Michael Mignogna:
What can a roofing contractor do right now to improve their SEO All by themselves?

Dima:
All by themselves? That's the question, right? Well, there are some things that are so important I believe, that make an immense change to where you stand on Google. Google says there's around 200 plus factors that influence SEO, but not all of 'em are equal, not even close. There are some that are so heavy, so important that they may make all the difference that you might need because guess what? Your competition probably, they don't really care that much about SEO or if they do, it's those fundamentals that they cover well. So it's important to know the fundamentals first. So what are they? Before I answer that, it's important to understand one key thing I would say to know your money keywords. Money keywords, we use that word here.

Michael Mignogna:
What are many

Dima:
Keywords? Money. Keywords are the keywords that your clients are typing in that are meant to produce ROI for you. If you show up for those keywords, then that will generate revenue for you. So money keywords is keywords that have a potential and the promise of ROI in them. And if you know what your clients are doing, then you're able to show up for those searches. It's like demand is king unless it's SEO. Well, that's a lot of times the thinking of SEO companies. It's like, we'll rank you for this and we'll rank you for that and we'll get you traffic, we'll get you blogs, we'll get you beautiful website. But what about ranking for keywords that are money keywords? And they might not be super high in traffic necessarily, and they might not be national keywords. They might not generate eyeballs from all over the world, but they'll be from your local market, from the people who are actually searching for your stuff.
So knowing your money keywords, and typically they're pretty simple. It's roofing plus city and state. I like to add, because sometimes cities repeat roofing, city, state, a roofing company, city and state roofing contractor, city and state and roofers, city and state. Those four combinations typically cover most of money keywords. There's other different combinations, but this is the bulk. So for you to get immediate results, you need to know, Hey, what am I shooting at? What is my goal? Because the saying is, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. So you want to aim, add your money keywords. So let's say you are in Spokane, Washington, where I'm at right now, your money keywords are roofing, Spokane, Washington or something like that, roofing company. So what do you do to showing up for those keywords? Well, number one, you use those combinations in the most important parts of your digital real estate on your website, your GBP Google Business Profile.
So you use that number one in your title, title of the page. That's where you want to use that keyword. So besides your name, your brand, you want to use the keyword that people are typing because Google is in the business of matchmaking, so to speak. So somebody's looking for a roofing company. Well, guess what? You need to tell Google clearly who you are and where you're at for Google to think of you as a perfect match. So use that in the title of your page. There's a special place for that also in the main heading of your page. Those two are the primary, I would say if you only do that, you will immediately see huge jump to the front. And some companies do that. Some companies do that halfway. Some companies will only mention roofing. Some companies will only mention the city, but use that exact verbatim keyword. Roofing city plus state, be creative with it. You don't want it to look and feel robotic, but we love to use combination of number one, Spokane Roofing, wa, Washington number, oneok number one, roofing, Spokane, Washington, and then company so that it's a statement so that it's not just a bunch of keywords. Something like that. You're actually

Michael Mignogna:
Typing out the words number one,

Dima:
Roofing. Yeah. Yeah. So I write something before, so it makes sense. And after, so it's a complete statement. Number one, roofing Spokane, WA company, whatever roofing it is, bumblebee Roofing, whatever.

Michael Mignogna:
Okay, so just to recap, a roofing contractor in order to immediately improve their SEO should first be able to identify what the money keywords are, and particularly the definition of what are money keywords. Just definitionally, they are the words that suggest intent to find a roofer to buy something from them. So they're the words a homeowner types in when they go to Google and intentionally look for a roofer that they're hoping will come over and meet them and talk to them and give them a quote, and I'll ultimately sell them something.

Dima:
Exactly.

Michael Mignogna:
And then the money keywords are usually even without even having to know how to do the keyword research with all the tools. If you just do these four combinations, which is like roofer, city, state, roofing contractor, city state, something like that, and there are two others, those four will almost always be the four that are great money keywords that suggest intent to buy something. And then where is important to put them is in the title of the page and also the main heading of the page. Now I have a question about that.

Dima:
Yes.

Michael Mignogna:
How do you fit all four money keywords on a page, or do you just sort of pick one? And what if you want to show up in multiple cities?

Dima:
So how do you fit all of them? So for those two places, the title and the main heading called H one heading, sometimes you want to pick the best one. So the best one, typically, and I'm saying that 90% of the time would be Roofing City, state company, and the contractor and roofer, they're also good. But those you can integrate a little bit later into the text itself. So obviously title and the heading is only the beginning. There's so much more places on that page where you can insert those keywords in a natural way. It's another place, it's called meta description or description, metadata, whatever. It's basically a description of your website. Whenever you type in on Google, you will see then the title of the website. And then underneath there is a couple a sentence or so the description of the website. You'll see that every time you're on Google. So in that description, you can insert or add those additional keywords as well as inside the actual content of the page. So other headings would also be a good option. So there's only one primary heading that you should be using. H one, like I said, that's where you want to use your best money keyword. But other headings, they're H two, H three, like hierarchy of headings. That's where you can use other keywords as well, as well as also in the text itself.

Michael Mignogna:
Got it.

Dima:
And then the second question you ask, what if you want to rank for more than one city? Well, this is a good question because the common belief is that well just stuff the keywords stuff, additional cities onto your homepage, and that thing's going to start ranking everywhere around your locations. And that's not the case. It used to be like that maybe 10 years ago. Google Rewards specialists, right? What I mean by that, Google rewards specific results for specific searches. If your page, let's say your homepage is going after everything in terms of locations, not even talking about services. Let's assume it's only roofing, but obviously many companies do siding, gutters or whatever. But let's say it's only roofing, but you go after multiple services, even that is enough to confuse Google. Google's going to be like, wait a minute, so where are you? What are you trying to do here?
Are you in Spokane? Are you in the valley? Are you in the Colbert? Are you in Medical Lake? What are you? You cannot be everywhere. So what do you do? Well, you play by Google's rules. You give it what it wants. You give it specialized pages. So what that means is if you want to go after additional cities or you have city pages, you want to make sure that you have additional city pages that are only talking about that city and that service combination. And you can have 2030. In fact, I recommend doing as much as you can because in addition to ranking for those cities, you also gain what's called a local authority. Google looks at you as a company that covers the geography and thus bestows more trust on you.

Michael Mignogna:
Interesting. Now, does that directly affect your Google business profile in addition to your just organic listing to your website, or how does that work?

Dima:
Yeah, Google business profile, now it's GBP used to be GMB, whatever. They're changing the name all the time. Those profiles are directly linked to your website. So the better your website is doing, the better your Google listing on the map will do. There's many things to talk about GBP, obviously one of them right from the start, because it's ties into what I said, each GBP can really successfully only rank in one particular city where that address is. So you don't expect for your Google listing to rank in the next neighboring city. Sometimes it does, but it only happens that way because there is no competition there. If there's local companies there, good luck, you'll have no chance. So focus on your city where your GBP is located, but also make sure that your GBP, your MAP listing is tied directly to the city page on your website.
So there is a space where you can insert URL. Some companies make a big mistake by attaching every single time a homepage to that. Now, if you are servicing other cities and you have other listings in other locations, you really want to link to your city pages so that they're connecting. So it's the same for same. And Google rewards that immediately. Sometimes you just do that one thing and next day you're in top three just because Google saw that link between your GBP being in that city and then it's connected to that city page that's super optimized for that location. Google rewards that immediately.

Michael Mignogna:
So regarding Google Business Profiles or GMBs, when you create a Google business profile, and obviously you can edit this after the fact, Google essentially asks you, is this a business that people can visit and therefore should we show the address publicly or is this a service area business? And I'm asking this because I'll tell you, a lot of the roofing contractors and contractors that I talk to, they have legitimate businesses, but they run their home address is like their business address because they don't really need an office. What is the best thing for them to do in that situation? Should they be putting their home address as the public address in order to kind of latch onto that local area in Google's eyes? Or should they be choosing a service area and not putting their address public? And then follow up question would be, if the answer is a service area, should you keep the service area limited to a city and then create multiple Google business profiles somehow? Or what's the best practice there?

Dima:
Yeah, good question. I hear it a lot actually. So the downside of the service area is that you don't show your address. And the downside of that is Google typically prefers for a contractor company to show an address. And it's not even that. If your competition is showing addresses and you don't, that is a weird scenario. What I mean by that, it actually speaks of a bigger philosophy of S-E-O-S-E-O is not rocket science. It's not something you have to create. SEO is looking at what Google has already established and Google looking at existing results and parameters that are ranking and trying to at the very least mimic that. But at the very best go beyond that. So what do we see when we look for a local roofing contractor and the maps, most of them have an address. So you showing up there and saying, Hey, I don't need an address.
I'll be ranking just fine. Well, if your top 10 competitors are showing address, that obviously is a common denominator. It's a common thing. It's it's a factor that unites them. So you coming in there and saying, well, I'll be different. It's not going to serve you. You want to take what they have and use that for your advantage. It goes for content optimization on all of that. That's a new kind of movement in the SEO world is not to just optimizing the vacuum, but looking at existing results and drawing information from that to guide you because that is a dead giveaway of what Google already likes. So most businesses, they do have that address, but also there is a psychology element. Obviously people, clients, they like to see the actual local address that gives them a peace of mind, but also that also gives you a pin on the map itself.
And Google usually prefers the actual local address if your competition has address. Then if you don't, the Google's like, well, okay, well, but we'll drop you off a little bit, drop you down a little bit. My advice is, show your address as much as you can. And don't overthink this. Many businesses are run from houses. Many, many businesses are run from basements. So what the reality is such that your clients are typically not going to just stroll into your business. This is not the kind of business that people just walk into without a call. So don't be afraid, and really you're not really solving anything by hiding your address on Google. Why? Because for you to even have a chance at competing on the first page or the first top 10, top three results in the maps, you would still have to do citations, which is basically business profiles all across the internet. You need to have enough of those business profiles all across the internet. So Google trusts you that you're legitimate. Well, guess what? You cannot hide your address there. You go to Yelp, all of the other business profiles, yellow Pages, you cannot hide your address there. You have to show it. So you're not really solving anything if you're in it, be in it 100% if you're not and not.

Michael Mignogna:
So what do you say to to a contractor who says, fine Dima, that's great advice. I'll show my address, or I'll show an address, but I do not want to show my home address for various reasons. What do I do?

Dima:
Well, then go get an office. Make it easy for everyone. Go get an office. You need to be serious about it. If you want SEO, be bold and show your address, which I do all the time. I've lived many different houses. I have a ton of kids. I still show my address everywhere. My home address. If anyone needs to find your address, they'll find your address. This is super easy. It's a lot easier than you think. Lemme

Michael Mignogna:
Ask you something. Let's say someone gets an address for their, let's say someone says, okay, I'm going to get an office. I'm going to spend whatever it costs per month, but I want to get the cheapest one I can find. So I'm going to find this coworking environment that has offices for 500 bucks a month. Or even there's a $200 a month option where it's a shared desk. Does that address at that building where there are a hundred other address businesses and the only difference being maybe a suite number, is that address, does that hold as much weight as a completely distinct address?

Dima:
From my experience, Google doesn't care at this point. So as long as it's a place where a customer can technically walk into and have a conversation and sit down with you, that qualifies. Back in the day, they allowed virtual offices and UPS boxes and PO boxes and all of that was possible. We've done hundreds of these and then they started suspending them nonstop. Shared office space is still an actual office. So I know a lot of roofing companies that use that. It's kind of like a backdoor. It's a loophole where you could definitely get yourself on the map there. Now, what they will want you, and especially now with video verifications, they would want you to record yourself inside that location with your logo somewhere. As long as you can do that, then you're fine. Record yourself on the desk, you're working. Here's my desk.
This is where we would meet with people. There's a lot of times some kind of shared conference room or something like that. Just use that for the video, and that usually goes through just fine. And that also is a perfect way to diversify your presence. To have multiple Gs is to have those shared office spaces all across the area that you service, because not only you want to show up with your website pages where you don't really need an address. Pages can show up for any location with your website, but your map listing needs an actual physical address for you to be qualified to show up to compete at that location. So that is another way to gain additional real estate on the first page in that city.

Michael Mignogna:
Where do you see your roofing clients who do the SEO that you teach them to do? Where do you see them getting most of the phone calls? Is it from their Google business profile, or is it from their website, or is it hard to tell?

Dima:
Yeah, good question. It's a bit hard to tell. I wish there was an easier answer. Obviously, as an owner, you can have information that is more specific if you're tracking that stuff. Obviously every time somebody's calling, you should be really asking How do you find us? But a lot of times a people will say from Google, okay, well, where exactly, and that's where it can get a little weird to talk about details. But Google Business Profile Map listing, it will actually show you. You can go inside and you'll see how many calls you receive because tracking that stuff, so right from your dashboard, from google.com, if you type in your listing and you're logged in into your Google profile that's linked to your listing, you can get inside and there's I think, info or something button, you can see all the calls that are coming specifically from your GP.
So you can probably use some math and subtract some numbers and come up with some idea. But I personally like to go after domination versus being specific, Hey, I want this and I want that. I want everything from my experience in roofing and home improvement industry. Sometimes I would not be surprised if the number is at least 50% that are coming from maps, because again, that's where your reviews live. That's also an important part in home improvement industry. People love to read reviews and reviews don't typically live on your website, which is another missed opportunity for a lot of website builders is to include your reviews into your content, make it visible on your website. But people love to read them on Google as well. So that's a factor too. And if they like what they read, they call. So 50 50, at the very least, I would say sometimes it's higher, but my approach, my philosophy is dominate, have everything not one or the other. Be fundable both in the maps and also in organic results. And even more, I would say create additional websites for specific services and dominate even more. Own as much of real estate on the first page as possible. If you can own all of the positions, you would do that, I'm sure. So there are ways to get even more than just two of those.

Michael Mignogna:
Really cool. Does running Google ads affect your organic listing?

Dima:
Wow, we're getting into the weeds of it, huh? It's from the realm of speculation, really. But I just came back from Thailand where the world's best SEOs hang out, and there was a conference on SEO and Kyle Roof, which he is kind of like an engineer of SEO world, meaning he brings his, well, he's actually a lawyer in the past. He brings his analytical mind and commits to testing. That's what all he does is tests. Tests. He wants to bring objectivity to SEO, because SEO is historically is a land of speculation. Now, there are some sharp minds both from law or some more scientific fields who have switched to SEO, who bring that expertise. And Kyle Roof and Matt Diggity, those guys, their brains behind a lot of the data. And there's a lot more, I just came back from Arizona and I've met 300 more high-end SEOs who've been doing testing, and there's a whole seminars.
It's like, is this theory working? Okay, let's test it. This is what we did. We did this for two months, and here there results. And how about this theory? And some of them are ridiculous, but it's like, hey, even little small things you can test. So Kyle Roof did a test, and he's saying that any traffic helps your SEO. So the more traffic you can get, the faster you're going to be ranking. Now, what's the fastest way to get traffic? Technically could be the ads, right? So ads could generate that traffic. It's not that you're spending money with Google that actually makes a difference. It's that it generates potentially traffic that then helps your SEO move faster. Now you can waste a ton of money with ads and not get any traffic that's been done hundreds of times. Does it matter

Michael Mignogna:
Where the traffic is coming from? Could it come from Facebook ads?

Dima:
Yes. Yes. So traffic is good. Now, obviously, the more targeted traffic, the more industry relevant traffic is, the more relevant the source is, the better. Now you can get Chinese traffic and it's probably not going to do you too much. But there are now at this conference, there's a bunch of companies that are offering basically bought service where it's artificial traffic that you can send to your website to make it look like it's actual people, especially it's helps with your GBP with your MAP listing. So there's services that simulate traffic so that you can rank faster.

Michael Mignogna:
Wow, that's really interesting. So traffic in general is a signal to Google that a particular page is worth valuing to a certain level, and if the page has a form on it or a phone number or something that the homeowner can use to get in touch with the roofer. Does Google keep track of what elements on the page are generating communication with the contractor via the page? In other words, if a homeowner fills out a form on a city page, is Google saying, Ooh, they're using this page to accomplish a task, we're going to give more weight to this page?

Dima:
Yes. Yes. So Google sees every activity that you do on the page, how much time you spend and all of that. But it's also important to understand not every metric is the same, because if some websites are designed to retain clients like informational, well then commercial websites are not really designed to retain the traffic. They're designed to convert the traffic. So it's not always that you need to have this person hanging out on your website this long. It's like, what do you do once you're there? Are you going back or you're actually clicking and calling and filling out the form? Because

Michael Mignogna:
The whole time on page thing is when I used to perform SEO for clients of mine, I don't do that anymore. But when I used to do that, one of the things I would look at, and one of the things they were curious about was time on page. And I'm like, they would say, oh, the time on this page went down. And I said, well, that's because we made it easier for them to reach you, and they don't need to be on the page anymore. So it's kind of this thing where you have to look, people mention KPIs all the time, the key performance indicators, and they're obsessed with data. And I think being data-driven is great, but it's like in what context is that data important? And it's like, alright, if the time on the page used to be three minutes because someone was unable to figure out where your phone number was and the form loaded too slowly, it's bad that they spent that much time on the page, they were consuming content. It's because they were really frustrated and now they hate you because they didn't know how to get in touch. And now we fix that. They're on the page for 14 seconds and that's better.

Dima:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Google is not too, obviously Google is not as smart as we think. That's true, but they're not as stupid as we think either. So they figure that out.

Michael Mignogna:
What if you had to boil down into two or three or just a few things that a roofing contractor or any type of contractor should know so that when they get on a phone with an agency or a company or a person who claims to do SEO, what are the questions they can ask of them and what are the red flags that should tip them off that they're on the phone with a charlatan who's going to waste their money versus someone who actually knows what they're doing?

Dima:
Man, that's a big question, right? That's a harder question from those that you've asked because there's so many ways to appear. You know what you're doing and not know what you're doing. And a lot of times these people, they're not charlatans in the sense that they know that they're lying to you, they're convinced of the things that they're selling. It's just they're uneducated, they're just ignorant. And a lot of times that's what allows them to have that confidence to sell you what they're selling you. So you want to move past their confidence, past their lofty words and graphs that they show you and even past. And I say that with the grain of salt there, even past the referrals that they will give you. And the reason is because a lot of times referrals, they have a reason why they're referring that company and maybe they're getting a commission off of that, but more often than not, they are referring you, not because they've seen trackable measurable results, but because they have good relationship or friendship or they just love to hang out together and they like the SEO company or the guy and he's funny and he makes funny meanings and whatnot.
That is a normal thing in roofing industry to recommend based on personal feeling rather than actual numbers and true experience, true experience of success from what they've done. So

Michael Mignogna:
Let me ask the question in a different way that might elicit an interesting response that's really cuts to the point. So you were just saying that there are certain things that a SEO company person agency might say to make a person feel comfortable hiring them. And one of those is look at these referrals, and then you're saying there's a chance the referrals are not referring, they're not giving a letter of recommendation for the SEO company for the right reasons. Maybe they like them or their family, friends, whatever. Totally. That's definitely plausible, obviously. But I guess the question is, is there even a single question that a roofing contractor or other type of contractor could ask the SEO company or the person they're on the phone with and based on the response, they can get a good idea if this person is educated or not. For instance, could they say, explain to me your thoughts on the importance of city pages and then if they say, well, you don't need city Pages, you just need everything pointed to your homepage.
And then it's like, all right, thanks, goodbye, click. And it's like, I'm think roofing SEO O school is probably a better idea. This guy wouldn't have helped me. Are there not like gotcha questions, but kind of like gotcha questions. What are the questions? Can you essentially quiz the SEO guy on the phone and just know what the answers ought to be? And if they answer in the realm of what they should be, then you probably, then you can feel more confident that they at least know what they're talking about. Or if they answer in a certain way and they mention specific things, are those red flags that should make you a little bit wary of hiring that particular person?

Dima:
Yeah, good question. I wish it was this easy to be honest. And then if I make it that easy, I know that a lot of companies will move past through that. The problem is not with the companies that are obviously wrong, because you can smell that even if you don't know what they're talking about, but it's the ability to test what they're claiming that actually brings you clarity because the data that the words, the verbiage is not unique. Everyone's going to say very much the same thing unless they're completely faking it. A lot of these companies, they're doing SEO, but they're dabbling with it. They're not approaching it as a science, they're not educating themselves. So they know the basic verbiage, they know the ABCs. So they'll tell you, yeah, the pages, city pages are important. Yes, title tag is important, yes, this and that. But to have one question, I mean, I could probably, but if I say it or here, then they all will learn it, obviously. But for example, what are the kind of backlinks that you're providing for your clients? Can you share with me a backlink that you have just provided to your latest client the best possible?

Michael Mignogna:
So I actually think that's a fantastic question because if I had to bet, I would bet, and we spoke about this on the preliminary call that we did prior to recording this, I would bet that at least 80%, it might even be 95%. It could be that horrific SEO companies claiming to do SEO, like companies like Hibu and other big companies that are getting people to sign up for thousands of dollars a month and in my opinion, doing nothing. They aren't even producing backlinks. I mean, they're doing blog posts and they're saying that you're getting social signals by posting a meme on Facebook once in a while and they're not doing the most important thing. So if you said, show me a backlink, they'd be like, oh yeah, I'll email you one and whatever, and then they probably never will. And you'll be like, well, I'll never hear from that guy again. I'm not hiring him. Yeah,

Dima:
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. A lot of these companies don't even know where to get backlinks and what it is really, what are the markers of a good backlink? And just for those who are listening, backlinking is a vote. It's like a clickable link from a different website to your website. Google looks at backlinks as votes of confidence. So it's like you're collecting votes for your trustworthiness before Google. That's what backlinks are. And there is an amazing gradation of quality and quantity of those. And you might have hundreds of backlinks that are just garbage, they're useless, and you can have two that will make all the difference. So there is a science to it, but at the very least, the backlink, the good quality backlink should be industry relevant. That is the bare minimum for a high quality backlink. Now even we don't provide just those type of backlinks to our clients or to our students, but this is the goal.
This the goal is to come to a point where you only collect high quality backlinks after you've built the foundation of more common backlinks like business profiles, social media, all of that just for the buzz, because that's what everyone does, but the high quality backlink that moves the needle is the industry relevant backlinks. So you can say, Hey, what is the last backlink that you've provided to your client? Can you show it to me? The high quality backlink? If they send you a link from some Chinese looking website or some basic directory that is not a high quality backlink, even if it's industry relevant directory, it's just a directory. There's hundreds and thousands of other companies out there, and you can easily go and get that yourself. You can just go and fill out that form. It takes you two minutes to be posted that directory. There's no expertise in that.

Michael Mignogna:
What's an example of a high quality relevant backlink that a roofer might be able to get?

Dima:
It would be from a website that is only specializing in home improvement, and it would be inside a newly written blog post for relevant topic. So let's say mom blogger that writes about decor in the house and it's a legitimate site with legitimate traffic. Now checking traffic would be also a good idea, but that's not as easy to check the traffic. But you want backlink to come in from a website with the traffic because that's an immediate trust to Google, but that's a harder one to check. But the very least, you want a link from a website that specializes on home improvement topics and it's inside brand new written piece of content, an article about something that is relevant to your industry. You are referenced inside that article as an authority that would be a good high quality backlink

Michael Mignogna:
For a roofing contractor watching this right now who's like, okay, I kind of understand what you're talking about, but I actually have no idea. How do you get these backlinks? Where do they come from? Do you purchase them from somewhere? Is there a service that does this? And then furthermore, if this is something they wanted to do, what would you recommend in terms of actually making that happen?

Dima:
Yeah, there's many, many services that provide you with backlinks, and they primarily work with SEO agencies actually, they don't directly work with the end user with roofing companies where in our school, we try to fix that. We try to break that sequence. We teach you how to work with these vendors, but in essence, what they do is they go and on your behalf do an outreach to these bloggers who are writing on topics that are relevant to what you are about, and they're pitching them an article or an idea, and obviously it's a paid backlink. And if you're against paid backlinks, good luck with SEO. It's like you cannot do SEO without actually getting high quality backlink. Now, some will argue and some will say no, just content, content, content, yeah, sure, to a degree, that's true in a very particular industries where content alone can get you to the very top.
There'll be more of from the semantic SEO world where you're writing super highly researched articles, but it's more on a national level or more on an affiliate SEO world. On a local level, you cannot write good enough article for Google to just or good enough page for Google just to put you on the first page. If the location is somewhat competitive, you need still those votes that from the outside, that confirm your claim that you're the best. That's really what backlink is. It's a confirmation of your claims. So those are coming, like I said, from the bloggers, high quality end bloggers. There's other backlinks, pr, press releases, backlinks, they're also not bad, but the highest quality would be, it's called a guest post. That back thing is called a guest post from a blogger. And listen, those bloggers are writing for a reason. They're not just there for fun.
We all think of bloggers as people who have too much time on their hands. Most of bloggers actually earning money, earning the living this way. They build their reputation with writing a blog on a very particular topic, and then people like you or me, and they're like, Hey, can you mention us? How about you link to us? And obviously if you're a garbage company, they might see that and not want to do that, but if you're a good looking company and everything is looking well, they're like, yeah, of course we'll write an article about this and that and we'll link from that to you. And yeah, here we go, 200 bucks, $300, $400 depending on the pricing.

Michael Mignogna:
Interesting.

Dima:
Yeah. By one backlink like that could easily cost three, $400.

Michael Mignogna:
How many of those at the outset of doing proper SEO, does a contractor need to invest in order to kind of lay the groundwork and the base for what ultimately might be an SEO plan that is more of a maintenance or slowly building sort of thing?

Dima:
Yeah, that's a harder question. And the reason is because of ai, AI is on the rise. So our capabilities are increasing incrementally. By the way, that's another question you should ask an SEO O company. If you're trying to vet them. It's like, are you using AI for SEO? And if the answer is like no, then you're wondering, are they still in the stone age? Why not? Because nowadays, to not use AI for SEO, now there's a wrong way to use AI for SEO, but not to use AI for SEO is a dead giveaway that you are a stale not developing company.

Michael Mignogna:
What aspects of SEO is AI best applicable to?

Dima:
The most obvious would be content production. So where in the past an SEO company is going to be proud about posting one blog a month for you, and that's the only thing they're waving for you, Hey, we did a month a blog for you this week or this month. You can easily do five six of them every week. Now, high quality blogs now, not just click a button, Hey, IG pq, write me a blog. You want to add quality to it, you want to add identity to it, unique markers, unique voice, but you can easily do five to six. So the actual application of this to a roofing company is the volume, the volume of what can be done. And if their SEO company is still pitching you their one blog a month type of thing, you just need to know they're ripping you off because the capabilities now are so much more advanced, they should be charging you less and producing you more because of the capabilities of AI to generate a ton more content.
Because guess what? If you don't do it, your competition does. So you're way behind your competitors who are implementing these tactics. Your question was, remind me originally as far as what can you do to lay that foundation? And I said, there is an evolution happening obviously with what's possible because of ai, but right now in our school, roofing SEO School, we recommend at least five blogs a week would be good to have established. Even better. You can write them all at once, load them into your website and create an out publishing schedule because many people don't know this. You can load all of the blogs in advance and then just create a schedule for your website to auto publish them. You don't need the special web designer to be there always to click a publish button that is easily done from

Michael Mignogna:
All the major platforms like Wix and WordPress,

Dima:
WordSpace anywhere. Yeah, for sure. So that's something we do as well for our students. We do have a done for you first three months program where if the student wants us to lay that heavy lifting, do the heavy lifting, lay that foundation, we can do that. We create 280 blogs for them or load them into a website and we schedule them to auto publish with those even six a week plus. I would say also it would be good to have 20 to 30 city pages on your website, because most companies, that's how far they can go. And I'm not talking major cities, I'm talking about towns, even neighborhoods. You would know those locations, but to number one, like we said, to be able to rank in those places, but also to create that local authority for Google to know that you can be trusted blogs, they create topical authority if you wanted to summarize it and city pages create local authority.
Those are two things that you want to have on your website to lay that foundation, solid Foundation City pages and blogs on various topics. My favorite approach with blogs, it might sound funny, but you go to your competitors, you take what they've written and you rewrite it in a better way, boom, most of your research is done right there. Just see what they have, make a better version of what they have, because again, the fact that they're higher than you in the results means that Google likes what they've got. So go and take what they've and make it better.

Michael Mignogna:
Do you recommend in the blog posts linking to various pages of your own website?

Dima:
Yeah, we were just talking about this yesterday with our team. Yeah. You want to link to three primary sources, ideally. Now at the very least, you want to link back to the money page that you're trying to rank. It's important to understand blogs. You're not really trying to rank blogs. Blogs are not written for you to get traffic. Now, you might get traffic from blogs, great, but blogs are written more for support content for the bulkiness of the website, for that topical authority that Google wants you to have. And then

Michael Mignogna:
It sort of transfers that authority by acting as a vote in favor of the money pages

Dima:
Money page. Exactly. You need to understand that money pages is what you're actually trying to rank, because that's where the ROI is hiding. And blogs are just for fun for the topical authority. And if some person from the other part of the world finds your blog, great, but that's not your client, right? But the blogs, yes, you want to link back to that money page as an additional vote that's constantly supporting that money page.

Michael Mignogna:
Do you recommend posting as your Google business profile? And are blogs a good thing to share on your GMB on your Google business profile to basically signal to Google that it's a living active profile and that it ought to show it higher in the results?

Dima:
That's a big one. Yes, we've seen a direct result from being active on your GBP to that GBP showing up in the results. Nothing else. We did just that. We would optimize it all to the T, but then there's nothing else to do with GBP. What else do you do? Well, that's what you do. And the best way we've found to do here would be go to your blogs, recycle them into a different format a little bit. Use Chad GPT for that. Tell, Hey, Chad, GPT. Recycle this blog into an update on my Google business profile with a link at the bottom to read more. Something like that. Boom. You just feed it to the Che G pt. It creates a more fun paragraph or a couple paragraphs, and then there's a read more link, and then it takes you to the actual blog. Google loves that stuff because Google loves when you pet it on the back and when Google creates something, you don't want to ignore it.
You want to give it what it wants, even though sometimes it doesn't make sense. Remember they used to, they still now, they're kind of removing it, but they would offer a free website on the map listing like, Hey, use our free website here. We would just do it because we would satisfy Google's need for that just to gain a brownie point from them. Does it really make any difference for your SEO? Do people really find it? Do people really going to go there? No, but we do that because we scratch Google's back and it was like, oh, thank you. That's what we want. And they create these artificial, now they started adding, there is six major social media platforms that they want you to add the URL to in your GBP in your listing. Just do that. Do whatever Google comes up with this way, you'll be ahead of your competition. You'll give it what it wants.

Michael Mignogna:
Yeah, smart. It's a lot of things. You've mentioned a lot of things. I mean, they're all very concrete, doable things. You provide a simple but comprehensive roadmap for people inside your SEO school, and then how do you communicate that to them? Is it overwhelming in terms of the number of videos and trainings to watch? Are there supporting documents that make it so that people can do things slowly and gain confidence as they go? How does that work?

Dima:
Yeah, I love that question because we just came back from Arizona with my COO, with my business partner from another SEO conference. That's something we're committed to be more at SEO Conference than roofing conferences. That is for some reason, that's a weird thing for many marketing companies, you should be sharpening your skills more than you're selling your stuff. But we just came back and it was like a fire hydrant of information just pointing at you and everything is important. And there's so many details. And it's like, I mean, all of it is good stuff, and a lot of it is very nuanced pieces of SEO. And my partner is like, how do we pass this on? And I'm like, listen, we are not just SEOs educating SEOs, we're SEO people or educating roofers. So what that means is we need to be a translator for them.
We need to be an interpreter. And not just that we need to be the people who choose what is more important and what is less important, because you can get lost in all of that data and have unrealistic expectations from roofing companies. But that's why it's important to understand what metrics make a bigger difference than other things. And the SEO is simple in this way. The saying, what do you need to do to survive a bear attack? You don't need to be the fastest runner. You just need to be faster than your friend. So that's the idea with SEO. Most of your competition, they're not great with SEO. So don't try to compete Nike or apple.com. Do better than what they have, do better than your competition has, and you'll outrank them. You'll do it. And you don't need all the details of technical SEO. Just do the major most important elements, fundamentals, and you'll be great.

Michael Mignogna:
That's great. That's awesome.

Dima:
So that's what we try to teach in the school, Michael, is how to look at SEO, not just as bits and pieces, but as a holistic understanding of the basics and fundamentals, because fundamentals move the needle fundamentals make your rank, especially on the local arena. So

Michael Mignogna:
There are a very finite and approachable number of things that'll get you 80, 90 even more percent of the way there. The rest of the fun things that SEO experts love talking about are nuanced, really fun things that all the nerds talk about basically. Exactly. But ultimately, those things can get you from 99 to a hundred, but it's not the thing that's going to get you from zero to 80. It's 80 20 principal. So that's great to know. I have one last question and then we will quickly go over how people can join your school and things like that. When people hire me,
They're paying me a fee. And then on top of that, they have to pay for the ad spend with SEO, whether it's with you or if they're hiring an agency to do the SEO, one way or another, they're going to get, they're going to have to pay for not just the agency who's just pressing the buttons, but also for the things they have to purchase in order to link back to the website for backlinks and guest posts. And the same is with your school. They're going to have to pay what it costs for your school, and then additionally have a budget for the guest posts and the things they need to purchase in order to blitz their website with links and things like that. So the question is someone who wants to join your school on a month to month basis to learn, and then in all of that, who is also going to have to purchase the backlinks? How much of a budget, in addition to what they're paying for your school, should they have set aside per month to pay for those things?

Dima:
Right? Roughly 500 bucks. So it is a good question because you never know how much of the money that you're paying to an SU agency is going directly into the process. A lot of times you think, well, the more I pay them, the more it's going to go to the process. Well, guess what? Thank you for. They'll tell you, thank you for sponsoring their events and their fancy offices and beer kegs that they're willing and able to bring to roofing events and flying and all of that party stuff. That doesn't equate. That doesn't mean that they're spending more on the process. You can pay them four grand, five grand, six grand, and only a fraction of that would go towards the SEO process, but you would never know. So for us, it's important to break it down very clearly and say, Hey, tuition is $500 right now for anyone who wants to join the DIY route, complete DIY route where you just lesson by lesson, step by step, video by video.
It's a video school with a private support group. It's $500 tuition per month, no contracts, no hostage situations, nothing like that. And then we teach you how to invest another 500 bucks. So total, you're looking at a thousand dollars if let's say you love the idea, but you just know you don't have that time. We do offer the done for you first three months option because first three months is where you lay that foundation where it takes more of your time. Writing that content, designing those pages, getting those fundamental backlinks all across the internet, optimizing your GBP. Those things are done usually one time, and that's why they take longer initially. But past three months, SEO turns into a very predictable routine. And that's one of the things that SEO agencies do not want you to understand. They want you thinking that they're working as hard as the first month.
Hopefully they work hard during the first month. A lot of times that's not even the case, but they want to believing that, hey, they're working as hard every month past that. And it's not just not the case. I used to run an SE agency. I know how things are done. I went to SEO school. That's how things are taught. You work hard upfront and then your margins are 95% profit, 5% process. That's a dream job, dream business, 95% profit, 5% process. Where here we're saying, Hey, we can do the heavy duty for you heavy foundation, and then it's only 500 a month for you to continue the work, but it's going towards backlinks and things that are easy to keep collecting. Nothing on the website itself anymore. The tuition also will go down for you if you do the done for you route to $100 a month versus $500 a month. So there's multiple routes. We have different people doing in different ways, but a lot of new students, they are using the done for you option. We do the heavy lifting for them, create hundreds of pages, design them, optimize everything, and then we're out. And then they continue where we left off.

Michael Mignogna:
If people want to join your school, do you have a coupon code you share or any sort of thing like that?

Dima:
Absolutely. I mean, I love your audience, Michael. I've been watching you forever. You're one of the few guys in a Facebook marketing world that I respect because you're sticking to your stuff and you are going deeper, not wider. And that's what we're about is going deeper into digging your well deeper and not looking into other places. So allow what you do, and I would love to offer a $500 off for anyone who wants to start with us on the down for you route. The price there, it's not cheap. It's $15,000 for us to do that heavy lifting initial work, because we create 300 plus pages of content for you, a ton of blogs, a ton of city pages, all of that is optimized to the TGBP optimization, your map optimization posts, even scheduled posts on your GBP, everything. We have a whole list on our website. You can check it. Roofing is to school.com. But for anyone who wants to jump on board, we'll give $500 if they mention your name and would love to work with 'em.

Michael Mignogna:
That's amazing. And I'm sure this is something that roofing contractors all over would benefit from in a really, really big way. Dima, thank you so much for spending time with me today and talking through all of this stuff. I find it so interesting. You explained things really well, and if there's anything I can do for you, you let me know.

Dima:
I appreciate it. Michael, same here. I really enjoyed you inviting me here and talking. If I had a podcast, we would do the same, but I don't.

Michael Mignogna:
Dude, start one man. I

Dima:
Don't know. I'm not convinced yet. I'm not convinced yet. It could be a massive waste of my time, but I love when people are sticking to what they're doing and we might get there eventually, but for now, I love what you're doing, man. Keep going. Thank you. I

Michael Mignogna:
Appreciate it. Awesome, man. Well have a good one. Thank you.