IAM2537 – Founder and President Helps Businesses Get Found Online Through SEO

Bruce Clay is widely known as the “Father of SEO” and a pioneer in the digital marketing space since 1996.

He went on to build Bruce Clay Inc., a leading company that helps businesses get found online through SEO, paid ads, content, and social media.

Bruce is the author of the popular book Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies and has trained thousands of people through his website SEOtraining.com.

He discusses how AI is reshaping SEO, likening it to a new “Wild West,” and the importance of adapting to modern SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features beyond traditional rankings.

Bruce introduces his methodology using 12 personas to map user intent and strategically place intelligent, question-based calls to action (QCTAs) that convert.

He highlights how SEO, PPC, content, and AI must now work in tandem under a unified brand strategy.

Additionally, Bruce emphasized that brand visibility and sentiment are becoming critical ranking factors in AI-driven search.

Website: BruceClay
LinkedIn: Bruce Clay

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Transcription:

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Bruce Clay Teaser 00:00 

So, I asked the question and then I lead him to a converting page, and so, and that's actually like 50 steps.

I mean, it's a really complex Programming issue and but what it does is it converts a normal page into a converting page

Intro 00:29

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Bruce Clay. Bruce, excited to have you on the show.

Bruce Clay 01:04

Thank you. I'm totally happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:06

Yes, I'm happy as well, too. I'm super excited because Bruce is doing so many phenomenal and awesome things.

So, of course, before we jump into having that awesome and phenomenal conversation. I want to read a little bit more about Bruce, so you can hear about some of those things.

And known professionally as the Father of SEO, Bruce has been a world-renowned expert in the field of SEO since 1996.

He wrote and taught how to optimize websites to be found in search, established BruceClay.com as a trusted source for how-to information in the new field of search engine optimization.

BruceClay Inc. has since grown into a leading search marketing company, providing SEO services, consulting, pay-per-click, advertising management, content development, and social media marketing services.

And one of the really cool things I found before preparing for this is Bruce obviously is a goldmine of information and knowledge.

I'm super excited to kind of dive into SEO, of course, AI, all these phenomenal things. But he also authored the influential book, Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies, now in his fourth edition, and Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals.

He created the first web page analysis tool and search engine relationship chart, which became widely used in the SEO community.

And one of the really cool things I found out listening and preparing for this is that I think his first client was a witch as well, too.

So, I think that's pretty exciting. So, Bruce, I want to hear about all the things. Super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Bruce Clay 02:32

Yep.

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Gresham Harkless 02:33

Awesome. I would love to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more from the beginning.

Could you take us through, like what led you to kind of get started? What I call your CEO story.

Bruce Clay 02:41

Yeah, this was back in January of 1996. Some people may remember that's when Al Gore invented the Internet. It'll catch on.

My background is I have a bachelor's in math and computer science, and I'm a programmer. So, I had the technical programming background, and I have my MBA is out of Pepperdine.

So, I have marketing and management. And along comes this thing called the internet, which is pretty much marketing if you did it right.

And it's very much algorithmic to get ranked in the search components. And I had the skills and the programming and the marketing flair and I started putting it together.

And I thought, I named it Bruce Clay because I thought I was just going to be a consultant. I'm on my dining room table here.

This is truly startup time. And that's what I had. And I pulled together a website and put it up, and I was learning and having fun while I did it.

And then all of a sudden, people started reaching out to me. And I had clients. And then I had more clients. And then I had to hire people.

And then I had to move out of the house. I mean, it took on a life of its own. The early days were referred to as Wild West because the search engines didn't really know how to protect themselves from spammers. I think AI is Wild West again.

So, we've got some things repeated. You mentioned it, I'm referred to as the father of SEO.

Well, that isn't so much of an ego thing; it is an honor that my colleagues chose to call me that. But I'll tell you right now, I'm too much of a marketer to ever give that up.

Gresham Harkless 04:51 

Yeah, of course.

Bruce Clay 04:54

That is a marketing thing. And, I'm happy that I've been given that. Although over time, I noticed that I aged, so they made me the grandfather of SEO.

Great, great, great grandfather. And, so the industry's evolved a lot and it's a very dynamic environment.

Gresham Harkless 05:22

Yeah, absolutely.

Bruce Clay 05:23

That's sort of how it happened.

Gresham Harkless 05:24 

Yeah, I appreciate you so much sharing that. So, I would love to drill down a little bit more, especially around this AI piece and how you are solving that problem, what that looks like.

What are some of the, I guess, the philosophy, methodology, the way that you're approaching that and that we can adopt as a community?

Bruce Clay 05:43

Our philosophy is that if Google's gonna put something above you and push down the organic, that's okay too, I just wanna rank there.

Whatever Google put above you, I want you there. And we've developed, it's a strange thing, it's about 2,000 pages of instruction on how to rank on all the 40-some Google features, they're called features, and how to rank there.

And what we have is a way of determining on a keyword-by-keyword basis, which ones should show up, and are you there?

So that if somebody does a query, doesn't matter where they look on the search result page, you're ranked. And that's our focus.

So, we did an analysis and I discovered that you probably, it's better than even the 80-20 rule, with eight personas, you will cover a vast majority of the people searching for something you offer. So, I said 12.

And what I do is I take your webpage and I point my really cool tool at it and it analyzes your webpage, figures out what it's about.

Then I say, what are the 12 personas likely to care about that? Then, for each persona, where do they enter your website in the funnel? Top of funnel, middle, bottom?

What is their intent? Is it transactional or informational? And I do a lot of pretty advanced smooshing.

And then I take that and I apply it to your website in the form of calls to action. So, I intersperse a very intelligent call to action within your webpage. And it's a QCTA. It's not a just CTA.

What I do is instead of just hitting you up slapping you silly saying, click here, I ask a question. And asking the question, it's their pain in the question.

So, I ask the question, and then I lead them to a converting page. And so, and that is, that's actually like 50 steps.

I mean, it's a really complex programming issue. And what it does is it converts a normal page into a converting page.

Gresham Harkless 08:48

Yeah, absolutely. And I almost wonder if this is part of what I call it your secret sauce could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both.

Do you feel like truly understanding that human part of business, human part of search is really like where that opportunity is, is something that you all have been able to kind of do and do very well?

Bruce Clay 09:06 

Yes, absolutely. My approach is what is referred to as a pass. It's a methodology. Pain activates solution.

And so by identifying the pain and the solution, you can actually construct your web content, even, and understand how you're going to get your traffic.

Because fundamentally, let's suppose it's you lost traffic. I could write an article talking about why you lost traffic and how you recover it. And it's pretty generic, and you go read it and read the next one and read the next one.

And they're all the same. Or I can say, this is what happened to you. This is the consequence. This is your pain.

And here's how I'm going to fix it. So, which way is going to be more of a conversion, right? How do I get out of the Google hole that they dug? How do I make my content better? From a CEO point of view, most companies have SEOs that don't talk to pay-per-click.

They have SEOs that don't talk to content, right? And pay-per-click probably doesn't talk to AIO. It doesn't have a big demand on content. These are disjoint skill sets.

But if you have like SERP visibility as an overriding rule, that's CMO, that's CXO, that person who is really the manager of the disciplines. for the first time, they'll have something that allows them to see the overlaps and the share of voice; the share of voice alone is worth having.

Gresham Harkless 11:11

Yeah. So, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

And you might've already touched on this, but it's kind of like an Apple book or have or something that could make you more effective and efficient, but I don't want to say easily implement, but it's something that needs to be implemented. So, we know where we're at.

Bruce Clay 11:24

Yes. Well, we do, you've heard the saying, if I have six hours to cut down a tree, I'll spend the first four sharpening my ax, right?

That's exactly what this is. You don't go in and do a fire, aim ready, right? You can't do that. And you have to know where to do it right.

And you have to be able to implement. But always you have to start with what I call an assessment. So that's the way we approach it. We start with an assessment.

Gresham Harkless 12:07

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And let's go forward.

What do you see and what advice would you give to your business self right now, or any other business owners and CEOs, on what things should they be thinking about five to 10 years and what action could they take today?

Bruce Clay 12:25

You're gonna find that a business has to have a brand. Let's pick that as the component. You have to do a lot of investment to build that if you don't have it.

Even if you have it, you have to; it's a battle between you and your competitors. But I'd say pick, make your brand as well-known as you can.

Do press releases, do blog articles, speak at conferences. You have no choice, because what's going to happen is the brand is going to be 80% of your future traffic. AIO, and all AI right now, the common knowledge is brands perform better than non-brands.

And they would probably perform even better if their brand was even stronger. And the definition of strong brand is everybody knows your brand.

Not links, you don't want links, you want mentions. And you want mentions to be related to positive sentiment about your brand, and you want it to be everywhere.

Gresham Harkless 13:45 

Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

Our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Bruce, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Bruce Clay 13:55

First of all, you have to be a leader, and you have to hire the best and respect them for their job. If you're telling, not conversing with your staff, that's your failure point.

So, I think being a CEO is actually managing a tribe and everybody in it has to be willing and able that if the CEO says no, it has to be this way, they're going to say fine, because they know you've just as many times let them have their way.

I may have a lot more experience, I may have more dollars on the line, I may have more, more visibility to other things in the system that you don't see.

I may have all that. But that doesn't mean I'm dictatorial. A benevolent dictator is not the right way to do it. Even then, you have to be willing to do it right, and people have to be willing to follow you.

Gresham Harkless 15:04

Wow, I love that definition, Bruce. So, what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about the books, the tools, all the awesome things that you're working on.

Bruce Clay 15:18

www.BruceClay.com. But I also own SEOtraining.com and do both online and classroom training on SEO.

And I have SEOtools.com. Now those are valuable domain names. I have PreRider, which, by the way, if you went there and signed up, everybody gets 20 free tokens to just play with the tools.

So, I don't even ask for a credit card. Just come and get them. And then after that, you come back and you can buy them and they're cheap. I am very inexpensive compared to other tools on the market.

But the majority of what I do that is going to move the needle, you can get from BruceClay.com. You can find me there. And everybody, by the way, are to subscribe or follow me on LinkedIn.

Gresham Harkless 16:11

Well, we truly appreciate you, Bruce, to make that, of course, even easier. We're going to have the links and information. and the show notes as well, too, so that everybody can follow up, connect, find out about the tools, books, all the awesome things that you're giving away so freely. And so, thank you so much, my friend, for all your time, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Bruce Clay 16:26

Thank you.

Outro 16:27 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase; it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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