Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey interviews Steven Schneider, co-founder of Trio SEO. Trio SEO is a blog writing agency that helps B2B brands, but also works with eCommerce businesses to drive high-intent organic traffic that converts. Steven shares his journey from college, where he began working in SEO and content creation, to co-owning a portfolio of 40 blogs with significant revenue from SEO alone. The discussion covers strategies for creating eCommerce content that moves beyond traffic generation to actual conversions, focusing on understanding customer needs, leveraging visual content, and fostering brand recall. Steven and Greg exchange insights on optimizing eCommerce content to enhance user experience and address specific customer pain points.
Key Takeaways
- Focus on Search Intent and Customer Needs: Creating content that genuinely meets the needs and intent of target customers is essential. Steven recommends prioritizing bottom-of-funnel keywords to attract high-intent traffic that is more likely to convert.
- Leverage Visual Content on Product Pages: Visuals, such as product images and videos, are more effective than large text blocks in driving conversions on eCommerce product pages. Emphasizing imagery helps customers quickly understand product attributes and make purchase decisions.
- Harness Customer Reviews and Testimonials: Including reviews, particularly video or image-based testimonials, can create a stronger emotional connection with potential buyers and influence their purchase decisions.
- Blend of Written and Video Content for SEO: Combining text with video in blog posts can improve engagement and rankings, as it caters to diverse user preferences and supports platforms like YouTube, which aids content discoverability.
- SEO as a Brand-Building Tool: With recent changes in Google’s SERP layouts, SEO for eCommerce may increasingly focus on brand awareness and recall, ensuring that when customers are ready to buy, they remember the brand and seek it out directly.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Steven Schneider LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schneis/
TrioSEO: https://trioseo.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.304)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast. I hope that everyone is crushing it today. Today, my guest, his name is Steven Schneider and Steven is the co-founder and CEO of Trio SEO. They are a blog writing agency that helps B2B brands drive high intent organic traffic. Don’t be fooled by that B2B. We’re talking eCommerce today, but that’s who they mostly help.
Before Trio SEO, he co-owned a portfolio of 40 blogs, which is pretty impressive and managed 400 articles monthly, even more impressive. And he scaled that to seven figures a month via, seven figures total or a month? Annually, sorry, sorry. I messed that right up. Annually, seven figures via SEO.
Steven Schneider (00:49.324)
annually. No, not month. That’d be crazy. I wouldn’t be in Seattle. I’d be in Bora Bora if that was the case.
Greg Shuey (00:59.052)
No paid ads, no social media, no other strategies. Feels very similar to the way that I’ve grown a couple of e-commerce brands, only SEO. And I’m a hardcore SEO guy, so I’m excited to jam with another SEO. Today, Trio SEO creates content that aims to convert browsers into buyers. Their team manages everything from strategy and outlines to writing and uploading. So today we’re gonna talk about just that.
how to build e-commerce content that converts browsers into buyers because that’s absolutely critical. One of the things that I learned a long, long, long time ago, I’ve been doing SEO for about 20 years now, is that you can rank and drive traffic, but if it’s not the right traffic that’s actually going to convert, it’s no good, right? So once we get traffic to the website, if your potential customers can’t find that information they’re looking for,
and you’re not making it easy for them to make a purchase decision, they’re not gonna stick around much less buy. So it’s gonna be a really fun discussion. I’m excited. Stephen, thank you so much for spending some time with us today.
Steven Schneider (02:07.282)
Thanks Greg, excited to be here. fun.
Greg Shuey (02:09.216)
Yeah. So before we jump in, would you just take a couple of minutes? I know I’ve already talked about it a little bit, but introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Steven Schneider (02:23.718)
Yeah, of course. So, yeah, I’ll kind of fill in some of the details from what you discussed, but, yeah. So I started my SEO journey, almost about a decade ago when I was in college and, it was kind of on this like finance MBA fast track, like didn’t know what I was going to do with college and know what I was going to do in life, but going to college, I might as well make use of it, become like a VC investor, sell my soul 40 years later, retired.
Greg Shuey (02:45.858)
Yep.
Steven Schneider (02:52.85)
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. One of my good friends in college and just kind of soon to be mentor told me that he had this business on the side. I was like, okay, what are you doing? Like, what could you possibly have a business on? Like you’re in college. And yeah, he was doing, he was building Amazon affiliate blogs back in the kind of wild west era. And he was making like 10, 15 K a month doing this in college. I’m like, okay, screw everything I know about.
Greg Shuey (03:12.974)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (03:21.882)
What my plan was like, teach me everything, you know, about what this SEO stuff is, what blogging is, like how to set up websites. I’m a sponge. So, yeah, pretty much that I became, you know, this kind of like teach me all person and he’d like, okay, go read this article. And then I’d come back and he’s like, go take this course and come back. And then he finally just gave me one of his old domains that he didn’t even know he had. And he’s like, here’s your playground. You can’t break it. Like if you think you broke it.
Greg Shuey (03:27.502)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (03:51.666)
nothing bad will happen, like do whatever you want. So I kind of use it as my kind of like fuel to kickstart that journey and figured out what blogging was and how keyword research worked and some of the technical basics and uploading, et cetera. And then that’s how I started making a couple hundred bucks a month and kind of figured out what it was worth and what doing was. For those who don’t know, like blogging, can sell a blog for
Greg Shuey (03:53.112)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (04:19.346)
30 to 40 X your average monthly. So if you can get a site to a thousand bucks a month, steadily, you can sell it for 35 grand say. So once I knew that I was like, well, okay, cashflow plus resell value, valuation multiples. Like this is a no brainer. So yeah, we long story short kind of merged with a couple of his sites. had another partner, three of us to the ground running. Hey, I graduated around the same time and
Took us about two or three years to get to 40 websites and at our peak, we’re doing, yeah, about 400 articles a month. We scaled that seven figures. So it was pretty fun. Yeah. That’s kind of the down and dirty of how I got into it all.
Greg Shuey (04:57.976)
That’s amazing.
Greg Shuey (05:03.366)
Nice. That’s cool. I love it. It feels very kind of similar to my story. I started in affiliate marketing and while I was going to school for marketing, I started to learn. I met a number of publishers who were just crushing it. I’m like, what on earth is going on? This doesn’t make sense. This, this isn’t what I’m being taught in my courses.
Steven Schneider (05:11.033)
yeah.
Steven Schneider (05:23.919)
Alright.
Greg Shuey (05:25.346)
And, you know, within a couple of months I had like 15 affiliate sites and I was driving traffic because it was easy to rank back then. You just stick keywords and, you know, you buy a bunch of directory links and boom, you were ranking and driving revenue. wish, kind of wish we could go back to those times, you know?
Steven Schneider (05:32.515)
Yeah, it’s just a numbers game. Like, how many articles can I publish? Yeah.
Steven Schneider (05:44.498)
It was crazy. It was literally how quickly can I create content, publish it and wait 30 days.
Greg Shuey (05:50.892)
Yeah, so funny. So fun. That was a fun time. Cool, man. Thank you for sharing that journey. It’s one of my favorite parts of the podcast. Just kind of hear people’s stories and where they’re coming from. And that’s amazing. So are you ready to jump in? Cool. So when people are just kind of getting started with content, and I think this maybe, you know, applies to any kind of business, not specifically commerce in general.
Steven Schneider (05:55.399)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (06:06.706)
Yeah, let’s do it.
Greg Shuey (06:19.438)
You know, what are some of those foundational principles that they need to keep in mind when they’re mapping out their content plan? When they’re creating content aimed at really not only just pulling traffic, but getting them to take action and converting them into a lead or into a buyer of some sort.
Steven Schneider (06:39.014)
Yeah, I the main thing is just like study your customer inside and out. think that people are so tied up in what has the sexiest metrics for a keyword, like what’s the highest volume and the lowest difficulty and how do we write an article on it? But if that’s a top funnel article, cool. Good luck. Like now you have all this traffic and you can’t do anything with it.
Greg Shuey (06:49.23)
Yep.
Steven Schneider (07:02.074)
Yeah, I preach search intent and making sure that you’re actually going after keywords that matter, going after bottom of the funnel first. That’s what we do. And kind of work a reverse funnel strategy is kind of how we’ve always thought about it. So that’s number one.
Greg Shuey (07:15.278)
That’s awesome. We do a lot of customer research here and I think that’s really, you know, opened our client’s eyes into the possibilities of being able to market a brand, not just in content alone, right? And, you know, we do a lot of research. We talk to a lot of customers.
And one of my favorite things to do there also is to run post purchase surveys. And as part of that post purchase survey have nested responses to where when they say that they found you through a search engine, you ask, what did you search for? And that is a fantastic way to start gathering that Intel of what are the actual queries that people are buying from. And then you can take that and kind of gear your content around. think that’s such a great foundational principle that you lead out with.
Steven Schneider (08:05.552)
Yeah, that’s a hack if I ever heard one. That’s straight from the tap.
Greg Shuey (08:08.94)
Yeah. Are there any others outside of just knowing your customer?
Steven Schneider (08:15.858)
yeah. I I think the biggest thing too is like, always, mean, we’re obviously an agency, but, we always like to say, you know, for me, the number one, we’re SEO nerds of the heart, but you know, your business better than we know your business. So aside from knowing the customer and doing all this sort of stuff, I think there just has to be more communication internally. Like if there’s a founder, they probably know.
Greg Shuey (08:32.44)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (08:41.806)
way more about that business than any other person on that team. like get questions answered by them, ask them surveys, know, get as much information out of them as possible and then go to the next in line. There has to be taught like, you know, three to five people in that company who know that business inside and out. They know the customers inside and out. They know the pain point and they, they’re a goldmine of information. So, yeah, I mean, if you’re not tapping into that stakeholder circle,
Greg Shuey (08:56.312)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (09:10.694)
but yeah, it’s low hanging fruit right there. And you kind of use that to create your arsenal of strategy or topics or CTAs, like what kind of verbiage are you using? What should writers be thinking about? How is the messaging coming across? What kind of imagery are we using? I mean, the list goes on and on, but yeah, at the very least, like they’re the SMEs. Like talk to them before you talk to anyone else.
Greg Shuey (09:33.614)
Who are those people in general? For us, it’s like founder. It’s, you know, head of sales wouldn’t be relevant for us, but for a B2B, it would be relevant. Like people who oversee customer service. Is there anyone else internally?
Steven Schneider (09:50.738)
CMOs for sure. mean, they are, I mean, they pretty much have all the information that I need to succeed. That’s kind of like where we, funny enough, we’ve changed our ICP from founders to CMOs because they know your psychoanalytics. know your demographics. They know everything under the sun around that customer. mean, they should, I do think if they do their job well, but it just alleviates a lot of that.
Greg Shuey (09:52.174)
See you mouse.
Steven Schneider (10:16.242)
headache from day one of me having to do extra research and me having to do all sorts of stuff. They’re like, like, Hey, do you guys have a brand brief? Do you have, do you guys have like an ICP map? Do you guys have a persona? Like everything and they’re like, yep, here you go. And I’m like, sweet. You just saved me 20 hours of research. Thank you. So. I mean, yeah, that’s it also depends on the size. It’s like, you know, the e-commerce is so diverse and like you get people who are solopreneurs, you get solopreneurs plus VA teams.
Greg Shuey (10:31.374)
That’s awesome.
Steven Schneider (10:45.424)
And then you have fully fledged teams. So you have C suites, you have a whole variety of people. So I think it really depends on the size of this e-commerce company, where they are in their journey, whether it’s year one versus year 10, and just how invested they are in that entire process. Because that’s definitely going to shape content too.
Greg Shuey (11:08.162)
Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. cool. So after you’ve talked to these folks, after you have a really strong understanding of who the customer is, what makes them tick, you know, how they use the search engines to research site, what are some of the most important content formats that are the most effective in really moving people along that buyer journey?
What are you seeing in 2024?
Steven Schneider (11:41.2)
Long form, 20,000 words an article, just much content. No, I’m just kidding. I love, think that my top favorites right now are always gonna be versus. Like people are always trying to figure out new ways to slice bread, like don’t reinvent the wheel versus crush. Versus with good CTAs and good tables and like things that make content skimmable.
that matters a lot. would say like if you have an article that’s paragraph one, item one, paragraph two, item two, like, no, throw it on the table, give me a simple of points, like put yourself in that perspective. the other things I would say are competitor alternatives. these ones are somewhat more touchy to get brands to get on board with, but, those who are willing to talk about their competitors on their blog, like
Greg Shuey (12:17.588)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (12:34.34)
Hey, your competitors are going to do it regardless. You might as well get that real estate, whether it’s XYZ alternatives or, brands like XYZ, or even like your own brand name. Like if you don’t have that, like that’s low hanging fruit too. And then talking about that or like, even like best product roundups, like I would say, like, if I own an e-commerce company, I would have every best article. would buy the products and do them like legit. wouldn’t try to.
Greg Shuey (12:37.87)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (13:03.152)
do old school affiliate style, but like, you don’t have to link to competitors, but you can at least try to claim that real estate and do an in-depth review. And like, I think that now with how content is shifting the transparency that a brand can offer and saying like, Hey, we actually bought three of our competitors products that we want to test it out. like, guess what? Some of these attributes are actually better than our product. And like, that’s fine. Like we’re not this golden product. Like we don’t have all the answers, but like,
here’s where we think that we actually the competitors and here’s where they maybe beat us. But like you’re the customer at end of the day and you can make that decision. But I think leveling that transparency and giving the information to them and letting them decide like that’s pretty powerful stuff. I think people just need to get over the fact that it’s like, well, what if we lose a sale? It’s like, well, you won’t even get a sale if you’re not ranking for it. So like take your pick.
Greg Shuey (13:46.902)
It’s way powerful.
Greg Shuey (13:55.566)
Take your swing. Yeah, that’s that’s wild. Are you seeing that like written content, video content, a blend of the two imagery like what what’s really crushing right now?
Steven Schneider (13:59.515)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (14:12.092)
Blend of the two is always going to have without a doubt, perform better. We actually have a client right now, very interesting strategy. They’re not in e-commerce, but I think the strategy still applies. They came to us and they had a backwards approach. So they took all their FAQs from clients and they converted them into YouTube videos, just like founder in front of camera, decent production, answered question, and then reverse engineered into a blog. So they didn’t really have any blog strategy, but they were ranking for…
Greg Shuey (14:31.371)
Okay.
Steven Schneider (14:41.314)
all of these great keywords and they had no idea and they’re like, well, we know that we have traffic, but like, there’s no strategy there. And I was like, no, there’s definitely a strategy here. Like you guys just don’t know it yet. cause I was telling them, was like, well, you have the hard part figured out and you have the video dialed in. So let’s just create blog topics that work and then you guys can do that. Your thing will meet the middle. And now you have a powerhouse of a strategy that tackles video. People like going into that video. If they don’t want to read the article, who does?
Greg Shuey (14:51.086)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (15:11.056)
It also helps build your YouTube. Like there’s, it’s a flywheel. So for that reason, I mean, take the ones that further, go to social posts and newsletters. mean, the list goes on and on, but, I’m always gonna be biased toward content only, I think just because of the, topical authority and the depth that it adds. But I mean, if you can blend the two into it, well, like more power to you.
Greg Shuey (15:32.654)
That’s awesome. So how can brands identify and address specific pain points in their content to really help them create stronger emotional connection with their potential customers? Because we know that emotion drives a lot of action on the e-commerce side. how do they go about that? Because anyone can just go create a piece of content. How do you really get that hook and that emotion?
Steven Schneider (16:01.658)
without a doubt, testimonials, reviews, throw those into there. So like if you’re, you know, promoting a product or if it’s like, say it’s like type A versus type B or something like that, try to throw in some actual reviews for people who have bought it. And if you can’t say you can’t say you’re not the best copywriter, you don’t have the best like conversion focused piece of content to add in like paragraph one, let paragraph two be a review from someone who actually bought it and loved it and said like,
Greg Shuey (16:08.856)
Hmm
Greg Shuey (16:25.923)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (16:31.26)
Hey, here’s why it worked well for me. Like I use it for this and it sucks because this was what my life was like before. And now it’s here, how it’s better. Like there’s nothing that works better than that. As someone who’s actually bought the product, has proof of it, came back to leave a review on it and then says like, here’s how great my life has changed because of it. So I think that there’s really a need to lean more into your circle of recent customers. Like you were saying with those Ted, like that’s a great idea. Reach out to them and ask like they’re searching for.
At that same time, if they’re happy with the product, get that review, upload it as a picture, like done deal. Why wouldn’t you just tap into that as much as possible?
Greg Shuey (17:10.764)
Yeah, I think one of my favorite review platforms on the e-commerce side these days is Okendo because customers can actually, you know, we send out the email asking for a customer review, they can click on it, they can leave a written review or they can record a video. And like being able to take those videos and embed those videos right into your content is very, very powerful. What about for a brand that is, you know, sell shoes?
Steven Schneider (17:26.793)
nice. Videos are huge.
Steven Schneider (17:35.1)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (17:40.268)
Right? Shoes aren’t really going to change a life. Whereas like maybe a skincare regiment getting rid of acne or blemishes or stretch marks. That’s more life changing. How do you evoke emotion in that kind of content?
Steven Schneider (17:56.592)
I’d say I’d actually, I’d argue and push back that shoes don’t change a life. think that you have to kind of think about like, there’s always going to be an umbrella of customers, or at least from like a psychological perspective. some people just buy it out of basic need. Like I need shoes to my feet don’t get wet. other people look at it as a cosmetic fashion lifestyle upgrade. and I think that depending on where you’re
Greg Shuey (18:07.852)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (18:21.752)
Fair enough. Yeah.
Steven Schneider (18:26.104)
shoe brand is in that kind of wheel is really how you should tailor that content. So if you’re selling, hokas, like the running shoe, for example, like I love hokas. I probably will never not buy hokas for running. I’m a runner. like that whole entire lifestyle encompasses me within that product. but if I’m looking at some insert, any other brand that’s not like that, I would
Greg Shuey (18:46.806)
Hmm.
Steven Schneider (18:55.612)
touch on more like, hey, does the job, it’s durable. Like there’s always going to be attributes that you can lean into, depending on who you’re selling it to and how you’re speaking and relaying that messaging. I think it really just depends on like not to beat a dead horse, but like how well they know your customer. What do they actually preference here? Like how did they think about the product? And the more you can kind of like immerse yourself in their point of view, it just makes the content that much stronger. But there’s always a way.
Greg Shuey (19:23.362)
That makes sense. All right. You got me there. I retract that question.
Steven Schneider (19:28.722)
Probably a product out there that’s probably not as black and white. Toothpaste, maybe.
Greg Shuey (19:33.398)
not as life-changing.
toothpaste, I don’t know.
Steven Schneider (19:39.612)
But I have to say on that topic Colgate’s blog is crushing. you ever got in a rabbit hole there, but look at their H-Refs, it’s crazy.
Greg Shuey (19:47.982)
I haven’t, I’ll have to dig into that. That’s cool. Talk to me about storytelling. hear, you know, although we both spend a fair amount of time on LinkedIn, right? I mean, a day doesn’t go by when I don’t see a post about storytelling. So how does that play, play into like really building content that converts?
Steven Schneider (19:50.546)
you
Steven Schneider (20:12.848)
Super hot take. I don’t think it matters as much. People say it does. okay. I’m glad there we go. said it. yeah, everyone’s so like willing to die on that Hill. And I just, I’ve seen a lot of success without killer storytelling. I think that if you are a visual media company and you’re creating ads or like I have a friend of mine on LinkedIn who they do like really high end, like 60 second ads, like
Greg Shuey (20:16.812)
I don’t either.
Ha
Greg Shuey (20:26.126)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (20:30.989)
Right.
Steven Schneider (20:43.314)
100 % that is your story, like book, everything. If you’re writing an article, especially content, and it’s like a versus guide or like some sort of piece of content that’s strictly informational, I’m there on a to-do list mental mindset, like search, acquire information, make decision, buy. That does not require, actually a counter opposite.
Like I always tell people, I don’t care about your grandma’s race, like 600 year old recipe on how to bake this cake. Like give me the six ingredients I need and give me the 10 steps in under 10 seconds or else I’m out. no. Storytelling has a time and place, but it’s not a blanket approach to content.
Greg Shuey (21:24.088)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (21:31.072)
I like it. Good. Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one out there who kind of sees through that.
Steven Schneider (21:35.446)
I was kind of nervous. I was wondering what you’re going to say. People are always like, you know, I can go one or two ways.
Greg Shuey (21:40.854)
And maybe it’s just because I’m a bad storyteller. don’t know.
Steven Schneider (21:44.07)
I’m just bad at marketing, I’m bad at SEO, I’m bad at storytelling, so let them come for me.
Greg Shuey (21:49.762)
That’s funny. So let’s dive into like more of granular view, right? And when we look at e-commerce websites, mean, the biggest point of conversion is going to be the product description page, right? And I feel like that is where most brands spend the least amount of time. They write a two paragraph description. Maybe they’ve got some product reviews on the page.
Steven Schneider (22:12.284)
Sadly.
Greg Shuey (22:18.038)
is not great. So what are some best practices that you’ve seen to help really make those pages impactful and encourage conversions?
Steven Schneider (22:29.702)
I’d say above the fold, is more when it comes to text versus imagery. think that a picture is worth a thousand words. Like I’d rather have 10 images in a video than a thousand words of content in one image. I just, I think that people need to be able to feel it. They need to be able to envision themselves using the product. they want to see how it works. Like how does it look scale wise? Is it the size of a pen? Is it the size of a map truck? Like.
That whole entire process of acquiring information that we do as humans and milliseconds is way more valuable than the bullet points of length times width times height. And here’s how it’s machine washable. Like I can look at the tag. don’t care. I would say like, whatever is above the fold, like the psychology of the user experience and how that looks in design. That’s another thing that people don’t consider. Like even from blogs, for example, like if you’re a featured image,
is 90 % of the fold, like take it out. Same thing with a product on an e-commerce site. Like if your text is 75 % of the page, like switch those two things around. The next thing there is I would say is like, what is the scroll psychology or like what I would consider like the flow of the page. So like if I’m looking at image plus text, the next thing that would make sense from like a funnel perspective should be some sort of like review or testimonial.
Greg Shuey (23:39.394)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (23:49.198)
Mm-hmm.
Steven Schneider (23:58.234)
I also not a huge fan of reviews that require clicks or to see reviews that require clicks. It’s like, anything that, yeah, anything that requires an extra action from the visitor is pretty much diminishing your likelihood of success. So like if someone’s going to scroll and even like one inch on the page, they should be able to see what that next piece of content is. And it should probably be something of pretty high value. like reviews, someone, the customer using it.
Greg Shuey (24:03.374)
Hmm.
Just load them.
Steven Schneider (24:28.146)
maybe even like a team video of like your product tester or something, how it works in action. and then kind of like feed into any of the standard stuff, maybe FAQs, cetera, et cetera. But, I go strictly like bottom, bottom, bottom, and then go mid, mid top and kind of like do like an hourglass approach where the bottom of the page is probably less important to the seller. So you have.
Greg Shuey (24:48.492)
Interesting.
Steven Schneider (24:55.224)
FAQs, it’s probably good for internal linking. It’s going to be good for your category connections, related products, all the other stuff. But whatever’s moving the needle, make sure that’s like immediately at the top.
Greg Shuey (25:08.022)
Yeah, I like that. I like that you bring up visuals first and how you need to put more importance on that versus the copy. I wonder how many people actually go through and read product descriptions and copy. I had a strange experience yesterday with one of my e-commerce brands. I spent a lot of time doing visuals, spent a lot of time doing product installation videos, and this particular product had been updated.
since I did the installation video. This customer reached out and said, you know, my order is not right. You didn’t include this. And I’m like, well, what are you talking about right here in the first sentence of the product description, it fully describes what this product is. Well, I watched your installation video and that’s what got me to buy the product. And I’m like, holy smokes. Like visuals are so powerful. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter if it like, I’m like, that’s an installation video. It’s not even a
Steven Schneider (26:01.706)
yeah.
Greg Shuey (26:06.894)
product picture is not a product video. Like what are we doing here? So I’m glad that you went there. And I think that it’s super important to invest time and money into getting that piece right. And then you can work the content around that.
Steven Schneider (26:18.887)
Yeah.
Well, I even to like, I always think back to the evolution of Amazon listings, I guess, if you look at like how quickly once any, any one seller finds something that does 1 % better, every single person has it. So for example, like there’s no reason you can’t have an image that has feature.
Greg Shuey (26:28.856)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (26:39.075)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (26:47.022)
Like call-outs or it has bullet points in it, like use your text in image, but people are way more, especially with like how technology is just an extension of our hand now. Like we’re going to swipe that image and read whatever’s in that image before we scroll and look at the text. So, and I think that like, to your point, text is so easily blurred between like, is the line height space? Well, are you using bold or people like dumbing it down by using emojis, which I don’t agree with either, but like.
There’s so many counterparts that can turn a good written piece of content into a dumpster fire of a text box. but then again, like, is that bullet point going to sway the customer? Probably not. It’s probably going to like distort their experience overall. So like I had to rather have a clean and clear copy section with imagery that speaks the same information, but people can digest it differently.
Greg Shuey (27:40.876)
Yeah. I like that. Cool. so how, how do you see brands and just other businesses in general measuring the effectiveness of their content? Like are there any KPIs or indicators that say, Hey, this content needs to be improved or you know, we need to work on X, Y, Z. Like how do you measure that?
Steven Schneider (28:06.674)
Yeah, so the main things that we look at are going to be the organic rankings. Obviously, it’s third party tools from Ahrefs, some people use SEMrush. And just kind of seeing like, is the, how is it tracking any given week or month? Clicks and impressions are always going to be kind of the poster child for SEO and making sure what’s your click through rate based on both of those combined. And then sessions, time on page as well is important. if, you know,
People are always really worried about that. And I think they should or could reason if people was on there for two seconds and they leave, like probably take a look at that content. I also like another hot take if people really are super up in arms about bounce rate. I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I think it depends on the site. and it depends on the brand, but like affiliate.
Greg Shuey (28:40.354)
Yep. That’s a problem.
Steven Schneider (29:01.222)
days taught me that bounce rates don’t care because people are there for one goal and one product only, and they’re not going to look at anything else. that’s one thing I would say. And then the other thing is like how granular you want to get with the event tracking within your piece of content. So whether you have custom CTAs or. Newsletters or whatever that KPI is specific to your business goal metric is like, that’s up to you. So.
Greg Shuey (29:28.184)
Cool. What are some of the common mistakes that you’re seeing that brands are making with their content?
Steven Schneider (29:35.64)
lack of user experience and just a disregard for everything design user experience wise.
Greg Shuey (29:41.086)
Whoa, we can go down a rabbit hole there.
maybe dive just a little bit deeper.
Steven Schneider (29:50.068)
my gosh. she’s, there’s nothing more frustrating than trying to relay the importance of having a really, really pre looking blog in 2024, almost 2025. it should feel clean. It should be smooth. mobile has to be dialed in like all these like, yeah, no doubt basics, but if you take a look at even like one step further,
Greg Shuey (30:02.476)
Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Schneider (30:18.534)
looking at your eat metrics and making sure that those are important. mean, Google yesterday announced that their November update is now in fact for the next two weeks. Everyone strap in. Yeah. So mean, like if you don’t have an author persona in your blog, like, especially with the world of AI, like it should link like ours, for example, it’s my face.
Greg Shuey (30:28.064)
like clockwork two weeks before Black Friday. Thanks guys.
Steven Schneider (30:46.458)
I don’t write every piece of content, but at least I have a face to the blog and my bio has a direct link to my LinkedIn with the same exact picture that matches that. Like it’s not rocket science, but from your customer’s point of view, they should know that it’s not an AI piece of content. And if it is probably add a disclaimer at the top, what was added, like what’s AI. I think it just goes back to the transparency thing. Like people want to be able to know that this brand.
Greg Shuey (30:48.494)
Okay. Yep.
Steven Schneider (31:13.764)
actually has humans behind it, not just a AI lever that dictates all action. Like, come on.
Greg Shuey (31:15.81)
Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (31:21.516)
Yeah, I like those. Those are some great recommendations. Looking forward. I mean, we’re six weeks ish away from 2025. We have seen some of the biggest shifts in search engine results pages that we’ve seen, you know, in the last five years, especially in e-commerce, you know, seeing what Google’s done with search results, going to category pages, PDP pages, trying to keep people on the SERP longer AI results overview.
all sorts of knowledge panels, like, what’s the future of content? Where do you see us going next year?
Steven Schneider (32:01.237)
I wish I had a crystal ball because my job would be way easier.
Greg Shuey (32:05.102)
What are your projects? Hot take hot take is what you’re calling it. What’s your hot take?
Steven Schneider (32:10.414)
Yeah, I think that the difference being is that like e-commerce is going to see the biggest shift because the like I always think back into like same thing is like one of my things that I nerd out on is like putting myself into the shoes of whatever the operator is that I’m in their playground. So like if I’m looking at Google, everyone’s like SEO is dead, AI is taking over and it’s like how do think Google makes money? They make money through ads and where do you think those ads are shown?
Greg Shuey (32:16.642)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (32:36.237)
Right?
Steven Schneider (32:40.274)
They’re not going to kill SEO because they did kill the company. But that said, from that same mindset, how does Google make money? PVC, e-commerce, things that actually have an immediate reaction to people spending money. So from that sort of perspective, I think that Google has an incentive to figure out how to dial in e-commerce. And like they’ve massively updated the e-commerce shopping page already. And like as a consumer, that’s sweet. Like that helps me a lot. I think that’s awesome.
I think there’s a long road ahead until they really figure out the content side of things like the AI overview suck. They really are losing a lot of trust. I was actually just talking to a friend of mine last week and it kind of was a funny revelation we had, but the fact that Google is this entity that billions of people use and they are kind of the, the testing ground of integrating AI into mass adoption for everyone else.
Greg Shuey (33:37.816)
Right.
Steven Schneider (33:38.002)
And if they mess it up, AI inherently kind of gets this disgusting taste in everyone’s mouth, regardless of whether you like it or not. so it’s really weird because Google always has an incentive to show quality content as quickly as possible. But from like what we do with blogs and all sorts of stuff, like I was telling this to a new client we had, it’s like, we have one client and like the mergers and acquisitions space.
There’s no way that Google is going to show an AI snippet of how to value your business using EBITDA valuations. Like, cause you give it the formula, but yeah. But someone who’s actually in that mindset is going to want to read through the research of how to do all that sort of stuff. I mean, and even like the topical authority of ranking your e-commerce products, if you want to tie it back to that, like no one’s ever going to complain about having better rankings organically on their site. So you better figure out how to.
Greg Shuey (34:13.71)
sure they are, they’ll show it and they’re gonna mess it up. Yeah.
Steven Schneider (34:34.46)
get your SEO tiled in. Like, I don’t know. Long-winded answer to your question, but I would say that I don’t know and I’m excited to see how it evolves.
Greg Shuey (34:44.27)
I’m excited. I’m a little nervous. You know, I think I post, was either this morning or I don’t even know. Cause I queue them up a couple of days in advance, but on the e-commerce side, I wonder if SEO is going to become more of a brand building kind of thing, right? Like more topical, as people are researching and Google’s trying with all of their might to keep people on the SERP, is it going to be more important to try to get your brand name out there?
Steven Schneider (34:47.014)
Yeah.
Steven Schneider (34:57.33)
100%, more topical.
Greg Shuey (35:12.684)
and into the consideration set so that when they are ready to buy, you can capture the click, you can drive more direct traffic if people remember your brand name and whatnot. And so it’s gonna be interesting. I don’t wanna say SEO is dead, cause it’s not, and I don’t believe it will ever be dead, but I think that we’re gonna see some pretty big changes next year.
Steven Schneider (35:30.022)
you
Steven Schneider (35:34.372)
Yeah. And I think the important part that kind of came to mind when you were saying that just to kind of piggyback off of it is that people often blur the importance of unique visits versus returning visits. the importance of showing your brand in the SERP and getting that visibility and reinforcing the brand and everything that it has behind it is a stepping stone to action point two through 10. So even though they’re not on that page,
Greg Shuey (35:36.59)
Thank
Steven Schneider (36:04.368)
buying immediately, same thing with blogs. Like it’s hard to sell a high ticket offer through their first visit of that blog. And that’s why we suggest newsletters, lead magnets for their next visit, like everything you can do to kind of embody that next visit and turn them into that ecosystem of your brand.
Greg Shuey (36:22.668)
and then move them through the buyer journey. Yep. I like it. Cool. It’s simple. It’s so simple. I love it. Well, cool, man. I think that’s a great stopping point. So thank you so much for being with us today. Appreciate it. CEOs are busy people. And so I know you took some time out of your schedule to be with us today. And I really, really loved our conversation.
Steven Schneider (36:25.01)
Exactly. That’s it. Come on. Simple.
Steven Schneider (36:38.322)
Of course, that was fun.
Steven Schneider (36:49.35)
Likewise.
Greg Shuey (36:50.508)
So for our listeners, I I know that you’ve probably taken away a lot today. My hope is, as always, that you’ve got two or three action items that you can take and you can carve some time out and start executing over the next couple of weeks to be able to set yourself up for more success in 2025. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Take care.
Steven Schneider (36:57.596)
you
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
