The SEO Agency Rollercoaster with Ryan Shelley of SMA Marketing

[Music] Well, we're in a world of zero click search. Doesn't mean people aren't clicking, but there's a lot more zero click search. There's much more complex buyer journeys and user journeys. Welcome to the SEO Agency Roller Coaster Podcast. Your go-to show for candid conversations with agency leaders that supercharge the ambitions of up andcoming SEO entrepreneurs. We break down the strategies, stumbles, and success stories you need to start, grow, and scale a thriving SEO agency. Consider this your road map to real world agency wins. My name is Andrew Zerudney and I'm a content marketer at SE Ranking and I'm joined by my co-host and fellow SE ranking success team member, Maximlu. Today, we're honored to welcome Ryan Shel, founder and CEO of SMA Marketing. Ryan's built a powerhouse inbound and SEO shop infused with his faith-driven values and technical expertise. We'll dive into his entrepreneurial beginnings, how he's

leveraging human first marketing today, and what bold experiments he's planning for the future. If you're ready for an inside look at building an agency that's as valuled as it is growthdriven, fasten your seat belt. It's going to be an enlightening ride. Thanks so much, Andrew. Thanks so much, Ryan, for joining us. So, I think let's just set the ball rolling. So, first things first, could you tell us a bit more about your entrepreneurial beginnings? Like, how did that idea come to you? How did a side gig turn into an actual business? How did it all started? Yeah, I mean, it was it was really by accident. It wasn't something that I planned out. I was uh I was actually working I was working at a church and needed some extra income. I had a background in uh like my undergrad was in um communications. So, at the time I was actually doing like video work, mostly video and video editing. And this is early days of of online video. So, I I launched in in 2008, which was a great time to start an entrepreneur adventure when the economy is was as terrible as it was in the United States. But, you know, I got some video work, but it really wasn't sustaining me. And I had a friend's dad who who had a website and was like, I see you have a website. I don't need video, but can you build me a

website? So, I said, sure. At the time, too, I was also a musician and I was traveling and, you know, and playing around as a singer songwriter. and um he saw that I was booking gigs, you know, all over the US through like MySpace. And he said, "Hey, can you do like that but with my my law firm? Could you like find a way to market my law firm locally?" He basically paid for me to figure out how to do this stuff, you know, as as I was like, you know, kind of put a retainer together. Wasn't very high, but you know, and and just started playing around and testing things. And this is back, you know, 2008, 2009 when SEO, I mean, you could met keywords still mattered, right? like this is back when you could rank like overnight u with just some simple optimizations. It was pretty cool to see what happened as I built some case studies. I got some more local businesses and just yeah kind of started rolling with it there and had this little side gig that was that was working for me. In uh 2015 I I made some major shifts in my own life, things I just needed to do differently and I decided to take the agency on full-time. You know, I'm not really a 9to-ive guy. That's just not the way I work. I don't function well in that. So, I wanted a

little more independence. I went head first into it and started trying to find new clients, you know, and and building and really taking my own marketing seriously and the things that I've applied to other small businesses. And it took a while. You know, a lot of people think, you know, you see all these videos today, it's like, you know, in 3 months we'll increase your MR by 100K, you know, well, okay, well, maybe. But the reality is most of us that's not what happens. and there's a lot of grind, you know, and I was creating a ton of content and just, you know, getting done in front of people and pitching and doing all the things you do when you're when you're small and you're a solo shop. And, uh, finally after about 12 months, uh, started to build some momentum, you know, cuz by between 2009, you know, really, and 2015, search had changed already massively, multiple times. You know, we're talking with tons of massive update dates in the algorithms. And so, my my strategy had to change. And once I got that first deal, the ball just kind of kept rolling and building partnerships and relationships with my vendors even, you know, um I ended up building a good relationship with one of my vendors who was helping me with some ad stuff. He ended up going to a large company in in

Europe and was like, "Hey, you should actually check out this guy. He's doing stuff that other people aren't doing." And uh I ended up getting contracted by them. That company got bought out. All those people went to other big companies. And now you know we started to build a footprint in Tel Aviv and Europe and then that kind of went over to the US even more too. So I had my local business in in in United States. I had I started growing in the Near East and in Europe and then that went back into you know the SAS companies here in the states as well. So it was kind of serendipitous opening the doors as they came building relationships with people like not just like hoping that my content marketing would do everything which was really important but like building friendships and offering help and support. I think uh those are some of the keys early on cuz I I didn't really know what I was doing. Cool. Cool. Uh frankly speaking, from the way I hear it, everything started very quite easily for you, but I don't believe that was the case. So were there any specific hurdles that um do you still remember? Something kind of an impediment that was stopping you from actually growing and something that you actually had to overcome? Yeah, I mean I think you know there are a number of number of things

you know the first one as so many people we probably see this with clients as well is people stop before they really get over the hurdle and content marketing laying a foundation for my brand laying a foundation for what how I thought about search and how I thought about marketing uh and getting that content out there. It was hard to keep doing it when I felt like nobody was reading it when I felt like nobody was engaging with it the way I I thought that it should be engaged with. There were plenty of times through that that journey where I was like, I'm just going to stop. Like nobody cares. Nobody's reading it. But I the back of my mind is like, no, you got to keep pushing through. So there was like that hurdle just with the the day-to-day stuff. And then, you know, man, so many hurdles. I mean, even just like looking at like revenue, like how do you build a contract? How do you build a a retainer so that it works? I mean, there were multiple retainers that when I did the math on it after I quoted, I was like, and they accepted, I was like, I just sold my my hours for like less than $5 an hour. Like, what am I doing? Like, I didn't think about the actual time and effort and the impact, the ROI that I'm

bringing this business. And I'm I'm hurting myself. I'm not valuing myself high enough. And like those things, like learning how to price, again, I'm still learning how to price. You know, I think this something we're always shifting and looking at. But realizing those huge mistakes where I'm like, man, I'm working myself to the bone and I'm not getting the value that I'm that I'm producing. And those are hard. They're not just hard like financially. They're hard emotionally, you know, cuz like then you feel like, man, what am I doing? Why why did I make this this mistake? You know, uh so there are lots of those little things constantly, you know, the content's not working. My emails aren't doing what I want them to do. You know, moving into new markets and trying to understand that business. Now, you know, there's there's a there's a difference between marketing locally and internationally or nationally and how do we position that or then multilingual, right? Every time I would take on a new project, I was pushed to try to find or learn something new. And then, you know, SEO and marketing, it's so multifaceted. It's not just content. There's so much of the technical layer. And I came from more of a creative background originally, but I was very interested in the technical side. Learning how to see the technical aspects of search as actually a creative

aspect was one of the ways that helped me slowly overcome you know the imposttor syndrome you know going from I know how to shoot and edit video um to you know now I need to understand HTML CSS I'm working in WordPress I need to do PHP now I'm starting to do more technical stuff so I got to learn JSONLDD and I need to learn SQL uh and then to what I'm doing today where you know I'm learning Python and you know building my own LLMs and training LLMs and and really getting into those side of things. So, there's been multiple hurdles, multiple walls along the way. I think persistence is a key in entrepreneurship and not allowing your failures to just crush you emotionally. Allow yourself to feel like you can I I've been bummed out plenty of times. I would say a huge factor was investing in in personal coaching and business coaching to have other people to speak into. Not assume that I have all the answers and not assume that I have to go find all the answers. I just need to find somebody who has the answers and let them coach me. and I need to be humble enough to be called out when I make a mistake and learn from that. You mentioned that you had a big client and and I just wanted to specify

specifically maybe you can tell us the name of that client or the ideas. Were you waiting for a big client or was the first client like the big client consider you considered the first client to be the big client that sort of let you know that you're in the right place? Okay, this is a um a moment that made you made you feel like okay this is going to work for me and sort of how did that transform when when you got the first official client? let's call it whatever we want. Like the the one that you realized was was like the real deal. How did that impact your agency's trajectory going forward? I mean, I think the big one, it wasn't just this this massive company. It was actually a local business, so to speak, but that works um in multilocations across my state in Florida. And I was able to present something that I knew would one work for them to drive business, but two would be also financially beneficial for me. And once they said yes, it was just a confidence builder. You know, I didn't come into the the discovery calls with like, please hire me. Please, just just hire me. I really need this. And I came into like, no, I have a solution that I know works, and I know you're really going to benefit from it. Yes, you have

to pay me, but we're both going to this is a win-win. Like, we're a partnership. And that's a big thing. I don't I don't ever want to position myself as a vendor. Vendors are easy to fire, right? If I'm a vendor, I'm expendable when things happen, when things change. But if I'm a partner, I'm a part of your team and I walk alongside you and I'm providing that value. That that creates long-term success. I've been with this client since 2010. They're still with us today. I have a number of those clients and it's it's the partnership side of things and especially in the marketing space where like, you know, contracts come and go. We have plenty of those that are, you know, the one year and they're out and they want to change because somebody else has got something new and flashy. But the confidence that came along with that and believing, oh, I can actually do this. I can actually, you know, grow this business. And then about a year, year and a half later, I start hiring people cuz I just kept winning and winning and winning. um which was really cool. Yeah. I want to talk about the evolution of your vision for uh SMA marketing. So what was the initial vision like on day one and maybe you can just go take us through the milestones that maybe let you know like okay I'm going to expand the team or whatever just like the aspects that sort

of that let you know that you can expand to the near east like you said just go beyond the state. So could you just walk us through the milestones it like that the vision that you had yourself for your agency? Yeah, I would say early on it was kind it wasn't it wasn't so much of a of a vision as it was just trying to figure out what the next right move was. So, you know, when in 2015 we started um you know doing more of like the whole inbound strategy type work, right? So, we were offering a lot of different services to cover a lot of different needs. What I realized in that though is while I can do it, I actually don't like a lot of this stuff and I'm actually not that and because I don't like it, I'm not that good at it because I don't want to be good at it. I don't care about social media marketing. I don't care. It's okay if you do. I just don't. That's not a passion of mine and that's not something that that I've seen at least in the in the industries we work at. There's not as big of a of a pool. What I realized what people were really coming to me for is not even as much so my SEO like the stuff we did, but more the consulting and the outside the box thinking, the consulting side of

things and then how to build strategies to implement that. And I really liked that. And so in order to find a team, I knew there were certain things we had to do, right? That you know, content is obviously extremely important. Uh some of the technical work is is very very important. Even content amplification through other channels is important. I found the things I didn't like that I knew we needed to provide and that's where I found people to help me. And the first person I got, I got a general VA. You know, I read a book um what was it called? Virtual Freedom. And my goal, I never wanted to have a building like my agency's been virtual and I said, I like to say before it was cool. So that that was an interesting conversion too cuz once the co issue stuff and all that happened we were actually able to help a lot of clients who were going virtual for the first time because we'd been a virtual agency for five six years up to this point. Um so we'd already been doing this for so long we had a lot of ways to help them there as well. a kind of eb and flow, right? We expanded our services, realized that not all of these made sense in all the areas, and we we kind of contracted to what we were really good at, passionate about, and then I know it now because I've done a lot of business coaching and training and and stuff with my team, but I was

able to hire people that were really strong in areas that I wasn't strong in. So, instead of me trying to this entrepreneur, right, you hear this is like find your weaknesses and make them stronger. I don't always think that's the case, right? I I looked at my weaknesses and go, I'm not good at that. I'm not even like programmed to think that way. If I try if I try really really hard and get better, I will be mediocre at this. So, why don't I just find somebody that's really awesome at it and put them in there and why don't I do the things that I'm really good at and just get better at those. So, like I'm I'm like a pro in that and they're a pro in that instead of us being mediocre in these areas we're not good at. And so, as we kind of construct contracted our services, we found, you know, companies that really fit with us, you know, like uh government defense. So, I'm in an area, Florida, where it's high, you know, government tech, you know, Harris, Lohee, Martin, Boeing, SpaceX. I'm I'm just south of where they launch the rockets um at Cape Canaveral. So, we see rockets go up all the time and of my front yard. And so, I was like, okay, I know a lot about this industry and a lot of people in this industry. These are the services they need. I looked at the SAS companies.

These are the services they need. I looked at some of the local business and I kind of we started just to go what actually is working for them in these services that we we kind of just have natural alignment with and we started building around there and as again as we expanded uh my first general VA she's now our COO she's she actually had a master's degree in HR and she was just a stay at home mom looking for some more hours you know and work and and now she's like helping me rerun the agency we hired another VA she's now our content manager and then as our SEO stuff like got a lot and I couldn't handle anymore I I hired and a technical SEO specialist and now we have an SEO manager. So, she's also kind of working in our CMO right now as well. So, we've intentionally stayed small cuz we want to be nimble. I'm not really looking to be this mega agency. I want to be like really strategic in in what we do and how we focus. So, as we've worked through these milestones these years, I don't remember all the years because I'm getting old, but our our logo is a is a hummingbird. And there's a lot of reasons why it's a hummingbird. Uh, one, it's kind of like a throwback to when Google rebuilt the algorithm, you know, and to like what did Hummingbird do to

search? I mean, it changed everything. But then also, it hummingbird is this very tiny animal. It's it's quick. It's nimble. It's agile. It can make very strategic movements when it needs to to accomplish a very specific task. And that's the way I see our agency. We're not going to be able to give you every service that an agency has, but if you need search content and you want to show up within LLMs and leverage the the changes that are happening in search at a very strategic way and you want to experiment and you want to try new things, like that's what we do and we do it really really well. And that kind of evolved over time and as we've gotten more clear about who we are, we've been able to just be more comfortable in that. You know, when a client says, "Well, do you do uh you know, social media calendars?" No, we don't. But I know people who do and I can send you to them, but that's not that's not us. But if you want this, we're the best at that. I really love the idea of actually leveraging the strong size that you have and this the expertise that you have instead of trying to be all-in-one solution as many agencies do. So um in terms of the strong size that your

agency has, you specialize in in SEO content and inbulk marketing. So could you walk us through a bit more how exactly you work with clients especially in terms of inbound marketing and what you believe makes you stand out among other agencies. So I we are very much more heavy on the SEO side and more specifically that component because SEO doesn't just include search engines today. It's not just ranking in search. It really does touch every channel. Every every inbound channel is is wrapped up now in search because search is everywhere. When a client comes to us, we're typically looking at how can we actually reach their goals, not how can we improve their rank, right? Uh so much in SEO has been, and it still is, even though there's a lot of talk about it, where are we ranking? How do we improve our ranks? Well, we're in a world of zero click search. Doesn't mean people aren't clicking, but there's a lot more zero click search. Uh there's much more complex buyer journeys and users journeys. So building your brand uh and building your brand in a way that the search engines, the large language

models, these other applications can can surface you when a query is made across the world. And then moving a customer or a prospect from seeing your brand into that business to create a business opportunity uh is really what we do with our clients. We try to build strategies to not just generate traffic and visibility, but revenue. How do we help impact your revenue? How do we partner with you to get the right people in front of you? So, this could look different for every business we work with. We don't have a a cookie cutter cut and paste strategy where it's, you know, for this much you get two blogs, 14 this and that. We don't do that. We look at the business and we start with what are you trying to achieve overall with your marketing. Okay. Now, where does search and where does inbound and where do these digital channels play a role in that? And how can we build a strategy to make sure that these digital channels are actually working towards your end goal? So some of the things that set us apart strong technical background we we are very versed in structured data schema.org ontology creating knowledge graphs u and linked

open data points to help assist in contextual understanding of your text within these computer systems. Computers don't understand text they understand numbers right so we can get real nerdy here if we want but I'm not going to. By giving them this additional information, we can create higher levels of context and understanding with the end goal that when a user makes a query and Google understands who that user is or the LLM does, they're going to surface the the content there. So, that's one thing. A lot of people are data driven, but what does that mean, right? It's kind of a buzzword today. Um, I've spent a number of years investing in my own studies in order to better understand data and we're finally, I think, actually at a place today where big data is useful if it's known how to be used because of the large language models. So we build customized recording. We track end to end path analysis from entry all the way to conversion points through all their different channels. And then we run analysis on that to help them optimize not what they think a user wants but what the users are actually doing on their website which is actually really helpful, right? And so we can build strategies along that. And then we use

all that feedback loop to to go, hey, you're missing content here. There's a gap between this concept and this concept and there's probably a disconnect for the user. So let's see if be creating this content will then go and build that additional touch point. So we're constantly experimenting but we're using data data analysis technical SEO and then intentbased human- centered content. That doesn't mean we don't leverage AI. Uh generative AI is extremely helpful as a tool but it has to be used in the right way and it has to be used with with human an uh human in the loop is what we say. So building the right structure, having a human touch to it, and helping our clients leverage these large language tools in ways that are actually effective instead of creating spam like too many people are doing currently. I I would say those things and staying on the front edge of what's going on. We're I'm always playing with the new tools, with the new algorithms, um dissecting and analyzing and then running experiments. We do a lot of experimentation and what's cool is we have a lot of clients that allow us to do experimentation. So, if you want a cookie, if you want like a safe SEO agency, a safe, you know, marketer,

like that's not us. Um, but if you want somebody that's going to go, hey, I think we could do this. And it's been pretty cool. I mean, just recently I was I was meeting with a client and we've been optimizing uh for generative AI engines specifically. And uh we just actually had a really high quality lead come through a chat GPT search where if this lead closes, I mean, it it pays for us for more than a year. So we found that because we're tracking that and we know what they found and we know what the what path they took on the website and now we're able to reverse engineer that a little bit. But um those are the kind of things we do. That's kind of what sets us. Right. You've said one thing that you're not trying to be a vendor, you're actually trying to be a partner. And I think it speaks both both for the way you approach running your business and your personal values in general. So um you often describe yourself as a faith-driven entrepreneur. Could you tell us a bit more about how exactly your personal values and faith influence the way you work with people and how it affects the service that you provide? Yeah, I mean so I'm constantly looking to grow in my own education, you

know. So like right now I'm taking a lot of uh like I'm doing generative AI specialization at Purdue. I've taken stuff at, you know, MIT and trying to grow the business acument, but at the same time, I'm also about six about a year away from finishing with a masters of theolog in theology from Westminster and Pennsylvania. So, as as a as a Christian, you know, kind of having set moral values, you know, one of the the basic values is that all humans are valuable. Every single person has value inherently because, as we would say, they are created in in the image of God. And so if I come into a relationship with that mindset, I'm automatically going to have more of compassion, empathy, and desire to to see the best in others as opposed to seeing it as a transaction. I don't see my the clients who were my staff like I don't see these people as clients or st I see these as people who are in my life that I genuinely care about even outside of the business relationship. Um most of the clients we have obviously our business conversations but I also have other

conversations with them too. How are their family? How are they doing? How can we support them even outside of that? And allowing you know my own foundations, my own faith to really be my core ethos as I'm making these other decisions, you know, even as it comes into revenue or let's say somebody's having a bad month, something happens in their family. We taking that into account even when it comes to like payment stuff, right? Take a break. You need to pause. Let's let's pause. Like family is more important. Let's say they're they're doing something for their own kids' baseball team. Do they need a sponsor? Can we sponsor their baseball team? You know, like how do we look for ways to add value into their lives? Not because I want their money. Revenue is great, but money is like it's a tool. It's a resource. How can I invest into their lives and and see the value that that person has whether they agree with me on faith things or not? I have plenty of people that we have very different views on on faith, eternity, morality, all of those things. But if I start for the point that they are valued because of who they're created after, I'm going to treat them differently. To

me, that's a business like I I'm proud to run. I can go to sleep at night and I don't feel like I made a bad decision because my at the end of the day, I I genuinely care about all the people we work with and I want to do what's best for them as well as my team. And that even comes to my team. So, let's say we have a client that doesn't have that same eye to eye and and maybe is doing things that don't go align with our values or treating our team in a certain way. I have no problem saying, "Hey, this is a value that that's very important to us and you've breached this and you maybe breached it twice. We're going to go ahead and not move forward anymore because I really value my team and I'm going to protect them." Right? So, it's it kind of works all around and like I love my staff. I love the the clients I work with and I genuinely care about their lives. Um, and I think it all starts and it's rooted in in that that underlying faith faith values. And you know another thing too as a business one of the things we do is we we work with KA. Uh KA is a pretty cool organization where we can donate money well not donate it's microloans interest free microl loans to small businesses all over the globe. You know there's people who who don't have financial

resources. Now I'm not loaded by any means but me giving $5 to a small business in Uganda is massive impact unless I keep that $5 and get a cruddy cup of coffee. So my mindset is why don't I make my own coffee at home? Let's give a portion of of our revenue to other people to help them provide for their families, you know. So that's an extended way where we can even take our our faith and our moralities and extend that further even to places and people that we may never meet, we may never engage with. And to me that's that's important. That's what the human experience is about. This is I'm starting to put together some stuff too around this in in the whole AI movement. I'm very involved in generative AI. I I really am I love it. I think it's really interesting. I think there's really cool opportunities with it, but what we need to have it all grounded in is our morals, is our ethics, is our idea of how can we then leverage this to serve humans. One thing I've always told my team at the other end of that screen is a human being. It's not an analytic, it's not a number, it's not a session, it's not a user, it's a person who is looking for an answer for either a

product, a problem, a solution, something. They need something. How are we serving that person? And again, it it starts with that seeing the value in the individual. seeing the value in the person and making sure that everything we're doing is serving that person, not serving Google, not serving a language model, serving a person. And I think when you start there, you have much more authentic marketing, you have much more authentic content, much more authentic just a connection. And people can tell, they really can, you know, uh I've been doing YouTube for for a really long time and uh I'm not the biggest guy on YouTube, but if you need anything on schema marketing, you can find my ugly mug there. Um, one of the things I've heard from a number of people, I've had clients come from YouTube and I get this. I've been watching you for about 2 hours. You don't seem like you're somebody that's just going to sell me a product and and screw me over and take my money. Can we have a conversation? Because I just want to build relationship. I I put stuff on YouTube not just for ranking. I do cuz like I had a problem, I fixed that problem. I know other people had that problem. How can I help them? And so that I guess that's a broad way. So it really starts at that base layer. Do I see humans? Do I see people as valuable? And why are

they valuable? you know, in in from my my faith says because we're created in God's image. Okay, if that's the foundational point and I use that to look at everybody, I'm going to treat them differently. Um, and I'm going to do things for for very different reasons other than just revenue. We're going to do the quick outro here and saying this is a wrap for this edition of the SEO agency roller coaster podcast. A huge thank you to Ryan Shel of SMA Marketing for sharing his story, insights, and the lessons that have fueled his growth from a oneman startup to a thriving agency. This podcast is powered by SEO Ranking, the SEO tool set that that helps agencies scale smarter and achieve lasting success. If you're serious about building up your agency, SEO Ranking is here to help you make your mark online. Don't forget to follow us for more expert talks, actionable tactics, and inspiration to navigate the agency roller coaster. Keep innovating, staying ahead of the curve, and remember, your next big agency milestone starts with taking action. [Music]