Episode 76
From Keywords to Conversions: Human-First SEO for B2B and SaaS Brands
In this episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew, host Brett Deister talks with Steven Schneider, co-founder and CEO of TrioSEO, about the importance of human-focused SEO strategies for B2B and SaaS businesses. Steven shares insights on creating compelling SEO content that drives meaningful results and the evolution of SEO from the 'wild west' era to today's focus on building trustworthy brands. They discuss challenges in B2B SEO, effective approaches to bottom-of-the-funnel content, and emerging trends like personal branding and AI search. Steven also offers practical advice on balancing SEO for algorithms and human readers, measuring the impact of SEO on sales pipelines, and ensuring long-term value for clients.
Guest Bio:
Steven Schneider is an experienced SEO specialist with nearly a decade devoted to helping businesses thrive on Google. Focused primarily on the B2B and SaaS industries, Steven crafts tailored strategies that drive meaningful growth through organic search. While he steers clear of e-commerce and local SEO “entirely different beasts,” as he says Steven’s passion for all things search and content makes him a go-to expert in his field. Always at the forefront, he’s now expanding his expertise into AI-driven search, and he’s never short on industry stories or enthusiasm. For Steven, SEO isn’t just a job it’s a lifelong fascination.
3 Fun Facts:
- Steven Schneider is a self-proclaimed coffee snob thanks to his wife’s family, who owns Herkimer Coffee.
- He always starts his SEO strategies at the "bottom of the funnel" for maximum business impact.
- Steven is very active on LinkedIn, posting daily and chatting with folks about SEO and marketing.
Key Themes:
- Human-focused approach to SEO strategies
- Importance of branding over simple websites
- Bottom-of-funnel, high-intent content creation
- Patience and long-term mindset for SEO
- Balancing Google optimization with human readability
- Personal branding and C-suite visibility trends
- Measuring SEO success by sales pipeline impact
Transcript
Everyone forgets that SEO is so human focused. It's not
Speaker:just trying to beat the algorithm. It's for humans and people on the other
Speaker:end.
Speaker:That's good. And welcome to a new
Speaker:episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host,
Speaker:Brett Deister. You can please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting
Speaker:apps we have. A five star review really does help with the rankings and let
Speaker:me know how I'm doing. But this week we're going to be talking about
Speaker:B2B marketing, the unfun marketing
Speaker:of them all, which people are going to roll their eyes and fall asleep
Speaker:to. But we're going to make this exciting because I have Steve with me and
Speaker:he's a co founder and CEO of Trio SEO
Speaker:and he has been helping B2B and SaaS
Speaker:brands turn SEO content into compelling
Speaker:sales pipelines. So welcome to the show, Steve. Hey, thanks for
Speaker:having me. Excited to be here. Yes. And the first question as all
Speaker:my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? Coffee. It's
Speaker:pumping through my veins, as much as I can get of it. Do you have
Speaker:a specific coffee you like or you just. Whatever is in the
Speaker:coffee pot or Keurig is all I need. My wife
Speaker:turned me on to good coffee. Um, her uncle owns
Speaker:herkimer Coffee if there's any other fans out there. But
Speaker:used to kind of trickle in the family. So I've now become a coffee
Speaker:snob. But just straight up, black coffee is the way to go for me. Yes,
Speaker:I do black coffee unless I have to go to
Speaker:Starbucks and I can never do black coffee ever. Yeah, now I'm a cold brew
Speaker:at. Starbucks and I gave a brief summary of your
Speaker:expertise. But can you give the listeners a little bit more about what you do?
Speaker:Yeah, I do SEO. I help people rank
Speaker:on Google and drive meaningful business through organic search
Speaker:and now evolving into AI search
Speaker:and do that through a variety of strategies, primarily in the
Speaker:B2B and SaaS space. Fortunately, I don't help
Speaker:with E commerce SEO and I don't help with local SEO. They're
Speaker:entirely different beasts. But I'm a big SEO nerd, big
Speaker:content nerd. Doing this for almost a decade. And
Speaker:yeah, can ramble on about it, talk a lot, a lot of fun stories over
Speaker:the years and yeah, I love what I do. Biggest lesson you've
Speaker:learned while growing brands to 1 point million using
Speaker:1.4 million. Excuse me, using SEO. And how did that experience
Speaker:shape Trio's SEO approach today? I think you're referring to.
Speaker:Yeah, I owned A portfolio of companies right out of college. That was
Speaker:my first business. And that was kind of my introduction into SEO back
Speaker:when you could get away with a lot more. And this was back when it
Speaker:was a little more lenient and kind of the wild west era of SEO. It's
Speaker:just a cash grab. But that definitely has
Speaker:changed how I view strategies and
Speaker:quality nowadays. I mean, it's so important to build a brand and not
Speaker:build a website. And I think back in the day people could spin up a
Speaker:blog on a no name domain and throw some content on that and
Speaker:drive some visitors and drive some money wherever that needed to go.
Speaker:But nowadays it's really important to focus on building a
Speaker:trustworthy brand and something that's backed by experience for the
Speaker:user and trustworthiness and, you know, all of the
Speaker:things that contribute toward a sustainable,
Speaker:you know, brand and vision for the company.
Speaker:And so what are some of the biggest challenges B2B businesses face with SEO today
Speaker:and how do you help them overcome those challenges? There's still a
Speaker:lot of competition out there. And I think that anybody who gets into
Speaker:SEO might, you know, say that they realize
Speaker:it's a long game and that it comes with delayed gratification and all that stuff.
Speaker:It's easy to say that, but at the end of the day when you're waiting
Speaker:six months down the road for things to pop off and start compounding for
Speaker:your sales, it is, it's a very hard game to play in
Speaker:because it's not an overnight success like you can achieve with ppc
Speaker:if you have a, you know, a paid advertising strategy
Speaker:where you can just start dumping money into it and see this immediate return
Speaker:in SEO, you really have to believe in it, you have to be patient. And
Speaker:nine times out of 10, patience pays in SEO. And
Speaker:with just your focus on the bottom to
Speaker:bottom of Funnel, Google and ChatGPT optimized
Speaker:content. Can you explain why this approach is effective and how it drives
Speaker:qualified leads? Yeah. So we always start bottom of the funnel. That's something
Speaker:that my partners and I have kind of adopted from a lot of our own
Speaker:businesses because I think that everyone will agree that
Speaker:all marketing is only meaningful if it drives meaningful
Speaker:results. And at the end of the day, it's a business, you got to make
Speaker:some money. So we always start very high intent,
Speaker:which means we start very bottom of the funnel. So topics that
Speaker:have a high probability of bringing in your ideal customer
Speaker:and making sure that they're steps away from signing up for a free
Speaker:trial or, you know, signing up for your newsletter Things that
Speaker:would pretty much pull them into your ecosystem and allow you to
Speaker:nurture them into a sale or even in some cases sign up for
Speaker:a demo or be a direct sale, whether that's going to be a service page
Speaker:or optimizing copy that's more sales focused. But
Speaker:every topic has a specific type of intent that's
Speaker:attached to it. And so our job is to figure out what topics
Speaker:make the most sense for your given strategy and what is
Speaker:the user intent behind that topic. And so based on a little bit of,
Speaker:you know, science and art and psychology, we can
Speaker:take a look at the full landscape and create a roadmap that
Speaker:makes the most sense, ROI wise and SEO wise.
Speaker:So what does the typical 90 day SEO roadmap look like
Speaker:and how do you determine high converting
Speaker:topics for content. Strategy really just depends on what's achievable for
Speaker:the site. So every site, you know, every client we work with is
Speaker:starting from a different position relative to their competitors. And
Speaker:so they might have existing content on their site
Speaker:that is under optimized. And so in some cases we might just take a look
Speaker:at that and see does it make sense for us to just go and
Speaker:spruce up some old content, bring it back to life. Other cases we
Speaker:might have to design service pages or blogs
Speaker:from the get go. So based on where we'll
Speaker:see with the client is kind of how we format the 90 day strategy from
Speaker:there and out. But it's usually always going to be bottom of the focus,
Speaker:bottom of the funnel, making sure that there's technical improvements, all
Speaker:the low hanging fruit, quick wins that make sense in order to build the
Speaker:foundation for your website. Just like a house, you wouldn't want to start putting
Speaker:on roofs or walls if your foundation was shot.
Speaker:So makes sense to start there. Yeah. And how
Speaker:do you actually basically overcome or beat
Speaker:the competitors with outranking them? Because I mean,
Speaker:that's all we want to do, we want to beat our competitors by outranking them.
Speaker:Does it consistent content, like how does that look like? Yeah, a lot of
Speaker:it's going to be consistency, making sure that, you know, we can publish
Speaker:5, 10 articles per month for the next six months and you look back and
Speaker:you have a bunch of content making sure that the content
Speaker:that you publish is always going to be very high quality and it aligns with
Speaker:the search intent. So if somebody's searching for something, are you
Speaker:answering that question? Is it clear? Is it clear, is it concise,
Speaker:is it backed by research? So making sure that you hit all those, you
Speaker:know, threshold Metrics right there. Other aspects are going to be site
Speaker:architecture and making sure that your site is fast and loads
Speaker:properly. You know, it's not rocket science that when you land on someone's
Speaker:site, you wanted to land, you know, you want it to be clean and efficient.
Speaker:And I think that everyone agrees that's how it should be. Status quo.
Speaker:So sometimes it's technical fixes, sometimes it's not.
Speaker:Mostly just content, but just making sure that the user at the end of the
Speaker:day has the best experience possible. Everyone forgets
Speaker:that SEO is so human focused, it's not just trying to
Speaker:beat the algorithm, it's for humans and people on the other end.
Speaker:And what SEO trends or opportunities do you see emerging
Speaker:for B2B and SaaS brands in the next year? I
Speaker:think the biggest one could be personal branding and
Speaker:how figures and C suite executives can
Speaker:really tap into that for small to mid sized
Speaker:B2B growth. I think that going on podcasts is
Speaker:a great way to build your authority and to build your
Speaker:SEO on the backend for your site. I also
Speaker:think that there's a huge, huge opportunity with
Speaker:AI and getting found in things like ChatGPT and
Speaker:perplexity and all these other great tools that are popping up.
Speaker:People forget that that's comes back to SEO and authority and making sure
Speaker:that your site is high quality and has content to match, you know,
Speaker:queries as they come into play. So I think that
Speaker:there's a lot of upside to be captured and it'll be fun to watch
Speaker:it evolve and come to life. So B2B is basically.
Speaker:Or the new trends are going to be to basically humanize it in some
Speaker:way, usually because of the top executive.
Speaker:Yeah, I think so. I think that we will
Speaker:lose touch with big brands if there's not a
Speaker:fun person involved within the social media strategy.
Speaker:I look at brands like Duolingo, um, you know, they're crushing
Speaker:social media and they have the owl which, you know, rest in peace. But
Speaker:it was such a fun way to engage with the brand and I, you know,
Speaker:it doesn't have to be a, a fake or inanimate object,
Speaker:but because of how social media is nowadays, I think it's important
Speaker:to realize where are your users, how are they connected with you
Speaker:and how can you tap into them?
Speaker:And it makes sense to kind of appeal to that up and coming
Speaker:generation. And what is your approach towards optimizing content for
Speaker:both Google's algorithm and human readers and how do you balance them
Speaker:both? There's always going to be a fine line between Hitting the
Speaker:core fundamentals for Google and making sure that it doesn't sound robotic. So,
Speaker:you know, making sure that your headings include primary and secondary
Speaker:keywords and that you have FAQs and that you have
Speaker:internal linking and all of the kind of nuts and bolts that,
Speaker:that we now know today to be sound advice for SEOs.
Speaker:I think when it comes to the human element, being concise,
Speaker:you know, being direct, being fun and engaging,
Speaker:not sounding like you're trying to use big words to make you sound
Speaker:smarter, I think getting your point across in a
Speaker:very conversational format is always going to be the best thing
Speaker:possible. You know, I think that if you think about our conversation right
Speaker:now, everyone knows that we're talking about SEO, but it's not like we're saying
Speaker:SEO in every single sentence or every other word. So
Speaker:if you read content that seems stuffed or like
Speaker:people are trying to spruce it up to make it something that's not,
Speaker:it's kind of a red flag. Would that be one of the ways you turn
Speaker:a boring blog into organic traffic
Speaker:titans? Because, I mean, if you're trying to make something like
Speaker:I think when you said trying to use like, trying to make big
Speaker:words, I think of like Joey from Friends when he tried to like make his
Speaker:stuff spruced up and use the thesaurus a little too much.
Speaker:Is it something like that where it's like, don't turn your blog too boring or
Speaker:people like, I don't even know what this word means. Yeah, I think that's,
Speaker:that's important. And I think you also have to realize that
Speaker:people are much smarter than I think we give them credit to when writing. We
Speaker:have a tendency to over explain or
Speaker:to try and clarify things that don't need to be clarified or
Speaker:use words because we haven't used them in the last paragraph or
Speaker:so. But conversationally, you know, we can have an entire conversation around something
Speaker:and keep in mind what we're talking about and what the topic is on
Speaker:and what you've already read. And so it's no different than if
Speaker:you were trying to curate this conversation.
Speaker:I think that as long as you're kind of sticking to the script from an
Speaker:outline or what the actual structure of the block should be,
Speaker:and you just make the content fun and engaging and direct, I think that the
Speaker:rest will fall into place. And what's your framework for creating content
Speaker:that not only ranks but compels users to convert? Yeah, so
Speaker:we, we use a variety of different things, making sure that
Speaker:call to actions are mixed in, but also organic
Speaker:it's not like it's going to be a big in your face sales punch
Speaker:trying to ensure that. There's always going to be a like TLDR
Speaker:summary section at the top. I always kind of laugh at
Speaker:how you can look up a recipe article and it will
Speaker:have 5,000 words around everything but the recipe. And
Speaker:so from that point, it's kind of good advice. If you're writing content,
Speaker:give people the information they came there for within
Speaker:the first paragraph or two, and then feel free to elaborate from there and
Speaker:expand on certain topics or areas of it that might need a further
Speaker:explanation. But you know, there's no harm in giving people the five
Speaker:steps or the five pieces of the recipe within the first 30 seconds. Some will
Speaker:leave, sure, but remember why they came there
Speaker:and then loop them in and, you know, do the hook and
Speaker:bait them in and give them the rest. I think it's, it's important to realize
Speaker:that everyone kind of thinks the same. They don't want to read through 5,000 words
Speaker:of trash. It's like no one's reading that. Come on.
Speaker:Yes. If a blog post doesn't need to be 5,000 words, you probably shouldn't be
Speaker:writing 5,000 words. If you can get away with a thousand
Speaker:words, so be it. And how do you measure success on an
Speaker:SEO strategy in terms of sales pipeline impact? And what
Speaker:KPIs do you prioritize? Yeah, we always
Speaker:ask the client, like, how are they currently tracking success? You'd
Speaker:be surprised. But how many people can't answer that question? And so
Speaker:we typically will come in there and say, okay, what matters most to you? You
Speaker:obviously have something on the site that is a call to
Speaker:action. So we typically start there, whether that's going to be a contact form
Speaker:or a free demo or, you know, any type of
Speaker:other lead magnet mechanic. So we track those and try and make sure that
Speaker:we're pushing those toward the sales team. Other things
Speaker:can be newsletter signups, maybe that there's a really successful
Speaker:newsletter ecosystem within the brand. Others could be
Speaker:tools like a quiz or calculator or some sort of
Speaker:engageable asset. So we kind of see what makes the
Speaker:most sense from that side. And then we also track any of the core
Speaker:SEO stuff, which would be keyword rankings, clicks,
Speaker:impressions, you know, time on page, organic
Speaker:usage, kind of all of the core fundamentals that are same on
Speaker:a site by site basis. And how do you ensure clients see
Speaker:the value of SEO efforts over the long term? Well, if we do our job
Speaker:right, then they get more business. So that's obviously the
Speaker:biggest kick it right there. But yeah, we, we update clients on a
Speaker:weekly basis and make sure that they're fully in the loop. What's going on between
Speaker:their content, any analytics that we're seeing, growth wise
Speaker:wins. We tend to over communicate from that sense and they don't
Speaker:have to reply to emails, but we do have weekly automated
Speaker:scheduled emails that go out every Wednesday morning. And so
Speaker:that's a, it's a great way for people to stay in the loop without feeling
Speaker:like they're not hearing from us, you know, or whatever. That
Speaker:was a huge, huge kind of point of feedback that we got as we were
Speaker:starting to work with clients is that their previous agencies
Speaker:would go, you know, 30, 60, 90 days without contacting them and they'd
Speaker:have no idea what they were paying for. And so we kind of
Speaker:planted our flag in the sand on the opposite side of that argument
Speaker:and try to do the opposite. And what advice do you have for
Speaker:businesses that struggle to connect SEO performance directly with
Speaker:sales growth? It's usually just a design fluke.
Speaker:If you have traffic, I mean, if you don't have traffic, you can't sell.
Speaker:So that's kind of step number one. But if you have traffic and it's not
Speaker:converting, two things that come to mind would either be what type
Speaker:of traffic is it? So if you have blogs, but they're all top of funnel,
Speaker:of course I don't think that those have a very high chance of converting. But
Speaker:if you do have all of the things, you know, bottom of the funnel service
Speaker:pages and the correct blogs and all of this sort of stuff and you have
Speaker:traffic and it's not converting, that's usually going to be a user experience
Speaker:or a conversion rate optimization issue. Maybe your
Speaker:site is wonky and you don't realize it, or maybe the buttons don't
Speaker:work as intended. So there's always going to be ways to
Speaker:improve a website once you have traffic. But getting traffic is
Speaker:usually the difficult part. And then how do you figure that
Speaker:out? Do you use Google Analytics to figure out where people
Speaker:exit from? Do you use the website yourself and figure out
Speaker:like where your hiccups are? How do you figure out like where
Speaker:that's leading them to go away? Yeah, we can look at page by page
Speaker:analytics, seeing what has traffic, what doesn't. We
Speaker:know where the CTAs are placed on sites so we can take a look and
Speaker:see, you know, what's being engaged with and what's
Speaker:actually moving the needle or not moving needle from that perspective.
Speaker:Overall though, we can kind of see just based on the data
Speaker:where people are going and is there a good way to capture that
Speaker:traffic? Maybe that means showing them a lead magnet or maybe that means,
Speaker:you know, pointing them to something that they wouldn't have normally been exposed to.
Speaker:That's kind of based on the beauty of working with all these different
Speaker:brands is that some have insane lead
Speaker:magnet assets that we can just tack onto the site, others we
Speaker:don't. And that's where we get to kind of put back on our entrepreneurship
Speaker:hats and think about, okay, if we were coming to the site, what would the
Speaker:customer want? What value add can we offer to them and
Speaker:how can we continue to nurture them beyond the initial
Speaker:visit so that they eventually turn into a customer? And what do
Speaker:you believe makes B2B CEO SEO
Speaker:fundamentally different from B2B 2C SEO?
Speaker:I think it's just the mindset of people
Speaker:who are searching for different keywords and different queries. At the end of the day,
Speaker:I think that B2B is
Speaker:a little bit more strategy focused where people have to do a little
Speaker:more research or maybe have to see
Speaker:things in action. It's a little bit more delayed when it comes to
Speaker:trying to nurture a lead. You know, a sales process,
Speaker:especially enterprise clients, can take months, but when they
Speaker:land, I mean they're massive contracts compared to something like B2C where
Speaker:it's very, in some cases it could be,
Speaker:you know, a matter of minutes. You know, they, they tap Apple
Speaker:pay and that's it. Let me think about how easy Amazon is to use
Speaker:or TikTok shop or any of these things that are popping up. So
Speaker:there's just a whole different thought process psychology wise when it comes to
Speaker:how they engage with content and SEO. And I think that
Speaker:many things in the B2C SEO space,
Speaker:I think E commerce is just crushing nowadays. Like if you have an E
Speaker:commerce shop and you know E commerce SEO, like you're in a very, very, very
Speaker:good position to capture a lot of traffic in the future because Google
Speaker:is continuously trying to figure out how to minimize
Speaker:the friction on E commerce. So good spot to be in
Speaker:for sure. So would you say like the B2B side takes a lot longer
Speaker:with the SEO and like prepping it because you
Speaker:having bigger contracts. So people actually have to like really research
Speaker:and invest and figure out what's the best route for them?
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. I think that, you know, it's
Speaker:not always going to be this easy path success where
Speaker:somebody reads a blog and immediately buys a product. Like that's a very
Speaker:rare thing. It's probably more B2C focused in
Speaker:the B2B space. You know, they might have to read the blog and then sign
Speaker:up for the newsletter and then read your newsletter for a week or two
Speaker:and then go back to the blog and then go back to the demo page
Speaker:and sign up for the demo and then you know, have the meeting and blah
Speaker:blah, blah blah blah. But it could be a on the back end, you'd
Speaker:have no idea. But it could be a month long journey
Speaker:until they finally sign up for the service. That's a couple thousand dollars
Speaker:a month from their point of view. It's not as easy as just kind of
Speaker:clicking buy now on a $25T shirt.
Speaker:And what's the one piece of advice you wish every marketer knew about
Speaker:SEO and content strategy? That it works. I
Speaker:think that many people forget that SEO is not this
Speaker:scam, black magic, witchcraft and wizardry marketing
Speaker:strategy. It's a very, very viable path
Speaker:to long term. Actually save a lot of money on
Speaker:your acquisition costs. Because you know, once you build the
Speaker:SEO system and once the everything is in place,
Speaker:you're CAC is always going to be
Speaker:much more efficient on a multi year time horizon
Speaker:than something like ADS or ppc. So
Speaker:if you're going to invest in it, think long term. But that's the benefit
Speaker:of doing it and thinking long term is that you kind of, it's like investing
Speaker:in your retirement account. You know, nobody invests in their retirement account for the sake
Speaker:of trying to pull the money out within three years. So if you
Speaker:are thinking long term about business and your brand, you know, it makes sense to
Speaker:have a multi year strategy that becomes more efficient
Speaker:as it grows. Is it because it's always changing as well?
Speaker:Because I know fundamentally SEO and maybe because SEO is just as
Speaker:old as email marketing and everybody kind of hates on
Speaker:email marketing and says oh it's dead. And it's never dead, it's
Speaker:actually always seems to be always growing. Is it kind of like that where
Speaker:it's because SEO is not new. It's like you
Speaker:said it was around since the wild west of, of
Speaker:the Internet. So is it because of that? Because it's kind of fallen out of
Speaker:favor and everybody's like look at TikTok, look at social media, look at video.
Speaker:And all that other stuff evolving too. And I think that
Speaker:because of how long SEO takes to come to life, people feel like
Speaker:it's a scam because they Invest you know, two to
Speaker:$5,000 a month for four, five,
Speaker:six months. And depending on the size of their
Speaker:site and depending on the industry, they might not see any results. And
Speaker:that's just the realism of it is that you have to based on the industry
Speaker:insight, some sites might take 30, 60 days to
Speaker:see benefits and others might take nine to 12
Speaker:months. So I can understand that if you're
Speaker:antsy and you don't have a lot of cash flow coming in and
Speaker:you're spending that much money on something, then it takes that
Speaker:long to come to life. And if you sign up for the wrong person and
Speaker:it doesn't actually work at all and you just spend all that money, it's like,
Speaker:wow, I would feel scammed too. But you know, there's plenty of
Speaker:data points out there that prove that it works. And it's
Speaker:all about working with the right people who have the right vision and the right,
Speaker:you know, resources to bring that strategy to life. And people
Speaker:listen to this episode wondering where can they find you online to learn more. I'm
Speaker:very active on LinkedIn. I post daily, always chatting
Speaker:with folks. If you ever want to, you know, learn more about me or learn
Speaker:more about Trio SEO. Yeah, Google my name,
Speaker:Stephen Schneider with LinkedIn or Trio SEO. You'll find me one way
Speaker:or another. And any final thoughts for the listeners? I hope that you are
Speaker:thinking about your business as it relates to AI search because
Speaker:it's not going anywhere. And wouldn't it be nice to show up in
Speaker:ChatGPT organically? Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker:Well, thank you Stephen for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on
Speaker:SEO. Of course. Thanks for having me and thank you. For listening as
Speaker:always. Please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps. Leave. A five
Speaker:star review really does help with the rankings. Let me know how I am
Speaker:doing and join me next week as I talk to another great thought leader in
Speaker:the PR marketing industry. All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding your
Speaker:SEO and maybe some SEO search and AI as
Speaker:well and see you next week later.
