From Invisible to Indispensable on Google: SEO and Business Marketing for Entrepreneurs and Brands

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0:30Google is one of the search engines that you should be on and most importantly be there for a long time. But at the same time, you have to create content that's going to allow your brand to be seen by Google, for example. So these are the very major things that we need to consider as business owners to know where are we showing up online, who are we showing up for, and if we're showing up consistently, how are we able to do that without fail?

1:06So the question of the day is, do you have a brand? And if you do, the second part of the question is, does Google know about your brand? Does Google know your brand? And there are ways you can tell because easily, I'll even give you this right off the bat. The first thing you want to do is to create a website that can be seen and that can also be heard, can be remembered, can also be typed, right?

1:38And you want your content to also be seen and connected back to the source. So if you're creating content, you're not just creating content because you have information, it's because you have value that you want to exchange. Welcome, Robin. Welcome, David. David, thank you for being here as well. So this is a very important discussion that I wanted us to have today just because there are so many things that we know about, but we also don't know if Google knows about us, but Google even trusts us with information to begin with.

2:12And I felt like it would be good for us to talk about this today, but also do it in a way that will be really quick. And then, you know, hear from you too, whether you're able to add this to your question, your bucket list, but also more importantly, how can you turn this around for the better? So the question of the day is, do you have a brand? And the reason why this question is very important is because when you have a brand, you have a name. When you have a name, you technically have a domain and your domain would be your website URL.

2:48We've talked about uniform resource locators before in the previous episode. And when I mentioned this on the We Don't Play podcast show, I specifically mentioned about having your URL as your destination key, because that's how people are able to find you. Like, for example, with you, David, you have dovid.com. So that's D-O-V-I-D.com. That is your brand. That is what people would know you for. And I think it's DNF or dnfund.com.

3:20That's what I'm seeing on your website, on your profile. So when I'm seeing that for me, I don't know which one is which, but if you've connected the right one to Google, then Google is able to now know where that comes from. So I'll just give you an example for you, David. So I'm going to go to Google right now and I'm going to type in site, S-I-T-E, and then I'm going to do D-O-V-I-D.com. Let me see. So now when I look at this, I don't know if the website is active or if it's available.

3:53We'd love to hear from you. But when I just did that on Google, I thought it literally is giving me somebody who is literally trying to fish for water or fish for a fish in a pond. So that's what I'm getting. And that usually happens when Google does not know your brand. So we'd love to hear from you, David. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

4:18Good morning.

4:48And then we will be touched and open your room. So when I started to listen to you, I had a question. Is this a pre-recorded message? Because there are many rooms that the moderator comes in, but he puts a recording for an hour. And then at the end, he shows up and says, is there any question? And then you start talking and looking at my profile. So I say, wow, this is great. At least this is not recorded. You are live.

5:18So, Dovid is my name, and many years ago, I was extremely lucky to get this domain. I am in a whole different business in regards to my day-to-day. I sell equipment to utilities, to electric companies in a number of countries. So, I use Dovid really as a private email, and the profile here on house, and I use it for a few other things.

5:58No, I don't have a live website on that domain, and the DM fund is up. We manage a private domain fund. We own almost 5,000 domains. Even that I bought my first domain in the year 2000 for my business, I came to the domain business in 2010. And I have been very active in the domain industry.

6:35I have been to most of the trade shows, names card. My first one was domain traffic, or traffic, which happened at Fort Lauderdale 2010, 2011, and 2012. And I know everything about what you're talking about. Not everything in a way of being humble. What I mean is, if you really want to be out there in the world and be recognized and have a working business,

7:09you must have your brand. And if you have a high-quality, premium domain, even better. So, aside of my regular business, we manage almost 5,000 domains. High-quality domains, top domains. I have sold many domains for six figures, five figures. We don't sell domains under $5,000. We don't carry domains that would sell below $5,000.

7:41And I'm willing to be here in your room and listen to you.

7:47Great to be here with you, and I'm going to start following you. It's my first time I hear you, but I'm very interested, and good luck. Thanks for doing what you do.

7:58Thanks for being here. You mentioned that you send emails with Dovid.com. Yes, but that's a private. When I am somewhere, and I want somebody to be in contact with me, so I tell him, send me an email with your contacts at Dovid.com, and that's very easy to remember.

8:32If I would have to say, Dovid, Roth, 719, Ed, whatever, people forget about it. So, I'll tell you what happened. There was a rabbi who registered Dovid.com. Dovid, in the way, with an O, is a pronunciation of David in Hebrew. And there are many Dovids around the world. So, this rabbi started in 1991 or 92,

9:10and he was very active in the Internet, and he had Dovid.com. Very sadly, many, many years later,

9:22he had, he was going to Chicago to a huge convention, and it was snowing, and another car hit him in the road, and there was an accident, and he passed away. I believe he had his domain registered renewed for another three years when he passed away. So, his domain was in his account for another three years. After three years that the domain was not renewed,

9:54and probably his wife didn't have the access to the domain, or there was no interest on keeping the domain, so the domain dropped, and it went to auction.

10:06And I was able to buy it on that auction. So, that's how I have it. Because you, you wouldn't be able to have a domain like that other than if you bought it, because those domains, single word names, were registered before 2000, many after 2000 right there. But single names are very, very valuable. They can go for hundreds of thousands,

10:38or even almost a million dollars or more. Because single names can be a fantastic brand for clothing, fashion, or any other things. So, it was great for me. It was unbelievable to be able to buy dubit.com. I have had a few offers to buy it, but I haven't sold it.

11:03Thank you for that feedback. You know, the reason why I was asking the question, especially on the emails, is to also know if you send out emails or receive emails, sometimes it can go to the spam, sometimes it might go to places on the inbox, or within the inbox, that may not be the best or the safest. So, when I did a search using nslookup.io, and it's a free option that you can always check out and see what it looks like,

11:34I checked your domain health, and I see you have a 3 out of 10, because the risk assessment level is high. Because I don't see any DKIM, which stands for Domain Keys Identified Mail, and DMARC, which stands for Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Confirmance. And your SPF, which is your sender policy framework, is green, the DMARC is red, and the DKIM is null, or void, or it's non-existent.

12:08So, why I asked was because of that reason, to make sure that you also are aware if you're not. What was the website you checked this on? nslookup.io. I'll put it in the chat. Well, thank you very much, my friend. What do you do? What do you do, actually, as your work? Are you involved in SEO and websites, or what do you do? Great question. Thank you.

12:38So, I run an agency in media. And also, able to be visible through the search engines across both traditional and AI, artificial intelligence engines. So, things to do with chatbots, chatGPT, perplexity, cloudbot, or cloudcode, all the way through Microsoft and Google. The goal is to build out your website.

13:10We either build your website, we audit it, or scale it. And then, we identify problems that technically would be needed to solve the site's portfolio, and also your domain authority, so that you can also grow across the web. And we usually use podcasts, Pinterest, or any other form to also enhance your website. So, basically, it's to make sure that you have a website that is strong, that is authenticated, and also that is scalable.

13:36Right. And your website is playinc.com? Correct. All right? Well, you can bring up to the room. Let me see if he's still here. He's very knowledgeable. He is in the domain industry group. He's a friend of mine. And you have him here listening downstairs. If he can come up, Danny Monson is a great person, very knowledgeable, and a good friend of mine.

14:06Danny is great. He's also in the domain industry and development also.

14:1222 before. Great guy. What's up, Danny? How are you, man? Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread? It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clearer visibility, faster deals. Zero chaos. Call it compliance, or call it compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to Vanta.com slash com.

14:47Welcome.

14:53And as... Hello, how's it going? How are you? Everybody.

14:58Favre, how's it going? Can you hear me? Oh. Doing well, thank you. Thanks for having this room. Every time that I can catch your sessions, I'll hang out here. And listen, hello, David.

15:15Hi, my friend. How are you? Nice to hear you. Nice to hear your voice, too. It's been a while.

15:23I did it actually for 10 days. Two weeks ago, I only was going to WhatsApp with my kids and a few people that I need to, but somebody, I was listening to somebody, and he said, you're going to feel the difference, and I detoxed from news, from websites. Only my basic stuff that I needed to do, everything else, I stopped for exactly 11 days.

15:56You have no idea how I was feeling. I'm still coming out of that from a week and a half ago. My wife was in Miami visiting her grandmother, her mother, and I used that time to try to do that, and I think I will be doing it two, three times a year. Detoxing from electronics for 10 days, your mind is more sharp,

16:27more clear. It was really unbelievable. I never thought that that would really be like that. so I had to be going in into clubhouse for some time, and it was really, really good. Anyone who wants to try it, it's unbelievable. I did that when my phone broke, and I just didn't have a phone for like three days, and I felt useless. I felt like I needed to do something everywhere

16:58that I went. I would look for my phone like subconsciously, and then remind myself that I don't have a phone, a working phone. It's, yeah. You can see by feeling what you were feeling how taken over our life is by our freaking phone. That's the biggest challenge in this generation, because people can turn on and monitor their phone

17:29and see how many hours a day they are watching their phone, and it's mind-boggling. It is beyond imagination that we can't leave those freaking phones. And I have seen people that have an alarm, they have, they don't have their phone in vibration, and even that they are not getting any alarm or any message or anything. They just keep taking the phone and looking to see if somebody

17:59wrote to them when nobody has written to them. So, and I'll finish with this, like six, seven years ago, we went into a restaurant. And we came in and there was a couple in a table close next to us. And since we arrived, we saw them that each one was on their phone. And they ordered, the food came,

18:29and they still were on their phone while they were eating. And they were there like for 35, 40 minutes. Then they left. We never heard them speak to each other. Not even a single word. When they finished eating, it seems both of them knew that they didn't want dessert. The man asked for the bill. He paid. And after he paid, he said, let's go.

19:00And they left. they never spoke to each other. So I have no idea why they went out to dinner. But maybe that's their way of life. And they're probably divorced without knowing it. But these freaking phones are draining people's lives.

19:25It's a big deal. It's definitely a big deal. Thank you so much, David and Danny, for being here. Nick says, or they are probably happy and still married. I mean, that's not my place. I don't know. But I'm going to interrupt you. Yes, they are married, but they are first married to their phone and then married to themselves. But the main marriage is with their phones. Worse. I don't know if Nick was thinking the same thing too.

19:55And Jasmine is laughing. So, yeah, you just never know. This phone thing, it can be a lot. And I mean, we're on Clubhouse, you can use your app, you can use your web, desktop. But at the end of the day, when we think about our phones and what we use and where we use them, most times it's on the internet, right? When you have Wi-Fi connected or your mobile network connected, that's where you get to see the most feedback. And, you know, we're talking about branding and Google knowing about your brand. And most times we say or we think that Google does

20:26when Google doesn't or has no clue of what you do because of those things. And how I want you to also check this out because I don't want to just talk about this room and leave it as is. There is a website called learning.google.com and if you just Google something and you say Google learn about, you will find it. I'll give you guys a link in the chat and I'll also say it out loud. That is learning.google.com slash experiments slash learn

20:57dash about slash sign up. When you sign up and you connect to this website, right? And it's an experiment because right now it's still in the labs. What you can do here is when you click on this and you sign up, ask Google to tell you about your brand. Say, tell me about this business. Tell me about the name of this business. Tell me about the name of this person. And it will tell you exactly what it has in this database. And if you realize that you're not getting anything concrete or

21:27anything that is solidified or even robust, then that means you may have light information or very thin content on your website or even across the web pages within your domain. So one thing to also look out for if you don't want to use this experiment, another experiment you can use, thank you, Jasmine, is you go to Google and then in Google where the search bar is, the search box, you now type in their site, S-I-T-E, full colon, not a

21:58semicolon, a full colon, and then with no spaces put your domain and then hit enter. If you don't see anything on the results pages, that's also another way of telling you that Google does not know about your brand. If Google knows about your brand, then you should see pages on your site. You should see your homepage, your about page, your product page, your blogs, your contacts, your privacy policy, whatever policy pages you have, they should be showing up on Google because they are indexed to Google. Now, if they're indexed to Google,

22:28then you also want to check if you're indexed to Microsoft, right? These are free tools everybody can use. That's why Google made it free. But the thing about being free is that the problem now gets in when you start realizing you start getting pages that are not indexed, or you start losing traffic, or you start having content decay, or your robots are not firing correctly, or you don't have the right associations, or your sitemaps might be configured incorrectly, those are where the things can start to come up. But these two ways to know if Google knows about your brand, or

22:59does Google know your brand at all, is by using the learnabout, or using the traditional way of going to site, colon, domain.com, or example.com to get your results. David or Danny, have you tried that before or heard that before? Yeah, I have heard it, but I'll tell you how you get very high in Google's environment when a company puts their website and they're active selling products,

23:30and they start paying Google for traffic, the world changes because now they're getting money from you, and now they go in and they take care of a lot of things for you to show up, because they want to keep you not only connected, but they want you to grow and give them more money. Now, I'm not saying that you go to Google and you pay them 50 bucks and

24:00things are going to change, but if you're an active business that is growing and you're using Google products, then things change. for example, I use many emails, but for example, the domain that we use for all the domains is a Google business services, a Google business email, sorry.

24:32so I realized that when we email people who inquire in our domains using that domain, they're using that email, none of those emails go to spam because Google knows who you are. You're paying them every month for that email, and I may have a Gmail, which is free already for 20 years, and sometimes

25:02depending on who we are emailing them, that goes to spam or whatever. Most of them don't, but if you use a paid email business, a email with them, then many of the things are greenlighted. greenlighted. The other thing that I wanted to tell you was yes, that right now on

25:33the Google search bar, because everything is using AI, when I get inquiries on domains, I have a prompt, which I ask, which of the companies worldwide would be able to use this domain or have a brand with these keywords or similar? You have no idea what happens. First of all, because when

26:04I do the inquiry, I don't want him to give me the companies in Panama, where I live or the U.S., I'm getting inquiries on domains all over the world. So right away, it gives me 5, 8, 10, 20 companies who use those keywords or would benefit from these domains. And that's the great benefit. When you're going to buy a domain for resale, you want to know that you have

26:35more than one or two future customers. You don't want to buy a domain that you can just sell to one company. Obviously, you have to check if there are trademarks and many other things. But the AI bar right now, when you give them a couple of prompts, it goes everywhere and gives you all the information that you may need. And also, you can ask the questions in regards

27:08to the domain or an email, how is it standing out there? And the AI will give you tremendous answers with a lot of deafness. So just wanted to tell you that. Thank you, David. Yeah, there's a lot of things to configure online, especially when you look at your content and you see where it's stemming from. Because even if you're being cited on an AI source or you're being mentioned within an AI filter, it's coming from

27:39a source itself and that source has a resource. So when you now look at it from the perspective of your website being the cornerstone of your information, then that's where you want to invest a lot of information about your business, about yourself. So when you're now connected to these platforms or you're sending emails, you're not being looked at as spam or someone that is fake or someone that's not branded well. Because like you mentioned, even Nick said it too with Workspace, Google Workspace, you can

28:09connect your account to Workspace and all these things, but if you start sending out emails and you've not made some compliance procedures to make sure that your website and your content is in alignment, that's where your DNS comes to play. You know how all of us, you know, all human beings, we all have a DNA, right? I always say that every website or every domain has a DNS, like a DNA. That DNS is your domain name system or your domain

28:40name server. When those servers are malfunctioning or when there's a problem, it's going to affect your site. Let's say your name server is pointing in the wrong direction or you don't have the right mail exchange records, the MX records. Those things can hurt your site. When you connect your website to Google Search Console, you connect it through a C name, which is a canonical name or a TXT, right? Or a text file. So those are things that if you don't connect to your site, it's going to be hard for you to also scale because when Google is looking for information about you, it's looking

29:11through those source files first. So it's so important to look into those things as well. So thank you, David, for that. Bridget, thanks for being here. Happy Friday. Hey, we can't hear you. Or was it just me?

29:28Can you hear me? I have these horrible AirPods on. They're horrible. But happy Friday.

29:40It's so unrelated to this, but it kind of is with branding. When you talked about AirPods, the wired headphones or the wired earphones are coming back to the market even more than the AirPods because people are starting to use the AirPods less and use wired headphones more. I use wired headphones. I don't know. God knows how many times I've lost my AirPods, so I don't even use them. And on top of that, it's not good for your brain or for, you know, people use it as fashion, putting one on their ear and

30:10walking around with no music on and they are hurting their brain cells, they're hurting their ears and it's damaging because when you look at the electromagnetic waves that are going through that, it's way higher than what you have with the wired headphones. So I know exactly what you mean, Bridget, when you're not getting those signals because it could either be the AirPods are not receiving the right strength, but it's also losing strength because you always have to keep recharging it. So I'm glad that you mentioned the AirPods today. I wanted to ask you about branding. and Google, if you have

30:42ever gotten to see what Google knows about your business or your brand in general.

30:50Oh, we lost you.

31:01Guys, Bridget, we can't hear you. No, I can't hear you.

31:10I hope you can hear us. Huh. Maybe if you leave and come back or if you disconnect from your AirPods, because sometimes it can pick up on the Bluetooth quickly. Just try again because we couldn't hear you at all, Bridget. Let's try one more time. showing you lately.

31:48Yeah, so I had the opportunity to work in New York City.

31:59My daytime job, I was working at a marketing firm doing competitive research for financial brands. and my nighttime job, I was club promoter. So the combination of those two jobs led me to almost, I wouldn't say

32:30without knowing, I definitely knew what I was doing, but I didn't know that I was developing my personal brand.

32:42The later on, I I established a business and I had a business, but people knew me by my name instead of by my business name, DM Digital. So I kind of just went with that, I, I was not a, a very dedicated, um, SEO driven, um, person.

33:16Um, although I knew the value of it, um, I steered more into the, the automation, um, sub niche, which was back in 2018 when we were automating, um, chat on messenger. Um, so that led me to eventually up to today. Um, I never worried too

33:47much about Google because my, my clients, um, didn't come from the internet for the most part, they came from, uh, referrals and, and past clients. Cause I never spent an ad in, in, I never spent a dime in, uh, advertising while you see here, I'll do that. Um, but, um, today I'm, I'm doing more about the, the opportunity that, um, AI models, um, are familiar

34:18with my work and that people need to know about me. They can just ask any AI model or at least uh, the most, uh, popular ones and, um, they'll find out, they'll find out about my trajectory. So, um, um, this is something that I probably look to implement this year as, um, I, after my divorce, I definitely had to, um, establish a, a different

34:51brand. so, might as well do it right. Okay, guys, I think I have, can you guys still hear me?

35:22Yes, there's, uh, okay. I, I, I, a short pause, but, uh, we can hear you now. Trying to reconnect and I think my, um, yeah, um, if you want, I'll, I'll summarize it, but, um, uh, uh, yeah. So, um, I haven't been very

35:52in tune with, uh, SEO and, um, that's because of the way clients up to this day found me or find me. And, uh, that is through referrals and, and, um, you know, um, basically through, through circles that, um, where I live, work and play basically, um, so, uh, this year I'm looking to establish a different brand

36:22and, um, this is why I'm here because this, this topic is, is, um, fundamentals, right? Um, so that's the summary.

36:33Thank you, Danny. Yeah, definitely SEO is highly underrated, but overly a great place to invest your time, money and energy for long-term benefit, especially if you're looking for local business, regional, national, or even international, you know, some websites even go to the extent of creating pages with other languages, right? If you have English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, those are things that you can also do, but it's not

37:04necessary, but if you want to have that international appeal, you can. And when you have a brand, your brand is basically what Google is going to understand you for based on what you've set up in the beginning. So if people are going to be finding you online, it's based on how you're able to put that through and how you're going to know is also putting that in your forms as well. We have a client, they deal with massage in New York and they have a massage spa and they focus heavily on like lymphatic drainage, prenatal,

37:36you know, things, TMG, TMJ, you know, a lot of different types of massage routines. It's not just heart stone and deep tissue, but they even go to the extent of actually treating and helping you to recover from pain or recover from any type of thing. So when I had a meeting earlier this week with a client, I was looking at the forms that they were getting because before they weren't usually getting a lot of forms and responses or getting signups. This is before we started.

38:06So we looked at their account, they have about 300 plus forms that were that were filled. And out of those 300 forms, anywhere between 30 to 70 percent of those forms, there's a section where I told him to put, how did you find us? And usually you can see family, you can see friends, you can see TikTok, you can see email, and then you see Google search. So when we started seeing a lot of Google search, I said, aha, this is good. So clients are finding them organically within their

38:37locality, within their zip code, within their radius for certain terms. And that's how they are found online within Google.