This morning the owner of a plumbing HVAC company asked me how much to build their website. $650 one-time is the short answer. But let’s break this down and see how most home service businesses screw this up badly. It’s no secret that a plumbing HVAC website is just a template that you can inject your name, phone number, and other details into. A reasonably competent VA following our checklist can do this for a few hundred dollars. However, if you want a skilled American to fine-tune the site to rank on Google, ensure proper call tracking, and help get the right content in place, these folks cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year. The real cost lies in troubleshooting performance and tuning content, which means that a “website” should typically cost around $2,500 over 6-8 weeks to coordinate after the VA has done her part. Many of you guys see marketing companies charging $8K or even as much as $50K for a website. Does this mean our plumber friend is getting ripped off? Not necessarily, since the agency is probably bundling in Google My Business optimization, Local Service Ads, and other services. However, charging separately for SEO on a monthly basis is a scam, as I’ve explained in detail in other posts. The same goes for monthly “hosting and maintenance” fees, since all of us know that we can use WP Engine for $30 a month, a bit more if you opt for VIP support, especially if you have a lot of sites and need super-fast loading, security, and support. When people ask me for help fixing their existing site, I first check to see if they have WordPress and all the necessary plugins for analytics, content, etc. If they do, then we look at what stage their business is in. If they are in a major Google local category (plumbing, landscaping, electrical, etc.) and doing at least $80K a month, tuning their site is usually easy – often doable for $1,500. But we prefer long-term relationships (think wives, not hoes) where we can put a team on it and have an American team leader actively watching and managing. The ongoing VA cost for a retainer should be $500 to $750 a month, depending on whether the scope includes social ads and video editing, in addition to just Google-related tasks (website, GMB, LSA, SEO). Add in a senior client strategist, overhead for tools/training, and a 20% profit margin, and retainers are typically $2-3K a month per client location. HVAC businesses may be at the higher end of this spectrum (versus karate studios at $500 a month). Clients in New York City would also be higher, since there’s more competition and, therefore, more work. There are agencies that charge $10,000 a month (which isn’t necessarily bad, depending on what you’re getting). But then they outsource to white-label fulfillment, paying $300 a month for implementation and assigning 50 clients per account manager. That’s a pure money grab, as they’re primarily sales-driven organizations where the leader isn’t a hands-on practitioner, believing they need to know only a bit more than their client about digital marketing – which isn’t much. So now you see why pricing in website building is all over the place. All digital services are connected through the website, so bundling makes sense. There is so much outsourcing and “easy money bros” taking advantage of uninformed clients that the markups are insane. The solution is to understand exactly what you’re getting and work only with folks who have published SOPs. And you must own your marketing assets. No more “website is free” deals, where you pay $295 a month but lose your site if you ever leave. The same goes for PPC, where the agency owns your account, and if you try to leave, they make up some excuse about “intellectual property.” Consider your own costs in running a service business. There are the actual materials and product (the equivalent of VA labor in our case), your various people, marketing costs, overhead, and then a healthy 20% margin. A few weeks ago in Paris, I paid $24 for two croissants and two coffees. You know the actual cost was maybe a dollar. But what else are you paying for? If you want to own your marketing and hold it accountable, I created a 5-step guide with Marko S. Sipilä that you should review.

What I’m about to say pisses off most people who do social media marketing or believe they do it for a living because they think every social channel is different. They think what you post on YouTube should be different from what you put on TikTok. Twitter should be text-based, while on Instagram, you need to focus on reels. YouTube content should be long-form, while LinkedIn is for your resume or business tips. From a consumer’s perspective, that’s true. But we work for our clients to drive sales, not just entertain or inform. When I’m on social media, my goal is to drive sales, not target everyone on LinkedIn or TikTok. On TikTok, I can target older people or any audience by focusing precisely on who I want to reach and the content I provide. It’s channel-independent. 

We had World Gym as our client. They’re the original gym for bodybuilders like Frank Zane and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and they were running professionally shot corporate ads. Their ads weren’t working on TikTok. So I did a search on TikTok for World Gym and saw a bunch of regular people working out at World Gym. They were doing leg raises, stretching, talking about their diet, and even doing exercises the wrong way to make fun of others. These were regular people of all different shapes and sizes—not Mr. Olympia, perfect bodybuilding magazine types—just actual normal people who go to this gym. We took their posts and started boosting them. It brought in new members, just like those people in the videos. Is that a surprise? No, because people will buy from people they trust. This has nothing to do with the internet. So why wouldn’t you leverage that? It’s just another way of saying social amplification. The Social Amplification Engine Our whole six-phase process is called the Social Amplification Engine.   You’re amplifying the social proof and the goodness of what your customer is doing. The better job your clients are doing the easier it is to amplify. So if you’re an agency your biggest issue is choosing the right clients. When you choose clients that are already doing well, amplification is easy.

If you don’t know how to network and you’re afraid of meeting people or you’re getting nervous. You’ll want to know how Jack Wendt networks with high-value people and is now going to become the head of Strategic relations at Caleb Guilliam’s company Better Wealth. He graduated high school last year and went straight to the Army National Guard. He’s in aviation intelligence. He did basic training and learned all the crazy, top-secret stuff. Just 12 days after he graduated, he had no job offer. So, he flew down to the event, hoping to figure something out. And he did. He was with Caleb in Nashville, learning on the job. He told Caleb he wanted to help and learn from him, aspiring to be like Caleb. He wanted to combine his strengths with Caleb’s and improve. It worked out. They created a position for him in Caleb’s company. Jack Wendt says it’s about asking the right people the right questions. A lot of life’s hardships is figuring out who to ask and what to ask. Jack didn’t know Caleb and was at a random event with high-profile business connections. He liked that Caleb is young, innovative, a genius communicator, and great at networking. He wanted to learn how to do that. Once he completes the trial period, his title will be Head of Relations, Operations. It was about asking the right person the right question, focusing on humility, ability, and connection. We’re moving into a world dominated by AI, losing personal touch. That’s why strategic partnerships and personal connections will always matter. AI can’t replicate this unless we have humanoid robots like in Ex Machina. Maybe that will happen someday, but that’s far off. I can Imagine being 19-year-old Jack, trying to build real relationships with high-value people. Seeing someone as high-profile as Caleb would be intimidating. We live in a world that encourages us to be consumers. On TikTok, scrolling is a comfort zone where there’s no judgment or rejection. But to get ahead, you can’t fear rejection. Take the salespeople in Salt Lake City, for example. They spend two years on missions, facing constant rejection. This makes them the best in the world because they learn to embrace rejection and overcome it. Overcoming fear and putting yourself out there is crucial. Everyone has a little voice in their head holding them back, but sometimes you need to push that voice forward. Think about it—what’s the worst that can happen? You have to be more like a missionary. But what if you’re an introvert? What if you don’t have the charisma that Caleb and I have? Are you doomed to fail at building relationships with high-value people? I believe everyone has something to offer. While Caleb and Jack rely on charisma, those traits are learned, not innate. It’s harder for some people, but it’s all about trial and error. Failing is how you grow and learn. Is building high-value strategic relationships better than focusing solely on selling? One of the best ways to scale sales is through word of mouth and personal connections. Having someone vouch for you is invaluable. This is where strategic partnerships come in. Many people have loyal fan bases in niche markets. For example, Jack is currently looking at popular YouTube channels in the fly fishing community. Jack sells life insurance, and many fly fishing enthusiasts are in their target audience. It may seem unusual for a 19-year-old in a life insurance company to collaborate with a fly fishing YouTube channel, but there’s a lot of value in it. By leveraging these partnerships, you can tap into existing communities and build trust with potential clients in ways traditional selling often can’t. Jack’s fascination with watches started at 13. His grandpa had some watches and said, “Jack, I’m about to buy a $4,000 watch. Any money you save me, I’ll give you half.” Jack found that watch for $3,500 and made $250. For a 13-year-old, that was amazing. He thought, “I could do this for people.” At 15, during quarantine, he started flipping watches. He bought a few at a time, starting with a $150 watch. The first watch he bought and sold cost $150. Two weeks later, he sold it for $375. He kept doing that, parlaying his success like in the book Smart Cuts. He didn’t know the concept yet, but he kept growing his money and increasing his margins. With more money, he bought more watches and continued to grow his business. He took a break while he was at basic training, but now he’s working with a partner to launch an e-commerce company. This helps Jack with strategic partnerships because he can approach high-worth individuals and identify their watches. Today, Jack walked up to a guy and said, “Hey, I love your Rolex. Is that a Daytona or a Rolex Explorer 2?” It instantly breaks the ice and gets them interested in what he has to say. It’s an actual conversation where you exchange stuff. There’s so much small talk today, and people are on autopilot, having the same conversation over and over again. Breaking that gets their attention. It doesn’t have to be about watches; it just needs to be something you’re genuinely interested in. Start with a hobby or something you love. Jack didn’t figure out what he wanted to do until halfway through his senior year. He had no clue whether he should go to college, join the military, or go straight to the workforce. All these options felt daunting. He applied to colleges and got into a few, but it didn’t make sense to him. So many people go to college, put themselves in six figures of debt, and not many end up successful. Jack realized that college isn’t always necessary. Education is not bad, and he might still get a college degree, possibly online while working full-time. He just needed options. He joined the Army National Guard. He always wanted to serve, partly because his dad

This data leak on the API came out that there are 14,000 variables that Google looks at to determine whether your local service business is Googleable and whether you’re lying in SEO.  As a result, all the “SEO experts” have gone nuts trying to deconstruct the clickstream data, saying things like “the overall domain matters, not just the page,” and “Google’s lying about this and that.”  They think using keywords a certain way, posting on social media frequently, using hashtags, or specific tools will fool Google. They might buy links, use triangular links, cloaking, PBNs, and other tricks. They act like liars trying to appear honest. But think of it as a lie detector test. When you’re honest, you’re not worried about trying to trick the lie detector test. If you’re a plumber in San Antonio and you’re honest about actually doing what you say you do, Google will recognize it and it will manifest in great reviews and an increased number of people visiting your site.  The way Google picks up on your signals is outlined in their 170-page document that is updated regularly. It’s called the Search Quality Raters Guidelines. Reading this document can be enlightening. It explains what E-E-A-T means and how to demonstrate experience, expertise, authority, and trust. Showing evidence of your work, like videos of your team performing tasks, reviews, and other activities, supports your authenticity. This evidence should be visible on various platforms like blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more. Google’s Knowledge Graph connects all these elements. It’s a vast database where everything is connected. In Google Analytics, you can track user behavior, such as the content they click on, the videos they watch on your YouTube channel, and their interactions with your social media presence. All these signals will be consistent if you’re a genuine business. When you are honest, you don’t have to worry about the constant changes: it’s timeless. Google has simply become more sophisticated in approximating these different signals. Danny Leibrandt discussed this in a podcast with Greg Gifford, who also confirmed our views – it’s all about signal analysis. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dennis Yu (@dennis.yu) It involves combining all these elements rather than trying to trick the lie detector test with how you breathe, how you blink, the words you say, how often you say certain words, your movements, and more.  Just be honest, if you want your SEO to be timeless. Now, here’s how you can understand the impact of AI:  We see new technology every ten years or so. For example, there has been the word processor, WordPress, PHP, or something like a calculator that allows you to do more things. These tools don’t eliminate jobs – at least, not at first.  Because when you have a calculator, it means that people who understand math or accounting can do their jobs better. With the right tools, someone who’s already competent can work ten times better and faster. But if you don’t know accounting, having all the tools and calculators won’t help you at all.  Similarly, if you are an agency using AI tools to generate content without the necessary expertise in SEO, digital marketing, or video editing, you’re in trouble. I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. Agencies that are just in it for the money will eventually find themselves out of business. You need hands-on experience doing a certain thing, before AI can make your work more valuable.  So, what does this mean for all of us?  It comes down to the same timeless principles. Look at the Vatican Museum here.  This place has items on display that date back over 2,000 years.  We were at the Colosseum yesterday, which was built around 80 AD, roughly 50 years after Jesus. That place has practically been here forever.  So, what is timeless about SEO and digital marketing? If you do good work – fixing toilets, roofs, lawns, buying and selling houses, taking care of pets, and other local services – you need someone to collect those signals. This is essential for gathering more reviews and increasing conversions from systems like CallRail, Service Titan, Angie’s List, Housecall Pro and Salesforce.com. All these systems pull in CRM data that needs to be pushed back to platforms like Facebook, Google, and TikTok. There is a technical component and a process component in your operations to collect all this content. This includes training your technicians to take photos of their jobs and more. Ironically, in the world of AI, there’s an even greater need for agencies.  However, these agencies shouldn’t just act like sales bros, focusing 90% of their efforts trying to close more deals without delivering. Instead, they should shift 90% of their focus to delivery – actually getting the work done through a sophisticated process involving VAs who use technology. Over the past couple of decades as a search engine engineer, I’ve been working on automating this at scale. We have lots of agency owners working under industry figureheads like Glenn Vo for dentists or Jeremy Newman for restoration companies.  Because all the restoration companies will trust a “Jeremy.” All of the pool builders will trust Nilson Silva because he’s one of them – at the top of their industry.  Below the industry figure head is an agency owner or multiple agency owners. Below them is an army of VAs who use our tools and follow our processes, which we openly share and to which anyone can contribute. It’s not a secret sauce. I am working on building the necessary tools to empower local business owners, allowing them to see their stats.  For instance, if you’re a landscaper like Anthony Hilb, running a $10 million landscaping company, you should be able to see all your stats instead of just trusting a marketing company’s word. You should have access to your data just like a doctor has access to an MRI or a person uses a scale. I want everyone to see the