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Good morning Launch Key 🚀 community!

This month’s subscriber story profiles a friend who was first introduced to SEO at a conference in 2000. He got it immediately. His recognition and subsequent action, put him decades ahead in building his career portfolio.

Andrew Holladay saw a glimpse of the future and chased it down … for 24 years and counting.

We’ve all had exposure to incredible new technologies over the past few decades.

But we need the intestinal fortitude to take the leap, and then the relentless consistency to build something.

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Create better content

• Subscriber Stories : Andrew Holladay

• Modern Tools

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Recommendations

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

I used to think SEO was too hard to get right.

There was unexplained nuance, then rabbit holes like local SEO, international SEO, video SEO, conversion rate optimization and UX, etc.

Being found in the search engines was a crapshoot. And clients did not appreciate the results of efforts that weren’t instant.

Keywords, meta data, backlinks, all intertwined in your content so that the magic of Google could help potential customers find clients’ pages. It never worked overnight, and outcomes frequently only improved long after a web redesign project had been completed.

So I chose to not focus my agency on SEO as a service.

Create better content

We had expertise at presenting content.

• Telling a good story.

• Showing off why customers should buy.

• Simplifying features into understandable bites.

• Stripping away corporate speak.

• Reducing friction in online interaction.

Every client thought they already had great content. Sales and marketing material. Slides and brochures. “Just post that online,” they’d say.

And most times, they were wrong.

So we focused on improving client content – hiring designers and writers to help clients stand apart. Unique ways to tell their story and organize sites and applications for their customers. Simple, clean, writing made a difference in everything from product descriptions to button labels.

We grew our content practice from product marketing pages to interactive applications like online banking, brokerage and insurance. We merchandised ecommerce pages and made online healthcare easier for patients. It still irks me that you ‘Press 1 if you’re a Doctor’ – but I digress.

Selling ‘design’ was subjective, so we focused on how to measure success of our projects. How could we show ROI from our design work?

• We created logical navigation

• We let customers both Search and Browse

• We built useful online Help

• We lowered incoming call center calls

• We simplified checkout and made it easy to buy

• We improved customer satisfaction

• We measured data points - before and after

By lowering costs or increasing sales, that boutique agency earned marquee clients like: Bank of America, National Gypsum, Wells Fargo, Baker & Taylor, Novant Health and more. We even won a SXSW award for Creatas (now owned by Shutterstock) who increased sales by 147% after our redesign.

Plenty of ROI in that.

Flash forward 25 years and the hand-crafted over-designed sites we created have been replaced by no-code templates used by ‘influencers’ to push a new thing overnight. And the algorithm has manufactured insanely huge audiences and chummed the internet with click-bait for said new thing.

Who can keep up in the social media age?

Search results have been bastardized by automated tools trying to take advantage of the system. AI is used to create reams of content aiming to overwhelm search engine results.

But finally the pendulum may have swung too far.

Google announced they too have had enough of the game, and will discount AI-generated content.

And some useful tips about how to do just that.

It turns out, the hard work of crafting and editing authentic content may yet be rewarded.

There are business Easy Buttons, and SEO is not one of them.

But, if you write great content, you have much better odds that today’s search engines will find you.

You have been creating people-first content for all of your work life.

Hit Send.

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Subscriber Stories : Andrew Holladay

Andrew Holladay : Founder | SEO sage | Domain name visionary

Full disclosure, Andrew worked as a project manager in the design firm above so I am biased about the cool stuff he’s done since.

But when we were designing Web 1.0 sites, he immediately understood that SEO would be worth focusing on. He snatched up some domain names on his hunch.

He was an early solopreneur and started an SEO consulting practice.

Be bought usedturf.com and started an interesting side hustle buying and selling used artificial turf. He was first in that market and probably the only competitor making his own keywords-based websites. He had so much success he expanded into warehousing all the used turf.

He also saw the trend that good internet access allowed freedom of location and he did WFH decades before it was a thing, running his operations from a cabin in the woods. All managed with a google phone number from a nearby trout stream.

Over the past 2 decades, he has improved SEO and Google Ads accounts for a Who’s Who of clients including: Verizon, CVS, Bass Pro Shops, Home Shopping Network, 1-800 Flowers, Best Buy and many more.

He recognized a unique new technology opportunity. He took the risk. Learned new skills. Delivered results. And has consistently focused on the changing field to remain a trusted resource.

He’s forgotten more than I ever knew on the topic and has created an interesting career portfolio in an extremely useful niche.

Don’t take my word for it ⬇️ 

Modern Tools

Automate your expense reports with BILL Spend & Expense.

BILL is the all-in-one expense management solution that combines free software with access to the BILL Divvy Corporate Card to provide a seamless experience for requesting, spending, and tracking your business finances.

Take a demo, get a Blackstone Griddle

Financial operations heating up? BILL Spend & Expense can help you take control. Automate expense reports, set budgets across teams, and get real-time insights into company spend. Take a demo to learn how and we'll give you a 28" Blackstone Omnivore Griddle—so you can take control of your next barbecue, too.

Request a demo

Old School Wisdom

If you are just starting your understanding of SEO, the Moz Beginners Guide is as good a resource as any.

Anyone can easily understand the basics and even a small amount of knowledge can make a difference in your search results.

Free Knowledge

This Semrush guide teaches you why SEO writing matters and how to hone your SEO writing skills in 16 easy pointers.

Recommendations

🤓 Product-Led Geek : Get your geek on and join over 7900 founders and leaders learning how to scale their B2B software companies with product-led growth and product-led sales.

🧲 The Affiliate Wire : Affiliate marketing isn't dead. You just aren't doing it right.

💹 Growth Hunter : Transform ambition into action: your exclusive source for strategies that scale.

📰 Marketing Memos : Proven Marketing Tips for Founders.

📕 MGMT Playbook : Practical management insights straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

Visual Crapshoot