Adobe's marketing-led SEO strategy that 2X its organic traffic in 12 months | Kevin Indig

[00:00:00] Ramli John: A few decades ago, you'd go to the library to research a topic. Now you just have to open up your browser. Go to google.com and go through the search results. As a business, ranking higher on the search results page could drive hundreds, thousands, or even millions of visitors a month to your website, which could be you worth big money with the right conversion strategy.

[00:00:21] So the question is, how do you rank higher on a search engines? Well, no one really knows because Google doesn't explicitly share its algorithm. There are people who have cracked the code and have figured out strategies to consistently rank number one on Google. One of those people is Kevin Indig. He's worked with Daily Motion, Atlassian, G2 Snapchat, and Shopify as a search engine.

[00:00:47] I'm excited to chat with Kevin about the marketing led SEO strategy that Adobe use to double its organic traffic in 12 

[00:00:55] Kevin Indig: months. Adobe's very interesting. Adobe is a business [00:01:00] butterfly that has reinvented itself many times over the last years. Right. They're generally a very underrated business in my mind and have also been able.

[00:01:08] Significantly increase the traffic over the last 12 months. In this 

[00:01:12] Ramli John: marketing Power UPS episode, you learn first the difference between product led and marketing led seo. Second, the top marketing led SEO growth levers. Third, Adobe's winning organic growth strategy. And fourth, two things that's helped accelerate Kevin's.

[00:01:30] For each episode, I create a power ups cheat sheet you can use to download, fill in, and apply the marketing concept to your business right away. You can go to marketing power ups.com to get those right now. 

[00:01:41] Are you ready? Let's go Marketing powerups. Ready? Go. Here's your host, Ramli John. 

[00:01:55] Let's talk about SEO Powerups.

[00:01:57] You know that's your jam. You worked at g2, you worked at [00:02:00] Shopify, and one of the essays that you have for people who are tuning in, you have this great, uh, newsletter growth memo. and you wrote about integrators and aggregators, uh, and really how SEO plays in both of them. Can you talk a little bit about the both?

[00:02:14] Cause it's, it's a very, very 

[00:02:15] Kevin Indig: interesting concept. So there're really, there're really two strong concepts in the, in the SEO world, right? There's integrator and aggregator seo, um, which you could also call marketing led seo or product led seo. And the fun thing about it is that in the last I would. One to two years maybe since uh, Eli published his book titled Product at seo.

[00:02:37] product led SEO is kind of the jam and the thing, and that is totally fine and justified. And yet at the same time, a lot of people now think that marketing led SEO is inferior and you shouldn't do that. And the reality is that it's just two different approaches. Both can work, but not every company can choose which one to go with, right?

[00:02:59] Mm-hmm. . So some [00:03:00] companies can do marketing at seo, some companies product that seo. And the main difference between them is actually who creates the content. That's a very simple question to get to the, to, to quickly identify whether you're an integrator or an aggregator. Integrators have to create the content themselves.

[00:03:15] They write block post, they build lead gen tools, or they build landing pages and aggregators can scale SEO with either user generated content. or a product inventory, say in the case of e-commerce, for example, or a marketplace like DoorDash, where you can order from inventory like, um, like restaurants, right?

[00:03:38] Um, or delivery services. So it really comes down to who creates the content and that can, that decides how you scale SEO and how you. Think about seo. 

[00:03:48] Ramli John: I really, really love how you separated that marketing led and, uh, product led SEO in that essay. Once again, I'm gonna link this in the description and for people who are already not, [00:04:00] uh, subscribe, they should, I'm a big fan.

[00:04:02] I'm just plugging that in, making sure people do subscribe to your, your newsletter. But you said there that integrators need differentiated content to stand out and attract customers, and that, I feel like that's such a key point around this. How does that apply to, like the SEO levers, uh, and how, how does an integrator or marketing led seo, um, approach?

[00:04:23] you know, what are some levers that they can, that those companies can take to, uh, to exploit SEOs channel for them 

[00:04:30] Kevin Indig: to better understand that You really want to look back at how SEO o matured over the last mm-hmm. maybe decades, maybe the last 10 years. And so what happened is that about, I don't even know how long ago this was, but uh, a while ago, this, this concept of the skyscraper technique came out mm-hmm.

[00:04:48] And the basic idea was, you know, you look at what's ranking well for keyword. And you basically synthesize that, summarize that, and do it much, much better. And this, this classic example are listicles [00:05:00] where, for example, you, you see, oh, uh, you, you wanna go after the keyword, you know? Um, Let's just say, uh, podcast mics.

[00:05:08] You Google that you see number one result is the 10 best podcast mics. And then a skyscraper method would be writing about the 15 best podcast mics. So this is constant, like one upping, and that, to be fair, that worked really well for a while and might still sometimes work. Um, , but there's an inherent problem, which is that everybody cooks with the same ingredients and everybody has access to the same resources.

[00:05:32] There's no way of creating something that you, that has a competitive advantage, right. That is hard to replicate. And that's what all this like differentiation aspect is really about. The opposite of differentiation is commoditization. Mm-hmm. . So when everybody has the same product, that's a commodity. The way to compete with the commodity is just by price.

[00:05:56] In, in classic economics and in, in the SEO time [00:06:00] or in the SEO space, better said, you really just compete with more resources, right? So can you write a listal faster? Can you execute the skyscraper method faster? Can you create more content? But that's really a, a race to the bottom, right? There's, you don't really.

[00:06:15] Easier for yourself. You just compete with muscle, but you don't compete with technique, and so the way to compete with technique is differentiation and the different ways to differentiate your content. The best way and the, the, the, the most effective, way better said. Is to use proprietary data that only you have access to.

[00:06:33] Mm-hmm. Right. So at, at Shopify, for example, uh, we had access to over 2 million e-commerce stores. And so any data we publish about that, it's, it's gonna be very, very difficult for anybody else to replicate that data, maybe. You know, Amazon has similar access or an Etsy, but the, the amount of competitors there all of a sudden becomes very, very small.

[00:06:54] Mm-hmm. . Uh, whereas if we write about, you know, the 10 ways to start a business, now all of a sudden we compete [00:07:00] with maybe thousands of sites or at least hundreds of sites, including, you know, some government sites. So, um, that's, that's like the, the easiest, most effective ways to compete. And then of course, you know, adding things like expert quotes or having experts actually write the content is another way to, to differentiate, uh, any sorts of, uh, secondary data.

[00:07:22] So surveys, uh, good visualizations, tools, all these kind of things that are harder to replicate can really help content. To be differentiated. And that content typically also ranks much, much better in search. Right. Interesting. It's not just, it's not just looking different, it's not just a positive user experience, but it's also something that Google will reward because all now you, when your content is differential, you bring something new to the experience, right?

[00:07:46] You bring something new, uh, that might help searchers solve their problems. Um, and um, and one thing that's often forgotten is that differentiate differentiation doesn't just happen on. On the content level, but it 

[00:08:00] also happens on a strategic level. Mm-hmm. . So another way to differentiate is to say, okay, look, my competitors are all creating these super long form guides with 5,000 words plus.

[00:08:08] I'm gonna do the exact opposite. I'm just gonna super short form, just target maybe Longtail queries. And every article is maybe gonna be four to 500 words long. Uh, or you only create a listicles instead of guides, or what is articles, right? Or you add a glossary. So there, there's an axis. The publication frequency.

[00:08:28] and the length of the content that you can play with, and you can discover different formats. And the whole idea here is that when you think about differentiation, there's the content level and there's a strategic level. When we talk about the strategic level, you need to look at what are the competitors doing in their fields and how can you do something different to stand out?

[00:08:48] Ramli John: you create, you, you shared this like really interesting two by two matrix on your, your name newsletter around, you know, on one axis is frequency, the vertical axis, and on. Horizontal access is 

[00:09:00] timely versus evergreen. And what I'm hearing is to differentiate is figure out where your competitors is playing.

[00:09:06] Is it, are they playing in the evergreen and low frequency? They maybe should go to another matrix where, like high frequency in evergreen or, or somewhere else. Is that, is that what I'm hearing, uh, correctly, where you kind of map out what your, your competitors are doing and then try to differentiate yourself from that?

[00:09:21] Kevin Indig: is exactly right. And you know, um, there's another dimension factor in which is. Am I in? Like, where am I? Where are my competitors? Very often you have a situation where you're a startup and you compete against big incumbents. Mm-hmm. . And they have an advantage simply because they've been on the market for longer, which is important for SEO because they've accumulated probably more trust, they've built more content, right?

[00:09:43] So when you compete with such an incumbent, you wanna figure out, okay, where's the gap? Where's the opening that I can. Enter and, and, and compete with them head on. And that's why I build this, this two by two is to figure out, okay, what's incumbent doing and how can I do something different [00:10:00] that allows me to compete with them?

[00:10:01] And then after a while, you might wanna compete with them, heads on, you know, you wanna, might want, you might wanna do the same thing that they're doing, just better. Um, and not talking about. The skyscraper technique. Sure. Use it if you want to, but I'm more, more so talking about using the same strategy, right?

[00:10:15] So mm-hmm. in the big, in the beginning, if they have long form, you might wanna go in the short form. And then after a while, after a certain maturity, then you might wanna pivot back into long form and compete with them more heads on now that you have a stronger, you know, um, brand and more awareness and maybe more content on your 

[00:10:30] Ramli John: side.

[00:10:31] One of the thing that other, the other thing that you mentioned around differentiation that reminded me is around, How important brand is and like, you know, creating your own terms. You know, we've heard of Amanda's Neda's zero click content and you know, west Coast's like, you know, spicy point of view, just coining a term.

[00:10:52] Look at Eli, your, I I heard for earlier, before we started recording your, your, uh, starting a podcast with, uh, the guy who wrote product [00:11:00] led SEO and product led seo. Might have been around but. Coining or somebody coining that actually does that, that I'm guessing that's a good way to differentiate your content is making up a new term that actually makes sense.

[00:11:12] Kevin Indig: Is that right? Yeah, that is. That is very right. And there's one thing that all of these, well, they basically that there's an underlying. Technique to coining terms, right? Mm-hmm. , you can just go out there and say, oh, I'm just gonna call the skyscraper technique and call, call it something else. Maybe the, the rocket technique or something, or I don't know what, you know, like catapult technique, um, and

[00:11:32] But, but most people then say, Hey, why do you coin this term? Like, that doesn't make sense. So when do you, when should you actually coin a term? Um, . And, and the answer to that is when you discover a new problem that doesn't have a name yet, right? Like the, the like zero click content idea came from the problem That's.

[00:11:51] Um, the, the Google landscape is changing very fundamentally, and, um, some keywords might not get as many clicks anymore [00:12:00] because Google is now showing the answer to them, right? In a search result. So there is an underlying movement. There's a new problem that entered the space that might not yet have a name.

[00:12:09] Um, and it's, uh, and, and your kind of. , uh, and that's basically the, the right time to, to give it a new name. Coin a term and coin a new methodology. Skyscraper was the same thing, right? Like Brian Dean noticed that everybody, like one thing works really well is this one upping type of thing, and that didn't have a name yet, so he gave him one.

[00:12:28] Um, and the same with West Cow and a spicy point of view, right? It's that, that there's so much cognitive overload and so much information out there on social networks and, and all sorts of, you know, feeds or email newsletters everywhere. You wanna send out. And the way to stand out is with a spicy point of view.

[00:12:42] So the way to coin a new term and to build a brand on, on, on something, which goes directly back to this idea of a blue ocean. I'm sure lots of, uh, of, uh, listeners, uh, um, or the audience have, uh, are familiar with the blue versus red ocean. Um, Uh, kind of category [00:13:00] creation concept. The point of all of this is that you're solving a new problem that might not have been there before, or you're solving a problem that has been there for a long time, but is unsolved.

[00:13:12] And of course, giving that a name is a, is a smart marketing play to be recognizable and memorable. Uh, but the, the important thing is that there is a problem that people can relate to. And if you want to transfer that to, to seo, that is actually a very smart way. You can say, okay, let's go after keywords, um, that represent a problem that users wanna solve, but let's show them a new approach.

[00:13:36] But it all goes back that there has to. a fundamental problem that already exists. If, if you make up a problem, then people won't care and it's gonna be fluff. That is such a good, 

[00:13:44] Ramli John: I've never heard thought of coining a term that needs to be associated with a problem like that. Either they're just like, oh, let's come up with something new.

[00:13:50] But that totally, totally makes sense with what you said. I, I, I also feel like you said something there again that really resonated around like trust. I feel like all the things that [00:14:00] you're mentioning around brand, the key factor that Google with their, all their updates that they're been releasing recently is around like, how do you amplify.

[00:14:08] is that, is that what I'm hearing from what you're 

[00:14:10] Kevin Indig: saying? Yeah. Trust is absolutely critical and has always been critical in marketing. Uh, it's one of these universal concepts that, that never truly die. And the way that reflects an SEO is that is a following. Here's the story. So I've recently been in the market for a credit card.

[00:14:26] Uh, I wanna change the main credit card that, that I'm using, and I made this very interesting discovery along the journey. Uh, so I looked for, , I think I, I started with best credit cards just to get an overview of like what's out there, , and what I noticed, uh, no surprise there, nothing fancy. And what I noticed is that Google shows some results that compare credit cards, and then Google also shows some results from bigger credit card vendors in the first, like on the, on the first page of Google.

[00:14:57] So you have side, side nerd wallet or Forbes [00:15:00] advisor, but then you also. , um, you have American Express, uh, and you have, uh, visa and, and MasterCard. And these were just lending pages, right? And I was, I was, it took me a while to like really understand why Google shows them because mm-hmm. in my mind, if you look for the best credit cards, you always want to hear, you always want have a comparison.

[00:15:20] Um, , but Google is known to a b test, lots of results against each other all the time. So when I see a result in the top 10, they're, they're usually, especially for such a highly searched keyword, there usually is a really good reason for that. And so what I realized after a while is that people look for these brands because they heard of these brands before.

[00:15:41] They're familiar with these brands. Mm-hmm. And they probably also trust these brands. Mm-hmm. And so Google tries to find the right mix. Comparison, but also trustworthy brands that have already established a certain connection to their audience. So trust is incredibly important and credibility as well.

[00:15:57] And it kind of goes back to this point that the [00:16:00] best way to do SEO is actually. to, for people to search for your brand in the first place, right? Mm-hmm. , when they search for your brand in the first place, then there's no competition. You already won the race, right? You the searchers just need to find the right landing page or the right, the right, you know, offering on your site.

[00:16:16] So I think it goes back to the, to the point that at the end of the day, , there are lots of things that have an impact on seo. It can be the experience with customer support, right? To, to see if people come back to you. It can be whether people saw your brand out there, it can be whether they saw an ad on tv, right?

[00:16:34] Like all these things somehow have an impact on SEO because it drives search behavior. Interesting. Um, and at the end of the day, you know, if you're able to, to. Trust in whatever way that will pay off from an SEO perspective. Mm-hmm. The problem is here, the challenge is that this is really difficult to measure.

[00:16:50] Mm-hmm. Interesting. It's very hard to attribute. Mm-hmm. There are ways, for example, if you look, if you measure your brand search volume over time, if that goes up, that's usually a really good sign. [00:17:00] Or if you measure your brand's combination, search volume, so something like shop. Business name generator or Shopify online business.

[00:17:10] Interesting, right? That that is a close association between your brand and a generic term, like online business, and the more people search for these associations or for these combinations, The stronger of a signal is it to Google to say, oh, maybe Shopify should also rank for business name generator or for online store because so many people already associate the brand with the term.

[00:17:32] Ramli John: Before we continue, I wanna thank the sponsor for this episode 42 agency. When you're in scale up mode, you have to hit your KPIs and the pressure is on to deliver demos and signups. It's a lot to handle demand, gen, abm, email sequences, revenue ops, and. That's where 42 Agency founded by my good friend, Camille Rexton can help you.

[00:17:53] They're a strategic partner that's helped B2B sales companies like ProfitWell, teamwork, sprout Social [00:18:00] and Hubdoc build a predictable revenue engine. If you're looking for performance experts in creative to solve your hardest marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in-house, look no further. Go to 42 Agency, that's number 42, agency.com to talk to a strateg.

[00:18:16] To learn how you can build a high efficiency revenue engine. Now find that link in the description or show notes. Well, that's off. Now let's jump back into this episode. We shift focus and talk a little bit about how Adobe is applying all this things that you've been talking about. I know. I keep plugging your newsletter

[00:18:35] Cause it's so good. You wrote a whole essay about how Adobe's, uh, SEO strategy, uh, applied the integrator and also the aggregator strategy and how they've, you know, Adobe's been around there. It's well known. Um, and usually when it's been around for a while, finding like spikes in, in. and growth is quite tough and they've done some, several, several things.

[00:18:57] Can you talk a little bit about, uh, [00:19:00] about stuff that they've done, how they've applied, uh, and differentiated themselves from other design tools or tools that similar to 

[00:19:07] Kevin Indig: Adobe? Sure. And thanks for the kind words. Uh, Romley really, really appreciate that. Um, so Adobe's very interesting. A Adobe is a business butterfly that has reinvented them itself many times over the last years.

[00:19:21] Right. Not to forget that Adobe. Next to Microsoft, by the way, is one of the few businesses that we're able to shift from on-premise to a subscription business and do that incredibly successful. So they're generally a very underrated business in my mind, uh, and do some very interesting things and have also been able to significantly increase their traffic over the last 12 months.

[00:19:42] Uh, so before then, it was relatively flat, not completely, but growth, you know, at least for judging from the outside. Not always accurate, uh, seemed to have come a bit slower, but then in the last 12 months, something changed. Um, and I, I dug a bit deeper into this in the growth memo, uh, essay into [00:20:00] what has changed and what they're doing, and the SEO strategy I think is very, very good and very refined to, to be fair seo.

[00:20:06] Uh, Adobe employs many SEOs, and, and each of those SEOs is, is. Or most of these SEOs are focused on specific products or categories similar to how, you know, you have many SEOs at big e-commerce sites like a Home Depot and as an seo, there you are focused on a category, or Walmart is another example. And so Adobe does something very similar.

[00:20:27] Uh, and what they do really well is that they build these content hubs. Mm-hmm. . And the the point, the Metapoint that I wanna make here is that a lot of. marketers and SEOs, especially when they think about marketing led SEO or integrator seo, they always go back to the blog as kind of the area to to, to create content and and scale seo.

[00:20:48] But blogs have a big problem, which is that they're time sorted, right? Mm-hmm. , you see the news content on top, all this at the bottom, but that's not how users explore problems, right? Right. Users are interested in a [00:21:00] topic or a problem, and that has a linear. Um, structure as opposed to a time-based structure most of the time.

[00:21:07] Uh, and so, um, Adobe is, is really good at embracing that and creating content hubs that revolve around one topic that could be e-signature, for example, in the case of Acrobat. and they keep all the content on this hub, just focus on e-signature. And so they will have a list of, uh, of landing pages for different features of Acrobat.

[00:21:29] Um, they might have a, a resource center with common questions. They have tutorials, they have little mini tools on there, and everything just revolves around the same topic. And, uh, that has, that works well for a couple of reasons. One is, as a user, you land there and you, you have like, everything is related to the problem you're trying to solve.

[00:21:48] And on the other hand, for Google, it's very easy to understand because all content is related to one topic and that, that we use this concept of topical authority. Mm-hmm. and seo, which is a little bit [00:22:00] fuzzy, but it's, in essence, it's easier for Google to understand that all these pages revolve around the same big topic and that that make for Google, that's a signal to say, oh, okay.

[00:22:10] If that's a very comprehensive. Place for this topic, then maybe I should rank all of these pages higher for their keywords, right? So there's an underlying mechanism. Um, and so when you, when you look at some of the data, the, the Acrobat content hub on on uh, um, on adobe.com actually has over 850 pages, which is, you know, like there are many sites that don't have that size.

[00:22:32] So it's huge. There's a lot of content out there and it gets almost. Million non-branded monthly visits. It was like, like about 25 million visits a year. And for a, you know, a self-serve, low-cost product like Acrobat, you can, you can do the mental math and think about how much growth that actually drives.

[00:22:50] Mm-hmm. . So, uh, I think it's a, a best practice of an integrator strategy. And, uh, I think the way that they organize and put the content together is just really. , I 

[00:22:59] Ramli John: totally [00:23:00] love that. Like, wow. 850 landing pages. And uh, uh, one of the things they've done is a little bit of aggregator strategy or product led SEO with their stock photos and, uh, videos and, and fonts.

[00:23:12] Can you talk a little bit about that, like how did they also get that, um, that wind there 

[00:23:17] Kevin Indig: as well? When we talk about product led seo, there are product strategies, um, that allow you to scale SEO and basically, Crossover from an integrator to an aggregator or sometimes the other way around, it's always easier to, to, to cross over from aggregator to integrator cuz you basically, right, you have your marketplace as, as, as an aggregator.

[00:23:38] And then you add a, you add some content hubs, digital tools block, right? The path that is relatively straightforward, whereas the, the product led as the old path, you always have to figure. What is the loop here? What is the flywheel? What's the user experience? What do we wanna give away? How does monetization work?

[00:23:52] There are many different facets that you have to consider. There's a much longer thought chain here. Uh, and so what Adobe has done, as you already mentioned, [00:24:00] they have created a, a sub domain, uh, called, uh, that's stock adobe.com, where they. Provide, um, graphical, like any, actually any creative asset. They create some, uh, some, some graphics, fonts, but also videos, uh, sounds, um, um, tracks or, or like sound bites, uh, plugins.

[00:24:22] So basically, A, a catalog of assets that you can use, of course, in combination with the products that Adobe sells. But you can also just buy them for like a, like a single license, right? So you can, you can pay a much higher price if you wanna use a certain. Font. But if you subscribe to, uh, Adobe subscription bundle, then of course you, you pay maybe nothing or maybe a, a very, a very small price.

[00:24:47] So there's a, an acquisition strategy here, which is to aggregate, uh, these assets, um, by category and make them discoverable by Google. So you don't have to log in to, to browse the asset library. You can just do [00:25:00] this, uh, you know, from the outside and you find these assets through Google search. There is an engagement, uh, strategy here.

[00:25:07] You might suggest different assets that, that are complimentary to the one you picked or you might be able to, uh, you know, browse a, um, a an artist or a creator's assets library and all that kind of stuff. And then there's a monetization strategy, which is clearly sign up for the Adobe bundle. Um, because that means you save a ton of money in the long run.

[00:25:27] But of course it's very helpful for Adobe as well because they have more predictable and sustainable revenue streams. 

[00:25:31] Ramli John: Uh, the last thing I actually didn't cover in that essay particularly is surround their distribution. Uh, I know you mentioned that distribution is super important. They're on TikTok as well.

[00:25:41] Adobe, you know, people talking about how TikTok is in new Google, but that's arguably true or false. But there have 300, over 300,000 followers on TikTok. They have over one point. Um, uh, 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube. Can you talk a little bit how important distribution is, uh, [00:26:00] especially it seems like Adobe is also, uh, um, you know, distributing their content in other 

[00:26:04] Kevin Indig: places.

[00:26:05] You, you already indicated, and I totally agree with the meta point here, that distribution is incredibly important. Um, and it is important for a couple of reasons, but integrators, always have the challenge that they're trying to build a direct relationship with their users and they don't have an in in inventory that allows them to scale SEO in the same speed and broad and, and and breadth as an aggregator.

[00:26:26] Uh, and so integrators have to think a bit harder about their distribution. And the principle you wanna apply here is that you always try to. Funneled users into an environment you can control. Mm-hmm. and the, the basic, there are a couple of options here, right? You have email newsletters, build an email list is nothing new, but is very, very important still because if, like, first of all, email inboxes are very, you know, like, uh, they're like intimate environments.

[00:26:52] If you invite somebody to your inbox and it reads, you open an email on ongoing basis, that is a very strong signal of a relationship. But [00:27:00] it's also that you ha like inboxes are just filtered much, much less. Twitter feed or than, than YouTube or TikTok, right? So you have, you have better access to your customers and then the other.

[00:27:12] our applications. So native, uh, na native apps, uh, ideally on a smartphone are great ways to build direct relationships with customers. And it's also something that you can control much, much easier cuz you can ping them or send them messages, right? Notifications, all that kind of stuff. There is a way to overdo this, but ultimately, uh, you have a much, much.

[00:27:31] uh, uh, you know, more direct, uh, line to your customers and aggregators should, they can do the same thing, but because of their size and because of their nature, it's much, much their distribution, uh, is, uh, the distribution channels are, are much, much more, uh, innate and more straightforward because they're so big, right?

[00:27:49] They don't need to worry about that as much, whereas integrators really have to. Uh, and so, um, the distribution angle here is often to have a direct client to your customers. And of course you also wanna. Present on all the other [00:28:00] surfaces, right? Like there are lots of benefits from, for example, also, um, having content on YouTube as an integrator, you can tie that back to your, uh, website and, and you know, combine these two by like adding a video to your blog article or into content hub that has some benefits from a clickthrough perspective and just from a user experience perspective.

[00:28:18] And these two environments reinforce each other as well. You can funnel people to your YouTube channel from the website and the other way around. , and these are all ways, there's be like top of mind and present in your customer's field. It's almost like this like, um, like, like surround sound type of effect that, that, that comes up when you play on lots of different channels.

[00:28:37] But of course that's more a strategy for more mature integrators. If you are startup just, you know, starting out, then you really wanna focus on nailing one channel, then venturing into the 

[00:28:45] Ramli John: next one. I wanna shift, uh, focus now. Power ups for career. Now you've been in marketing for 15 years and for people who might be tuning in, they're probably, uh, less than 15 years in marketing.

[00:28:59] uh, you're, [00:29:00] I'm probably 12 years as well. But like, what are some things that's helped you in your career as you, you know, went through it, you. went to d g two, then Shopify. Now you're, uh, following along with a, with your own, uh, practice and courses and things like that. What was, what's one thing that has really helped you, uh, power up this helped 

[00:29:22] Kevin Indig: you in your career?

[00:29:23] Yeah, that's a good question. And, and the first thing I always say when people ask me that is you have to get, you have to give credit, you know? to the things that you cannot control, right? Like being born to the right parents with the right genetics in the right place at the right time. Uh, you know, having had great mentors and supporters and all this kind of stuff that you always have to give credit to that.

[00:29:45] Uh, and that's probably 50% if not more. And then there's other half of things that you can control. And I think, you know, like reflecting back, um, there obviously lots of things that help, but two that I would wanna call out. Number one is I'm a, you know, I'm a, I'm a voracious [00:30:00] note taker. Um, I, I know you use, uh, notion as well.

[00:30:04] Uh, I use Notion it's probably the most used app on my computer, in my phone. , I use it all the time for lots of different things, whether it's managing my tasks or. Uh, or planning my weeks, but most importantly, to just take notes and keep track. And I keep track of everything. And the reason is that I'm a, you know, um, I mean, everybody suffers on that.

[00:30:23] There's a lot of information out there and it's really hard to store that in just your brain. Uh, but it really helps me to structure all that information by writing it down. So, Um, again, like everything I read or consume, whether it's podcasts, newsletters, blog articles, movies, I always take some notes and sometimes it's just scribbles or thoughts and other times it's very structured notes that I come back to.

[00:30:46] So I have a whole s e o playbook on my notion with, you know, that I, that I groomed over the last 10, 15 years. Um, that has obviously, Um, and then the, the, the second thing is that I, I learn about myself that I'm [00:31:00] a relatively slow thinker. Mm-hmm. . Um, and so what really helps when you're a slow thinker is to just like, sit down about and, and, and, and like write down the things that you know, and then, and then refine them over time.

[00:31:13] Right. So, I think I learned over the last years to work around slow thinking and, um, writing things down was a, was a massive help. So if I had to pick one thing, it's just taking lots of notes and like grooming what I would call your digital brain. 

[00:31:28] Ramli John: That's awesome. And I'm sure you can solve that SEO playbook that you have for several councilmen and people.

[00:31:34] People who Gotti 

[00:31:35] Kevin Indig: people with Gotti by one day. One day, yes. Yes. One day for. 

[00:31:39] Ramli John: Uh, we're gonna plug your course in in a bit, but , I know you're working on that. Uh, one final question around, you know, if you can give yourself a y younger self an advice, like one or two pieces of advice, uh, you know, your yourself when you're early on, 15 years ago, you're just starting out in marketing, what would be the [00:32:00] advice that you'd give that younger version 

[00:32:02] Kevin Indig: of Kevin?

[00:32:02] So if, if I had to pick one, I would probably, um, give myself the advice to have more conviction. Mm-hmm. , uh, and I'm saying that because, you know, one thing I'll learn about myself is that I often have good ideas, but I'm trying to. be a little too democratic about pleasing everyone with these ideas and getting everybody on board and excited.

[00:32:25] And when I look back, I think one thing that could have ha ha could have made me more effective would've been to just say, listen, this is a great idea and I really believe we should do it. And if some people disagree, and of course like part of this good idea has to be to def, to be able to defend it and to make the case for it.

[00:32:44] But it's fine if not everybody's on board with that. And it's fine if not every. Loves the idea, right? Um, but I think a mistake that I made too often is just to get everybody excited and pleased about something which always dilutes the effectiveness. Um, you know, and that doesn't mean you have to piss [00:33:00] people off.

[00:33:00] It's just simply that, you know, you just have, I think I would want it to have more conviction that this is a great idea and we should execute it to the way that I think and be open to make small compromises along the way, but not to sell your ideas. And given at the first critique, I think that that's like one major lesson I learned for myself.

[00:33:21] And if I, if I could pick another one, I would probably say more focus and less volume. I think, you know, like something I'm really good at is to come up with 10 different things or ways to solve a problem. Sure. And then one thing that I, that I learned to do much, much better now is to say, What are the three things that we should actually do, and what is the number one thing that we have to do out of all of these 10 ideas?

[00:33:42] And that's actually incredibly helpful because you make harder decisions. You think through all of these 10 ideas much, much more. Um, And, uh, at the end of the day, the more you focus, the more effective you are. Right? And you can still go back to the nine other ideas. But first, make sure you lent this one idea and it's successful, and then [00:34:00] bring in the ball.

[00:34:01] This chat 

[00:34:01] Ramli John: was such a great primer on marketing led seo. Kevin is the real deal. I encourage you to sign up for Kevin's newsletter growth memo, Kevin Indig dot. You can also find Kevin on LinkedIn and Twitter. All those links are in the show notes and description. Thanks to Kevin for being on this show. If you enjoy this episode, you'd love the marketing Power UPS newsletter that I sent out.

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[00:35:08] Well, that's all. For now. This is your host family, John, until the next episode. Have a powered update. Bye 

[00:35:14] Kevin Indig: marketing Powerups until the next episode.