Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:27
Yeah. And it seems like on your site, when I was looking at it, you kind of zone in on it seems like 20 to 60 keywords to start off with.
Mark Herre: 14:36
Absolutely. Why? And let’s pivot to a dental implant dentist. Now they are in an emergency. Maybe they do. They have pediatric services. Maybe they figure that they’re going to be good at doing orthodontic work. They can bring in another doctor in an orthodontist, and that is we’re going to we’re going to have a big key word list. And that 30 day trial is going to kind of encompass all of those keywords. Are we going to achieve on all those rankings in the first, let’s say, 60 keywords for that one larger dental and dental clinic?
No. But we’ll pick it off month by month. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll we’ll achieve our results. We’re going to see where the low hanging fruit is. It’s going to achieve some results. And the and the agency’s going to look good because their history is going to be made. And I see history being made when the website has the most improvements in that first 30 days, and it’s never achieved such results ever before. That’s history.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:38
Talk about tracking and reporting, because I’m sure, like you’re communicating to the agency and they’re communicating to the client. What’s that communication like? What kind of reports and things are you providing so that the agency because I know, like your main job is to make the agency look good to their client. Right. And so what are those kind of reports and communication look like so that they could present it to the client?
Mark Herre: 16:05
Thank you, Jeremy, for keeping that top of mind of what I do to help the digital agency grow and scale their business. What I would just say about that is, first of all, I use the best reporting service out there with SEMrush data, which everybody loves, the Cadillac of agency analytics. People can cut a lot of expenses when they know that I’m providing the agency analytics dashboard, which they’re paying for it. They can save a lot of money. Then we’re reporting on all of those that those dashboard reports. What’s really good is that we’re also reporting on the month to month SEO tech.
And the SEO tech is basically all the work that we’re doing in the Google business profile. It’s what we’re doing in the citation link building, and we’re sending the data over to them month by month of usernames and passwords, to all the citations, to all the reporting that we do in Google Business Profile. And we’re also focusing on making sure that the story is being told in attribution, because we do what we do in SEO company that says they do it for another reason is not a good SEO company. I feel like we do SEO to attribute number one rankings for the best high volume keywords, to attribute the best work to get the biggest ticket keywords, and then hope.
Hopefully our attribution is phone calls and web traffic that show that in Google Analytics. And we can talk a little bit about Google Analytics reporting and Google Analytics reporting with the newer or the best topic that I know everybody wants to hear. And that is what we’re doing to solve the problem and answer engine optimization and LM models or summaries of generative, you know, AI. But that’s another thing. That’s a whole nother topic. What we do.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 18:04
Talk about some of the tools and tech. You know, you mentioned SEMrush obviously, and leveraging that to help show people, you know, the results in Google Analytics. What other tools do you like to utilize? Someone was mentioning the other day about Open Forge, like we’re speaking about AI and ranking on and tracking. What are some of the tools that you’ve seen our go to in the industry?
Mark Herre: 18:34
Well, the agencies I help need agentic AI tools that support what we’re doing. And they need a platform that’s secure. And so I’ve partnered with companies that help with and, you know, everyone’s got their own name for their tool. So I partnered with a, you know, certain companies they name, you know, like one of the tools is helping the agency with five introductions of websites that fit in their ICP ideal client profile. And what we’re trying to do is making sure that they get five opportunities a day and that they’re closing them, and they have a built-in CRM that’s an agentic tool that we actually don’t charge anything for.
We only charge if they want more than five referrals a day, introductions that they can close on. And then we’re doing that.
And then we’re also helping with the Heatmap. That’s a tool that Google Business, Google My business, introduced five years ago. We all resisted. We all hate it, but we all have to play with the and that’s for local search heat maps. And so we have an AI tool that we we support that actually comes through the Google business profile to help in expanding the visibility of websites so we can increase attribution, more phone calls, web traffic. And then we also have a plugin in WordPress that we’re also helping with, semantic link building that’s helping with agentic AI and semantic searches.
And so what we’re doing with the AI WordPress plugin is it’s actually combing through the internal blogging, and it only really now works with WordPress websites. We’re getting a rating score, and we’re actually improving Google Analytic results with how much traffic we’re getting from ChatGPT. Gemini. What you know, with that Google AI summary. And then also perplexity. And we’re really trying to improve the numbers in Google Analytics with those four roughly tools that we’re using. Not to mention we’re putting it all into one dashboard at Agency Analytics as well. So that’s the best tool that an agency has. So they can just go to one place and then get all that information.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:54
So your clients then when you have a client do they get a dashboard with you. And all these things are kind of plugged into them.
Mark Herre: 21:02
Yes. It’s all plugged into them. And the training is going into that so that they can share it with their clients.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:08
Very interesting. I’m curious early on why you went to white label route. Yeah.
Mark Herre: 21:14
Well, I.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:15
I mean, I could see advantages and disadvantages, right? Because like obviously you have an agency and they have a lot of relationships. Right. And you can manage one relationship that maybe they have 10 or 15 clients. And so you’re just managing that one relationship. That’s obviously an advantage. Disadvantage is like you go directly to a roofing company and obviously you can charge more. Right. Because the agency needs to make money in the end for all this stuff. And then so your fees get decreased along the way. So I see advantages and disadvantages. But talk about you know, that decision to go white label.
Mark Herre: 22:01
Yeah. White label to me just came naturally after I built my first website for the university or college I was attending, and I was running another technology company at an ISP, an internet service provider, where we fixed fax machines and got everyone on that lightning speed dial up. As you mentioned in my intro, what I did is I, I had clients that were digital agencies. I was gravitating towards what they were doing, learning really early on. And with technology back.
This is all pre-google, by the way. Technology could solve the problems that they couldn’t do on their own.
I had servers, I had I knew what to do with those servers. I knew the software that could interact with those and could back then, the day it was a little bit more Wild West kind of approaches. We all wanted to wear a white hat and we called ourselves white hat. But I think a lot of us were grey hat, black hat. It was a little bit of a difference in our approach to how we were doing SEO. I did it for the agency so they could look clean and good. And then behind the scenes they had a they had a competitor, they had a really competitive website. They wanted number one ranking, and they needed a better solution than what they were used to doing.
I could provide that heavy hitting solution with servers. Now, I became a white label SEO from the very beginning, and I just stuck with that model because I enjoyed always working with the book of business of the clients, and it allowed me to grow and scale and always stay in business. And my job is to help digital agencies stay in business. And so I’ve just kind of said, well, Mark, I’m in my lane, I’m going to stay this way. Now digital agencies give me what’s called handoffs. Networking has given me handoffs and it gives me an opportunity to work directly with owners. And I’m not objective to doing that. I’m just not seeking, you know, opportunities to go directly to target plumbers, if that makes enough. Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:07
What is Mark? I’m curious, what does your team look like? The team looks like a lot of clients.
Mark Herre: 24:13
I have a three legged stool approach, and any digital agency is going to tell you the same thing. The three legged stool approach to all SEO is in Google Business Profile. If we need to create one on page optimization, fixing the website and off page citation building, I’ve managers in all three of those areas that have been around with me and understand how to work closely together, and they’ve been with me for over two decades. And so I stick with my team member. And then we hire contractors and they make the recommendations to hire.
And then I pay the bills.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:52
You know, I noticed I’m going to share my screen for a second. You have some interesting articles on your website here, which are we just talked about. Right. How to rank in Perplexity AI how to rank in Google Gemini to increase GA4 traffic. Talk about some of these recommendations.
Mark Herre: 25:14
This is based on that plugin I was talking earlier about in WordPress. And we’re we have that recently just launched and we’re placing it on websites that are WordPress sites. We’re getting this overall score that will then interlink and focus on our semantic link building strategy internally on a website, so we can focus on the semantic search. So right now, 99% of all overall traffic for the brick and mortar companies. The home services are still in traditional search. However, we’re trying to increase that 1% of traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini.
We’re trying to improve that, to increase it from 1% to 4% and hopefully get it to 8%. We’re trying to make content marketing cool again. We’re trying to show the agencies that they can build us a new product out of this. They can make blogging cool again. What? Well, making content marketing important again. And we’re giving jobs back to content marketers that need to be, you know, hired by some, you know, web, you know, website owner that can afford them. Or if they want our route, we can just do it. But this is their website and this is their blog. And so we’re we’re we’re we’re hiring real content marketers to make it happen.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:40
So if people want to check that out, can they just Google GA4 traffic booster WordPress plugin? Is that what?
Mark Herre: 26:47
No, it’s a knowledge based plugin and I’m doing demos with it and it’s right now private. But it will be live and it’ll be live there pretty soon.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:57
Okay, talk about the process of creating a plugin.
Mark Herre: 27:02
Partners, getting a partner that knows what they’re doing, who’s done it before and having them do it, and then having all the problems they’re dealing with, the problems of making it live. That’s why, you know, two weeks ago I wanted this same plugin live. It still isn’t. It’s not live. So right now we’re just doing private demos. So the partner’s going to take care of it. We’re working on a server issue so it won’t get hacked. A plugin for WordPress. If you don’t do it right it’s going to get hacked. And we don’t want to get hacked. We want to have the only you know, we want to have the opportunity to, you know, make sure it doesn’t get hacked.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:38
Yeah. Well, you’ll have to share when? When it goes live. If not, you know, I guess people have to work with you and they’ll get it privately. How would it be a good network?
Okay. Talk about your thoughts on that throughout the years.
Mark Herre: 27:55
You are my. Every time I think of a good network, Jeremy, you and I, we go so far back. You mentioned, you know, what you’re doing early on in your other, you know, this podcast, but you circle back not using some kind of automated system. You just know the value of networking. So I always for as long as I’ve known you in networking circles, we’ve been in networking groups together for a long time. I expect when I meet with people that they’re going to never give me a referral for a digital marketing agency.
I just expect that they’re just sitting on someone, but they know a web designer, they know an SEO company, they know a marketing person. They know it. They know it’s easy to give me a referral. They might just say, I’m holding back. So how do you do that? I work on helping them get what they want, and in networking. I love taking 15 minutes and actually finding their ICP or Super connector. And I think everyone is getting so elevated in good networking circles that I’ve. I belong to four groups right now. So if I know someone who’s looking for an HR leader, I’ve got five of those. I know someone looking for a CFO who are good at virtual networking, and they have that gift of, you know, they’re going to make the life of that person I meet.
Once I find out what their ICP is, once I find out what their super connector is, who they want to geek out with, I know I’m going to follow up with a quick email after the. And it’s going to be such a simple email, it’s going to say, these are the five people we talked about. Here are their LinkedIn URLs. Click them and let’s make some introductions. And that always helps them to come back. And then maybe we talk about them and then they might be able to be open up, and then they might be able to share somebody with me. But I always look at the person who I network first. How can I make their day better?
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:52
Yeah, I always ask and I’ll say, you know, the best way to get referrals is to just give a ton of referrals. I think I introduced 5 to 20 people a day. And so just to give and by the way, that’s not even expecting anything in return just to give and you know, good things will come back eventually. And that’s my philosophy anyways.
Mark Herre: 30:15
And that’s why I look to you, Jeremy, because you have always been a stalwart. You’ve been the best. And I’ve. I can’t thank you enough for all that.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:24
Yeah. You’re welcome. What groups are you a part of? I know we’re a part of the connection. Shout out to Joe who started The Connective. That’s a great group. What other groups are you a part of that you like?
Mark Herre: 30:34
Well, they’re they this linger. The directories is where it’s at, where you can get yourself listed in a directory. I may not be front and center of the directories, and they are kind of like shielded behind the scenes. But I like networking with people in the Success Network and their directory is open to the public, even though I’m not a member of their group yet. I’m debating how H7 is another good networking group. So I’ve got the Success Network with Donnie Boivin and then Clay Hicks at age seven, and then one BC and that’s another really good one. And pretty much, you know, locally in the Utah area, there’s some good events.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:19
So you’re part of some local ones like. Like what.
Mark Herre: 31:22
Yes. Well just local chapters that have lunches.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:25
Are they like chambers of commerce or.
Mark Herre: 31:27
No, no, they’re just lunches. I pay for lunch. And then there’s you know, that Utah is really good at networking, so there’s going to be some good in there Facebook private groups that we’re networking. And then of course there’s some slack channels. I hit the CMO Fractionals really hard. Wherever the CMO Fractionals are networking, a lot of those I have to get invited to, and then I get kicked out because they find out I’m not as fractional, but hopefully I can find good ways to be a good networker. So they make a make a.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:03
You’re I mean I don’t know. Yeah. Fractional. If you use the term loosely maybe we can consider you a fractional. But yeah those are good ones. I’m glad you mentioned those. Yeah. Connective is good. I’m a member of Brian Kurtz’s group which is Titans a lot of direct response. I mean, they focus in on direct response marketing, but it’s all sorts of businesses. That’s a great group. And I find that when I look at the leader of that group, if that person is just a giving human being, they attract other giving human beings. right? And so that’s how Brian is and so and so and people of the connective tissue.
Mark Herre: 32:41
I apologize for all the groups that I’m still in, that I’m in the directory and I have a profile in like giver marketing. Just there’s floods of names are coming back to me, I have them. That was a great question. I just I just know that I can go to my, the, the spring of the, the source of the water and, and I can tap into those anytime, even though some of them aren’t as active as that. I should be into them.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 33:08
Yeah. No, I mean, I think it starts with that’s why I started with the offer. Because, like, you have such a compelling offer, it makes it easy for people to refer to you. Right? And if someone doesn’t have a compelling offer, it makes it more difficult. Right. And what what I found interesting, too, is some people’s trash is other people’s treasure. And I’ve heard you talk about sometimes we’re inundated with cold email and people are like, let me help you with your SEO, and people will come to you at a networking and say, Mark, I got like these 17 emails from different people, and I want you to discuss what you tell those those people to to tell the cold emailers out there.
Mark Herre: 33:59
The digital agencies get 17 emails a day. If they even get more than that, everybody’s trying to tell them their white label solution and they can help them. That’s why networking works, because it cuts right through it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:16
And yeah, and I was referring more to like more direct people pitching SEO services or web services or individual services. Right. And I’ve heard you say, well, just send them my way and I’ll do the work for them.
Mark Herre: 34:34
Yeah, yeah. And it’s not so much a pitch slap. Let me, let me get some work. Like, let me beg and plead for some, some, some work. Maybe you have some, some scrap to like.
Maybe you need some help. It’s more or less about providing value. Cut through the noise a little bit for the digital agency. Give them an offer that’s appealing. A digital agency might want to look first to the words that never out of those 17 emails they get a day, no one has ever told them that they can achieve social proof. Those two words. If you’re talking to a Houston SEO company, for instance, what is social proof? Well, social proof for Houston SEO is for being number one ranking for Houston SEO.
Well, I can help them. That will give them social proof where they can. And that megaplex area of Houston. to all that huge area. They’re going to do ten times their business with that word social proof. They’re losing sleep with those two words of social proof. If I could just solve that problem in a 30 day trial and help work on that solution, maybe they want me to work on it because they’re not number one ranking for their own keywords. Web designs. Houston I help digital agencies kind of. Sometimes that might be their first project. You know, that might be the only thing that they care about at first. Then we’ll get to those other websites I work on. But let’s see if you can fix my problem. You know.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:11
You know, Mark, I just have one last question. I want to just encourage people. They can check out your site at SEOGame.com like we showed before. You can go in, you can fill out keywords on your website and get a free report to start. Right. So it’s a no brainer. So check out SEOGame.com. My last question is just mentors in business. This could be colleagues and mentors, people you’ve learned from personally. It could be distant mentors, meaning there’s just books or some other resources that you’ve looked at over your business career over several decades. Who are some of your personal business mentors or distant business mentors?
Mark Herre: 36:59
Well, I’m going to plug in the guy that you mentioned, Steve. Jason Swenk, Steve Guberman, people who are at that high level, they sold their SEO company at a high level, and now they mentor others to help exit or help them succeed, even get, you know, they’re they’re always my kingmakers. I’m going to plug those guys in, you know. You know, maybe you can mention a little bit more about Jason in the interview you did. But along the way I look to them and mentor how they help the digital agency go a little bit further, and then I’m going to plug in my guy that helped me with the AI tools.
You know, Justin Silverman over at Merchant. He’s the one that uses the platform to help with heat maps and the AI tool that we fix problems in getting referrals to the agency so they can get five every day and close it in a little. Then I’m going to mention my WordPress plugin developer, and she’s a member of The Connective. And I want to make sure Kim Albee gets recognized. And yeah, definitely love, love working with these people that they were willing to take. My advice, come up with some ideas, do it on their own. And then I just love, you know, love, love good partners like that are helping me stay, you know, on the front and center, on top of mind of the digital agency so they can stick with me and stay with me and not become the next real estate agent. If they stay in. Their agency, I know they can make it past the first one. Second year, third year and continue on and have a fruitful life of. Digital marketing agency running.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 38:43
Yeah. Mark, thanks for mentioning that. Jason’s a good interview. Steve Guberman’s awesome. He was on the podcast agency out site. And that reminds me of Carl Smith, who runs Bureau of Digital, which is another agency group as well, so people can check that out. Also, Mark, I want to be the first one to thank you, everyone. Check out more episodes of the podcast. Check out SEOGame.com and we’ll see you next time. Mark. Thanks so much.
Mark Herre: 39:09
Bye y’all. Thank you.
