Agency and marketing-team governance

I wanna share an SEO horror story that is happening right now with a client that I used to work with these guys called me in December and they said Josh we have decided to move to a new SEO provider one of the directors is friendly with one of the guys there and this is the way that we wanna go obviously I don't like losing clients but I said to these guys guys I know these providers they are terrible they are cowboys they are useless and you are gonna drop off a cliff they didn't listen to me and I made the move yesterday I went onto HS just to take a look how these guys are doing and I've started to see like I said they are really starting to collapse take a look at these horrible results so far I can see so far they've lost 545 keywords from the rankings I can see just from the top three keywords alone they've dropped 372 keywords if we look at the organic traffic go look at that number this is massive now I'm so disappointed because I worked so hard with these guys again I knew this new provider would do it if I go look at what the issues are I don't really know what these...

Someone asked me the other day, what does it take to be a good digital marketer? What does it take to be successful at doing Google Ads and SEO for a living?

The answer that I give them and I give to everyone is that you have to be passionate about the industry. You have to love the job that you do.

You have to live and breathe it. You have to read everything that comes out about the industry.

You have to be on top of it. You really have to be passionate.

So many times I interview people for the job and I can see that they are just bored and they're just doing it because they have to get paid. That's a red flag.

Whoever does SEO and Google Ads for you, the only way that they're gonna be successful is if they're passionate. Now, obviously you have to have mzzle from above, but the second thing is that you really have to be passionate about the industry and then only can you have a chance of being successful.

If you have an agency doing Google Ads and SEO for you, but you have a suspicion that things aren't working well, all you have to do is open up a new window on your browser incognito and search for your company on Google. It sounds mind boggling, but so many people just don't do this.

Are your ads coming up? Are they coming up on your sponsored text ads?

Or if you have an e commerce website, are they coming up on sponsored search ads? Also, if I'm looking for my product and my service and someone is meant to be doing SEO for me, am I coming up on the top of the Google searches?

Now again, this technique is very simple, it's free and obviously it is what you have to do. You don't need fancy tools.

Your SEO agency or your Google Ads agency shouldn't be playing games with you. They shouldn't be giving you fancy answers, but you should be able to check it out straight away.

So many times when we've seen this and a person realises and they get the light bulb moment, they say, wow, you know what, Josh? Our searches never come up...

Are you in an abusive relationship with your agency? I know it's a terrible word to say and I know it's a terrible comparison, but I honestly don't know of any way to explain it.

So many times we speak to clients and we deal with clients that are using agencies that are really just harming them. Not only are they harming them, they're literally stealing money from them month after month.

Yet these companies still stay with these terrible agencies. I can tell you so many examples.

Literally on a weekly basis I see it. I know of a certain company they've been begging an agency to change one page on their website for 6 months.

Every single week they ask the same questions and once again, the agency gives them a whole variety of different answers. I know of another person that continuously pays for services they're just not getting.

I have no idea why these people are staying with these agencies. Like I said, it reminds me, unfortunately, of abusive relationships...

The companies that are getting the most out of search engine optimisation, Google Ads and social media are the ones that are merging their in house marketing teams with external agencies. In house marketing teams are brilliant at what they do, making sure that things run smoothly, executing things and working with the brand.

External agencies on the other hand bring a lot of other aspects into the marketing mix. They can bring creative spark, they can bring new ideas, they can bring new things that are happening in the market and most importantly they can bring technical expertise such as SEO, Google Ads and paid social.

SEO and Google Ads for example take years and years to master and in house marketing teams can't be expected to know it. All the companies that I've worked with that get the greatest success by far are the companies that were merging the in house marketing team and my external agency together.

We form a great relationship together and it really is the way forward...