Jeff Tormey on Why ChatGPT Now Recommends His Agency by Name

Jordan Lally:0:00
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] Podcast, where we discuss marketing, sales, client acquisition, AI, and everything in between. My guest today started learning SEO back in 2001, before most people even knew what Google was. He's a mechanical engineering grad student turned... Let me backtrack here. I always mess up the intro.

Jeff Tormey:0:22
It's okay.

Jordan Lally:0:25
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] podcast, where we discuss marketing, sales, client acquisition, AI, and everything in between. My next guest started learning SEO back in 2001, before most people even knew what Google was. His mechanical engineering grad turned search authority who built SEO Guru Atlanta into one of the most ranked agencies in the country, helping local and national businesses not just rank on Google, but get cited and recommended by AI engines like Chachi BT, Claude, and Gemini. Everyone, please welcome to the show, Mr. Jeff Torme.

Jeff Tormey:1:02
Thanks for having me, Jordan.

Jordan Lally:1:04
It's our pleasure. I'm excited to dive in. all the SEO secrets that you guys have. Now, can you actually take us back when you first launched SEO Guru Atlanta? What was the intention behind that? And now fast forwarding to today has the business model or the problem you are trying to solve change over the years.

Jeff Tormey:1:27
Yeah, great question. So when I started, it was really just out of curiosity. And I just, bought a course when I was at a seminar in 2001. And then I started implementing what they were teaching. you know, I was buying magazines about SEO and it started working and I started making money with it. I thought this is pretty cool. So I started just using it, by myself just to make money. It was just, just a hobby. I just thought it was super interesting. and then my CPA asked me about, how are you making this money? What is this stuff? so I started working with him and that's kind of when it clicked that almost all local businesses. Need help with search with SEO. And that was really about 2008. and then I decided, decided to start working with other local businesses really just to, I really like to help them grow because.

A lot of these business owners, they know what their business is really well, but the problem is they didn't go to like a business school or something. mean, they don't know necessarily marketing or lead generation or how websites work or how the search engines were, you know, it's all this other big, you know, confusing, um, a bunch of stuff that they don't really have the time or expertise to, um, to learn about. So.

I've always just thought it's really fun to help local businesses grow. So I kind of did it that way. Plus I can make money at it as well. so it works out for both sides. Their business grows, my business grows. So I always thought it was a really cool, business model. and it's still the same today. We work with companies, really all over the U S B to C B to B all kinds of companies from e-commerce to local service companies. So, you know, The, the, I guess the, the aim of helping companies have a better online presence so they can grow their business. that's really always been my goal. It's pretty much still the same.

Jordan Lally:3:38
Thank you for the context and the insights there. Getting back to what you said regarding most of these businesses are excellent at their craft. Let's just stick with home improvement companies. So HVAC, roofing, solar pest control. Most of those business owners are fantastic at that craft, right? Building new roofs or fixing HVAC, unix, et cetera. But what separates decent from good to great is acquiring more skills.

Right. So obviously having a good product, which is you building or fixing whatever the said thing is, and then getting good at marketing, right. Getting your foot in the door and then getting better at sales, actually converting those leads into paying customers or paying clients. And then the next thing is like recruiting and onboarding kind of at scale. Right. Again, that goes from, you know, multiple six figures to seven figures to possibly eight figures and beyond.

With that being said, where do you feel like your skill set has improved and increased and gotten better over the time? In which form is like, my gosh, like I am not the best at this thing. I have to double down on getting good at this one thing.

Jeff Tormey:4:42
man, really putting me on the spot. All right, so that was such a big question, Jordan. Can you boil that down for me a little bit? Because it's just too much for me to bite off at once.

Jordan Lally:4:55
Absolutely. So essentially when you first started the company, you kind of started it by accident, right? You're accidentally making money with SEO. So I want to say the fulfillment side, your skillset is really good at SEO, getting clients results, et cetera. What was the next challenge for you within the business? I suppose, was it like trying to find companies to work with? Was it like conducting the sales process or finding other SEO gurus to kind of offset some of that fulfillment work.

Jeff Tormey:5:28
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. So in my previous jobs, you know, I a, having a degree in mechanical engineering, then I was in sales for a long time. So technical sales. So I had these companies actually invested a lot of money in sales training for me. So I kind of had that side down pretty well. the thing I think that I, the reason that I've stayed in this market is because it's, keeps changing so much.

Jordan Lally:5:45
Let's.

Jeff Tormey:5:58
All the time and it always has. So, I really enjoy that, that we're always learning. And so, yeah, we're really good at the technical SEO side, but it's, it's never stood still. And, know, there's going to be, changes in the Google algorithm. And now with the, you know, introduction of AI, that's been a huge thing. So I've got a really great, talented team. So I don't have to. to try to learn it all on my own. But as we grew, one of the things that was really important was like you mentioned, kind of scaling. How do you get more clients really having a good reporting dashboard is super helpful. Having a good project management platform is super helpful. I tell you, one of the things that's been the best is hiring really good people, like really, really good account managers.

Jordan Lally:6:53
Mmm.

Jeff Tormey:6:56
where they don't really have to know everything about SEO. Of course, not many people do. but as long as they're very good with, communicating with the team and communicating with the client. And as long as a client feels like, you're taking good care of me and it's okay if you come to me with questions and things like that. I think that like adding people, that was the most difficult side for me because quite honestly, I didn't really want to be a people manager.

That was the reason I kind of liked this was I didn't have to manage people anymore. I used to do that. I didn't really want to do that again. And then once I finally said, okay, let's go ahead and scale this thing up. Then I have to do it. But the great thing is I could hire the people that I like. And, and it's, it's just, it's, it's been amazing. It's, been great having people that, not only I enjoy working with, but our clients enjoy working with that. That was definitely the hardest part. think it's.

Jordan Lally:7:27
you

Jeff Tormey:7:56
finding the right people.

Jordan Lally:7:58
Thanks for opening up and sharing for me. I think I'm pretty decent at marketing, right? The ability to get in front of people. I will say something I struggle with internally is sales. It's funny because internally, like my internal dialogue, like I know what I'm going to say. know how I'm going to say it. But when it comes to actually saying it the way I want to say it, my communication skills are kind of subpar in that area. which is obviously something I'm working on. And then in regards to hiring A players, because that is really what's going to unlock, you know, true growth potential and true scale, a one man band can only go so far. What was your secret to finding and hiring these A players?

Jeff Tormey:8:40
interviewing a lot of people. It was a lot of people. It was a discouraging number of interviews, you know, just one after the other. No. So this is so we work remotely. We don't all go to the office. We all work remotely. And so I needed somebody that was going to be, you know, has a home office can present themselves, and then somebody who's going to show up.

Jordan Lally:8:41
So volume.

Jordan Lally:8:56
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Tormey:9:09
you know, not just kind of sort of do it sometimes or have a whole bunch of other stuff going on, but this is actually my job. So, it was just shocking when you see people show up for interviews, like on their laptop in their bedroom with a sweatshirt on and it looks like they just woke up. You're like, really? This is a job interview. And that wasn't a rare thing. So that was, went through so many interviews like that where I could You know, you don't want to be rude, but you could tell the interview is over soon as it started. So that was the hard part.

Jordan Lally:9:42
Absolutely. No, I think you're a little.

Sorry, I was going to say, I think you're a little kinder than I. When I was hiring for fulfillment, right? Because I want to still be in charge of like driving new revenue, but for fulfillment, can definitely pass off. I was kind of a savage where if I immediately thought that they were going to be a bad fit, it's just, hey, thanks for your time. You know, not going to be a good fit.

I don't know where that comes from, but at the same time, I also feel like I'm doing Numa solid, right? Instead of sitting there for like 30 minutes pretending that, you know, they're a good fit or whatever the case is. Anyways, I know AI and SEO is like the new thing. Has SEO guru Atlanta adopted AI SEO services at all?

Jeff Tormey:10:35
Yeah. So we started that beginning of 2025. So I would say we were pretty early in that. Um, and quite honestly at the beginning of 2025, I didn't know what was going to happen by the end of the year that this stuff was all starting. People were talking about, you know, um, AI basically becoming, um, uh, sentient being and taking over everything. You know, it was just hard to know. how fast it was going to go and how far it was going to go. And, but like I said, I've got a, a, a great team, that I've worked with for a really long time. So we've been extremely stable and w what's really great is that we think alike. So when we started looking into these things, we started developing the strategies and the plans because you don't want to be left behind. And if you're not, doing those things now, I get calls from, you know, potential clients just about every day and they may be working with an agency, but they're not coming up when they go to chat GPT and search for their kind of company, they're not showing up. And they're like, we used to rank good in Google and we still rank good in Google, but we don't show up at all in, you know, Gemini or chat GPT or perplexity or whatever search engine that they're using.

So that's a, people really started to hit the panic button. so fortunately I got a call just yesterday from a really big company. there are a B2B, e-commerce company and they said, yeah, we just went to, their headquarters is in Atlanta. So they said, they just basically went to chat GPT and made an inquiry because they said they felt like that's where they were losing out was on the AI side. And they just looked for the. company that was the most recommended. And they said, were number one. So that's why we're talking. So it's that important, you know, because we see more and more. So we look at the analytics for all of our clients and we consistently see the AI gaining more and more of their search volume. Now Google's still the biggest by far. But a chat GPT

Jordan Lally:12:42
That's so badass.

Jeff Tormey:13:01
is probably the second biggest one that we see. But usually that's just referral traffic. It's small compared to Google, but it's definitely having an impact.

Jordan Lally:13:10
Do you think that SEO and how it's conducted today is still pretty important? Because I know with Google, they have these AI summaries and all that fun stuff. Can you dive into that? Does having strong SEO play into the Google AI summaries algorithm?

Jeff Tormey:13:35
Yeah, for sure. So I would say that it's, some of the things that we had always done or that we've been doing for a long time were things that were, that were very helpful when AI really started rolling out. So we didn't really feel like we were catching up. We're like, cool. We're already doing this stuff. So now we're being rewarded for doing things that, you know, we knew to do for, for quite a while.

Jordan Lally:13:59
you

Jordan Lally:14:04
Okay.

Jeff Tormey:14:05
You know, so, so what, one of the important things is if you're, if you're reading those, those summaries from Gemini or whomever, you'll notice that, they, they do like to have answers to questions or they'll like to pull content from a website and show it to you in those results. So you can be cited by the AI. So it's really important that you structure the content on your website. with not just the content, but some other technical implementation like schema markup, for example, and then show up in those search results, right? With FAQs and different ways that you can structure content. So it helps to influence the output of the AI.

Does that make sense?

Jordan Lally:14:56
I love how, no, it definitely does. was just processing. You use the coding word, you said markup, schema markup, and I smiled because no, not a lot of people in our space know, you know, MD or MU markup or markdown. But after, for me personally, I utilize cloud code to basically run my business and the files and and the Sigmas and the schemas, excuse me, just the information that it outputs or the things that I have to get familiar with. it is, it's a lot of code, but they break it down and simplify it essentially kind of what you did right there. Now, what do you think is going to be like, not more important for a business owner, but if someone was, doesn't have that good SEO, obviously probably doesn't have good AI SEO. Where should they start? Like if I'm a roofing company, you know, I'm a sales rep. have a couple of contractors working with me. looking to dive into SEO, what should I do? Google SEO or AISCO?

Jeff Tormey:16:02
so first I would definitely just start with the blocking and tackling just standard SEO, right? And if you're a local business, that's going to really include a strong Google business profile. Fully built out. People don't seem to realize you can post on your Google business profile. It's sort of a social media type of a thing for Google, but you can post on it and it's owned by Google. So why wouldn't you post on it?

You know, but most people though. so, so that's important. And then just having your, basic stuff, right? You're the, the, meta title meta description for your important pages. That kind of thing is really important. Having good content is going to be really, really important. Not just getting stuff out of chat GPT, but, but you know, structuring the content and putting your content in the right silos. creating the correct pages for different types of content or different services that you provide, just kind of building everything out properly. That's going to really help set the stage for then implementing a lot of the AI SEO. But there's a lot of the AI stuff that you could do in conjunction with that. But I would say that a lot of it just falls kind of in the, in the bucket of traditional SEO. And then you can really augment that or build upon that for the AI stuff. like signals. Okay. So they like to have different signals. Like, you get an award? Do you have, links from certain pages? Do you have a lot of good reviews and things like that is your Google business profile basically linked to your website so that if you have good reviews, they show up on your website, just kind of basic things like that. But they're, they're, they're basically traditional SEO combined with.

Jeff Tormey:18:03
the AI SEO. And then there's a little bit more advanced stuff like the LLMS files that you can upload and things like that to help train the AI on your website.

Jordan Lally:18:13
How would one, if that's proprietary or like secret sauce, you can pass, but how would one upload the LLMS file into an LLM? how does, or do you upload it to your website? How does that work?

Jeff Tormey:18:30
Yeah, it's kind of secret sauce, but, yeah, it's like, it's a, it's a, you know, TXT file that you can generate. You could probably Google it and figure it out. So it's not that secret, but, but yeah, it's just a file that you can, generate that will basically train the AI on your website. and then you can essentially upload it to your directory as a dot TXT file.

Jordan Lally:18:34
Okay.

Jordan Lally:18:42
Okay.

Jeff Tormey:18:59
Now, one of the important things though, is that you have all that, you know, original blocking and tackling the regular SEO stuff, you know, kind of nailed down. Cause then that will really help, what's in the LLMS file. And it helps the AI to understand and read your website. What's super important, especially if you've got helpful things like answers to frequently asked questions, and fresh content. If you've got any kind of original. stuff like stats or original research or case studies, you know, all that stuff helps tremendously, I would say.

Jordan Lally:19:37
Gotcha. Okay, good stuff. Do you know the percentage of individuals looking things up or looking up business inquiries on Google versus LLMs?

Jeff Tormey:19:48
man, that is a great question. I should, I should have that off to my tongue, but, but I don't. yeah, I can tell you that the, the volume of traffic, is so if we go to Google analytics, for example, and look at traffic volume, you know, you may get a thousand visits from Google and you might get 30 from one of the, AI engines.

Jordan Lally:19:53
No worries.

Jeff Tormey:20:17
So it's still pretty small, but it's growing. And then the thing about it is if you're not showing up in those AI results, your traffic is going to continue to, to dwindle.

Jordan Lally:20:33
No, I agree. Absolutely. And now with I had somebody else on yesterday who did, AI SEO as well. You're no offense to them. They're awesome people, but I think the level of scale that you're at is much more. They were saying, he painted a picture where like, yes, you know, there are some brick and mortar chains and locations now that are run by, just older people.

You know, and the newer generation is I'm trying to say this, but I can't find the words, but people like the younger generation, like I sure my age younger than I, they don't really utilize Google as much as maybe like how we did growing up or whatever. But now they're starting to utilize LLMs and AI for their search engines. And basically what he was saying, and I'm sure you might agree or have your own spin on it is it's better to start now. because the individuals that are taking over these leadership positions or taking over a brick and mortar location via owner, whatever, they are utilizing these LLMs as their search engine, opposed to utilizing Google. Does that make sense at all?

Jeff Tormey:21:52
yeah. Yeah. Now that that's 100%. I agree with that. That's basically what I was trying to say was that it is gaining more and more traction. And, and even though it's relatively small compared to Google, it's growing and it's going to continue to grow. Will it displace Google? Man, I don't know. Google still doing really well there. If you look at their, you know, their earnings reports and stuff.

Jordan Lally:21:54
Thanks.

Jordan Lally:22:02
Yeah.

Jeff Tormey:22:20
Google ads still sell really well. People are still on that platform. They're still making a lot of money. So I think when Google was first rolling out Gemini, I think they were pretty, well they were, you could, you could see that they were testing and I think they were testing to see how much revenue it was going to cost them. Was it going to cost revenue or will they gain revenue? Well, if you just look at it, you'd think, well, they might lose revenue. Maybe Google ads just goes away.

But that hasn't been the case at all. Their revenue has gone up. you know, so people still use Google. They still use Google ads. But younger people. Yeah, for sure. And it's not just that they're using the, AI you'll see in search results now Reddit. You know, I think they've got an agreement with Google, obviously. So they're showing up in their results all the time. So it can be helpful to be in places like Reddit.

Jordan Lally:22:54
you

Jeff Tormey:23:20
probably a little bit younger, but I just liked that the demographics for Reddit and it's, it's really not just the young people's platform. was kind of surprised.

Jordan Lally:23:31
For sure. Yeah, I definitely use, I mean, I still utilize Google. Don't get me wrong. I use Google every day. Question, when you said that advertising is the biggest driving force, not force, but the biggest revenue contributor to platforms like Google or Meta, et cetera. Now that we're incorporating like a search engine abilities in these LLMs, do you ever think that these LLMs will allow people like us, businesses, to advertise on their platform to rank higher in these search queries. I just thought about that as you said, Google's biggest revenue is Google Ads.

Jeff Tormey:24:09
So I regularly get emails from chat GPT to test their ad platform. I've not done it yet.

Jordan Lally:24:15
No! It's already happening! That is so funny. I had no idea that that was a thing. I don't get any ads on, you know, chat or anything like that, obviously, or else I would know the answer, wow, it's already happening. What are your thoughts on that? Any insights? Any feedback?

Jeff Tormey:24:21
Yeah.

Jeff Tormey:24:37
So, you know, so it's an interesting revenue model that they've got. So, you know, if you have enough people paying you $20 a month, and then people paying you $200 a month and then enterprises pay, but their investment is just astronomical because you're basically building a power plant with your data centers and you know, it's a, it's a huge capital investment. So, um,

Jordan Lally:24:37
Good thing.

Jeff Tormey:25:05
I would think that they're going to be integrating some kind of ads. I can't imagine that they wouldn't. It seems like it's just be very difficult for them to pass up. That's just my opinion. And it seems like they're starting to roll out an ad platform. Like I said, they've pinged me on it, but I haven't investigated it yet. But I would suspect that's coming. And it could be good. It could be really helpful.

You know, I know it's a super creepy and a lot of a lot of ways to get targeted ads, you know, but on the other hand, it's like, well, it's better than just getting ads that are relevant to you at all. So, I think the, the chat will definitely know what you're interested in and may have ads that, that you might like, you know, discover cool new products or something like that.

Jordan Lally:25:58
Yes.

No, 100%. And that's what makes these platforms, these advertising platforms so powerful is because it serves relevant ads. Right. And another reason why Metta and it has taken off and when we consider them the best advertising platform, because if you're scrolling through your Instagram or your Facebook, what do you get served? Things that you like. Right. So if you're scrolling through things that you like and the next video or image is Another thing that you like but it's an advertisement. It's like a good thing that you saw it if that kind of makes sense.

Jeff Tormey:26:35
yeah. They know who they know my profile on Facebook. I get a lot of ads for agency owners.

Jordan Lally:26:39
Yeah, for sure.

Right, right, right. On that topic, you brought up the fact that you speak, you get a lot of inbound leads. Is that because of the reputation you built up? Is it because AISCO? How does that happen for you?

Jeff Tormey:27:00
so a lot of it is that we've got really great SEO, you know, and there's a lot of things that go into that. So the domain name was registered in 2010. So it's a very old domain, which helps. and then we've got tons of content, which it, and the content's really good. So we get cited by the AI a lot. We get, show up in Gemini. Google's loved the site for a long time. We've got good reviews. We've got it kind of done like. everything. But we've done it for a long time. I wasn't always number one. You know, we are now. But I remember when I wasn't even on the first five pages, right? I mean, I was nobody. And I was like, how did these guys do that? I think I'm going to do that. And we just started chipping away at it. And it and it takes it takes time. I hate when people I guess one of the things that bugs me about SEO is that we see

Jordan Lally:27:49
Right.

Jeff Tormey:28:00
like, I don't know if it's criminal, but obviously it's immoral behavior, where we do audits for these inbound leads, people reach out to us and say, Hey, you know, can you help us? You show up high and looks like you know what you're doing. And, and then we we audit their website, and they'll have been paying somebody for a year and they sometimes the entire website has a no index tag on it. You're like, What it's just mind blowing the stuff that you see. So, it's, it's helpful when you do have a good reputation, of helping people because there's so many disreputable agencies out there. I don't know how those people can sleep at night. So I, I think that's one of the things is, we do have a lot of really good reviews. It's not that easy to get. a ton of reviews as an agency, especially when you're like us and we're not just churning tons and tons. We don't have thousands of, of clients, for example. So, yeah, but, but to get those inbound leads, that's, you know, it's, it's basically positioning yourself as an authority. And we've been doing this so long that we're in a lot of different markets. So we have content and case studies and things for different markets, like, like home improvement. landscaping, HVAC, we also do a lot of medical. So we're into, you know, bariatric surgery and other niche markets, not just medical in general, but cosmetic surgery and things like that. So that's, that's how we have targeted certain markets or certain niches that we thought would be really good fit for us. So one of the things that we try to stay away from are people who have kind of like low ticket items because they just can't make enough money to pay for what we charge. It just doesn't make sense, right? Because we're not cheap. And if you're selling, you know, jewelry on a Shopify store, it may be great stuff, but you can't also afford to pay us for that, right? So you probably doing your own Facebook ads or something would be a better source.

Jeff Tormey:30:25
Yeah. So that that's why we targeted certain niches is because they're kind of higher ticket items and that works really well for us and it works really good for them.

Jordan Lally:30:37
Absolutely. The finances have to make sense from a business owner's perspective investing into another company. Let's see. I think what you said right there, not a lot of people bring up in marketing or even sales, but you brought up doing something for free on behalf of the respective or prospective client without them actually paying you yet. And you classified it as an audit. We actually utilize that amongst my clients internally as a lead magnet.

Jeff Tormey:30:41
Yeah.

Jordan Lally:31:06
Let me tell you what does wonders. It does two things. One is it builds an immense amount of trust because you're showcasing your expertise. The second thing is it's not a cookie cutter template. It's this is your account, your website. Here's what's wrong with it. Here's what we can do to fix it. Here's how we're going to fix it. Right. And when you present that to more sophisticated buyers, they look at you completely differently.

And because they look at you differently and that trust is high, you can actually increase your prices if you wanted to. not saying you should, but you could. did you, when did you start incorporating that? I want to call it a lead magnet, even though you can classify it, whatever, but that free audit, what, did you start incorporating that? And has that been effective?

Jeff Tormey:31:53
Yeah. Yeah, that's extremely effective. So I would say, I'd say at least two thirds of our inbound leads are SEO audits at least if not three quarters. you don't get a ton of people just filling out the web form. Most people get to the website and like, yeah, I'm to go ahead and do that. Right. So, so they'll get the audit and then

Jordan Lally:31:58
Right?

Jordan Lally:32:08
No.

Jeff Tormey:32:22
from there. Now that's a good audit. It's not great because it doesn't have any human intervention, but it's pretty good. So you can get an idea and maybe that's all you want. But if somebody's very interested, if they're kind of a qualified person, it's like, we want to see more. We'll do a manual audit for them. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, wow, we've never seen anything like this before.

So we actually do those for free. You know, if, if somebody looks like they're, you know, like a good qualified prospect and we'll do the market analysis for them. We'll show them why their competitors are beating them and how they're losing their market share and all these things that are costing them lots of money. And now keep in mind almost all these people are already using agencies. So, but they're just not getting the results. So they come to us and go, well,

Jordan Lally:32:52
Right,

Jeff Tormey:33:21
What can you do differently? And we're like, well, look, you're paying these guys money, but they don't really know what they're doing. And there's just so many things that are missing that you can just show it to them in black and white, right? It's right there on the page. You can prove it. So once they see that, okay, you guys do have a, and I, one of the things I have to be careful about is, you know, I I'll tend to get too much into like teaching SEO, right? Most people, they don't care. They don't really want to know.

All right, so I've got to be very careful about that because it's just sort of a tendency where I don't, you know, they don't want to learn about SEO. They just want to see why am I losing money to my competitors? Right. So yeah, but, but it's.

Jordan Lally:34:05
And how can, how can, how oh sorry, go for it.

Jeff Tormey:34:08
It's a great lead magnet. It's a great value to them. And it's helpful for us too, because then we can have a good idea and insight. So when they're going to go ahead and get started, we already have got the, you know, the competitive analysis.

Jordan Lally:34:23
No, exactly. So we, as I was saying earlier, we utilize that as an outbound strategy. So we've, built out a full autonomous AISDR where it scores leads, personalizes the entire email based on 10 different layers. Whenever the lead says, yes, I want that free thing. I want that lead magnet. The AI will conduct a pretty thorough report audit. lead magnet, et cetera, specific to that one lead, and then send it out to them in less than 120 seconds. And I bring this up because you're utilizing free audits already, except it's inbound traffic. I wonder how much effect or how effective it would be and how many more clients you could possibly land if you did the exact same thing, but just inverted it and did outbound opposed to inbound, you know?

On the topic of AI agents, do you utilize any internally or do you utilize any for your clients?

Jeff Tormey:35:25
Yeah. So I started, uh, so we do use a go high level. think a lot of people use go high level now is probably no big secret. I think it's, it's good. And it's got some, some pretty good, um, agents built into it. I started using another platform, uh, kind of moving away from it now, but it was using AI. Gosh. I was probably one of the early adopters of their platform back in like 2017, 2018, and it had AI built into it then.

So it was great. So people would, would get the, the free audit. And then soon as they got it, they're going to get, you know, a message from the AI about, would you like to schedule a time to go over that? Here's some times that are available on the calendar, which works for you. And they're like, 10 o'clock Tuesday, boom, books them on my calendar. It's like, So we've been doing that for a long time, probably six or seven years.

Jordan Lally:35:55
Dead.

Jeff Tormey:36:24
So then we've switched now over to go high levels really, really good. it's got a lot more tools and different things built into it. So it's a very different platform, but, yeah, we are using, those kinds of AI agents and it's really helpful when customers have got inbound leads, especially when they're paying for them. So, so we do the go high level for our clients too. So let's just take an example. of like a roofer. Okay, so a roofer may be buying leads from a place like Angie's used to be Angie's list and a lot of these different places have kind of consolidated but you can go in there and people go to Angie's and look for a roofer. Now when they get that when Angie's gets that lead, they're going to send it to four different roofing companies or remodeling companies or whatever it is. And

Jordan Lally:37:15
Yeah.

Jeff Tormey:37:24
You've got to be able to contact those people right away. So having automation in place is so helpful and not just immediately, but if they don't reply then also in 30 minutes and if they don't reply then in an hour, if they don't reply again, you know, in two hours and just try to ping them because they're interested. They're trying to, they're in the buying mode. So you want to make sure that you follow up with them. And then of course, once they say, yes, I'm interested. Then you can have a trained AI agent start to interact with them, like to either book a call, book an inspection or, know, whatever the client wants to do to, to, you know, to initiate that contact with the client. so the AI there, I think is super, super helpful.

Jordan Lally:38:18
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it sounds like you utilize it internally for lead nurturing and also externally on behalf of your clients for their lead nurturing process as well. Solid. Now with SEO and AI, not AI SEO, but just AI and then SEO, does that amplify the speed to production or does utilizing AI for a blog post and backend site links or however SEO actually works. Does that benefit it or damage it? Heard it.

Jeff Tormey:38:58
so let me see if I understand your question is, using AI, it, does it help or hurt SEO?

Jordan Lally:39:08
Yes, like as an example, I know in the past I could say hey chat write me this blog post for my website if I were to take that blog post and just upload it directly into my website to get back links and you know build my domain authority does that damage it if I do not alter it and change it and like Keep a human in the loop and modify it or am I allowed to just copy paste it? I'm good to go

Jeff Tormey:39:36
Yeah. So that was a really big debate. maybe a year and a half ago, maybe more, but in the, in the recent past, Google was kind of frowning on AI generated content and it was flagging it. And then everybody's using AI generated content. Cause you're like, why wouldn't you use AI generated content when it's really good? Even if you write really good content, you could put it in AI and it'll polish it up and make it read a little bit smoother. A lot of benefits to it. So Google, you know, finally related and came up with the helpful content update. So as long as the content's good and helpful and unique and original, you can use it. I don't know that anybody's writing all their own content anymore without using AI. I don't think anybody is you maybe I don't know who would but nobody I know. So we definitely use it. I mean,

Jordan Lally:40:21
Got it.

Jeff Tormey:40:35
I don't think that'd be a secret. and then, yeah, there, there are tools that are quite good. they're not free for sure. It's not like the free version of chat GPT. we, we have some very expensive, very sophisticated, AI tools built for agencies, that, that help write the content and then help with the, like you had mentioned before, internal linking and things like that. And then.

You also got to not just, I think say, well, let's just write a blog post about something because I'm sort of kind of interested in it. Right. So we see that kind of thing a lot when we, when we start taking over somebody's website is you're like, that's kind of random. Why would you do that? So we always go with a plan. So we're always looking at what keywords are we trying to target? What do we, how do we rank right now? What's the search volume for those? And then we'll.

Jordan Lally:41:21
Right.

Jeff Tormey:41:35
plan it all out. And then then we'll get a blog post written. So there's a lot of strategy that goes in even if we're using an AI tool. You can't just say, well, just, you know, run my business for me. And it'll just go to everything. Maybe someday that'll happen. But not yet.

Jordan Lally:41:55
Right, right. There's these YouTube people that I like to listen to where I learn a lot about AI from and he always makes his joke. He's like, yeah, dude, just go in the chat, go into cloud, say, make me a million dollars tomorrow and make no mistakes. And it's going to work. Right. And it's like, duh, obviously not going to work. I spoke with someone yesterday, similar position from a revenue and head count standpoint. She said AI is 80 20.

10 % human on the front end, AI can do 80 % of the work in the middle, 10 % of human on the back end to make sure it's actually good, right? And I think...

The most important piece out of the 80 20 there is the front end of that 10%. The AI needs context. So if we take some random high schooler off the street and he says, make me a blog post, it's 100 % not going to be as effective. If Mr. If you, Jeff were to say, Hey, here's all the information I know about SEO. Let's go ahead and craft a killer blog post for my client over here. Obviously the one that you, um, produce and provide chat is going to produce a lot better results because you have that 10 % context in there. for sure.

Jeff Tormey:43:10
Yeah, 100%. And even when we get, you know, like I said, we've got these really great, really expensive tools. We have a strategy, we try to make sure that it comes out just great. And sometimes you'll get stuff just like, you can't say that. So you got to rewrite it, you know, because a lot of times, stuff has to be on brand, you know, and even if you try to train the AI, it doesn't always get that they're trying to be the luxury brand, but they're a remodeling company. Yeah, but they're trying to be like really high end, you know, super custom homes, very expensive remodeling company. So you can't use certain words that will kind of, you know, be, you know, not on brand like that. So it's, really important that, that you revise it and that, you know, we, have somebody We have two sets of eyes internally review it before we send it to a client for approval. And sometimes we still, we still sometimes let stuff through that we shouldn't. So.

Jordan Lally:44:13
So that's Mark.

Jordan Lally:44:21
What precautions do you take with your team to ensure that doesn't happen? Like you as the founder CEO, did find out that, you know, one slipped through the cracks. What is your approach to your staff about that out of curiosity?

Jeff Tormey:44:38
Well, you know, we do try to train them up and make sure that there's guidelines and that they understand who the client is. we, we have, you know, recently had to replace somebody because it was like just not quite getting that we need to be really on point, right? We can't afford to be sending stuff to the client. That's that's not matching their brand. so that kind of thing can happen.

So if somebody's not getting the job done, we might need to replace them. and then just internal, meetings really twice weekly, just talking about how we're approaching clients. what are the things that we need to talk about? We, we talk about making sure that we are staying on brand quite a bit and, you know, just, just things like that. And also if we screw up and we'll fix it. Right. So sometimes they'll be like, guys, what were you thinking? But usually our, uh, our client success managers have a good enough relationship where somebody can call them and say, I don't know what you guys are thinking. This is not us, right? This is, you kind of missed the boat on this one. Then we can be like, you're right. We, we did miss the boat on that one. Let us fix that. And we'll try to take steps to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Doesn't happen very often. mean, when you consider how many blog posts we write every single month, it's extremely rare that we have something go out. That's not, that's not really, really good.

Jordan Lally:46:18
Right, right. No, thanks for, I know probably a hard question, but thanks for explaining that process. Probably two, three more questions for you. Jeff, looking back over your career, what is something that you wish you knew before you got started with your company today?

Jeff Tormey:46:37
that's a long list. I guess the thing that I wish I knew, you know, I didn't, I really didn't understand how to like build and grow a company. That that's thing I never, that just it's like, how do you do that? And once you've done it after a while, you're like, it's not that hard, but, but

Jordan Lally:46:53
Mm.

Jordan Lally:47:03
Hahaha!

Jeff Tormey:47:07
To me, that was a huge, huge hurdle because I'd always worked for other companies and we had all the infrastructure and everything's in place. like, how do I get all that stuff, you know, put together and all that kind of stuff. And it's a lot of work, you know, so that that's the thing. It's, probably just didn't want to do all the work, but, but I think that that's probably the biggest thing was just, I just, I couldn't really comprehend it. And then. once I started hiring more and more people, then that became, you know, a lot more clear about how you do it. And it's not perfect. You know, we, make adjustments and things all the time, but, but that's, that to me is the biggest one. Cause I've got an engineering background and you know, yeah, I've took maybe a couple of business classes, but that I didn't really have a business back.

Jordan Lally:48:04
No worries, man. I feel like that's every entrepreneur at heart. Like, excuse my French here, but you just figure it out as you go, you know? I feel like 100 % it's insane on my end as well. I've been doing this for half a decade, not too long, but when I first started it, I mean, I had no idea what I was doing, but through time, repetition, trial and error, you kind of get the hang of some things, you know? And maybe the biggest challenge isn't the workload, it's the unknowing.

Jeff Tormey:48:11
You do.

Jordan Lally:48:32
It's the daunting fear of, dude, I feel like there is so much I do not know, and I'm supposed to figure this out. How? You know, but kind of like climbing a mountain one step at a time until eventually I'm at the top of Mount Everest. I'm at the top of a mountain, maybe not Mount Everest, but I'm at, you know, I've gone pretty far and I have an amazing view. So thanks for that insight. Now, looking forward the next 12 or 24 months, what is something that SEO guru Atlanta is looking forward to?

Jeff Tormey:48:51
Right.

Jordan Lally:49:01
big projects or things in the pipeline.

Jeff Tormey:49:04
Well, one of the big ones that we're rolling out is a lot of our clients don't do a very good job with lead management. we're, you know, we're implementing go high level for a lot of them and kind of teaching them how to manage their lead flow a little bit better. Cause when we turn on something like, we really didn't talk about it at all, which is totally fine, but we run a lot of, Google ads and meta ads. And if you're running those kinds of ads, you want to be really responsive.

Right? So if you're running like a Facebook lead format or something, you want to make sure that you're responding to those people right away. And a lot of times, you know, that's just not the case. And people will be like, yeah, I'm not getting that many leads. Like, well, what about all these? And so it's just having them show up in their email doesn't seem to be enough because a lot of these guys, you know, they're, they're very, very busy. So they needed some way to have a repository.

And then also to have something that's going to help them out, right? Implement some AI, get some things where they can maybe get a, a call booked on their calendar automatically. I'd say that's one of the big things that we're doing this year for our clients.

Jordan Lally:50:21
That's amazing. I think all businesses need that. And back when I ran an ad agency, you know, a years ago, oh man, it was so interesting. Some of the clients, I feel like some clients when you run ads for them, a lead comes in, a client calls them once, man, this lead is horrible, Or it calls them once, they didn't answer. Oh, this lead is horrible, man. Like what kind of bogus leads you giving me, bro? I'm like, dude, like they're humans. Like they have a family. Like they're probably a husband with three kids at a soccer game.

Call them a couple of times, you know, like actually run a business. It's just funny. But I feel like as you get better, you can take on better clients. can push away the non-educated clients away, you know, but from your experience, have you ran into that issue and how do you approach that?

Jeff Tormey:51:08
the issue of the bad leads or pushing away clients that aren't a good fit.

Jordan Lally:51:11
Yeah, I tend to ask multiple questions in one go, huh? I thought that's a common theme. Let's go with the first one with the, guess people complain about lead quality.

Jeff Tormey:51:24
Um, yeah. So, so that definitely does happen. And, um, let me take a slightly different direction. One of the, things that was just, uh, so interesting for us last year is, uh, we started getting clients like these, these leads are bogus and we put all the leads in a Google sheet. They, they get populated automatically. And so we were on the Google sheet. Like these leads look totally legit, real names, real addresses, phone numbers. They have like.

Yeah, I want to have my basement finished or something. And then the guy would say, call them that the phone number is no good. The email bounces. And we're like, what? That's really weird. Cause we're of course used to the spam stuff, right? Been getting that for forever, but these look legit. And it was like, why would you even bother programming a bot to go fill out something like that? It just didn't seem to make any sense.

So sometimes, you know, you got to listen to your client and then we, we went, okay, what can we do about it? So one of the things that we implemented was a multi stage form and that got rid of a lot of that stuff. So we switched over to jot form for certain clients. And so they fill out, you know, name, email, phone number, then they hit next, and then it will ask them some additional questions. And then. that screened out a ton of those bots, but that was weird. That was really, really weird. And that happened to a number of clients last year. It's crazy.

Jordan Lally:52:55
Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting when people go through the form and they put bogus or fake information in there. It's like, why are you wasting your time going through this form? Like just to put in some fake information, you know, people are interesting. I think you just have to increase the qualification layers. I know within GHL. you can put two way, not two way authentication, but OTP, I think it's called for like a lead form where if they put in their phone number, it sends them a code. They have to put in the code in order to move on to the next step. I know that has worked well for not my clients in general, but just in the marketing space. Is job form kind of similar? Like you said, it's a two step. like first name, last name, and then the second page would be like additional information.

Jeff Tormey:53:46
Yeah, it's just additional information. we did try that phone number verification thing. I think that was a little too cumbersome. So we ditched that and just went to the, you know, on the second page, they had a select like, what are you interested in? Maybe have some radio buttons or a dropdown menu. What's your budget? Where are you in the process? just a few extra things that would just, that would defeat a lot of the bots. because it seemed to be bot driven. It just bizarre. It was, I know.

Jordan Lally:54:15
For sure, for sure.

Yeah, it's so weird. Well, I do appreciate the conversation. Where can they find you? Either personal brand or company locations.

Jeff Tormey:54:28
Best places SEO guru, Atlanta.com. I'm on LinkedIn. We have a Facebook page, but mostly we're on the website or LinkedIn.

Jordan Lally:54:32
So.

Jordan Lally:54:40
for sure. Any last comments you want to leave with the people?

Jeff Tormey:54:46
just, you know, be persistent. think that's, that's the key to success is determination and, being persistent. So, yeah, sometimes, sometimes stuff takes time. SEO does take time. but if you stick with it for a while, you can see really, really great results. I mean, just, something I meant to, to mention earlier is. is a couple of things that we are really proud of this last year is we had two clients get acquired by private equity. Because because we help them dominate the local market. And these are hard markets, right? Like HVAC Atlanta, right? And, and another one. So, you know, so just be persistent, find somebody that kind of aligns with, I think your, your company, your vision, your work ethic.

Jordan Lally:55:20
That's awesome.

Jeff Tormey:55:42
And then, you know, get a plan and stick to it. I think we, that's where we see, successes. Sometimes we'll see people who jump around from agency to agency. And those guys are just a train wreck. You can tell that the, that the company is not well run and all that stuff. So just be, just be persistent. I would say is the most important thing and pay attention, make sure you're getting what you're paid.

Jordan Lally:56:07
That's great advice. Thank you for that. Audience, was a pleasure having you guys listen in. Jeff, it was a pleasure speaking with you. We'll have to have you back on in like six to 12 months if you're up and to it. But with that being said, we'll talk to you guys soon. Really say something? Yes, sir. Bye, guys.

Jeff Tormey:56:20
All right, thanks, Jordan.