Does SEO Work In 2024: Secrets To Grow Your Audience Engagement

SEO is Not a One-Time Task It’s a Journey

SEO is about ranking on Google for the keywords that matter to your business. It’s not something you can just “do” once and expect immediate results—just like you can’t “do” weight loss overnight. You have to change your diet, hit the gym, and stay consistent. Over the past ten months, I’ve lost 51 pounds, and I couldn’t have hired someone to do that for me. SEO works the same way—you can’t outsource the commitment. It’s a process that takes time and effort.

You’re the expert—you run your own home service business. You know your clients, you have the stories, and you understand the community you serve. You can hire help—editors, web developers, marketers—to get your message out there. But no one else can bring the core elements that make your business what it is. It doesn’t need to be unique—you are the one who makes it stand out.

Consider this: you can’t hire someone to be a husband to your wife—that’s your role. In the same way, you can’t hire someone to replicate your genuine experiences and relationships. For example, if you’re a plumber, you can only tell real stories about solving customers‘ plumbing emergencies. If you’re a landscaper, only you can show the before-and-after transformations you’ve made for clients.

Your relationships and reputation in the community are vital. Only you can engage with your customers, respond to reviews, and be active in local events. These relationships build trust and authority, which are key components of SEO.

Imagine SEO as cooking your favorite dish. You provide the ingredients—your expertise, content, and relationships. A professional (like a chef) can use those ingredients to prepare a fantastic meal. They can help with the technical aspects, like optimizing your website or managing ad campaigns. But without quality ingredients, even the best chef can’t create a masterpiece.

People think of SEO as something you can purchase with one click, like ordering from Amazon with next-day shipping. It doesn’t work like that. SEO is a process that involves consistent effort and contribution from you. It’s about building your brand, sharing your knowledge, and connecting with your audience.

Marketing “Experts” Get It Wrong—The Core Message Stays the Same Across Channels

These so-called marketing experts keep claiming that every channel needs different content, but that’s not true. I’ve been saying the same thing for over 20 years, and almost nothing has changed. Now, TikTok is the latest trend, just like Facebook was back in the day. People are talking about TikTok the same way they used to about Facebook, saying it’s just for young adults girls showing off their Bikini’s.

But here’s the reality—everything just repeats. Every day, it’s the same cycle: a new tool, a new platform, but it’s the same old circus with different clowns. I’m a fan of sticking with what works and continuing to do that.

Platforms Change Strategies Don’t—Stick to What Works

Sure, YouTube’s growing, TikTok’s hot, and people keep saying Facebook is dying, but then Facebook’s stock skyrockets because of their growth announcement. I don’t care about any of that.

The relationships you build, the content you create, and where you publish it matter. The platforms might change, but that’s just a tactical shift. We’re still building relationships at the core, and our strategy stays the same.

Take my buddy Jeff Lambert, who runs Greasy’s Garage. He sells soap for people working on cars and donates a flag for every product sold. His stories about the cars he’s working on and the products he uses don’t change.

I have no idea how he restores those rusted old cars, turning them into something pristine—but that will never change. His tactics might evolve, and maybe five years from now, he’ll adopt new methods, but his core approach will remain the same.

If your strategy is solid, that’s what defines you. Marketing is just there to amplify that. Whether it’s making a quick video about restoring an old Ford, having lunch with a friend, or sharing a story about his dad, those stories will always matter. The rest is just noise.

People often mix their stories, goals, content, and targeting—like trying to mix oil and water. They get overwhelmed by strategies involving technical AI tools, SEO, and other complex tactics that seem like mysterious witchcraft.

Exposing the SEO “Voodoo”—It’s Not as Complicated as They Make It Seem

“SEO experts” who sell tools and services want you to believe that you need to hire them because they are experts, and that you and I could never understand this “voodoo.” I’ve been exposing these claims by doing SEO audits, examining people’s ad campaigns, and reviewing what has been done. Auditing their SEO is something we can do in 10 seconds.

Yesterday, I visited a friend, Andy Aranda, who owns Pure Plumbing, a plumbing company. I went straight from the airport to his place without even going home to shower. He had been paying some agency a hundred thousand dollars a month for doing all this “magical” stuff. And this guy is an actual plumber.

He fixes drains, pipes, toilets, and the like. He thinks he knows nothing about SEO, but his relationships and his technicians who travel in vans collect stories.

That’s the kind of expertise that an SEO professional doesn’t have because they lack experience in fixing HVAC and plumbing. This is where the fundamental confusion comes from: as an entrepreneur, you have that expertise, you have that knowledge, you have those customers. Someone can help you gather and edit the content, but no one can “do” SEO.

No one ethically sells SEO. I’ve been saying this for 30 years.

Here’s where these SEO people go wrong, and this is where you, as a home service business or pest control company, can spot the fakery. If they’re doing stuff for the search engines and not for the users, it’s likely a scam. However, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work because you can generate a number of fake links.

You can generate citations. You can set up GMBs in areas where you don’t actually operate or have an office or what’s called a storefront. Yes, those things actually do work for a little while until you get suspended, and once you get suspended, it’s very hard to get back in. So if anyone claims to be helping you with your SEO, are they doing things that actually create a better user experience for your customers? We could look at a website and see a bunch of stock art. Let’s replace that with actual pictures of you spraying homes in Austin, Texas, or whatever. Then, yeah, that’s actually helpful. That actually does create a better user experience. Let’s have your location service pages include more information about the city, the jobs that you’ve done, or whatever.

Yeah, that’s actually helpful. But if it’s not doing things for the users, if it looks like they’re all, “Oh, we’re going to change your metadata and title tags and all this kind of stuff.” No, Google doesn’t even care. Google even made an announcement a couple of weeks ago saying, “Yeah, your title tags don’t matter as much as you think they do.”

A Dollar a Day and SEO

Dollar a Day is basically an amplifier. If something’s working well, then you’re letting the algorithm find other people who would enjoy your content and buy your products and services. That’s fundamentally what Dollar a Day is.

Letting the algorithm do the work for you if you already have something that’s working.

The algorithm is moving towards short videos that are in the 22-second range. Up to a minute, YouTube, we can go a lot longer, but even YouTube Shorts is the same thing. It’s just their version. If Google’s trying to build a social network that is short-form video content, like an Instagram Reel or a TikTok, any of this talk, like I get hit up 10 times a day from other people saying, “Hey, the algorithm just changed on Facebook.”

Or this one thing happened on Twitter. That’s all noise. If you focus on what matters, we have this concept we call The Content Factory.

You should focus on the first stage, where you’re creating content based on relationships and credibility.

You’re clearly showing that you’re a legit person and that you deliver good quality. Everything else is just checking boxes and pressing buttons—tasks that a Pakistani virtual assistant can do for $500 a month if you have established the essentials in the first stage.

People who create content for a living are a little biased because they think you should create content for a living. I would never want to make it as a content creator. Here’s something you might look at me and say, “Dennis, you’re creating so much content every day. I see you’re in another city and all this and that.”

You know what? My most popular content was from over 10 years ago, but it’s being repurposed. Why? Because when I’m talking about what it’s like working with clients or helping young adults start their agencies, it’s the same thing. The principles are the same. They haven’t changed.

I mean, have the rat traps really changed in the last 10 years? No. The same story of Sally, and she’s got spiders here, the wasp nest, or whatever like that. Those stories are always the same. So you can retell, repost, and repurpose that same content over and over again.

Do Paid Ads Affect SEO?

When Google sees that people are actually engaging with your content on your site, on YouTube, or in other places, it improves the search signal. It’s not just about sending a bunch of traffic but providing content that’s actually helpful.

If you run paid ads to get people to your website, and that shows Google that there are more people on your website having a good experience because they’re learning about rats, bugs, moths, and whatever else, that will help you.

Google says it doesn’t matter because what they care about is the user actually getting their question answered. Now, if you send low-quality traffic because you hire a crappy ad agency and visitors leave your website immediately—which is called a bounce—and they go back to the search results to click on something else, that will actually hurt you.

So, I’m not saying ads will always help you. However, if the ads are relevant and helpful and people actually engage with your videos and social posts, then they will help.

How Relationships and AI Affect SEO

The core of our businesses is what we truly believe in. That’s reflected in content and relationships.

This was true before the internet even started, and this is what we’re doing now. I could send you socks and the whole thing that’s in your sock drawer. That’s an idea that predates the internet. We just happen to have a lot of internet tools that help us process this fast. Drew, we have an army of 500 virtual assistants.

But it’s not because of the technology, it’s because you getting a pair of socks with your face is me saying, I care about you. It’s not a gimmick.

So it was my birthday three days ago, and I turned 49 and got hundreds of people posting happy birthday, Dennis, and blah, blah, blah, which is great, and everyone gets inundated. Usually, the rule of thumb is that 10 percent of your friend base will do that. If you have 2000 friends, you’ll probably get 200 people wishing you a happy birthday.

And just for fun, I changed my birthday on Facebook. It’s like people change their things, from marriage to whatever. It’s just a status on any social network. You can say whatever you want.

But when that date came around, hundreds of people wished me happy birthday. My actual birthday is October 6th. It showed me that most people were doing it mindlessly because it’s an easy way to check a box and show that you care.

We had my birthday dinner last night at a Brazilian barbecue where I sliced the meat with the people who genuinely cared.

We had an intimate dinner, and these are real friends—not Facebook friends, but real friends of mine, genuine friends who texted me, and real friends who called me.

In the age of social media, where everything’s so fake, especially now with all this AI-generated stuff, people long for real. Real is like me sending you a pair of socks, or us having dinner together, or us spending quality time together. I fly around so much because I want to meet people in person.

My mentor, 30 years ago, was the CEO of American Airlines, and this was right when the internet started. And he asked me to build the website because he had the vision to think, you know what, even though he’s an old man, he sees that the internet’s going now. Of course today it sounds ridiculous because of course, the internet’s a big deal, but back then you and I remember that people weren’t really sure what this thing was like, why are you dialling up?

Like you’re interrupting. I’m trying to make a phone call. And then you went on the internet, and I said, yeah, but isn’t that going to hurt the airline? Because now all these people can have phone calls or video conferencing or on Zoom, they won’t want to fly anymore. So we’re in trouble as the airline.

And he said no. The internet will help us because when your friend takes that trip to Rome and takes a picture in front of the Coliseum or something, their friends want to visit. And when you build relationships, you want to visit.

So my buddy Munawar Abadullah runs a real estate company. He’s one of the most prominent players in real estate. I’ve known him forever, and we met in person. I’m flying to Dubai to see him in person, even though we were just on a Zoom call yesterday. People think the internet is some shortcut or social media because I have a million followers on Facebook, but that doesn’t count.

What counts are the actual relationships. The most successful people meet people in person, and then they engage; they continue the relationship digitally. The noobs, the amateurs, meet people on social media and hope to meet them in person eventually, but the most successful people do it the other way.

And so I view social media back to the key point as an extension of what you already have. You’re multiplying the relationships and content you already have.

It’s literally that simple. So, this conversation can feel a little esoteric, have a personal branding issue, or whatever, because people are looking for this technical shortcut. But what we’re talking about here is these relationships and these moments; these are the actual ingredients.

If you have them, then all the techniques we teach—like making one-minute videos demonstrating your relationships, what you do, and your expertise—and using Dollar a Day to amplify those videos across Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms all become easy. And then it brings in more of the right people.

Because they see your knowledge, they see your relationships. This builds trust, which drives sales. It’s not because you’re a really good copywriter or because you’re optimizing the landing page to have a green button instead of a red button. It’s not because of any of those things. It’s not because of all these technical tweaks.

I switched my CRM to HubSpot, away from whatever. It’s not that; it’s always back to the core ingredients. Ironically, the influx of all these cool AI tools has made it even more important to have those good ingredients.

Last year, I interviewed the top people in AI. Do you know what they said? Because I said, like, where’s AI going and what’s the future and all that? Ironically, they said success is going to those people who are the most human. If you have the necessary ingredients, AI is a multiplier.

Just like any time there’s a shift in the economy, the rich get richer, right? And this is the same thing. AI is not a democratizing thing where anybody can use AI, which is true, as anybody can build a website. Anybody can use ChatGPT. It’s free, but the already successful people will become more successful because AI multiplies what you already have.

It starts with the ingredients of the actual relationships you have.

So the people who are most successful in SEO are the same ones who are successful in AI and the same ones who are successful in social media.

Consider my recent interaction with ChatGPT, where I sought its insights ahead of this podcast session with Richard Kaufman. I asked ChatGPT last night… “I’m going to be spending time with Richard Kaufman, and we’re going to… what do you know about Richard Kaufman, and what do you know about me, and what do you think are good things that we should talk about?”

So I’m not asking you to generate content using AI, which is what everyone else is doing. There’s nothing wrong with generating content, but I’m using these AI tools more for advisory purposes, such as saying, “Okay, we’ll talk about this and this, but what angles do you think I’m missing? Or where do you think people might get confused?”

And it’ll make a recommendation. Then I’ll say, “Okay, explain why you chose number three there.” So I’m asking about this thinking intelligence called active listening or empathy. And so that’s the key to digital and SEO now because the AIs are so smart, they can beat you in chess, they can auto-generate anything, they make stuff so real-looking, you can’t even tell if it’s me or the actual celebrity who’s singing or if Donald Trump said it or not, you don’t know, right?

So, the true use of AI by successful people is using it to help them think better. And so this conversation, it’s not a magic prompt. If I say the five magic words to the AI, it will unlock the universe for me. No, it says something, and then you thoughtfully reply, saying, “That’s cool. But what if we made it this way? And why did you say that? Why’d you recommend what you did? And no, I don’t really like what you said there. I think that’s too flowery. Can you make it more like the way I would say it?”

I believe if you’re an entrepreneur, a veteran, or whatnot, you’ve got a lot of stories. If I Google your name and I don’t see you have a website and I don’t see you have a YouTube, Twitter, and all that kind of stuff, then you’re already lost as far as I’m concerned when it comes to being an entrepreneur trying to sell products and services.

It’s pretty close for me, though. If you say, “Hey, pretend you’re Dennis Yu. I will ask you a series of questions.”

The answers will be close because it knows it has seen and read hundreds of articles, videos, books, and things I’ve written. But if it doesn’t know who you are, you say, “Okay, I’m going to paste in a few transcripts or a few pieces of content for me and my bio so that you can know who I am. I’m Richard Kaufman. Now I want you to be able to answer like Richard Kaufman,” and it will.

So in that case, you’re not prompting it. I’m saying you’re not giving it proper context. So, it can definitely be written in anyone’s voice or style.

If it doesn’t know who you are, you have to paste in some items saying, “Here, let me show you my style. Let me show you what I am talking about. Let me show you what it is, and it’s based on the ingredients.” It can’t generate what you want if you don’t put in the right ingredients.

So, if you ask it, “Hey, I’m writing a book about this topic, and I’m generating an outline. Now, generate the chapters.”

It’ll do all of that, but it doesn’t know your tone. It doesn’t have the context. It doesn’t know what you are talking about. It doesn’t have your stories. For example, I upload photos and videos of myself. I’ve uploaded, I think, 40,000 pictures and videos to a couple of different AIs, such as Amazon, Google, and Apple, which have their AI they’re working on.

I’m doing that to all these other places because I want them to know what I think about and my mission. I’m here to create a million jobs, right? Certifications through digital marketing. So, the AI knows about that. Ask the AI, “Why is Dennis Yu trying to create a million jobs? What’s that all about?” and it’ll answer you.

But my friends, who are successful entrepreneurs, are succeeding with AI and whatever. They succeed on day one because they already know how to talk empathetically. So, I find if you’re a good podcast host, you’re also going to be good at talking to ChatGPT for the same reason.

It’s not the kind of thing where you have to put in a ton of reps. Like, I get that, like going to the gym or learning a new skill, at first, you suck and all, like I get that analogy. I think with ChatGPT, you can win immediately if you have the ability to practice active listening, which is thoughtfully replying and giving context along the way. Like a great podcast host, you are always asking thoughtful follow-up questions based on what the other guy just said.

If you want to sell more, uplift the people in your network. Talk about them. If you’re a douchbag and talk about yourself all day long, people will know that you’re obviously trying to sell. People don’t like to be sold to, but they love to buy.

And this shows that when someone’s interested in you, you will be interested in them. I got called twice at the airport yesterday in Curacao, Bogota, or whatever. And it was some sales guy who went on and on about his company and how he would help me and whatnot.

And I said, “You haven’t even spent three or one minute researching our company. You haven’t even shown interest in what we do. Cause you’re so busy trying to drive a sale of your software or selling us whatever thing you’re trying to sell us.” This is a huge turnoff, I think, for most people.

It’s ironic if you’re actually interested in driving sales. Of course, I want to drive sales but show that you’re interested first, and then people will love to give you money.

It’s not because I have a great technique in manipulating people into how to close them and saying the right phrases to create fear and uncertainty, so they buy now. Think of it more as we’re emergency room surgeons. People are coming into the hospital. They’re bleeding, and I don’t need to tell them they’re in pain.

They want help, but they want help from someone who cares about their situation instead of selling everyone the same surgery. Imagine you came to the emergency room, and I said, “I don’t really care what condition you have, but right now, we’re selling liver transplants for half off.” What do you say?

So when we are consultative sellers and experts, we care first.

So, I’m constantly elevating other people that I really like. And guess what? I get more of the same thing. So Liana Ling and I had dinner and hung out in different places. And I love talking about how awesome she is.

Meanwhile, when I do that, guess what she’s talking about? She’s saying “I joined Dennis’s dollar-a-day coaching program, and it has changed my life.” And other people have been signing up just this week. I got three people signing up because Leanna made some posts about it.

Did I give her a commission? Zero. Did I tell her to do it? Never.

And if I ask you for a testimonial with this scummy feel, it’s not a testimonial. You are forced to say these words, and people can tell.

The Power of Providing Value and Elevating Others

I always have to look at the credibility of the people giving the advice. Do they actually practice what they preach? What is it that you do? Is it a service? Is it a product that you have? Maybe you have an idea. That’s great. But where have you actually created some kind of value where you have someone who’s paying money for that?

Can you do that repeatedly? Can you do that for 10 people who are willing to pay you? Can you do it for thousands of people? And what’s the bottleneck there? Is it manufacturing? Do you need a loan for equipment? Do you need to hire people? What is bottlenecking you from creating more value?

Yeah. It’s all about creating more value. When you create more value and people are happy, that signals that you need to start marketing because then you’re making one-minute videos about something legitimate, not some idea you had. You’re actually elevating your customers’ success and talking about their story.

You start a podcast to interview these customers and turn it into a book. That’s where my TikTok book came from. It consists of interviews with the top people who are the most successful on TikTok.

And all your marketing comes from interviewing and uplifting your customers. And you never talk about what you do. It’s like a fight club thing.

You just talk about them. And when they feel like it, they’re going to talk about you. And when they do talk about you, it comes off so authentically, so powerfully. You can never get that in some of these forced confessions that you can tell that’s not real.

So I put all this stuff out here because I want people like you to implement Dollar a Day and see for themselves. 

I also promote a lot of companies and products that I have no ownership of, like Kaqun oxygen water. I drink a bottle of it every day. I’ve researched it. I put flavoring in it because I don’t like the taste of water by itself. I’m not being paid. I have no ownership, but I talk about it because I believe in it.

I’ve seen the impact on my body, and I’m younger. I’m 49. I have more energy than 20-year-olds.

You might even pay money to buy a T-shirt to advertise for them.

What do you think Nike does? People are spending money so they can have the Nike logo here or a polo or whatever. That’s, I think, fashion is like the ultimate there. People believe in it so much. They pay money to advertise.

Boosting Posts for Better Engagements and SEO

Boosting a post is that blue button you see when you make a post. If you go to your profile, click on the three dots, and scroll down, you can turn on professional mode. This mode is relatively new and now allows you to boost posts on your profile. This wasn’t possible before.

You can create any kind of post—about your product or service, or honoring a customer. Ideally, a one-minute video performs better than other types of content. Now you can boost it too. Choose the default option to target people similar to your audience.

The system will start to learn if you don’t have much traction or if your Facebook is mainly like friends and family and your business is like this other thing that you’re just starting, then it takes a little bit of time to learn. But people who are engaging on that content and watching the video all the way through are a pretty good signal to Facebook that it’s relevant content.

And that person who decided to stay and watch for a minute—they’re clearly interested. They didn’t just accidentally scroll by. They stayed, and they were paying attention. Facebook can use that engagement as a signal to find other people who are like those other people. So you don’t have to go into this crazy kind of targeting anymore, which is what we did ten-plus years ago.

Now it’s not necessary because the engagement is what your content drives, which then drives the targeting. So the targeting is embedded in the content itself. When you find a winner, you just put in more money, $5 a day, $10 a day, up until the limit. If you’re a local business, then there’s a limit to how many people live in a particular city.

But driving for engagement is the first step in determining when your content works. Suppose people are paying attention instead of just scrolling past you. In that case, that’s a sign that you can then repurpose, meaning recombine other things that you have to create, into an ad that generates a lead, a phone call, a sale, people coming into your store, or whatever the next stage is that you’re trying to get them to do.

So, the ads manager has all these different objectives at different parts of the funnel, and yes, it’s more powerful, but you don’t always need the full Caterpillar bulldozer when sometimes you just need a little garden trowel. 

If you understand the idea of testing, boosting posts is what the pros do if you have great content. Facebook even admitted this to me. I’ve had meetings over there in Menlo Park, and we’ve been eating their barbecue.

They said the reason they don’t promote the Boost Post button is that most people are constantly just self-promoting and not making authentic videos that tell stories. So if you boost that kind of content, it won’t perform well. It’s not because Facebook’s trying to take your money; it’s because the content isn’t engaging.

They have to feel something. The key is that emotional connection and videos are the best way to do that. That’s why people watch movies instead of reading books. So when you have that winner, you continue to let that run for a Dollar a Day. Most people spend 90 percent of their time trying to create more content.

And they don’t even go back and optimize. Spend 90 percent of your time getting more out of something winning and only 10 percent making new content. It’s a quality-over-quantity thing.

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