to my prospects if you aren't in the video call neither will your AI recorder be

if your client needs a weekly call to feel good about you, your report isn’t doing its job we had a commercial paving contractor in the Bay Area on weekly syncs started that way on purpose, we were relaunching campaigns and things were a little hairy at some point those calls changed nice lift in leads the last couple months booked out 6 to 8 weeks turning down same day job walks because they don’t have the bandwidth and the person running marketing on their side took our recap and presented it straight to the owners didn’t need me in the room so I offered to move them to biweekly or monthly most agency owners hold on to the weekly call because it feels like the safest way to keep the client and if your report is a rankings PDF, it kind of is, the call is the only place your value shows up that’s the whole idea behind the Lead-Proof Retainer price it off what one job is worth to the client, and one commercial paving job is worth a lot more than $500 a month sell it as leads prove it every month with tracked calls and forms, so the report does the talking what goes in that report and how you lay it out so an owner gets it in 30 seconds, that’s what I build with agency owners one on one

had a call with a PT clinic we do SEO for biggest month in their history before we even got to the numbers, she asked me about ChatGPT she’d been reading about ChatGPT ads, wanted to know if they should be running them most agency owners are still in wait and see mode on AI Google changes something every month, tools change every week, why build around it yet I get it that same month we paused a platform we were testing, AI data was all over the place but the client isn’t waiting people are asking ChatGPT who the best PT in town is and she wants to know where she shows up pulled up her dashboard AI tab already there prompts we track like best physical therapist in Fresno and Clovis, citations, mentions, avg position she was already showing up in the AI assistant results didn’t have to guess, she could see it herself almost no local agency is showing clients this yet the cheap ones are still sending rankings PDFs and hoping nobody asks give it a year and every agency will say they do AI visibility the ones already reporting it will have the budget locked in we put it in the same monthly report as tracked calls and forms, that’s the Lead-Proof Retainer owner sees one more place his customers come from, never has to learn what AEO stands for which prompts, how to show it, how to price it so it’s not a free add-on, that’s what I walk agency owners through 2 years ago I would’ve told her AI was hype and kept sending the rankings report

getty stole many "free" pictures from archives and libraries and did harm for artists and photographers across the world very predatory company this is good news

at 14 I bought a website template for a program called RapidWeaver couldn’t figure out how to use it, so I posted a question on a forum they never replied so I started answering other people’s questions on the forum instead anything I figured out, I posted then one day he reached out offered me a job for handling support emails and taught me a lot that was my first mentor, I just didn’t call it that back then most agency owners I talk to are trying to figure it all out alone pricing, sales, hiring, the client who won’t stop texting I did that for years and it cost me more than I like to admit every big jump in my business came after I got close to someone a few steps ahead of me and kept learning from them 14 year old me figured that out by accident who was the first person ahead of you that taught you something?

5 years ago I would’ve built this same website for $1,500 just got paid $17,500 for it (pic) have I gotten better since then? of course but the bigger change was in what I was selling used to sell “a website” "wordpress", pages, contact form, mobile friendly, couple revisions now I sell what it’s gonna do for them more calls, more quote requests, and tracking so they see every one come in no one wants to buy a website, seo, ads etc they want the outcome phone ringing, jobs booked, money in the bank its cliche, everyone says it but few actually implement it most agencies still send a list of deliverables with a price at the bottom, then lose the deal to the guy who’s cheaper same thing I build the Lead-Proof Retainer on how are you pricing your sites right now?

when I first got started I was a cafe vagabond Would hop from cafe to cafe Loved the energy, the vibe, the bustle People you meet Convos you overhear could never work just from home and not have constant energy and people around me this is your sign to get out more

made this HVAC client $800k in cash on $70k in spend surging to top on google, maps, PPC, LSA - etc dominating SERPs outshining PE guys in the market was killing it for him got CPL down to $53.38 for HVAC replacements at some point his CPL started to climb up leads started going down he went in and added broad match keywords, and competitor names we advised against it, undid it he did it again kept tweaking stuff w/o us knowing finally, I told him our work clearly wasn't appreciated his response to my text (pic) after this, I fired him no point in trying to convince someone to respect my team, our efforts and see our value 5+ years ago I would've taken this because I thought the money was worth it

ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers are already recommending local businesses by name, and most of those owners have no idea whether they’re on the list. Almost no agency charging $1,000 a month is selling this yet. I think AI visibility is the biggest opening in local since the map pack, and the window is short, because the agency that gets a client showing up in those answers first is the one he credits when the phone rings next year. Where most will blow it is pitching it as another acronym. The owner has never heard of AEO and doesn’t need to. What he wants to know is whether ChatGPT sends the customer to him or to the guy down the street, so we sell it as more leads on top of the Lead-Proof Retainer, measured with the same calls and forms as everything else. Are any of your clients showing up when someone asks ChatGPT for the best roofer in their city?

Five years ago I brought my youngest brother into my agency as a web developer and designer. Then he got into an accident and had to step away to recover. For a while, getting him healthy was the only thing that mattered. About a year or so ago he came back on, and he built just under 10 websites in his first 60 days back. Then he kept going and learned Google Ads and SEO, and the results he's getting for clients are insane. He's not just building sites anymore, he's a growth operator now. People see the revenue and the client results on here. They don't see that a lot of what's behind it is family and people I'd bet on any day of the week. I'm grateful to God he's back and doing what he's good at.

Adobe Flash websites marked safe from PHP vulnerabilities.

dont trust an seo agency that doesn't practice what they preach

terrible day to be on WordPRESS

seo backlink guide 101 It has to intersect on 1 or 2 (ideally both) levels for your website 1. locality/geo = chamber, local nonprofit, etc 2. industry = affiliated company, industry magazine etc holy grail is both anything else is a waste of money

Every business has a slow month. The ones that cancel their marketing are the ones who couldn’t tell if it was a slow month or a bad agency. When you sell SEO, that’s the month your client decides whether to keep you, and he usually decides it alone, looking at his bank account and a phone that rang less than he wanted. You don’t hear about any of it until the email shows up. Up to that point he was paying every month and telling you the work looked good, so you figured you were fine. I understand why agencies end up there. Nobody wants to be the one who brings up a slow month first, and most reports are built to show activity, like pages built, keywords moved and posts published. So when the calls dip there’s nothing on the page that tells him what happened. He fills in that blank himself, and he never fills it in on your side. In my agency every call and form is tracked, so the client knows what came in and where it came from. When a month comes in lighter, we’re the ones who bring it up. A steel building manufacturer we work with had over $700,000 in open pipeline in one month, and he didn’t need me on a call to explain what we did for him that month. That’s the third part of what I call the Lead-Proof Retainer. You price the retainer off what one job is worth to the client and sell it as lead generation instead of SEO. Then you prove it every month with tracked calls and forms, so he judges you on the one number he actually understands. Most agencies that try this get the tracking wrong. They have to decide which calls count, set it up so the numbers hold up when the client starts asking questions, and know what to say on the review call when a month comes in low. Clients get kept or lost on those three things.

Anyone check on the ‘ start marketing agency because they have ChatGPT subscription’ bros lately?

Every SEO agency says you can't guarantee results. I guarantee them on every deal, and it's the reason my sales calls got easier. You've probably said that line yourself this month, right after the owner asked what happens if he pays you for six months and nothing changes. I get why you say it because I said it for years. Google controls the rankings, an update can hit any week, and if you promise something you can't control you're the one eating it when it goes wrong. That part is real, and nobody can promise a plumber position one. But he never asked for position one. What he's really asking is whether he's about to waste his money again like he did with the last guy, and as far as he's concerned "nobody can guarantee SEO" answers that question with a yes. So I guarantee a noticeable improvement, and once he hears that he stops worrying about getting burned and starts asking about the plan, so the price isn't the whole conversation anymore. Most agencies are scared to guarantee anything because they sell rankings, and rankings are the one thing they can't control. When you sell leads the way I do with the Lead-Proof Retainer, priced off what one job is worth to him and tracked every month in calls and forms, you know exactly what you're delivering and you can stand behind it. An auto glass shop here in Fresno, 22 keywords we track for them, and their performance score is up 627%.

Your clients don’t care if it’s SEO, AEO, GEO or whatever we’re calling it next month They care about what’s left in the bank account at the end of it The acronym is how you got the work done The money is why they keep paying you Learn to show them that number and you can charge what you’re actually worth

There's a verse in Proverbs I come back to a lot: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." I didn't connect it to my business until a client fired me. I was on vacation with my wife and I spent a whole afternoon in a café building him new pages because he had questions about his rankings report. I wanted him happy, and two weeks later he was gone. I was mad at the moment, but what I realized is that people will only value you as much as you value yourself. No client is ever going to look at you and say "no, you're worth more than $500." You have to be the one who says it. If you've tried raising your prices for years and it never sticks, I don't think you're bad at this. I think the number in your head never moved, so it came out shaky on the call, and the client heard it before you finished the sentence. The number you believe you're worth ends up on your invoice. What's the number in your head right now?