V.O. Guy
Hello and thanks for coming along to …And we have an office dog, the digital agency podcast where we talk to agency owner, directors and learn more about what makes them tick from the things that make them similar to the things they’d rather have known sooner where they’ve had success. And where they’ve learned some hard lessons. All will be revealed. With your host, Chris Simmance, the agency coach, and he’ll be talking to a different awesome agency person in each episode, asking them four questions and seeing where the conversation takes us over the next 25 minutes. OK, so let us begin over to you, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Thanks. Voice over guy and on the podcast today we’ve got Andy. Hey, how you doing, Andy?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah, good. Chris, how are you?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Not too bad. Second season in a row, he’s come back. He he he didn’t didn’t chase you off the last time. So thanks very much. For coming back.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Now, thanks for having me, Chris.
Chris Simmance (Host)
So for anyone who was really bad and skipped season one entirely and missed your fantastic episode, can you just remind people who you are and more importantly, the agency? I say, more importantly, you’re more important. Than the agency, but you know. Who, who you are and what you and. Snippet do.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah. So I’m Andy, Andy Chadwick. That sounds really James Bondy, but no, I’m Andy and we I am one of the Co founders of Snippet Digital and Snippet Consulting, which sounds like the same company, but the two different companies. So snippet Consulting is an SEO agency. And Snippet digital is well, basically we’re a software company that builds tools for SEO companies, including our own ones. And what we’re most famous for is keyword insights. That is the public facing SaaS SEO tool that we’ve released, the content marketing one. So that’s me and my business partner Sir Ganthan. Who you’ll also find on Twitter. But that’s. Yeah, I’m Andy. I made that really complicated. Don’t. Know why I did that?
Chris Simmance (Host)
It’s OK, it doesn’t matter. Hopefully if you didn’t get it, just follow Andy on Twitter and you’ll also be as confused anyway. But so yeah, you started snippet with suganthi in quite a while ago now what? Three years or so I said quite. A while ago. Three years feels like a long time.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
These days, yeah, well, we started sniffing. We started an agency together and again to give a bit of background, I wanted to try and not hire as many. People as possible. I I had a company in the past before I started this agency and we had about 20 employees and I. Was a useless manager. Come to think of it, it might be my age. I was 25 and trying to manage. 20 people when I was 25, it just wasn’t good. So anyway, horrified by the previous experience, when I started an agency with Sir Ganthan, my goal was to. Get scale but not with people. So we started to develop tools instead to anything we could automate. We did automate basically and that reduce the need for us to increase our headcount and off the back of the. One tool in particular queue of insights we launched to the public well, basically we had other agencies asking how are you, how are you managing to do this much work when there’s just two or three of you and we explained it was some of the tools we built and after speaking to a few other agency owners they were like ohh can we can we pay to use access to your tools and we that’s when the light bulb. And we were like, oh, actually, yeah, why don’t why don’t we build these out? This is this is where the interest is and we we don’t have to service that. So keep it in such as the first we’ve we’ve released there are more and we did intend on releasing them, but I. Didn’t realise how hard it was to run a SAS tool, so the other two or three that we’ve built internally probably aren’t. Going to come any time soon. Just it’s been that difficult.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I I I I can I I haven’t done it, but I can. I can vouch from experience of talking to other. Agency and then later SaaS founders. It’s very complicated and a lot harder than you immediately think, right. There’s, there’s mark. With who, who founded with candour. So he’s got so asked. There’s a few other people which which I won’t name names because obviously they run their own things, but they’ve they’ve launched SAS tools. Whilst running their agency and. They yeah, they can vouch for that as well. So what what’s been from the? Agency’s perspective, what’s been some of the sort of the major developments or changes that you guys have have taken this year?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Is in the changes we’ve made as an agency or changes we’re seeing?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, changes that have happened in the agency in the last year. What what’s?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
What’s new? Well. I started this whole thing and we started the the software side of things as a way to keep headcount down and that was still very much a goal. But in the last 12 months. Fortunately, our tool Cuban insights has acted as a flywheel for more leads from agencies as well. We did white labelling, so it’s not like and we we now we we try to specialise in little knee. So we’re not treading on anyone’s toes and that that knee is very much going to be in the direction we’re going in is it’s very much going to be content. Focused and keyword research focus, it’s obviously what the tool helps with so. I guess to answer your question simply over the last 12 months, we have now started to increase headcount. We’re going to be seen as more than a consultancy, which is what we were previously and I think you’ll be seeing a rebrand in the not too distant future where we’re not marketing as a consultancy or we’re very much marketing as an agency but. That agency is very focused on is going to be very focused on content, content strategy, content building, content writing, keyword research. Just that side of the market there. And that’s purely because, yeah. The the tools just acting such a. Nice flywheel for it. It would make.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah. Well, that, that’s that’s really cool because agencies will typically niche into either a an industry category sector or or or even like down to like cats in the pets industry kind of thing. But you’re you’re focusing on a discipline within. Seo, which is actually a really good way to niche, cause you can still service pretty much anyone anywhere within budget, but you’re focusing on what you’re excellent at in the first.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah, and it it means we still cause what we don’t want to. Do is have a. Go head to head with other agencies and and it means we still do a lot of work with them. So we’re in talks at the moment with link building agency is the obvious one. There’s some really good link building agencies there whose clients are now wanting content. So we partner with them and they get the content and the link building and there’s just other larger agencies without naming any names that. They don’t. They just want the contents of things sorted for them, and so we can help service that part as well. So yeah, I guess niching into that little part means we’re not treading on any toes there. And like I said it, it’s, yeah, we specialise in. It’s what we made the tour for. So we’re scaling up and we are niching. I guess.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s cool. I mean, it’s the. It’s an ideal way to do it. It really is. Especially with the the the. The the tool that, like you say it provides leads, which is exactly like it’s a. It’s a, it’s a sales tool as well as selling it. Itself. Yeah, that’s quite a lot.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
And actually one of. The I was going to. Say, what are the most weird but one of? The most niche things we’re getting asked for a lot and we really want to specialise in this is information architecture review. What they’ve seen is our videos of us clustering all these keywords giving these hubs and then mapping them all out and something like lucid or Mero, which is a big task and that’s something we’re we’re doing a lot of. At the moment. You’d be well, maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, but. I’ve often been surprised. Is it just creating the right pay? It seems obvious, but creating the right pages and linking it from the right pace makes such a big difference in such a short amount of time, so that’s something else. We’re sort of reaching in on information architecture and content type stuff that’s. What we’re doing?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, and and and I think the with that in particular putting my old SEO head head back on, there’s a good reason why that’s so important to get right. Obviously for for the SEO benefits, but usually. An SEO agency or an SEO say expert and in in very loose inverted commas doesn’t necessarily get that forward strongly enough when the a website is being developed or redeveloped or content is being produced because there’s business needs or the developers get hold of it too soon. Things like that. So if you can use. The authority of snippet and the authority of keyword insights and then show this information architecture and do the auditing around that. Then it’s an awful lot easier to to get that argument through and make changes, and, which is pretty cool, and I look forward to hearing a bit more about that. In the future. So in the last year you’re in, you’re in the content game, should we say keyword and content game, there’s a lot that’s changed in the last year, both from a search engine. Point of view and a technology point of view, what’s been some of the kind of key evolutions and trends that you’ve seen that are kind of probably fitting quite? Well, with what? You’re what you’re offering now in terms of like scale and ability to to do stuff.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah. So the obvious one is and it maybe makes it seem ridiculous that we’re going down the the content side of things is the rapid rise of AI and that sort of thing may lead people to say, well, why are you, why you start to niche down in industry that’s becoming generative and easily generative. And I think my answer to that is well, then maybe I haven’t explained what we’re going to be doing. And so the first part of it is, like I said, information architecture and finding out what the content needs to be, that needs to be created and that’s something that AI just doesn’t do a good job of it yet. So you can ask GPT 3 or GPT 4. To write a A content briefing outline or to come up with a load of content ideas, but it’s not. It’s not and and this is a massive misunderstanding. It’s not actually keyword, it’s not keyword lead. It thinks it is and it says it gives. You some arbitrary volumes, but. It’s it’s just off of trained data. It’s not off of actual data. Yeah. So certainly the strategy part of it and. Well, the mapping and the topical clusters all that, that’s something I I can’t see AI replacing any time soon in terms of actually developing the content, we again you can ask. To chat to you 54, which I think does 50 pages now of content you could. Ask it to. To physically write the whole article for you and we’ve, we’ve done that. And we’ve looked at it and it. It just there’s so many improvements. So where I’m going with.
Speaker
This is.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
As what we will be a content marketing agency, I guess we’re very much going to be we’re not saying don’t use AI at all. We’ll very much be using AI and we’ll be very transparent about that with our clients. But what we will be using it for is to just rapidly increase the amount of content we can produce rather than. Producing it or using that I’m actually going to be making some videos soon internally, but I’m thinking of making it public to to some of our our stuff about how I’ve been using a mixture of keyword insights and ChatGPT to. Write really good. Articles in two or three hours which would have normally taken, you know 9 or 10 hours and I’m not using it to generate the whole thing. I’m just using it. To help speed it up that.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Makes sense, yeah. Well, this is the thing. If you use it as a tool to. Leverage scale then it. Makes sense, but if you use it as the solution to do all to do. The delivery of those things then, naturally, you’re going to you’re going to to make life harder in the long. Because I I I like you say 50 pages. Maybe it’s more or less than that, but imagine creating 50 pages worth of content in an afternoon. You don’t really know what’s in those pages, and you might be putting I I was talking to Steve Kunich the he’s a a lawyer in the digital space and and and I was. Saying, you know, if you. Write all this content you don’t really know 100% what’s in it and you. Didn’t write it and then someone takes that advice or takes that on. Where do you sit? Where does it sit? Where, who, who, who gets sued if someone does something terrible? You know, if if you thinking about medical space or or any kind of thing like that, it’s it’s a it’s a very risky, risky place to just let it do it. But if you let it kind of be a bit of a copilot, then then I think I think you’re. You know you’re making some value out of it. What’s the you know with within the the the industry, there’s also the extra E that’s been added on to eat as well or EATI can’t remember what the extra E means, but I don’t know if that makes a difference. In in the.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
This variance.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Experience. OK, cool. So was it now experience, experience or what’s the? I tend to know what these things. In these days.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah, no authority, trust, experience and expertise.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Right. OK. And I’d argue that you get the extra E by having the E the A and the T in the 1st place, but you know we love an acronym in this industry that is, is that the kind of thing that would would I I’m guessing that would philtre quite deeply into. The architecture of a site. Because you need to be able to prove expertise as well as experience and potentially how things like I’m trying to work out how that impacts the industry a bit.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
So I’ve always had a massive problem with us making such a big deal out of E 80 all the time anyway. Like I I don’t know about you, but as a. I’ve seen, so I’ve seen we’ve seen traffic drop, analysis has done so websites a business has come to us cause a lot of traffic drop and they’ve already had another agency doing analysis and they’ve come to us because they’ve been like well this we we can’t get any insights from this and I’ve gone through the analysis and it basically. And this happened a few times and it’s it’s gone back to and what the whole analysis has hinged on is you need to focus on your EAT. You need to focus on your and it doesn’t mean. It’s not a tangible. It’s not a tangible thing that, that. Business can do. And that is so sometimes get a bit riled up by this EATII get I get where it’s coming from and get the point. But when you. Really think about. It authority still links trust, is still citations and and author name and expertise or experience as it is now. It’s just. The human touch. I guess. And so the fact we’ve given it this acronym. Means that we. Try and apply it to our focus on ET without actually saying no. You this article does not have as many links as this article. That’s a more tangible thing. This article, and that’s the other one I had. You see a lot of ones were like, oh, you need to slap an author on it and give them an author. You know, again, that in itself isn’t, it’s not gonna harm you, but it’s not. Going to do anything if you really want to. Go to the author. You need an author, but you need that author to almost be an entity. You need their name to be mentioned various times through the web. You need them to have post on LinkedIn. You need them to be much on other blogs. You need to be ideally if they have got one on Wikipedia or wiki data, that kind of thing. Just slapping any author on there isn’t. Going to make a difference, so I’ve I’ve put that into context. I’ve I’ve tried to build up my own name, so if you typed in or ask Google who Andy Chadwick would be, it would say oh, he’s an SEO consultant. And that’s because I’ve got my name on various blogs from search engine land, search engine journal HS, all with my name and I always have the same bio on it. So it’s it’s got my name, it’s got my bio. So if I put my. Name on an SEO article now. I’m fairly confident Google understands who I am and actually gives it that authority. So my other problem I see is when I see an audit and it’s like, Oh yeah, you just need to get an. Auto buyer on that. It’s it’s not gonna harm you, but it’s it’s not really giving you.
Chris Simmance (Host)
It’s not. It’s not enough. It’s a box cheque. Yeah.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
It is a box cheque and and yeah. And that’s always been my problem with this hat thing. It’s it wasn’t. No one’s giving tangible. So to make that tangible, if instead of trust it’s linked as the competitor got more linked to this page instead of authority and slapping a. Just the name on it. It’s. Is that person you’re adding? Are they relevant throughout the web? Are they in more places than just the web? And instead of experiences, if you’re reading it, is it obvious that this has just been turned out? And I I don’t know about you? I’ve I’ve been obviously because I’ve been generating a lot of content with ChatGPT at the moment, but I am starting to realise. As good as it reads, I am starting to realise. If you ask. If you ask it to define this and then define that and then define this and then define that and the four different definitions, the actual cadence of how it writes it is always very similar to the point where I can start to see and you can say I’ll rewrite this like Shakespeare and then it starts to become. Difficult, but if you. Don’t. If you don’t give it any tone or any type of thing. You can actually start to see the cadence and it always answers in the same structured way. So I’m actually starting to pick up myself that looks like it’s AI generated. It doesn’t have to be incorrect. It’s just the cadence of it, the way it the the how how I read it looks like a generated. And so that’s where I think the experience is going to come in. I I can I can see when someone is bringing their own spin to it.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Like tying your shoelace if you ask GPT 3 to do that, or GTA4 it would, it would give you a very detailed way of if. If you read it, you’d see that cadence, but if you ask someone on the street how they would do it, they’d bring this own little twist to it. And if you get stuck, do this. And if you do, it’s. Just a different and that’s a really.
Speaker
And and and.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
The 9 examples where yeah.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Well, I guess I guess the all of this is relatively new in many senses. There’s I think that, you know the the proof will be in the pudding in the in a year or so. It’s time to see really what shakes out, but early doors analysis from my perspective is this is just a very, very clever new way of doing article spinning. If you’re a black out person and a very, very good thing. Uses a tool to leverage as a copilot. If you’re if you’re. Trying to make some value out of scaling abilities and things like that. In the in the last year, though, since we spoke last what so you talked about the difficult how, how difficult it is to to to run a SAS platform primarily because it’s complicated as hell especially with your amount of developments that you do and also running an agency. What’s? It’s kind of evolved for you in the last year, sort of professionally speaking, how, how have you coped with all of that?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
I think. Ohh that’s such a hard question so.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s what they thought.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
I I think with the. With the agency, what I I’ll I’ll separate those two answers. So with the agencies very much as we’re growing now, we’re completely remote and we always have. Been it’s how do we I I was very lucky in the past. Everyone who worked for us. I knew in the past or have been a friend with so I didn’t really need a culture. I knew them. We were friends. We’re now hiring people I don’t know. I’ve never met and it’s very difficult or it’s going to be very difficult. To to keep them if there’s no culture and there’s. Nothing they’re working towards. So that’s one thing I’ve I’ve worked on changing in the last few months and actively so. And so our most recent hire his names, Emil he we got him on we we we we interviewed a few very very talented CEO and they’re listening to this. They know who they are. And I was so impressed with all of them, the one thing. The eventual successful hire brought to the table which the other two didn’t wasn’t so much the SCO knowledge. It was he was asking difficult questions that I couldn’t answer, and I I’ve never told him this. But to begin with was a bit annoyed because I was getting frustrated with these questions. But I realised it was actually the questions that I needed to answer for us to be successful, they were. There were questions. Ones. But why haven’t you done this? And what’s wrong with that? And where are the like the? Where’s the staff support plan? And where’s where’s the medical benefits, like things that I was like, I was getting frustrated. I was getting angry at him and I’ve actually thought, why am I getting? I’m angry because I can’t answer his questions and they’re all valid questions. And so I actually hired him. Because he asked the difficult questions that I couldn’t answer, and that’s the one thing, the one addition he brought to the other two candidates. I’ve let them. And here’s what I want to grow the culture of it. And so we’re all flying everyone to Brighton SEO next month, which is the first. So there’s about 10 of us. We’re flying everyone in. It’s going to be exciting. There’s people. Yeah. And there’s.
Chris Simmance (Host)
That’s gonna be awesome. Yeah. It’s always lovely to bring your team to an event like that. It just brings everyone together a little bit. Doesn’t it?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah. And so we’ve got like Nina. Coming from Croatia, giants coming from Kosovo, and Neil lives in Portugal, then Suganthi’s, obviously Norway, so it’s it’s going to be really. Fighting. So that’s the first step. The other one was how do we start meeting? And this is like a, I don’t know if it’s public at all yet, but there’s a little software called Rome. Have you? Heard of it? So I’m using it right now actually, and scampered is knocking on my proverbial door. But it’s it’s a software growing out from the founder of Yext, so the old founder has grown. And it’s basically a virtual office, so I’ll show you on another call if you’re interested, but it’s it’s very much open to beta at the moment. So you’ve gotta sign up to a waiting list. But we were lucky enough to get on it, so I talk you through it. There’s two virtual floors. You’ve got the software floor and the agency floor. Oh, and there’s an auditorium as well. And so when I’m looking at, let me just look at it. So I’m looking at it. Now and it’s got everyone’s offices. And you can see everyone in the office. And if I want to go knock on sigan to the store, I just click on it and he can let me in or there’s meeting rooms and there’s team rooms and you can, if I sit in the team room means anyone can come in at any point and come and join me and then the auditory.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Sounds very. Very perfect from a metaverse point of view.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah, that I’m waiting. For it to get to that stage, given our history and trying to make. That work, but it’s for. A not a metaverse. It works really well because one of the biggest problems we had as an agency. So Nina is a good example. She is amazingly intelligent woman. I’ve known her for quite a while. Well, four or five years. And I’ve been personally training her from when I was a freelancer because I needed to offload some of the heavy lifting to someone and. Nina is incredibly clever and she will be the first to admit things weren’t being picked up as quickly as someone with her intelligence would normally have done. That and what? We try to identify the root of that problem. Well, it’s quite. Simple, even though it still takes just a WhatsApp to send. Me a message. Can we jump on a call? It makes it a bit formal. It makes it. It’s just a weird. Psychological barrier was if you were in office, you’d just turn around and. Go hey. Can you help me with it?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, yeah.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah. And just having this with this now floor, which says it’s got little green dot by my head in my office. Nina can now just come and knock on my door and ask me a question. This I don’t know why, but when are you gonna send a WhatsApp or a message to send call?
Chris Simmance (Host)
Sounds really cool.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yes. So this is really working now and we’ve had it a month now and the whole team have said even this makes them feel a lot better. There’s a lot more collaboration going on. It’s removed one of the barriers we had as a completely virtual thing. The auditorium is really called as well. It’s got this big screen and people sit on rows. We can invite up to 2000 people, so we’re going to start doing. Demos and stuff. On it, but you. Can press the spacebar and whisper to the person next to. You and it’s just it’s.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Ohh, come on, this is crazy.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
It’s really cool.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I I like this. You have to. Yeah, I love to show me later. That sounds awesome. So one year’s time recording season 3. What one thing do you want to be able to say? We did it, achieved it. What’s the what’s going to be the the, the, the, the the the key milestone between now and season 3 recording?
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
So I would like to, I would like the. Again two different answers depending on the agency or the tool.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Pick one, pick one.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
With the agency, I would like to have a a team that so with the agency specially definitely have like pods, there’s no. So we started to get that culture. I was just speaking about now, which is one of the problems we’ve had. We we’re starting to bring this culture and we’ve started to break these barriers working remotely that my next thing as I’d like. Like definitive teams to be working on different parts, like a content writing team specialising, there’s a content team specialising in that and I’d like them all. Our staff are great, but they don’t have and it’s my fault because it’s just growing out of hand, but they don’t have. Like career paths per se, they’re all doing incredible jobs and you know they get bonus is a bonus isn’t a career path, it’s. Just. Oh, you’ve done well here, so. It’s some cash, so I’d like them all to have proper career career goals, career paths and have that all laid out. And yeah, basically love to see them all doing well and I I want them all to be doing talks and we’re trying to. We’re trying to encourage them to do talks themselves, so basically operate more like an agency than a consultancy and it making that transition at the moment. Is, is is quite difficult, but that’s that’s what to answer your question that I’d like to be in a year, no less of a consultancy in more of an agency then.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Which which is really admirable because I think you know people, people feeling like they’re part of something is is great if they’re, if they see where they. Going if there’s, you know, just you get the paycheck and everyone’s friendly to each other, then eventually that doesn’t. That that doesn’t cut it enough. Yeah, but, you know, kind of knowing that. I know. Say arbitrarily you are exec level 1 to get to exec Level 3 you need to exhibit these accountabilities and you need to be doing these things and in order. To get from exec Level 3 to. Account manager level one. These are the things you have to do and there’s time frames and all sorts of stuff like that keeps people engaged, but it also means that when. You do pay reviews. It’s an awful. Lot more clear when you do promotions and things. There’s a there’s a a tangible reason behind it, and quite a lot of it takes that kind of finger in the air feeling out. Of out of some of it, for for both sides. Your side and for theirs, and it also means you can forecast cash flow at the very basic level. You know these people are due to get these people are due to get a salary increase in six months time. Can we afford it? Yes, we can. That’s great. No, we can’t. OK, well, we. Need to work. Out what we do there, but it makes a big change for people to know where.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
Yeah. So for personal development plans, yeah, that I think it’s really important.
Chris Simmance (Host)
Yeah, 12 months time. We’ll, we’ll we’ll hear that you’ve nailed that and and and and well, I hope we hope we hear you’ve nailed that. And so thanks very much for coming on to the podcast for a second time, Andy.
Andy Chadwick (Guest)
No worries. Well, thanks very much for having me and I hope, yeah, my trials and tribulations have been useful.
Chris Simmance (Host)
I I’m sure they will be and everyone will listen to this in their droves as usual and and in our next episode we’ll revisit another agency leader and see how their last year has been. So thanks very much for listening everybody.