SEO Expert Ray Martinez on Angel of Words (AoW) Podcast Episode 44
Listen to SEO Small Business Help’s resident SEO expert and founder, Ray Martinez, discuss SEO strategies for small businesses on the Angel of Words Podcast. Listen as he offers tips, tricks, and tools used by search engine optimizers to maximize the visibility of your audience.
View some tips for your small business SEO here.
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SEO Expert Ray Martinez on AoW Podcast Ep. 44 Transcript
Transcript
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a-o-w-e-n-t now
today on the angel of words podcast
we have seo manager for circa
interactive mr ray martinez
on deck on the angel of words podcast
[Music]
hello everyone and welcome to another
edition of the angel of words podcast
i am your host angel of words and my
guest today
is seo manager for circa
interactive all the way from san diego
california
mr ray martinez mr martinez how are you
today
joining us today on the podcast brother
it's a pleasure to have you
Ray: Angel i am humbled and honored to be
here thank you for having me as a guest
man
it's lovely to be here i love your show
and what you've been doing
um but yeah man it's great being on here
you know
just as an seo manager every day i
you know work with larger businesses
right now
help them get found on search my big
thing is
you know i i help people market the
people and find
the right target audience and make sure
a message matches the people that we're
trying to meet
you know i want to make sure i'm meeting
people where they are and not doing too
much
Angel: well i'm glad that you already broke
into it because that was you know that
was going to be my first question like
could you break down what you do in
layman's terms man for the untechy savvy
human being
Ray:so i have this thing that i do anytime i
interview someone for an seo job i i
answer one question i ask this
question all the time what is seo yeah
and to me
seo is making sure that you are found on
search
in organic search results so when you
pull up a google search
what you'll see is you'll see ads at the
top of the page and then
right there below you'll see that first
organic result
and that to me is gravy and there's a
whole magic sauce there's a whole bunch
of different
things that you can do in terms of
tweaking on page there's a whole bunch
of things that you do
by building backlinks there's a whole
bunch of things that you do by
structuring your content and having your
content written a certain way
to really and it's you really need a
combination of all those things to earn
that number one step
um so it's you know it's like a puzzle
so every site needs something different
every page needs something different
every topic needs something different
um so it's all about all about analyzing
all those pieces and putting it together
so that
i can get the most eyeballs on my
client's website or web prop
Angel: ray that's a lot of work man i'm going
to be completely honest with you
you know i i've done obviously you know
because i'm posting stuff online all the
time
and i'm like bro like how do you even go
about
optimizing website you know websites
social media content you know uh
digital content like you know how like
what thought what goes through your head
man because you know it's a lot of
different variations
Ray: honestly you know you want it's funny
because like
so as you know i i studied advertising
in public relations so i came from like
a very
traditional background i didn't i didn't
ever intend to be an seo
Angel:at full disclosure guys ray and i went
to college together we got our
bachelor's degrees together over there
city college of new york shout out to
them
and you're right man like it was old
school like it was very
old yeah it's very traditional
Ray:and um so i actually was working for a
club
i was working as an intern um you know
the owner of the club she brought me
downstairs said hey here's my website
try to make it rank try to get it found
because we want to bring people in you
know i want to make sure so
she had me optimize a listing on yelp
she had me go through the website i did
a whole bunch of
what we call now black hat so i went on
these websites found out little hacks
and tricks that now google would
penalize your site and remove you from
the index
um and did all these yeah i did all
these you know
back in the day you could do that though
because google wasn't looking for it and
now as it's evolved over the last decade
really it's when you see penn and
penguin come in
so basically penguin was a link so
basically they were looking for sami
link
and it was looking for the quality of
your site to make sure that you're
actually putting out quality
um and it cut a lot of bad practices
down like back in the day
i could just take a bunch of text put it
in white or whatever the color the
background is
and stuff a bunch of keywords in that
text make it invisible so that you can't
see it
so i keyword stuff on the page and i
rank really well can't do that anymore
who
understands context um
so you know i took that and i really got
interested in like
ranking and kind of just worked my way
into
it and when i got here to california
after getting a master's
from the new school in new york um
i i started working at this seo agency
and i really started from the bottom up
like i started
doing all the little execution stuff
like actually link building going to
directories
submitting links so basically you know
the big thing with seo is
and this for the longest time it's been
this is the more links you can earn for
page the stronger that page is going to
ring
and there's there are certain things
that you need from those links you need
relevancy you need it you need those
links to be trustworthy
you need them to be and what i mean
relevant they need to be relevant to
your content
they need to have anchor text that
matches your content they need to
come from credible sources
on unique interesting content so you
know there's a whole bunch that goes
into this link building
but back in the day uh what you could
really do is you could just
i could just you know find a way to hack
or add like a link into a plugin
and get a million people to download
this plugin put it on their website and
i got a million links
yeah and then all of a sudden wasn't
like back then
i was like exactly so would you like
i'll talk to some of these old heads in
the game
right now and they you know these guys
own like and they will never tell you
how many websites they have
like you know 50 to 100 websites and
they're driving traffic
because you can monetize all that
you know we make money on that traffic
yeah that's you make money that's where
the money's at everybody wants that
traffic
and you know and your job so people know
is to make sure
that you optimize that traffic correct
so it's basically i'm qualifying the
traffic when we say optimization what
i'm doing is
you know there's multiple things so like
me i specialize
in three three main areas for my
industry and i deal specifically in
higher education right now
my clients are you know large
universities
um tier one schools that you know by
name
um for example you know one of the big
clients i work with is lsu online
they're my they're my favorite client um
but you know i've really watched their
site go from having
1000 visitors in january to you know x
amount now
and it's like a huge amount of growth
you know in in a short period of time
um because we did it the right way you
know and we worked as a team to make
sure that their pages are structured
in a way that their users get the most
information and it's not about
you know nowadays it's not about like
trying to please google it's about
making sure the user gets what they need
um and yeah i mean just
seo practices right now you know
i kind of lost my train stock
Angel:no no it's
all good man
that's so good but you know what do you
think is the most important thing that
people need to know about
Ray: managing website content managing okay
so
so managing website content getting back
to on page optimization
i mean you want to make sure you meet
google best practices
i mean there are best practices out
there like making sure
that your url like you know if you have
uh if you're using a content management
system and your url structure is
incorrect
like you have like numbers or file
numbers
associated with your url from a from a
php query string
so i'm getting deep into it right now
Angel: no no go ahead man because you know this is
this valuable information man
so basically if you have that query
string attached
right anything in a query string on a
url
if it's not properly being tagged or
tagged or canonicalized
is not indexed because what google is
saying is
oh you're searching for a file but i'm
not going to index that independent
file rather i'm associating this with
the url so
everything that comes up on this url
minus whatever you're searching
and so basically you're creating
duplicate pages in this site
and google and google looks at that and
they rate the quality of your site and
they lower the quality of your site
they're saying oh you have all these
different pages serving the same exact
title offering no benefits to users
my phone is talking to me because i
mentioned google um
[Laughter]
Angel: well now we know exactly what phone very
carries on them you know
exactly you didn't know now you know
guys
Ray: yeah it's pretty funny um
but yeah i mean basically when you want
to manage website content
you have to think of content in a silo
um
really from a topical structure i think
you know
so there's a one of the thought leaders
in seo is ahrefs
it's a tool that seos use to understand
links understand content
um it's a great tool to really just
diagnose a lot of issues with your site
um that particular tool they have a
they basically have a really good guide
on
content strategy and developing content
around content silos
and they they have this particular model
they talk about a page
let's say we have a page an area of your
site that's focused on fruits and
vegetables
you're a grocer and you want fruits and
vegetables so then
you get down into individual individual
fruit pages individual vegetable pages
right and then you from there you get
into the individual
fruit itself or whatever variant so you
have like
i go you know fruits and vegetables
folder
i'd go into fruits and i'd have an
orange
so i'd have a fruit page i'd have an
orange paste
each with headings so you know
fruits and a variety of you know variety
of fruits you know that'd be
my head my
what is a fruit is my next h2 that's my
next section
and from so on and so on i build out
topics to really just talk about all the
angles and
aspects of the fruit and the reason i do
this is because i'm
showing my authoritativeness i'm showing
my understanding
of this concept of what a fruit is
so then i'd get in into the individual
page and do the same thing
with similar headings and you basically
and what you're doing by creating
and adding all these headings is you're
pulling in organic keywords that you
rank for
and the more variations of organic
keywords i liken them to doorways
they're entry points to your site
the more entry points you can rank for
the more traffic you're gonna get but it
has to be relevant it can't be something
that
is not relevant to to to a site exactly
well not so much google is going to pick
up on it
it's that if you're trying to monetize
this
right say you want to generate leads
right let's say that angels and words
want
people to sign up for the monthly a
monthly newsletter
all right and you want to drive signups
if i'm driving traffic about fruits and
vegetables to your signup page they're
going to
land and say what the hell is this
[Laughter]
and so what are you going to do if you
you get faked out like that you're going
to leave
immediately i'm not going to this is
spam this is
a very that's a that's what we call a
black hat practice
actually google calls it you know
there's a certain type of cloaking where
i can send you
from one url to another that has nothing
to do with it google actually basically
like a click bait type of situation
because it's basically you're you're
you're faking something somebody out and
you're showing
you're showing one thing but you're
actually bringing them to another
property that has nothing to do with it
gosh it's it's you know it's very much
in line with like fishing practices so
it's like
you have to think about this and so we
want to make sure that when
you know you're building out a content
strategy or building out something
around your site
um it's relevant to you it's relevant to
your industry it's relevant to your
your mission it's relevant to the
services the offerings that you provide
um because then you have you get what's
called qualified traffic
and we say it's qualified traffic
because we have tools like google
analytics
which i will say is a must for every
small business owner
if you don't use google analytics you
should be it's a
free analytics tool it's a javascript
snippet that you actually put on your
site
it's called a ua code a universal
analytics code that google's created
um it's a trigger so it basically is
triggered when a user lands on your site
registers a visit it tracks their visit
um all this data is anonymized by the
way so you can't see who the user is
but you understand where users are
landing you understand where they're
navigating to your site
um and i like to use that tool to really
understand
what my what users to my site value
what's the content that resonates with
them
um and you know google analytics is a
really great tool to really diagnose
that and there's also
these engagement metrics so one thing
that google provides you with there's
something called
downstream bounce rate is essentially
the percentage of users that land on
your site and took no
action and leaving me
generally you want a bounce rate under
60 that's what
would be considered an industry norm an
average bounce rate
anything above that it's showing that
your
content is not quite relevant to the
target audience if we did that fruits
and vegetables page to angels of words
you'd probably see like a 98 bounce rate
and then you'd see you'd get leads you'd
probably get sign ups
but it'd all be spent got you
got you now when they talk about you
know because
Angel: they talk a lot about building and
nurturing an online community
right you know how do you go about that
and what exactly does that mean
Ray: i think it's just engagement i think
it's so there's a couple things that you
got to do like if
and it depends on the platform so you
know with facebook when you have a page
you know you really want to drive up the
users external from your friends and
family you want your friends and family
to like the page but you want more
people than your friends with them
and you know the real reality is you're
gonna pay
you got to pay you know x amount of
dollars a couple hundred bucks to do
what i'd call
a life campaign and especially so that
works doing those campaigns on facebook
does
add value to whatever brand you're
trying to market
yes but i i would i would also couple
that with
it needs to match your audience
Angel: gotcha
Ray: so you need to really understand
the interest of your audience so you can
target the audience you want
or if you have a mailing list you can
create what's called a look-alike list
and look alike lists in facebook
essentially you upload this list and
they look for profiles of similar
behavioral interests um and then they'll
give you this list of users to advertise
to
um it's very intuitive
i think you know especially with with
more media based and creative based
facebook's an interesting platform to
advertise to because you can do a lot
more
um i think with like a longer sales
cycle style like product
so like because i market um
i market higher education degrees
specifically you know my
you know my company's bread and butter
is master's online master's degree
it's you know it's a harder proposition
and we have to we have to use creative
in a different way to re-engage and
personalize
and that's matched across like email
marketing so it's like
it's a full inbound campaign across
multi-channels
as where you're a small business i can
almost do
all of my brand in one social media
platform
Angel: that's that's crazy man now what what
triggers should you
like you know should you use for your
website when you're monitored you know
when you're monitoring you know user
analysis what triggers should you look
for like what what what insight is
really the most important or is it just
goes depending on what you're trying to
market
Ray: i mean the data's going to tell
you a story
so i think i think i think the main
thing is looking at the story so like
for example i've seen you know i've seen
sites that have
seen a one-day spike in traffic
right and then i go back and be like man
what's i
couldn't correlate what's with this one
day spiking traffic and i speak
to the client i'm like hey you know i
saw this one oh they're like oh yeah we
had this big event
so it's like the data is going to tell
you a story
yeah right there's real world events
that are happening
that are going to translate into people
coming to your site
and actually interacting with the site
so if i see my users growing
month over month but i see a bounce rate
at 90 percent
i know that my traffic's too big i know
it's fake yeah it's no good exactly
in new york exactly
[Laughter]
you mean it's all fake yeah so like
you know one thing that you can really
look at to understand
the quality of your traffic also is time
um is the average session
like how long a user stays on site
um really you want that over a minute
at least you want a user to give you you
can't get them to give you a minute
there's something wrong because you know
what like a minute to two minutes is
just enough time for
a user to just enter their email address
or sign up for something
that they might find interesting you
know
that's just enough time but anything
under that
are they taking any value from my
content so i have to think about that
how many
pages are they going to on the site so
if it's over one page
average session i know that they're
clicking to another page
and you can actually see the user path
and say hey
you know 30 of the time users go who
land on this page
go to this page so you know that these
pages should have better interlinking
maybe you should call out
the page that they're linking to
directly on the page
Angel: nah that makes sense i mean now what
about keyword research like do
is like should you research like
keywords before you even start
doing anything of that like because i
always tell people like
i mean before you even because i mean i
feel like i
i felt like i did enough research before
i even launched angel awards podcast but
i could have done
more and one of those things that i
could have done more is keyword research
so when i'm you know
doing these things i can actually try to
drive traffic to where i'm going and i
wasn't too hip to the game on that how
do you feel about researching keywords
before you even get anything started
but is it something that you can adapt
to
Ray:keyword research is
everything in life gotcha it's
everything that i do now
Angel: is there a site
ray you can go to like
you know how do you know that you're
getting value you know valuable
information
so i think there's there are a bunch of
different
tools out there so in google ads
you can use the keyword planner if you
have an active campaign running
um you also have buzzsumo i'm sorry uh
what's it called spyfu so they have a
key keyword uh research tool you have
sem rush you have ahrefs
um there's a bunch of different tools
out there
um that you can actually use for keyword
research
also there's this really cool uh browser
plugin
um for google chrome that's called uh
it's keywords everywhere so essentially
anytime you google search anything um
you'll get a sidebar on your google
search
it'll give you related keywords it'll
give you their calls per click
um so quick research and their
difficulty
um it's like 10 bucks and you get 100
000 searches
Angel: or that's valuable that's valuable
Though
Ray: it's worth
investing in okay so and it's also
giving you related keywords and it's
giving you maybe it's giving you what
they call
long tail variance so the thing with
keywords are
you know the big part of research is not
just finding a keyword that matches your
intent
but finding one especially for small
business owners finding
one that's not competitive that you know
your site
because the big thing is you know sites
need what's called authority
google looks at how old your site is how
many links and citations are pointing to
your site
how many unlinked brand mentions there
are of your site
for example like i've seen larger brands
like an lsu brand they benefit
they'll see a huge spike in rankings
around a national championship win
they're the online school and they're
receiving it from the football team's
brand and they see this and they just
benefit because
lsu is being mentioned everywhere
facts so you
so if you are in a competitive space and
you have
larger players in the game you damn well
better believe that they're investing in
seo
and not only are they investing in seo
they're investing in valuable links but
here's the thing you could look at these
top players in the game you can see the
keywords that they they are ranking for
you can see what they're not ranking for
and you've that's where you find your
opportunity you call their gap analysis
pull all their keywords look look at
where
your keywords are looking for
opportunities that they're not ranking
for
that you can actually get in
and you're grabbing all this information
via via google analytics is this
this information is there so
this is i mean it's a variety of sources
so like when you do the keyword research
basically you're getting with certain
tools you're getting
how many searches you average searches
there are a month
how many average clicks there are a
month what if you were to bid on from a
cost per click perspective what the cost
per click would be
um and basically the more expensive a
keyword is
the more competitive
the the higher the cost per click it's
telling me
that it's driving qualified traffic
which is why the bid is so high
so i look for things like that and i
take that information on the organic
side
and i said okay who's ranking for this
so we look at the organic results and we
look at
we do what's called a link gap analysis
we look at their backlinks
how many backlinks are pointed to this
page and not only how many backlinks are
pointed at this page
how many internally how many internal
pages do they have
on their own site pointing to this page
that have their own backlink so it's
it's a pretty layered
yeah y'all you know
Angel: i love it i feel
like you're reading my mind like you
know the questions i'm about to ask you
because
i was like i'm like this mysterious
backlink i didn't know what the heck
that was to like you know i was
preparing for this podcast and now i'm
like yo backlinks that sounds
interesting that could you elaborate a
little bit a little bit more on what
that is and how valuable
it is
Ray: so we call a backlink
any any site that says hey i find
let's say somebody reviews you let's say
the new yorker reviews games in the
board's podcast and they link back
to your website that's a backwards
and that's like the highest quality
backlink because
it's the new yorker magazine and they're
a high authority
well well reputed brand linking back to
your site
so not only is it just like a really
great brand mention
links actually pass equity from a
so the more authoritative site
by actually giving you this link back to
your site
is actually passing you equity from
their site to you
[Music]
and that equity lifts up your pages in
the rankings because
to google they're saying this authority
figure
says that this piece is relevant enough
to be mentioned
on their site which is a vote of
confidence i i liken it to like a
citation
it's like all these citations if people
are citing you as a reference
it's a powerful indicator that you have
a lot of knowledge
around this topic got you so it's like
Angel: if drink dream champs for example
had a had a website and then they
mentioned me and their website and now
they're clicking on me and they're like
oh
Ray: boost your rankings up because it's like
oh this we're valuable we're we're the
influencers and now boom this is like
you know
Angel: the i guess the underlings or the people
on the rise or the people that are
joining us i would also say i would also
Ray: say what's also interesting about that
though
the power of a brand like a drink chance
right so like if norway said
you know shout out nre you know and then
he goes
angel the words podcast shout out that's
my man right just him saying that right
alone would generate so much traffic for
you
just just that alone would be uh
that it's called an unlinked brand
mention yeah would be
a valuable extension of driving traffic
well i won't hold my breath for that you
know
[Laughter]
Angel:i love jerk said i love you gloria
i feel like having a shot for nori but
hey man me too brother you know
i'm gonna have to continue this grind i
don't mind it's fun i enjoy it but yeah
no but okay but that makes perfect sense
that
what how bank links are implemented now
you know how important is coding
languages like do you have to be hip to
html
Ray: javascript css is that something that
you also
have to do as an seo manager you have to
be aware of or have some knowledge base
in so as a as an seo manager my
responsibility in technical seo
um i have no quote um i'm not a coder
like
i will not go out there and build the
code i just unders i could
go into your site i could understand
elements i could read i could say okay
this is what this is doing um for
example
you know i i looked at my own site which
is built in wordpress and i was like you
know there's
we had a whole bunch of uh jquery on
site
and we were only using it for this
animation that we could use
to get the same effect using css right
so we had a whole library loading
it was slowing down our site just for an
animation that we could do with
something else that we're already using
and we use more of so
we have this unnecessary library that
it's just and it's it's called
it's what we call render block gotcha so
you
like and you develop those things like i
i didn't go to school for that you know
i mean i i was a writer
and i ended up learning about html
because i had to structure the page and
i had to
tag headings and i was actually doing
the execution and reviewing
to make sure that the on-page
optimizations were done i had to look
for the title tag
i had to learn oh is the page
canonicalized
okay i have to learn what a canonical
tag is i have to
so you basically learn these i think the
best part about
being an seo is you can self teach
yourself i think the main thing is
diving into a site and not being scared
to look at the code
and if you're not certain of what
something is
um look it up you know
a couple months ago i had seen um
and then it's called an inherited
library system
tag or a inherit uh inherited paragraph
system attack
essentially no i like i i had known
there was ways to like basically
associate something and bring it on a
page dynamically but i'd never seen the
actual tag i was like
what the heck is this you know um
and i was like oh so i googled it i'm
like oh okay
yeah and i think that's the but it's
also it's important to note that
these languages are always updated like
there's always
new uh variations of bootstrap
new sorts of markup um and there's
that's the thing you know with seo you
always have to keep learning
you know you're gonna get overwhelmed
Angel: Ray you know because this some
this sounds like something you're
learning on a daily basis like this is
changing like second to second situation
everybody talks about busting algorithms
open and i'm like
man i would love to bust an algorithm
open but like how am i gonna go about
that they change
constantly and your job is to stay on
abreast of that man like how
overwhelming must that be sometimes
Ray: i think it's going back to the story
yeah don't get lost from story so google
analytics is a story
the users that are converting and that
are engaging and interacting with your
content that's the story
so if i know that there's an algorithm
update and my wave
decreases i need to understand what what
happened with that algorithm update
so then i start going to the blogs and
gloves speculate a bit
but you can you can get a semblance
of what's going on there you can also
look at google they're not transparent
so it's like that's like watching cnn
fox and msnbc and trying to decide
what the truth is exactly
it's it's you know it's speaking every
day
all day and it's waiting through all
that to understand
but i mean i think it's looking at the
data is going to tell you
Angel: right the data's going to tell you if i
see
Ray: exactly if i see my traffic's decreasing
right
the volume of my traffic the number of
users going down
but i see more users are converting
more users are engaging and they're
staying on longer
i'm not as worried of course i want to
increase the volume again
but i see that my traffic's qualified so
now i'm saying okay
there's qual how do i track more of this
traffic
how do i turn the knob up on
and that's where you have to use content
strategy to really
identify the areas and it's it's mapping
your users
understanding the personas the people
because there's different types of users
that engage with the site
you can get that demographic information
from your facebook from your google
analytics
it's right there on your page and i
think understanding and speaking to
those users
and speaking to you know this is a
practice called news jacket
perfect example you know the election
using using
that type of content to engage people
but not to divide but to start a
conversation
yeah that's volume gotcha like i
i had a client that's a
nursing school they're a small nursing
school
based in the southeast
they ranked number one for a bachelor of
science in
nursing
because we capitalized and we had a lot
of content
around pandemic prep and this is before
the pandemic
on just cold prevention all that
and because of the generated interest
the natural interest and
uh increased interest because of cobit
the school just naturally saw
a huge gain impression
and they're at all-time highs in traffic
Angel: wow
Ray: just because they were relevant it was
timeless
Angel: that's crazy man now now ray like these
websites
well these places that make websites for
you such as squarespace
wix wordpress like are are they valid
places to go to start or should you
start a website from scratch what do you
think like
is it is that even worth starting a
website from scratch anymore
Ray: i think it depends i mean um depends on
the nature of your business it depends
on
how much traffic you expect to receive
it depends on how you want to monetize
traffic
depends on the technology you want to
run behind that site so i think
you know there's a couple of things that
will really determine that i think for
small businesses
if you know you're going to generate
revenue and you're serious about your
business
and you want to put invest in yourself i
would say wordpress.com
um because there's a lot of plug-ins and
there's a lot of functionality and you
can hire developers
with experience on wordpress for
relatively
affordable pricing if you go on like an
upward
or like a freelancer.com type deal
you can find resources
Angel: yeah yeah yeah
basically you can find resources because
it's php is a very common language
and that's what uh wordpress.com is
built in
so yeah i mean i would recommend that um
i have
enterprise-level clients you know
clients with thousands of pages
using wordpress i think when you get
over a million and a million visits a
day
to your site that's when you need to
kind of like maybe outgrow like a
wordpress or you have to do like a
custom build with them or
do a static like build for your website
i would say
it's really pricey to build your website
build a static website
and then it's also a lot of work because
you need a developer to go into the
files
manually update files because it's not a
cms doing the updating of all the
plugins and all the languages for you
it's your developer having to go do that
and then you have to pay for dev time
and then it's about and because it's
because it's a server side you generally
end up might end up playing like
for a back-end developer which is a
little more expensive than a front-end
developer
the back-end developer does the
server-side stuff um
because you need them to set up uh ssh
so you need them to like set up uh
i'm sorry uh what's it called ftp
you need them to say that too many
acronyms in my life but
uh that's all right does that mean
ftp so you need to it's a file transfer
protocol um
so that like somebody like me if you
have a static site i can go into that
folder and add the necessary files or go
into
the files and update them from those
folders
so without going into the server doing
it remotely and just
accessing it through remotely
that makes sense now now ray how do you
use social media do you think it's
you know do you think that because a lot
of people seem to think it's like the
most important thing but how do you feel
about it like if you're
if you're trying to brand yourself like
is it something that is you should use
you know that should be 30 of your brand
40 of your brand
and it's marketing tactics like how do
you feel about social media and the
usage of it
to to you know bring your brand to the
forefront
i don't think you can survive if you're
a brand without being on social media
that's just me um that's my personal
feelings about it i think
you need to get in where you fit in and
you need to be there
where your users are and your users are
on social media
Angel: yeah it's a captured audience it's right
Ray: there tools are at your disposal
um let's say you write a blog post and
you post it on your facebook
for 20 you could boost that to like 20
000 people
it's i mean it's just it's so simple
it's it's a relatively easy tool
that and it's intimidating so it's like
it seems like a really high barrier
but you can go in there and you just
play around and you play around with the
targeting tools the interests
and you can build audiences all you want
i mean
they have data points on everyone
i don't know if you've like ever watched
like cambridge analytica it's crazy
they were no i mean you know i've been
you know i've i've i've messed around
with google analytics i look at the
analytics on my spot on my anchor you
know what i mean i look at my google uh
my analytics on my lips and
like i read like i i know what my
demographic is
my age and gender you know so i have a
good
gauge on what's happening but it's
reaching out to them that is always the
hardest part
finding you know and breaking that
algorithm you know what i'm saying that
i
always say that's like part of my life
it's looking at your audience and
setting the targeting at the right age
matching that demographic and matching
the interest
i think it's taking the insights from
facebook and throwing it in there but i
also think like
you have these larger players in the
game like like cambridge analytica that
has like
they basically did um all the digital
marketing for trump in 2016.
and what they were able to do
for years they were stealing data from
facebook like
Angel: oh yeah they got into a lot of trouble
over that yeah yeah yeah yeah
and everything that was yeah exactly
yeah so so that that
Ray: that yes that game right they were
basically reading your mind man it was
Angel: crazy
Ray: you know because they had they had nodes
so this is the type of information that
facebook has so when you're using their
targeting
in their tools you're using that level
and that depth of information
so targeting my interest
is very powerful you know i i
i've you know seen people just target my
age and by geo
and that's not enough you need to get
the right type of user
because what happens is if you're paying
per impressions
and then you get a whole bunch of you
know invalid or unqualified impressions
what does that matter you just paid for
a whole bunch of wasted ads
so i think it's just it's that
personalization that matters
i'll say it's you know for me i go from
search engine optimization
and i really want to take it to search
experience optimization
so that brand covers all these organic
spaces
yeah i think i want to get to a point
yeah no go ahead sorry i i think another
thing that like businesses need to use
because of my business
if you are a physical business or you
have an office as an online business
and you have a local geographic region
that you want to hit
you need to use that tool you need to be
there just to be in the map you need to
claim your space you need to claim your
business
because if not somebody else is going to
claim your business
and uh make money off and you see this
with what's called what are called ghost
kitchens i'm not sure
yeah i've heard of that and then you
know i i i also heard that actually
you know posting your business and and
getting like your friends and family to
write reviews
for google is a good way to go because
nobody's doing that nobody want you know
let's say you have a where you're
working from home
or the or you know you're working from
home you you you have your studio or
whatever there a lot of people don't
want to post
their their business from their home
location but that helps you
you know get get people to to come to
come to your
to your brand because maybe a lot of
people in your area aren't doing it and
it might help drive consumers your way i
would i would put a disclaimer there
though
because you know depending on where you
live you know what there is
like if you live in an hoa and they say
you can't have a business from your
house and then you put up a visit
oh man oh man that's just
bad news i would say but yeah i mean if
you have like a brick and mortar like if
you want to
use your home office as a location you
want to say this is my headquarters
why not you can set a service area
say hey you know i do i only work with
people
in east coast time zones because it
matches my time
so i would use just google my business
as a tool
because not only that it's you're
inputting your brand information
and it's something that google can use
to populate a knowledge graph about your
brand
so when you use google my business you
actually get a full knowledge graph with
whole panels you can add pictures
and not only can you add pictures if you
add images that are relevant
to the services you provide you can
actually drive qualified traffic
with those pictures
now ray there's a lot of people out here
that you know they give all this false
information on marketing
on youtube and and whatnot like you know
what platform or person do you think is
a credible source of information for
strategies of this nature
like if you're gonna go online and try
to do you know try to do your research
because you know i'm lucky i got you to
come on the podcast but a lot of people
don't have that you know what i'm saying
so i yeah i would say i would i would
say like
you gotta look at the industry thought
leaders and that and those are like
you know legacy for seo would be like a
mod
you have ahrefs which is um they're
really good with understanding content
links
all things seo um backlinko which is
really good understanding what we call
off page seo which is that backlink
building
um yeah so i mean you have
neil patel who's another great resource
he has a boy he has his own agency but
he also has a blog
resource which really gets into the nuts
and bolts of seo
um there's search engine journal search
engine land
um sc round table
i i can get you know uh traffic think
tank
those guys are really great um and it's
like an
innovative group of seos um i actually
have a colleague who's a member of
traffic big thing
um and they it's they're nationwide and
they basically
get together and put their heads
together and talk about things that are
driving
traffic and how they you know what the
the trends that they're seeing
in terms of the industry and where
they're going and the things that
they're using data for
and how they're putting content together
so those guys are really interesting
yeah i mean there's tons of resources
out there i'd say hubspot
another great resource for businesses
hubspot is a marketing technology
company uh they really
understand tracking help people
implement forms
um and help with automation so really
cool stuff there
yeah i mean i now really like where do
you think a small
business right should should invest
their money
when you're when you're starting off in
terms of like money so i would say
okay i would say if you have a local
area
you want to do local seo so
there's three letters that you as a
business this is the acronym you need to
know
it's nap name nap
nap nah okay name address phone number
got you and the reason you need to know
that is it needs to be consistent across
all your citations and there are
you know this is a service that i
actually do on the side
is i'll do cleanup for small businesses
because it's
you know you you're talking about a
volume of websites you know you got to
go
through the yellow pages through so you
have tons of sites like yellow pages
that actually
index and list your site and you need
those to all be consistent
with all the matching information and
and all having the same website
and google sees this as a trust fact if
you have inconsistent information
ranking locally is going to be really
hard
now ray i got to be honest i'm really
impressed with the depth
of information that you're providing
today it really makes me proud that
we come from the same alma mater you
know what i'm saying
and i you know um i i preface that to
say this
you know there's 16 percent of latino
americans in the workforce
you know six percent of them
six percent of latinos overall are
in stem you know there's 18 million
you know high-paying jobs in stem you
know
what what do you think why do you think
that there's less
of us in this situa you know in stem and
these kind of
you know tech in this tech space and you
know we seem to be all in
hospitality or service industry or you
know
things that aren't sustainable because
as you can see the pandemic has wiped
that out
you know a lot of people are
unemployment and a lot of latinos aren't
unemployment you know so
it's funny man not really funny but it's
it's interesting that you bring this
up because it's like that that last part
really is close to home because i got a
homie
that just you just brought it who's in
new york who's really affected
and i know i mean ray you know i used to
you know i worked in the service
industry when you met me bro
you know i was bartended when you met me
they're like yeah so it's like
i think it's i think it's fresh i think
i mean when i go back to like
so i was in an honors courses like
i grew up part of my childhood in puerto
rico right and i came from puerto rico
back to new york to public school in
brooklyn
in a predominantly white neighborhood
and i wasn't put in the highest honors
class which i should have been
i was putting the one right below it
right in high school
i got a 75 in an honors math class
i wasn't put into a regular math class i
was put into a remedial math class
that set me back like i didn't do
pre-calculus so i went in my college
path
i had never even done calculus i took
the easiest math i could possibly take
and i regret that because now i'm going
back and i'm doing data statistics and
analysis of data
and now you're working with numbers all
day yeah i i actually i do forecasting i
i use decay formulas
so like i use a fair bit of statistics
and statistical analysis every day
um i think it's an oppression thing i
think especially when you're
a new york city public school student
you know if you're going to be labeled
you know they label kids and when you
label kids and when you when you ship
kids off to the bad class
like i remember this particular school
in brooklyn you know they had the
it was the special class which is the
honors class
which was separated from all the other
kids and then you had the
you know 6-1 6-2 6-3
and these classes were all separated
by varying degrees of behavior
oh man that's horrible so it's you're
basically segregating kids
[Music]
by social and behavioral issues so i say
i directly relate this back to stem and
i think what i do see though um
and i see this nationwide is a pushing
of the stem and theme movement
to a lot of communities of color
and i would recommend yeah i recommend
parents letting your kids
get getting your kids into science and
math
um at a young age and trying to find
resources
around like after school programs for
math
you know getting them you know workbooks
around
science and math and having little
experiments and encouraging that sort of
behavior because
i think in the long run when you look at
the engineering space and when you look
at a lot of these higher
paying job spaces it's where we can
really make our mark and move and
actually change infrastructure
and change and affect people's lives
and i agree i mean i agree with you
because i mean
those spaces right now which really is
going to drive the economy moving
forward
and if we don't get that type of
education man we're going to be lacking
you know we're going to be slacking
behind everybody else and it's not going
to be good for the development
you know you know we can't be doing the
same things with the benefit of everyone
but we can't be doing the same things
our parents were doing 20 30 years ago
you know like i noticed my little niece
is learning the same way i was 30 years
ago and it's disconcerting
i mean i think i think there's i think
there's a definite disconnect
in the way that especially like in
public schools the way kids are taught
and like i can tell you like so when i
went to school in puerto rico you know
my father worked for the federal
government i went to a private school
on a military base um on fort buchanan
and puerto rico
tilly's elementary school and i had two
classes
i had two teachers in the classroom for
15 kids
teaching me bilingual so i have one
teacher speaking english one teacher
speaking spanish
and all the resources and attention you
could possibly imagine
and i remember going from that
environment to going to
brooklyn and there's 40 kids in the
class
with one teacher
and you know it's it's natural for this
teacher to be overwhelmed and not want
to deal with
all these kids i mean like that that's
and it's crazy because these teachers
care because like i'm i'm friends with
that sixth grade teacher on facebook hey
yeah
yeah teachers cut to the max you know
this guy no you know what she's let me
tell you though like she's friends with
all my classmates like she has
like people without professors bro
what's up
you know what like i'm friend i'm
friends with uh i'm friends with
applebaum
and then professor guy jackson in
contact with miss applebaum honestly man
i gotta thank her man
a lot of the things that she taught me
still ring in my head till this day i'll
be completely honest with you
honestly when i started the role as seo
manager uh she reached out to me she
goes oh seo manager
i see i see mr martinez so i mean it's
great
to have that connection and i think look
your education is what you make of it
and i think you know it's a two-way
street so i think as a parent
you got to be invested in your kids
education you got to show your kid that
it's a value
because if you show them it's a chore
like i think one thing that i've seen a
lot of just in my own
family and this is me speaking
anecdotally is i've seen
you know education uses a punishment
like you do do your homework or you know
it's like reprimanded to do your
homework or to do something or to learn
or punish yourself to make you read
now that's that type of behavior should
be encouraged that should be a reward
you know like for you know i was blessed
with parents that said hey
you know you have this homework but you
know the moment you do your homework
your free time is yours to do whatever
you want
so when i was a kid i would do my
homework in class
so while my friends were like either
talking or taking notes i was doing the
homework already
because i knew that if i could show my
mom that my homework was done
my free time was mine um
and so like i had i had i was blessed
with parents that like
set that value of saying hey education
matters
um wow i hope a lot of people are
listening to this because what you said
was just so profound
right now because it makes perfect sense
man if you breed it like that if you you
know
if that's the culture then that's what
you're gonna that's what you're gonna
create
you know that's the type of person
you're going to create wow that's deep
you know i i i i see it all the time i
think it's hard now especially
to balance as a parent your kids want
for things
you know they want to screen they want a
device
and you want to be the parent to give
them that but devices are bad
we have to understand that a lot of the
social media a lot of the tools that
we're using we may think that they're
free they are not free
we are being experimented on with
behavioral things and that
it's it can be as simple as a button
color change
they're trying to right we're being told
we're being told when people don't even
know that we're being told what we like
what we don't like
we're thinking that we're making these
decisions no they're making those
decisions behind the scenes or the tech
people
behind the algorithms and everything
yeah they're you know they're suggesting
things for you to purchase it's all
about commerce
yeah um you know like i i
i get into arguments with my own parents
because i'm like yo step away from the
television because
it's captured you're trying their their
job is not to inform you their job is to
make money for their bosses
their job is to keep you engaged as long
as possible to say hey look at what my
engagement rate was so i can charge x
amount of dollars for an ad placement
that's what their job is that's what
that's this is there is no difference
between an msnbc a cnn and a fox news
they're all they're all doing the same
thing and they all switch positions and
varying and they all
rotate because and you know
the people who all the people who work
at those agencies they're not bad people
they're just people making a check
yeah it's like me and you just working
man
exactly they're just people making a
check and i think
we say oh big media and overlords no
it's not about that it's about 15 it's
about that extra 15
per second i can charge for an ad space
because if i can do that to scale
that's a couple million dollars that i
added in a month
as a company right we can have a whole
conversation about that man yeah anyway
so crazy it really is man people really
need to pay attention to what they're
consuming why they're consuming it
and be conscious of it you know what i'm
saying because like at the end of the
day you are a dollar they're
they're buying your attention i mean
they're they're using your attention to
make money
you know i mean but it that it is what
it is you know um
just consume what you feel you're gonna
need to
better your life that being said we've
reached the point in the podcast mr
martinez
where it's time to play five words
with angel
[Music]
all right all right mr martinez on five
words with angel i'm gonna give you a
word you're gonna give me the first word
or
phrase that comes to your head are you
ready yeah let's do it here we go
the first word is social media
chaos
[Laughter]
second word is google
opportunity the third word is
websites lead generation
the fourth word is s
oh the all-powerful
and now there's the curveball uh
obviously it's the fifth word that's
what i like to do
the fifth word is the city college of
new york baby cuny
best times of my life oh man you ain't
lying you ain't lying man
oh my god now mr martinez um you know
before we end the podcast please let us
know
what you think makes a good seo manager
and where to find you man if people have
questions about what we just spoke about
today
on the angel awards podcast yeah i mean
so i think what makes it really great
seo manager's attention is detail um
uh curiosity and um wanting to learn
more and understanding how things work
and liking to put together puzzle pieces
i think really
that aspect and understanding just
writing
if you like english if you like
literature you like writing topics for
actually writing pages or writing doing
any sort of content
seo is pretty interesting and would be
right up your alley
um and in terms of reaching out to me um
if you're a small business
reach me at raymond.martinez.com
and once again that's
raymond.martinez.com
um with any inquiries uh yeah
i'd love to hear from you guys i you
know my specialty you know where i
really cut in and started with this
business was with small businesses so
now one more thing ray could you give a
message out to the kids out there man
that might want to get into what you're
doing right now
yeah i mean it's just keep at it work
i mean i i think your path is never
defined
um you'll find your way into whatever
you're gonna do and
and if you're gonna get into digital
marketing i would say
just run with it i would say own every
space and don't be scared to ask
questions
ask a lot of questions and you know
learn from experience get your hands
dirty don't be scared to do the hands-on
work and learn the execution because
where you actually grow is through the
execution through the execution you
learn the strategy
and from strategy you can understand
where the money's at
well mr martinez thank you for joining
us today on the age of awards podcast
my good friend is it really good to see
you man great to see that you're
busting it down out there in san diego
and you know we will be in touch
moving forward man for sure awesome
that's a pleasure it's a pleasure
brother
i'm i'm honored to be on the podcast man
it was great sharing this time with you
um and thank you to all the viewers out
there
what's up y'all i hope you enjoyed my
interview today with seo manager for
circa interactive mr ray
martinez dropping that knowledge about
how to get
your stuff popping via google
via anything that has to do with
anything
media now you know where to find us
on uh youtube at angelo wordsent
follow us on spotify apple podcast and
wherever you get your podcast
leave a donation if you want to at aow
ent
on cash app and if you want to know what
i'm up to on my social media
catch me at angel of words ent all one
word
thank you for tuning in everyone
we'll talk to you later
[Music]
you