How do businesses get clients in the age of social distancing?
This week’s guest has the answer.
Chris Dreyer is the Founder and President of Rankings.io, an agency that specializes in personal injury lawyer SEO. Their company helps elite personal injury law firms dominate first page rankings on Google’s organic search results paving the way for these firms to land personal injury and auto accident cases. Rankings.io has made the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for the past two years.
Chris has over 15 years of digital marketing experience and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Prior to launching his agency, he was an affiliate marketer with over 100 sites.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- How businesses can start maximizing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) today
- How lawyers can create great content for their websites in the least amount of time
- Chris’ advice to lawyers on how they should handle their website in this time of public health crisis
- Things to keep in mind when you want to contribute to another website
- The role video plays today in SEO and in driving traffic to a website
Resources Mentioned:
Sponsor: Rise25
Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing.
Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally.
If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing.
A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
To learn more, book a call with us here.
Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran 0:40
All right. Hello, everybody. John Corcoran. Here I am the host of the smart business revolution. podcasts are doing this live right now, which is a lot of fun. And through that podcast and through these LinkedIn lives, I talk with CEOs founders and entrepreneurs of companies and organizations like YPO eo Activision Blizzard, the world largest video game company, lending tree Open Table x software and many more. I’m also the co-founder of rice 25, where we help connect b2b business owners to their ideal prospects. And obviously, this is a unique period in time in which we are going live on this. This is March, mid March of 20. In case you’re listening to the recording, right in the midst of kind of the Coronavirus, confusion and uncertainty.
And so I wanted to bring on a very smart person guy who had gotten to know real well also a client of ours Chris dryers his name, and Chris is the founder and president of rankings.io. It’s an agency that specializes in particular in personal injury lawyer SEO but you don’t need to be a personal injury lawyer in order to benefit from this because ultimately when you talk about SEO, we’re talking about how to get traffic how to get eyeballs to pay attention to you your offer your website. How do you get clients How do you get referrals without having to leave the house without Having to go face to face, which is really important at this particular juncture this this period of time in which we are, you know much of the country, much of the world is sheltering in place and trying to limit exposure to one another, Randy Sato has made the Inc 5000 List of fastest growing private companies in the past two years, and will, in all likelihood be included again in 2020. And Chris has over 15 years of digital marketing experience prior to launching his agency as an affiliate marketer and over with over 100 sites, marketing everything from how to stain concrete floors, to double chins and sad fruit. Oh, I love I say that’s great. So first before we get to that this episode is brought to you by rise25 media which I co-founded with my business partner, Dr. Jeremy Weiss, and our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners and customers. Even if you can’t travel even if you can’t be face to face with the way we do that is through done for you podcast. Interviews done through content marketing, and I believe firmly if you have a business, you should be doing a podcast period. And Chris, I believe you would say the same thing we’re just talking about a second ago. How have you liked doing the podcast?
Chris Dreyer 3:00
Oh, yeah. So definitely a podcast is a home run, it’s an instant instantly allows you to connect with the top influencers in your niche. And, you know, I was talking to Dr. Jeremy Weiss, your partner. And he said, you know, now is the time that people are more available because they’re home. They’ve got time to do podcasts, interviews, so you can get some great content through a podcast and truly helping our business.
John Corcoran 3:30
Yeah, yeah. And it’s critical these days. I firmly believe that I’ve been doing it for 10 years, but I’ve never seen it more important because there’s so many people that have relied on for leads for clients for referrals have relied on in person networking events or going to conferences, and just there’s that’s been shut down right now. Very, very limited opportunity to travel. And so if you want to learn more about that go to rise. 25 media.com. So all right, Chris, so why don’t you help us pretend we’re all beginners here, everyone is listening and talk a little bit about first, you know, for me, you know, SEO, in many ways has been kind of a big black box, I know enough to be a little bit dangerous but don’t know that much. And so if you are, you know, in find yourself in this situation, you’re a business owner or you’re in business, and you’re thinking, Okay, I gotta do something to get more people paying attention to me my offer, where do they start? And just tell us about kind of some of the principles and what’s the state of SEO in 2020. In 20 seconds or less, I’m sure you can handle all that.
Chris Dreyer 4:35
I’ll do my best, you know, Google’s still to go to for the mass source of information. And when it comes to the virtual real estate, so to speak of Google, you’ve got their paid ads, which the next five down is the local maps and then organic. So if you’re a local brick and mortar business, it’s very important that you show up in the maps. So that’s doing things Like getting reviews, making sure that you are listed on prominent citations and directories like Yelp and, you know, Yellow Pages and Google My Business. And then also just making sure you have relevant content around your niche. So if you’re, you know, we work with law firms, and you need to have any more car accident cases, you need to have a dedicated Car Accident Lawyer page. And then when it comes to organic, that’s just, you know, that’s, that’s the most real estate, right, that they are served. There’s related queries, and just helping the consumer but most importantly, answering their intent. So when you create content on your website, it needs to serve the consumer and you need to answer their intent. It’s more about intent than it is keyword research now.
John Corcoran 5:50
Yeah. So what do you mean by that in terms of the intent like it’s answering the question that they are most intending that you answer? Yeah, yeah. Are we possibly the worst question I’ve ever asked?
Chris Dreyer 6:05
So in the past, the first step everyone would tell you is like, look for a keyword and make sure that it has enough search volume to justify writing that article. Well, now it’s more about the whole keyword grouping around that phrase. So if I was going to give you another, you know, law firm related example, if you if someone typed in the word, phrase, Car Accident Lawyer, it’s very hard to identify what their intent is. They probably want to hire an attorney, but what if they’re interested in statistics or steps to take after the accident. So, in general, if the phrase is shorter that you’re trying to rank for, you need to write longer amount of content that covers multiple versions of intent. Now, and that’s where we get into you’ve probably heard you know, those longtail blogs, you know, that was five-plus word phrases. Well, a lot of times intent is already built into that question. So if you’re trying to rank for, you know, steps to take after a car accident, it’s pretty clear that you need to answer and then have those steps listed in the blog. And maybe that blog can be shorter because the intense really defined.
John Corcoran 7:20
So that’s it. So just kind of getting clear around really the specific nature of the question that they are asking. And of course a big you know, I’m a recovering lawyer but practice law for many years. And of course, one of the big objections I’m sure you experience from when you’re talking to your clientele is that lawyers are busy just like other professionals, everyone’s busy everyone doesn’t have a lot of time to do these things. So what do you say to people who say like, Yeah, I know I need to create content but how do I do it? I don’t have time.
Chris Dreyer 7:45
So if you’re like, you know, take the Gary Vee approach right? You know, don’t doc don’t create document. So you know, whether you’re recording your interactive your interactions with your customers. Or, or you’re doing a podcast where maybe you like to do the audio and you’re not. And you can just get something transcribed or video, you know, ultimately, no matter what form of media that we’re taking, it’s all producing content. And that’s the only way to make sure that you can become a thought leader because best known as better than best. No, nobody, like, nobody wants to be the best kept secret, because right, it was about you. Right? Right. And I never really understood that one. Sometimes people kind of where it is like a badge of honor to be not well known, and that only you have to be in the know, in order to know about people. I’ve never really understood that one because for me, it’s like, if you’re better known, you’re going to have higher caliber people coming to you, but you’re gonna have more of a choice of who you work with and who you don’t. And, you know, you’re going to work with people who love working with because you can be selective, and that to me, seems like a great thing all around. Yeah. That’s, you know, that’s another reason why it’s important to have multiple streams of lead gen, you know, not, you know, a multi-channel type of approach and, and to develop brand equity, you know that that top of the funnel, the awareness side, you know, you hear people say they like to do business with who they know like and trust when it comes to marketing, knowing is your awareness base campaigns, whether that’s billboards or podcasts or ads. So it’s just really important if you have a business in general.
John Corcoran 9:30
Right, right. What else are you advising your clients right now in this odd area era that we’re in right now in terms of how they should be handling their website and, and whatnot, Seo In particular, as well.
Chris Dreyer 9:42
The biggest thing is I’m saying be more sensitive to the audience and instead of writing that bottom of the funnel content where you’re just driving them to a sale, it’s more of the middle the healthful side. So You know, being helpful. So say you’re, you know, a local business and we all understand that takeout is going to be on the massive rise, right? Nobody, especially if you if you’re not a great cook, you’re probably going to want to order takeout more. Well, you could generate a blog on, you know, top 20 restaurants that deliver, right, that provide value to the audience. And that drives Top of Mind awareness, people may naturally link to you. So it’s just an approach of being sensitive to the audience and being more helpful, more top middle of the funnel, as opposed to just driving people right to the bottom trying to sell them something.
John Corcoran 10:40
What is the state of writing guest content on other websites today? That was something that I did extensively, about six or seven years ago, writing for Forbes and Business Insider, an entrepreneur and, you know, starting anywhere I could and then working my way up to some of those larger publications. But how does that how do people do that today.
Chris Dreyer 11:00
So it’s still a very mainstream practice, right? Because, you know, you can do your directories and entering data, whether it’s on a directory in association, a chamber of commerce, those are finite, there’s only so many of those where there are, you know, millions of websites that you could contribute content to. So it’s still a very strong tactic. Again, taking the helpful approach where, you know, maybe maybe a piece is data and you offer to upgrade it and provide a little bit more value and information so it makes their page on their site better. That’s a better tactic than just going straight for the ask, Hey, can I post to your site? Right, I noticed this, this blog is great. And there’s some additional resources and statistics that we could add here. Um, you know, serving their needs as well.
John Corcoran 11:55
Right. A bunch of people here live with us. Iron garlic is here, bro. Chris Burstyn is here. Amy Kilgore is here. She says, So correct. It’s not just about the sale solving issues is key. And I want to ask because I N was was, you know, he’s well-known expert in video and video storytelling. What role does video play today especially in terms of SEO and driving traffic to a website? Oh, it’s a tremendous asset, right. So, video again, you can get your videos transcribed into written content that Google can crawl, you know, it allows you to build a rapport and social proof easily with the person watching it. Not only that, YouTube’s the second largest search engine, it’s just where people are going. It’s just where the audience is going. It’s where attention is. So it’s just increasingly important in all areas of that funnel. Video can play a huge part. Great, great. All right. So Chris, we’ve been talking to Chris dryer. rankings.io is the name of the business of the website, where can People go to connect with you, Chris. Just go to rankings.io. And you can hit our contact form and get a hold of me there. Yeah, it’s a beautiful website, by the way, so you have to check out his website, even if just to check out the way that he’s organized everything. It just feels like one of the most contemporary websites I’ve seen out there, you know, you hit some website and you’re like, this looks like they have not updated this since 1997 or something. And, you know, you’re like the whatever is the polar opposite of that. That is you. Thank you. That’s it. That’s an awesome compliment. Thanks, john.