Digital Marketing and SEO in a Changing World: A Chat with Jesse Ringer

[00:00:00] 

Introduction to Jesse and Method & Metric
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Jim Banks: So Jesse's coming to us today from Vancouver. Jesse is the founder and CEO of Method & Metric. Tell me a little bit about Method & Metric, Jesse.

Jesse Ringer: Hey, Jim. Yeah. Method & Metric, is an SEO agency,that started back in 2017. we specialize in technical SEO, ,content marketing, ,analytics and conversion rate optimization. , we work with brands like TikTok and Samsung, as well as software companies, ,around the world to kind of improve their digital marketing presence and help generate more leads and traffic through their website. 

Jesse's Journey Before Method & Metric
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Jim Banks: And what did you do before Method & Metric? 

Jesse Ringer: ,you know, I foolishly jped right into, ,consulting, ,right out of school. , it was shortly after the 2008, ,financial crisis and finding secure, consistent work was quite challenging. So I started taking on, ,SEO projects here and there, and kind of just built up, ,a nice roster of clients, ,and just.

Went from that. So I did consulting work on my own for about five years, ,before I pivoted to launching Method & Metric, 

Jim Banks: It's funny, [00:01:00] I've had quite a lot of different people involved in digital marketing in one way or another. Some have been SEO, some have been paid search, right? Underlying thing that every single guest I've had has gotis that none of them planned to be what they ultimately ended up becoming, right? So again, I was a complete failure at school, did really badly at school.

But you know, I had a,I had a good sort of gift of the gab, so I was able to kind of like wing my way through life in some respects and I've, again, I've been doing digital marketing now for 26 years, and clearly you've, you've been sort of successful with your current business for eight years and prior to that sort of five years of, of doing consulting.

When you were at school, what did you think you were going to become, when you graduated?

Jesse Ringer: you know, , yeah, like going through high school. I, I was always drawn to business. I think, marketing was always a passion of mine. Like I can even remember doing a book report on how to be an entrepreneur. And so I think that that. Sentiment was always there, but SEO wasn't a thing when I was in high school and going through university, you know, taking different marketing courses, [00:02:00] I really wanted to work at an ad agency.

Mad Men was at its peak and, you know, the thought of creating ad campaigns and that kind of work really fascinated me. , writing was always something that I was very passionate about, and felt pretty confident in my abilities with, and, you know, it was always kind of in my mind that I would be in, in advertising, but, you know, as I said, things kind of.

Unfold it differently. , turns out that, ,as creative as I think I can be, I'm much more analytical and focused on, and on nbers and patterns. And I found that doing SEO work mixed with my content writing abilities, was a good way to bridge those two gaps and really find my footing, you know, in the marketing industry,

Challenges of Running an SEO Agency
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Jim Banks: And in terms of the challenges of running an agency, I mean, again, I've met lots of people that are really good at running businesses, but I've also met a lot of SEO people that are really bad at running What are the sort of skills you think you need in order to kind of be [00:03:00] successful running an SEO agency?

Jesse Ringer: you know, I think, Running your own business in any sense, is hard. And I think running an agency is a unique, a unique space in that your clientele are other business owners and other marketers. And so, you know, one piece of advice that really resonated with me is kind of just being tenacious and being patient with the process.

You know, and also realizing that you don't have to get everything perfect the first time. You know, I've been running my agency now for eight years and I'm still learning new things. I'm still figuring out how to, you know, work with employees, how to communicate our value to clients, how to really align with what a client's expectations are.

You know, all those types of things. The han connection part, I think is what really makes. A business successful, knowing the nbers, you [00:04:00] know, know how much, you know, your services cost, you know, how much it costs to actually run a business. That's huge. , but at the end of the day, if you don't have clients, like you could have all the nbers perfect, but you won't survive if you don't have clients and customers.

So I think that han connection is a huge, huge part of running any business and then an agency in particular. 

Jim Banks: And in terms of the, like you said, obviously like clients are being like vitally important to your success, success of your business. 

Finding and Working with Ideal Clients
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Jim Banks: How do you kind of go about finding clients? What, what, what do you, what is sort of things you look for in an ideal client? Do you have an ideal client or, is there kind of, you just have like anyone that comes, comes, comes to talk to you is , potentially a prosper?

Jesse Ringer: Good question. Cause I think there's two parts to that. One, I mean our work has been, is very successful. , so word of mouth is a huge part of our, our business. , SEO is not something that people can readily see or, you know, have a strong understanding of just by looking at an audit or looking at a strategy, it's hard for people to [00:05:00] really see it.

So they want to work with people that they know and they trust and, you know, being referred. Is an instant vote of credibility. And so word of mouth is a massive part of our business. The other part of that is also like demonstrating and sharing our knowledge and our experiences. , you know, speaking at events, writing content, speaking on podcasts, you know, all these types of things of just sharing our expertise, sharing my experiences around it really helped to create that trust and connection for People to want to work with us and an ideal client is, you know, person or business owner that is, you know, cognizant of where they want to be in five years, you know, they have a good understanding of what their value proposition is a good understanding of, you know, the Product market fit, who their target audience is, because SEO really does [00:06:00] take time.

And if you're still trying to figure out how you're going to generate revenue, what your value proposition is, you know, what your key services or products are going to be, it's really hard for SEO to, to really have an impact on your business because you're always changing things up. Google wants to see websites that are well established, updated regularly, and if you're constantly changing the content and reworking all of the, your products and services and the information on your website, it makes it really hard for Google to rank your website and understand what it's fully about.

So for us, you know, the clients that we have the most success with are ones that have a vision beyond. The next six months, a vision beyond the next year, and are able to really like understand and be confident in that SEO will serve all of your marketing efforts, not just the website. It'll help serve your social media.

It'll help serve your paid ad strategies. It can even help with your [00:07:00] YouTube strategy. And so those are the types of clients that we really like to work with.

Impact of AI on SEO
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Jim Banks: And, I mean, I, again, I've talked to a lot of people recently who, you know, they're, I say they're concerned, I don't necessarily know that they're concerned, but obviously they're, they're much more aware of, you know, The presence of, you know, chat GPT and AI and the fact that, you know, some of the data that they used to be able to kind of claim as being for SEO is kind of like being absorbed now and people are using perplexity and Claude and they're just, you know, the vole of leads hasn't necessarily dropped, but the kind of the actual attribution has probably dropped from an SEO perspective.

So maybe the traffic. , vole for SEO will be less, but the nber of leads may not. And people go, oh, that must mean that SEO is not working anymore. What are your thoughts on that?

Jesse Ringer: That's a great question. Cause you know, AI is omnipresent at this point. You can't avoid it. You can't avoid. Talking about it. , [00:08:00] my sense of it is that the types of queries and content that used to be really effective, like, you know, how to write a great blog post, or, you know, should I get life insurance?

Those types of questions can now be answered really succinctly. The chat GPT with other AI tools, even Google's, AI responses are extremely effective. , and so what it's doing from an SEO perspective is kind of taking away those, the need, the need to an extent of like creating content that is kind of superficial in nature.

You know, those types of questions that have like one or two types of answers, ,will be. Easily addressed by AI, where we see the advantage is again, like creating that han connection through your content, you know, creating and sharing your own [00:09:00] experiences that benefit your audience and your clients.

And then also, you know, putting more emphasis on the business pages of your website. You know, how do you drive traffic to those pages that are going to generate more leads, that are going to generate more sales, and remove kind of that low quality traffic that your blog was kind of feeding. So there's a bit of this kind of

Jim Banks: for

Jesse Ringer: for your blog is still important, but creating a more personalized, narrative, In your content, rather than just straightforward how to's or, you know, fluffy opinion pieces, you know, really get into the han side of it.

And that's, I think, where the advantage is going to be for business owners and content creators, in this new age with AI.

Jim Banks: , again, one of the sort of main topics of discussion at the moment amongst the SEO community is the impact of, [00:10:00] you know, one of the most recent updates that Google put out that kind of penalized HubSpot significantly. Like it was almost like they were. Sort of selected as a poster boy for, for kind of like what was going to happen.

, I mean, are you aware of that kind of, that happening and what are your thoughts on

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, it's definitely coming through. I mean, Forbes is another one where they were just creating tons of content that was not even relevant to the Forbes brand, like there was content on like places to vacation or best luggage, like that Forbes was publishing. And, you know, to that extent, it's like, create content that you're really You know, it's going to be very hard to compete with the entire internet on best places to vacation in 2025.

But if you create content around your own theme and their own experiences, that's much harder to replicate through AI. And so You know, that content that is really kind of just there [00:11:00] to get clicks and eyeballs, it's going to diminish greatly, you know, we're already seeing it across a variety of industries.

We're seeing it in a lot of spaces. HubSpot's a good example of that. Like, they're also going to see a huge impact in like, how do I start a marketing company or, you know, What goes into a marketing campaign, you know, those types of questions like AI will answer much better, ,than your content will. So you have to become much more cognizant of, you know, your individuality and what makes your brand unique.

Jim Banks: Yeah, it was definitely a kind of like a, A fanboy of the whole inbound marketing methodology. And we were a HubSpot partner for a period of time. , I mean, I didn't fall out of love with the kind of software. I still, still use it every day within the business. I just felt that, you know, that the, the, the way in which content is

Podcasting and Content Creation Insights
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Jim Banks: So, again, like I've been the whole podcast thing. , I did it purposefully to try and sort of give me an, an, an avenue to be able to kind of talk to other people that are relevant in [00:12:00] the industry. Right. And again, it just gives me the ability to be able to kind of, you know, I always kind of say whenever I have somebody on as a guest, I kind of go into learning mode, right?

Because I'm, I'm there to kind of try and learn a little bit more about some of the things that I'm kind of maybe uncomfortably, depleting in terms of my knowledge. , and, and so for me, I think podcasting, video content creation for YouTube, you know, the whole thing with Shorts and TikTok and, you know, LinkedIn, I mean, there's so, there's so many places now where I think video content is becoming.

You know, like very de rigueur, it's kind of becoming the norm for a lot of people, you know, there are some people that are having huge success by just being video content creators, right? That's, that's the kind of the content that create, right? And on the back of that, they're able to generate a significant amount of inbound inquiries for their business, because people realize that the skills that the, you know, maybe an agency that does kind of content creation is video content.

Production, right, is very valuable to them, right? Because I think so many people are going, yeah, I want to do a podcast, but they haven't got the [00:13:00] first clue about how to set one up, right? And again, I don't know, do you podcast yourself or do you just appear as guests? 

Jesse Ringer: I love being a guest. , I dabbled in it briefly. , but yeah, the, the time it takes to produce and edit was something that I did not have enough of a passion for, so I didn't

Jim Banks: It's funny, I've had so many people that, you know, with the benefits of hindsight, I go, wow, we should, we should like ask more questions, right? Because, you know, again, I love having guests on. But the whole process of getting guests on, setting up the time to kind of talk, you know, the editing, the production, the putting it out there, the social pro, it's like there's a huge amount of activity involved in sort of setting it all up, right?

Whereas I think a lot of people think, you know, like, one of my, I think my very first guest on the podcast was Jon Loomer, right? He's a,he,he sort of set himself a task to kind of produce a short form video on TikTok, right, every day, I think for 365 days, right? So he, I think he's like. Up to about 500 days.

So, you know, but, but what he did was he had a podcast before and he stopped it, right? But [00:14:00] he's just started it up again now, right? But it's only audio, right? And each episode is just him. And it's usually sort of 5 to 10 minutes, right? So he can, he can sit down and bang out those like all day, every day, right?

Whereas, you know, again, I don't know how long we're going to talk for, but, you know, I, I'd imagine based on the conversation thus far, it'll be a reasonable amount of time, right? So, you know, , I think sometimes, I know that podcasts became very popular when, you know, we went into lockdown because people were looking for other things to conse other than just TV.

And I think a lot of people became podcasters, started listening to podcasts. It's kind of really had a growth spurt since then. But, you know, but I, again, I was stunned at how few Podcast made it past three episodes, right? Which to me seems crazy, but, you know, I think I'm on about sort of episode 30, 35, something like that, but it, you know, it's, it's still.

I'm still comparatively new to it, right? I enjoy it, but it is time consing, right? And again, I'm very lucky. I have a kind of good team of people around me to enable me to kind of do [00:15:00] the podcast while my sort of normal day to day agency work can still get done in the background. , but you know, but I think it's, it's just one of those, with the benefits of hindsight, had I known how hard it was, I may well have just gone, I'm just going to do what it is and be a guest on the podcast.

Much easier.

The Importance of Han Connection in Business
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Jesse Ringer: you know, like, to your point, and I want to kind of echo something you said earlier, like, with all this AI stuff, this content is extremely hard to replicate with an AI, like, you can't share this kind of stuff as easily, or like our experiences and the conversation we're having is unique to us, and that content is special, you know, and it does take work and, you know, That's, I think.

In my opinion anyway, this is, that's where businesses are going to have the advantage. Han beings will have that advantage of like the work that it takes to go into these things. It [00:16:00] then, you know, creates a unique offering that AI just can't replicate yet. And maybe it will, and maybe AI will start making video podcasts of us based on previous podcasts.

But, you know, for the time being, it's. You know, a hanizing way to connect. And I think that that's where a lot of people are gravitating now is like, you know, that, that han connection, like I was just reading about the growth of like retail spaces, like people are spending money on opening storefronts again, because the e commerce is great, but it's not connection.

It's like you buy a product and you get it. Whereas. Going into a shop and experiencing that shop and buying the product, trying it on, you know, seeing how it looks and feels is something very han and something that people really still [00:17:00] need and want. And so I think to that point, these podcasts, the videos, people getting to see who you are and how you interact and like what value you bring to the world's like, it really does, Change.

And it's much more,  I don't know, powerful than AI blog posts and AI content will be

Jim Banks: Yeah, and for me, it's been very gratifying. I've been to a few live events, and I've had loads of people come up to me and say, Jim I listen to the podcast, I watch your Tik Toks, again, I'm thinking I'm completely not the demographic for Tik Toks. But, you know, but it's like, I thought, what the hell?

I mean, you know, let's, let's kind of get, go out there and just see what happens. I'm not, I'm not so egotistical that I really care about the nber of views it gets. For me, it's just about if I can touch a handful of people in the process of producing that content that helps them to make a good decision.

Whereas, you know, like a lot of the, the. The podcast guests I've had have shared some of the bad decisions they've made, then it can [00:18:00] only be a good thing for, you know, the, like I said, the evolution of digital marketing, that's, and that's ultimately what I'm trying to ensure happens is that the industry that I really was in from the very early stages, Continues to evolve and develop and everything else and like, you know, hopefully in years, years and years to come, I mean, I've got like young grandkids now, right?

I'd love to kind of think that when they get older, they might be able to kind of discover their granddad talking about some crap from 2024 25 and go, Wow, what is granddad talking about? Complete nonsense, right? So,

Jesse Ringer: Oh man. Yeah. That's not like that. And I think that that's all of it. It's like, you, we don't need to be marketing to the masses, like. It's much more effective and, you know, profitable, for lack of a better term,to,to focus on a target group, a niche audience that really cares and is invested in the content that you're creating, because that'll serve you way better than trying to [00:19:00] connect with all the millions and millions of people on TikTok, right?

Jim Banks: And so again, I mean, like a lot of the US based TikTokers that make their entire livelihood from TikTok, I mean, they must be absolutely shitting themselves, right? Thinking, God, I don't even know if in 90 days time, I'm going to have a job, right? Because I mean, yes, they can pivot and maybe go to YouTube and Instagram, but it's a completely different demographic, a completely different algorithm.

Right, everything is different, right? The monetization is different, right? The rules of engagement completely different, even though it's still the same 9 by 16 video format, right? And it's, it's still the same principles. It's still be the, you know, the, the hook, the, you know, change, you Pan every four seconds, all that sort of the normal stuff that everyone knows about.

, but you know, but I think, I think what, what to me is really quite interesting. I mean, you know, again,some,some video content creators on YouTube, they're so obsessed with like long form and they're, they're all about got to be eight minutes and this, that, and that, make [00:20:00] a good thbnail. And yeah, I get it.

I mean, I, I understand all of that sort of stuff from a mechanical perspective, but ultimately the content itself has got to stand on its own two feet, right? Yeah. You know, I think a lot of the people that watch my videos or, you know, like I said, TikTok and so on, right? They, they watch it because they know me, they like me, they trust me to kind of deliver decent value, and I'm not going to be salesy, pushy or anything like that, right?

I think a lot of people are. People that are kind of absolutely dyed in the wool, you know, make all their money from podcasting, right, they're obsessed that well, they were obsessed with the whole concept of downloads. And I can't remember who I was speaking to. But I was basically saying that, that, you know, I used to have probably 50 to 80 Podcasts that I subscribed to, where I had auto downloads switched on, right?

So all of those 80 episodes, they got published every week, would be downloaded to my phone. And when I started running out of space, I'd like to go in and just delete the episodes, right? Never listened to them, never couldn't give it, had no idea what [00:21:00] was in, in, in the content. But all their sponsorships were based upon how many downloads they got, right?

Rather than How much engagement the podcast got. So for me, I'd much rather be more, I mean, again,that's,that's why I'm, I'm probably more passionate about. Video, podcasting and YouTube because I understand the metrics better. It's all about views and you can see how long people stay, all that sort of stuff.

Whereas, like I said, I think with Spotify, Apple, Amazon music, there's so much kind of, , you know, unknown. There's so much unknown stuff in there about what did actually, what did people do, where did they get to? I just, you just really don't know right at all where people got

Jesse Ringer: You bring up an interesting point about the analytics, right? Like from a business perspective, like even just to your point, like, yes, everyone auto downloading those episodes. Great. You got subscribers. Great. But if they don't listen to your content, what does it matter? And the same goes with like a website, like getting lots of clicks [00:22:00] is useless if nobody buys your stuff, right?

Like, If they come to your website, but they don't engage with any of your content and engagement being like reading it, you know, reading the whole thing, clicking through to other pages, you know, what does it matter? You could rank for all the keywords in the world, but if nobody buys from you, you're not going to last in business very long.

And the same goes with all the, the other content too, right? Like most of these things are. Kind of vanity metrics and, you know, listens are an authentic piece, like how long people listen for and how long people, you know, stick around is an important metric, but if people are just downloading your episodes and never hearing your voice.

It's kind of, you know, a waste of time. And so I think that that data driven perspective, like the analytics that go into all of this, that help us make our decisions, it's going to become a lot clearer and much more important to get the han side of that engagement, right? The han side of [00:23:00] the data, like.

You know, what did, you know, what did watching your TikTok video lead to, you know, where, what next step did they have, you know, you're making han connections, you're meeting these people in real life, and they're coming up to you and telling you that they listen to your show and watch your content, like, that's a real connection.

And, you know, that's something that is very hard to replicate. Again, with like the AI, if you're just getting information, it's not a real connection.

Diversifying Content Platforms
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Jim Banks: Yeah, and I've had, I've had people reach out to me that said, like, when the US was going to be shutting down TikTok. They were like, Jim, I'm going to be obviously uninstalling TikTok. Where else do you publish your content? Right? They wanted to know where else I was, right? Because they hadn't found me elsewhere, right?

Even though I am elsewhere, right? And so for me, it was, again, it's quite interesting that, that, you know, , they chose that as their platform of choice. Right. And that's great. And, you know, I see a lot of people, they just focus on just doing SEO, just doing paid search, just doing email marketing. And I think in some respects, as you say, like the [00:24:00] way in which you kind of marry everything up, I always kind of say it's a bit like an orchestra, right?

You've got to have everything kind of talking to each other, right? That's where your CRO kind of feels, feeds into things, your analytics feeds into things. It gives you a kind of like an overall story of what has actually happened, right? And what impact each, each one of those things Pieces has kind of had to the end production of what.

Jesse Ringer: Absolutely. Like that's it. Like it's all these different pieces, all the different touch points that contribute to your brand and help to, you know, convince or, you know, persuade people to to work with you. And so, yeah, it's all of those things. You can't just have one channel. I mean, it does work for a lot of social folk, but at the end of the day, you got to diversify because again, someone could change the algorithm tomorrow and you'd be out of business,

Jim Banks: Yeah,I,I, again, I've always kind of said, I see some people and they, they don't, every time they share anything about their podcast, they only share the spot, the Spotify link, right? They don't, again, I mean, I have a website for mine. And from [00:25:00] there, people can kind of like, either watch the content, or they can Or listen to the content on that website.

If they want to, they can go to Spotify and like conse it. They go to Apple and conse it. YouTube to conse it. YouTube Music to conse it. , you know, where else? , Amazon Music. You know, like there's so many different places where they can go and conse it with whatever method they choose to do it, right?

But because it's my website, right? I own it, right? Spotify is kind of like it's leased land, right? I don't own anything on Spotify at all, right? They could literally turn around and go, you know what, Jimmy, no, we're shutting everything down. I remember, like, I invested heavily, heavily. I mean, again, if you've been around a while, since 2007, you probably remember Google+ right?

And they had great communities. I invested a huge nber of hours in developing Google+ communities for digital marketing and everything. And then Google went, we're not going to do this anymore. And they just shut

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, right.

Jim Banks: it. What do I do now? 

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, I'm a huge advocate of owning that content, like have it on your [00:26:00] own website, you know, you, that will, you'll always be able to drive traffic to it, whether that's through ads or social or organic search, like, there will be ways to get people to a website, but. Yeah, TikTok's a prime example.

Google Plus is a great example of like something that we put a lot of time and energy into and then it's like, you know what? It's not making us money. We're going to shut it down. And so that's, that's a big one. , I've seen businesses that were like, we're a social agency, so we're just going to have our website on Facebook

Jim Banks: I hope you

Jesse Ringer: nobody would visit their website.

The Importance of Website Performance
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Jesse Ringer: And it's hard to get business if no one can find your website. And so, yeah, owning that real estate is huge. It makes such a difference.

Jim Banks: Yeah, and again, you have the ability to be able to control the narrative of everything that kind of happens on there, right? So again, if you want to kind of do better organically from an SEO perspective, again, write good content, generate decent inbound links [00:27:00] that point to the content. , you know, again, make sure it's like really fast.

So. Make sure your lighthouse reports kind of like look okay. I always remember working with a client and and they had a website and on the the  the page that they wanted to kind of promote right they had images of all of the c suite right so the ceo picture i think was like 10 000 Pixels, Square, and was about 15 megabytes and there was 10 of them on the page, right?

All right, this is going to load really slowly, right? Particularly on mobile, right? So, , you know, from a kind of usability perspective, it was horrible, right? And, you know, Just those sorts of things. It's like it's nothing to do with SEO. It's nothing to do with paid search or anything like that. It's just like, I was thinking about the end user and that's what I've always kind of said.

Client Experience and SEO
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Jim Banks: It's all about, I don't care. I always say to people, I don't care about my clients. I care immensely about them, but I care far more about my client's clients, right? Their end users and the experience that they have. Because if they have a great [00:28:00] experience, it makes everyone's life so much easier. My client has a good experience.

I have a good experience. I can buy great media and drive great sales because I know the site converts well, it loads quickly, you know, everyone, it's a joy for people to be on it, right, rather than it being an absolute pain for people to be on it. It's like a, like a, you know, Japanese endurance game show, right?

It's kind of, you don't want it to be that,

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, like to your point with those giant images, I always like open the image in a new tab and show the client, like, this is what is loading, like, this is what the internet sees, even if it fits into a nice little box, like, This 1000 by 1000 pixel or 50, 000 pixel width kind of image, like, yeah, you got to show them, yeah, those things really mess up page speed and mess up the loading experience.

Like, if you're having to download that on your phone just to view, you know, who the CEO is, like, that's going to create a bad experience. But yeah, to your point, like your clients, clients, your clients, [00:29:00] customers, like those are the people that we're trying to serve. You know, this is who we're trying to create a better experience for.

Cause at the end of the day, if they're happy. Then theoretically your client will be happy because they're doing business with them.

Jim Banks: Yeah,which,which, you know, to me is one of the reasons why I'm less bothered so, so much about that whole, you know, You know, you've got to hook them in the first three seconds. Otherwise, they're going to move on. It's just like, honestly, if you get them for the first three seconds, and then everything after that is a complete lie, then they're never going to come back, right?

I've always kind of said that, you know, if people have a bad experience with you now, Right? Not only will they not buy from you today, they will never come back to buy from you again. Right? They're not going to go, well, I'm going to go and try and buy from them again, because I had such a bad experience with them the last time.

I'm sure it'll be better the next time. They just will move on. They just won't come back.

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree.

Recruitment and Retention Challenges
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Jim Banks: So, Jesse, I'm curious, like, obviously we talked a little bit about how you find your customers. How do you find, [00:30:00] Your team, right, your staff that kind of work with you. I mean, how do you find, you know, the recruitment and retention side of things? Because it's always been a bit volatile.

I'm going to advance my

Jesse Ringer: Yeah. It's, I think that's a, as a leader and a business owner, I think that that is always a moving target. You know, what was effective when we first launched Method & Metric to retaining

Jim Banks: I'm going to show

Jesse Ringer: And then contractors has greatly evolved, you know, as we mature as a business, we want to attract more mature employees and people that want to stick around for the long haul, you know, for, for us and like with clients,  it's really, you know, unsettling for some when they're having to, ,Learn and meet new staff every week or every other month, you know, and so retention is a big part of that.

Like that familiarity is hugely valuable. It's currency for us. So, you know, we, Like to take our time with it naturally, but that [00:31:00] always doesn't, you know, the world doesn't always allow for that. , you know, what we look for are, you know, are they a good person? Are they curious, you know, Are they, I mean, collaborative is so generic, but, you know, do they work well with others?

Do they work well with people where they have dissenting views? You know, how do they deal with someone that doesn't agree with them? How do they deal with a client that is really demanding, has really exacting standards? You know, how do they deal with, you know, managing multiple projects at one time? You know, those types of things we, we try to assess, ,you know, the, the SEO knowledge is important for sure, but we can teach them that, you know, it really matters about how well they'll work with our team and work with our clients because clients don't always fire you because the work is bad.

Like that does obviously a reason, but if, you know, they don't like working with you, [00:32:00] no amount of good work is going to save that, you know, you could create the best strategy, have the best results, but if you're. Not a good person or don't, you know, align with the same values as a client. They'll never be successful.

And so, you know, I, for a long time, used to really look for people that have worked in the service industry, because if you can handle working at a coffee shop or working as a server, working facing, you know, a multitude of Personality types in a day, like I think you can handle working in an agency because that is, that is life.

And so I think that that is a big part of it.

Jim Banks: Yeah, I mean, I had to handle the sort of the flip side of that because, I mean, obviously, you know, like, as you say, like, sometimes clients will fire an agency because, you know, there may be a personality clash with the person that they hire. 

Handling Difficult Clients
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Jim Banks: And I've had this sort of the opposite of that happen where, you know, I've fired clients because of the way they were treating my staff, right?

Because, you know, at the end of the day, [00:33:00] you know, they're my staff. They're not the client's staff, right? So it's not, it's my job to kind of like decide what they do, when they do, how they do, rather than them just kind of Taking out their anger and disappointment on that individual member of staff, right?

And it's like, whoa, hang on, it doesn't work that way. If there's something to be said, I'll say it. You can take to me, I've got broad shoulders. You can shout and scream as much as you like at me, but don't shout and scream at my staff, right? When they come up to you in tears and you're like, whoa, hang on a minute. You know, because if, again, if you don't defend your staff, then people are going to go, I don't want to work here. If, you know, the minute, the minute there's a challenging, a challenge from the client. They throw me under the bus rather than, you know, handling it in the right way. That's always the, you know, premiere telltale.

for joining us

Jesse Ringer: point. Cause it, you know, yeah. If, if your staff are not being treated fairly, they're not being respected, like they're not going to stay, like no one does to be treated like crap in, in any sense, especially not from a client, you [00:34:00] know, and, you know, in our contracts, we've actually added a whole section on like, clients have to agree, like sign part of the contract saying that they will not Discriminate, insult, ,be rude, you know, harass any of my people on any grounds, you know, any homophobic, sexist, xenophobic comments will not be tolerated and we'll cancel the contract for it.

And we've done it before because, you know, people sometimes don't realize they're being awful or being assholes. And so, well, we kind of had to put this in place and, , you know, we've used.

Jim Banks: I, I would have situations where people would be, you know, again,we,we would get approached by, you know, maybe a, again,not,not so much now, but certainly historically, you know, we would work with any vertical. So we would have all sorts of different, strange clients would come along with different products.

I mean, we had sex toys and Viagra and, you know, like porn and it, and it. [00:35:00] Initially, I took it all because I'm like, yeah, I'm just going to chase the money, right, but It soon became apparent to me that, you know, again, when you're asking people that may have strong religious beliefs or cultural beliefs to go, you can sort of sit down and go, right, I want you to kind of work on this, you know, this adult dating site that we've got here, and all the pictures of, you know, men are there.

Penises and, you know, you're thinking, oh, hang on a minute, this is, this is not what people signed up for. And equally, there would be some people who would be more than comfortable to do that. So again, it's understanding what people's boundaries are within their own within your agency, right? And make sure you deploy them in the right, most appropriate way to kind of get the best for the clients that they're working with.

Yeah.

Jesse Ringer: ask my clients there, sorry, my, my team, like if they would be comfortable if we won this project, you know, and there's been ones where we actually were approached by a right wing group in the States that was anti immigration. And [00:36:00] most of my team here are newcomers to Canada, you know, and I was like, how do you feel about this?

Like the money would be good. Right. But at the end of the day, like we're helping to support a group of people that our values don't align. And so we've had that conversation and, you know, one option, we didn't win, get the project, but, you know, one option that we considered was like, we'll donate part of the funds to a competing interest group.

You know, and put money towards the values and the positions that we care about, that we feel are important to kind of counteract, you know, that weird feeling. But again, like, it's a gut check. It's a conversation with my people. You know, I want to make sure that they all know that I think about their interests when I'm, you know, getting going after business and, you know, making sure that our values aren't compromised just so that, you know, You know, we have another project to work on.

Jim Banks: Yeah, because I, I've always maintained that no amount of [00:37:00] money can make up for, you know, the kind of, if people are feeling uncomfortable about coming to work, then no amount of money is ever going to make them happy, kind of doing what they do, right? If they're not enjoying, you know, coming to work and spending time with the colleagues that they work with, right?

You know, whether that's in person or remote, doesn't matter, it's still, you know, they have a kind of choice of where they go. And again, I'm always amazed, everyone just asses that people are only interested in the money, right? And I've always kind of maintained that most of the people that work with you, right?

The money is important, but it's not the most important piece, right? Because if they're not happy doing what they're doing, no amount of money is going to make it kind of a good job.

Jesse Ringer: I agree. Like, culture is a big part of that. And, you know, the, the quality of the work that they're doing, if they're proud of the work that they're doing, and they're feeling, you know, challenged and rewarded, like that's going to go a lot further, you know, that excitement, that enthusiasm of feeling like you're doing.[00:38:00] 

You know, the thing that you love the most when you're not the most, but you know, the work that you've chosen as your career and it's rewarding. I think that that carries a long way and you're in an environment that you feel comfortable and safe and you like the people around you, you know, That will definitely outpace getting paid lots of money.

Money is important, but it's, it's not the thing that keeps people around.

Side Hustles and Employee Transparency
---

Jim Banks: curious to know your thoughts because , like when I had my very first agency, which I set up in like 2000, right, I set it up because I got made redundant or laid off three times in 18 months.

And I just thought, you know, if I have my own business, nobody else can make me redundant, right? So that's the reason why I set it up. And , you know, employed a bunch of people, grew it pretty quickly to 25 people. And then sold it. But in the very early days of kind of having the agency, one of the things that kind of like became apparent to me was that some of the people that were working with me were moonlighting.

In other words, they were doing their own thing, right? Doing their own kind of business interests. , and I know [00:39:00] that obviously in today's day and age, this whole concept of side hustle, you know, do your side hustle and, you know, It's almost like a badge of honor. You kind of, you're not really achieving anything unless you've got your own side hustle, whether that's, you know, you're a content creator, bit, you know, YouTuber or whatever it might be.

What are your thoughts on that? Right? Because I'm curious to kind of know whether you think it's okay, whether it's not okay. 

Jesse Ringer: Yeah. , you know, that's, that's come up a nber of times, with us, you know, on one hand, as long as the type of work that they're doing is distinct enough from the work that they do for Method and Metric, I won't fight on it. If it is similar to the work that they do with us, you know, the clients need to be distinctly not relevant to us.

And so they can't, they have to be maybe a smaller business or in an industry that we don't serve, which is kind of rare, but those types of things have to be unique. Distinct. We did have to terminate someone a few years ago because, he was operating [00:40:00] a very similar business, on the side and refused to do some work for us, stating that it'd be a conflict of interest to his side hustle. , andso. Right. , andso those things are like, yeah, you know, I think if the employees are open about what they're doing, and we have a conversation about it and there's transparency involved, like, I think that's totally reasonable. , our contractors are obviously different,

Jim Banks: I kind of took a different view like later on, I think when I became a bit more mature in terms of being a business owner, I was more, more understanding and tolerant of, of it. But again, you have to kind of set some ground rules is, you know, again, you don't want to have them sending emails to your client from their side hustle email address by accident, right?

Again, it's sort of, that's not even a three strikes and out, that's a one and out, right? So, ,

Jesse Ringer: using your software to do their client work. You know, that was another one that we've come up against. I think each situation is unique. , [00:41:00] each person, you know, if you're talking to someone and someone's coming to you being like, Hey, I have this business, this is what it does. You know, there is some overlap in my work, but my client base is different.

You know, I think it's going to be a very different conversation than if they're keeping it secret from you. And then when you present them with some work that they need to do, and they're like, I can't do that. It's like. Well, that feels a little uncomfortable. And, you know, at the end of the day, I need to protect the jobs of everyone at my company, not just that one person.

And so I think that that is a big, yeah, it's always just a conversation about it. So, yeah, it's definitely

Jim Banks: I think you're right though, I think it's kind of, you know, if they're transparent and upfront about it. That's fine. But if, you know, again, if you find out about it, kind of like through, through their stupidity and making a mistake, then that's kind of different. And as you say, like if, if you've got a Google Cloud account, you find that they're storing a whole bunch of stuff in BigQuery and, you know, you get a massive bill because they're [00:42:00] using your bandwidth and everything.

It's kind of not cool, right? So, 

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, like we obviously have a variety of software that we use. , you know, I've, yeah, seen people, well, one person in particular, like running audits, for their side businesses using our software. And it's like, that's not appropriate. , and so in

Jim Banks: if they come and ask for permission. Is it okay if I do it? And then at least it's your decision then as to whether they do or not, right? You can say, Okay, yeah, that's fine. Because, you know, again, it's, as you say, sometimes, I've always maintained, like, if you have a quota, so let's, let's say you have a quota of 10, 000 queries a month, and as an agency, you use 2, 000 of them, then you're still going to be charged for the 10 regardless, right?

So to me, I'd rather it was still used, right? But, you know, used with kind of the permission rather than just being used because people just

Jesse Ringer: totally. And like, on the flip side of all this too, like the positive traits of having someone that has a side hustle, [00:43:00] you know, there's a greater chance that they'll empathize with your entrepreneurial spirit and like the, all the, the baggage and all the crap that comes with

Jim Banks: they can bring skills to the table then that they've learned in the side hustle that can be beneficial to your agency,

Jesse Ringer: They can be more adaptable

Jim Banks: So, you know, if they choose to educate themselves in, you know, using, you know, Adobe Premiere Pro to be able to kind of create client videos and things like that.

It's like fantastic. That's something that we could benefit from, right? I've had that happen in a few occasions where people have kind of gone off to do their own sort of side hustle because it's a passion thing. , and then it's become something that we've been able to leverage in the agency by utilizing their skills that they developed kind of, if you like, on their, their own dime or in their spare time.

So. 

Jesse Ringer: yeah, and you know, we've even gotten the route of like changing their employment from an employee to a contractor. So they could continue to do that. They're not a conflict of interest because they're not necessarily in any of that. All of the minutiae of our [00:44:00] clients and stuff like that, and they're still able to provide value to my company and our clients without a competing interest.

And so there's, yeah, there's lots of ways around it. If the people are transparent and honest about where they're at, you can be, you know, receiving of that and, and, you know, Return that favor and do it in a way that doesn't hurt your business and it's equitable for both parts.

Jim Banks: Yeah, so anyone listening, that's probably the nber one thing I would say take away from this episode is transparency. Be open and honest and upfront and you'll kind of go far. You know, if you try and do things kind of like by moonlighting, you'll get caught. Guaranteed you'll get caught, right? And it won't end well.

Jesse Ringer: Totally. Like those stories of, ,well, people working from home or working remotely, you know, working two full time jobs from home secretly, like not letting either employer know that they're working for the other person and like, it's, yeah, you're going to get caught. And it really like will burn, burn your bridges [00:45:00] and trash your reputation.

Jim Banks: I mean, again, I know a lot of people that, you know, work in the affiliate marketing space and they hire a lot of virtual assistants that are based in like the Philippines, a place like that, you know, and a lot of the people they have, they go, oh, I'm only paying them like four to six hundred dollars a month, which sounds cheap, and it is cheap, right?

I mean, compared to what we probably pay our staff, it's like, You know, crazy cheap, right? But what you have to bear in mind is that those, even though it's for a 40 hour work week, right? Those people probably have three or four of those kind of gigs on the go at the same time, right? So you're not getting 30 or 40 hours worth of work a week, right?

You're probably getting more like 10 hours, right? But you're paying effectively what, you know, what could amount to a You know, a much, much higher wage. It's sort of more like 1, 600 a month. Right. But again, it's still crazy cheap, but you know, it's still , proportionate to, what you're actually paying for.

So, 

Jesse Ringer: if you're getting the value from it, like we use a virtual remote assistant company and they're fantastic and, [00:46:00] you know, I know that they're not putting in 30 hours or 40 hours for me, but they're on top of everything and they get the things that we need done, done well, and I don't have to chase them for it.

So that's absolutely worth every dollar, you know, taking all of that extra stuff off my plate is super fantastic.

Balancing Work and Personal Life
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Jim Banks: Yeah, I think, you know, I think in most cases in business, certainly more so now with people working remote, you have to give them the benefit of the doubt, you know, I always kind of say, like, I can only manage the output, right? I can't manage the, you know, what, how they kind of, how they deliver it, right?

I'm only interested in the goals that, you know, that we have to achieve, right? If you have a certain amount of work that we need to do for clients, As long as that work gets done, I don't really care how they do it. So, you know, some people I have that work with me, you know, they've got children, so they kind of take 'em to school and pick 'em up and feed them, and if they're sick, they have to take it.

It's like, I don't care. Right. That those sorts of things happen. That's, that's life. Right. I just think the most important thing is, you know, again, people are [00:47:00] open, upfront, transparent. You know, talk to you, explain what the problem is. I will always, 100%, I will always, you know, err on the side of, you know, being sympathetic to their cause.

I'll never go, right, you got to do this. Your kids are going to just have to kind of suffer, right? That's never going to happen, right? So, , you know, but I, but I think it's kind of, you know, I used to sort of say to people, Your work here is like a bank account, right? You make deposits by doing good work, and then you can make withdrawals by kind of like asking for leniency in terms of time off or whatever it might be, but if you kind of keep making sort of requests that kind of do things and you're not doing anything positively, then effectively to mine, To my mind, you're overdrawn, right?

And that's not cool, right? I mean, you've got it, you've got to make deposits to be able to make withdrawals as well. And that's sometimes not always the way in which people conduct themselves. So

Jesse Ringer: Agreed. Totally.

Jim Banks: if you have

Jesse Ringer: It really.

Jim Banks: you expect people to stay until the work is done, right? And You know, that's that again, [00:48:00] that's not the norm.

That's just sometimes you have to meet a deadline, which then means you're everyone rolls their sleeves up and just gets on until it's done. Right. And, fyou know, if that means they have to call their partner and say, I'm not gonna be home for dinner in time, put some in the in the oven, and I'll get it when I get home.

Right. Not as long as it's not the norm, then it's fine. And then that way, if they say, Hey, you know, I'm going to go to the cinema, and I need to leave at three o'clock instead of five o'clock. Cool. Absolutely fine. No issue at all.

Jesse Ringer: Yeah, life happens, right? They, they spend a lot of time at your company, but at the end of the day, they're still hans, and they have other interests and other demands on their, their lives. And so I think bringing that in, that empathy to work allows you to retain staff and retain employees a lot longer because, you know, They see how good they have it and how well they are treated and respected.

Jim Banks: And they'll tell and they'll tell their friends and their friends will then want to come and work with you as well. Right. Which then, you know, makes the whole [00:49:00] recruitment side of things that much easier to do. Right. I've always kind

Jesse Ringer: Yeah. And like,

Jim Banks: If you're, if you're a sort of strict, you know, hard task master, right, then you'll probably end up having to go through recruiters and pay a ton of money to recruiters to kind of get people to come and work with you.

Whereas if you are super flexible, easygoing, you know, fun to be around, pay well, pay on time, no hassles, pay, give good time off, right, good promotion, good career paths, right, then there's every likelihood that people will stick with you longer. And encourage people to come and work with you if, you know, because they like it working there as well.

Jesse Ringer: for sure. All of that is true. Right. Yeah,

Conclusion and Contact Information
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Jim Banks: So Jesse, thank you so much for being on the show today. I've really loved having the conversation. It's been great to have you on and, obviously all your contact details of how people can get in touch with you. If they're in need for a good technical SEO agency, then, then, you know, by, By all means kind of reach out to Jesse through the links on the show notes, which will be available when the episode get published.

So it just remains for me to say [00:50:00] thanks a lot for being a guest on Digital Marketing Stories. 

Jesse Ringer: Yeah. Thank you, Jim. That was a great conversation. I appreciate you having me today.

Jim Banks: My, my absolute pleasure.