[Fully Managed] John Moffitt from Elvin Web Marketing Ep. 50

John’s Background

Shannon: Could you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, anything relevant on your personal business journey that you think people would like to know, that you think is interesting, and what inspired you to start Elvin Web Marketing?

John: Sure. Well, I started out in life as a normal person. I joined the military, came out of the military, went to work for the postal service. Got married, building the normal life that you expect in America. And we’re trained to do this, do that, and go to an end point. Eventually get there and life begins.

In 2002, my first wife passed away. And that made a huge difference in my life. I was at the post office, great place to live, but I was never really happy there. And it occurred to me that you can’t count on getting there. Things get in your way. And so life goes on all the time. So I decided if I’m gonna spend a third of my life doing something I like, then I’ve gotta make a change.

So the first change was into financial planning. That was a colossal disaster. And I wound up going almost bankrupt from it. Lost hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to make that business work. So I was thinking, at this point, I’m 55 years old, basically unhirable at that age, it’s 2011, bad recession going on. And so I decided, I’ve gotta start a business ’cause no one’s gonna hire me. And then it occurred to me, well, what can I do with a 6-year-old laptop and $20? Well, I could start an internet business. And that’s what we did. And that was 14 years ago and we’re still here.

Authenticity in Agency Work

Shannon: Well, I really appreciate you talking about all the bumps in the road. I think that in agency work, you don’t hear a lot about that. A lot of people like to hide those kinds of things. And I honestly appreciate the authenticity of sharing that there are bumps in the road because I think that everyone experiences them. No one has just a streamlined, perfect way of getting to the spot. Especially owning a business is not something that’s easy or, you know, a lot of people start out not doing something that they enjoy.

And I think that’s just, you know, getting into the workforce, doing what you think you’re supposed to do. So it’s good to hear and I’m happy. Thank you for sharing about that specifically because again, I think that the agency world, a lot of things are hidden. People like, seem like they’re doing everything perfectly so that their audience thinks that they’re doing that. But I know that that’s not realistic and I think people see right through that. So it’s good to know that you’re comfortable with sharing that experience.

The Future of SEO and Web Design

Shannon: So with your experience in SEO and web design, you’ve definitely seen a lot of things, I’m sure, since you started. Do you foresee anything in the future changing drastically because of anything new, like AI or whatever it may be?

John: Google. We’re talking Google the Internet. Google is still the internet. I know there are other things going on. AI, the internet is Google. Google’s goal is to dominate their space. They dominate their space. Their goal is more than that, is to make money. And they make their money by selling ads on their search engine. They dominate the search engine and they do that because they have the best results. They get the best results they need the best content.

So if you give Google the best content, you’re gonna end up towards the top or at the top no matter what. You need to prove your authority. Once you approve your authority, and there are ways to do that, once you show that you know what you’re talking about and you can answer the question for the visitor, Google’s gonna find you.

They’ll take different roads. They talk about algorithm changes and this and that, and AI, the destination’s always the same. It’s the how. How you get there may change. The road may change, but the destination’s always the same. If you keep that in mind, just remember Google’s trying to make money by bringing in visitors. You want people, you want visitors too. How can you get visitors and help Google too? And if you can get that nice virtuous circle going, you and your clients will do well.

What Makes Good Content?

Shannon: Yeah, I definitely agree. So what things do you believe will go into something being considered good content or a good website?

John: For us, our best websites are the ones that are packed with information. The more you put up there and the better it’s organized, the better the website will perform. So on our websites, we try to make every page at least 500 words of good content. They can’t get 500 words of good content on every subject. So you don’t put in the filler, you put in the information you need to put in.

The links within the sites. If you’re a plumber and you’ve got an article and you’re referencing somehow water heater repair, put a link in there and send it to your water heater repair page so people don’t have to go back and look for it. The easier the people can navigate the site, the more they can understand it. And yes, the faster it loads all go into user experience and that’s what will, from the website side, that’s what’s gonna win.

And then the organic stuff, Google doesn’t like stuff just sitting there. So if you build a site and you know, I built it two years ago, why do I have to change it now? It’s already old. So you need to put the blogs up there. Some people say you need a blog every day, every week. It really depends on your business and your competition. Plumbers, local plumbers don’t need to have a blog up there every day.

Shannon: That would be difficult unless they had an update on every task they did.

John: Right. But they should have better information than their competitors do. And that would get the site ranked higher in the organic search, and then you got the Mapbox and the other stuff, which is an entirely different thing. Most people don’t understand that the three pack you see at the top of a search in the organic listings underneath are two separate things. And so you gotta treat ’em both separately.

Website Usability

Shannon: Yeah, I definitely think that’s sound advice. I do something that I specifically resonate with that you said was the idea of making your website easy to navigate and easy to use. I think that is the most frustrating thing for anyone to get on a website and have, you know, using a service or a product in mind and just clicking off the website because it’s hard to use or the loading speed is long, or whatever it may be. Especially, I think that you miss out on an entire audience because of that. Like people with less patience, and I think that might be the majority of the population.

John: Yeah. Well it’s like, you know, you gotta read this great book and then the person gets the book. I can’t open it. Well, if they can’t open the book, they’re not gonna read it. They’re gonna move on to a book they can open.

Shannon: Exactly, or if the first two chapters are like nonsense and they don’t help you. It’s the same thing with content. It’s, people resonate with something that’s not only easy to navigate and easy to use, but also that something that’s easy to process if the information on there is something that is helpful to you or is not. If there’s a lot of jargon that you don’t understand and you wanna use something that doesn’t make things helpful for your potential clients. No.

Speaking to Customers

John: A lot of mistakes that web developers make, I think, or they put out all the stuff they do that nobody understands. They should really speak about how they can help the customer attract more visitors and get more business rather than “we do this, we do that.” We can make the Ferrari of websites while they don’t know what goes into that.

Most of our clients we’re a local SEO, we don’t do the national accounts. They want us to make money. We don’t even do reports for most of our clients. They don’t care. We have a very high retention rate for two reasons. A, they’re getting results, and B, we answer the phone. So if we’re there getting them result and we’re there when they need us, that’s all they’re looking for.

Shannon: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that something that people don’t pay attention to a lot of times when building a website is that it is for your clients or your potential clients. And it’s difficult because a lot of times you’re so familiar with a subject, like I see it all the time, for marketers, websites is the idea that they have terms on there, that someone who needs marketing and can’t do it themselves would not understand. Like they don’t know what you’re helping them in because they don’t understand the terminology you’re using. And that is not, they’re gonna go to a website, another person in which they can understand what they’re getting from you. And it’s very, you know, it’s difficult sometimes when someone is creating a website to have that in mind because they’re so familiar with the subject. They don’t know how to put it in layman’s terms. They are in a generic way. They only know how to do it because that’s how they speak regularly on that subject, on a regular basis.

John: A lot of small business people, they get into the business because they love what they do and they’re really good at it. But they don’t know how to run a business. They don’t know the customers. They don’t know what to say.

I think our advantage is, I don’t know web marketing. I know a little bit about WordPress enough to make a really bad website, but I found people who can make great WordPress sites. SEO, the content stuff, I’m a really good writer. I understand SEO back forward and backward, that stuff. I can do the website stuff. I don’t know.

But I can tell you this, I know our customers. Working in the post office for 15 years dealing with all those customers, dealing with people on the street. While I was building this business, my wife didn’t have insurance. I needed insurance. So I went to work for the US Census Bureau that allowed me to talk to literally thousands of people. I got to intimately know thousands of people from Burlington, Vermont, down to Philadelphia. That’s information that we have that other people don’t. That’s good marketing information. So we know the customer and so when a person comes in, this is what I’m looking for, you know, in my head, yeah, I know that person. I can help you.

The Value of Service Experience

Shannon: Yeah, no, I think that that’s something that people really need to keep in mind something that I value personally. If I was ever doing hiring, I am not high enough to be doing hiring, but that I personally value is in a good worker. If you’ve had any kind of service experience, I immediately know that you’re going to be better set up for a marketing role than another person because you understand like you have firsthand knowledge on a consumer experience. Whereas a lot of people think that they have that just because they’ve been a consumer, and that’s not always the case.

I think that being able to receive direct feedback from people is so vital and, you know, unfortunately, if you’re like a waiter you have to deal with even if it’s not your fault. And I think that having that mindset is really important when experiencing feedback in any other job, but firsthand one-on-one face-to-face feedback is, I think what really sets you up for being able to receive it through an email or whatever it may be, because you have in mind that, hey, like they’re probably not explaining this as, they’re probably more mad than they’re explaining in their email. Because this is on paper and they have to be a little more polite or professional about it.

Handling Customer Feedback

John: When we get a mad email and we do, the first thing I’ll do is call ’em up because you can’t read the tone in an email. And sometimes they’ll tell you, sometimes they’re embarrassed to complain. But we need the information. We wanna know the truth here. One of our core values is radical honesty.

We want to know, we need to know. We’re big boys. We wear big boy pants. If we’re doing something wrong, you need to tell us. And the same way, if we think there’s something they’re doing wrong that’s gonna hurt their business or affect our business, we tell ’em, we work it out. We can’t work it out, then we have to part ways. But no, it’s important, you know, we’re on the internet, but at the end of the day, we’re still dealing with people and I think some people don’t realize that.

Shannon: I definitely agree with that. I think that when you are so used to, you know, being remote or using a device to speak to people, you forget that they’re people, or to treat them like such. Especially through an email. I think tone, I agree. It’s so difficult to gauge. And as someone who only started regularly emailing for this job specifically, I hadn’t, it had never been my main form of communication. I think that it made me so nervous, I think, ’cause people don’t say, you always think someone’s mad at you because they put a period after Okay. Or something like that. And that’s frightening. But I think that it’s great that you call to ensure that you’re getting proper feedback and understanding exactly where they are at, because I think that that’s really, really important.

John: Yeah. And it shows that you care. People just want to know that you care about ’em, that you’ve got their best interest at heart. I tell our team, listen, if we make money for them, they’re never gonna leave there, gonna make money for us. So our goal is to make our guys money so that our guys, our worker bees also have money. And we have money and everybody’s happy, right? If we fail in that attempt, then you know, they should fire us. ’cause they hire us to make money. They don’t care about the nice website, if it’s making money, it’s a great website. If it’s not making money that has no value to ’em.

Building Trust with Clients

Shannon: They also, I think trust is really important in that kind of relationship as well, and I think that when you provide that radical honesty and transparency and you’re calling them and communicating with them when things go wrong, that ensures that you have better relationship with them, regardless of if you perfectly fix the issue or whatever it may be.

I think that what you said about them understanding that you care, I think being active with the way in which you communicate is very important and instilling trust in a client is something that I think is the most important of a dynamic between client and service or whatever it may be. It’s gonna keep people as a long term client rather than a short term, or it’s going to keep them giving you a referral or whatever it may be, because they had a good experience and they know that you’re paying attention to when things go wrong and not just when things go right or trying to hide them or whatever it may be, to fix them and not telling someone about it.

John: Well, we’ve got quite a few clients now, we’ve been doing this for a while. Can’t believe I’m a veteran in SEO. I’m one of the first guys compared to everybody else, but we’ve been doing this for a while, so we have different clients at different rates. You know, some guys pay us this month, some guys pay us that a month.

But if we get a call from a client saying they’ve got a problem and we can fix it, no matter what’s going on, we will drop what we’re doing and fix it. And we will fix it. Well, we try to fix it while they’re still on the phone, but if we can’t, then we get it fixed the next day or the day after. We do not let those hang out. The guys know that we are there to solve their issues and to fix things as quickly as possible.

Sites go down, I get a text when a site goes down. We get those sites back up before the client even knew they were down. You know, that sort of stuff. And they appreciate it. That’s how you keep, that’s how you keep a good client, that there’s nothing harder than finding a new client. It’s really hard. It’s the hardest part of my job. So why would you wanna, isn’t it easier, just keep the guys you got? And find new people every month? I think it’s easier to keep the guys you got.

Shannon: 100%. It’s like the similar of doing outreach. It’s easier to reach back out to someone that you’ve already had a point of contact with rather than reach out to someone that you’ve never talked to before, they’re like more likely not going to respond.

And even with that, when you already have someone as a client, even if they don’t need your service or they feel like they don’t need it after a certain time, if anyone asks them where they got these SEO services done, they’re going to recommend you because they had a good experience with you. And a referral is almost just as good as maintaining a client because you usually they have similar goals as that person or they’re the same kind of demeanor, you know, that they’re gonna be a good person to work with. I think that when there’s associations, that’s why it’s so great to grow your network in that way.

John: I could say honestly, we’ve gotten a decent chunk of our business building websites for clients that we built websites for four or five years ago. So we’ll flip out the website, I’ll call ’em off. Listen, it was four years ago, five years ago we built this. Now this is what’s going on. He goes, yeah, we need a new one. Can you do that for us? And so you have that kinda relationship when all you gotta do is suggest and they go along with you because they trust you and you’ve done right by ’em. That makes business a lot easier.

Building a Team

Shannon: Yeah. That must, so you actually mentioned before that you don’t have a lot of experience in web design and you found people that did so that you could have them as a part of your company. What was the point where you wanted to add this on to your services? Why? And like how did you find the right person for this position? What did that look like?

John: When you start a business, you are the visionary. You are the project manager, you are the secretary, and you are the accountant. As you grow the business, you realize some of this stuff has to go. Some of the stuff you do is a hundred dollars an hour stuff. Some of it is $15 an hour stuff, so you wanna dump off the 15 hour an hour stuff. So that’s one of the things you do.

You also realize that there’s things in my case I don’t know how to do, I didn’t know WordPress. I’m too old. I frankly didn’t wasn’t interested in learning. So you find somebody who could do that. We use Upwork and fiber, like all of the other people you’ve ever talked to use. And but we go through ’em. Our hiring processes, you know, first we gotta get along with you. We give them a project to do. If they do that well, we give ’em another project, do that well, we give ’em another project and we’ve got a handful of people who we’ve done that with and we’ve gotten rid of a lot more for, for every person we’ve held onto, we’ve gone through five.

I’m looking for, if I’m looking for a writer for one of our clients now, we’ve gone through four writers so far because they don’t get what we’re trying to get. But we’ll find the right one and that’ll be fun. So you keep the right people.

And then what I think what happens, people have this in American, other places probably they have this, I’m going to India. I’m going to Pakistan. I’m finding this guy, $20 is worth a million there. I don’t have to pay him anything. And they’re freelancers. There’s more where they came from. We have got some really great people working for us because we appreciate what they do. We tell them we appreciate it and we pay them what they’re worth.

The Value of Paying Team Members Well

Shannon: I completely understand that. I think that is a great business model to have. I think that even if you are being paid more than what is expected in the area that you live in, I think that people, those people aren’t blind to the idea that they’re being underpaid, regardless of whether that’s better in their situation than others or not.

And I do think that that lack of motivation is, you can see that often is the idea of, well I could be getting paid more if I was in a different country or I was a citizen of this country, or whatever it may be. And I think that is something that happens very often. I think it’s also difficult sometimes when there’s a language barrier as well, especially for content, content writing, which is something that it appears that you offer. So I think that that is something that is really vital in English being the first language or at least being a specialty. And so I completely get where you’re coming from with that.

John: Yeah. And they’re good people. And just from a tax standpoint, and I know there are people, there are people out there saying, you should hire Americans and be American, and what’s the matter with you? There are tax advantages to going overseas that people don’t…

Shannon: Of course. Yeah. That’s why, you know, globalization, there’s many reasons for why businesses take part in this. And I don’t necessarily knock them forward, especially if you need to grow a certain rate. It makes sense sometimes. And it does work sometimes, depending on if you find like the right group or whatever it may be.

I don’t think that, I think that there’s this association that people in different countries aren’t as knowledgeable or whatever it may be. I think the language barrier is probably the biggest thing. I think I constantly hear from people who English isn’t their native language of, I am very smart in my language, but it’s so difficult to be able to translate that into English and make it seem like I’m just as intelligent. And I think that’s a difficult thing with that is just navigating that relationship, especially when that’s not your strong suit. But I don’t think that’s like the only disparity, I guess.

John: Yeah. Well the English is a problem for a lot of folks, we have found a couple foreigners who write very, very well. We have a guy now, he is one of our SEO specialists. In fact, he’s like the our top SEO specialist decide to make who couldn’t write English. He tried. He tried, but it was just terrible. So we took him out of that. But he does a lot of the analysis work we have for clients and suggestions.

So the first thing we do actually is give him the work to do the workup on a client. What do they need, what they don’t need. And that’s his job. And helping out with the sites and making sure that a site stays on track what it’s supposed to be. ’cause you build a site for a specific service or product as it grows, it can get off of track and we know Google wants you to stay on track. They, your brand is your brand. You can’t keep doing other stuff.

Shannon: No, I definitely agree. It’s nice that you are able to vet these roles and make sure that you’re getting everyone that’s perfect for the position in which you’re looking for. I think that shows that you obviously care about your client experience, but you’re also on top of their work and what they’re capable of and you know that they’re doing a good job.

John: Our standards are high here. If you don’t do a good job, we have to let you go.

Shannon: Yeah. No, I think that it sucks to put someone in the position, but it has to be done. Sometimes it’s just that’s how it works, especially like you want your clients to be happy. If you have someone doing subpar work, then of course it’s not…

John: And it creates, it creates work for you. The idea of hiring somebody is to take something off of your desk. If it’s still on your desk then it’s not, then it’s not a hire. It’s, you know, it’s another weight. So you gotta go through it, but you’re gonna have to talk to a whole bunch of people to find the right people. And when you accept that fact, it becomes easier.

Common Misconceptions about SEO

Shannon: So in your opinion, on like a different side or on a different note, what is the most common misconceptions you think businesses have about SEO or digital marketing in general?

John: For the folks that we work with and we work our best, our best clients are the ones who know nothing about it. Because they have no questions, just make me money. They can’t even understand reports, so we don’t send ’em reports.

Over expect, and I heard, if I heard, if I hire an SEO guy, I’ll be number one in Google. How long is it gonna take? Well, we have to sit down six months. I don’t have six months. I gave you all this money. How come I’m not ranking first? You know? So that’s, you’re gonna get that a lot, especially from the guys who don’t have a lot of money. So we try to stay away from ’em. We take ’em, we started out that way. So we’ll take businesses with very little digital footprint, but ultimately what we’re looking for, I think other agencies are too, are businesses that understand digital marketing have been there.

Are either still doing it with somebody or have stopped doing it, but they’ve realized that their business is crested and they see trouble on the horizon and they’re looking for somebody to help ’em. Those guys, we can do a lot of good work for.

Shannon: That makes a lot of sense. It’s definitely troublesome when someone doesn’t understand the time that takes in order to be marketed successfully. I think it also has the other end of the coin is the idea that a lot of times they don’t understand that it takes like upkeep.

And I think that you can have a great website, but you know, you have to maintain certain keywords to make sure that you’re being, you’re showing up on Google. You have to update based off of like services that you provide, all these different things. A lot of people expect like one campaign is going to do this wonderful work and it might be able to, but then maybe in six months after that, you’re not seeing the same results. And maybe that’s fine because you have these connections that you formed and you did a good work with them, and then you can just maintain those clients and that’s fine.

But I think that people who wanna grow and scale their business need to maintain that dynamic.

John: It’s what the clients need to understand and the older guys don’t, is that on the internet, it’s a perpetual race and if you stop running, they’re gonna be passed.

Shannon: Yeah, it’s definitely, I especially people that don’t have an understanding of SEO or marketing in general, I guess. I think everyone has some kind of understanding about marketing. It’s a…

John: I’ve gotta be honest with you, and it wasn’t always been around enough so that we do, if somebody doesn’t get it, we can’t work with them because if they don’t get it, they’re never gonna get it, and you have to explain to ’em again and again and again and just debilitating it. It’s energy draining from you and sometimes it’s better just to let those folks go and try to drag ’em along with you.

Shannon: Yeah. They’re probably also, I’m sure that that’s the type of person that would tend to get frustrated with the lack of results in like a short period of time, even though that’s impossible.

John: Yeah. Sometimes you have to make that decision.

Shannon: Yeah, no, that’s a difficult decision to make, but I think it’s also you have to have the client that is ideal for you to be able to work with and yield good results, and also be happy with your work. Whereas there are some people that just don’t work. And that’s holding a level of respect for your work and what you can do.

And I think that accepting everyone, of course when you start a business, a lot of times you have to accept everyone because you need clients. But at a certain point, I think that it’s good to stop doing that. I think that that shows growth too.

John: Yeah. So it does. And we took everybody in the beginning and it’s hard to get used to saying no. When we talk to somebody new, we first 15 minutes, it’s just to get to know, see if we like ’em, see if we think we can get along with them after. If after 15 minutes we think we got it, then we set up another meeting.

And that’s when we spend a half hour, an hour learning about the business, learning about them, seeing if we still like them, seeing if they understand us, and what we can do for ’em. And if that conversation goes well, then maybe we make a proposal and get to, again, put things together. But you really should know your client before you actually agree to work with ’em.

Shannon: Yeah, definitely. You need to be able to know they could be a horrible person even. It could not be that you can provide services for them, but they could be just someone that you wouldn’t like to work with. And that happens a lot too. I think people don’t really consider things like that. They’re more like, okay, what can I do for you? Am I capable of doing this? But I think it’s also, you wanna work with people that might not be enjoyable to work with, but someone that at least is cordial, and you’re able to have a good and valuable conversation with them about what you’re doing. Whereas you could have a client that you hate calling, but you have to in order to fix problems or whatever it may be. And that is, you know, you dread going to work.

John: Yeah. Yeah. And there are clients who don’t respect you and you know it. And you worked with him anyways ’cause he’s paying a decent fee that will kill you and your business in time. Those are the guys you gotta let go.