The importance of an SEO first developer mentality — Justin Abrams & Michael Rispoli // Cause of a Kind

About the speaker

Justin Abrams & Michael Rispoli

Cause of a Kind

- Cause of a Kind

SEO has become the digital nucleus around which websites are being developed. Far from being simply about search results, SEO work centers around accessibility, site performance, branding, and more. Increasingly, the gap between SEO work and frontend development is shrinking. Justin Abrams and Michael Rispoli from Cause of a Kind share how the two halves of marketing and programming are essential in helping websites stand apart from their competition. Justin Abrams @cuzzinjustin Justin has 10+ years in MarTech and FinTech & is co-owner of the digital agency, Cause of a Kind. He specializes in consumer experiences with SEO. He is also the Senior SEO Consultant for the most recognizable brands on the planet for BrightEdge, speaks publicly at SMX annually and can be found as a published industry advocate. Michael Rispoli @michael_rispoli Michael is a full stack engineer who specializes in web app dev with a passion for finding novel & creative ways to apply tech to business problems. Mike is the Lead Software Engineer at The Knot Worldwide, and resident writer for FaunaDB.

Show Notes

  • 01:25
    How Justin and Michael got into the SEO business
    Justin and Micael are childhood friends turned business partners. Careerwise, they both specialized in SAAS models,agency, and full stack development before co-founding Cause Of A Kind.
  • 02:51
    How Justin and Michael started to work together
    Justin is the SEO and Michael does the development. The journey into SEO started with them selling t-shirts and doing marketing and web development for non-profit organizations.
  • 04:25
    Bens entrepreneurship story
    Ben started out in entrepreneurship as a side hustle while he maintained a full-time job at eBay. From there he moved into consulting, which led him into the podcasts he hosts today.
  • 05:47
    The developer
    The developer-first SEO mentality has to do with bridging the gap between the human experience with SEO and utilising SEO best practices from a development-first perspective.
  • 07:27
    Web development from an SEO
    developers and SEOs need to work more closely together. Finding the balance between the hard data of SEO and the ambiguity of the SEO testing stage boils down to being able to measure results at every stage..
  • 09:58
    Experimentation versus measured results
    Figuring out the balance between experimenting and using measured results has to do with the type of business involved. Larger businesses like enterprises tend to be less agile or flexible than smaller companies in this respect.
  • 12:15
    Using market intelligence to influence development
    Regardless of the suite of tools youre using, its important to gather data from both the user or the demand perspective as well as on the KPI level. Both are integral to the next steps your development team will take towards ranking.
  • 14:30
    Catering for the algorithm versus people
    Forget the algorithm. Once you can please your audience with a better user experience, you will automatically please the algorithm as well. Googles updates are based on what the users want.
  • 17:20
    Communication between SEOs and developers
    Developers tend to prefer hard data over experimentation. But SEOs work with both. There needs to be clear communication between both teams for the success of the business as both perspectives can drive results.

Quotes

  • "Starting from zero is really hard. And also we had no real scale. Starting from zero is really hard. And also we had no real scale." - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • "There's a big challenge in the SEO community, which is to be able to gain a little bit of authority and partnership with the development side of any organization." - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • "In the continuum and the maturation of businesses towards digital centers of excellence are really trying to bridge the gap between that human experience and marketing capacity. " - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “SEO is assessing the largest audience that we have access to and trying to utilize SEO best practices from a development first perspective.” - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “The goal for us is to make sure that we are doing what is not only best for the search engine and the human and what achieves the business goal as successfully as possible.” - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “SEO has like two sides to it. In my mind, there's an extremely measured side...Then there's this whole other side of SEO. That's very ambiguous.” - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “It doesn't really help anyone to just make stuff up. So we try to be extremely measured about everything.” - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “We try to be more on that measurement side where we're like, if we can't prove it works, we want to think twice.” - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “Enterprise level brands can't be as prescriptive and pivot as easily as a small agency would be able to do from an agility perspective.” - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “It's critical to provide data back to authorities of use cases, remove the emotion from the conversation entirely. Use true data and market intelligence to help drive development decisions.” - Justin Abrams, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “We honestly don't think about the algorithm a lot.” - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

  • “Forget the algorithm. All the algorithm is doing is keeping up with the user trends.” - Michael Rispoli, Co-founder of Cause Of A Kind

About the speaker

Justin Abrams & Michael Rispoli

Cause of a Kind

- Cause of a Kind

SEO has become the digital nucleus around which websites are being developed. Far from being simply about search results, SEO work centers around accessibility, site performance, branding, and more. Increasingly, the gap between SEO work and frontend development is shrinking. Justin Abrams and Michael Rispoli from Cause of a Kind share how the two halves of marketing and programming are essential in helping websites stand apart from their competition. Justin Abrams @cuzzinjustin Justin has 10+ years in MarTech and FinTech & is co-owner of the digital agency, Cause of a Kind. He specializes in consumer experiences with SEO. He is also the Senior SEO Consultant for the most recognizable brands on the planet for BrightEdge, speaks publicly at SMX annually and can be found as a published industry advocate. Michael Rispoli @michael_rispoli Michael is a full stack engineer who specializes in web app dev with a passion for finding novel & creative ways to apply tech to business problems. Mike is the Lead Software Engineer at The Knot Worldwide, and resident writer for FaunaDB.

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