#59. How To Leverage SEO To Sell Your Products Without Wrecking Your Marketing Budget | Podcast

Alissa: 0:16

It is going to be an extremely helpful episode for all of you e-commerce biz owners who are listening, especially beneficial if you’re looking to level up your success as a brand.

Vira: 0:50

Hello, hello everyone, and welcome to episode number 59 of Flowium Podcast. We are email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium, and we are very, very passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world, and we provide premium full-service e-commerce email marketing to all of our clients. And our services are tailored specifically for your business, and they are designed to help you increase your online retail revenue by sometimes 50%, 5-0. So we are all about delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment. And today we have a very, very special guest with us. Alissa, you take it from here.

Alissa: 1:43

I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Today is one of our favorite kinds of episodes to record because Vira and I get to chat with our very special guest beforehand. Get to know them, chat, because you guys all know how much we love to talk. And then we get to introduce them and then ask them some really cool questions that we know will provide a lot of great insights for all of you who are listening. So today’s special guest. So even though today’s episode isn’t necessarily 100% email marketing related or like completely email marketing oriented, it is going to be an extremely helpful episode for all of you e-commerce biz owners who are listening. And it’ll be especially beneficial if you’re looking to level up your success as a brand. So everyone, please say hello to Vincent. He is the founder and CEO of SEO Therapy. Can you say hi, Vincent?

Vincent: 2:35

Yeah, hi everyone, nice to meet you all. That was a long introduction.

Alissa: 2:40

No, well, I have more, I have more. I wanted them— I, I wanted them to hear your voice just so they could know who we were working with today. Yeah. So actually guys, if you’re listening, we’ll have some links in the description. But if you go to SEO Therapy’s website, I love, love, love, first of all, the look and feel of it, but also like their main kind of like slogan at the top is, “So good, it’s therapeutic,” which I think is like the funniest thing ever, especially because a while ago I used to work for another agency who used to be focusing on SEO and the brands that we worked with through that agency were obsessed with SEO to the point where like a lot of these business owners would lose sleep at night. So it’s funny thinking about a business owner panicking about SEO and then working with an agency that makes it feel therapeutic. So I like that a lot. So just kind of some background about Vincent. So Vincent actually has a proven track record of helping companies grow their online revenue through careful design, execution, and implementation of digital marketing strategies across numerous different industries, including our very favorite industry here at Email Einstein, e-commerce. Some of the major problems that Vincent focuses on over at SEO Therapy resolves include finding strategic ways to drive traffic without wrecking your company’s marketing budget, which we all know is sometimes a bit of a challenge, generating a steady stream of leads, and also creating a strategy that will level up your company’s approach to how you continue through your digital marketing journey. So I don’t really wanna talk for Vincent cuz I know he’s gonna go through a lot of this with us today and we’ll get right into it. Vincent, we have this segment of the episode every time we have a guest on that’s called Blitz Q&A, where we’re going to ask you some yes or no or this or that questions. And it’s just supposed to be like a speed round for everyone to kind of get to know you really quickly. A lot of it’s silly, but a lot of it is kind of telling to your personality. So no pressure there. Are you ready? Can we ask you some Blitz Q&A?

Vincent: 5:02

Yeah, that sounds, that sounds fun. Go ahead.

Vira: 5:05

Awesome. Let’s go. Early bird or night owl?

Vincent: 5:08

Early bird, definitely.

Vira: 5:10

Nice. Dark chocolate or white chocolate?

Vincent: 5:13

Is white chocolate chocolate?

Vira: 5:16

I think that’s a good answer.

Alissa: 5:17

I love that, answering a question with a question.

Vira: 5:20

It’s very French of you. Is it really a chocolate? Google Ads or Facebook Ads?

Vincent: 5:28

Ah, that’s a tough one. What are you trying to do? So I say Google Ads.

Alissa: 5:33

Okay, this one is funny. I hope it’s not— I hope it’s funny and not offensive to you. Canadian French or French French?

Vincent: 5:40

Okay, so that’s a fun one because I lived in Canada. I’d say Both. Like, I don’t really speak Canadian French, but it’s so, it’s so nice to hear. They speak so differently than we do in France. So it’s, it’s really nice here. So both. I can say both, right?

Vira: 5:57

Okay.

Alissa: 5:57

Okay.

Vira: 5:58

That’s fair.

Alissa: 5:58

That’s fair. Okay. SEO or CRO?

Vincent: 6:03

Oh, oh, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. I want to say both at the same time because they work hand in hand so much and you need to align your strategy all the way if you want to maximize the results. Short-term, probably CRO. If you’re in long-term endeavor, SEO is going to bring much more value. Yeah.

Alissa: 6:24

Okay. And I like that breakup as well, where it’s like, if you’re more in short-term, CRO, if you’re more long-term, SEO. Okay. And the last one, this is very, very silly. We ask all our guests socks or mattress?

Vincent: 6:38

Mattress.

Alissa: 6:39

Okay.

Vincent: 6:41

I have no, I have no idea what the implications are and I’m very afraid.

Alissa: 6:45

So whenever we provide kind of examples about email marketing, marketing campaigns or strategies or anything like that. For whatever reason, since like the very first episode that Vira and I ever recorded, we came up with these examples of like, if you’re a sock company or a mattress company, your strategies are going to be very different. And it’s just something that kind of stuck and we’ve used it ever since. And now what we’re starting to do is we actually offer a free pair of Flowium socks to anyone who leaves us a review if they send us over a screenshot confirming that they left a review. So it’s become this very ongoing silly joke, but we have to keep the trend alive. So we ask all our guests, but thank you Thank you for getting through that round of blitz Q&A. I appreciate it.

Vincent: 7:24

No problem.

Vira: 7:24

Can you imagine, guys, one day we’re gonna be so big that we will be giving out like mattresses for review?

Alissa: 7:30

Flowium mattresses?

Vira: 7:31

Flowium mattress. Isn’t it cool?

Alissa: 7:34

I’d love it.

Vira: 7:34

Okay, Vincent, tell us more about yourself and what you do. When people ask you, who is Vincent? What do you usually tell and what you do?

Vincent: 7:44

So first and foremost, I used to be an SEO consultant and now I consider myself more of a CEO of an SEO agency, but I started like everyone in the business as probably more related to content. My first job was in content and then I learned SEO as I went. And I actually have— I started a PhD in French literature, which is why I got hired to take care of content. And yeah, yeah, that’s a fun one. And so I am French, which people can’t really hear, but I am French 100%.

Vira: 8:18

We can.

Vincent: 8:19

And then yeah, so now nowadays I’ve had a lot of success consulting for companies. I’ve consulted for Fortune 500 companies on their SEO strategies and content strategies and a lot of other types of companies, startups, SMEs, e-commerce stores as well. And so now I structure my own team to my own SEO agency that’s called SEO Therapy. As you said, we are an SEO agency that provides— we focus on like outcomes rather than just outputs, as I like to call it. So what we’re interested in is really making sure that every project works. Rather than just optimizing your website for the sake of it. So that means that our approach is always to— we have to understand what you’re trying to achieve with the site, the audience that you’re trying to attract, and what your business objectives are. And this ties to what you just said. If you’re stocking a mattress company, it’s not the same strategy. And if you have a store that you’re looking to sell in 2 years, or if you just want to be the leader in your marketplace, these are going to call for different strategies as well. So yeah, this is what we do as, as a business and That’s pretty much it.

Vira: 9:27

That’s awesome. And I was kind of hoping that you would have a French accent because I love it so much.

Vincent: 9:33

I mean, I can do it. I can make no effort for the next 30 minutes, but it’s going to be really painful for you.

Vira: 9:41

Don’t me start to bring in on my Ukrainian and Russian accent.

Alissa: 9:46

Vincent, we have this ongoing joke that I can speak French. I really cannot. But whenever I pretend to, I always do like a— and everyone’s like, Alissa, what are you doing? You don’t speak French. But after I watched—

Vincent: 10:00

French is convincing.

Alissa: 10:02

Thank you.

Vira: 10:03

To me as well. To me, Alisa sounds legit, and I’m from Canada.

Alissa: 10:08

So it was after watching Lupin that I was like, oh my gosh, I wish I could speak French because it’s so like, uh, like I don’t even know how to— if you guys could see my face right now, like I’m like squishing my hands and like, ooh, like it’s— I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. But anyways, I digress. So Vincent, let’s get kind of like into the nitty-gritty of it, right? Let’s get into like the really juicy stuff. So Vira and I were actually talking about this before because we were like, we actually don’t know a huge amount about SEO. It’s a term, or I guess a phrasing that we hear about a lot and it’s kind of thrown around, but we don’t know what it actually is. So could you kind of address like, what is SEO and why is it actually so important for e-commerce?

Vincent: 10:48

Yeah, yeah, sure. So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And so it’s kind of weird because a lot of people, they hear that and they hear search engine manipulation. Which is not what it is. So it’s not magic, it’s not a black box.

Vira: 11:03

Okay.

Vincent: 11:04

It’s not, you know, it’s really data-driven science even though it’s not a science, but it’s really a data-driven technique to help improve rankings in search engines. And so what we do as SEOs is we help Google understand websites because if you think about it, the only goal of Google is to keep you on the platform like every other platform on the internet. And the way, the reason they have to do that is so you keep using the search engine, the tool that they have so they can show you ads, right? Google Ads. This is how they make money, same as YouTube. So every time, and this is the secret of SEO right there, I’m giving it free to you guys at, you know, the first segment. If you understand this, you understand everything there is to understand about SEO. Every time Google ranks a website in its search engine, it takes a business risk because it could be providing the wrong result to the wrong person, thus leading to that person not using the tool anymore, leading to Google not making as much money from ads anymore. So if you think of every ranking opportunity as a business risk from Google, you understand why Google needs to trust a website. It uses a lot, a lot, a lot of signals to make sure that that website at that moment to that person is the right result to show. So our job is to reassure the search engine and help it understand the websites, understand the content, understand the audience that we’re targeting and how we are expecting users to interact with the website and what we’re trying to do with the website. That way we are reassuring Google that it’s not a risk to show our website versus other websites. So that’s kind of the gist of what SEO is. Obviously there’s a great deal of, you know, craftsmanship, so to speak, that comes into play. And the reason it’s important for e-commerce is usually because whether you want it or not, organic traffic is a huge part of your e-commerce traffic. Even though you’re relying on social media, even though you’re relying on ads, organic traffic still plays a role in your strategy. You cannot avoid it. And making sure that your website can be discovered, understood, and can be shown by search engines is a great way to not only get more traffic, but get more sales, get more revenue, and also grow in a profitable and enjoyable way because you’re getting that organic traffic steadily to your website even though you’re not paying for the traffic. So you can get more visible overall, right?

Vira: 13:34

I love how you’re explaining it.

Alissa: 13:36

Honestly, that makes A lot of sense now, like a lot more sense where it’s like, I love the business risk as well, that the idea. And Vira, I don’t know if you heard it as well. Vincent was saying, it almost sounded like he was going to say the right message to the right person at the right moment. I was like, come on, come on, give it to us.

Vincent: 13:55

Yeah, well, I’m going to say the right content to the right audience, right? And it’s kind of the same thing, but you know, people think SEO, and this is why I’m saying it’s more difficult than you think, is people think SEO is like a checklist. Okay, I have my title. My title tag is optimized, my meta description’s optimized, my content is more than 500 words long, and I have this and this and that. Why am I not ranking higher? Mm-hmm. Well, usually people forget about intent, right? If you type in something like mortgage calculator and the website that’s trying to rank for it does not have a calculator, Google is not going to show that website.

Alissa: 14:32

Right.

Vincent: 14:32

Even though it has the best content around mortgages online, it’s just not what users are looking for.

Alissa: 14:38

Right, right, right.

Vincent: 14:39

So everything needs to be aligned. So it’s kind of what you said, you know, Right message, right person, right moment. We have right content and right intent to the right audience.

Vira: 14:48

Wow.

Alissa: 14:48

So why is it risky for Google? Oh, because, okay. Cause it reinforces their legitimacy as a search engine.

Vincent: 14:55

Yeah, exactly. Like if you, if tomorrow, if a new search engine comes up that is 10 times better than Google and you don’t even have to type in what you’re thinking about and you have the answer right on your screen, then everyone’s gonna start stop using Google, like, okay, from day one day to the next. And the fun stuff is Google knows that better than anyone because they actually tried to get acquired by Yahoo very early in their existence, and Yahoo refused. And like one year or two years later, I don’t remember the story exactly, so they refused to buy Google for like a couple million dollars or something. And then two years later, one year later, I don’t remember, Yahoo paid Google$1 billion to be able to use their search engine. So Yahoo was the leading search engine, and Google, within a year, they completely crushed the market.

Alissa: 16:15

Wow.

Vincent: 16:15

And this can happen again, right?

Vira: 16:17

Wow.

Alissa: 16:18

Right. Okay. Okay. It’s all very full picture, like very, very full picture. So when people like transition to, I’m sure you’ve heard of it, like DuckDuckGo, for example, which is like a private browsing search engine, I guess that is a negative thing for Google. And so Google, okay, I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha. So I would presume that that’s probably why all these privacy data changes are taking place is because Google is now trying to compete with these other search engines that are privatizing more of users’ like information.

Vira: 16:48

Yeah.

Vincent: 16:48

And at the same time, Google relies on that personal information to provide you with the best results, right? So they’re kind of stuck in the middle, but they still have— and I don’t know the percentages in the US, but like DuckDuckGo is probably the third most used search engine after Google and Bing.

Alissa: 17:05

No way.

Vincent: 17:06

And it has like probably a percent market share or something, half a percent. I don’t remember, but it’s like really small. It makes a lot of noise, but it’s really small.

Vira: 17:15

Wow. Okay.

Alissa: 17:16

Interesting. Very, very interesting.

Vira: 17:17

Yeah, I really like this cheesy joke. And Vincent, I’m sure you heard it, but I really like this search engine joke. So ranking first, obviously, in search engine is very important. So there is a joke in SEO world that if you wanted to hide a dead body, you’d put it on page 2. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Yeah, but Yeah, let’s get back to like e-commerce businesses that we work with. Like how to know whether my e-commerce business, whether my store specifically would benefit more from SEO or like PPC? Like what are the signs? Sort of.

Vincent: 17:54

So we’re taking the case in which you have a limited marketing budget, right? And you have like, I don’t know, $20K to spend per year and you’re wondering whether you to spend that on PPC or SEO, right? So the first thing to understand is both are not mutually exclusive. What that means is you can both. The thing with PPC is you can think of it as paying people to see your site. What you’re actually doing is you’re paying for people to see your site. You’re paying Google so that it directs users to your site. But if you think of paying the person that comes to your site, it makes you understand that if you are targeting the wrong type of people, then it does not do anything good for you and it’s gonna be really expensive. So if you’re doing PPC, you either are targeting people who are ready to buy, or you’re trying to trigger an impulse buy. Maybe if you’re doing that on social media, for example, with a nice graphic design, your product, whatever. So that’s great, but you are only talking to bottom of the funnel people. You are only talking and you are only addressing people who are either already ready to buy or you’re creating that need for them. But with SEO, what you can do is if you are, say you’re, you’re selling you’re selling smartphones, if you can get people who are just trying to choose which smartphone to buy next, then you are attracting traffic that you could not get through PPC, right? Because trying to rank for this and that smartphone review, trying to get shown with that for Google Ads is going to cost you a lot of money and bring almost nothing to you in terms of sales and revenue. But with SEO, it’s less expensive to produce the content and rank. So you can go ahead and try and rank for these review queries or comparison queries or all the queries that are not necessarily people who are directly trying to buy from you at the minute, but you know they are looking to buy at some point in the near future. And so that means that you can get these people on your website. You are going to convert less obviously, but you can also offer other value propositions. And this is where you know more than me that if you can get someone to subscribe to a newsletter, if you can get someone to coupon, if you could get them in your database, then that’s a huge win as well because you can then nurture these people over time and sell to them and turn them into, you know, returning customers as well. So SEO and PPC are not mutually exclusive. Another way to know whether you want to spend your money on one or the other is to think of it as different ways to spend money. So PPC is a cost. You can think of it as a tap and running in the tap is your money. Money and that’s pouring down the sink and Google is sometimes giving you something or Facebook or social media in general is sometimes giving you leads and sales. But if you stop, if you turn off the tap, if you stop the flow of money, then everything else stops with it, right? Even though that campaign was successful, if you stop paying, it stops altogether. Whereas SEO is a long-term investment in building your brand, building your organic traffic and your visibility and raising brand awareness and everything that you do on your site will keep making you money for years to come because that, you know, camera comparison article that you have, and that’s great, that’s the best content on the web, that’s gonna sell cameras every month for you, right? Right. Even though you already have paid for it, so it’s gonna pay for itself 10 times over. Mm-hmm. So the answer to your question is also maybe am I looking to build a brand, to build a store for the long term, or am I looking to really get more revenue, more sales fast? Mm-hmm. If you’re trying to go short term fast, SEO is not an appropriate tool. But if you’re willing to invest in the long term, then it’s the best tool there is, basically.

Vira: 21:39

Right. Actually, quick question. I’ve been always curious about it. Does Google Ads PPC marketing actually can help your SEO or not?

Vincent: 21:49

So I’ve already answered this question, but I mean, like, and this is why I’m saying it’s the secret to SEO. No, because is if Google did that, then it wouldn’t present users with the best results because the results would be skewed by people paying for PPC. Right.

Vira: 22:09

Wow.

Vincent: 22:10

Yeah. And this is why I’m saying this statement is the end-all be-all of SEO. Every time you can relate it to ranking being a business risk, basically.

Vira: 22:21

Right. You’re right. Users wouldn’t be actually getting the information they are looking for. Exactly. It’s like paying people to be your friends. Friends, you know?

Alissa: 22:28

Yeah. So SEO, kind of like once it gets set up, it’s kind of like how flows operate. As you can tell, Vincent, I’m very not SEO-minded.

Vira: 22:38

That’s fine.

Alissa: 22:39

But very email marketing-minded. So I’m like, when you say stuff, I’m like, okay, how is this relevant to what we do in email marketing? But when you set up SEO and it has that kind of like long-term benefit, it’s kind of the same as like an automation that we set where you go through all the hard work and the effort of setting up these emails. But once you turn them on, we don’t really like the term set it and forget it because that really apply. You have to optimize. But once you turn them on, you’re not recreating these emails and manually sending them out every day. The emails are doing the hard work for you based on the consumer’s behavior. So SEO kind of works as well in that way. If I’m reading this correctly, SEO works in that way where you set it, you don’t forget it. Obviously you have to optimize, but what you put in place will reap benefit for you in the long term, like over the course of time. So there’s a lot of residual benefit to it.

Vincent: 23:23

Yeah, exactly. I feel like I’ve never thought about it that way. With regards to email marketing, but I feel like, yeah, it’s very valid. The fact that, you know, you design your email, you design your copywriting, and then you have this great asset, right? Like a piece of content. And then that is going to generate sales for you, even though, like you said, there’s still stuff that you can change. There’s still stuff that you can optimize, test, and whatever. But having that, say, you know, abandoned cart email or flow is going to help you make more sales every month. And it’s going— the cost of setting it up is only once. So yeah, it’s very similar. Okay, sure.

Alissa: 23:56

So I feel like I’m getting this then. I’m getting I’m getting the hang of it. I’m starting to understand it more. So in terms of SEO, what are typically like the more common mistakes that maybe you’ve seen kind of in your, in your career, or just what are some general common mistakes that e-commerce sellers make when it comes to SEO?

Vincent: 24:15

Yeah. So when it comes to SEO, e-commerce, a lot of SEOs are going to tell you e-commerce is mostly technical SEO. And what we call technical SEO is making sure that Google can discover your site, understand it, index it, and then show it. SEO doesn’t have anything to do with content. It really has to do with information architecture, site architecture, code, structured data, all that stuff. So usually when we come into e-commerce projects, the websites are in pretty bad shape if people haven’t invested in SEO because, you know, they’ve used their CMS without thinking about the SEO implications of what they’re doing. And so we have to fix a number of issues. That’s both a good and a bad thing because the bad news is that people have been damaging their site for sometimes for decades. But the good news is that when we come in and make these changes, then we usually see a boost in organic traffic like right away within the first few months. So there’s a positive side of it to it. And then I don’t want to expand too much on why technical SEO is important for e-commerce, but we can have that conversation if you want. And probably another mistake, and this is not necessarily only for e-commerce, but it’s also very relevant to e-commerce business owners is not thinking enough about the big picture. So like I said earlier, people will think, okay, I have optimized all my title tags, or they will focus on very uneventful things like, oh, my title tags are not over 60 characters, or all my meta descriptions are unique, or, oh, I have added content to the site a little bit. But this is all great, this is great, and we do that. By all means, we need to do that. But these, all of these things are tactics, and tactics only get you so far. What you actually want is a strategy. And this is the same thing as email marketing, right? Yes, changing your subject is great. Yes, changing your call to action in email is great. Yes, changing the time when you send the email is great. But if you don’t think about who you are sending that email to, then how good is it really? So it’s the same with SEO, you know, you need to take a step back, think about your audience, think about who you’re trying to attract, what you’re trying to sell to them because, you know, sometimes you sell products, maybe some SEO, some e-commerce store also sell digital products, which, you know, differs from a physical product. Maybe you sell training. Okay, that’s another thing. So you need to think about all of this. You need to think about the problems that the product or services that you sell are solving, right? Because so sometimes it’s really easy, for example, you sell socks, so okay, there’s no problem to solve. But if you start thinking about like, okay, let’s take the mattress company. Of course, some people are gonna buy a mattress because they don’t sleep well or they’re too hot at night. So changing the mattress will actually help them solve a problem. So that means that in your strategy, you can address this problem and you can have content on your site that’s dedicated to, you know, all the sleep and how to sleep well and how to change bed and furniture and whatever, okay, that your audience is interested in. If you don’t do that, then you’re missing a lot of the picture.. And same thing with your goals, you know, what are you trying to achieve with SEO? If you’re saying my goal is to be the biggest activewear e-commerce store in the UK or in the US, you don’t have the same strategy as someone who would say, you know, my goal is to expand my e-commerce operation outside of the US, for example, right? And so those will lead to and can call for different strategies. And this is really, and I think we’re going to come back to it if we ever to say about whether you need an SEO agency. This is what is going to differentiate SEO from good or really expert SEO is this strategic planning and making sure that you actually address the right audience that’s going to buy from you in the end, right?

Vira: 28:10

I like how you explain the difference between the tactics and the strategies because that’s actually what people are coming to us for, right? They coming to us to get like to email marketing to get like the big picture, the big strategy, and not just like this little tweaks but having the big strategy. So Vincent, correct me if I’m wrong, but search engines, they like have a tendency to send users to more like frequently updated sites, right? Just for the sake of like presenting the relevant information, or how does it work?

Vincent: 28:41

That’s controversial. That’s controversial because if you think about it, not all information needs to be updated all the time. Yeah, that’s true. So for example, if you are looking for something COVID -related right now, then it needs to be the freshest it can be, right? But if you’re looking for the life of Henry III or the IV or the VIII or whatever, then that information is okay if it’s from 10 years ago, right? So yes, it does matter, but it’s not as important as people think. What really does matter a lot— and this again, I’m coming back to my initial statement— but it’s the fact that if you have a new website, Google is not going to trust it, right, as much as, you know, an old website. And that makes sense. You know, if you have a restaurant in your town and it just opened up, this is probably not where you are going to host your wedding next week, right? Because you just don’t know, right? It just opened up. So it’s the same thing. You just trust people when they’re established. And this is why so many brands have, you know, established, you know, 1892 or something on their, on their logos as well.

Alissa: 29:48

Right. Right. Which makes sense. That also makes a lot of sense.

Vira: 29:51

And like getting back to the content that you can create, obviously, like writing blog posts as a great way to build your audience, to like earn more exposure and like drive more organic traffic to your website. But the question that I always get from my clients who want to start doing the blogs is like Shopify SEO versus like WordPress SEO. Like who wins when it comes to SEO? Like what way to go? Should I use that amazing built-in Shopify feature if I have a Shopify store, or should I have like a separate blog? Like what is the right approach here?

Vincent: 30:26

Well, there’s no right or wrong approach when it comes to SEO. And what that means is you can have success both ways. So it’s, it’s, it becomes more a question of whatever works for you, whatever is more convenient for you, because you know that if you want to do SEO, you will have to upload a lot of content on your website. So are you more comfortable doing that on Shopify or on WordPress? Do you maybe already have a blog design and that has been done or you, or you have a partner that works with WordPress. So that’s going to be more convenient for you to go the WordPress route rather than the Shopify route. So it becomes more of an operational point of view than just a CMS choice. However, whichever solution you choose, you need to set it up correctly in an SEO-friendly way, right? So you need to make sure that your URL structure is good, that all the technical factors are good, that everything’s set up correctly. And one very important thing that people don’t get about SEO is that URLs matter. So the URL is the address of the webpage, and you can think of it as a postal address. If one thing changes in the URL, even if it’s just a slash at the end of the URL, even if it’s just one letter, Google will think that the two URLs are separate, right? Or different things. Things like a postal address where if you change the postal code even one number, then it’s a different address. And so what that means is we do not like changing these URLs as much as we can. We kind of want to avoid doing that. So when you are setting something up and you’re starting off, then you want to think about your URL structure, you know. Do you want /blog or do you want /news or do you want/journal or /magazine for your blog? You know, that is a decision that is actually is going to have implications in the future when it comes to your SEO strategy.

Vira: 32:20

Wow. Like no pressure whatsoever.

Alissa: 32:22

I know, right?

Vincent: 32:23

Well, yeah. So that doesn’t mean, let me be clearer, that doesn’t mean that you cannot change it. It means that, you know, having that information that it is an important choice, it’s good to keep that in mind, right? Right. So the safer, the safer option is usually to go for /blog rather than/magazine or slash, you know, some people like to call their blog, for example, if you’re a cybersecurity company, you’d call your blog, you know, Threat Reference or something. So that makes sense from a cybersecurity point of view, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense from a user point of view. And if 2 years down the line you want to change that, then this is going to be a whole project. It’s going to be costly and it’s going to have implications on your organic traffic as well. So yeah, just think about it.

Alissa: 33:06

So Vincent, just to kind of end on this, because I think this is probably going to be very helpful as well in terms of like, okay, some practical steps now for e-commerce business owners who are listening. So when it comes to hiring an SEO agency versus actually taking care of your business’s SEO on your own, what are sort of like some of the high-level pros and cons? And are there any insights that you can give to a business owner so that they know like, okay, now I really have to hire an agency to take care of this? Or is that something that’s pretty manageable on your own?

Vincent: 33:38

Yeah. I feel like the first thing is if you’re starting out and your store is new, right, it’s probably not a good time to start working with an external agency. And the reason for that is that Google is not going to trust your site for a long while. So at that point, an agency is going to charge you for their expertise, and a good agency will probably refuse to work with you because they won’t be able to provide any value. But there’s always someone out there to make your money. So of course, if you’re really starting out, I wouldn’t go for the agency route. Okay, when it comes to pros and cons, well, you know, when you hire an agency, and this is true for any agency, be it a design agency or an email marketing agency or an SEO agency, you get a team, right, which you do not have internally. So for example, we have an SEO lead that’s an SEO expert, we have a technical SEO, we have a content manager that just does content, we have a team of writers, we have conversion specialists, you know, we have a team like you guys have someone who designs emails, copy, does copywriting, does technical setup. If you do that on your own, then you don’t have access to all of that skill set. The second thing you get when you work with an agency is you get the process. And usually agencies have a very robust and solid process that they go through with every website, and there’s no guessing involved. So you also get that, which is a tried and true way to improving organic traffic an organic presence overall. And this is controversial. The third thing is controversial. I’d say it’s usually cheaper than doing it yourself. Interesting. And the reason why it’s cheaper is because if you’re doing it yourself, you are going to have a lot of headache. You are going to be reading lots of conflicting information and you are going to be losing a lot of your time. And as a business owner, this is kind of not the route that you want to go.

Alissa: 35:29

Time is money.

Vincent: 35:30

Exactly. And it’s also just bandwidth, intellectual bandwidth, knowing that you have to learn that stuff because no one there can learn it for you. If you work with an agency, you’re able to just offload that off of your shoulders and then refocus on whatever drives and brings you energy in your e-commerce operations, be it partnerships, logistics, supplier management, whatever you do, maybe email marketing. I don’t know some of the other stuff that you like best in your business. And also one thing to understand about agencies is, and especially for SEO agency, but it’s also true for email marketing agencies, is there is only one way forward and that’s that the project is successful. Because contrary to a web design firm that can just deliver the website and if the website doesn’t sell, then it’s not their problems. If I run an SEO campaign for a year and that is not successful, then it becomes my problem., right? Because I have a bad track record and, you know, I work continuously and ongoingly with my clients. So the only way forward is to make the project successful. And what that means is the relationship is mutually beneficial, right? So if you’re thinking of an SEO agency as a contractor or way to outsource, I think you’re in the wrong mindset. You need to think about your agency as a partner in growth and really leveraging. But like you guys, I mean, when you go ahead and hire a digital and email marketing agency, you know, if the guys are just looking to do the work and then leave, it’s not beneficial for everyone. You need someone who is able to really provide insights and say, oh, we could improve this, we can improve that, etc. So, right, right. And so in terms of the cons, I’ve listed a few as well. I think the first con is that it could be a big commitment in terms of finances, right? Because most agencies, and this is really true for e-commerce because usually, and there are lots of types of e-commerce websites, but usually you’re gonna have a lot of products in an e-commerce website. And so that means that you’re gonna have a lot of URLs. So there is gonna be a lot of work involved technically on the site, and usually that’s man hours. So that’s actually expensive, right?

Alissa: 37:41

Right.

Vincent: 37:41

So it, it can sometimes be a big commitment, you know, when you have someone come in and you say, okay, well we can’t really do anything for you if you don’t spend 50, 60, 70K per year on your SEO. So not all business owners are ready to do that. And the problem is for most stores, if you don’t spend at least a few thousand dollars a year, you won’t get any interesting results that are going to be able to, to grow your store. So that’s, that’s probably a big con for that. The second one is that you have to find a good agency. If you want to partner up with someone, you have to find someone who’s in that mindset, and that’s not necessarily easy. And I’m saying this because the SEO space is full of people who actually are not so good at SEO. So it’s really hard when you don’t know the topic. It’s really hard to differentiate the bullshit from the real experts and people who are—

Vira: 38:34

Yeah.

Vincent: 38:34

So you need to find someone that you can know, like, and trust because we’re talking about the growth of the business here. It’s not just, you know, it’s not just design. It’s not just, you know, it’s the roadmap for the future for the store. So you need someone who is able to take that on really. And then, yeah, the third thing is if you if you are a small store or if you are a smaller business, then an agency might be too much for you. So it’s not suited to every type of e-commerce store. But if you can find the right fit, you will see a very good growth and very good return on investment by working with an agency.

Vira: 39:08

Right. Speaking of finding a good agency, where can people find you guys? And if our listeners have any questions or if they want to learn more about what you do, how they can find you?

Vincent: 39:19

So you can find us at seotherapy.io and you can email me at vince@seotherapy.io. That’s awesome. Yeah. And then maybe you can put that email address on the podcast, on the episode page as well.

Vira: 39:32

We will. We always do. And you guys, if you want to find all of the resources that we talked about in this podcast, just scroll down to the description box and you’ll find all of the juicy stuff there.

Alissa: 39:44

Yeah. Love it. Love it.

Vira: 39:45

Love it. Well, thank you so much, Vincent. It was a pleasure having you on our podcast today. Honestly, we learned so, so much from you.

Vincent: 39:53

Thank you for listening to me talk for too long.

Alissa: 39:56

Not at all. And thank you for connecting everything to email marketing too. That’s very helpful for us to really understand about SEO, and I’m sure it’ll be super beneficial for us to have a little more knowledge about it for our clients, but then also for our listeners out there who are like, hmm, maybe I should start dipping into SEO. Definitely something that we’d recommend.

Vincent: 40:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re thinking about it, You should, because you know, one thing I didn’t say is SEO takes time. That is, that has to be said. It takes time, especially if you’re starting out. You will not see results before the first, you know, let’s say optimistically it’s 6 months and then realistically 12 to 18 months. So starting as soon as possible is beneficial. And then remember, because it’s an investment, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, but the second best time is now, right?

Alissa: 40:45

It’s true. It’s very true.

Vira: 40:46

Very, very true. I’m sending this podcast to all of my clients, you guys. Yeah, seriously. Listen to it. Listen to it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much again. And guys, I hope you enjoyed this podcast just as much as we did. And if you love what we do, please leave us a review, send us a screenshot, and we will send you our pretty, pretty Flowium socks. We’re trying to bribe you guys with Flowium socks, and we are obsessed with them.

Vincent: 41:12

But then what happens What happens if I take a picture in the Flowium socks?

Vira: 41:15

Do I get something else? A Flowium mattress.

Alissa: 41:19

Yes. No, Vira, don’t promise that.

Vira: 41:24

I’m joking.

Alissa: 41:24

Andriy’s gonna have a meltdown. He was like, don’t promise mattresses to anybody.

Vira: 41:30

And then if you take a picture in your socks and on our mattress, you’re gonna get a Bentley. So subscribe to our podcast. Lots of fun here, honestly, you guys. And if you want to to like get involved in the community of e-commerce entrepreneurs and email marketers, visit flowium.com/community and join our nerdy bunch because that’s, that’s what we are. That’s who we are. We love email marketing, we love e-commerce, and we love fun facts about e-commerce. So join us.

Alissa: 42:01

Thank you so much for listening. And next week, guys, make sure that you tune back in. We actually have another guest that will be on our podcast next week. I’m very, very excited about this guest because I don’t know if you guys recall, I’m pretty sure in the first episode ever I mentioned this brand. It’s Andy Swim. I’m not only obsessed with their products, but also highly obsessed with their emails. One of their team members will be on the podcast with us next week talking about their emails, the creative side of their emails, their strategy, everything with us. So make sure that you stay tuned because you will not only hear from some creative geniuses when it comes to email marketing, but you will also hear me turn into a total fangirl because I am internally freaking out, high-key freaking out about this episode that’s coming. So make sure that you tune in. We’re really, really excited and looking forward to seeing you guys next week. So thank you so much for listening as always.

Vira: 42:56

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Vince. Take care.

Vincent: 43:00

Bye.