeah.

Mary (34:29)

Yeah, it's just be real.

know, you're not I'm not perfect when he's not perfect. We make mistakes. You know, that's just part of being a human being is to make mistakes and learn from it and just to laugh at yourself because what else are you going to do if you screw up? but I just want to say thank you for joining us. I I really like Big Leap. I like what you guys do. I like the fact that you are focused on doing things right for your clients and being authentic and being, you know, that voice of reason in a chaotic world where

Tyler Brown (34:35)

Okay, good.

Winnie Youger-Rash (34:35)

That's why not.

You

Tyler Brown (34:42)

Yeah,

for sure. For sure.

Winnie Youger-Rash (34:52)

Mm-hmm.

Mary (34:58)

There's so much stuff being thrown at us that we don't always know what's what the right course of action is. So I really like that that's, know, what your guys are building your voice on is being that voice of reason, that authentic, you know, building it, doing it right. So just remember slow and steady, strategic, always beats quick and careless. That's what I'll leave you with. And just, you know, thanks for joining us today.

Winnie Youger-Rash (35:17)

Mm-hmm.

Tyler Brown (35:20)

Thank you so much for having me. It was fun to be on with you.

Winnie Youger-Rash (35:23)

thank you for joining us. To all our listeners, if you have any questions, let us know and we'll talk to you next time.

Mary (35:29)

And watch for, you know, the the podcast to come out because we will be posting links to Big Leap, some of their blogs that Tyler was talking about. That would be great resources for listeners. So we'll be doing all of that.

Winnie Youger-Rash (35:35)

Yes.

Mary (35:41)

Yeah, it was really good to talk to somebody who's not necessarily in the same space that we're in who does with a little bit bigger businesses and and has more Experience with that brand voice. So we appreciate you taking the time and I hope you have a good week Thank you

Tyler Brown (35:54)

yeah, you as well.

Thank you.