Search Engine Optimization with John Vuong | E045

How to increase business through optimizing for the online world.

In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, and writer, interviews John Vuong, Founder and Owner of Local SEO Search. John specializes in helping small businesses increase their revenue by increasing their digital visibility!

Episode Highlights:

  • 1:06 – John Vuong introduces Local SEO Search.

  • 2:00 – What does everyone need to know about increasing traffic to their website?

  • 6:30 – How does a stale website affect user optimization?

  • 8:27 – Jason discusses common misconceptions surround SEO.

  • 9:06 – What is the next step after the production of great content?

  • 10:00 – John and Jason break down the importance of having visibility across the internet.

  • 13:00 – Jason and John discuss the need for visibility in different stages of business.

  • 14:15 – John dives into amplification and what that means for your website.

  • 16:31 – What are some of the methods that John focuses on for amplification?

  • 19:00 – What kind of results are clients seeing and how does John measure those metrics?

  • 20:47 – John discusses the SEO no-nos and the punishments that are handed out when you break the rules.

  • 23:54 – John explains their new Impact Initiative to help small and medium-sized business owners.

3 Key Points

  1. Local SEO Search helps small and medium business owners increase their visibility online with the use of search engine optimization.

  2. Creating good content is all about answering the questions that your ideal customers are searching for.

  3. Press releases, link placement, and guest posts are the methods that John uses for website amplification.

 

Tweetable Quotes:

  • “It starts off with having a good business but then it transitions into having a good website so that people understand what makes you different.” – John Vuong

  • “When you start producing good, well–researched, in-depth answers to your customers’ queries, it’s going to allow you to be known as someone that knows your stuff.” – John Vuong

  • “In today’s day and age, I feel a lot of the people that are looking at growing and increasing visibility and expanding need that digital presence.” – John Vuong

  • “What we really focus on is helping the small and medium-sized business owners because they’ve been really impacted heavily during this pandemic.” – John Vuong

Resources Mentioned:


Full Transcript:

Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning for Business Owners Podcast, where you will hear about industry  insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira. Through the interviews  with different experts on their stories and advice, you will learn how to navigate the challenges of being  an entrepreneur, plan for success and make the most of your business and life. And now here's your  host, Jason Pereira. 

Jason Pereira: Hello, and welcome. To my podcast. I have John Vuong, founder and owner of Local SEO Search. John is  an expert at helping small business owners attract more traffic to their website. And this is definitely  one of those podcasts that falls more on practice management and business management than it does  on financial planning, but hey, we can't do financial planning if we don't have revenue, so this is one way  that people can increase that. And with that, here's my interview with John. 

Jason Pereira: John, thanks for your time today. 

John Vuong: Well, thank you for having me, Jason. I'm excited to be on your show today. 

Jason Pereira: John, tell us a little bit about what it is you do. 

John Vuong: I started an agency back in 2013 and what I do is I just help small and medium-sized business owners  become more visible online, in particular search engines, such as Google, and really dominate their local  niche, right? As a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant, you want to be known, visible when someone's  actually searching, or seeking you out. What we do is position and help business owners become that  expert or thought leader digitally. 

Jason Pereira: All right. Quite simply, this is not something that's overly easy to understand. There's a lot of small facets  to this. Let's talk about how we increase that visibility. I know it's not one thing. Let's go through your  top five. What is the first thing anyone who's got a website needs to know about driving traffic to their  website through SEO? 

John Vuong: Yeah. SEO, there's over 200 signals of what Google's looking for to rank a website. And for us, we look at  the five major pillars, right? And I think the first one is pretty straightforward, but it's more common  sense, right, which is run a good business. And running a good business is more fundamentals, but a lot  of business owners don't really start off understanding what differentiates themselves, right? What is  their main focus and goal and vision and core values? What is their competitive advantage? How are  they setting themselves apart? What is their service level like? What is their pricing like? All that comes  into play about how to run a really good business. How do you replicate that if you have a bricks and  mortar or a traditional base business to now digital?

John Vuong: And so it starts off with running a good business, but then transforming it to having a good website so  that people understand what makes you different, right, so creating good, compelling content that  actually translates and speaks to the audience members, so building a website is number one,  understanding that audience. 

John Vuong: Number two is creating content. And the content piece is more about making sure that it speaks to your  users, your audience members that are actually seeking you out. And the best way to do that is if you've  been in business for a couple years, you probably have the best five or 10 best clients of yours, your  ideal type of clients. And once you know who they are, my suggestion would be go out there, have a  coffee with them, go out, have lunch or dinner with them, speak to them on a more intimate level  where you want to uncover everything about them in terms of personality, where they shop, how their  behaviors are, what triggered them to use you, what were their determining factors, right? Who did  they also search out and what made them decide to go with you, right? Map that out. Put that in a little  content form so that when you have these five or 10 best clients, whatever you put on your website is  speaking to those type of people, where they shop, how they shop, what's their demographic, what's  their profile like. 

John Vuong: And then in terms of content, answer the questions that they were seeking out, right? It's not rocket  science, but it's very similar to understanding that avatar of yours, right? Your ideal customer. And what  is the type of content that they want to absorb? Is it written content? Is it audio images? Is it videos?  And answer them. On your homepage, let them know what you offer, but speak to them. All the services  that you want to really be known for, talk to your customers or active clients on what really made them  decide to go with you, right? 

John Vuong: And then of course the blog is all about answering specific questions to position yourself as the expert,  right? Content is very important because that's actually trying to get you more, I guess, as a thought  leader, because when you start producing good, well-researched, in-depth answers to your customer's  queries, it's going to allow you to be known as someone that knows their stuff, right? 

Jason Pereira: First and foremost, again, the old saying, is content is king. Bottom line is you're putting out reasons why  people should work with you. I previously saw a gentleman by the name of ... Oh, now his name escapes  me ... Marcus Sheridan, speak about ... I'm not sure if you're familiar with his book, They Ask, You  Answer, but this guy built a startup pool company to the most successful pool company in this area by a  long shot primarily through content marketing, just basically creating that content to make themselves  the authority. 

Jason Pereira: Okay. Essentially, so you take the time. Every business owner needs to take the marketing of their  website seriously. And this is an interesting issue, right? Because you look at most websites, most  websites are bare minimum, right? It's like, I need to have a website. I throw something up there. I put it up there 10 years ago. I forgot about what's up there. How is a stale website going to play out when it  comes to search engine optimization? 

John Vuong: It's more about the user intent and their expectations today. And if you're not up to par, people are  going to bounce off your website. They're not going to stay and there's nothing to attract them to  continue seeking out information or gravitate towards that call the action of the call or lead form, right?  What you need to do is produce relevant, well thought out, attractive pieces of information or video  content, audio written images, anything to actually get people to stay on your website so that you are  positioned as a leader, right, and answer them exactly what they're looking for, right? 

John Vuong: If it's questions, if it's a service, because that buyer journey, you don't know where they're at in terms of  that phase, that buyer journey, right? It could be very early stages, like information gathering. Then it  could be navigational, right? They're just shopping around. And then when they're ready to buy, they're  going to type in pricing or top or best kind of services or products, right? You have to figure out how  does your content relate to where that customer is throughout that buyer journey, and you need to  position yourself as a thought leader, right? 

John Vuong: I feel content is king definitely and focus more about depth as opposed to just an overview. And yes, you  mentioned people overlook their website or content or producing information on the website because  they're busy running a business. Marketing that website, making sure that it's not stale, it's fresh, it  actually produces good, relevant information, up-to-date, that's what people expect today, right? And  you need to make sure you're investing into your business as opposed to doing that one time  investment five years ago and thinking that that's all you need to do, right? Marketing is an ongoing  investment. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. And it's funny. When we talk about things like search engine optimization, I think a lot of people,  for whatever reason, think that they're going to hire someone to tweak a bunch of stuff in the  background and that's going to make their results better when an actuality, so much of it comes back to  the actual, basically no, what is actually on your website? Forget the tweaks. What is the core message  to your website? What content is there? What's attracting people there? 

Jason Pereira: Okay. We started with content. Where do we go from there, okay? Let's say I've got decent content. My  rankings are showing okay. What can you do? What's the secret sauce, the next big tip to move things  forward? 

John Vuong: Yeah. I always talked about having an awesome website and then producing good content. I think  number three would be start working on some sort of asset creation. Right now you own your website  domain. There's a lot of other asset pieces that you need to own such as all the social media channels,  Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google My Business, YouTube as well as claiming all the directories out there, right? Start making sure your brand is recognized across all digital channels, not just search,  but also social and all the other forms of directories out there such as Yellow Pages, Yelp, and others,  right? Making sure that your profile is established across all the properties. 

John Vuong: Then number four is very important, which is more about the amplification part, which is 

Jason Pereira: Well, actually, let's just stop for one second. I want to talk about the social thing. It's interesting because  I actually look at that as there's a couple of things in business that are table stakes, right? I don't think  anyone would argue that you'll need a phone number, right? A business needs a phone number, right?  That's a table stakes sort of thing, right? 

Jason Pereira: But I find that depending on the person I'm speaking to, we all see things differently. To me, people will  say things like, "[inaudible 00:10:24] get business off social media," right, or, "I have social media  channels, but I'm not getting any business off it." At the end of the day, it's just about visibility, right?  The reality is is that if someone gets referred to your business, the first thing they got to do in most  cases is pull out their phone and search for you, right? 

Jason Pereira: To me, these things are table stakes. Just the desire or the need to have a web presence is table stakes.  The desire or the need to essentially just to exist on social media and have some sort of presence  explain what you are, I mean, all these things ... Let's put it this way. Imagine you're referred to two  separate businesses. And you go looking for the first one and the first one's visible everywhere, website,  blog posts, newspaper articles, social media. You can find them anywhere. The second one has a  website that hasn't been updated since 1998, right? It's an HTML thing. It looks like it may as well come  off with Geo Cities. Maybe not that old. Maybe it's 2008, but the point is that, which one do you think is  taking the business more seriously? Which one are you more likely to give business to? 

John Vuong: Exactly. I think you made a very valid point. The reason you want to own all your asset pieces is you  don't know what the customers, your users, your potential prospects are doing to vet businesses today,  right? And they're going to do their due diligence, which is exactly what you mentioned. They're going to  check you out. They're going to type in your brand. They're going to check out what pieces,  contributions, which associations you're a part of. Are you a part of Facebook? How active are you? Do  you have any credibility out there, right? Because people want to see, if you're active business owner, it  shows a lot about how engaged you are in terms of your business, right? How active are you blogging?  How active are you posting on social? How active are you engaging with comments? 

John Vuong: All these little things play a big role in the perception of your customers. And that's the most important  thing, because honestly, if you're busy enough as a business owner, then of course you don't need a  digital presence. But in today's day and age, I feel a lot of the people that are looking at growing and increasing visibility and expanding, they need a digital presence. You need to ensure that that asset  piece of your website and every channel is active, if that makes sense. 

Jason Pereira: There are very few business owners I've ever met that said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I got too much  business. I got too much." I mean, don't get me wrong. There are definitely the moments where you're  lucky enough to have so much new business coming in that maybe you're going to die of indigestion if you're not careful. But I have seen very few people in my career that have said, "I have enough what I'm  doing. I really don't need to solicit anything else," so absolutely, the vast majority of businesses,  especially new ones, really need to make that kind of effort. 

John Vuong: Yeah. And it all depends on your stages in terms of your business journey as well, right? If you're early  stage or mid stage, then of course you want to continue growing or at least sustaining because there's  going to be a drop-off no matter what stage you're at in terms of your business life cycle. But at the end  of the stage, maybe you just want to close shop, right, and you don't want to take on more burden or  stress, right? I get it. But ultimately it's all about continue being curious, always wanting to improve and  get better and understand your customers, and that's what SEO and really digital presence really can  offer a business, right? 

Jason Pereira: Okay. Let's go back to where I distracted you from going earlier, which was amplifications. Let's go back  to amplification. Talk to me about what that is. 

John Vuong: Yeah. The fourth note I wanted to talk about is amplification or letting other people link to your website.  And this is really about backlinking. and I'm just going to go more basic foundational stuff, which is  before the internet, before Google, how do these traditional businesses grow, right? They focus on word  of mouth referral business. And if you think about that, that's really where a lot of them [inaudible  00:14:47] all these generational businesses group, right? And they didn't rely on a lot of advertising.  They took care of their base. They took care of the customers. They understood what was important to  them. 

John Vuong: And this is very similar to what's going on today, right, where if you rely on referral word of mouth, now  this whole digital space, you can do the same thing. And this is called backlinking, because this is how  Google indexes your website, right? And the more places people are talking about you or linking back to  your website that is trusted, authoritative with higher rating score, with organic traffic that is relevant to  your business, it's going to help you boost some of your credibility as well, right? 

John Vuong: What you're trying to do is get other people's websites. It's all about the relationship play, where you  want them to start writing a blog or mentioning you somewhere on their website that will transfer some  of that SEO juice, link juice, to your website, to really help you boost your rankings. And that's a very challenging thing for a lot of business owners, right? And backlinking is the most rewarding aspect of an  SEO campaign if done right. But it's also the hardest thing to attract, which is partners and relationships. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. I mean, so absolutely. I mean, people have to find you in the first place [inaudible 00:16:17] is  valuable enough as to basically share with other people through their own channel. What are some  methods for getting those people to buy in or for creating amplification? 

John Vuong: Yeah. There's a couple of methods that we really focus on at our agency. The first one is pretty  straightforward, which is press release. You go put it on Cision and you have something newsworthy  that goes out to the press and hopefully one of the media channels picks it up and you have a link back  to your website, right? It's hit and miss. It depends on time, day, newsworthiness and of course the  media channels that will pick it up or not. That's the first one. 

John Vuong: The second one, we do these two as the most frequent one at our agency, which is a link placement,  which is an article that has substance already that's ranking that is associated to the niche or the  industry that you're in, such as a dentist, for instance. There's Association Dental magazines or articles.  You're going to reach out to the contributor or the person who wrote the article and ask for a link from  them, right, back to your website. Maybe it's a dead link that's already existing or embed an additional  link on that article to link back to you because it is of substance. 

John Vuong: It is a relationship play where you have to reach out to the contributor or the owner of the website that  actually wrote the article and hopefully that will ... You have to create some sort of value prop and help  them build a relationship, right? It's just like anything in business. It takes time, right, to do. It may take  weeks, months, years to build that and harvest that. 

John Vuong: And then the last part, the last way I really focus on link building is guest posts, which is you going out to  pitch a content piece on someone else's website that would reside on a blog, right? Again, it's a  relationship play, which is adding value by giving a piece of content that will help boost their audience  members with more engagement. And again, it takes time, but it also helps you once you get that article  and link back to your website. Those are the three that I really, really focus on here at our agency. 

Jason Pereira: Interesting. All right. Talk to me about the end result. We do all this, and what kind of uptick are you  guys seeing in client traffic and what does that translate to in terms of a percentage of revenue change,  or do you have those metrics? 

John Vuong: It all depends because again, we always have to benchmark everything, but most of our clients would  see an uptick in any SEO campaign starting in month three or six. Sometimes it may take a couple years  based on the competition level. For instance, if you're new and you're a dentist, for instance, in Toronto, there's thousands of dentists that's already established, but been doing SEO for five, 10, 20 years, right?  You have to be realistic as well. And it's not the amount of money that you're about to spend. It's more  about Google expecting you to follow the curve, right, because if all of a sudden you get thousands of  backlinks, it's not natural, right? You want to 

Jason Pereira: You're hacking the system somehow. 

John Vuong: Exactly. And that's where you want to stay away from because if you're running a legitimate business,  you're either starting your career, you invested a lot of money buying a business. Do you want to really  sacrifice all that, right, by trying to trick Google, because that's the ultimate place you want to be found  at? I would say follow the rules, play by the rules and make sure that everyone that touches your  website or works with you is doing everything onboard, right, above board. But yeah, that's my answer  for you, Jason. 

Jason Pereira: Yeah. Let's talk about the punitive nature of this. There are some dark sides to the SEO world and things  you can do that will make the Google overlords unhappy. Talk to me about what happens, what those  things kind of look like and what happens when you go outside. 

John Vuong: Yeah. There's been a lot of updates in the last, I would say 10 plus years, right, from trying to prevent  backlinks from ... It's really toxic, right? You can buy PBMs, you can buy different links from different  channels. It's not the way you should really go about your business. And then of course the hiding of  content, the link schemes. It's all about tricking Google to really fast-track your ranking, right? 

John Vuong: The worst end result would be you're blacklisted and you wouldn't be indexed by Google, right? They  know that something suspicious is happening. Why even take that risk, especially if you've spent 20  years in schooling, you spent five, 10 years as an associate or going into business? Why even take that  risk, right? Do everything above board, focus on what matters and really focus on what your customers  expect you to be doing, right, and what they want, because that's what you should really focus on and  satisfy their user intent, right? Once you do that, everything should really follow by organically  increasing your ranking. 

Jason Pereira: Agreed. I mean, yeah, no one wants to be put in the penalty box because the stakes are too high, right?  That's what it comes down to. John, you originally contacted me because you have a certain offer going  on to help Canadian small business right now. Can you speak to that? 

John Vuong: Yeah, definitely. I think there's one last point [crosstalk 00:22:22]- 

Jason Pereira: Sorry. I thought you were done. 

John Vuong: That was number four. The fifth thing that I do want to touch upon is your reputation online. That is so  critical today because as you know, if you go online and you go Googling any product or service, the first  thing you see is the Google three pack, typically, the map, and below that is organic listings. But when  you're shopping, you're going to vet people. You're going to check the reviews, case studies,  testimonials. And if you don't have a good reputation, people will see right through you and they're  going to judge, right? And they'll know if you're buying fake reviews as well. If you're authentic, if you're  commenting, responding back to real reviews, if you're gathering fresh, new updated reviews, all that  matters, right? 

John Vuong: Focus on not just Google reviews, social media reviews, director views. Whatever your industry is that  provides the reviews, focus on getting more of those, right, because people are going to vet you. They're  going to check you out, and not just your website, because anyone could put in a testimonial on your  own website. Focus on third party websites that are much harder to attain versus just adding reviews on  your own website because you have full control on that, right? That's my advice in terms of reviews. 

John Vuong: And then I know you mentioned about that impact initiative. In October we started ... As you know,  during this pandemic, there's a lot of local business owners that have been impacted throughout this  COVID pandemic, right? And usually, the last couple of years, we've been giving backpacks filled with  school items to students, right, children in need or new to Canada, families that need a kickstart to the  school year, right? We would give hundreds of backpacks away filled with school items. 

John Vuong: This year, unfortunately, we were unable to do that based on the restrictions. What we really focused  on was helping the small, medium-sized business owners because they've been really impacted really  heavily, right, during this pandemic, especially even right now, code red. A lot of the bricks and mortar  storefront locations, it's difficult for them to even pay rent, right? 

John Vuong: What we've really shifted towards is really help these business owners. In the next five years, what  we're planning on doing is giving away 100 SEO campaigns to small, medium-sized business owners. And  they are going to be one year campaigns each. It's really a full-on campaign that we would typically take  on as new clients would be paying a monthly retainer. It's a full service that we offer from onboarding to  the SEO strategy content piece. If you need a website, we'll create it. We have developers, we have  graphic designers, we have link builders, we have social media, we have reputation management. The  whole thing is helping to make a small difference in the world of local businesses because they've been  impacted the most. In October was our first campaign that we nominated and picked. We started their  campaign already and we're going to continue picking one to two every month for the next five years. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. Well, I mean, thank you for that. I mean, anyone who's listening to this, how do they basically  apply to be one of those lucky potential winners? 

John Vuong: Yeah. We'll have this on the show notes, but if you Google impact initiative and the company name, I'm  sure you can find us, but we'll include it in the show notes. Anyone that is interested, there's a  questionnaire. There's a vetting process. But we're always trying to look for people that resonate with  our core values, which is trying to help others provide more of a philanthropic community type business,  because that's what we're all about, right, helping one another strive, succeed and be grateful, because  I'm very fortunate to be living in Canada, in the best country in the world, right, and doing something I  love, very passionate. And I love just helping others that maybe need just a little kickstart because of  what's happened, right? But they have their own issues, right? There's a lot of financial burden going on  right now for a lot of the local business owners. And it's just a small thing that I can do to really give  back. 

Jason Pereira: Yep. No, that's very generous of you. I thank you for that. Encourage any business owners listening to  this that could benefit from that, which probably most of you, to consider applying for that. I would also  say that now I have to remember to go and put them in the show notes. Thanks for that. 

Jason Pereira: All right, John, so thank you very much for your time and for all this guidance. I'm sure people appreciate  it. And thank you for helping pull back the veil of what's involved in this world. And like I said, people  think it's a lot of witchcraft and code on the back end when really it's all about just basically getting  content out there and being seen as an authority. That's basically it. That will drag business towards you. 

Jason Pereira: You mentioned dentists. One would think that ... That's not the first industry I would think that requires  SEO, but hey, you clearly have the experience in proving that that can be a meaningful ROI. Thank you  for bringing that experience to life. Thank you again for your initiative and your generosity. I hope and  encourage anyone, like I said, who could benefit, to reach out and do that application. And otherwise,  where can people find you? 

John Vuong: You can check out our website. It's called localseosearch.ca. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. On  the team page, you can just find John Vuong and I'll respond to all LinkedIn messages. And we also have  a podcast to educate entrepreneurs and business owners as well. It's called Local SEO Today. If you want  some valuable insight, myself and Roger, which is the VP of sales, we've worked with over 10,000 local  business owners over the years and we are here to share some insights and valuable information about  how entrepreneurs can succeed through good times and bad times, and hopefully you find the  information valuable. 

Jason Pereira: Excellent. John, thank you so much.

John Vuong: Take care. Thank you, Jason. 

Jason Pereira: That was my interview with John Vuong and that was his very generous offer to help a bunch of  Canadian businesses get their SEO game together. Hope that pulled back the veil of what SEO is and  made you realize that, frankly, just start writing stuff. Honestly, just start writing stuff, just start  producing, start putting it out there and start giving people a reason to work with you. And you keep on  doing that long enough, it'll pay off. And then yes, it helps to hire someone else to help with the actual  SEO part. But nevertheless, the content is king. As always, if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a  review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever it is you get your podcasts. And until next time, take care. 

Producer: This podcast was brought to you by Woodgate Financial, an award-winning financial planning firm  catering to high net worth individuals, business owners, and their families. To learn more, go to  woodgate.com. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and  SoundCloud, or find more episodes at jasonpereira.ca. You can even ask Siri, Alexa or Google Home to  subscribe for you.

FPCBOJason PereiraSEO, Business Owner