The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Navigating Digital Marketing with AI: Insights from Smart Finds CEO Melih Oztalay

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

Navigating Digital Marketing with AI: Insights from Smart Finds CEO Melih Oztalay Smartfindsmarketing.com About the Guest(s): Melih Oztalay is the CEO of Smart Finds Marketing, a distinguished ...digital marketing expert with over three decades of experience. He has led the firm for 21 years under its current branding, playing a pivotal role in transforming digital strategies into revenue-driving initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, tech startups, and professional service firms. Known for his sharp insights and thought leadership within the marketing industry, Melih frequently contributes to well-regarded publications like the Search Engine Journal and Crain's Detroit, and is a sought-after speaker at marketing conferences nationwide. Episode Summary: In this dynamic episode of The Chris Vos Show, host Chris Vos invites seasoned digital marketing trailblazer Melih Özeyranli to delve into the continually evolving landscape of digital marketing, AI advancements, and strategic ROI in business. With over 30 years of experience steering Smart Finds Marketing, Melih shares his insights on transforming online strategies into effective revenue-generating engines, and why a robust strategic foundation is essential for marketing success. As they explore AI's rapid advancements, Melih emphasizes the importance of adapting to new technologies to outpace competition, offering compelling insights into the omnichannel approach to B2B SEO and the role of AI in boosting conversion rate optimization. The discussion turns to the intricacies of B2B SEO and common missteps in marketing strategies, as Melih highlights the importance of schema in optimizing sites for search engines. He provides valuable tips on conversion rate optimization, detailing how AI is revolutionizing content creation, video production, and website visitor conversion tactics. Throughout their conversation, Chris and Melih Oztalay underscore the necessity of embracing technological change swiftly and strategically to maintain a competitive edge in the fast-paced digital market landscape. Key Takeaways: Digital marketing is rapidly evolving; staying ahead of the curve with AI and technology adoption is crucial for effective business strategies. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is vital for B2B companies wanting to turn website visitors into leads, utilizing active call-to-action strategies. Understanding your marketing ROI foundations and metrics is critical—identifying what net profits are needed to justify marketing expenses ensures strategic spending. Comprehensive SEO strategies should involve schema integration, accurate page titles, and structured internal & external linking to improve ranking effectiveness. Embrace change swiftly in marketing technologies; as industry dynamics evolve, early adoption can make all the difference in staying ahead. Notable Quotes: "In today's world, it's hard to be an expert. You have knowledge, you have experience, and the question is how do you apply it?" – Melih Oztalay "If you wait until something's proven, you're late." – Melih Oztalay "The AI tool is creating what I call a journey funnel per visitor." – Melih Oztalay "How do you learn about AI agents and how they can handle your mundane daily activities?" – Melih Oztalay "Understanding your marketing ROI foundations and metrics is critical." – Melih Oztalay

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster
Starting point is 00:00:32 with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, there are only a few things that makes a fish a local to the show. As always, the Chris Voss Show has been with you for 16 years, going on 17 next month and over 2,400 episodes.
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Starting point is 00:01:13 Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. We're gonna be talking about marketing. A little bit of AI today, I think, too, as well. ROI, AI, B2B, SEO. We're doing all the three-word thingies. Yeah, I'll add. Two to three word thingies. So today we have Meili
Starting point is 00:01:41 Oselay on the show. He is the CEO of Smart Finds Marketing, a digital marketing pioneer with over 30 years of experience helping businesses transform their online strategies into revenue generating engines. Known for building scalable marketing infrastructure, he has led campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, B2B industrials, tech startups and professional services firms. Recognized industry thought leader, he frequently appears on national media, speaks at marketing conferences and contributes to publications such as the Search Engine
Starting point is 00:02:16 Journal and Cranes Detroit. His philosophy blends smart technology with strategic storytelling to help brands convert attention into action. Welcome to show, sir. How are you? Nice to be on your show, Chris. I think you missed a few things there. Did I miss a few things? No, no, I'm kidding. There you go. There's a lot there. So good for you. There's a lot there. So give us your.com where can we will find you on the interwebs?
Starting point is 00:02:44 Yeah. First of all, uh, visit our website, smart finds marketing.com. And, uh, it's been around for a really long time. Uh, it is our corporate third brand over the 38 year period. Wow. It's been around for now 21 years, specifically, but the agency's been in business since 87. Um, I started the internet group back in 94. It's, you know, was the wild, wild west of the internet.
Starting point is 00:03:17 They did. They did. It was a wild, wild west. So we didn't have any rules or no regulations. There was nothing Yahoo, Netscape and a few 28 dot 28 daddy modems and we, you're good to go. Prodigy compuServe. Yeah. I remember those little dial up. Hey, well, all these things, right?
Starting point is 00:03:34 So you always keep your fingers crossed every time you dial in. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what it was. Right. You would cause it was like nine. I remember when that windows 95 came, and I think it finally came to the market in 96, it's kind of a funny story.
Starting point is 00:03:50 But until that came onto the market, it was like a disaster trying to make a connection to the internet. So, the point is, we've been around for a long time. We're an award-winning marketing agency out of the Detroit metro area. I, you know, we've got a great team post financial crisis. So starting around 2011, the current team has been working together. We've all been doing a great job for 14 years. We've got great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, people have asked me, you know, Hey, you must be doing a great job keeping the team. I say, yeah, you know, hey, you must be doing a great job keeping the team good. I said, yeah, you know, listen, I believe I'm part of the equation, but I don't think I'm the equation. And what I mean to say by that is because everybody experienced that financial crisis where Detroit was ground zero
Starting point is 00:04:36 back in 08, 09, 10. I think that is a significant glue. Everybody went through that together. It was just the, you know, it was a financial disaster at the end of the day. They were shoveling people out of Michigan back in those days. Um, it was a very difficult time to get through. It was kind of like you've been through a war together, right? It's kind of like, you know, when soldiers are battling together, I mean, this is really what it comes down to and that same type of situation I think exists within the team of 25 that I have and so we have creative way of
Starting point is 00:05:13 marketing with that tech we got writers and brazen Detroit nobody's out of India or wherever that calls people come from. Well, that was a good shaper of character and team building then. Maybe we should have more of those crises in 2008. Yeah, let's not make it that bad though. I mean, listen, we went through the pandemic, listen, we went through the pandemic and we were, you know, we, it was smooth sailing. We didn't have any
Starting point is 00:05:45 problems because we made a lot of changes after that disaster back in 09 and 10. So, um, but I think it all comes down to knowledge. It comes down to experience. And I think what I'll do is give an example. I had, I was asked to be on a live radio show out of Tampa one time and the host introduced me as the expert in marketing or the expert in digital market, whatever you said. And I, when he turned the mic over to me, I said, listen, I just want to be clarified something. I said, I'm not an expert.
Starting point is 00:06:15 And of course, you know, we're on live on life radio. And so I said, listen, I'm not most loving when you shoot down what they say. I know. Well, you know, I, I wanted to make a point though, which I think is interesting. And it's the same point I'm going to make here is that in today's world, it's hard to be an expert in today's world. You have knowledge, you have experience.
Starting point is 00:06:37 And the question is, how do you take that knowledge and experience? How do you apply it? Right. And more importantly is how do you take new technologies that are in the market and new strategies, new everything, and use that knowledge and experience and apply it to a client's project, right? Whatever that project is, is it marketing? Is it the website? Is it lead generation from the website? Is it, you know, public relations, press releases, email marketing, take your pick, right? So you have to figure out how to take your knowledge, right? So you have to figure out
Starting point is 00:07:05 how to take your knowledge and experience and apply it. And to that extent, what I'm saying is there are no experts in the field nowadays. You might be able to say that 30 years ago. I don't think you can say that anymore today because the speed at which everything changes and at the speed at which everything and um, and the new technologies and strategies that come up, you can't keep up with that. How, who has the time to do that? I kind of get that when people claim to be a AI, you know, lately, as soon as AI kind of looked like it was really moving there, a bunch of people jumped on board
Starting point is 00:07:41 and they're usually these, I call them carpet baggers. What they do is they, you know, I started in social media after 2008 because I lost everything from, you know, that, that was a real team builder. Let's put it that way. And so then I had to learn new strategies for marketing and, and, and survival. And, you know, I got on Twitter, I was like one of the first top 1000 people on Twitter early on and I just figured out how it worked. I'm like, the more you advertise on here, the more I press the button, the more traffic I get to my website.
Starting point is 00:08:10 This is pretty cool. So it's just a button. So make more buttons. Right. And maybe more tweets. And, uh, so I figured out the game and then people started hiring me to, uh, consult with them and, and that was the game. And, uh, but back then, like these people would come on and be like, I'm a social media guru and you know, everyone was a guru back then and you're like, what are you in Japan or something in a field or something? Now everybody's an AI guru. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:41 And now everyone's an AI guru. And like I say, the carpet bagger. So, so they were the NFT gurus when that was like, remember how big that was going to be. It's really, it's really turned out well. And, uh, you know, a lot of, a lot of different things and just like every new fad there, there's suddenly that person is always the new guru. So I call them the carpet baggers because they go right on target. I agree.
Starting point is 00:09:01 100%. like every new fad there, there's suddenly that person is always the new girl. So I call them the car. Cause they go right on target. I agree. I remember, I mean, I remember there's a good friend of mine and he's a wonderful guy. And so I'm not going to say his name, but I remember Google plus came out and he wrote a book like within the first month about how to do the plus and everyone's like giving him shit. Like, you know, shouldn't you like wait at least a couple of months? You know,
Starting point is 00:09:26 well, we see what this thing really does and it's kind of in his infancy. But you know, people like that, what are you going to do? But you make an interesting point. And I think it's worth talking a little bit further about this. And I, and this is what I've told clients too, is that when something new comes out, if you wait until it's proven, you're late. That's true.
Starting point is 00:09:51 Yeah. Yeah. And in the, in the B2B world, especially in the competitive market space that a lot of companies operate in, cause it's no longer just national, right? It's also global. And so, um, when something new comes out and if you have a marketing agency like us, take our word for it, this is, and when we say we're going to move in this direction, we're going to move in this direction. It might not be proven,
Starting point is 00:10:14 but we have to try it. Yeah. Because if it really takes off, it's going to take off and it's going to do wonders. And the other thing to keep in mind is when something new comes out, it doesn't take long to figure out that it's not working. So it's not like we're talking about spending months on end within, you know, in this new direction. We're suggesting, Hey, let's give this about 30 days. Let's take a look and see what's going to, what's going to happen with it. And so it is worth considering jumping on board when something new comes out.
Starting point is 00:10:46 I mean, listen, you know, at least, yeah. I mean, this comes down to my four A's and I don't remember if I mentioned this to you, but my four A's of change, right? So you need to anticipate change. You need to accept change, which tends to be the hardest one that a lot of companies aren't willing to do They'll fret fuss and fuel before they accept the change and I say well why you're fret Yeah, and while you're fretting fussing and fuming don't keep in mind your competitors are moving ahead of you
Starting point is 00:11:22 If I can get the client past acceptance change then then it's a little bit easier, right? So the third A is adaptive changes. So what do you need to do to make that change happen? And then the last one is probably the easiest one, which is adopt the changes and those implement whatever the changes that you need to do. And so those are my four A's. And I will tell you that I developed these four A's after the the 2013 August, yeah, August 2013, Google's hummingbird algorithm. I learned a hard lesson about Google. And because 90 days after that humming that algorithm came out, I lost a client. And the conversation I had with that client is what led me to develop this concept of these forays, because that's what's helping me to guide not just clients but partners and otherwise on how do we how do we work within this fast changing environment that
Starting point is 00:12:12 we're in. Yeah. The Google is always changing that marketing algo there. There was they are but you know what I also in 2014 I decided to make Google my secondary priority not my primary. Oh, what was your primary Facebook? 2014, I decided to make Google my secondary priority, not my primary. Oh, what was your primary Facebook? Well, we moved into other marketing sectors, right? I mean, I went into press release marketing.
Starting point is 00:12:33 We went into more into the email marketing. We went heavily into social media. We, we, we kind of moved away from this concept of constantly trying to get right because the out, you know, Google's changing algorithms like, you know, like crazy. And it's like, well, at some point you just can't, it's hard to keep up. So what you're better off doing is finding a consistent method of how you're going to optimize your website, stick to the basics and don't try to overcompensate because that's usually where you get into trouble. Rather, let's take a look at the, you know, what I call an omni-channel or a multi-channel marketing approach.
Starting point is 00:13:14 So don't stay focused on just SEO. Why don't we take a look around and see what else is out there and spread the marketing activities across the board, which we found, believe me, much more successful. That'll make a difference. So what do you guys do for your clients? What is the sort of work that you do or services that you offer? Well, I think at the highest level, I'll tell you that we're more like a fractional CMO, right? We come in with a team and we're a 360 marketing agency and we basically take over everything, right? And some, when I say we're a fractional CMO, it's usually because we're in support of an existing marketing team within our client.
Starting point is 00:13:56 Or alternatively, the client doesn't have a marketing team or a marketing department, which we have a new project very similar to that and we come in and we become the digital marketing department for them, right? We take care of everything in that. So that's the high level. Now on the other, on the website though, is you run into scenarios where companies say, listen, you know, can you manage our website? Can, you know, including the website performance management, can you do our blogs, can you run our email marketing, and run our social media. So I don't know, and I'm just throwing out a concept here,
Starting point is 00:14:32 a solution of maybe five or six services, right. And so we'll bundle that together and put a price tag on that per month based on the number of hours or work that's required. And so if I take a look at what do we get asked the most, especially post pandemic, and it's usually, and keep in mind, we're in the B2B space. We moved away from B2C after the financial crisis. And so, yeah, I mean, our biggest exposure was with the B2C clients, with the financial crisis, unfortunately, especially with the advertising does. It's a long story. I want to get into it here right now.
Starting point is 00:15:12 But my point is, as I'm talking, I want the audience to understand that we're talking about B2B here. And so what's the number one thing a lot of B&B companies are looking for? They want their website to convert the website visitors into leads. And so in the industry, we call this conversion rate optimization or CRO. Now for clients, they don't have a clue what that means in most cases. And that's okay. It's an industry term rather for, for their purposes, it's about website visitor conversion or website lead generation. The idea is how do you take your
Starting point is 00:15:50 existing traffic that you're getting and convert it to a lead or a sale? That's the process, or that's the service. Now, the way that this works is, first and foremost, we have an AI tool is first and foremost we have an AI tool that makes this happen. And the AI tool is creating what I call is a journey funnel per visitor. So in the B2B world what usually ends up happening is that same visitor will come back two, three, four, five times to the website looking at different things and trying to get better understanding before they contact somebody. So our job is how do we take somebody who comes into the website five times
Starting point is 00:16:30 and bring them down to three? All right. And the way that we do that is the AI tools journey funnel is tracking that second visit and that third visit and it's creating this journey funnel for that visitor and it gets a little bit more aggressive along the way in terms of the call to action that's on the screen. So look at it this way. We're talking about an active call to action
Starting point is 00:16:56 versus a passive call to action. So what do I mean by passive? We all have passive call to actions on our web pages, right? It's a button that says click here or, you know, fella, you know, contact us or whatever the case might look like. Those are all passive because we're actually waiting for the website visitor to click on something. In what we're talking about with active call to action, meaning that the the AI is identifying which call to action to give you
Starting point is 00:17:26 and gives it to you based on the activities that you've been performing within the website. How long, how many pages, how long you spent on a page, which pages you've gone to, which category of pages you've been to, and then based on that, feeding you the necessary call to action so that that particular person can become a lead.
Starting point is 00:17:45 So that's part of the job. The other part is heat maps with a lot of A-B testing, a ton of A-B testing. Sometimes it's A-B-C testing. We do, obviously we do a lot of optimization within the website as well. And there's a whole list of things that people can find on our website that talk about our CRO program. But that's, I would say, would be at the top of the list of what a lot of B2B companies are looking for nowadays is, how do I convert my
Starting point is 00:18:11 existing traffic? It's not about driving more traffic. Let's get our website to be effective first. Then we can talk about driving more traffic to the website. Yeah. You want to, you know, what is the bounce rate? You want to get that down? You know, if you've got people coming, you want to make sure that you, you know, you can at least, you know, activate it. So what, what clients usually fit you? A medium, large, small company usually spend they need to have. Yeah. I mean, I basically I can break up our clients into probably three groups. One is, you know, on the low end, it's usually $10 million in annual gross revenue or more. And that takes us up to about 100 million.
Starting point is 00:18:52 Then we got the group that's 100 million plus. And you know, that's the level where we end up being in support of an existing marketing team, or it could be even a one-man marketing team. And I think that's the important part to keep in mind is we're never coming into a project or to a client trying to take over the people that exist. That's like the worst thing that any marketing agency can do. You need that person on the inside who knows everything about the company to help facilitate
Starting point is 00:19:21 getting the job done. And so we're never there about trying to take somebody's job, rather. We're in support of whatever's, whoever's there. But then we have clients that are in the eight figures and more, and those are specialized projects and whatever little tweak and niche work that they want us to do.
Starting point is 00:19:40 And so those are kind of our three groups. Do we do work with small business? And the answer is usually if they're referred to us, yes. Do we actively seek them out? No. I'm just being real. And so how do you see AI impacting what's going on right now? What are some of the advances you're seeing?
Starting point is 00:20:00 I mean, it's moving incredibly fast. I mean, it's moving very, very quickly. It's amazing what's what's what's happened in two and a half years. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. When first of all, give me an example on the world as it relates to our day to day activities. I'm not I don't want to get into the robot world and everything else that's what's going on. But the fact that you could create an AI workflow that will effectively take care of your mundane day-to-day activities is amazing. That didn't exist two and a half years ago when
Starting point is 00:20:36 chat GPT first came to market. Here we are, you know, two and a half years later, and all of a sudden you have AI agents. you can tie AI agents together and you can create that flow, right? So that in my opinion from a productivity and an efficiency standpoint, it should be number one on everybody's list. How do I learn about AI agents? The other thing that we're seeing obviously is you know content development in AI has leaps and bounds forward in two and a half years. Forget just creating blog posts, right? That's turned into standard operating procedure nowadays.
Starting point is 00:21:16 But now you're doing movies, right? You're doing video with AI, which it's come out pretty damn good. I mean, especially if you're familiar with Canva, our team use Canva quite a bit. Canva's platform, let alone the AI tools that they will, I mean, we created a draft of a pitch video for our client just the other day through Canva. And it was amazing what came out of it.
Starting point is 00:21:43 And don't get me wrong, it's gonna get get improved on but what came out was pretty good. So content development has changed a lot, right? Image development, using AI to develop videos, which I think, you know, videos has always been a hindrance for a lot of companies, because it takes so long to put them together, right? Well, put together a simple PowerPoint and let AI figure out how to do it for you, right? Yeah. And so I'm giving examples on how AI is impacting marketing and how AI can impact our workflow and our efficiency on a day-to-day basis.
Starting point is 00:22:21 Now obviously we could spend the next two hours talking about AI, but these are just a few examples. Wow. So you guys are trying to stay up on the cutting edge. It is amazing how much they don't have a choice. Yeah. It is amazing how good the video works. I mean, it really is. And of course, it's upsetting coding and a lot of things. I mean, you can have, uh, there's some AI box now you can have build a website for you. It's crazy. Hang on a second. Let me, let me pick up on that. And this is a good example and I'll give the audience a little piece here that
Starting point is 00:22:57 they can use right off the get go, go to chat GPT, grab your blog post, one of your blog posts that you want to rank. For example, take the URL of that, give it to chat GPT and say, give me the schema code for this blog post. And it will give you the script that you need that you can just copy paste right into that blog to that page. It's not for your entire website for that page. And if you're wondering what schema is, schema is being used, was developed originally back in 2007 by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Starting point is 00:23:37 What is it? It identifies what the content is on a web page. So is this a phone number? Is this a zip code? Is this a state? Is this an address? Is this the body of the blog post, for example? Everything gets identified since 2007 and you want to have schema. Go to schema.org if you really want to dig into it, but I don't recommend it because it gets too technical. But my point is that schema is also being used by AI agents by the GBTs out there.
Starting point is 00:24:11 So for example, I went through this conversation not too not too long ago. How do you get sourced in chat GPT or in quad or in co pilot or in Gemini? In other words, somebody goes there and like in my, let's use my agency as an example, B2B marketing agency, who would you recommend if you were to go to chat GPT and do that? How do we get our company into that? Aside from the fact that you need
Starting point is 00:24:39 notable sources on the web, so your website, your press releases and write in your social media, etc. The AI GPTs out there are also looking at the schema code. Now the schema code for the AI is slightly tweaked from what used to be just for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. And so adding schema code to a page not only facilitates general search engine optimization and usage for Google, but now it's benefiting your web page or your website getting sourced when somebody's looking for something and asking the GPTs for a recommendation. Wow. Big stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:29 Yeah. Big stuff. Uh, it's interesting how the landscape of this is constantly changing. You know, Google is constantly changing their little algorithms and you know, all that stuff and it's just crazy. Like all the, all the variables and the constant moving thing. Now, you talk about a strategic foundation on the ROI of marketing infrastructure and why sometimes marketing can fail without it. Tell us about what that means, a strategic foundation.
Starting point is 00:25:56 So the idea or the concept here is this, every company out there wants to return on to their investment, right? And I think that's an important factor to keep in mind. Marketing is an investment in your company, in your brand. It's not an expense. Now, advertising is an expense. That's not what we're talking about. Investment in your company and in your brand and your services. And so everybody's looking to say, listen, what's my return on an investment? So I think it's absolutely important. And I know this sounds one R.O.I. one on one per se, but it's amazing how many people really don't go through
Starting point is 00:26:38 the exercise, the exercise that they don't. It's it's crazy. And so the exercise, when we talk about the foundation is, okay, how many, so, and I'm just, let's just use this as a simple example. I'm spending $5,000 a month on marketing. Okay. How many, how many leads do I need to get to generate a certain amount of revenue to not only make up for the 5,000, which is coming out of my profits, my net profits.
Starting point is 00:27:13 But what do I, how many companies, how many sales do I need to actually make a profit on that 5,000? So when we talk about the foundation, you need to go through that exercise. You're spending X, how many leads you get, and then you need to know how many leads do I convert. And if I'm, I mean, am I converting enough leads to make up for the 5,000 in my net profits or from my net profits? And if I want to make money on top of that, how many sales do I need to close? So when we're talking about the
Starting point is 00:27:48 strategy, and we're talking about the foundation, that's the foundation we need to work on. So what's one work? What's one sale worth in net profits? Start with that. It's I'm not talking about gross profits, gross revenue. And we're not talking about gross profits either. I want to what's my net profit on One sale is in it. Does that cover? My investment in the marketing budget So that's where we need to start with then you can and once you figure that equation out then this blame me everything else It gets a lot easier
Starting point is 00:28:21 Well, that's what you want you You want things to get easier, not harder, because there's enough of that harder stuff going on and all those things. One thing you talk about is most B2B SEO is built wrong. What are some common missteps that you see out there in the marketplace? I'll refer back to what we just talked about. First mistake or misstep is not knowing that schema exists. And you need, when it comes to optimizing your website, you need to be able to understand that schema is very important in the grand scheme of things.
Starting point is 00:28:56 It's not just about your title. It's not just about your meta description and your tags and your categories and your of your web page or website You have to have the technical infrastructure in place as well And that schema code is important Yeah, but that being said the next misstep usually is the fact that the title is Improperly defined based on the content of the page. Oh, I can't tell you how many times people use the same title across all other pages or lack thereof. And the title is such an important factor in SEO.
Starting point is 00:29:36 Yeah. And so, but the title has to match what's in the on the page. You can't just have your the content, you know, how you optimize your homepage is not the same as you're going to optimize one of your service pages or your product pages. So the title has to be different and accordingly. So the description has to be different as well. You can't just have the just willy nilly go through this. And so we see a lot of this being an issue.
Starting point is 00:30:03 Next step, a lot of pages don't have featured images, have an image on them and they need an image. Next step, they don't have subheadings. You need to tag your subheadings appropriately in the HTML code. What's another misstep? Oh, you need a link to another page within your website, so you need at least one internal link, So you need at least one internal link and
Starting point is 00:30:29 You need at least one external link. In other words, where are you linking out to? these are all part of your SEO checklist so to speak and I hope that your Viewership is getting a little bit of feedback on some of the things that they need to watch for. Oh, yeah I mean, there's there's a lot that goes it. And that's kind of why you have to hire this stuff out now is because it's just so whipping fast on what's going on in your competition. You got to figure your competitions out there trying to keep up and compete with you too. Exactly. Sometimes it's just a matter of who gets there first or who's advertising ahead of the other
Starting point is 00:31:03 ones. You see how Barnes and Noble, I remember back in the day, Barnes and Noble was like the leading bookselling store in America. Oh yeah, huge. And Amazon just beat them to market by a very short time, by a couple months or something. I don't remember exactly. Exactly. But they basically beat them to market with their first website and offering, and they were dragging their feet at getting online, I believe. And, uh, and that difference of being online, I
Starting point is 00:31:30 think six months, maybe ahead of them or something, three months ahead of them, uh, just turned to Amazon into a powerhouse bookseller. It was, it was like, and that's where they started on was the book selling. Yeah. Yeah. And they totally upended that market something fierce. It's crazy. And yeah, and you know, stuff like that can happen. You're, you're, you know, you look at, you look at Blackberry was another good, uh, the Blackberry phones, you know, they were like, we're so detailed. No one can beat us. Uh, Steve jobs. Yeah, whatever, Steve, we're the, we're the 800 pound gorilla in the room the room overnight, they were gotten the same thing with no, you remember and Carter Microsoft's encyclopedia?
Starting point is 00:32:10 Well, I guess, you know what took in Carter down Wikipedia, ah, free Wikipedia took and Carter down at the end of the day. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm broad stroking this right now, but ultimately Microsoft didn't put their encyclopedia online. They were held back on wanting to sell that as a as a knowledge base and Wikipedia came out not only for free with as an encyclopedia but more importantly Wikipedia stuck to their guns and every article inside of Wikipedia has to have reference. Yeah and if they don't and and they're very strict. I mean, might be very strict. But they were able to get rid of, you know, things like Encarta went away because of that.
Starting point is 00:32:53 Pete Slauson Yeah. It was kind of interesting. The, you know, people wanted to, Encyclopedia Britannica probably held back and whatever, whatever. David Yeah, they did too. Pete Slauson You know, some people don't want to do what's called eating your lunch, eating your own lunch. Apple did that with the iPad. They knew that if they launched the iPad that it would cannibalize their Mac sales. And sure enough, it did. It did.
Starting point is 00:33:20 It did destroy the Mac sales. But they came with a new revenue stream. And it's one of those things where if but they came with the new revenue stream and You know, it's one of those things where if you I mean you got to do it or somebody else is going to eat your lunch Basically, that's it Yeah, uh, like I said before, you know When you when you see change you need to figure out how to accept it very quickly and and try it out And there is no room In any longer in today's market to just you know wait around
Starting point is 00:33:49 Yeah, just doesn't exist anymore We're fucking around So as we give out give people a final pitch out on how they can onboard with you guys How they can get to know you better reach out etc. Etc. I think I've already given out our our websites mark findscom. But if you want to reach me, I suggest you reach me on LinkedIn. Um, I guarantee you on the only mainly on Stalane. I wish I had that kind of unique. I like that.
Starting point is 00:34:19 And the other thing I'm going to suggest for the viewership is I have 22,000 really close friends on LinkedIn. Wow. And so please tag me. I'm happy if you tag me just for those who don't know, if you tag somebody on LinkedIn, on a post, that person gets an email in their in their normal inbox, not their LinkedIn inbox, with their normal email inbox. And that turns into kind of a, you know, to do so to speak. So when I get those emails from LinkedIn, I actually go to that post, I will react on it. I'll put a solid comment in there, I'll put some hashtags, and I will help you expand your reach into a larger network. So, and
Starting point is 00:35:02 to my understanding, you can do this, whether I'm connected to you or second or third level. So, but by all means, I love connecting with people. So if I make an extra request, I'm happy to join up and have a chat once connected on LinkedIn. There you go. Well, thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it. And what is going on with marketing and AI and the future? So thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com for Chess Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com for Chess Chris Foss, Chris Foss Well and Tiktokity and all those crazy places in the internet.
Starting point is 00:35:33 Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.

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