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John Jantsch (00:00.98)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Sam Dunning. He is the founder at Breaking B2B, an SEO firm and the host of podcast by the same name, Breaking B2B. So Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam Dunning (00:20.738)

Hey John, thanks for having me on man. Looking forward to the chat.

John Jantsch (00:23.822)

So I know that one of your promises, taglines, messages, whatever we want to call it, SEO for revenue, not vanity. So let’s start there. How do you define that distinction and how do you use that to sort of differentiate yourself from other SEO firms?

Sam Dunning (00:42.742)

Yeah, great place to start. So in short, it’s after going through the pain myself. It’s so before I got into SEO as a profession or ran my own consultancy or agency, kind of working with past agencies, teams, contractors, and also potential clients, prospects, and customers that come to us. So much of the time get frustrated as they’ve either tried to do SEO themselves.

hired contractors, hired teams or whoever it may be, but have focused on the wrong metrics or wrong outcomes. So they’ve fallen into what I call John the traffic trap, which is even more important in the world of AI as AI search, LLMs take over slowly beat at Google’s market share. They’ve fallen into something called the traffic trap. What does the traffic trap means? Well, it means they go for informational based keywords on Google search.

John Jantsch (01:38.48)

businesses.

Sam Dunning (01:39.734)

So think of things like simple searches, like what is a KPI, how to build a website, what is a CRM, stuff that’s easily answerable nowadays with things like AI overviews in Google, which show up as really high juicy traffic terms, but are not likely to result in conversions, AKA inbound leads, demo requests, booked calls, or whatever that main call to action your B2B company wants.

John Jantsch (01:50.49)

Yep.

Sam Dunning (02:07.092)

So they fall into that trap thinking we need to get traffic at all costs, but it’s not going to result in, or it’s very unlikely to result in a book called demo or conversion. Now I thought, well, that’s a waste of time, especially running, running a business myself. And I’m sure you’re the same John, like most marketing that we put, whether it’s our own resource or agencies or contractors want to result in actual kind of qualified leads or revenue. So we flipped that on its head. thought, how can we do the opposite of that?

and focus on what is a dream client actually searching for when they need our offer, when they have this very specific problem we solve or they’re comparing alternatives and how can we show up and start driving qualified inbound traffic for those terms.

John Jantsch (02:50.0)

Yeah, and I think one of the things, know, there are a lot of people that have enjoyed what looked like a lot of good organic traffic that are kind of freaking out because all of those information searches are going away or Google’s like hoarding them, right? And so a lot of people have seen real drops in traffic and they’re freaking out, right? But what you’re saying is that was garbage traffic anyway, wasn’t

Sam Dunning (03:03.566)

Mm.

Sam Dunning (03:10.978)

Yeah, now, now don’t get me wrong, top of funnel or informational based SEO isn’t completely dead. But if you’re doing a very light version of it, stuff that can be simply answered by an AI or LLM, then that probably is a waste of your time. And those prospects that are searching for that kind of stuff, like very simple what is or very simple how to terms are probably just going to land on your page, get the info and bounce off.

John Jantsch (03:35.93)

Yeah, yeah, I do. I do it dozens of times a day myself, right? You because I just want to figure out like, how do I make that thing work in this tool that I’m using? And I know I could find somebody who’s written about it, but I can’t even tell you what their website was or what it was about. So SEO really, with a lot of small business clients, is so misunderstood that it gets a really bad rap, you know, because a lot of people hire SEO people, they don’t know what they’re doing.

Sam Dunning (03:51.522)

Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

John Jantsch (04:04.804)

they’re getting some reports once a month that seem to say they’re ranking for something and ultimately they get really frustrated. And, so, you know, what is it that you think, the, the, the, true, like value-based, let’s put it that way. Cause there are a lot of scammers out there. The true sort of value-based SEO firm is, is going to be telling their clients today. that is kind of different.

different than smoke and mirrors that I think a lot of SEO folks have used to describe what they’re doing.

Sam Dunning (04:37.238)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’d say one of the first things is that SEO is not for every business. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, first and foremost, you have to be in a sector that actually has demand to capture. So you have to be in a known category and have folks, AKA your dream clients or prospects actively searching for your offer. Because if you’re trying to create some kind of new tool, new service, new offer, Google is, SEO is always best as a demand capture channel.

John Jantsch (04:43.216)

Hmm.

Sam Dunning (05:05.036)

So you need prospects in market searching for your offer. That’s the first thing. The second thing is you actually have to have resource to make it worthwhile. Whether that is your own cash, like you mentioned, they’re hiring a contractor agency, whoever it may be, that you can invest to actually give it a good amount of time to see success, or you need the resource in-house. Marketers that actually know what makes a solid SEO campaign.

know how to actually build a revenue driving SEO program, whether that is creating, doing solid keyword research around what your dream clients search or when they need the offer, building content that matches that intent that resonates with dream clients and is also following SEO best practices than the other elements of SEO, be it link building, technical SEO, et cetera. And you have to have the longevity to make it worthwhile. And you can, don’t get me wrong, you can see results with SEO done right as quick as 90 days, but

John Jantsch (05:56.613)

Yes.

Sam Dunning (06:03.762)

If you’re looking at it as a quick hit and you’re thinking, yeah, I’ll do this for a month. Then I might switch and do paid ads. Then I might do some social ads. Then I might try some outbound sales. Then I might do some review sites. Then it is a waste of your time. Do another channel that you can give a chance or stick to paid media.

John Jantsch (06:20.398)

Yeah. So what do you tell a client when, mean, because you, just told me something a lot of clients don’t want to hear, right? It’s like, no, I, you know, I, see my top three competitors are, know, on top of Google. How come I’m not? so, you know, how do you kind of set the expectation for that fact that it’s a long-term game? Because let’s face it, there have been SEO folks that I sound like I’m really negative SEO, but I’ve just seen too many small businesses get kind of burned by just not understanding it. And so not knowing what they’re even buying,

Sam Dunning (06:46.53)

Yeah, I get it.

John Jantsch (06:49.902)

So because a lot of SEO firms hide behind that, it’s a long-term game, it’s a long-term game, which just means you’re never gonna get results.

Sam Dunning (06:57.516)

Yeah, it’s that classic response, right? Like the client says, or the potential customer says, how long does SEO take agency says, six to 12 months, sign our 12 month retainer and we’ll be good. So what you said is correct in the sense that let’s face it. Most of us, whether we’re a B2B service company, tech company, software company, we have giant competitors, right? We’ve got the top three, the top four, the top five that always come up in sales conversations to an annoying level.

John Jantsch (07:06.298)

Right.

Sam Dunning (07:25.57)

And they’re probably, if we’ve not done SEO ranking above us for some of those core terms that we want to start driving leads for. Now, usually for those juicy terms, there’s quite often competitors owning those. So let me give you a tangible example. If let’s pretend we sold proposal software as a tool. We might want to own terms like best proposal software or best proposal tools, et cetera.

But those are gonna be extremely competitive. You’ve got massive software companies like Proposify, Quilla, PandaDoc, well-funded companies that have a ton of cash to spend on marketing and SEO. Now, how can we beat these companies? Because we’re probably not gonna get ranked for that keyword for years, realistically. Well, that’s when you need to do something called long tail SEO. And you need to, instead of thinking like we’re gonna rank for best proposal software in this instance, we might go for things like, we might pick niches that…

that are maybe underserved or that we’ve historically sold well into. So you might think, all right, short term, like the next three months or so, we’re gonna go for like proposal software for FinTech teams or for sales teams or for HR teams, or we’re gonna target competitors. Like we’re gonna go for Proposify alternatives or GetAccept alternatives, all that kind of stuff. there’s always quick wins you can grab with SEO, but it’s naturally knowing first and foremost, what niches you wanna target.

John Jantsch (08:28.464)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:43.14)

you

Sam Dunning (08:44.972)

what your prospects might be searching for and realizing that those really super competitive terms are going to be owned by the giants and that we have to chip away at the stuff they’re under serving.

John Jantsch (08:53.936)

Yeah. And I love that idea. You know, I have people come to me all the time and they’re starting a business and they’re like, should I choose a niche? And I’m like, well, my take is, mean, if you have a real reason, like you’re an expert in that and you’ve worked in it all your life. Otherwise, I think what happens is a lot of people choose niches they think are good. And, but, you know, then they’re like six months later having to start their business over again. but I’m always telling people you don’t have to choose a niche, but you should niche your marketing.

Sam Dunning (09:15.48)

Mm.

John Jantsch (09:21.412)

And that’s really what you’re talking about is that, you have campaigns that are like, say professional services is a category for you. Well, there’s 10 subcategories in there and you should be messaging to those 10 subcategories. And I’m hearing you say that that’s a, that’s a solid foundation for approaching SEO today.

Sam Dunning (09:42.122)

Exactly right exactly right. So I always say Like going back to marketing fundamentals like SEO Let’s ignore SEO for a second the main marketing fundamentals are have an offer But have an offer that serves a dream client that ideally has historically bought well into your service is in a niche that can easily Ford your offer Has the expensive problem you solve is motivated to solve it and has no issue spending cash on it

If you can get those lined up, that’s good, not just for SEO, but for marketing in general. So I have a very simple, I’m a simple guy. A lot of my strategies are straightforward when it comes to actually building out your SEO, like what keywords should we target? What type of content should we create? I recommend folks, whether it’s a founder, whether it’s your marketing leader, whoever in your organization makes sense. The very simple strategy for finding what I call money keywords, which in simple terms of commercial keywords that your dream clients will search for needing your offer.

Fire up a Google Sheet, fire up an Excel Sheet, split it into four main columns. Column one is what you actually call your offer. Going back to proposal software, that might be proposal software, proposal tools, proposal platform. Column two, what are those money niches that you’ve historically sold well that can have the problem you solve and motivate to solve it and can easily afford the offer? Could be, like you said, financial firms, accountancies, whatever those niches are. The third is what are those main competitors that always come up in sales calls? That’s column three. And the fourth is…

This is probably a framework you’ve talked about on the podcast. I’m sure jobs to be done. What are your dream clients jobs to be done? What are those struggling moments they face? Maybe they try to do something internally, like they cobbled together a solution on Google sheets or Excel, or maybe in the sales proposal world, like it would be like something like how to build a sales proposal within Google docs or how to, how to build out sales proposals that convert all that kind of stuff. Why do I build those four columns? Well,

John Jantsch (11:14.544)

Mm-hmm, true.

Sam Dunning (11:37.486)

It helps me build out long tail keywords that my dream clients were actually going to search for needing the offer. And if I get, if I’m, if I have a team, then I might involve my sales team. So they can actually come with me to say, look, these are competitors that come up. These are the niches that are doing well right now. Um, these are the common frustrations or our clients jobs to be done or struggling moments. And then we can have well-informed keyword research. That’s also going to fuel our content when we get to that stage.

that our target prospects are probably actually looking for when they need our offer.

John Jantsch (12:10.248)

So one of the things that if we could do a quick search and find 10 blog posts on people saying SEO is dying and AI is going to eat all SEO organic traffic. one of the things I’m hearing you say is, or at least that I’m seeing is, if you’re really focused on high demand, AI is not really returning results for somebody who is looking to hire

an accountant in their community right now, right? mean, if somebody who’s really doing that level of search, they’re not getting an AI overview for that, are they?

Sam Dunning (12:46.766)

Not so much not to say there aren’t it’s like right now from what we’re saying a lot of the AI Overviews and more for informational based searches Not always but quite a lot of time now. There’s there’s obviously two sides to the coin with your typical Google result now There’s sometimes an AI overview at the top Then you’ve got some a couple sponsored listings. Then you’ve got the organic results in between but that aside You’ve also got LLMs like chat GPT search perplexity, etc

John Jantsch (12:49.956)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Dunning (13:16.416)

Now, a lot of folks are saying stuff like, when I say a lot of folks, mean, random marketers on LinkedIn, et cetera, they like to make a lot of noise and saying stuff like Google search is dying and all this kind of stuff. the truth is that LLMs, whether that is chat, chat, GPT, perplexity, et cetera, are gaining chat. GPT is especially are gaining a bit more market share, but it’s nothing in comparison to Google. Google’s still growing and it still is by far the most searched engine. when it comes to those prospects.

John Jantsch (13:26.405)

Yes.

John Jantsch (13:44.752)

So what do we, just to put a number on that, 2, 3 % for the LLM?

Sam Dunning (13:50.67)

I can’t, I can’t remember what it’s last valued at, but Brian Fishkin has just done a report. So one of the, one of the well-known SEOs he’s just put out a report to show that I mean, Google is literally kind of a hundred X or so more compared to some of these LLMs. So what I’m saying is the thing to consider is if you have a more technical user, so if your end clients are more technical, they’re probably using more AI search. If not, they’re more of a layman.

They’re probably still using Google for now, but it’s more to be aware that AI is on the rise. We can certainly dive into some ways that you can rank on LLMs and chat to you between similar happy to dive into that. But I think that’s one thing to bear in mind. Most folks are still using Google when they have intent to review offers.

John Jantsch (14:36.848)

Yeah. Sometimes we forget about, you know, what our target market does. Like, do they read the newspaper? Do they, you know, it’s like, that’s what we need to pay attention to. Right. So, so, uh, instead of ranking on the LLMs, I’d let’s for a minute go into local search. Um, so a lot of, let’s say I’m a local home remodeler. Um, I mean, in, in this day and age search has really been, I mean, we can run ads and do things, but search has been a big driver of business, uh, for me, especially if I can get myself in that three pack.

Sam Dunning (14:50.211)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (15:05.776)

So how is local search going to be impacted?

Sam Dunning (15:10.614)

Yeah. I mean, to be blunt, I don’t do tons with local businesses. most exactly, exactly. So a lot of my clients are kind of more national, not necessarily serving, serving small end industries. Now, yeah, some of that, again, some of that, certain searches will, will be appearing in whether it’s Google AI overviews. So you get the quick review, and that sort of things. And I think more of it is understanding the crux of SEO in my opinion, at least.

John Jantsch (15:14.67)

Yeah, because B2B is more national, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Dunning (15:40.814)

is yes, you follow simple guidelines with technical. So for example, if you were, say, I don’t know, providing HVAC in a certain state of the U S so let’s say in New Jersey, those kinds of HVAC services in New Jersey, for example, if we actually want to typically what’s going to rank for that is probably a landing page. And the usual framework I like to follow for a landing page is problem. Are you facing this problem with whatever’s going on in your home? This is the impact of that problem.

We’ll agitate a bit and then this is the solution. This is how we’re well equipped to solve these issues, these bleedneck frustrations. And then you’ll probably show some examples of your offer. You’ll have some client testimonials and reviews might have an FAQ like what’s your pricing? How long does it take? What’s your refund policy? And you have a call to action to book a call. The crux of SEO is reviewing what’s ranking right now. In this case for our target search term, this offer in this location.

And how can I completely blow that page out of the water? How can I make my page more helpful, more useful, more educational, trustworthy and convincing to this dream client? And a lot of that comes down to customer research, like knowing what your prospects actually care about their jobs to be done in their end goals. Yes, you need basic technical SEO. So you need your focus keyword in the URL. You need it in the H1 in the MetaTitle description. And you might want some internal links on that page to other blog articles or other useful pages. But if you can follow that framework.

With local SEO, in most cases, you can actually outrank competitors without even worrying about backlinks. Cause a lot of these local websites, they’re not really doing a lot of SEO. They might have like a couple pages, like homepage, couple service pages, portfolio contact. If you can actually strategically build out what I call these money pages for like offer plus industry, offer plus location, and do that in a systematic way that’s custom research backed, then you can, you can probably start ranking quite nicely and pulling in some leads.

John Jantsch (17:14.412)

Yeah. Right.

John Jantsch (17:36.034)

You said one of my favorite words that you Brits say, HVAC. I love that term.

It’s a little different than the way us Americans pronounce it.

Sam Dunning (17:50.23)

It’s also niche isn’t it when Brits say niche and US says niche. I always get those two mixed up.

John Jantsch (17:51.788)

Yeah. Well, I have learned niche too. I rather prefer niche. So that’s one. I have a lot of Canadians that are clients and a couple of their words of process is one that as opposed to process that I love to harass them about. you went into a business, they said, Hey, Sam,

Sam Dunning (17:59.071)

Okay.

John Jantsch (18:16.506)

Come help us. We’re not ranking for anything. You know, they’ve got a decent business. They’ve got a decent product or offer. I mean, that’s not really the issue. Where do you start? I mean, what do you, how do you kind of start the process? And let’s say they’ve bought into, it’s going to be a six month process. Do you have a set? You know, here’s what we do first. Here’s what we do next. Here’s how we expand that.

Sam Dunning (18:37.678)

Yeah, yeah, so you start with what we briefly touched on earlier. So understanding the main offer, problems they solve, competitors, industries that they serve well, that have that expensive problem and motivated to fix it and have cash to easily invest in the offer. So you build out that Google sheet, formulating those offers, industries, jobs to be done and competitors, make those four main columns. And then from there,

John Jantsch (18:42.82)

Yep.

Sam Dunning (19:05.026)

We’re making our money long tail commercial keywords. So what service do you want to make at us, Or what offer?

John Jantsch (19:12.99)

you know, let’s do mine, marketing strategy.

Sam Dunning (19:16.182)

Okay, it’s quite a nice broad one. And do we want to serve like specific niches? Are we gonna?

John Jantsch (19:18.442)

Yeah, let’s go with home service businesses where we’re going to serve like remodeling contractors, roofers, landscapers.

Sam Dunning (19:26.23)

Yep, lovely, lovely. Yeah, yeah, so we could, if we wanted to drill down on those niches, some of our offerings might be, some of our money keywords might be like marketing services for landscaping or best marketing agency for landscapers and hitting some of those home niches. And then once we’ve kind of worked out, once we’ve exhausted what I call these long tail keywords, and then if we go to kind of…

That would be kind of some of the high commercial intent keywords. If we, if we went more jobs to be done, it might be how to rank higher as my home services business or why is my business not showing up on Google? Why is my landscape business not driving leads or why is my landscaping website not converting? Those might be some of the struggling moment searches.

John Jantsch (20:11.442)

So those were all questions, by the way, right?

Sam Dunning (20:15.116)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are things that probably come up on discovery calls. That’s how you pull those. So make an exhaustive list of that. Like I said, if you’re the founder, you’ll know a lot of these, but if you perhaps have a sales team, they can help you contribute to that. Then simplest way to actually build content that ranks is to just Google those keywords. So let’s say marketing agency for landscapers or best marketing agency for landscape or something like that. Google the keywords, see what the top three organic pages are.

John Jantsch (20:15.952)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (20:28.4)

Sure,

Sam Dunning (20:44.652)

what type of page they are. This is called addressing, assessing the intent. Is it a landing page, a blog article, a how-to, a product list, a comparison, whatever. Probably gonna be, I’d imagine a landing page for that type of keyword. It might be a top 10 comparison, like we reviewed the top marketing agencies in 2025 for landscapers. Probably one of the two. See what shows more in the organic search results. Let’s pretend it’s a landing page. I’d review the top.

John Jantsch (21:03.12)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Dunning (21:12.396)

three landing pages. So what’s ranking now of my competitors. I look for gaps in those pages. Usually landing pages are quite thin. This is our offer. There’s some testimonials. Here’s a to action. So I would do what we talked about earlier, problem agitation solution based on our knowledge of the industry or ourselves team’s knowledge. So start with the hero area, the top banner. This is the offer. Here’s a call to action. Here’s a book of cool calls to action. Are you facing these problems?

around your landscaping company, like struggling to drive leads for your website, competitors above you in organic search results or spending loads of cash on ads and not returning pipeline. Here’s exactly how we fix it. Here’s three video testimonials of customers we sold it for. Here’s our exact process from A to Z. Here’s some FAQs around our offer. Why are we more expensive than other marketing agencies? Do we have a proven process? Do we have a returns policy?

How quickly can I see results? All those FAQs from those kind of really tight objections you get on sales calls. And then yeah, follow the technical SEO basics. So the focus URL has the keywords. So yourdomain.com forward slash best landscaping marketing agency. Same for the H1, same for the meta title and description. So that’s what I call the blow out the water strategy, review what’s ranking, make your page more helpful, useful, educational, trustworthy.

John Jantsch (22:10.03)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Dunning (22:34.84)

Google rolled out a framework called EEAT, Experience Expertise Authority Trust a while back. And for more, I guess, for less competitive terms, that alone, doing that at scale in a systematic way, like saying, look, we’re gonna publish, we’re gonna build out and publish five to 10 pages each month, whatever’s realistic for your company, we’ll steadily get your rankings. When you get to more competitive terms, I don’t know, in the marketing agency world, like things like best marketing agency in the US or whatever it might be,

John Jantsch (22:37.626)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (22:52.624)

Yeah. Right.

Sam Dunning (23:03.886)

you’re gonna have tons of competitors. That’s when you’ll need the help of backlinks to build up your website’s authority. And there’s a bunch of ways to build links, happy to dive into, but that’s just a starting point that I’d recommend.

John Jantsch (23:07.918)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (23:17.348)

My favorite is guesting on podcasts, quite frankly, because we’re going to link back to your site, Sam, and we’re going to promote the heck out of this episode. so that to me is one of the best backlinks that you can get is going on people shows. Plus you get the exposure, you know, you might actually get a client because somebody listens to it. So that’s my favorite. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Dunning (23:36.79)

Yeah, it’s great. It is one of the best. I’d probably put that as number one or number two for sure. My other favorite is building partnerships, which again has more holistic business play. So this is finding partners that serve the same ICP, the same idle client profile as you, but are not direct competitors. So as a real example, I partner with a LinkedIn ads agency, Impactable. They serve just like me, B2B service and B2B SaaS clients, but they’re not going after SEO clients because they don’t offer it. So.

John Jantsch (23:44.911)

Right.

Sam Dunning (24:05.518)

I approached their founder guy called Justin a while back and I’m a big fan, John of weird, painfully short messages if I’m trying to get stuff done. So I probably sent you one. I find the founder or the marketing leader on LinkedIn. I’ll say something like, Hey Justin had a weird idea to scale your organic traffic and in bounds you against a conversation. He’ll probably connect with me on LinkedIn or whatever channel I outreach email, whatever, and say, Sam, what are you on about? But let’s hear what you’ve got to say. Then I’ll shoot him like a loom video.

John Jantsch (24:30.084)

Yeah.

Sam Dunning (24:33.006)

and just say, look, I’ve got an idea. In this case, partnership play. The small step initially I might offer is I’ll write out a guest blog article for you that will be really useful to your audience. And in return, I just want to link back. And then they might do that and that might grow into, okay, let’s do a podcast together. Okay, let’s do some more content together. All right, let’s start presenting business each other’s way. So it’s gone from just a small SEO play to like reciprocal business. Just like your podcast is kind of has so much more play to it than just SEO.

John Jantsch (25:00.878)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Sam, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the duct tape marketing podcast, where would you invite people to connect with you find out more about your work?

Sam Dunning (25:09.942)

I really appreciate it. Three, three main ways. Really one is LinkedIn. I post ramblings on SEO each and every day. The second is the Breaking B2B podcast where we interview just like this marketing leaders as well as solo episodes on SEO and what’s working on marketing today. Or the third is if you’re tired of seeing competitors above you and organic search results, stealing traffic inbound leads and more, then we might be able to fix it with our unusual approach to SEO. It’s BreakingB2B.com. Happy to chat.

John Jantsch (25:37.584)

Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Sam Dunning (25:43.022)

Cheers, man. Thank you.