Discover how Tyson Stockton navigated the complex merger of two prominent SEO agencies, preserving legacy while adapting to rapid AI-driven changes. Tune in for strategic insights into leadership, culture, and the future of SEO link-building!
https://page2pod.com - Tyson Stockton, Co-founder & COO of Previsible.io, unpacks the challenges and strategies behind merging two distinct SEO agencies: Previsible.io and Internet Marketing Ninjas.Â
Tyson shares candid insights about integrating teams, managing culture, and redefining roles while preserving legacy. We also explore how AI is reshaping the SEO industry, driving a renaissance in link building and authority building strategies.
🧩 In This Episode:
• Navigating the complex integration of two SEO agencies
• The importance of cultural fit and open communication
• Strategic insights on preserving legacy and heritage post-merger
• Adapting SEO services to remain relevant amidst AI evolution
• How link building is evolving in the AI era
• Developing effective career paths within SEO teams
Tyson provides valuable lessons for agency owners and SEO professionals navigating mergers, acquisitions, and evolving search landscapes.
🔗 Links & Resources Mentioned
• Tyson Stockton LinkedIn
• Internet Marketing Ninjas
• Previsible.io
• Voice of Search Podcast
• 2025 SEO Jobs Report
• 2025 SEO Compensation Trends
• Page 2 Podcast Nick LeRoy episode
🔔 Subscribe for more expert insights into SEO strategies and agency management
💬 Comment below with your experiences or questions about merging SEO teams or adapting to AI-driven SEO.
[00:00:00] What happens when two SEO agencies with radically different service models and histories decide to merge, not just in name, but in culture process and people. Today I am talking with Tyson Stockton, co-founder and COO of Previsible a fast growing SEO consultancy that just made a bold move. Acquiring the longstanding internet marketing Ninjas Tyson isn't just navigating a business deal.
He's trying to preserve legacy while reshaping a team for the future. The real story here isn't just about expanding service lines or boosting revenue. It's about the delicate, often messy work of integrating teams, redefining titles, and building a shared culture from scratch. Tyson walks us through how he and his co-founders approached.
Everything from overlapping charm rolls to the unsexy high stakes org chart, decisions that can make or break a merger. We also pulled back the curtain to talk about what SEO agencies need to do to stay relevant as AI reshapes the search landscape and why link building is having a quiet Renaissance Tyson's Challenge balancing pres high touch model with the scrappier DNA of the ninjas, all while scaling leadership and stepping back [00:01:00] from the day-to-day himself.
Let's get into it.
Welcome to another episode of the Page two podcast. As always, I'm joined by Joe Devita, my partner at Crime, at Moving Traffic Media, and excited to welcome Tyson to the show. Thanks. How's it going guys? Great. Great. I know we originally reached out to talk more about the SEO Jobs report, but since we've gotten this locked down, there's been some big news on your part in terms of acquiring internet marketing ninjas.
I know that agency has a very rich, historic history in the SEO space. I'd love to learn a little bit more about maybe how that came to be and how you see that fitting into. Your overall agency approach?
Yeah, absolutely. No, it has been obviously big news for us. It's been a lot of behind the scenes work.
I think we originally started talking to Jim and the team back [00:02:00] in September of last year, and so it's been a bit of a road to obviously get to this point, but it's been really fun to. One, be able to connect with Jim, see how he's also thinking about like the future of search, looking at our kind of what we've been able to offer to the market and kind of service wise.
And we really felt like both from a service offerings with how things have been evolving as well as more of like kind of the people elements and how we felt like the culture of the two companies would fit. And it really just has. Fallen in line and I feel like there's a lot of like sere serendipitous aspects to it where, you know, getting connected at the right time and all the different conversations that go into it, but we're pretty excited about this next chapter, bringing them on board.
Yeah, definitely. Congratulations. That's a big step forward for any agency. Joe and I as agency owners ourselves, have explored what that might look like. And I think one of our big questions always [00:03:00] was, how do you manage for two teams coming together, even if they are small teams in our case. So how did you vet that?
Like how did you make sure that outside of the founders, obviously they have to get along to some degree, but how do you make sure that culture fit is the
right one? It's a hard piece to like, I think quantify too, and for lack of a better way to describe it, I think it just takes like deeper conversations, spending longer time, like really like understanding the nuances of it.
And for me personally, I think one of the pieces that was the most. Beneficial is early in the discussions and process. David and I, one of the other co-founders, we actually flew out and met Jim and stayed with him at his house for a few nights and literally just would spend all day going through and talking about our team and our business and our services, and learning about their approach and then.
Just one more of taking that let's just listen [00:04:00] and learn and talk through all the nuance aspects. And then later it was more coming into, okay, how could this come to be? Like, what's our strategy as far as like one company, two companies, like which areas maybe blended, whether it's behind the scenes client facing, and so there's I think, a million different scenarios that you could have.
On what it looks like and the more, at least for me, that I felt like I could in-depthly understand the nature and the people and like the service and stuff, and it felt like it just started making sense where the pieces would connect. The other element I would say for it is like there's no full way of planning for it.
Like anytime there's gonna be surprises and like things that you realize. Even as we put together like a plan for the integration and stuff, like we've been making audible changes along the ways and little course corrections, and I think that's. Area two at least as far as recommendation on my side.
Anyone else going through this is be open to that. Don't be [00:05:00] too hard set on what the plan is gonna be because you're gonna find out new things. There's gonna be shifts in market. We're on the cusp of significant changes in like strategies and we were just talking right before we got recording here. But like all of that I think makes it impossible to be too rigid on your initial kind of strategy and plan and.
Just lean into that adaptability aspect. 'cause as much as we try to plan out every aspect that I'm very much in more of that mindset, it's like you have to recognize that you're not gonna be able to foresee everything. And as things arise, you need to be able to adapt to them.
What are like the big things you hope?
To integrate in the first few months, whether you do 'em or not, that's a different story, but what's your outline for the first few months?
The one of the first pieces, and I would bucket into a couple areas. One, there's like the people aspect. It is just getting people talking to each [00:06:00] other. When we actually had the internal announcement, we got together in person with the rest of the internet Marketing n just team.
So we had some of that FaceTime and some working sessions with the management group. And then I would say I. Beyond the how do we socialize teams and just get people organically talking. Then it's also looking at, okay, from the service offerings and also like how do we adjust like our org structure? Are there areas that have similar shared functions that we can combine?
What's one area is content. We both have offered content in different forms or different capacities, but that's an area where we can find shared. Work and shared areas given the nature with like authority building and link building and stuff like that's not a service that we had covered in the past. So obviously that team's gonna stay more independently operating and as they have been.
So I think it's one, looking at the social kind of intangible aspects. And then the second piece, I would say [00:07:00] it's looking more from the actual job functions and services delivered and looking for areas that. I think the teams can also learn from each other. And we're not trying to take an approach where, hey, it's just gonna be this direction or the other.
Like we're looking at, hey, there's things that we're learning from ninjas that we can adapt into pretty visible, vice versa. And so I think, again, it's coming back to that, like keeping an open mind, observing, watching, and then picking up the things that you know, more value in. I think
the other big challenge when you're integrating another business is deciding whether to merge them into like your agency or keep them separate.
Internet marketing Ninjas has such a rich history. Was that one of the drivers behind deciding to. Continue to operate them as separate brands or,
yeah, that was a piece of it for sure. I remember way back when I was first even getting into seo I, and it was like as we're into conversations, so I was like having these flashbacks of reading [00:08:00] Jim's blog like back in the day when I was just going through like Met Cuts videos and whatever else, and so.
There was definitely like a heritage and like a legacy aspect that we wanted to keep intact and we wanted to also honor in a lot of ways. I think for us too, it's like. Being that there is a different area of focus and approach to it. I think like business culture wise, we see a lot of similarities, but from like a service offerings, it's been very different.
And like we have been way more high touch, full teams being assigned to clients, maybe even slightly different like client base and Ninjas has had a different. Area of focus from a services provided as well as like how they're engaging with them and as well as what the client base is. So I think for us it came down to a bit of the wanting to maintain some of that, what they've brought to the market and industry they [00:09:00] originally, but then also recognize that hey, there are differences in servicing and like approaches to that.
So it kind of warrants having the two separate kind of. Businesses or names in the market. If there was someone where it's like they're merging and it's like pretty much the same service provided, probably wouldn't. I don't know. There's always nuances, but personally I would lean to, yeah, combine them and just the faster that you can integrate and get people working together the better.
But I think for us it came down mainly to that. Heritage piece as well as like some nuances in what's actually being delivered to the clients.
Makes sense? Yeah. I think we're, ed, you're thinking about the acquisition, you mentioned the link building component, and I think we're Link building, having a, it never went away, but it's having a renaissance in the age of AI where you need this brand awareness and citations and all these sorts of things.
Was that a driver behind how you were thinking about integrating that into. Okay,
like a hundred percent. It's [00:10:00] something too, like personally, like I have not had a ton of experience and from like my own, I guess SEO, like whether it was earlier when I was on the in-house side or search metrics, like I think a lot of the websites that I worked with.
That wasn't as much in the forefront of the efforts and when I was in-house, there was just a wealth of knowledge that was being generated and it was in sports specialty, like tennis in particular where they have tennis. Warehouse has probably the best honest, like actual reviews and like most in depth content out there.
So by nature it. Always had a ton of links going to it. And then Searchmetrics side, I've worked with a lot of larger e-commerce enterprise players like eBay or Williams Sonoma, in which case also those, maybe it's not as cornerstone, but as we've been looking at how the industry's shifting, and I think you hit right on it, is it's not just linking, it's also [00:11:00] citations.
And it's also like looking ahead to how do we evolve Previsible service to. Ensure the relevance and impact that we can have in AI search. And this was like one piece that I felt like we were missing in our existing services provided. And so for us it wasn't, we weren't competing against each other, it was more of additive kind of functionality and like capabilities of the team.
It's almost an immediate upsell to your current clients. So it's also a revenue driver in addition to acquisition of the talent and the capability. So really smart move. Growing Previsible from a startup to the acquisition of a, a well-known agency like Internet Marketing Ninjas must have been quite an effort.
What sort of challenges did you come across as you were starting and building up to this point?
I mean, there's a, there's a long laundry list in there as far as. Challenges go and to me I [00:12:00] kinda, I don't know, almost visualize it as like chapters and it's each kind of stage, there's been its own challenges and I don't know, like success stories and pieces to it.
So I think. Depending on those challenges, I would say it's really at which stage and what size of the team. And I think there's some natural progression pieces where it's like when you're getting to a certain size, whether it's like number of employees, you have to change how you're approaching it and how you're functioning.
And we're still in the process with this acquisition we brought over. The entire ninjas team. It wasn't like, Hey, we're just gonna take like the name. And so with that comes their entire team. And so now overnight, the team's that much larger. And so I think we're still, I think, going through some of those challenges where it's you hit that 50 employee mark, and now maybe you're not in every single conversation and you're having to work.
More and like managing [00:13:00] a group of like managers or like directors is gonna be very different than managing ics. And so I think like each stage of growth has brought unique differences and challenges and it's required us to revisit how we do certain things, revisit how, or whether it's org structure, areas of focus.
Like my role in particular has been led. Miscellaneous, like whatever pops up type like doesn't have a full-time role yet piece. And so as we're getting larger too, it's starting to delegate that ownership looking for other team members to step into larger roles and things like that. So I think it would really depend on what stage we're talking about, but I think each one has had its own unique set of challenges that comes with it.
Yeah, I think as we've grown, Joe and I've, I just figured out ways to. Exactly as you're saying, be more willing to delegate, to trust team members to take on more responsibility. [00:14:00] Focusing on building the business from a sales and marketing perspective, things like that. Things that when you're growing, like you said, you're just doing all these different things just to try to grow, and now as you start to get a team under, you're able to build out a little bit better process and structure.
How do you see your role when this sort of new. Double size
team sort of environment? It's a good question. We'll see how it evolves. I think I would assume that even within the next six months, it's gonna continue to change. One of the areas I think just for me personally is trying to step away from some more of the day-to-day activities and whether that's through establishing better.
Lines of ownership and areas of focus within the team. And so that's been something I think honestly probably as of late that I've been working on, especially on kind of the more business operations side of the business is having a group that I'm working with and separating out different areas of focus within [00:15:00] that.
But it is, it's an interesting kind of transition time. 'cause as a co-founder, you're like so used to being involved in absolutely everything. To then make that little kind of change to where it's, yeah, you're not in every conversation, you're not talking to every client because it's, you have to have, it's like a, a leap of face where you're trusting the team and everyone else.
For you guys, like how has that transition been like, yeah. Where have your challenges been in that? I'm
sure Joe has thoughts on this as well. I think Joe has a unique strength that I don't think I have, which is on the people management side and figuring out like what that roadmap looks like and the specific, I'll call 'em milestones that the person needs to meet in order to be ready to take that on.
And so. As we came to this realization, we sat down together and Joe did a lot of this work, but he figured out who is the right person to step into the role of me on certain calls or certain clients. And [00:16:00] then we mapped out clients to individual people figured out like what that roadmap would look like to get them.
As prepared as possible to step more into that leadership role and then took that plan to them and said, is this something you want to do? 'cause that's the most important part. And then are you in agreement that if you were able to accomplish these sets of things, you'll feel comfortable not having John or not having me being Joe join the call In that scenario, I think that's been successful for us.
I don't know if you have anything else to add to that, Joe, but I think
it, it's taken us a long time to develop like good. Managers un under us and the, we've been really lucky to have people stay with us for a long time. We're John and I pitch, one of the things we're really proud of when we pitch is the tenure of our team.
We think a lot about our talent and recruiting. Like every new employee we bring on, it's like the biggest decision we make. Like it's the riskiest thing we'd make. It's just like. Think a lot about people. And I wonder, I know Tyson, you spent a lot of time [00:17:00] thinking about talent too. Maybe we could talk about the talent a little bit.
I've got a bunch of questions, but I'm gonna start it a little bit in a silo 'cause of your acquisition. Did you find that like the titles of your people and the titles. Were they so much different? Did you, do you, did you have to figure out, that doesn't align to this? And how did you think about the titles that people have and the different, and how are you gonna bring them together?
Great question. It's something that like we're, I think still like mid-process maybe on doing, but it's, yeah, there's always gonna be differences of titles and I think every organization has like their own kind of fingerprints on what is a manager, what's a director level, and. That's been something that I guess coincidentally had been working through recently on our side, and so one of each year we have a set of goals that we're working towards, and it's not exactly I would say like OKRs, but more in the [00:18:00] sense of we typically break it down from a, and we, I don't know my mind, it's like a level of importance where it's like people, clients, and then revenue.
And so it's like first making sure that we're taking care of the team, that's gonna be then supporting the clients and driving the value to them. Obviously you drive the value, then the revenue's gonna be lacking afterwards anyways. So it's like we would have, Hey, we want to grow by this. But then it's, okay, what are we gonna do from our people development aspect?
And this could be whether it's benefits that we want to introduce in the year as far as just like additional benefits to the team, or also in the sense of just like career development type items. And so going into this year, like one of the people goals was around like refreshing and making some changes to like the career development model.
And so like, how are we being consistent with titles, with setting the expectations of those roles, [00:19:00] I think has been like a, also a challenge because when you're small, your team's doing everything and so there's, it's hard to have that clear separation of like levels and expectations from those. And so going into this, we were like, okay, let's have clear level sets and we establish kind of levels for.
We just put it as like L one, L two, L 3 0 4, and then with those titles that can be across different functions, these would be some elements that we expect from that level. And these would be unique of whether someone's a content writer or an SEO manager or a technical person. And it's just more of these general characteristics.
And we broke it down to four categories. One was more of just general SEO. Knowledge and expertise or firm believer, it doesn't matter if you're in HR or an actual SEO role, you have to have familiarity and knowledge of SEO. [00:20:00] Like we can't hire good SEOs if we don't know seo. And so one of the areas across the board is just SEO knowledge, and then the remaining three, we break into the SEC models.
So it's skills engagement, coachability. And so the skills would be like, what are the hard skills? Whether they're communication skills, whether it's technical skills, like which level do we expect someone to be at engagement? How are they showing up? What are they like when they come to work? Basically, everything from how they're engaging with clients, to colleagues, to interactions within like the company.
And then the third is coachability. Looking more towards like. How are they developing? How are they growing? Are they eager to learn? Are they, do they have that internal hunger to progress? And so we established those at each level and then brought that also into our annual reviews. So then when we're doing the annual reviews, we can talk to people, Hey, you're here.
What? We really wanna see you at this level. We think you need to embrace X, Y, and Z more, or something like [00:21:00] that. So it's a little bit of a tangent from like the question, but when it comes down to, you're speaking Joe's level language right now. Nice.
I got six follow ups already. I'll wait for you to finish.
Alright, so I'll, I guess coming back around those, the original question of the integration. That has been a piece of it where clearly there were some differences and we still have some unique titles that may be on the internet marketing ninja side versus Previsible, but I think one, it's, Hey, let's make it as consistent as possible on day one.
And then we'll probably revisit this next annual review cycle if there's any fine tuning from that. And I think our goal was initially to have, we're gonna adopt and it hold as much of the culture and the business of internet marketing ninjas. And that also has a structural component. And so we wanted to integrate where it made sense, leave the uniqueness where it made sense, consistent.
Titles as much as [00:22:00] possible. And then my goal would be next year with the annual review. Then we're bringing everybody into the same career model, having that same level of expectations and do it. So it takes, I think, a little time to ease into it, and I wouldn't wanna force something too quickly. But even going back further, I think that's been.
An area of focus, especially as of late on making sure that we're doing a good job at giving that transparency of expectations on roles. And I think that's a common catch or like hangup for businesses. Going from a small team where everybody's involved with everything to the next size is like being more.
Direct and having those honest conversations around expectations. 'cause sometimes they're easy conversations, sometimes they're difficult. But I think at the end of the day, it's really beneficial for the employee because it's like they don't, an employee that stays isn't just happy. It's like they're engaged, they're feeling challenged, they, it's like there's all [00:23:00] those other aspects on top of it.
So you mentioned the L one, L two, L three, L four maybe have 10 levels. You don't have to tell us. But in each of those levels. There's like a, there's a group of titles that you say these titles fits into L one. Maybe there's a salary range too. When your LL ones are these five titles, the salary range is X to Y, and here are the skills, expectations, communication expectations, maybe your.
Entry level analyst is your L one and your VP of whatever is L 10. I know you're not a 10-year-old company yet, but what is the path? If you brought someone in and they stayed with you forever and did all the right things, what is the path from the top? Like how do you, what maybe, what do you think a typical path would be for like a lifer at your company, starting out, out college or whatever, and then becoming a leader under you?
What would that look like?
Yeah, excellent question. And for us, it's like we use kind of the tail end of the title as like [00:24:00] the unifying factor. And that's how I think you can make it consistent across content or technical or hr. And so it's like you have your associate manager, associate director, team lead, vp, et cetera, et cetera.
And so from that would be like the starting 0.1 area. And there's a little bit of. Side topic, but salary ranges we haven't been able to implement in all honesty, across like the board because you see so much difference between whether it's content or technical and it's, so I think those, I'm looking more.
Of making consistent within a department level versus a company level, because it's like, yeah, different functions are gonna have different areas. If you bring in a senior developer, that might be very different than someone that's, I don't know, more standard SEO or like an HR person or a sales person.
So like comp has been a tougher one to be consistent across departments within the departments easy enough. But I think that would [00:25:00] be like the other challenge, the pathway. I guess the way to break it down is first in the model, I wanted to make sure there was something for both like people management and individual contributors.
And so wanted to have basically the progression opportunity for someone that doesn't want to, people manage. And you have some like super talented, really powerful employees that may not have an interest in managing people. And so I think first it's establishing, hey, you have two paths. It doesn't matter if you're gonna be people, managers, or you're gonna be an expert and residents on our side, like you have these two areas.
These are the universal criteria on the company level of L one, L two, L three, and like the next piece that we're embarking on is setting also those competencies and criteria within the department. Because again, like L who leads our content team is gonna have different requirements [00:26:00] for a content associate versus a content manager.
And similarly on the SEO team, there's gonna be a difference of expectations between an analyst and a manager. The managers have some consistencies, but it's been sat next level. And then we would bring that into the annual reviews. Hey, this is where you're at. This is either where you're over the mark, these are the areas that we need to see you step into further.
And then setting that plan in the annual review of, Hey, this is like what we are going to be working on to get you to that next step. And this is an area, honestly, it's like I feel like we're still developing and leaning into, but my. Goal is people coming out of like their annual review. They have alignment on what their expectations of their current position is, as well as what the next one above is.
Then depending on that individual, we're setting different goals from the 3, 6, 12 month marker [00:27:00] for them to go grow throughout the year. And that could be totally different depending on the individual. We do sometimes bring in friends or people from the outside to do trainings with the team. We have some kind of like ongoing ones where.
We will identify someone that we feel like, Hey, this person really needs to improve in technical. Okay, we're gonna connect them with so and so for a monthly kind of conversation that's outside of the direct reporting lines. 'cause you have a different dynamic when you have a direct manager saying something versus a colleague.
And so I think ideally it's. Being clear again on those expectations of a, Hey, this is what you need to do to get to that next level. This is what we're gonna do to work on together to get to that next level. And then the hobert push is the direct managers bringing that into their one-on-ones. And it's not just a one-time conversation, but it's just constantly being touched on throughout the entire year.
And I always tell the team too, like if someone's [00:28:00] surprised at their annual review, like there's been a fail on the manager side, like there should be no surprises at that stage. It's just more of like. Really like blocking the time to have those deeper conversations and finding where that intersection is between individual interests and business need.
And that's like always the big push
that that idea of bringing in friends to cross train your. John, we've never even really talked about that, but we have such a good network of like really great SEOs. I, I wonder, should we stop doing some of the training? Should we stop training people on how we like to do technical audits and content audits?
Maybe just bring in someone else to give like a wider perspective to people. I never really, we never even really talked about it. It's brilliant like that.
I used to lead like SEO office hours where it was just like open-ended. Like I would maybe come with some new tools or like an idea or something, but the conversation wasn't always fluid.
'cause [00:29:00] I'm like the co-founder of the agency and it's just, it's just a different dynamic than like someone who is perceived to maybe judge them differently or not judge them at all. And yeah, it's a smart. Thing to talk about. Yeah, we should definitely take that one.
And I, I think too, it's like I wouldn't, I would keep doing your, like how you want the work done.
'cause it's, it's your agency at the end of the day. You need them following your path. But I think sometimes just doing that, maybe different questions come out and. I think at least from our agency side, we're like, we're not territorial too. So it's like if you guys were like, Hey, like we'd love you to come in and talk about stakeholder management with our team, it's, yeah, cool.
Like we can have that kind of collaboration piece, but then sometimes it's looking outside of SEO. Like I remember we had a couple of situations where it was like expectation management of clients. And so to do that, I reached out to someone that I'd, I mean I worked with her I think at a few different companies over the [00:30:00] years where cars.com was one y.
Zant was another, went over to base camp and she's not an SEO, like she was a COO. And I asked her, Hey, can you come talk to my team? And I want them to hear from you. What you expect from an agency partner on the kickoff on three months in, what are the areas that annoy you or frustrate you? What are the pain points?
And I think those conversations are really interesting 'cause then they hear directly from someone else. And funny enough, in that one, she actually did, one of the questions was, what are things to avoid? And she did a throwback of something that happened in the past and it was actually from. And she was just like, yeah, no, like this kind of thing you wouldn't want do.
And I was like, all right. Like fair enough.
I love that. Yeah. That's amazing. Joe, do you have any other questions around that?
On the talent side? I guess I wanna keep the conversations more focused on SEO. I think that's what our audience is tuning in for, but at what [00:31:00] point do you what, at what point do you have someone manage someone else?
And what's the most direct reports you've found successful? Is it three people, four people?
Great question for that. I, I really like, and I think one, it depends on the age or like the experience of the manager. Younger manager, I'm gonna want to have a smaller group. I don't like, even for like really experienced individuals that have too many direct reports, I feel four to six is like my kind of favorite zone.
'cause I feel like the manager can lean into each person with even this like acquisition and integration. Like one of the question, like literally two weeks ago, Jordan and I were talking in the evening and we're like, we both have to re reduce our direct reports. Like him as well as myself. It's like we had too many direct reports on the work chart and so it made me look back at my team and have some honest, like more of, I guess just being honest with myself of, okay, [00:32:00] what really makes sense here?
Like why maybe am I holding onto this direct report or what would I need like. Why maybe have I not done that? And then thinking, is it a structure piece? Is it where that individual is at from their career development? But I think like the number of direct reports is huge. And yeah, to me, like anything over that, like eight to 10, I would really question if the manager is being able to lean in as much as you'd want to.
Develop the individuals. Maybe that's
a good segue into the SEO jobs report. We had Nick Laroi on, he was our first guest of the season, and similar to this conversation, we got onto like such great topics that we didn't even really get to cover the SEO jobs report. But I guess you've done this for a couple years now, right?
Or was this
Yeah, this was our first proper one. It's been something we've been working on for a while. I had conversations too, and I think it's part of what I was saying, like non territory. I was like, we had [00:33:00] conversations with Nick and I was like, okay, like we like this guy, like we should find something to partner on.
And he had done a previous one that was like data just pulled from a quarter and I think it was looking at, if I remember correctly, one quarter. Then the previous quarter of the following year and going into it, we started collecting the data and as we were getting closer to the end of the year, I reached out to him and was like, Hey.
This is what we've been doing. Love to go. So like partner with you. We wanted to support SEO jobs and so he came into the fold on it. But what our report was across 2024, we crawled and scraped all the SEO jobs data in Google, which we found top of mind. I think it was something like over 60, wherever sources that the jobs were coming.
LinkedIn was. Dominant one, and I mean you could probably guess like the big ones. Most of the positions I would say came from 10 sources, but there were quite a few in there. And then, and basically we took almost the same approach as like rank tracking. We. [00:34:00] Used some of the raw data providers, crawled, scraped, parsed it, and then used that to cluster into like consistent job titles and like levels, because everyone uses a slightly different name.
Other challenges that we found was like duplications, especially like the companies that have multiple offices, they would post a job like 50 times because they have. An office in every single state. So I think that was another piece too, is we were finding like, Hey, a lot of these reports, you're gonna have some skewed data because if you have one quarter, a lot of companies that have multiple locations, you're just gonna have this crazy duplication factor.
So then we had to dedupe a lot of the postings and then identify within those, what are the. Common skill sets being asked for. And even within that, you have another challenge of then grouping skill sets because not everyone's gonna say stakeholder management, someone might [00:35:00] just describe it as being able to do cross-functional management or something along the lines.
And it's okay. That means stakeholder management. And so we also went through using some different kind of like LMS to cluster. The actual job description points to then say, Hey, technical requirements are on the rise, or stakeholder managements on the rise. Whereas you wouldn't get that if you were just looking for an exact match.
Did they say this? So, yeah. So for the report we collected across 2024, and then we're able to look at what trends happen throughout the year. We didn't have complete data set to compare 23 to. I think that is a limitation of the report is I wouldn't be able to say in all certainty like, Hey, there are more or less jobs from 24 to 23.
I can tell you within the year of 24 when there were more, when there were less what's trending. But I think that was one limitation and that's something that we want to be looking [00:36:00] at this year to continue it. And it really came out too of just something that it's like we want to lean back into the SEO community.
We all fell into this industry from one place or another. And I think for me personally, that's why I like talking about the career development aspects. 'cause there's a ton of people that are offering a lot of great value from the tactics and the strategies. But I feel like Window of the day is work for all of us and there's not as much kind of guidance or coaching to get from that IC to manager or someone that is trying to make that jump to the director level.
Where should I look? What should I be expecting? And I think that was some of the areas that we wanted to provide insight towards. With the jobs report
across the industry are much more, to your point, like tactical driven or tips and tricks and those sorts of things. It's really much less about the, what the career path even is supposed to be or what it could be.
So I love that you guys are doing this [00:37:00] as well. I'm curious, I'm sure we could take a guess, but do you envision or can you anticipate some of the changes that you'll see with job descriptions, maybe even that you're posting yourself, but or maybe have come across how those might be shifting into 20 25, 20 26?
With the evolution of
ai. Then there's a few obvious ones like obviously AI experience, LLMs, like those type of pieces, which I think like the recommendation then for the SEOs out there is include those elements in your actual LinkedIn and resume that you're submitting. 'cause I think that's like the biggest piece too, is like a lot of, especially the larger in-house opportunities, is you have automated systems for rejecting candidates.
And so it's like you could be an absolute rock star of an SEO and just be rejected because it was an automatic rejection. And maybe you said something like, not in the same way that their filter was set. And even for others, like sometimes I'll set like filters or I'll go back and question [00:38:00] where it's, yeah, I asked for like experience with websites over a hundred thousand pages.
Should I maybe reduce that to 10,000 just to make sure I don't miss anybody? And so it's like maybe someone comes in with, yeah, largest website I had was 90,000. Okay. Probably want to talk to them as well, even though it wasn't a hundred thousand. So I think like those technical aspects will continue to be on the rise, like familiarity with like different, whether it's technologies, softwares, systems, like that's gonna be important items for people to be adding to, I think.
It's been an interesting point though, because I think there's, in some ways, like a timidness in the market where we're seeing some sectors and some opportunities increase. But I feel like with all the changes in search, it almost feels like some businesses are like. How do I invest? Or like where should I invest?
Like what should I be looking outsource and agencies or do I wanna bring in house? And so I think [00:39:00] that's something that I feel like maybe we're gonna still feel for a little bit as things continue to mature. I'd recommend companies to lean in now and just know you're gonna have to course correct. And it's like earlier you get started on it, the better.
But I feel like there is like a timidness. That still is like lingering in the industry right now on how or where companies should invest,
and that's because going out an ecosystem internally is much more complex versus maybe hiring an agency who maybe has that infrastructure already and can just apply it to a client
probably too.
And like I'm sure you guys see this like with your businesses, I feel like oftentimes an SEO agency actually might be able to adapt and. Change quicker than a lot of these larger in-house businesses. 'cause it's, especially at the enterprise level, like you're trying to steer like a, like shipping container shift that's just going to take forever to turn a little bit where, you know, an agency that most all the conversations around [00:40:00] search we're gonna be able to pivot and change reallocate resources a lot quicker.
And it's like definitely something that agencies need to lean into from a like. If you're not changing services, like that's probably gonna be a challenge even for us. Like we're making new changes to our offerings, which is yesterday, like we had a conversation in a management group where it's, yeah, there may be some things that we'll have to course correct from this.
We're not. Sure the exact formula and like we're gonna throw out what we think is best and then we're gonna have to course correct and probably even change depending on the client, depending on the industry and everything else. So it's like setting that expectation with the team is like, we're gonna start with this, but be prepared to change quickly.
This will not be the same.
Maybe flex up a little bit as like we're figuring it out too. But we're giving that service away for free right now we're basically like figuring out what those deliverables look like, and a few clients will get the free version as we go [00:41:00] through the drafts of them until we figure out how to package a few deliverables into a service that we can sell, which is probably not gonna happen this year.
We're gonna figure out our deliverables with a few of our clients who are receptive, most receptive to our ideas, and then we'll figure out how to package it and sell it next year. That's where we are with that. No,
a hundred percent. Or Sorry, go ahead Joe. I was gonna say, I think for us, like figuring out who is to Joe's point, like actually receptive to implementing something that may be AI influenced is part of the hurdle from a compliance or legal perspective or, I don't know, maybe even ethical, depending on who you're talking to.
And we've pinged our clients and said, Hey, is this something you're open to? If the answer is yes, then we'll figure it out together as we implement different things and doing anything risky, but just figuring out what that roadmap looks like.
Yeah, it was like there's gonna be tweaks and changes along the way, but, and it came out in.[00:42:00]
A recent conversation I had on the voice of search, Zach from Finder was on with me, and it's like right off the back of the beginning of the conversation. He was just like, he's like, yeah, he is. We're excited about this because like in finance, it's like super tough to compete with the, like the juggernaut players, but now we're like, Hey, we can move quicker.
We can adapt faster. Than the larger players. So it's like he's viewing it as an opportunity and I think that's what I wanna push clients into is, hey, especially if you're not the market leader, take advantage of this. Yeah, you might get 80% right and tweak and fine tune the rest, but like you all of a sudden have this like open lane and.
You might as well capitalize on it while you still have the edge. Yeah.
Maybe that's a good segue into the podcasting. This is a new venture for us. I think it's been really rewarding just being able to sit down with both old friends, but also new acquaintance, acquaintances like yourself, where we can have some smart conversations and learn [00:43:00] together.
How did you think about, or I guess, why did you think about starting one and maybe how is it. Influence maybe how you approach your business?
Good question. It's been a long road for us on like the podcast and that's something too that I think got a little lucky that I fell in our lap. And so back, Jordan and I, so previously we have three co-founders, Jordan Cooney, David Bell, and myself and Jordan and I worked together at Searchmetrics.
So I think we'd been working together for almost 10, 10 years before Previsible. And at Searchmetrics, one of Jordan's old colleagues and friends, Benjamin Shapiro, who they worked together at eBay. He had started a podcast, kind of production company and one of the early podcasts was Voices of Search, where he was the host and Searchmetrics was a sponsor of it.
And. Jordan and I were regular guests for the first, I don't know, three years, maybe four years or so. And as [00:44:00] Ben's business grew, his main focus was the MarTech podcast. I think eventually when we started Previsible, Ben was just like, yeah. Takeover, be the host of it and it helps that we're buddies with Ben.
He also, I think, wanted to help Previsible out and give us the opportunity. And so Jordan and I took over hosting back at the beginning of Previsible and have viewed it in twofold, like one opportunity to connect with others in the industry. You hear new ideas, you get to make new connections, like you said. So I think for me, that's probably.
My favorite part and I get to be selfish and ask the questions that I want to ask or kinda talk to people that maybe I hadn't talked to before. And some it's gonna go really well and go long and some are gonna be more kind of your standard ones. But I think that's been super fun. And then the other aspect is, again, like similar to the SEO jobs report, we all fell into this from one place or another, and so.
Some sort of like contribution to [00:45:00] that was important for us. And so I think especially for Jordan, David and I, it's something that one we see a business value for as far as just marketing and getting our name out there. But two, it's something, hopefully other people can get some value from the conversations and whether it's networking or just giving some good advice out there, hopefully it's something that has a positive impact.
Yeah, I love, that. Seems very similar to us. We, we took over this podcast, it had been defunct for about two years, but there were some. Great legacy content there starting back in 2017 and yeah, it's been a lot of thumbs to far, so I know we're getting close to wrapping up. I feel like we, we have to talk about AI a little bit.
I guess to start, how are clients approaching you with questions about it or tactics or, I think for us, we're getting lots of questions like, oh, I, I read this somewhere, or I heard this. It's not necessarily how to directly apply it to their business yet more just getting their arms around [00:46:00] what is and isn't possible.
Yeah. What are you hearing on your side and how are you presenting that back to clients?
It's, it's like it's all over the board, whereas you have some clients that are just super eager and pumped on, Hey, there's something new. Let's do it. Let's try whatever. You have other clients that are more on the.
Nervous getting a lot of pressure from the powers that be, and maybe it's even seen some shifts in traffic and losing some of that kind of like vanity traffic that was coming in prior. And they're like, how do I manage and navigate these executive conversations? So it's, I guess it's hard to put it into groups.
I think most of the areas would be, or I guess I would bucket in three groups. Like one is gonna be the, it's not coming up in conversation. We need to push the conversation. Where it's like proactively, Hey, we need to recon, we need to rethink how we're approaching content types or content selection or whatever.
In that sense of like just. [00:47:00] Hey, looking ahead, we see a need that we need to change service and obviously that conversation's a little more of pointing at what's happening, what risk exists, why you need to do it. Then you have another one, which I think is, and maybe it's more often in like when you're working with like experienced SEO teams, and I think those conversations.
There's more understanding of what work needs to be done, but they almost want more guidance into the strategy of like, how do we sell this internally? How do I set expectations with the executive team? How should this be presented to cross-functional teams? And I think that's scenario that we really try to lean into with our services, like especially at the enterprise level, is like navigating that environment is one of the biggest aspects of whether or not you're succeeding or failing.
And so I think for that group it's largely more of like, how can we help craft the narrative [00:48:00] for them to use internally to mobilize on it. Then the third group is the needs there. It's probably a smaller team. Maybe there's not an SEO and we're acting basically as the SEO in the department, and it's maybe our direct champion might be like VP of growth or something like that.
And those, I think it's quicker to get to that Strat like tactical phase. Where it's like they're already aware of shifts, so it's not, Hey, we need to convince you of anything. It's then, okay, because of this, we're gonna prioritize schema over the next 30 days and then we're gonna shift our roadmap in this way.
And I think those ones are probably the most straightforward of the bunch. But I think like those would be like the main common. Areas where I feel like we're talking to businesses in one of those like kind of categories.
How about you guys? Yeah, I would say the same. I think for us in [00:49:00] that third bucket, I think it's a mix of the second and third bucket.
Like even if they know what needs to be done, there is a component of how do we position this to stakeholders or get it. Into a sprint planning or something like that, especially around schema where they may have done some schema in the past and the pushback is, well, oh, we already did that. No, we want to do some more advanced stuff, or we wanna figure out how to layer schema within schema.
And so I think those are some of the things that we're bumping up against, like how do we. Get additional time to expand on something that we may have already tried to tackle six months or 12 months ago, or maybe update. So I, I think the buckets are highly similar. I don't, I do think there's probably a better job we could be doing for the clients that aren't specifically asking about it, right?
That's sort of educational component, and that's something that we have some process that we're starting to get our arms around, like [00:50:00] govs and. We'll call them like mini trainings, like introduction to like what's possible, here's how you might apply it to your site. Here's some more advanced stuff that we're seeing.
And I think one of the things that we found also you, I'm sure you see this as well, is if there are competitive examples that you can show where there are competitive set is doing this, you're already behind messaged, but we've seen that be pretty impactful as well. Just looking forward, is there anything.
AI related that you're really excited to tackle over the next like year or two? I
wouldn't say like one aspect, it's more of like the general, like how like I think a lot of our building blocks and like the tactics aren't crazy difference. Like to me, a lot of the conversations I'm saying is, yeah, no, we're probably prioritizing things a little different.
A, we're making shifts in content structure and elements like that. But I think for me it's like largely. How does this change the prioritization and the strategy [00:51:00] of when and what we're applying? I think the piece that I'm most excited about too is just I like the new challenges. Like I think that's what draw like.
I don't know. I studied for my undergrad, like traditional marketing and I thought of just marketing like a tangible product where all the classes were on, whereas just felt stagnant and stale. And so it's like I got into more of the experience side and grad school for that and then found SEO. And it's like that constant change element of, okay, now there's a new puzzle to solve to me is the piece that's like most interesting.
And I don't think the. Like a lot of the fundamentals of it. And I've told people it's like the game is still like we're still playing the same game. Like the field changed and maybe some rules changed, but it's like essentially we're still playing the same game. And so you're still applying that same kind of hypothesis, test measure, results, adjust course.
Correct. Apply. And I think one of the areas that I'm excited about is also that there's not gonna be one. Playbook or [00:52:00] one rule book for it, and more so than the past, we're gonna see even more nuance between categories and website sizes and everything else, which makes it more difficult, I think, for some companies to deal with because there is like that nuance and whatever.
But I don't know. To me that makes it a lot more interesting where you can't just take what someone else did and do the same thing and expect the same results. It's like you're gonna have to apply something unique about it, which. It's fun.
You're gonna have to actually have a strategy, not just a copy and implement.
Yeah. I would say it's probably the most exciting time to be an SEO. I've been doing it for almost 17 years now, and you have, I feel like for the last five years or so is pretty, you're doing SEO and. It is what it was. And the last, I dunno, two years have been really exciting at the potential and just the change.
I think to your point, I love this industry because it changes so much. So you're never, you're always learning something [00:53:00] and I think the learning that I've done over the past 12 months has been, I don't know, it's hard to even put it into words. You just constantly am taking in so much information. It's been a lot of fun.
I think there's just a lot of renewed energy in the industry too, which is. A nice time to be involved.
And that energy's been really cool to see because with Jim and internet marketing ninjas come over, it's, I feel like I'm seeing also this, I don't know this spark in Jim as well, of it's like he has a, a level of excitement into these changes.
And like just the other week, I think he spent probably the whole weekend coming up with some different ideas around services. And it was like on Monday it was just this like long document of stuff and so being able to. Work with him and seeing also, especially David and him working together has been really fun to watch and participate in.
Having Jordan, David, Jim, myself, I think that's been just fun too, to bring in like additional kind of [00:54:00] expertise and be able to. Pick Jim's brain on different aspects and things that he's seen in the past, but it's like that offsite SEO component, whether it's in citations or links or barnacle, SEO type items has been, I think for me, a fun area too.
'cause it feels new and it feels like something that I haven't spent as much time in the past on. And now having that expertise in that specific area with ninjas has been pretty exciting.
That's an incredible gift to be able to work that closely with Jim, for sure, and I'm sure his mind is going a million miles a minute.
So hopefully there's a lot more of those emails coming your way and helping you build the business. Before we let you go, we, we like to ask this question basically, if you go to google.com in the next 12 months, like what do you envision that experience to, to look like?
Way more blended like obviously.
AI mode's gonna be more and more dominant. And so I think like that [00:55:00] experience within the SERPs is gonna become more and more one, but you're gonna see more variety and diversity. So it's like what the SERP looks like for an e-commerce query is gonna be even farther. Different than what we've seen over the last five years.
We've seen more and more like similar products and stuff that have just been dominating e-commerce, but with more and more AI mode, it's like you're gonna have more nuanced variations in what the experience is based on what the query or prompt was. And so I think just that. Variation and level of you're gonna compete in different landscapes across maybe even one domain where you're gonna have one set of landscape for your editorial, one for your e-comm or transactional.
And I think having that variety is gonna change a little bit in strategies and tactics on kind of the more like page level. That makes
a lot of sense. [00:56:00] Thanks again for joining the show, Tyson. Stockton, everyone, and if you enjoyed the show, please remember to rate, review and subscribe. We'll talk to you next time.
Bye.