Ted Kubaitis - SEO Tool Lab

Running the Bases today with Ted Kubaitis, Founder and CEO of SEO Tool Lab. Ted has innovated software solutions that drive results for over 20 years for companies spanning the globe.

Our guest today is quite a rockstar in the Digital Marketing industry.  A native of Illinois, he attended the flagship university - the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign.  While there, he studied Computer Science and had the opportunity to research at The National Center for Super Computing Applications housed on the Campus.  After graduation in 1996, he relocated to Seattle to begin his career with Microsoft.

Several years later, he pioneered the market for competitive intelligence analysis and founded QL2 Software.  Over 20 years later, his WebQL tool continues to be internationally recognized for data queries.  More recently, he has been impacting the SEO world.  He is the Creator of the SEO Software Cora.  In addition, he travels the world speaking at SEO conferences and on podcasts dispelling numerous SEO myths and educating about scientific, data-driven SEO solutions.

To learn more about Ted and Cora Software visit: https://seotoollab.com/cora.html

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Transcript

Randy: 0:01

I'm Randy Rohde and I'm fascinated with entrepreneurs and small business owners. Plus, I love baseball. Every show I sit down with a small business owner and we discuss their running the bases of entrepreneurship. We throw the ball around on strategy management, execution, and innovation. Plus a little fun baseball talk. Hey, thanks for joining us today. Settle in, grab your cracker jacks, and you know what they say, play ball. All right. It's a great day for a ball game. This is Randy Rohde on running the bases with small businesses. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us today. Our guest today is quite a rock star in the digital marketing industry. He's a native of Illinois. He attended the flagship university, the University of Illinois or Banish or Champagne. While there, he studied computer science and had the opportunity to do research in the National Center for Super Computing applications that is housed right there on the campus. After graduation in 96, he located to Seattle to begin his career with Microsoft. Several years later, he pioneered the market for competitive intelligence analysis and founded QL two software. And over 20 years later, his web QL tool continues to be internationally recognized for data queries. More recently. He's been impacting the SEO world. He is the creator of the SEO software Quora, and in addition, he travels the world speaking at SEO conferences where I actually, in the last few months, I've been able to join up with Ted at a couple of those. He's a leader in SEO education through his IMG website, and you can listen to him weekly on his podcast, SEO Fight Club, dispelling SEO Myths and Educating about data driven SEO solutions. So please welcome to the show, the founder and CEO of SEO Tool Labs, Ted Kubaitis. Ted.

Ted: 2:11

Thank you. Thank you. That's, uh, uh, an impressive amount of research you've done into my past. Uh, one, one small correction. I'm, uh, not with IMG anymore. I sold that venture. Uh, well, good for you. Yeah. Yep. So that's, that's one that's, uh, I'm no longer running.

Randy: 2:29

I'll, I'll note that with my researcher. Was that, because I know that you, now we're gonna get into weeds a little bit for her audience, but was that the venture you were doing with Kyle Roof?

Ted: 2:40

Yeah. Yeah. It, you know, a lot of people think there's a lot of drama and stuff about that, but there, there's really not basically, uh, long story short, uh, Pandemic. Uh, my father died and I was suffering from a spinal injury, so I could barely sit for 15 minutes at a time. And, uh, I wasn't pulling my weight. And so they bought me out cuz they needed to move faster than I was able to do. So it is, uh, no, no hard feelings or anything. It's just a case of it wasn't gonna work out at the time. And, and in those cases, you know, a lot of people, they get all angry and bitter and fight and everything, but, but really what you gotta do in those moments is just, you know, kind, kind of make it right for all sides and, and move on. And so that's what I did.

Randy: 3:35

All right. Well, good to know. That's a. Program I've been a part of and I love, uh, listening to SEO Fight Club. So I'm glad that still lives on. Uh, that's very fun. So before we get started, as I mentioned in the intro, and by the way, so I have this research team and they do a great job in like digging up all kinds of stuff, uh, on people. So I'll pass along your congrats to them for another job well done. I've heard you say this story a couple of times and I think it's really, is quite, quite humorous and kind of fascinating being in our industry. But I would love it if you could maybe share the story as you say that you've been fired four times from the same job for being too successful.

Ted: 4:21

Yeah. You know, as a commission based SEO for an online retailer and what I've learned. Uh, commission based seo is that it? Once you become one of the highest paid employees at the company, uh, they resent you. Um, so it's the nature of the beast and, uh, they always wonder because for a search engine optimizer, they think, well, you've already tuned the pages. How much more value can you bring? So we already got the value, and as an online retailer, they do 80% of their sales in q4, and so, Why wouldn't they think that they should just let you go before q4? Not pay out the big commissions. I mean, what more can you offer? A big mistake on their part though, because when I left, uh, their revenue fell by millions and so they wanted me back. Of course my rates went up at that point. Cause I can't trust them anymore. My contract terms change and uh, then I do it again. And then they hate me cuz I'm the most expensive person in the company. And so what more can I do for them? So they fire me and their organic revenue falls through the floor and so they want me back. And so you did

Randy: 5:48

that dance, like you did this dance like four.

Ted: 5:52

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, uh, life is a commission based employee. If you're good at what you do, um, I bet if it was commission, sales, commission, whatever. Sure, sure. Um, the second you become the most expensive is the second everybody hates you and shoots high daggers in your back and. And it's tough. And being an seo, like if you're a small business person and you worked with an seo, you probably have a lot of complaints about the seo. Well, it's, it's kind of a, a two way street, you know? But being an SEO is a thankless job because half of what we're doing is an SEO is, uh, preventing the customer from shooting themselves in the foot. And so SEOs commonly tell, you know, engineering teams and businesses, no, you can't do your redesign that way. No, you can't just point any old domain at the money site. No, you can't just. And very quickly it becomes political and people hate us. We're the people saying, no, no, no, but we're not the business owner. Right? And all of a sudden, anyone who, you know, has a plan to the contrary, wants to see you die a miserable death business speaking. But you know, you have to, you have to push back. And like, you know, businesses so often don't recognize the thankless value of saying no to things that will hurt the business. And so many SEOs get sacrificed for kind of doing the right thing and saying no when it needs to be said. Uh, that

Randy: 7:33

is, uh, yeah, I, I think that's a funny story. And you're probably right in the sense of probably could be anything if you were a sales commission person selling cars or mattresses, probably doesn't matter if you were the top gun, they, uh, you're, you got a big target on you. Yeah.

Ted: 7:51

Yeah. And, and you know, there's a lot of businesses out there that would love the idea of hiring an SEO on a commission basis, but just remember you can lose that bet. And what are you gonna do when that SEO knocks it out of the park? Yeah. Like some of, some of the SEOs I work with, their data driven and they've tested their methods so they know what they're gonna bring in. I know one guy he took on an online retailer. He just knocked it out of the park That retailer was, was selling, you know, those collections of, uh, of elements that are in acrylic plastic that look so cool, like if you are into chemistry and like, oh, I want to collect all the elements. Sure. It was that type of product. He sold them out of inventory in like three weeks. Oh my. And he ended up getting himself fired because the reorder time on getting more inventory was six months out. So what do you need an SEO for if you have no inventory?. And so a lot of businesses, uh, they don't understand that, you know, you have to have the whole, you know, pipeline set up for scale if you're planning to grow. And people don't think about that when they. You know, a top of the line seo.

Randy: 9:11

Yeah. Yeah. So let's, uh, walk back a little bit in early in your career. So, and this is early, early . Have you always had a passion for computers? I know growing up, you know, in the shadows of the University of Illinois. I mean, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think that is the, the laboratory for the personal computer. Well,

Ted: 9:35

to, to understand my origin story, you need to know a tiny amount about my dad. Ah,

Randy: 9:42

alright, here we go. So family secrets here.

Ted: 9:45

Yeah. Yeah. Going, going back to the late sixties, early seventies, you know, big room size mainframes. He was hired to kinda watch the door of the lab and, and, uh, check, uh, IDs and stuff for controlled data corporation. And, uh, uh, he was often in the, the night shift and there was nobody ever there. So it was him, these giant rooms of servers and all of the technical manuals. So he read all the technical manuals on all of the mainframes and servers and everything while he was there. And, uh, at some point, you know, one of the, the main scientists is having issues and, you know, things aren't working right. And there are problems. And so my dad, who, you know, RTFM, you know, he, he read the FN manual. Sure., uh, you know, he, he goes in and fixes the. And the scientist gets all up in arms that the guy watching the door dared even touch these mainframes. So he goes, uh, to the CEO of the company, starts demanding that my dad be fired. Oh. And the CEO looked at the problem, looked at what my dad did, and, uh, gave him a job as a system administrator for the systems . All right. So that's, that's kind of his origin story. And so he makes all these contacts at control data and eventually ends up and Avia, Illinois. Oh, yeah. At the Firmi Lab Article Accelerator. So he's there doing, uh, systems and engineering for Firmi Lab. Right. And I, at that time, I'm a little tiny kid. I'm just, you know, running around, uh, you know, fishing in the cooling ponds outside of Firmi Lab, , and, uh, Saw, uh, Stephen Hawking there once, didn't, didn't even recognize it wouldn't be later until later in life that I learned how special that was. Yeah. To just run across Stephen Hawking. That doesn't normally happen. And so, uh, saw James Randy there too. Wow. He was there for a little bit. And, uh, yeah. Number, number of, you know, famous people in that crowd were there. And, uh, at that time I was in grade school. My dad hands me a, uh, TRS 80 Uhhuh, you know, they called it the Trash 80 from Radio Shack, little Computer. You connect it to your tv Sure. And type in some basic programs, draw random circles, that type of thing. Right. So I, I kinda learn the basics of programming and stuff at that point. Later on I get to high school. I don't take any computer stuff in high school cuz I'm way more advanced by that point than what they're teaching. I get to college and I can't really handle the college curriculum for computer science cuz it's boring the shit out of me. And this is at

Randy: 13:02

University of Illinois? Yeah.

Ted: 13:04

Yeah. So you have to remember that the curriculum at that time was very basic. Like most universities didn't have computer science. It was all part of the math program. Right, right. And so, yeah, and like one of the things that happened, uh, at that point in time is they had, uh, they came around with a NDA saying, Hey, we have something we wanna show you, but it requires a signed NDA to use it. And so I signed it and I installed this new thing that nobody's ever seen before called Mosaic And uh, what it was was the first graphical web browser. Yeah. Yeah. I remember. I'm looking at this thing, it has one web page on it, uh, Usenet News and a couple FDP sites, and that's all it was. There's nothing else on the web and uh, so I was like, okay, this is never gonna catch on. But it was pretty cool. And, uh, but it did catch on like very quickly. Once it was out of the, the closed NDA thing, I had all my friends making websites about their bands and, and doing all that stuff. And it was, it was a lot of fun. I had the, uh, office across the hall from Mark Riesen for a while who would later go on and make Netscapes. Sure. And. I eventually, uh, made my way out to Microsoft and Seattle where I was working for a marketer, a rocket scientist who was part of the team that engineered the Boeing Delta two rocket. And Microsoft had this idea of let's get a rocket scientist and throw marketing problems. Adam. So, uh, uh, I was his engineer and I was learning from him about his concepts of payload in the marketing. And so I learned a ton there. And did it work?

Randy: 14:57

Was that a good connector? Oh

Ted: 15:00

yeah. We knocked his approach left and right, like it was, it was every two weeks. Somebody was bringing a bottle of champagne to me, . Um, so it was really cool. That's great. And yeah, that was amazing. And then in April of 2000, I went to start a, uh, a startup. I raised two and a half million dollars in angel funding for the startup. I fought with the VCs all the time. We, we opted to go without VCs because they were all ridiculous. Yeah. You know, when, when you start talking with the VCs, they think you should revalue your company because they brought a box lunch. You know, it's like, no way. And they're arguing the valuation. It's like, well, we've already sold shares and we can get. Any number of shares sold again at the same valuation. Why would we give you 10 cents on the dollar for a box lunch Uhhuh? Like what? What possible reason would go through your head for us to revalue? Yeah. And so, yeah. After arguing with a number of venture capital companies, we realized we just didn't meet 'em. Right. You know, that is the problem. The thing that they couldn't understand is why we didn't need 'em . And so we made this awesome technology. Is is incredible. Working with all the major airlines. We're working with, uh, government agencies. We're working with massive corporations in the area of business intelligence and nine 11 hits and all the airlines left the table. We weren't gonna make profit for another 10 months after that, had a staff of, uh, 25 engineers. I had to let 'em go cuz I knew it would be 10 months before we could really pay 'em. And man, that was rough. That reduced me to tears. But, uh, stuck with it. We clawed our way out of that hole. Nice. Um, were, uh, partially credited with helping the airlines, uh, rebound at that time cuz there are laws that the airlines couldn't communicate to, uh, adjust their pricing. So we were the end round around that, where they could monitor each other's pricing and adjust accordingly without coordinating it. And, uh, so yeah. Part of the reason airfares got expensive again after nine 11 was the stuff we were doing. Mm-hmm., thank you. Well, thanks for doing that, . Yeah. I, I sold that in April of 2000 and, uh, went into online retail where it was an engineer. An SEO fell into my lap. Right. And eventually I, I, you know, invented my own way of doing seo and I was working in isolation. Nobody knew about it. And I showed some people on Black Hat World, some of the things I was doing, and they were like, Oh my God, what made that data ? And then I kinda realized I had an opportunity and so I struck out on my own. Nice. And so I've been doing SEO software ever since and I've been loving it. It's my happy place. I get to invent, uh, technology and help people. Yeah. My two favorite things in the world. Yeah.

Randy: 18:18

Well that is, that is a great story. So that's, yeah. Long sliver. I love this story about your dad and kind of going from the security guard. I don't know what his title was to being, you know, a systems analyst Yeah, exactly. And it's man's amazing man.

Ted: 18:36

Uh, it, it's just crazy how the world works and it, you know, it shows you the value of reading the manual. Yeah. So you have this, you know, PhD computer science guy that's screaming at you that didn't even read the manual. And you have an untrained person who read the manual. Well sometimes whoever read the manuals and the right, you know?

Randy: 19:00

Yeah. That, that guy's the smartest guy in the room. Well, I always tell, and your dad was, was doing the thing physically. It's like what I tell my kids all the time is like, listen, you were living in such a great world right now. You could spend 30 minutes on YouTube and learn how to do anything, and your dad, you know, is like, wow, I got all this resource right here. I'm gonna go put it to use and just did his.

Ted: 19:24

Could you imagine it like back then, like that documentation was in three ring binders of black and white paper. Oh yeah. You know, you, you dream about it being on YouTube back then to have that type of initiative, man, you really had to invest a lot. Yeah.

Randy: 19:43

Personally. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so, and then walking through a little bit, and I'm just kind of putting the timelines together. So you were at Microsoft and I should say, uh,

Ted: 19:53

yeah, that was in 97 when I went there. You

Randy: 19:56

know, you and I actually, I used to live in is Aqua and I moved there in 90. 95, I believe it was. Uh, and I was there for five years. So we were, you know, who knows, maybe we were

Ted: 20:12

neighbors. We probably pe each other on the five 20. Randy: But I just know, because was, uh, um, um, VP of operations for a company called Egghead. Do you remember Egghead? Vaguely. Were they, uh, they were, were they a software vendor or, well, we

Randy: 20:31

were, we were a retailer that had that you could go and buy any piece of software, right? Or, or, and then we began to expand. We were selling hardware, uh, as well in the final days, but, I remember in, uh, and this was kind of interesting, in 96 that December the board of directors had a meeting, they said, Hey, you know, this is after we had spent a, a ton of money in opening like three big, big box, uh, footprints. Typically, that typical egghead store at that time was about 2000 square feet, we'll say, packed with software. And then because competitors and big box, you know, was the, was the, was the standard that was where retail was going. So we put investment into, and we opened three big boxes around the country and uh, and they were going well, but the board of directors came and met December, I remember this. It was like, wow. December of 96 they met and decided they had a question, do we continue to invest in the big box retailing or do we just go all in and bank everything on. This thing called the internet and do internet sales. And they decided, and, and at this time when I joined, I grew the company. We went from 75 stores to, we were up just under 300 at the time and they decided that they were gonna roll the dice and go all internet And so, so, and that was in 96. So in 97 I just spent that whole year shutting stores down. That was crazy. I'm like, this is gonna be a lot of fun. And uh, and that's what, and now today they are called New Egg. Uh, and so you probably see them online doing retailing. So we were probably there, but that get away from my history. You were there at Microsoft though, during like some really cool times, right? I mean, you were there like Windows 98 launched, man, and that like, wow, that would changed the world, right? You were there with Bill himself and when he stepped down, so man, it.

Ted: 22:41

Yeah. Uh, when, when I was there, I was part of the Look Smart acquisition. I, uh, had written some of the, the materials on the I E A K, the Internet Explorer administration kit, you know, all those CDs they sent out to sign up with ISPs. Yeah, I helped author that a number of my, uh, projects appeared in the Barksdale antitrust testimony between Netscape and Microsoft. So I have a couple bullet items on that laundry list. good for you. Um, Yeah, it, it was an interesting time to say the least. Yeah, the

Randy: 23:22

mid nineties right in there in the tech world was uh, just crazy cuz it just seemed like every other, every other month it was like something revolutionary coming and you know, and then for a period of time, you know, Microsoft and other developers at Barlin at that time as well, I mean they were just like buying, trying to acquire different, smaller software companies to embed whether into Windows or Microsoft, into office, you know? Um, yeah, it was, uh, that was a crazy time period back then. Was that tough stepping away from Microsoft? It

Ted: 23:56

was, but uh, there came a point where, where Microsoft was, uh, leaning heavily into change after like, the perma temp lawsuit. And, and so, you know, the culture changed significantly then. And I remember that was the time I left to create my, uh, first startup venture. And, uh, eventually, eventually during the course of like the four years of that startup venture, we were nominated for Best New Technology by PC Magazine. And I ended up at the award ceremony in, uh, Vegas at Comdex. Oh geez. Uh, being cod for a category with Bill Gates and the Windows operating system. So I'm, I'm up there for a technology no one has ever heard of and is brand new technology is amazing technology, but nobody knew about what it was. And there I am. You know, up against like Windows 98 or Windows Vista or something like that at the time. And, uh, yeah, it was, it was incredible. I was, you know, right. Sitting next to, I was sitting next to the security detail that was next to Bill Gates, so I was within 12 feet of Bill Gates at this award ceremony. Yeah, yeah. And,

Randy: 25:19

uh, who won the award that. It

Ted: 25:22

wasn't me. I was happy to be nominated, but of course, the technology that nobody knows is not gonna take the practice.

Randy: 25:29

Probably not. But anyway, you were at the table though, so that was kinda fun. Yes. Uh, good for you. All right, so I wanna get back, we're gonna get into it. I want talk about your current Venture SEO tool lab and, and folks, I will tell you this is as an SEO myself, this is like, uh, the mad scientist kind of stuff, right? And this is not a tool for the meek here. This is a lot of data, lot of info. So this is probably, and unless you are into seo, this is probably not the tool for you. But I love Ted's background and I love his tool and how he's grown his company. And so I thought he would be a great guest for us. So we're gonna talk more about your, your latest, uh, endeavor.

Ted: 26:14

And I want to point out that, uh, what Randy just said is, is not a dig. He says that with, with my approval, my software is for professional SEOs. So if you're a mom and pop business, you kind of have no business, uh, getting it. But if, if you're, if you're a professional seo, then I can help you. So if, if you're interested in the kind of advantage like my technology can bring, what I recommend to you is you find an SEO that uses my software Right. And go with them. Yeah. But maybe, maybe if you're a mom and pop shop, don't buy it. It's probably gonna be more than you can handle. Yeah.

Randy: 26:57

Yeah., I just wanted to set that table there a little bit before. Yeah, yeah. Before we dig into that, I don't want people getting into, into trouble maybe doing something. But before we get there, Ted, I I, do you like baseball?

Ted: 27:11

I, I do, I'm not, I'm not the biggest expert, but I can tell you the first game I ever saw.

Randy: 27:17

Oh, well, let's hold on a second. Let's get it. It's that time and

Ted: 27:20

it's time for the seventh inning stretch.

Randy: 27:24

All right. It is Ted, this is that time of the show that we call the Seventh Inning Stretch. And, uh, yeah, it gives me an opportunity to ask our guests a little baseball trivia question. But before we get into that though, you, you kinda teased us with the Remembering your first baseball game.

Ted: 27:44

Yep. Yep. I, uh, uh, went with my dad to Chicago and we saw a Cubs versus Pirates game. There we go. And in true fashion, the Cubs lost miserably, and I loved it. And I was a Cubs fan. Forever.

Randy: 28:03

I, you know, I was wondering, I can see you're, you're, it's not quite covey blue, but you, I can see you're wearing some blue. It must be covey blue. I know.

Ted: 28:11

Yeah. I mean, how can you not like an underdog? It's a fun game to watch, even though they didn't win, they played their hearts out. Yes. And you know, that's, that's always respectable. And I always got teased for being a Cubs fan, but, you know, uh, you know, in for a penny, in, for a,

Randy: 28:30

there you go. All right. Well, Ted, I am a lifelong Cubs fan, so you and I have got, uh, something to share there. So here we go. So here's the, here, here's the, the background for it here. Our seventh inning stretch. You're a native Illinois. Did you, well, your dad took you to baseball, so this is good. You're a Cubs fan. So experts we're, we're kinda going here with this, the, the Fight Club theme, kinda like with your current podcast that you've got going and so, We're gonna talk about the intense rivals in mlb, right? Kind of the fight club of MLB experts have been talking and have had opinions about what makes the great rivalry, what are some of those crosstown classics and that kind of stuff. Um, men's Journal recently ranked their most intense rivalries, kind of listing their own fight clubs, so to speak. So here's, here's your question. What do you believe that they ranked the number one rivalry in all of baseball? Number

Ted: 29:38

one rivalry. Well, it has to include the Yankees, I bet . Um, who would be on the other side of that?

Randy: 29:48

I'm listening for keyboard click. So no, no, no. No,

Ted: 29:52

no. And, and the, the problem is, I'm, I'm not a, a huge, uh, baseball trivia person. So right now I bet people are pulling their hair out saying, why on earth don't you know this? It's because I, I like playing the game. I like watching the game, but I don't study. There you go. The

Randy: 30:12

stab hooks. Well, you're, you're, I, I will say this. You are halfway there. Let's walk it down from top five down to number one first. Uh, in the number fifth spot is the Rangers versus the Blue Jays. All right. I'm not exactly sure how that got to be a big rivalry, but that's number five. Number four are the Giants and the Dodgers.

Ted: 30:40

Ooh, yeah. That, that should have been more obvious

Randy: 30:43

to, yeah. Yeah. So there we got the Giants and the Dodgers. Then number three, Are the Yankees versus the Mets. And that makes sense, right?

Ted: 30:54

You got two? Yeah, I, I was thinking that, but I was like, that's kinda a little too close.

Randy: 30:59

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Too, too. Uh, metros number two. No, this one I know because I live it on every season. Cardinals versus the Cubs. Yeah.

Ted: 31:11

Yeah. That was big in Illinois, but I didn't know if that would Oh yeah, yeah. Be meaningful nationwide. Oh yes, it

Randy: 31:16

is. The, uh, the Route 66 rivalry, right? Yeah. And those, and just a little, those two teams have been playing each other since 1892. So think about, you know, all of the history that's, uh, rounded the bases with those two guys. But the number one rivalry in all of baseball Yankees versus the Red Sox.

Ted: 31:38

Yeah, there you go. Yes.

Randy: 31:40

Yeah. They have played each other over 2000 times. Uh, that's a lot

Ted: 31:46

of baseball. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yes. That should have been more obvious to me. Oh

Randy: 31:52

man. So you think about all of the history, you know, you had Babe Ruth that was sold from Boston to New York back in 1916. We've had a ton of fights between those teams, you know, bench clearing brawls, and then, you know, the, the Red Sox, uh, kind of when they launched their wave of winning, when they won game seven of the, uh, 2003 A L C S and then went on in 2004 to beat the Yankees. So swept the Yankees actually there. So yeah. Yeah, there it is. Yankees versus Red Sox number one rivalry.

Ted: 32:27

It, it seems like television is always looking for things to reboot. I think if they did dramatic, uh, recreations of famous big rivalry games. That would be like winning content. Yeah. That

Randy: 32:43

could be good stuff. All right. Right. Well good. Well, thanks for, uh, playing our seventh inning start. So let's get back into it. Play ball. So I do wanna hear about, um, SEO Tool Lab. And so give you a chance to talk a little bit about that and, um, and really about Quora so you can tell folks what this great tool is that you have out there. And I think if I recall, you've just, or, or either it has been released or it's on the horizon here of a new version of

Ted: 33:12

Quora. Yeah, yeah. Cos seven is out and it does local and it has tons of new features and, uh, people are wildly crazy about it. So I, I kinda, uh, hit a grand slam with cos seven. Nice. So it's, it's doing very well. Nice. You know, the interesting thing about my current business is kind of my mentality. So you, you heard in my story that I did a big angel fund adventure and, and sold it in 2004, and I kinda went completely the opposite direction on SEO tool Lab. So on on, on my, uh, first startup, I was, you know, thinking big and, you know, let's change the way businesses do business and, you know, giant ventures and, and huge ideas, you know, million dollar ideas. And, and I kinda backed way off of that. For my second business, I was like thinking much smaller. It's like, you know, there's, there's probably a much more comfortable way to go about making money. You know, if you can solve a, a$200 problem really, really well and you can sell that solution over and over and over again, you don't need to have million dollar ideas. You can, you can have a $200 idea that makes you millions

Randy: 34:40

there. I like that. That's a great, that's a great analogy right there.

Ted: 34:44

Yeah. And, and so I, I started thinking more lean and, you know, let's find a good idea, solve it. Well take it to market. And race to the first dollar and do incremental improvement and, and I've come to learn that what I really love in business more than anything else is small business. Like it is so cool when you find a successful recipe and small business and you don't have to play the big wheel and dealer type, you know, ventures like, you know, that doesn't have to be what you do. You can find tremendous success thinking small.

Randy: 35:29

Do you want to, I, I don't wanna confuse people and I'm wondering, do you wanna, or do, do you have a, um, kind of a summary description of Cora?

Ted: 35:39

Yeah. Cora is a, uh, it's an SEO measurement tool. So you type in a, a keyword in a url, and Cora will tell you exactly what factors you need to tune for that url, for that keyword, and exactly how much of each one. And so there's several ways that, uh, marketing agencies use Cora. Uh, for one, it's very detailed data on costing out the work so you can get the right cost for the work you need to do. Cora tells you when to stop, which. Most SEOs don't know when to do. They'll keep tuning the same thing endlessly, and Carl will say, no, you're number one for that. Stop doing it. Move on to something else. It tells you exactly how you're different than higher ranking websites. And so most people think that Google is out there reading your page and going, aha, you made a better point in sentence three of paragraph two, therefore you go up two spots. But that's not how it works at all, It's just kinda understanding. How do you speak to algorithms to rank well versus how do you speak to visitors so they convert into sales. You need to do both in their different processes. And so Cora is very good at speaking to algorithms to rank well,

Randy: 37:08

that's a, a great point cuz I have this conversation not in those exact same terms, but with clients and I try to tell'em, listen, I I try to have two mindsets. One which is SEO based, so I wanna get you ranked. But on the other side we also have to look at your content. Look at the way your site is structured so that we are converting. It doesn't matter if you get, I could drive a million people to your site if they're not gonna buy anything from you or convert or become a lead, what value does that have for you? I guess you could, you know, run ads on your site and then that becomes a value. But otherwise, you know, it's gotta convert.

Ted: 37:48

Yeah, exactly. And, and the SEO side of it doesn't get all of the credit. You know, you, you hear people talk and they tell you that, you know, they, they, they're almost predatory on SEOs because SEOs walk the traffic, you know, right. Within a, a yard or two of, of the. Of the touchdown and then leave it there, and then the CROs come in and complete the sale and get all the credit. And, uh, the SEO is the hard, expensive part. And so, yeah, my tool set makes the hard, expensive part a lot more simple and easy to do, uh, so that you can focus more on the conversions and making the customer happy and getting the credit for the sales. Yeah. And so, yeah, people have have found a lot of success in streamlining their workflows with Cora to get good results. And they've found that when they use Cora, As part of the sales process, they blow their prospects away cuz we're using data and most SEOs don't do that. And when you demonstrate that we are working with measurement data and we base our recommendations based on measurements, it's a game changer. Yeah.

Randy: 39:05

Yeah. So you mentioned, so you've got a new version of Cora. You've started SEO Tool Lab about five years ago, six years ago, roughly. Um, what's the team like? Is it just you being mad scientist and doing everything? Or you have a team, you have an office dispersed workforce? What do you got going for you?

Ted: 39:27

It's, it's, right now it's me and my wife and I'm gonna expand to a little bit of help in the area of support, but I'm still gonna be doing the main development. You know, the thing that I found is that, uh, I have a weird blend of exacting standards for how software is coded for performance and for the, the business problem being solved. And I'm also very artful and figuring out which corners we need to cut as a business to get the software deployed and rolled out efficiently and on time. And so one of the things I'm known for is very aggressive updates and feature enhancements and listening to my customers and doing customer requested changes. And, uh, I find that a lot of software engineers aren't up to working to those kinds of standards. And, uh, so I, I like to maintain tight control on that. So that's probably the last thing I'll give up is, is that engineering control. But I do, I do need to grow in terms of handling scale and supporting customers. And so that's what I'm gonna build out first, uh, in this next phase of my business. All right.

Randy: 40:51

So you mentioned you work with your wife. How is that, how, how does that work? Nice situation. I don't know. Well, I've tried it a few times with my wife and it doesn't work real well. Yeah.

Ted: 41:03

Most, most people don't do it Right. So you, you have to stay in your lane Yeah. So to speak. And so you have to come to terms about, What lanes are what? And so, uh, my, my wife is very smart. Uh, she, uh, was a Georgetown undergrad and a, uh, UDub MBA in finance. And, uh, she knows her stuff. She, uh, worked in, uh, finance with Starbucks when they did their big, uh, growth and development. She worked in marketing at Microsoft. And so she's, she's very good at her job and she knows how to take money and put it to work. And so that's a good part to have . Yeah. Yeah. And so the fact that, you know, she can easily handle doing the, the business accounting and the finance, she can take the money and make sure that it's in a place where it's doing more work as it grows. And, you know, It's really awesome cuz then I can focus on bringing the money in that she can then put to work. Yeah. And so, you know, if we stay in our lanes and, and we, uh, cooperate towards goals, it works great. But when you, when I see a lot of other husband and wife teams work and they often collide like. We're both working on a website development and we're arguing about what, what it should be. Well, you got two people in the same swim lane, you got a problem there. And so of course that's not gonna end well. One of you's gonna have to climb out of the pool in order for that to work. And so I see lots of people attempting to work with their spouse and they, they don't make the separation of roles. That

Randy: 42:49

is great advice. And I'm sure some of our listeners are like, ah, take that to heart, hopefully. So I find your story very interesting. So, because I mean, when you say like you, you're really are going small. I mean, and, and to put this into. Perspective. I'm, I'm not even sure that I can, I mean, you are, in my world, in digital marketing SEO worlds, you are really on the pedestal. I mean, people just have the greatest admiration, respect, uh, for your, uh, talent, for your software, for uh, what it is that you do, your ideas and directions. And so, you know, and this piece of software that you have, Cora is fabulous. I mean, if, if I had 10 SEOs in a room and I said, what do you think is the most valuable tool that you can think of in our industry? Nine outta 10 of those guys would rank Quora, certainly in the top three, if not number one. I mean, that's, that's the, certainly the mind share, at least I think of SEOs in the, in the world here. And you know, so it, there's a few of us out there. I'm amazed to hear it's just you and your wife, right? So you, you're like, Hey, we are staying small from that standpoint, but yet you've got this incredible piece of software and tool that does, uh, so much. I'm like, wow. I would think, yeah, to a degree. Was that a little bit of discipline to do that as. Uh,

Ted: 44:17

it actually is, uh, a lot of licking my wounds from the previous startup. Okay. You know, I, I kinda learned that, you know, when you have, uh, you take on investors, you're basically taking on a large roster of bosses. So, you know, there's that, uh, when you have, uh, millions of dollars of investment in your company, uh, it kind of closes the door on a lot of common sense decision making. Like you could make a lot of quick wins and bring. Income into the business. But if it's not steered towards a 10 x ROI for the investors, then the board is saying no to, to people who wanna steer that way. And, and the, the, so you end up saying no to a lot of things you ought to be saying yes to. And if I had better control of the business, then I could do things that make sense for revenue and making the business stable and for making customers happy. And so when I was being pushed for a 10 x ROI all the time, a lot of, a lot of good decisions didn't happen and a lot of bad decisions did happen. And I didn't like the fact that I was constantly, you know, having to just, you know, eliminate the, the war chest of the company for hiring staff that. We weren't efficiently putting to work and you know, there are so many things I disagreed. And ultimately, ultimately I saw a vision, like for that first startup that I wanted to go down. I had the contacts. I was like, you know what? We could be the, the bot creating solution and visual studio with Microsoft. I come out of Microsoft, I have all the contacts, I have leads into the CTO at Microsoft. We can home run this strategy. But the rest of the board of directors and management wanted to go down the service path. So it's like, I could have had my technology in Visual Studio, and they're trying to keep it secret and it's like, oh my God, you know, what am I doing here? So, you know, I ended up talking with the investors and I talked with the employees and everybody disagreed with me. So I was in the wrong, everybody thought I was the crazy one. And so it's like, all right, I guess I'll just sell my shares. And, and so, you know, I, yeah, I, I left and I went on and I started. I started SEO Tool Lab and I was like, you know, I, I still don't feel right about that. I think I was conceptually right in that you can make good software and take it good places and I just wanna make a small business this time around. I want to keep it small and keep it all and kind of embraced that. Yeah. And my startup costs on the company was under $5,000.. And, and yeah. I mean the ROI on that's through the roof. My revenue per square foot for my office space through the roof. Randy: I would love to have it, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm always in a situation where I don't have enough business expense. Yeah. And, and so like, these are great problems. Like when I look at like VC funded venture capitalists and I see how they spend money at Crunch at cr, you know, I see the things that they do. Like they make these, you know, video game rec rooms and the startup, and I'm looking at this going, there's a hundred thousand dollars of like foosball here, , you know, that, what are you doing

Randy: 48:10

Maybe that's what you need for your office, put in a, uh, foosball room and you know, yeah. You know, it's employee expense incentives.

Ted: 48:19

So, yeah, I guess, I guess I just have very different ideas about business than like what a lot of the VC funded startups have done in the past. And, and I don't agree with it. And I thought it was terribly wasteful and I thought there were better directions that would be longer lasting. And that past venture, it's still alive today. Yeah, it's, it's been going since 2000. So, you know, here we are 22 years later and the company's still alive, so, but I think it could have been bigger. Yeah.

Randy: 48:52

Well, let me, and I don't wanna dig into old wounds cuz as you said, you know, you're kinda licking your wounds, so I don't, but I think you've got a great lesson, uh, that you can provide to our audience in that, you know, as you described, kind of that post nine 11 crisis, right? So, you know, the, the world kinda came crashing down for you in that particular industry and then you said it took about 10 months or so for you to kind of claw your way back out of that. I am curious cuz we're always, you know, trying to uncover how do people approach challenges and, you know, big obstacles. Obviously we just came through. The pandemic, and as people prepped for that and, you know, survived that hopefully in more ways than one. But in that particular instance, for you, for that nine 11 issue and your crawl back, uh, to survival, I guess, with your company at that time, how, how did you approach it? What were, you know, if there's one or two, I don't know, key points maybe that you could share that said, well, this is what we did and what we had to, the steps we had to take?

Ted: 49:59

Well, that's, that's kind of the, uh, the consequence of taking on investment dollars. Like, if you spend your own money, you can pull the plug when you want. But when you go to your family, when you go to your friends, when you go to your past employers and tell 'em you have a venture and you're taking their money to start your venture, uh, you, you can't quit easily. You can't just let it die. Right? And so I, I needed, at that time, when nine 11 happened, I knew that I needed to just, I, I needed to get through the event. So whatever it took to survive, keep the company alive and don't let those investments die. And so, you know, that was my mentality. So we had to downsize. We obviously couldn't keep the head count and we just had to keep the doors open and we had to keep the product alive. And eventually we did bring it back. We resurrected what out of ought to have been a failed business. We resurrected and there's these concepts with startups. You know, people tell you that nine out of 10 startups fail. But I hear that differently. Like the, the reason like, I hear that differently is because, you know, when I hear that it's not nine outta 10 startups fail, it's that in the course of your startup there will be nine times where nobody would blame you for quitting. Where everybody would understand and they'd say the correct thing to do is to pull the plug. Mm-hmm.. And you need to not do it 10 times. And that's how you get to be the one in 10 that didn't close the door. Yeah. Because I guarantee in all your startups, there will be nine times where you're like, damn it, we just went negative. We're less than zero. I'd be happy to be at a zero. You know, I need to pull the plug and, and end it. And if you wanna be that one in 10, that makes it, you can't, you can't give up easy. Yeah. And so some, sometimes that's terrible advice. Sometimes you gotta close the door, you don't wanna.. You don't want to keep doubling down on something that's never gonna work, but if you know it could work and it just takes grit and determination, I've always had that in space. Yeah. You know, if I can reduce it to an equation of effort, like, you know, some amount of effort equals a win, then I've already won because there's no amount of effort I won't put in to succeed. But the hard part is getting it down to an equation where effort equals

Randy: 52:49

victory. I would like to know that equation that would be

Ted: 52:53

Well, it's different for every business and, and interestingly enough, for most businesses, the, the problem is in sales, you know, you make a a solution and you're like, well, geez, if I could sell one copy in every town in the United States, that would be 25,000 units sold. Obviously we can sell one copy per town. Why not? That's totally reasonable. I could sell a copy in Chicago. At least I hope I could, but it's still a sales problem. Right. And most people don't come prepared for the sales

Randy: 53:28

problem. Right, right. Well, that's some good advice, just in thinking about, uh, that I love the issue about the effort though. That's good. So today, so you've got SEO tool labs. Uh, what, what's your approach to marketing? I have an idea, but, uh, what I think that you're probably doing, but I want to hear, I guess, what, what you're doing for marketing.

Ted: 53:49

I'm, I'm kind of in a state of identity crisis about that. So it's, it's a loaded question, but, you know, here's the truth. Okay. The truth is, uh, I'm an engineer and techie people. Hate email. We hate it with a passion . And so all of a sudden that makes me a marketer who's self hating, right. Self hating marketer. Cuz I hate email with a passion. But I have a very real problem in that as a software company, every service provider company on earth wants to sell to me. I'm like the low hanging fruit of everyone. And so my inbox grows by about 30,000 emails daily. It takes about three to four hours to process. So on a normal work day, if I were to process my inbox daily, I'm spending half my day trying to sort it out. Yeah. And my customers were falling into that inbox and I, I can't have that. Yeah. So I'm having to reinvent my business to get my customers out of that horrible inbox. And so I'm making changes to do that. And uh, I also come from, you know, online retail and. I've witnessed everything there is to witness in seo. I've lived through every major event and at one point, during the caffeine made a instant Google updates, uh, long tail died and SEO's everywhere took a big hit. Like it was the doom stay of SEO because all that long tail traffic dried up and wasn't easy to get anymore. And at that point I realized you gotta diversify cuz if you are over invested in Google for your organic revenue, you're, you're giving Google too much power, right? And so I wanted to make sure that Google could never pull the plug on me again. And so my business is largely built on the unthink. Word of mouth. I, I, I

Randy: 55:51

don't, because in my mind, when I think about your tool, I don't know, I've never received an email from you . Yes. From I've been onto your site multiple times. I don't recall, uh, anyway, ever seen any kind of an ad pop up anywhere about your software? And the only way that I've known about it and learned about it, um, I guess, or where I see it, is only in various groups that I navigate in. Absolutely. Word of mouth. Now, the other thing that I would say is, you know, you do. Travel around. You talk to people, you know, you go to conferences, you make presentations. So that's part of that, I guess kind of word of mouth delivery. Um, but yeah, you're, you're very lowkey, but yet you've got this incredible, this is where I think you've got such a great story. You're very low key in, in regarding your marketing efforts. Um, but yet you've, from a mind share standpoint in our industry, you own it. I mean, you are the gun.

Ted: 56:58

Yeah. Yeah. I have the best tool in the, in the industry and it's the least known. I don't have the most market share. I have quite possibly the least amount of market share, but

Randy: 57:10

it's different market share from mine. Share is different though. Yeah. Almost anybody, as I said, if I put 10 SEOs in the room, absolutely. Everybody has heard and is familiar with Cora.

Ted: 57:22

Yep. And, uh, yeah, you know, I've, I've focused my business on, on making the advantage. I deliver very real, improving it and helping my customers realize it. And, and so it's to a point where, yeah, I don't have to do heavy lifting to spread the word. I'm, I'm a viral phenomenon cause of word of mouth evangelism, and that's where I wanna be. You know, I, I love it when other tool vendors, when their customers get nervous because one of my customers moved in on their space, , like that fear. Lets me know I'm doing my job right, ? Yeah.

Randy: 58:06

That's great. All right, so now in one of the ways that I think it probably helps you as well in that kind of viral evangelism, I love that term, is this thing that you do. What's a friend of the show? He's been on the show, uh, once before. Actually we're gonna, we're sitting down at the end of the month, we're doing another recording. We're gonna do one of our random shows with Kyle Roof. Uh, Kyle is great. Love the guy. You guys do this thing, this SEO fight club, which I think, um, you know, you guys kinda have some fun with it and, uh, make it fun. Um, but yet it's still very. Data driven kinda SEO mindset and conversation sometimes for people. I think we were at a, at a conference just last week, and I remember somebody was talking about watching, you know, they were getting into the industry and they were watching the SEO Fight Club videos, you know, on YouTube and like, listen, I listen to the first, you know, like 10 or 15 episodes or whatever the number was. She goes, I have no clue what they were even saying. I couldn't, I didn't know the language. I didn't These guys. Yeah, I mean, you and Kyle are like, I can, you know, you're like a couple of mad scientists out there kind of trying to explain a formula. How did that come about, the, the two of you?

Ted: 59:20

You know, we, uh, we were appearing at all the same conferences and so we, we'd talk shop, you know, I, I have a background in SEO testing and he has a patent in SEO testing. And so we were kind of, uh, you know, doing, doing similar things, but from different origins. Yeah. And, um, uh, so yeah, it is a natural fit. Uh, he's, he's not on the show currently cuz he lives on the opposite side of the planet and the hours were too rough for him. Uh, but who knows what the, the future may bring. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it, it just made a lot of sense to, you know, get like-minded people who are trying to put scientific method into seo. Uh, get 'em into a room and to discuss things.

Randy: 1:00:08

Well, I'll just tell people want to go check that out? Go jump onto YouTube. Go look for SEO five Club. It's a lot of fun. So what's around the corner for TED and SEO Tool

Ted: 1:00:21

Lab? Well, um, my, my happy place is inventing, so I do need to grow the business so that I can stay in my happy place. So I want to invent, uh, more technologies to put into Cora. I want to deliver better advantage over time. I wanna make sure we're prepared to adapt to any curve balls. The industry throws our way. I'm pretty good at, uh, anticipating those and being ready for them. And so, yeah, you know, I, I want to, uh, continue to do the core of what I started, which is to invent cool stuff and to help people succeed. And so anything that furthers me on, on those two agendas is what I want to. I love it. All

Randy: 1:01:11

right, well, here we are, Ted. We're at, we're at the point in the show, we'll call it the bottom of the nights. Okay. So this is where I gotta ask you if you have some advice. What, for the rookies in the game. So those folks just kinda starting out, uh, maybe they already have their business looking for some guidance from a guy who's been around the bases a few times. Uh, what kind of advice do you have for those folks?

Ted: 1:01:35

It's gonna be unusual advice, but here goes, like, if you're, if you're making a, an online store and you're trying to figure out, you know, what can you do? Here's what I recommend you do. Don't make one online store, make two. You know it's gonna cost you about the same amount of money to operate both of 'em as it does to do one. Just just make two, make brand A and brand B. Put 'em out there. Now, after a while, one will take the lead, one will be your primary one that's pulling the best numbers. And great. So when you recognize that, that's, that's your big brand. When you get a little brand, the little store you have going, well now, now you have a safe place to fail. All right? And that's what people don't give themselves is a safe place to fail. So a lot of SEOs out there, they'll, they'll take on a big client and they're putting themselves in a situation where the next mistake they make gets them. And I want you to think, how fast is that SEO gonna master his trade? It's like he's, he's not going to, if his next mistake gets him fired, right? He's gonna always play it safe and he's never gonna learn. So when you make that safe place to fail, you have a store that you can hire an SEO and give them a shot. What can they do? You know, make backups. So if they tank your site, you just restore from back, uh, backup to undo it, right? You have a place to test people you hire before you put 'em on the big. You have a place where you can learn what works and what doesn't works before you move it to the big store. And so I made a 17 year career out of testing on the little store and migrating the successes to the big store. And that produced that strategy for me as an in-house SEO produced double digit growth quarter after quarter, year after year. I went from the new guy on the dev team all the way to the director of bi, uh, at the executive. And so it didn't take rocket science, it didn't take degrees and this and that. It didn't take engineering chops. It just took having a safe place to fail.

Randy: 1:03:50

Nice. I love that advice. That is perfect. Uh, Give yourself a safe place to fail that. And I love you. Were going on, you know, I like, but you read the manual, right?? Yep. That is, that is great. Well, listen, Ted, thanks so much, man, for being on the show. I've thank you. I've really enjoyed getting to know you a little bit more, and, uh, hearing all the great background on you. Um, it's terrific. People can get in touch with you, go directly to, uh, seo tool lab.com. We'll have a link in the show notes to that as well as, uh, Ted's, uh, online vitals, I guess his social accounts, so you can go tap into him directly. Find him every week on SEO Fight Club as well. Always kind of fun. All right, well, listen, Ted, thanks so much, man. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you. And, uh, I, I've really enjoyed it. And listen, folks, that's a ball game, so thanks for joining us today, and if you like her, Please tell your friends, subscribe and review. And as we like to say, we'll see around the ballpark. Running the bases with small businesses is brought to you by 38 Digital Market. A digital marketing agency committed to client growth with lead generation, higher conversions, and increased sales. Connect with us today at 38digitalmarket.com.