Ranking Revolution

Hey, what's going on.

It's Doug.

Cuttington here.

Your host.

I wanted to pop in before I send
it to the interview, as normal with

the interviews, I've divided this
into two different parts and I think

I liked the way it's working out.

I cover one topic for the first
part, one topic for the second part.

And it gives you a chance to dive deeper
into a certain topic, or just skip one,

if you don't like the conversation for
some reason, but I hope you do like it.

And this episode, I
talked to Spencer Hawes.

And we talk about rank logic and
why he created this specific plugin.

And then we talk about the
March core update, which

actually gets super interesting.

We could have gone.

Probably for two or three hours, but we
only went about 30 minutes on that part.

So we're going to start off with
brain Cologic and then we'll talk

about the core update and let's
send it to the interview right now.

Doug: Welcome to the ranking revolution
podcast, your go to source for

strategies and ideas for SEO, organic
growth, content creation, and business.

In this episode, I'm chatting
with my friend, Spencer Hawes.

We'll talk about rank logic.

A WordPress plugin that helps
you track SEO performance.

And we'll also talk about the March
2024 core algorithm update, which

we're just finishing up right now.

Spencer, how's it going today?

Spencer: Doug, it is going really well.

I'm excited to be here on the podcast
and chat SEO and everything else.

Doug: And a lot of people know who
you are, but I'm going to give a

little, little bit of an intro here.

You're the founder of niche pursuits
and started your entrepreneurial

journey in 2006, laying the foundation
for a series of ventures online.

And actually your blog and podcast
really helped me get started.

So I found Pat Flynn first, and
then I heard you interviewed.

And then, uh, like many of us, I stalked
you online and read everything that you

wrote and really loved your podcast.

And I credit you with, you know, really.

Getting me started.

So despite some of those early challenges
and building niche websites from 2005

to 2010, those experiences kind of
lay the foundation for you mastering

SEO and some of your future projects.

You quit your day job in 2011 and I
think it was because you were just

earning enough with your websites.

Is that.

Yep, exactly.

Right.

So once you started earning enough, you
were like, Hey, I could do this on my

own and you started a couple software
companies and you've sold some and

exited and you have some other stuff
going on, but you have long tail pro

or you had long tail pro, you started
that you got into Amazon FBA for a bit.

You created table labs and link
whisper to essentially enhance some

of the issues you were having and take
care of some of the issues you were

having you co founded motion, invest.

And you probably done five or six other
things that I haven't listed on here too.

But one thing that always impresses me
is you're still building new niche sites

and running challenges to help grow the
community and just share the knowledge.

So I think you've done really awesome
job over what, 16, 17 years here.

So

Let's

talk about RankLogic.

So what inspired the
creation of RankLogic?

RankLogic.

. Spencer: Yeah.

So rank logic, as you mentioned, is a
way to track your, , SEO performance.

Um, you can track keywords, but the
bigger thing and really, which was the

nugget of the idea, uh, for me, why
I wanted it was a way to track how my

content updates were performing, right?

, testing, you know, if I change the
title of an article or if I update

a couple paragraphs of the article,
did that really have an impact?

Uh, and so previously it would
be a lot of manual effort.

You know, I had spreadsheets set up.

I check my Google search console,
you know, kind of before and after

and notate what I changed and it can
become messy depending on how many.

And then you can see what kind of
updates you perform on an article.

And so, I created BrankLogic
to do all that automatically.

You don't have to even, , say
that you're starting a test.

If you do it in WordPress, Rank
logic is tracking it, right?

So if you change the title, it
creates the graph before and after

it kind of takes care of all of
that manual tracking for you.

So that's why I started.

I wanted to track my content update
performance, but tied into that is

all the analytics of keyword tracking.

, And now we actually integrate with Google
Analytics 4 so you can get all of that

data right in the WordPress editor.

You can see all your graphs,
you know, traffic stats,

rankings, everything right there.

Doug: And you mentioned Analytics 4.

When, when you mentioned the solution,
you know, up front, I'm like, Oh, can't

we just track that in Analytics, right?

So what's the issue with Google Analytics?

Yeah,

Spencer: I mean, one is that
it can be difficult to learn.

It's a big learning curve
for a lot of people.

And another thing, I mean, for
content updates, for example.

It doesn't really track
that for you, right?

Again, it's all just, it's manual, right?

You can look at what your traffic was
a week ago and what it is today, but

again, you gotta track in a spreadsheet
whether you made an update or not.

But another big thing that I use RankLogic
for that Google Analytics 4 does not

do well, is tracking groups of content.

So if I've got 10 or 20 or 100 articles,
That are all in one category or maybe

they're all by one author or They're
all whatever reason I want to group

them all together and see how that
basket of content is Performing rank

logic makes that really easy, right?

You just put it in a project
or Select the author and then

it shows all the stats, right?

You can see that.

Oh, I got a thousand visitors
today from author XYZ And it's

with the click of a button.

Good luck trying to do
that in Google Analytics 4.

Like it's, I don't know how to do it.

Honestly, I could, I figured out how to
do something similar in, in universal

analytics, but have not figured out
how to do that in Google Analytics 4.

Doug: As a, I'm kind of
a data person, right?

I think, you know, if you're working
online, like you end up being a

spreadsheet and a data person and all
that, but, and usually I'm like, Oh,

I could kind of imagine how one might.

Come up with a solution for,
you know, whatever the tool is.

But yeah, I'm stumped.

I have no idea how you
would, how you would do that.

You have to have like the
integration with WordPress, I think.

Okay.

Yep.

Very cool.

Well, in a lot of the.

A lot of the listeners, a lot of
the viewers are agency owners.

They are maybe solo agency owners,
solopreneurs, and they're looking to grow.

Like how can rank logic fit
into working with clients?

And I'll leave it kind of open.

Cause I know.

You know, some, some people,
they run their website and then

they have an agency helping out.

Sometimes the owner of the website
doesn't really do anything and

it's more of a managed services
situation with the agency.

So what kind of solutions, how
can an agency owner roll this

out to some of their clients?

Spencer: Yeah, I mean, RankLogic is a
WordPress plugin, so it's really easy.

So, assuming that you have, you know, lots
of clients on WordPress, you can get a 50

site license or whatever and for a small
amount, right, relatively speaking, per

client, you install this on their website
and you have all of this analytics, right?

You can suddenly put together great
reports using RankLogic, you can

export the data in terms of Keyword
rankings traffic stats and what's

again, even better is if you are an
agency and you're doing a lot of the

SEO work yourself in terms of updating
content the plugin again, tracks all

of those changes automatically for you.

And so you can go back to the client
and say, okay, here's, you know, you

can see all the updates that we made.

And.

You can see where the traffic was
when we started and where it is now.

And, and all of that, again,
testing is done automatically.

So it's going to save you as an agency
owner a ton of time, because you don't

have to have all those spreadsheets.

It's just It's tracked automatically for
you and every client is separate, right?

On their own WordPress installation.

And so it, it keeps everybody separate.

Doug: Okay.

And this is huge.

I don't know if we could
highlight it enough.

So as a.

Agency owner working with clients,
you could show the results that

you're getting for the client.

So it's like, if you are not doing
this in some capacity and rank

logic makes it super easy, but if
you're not doing this, you're kind

of shooting yourself in the foot.

Assuming you are an effective marketer and
SEO, and you're actually doing a good job.

It, do you have any, no question there,
but do you have anything to add to that?

It's just like a no brainer.

To show the results and
make it super easy and

Spencer: clear, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it's all about, of
course, showing results.

It's as an agency owner, you want
to be able to show that you're

adding value to your clients.

And this is one way to do that.

If you're actually
providing content, right.

If, if part of your agency is you're one
of the authors on the site itself, right.

You can obviously track all the
stats for, you know, your author.

Um, and you can see, okay, when
we started, you know, we weren't

getting any traffic because
we hadn't written any content.

But now, after six
months, You see the graph.

You just export the graph and say, Hey,
look, I mean, we're, we're now driving

all these results because we're now
producing this content on your site.

So there's a lot of different ways that
you can kind of slice and dice the data

for the client to make it easy for them
to understand and to see the value.

It integrates

Doug: with Search Console and
GA4, any other integrations?

Spencer: Uh, it's just those two right
now which provides pretty much all the

data and then because it actually lives
on WordPress, that's really the magic

that happens there is because, because
it lives on WordPress, it sees all the

changes automatically happening on a
website, uh, where a lot of third party

tools, you know, an Ahrefs, They don't
see what's happening on the website.

You have to actually manually
input some marrying those.

The data sources with WordPress is
really where the magic happened.

Doug: Okay.

Very good.

And, you know, we'll link up so people
can dig into it deeper, but hopefully

they can visualize, like you have the
information and data from analytics,

you have it from search console, and
then you're overlaying what, you know,

from WordPress, whether it's the groups
that you've created, maybe the author,

the changes, any of the details,
like you, you can Lay that on top.

So you have, you know, if people could
imagine a database, like that's what

it is, you have a reference key, and
then you have all this other data that

opens up that before you were, you
have to look on this screen and then

you have to open up another tab and
another tab and kind of, you know, just

imagine what it, it could mean, but
here you see it all in your dashboard,

Spencer: right?

Right, exactly.

It makes it really easy.

Doug: Super powerful.

Okay.

So were there any other
solutions out there?

So do you have competitors in this
space that are doing the same thing?

Spencer: No competitors that are
doing exactly this thing, right?

It's always sort of piecemeal, right?

You you've got, I mentioned a
couple of third party tools that

you can use for all sorts of things.

There's keyword rank trackers.

That's a huge market.

Obviously.

Rank logic has.

Rank tracking.

So there's that competition, but
nothing quite that I've seen for

tracking content updates, the grouping
of the content and living on WordPress

so that you get all that data live.

That's, that's sort of
the difference there.

Doug: And then that makes sense.

I mean, a lot of stuff sort of came GA4
where, you know, some people were pretty.

Effective with creating
reports and custom reports.

If they were savvy and they were,
you know, we were using it for many

years, but when that went away, uh,
we're kind of left without much to do.

So you've created several
software products.

Now, is it a little bit easier now?

And you're, you're not
a coder yourself, right?

You, you have a team,

Spencer: correct?

Yeah.

I've always hired developers.

I'm not a coder myself.

All right.

Doug: Yeah.

So has it gotten easier just working
with some of the same folks, which

actually met some of your team at FinCon?

Spencer: That's right.

You sure did.

It I'm aware of the pitfalls that
might happen in developing software.

You know, certainly my first go around,
the first product, software product I

ever created was Longtail Pro that you
mentioned many years ago, back in 2011.

And, uh, made a lot of mistakes.

I didn't make quite as many mistakes.

You know, this go around, uh, I've
created a few different tools.

And so I, I learned something, um, each
time I create a new software product.

I don't know if it's necessarily easier
because there's always challenges.

How will the market respond?

You know, there's always unforeseen
circumstances that, um, Might make

things difficult, but, but it, it
is easier in terms of, I know what's

coming, what needs to be done.

You know, I understand beta and
alpha testing a whole lot more

and the importance of getting
customer feedback early on.

I've learned a lot of these things
that hopefully make a more successful

product at the end of the day.

Doug: Yeah.

Just got to get the reps in.

Well, do you have any, specific challenges
when you were developing rank logic?

Spencer: one of the things, well, so I've
got link whisper, which is, you know,

another WordPress plugin, uh, and I have
a team in place with that because it's

a little more established of a business.

And.

Then I decided, of course, why don't
I create another WordPress plug in.

And so I tapped into a lot
of the same team members.

And some of the challenges, one
of the big challenges that came

up was just the amount of time.

I'm stretching my employees too thin.

I had my main developer that's
really putting in essentially

full time on Link Whisper.

And now I'm asking him to build A new
software product, uh, and he did a good

job, but it started to stretch, you
know, I wanted it done in six months

and it was like going beyond that.

And so I needed to hire a third
party development shop Did a lot of

vetting, brought them in, and they
generally did, did a good job, but

they were, they were pretty expensive.

And even they ended up having,
you know, the regular issues.

They had turnover on their team, and,
you know, the deadlines weren't met.

And so that's just kind of the name of
the game, unfortunately, with software,

is that there's this Sort of feature
creep, you know is part of it is like

they build a couple of features like well
It'd be nice if we had this minor little

thing And so part of it's my fault part
of it's you know Just the nature of the

beast that it can take a long time So that
that's been kind of ongoing challenges is

just personnel And length of development.

Doug: And that, yeah, that basically
never goes away with software.

Like those are just standard
or any project really.

Like that just happens.

Yeah.

Okay.

Very good.

Well, it means you got the, you
know, most of the silly problems that

should not be there out of the way.

So you're just running into the, the ones
that are just always going to be there.

Spencer: Right, hopefully.

Yeah.

Doug: All right.

Well, how do you gather and incorporate
the user and customer feedback?

Into RankLogic's development
or other tools for that matter.

Spencer: Mm hmm So before I launch a
software product, I try to get a lot of

feedback from early Potential customers.

So, hopping on calls with potential
customers, asking them how they might

use features that would be in rank
logic or link whisper or whatever the

product is and truly understanding
their process for tracking keywords or

building internal links or whatever the
problem is that I'm trying to solve.

I think that from the very beginning
early on is super important to make sure.

That guides the direction
of the product early on.

But then after you've sort of done a
lot of beta testing and I guess that's

a big step is have an early version of
the product that is not publicly released

that you try to get 20 or 30 people
testing and getting feedback from them.

But then, okay.

Then after that, and nowadays that I
have the existing product, it's live.

Real customers that are paying money
trying to continue to listen to them when

we notice things like support tickets
that are repetitive, you know, people

having certain issues that are unable
to figure out how to do something or

there's bugs to really be on top of that.

And so we have a system where we
take that feedback in our support

tickets, gets put right into GitHub
so that immediately our developers

can see that feedback and either start
working on it if it's an obvious bug.

Or they can ping me to get me involved
and say, okay, there's a bunch of

people mentioning a new feature.

Should we develop that?

Right.

And then it's, it's a business
decision at that point to decide,

okay, do we go this direction that
customers appear to be guiding us in?

And just making some of
those decisions for sure.

Customer feedback is super important.

Because they're using it on a daily basis.

As much as I use it, there's
always ideas or integrations or

issues that come up that you didn't
think of that your customers will,

will definitely make you aware of

Doug: leading me to the next
question with integration.

So are there plans or do you
see other integrations possible?

I don't know, like in the next 12
or 18 months or anything like that.

Spencer: Uh, we have toyed around
with using more AI in the tool

you know, integrating with open
AI to assist in either content

updates or in, um, understanding
data better, um, on your website.

And so those are some of the things
for sure that we've been looking at

and actually done a little bit of
development, kind of playing around

with how things might might work.

So I would see that as potential,
certainly over the next 12 months.

Beyond that I'm not sure
where else we might go.

I mean, there could be other data sources
potentially, uh, that we could look

at, but nothing on the immediate radar.

And then

Doug: more generally, long term goals
or visions for where RankLogic might go?

Spencer: Yeah, I just really want to make
it the go to tool for SEO content updates.

For keyword tracking and analytics.

I feel like it's such
a big market already.

I think if we can just nail that vision
then we've got a long runway to go.

So I don't foresee any like big drastic
changes or new features per se, other

than we've zeroed in on the market,
really just want to grow it as much

as possible, two, three, five years.

And, and make it a much bigger
player than it is currently.

Very cool.

Well, if

Doug: people want to find more,
find out more about rank logic,

is there any particular place
you, we want to send them?

Spencer: Yeah.

Just head over to rank logic.

com.

That's going to be the best place.

Got some demo videos there,
of course explains, uh, the

product, but yeah, rank logic.

com they can always follow along with me.

I'm a little more active on Twitter.

You know, um, if they.

Want to interact personally with me.

Thanks a lot dispenser and
we'll link up to rank logic.

So you can check it out a
little bit more if you want to.

And that concludes part one.

Part two is where we talk about
the March core algorithm update.

And kind of the state of
content sites, niche sites.

Authority sites, whatever
you want to call them.

So if you liked where this episode
was going, we get into even more.

More juicy stuff.

I really enjoyed the
conversation with part two.

So that's it for today.

Remember if you have a chance.

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All right, thanks a lot.

And we'll catch you on the next episode.