1-on-1 Web Design Coaching Session | Episode #5 Ryan Sciolla

1-on-1 with Patrick is a series of web design coaching sessions for wannabe web designers.

In this episode we have Ryan Sciolla from Philadelphia, USA! We discuss:

• Where Ryan is at in his web design journey
• Ryan’s business model
• Ryan’s experience with outsourcing his website’s copy and blog content
• I review the content he paid for
• Why Ryan is struggling to focus on what to learn first
• I review Ryan’s website
• The importance of great copywriting in web design
• Using web design and SEO to create sales funnels
• Why web design courses are bogus and how to learn for free instead
• Ryan gives me feedback on my content
• The importance of taking action and closing thoughts

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Tools & Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Weebly
• Elementor
• Ahrefs
• Ryan’s Website
• Are Web Design Courses Worth It?
• Staying Focused on What Matters Most
• Learning Web Design Fast

Episode Transcript

Where Ryan is At in His Web Design Journey

Patrick: What’s going on, man?

Ryan: How’s it going?

Patrick: You’re in Philly, right? 

Ryan: Yeah. 

Patrick: Let’s get into it. Why don’t you start by telling me where you’re at with your web design journey? 

Ryan: We’ve lost a real pain; let me tell you. It’s easy to use, but there are so many intricate issues. It just drives me up a wall. I started a program, I was really just– I’m a very successful loan officer. I got injured with that injury I told you about. And I’ve been for the longest time trying to figure out what can I do to really build a business on my own to be self-employed, so I have something that when I ended up leaving the mortgage business, I can travel, spend time on my daughter, my family, and just live the way I want to because I’ve put the groundwork in now. And I’m one of the most highly motivated people you’ll ever meet. Like, I just spent 45 to 80 hours on Weebly in the last five days. 

Patrick: Wow. 

Ryan: Like trying to learn everything I could. And also, the biggest thing I was trying to figure out in my head was how do I find the right program to learn? And I was on YouTube and I just started getting those click funnels. So I started putting in my spam email because I don’t really care about that one. I just wanted to get as many ones that could come through. And finally, I came across this one video where the guy was talking about internet real estate. The way he meant that was if you build a website correctly where proper SEO management, learn all the factors, learn the training that I can give you, we can really help you out, and you will be very profitable.

Only one of the overhead is like if you actually bought a piece of real estate out in the market. And that really fascinated me with the way he presented that market, so I was interested. I put my info in, they scheduled a follow-up call. It’s not like you just give your credit card. Like, you can’t even get in unless they give you a whole phone call interview, which took two hours. I signed up contents, phenomenal trainings are great. The only thing is though, the only thing he gave me training on how to build a website, which he had built his own, which I followed was the Weebly one. But, I decided, this is what I want to do. I want to build my SEO consulting company. Obviously, I just started learning these two weeks ago. So I’ve already built the website, got the domain, got the logo, got the office address. Like, I’m just being proactive. I’m trying to check things off that. I know what I can, you know, things that I’m capable of doing, I want to do now. And I’ll just learn as I go.

Now, I’m not really too worried about getting clients and stuff because even my first day selling mortgages, I talked to the director of university of Pennsylvania, no idea what I was doing, he said just start making calls. I sold him on a deal. And to this day he thinks like I’m a revered expert. Now, I’m eight years in the business now; that was my first eight years ago. So I was like, I know I have the capability to sell and help people out. I’m very personal person. Like you, your style kind of resonated with me. Of all the BSSE on YouTube, just really talk directly to people in a way like it’s friends or family. You’re not trying to BS anything, and you give your opinion and views on what worked and what didn’t work. So I really appreciate, and I’m very grateful and thankful you took the time to at least talk to me because I was just blown away by the way your content is on your blogs and YouTube videos. I just want to say thank you directly for that. 

Patrick: Oh, I appreciate that, yeah, no worries. I enjoy doing this. It’s fun being able to talk to people like all over the world. So far, I’ve talked to people from Nigeria and India and Europe, States, and Canada. It’s pretty cool. So you decided on Weebly because of that program that you had signed up for? 

Ryan: Yeah, I had no idea how to design a website. So I was like, this is my first real training tutorial, so I just followed it step by step. 

Ryan’s Business Model

Patrick: What do you think of it so far? You said you’re having a problem with it or found it frustrating.

Ryan: You want to pull up my site to see it?

Patrick: I do, yeah. You have one already? Sorry, so it was philadelphiaseoconsulting.com. Okay. So you’re going after SEO clients, not website design?

Ryan: No, I’m doing it all. I named the company SEO consulting, but when you’re on the site, I mean we do web design service.

Patrick: Got you.

Ryan: I mean, you have to outsource it. I already have three web developers I have found on Fiverr that’ll do the work and I could charge double what they would charge me to still get the client in. And if I have a whole team of people I just outsource to for content writing, blog, writing web development. And I feel like in a way that’s fine because like I am a consultant like now that I’ve deemed myself that, so I want to have a team of people around me. But at the end of the day, yes, time is the most valuable asset that we have, so if we can allocate it accordingly and do what we need to do when let other people do the hard work behind the scenes. That’s great. But also want to learn how to do the damn stuff. Like I saw you said, you know, you started in the first year or so just hitting up local businesses and showing them what the new design would be like for their homepage. I like to do that; I just don’t know how many more hours. If it took me 40 to 60 hours to look at what you’re looking at now, it might take me 20 years to do what it would be on WordPress. So that’s why I’m kind of– because I figured Weebly is just drag and drop. I don’t even do HTML or any of it, you know?

Patrick: Yeah, so with WordPress, I don’t do coding either. I don’t do HTML and CSS and all that stuff. The big reason why I migrated to WordPress is because I discovered that plugin Elementor that basically integrates a drag and drop style CMS into WordPress. It still retains that drag and drop functionality that I needed to give to my clients so that they can edit their site when they need it to, but also adds the customizability and added features of WordPress, whereas, Weebly is more limited in a lot of senses.

Ryan: Is that what elements or is the ability for your client, once you publish the site, they can update an image or put anything they want in there?

Patrick: Elementor is a full CMS. It’s a full content management system. So imagine you’re actually taking a platform like Weebly and superimposing it over the WordPress platform. It basically kind of takes it over and it’s so it’s a way you can design the web. I think you’d actually like it a lot based on what you’ve told me so far. But I noticed you’re already blogging. Are those posts you wrote?

Ryan’s Experience With Outsourcing His Website’s Copy and Blog Content

Ryan: No, no. I found somebody in Pakistan; I really did. I found someone in Pakistan I’m paying like 10, $15 for– not even that I paid $25 for 3000 words, so 1000 word blog posts and its SEO optimized. I liked her writing style. And as you said in one of your other– I was listening to some of your podcast like, it’s impossible to find, look at the crap that’s on there now. I paid a hundred dollars for this site. I gave her exactly what– I did all the keyword research, Ahrefs at everything. I took it all, gave it to her. She repetitively keeps saying the same stuff. If you want this, if you’re looking for, I was like, I’m going to kill myself. Like I don’t understand how I paid for this. And then I’m trying to rewrite it, in my actual writing if you wanted to see it, let me just show my design of writing, which is in the opening statement.

And then in the back, when you go to the SEO page, you’ll see my like, Hey, welcome back again. And then enjoy the rest of the site. I thought it was a cool little thing. Not many people do that. So I was like, that’s fine, but like, I can’t even begin to tell you that I’m not going to be able to rewrite the garbage that I paid a hundred dollars for, so that’s the other issue, but I just want to know–

Patrick: That was a hundred dollars for three posts.

Ryan: No, the actual content on the site outside of the blog I just created yesterday, all the writing is kind of just not good in my mind.

Patrick: Oh, so you paid someone to do the web copy for the website, not the blog?

Ryan: The web content, the writing the words.

Patrick: Yeah, so you ever heard the old adage “you get what you pay for”?

Ryan: [Inaudible08:14] my first time doing it. I went on text brokers. I thought, you know [crosstalk08:16] I signed up for that I paid the tuition to learn. They have a writer it’s like 250 bucks to do a 1500 word home page 500 words per category. And I’m like, no; I’m smarter than these guys. I’m going to pay a little less.

Patrick: Yeah, I mean, I was in a similar boat when I was first starting out. I did lots of experimenting and trial and error. There’s going to be a massive shift in the SEO industry over the next couple of years, in particular, the content production. That kind of content you use be able to get away with that stuff. That you used to be, you know, five, six years ago, you just pump a bunch of blog posts, articles out and stuff with the keywords you’re trying to rank for, and it would work. But Google is getting smarter and smarter and smarter and they’re pushing out new algorithm updates every few months. So the name of the game now is producing like really high quality content, like storytelling, like really engaging custom images, embedded videos and podcast episodes like different ways for people interact with the content. If you want to rank, you have to go all in.

Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the blog posts I’ve done or if you just seen my YouTube videos, but they’re long blog posts for thousands of words, very in depth covering all kinds of different categories. And I also embed my YouTube videos in the post and I embed my podcasts excerpts in the post. I give people multiple ways to interact with it, whether it’s reading it, watching it, listening to it, I give them the choice. And all of those things keep people on the blog posts for a longer period of time, which is a ranking factor. It shows that people aren’t just landing on your page and taking off right away. So content has never been more competitive. Everyone knows now you have to produce content if you want to rank. So the competition has never been tougher which means you need to have higher-quality content than ever. So those companies that offer these, like they’re basically like content farms, they’re either going to go under or they’re going to have to completely change their models and just charge more and have actual like professional writers producing this content for people. I write all of my blog, posts myself.

Ryan: Well, I needed to do something just to get me on the board with all the time I’m putting into it. There’s no way I’m going to have time to write place. You have time now and the freedom to do it. Like, I’m just trying to get everything up and running to a point where Google, even as we listed on the 10 page or something. So then, I could sit back and be like, all right, my content is done, I have some blog posts that are going to rank hopefully, and now I can take the time to write my own blog that I got everything else out of the way, you know?

I Review the Content He Paid For

Patrick: Yeah, nothing wrong. Like I said, nothing wrong with experimenting and trying things. But those blog posts based on what I’ve seen aren’t going to rank.

Ryan: Oh, the ones that I have in there now?

Patrick: Yeah, they’re too generic, too similar to a ton of other content that’s out there. It has to be a way more in depth than that. So try to think of like, if that’s what you’re going for, especially if you’re going to be an SEO consultancy, you’re going to have to prove that you have the ability to do that, that you do it yourself with your own business. So the SEO services that I offer, they actually focus; 80% of it is just on producing quality content; the keyword optimization, the technical aspects of SEO; that’s becoming less and less important. Google is getting smarter at understanding the search intent of what are looking for rather than just the keyword itself. So like for example, if I Google Nike shoes. What is it that I’m looking to do?

Ryan: Buy sneakers.

Patrick: Buy sneakers, buy Nike shoes. Google doesn’t show me a bunch of pages about Nike’s main website or their history on Wikipedia, where the air Jordan started, no. They know that people that are searching for Nike shoes, they’re ready to buy. That’s what they’re looking for. So all of this stuff, they feature our websites that are selling Nike shoes.

Why Ryan is Struggling to Focus on What to Learn First

Ryan: If I let’s say like one of the people; you had mentioned in the past, so I forget what YouTube video it was, but you were like, you know, your biggest things, one of them you got to be motivated, like not have excuses. Like you need to know that you want to put the time in to get where you want to be. My issue is not that, my issue is the confusion of trying to figure out where am I going to invest my time to know that I am learning the correct things. Because I thought those blog posts were good, but to you, you’re like a veteran and a high expert, I guess, in the field. I mean, your website looks awesome. I see the customer testimonials you have. You obviously know what the hell you’re talking about. So for me, if I just started this two weeks ago, which obviously I could commend myself and give myself a pat on the back; that’s great, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m trying my best to kind of wing through it. I’m going to get wrecked by Google on their algorithms if I have no idea how to do it the right way. So what’s your advice on the content you use and what you’re doing and how I can kind of go off what you’re doing and do it for myself?

Patrick: So couple of things, one; the thing you said at the beginning about how you have always been really great at sales and you’ve had a business mind. That’s fantastic. That’s the hardest part about any business; regardless of what you’re selling is getting clients. So if you can sell, that’s going to be your biggest challenge. Your biggest challenge is going to be taken care of. And if you have to outsource some of the work and build your own team of freelancers to actually do like the website designs and the content production, that’s fine. That’s called a company. You’re the CEO and you got team members that are specialized in those different niches and those aspects. You’re bringing in the clients; they can do the work. I believe that if you’re going to sell, you should also really get to know what you’re selling as well.

And so, it sounds to me like right now you might have a bit of a shotgun approach. Like, you’re trying a lot of different things. For me, web design and SEO, they’re basically two very big things. SEO is an important aspect of web design, but the content production side of it, that’s a whole other beast. That’s a whole other animal, so I would recommend you kind of narrow down what it is you want your company to be. Whether you’re going to focus on web design first or SEO first, and put all of your resources into learning that one thing really well first, and then move on to the next one. And then do the same thing, repeat the process, then move on to the next thing. Like when I first started out, I was using Weebly. I was just trying to learn the fundamentals of web design.

And because SEO is important aspect of web design, I was learning the basics of SEO as I went along with it. Then as I got better and better, I realized, oh, I need to be producing content if I want to rank. And then as, okay, I started dabbling with producing content, realized Weebly is not a good platform to produce content on, started looking at, okay, what is a good platform? Wordpress, obviously it’s the most popular platform in the world, okay. I need to produce a blog on WordPress; start producing content. My content was horrific. It was so bad. And I did that first six to 12 months and it slowly refined get better content, realize all my old stuff was garbage, deleted it all. And then I realized, oh, you need to have engaging content in your blog posts like custom images. Don’t just use generic stock photos. People are so accustomed to seeing those. They see it blank out. Move on.

Even if you take a stock photo and just edit it yourself, put a little funny text bubble make it funny in some way, make it engaging. I was like, okay, I got to learn a little bit of graphic design to do that, but I don’t really want to get into Adobe and all that fanciness. Is there anything simpler online that I can use? Then you find a tool like Canva. It’s an online graphic design tool and it’s just snowballs. And you go from one thing, but you, I don’t want to say master, but you get to know a skill really well before jumping on to the next one, because otherwise you can spread your time so thin amongst all these different skills that you’re not progressing very quickly with any one of them.

Ryan: I would say I’m a hundred percent– I needed to get my website up. So like when I do start selling, I had a finished product to show people like, yeah, I’m legit, so that was one of the reasons. But like as far as going forward, I don’t mind outsourcing a website development. Yeah, it’s a service I offer and I can find good WordPress people that can put it together. And I think as long as they see that the clients are coming to them; because a website’s not going to give you clients. The website is going to be aesthetically pleasing, better for your company compared to what it was for your image. But you need to have SEO integration, you have Google ads, you need to be able to do Google maps, social advertising, all the things I’m learning in the courses that I have to build to bring traffic to the site is going to be great. But, I need to fully understand SEO with what you’re telling me because even with the trainings I have, I’m still very confused on how to do it the right way.

Obviously, the one thing that is unanimous; content is king and you need very, very good content. How do I get very, very good content without outsourcing that content, even if I want to work the back-end, like at nighttime and just type my own things? I need an example to know what I’m doing to get to that level. You know?

Patrick: Yeah. So SEO is complete– the whole point of SEO is to bring traffic to the site. But, bringing traffic to your site doesn’t instantly turn those people into a customer. Now that you’ve brought them there, now you have to convert them. Now you have to convince them. So sales copy, learning a web copy; what type of wording you put into a website is probably the number one skill “copywriting”. Out of anything else, even above SEO because you can have an SEO expert bring in 10,000 people every month to this website, they get there, and it’s a boring website with boring copy. The value proposition is not clear. There’s no clear call to action. I don’t know where to submit my contact form. Am I supposed to buy something? There are so many different elements just to writing great copy and making that sell.

And it sounds like you are very good at sales if you have that type of personality. So I would recommend you spend time trying to develop, basically convert your speaking sales skills into copy, into writing onto your page. So, if your whole website just makes up one landing page, one page, if you notice, if you go to rapidweblaunch.com, it’s one page.

Ryan: Very nice one page, by the way, I liked it.

Patrick: And that was years of refinement constantly tweaking this and that, little words here or there, adjusting the visuals or something. I’m always looking for just a little ways to make it more attractive, make it more appealing and to get more people to convert, to actually click the contact form. But I always, from the very beginning, my whole web design page was just my homepage. It’s just one landing page. And the whole goal is to get people, to get to the bottom and submit their contact info.

Ryan: When you said copywriting, I always thought copywriting was like taking somebody else, like plagiarism; that’s what it assessed in my mind. I never actually looked up the term to dig into it. Copywriting is what exactly by definition?

Patrick: Yeah, so that’s copy right as in right versus wrong. So that’s like a trademark. That’s the legal, like basically it says I own this copy; I wrote this. When I say copywriting, I’m talking about as in like writing words. Yeah, so copywriting is just a fancy way of saying, be a good writer, like write words really well, be a good storyteller. A lot of like–

Ryan: I am a good story teller. I think I’m a good– Like in just a brief example, not the greatest writer, but in my first opening statement on the home page, I don’t know what your thoughts are. What are your thoughts on the website in general, even with the stock images and everything for a first timer?

I Review Ryan’s Website

Patrick: Let me pull up your homepage here. So first issue is that I land on your page and there’s nothing there but a video of I’m assuming Philadelphia.

Ryan: That’s the top header.

Patrick: Yeah, but there’s no words. That’s your most valuable piece of real estate right there. When people first land there, that’s when you got to get people, hook them, convinced them to keep scrolling; because right now I land on here and I’m like, I don’t know, should I be watching this video? Am I supposed to scroll down? Like, I know it sounds crazy, but you got to make it stupid easy for people and get them to hook. So even if you just put a heading that says– now if you look at my page, it just says “fast and affordable web design guaranteed. And then there’s a call to action button. Because there’s nothing here; it doesn’t tell me what you do.

Ryan: Listen man, you can assassinate me on this call. It’s fine. I like the constructive criticism. Just bring all you got, man. Let me know.

Patrick: You’re going to regret saying that.

Ryan: That was fine, man. It’s my first time man. I’m barely trying to walk right now compared to like the pros.

Patrick: Yeah, that’s why you’re here. I mean, that’s why I’m doing this. I’m happy to help out. Yeah, so scroll down, the hours of operation; not really important, that’s a digital company, you’re not a restaurant, unless you’re really worried about people calling you at 5:30 instead of five, I would get rid of that. Phone number, having the phone number near the top is good. But I would probably just stick that in your navigation menu at the top. Make it, so it appears as you scroll sticky. “Philadelphia SEO consulting introduction, so that’s what I mean by copywriting. So I’m guessing you put that there for keyword benefit?

Ryan: Not the introduction; that’s just the name of my company I’m just putting into production just to give you a heads up, like, Hey, let me introduce myself.

The Importance of Great Copywriting in Web Design

Patrick: Got you. So the way people are– copywriting these days, it’s become more and more about trying to write the way people think; the way people speak. So as you scroll down and then you see something that says Philadelphia, SEO, consulting introduction. That’s not how people speak naturally, right? So if you want to picture someone landing on your website, okay, you have a few seconds to hook me. Why am I here? I’m here because I need either a website designed, or I want my website to rank in Google. Those are the two reasons I should be visiting you because those are the services you offer. So right away, you should be telling me, why should I be here? What can you do for me? Why should I keep scrolling? Because it is all about me and the customer is always right in this scenario. So instead of that, I scroll down and I see something about an introduction and then there’s a massive wall of text. Like, it’s a lot of texts. I’m not going to read all this.

Ryan: I’m not asking you to read it.

Patrick: No, no I’m speaking has the person, some random person who’s visiting your page. Like, it’s just a wall of text, so there’s nothing to– You have to break it up into literally like one or two sentences. Make text pop, make it eye catching, appealing–

Ryan: But I thought the homepage has to have like, at least 1500 words to [inaudible24:14].

Patrick: Nope, see that’s an old fashioned way of thinking for SEO.

Ryan: That’s what I could [inaudible24:20] that could be wrong. That’s what I’m saying, I’m learning.

Patrick: Yeah, honestly man, that’s the dangerous, there’s so many guys out there that are teaching old fashion SEO tactics. It can be really– SEO is not easy. It’s very competitive. Google’s always changing, so you have to stay on top of every new algorithm update they have. And you have to make sure you’re following like the legit leaders in the industry because otherwise you can end up buying some crappy course from some guy who’s pitching SEO tactics that worked six years ago, and that is a perfect example.

A minimum word count is nonexistent; that’s never a thing. What you need to do is optimize your page for sales. Don’t think SEO first, think about once you’ve actually got someone here, how are you going to convince them, how are you going to convert them into a customer? So, if you look at my rapid web launch page, I think at most I might have 500 words on the entire page. Everything is broken up into really tiny sentences, little paragraphs, lots of images, lots of custom graphics. It’s very scannable. Like, you can just kind of scroll down and just scan things and get little pieces here or there. Words stand out at you, the headings stand out at you, and you can tell right away from the top, you know exactly what I’m all about ‘fast and affordable web design’. I can give that to you.

Ryan: Straight to the point.

Patrick: Yeah. So actually if you could pull up my SEO page, I’m assuming you have your browser there. You can pull up a website. So if you go to rapidweblaunch.com/seo-services–

Ryan: Where is the call to action to get to the other services or is it that you just clicked with that?

Patrick: That’s what I’m saying, dude, there’s no menu. There are no other pages.

Ryan: There’s no menu. This is mind-blowing me right now.

Patrick: That’s it. It’s just the one page. There’s nowhere else to go. There’s literally nothing else you can do on that page except contact me.

Ryan: So how do people know, they like put backslash SEO?

Using Web Design and SEO to Create Sales Funnels

Patrick: That’s my point. So I think of it this way, everything I design, think of it as a funnel. So at the beginning of the funnel, you have someone searching for let’s say examples of good consultant websites, okay. So the Google that, they find a list of blog posts of listing examples of great quality consultant websites. Which one of those blog posts is at the top? Mine. They click on my blog post shows, I don’t know, 12 to 15 examples of great quality consultant websites. They get exactly the answer to the question they were looking for. And on that same blog post there’s a call to action “Do you need help with your consultant website, click here”. They do need help with their consultant website because otherwise they wouldn’t be looking at examples of consultant websites. They click on my call to action, it takes them to that landing page; a landing page design specifically only for people who are interested in consultant web design.

It’s just one page. And they scroll down, and the only option they have is to either fill out the contact form and contact me for a website quote, or just leave. There are no other confusing buttons. There’s no menu to lost on. It’s just funneling down to that simple action of submitting their contact info. So, in this example, I’m offering SEO services. The only people who can actually access that link for SEO services are people who followed that funnel, who are actually interested in SEO services. And once they land on that page, they’re not looking for web design. Why do I need to put a menu at the top that says, try our website here. No, they want SEO, so you found it; this is the page, now, just submit your contact info.

Ryan: This is fascinating because I thought you’re supposed to have a menu with the backlinks and interlinking for the Google algorithm to help you rank.

Patrick: So I was just saying, it depends on the business, the industry, what you’re trying to achieve. So most of the websites I build for clients, they do have a navigation menu and multiple pages. That’s perfectly okay. What I determined is that for my goal of selling web design and SEO services and the products and services that I’m offering, it made more sense to funnel people down this way. And the reason I came to that conclusion is because I access over what process mental state are people in when they visit certain pages on my site. And then I optimize everything for that mental state. I know if someone Google’s examples of consultant websites, they’re interested in getting a website made for their consultancy. There’s no other reason why you would Google something like that. So I have that mentality in my mind when I made the blog post for them; here you go, here are some answers. But because I know they’re interested in that, I also put a call to action that said, by the way, if you need help click this and it just funnels them down to that one single action. And you can apply that to any product or service. So did you land on my SEO page yet?

Ryan: Yeah, I’m on it now. I’m actually going to all refs. I want to see the back-links and everything on there and how that works.

Patrick: I don’t have a lot of back-links to that. You won’t find much. That’s good that you actually have Ahrefs.

Ryan: As I said they gave me in the training, but I guess the training was from seven years ago. So it’s like, I think he did this in 2015 he made those videos back-links or two.

Patrick: Oh wait, so you got that training from Ahrefs?

Ryan: No, no, no, no, no. In the training you said get Ahrefs because that’s where you’re going to be able to look up all the answers. And then, I saw you said the same thing. You had this other company; you were using KY Keyword or something. You really liked them in one of the old YouTube videos. I was going to ask, what’s your favorite service today because the other one looked like in Canada, I think.

Patrick: Yeah, there’s a bunch to choose from, Ahrefs is my favorite, but it is the most expensive. It is the like agency level platform. But I use a couple of different ones throughout the years. And as my budget and my business grew, then I finally invested in Ahrefs. But dude, if you want to learn SEO, Ahrefs is the way to do it. Their blog or their YouTube Channel, it’s the best in the industry. Those guys are on the ball. In three years, they went from nobody to the biggest SEO tool in the industry. And it’s extremely competitive. And if you want to–

Ryan: [Inaudible31:18] you like it compared to me, it’s like almost saying like you got to get the Ferrari man. It drives so much better than the Toyota. I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, but when you understand what you’re doing and then have the best tools like a Ferrari to do it, I get where you’re saying. It’s just, I need to get on the level of understanding of what you’re doing so I understand why Ahrefs is the best or however you say it.

Patrick: I’m just trying to say, even if you can’t afford to use their tool right now, their blog about SEO and their YouTube channel are the best in the industry if you want to learn for free.

Ryan: I didn’t even know they had a blog or YouTube. I’ve just been on this site. We’re talking about AHREFS.com, right?

Patrick: Yeah.

Ryan: Yeah, okay.

Patrick: Do you see my SEO page, right? Do you see the example of the copy I’m talking about how it’s like a story I’m telling?

Ryan: Yeah, websites with no traffic are lonely places. I love how you also have like entrepreneurial post, you keep putting, you know, major advertising in there. Like, it works out nice. I like that.

Patrick: That’s called social proof. That bit just proves– because those websites and those blogs that featured my content and stuff and my web design, so it tells people that I’m legit.

Ryan: Yeah, very, very straight to the point, different sections of images, showing the keywords that you want.

Patrick: Yeah, and I explained, I showed the graphs. I was like, listen, if you want to rank, you’re here for SEO services; you need a blog. If you want a blog, this is what it’s going to take. And I know what I’m talking about because here’s the proof I did it with my own blog. And here’s the price if you want to get it done. It’s very straightforward. So that’s the idea of storytelling though, and getting really good at copywriting. That’s a more valuable skill then any of those other things we talked about. People will pay you a lot of money to write good sales copy.

Why Web Design Courses Are Bogus and How to Learn For Free Instead

Ryan: I got to figure out how to replicate this idea, which doesn’t seem too difficult once I know how to design something like this. And then I got to really dig into– I wish you had an SEO course.

Patrick: No, you don’t need a course, man; it’s all out there for free. That’s why I don’t like all these people that sell courses. Don’t buy any courses. I learned all this stuff for free. I didn’t buy a single course.

Ryan: It seems like SEO keeps evolving, as you said, you learn that just as things were evolving, you were still finding people, giving you updates on [inaudible33:38]–

Patrick: For free. Oh yeah man, like I’m telling you, you got companies like Ahrefs are legit. The guys that are selling courses, they’re the ones you should be most skeptical of. Those are the ones because they’re outdated. If you make it– because it takes so much work to put together this massive course, they’re finally ready to sell it. And then six months later, Google was like, oh, the game’s changed, and their whole course is meaningless. You think they’re going to stop selling it? Get out of here. They’ve invested so many resources into it. And a lot of times they won’t bother updating it properly. No, for sure, save your money and just learn this stuff for free. It’s all on YouTube. It’s on Google.

Ryan: That’s a very tricky place. If you don’t have the right resources to know who to go to, you could be wasting a lot of time on there.

Patrick: That’s well for one thing you– so one thing that helped me is you do over time, you learn who to listen to and who not to listen to. Once you find out who to listen to, you listen to their recommendations. And if they turn out to be legit, then you know they’re a trusted source. Let me give you an example, why do you listen to me when I say you should use Ahrefs?

Ryan: Because you seem to be a leader and knowing what you’re doing based on–

Patrick: But what incentive do I have to tell you to do that?

Ryan: None.

Patrick: Nothing. They’re not paying me. I don’t get any affiliate sales; I get nothing for telling you.

Ryan: You just generally want to put people in the right place to be with the right tools to learn best.

Patrick: I mean, like why else would I be doing this? For me, when I see someone offer a course or affiliate, but like there’s an incentive for them to sell because they get a piece of the pie. It’s like the biggest scam out there, is every single post you’ll see about how to start a blog, every single one, they sell Bluehost as the best hosting services. They always suggest Bluehost, Bluehost. And they have links to Bluehost throughout their posts. You know why all of these bloggers recommend Bluehost?

Ryan: Because their affiliate link and their kick back.

Patrick: They get $120 for every person that signs up with Bluehost. Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Bluehost is a bad company, but it means their opinion is automatically tainted. There’s an incentive to not necessarily be a hundred percent truthful because you want that sale. So for me, I often, when I’m looking for people to listen to or want to learn something, I ask myself, why are they telling me this information? Where is this coming from? And the vast majority will have some kind of call to action at the end that says, buy my course or buy from this company. Again, not necessarily a bad thing because I make suggestions too, but look at; is they benefiting by selling this information? And to be honest, like you said, one of the things, the reasons why I’ve grown my blog and my YouTube channel, it’s still small. Like it’s still a niche, but the reason why a lot of people are drawn to it, it’s becoming more and more clear that I don’t actually have any financial incentive for a lot of the information I’m giving. I’m just throwing it out there. My benefit is that I grow my brand and I grow my business. I get more awareness and I get more clients; that’s my whole point is just get clients. The rest is just giving the information for you guys for free.

Ryan Gives Me Feedback on My Content

Ryan: I mean, I feel like you got to be pretty successful man, with like, I just don’t understand how you don’t have more followers on your YouTube videos, which is crazy to me. Because like I could watch your videos like three or four times and be like, I just watched 20 other videos that were straight garbage. This man just made a video, phenomenal content, the way he explained everything; you wanted a roadmap to find the treasure chest on Treasure Island. He gave it to you. He’s got a thousand viewers on a thousand subscribers. I don’t understand. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

Patrick: It’s a competitive game. Feel free to share my stuff with people.

Ryan: Dude, I will, I will. Anything I can do to help you out. I would. Just for the fact that you’ve even talking to me like that’s, you know, for life, anything that I ever have an opportunity to send somebody a video, I’ll try to get you one more follower if I could just because I appreciate what you do for everybody. You get straight to the point. You’re honest. You’re not trying to have another hidden agenda. You’re not trying to charge people for additional things if they didn’t need it. And you’re just all around, seemed like a good guy. That was kind of the feeling I had when I heard your videos and stuff. Who should I listen to? What’s the best advice you have, like straight up, like for me to learn to become a great SEO consultant? If that’s what I’m going for, and I want to be 100% all learning that first, where do I start?

Patrick: That’s what I was saying. Honestly, the number one free method of learning SEO, great SEO is through Ahrefs; their blogging and their YouTube channel.

Ryan: I’ll check that out for sure.

Patrick: Like you’ll find that obviously a lot of their post they’ll integrate their tool into their strategies. And that’s fair; they are trying to sell their service. But all the information is extremely valuable, it’s free, and they back it up with proof and evidence. They are the number one SEO blog now because of this. Actually their biggest competitor just got absolutely burnt last week because they tried to offer this new service that all of the SEO experts were like, that’s kind of sketchy; that’s like black eye SEO. And Google themselves actually tweeted them and was like, “Yeah, that’s a bad idea”. And it was all just because they wanted the extra buck. They didn’t really think it through. And so their brand and their credibility is like– just like that it can be severely damaged. So for learning SEO, yeah, Ahrefs YouTube channel and blog is fantastic. And with learning web design, it really just, the best method is practicing the way you’re doing. It takes time. You got to invest in it, but you pick a tool, and you consume a bunch of content about how to use that tool. You learn about user experience design. What makes people interact with websites in a certain way?

Ryan: Wow, I’ve got to redo my entire website to make it look like this.

The Importance of Taking Action and Closing Thoughts

Patrick: I’ll tell you one thing. You’re way ahead of most people I talk to on here. Most people don’t even have their own websites still. They’re getting their own clients already through whatever means, and they still don’t even have a website for their own business. So it’s great that you’re actually taking action.

Ryan: Thanks man. You can’t Excel in life if you’re always thinking about things and not putting in the motion. I like to try to put things in motion, even if it’s going to not be where it needs to be; it’s a start, right? You can’t build a house without laying some bricks. You need something to be able to build. That’s what I wanted to do. And I want to get your guidance too, man. I really can’t thank you enough. And hopefully, I don’t know. I don’t know if this is like one and done with you, but if you ever like maybe we could check it in the future, see where everything is at because it was a real pleasure to talk to you.

Patrick: That’d be cool, for sure. Keep up the good work, man.

Ryan: Yeah. I might be walking on two legs next time.

Patrick: That would be progress.

Ryan: Take care. Thanks.

Patrick: Alright, dude. Have a good one.