Our Episode Transcripts are produced by Descript. Some words/dialogue may not be transcribed with 100% accuracy.
[00:00:00] Ellie: In this episode of Law Talks, I'm joined by Travis Bliffen, who is CEO of Stellar SEO, and leads an award winning digital marketing agency. In this role, Travis works with law firms to ensure search engine optimization, to provide them with greater publicity for clients.
[00:00:21] Ellie: Thanks so much for joining us today, and to start us off, please could you tell us about your career to date?
[00:00:27] Travis: Yeah, so I kind of took an unconventional path to SEO. I didn't really have a previous interest in it. I graduated high school, joined the army. I was in the army for four and a half years, got out, went to work for the Illinois department of corrections.
[00:00:41] Travis: And one day on my way to work, I stopped in and I bought a magazine and I found an article in there. And basically it was the top businesses to start in 2012. And SEO was one of the things on the list. Really was very interesting to me, even though I didn't know anything about it. And so I, I actually, when I took some web [00:01:00] development courses At the local college so that I kind of had a better understanding of the technical side of it And then I actually just went to work on testing and kind of learning it until I finally got our very first seo client at the time which was funnily enough a tanning salon And which is the only one we've ever worked with in 12 years now.
[00:01:20] Travis: So that's how I got started into it. Fast forward from there a little bit. Once we started to bring on more clients, of course, I didn't really have a background in business based on my previous things. And so I, it was twofold. I had to learn simultaneously about the ongoing changes to SEO. And if you, if you're familiar, 20, 2011, 2012, we're one of the first sets of really big Google updates.
[00:01:44] Travis: Made a big impact. And now, you know, fast forward to this year, and it seems like every other month they've done something outrageous. So a couple of years in my career, basically, I'm at a point where I have to learn both how to run a business hiring HR. [00:02:00] And you have to continue to stay up to date with, with the things.
[00:02:02] Travis: And so at that point, that's when you start to bring in other people. One of the first people we brought in, of course, was an accountant and a bookkeeper so that they could keep, keep tabs on all of that part of it. And so that's how my career evolved a little bit in the, in the early years. Once that got smoothed out where we really went into focus was on link building.
[00:02:23] Travis: And so from 2015, basically until 2021, we, we were 99 percent elite building focused agency. And so most of my career, most of my time and efforts were all in building and refining a link building process that would, would be scalable, but would also not compromise quality. Because if you've worked with many link building companies, you can kind of spot the problem areas that they'll have pretty quickly.
[00:02:50] Travis: And so when we actually set up to create our link building program, we went and we spent a couple hundred thousand dollars buying links from a whole lot of [00:03:00] companies so that we could just make an internal matrix of all the. Things that we saw as issues with those, with those things. And then we went over the course of, you know, six to 12 months, basically to continue to refine our process so that we could eliminate those issues.
[00:03:16] Travis: Now when we go to 2021, that's when we decided, okay, we have the link building. It's very smoothed out running really well. We've got a great reputation. We work with both agencies and direct clients. So let's add back a couple of industries and so we knew going into 2021 that we would eventually add finance legal and real estate, but we started with legal because There was already a big overlap there in the link building that they would need in the legal industry because of competition Specifically injury attorneys things like that.
[00:03:48] Travis: And so 2021 we rolled that that new program out That's been very successful so far. And now we're in this year. We're rolling out the mortgage broker and real estate sides of it, but that that's [00:04:00] kind of the path that it took from You know, I went way back to high school, I guess on that one, but that's kind of the path that it took.
[00:04:06] Travis: And it was just very, very focused on a couple of key elements there, I would say is. First, you know, mastering how to run a business, then mastering a specific process and then mastering a specific niche and then moving into the next one. So I guess kind of a boring career so far.
[00:04:25] Ellie: Not at all. Thank you so much.
[00:04:26] Ellie: And yeah, a lot of our listeners are kind of, I suppose, almost closer to that high school age. So I think it's really helpful to hear people's like career trajectory and how they level up and particularly. That kind of like business development. So going, going forward on that, could you tell the listeners a little bit about what Stella CEO offers clients and how particularly with a focus on law you draw like legal, legal clients into the business.
[00:04:51] Travis: Yeah, so we like to practice what we preach. Right? So the best way to attract clients that are interested in SEO and that value your SEO [00:05:00] opinions is by having visibility across a lot of places where people search. And so people might think initially that means, oh, I ranked my page for something related to law firms, and now I'm done.
[00:05:11] Travis: Well. That's one way to see you, but they should see you multiple ways. So SEO, marketing, outreach, right? You need to be visible in multiple areas because the most law firms, especially bigger law firms, they're going to do research on the companies, right? They're not going to see a page ranking and then just call you and hire you without doing any further research.
[00:05:29] Travis: And so for us, we've always tried to have good visibility across a lot of Digital platforms throughout Google, not necessarily with paid advertising. Because paid advertising works and I'm not saying it doesn't, but organic listings come with a little more inherent trust. So we found the conversion rates on those are better.
[00:05:47] Travis: And so. That's, that's been our key way of drawing in law firms. We've actually never done any outbound sales until I'd say about 60 days ago, we started an outbound sales program, just to add that [00:06:00] in the mix and see how, how it produces. We've experimented with it a time or two in the past, but pretty much all of our business growth has been exclusively driven through SEO and listings both on our, our own website and then external platforms.
[00:06:16] Ellie: Thank you. Yeah, it's particularly interesting to hear the side of things that work and you've mentioned Google a few times and I'm just curious because a lot of kind of like digital marketing, there tends to be this kind of like overall aim or mission of different agencies. And do you feel that Seller CEO has kind of like a, something that you could, you know, A self defined mission, or is it very kind of a broad?
[00:06:38] Travis: Yeah. So the one thing that we've always tried to do is a lot of SEO agencies, they're, they're very good at SEO, but they're very SEO focused. Right. And so they'll say, Oh, here's a bunch of stuff we can get you to rank for. They get you to rank for that. They give you pretty reports that show you that you've ranked for it.
[00:06:56] Travis: You go through this whole thing. Right. But then you look at it at the end of six months or 12 [00:07:00] months, and you haven't really made any significant money from it. So you have visibility. So the one thing that we try to do is we think about it from a business owner standpoint, right? So the whole reason that they want to ring for anything in the first place is to produce revenue.
[00:07:15] Travis: And so we try to avoid chasing terms that are just traffic that don't really provide any value. And so we've built websites that the total traffic is, you know, 1000 to 3000 per month. And they're producing three to five times as much revenue as sites that may get 10, 20, 50, 000 visits a month because we've specifically targeted terms that have good conversion potential.
[00:07:40] Travis: And so one of the main focuses that our agency has always had is, is thinking of it, you know, as a business, Strategically as a business partner versus just an SEO agency. And that's really changed the entire way that. We build our campaigns because if it doesn't contribute to an end goal, which [00:08:00] generally is revenue, then we really don't like to include it.
[00:08:03] Travis: And so we will do, you know, fewer blog posts than a lot of companies will offer. Or if we do them, they're going to be very targeted. And so that's really our aim is to help people see a actual good ROI on SEO over the time. And that even goes back to the onboarding process. So a lot of people reach out to us, law firms included.
[00:08:23] Travis: And we have to tell them no. And the reason why is if we don't think that there's a high likelihood of success and for us, success doesn't mean getting them to rank for a keyword. It means they're making money from their spending on SEO. Then we'll tell them about it up front and we'll, you know, we'll just let them know, here's why we don't think that it would work out.
[00:08:42] Travis: And so we kind of go through that process, but that's really been our main aim is to, to use SEO as a tool, even though we're an SEO agency, we know SEO is just a tool to get to the end goal. And that's, that's really our, our mission, our focus. If I had to narrow it down to one specific thing, that that's really at the [00:09:00] core of everything we do.
[00:09:01] Ellie: Thank you. That's, that's really clear. And yeah, interesting seeing, I can imagine blogs and there's sort of like different techniques with this focus on, on revenue. So you've talked um, a little bit about how you have, that you have this specific goal that suits certain, again, focusing on the law side of things, law firms.
[00:09:19] Ellie: To kind of give an idea, I imagine that a lot of our listeners, this might be their kind of first time hearing someone who works and has worked, had their whole career in this area of industry. Could you tell us a little bit about kind of what your typical week looks like? What actually looks like day to day working in this role?
[00:09:36] Travis: Yeah. So it's, it's it's evolved a lot from where we started. Of course, in the beginning I was, I had my hands on everything. Now it's, it's more of a strategic and research thing. And so what I spend most of my time on is, is strategic vision. Now growth, how we're going to do that, but on the SEO side of things specifically for law firms, where I spend a lot of my time is, is refining our process for building [00:10:00] campaigns.
[00:10:00] Travis: And so Google over the past year has made a lot of updates and several of the updates really haven't been for the better of SEO. It doesn't seem I saw a thing just today where in the U. S. there are some sites like Indian websites are ranking for college pricing in the U. S. When you search from the U S and it happened after this last Google update a couple of months ago.
[00:10:22] Travis: So a big part of what we do, and it kind of goes back to the ROI. I think that I mentioned previously is we don't have like any package plans. You, you know, we don't have a generic, something in place that we plan to do for any law firm. Whenever somebody contacts us, they tell us, here's what I'm trying to accomplish.
[00:10:39] Travis: Here's my market. Here's my competition. So we actually go out, we evaluate all of the competitors. We analyze everything and we figure out where the deficiencies are with the potential client versus everybody else in the market And we map that out into what what needs to be done in terms of deliverables Cost timelines what will all that stuff [00:11:00] take so that we know what we're going to do and so that's a lot of what I do as I look at What are the various elements of our research process that we can continue to fine tune and improve so that we really can narrow in on the most efficient way to build a campaign and leave out as much of the fluffy stuff as possible.
[00:11:20] Travis: Because that helps to, you know, it improves the ROI. And when I say ROI, it doesn't mean that you know, it's necessarily an inexpensive campaign, but we're just making sure that all the money that is in the campaign goes to things that actually will be beneficial. So that, that's a lot of what I do is actually refine the processes continuously.
[00:11:40] Travis: Very similar to how we did for link building in 2015 where we're in that ongoing phase now on the law firm side. And so that's if over the past six months, that's where a lot of my time has been spent.
[00:11:53] Ellie: Thank you. And it's interesting showing, I mean, I suppose in the way of most careers, there's sort of a change as you progress and build your [00:12:00] expertise.
[00:12:00] Ellie: And it seems also from what I'm understanding when you're talking about these changes that Google have introduced, you have to be very adaptable and that's, yeah, it seems like you were really happy to kind of change your strategy as these search engines alter that change. Would you say, was that kind of a correct characterization of,
[00:12:22] Travis: Yeah, that's 100 percent right.
[00:12:23] Travis: Because right now, there's a growing divide between what Google tells you that they want you to do and what actually works to, to your benefit in SEO. And the, the further that gap gets, The more important it is going to be to use a very strategic process. That's the, I think a lot of SEO agencies won't survive like 2023 to 2026.
[00:12:46] Travis: I think a lot of them will go away. Because they so far I've built plans that basically Google said do X, Y, and Z. They built a package that said they'll do X, Y, and Z and. 60 percent of the time it works, so they're able to replace clients [00:13:00] fast enough, even with churn that you know, it still works out and they grow, but now it's starting to get even more granular by industry.
[00:13:07] Travis: And even by market, we've seen some examples where one city versus another. Some of the key factors would be polar opposites of each other. In terms of say, like, anchor text percentages, things like that, one might be very, very heavily over optimized across the board, and the other is closer to what Google would tell you would work.
[00:13:26] Travis: But, you know, even with the same thing, personal injury law firms, it's just two different scenarios. And so people who miss that process are really going to have a lot of problems.
[00:13:34] Ellie: Yeah, that's very interesting. It's very interesting seeing this kind of changing and I suppose potential, like, future impacts of, of this industry.
[00:13:41] Ellie: And you mentioned now just out of curiosity, Ty, like, personal injury law firms. So is there, like, within law firms, are they kind of like the firms that specifically you work with? Or is it kind of a range of different legal areas that you work with? that require this digital marketing assistance.
[00:13:58] Travis: Yeah, so we've worked with [00:14:00] various types of law firms, but we just find by and large that personal injury law firms face the most competition and therefore are in the need of the most customized and, and process driven strategies. Whereas other types of law firms, we've worked with them and, and you know, like say you're a bankruptcy attorney.
[00:14:17] Travis: There's a lot of markets where you could go and buy an SEO package that's, you know, not inexpensive, but, but on the lower cost end, and it would still work because your competition isn't really that fierce. Whereas if you take a personal injury law firm drop in one of the top 50 cities in the US, right, you're going to have to have a very aggressive campaign.
[00:14:36] Travis: And so that's, When we go back to the ROI focused and that kind of initial process, personal injury law firms have a great ability to produce revenue and to see a good ROI, even at a high output, whereas if you're a bankruptcy attorney, and you're making a 1000 per case, and there's not a lot of volume.
[00:14:56] Travis: It's going to be much harder for you to see a similar ROI on what [00:15:00] you've done. And so we didn't intentionally ignore other types of law firms. It just so happens that the majority of ones that we work with do become, you know, personal injury or criminal defense would be the second one in areas where there's a lot of competition, but yeah, it just kind of naturally happened that way more so than it was intended.
[00:15:19] Travis: And it just was kind of a by product of that ROI focused approach that we take.
[00:15:25] Ellie: Yeah, thank you. I think when we have guests who work in the legal industry, it's interesting seeing how because there's so many broad areas that the actual role is so different and I can definitely see how personal injury, criminal defense is particularly relevant in this area.
[00:15:39] Ellie: So now to focus slightly, I've mentioned previously that our listeners are tend to be kind of at the start of their careers, still studying at university, that kind of level. So now kind of, I suppose, focusing people who are aspiring and thinking of starting out. What skills do you think are most important to be a successful CEO expert?
[00:15:59] Travis: Yep. [00:16:00] So I think that the the biggest two things is, is you have to have a mindset of constant learning and you have to be willing to disprove a common, you know, what's a common belief or a common theory. Because if you take just what's generic SEO advice, a lot of times you'll have no success with it.
[00:16:19] Travis: It's the people who actually test things to the contrary that have a lot of luck. And so that kind of ties into that attitude of constant learning anyway. But I think those are really the, the two key things throughout my entire career between the SEO running a business, you know, additional marketing channels, like I've had to learn, I've had to adapt, but we've also found it several times, and this is in 2024 is another example.
[00:16:43] Travis: If you take the advice that would come from Google or some of the major searches, right? Search engine land or search engine journal a lot of that stuff They they err on the very very cautious side of seo advice And so sometimes if you take that to be the truth, you're going to just be [00:17:00] outdone by, by any competitor who's bothered to test things beyond what they recommend doing.
[00:17:05] Travis: And so that, that's it, you really have to go into it to try to disprove. If somebody says you can't do this, it won't work. The first thing you should do is set up a test website and see if it in fact works. Because a lot of times, It's going to work better than whatever else everybody's telling you to do The other piece of advice i've noticed over the years and this is I didn't come up with it But I saw it, you know, probably eight years ago and shiny object syndrome, right?
[00:17:29] Travis: So you'll notice Right now everybody is trying to sell courses on ai a lot of this stuff right there. Here's how to use ai for seo do this with seo Blah, blah, blah. So most of the time, whenever you see stuff like this, there's two things that happened to either one. They had something and it worked really well.
[00:17:48] Travis: Google fixed the loophole. And so it doesn't work as well. So they can kind of see it's on its way out. So they've monetized it as much as they could afford themselves. And now their second monetization play is to sell it to you [00:18:00] because it's on its way out, right? So don't, don't You don't get wrapped up in the latest trend because if it is a trend and it does work extremely well Google is going to come back through and correct it Throughout history.
[00:18:11] Travis: They've tried to correct every one of those things Going back to you know guest blogging at large scale whenever you had those exchanges where you could do that I mean google will come through and find it even way back to like safe networks and things like that it was large scale. It was well known and it worked really well.
[00:18:26] Travis: So Google will come and do that. So don't get wrapped up into those things. Especially when, you know, you see like, Oh, well, everybody's selling the course on this now. It's either just a trending topic or the loopholes on its way out. And if you notice. Right. This last set of updates has tried to target AI content without directly saying they've done it.
[00:18:46] Travis: But some of the factors that seems to look at like publishing velocity things like that. And so those are kind of telltale signs where they can't fully know that it's by AI content. But if you notice though, over the [00:19:00] past 12 months, there's been an influx, of course, of selling this. And then six months later, they started making updates to kind of kill it.
[00:19:06] Travis: And so that's repeated itself throughout the history. of SEO. And so if you stumble onto something and you think this is the latest and greatest, you know, magical hack that's going to make a lot of money, chances are it's, it's short lived and you're going to have problems on the backside of that. So try to avoid that.
[00:19:24] Ellie: Thank you. That's very helpful. And yeah, I think shows the really interesting staying on your toes, adaptability side of the side of the work that you do and kind of focusing on, I suppose, like the first part of your answer, when you were talking about skills required, do you feel that these were, these are skills that people learn before they get into, into the industry and into the work, or is it sort of something that you develop on the way?
[00:19:49] Ellie: Just cause it seems like such a kind of like unique like a unique skillset and particularly kind of learning, I guess, like, I guess they're like Google adaptations and that side of things.
[00:19:57] Travis: Yeah, so I think, you know, [00:20:00] I guess I'm a fairly good example that anybody can learn SEO If they're willing to have the right mindset and put in the right amount of time and work to do it And so I think a lot of the skills that actually make you great at seo don't have anything to do with prior seo background prior educational background.
[00:20:17] Travis: I think it's just a, a mindset. It's a philosophy of being willing to learn and adapt and also being somebody who's comfortable in that scenario, because there are a lot of people who can, they can learn very well and they can adapt, but it just makes them very uncomfortable. Whereas other people's mindset is I enjoy.
[00:20:34] Travis: the constant change, the constant evolution. That brings me joy to be a part of an industry where you're always learning something new and growing. And so if that's the personality type that you have, you can, you could apply that to any business, SEO included. SEO just happens to be a great one for people who just love a constant challenge.
[00:20:53] Ellie: Yeah, thank you. I think you've definitely demonstrated how, yeah, the challenging side of the industry. And I suppose, yeah, [00:21:00] as a final thing, you've talked about different advice you'd give to listeners who are interested in this. What, like, what do you think the best way, because you've, you mentioned in your previous answer that you can, like, learn these skills in different areas.
[00:21:11] Ellie: What's sort of the best way to get into SEO or prepare for this sort of career?
[00:21:17] Travis: Yeah. So I'd say two things. One is Look for, especially if you can find like an internship or something like that, that it's not SEO specific, but marketing specific. Because the specifics of SEO will change. Even if you go to college and you take courses to cover SEO, by the time you graduate, there will be significant changes from what was covered during your coursework.
[00:21:39] Travis: But marketing itself as a broad concept, doesn't really change. You're creating interest. You're creating demand. You're creating awareness. So if you understand marketing concepts very broadly, and then you combine that with SEO knowledge, which you need to learn by doing it hands on through your own test sites, affiliate websites, whatever you may [00:22:00] build out to, to learn.
[00:22:00] Travis: And I don't recommend just learning with a client. I see a lot of companies that, you know, or individuals who their very first. Attempted SEO as somebody is paying them money to do it. And so they're learning at your expense, right? I don't recommend that you should build your own test website, build a blog, building an affiliate site, and if it's a 2024, which it is now, and Google doesn't stop favoring e commerce sites, I'd build an e commerce site over an affiliate site today.
[00:22:26] Travis: But build your own site and apply what you learn, but look at it through a marketing lens. And that will make you do two things. One is if you're paying the bill for what you're buying. Then you're going to start looking for things that you've done from an SEO perspective that actually didn't translate to money for you So you'll adapt the right mindset because you're spending your own money.
[00:22:47] Travis: You're trying to grow your own little website or business the other part of that is You'll, you'll picture it as a business owner. So you'll have a more holistic look at it where you'll say, okay, I got these 10 blog [00:23:00] posts and they're bringing me a lot of traffic, but they don't make any sales at all.
[00:23:04] Travis: Why would I continue to spend time, effort or resources to promote these blog posts that have clearly no return to me? That's, that's how I would start is by understanding the broad marketing concepts. And there's a lot of companies where you could intern there. Even if you went to say a digital marketing agency that did SEO, social media, pay per click, right?
[00:23:24] Travis: So you get a broad awareness of that. Or, you know, if you're in a position where you can start by building your own website and learn, maybe even while you're still in college that's another great way to do it, but you do need to get some firsthand experience one way or the other. Thank you. So that you can understand and you know, make sense of it and also appreciate it through the eyes of a business, because then that will probably carry over with you throughout your SEO career, which will make you better than 90 percent of other SEOs out there because they're just looking at it through a, a completely numerical data lens and not so much one as a [00:24:00] real world application or value.
[00:24:02] Ellie: Thank you. That's really helpful. And I think also having, you know, you said you could internship, but also this idea that maybe you can develop skills independently by yourself, whether at college or wherever your stages is I think probably a nice idea for people who have spent a lot of time struggling to get different internships.
[00:24:19] Ellie: Well, thank you very much. I think this is a, been a really interesting, it's not an area that I knew a lot about before. And I feel like I've really developed and it's interesting also hearing this. very important area for law firms that maybe those who are interested in a legal career or getting involved in the legal sector don't hear about very often.
[00:24:36] Ellie: Yeah, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
[00:24:39] Travis: Yeah, I appreciate it.
Comments