How I Grew My Customer Base By Offering Free SEO Webinars [$10K/Month]
This is a follow up story for 1ON1 SEO Training. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
Hi there, my name is Bruce Jones, and I am the CEO and owner of 1ON1 SEO Training. 1ON1 SEO Training came to be just three years ago in 2019. Since then, it's been a challenging but incredible time with the pandemic and the difficulties of running a thriving business in uncertain times.
I started 1ON1 SEO Training to work with individuals, small businesses, and startups. The primary differentiation with 1ON1 SEO Training is that I offer personalized curricula and strategies for digital marketing and search engine optimization.
I share my knowledge with everyone who signs up, but I figured that I had to customize the approach to make things easier and more effective for my students. Being a passionate, lifelong learner and teacher myself, it was vital for me to be able to serve SEO in a way that maximizes gains for people who signed up for the service.
1ON1 SEO Training is a B2B company, so naturally, I want to accomplish many on several significant fronts. First, I want businesses to understand that SEO has several domains. People should give equal attention to these domains if they're going to quickly succeed in being competitive in their industry verticals and markets.
There's a reason why SEO is a multibillion-dollar industry, despite what naysayers have been proclaiming for over two decades ("death of SEO" and similar claims). SEO works. But not all SEO approaches work. Some approaches don't work because they're incomplete.
I'm still making over $10,000 per month, and I carry out all vital jobs from the comfort of my home office. In the beginning, I was intensely focused on serving local Chicagoland businesses, but I also now serve international clients as far as Ireland and New Zealand. Teaching SEO is as boundless as search engine optimization itself.
Before 1ON1 SEO Training, I owned a successful digital marketing and SEO agency called Design & Promote. I worked in this industry for 15 years before receiving an offer I couldn't refuse. I sold the business, and here we are – on the saddle, working in SEO education so I can impart essential SEO resources to individuals and companies who want to advance in this area.
Tell us about what you've been up to! Has the business been growing?
I have always been passionate about SEO, so I guess in a big way, I have a slightly more comprehensive and objective vision of the field. I'm happy to report that the business has grown despite the pandemic.
I've always had my eyes on steady expansion while staying true to the core of the different methods of successfully applying SEO to other businesses and market environments. Since I began 1ON1 SEO Training, I have worked with professionals and business owners from all over the US (and globally).
We're talking about multiple markets and verticals here. I work with law offices/legal professionals, cleaning companies, roofing companies, accounting firms, plumbing companies, and even kitchen renovation companies.
It doesn't matter what the business offers (whether it's products or services); what is essential is that the owners coming to me for SEO consultation or SEO education have the necessary willingness to learn and evolve with the times because SEO is a constantly changing field.
A method that seems to be working great for years can be less valuable in the next. Consumers change, markets change, and in the end, search technology evolves alongside people. In almost all situations, I think an important factor is looking closely at what makes customers happy, verifying with analytics and data, and applying what we know to our websites. I believe this is a top-notch SEO practice.
Unfortunately, with the glut of information on SEO, it's easy for first-timers to create a sequence of steps in the wrong order, or worse, some steps may not be practical. There is no golden playbook for SEO – you must work on SEO conscientiously over the years and figure out what works best.
Fortunately, my long experience in the industry as an SEO and digital marketing agency owner has given me the right tools to teach people how to do it right. I teamed up with a professional copywriter and content writer, too, and I have been implementing the essential changes to keyword research and content structure through the writer.
Since I moved to SEO consultancy and educating professionals and business owners about search engine optimization, I have also worked on specific areas in the practice that I believe can be improved. I think that I'm still learning and growing. Teaching SEO gave me a way to work on the problems that I've had in my old business to serve my clients at 1ON1 SEO Training better.
If you feel that you have what it takes to make your business thrive on the internet, then start early or start now, because trust me, the essential steps and the entire journey will require a natural progression and will also take a lot of time.
The demand for better SEO education will continue to expand, and I just happened to be here at the right time, with my experience, to provide a more suitable way to learn SEO. A significant factor in an SEO effort is the small steps or tasks that collectively contribute a positive net effect to any campaign.
These tasks are 'small' because they are not as complicated as the other steps, but they must be contracted to somebody else if the business owner doesn't know it. At 1ON1 SEO Training, I decided that maybe the business owners can learn how to do it, and they'll reap different benefits.
Two-plus years later, here we are, we have business owners who have become savvier with the technical aspects of SEO, and they're happy to know the specific steps instead of having to do a lot of guesswork from reading online or watching YouTube videos.
As I continue to expand my business to pave the way for more types of companies (even professional graphic design companies are signing up), I was also eager to show them another essential side of SEO: reports and analytics.
Any serious business owner who wants to be found online must also learn to read data – even if you're 'just' researching keywords. Previously, I talked about market fluctuations and keyword evolutions over time – these peaks and dips represent actual market activity and customers' changing perceptions and preferences.
The great thing about expanding and experimenting with SEO is that I can transfer the current knowledge as search technology continues to evolve. I believe that this is the closest and most effective way to guide and mentor people because, as I said earlier, online search is constantly changing. It's been decades since Google began dominating search. Google is getting more and more advanced, too.
The search engine (alongside others like Yahoo and Bing) now relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning, alongside natural language processing. There are also many practical aspects of SEO that I have continued developing over the years.
Previously, I talked about the importance of keywords and analytics; there are also some important considerations regarding location pages, landing pages, and blogs. I've been helping clients learn how they can combine keyword data, design, and content on their pages. Each of these domains is crucial. Search engines are getting smarter by the month, so pages must reflect newer customer experience standards (CX) and page experience.
There are a few things that keep me busy alongside 1ON1 SEO Training (and Bruce Jones SEO). As I've mentioned, I'm always exploring, learning, and expanding, and part of that process when you're an SEO professional is always practicing in new markets. Let me tell you about a couple of websites I've been working on these past few months.
My foray into social media management services, where I offer a whole array of services focused on increasing engagement through social media networks. The fun thing about social media is that once you master the essentials and find the perfect combination of content, there is no cap on progress. Social media marketing works best if you combine it with other channels, and yes, social media both needs and supports SEO.
Another passion project of mine, which again combines much of what I do into a format that I know will benefit many people. You can say that SEO Sundays is another of mine to give back to the community, and I also offer other professionals and businesses to help the site become more established through sponsorships.
I provide free SEO webinars on SEO Sundays, which we know is one of the best formats to learn just about anything. Webinars come from Web 2.0, but they could remain a top education and marketing channel well into Web 3.0 or even Web 4.0.
While nothing could replace physical seminars on a 1:1 basis, webinars are close to providing the types of interactions [found in physical workshops and lectures] that make it easier for people to pick up concepts and address the presenter simultaneously.
I post my webinars on Eventbrite, and people can sign up for the SEO webinars whenever they're ready. I'm also taking steps to enrich others by providing other free resources on SEO Sundays, including previous videos (Youtube) and even podcasts. In my last feature, I mentioned that I'm known for 'free teaching,' which may be why I've been so passionate about this industry. Teaching others and helping uplift their endeavors online is the way to go for me.
And finally, I have also been developing legal directories to get some business in that direction. Legal guides have the same relevance and value as conventional business directories, which have been around since Web 1.0. Long before Google My Business, there were meticulous and diligent local business directories somehow simulated the organization and usefulness of local classifieds and yellow pages.
Business directory listings will always be relevant as they serve a specific purpose for specific geographic coordinates. The legal directories I've been designing have streamlined user interfaces, an excellent, simple design emphasizing function, and free and premium options.
The free listing options mean the diversity of the internal ecosystems of the sites will be healthy. In contrast, the premium listings will provide additional features to law offices that need them. Working on these new platforms and websites has been great, and I am not slowing down this year.
What have been your biggest lessons last year?
Last year things were getting back to normal somewhat, but the pandemic brought some tremendous and lingering changes to the way customers behaved online. I've mentioned this previously – the need to be adaptive is a big game-changer in SEO, and just learning how to do SEO on your website.
If you can commit to being diligent with change, you will have less trouble in the future.
There's a big misconception that SEO is all technical and is somewhat devoid of connection with customer experience; far from it. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the SEO industry observes these changes firsthand whenever consumer behavior changes. SEO professionals are the first to adapt as well. Why? Because SEO on your website means you're always looking at data, trends, and evolutions, even if you are looking for keyword data.
Working through the past two pandemic years, I realized that the strategies that worked before needed to be updated. It would help if you did that after observing the trends and keeping yourself updated with the search industry. Luckily there is no shortage of news, and even the engineers at Google keep people informed whenever there are new guidelines, standards, and changes in the works.
Another important lesson I learned is that search has been forever changed, once again, by machines. I'm talking about AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning). We know that Google doesn't hold back when it comes to technology, which is probably why they're still number one.
There was a time when Google was not the foremost search engine, and there were Lycos and Yahoo and all these other search engine companies who came in first. The search was synonymous with Yahoo and not Google back in the day. But things changed. People changed, and Google knew that to keep up with an ever-expanding web and evolving needs, they had to have the technology for it.
Google and other search engines like Bing are changing the search landscape forever with AI that understands natural human language. Maybe ten years ago, companies were tinkering with voice assistive technologies to understand voice queries better. I'd say that Google is advanced with voice queries and what they're trying to master now is how they can comprehend human content to serve better search results to people.
It's one thing to understand the question or query, and it's a different ballgame altogether when machines start understanding what a blog or page is truly about. So, is it tricky for SEO? It might be, depending on where you're coming from.
However, suppose you're working with an SEO professional and addressing issues one by one and testing what works on your website. In that case, I'd say that these changes and lessons for digital marketers are all positive. If we learn how to be more adaptive and open to change, algorithm changes will not necessarily harm businesses.
What's in the plans for the upcoming year and the next five years?
Since 1ON1 SEO Training is only a few years old, there's still a lot I see happening in the next few years. For one, I'm interested in producing more webinars, podcasts, and other resources as a way for me to give back to the community.
I have been doing this since before I started 1ON1 SEO Training, and I also work with some nonprofits that support the causes that I consider dear and vital to me.
In addition, I hope to work with more professionals and business owners who want to learn about search engine optimization so I can provide them with not just the knowledge of SEO but also the breakdown of the steps and processes that contribute to the goal of dominating search engines and being more competitive in digital marketing.
Have you read any good books in the last year?
Since updates to the industry happen at breakneck speed, I mostly do my readings online. I follow blogs of intelligent leaders in SEO and digital marketing, and I try to stay updated with search technology as much as possible. I think it's a good practice to read something new daily; you will always know the best practices and changes in search technology and, of course, your market or industry vertical.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
My advice as an SEO professional (or as I'd like to call myself since I've spent 15+ years in the industry, "The CEO of SEO") will always be based on practice and the results of trying both old and new things out. My first and most crucial advice for all entrepreneurs (and people trying SEO as a digital marketing channel) is to start early.
It sounds straightforward, but I've found over the years that people put off a lot of the essential steps necessary for a business to thrive. It's not just about SEO – there are so many ways to improve an online business, but all these tasks or steps require time commitments, energy, the outlay of money, and of course, if you want ideal results, it will take time.
I mentioned in the first interview that search engine optimization is something that needs time before you see results. It naturally follows that when you have SEO done to your website, there will be contracts and commitments stating that you must commit to an SEO agency for six months or twelve months.
While 1ON1 SEO Training addresses this partially by providing excellent SEO education and the opportunity to consult with an SEO professional directly about problems on your site, for example, there's still a lot of effort that will depend on the conscientious energy of the business owner.
If you feel that you have what it takes to make your business thrive on the internet, then start early or start now, because trust me, the essential steps and the entire journey will require a natural progression and will also take a lot of time.
My second piece of advice has something to do with how you perform steps in your business process. It's good to create a blueprint of what you think should be the steps, complete with a sequence and how you should do things. However, like SEO, you should never stop learning and evolving with the times.
I know that running a successful business in less than stellar times puts enormous pressure on you as the business owner. But not changing and not finetuning your steps and not relying on analytics and data will cause problems. If you can commit to being diligent with change, you will have less trouble in the future.
Where can we go to learn more?
You can come to visit me at 1ON1 SEO Training, Facebook , LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and if you're interested in strategy and other services, there's Bruce Jones SEO and Jovie Social. Finally, for my weekly free SEO webinar, head over to SEO Sundays. Please feel free to reach out any time through these channels.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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