Steven Schneider knows SEO

TL;DR

This episode, we’re chatting with Steven Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Trio SEO.

He shares his journey from being a college student to running a successful SEO agency.

We talk about:

• Steven’s work mindset
• Treating business as an experiment
• The transition from college to entrepreneurship
• Scaling a business requires reinvestment and dedication.
• Listening to your body & avoiding burnout
• Data analysis for making informed business decisions.
• Driving content creation with excitement and engagement.
• AI Hot Take: Freelance Writing & SEO
• SEO – a long-term game
• Adapting to industry changes as an entrepreneur

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Transcript

Introduction to Steven Schneider and Trio SEO

Steven Schneider (00:05.226) I am Steven Schneider. I am a co-founder and CEO of Trio SEO. It's a blog writing SEO agency and we focus on high quality content. driving the right traffic to your brand to convert browsers into buyers. So big SEO nerd. My free time, I like to golf. I like to relax, hang out with my Basset hound. His name's Hank. And yeah, I'm a pretty big homebody. So I mean, I love working. It's kind of like a big

Rachel Meltzer (00:29.272) cute

Steven Schneider (00:34.392) video game to me. yeah, but I try and get out as much as I can, weather permitting. I live up in Washington, Seattle, so it's, we get like two months a year of sunshine. And aside from that, it's like gloomy and foggy and rainy and cold, so.

Rachel Meltzer (00:43.557) haha

Rachel Meltzer (00:48.174) Yeah, I like that outlook on work that it's kind of like a big video game. I used to get like really stressed out about my business and getting clients and like making my skills better and all these things. And then once I started treating it like an experiment and like looking at the actual data of my client acquisition processes or how my blogs are targeting an SEO and that sort of thing, it felt like, okay, I can just like make little steps of progress every single week and get better and better and enjoy it.

And it just is so much easier when it's like a game or an experiment where you're just collecting data and acting on it. that, is that something that you like developed throughout your career? I've never actually heard anyone else talk about it that way except me.

Steven Schneider (01:16.877) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (01:30.382) no, I think it was like really, it's kind of a, a really nerdy thing, I'm sad to admit, but I used to be really, really addicted to video games, like in college. mostly like RuneScape, if you're familiar with that. It's kind of like similar to like World of Warcraft, but yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (01:42.662) Yes, my friend is like a RuneScape nerd and this entire past couple of months, like a new edition just came out and he literally put a couch in his office where he has his gaming set up so his girlfriend can sit in there while he plays so they can hang out and he can still play.

Steven Schneider (01:48.758) yeah.

Steven Schneider (01:54.19) yeah.

Steven Schneider (02:00.558) my gosh, yeah, you're preaching the choir. So yeah, like in college, I hadn't played in forever. My friends like, you should start playing again. I was like, man, can't, can't, like my grades are up. Like I can't get back into it. And then I did it for like a weekend. And I remember like, it was like during like a double XP weekend. I was like staying up all night. And my girlfriend was like, so are you going to like come to come to bed soon? I'm like, no, like I'm up for like three days. Like what are you talking about? Like this is, this is what I'm like, this is the thing now. And she's like, my gosh. So I kind of had to like cut the cord on that.

And that was actually around the same time of me starting my first business. And that was kind of like how my addictive personality just kind of like let that one die and then latched on to the second. And so I kind of always had viewed it like that, especially that was around the same like my first business was when I made money online for the first time. And like, I saw that kind of transition to being a broke college kid to being like, there's actually something here and I can actually like do this as a sustainable path.

Rachel Meltzer (02:32.134) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (02:38.981) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (02:55.948) And so that's kind of where it really just kind of like fed into that entire vision of what I wanted and how I can get it. And I was like, this is, this is easy. Like I can figure this out now. Like this, I thought it was way more difficult, but it wasn't.

Rachel Meltzer (02:56.038) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (03:08.024) Yeah. And it's just as addicting to get that like your first paycheck online and like seeing success. Yeah, it feels so good. So what was that first business after college for you?

Steven Schneider (03:11.626) yeah.

Steven Schneider (03:16.277) I know.

Steven Schneider (03:23.608) So that's kind of how I learned SEO. A friend of mine and still good friend of mine, mentor in college was building affiliate sites, Amazon affiliate sites back in the kind of wild west era of SEO. And yeah, we were working on a class project together and he mentioned that he had like this business on the side and I was like, yeah, right. Like, what are you doing? Like, you're probably like, you know, making 50 bucks there, 50 bucks there. And now he was making like over 10 grand a month doing

Rachel Meltzer (03:36.422) you

Steven Schneider (03:53.014) Amazon affiliate blogs and this is in college, in college. Yeah. And I was like, I was on this like finance MBA fast track. Like I was a pretty studious person and I was like, yeah, screw that. Like I'm like everything I can to figure out what this SEO stuff is. And, yeah, he, he had a couple of sites, like I think, yeah, combined they're making probably like 15 grand a month. And with the, yeah, and with like the blogging kind of like.

Rachel Meltzer (03:54.745) In college?

Rachel Meltzer (04:18.182) That's amazing.

Steven Schneider (04:21.998) world, it's similar to real estate. How, you have like an average monthly income of like, say, like a thousand dollars a month that a blog will make, you can sell it for like 30 to 40 X that for a flip. So, you know, if it's sites making 10 grand a month, which is like a 1 % site, you can sell it for like $300,000, like essentially from your portfolio value. So, so I learned all that and I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to focus anything except for like, I went from sitting in front of the class taking notes to like,

Rachel Meltzer (04:32.27) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (04:42.982) you

Steven Schneider (04:51.886) back of the class building blogs and like sort of listening and my teacher would be like, hey, what's going on? like, I don't, I don't worry. Like, I'm not worried about this. Like this is, this is low priority. So yeah, I just, that was how I, I knew someone who was my age, actually he's younger than me, doing this thing and making more money in a month than I thought I was going to be able to make it a quarter. And I was like, it's tangible. It's within reach.

Rachel Meltzer (05:02.981) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (05:16.197) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (05:20.246) He's a smart guy, but he's not like Mark Zuckerberg. Like he's not like, you know, it's not like it's just like out of reach for me. Like if he's doing it, can definitely figure it out. and SEO and blogging just seemed like it was like how, like you're just writing an article. Like it's just a blog and like, this is working. so yeah, long story short, we scaled that up. started building that in college. We had about three, three or four sites combined, and then we merged with his other partner.

Rachel Meltzer (05:24.216) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (05:28.676) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (05:35.803) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (05:46.292) And then over like a three year period, had about 40 in our portfolio and we scaled up to seven figures. Yeah. We're doing about like 400 articles a month across support. So.

Scaling Up: From College Projects to Seven Figures

Rachel Meltzer (05:50.31) That's so many. Wow.

Holy shit, and you were writing all those articles by hand? Okay, I was like, that's a lot. I would be so burnt out.

Steven Schneider (05:59.732) No.

No, no, I did write a lot in the early days. the first, like the first website that ever made money was a barbecue website, like for barbecues and smokers and cooking. And I wrote a lot about barbecues. Like I, I always liked to joke. Yeah. No, I always joke that I'm like a jack of all trades, master of none. Like if I go to a party and I don't know anybody, I can like roll through this mental Rolodex of like whatever hobby they have. And like, I just have done.

Rachel Meltzer (06:18.746) Rolls eyes, never wants to write about a barbecue again.

Steven Schneider (06:33.704) an article or I've done keyword research on it for some point. I'm like, you're interested in like the best spinning reels under a hundred dollars. And I like insert SEO topic and like, I don't know, just like this weird thing. yeah, to your point, like, no, we didn't write. had a team of, we had a team of 30 people overseas plus writers on top of that. it was a massive operation. mean, it was just like a complete like powerhouse of a system of business. It was fun.

Rachel Meltzer (06:42.694) you

Rachel Meltzer (07:01.35) That's huge, yeah. It kind of makes you wonder. There's all this advice out there that you have to have a niche to be a marketable writer, but I don't. It depends on what you're doing. I am always like, that is not how I. I think of a niche as a target so that you know who your ideal client is so you can be connecting with the right people and pitching the right people and creating a portfolio that attracts them. I don't see it as you can only write in this box.

Steven Schneider (07:15.064) Right.

Rachel Meltzer (07:30.106) for the rest of your career and be bored. Like that is not ideal. No one wants that. No one wants that for you or from you. Yeah.

Steven Schneider (07:32.43) No.

Steven Schneider (07:38.344) Exactly. No, it should be. And I think that's kind of the like, more power to you. And that's kind of like you you should essentially build your skill set, I think around one thing, like if that umbrella is going to be writing or SEO or however you want to like focus that true north. But you essentially want all of the sub areas within that to be like a Swiss Army knife. And that's kind of how you look at it.

Rachel Meltzer (07:54.95) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (07:59.846) Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it's a good visual for sure. How old were you when you got to the point where you guys were like 40 blogs, 400 articles a month?

Steven Schneider (08:04.834) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (08:14.606) I was, I graduated college. I was a definitely a delayed college kid. was like, I took the six year path. So I graduated college at 20 to 23, think. So I was like right around that time. I graduated college and then we immediately went full time and then it took about a year and a half to reach our peak from there. Yeah, it was fun. We just pretty much like.

Rachel Meltzer (08:32.047) okay.

Rachel Meltzer (08:37.402) That's so fast though.

Steven Schneider (08:42.91) everything we did is reinvested every single dollar that we could to hammer down as fast as we could.

Rachel Meltzer (08:48.142) Yeah, yeah. And like at 24, I cannot, I was like through hiking the Appalachian Trail being a total like bum of a person trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. That's hilarious.

Steven Schneider (08:54.094) you

Steven Schneider (08:59.936) I mean, yeah, just to each their own. kind of like I said, it was such a addiction for me at that time, like it's such a valuable thing. Like I woke up and it's like all I did is like, I'd wake up early before class. I woke up at like 3am and I would work before class and I'd go home and just like work until my wife told me to stop at like seven o'clock. And she's like, okay, cut the cord, you're done. But it was just so fun because like everything was such a input output.

Rachel Meltzer (09:09.819) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (09:23.186) Ha ha ha.

Steven Schneider (09:29.454) mechanism where like the more that I worked, the more I got rewarded. So it was like this complete rush. Yeah. Yeah. And it was fun. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (09:34.298) Yeah, it's like an immediate reward too. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I could see how that would be addicting. That's how I felt when I like first started freelancing. I was working like 60, 70 hours a week. I would write for like 10 or 12 hours a day. I would spend like an hour or two networking. I would pitch for half an hour and then I was writing like two to four blogs a day after that. And it was just because I was so obsessed with the fact that I had figured out how to make money online. And I just wanted to like,

Steven Schneider (09:48.236) Yeah, exactly.

Steven Schneider (10:01.516) Right.

Rachel Meltzer (10:03.632) constantly be on a big adventure where it didn't matter where I was, I could do whatever I want, had enough money and that was like, that was it. I was so eyes on the prize and it was the perfect vehicle that I needed and that obsession drove me until I like got burnt out basically and that's, that's the cycle, you know? How, I mean obviously you've gotten burnt out before, how have you?

Steven Schneider (10:13.549) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (10:21.888) I feel it. Yep. Yep. I couldn't relate more to that journey.

Rachel Meltzer (10:32.688) How have you been able to deal with that? Because you have had a sustained career. Like now you have another successful SEO based business. So you obviously bounced back. Do you have any hot tips or is this just like, I don't know, it just happened.

Steven Schneider (10:46.19) I think the biggest thing is just like, listen to your body. Like I literally had one yesterday where I go through these like spurts of work, work, work, work out. Like I just kind of like put my body to the max essentially, which isn't probably the healthiest in hindsight, but it's kind all I know where. Like I work 10 hour, 11 hour days and I work out in between. So my brain and my body just kind of like gets to this point where it's just like sleep. And it's like. Tying off slack. I don't take like a three hour nap.

come back and I'll work and I'll go to sleep last night at like 730 and I wake up and I'm just like recharged. So I think the biggest thing is just not to push through those times. Like if I'm eating lunch and I'm like, wow, I'm so tired, but I have to do work. It's like, go sleep, like listen to your body, recharge. there's really no reward in pushing through that and trying to like be this big ego person who works 50 hours a day. It's like, okay, like cool.

Rachel Meltzer (11:33.22) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (11:45.272) Who are you impressing at that rate? Like, good luck. No.

Rachel Meltzer (11:46.359) It's not helpful. Like you're just tearing your body apart. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed that as well. I think the most important thing is like noticing, figuring out what your cues are, what your triggers are. Like how do you, when you get burnt out, like write down everything you're feeling and then you can kind of tell like, maybe writing 10 hours a day is a little too much for me. Or maybe this topic is just not for me anymore. And I'm just struggling to push through it. Or sometimes it's also like,

Steven Schneider (11:50.336) Exactly, so.

Steven Schneider (11:58.424) Yep.

Steven Schneider (12:09.612) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (12:15.546) what you're putting into your body. Like if you're not exercising enough, like I get so sluggish if I don't work out and I feel like stiff and tired or like I have just realized this year that blood sugar is so important for me. I didn't know that I had an insulin issue. I just got diagnosed this year and I was like, no wonder I'm tired all the time eating like bread for breakfast. And then I need to take a nap like.

Steven Schneider (12:17.75) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (12:29.837) yeah.

Steven Schneider (12:33.848) Go well.

Rachel Meltzer (12:43.13) The light is on in the attic now, you know? But those are the things, like, I just thought that I was just tired all the time. And then I changed how I eat and I'm not tired all the time. And I just didn't even, it didn't even cross my mind that what I was eating could affect me so much that every time I ate I needed to take a nap. Like, that's insane. And it affects your work. Like, I got, I was like, am I burnt out? Am I depressed? Like, why do need to sleep all the time? It's just sugar.

Steven Schneider (13:03.724) Yeah, 100%.

Steven Schneider (13:13.038) It's the best. mean, especially when you can figure out like those little life hacks in a way is like, wow, this little thing that I thought was going to be detrimental to my future is a minor change in my lifestyle. And now it's like, you just gained all that time back essentially. I think I love that.

Rachel Meltzer (13:16.922) Yeah.

The Importance of Data in Business Decisions

Rachel Meltzer (13:26.682) Yeah, yeah, it's like you kind of write off that part of your future where you're like, well, I guess I'll just be tired for the rest of my life. That's gonna suck. But also I think we are, humans are just, little data analysts. Like our brains are just these little data machines and everything we're doing, like you said, with that inputs and outputs and rewards, it's all like contributing and we're constantly, whether we realize it or not.

Steven Schneider (13:32.429) Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Rachel Meltzer (13:52.122) gathering that data and processing it in our heads. And sometimes we are biased in that data if we're not actually looking at real numbers every day of our lives. Yeah, and that's the thing too. Like sometimes I'll think I've done really well with my diet, for example, and then I don't have numbers to prove that I just got my first glucose monitor and I'm so excited to have actual numbers to be like, is this working? Or like I was doing my marketing for my business on Instagram for a while.

Steven Schneider (14:00.44) Sometimes. Always. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (14:20.91) And I never like had tracked my time or I was like looking at my stats, but not in a way that was making sense to inform whether or not it was worth continuing to do. And then I started doing content marketing on LinkedIn and I popped off like five times faster growth than Instagram ever was. And I could just feel it. I didn't even know from the numbers. And then I sat down one day and looked at my time tracker and my numbers from Instagram, my time tracker, my numbers from LinkedIn. And I was like,

I could spend an hour and get like 14 times the output from LinkedIn as I was from Instagram. I abandoned it immediately. was like, Instagram, I'm never doing that again. Like we are on LinkedIn now. Let's go.

Steven Schneider (14:55.289) yeah.

Steven Schneider (15:03.854) Yeah, LinkedIn's the place to be. It's such like a slept on platform, which is kind of still nice for people who are actually leveraging it. But yeah, it's fun to be kind of in that first, first or second wave, I guess, when I look at it.

Rachel Meltzer (15:10.362) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (15:16.644) I'm so obsessed with it. That's like my video game.

Steven Schneider (15:21.516) Yeah, it was for a while too. That's where I got burnt out on it. Now I'm like, it's a chore and I'm have to go through waves.

Rachel Meltzer (15:27.022) no, yeah, I think there's kind of seasons and cycles for everything, in business and in life, you know? This is, I'm entering my slow down season. I'm like, let's schedule everything in advance. I am done, like, I am ready for my vacation in December.

Steven Schneider (15:40.269) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (15:44.546) I mean, that's kind of like, mean, the content game is just such a hamster wheel. It's like, you just can't, you can't fall off. And if you do like for how long and then you come back and it's like, you lost that momentum and things change and you're out of the loop. And so it's like this constant pressure, I think is maybe the right word, but yeah, double-edged sword.

Rachel Meltzer (15:57.926) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (16:04.108) Mm hmm. Yeah. You really have to find a system that works like before I tried. This is not for me, but I tried time blocking. Some people love time blocking and I think it can be. There's always somebody who's like obsessed with it and somebody who's like, I can't possibly do it. I like to have like, I know at this time I'm going to take my dog to the park and I know at this time I'm to eat breakfast and.

Steven Schneider (16:16.894) Mmm, I love it. That's my, that's my bread and butter.

Steven Schneider (16:24.88) Hahaha.

Rachel Meltzer (16:32.454) But like I like to have just a goal for the day or something But I struggle with like if I have a time block for something else like writing content for a client for example And I get a really good idea for a post to write on LinkedIn I used to tell myself like no you can't write that post right now put it in a note and write it later and That note is the graveyard like everything I put in that note died. I never wrote it

Steven Schneider (16:55.726) you

Rachel Meltzer (16:58.488) it's all in there, you could write five years worth of content from this note at this point. And instead, instead I switched to just writing it when I was excited. And then I use my LinkedIn posts also as, because they're scheduled so far in the future, because I have so many scheduled, I use them as my newsletters as well. And then my newsletters are my blog, just SEO.

Steven Schneider (17:04.162) That's all the more reason to make it not the graveyard, come on.

Steven Schneider (17:22.284) Hmm

Rachel Meltzer (17:25.764) I just optimize it and add like FAQs, intro, outro for my blog. And then it all works together as a system. But before I figured that out, I was just like, content graveyard, you know? And so, I bet it's like, I mean, I'm gonna get the client work done no matter what, because that is what pays the bills. Someone is expecting me to do something, but I am not gonna get my content marketing done for myself if I don't do it when I'm excited.

Steven Schneider (17:39.538) No, no, no, you gotta pull it back.

Steven Schneider (17:45.944) Right.

Steven Schneider (17:55.678) Yeah, exactly. And I feel like, especially too, if you have a scheduling tool, like I use Publer and, I can just like go back and I'm like, people in social media don't remember when I posted yesterday. Like I can go back three weeks ago, reuse it. Like if I'm just too lazy, like I have probably like 15 posts that are designed. Like I don't, I never post a text only post. I think that's kind of one of my downfalls is that like I have to have a graphic or a carousel.

Rachel Meltzer (17:56.26) Bye.

Rachel Meltzer (18:01.51) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (18:20.557) Hahaha

Steven Schneider (18:23.286) So I'm just picky about that. It's like no one cares except for me.

Rachel Meltzer (18:27.194) Why don't you do text only posts?

Steven Schneider (18:31.618) I don't know. It's like this like weird, I wish I had an answer aside from like some stupid like anxiety. No, it's like not even that. It's just like a really like, like I have a nut. Like this is like the weirdest probably answer here, but like I have enough data that confirms that carousels perform better and like graphics perform better than text only. And I have enough on hand to where I can always repurpose something. So it's like, I'll never not post a carousel or a graphic because

Rachel Meltzer (18:35.835) It's personal brand.

Rachel Meltzer (19:00.346) Did you A-B test this with your own audience or this is like best practice information you're getting from LinkedIn?

Steven Schneider (19:00.524) I just know it's gonna perform better.

Steven Schneider (19:08.066) I haven't AB tested things like specifically, but, I've tracked like all my data from every single post I've ever published on LinkedIn over almost a thousand posts. And I just know that. Like if I post carousels are going to pop off compared to me writing like some long text thing. especially now that the algorithm is more tailored toward reposting, people want to repost pre content.

Rachel Meltzer (19:27.588) Sure, sure.

Rachel Meltzer (19:32.678) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (19:36.302) I'm like, not gonna repost like text only. So you just have a higher chance to get more repose with that. like, I don't know, I'm probably overthinking it. It probably doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Rachel Meltzer (19:36.646) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (19:41.178) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (19:44.766) I just think I ask because this year I just analyzed my entire past year of content and based on LinkedIn's best practices, 50 % of what I do should not be successful and it would not be pushed by the algorithm or get good reach. And the thing is like, the actual data from my actual posts, my actual audience, like all of my text posts,

Steven Schneider (20:01.1) Yeah, that's annoying too. Like that's like we met through. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

Rachel Meltzer (20:13.552) did better than my posts with images and carousels. And posts on Friday was my best, most popular post. I got like 50,000 impressions on a post I posted on Friday. And LinkedIn's like, don't post on Friday, nobody's on here. And it's like.

Steven Schneider (20:16.546) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (20:26.117) no, weekends are definitely the best time to Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (20:28.568) It's killer and it's so silly. I was like, I went into LinkedIn as like a fun experiment. I'm just going to do what feels good to me because on Instagram I was trying to do all the best practices and it never worked out for me. And so I didn't do the best practices and I'm like, wow, this is all like so contradictory. So whenever someone makes a comment, like I only post carousels cause carousels are going to do the best. always want to know like, why do you think that? Where did it come from? Cause sometimes it's not true. If you think it's a best practice, it might not be true for your own audience, but it sounds like you're like,

Steven Schneider (20:53.409) No.

Rachel Meltzer (20:57.882) actually analyzing your data and that's good. You're doing good.

Steven Schneider (21:01.134) Yeah, I mean, it's like, it's such a weird thing because like, we know, Blair, I think that's kind of how we got connected sharp. And she just posts like, I mean, I Blair for listening to this, but like she posted most ridiculous stuff and it does so well. And it makes me so mad. And like, we've talked about this so many times together and like she posted about like toilets and it gets like 300 likes or something crazy. And like, I think the difference too, is that her content and a lot of other people's content is tailored.

Rachel Meltzer (21:06.533) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (21:13.318) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (21:22.777) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (21:30.262) in such a way that that is her brand. Like her brand is the randomness, I guess, of what you're going to get. And that's the fun part of engaging with people like that. Like hers is like a true social media platform account. I think that I probably cornered myself into being such a SEO tips, tricks, beginners brand where it's hard for me to like post about something.

Rachel Meltzer (21:33.466) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (21:40.068) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (21:45.69) Yes.

Steven Schneider (21:58.712) that I'm working on, like the business that would actually like be fun for me to write about because I know that the engagement would just be not there. And like maybe the metrics don't really matter, but I also look at like my personal brand trajectory. I was like, when I first started on LinkedIn, it was like a three year experiment that I like mentally signed up for and I'm on year two. So like, if I'm going to give myself everything I have in three years, like I want it to be.

Rachel Meltzer (22:20.588) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (22:27.156) the best path forward and like I think that's part of the journey is like figuring out like what that path is defined as so who knows it changes every month.

Rachel Meltzer (22:28.55) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (22:32.332) Yeah, I think you can also kind of like, you gotta like tune your audience too. Like sometimes you gotta switch it up and start engaging with people in a different way and you'll find new people. But it's all an experiment, you know, and it's all changing all the time. Just like SEO. Like SEO has changed so much since you started. That was like, even since I started, I feel like it's changed so much.

Steven Schneider (22:42.424) Yeah.

Yeah.

Steven Schneider (22:48.817) yeah.

Steven Schneider (22:56.52) without a doubt. Like it's changing every week, it feels like. But I mean, the main thing is

Rachel Meltzer (23:00.55) It feels like a change is, the cadence of the change speeds up every year, right?

Steven Schneider (23:07.246) a hundred percent. Like, especially with all the AI stuff, it's like, you just have to strap in, but, you know, there's really no, like I always say, like, you can't really reinvent the wheel in SEO. It's just a matter of how well you can do the basics and how long you can do them for. Like essentially at some point time becomes a competitive advantage. And so if you just like anything in business, if you just do it longer and better than your competitors, like people are going to drop off because they get bored or they don't see results or it was interest or they start doing PPC or whatever.

It's like LinkedIn. You are going to try to to Instagram or Twitter. Yeah. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (23:36.772) Yeah, mean, SEO is such a long game. Yeah, TikTok. Yeah, SEO is such a long game. And also there's SEO for everything. There's SEO on LinkedIn. You can optimize your profile for search. I've done it. I've taught people how to do it. It works. It'll get you in down leads, let me tell you. And obviously there's SEO for Google. There's SEO for TikTok. But at the end of the day, it's all the same concepts, the same basics.

Keywords, strategy, longevity, repetition, consistency, right? These are all classic things that you just have to build on. All the buzzwords. We should just have like an SEO, do you have a carousel that's like SEO vocab?

Steven Schneider (24:14.55) All the buzzwords.

Steven Schneider (24:22.71) I do. Yeah, I have a 99 top terms. It crushes every single time I post it. It was like, yeah, I made it like probably a year ago and every time I post it, it's like one of my top performers.

Rachel Meltzer (24:25.964) Of course you do, of course.

You should post it like every quarter, at least once a quarter. damn! It's like, never forget it!

Steven Schneider (24:36.59) I post it like once a month. Maybe not once a month, like, yeah, whenever I need something, well, it gets funny because like, I just know that like some posts are going to perform better. So if I'm like, I don't know, a lull of traffic or a lull of followers, I'll just like throw in one of those. And I know it's going to be like a, it's a game. It's like a game.

Rachel Meltzer (24:47.696) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (24:55.982) Yeah, I do that too. I like to do rude reviews. I just take like a job, a freelance gig listing that's like really poorly written or lacking all of the information that anyone would need. And I just say like how they could do better and what they did wrong. they always, like people want to comment on that so bad, but also I'm hoping that like people who hire freelancers are also seeing these posts and maybe like.

Steven Schneider (25:01.074) That's a good one.

Steven Schneider (25:05.842) my gosh.

Rachel Meltzer (25:22.846) gleaning something from it. Like someone once commented like you're never gonna change an entire industry by writing these rude posts. You don't have to be such a bitch. And I was like, you know what? I will prove you wrong right now.

Steven Schneider (25:25.197) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (25:31.827) You're like, watch me.

Steven Schneider (25:37.153) That's hilarious. Yeah, I also do the memes always. Like I have a carousel. It's like the top, like my favorite, it's like my 15 favorite SEO memes. And it's like a compilation of the best SEO memes. And it's like the same ones every time where people love it. And then the other one is, I know, right? And it's like you have a little spice and...

Rachel Meltzer (25:47.759) You

Rachel Meltzer (25:52.162) Yeah, LinkedIn is severely lacking memes. There's GIFs but no memes. Yeah, yeah.

Steven Schneider (26:00.014) The other one is like, good morning to everyone except, and then you leave that blank and you just have people fill it in like SEO edition. It's like, did you see some crazy responses there? Like, yeah, you can use it for anything. Feel free.

Rachel Meltzer (26:09.67) That's a good one, I really like that. I would love to. I'll tag you so you can comment on it. I wanna know, I'm asking everybody this this season, what is your hot take on AI? And I wanna like ask you in two parts, because I kinda wanna hear your opinion on both of these angles, because you have a hand in both.

Steven Schneider (26:19.847) Sounds good.

The Role of AI in Freelance Writing & Understanding AI's Limitations in Communication

Rachel Meltzer (26:36.73) Do you think AI is gonna replace freelance writers? Number one.

Steven Schneider (26:41.773) No.

Rachel Meltzer (26:44.23) That's what I want to hear. Why do you think that? Why not?

Steven Schneider (26:46.119) Ha ha ha

Steven Schneider (26:51.704) I just feel like, I I guess I should say no with like a big bold asterisk on it. But like, who knows in 30 years, highly likely. Like, you know, if you think about the, just the trajectory of technology, like, yeah, for sure. Next five years, no, 10, probably not. I just think that AI doesn't have the conversational human element. It's kind of like, if you look at all of the like,

Rachel Meltzer (26:57.093) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (27:19.966) AI sci-fi movies and like all the things you probably shouldn't put your faith in when you look at the future, but you kind of have to to some degree. It's like AI will always lack a human touch and that human touch in written word is the vehicle for how humans communicate virtually. And without that, there is a massive disconnect. so until a

Rachel Meltzer (27:40.454) Mm.

Steven Schneider (27:49.012) AI can adopt conversational understandings and innuendos and like all of this like read between the lines sort of stuff. It's just not going to be there. Like we know that, like we've seen a lot with like entry level writers where if they're writing an article about the basics of SEO, they are probably going to use terminology that is A, going to make them sound smart because they don't know what they're talking about.

Or B, they're going to repeat it because they feel like the user needs to know it. What really is humans, like you can understand that if we're talking about SEO, you don't have to say SEO every sentence. So same, same kind of ideology applies to AI.

Rachel Meltzer (28:24.837) Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (28:30.948) Yeah. I also feel like the, I mean, they'll fix this eventually, but the mismatch between facts and like what AI actually spits out is a severe problem that just like cannot be solved right now. Like you can't just use AI and trust the fact the other day. Okay. I Googled cause my friend told me she ate Dave's killer bread for breakfast every day. And I was like, you do know Dave killer bread has a lot of sugar.

Like a lot of sugar, you should not be eating that for breakfast. It's why it's so tasty. You will crash. That's why you're tired. Like stop eating that. You won't be tired anymore. Same with bagels. Like bagels are awful. Don't eat bagels for breakfast unless it is a sandwich with like vegetables and meat on it. and I told her that this bread was awful and she was like, well, how much sugar is really in it? And I was like, well, let's just like Google it. I just remember it has a lot of sugar and I Googled it and it told me that has like 26 grams of sugar per slice.

Steven Schneider (29:01.198) That's why it's so good.

Steven Schneider (29:10.126) Hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (29:29.114) Which is insane, that's like a can, that's more than a can of soda. There's no way. And I went to the Dave's Killer Bread website and it has like five grams per slice, but it has like 40 or 50 grams of carbs, which do turn into sugar and is more carbs than say Ezekiel bread.

Steven Schneider (29:29.57) Mm-hmm.

It's like a half a soda, yeah.

Steven Schneider (29:44.116) Mmm. Right.

Rachel Meltzer (29:49.314) But at the end of the day, the fact is it doesn't have 26 grams of sugar in it. And Google's AI summary was like 26 grams of sugar. And I was like, this is dangerous misinformation. You could be ruining. You just like fully ruined all of Dave's killer bread. It's like sales from AI misinformation. Like this is not good.

Steven Schneider (30:00.514) The TLDR is that Rachel knows her bread, guys. That's what we learned.

Steven Schneider (30:12.078) I know that's the AI snippets are like just completely. And then it's kind of good too, because like I was thinking about this the other day is that the AI overview is kind of like. It's hurting AI's it's hurting these perception of like how people engage in the AI. Cause it's like if the first product that Google releases, which is used by like billions of people is trash, people are immediately going to think the AI is trash, which is like such a weird way to look at like the future.

Rachel Meltzer (30:33.028) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Schneider (30:40.654) trajectory of like AI, where it's like Google creates a bad product. So everyone thinks that like the product itself of AI technology just sucks. It's like, we're going to see how, it becomes adopted and who knows.

Rachel Meltzer (30:48.303) Yeah.

I just feel like Google's doing too much all at once with their AI. They have like 50 new AI tools this year. I used the research paper to podcast thing. I know it is. Yeah. It's like the space race all over again. With the AI race. But I mean, like some of them are cool. Like you can put research papers into one of their tools and it'll turn it into a podcast and you can literally listen to people talk.

Steven Schneider (30:57.89) my gosh. You can't afford not to though. It's the arms race. You have to.

Steven Schneider (31:07.246) That's the AI race.

Steven Schneider (31:18.414) Mmm, interesting.

Rachel Meltzer (31:19.928) about the thing and it was helpful. But at the same time, it's like a little weird. And there's just so much going on. Like, there's too many AI tools out here.

Steven Schneider (31:29.006) I know, it's definitely like the selling shovels during a, or the selling pickaxes during a gold mine or gold rush situation.

Rachel Meltzer (31:34.508) Yeah, yeah, totally. There's like a TikTok I follow that's like AI tools you should know about and they're in like the thousands on those videos and they've never repeated a tool. And I watch every single one.

Steven Schneider (31:45.722) my god.

I know that's why I hate like, there's so many like people it's like the top AI tools of the week. And it's like, just tell me the one like, which one you actually you're using, like, I'm just gonna wait until like the tools I use just integrate AI and after we learn something, it's like the most frustrating thing ever. Two minutes like opportunity overload.

Rachel Meltzer (32:05.37) That's so funny, because I wish, I want my tools to stop integrating AI. Some of them, I'm like, this is pointless AI. I get Y-Notion added AI, but I don't want it. Can we just turn it off? The button is in the worst spot. Please leave me alone.

Steven Schneider (32:16.504) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (32:23.863) See, I look at it more as not as like a direct use case, like immediately, like even though like Ahrefs, which I use every day, all day, has an AI feature, it sucks. Like it's absolute garbage. Doesn't mean that I'm going to use it, but what I like about it is that the tools I'm using, their team is trying to figure it out, which just means like this time, three years from now, like it's probably going be pretty solid. So I would feel more put off if...

Rachel Meltzer (32:37.062) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (32:53.132) They were just like, no, we're not going to do it. Like our tool is good enough. It's kind of like, have to at least hope that they're going to, because eventually they're going to figure it out. Like it's just a matter time. So.

Rachel Meltzer (33:02.416) That's true, that's true. And they kind of need users to test it and tell them what's wrong. Grammarly's been using AI for years and they're great. Yeah. Grammarly's my favorite. Yeah. Like, yeah, thanks Grammarly. I've been, I used to write for Grammarly and there, that was like one of my favorite gigs. I got bored. I got bored, but it was a really good gig for while it lasted.

Steven Schneider (33:04.066) Like, and Grammarly, like Grammarly is crushing it.

Yeah, they're crushing the game. Like, I love that. Yeah. So it's like, look at that. So it's like, okay, perfect. Keep doing your thing, Grammarly.

Steven Schneider (33:23.23) Ooh, name drop. Humble brag, love that.

Steven Schneider (33:31.074) That's pretty sweet. I love grammar. It's like one of my tools I will die on.

Rachel Meltzer (33:35.288) Yo, yeah, they can take my money until retirement, please. Honestly, after retirement, I'm be writing novels. Like, let's be honest.

Steven Schneider (33:39.988) You see? Yeah, the emails, it's like, you how many times I've been saved just like stupid email stuff that I don't check and it's like, do you really want to send this? And I'm like, no, thank you.

SEO in the Age of AI

Rachel Meltzer (33:50.182) Yeah, Grammarly's got your back. How do you think AI, the second part, how do you think AI is affecting like how SEO is right now? And also, like, do you have any predictions for how it might affect SEO in the future?

Steven Schneider (34:10.51) So right now, I think that there's a couple of different things. So the main thing is that it's making Google be more strict on quality, which I think is good. It is a double-edged sword because those who actually play by the book and do things good sometimes will get penalized like we saw in the last core update. Because Google just like, they don't know. Like they're taking their best shot at it.

So, I mean, it's definitely a step in the right direction for everyone, but I mean, like they're not perfect at the end of the day. So, I think that people are also trying to cut corners. Like it's just human nature that if there's a corner to be cut, like they're going to try and shave a couple of seconds off the end path. so quality content is like the, the topsy-turny thing that gets like put upside down when you do it in that equation. Like people are going to have the ability to create 500 blogs for $5. Like

Rachel Meltzer (34:45.936) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (34:56.763) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (35:09.198) Why wouldn't you? Like, and that's just really bad for the entire SEO name. cause agencies like ours who are a hundred percent human written, a hundred percent human edited, like do everything a hundred percent correct. We have great results, like all of the Google updates, we saw massive bumps in traffic, like great success through that. but people see SEO and they kind of think of like this, like scammy black hat, like witchcraft, pseudo science thing, cause they don't really.

Rachel Meltzer (35:10.229) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (35:21.968) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (35:27.878) That's awesome.

Rachel Meltzer (35:37.659) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (35:38.752) It just, it's like a, it's a grave line between AI SEO and like feeling like SEO doesn't really work. So it's hard to kind of like convey that. I think in the future, it'll be interesting to see, especially as like, you know, the chat, GBT Chrome extension came out that will like allow people to search natively through that. Have you heard about that? Yeah. So like chat, GBT relays a, a extension that you can pretty much like integrate, like, know, if you look at like, use Chrome.

Rachel Meltzer (35:56.686) I have not. Yikes.

Steven Schneider (36:09.55) So you know how like, you'll say like your G like up in the little search bar, like of like, so it'll just say GPT and you can like use GPT as like, just like you normally would search through Google, but you're essentially searching through chat to BT. essentially, yeah. I think that's cool. I think that's like a step in right direction, but like I saw this post the other day from an SEO guy. He's like to everyone who thinks SEO is dying because of chat to BT, like don't forget that chat to BT has like 10 million searches a day. Google has like.

Rachel Meltzer (36:21.2) So it's your engine instead of Google.

Steven Schneider (36:39.758) 4 billion. So it's like, it's still a long ways to go. So I think it's like something we're going to see evolve similar to like we did with the iPhone or the credit card. It's like mass adoption takes decades. We're kind of in this like early trendsetter stage right now, which is like, if you're in that world, you feel like you are that world. And so it's like, it's hard to realize that there's still my aunt uncles who have never even heard of AI and like,

Rachel Meltzer (36:40.837) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (36:53.147) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (37:01.85) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (37:08.358) I was gonna say that, yeah. They're gonna be using Google till they die.

Steven Schneider (37:10.307) So it's like if you're living in it, exactly. It's like if you're living in that world, you assume everyone's living in that world. It's like the of like the, you know, conversational bias. It's like, okay, but we're far from that.

Rachel Meltzer (37:23.92) Yeah, yeah, totally. I always tell freelancers when they're freaking out that there are going to be people who use Google until they die. And maybe Google will integrate AI, but Google will always be around. And all of these skills that you're learning if you're providing SEO as a service is applicable, like we said, to all of these other platforms. You can always just switch platforms. You can always just start offering a service for a different platform at the end of the day.

Steven Schneider (37:34.488) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (37:49.805) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (37:53.456) But it's not, I also, I do think about like the environmental implications and how much power it takes and how many like data banks we actually have for this. Like at some point, like the AI is going to max out of the infrastructure we have for it or get really close to the top end. So they're constantly building stuff to make it work. And then we're constantly feeding it power.

Steven Schneider (38:07.768) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (38:22.788) And like new power plants have opened to power AI. And that's absurd if you think about it. So I think in the background of what we see as a user in our browser, where we type it in, we just press enter, we wait a couple seconds and something comes back, there's tons of infrastructure powering that. we don't have, most of us are not paying attention to that. Most of us don't even know it exists. And that stuff is all changing in the background too. So there's just so much we don't know.

Steven Schneider (38:25.155) No.

Steven Schneider (38:29.539) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (38:51.664) but we love to want to predict the future.

Steven Schneider (38:52.258) Yeah, that's good point. Yeah, I guess I really do live in a role of privilege when it comes to thinking about that sort of stuff. And yeah, I think it's hard because like, especially the US, like things, no matter your give or take on certain views, they're heading in directions whether we want it to or not. And we can sit here and go outside and kind of wave our fists in the sky and shout out the clouds, but at the same time,

it's so, it's so hard to combat things that are out of your control and also to have a, grasses green on the other side of mentality where you're like, well, I'm using this thing. It's like Amazon, the Amazon debate where you have the, the, the, the young college kid who's so eager to fight capitalism and live the green world, but they're getting three packages a day on Amazon. It's like go shop locally. So it's like,

There's a balance between instant gratification and how that is actually created on the backend. So it's a dilemma. It's the human dilemma. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (40:01.242) Yeah, it's the human dilemma. It's that's the whole US. It's like convenience and affordability is our priority. But then at the end of the day, those things will lead to fuck ups. Yeah. Yeah. Delay gratification is not very marketable.

Steven Schneider (40:06.977) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (40:12.234) Instant gratification always wins. Yeah. It's that world.

Steven Schneider (40:20.812) Welcome to my world of trying to sell SEO.

Rachel Meltzer (40:23.014) Remember when were kids, we used to order things from catalogs, wait in the mail for a month. If I had to wait a month for a package, I think I might forget that I even ordered the thing at this point. You know?

Steven Schneider (40:28.827) yeah, geez. Yeah, that's...

Steven Schneider (40:37.37) I know, right? That's so funny because that's like one of the first things my partner told me when we were in college. He goes, think he says, one of my friends, some of my friends have tried this SEO stuff with me and the only reason I knew that you would be a good partner is because you were so fine waiting six months to make your first dollar. I know it's like, yeah, I mean, if it's going to come, it's going to come, right? You've got to wait for it. It sucks.

Rachel Meltzer (40:58.086) Yeah, yeah, you have faith in the process. It's a struggle.

Steven Schneider (41:02.36) Don't think you can out-faith it nowadays. You just got to trust the process blindly and look back and be like, what is this SEO stuff? Does it actually work? Yep, perfect.

Navigating Freelancing: Tips for Success

Rachel Meltzer (41:07.27)

Yeah, I Wanted to ask you to like I'm a solopreneur I pretty much I mean I always have been I thought about pairing up with other people I almost started an agency this year and then I was like my the person I was gonna partner up with Decide it got accepted to grad school and decided to go to grad school and I was like that's not gonna work But I also am like I don't really want to do that alone but

Steven Schneider (41:28.6) Boring.

Rachel Meltzer (41:35.276) what was it like to pair up with someone else and are you still working with that same person that you paired up with originally in college?

Steven Schneider (41:42.358) no. so the person I've paired up with college was, just like a friend of mine, his wife actually is like one of my childhood best friends, like our parents with the high school together, grew up, we were babies together, like I've known her my entire life. So it's kind of how we connected to college. and then, yeah, we rode that wave for four years with the first business and then so many things changed. We got hit with like three blacks one events in 30 days.

And that just kind of shook the business. And I was like, all right, let's figure out what's next. That was when I took a year off to of coast to figure out what was next. And then I kind of serendipitously found LinkedIn and then found my new partners. So no, things changed. But still great friends with them. see them weekly, big off pretty much every week. So yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (42:31.078) Nice. Aw, cute. Heck yeah. I think partnering in business can be really tricky and it feels scary. It feels intimidating. Yeah.

Steven Schneider (42:39.778) Yeah, I've definitely run through them. Yeah, it sucks like, especially when they're your friends too, like, yeah, I've, I've learned the hard way. Definitely. I've lots of pop-up, like, I mean, obviously I had the first business was successful and this one successful, but like, there's a lot in between. not like I got lucky.

Rachel Meltzer (42:46.276) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (42:50.904) You

Steven Schneider (43:01.162) And those were all with individual friends that were like, let's try something else. Like, cool, then it doesn't work. And you're like having to break up, essentially. It's like going through a divorce.

Rachel Meltzer (43:08.772) Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and there's so much like logistical stuff that goes into it that's outside of just the actual personal relationship that you have with that other person too. Like all of the legal stuff, appointments, how you work, like yeah, it's very complicated. So thanks for being transparent. I think people, a lot of people who are successful and have a personal brand presence on social media don't wanna talk about the roller coaster that it is.

Steven Schneider (43:20.972) Right. Yep.

Steven Schneider (43:26.392) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (43:37.106) no, I'm an open book. You can ask me anything. Yeah, that sucks. It's hard. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (43:37.774) And it's, business is such a roller coaster, you know? It's like, it's hard. Well, on the topic of being hard and the roller coaster, a lot of our listeners are freelance writers or freelance SEO strategists. And they're kind of like starting out freelancing or they just started offering content writing. Do you have any tips for like how you present?

Like at Trio SEO, how you guys present your service in a way that makes the sale or helps you get across the value of SEO.

Steven Schneider (44:18.414) Yeah, so it's hard. With SEO, mean, it's hard because like, a lot of it, like 90%, or like, would say probably 80 % of it is strategy. So, like, you can be a freelance writer and be a great writer. But if you have a personal blog on the side, and you don't have any strategy behind how those blogs are chosen, or how they're written or the structure, like, they're just not going to perform. Like, it's just simple.

So like with us, a lot of ours comes into case studies and our experience and like my partners have a lot of historical success with their businesses and like leaning into like who we are and what we've done. We always like to say that if you're new starting out in SEO, like the biggest thing I would suggest doing is like creating a site on your, on the side that you can have that luxury to fail and have something that you can tinker with and like be fine doing all this sort of stuff. And

failing. That's the biggest thing. You have to be able to thousands of times before you can realize what not to do. It's it's way easier to mess up your own site than it is to mess up a full-fledged business and realize that like, wow, like I just Dn'd X to site that's making, you know, X traffic. It's like, okay, good luck having that conversation with the client. But yeah, freelancing is kind of similar, like with wherever hiring writers, like I don't care about your resume. I don't care about

Rachel Meltzer (45:18.596) Yes.

Steven Schneider (45:44.714) any of like that sort of stuff. Like just show me that you can write, show me that it's well written. The other thing too is like I really favor people who have great communication, like prompt to respond. If you say you're going to follow up in a day, follow up in a day. Don't make me follow up with you. And we have like really strict brand briefs for all of our clients or like guidelines for our outlines. So if we give you an outline,

stick to the outline. Like don't go off the board. If you're you're gonna like woo us by like going outside the box. It's like, no, the box is pretty, pretty tight for a reason. just, yeah, just following directions. I think like just being a good human and like communicating well and like doing a good job. Like it's not rocket science.

Rachel Meltzer (46:19.844) Yeah. It's a strategic box.

Rachel Meltzer (46:30.222) Yeah. Yeah. I always tell people like, if you want to be a freelance writer and you know that you can meet deadlines, you can show up to a meeting on time. You can communicate with your client if you can't do any of those things. And even if you can do those things and you can write, like anybody can learn how to write well, especially for SEO blogs, because it's not like short form copyright. Like it still needs to be good and clear and concise, but it's not like short form copywriting where it needs to be like

Steven Schneider (46:46.808) Yep.

Rachel Meltzer (46:56.382) designed to convert and short and fits in the wireframe that the UX designer made and like all these things. It's just, it is an article, it is long form, and it just needs to like convey the information with the right personality that you were assigned. That's it. And done on time.

Steven Schneider (46:58.519) Right.

Steven Schneider (47:10.988) Yeah. Yeah. And like the other thing too is like, be open to feedback. I think that there's so many people that I've worked with over the years where they can't take feedback. And I think that feedback is me like screaming at them through Slack. And it's like, no, like we're all on the same team. Like we're all going in this right direction. Like just because I tell you that like, Hey, it's probably the best idea if you do XYZ, just don't do again. Like it's great. and like, especially with writers too, like we've had writers in the past where

Rachel Meltzer (47:16.838) my-

Rachel Meltzer (47:33.894) Thank

Steven Schneider (47:40.064) If we like, Hey, the client says to do this, like, please don't do this. And then they do it. And there is just like that, like weird friction. And it's like, they're always going to push back or well, it'd be better if we did this. like, that's like, some cases you just don't have that like creative freedom and like, that's okay. But like. Follow directions kind of goes back to that. So being able to like grow with the team, like we take a lot of pride of that with like a lot of our full-time writers where we.

Rachel Meltzer (47:44.294) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (48:02.212) Yeah, totally.

Steven Schneider (48:09.344) only like to work with writers that we look at as like, can we work with you for the next five, 10 years? And so that's how we build a team. Because if it's not a good culture fit, if it's not a good like conversational fit, like we should be able to talk freely and like feel like we're friends the other day. And if it's not like that, then it's just not gonna work out.

Rachel Meltzer (48:14.149) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (48:26.95) Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that the taking feedback thing is massive. Like when I first started freelancing, every time I would get the email notification that I got feedback from a client, I would like freak out and then I would read it and I would get angry at every comment and I would either beat myself up or be like, no, they're wrong. And the amount of like anger in my little body, it just is so unhelpful. Like

Steven Schneider (48:52.291) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (48:52.602) The client wants what they want. You either need to do what the client wants or have a very informed practical reason why you're not gonna do it that way. And it needs to be to their benefit, not to yours. And you can't take it personally. Business is not personal. When someone doesn't respond to a DM on LinkedIn, it's not personal. When someone gives you feedback, it's not personal. When someone says, don't wanna work with you anymore.

Steven Schneider (49:03.938) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (49:14.378) Sometimes I'm like that. I know. Yeah, it is. It's.

Rachel Meltzer (49:15.462) It's not personal. Like the majority of the time, it's just like, that person was busy and didn't have time or you asked them for work and they didn't have any work to give to you and they didn't want to be rude to you or like they, whatever you did went against the brand guidelines they gave you. Like it's, that's not personal. That is just, that's just strategy. That's just business. Like if they can't afford your rates, it's not because they don't like you. It's because they can't afford your rates. Like money is money. Business is business. And I think,

Steven Schneider (49:23.79) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (49:32.568) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (49:44.698) We as humans take everything personally because we have all these like little egos, know, and you can't let your ego get preyed upon or you'll never survive, especially if you don't want to fail or you don't want to get rejected. Like this is not the job for you. You don't want to fail.

Steven Schneider (49:58.784) Yeah, I mean the most difficult balance in business is balancing emotion versus logic. And sadly, the people who do it best have more logic than emotion, which doesn't actually become, it's not a good leadership trait. But those who are more emotional than logic are great leaders, but not the best business operators. So it's hard to find someone who can lean into both sides when the time is right.

Rachel Meltzer (50:04.791) Yes!

Rachel Meltzer (50:13.286) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (50:20.422) Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (50:25.624) Yeah, yeah, exactly. I totally agree. That's such a logic versus emotion. It plagues everything as human beings, even outside of business. yeah. Okay, so I have one more question for you and then we'll wrap up. But what's your best advice?

Steven Schneider (50:34.542) yeah. 100%. Yeah, it's rough.

Steven Schneider (50:49.42) I got time. This is fun. Don't worry about it.

Long-Term Mindset in SEO Strategy

Rachel Meltzer (50:50.968) Okay. That's so good. Okay. What's your best advice for service providers, like freelance digital marketers like we've been talking about, who might want to use SEO to attract their clients?

Steven Schneider (51:06.082) The main thing is having just a long-term mindset. We are really picky with who we work with and we do a discovery audit for people who are interested in services. And that's just mainly to like do our own due diligence too. But with every conversation that we go into, it has to be a six month minimum, not like from a contractual basis, but like a mindset basis. We never work with people who are like, Hey, like I'm really interested in this SEO thing. Like can we test it for 30 days? It's like, no, that's not how it works.

Rachel Meltzer (51:26.918) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (51:33.732) Yeah. It's not going to do anything for you to test it for 30 days. Yeah.

Steven Schneider (51:35.694) right. It's like, yeah, I think this is 30 days to onboard you. Like, okay, like we'll, we'll do that and leave. so yeah, the biggest thing is just your mindset and like the expectations. think expectations as a whole across any part of business are always good to check in on. like not biting off more than can chew whether like SEO shouldn't be 80 % of your marketing budget. Like you should be able to look at things as like, okay, we're going to experiment experiment with this for.

Rachel Meltzer (51:42.094) You

Rachel Meltzer (51:52.861) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (52:04.672) nine months and see what kind of results we get. And if it's good, like let's double down on this. And if not, like let's reel it back in and kind of go from there. the other thing too, that is really, really hard to communicate with clients is that as an SEO agency, we are really good at bringing you the best traffic possible, but we're not a CRO conversion agency. We're not a email marketing agency. We're not a

Rachel Meltzer (52:30.544) Mm-hmm.

Steven Schneider (52:34.804) insert other thing you will probably need to convert that traffic into buyers agency. So like, I mean, we have it all the time where people have gobs of traffic and they're like, well, this isn't working. It's like, we just 10 extra traffic. What do mean it's not working? They're like, well, it's not converting. It's like, sorry, that's like our job is to bring you the traffic.

Rachel Meltzer (52:39.738) Yeah

Rachel Meltzer (52:53.264) That's not my job. Your job is to convert. Yeah.

Steven Schneider (52:57.912) Do you have any lead magnets? How's your user experience? Like, you updating your app? Like, are you doing all this? Like, how's your newsletter? Like, well, we don't have a newsletter. I'm like, build a newsletter. Like, there's so many things. Exactly. Like there's so many things that it's, it's, there's more beyond getting traffic there. And it's like, we can bring you all the traffic in the world, but if your team is just expecting this to be a, like crystal ball solution to your leads, like that's not how it works. So.

Rachel Meltzer (53:06.918) Do you have an email welcome series? Yeah.

Steven Schneider (53:26.018) We placed a lot of emphasis early on on like making sure that that conversation is had and like we provide everyone with a free UX and CRO audit to like give them like a to-do list of like, Hey, did know that your blog featured image is like 90 % of your of the fold content? Like you should probably change that. but like you can lead a horse to water. can't make them drink situation. So, a lot of my job is like poking and being like, Hey, can you fix this? Can you please help me fix this? So.

Rachel Meltzer (53:55.564) yes, yes.

Steven Schneider (53:56.026) yeah, it's just kind of one of those things that like people expect it to be this like thing that's not, you just have to reset expectations going in.

Rachel Meltzer (54:05.638) Cause we love instant gratification, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I like that six month mindset because you need that SEO is a long game. And I think freelancers always underestimate how long it's going to take to onboard someone. Like you're not going to have a blog done in the next two weeks. If you're, if you don't have their style guide, you don't have their brand voice guide. You want to be strategy. Like if they don't give you anything and they're just expecting you to do stuff like

Steven Schneider (54:07.8) Exactly, yeah. It's like, why not?

Steven Schneider (54:17.549) Right.

Steven Schneider (54:25.88) Well, that's easy. that's easy. Yeah.

Rachel Meltzer (54:36.006) I've had multiple clients that were like, yeah, I need this like sales launch done next week. And I was like, cool. You just signed your contract yesterday. You haven't sent me literally anything about your brand. No can do. Sorry. You know, and it's hard. You have to be your own advocate. Like you have to tell that person that actually, sorry, that's not going to work out for us. Like this is the timeline I can realistically do this on. And I think a lot of freelancers like want to get the client in the bag so badly that they don't realize that they need to communicate those things.

Steven Schneider (54:36.77) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (54:48.941) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (55:05.816) Mm-hmm.

Rachel Meltzer (55:05.886) or that they say yes to things that are actually unrealistic, but they don't know they're unrealistic until they get into it. And so I love that you guys have, I mean, obviously you have this because you're an agency and you fucking shouldn't, people are paying you. But that system, that standard operating procedure that has a timeline, a clear timeline that's like, first 30 days we're onboarding you, next 30 days we're doing your first, your strategy and your first blogs. Like next 30 days, it becomes more consistent after that and then we're on a roll.

Steven Schneider (55:11.436) Yeah.

Steven Schneider (55:16.75) you

Steven Schneider (55:22.284) Right.

Rachel Meltzer (55:34.574) And then six months from now, we're gonna check in with all this data. Nine months from now, we can make tweaks.

Steven Schneider (55:40.174) The GP parts, and that's pretty much exactly what we do. Yeah. We have a, yeah, we have a 30 or the first 60 days. First 30 days is onboarding and creating the brand brief, creating the sample article, getting that approved, doing the strategy, having to kick off call. And then we do all of the month one and month two deliverables within the 60 day period. And then we meet every 90 days to go over strategy analytics. So pretty much dialed that in from what you just said. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty spot on.

Rachel Meltzer (55:59.782) Mm.

Rachel Meltzer (56:05.414) damn, I just made that up off the top of my head. It's almost like I could start an agency. That's so funny. Now I've thought about it so many times. I do have a little bit of imposter syndrome, but also just like doing it on my own while also like running my coaching business is feels like too much. But in the future, it'll probably happen. Let's be honest.

Steven Schneider (56:10.548) Yeah, you should do it.

Steven Schneider (56:23.694) Yeah, do it. Yeah, do it. Take the leap. I don't know. feel like it's a, if you find people you can trust, that's the biggest thing. Like I, I got really lucky. Like I feel like that's, I've had a lot of luck in my life and I fully lean into that. But like I said, you kind of have to know going in like, yeah, trust your gut. Like it's such a hard, hard vibe.

Rachel Meltzer (56:44.324) Yeah, totally, totally. I think that's true of getting clients individually too. Like that's just true across the board. got to trust your gut. Nice. Yeah. my gosh. Yeah. It's tough. I have templates for it if anybody wants. Well, Steven, how can people work with you and your agency?

Steven Schneider (56:50.124) No, 100%. Yeah, yeah, don't be afraid to fire a client.

Steven Schneider (57:02.03) Shout out the templates.

Steven Schneider (57:11.058) You can Google Trio SEO, T-R-I-O SEO. You can find me on LinkedIn. Yeah, I always like joking that you can Google us and find us pretty easy because we're an SEO agency. So if you can't or doing something wrong, yeah. Yeah, but LinkedIn's easy. I'm on there every day and I post content daily.