Another great interview with someone from the St. Louis AMA!
Today we have Zane Creek, an expert on SEO!
About Zane:
Midwest-born and based in St. Louis, Zane is an associate-level, full-stack marketer currently working as an SEO consultant. He returned to St. Louis 2 years ago, following a 2-year stay in Germany, living and working as a junior US ambassador and eCommerce manager/international marketing coordinator. Specializing in traditional, local, and AI SEO with a background in web development, ecommerce advertising, marketing management, and data analysis, he has a strong interest in business process automation and marketing data analysis. Alongside his full-time work, Zane consults independently, building and optimizing websites and producing video projects.
Zane’s plug: https://www.wearetg.com/
Resources Zane mentioned and Sent:
Foundational Info: – https://developers.google.com/search/docs – https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-pro-seo-course/
Ongoing Study: – https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7237806463128125440/ – https://seonews.pro/ (RSS feed) from leading industry blogs
Tools: – https://search.google.com/search-console/about / https://www.bing.com/webmasters/about?from=tools – https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/ – https://www.link-assistant.com/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
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And the next best way is to share!
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Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
Sean Jordan (00:08)
Hey, this is Sean and St. Louis and welcome to the marketing gateway and as always we have such an amazing interview for you today. I really, really loved talking to Zane Creek who you’re going to get to meet in a moment and Zane is an SEO specialist and I’m going to talk about this in the show, but I met him last year and he left a big impression on me. So I’m so glad to be able to have him on. He is at the Timberman group and he’ll show you he’s got a shirt on where he’s going to get a remind us of that a few times because.
He’s really proud of what he does there. And I didn’t know until I was doing the interview that he and I went to the same high school. So that’s really cool because I grew up in the Metro East and I never get to ask the St. Louis question, which is where did you go to high school? So you get to ask it in this interview. Really excited. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this one because Zane is full of marketing knowledge. He’s going to tell us all about SEO and help us to understand what it is. But I’ll tell you also that he got to live in Germany for a while and work there. He is a
full stack marketer. He’s currently thinking about SEO every day and he’s going to even provide us with some resources that are in the show notes that you can use to learn more about it yourself. And beyond that, he also has marketing resources that he’s built that are also in the show notes. So again, you’re going to love this interview. Enjoy.
Sean Jordan (01:24)
Well, welcome back to the Marketing Gateway. I’m Sean in St. Louis and I’ve got with me Zane Creek. And Zane, I met you last year at the AMA ⁓ conference that we had at Webster University. And ⁓ I remember being super impressed with you. And let me just say why, ⁓ because you reminded me of myself when I was in college, because you were such a go-getter. You were there to meet people and you were talking about these marketing resources that you built. And you just came off as somebody who was
Zane Creek (01:45)
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (01:52)
really, really interested in not just landing a job, but really pursuing and advancing the craft of marketing. So I was so glad to meet you then and I told you at some point we’d have to connect and here we are. Thanks for being on.
Zane Creek (02:04)
Yeah, no, I
appreciate that. Absolutely. Yeah. Appreciate that, Sean. I was so glad to hear from you because I felt the exact same way when I met you at the conference. And so, yeah, it was, I was pleased to be able to reconnect with you and join you here to talk a little bit.
Sean Jordan (02:17)
Well, fantastic. Well, it’s always good when there’s mutual admiration. And ⁓ I like to begin by asking every guest to tell me something surprising that I don’t know. So here you go. Tell me something surprising.
Zane Creek (02:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, I was thinking about it because I touched on the fact that I’ve gone to Germany and so that’s a big deal. But another big thing that is a surprise to you as well is I’m an identical twin. And so there’s a copy of me out there in the wild world. And it’s just interesting because it uniquely conditioned me in my understanding of the world where I am competitive enough that I want to win, but not at the cost of
Sean Jordan (02:40)
wow.
Zane Creek (02:57)
people around me losing. Like I always grew up wanting my twin and I to win as much, like the same. So anywhere I’m at, like I want to make sure everybody around me is winning as much as I do. And I just find that kind of unique.
Sean Jordan (03:09)
That is fantastic. And here’s something surprising about me. My wife is a quadruplet. Now, not identical, thank goodness. But she is actually a quadruplet. she’s probably, if she hears me, she’s probably going to be annoyed that I’m giving the secret away. But ⁓ it’s always interesting at family gatherings. I am not ever gonna play apples to apples with them again, because they have their own like secret language that they use.
Zane Creek (03:15)
A quadruplet? Wow! Wow.
Ha ha ha.
Yeah, it’s not fair.
Sean Jordan (03:35)
you just can’t win because they all pass cards to each other
Zane Creek (03:35)
Yeah. No.
Sean Jordan (03:37)
that I know the other is going to get the other person but yeah, the I never really been around folks that had had, you know, multiple, you know, twins, triplet or quadruplet before and then I’m at her and get taught me a lot.
Zane Creek (03:41)
Okay.
That’s
whole different world. just, I mean, it dictates the way that you see the world around you. So it’s just, I mean, everybody has different situations too, whether you have siblings, no siblings or not. But nonetheless, I’m going to have to, man, that’s very interesting because I’ve only known a handful of quadruplets as well. And that’s next level. So that’s very cool.
Sean Jordan (04:10)
In fact, the first time that she told me that it was like before we were dating, I kind of was like, yeah, right. Sure. And she’s like, No, I can get a newspaper article and prove it to you because they put it in the newspaper. Yeah, it really was. Well. ⁓ So she she was not born in St. Louis. He can’t look that up here in St. Louis. And I actually I was a transplant here, too. I moved here when I was a kid because of the military. We moved to the Air Force base and we just kind of wound up here. But, you know, we’re talking about the St. Louis area.
Zane Creek (04:17)
Sure, yeah.
It’s a big deal, yeah.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (04:37)
and tell me a little bit about how you came to live and work in the St. Louis area.
Zane Creek (04:42)
Yeah, actually funny enough, the same. So I was born in Peoria, Illinois, was born to an Air Force family, moved around to a couple of different places and landed in O’Fallon, Illinois for Scott Air Force Base. And then I ended up studying international business and German studies at UMSL, so the University of Missouri, St. Louis. And then my main goal was actually to go to Germany and just really leave the USA to be honest. And so I succeeded in that.
And from 2021 to 2023, I was a junior US ambassador for the United States and worked and studied in Germany, after which I got a job there and stayed there and worked in e-commerce. And then for a lot of reasons, mostly, you know, family, friends, native culture, all the classics. I came back to the US in 2023, I suppose. And St. Louis is just what I knew. It’s what I grew up around, it’s where I studied. I could go other places, but I came back to the USA to be on
in my stomping grounds, you know, to be around familiar territory. So I just came back to St. Louis. I’ve been back here about just just around two years now. And I’m finally like actually feeling settled back in. So it’s nice to be back home.
Sean Jordan (05:51)
I never get to ask this question because I grew up in the Metro East. What high school did you go to? Did you go to O’Fallon? I did too. I did too. We’re both Panthers. That’s crazy. And my girlfriend in high school, not my wife, someone else, lived in Germany because the Air Force moves people back and forth to Germany quite a bit. And we were in grade school, and she moved to Germany, and then she came back and we were dating in high school.
Zane Creek (05:55)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, Final Township High School. Did you? Very cool. Yeah, go Panthers. Very cool. Yeah.
Right, yeah, I got that question, lad.
Very cool. Man, what are the odds? We have a lot more in common than I imagined. Very nice.
Sean Jordan (06:20)
That’s that’s pretty
crazy. Well, what is something about Saint Louis that you wish people knew you’ve been all over the world? So I’m sure you’ve got some reflections on what this community has to offer.
Zane Creek (06:31)
Yeah, I think that’s a really good question. I would like people to know how much opportunity there actually is. I mean, opportunity almost seems like it is that almost makes it sound like there is a lack of things happening, but there is the availability to make them happen where that is also true, but more so there’s almost a critical mass of resources and interest. And I guess I’ll just use the word opportunity again, where
There is plenty that can be done in any field, in any area of interest and enough competition to really like push you along and make you innovate, but not too much to suffocate you. And it’s a good size, it’s a good location to give you the things you need without being like front of mind and make everybody aware of it. And so that’s why, you know, it’s kind of slept on by a lot of people, but I think that there’s a lot more here to do and to take advantage of than people really know about worldwide.
Sean Jordan (07:29)
That’s very true. I agree. you even the opportunity angle, mean, because it’s so affordable to live here, you can take a lot more risks because you’re not worried as much about having to pay a million dollar mortgage or something. So you can try new things and get new skills and that really can advance you in a lot of ways.
Zane Creek (07:37)
Yes, exactly.
100%. Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting because there was a parallel between that and my experience in Germany that I always refer back to in my brain, where when I went there on the ambassadorship program, you were randomly allocated to a different city across the entire country. And everybody wants to go to Berlin. Everybody wants to go to Frankfurt and Munich and the big cities. And I landed in a city called Zarbuchen, which is right on the French and German border. And it’s really funny because it’s
very very similar to St. Louis for the size of the city relative to the rest of like major cities in the country and it was the exact same experience where I landed there and I was like it’s not going to be as cool as Berlin or as cool as XYZ and it totally was there’s always something to do if you just look for it absolutely.
Sean Jordan (08:37)
Plus if you got tired of German food, there was probably good French food to have there too, right?
Zane Creek (08:41)
There actually was of course. Yeah, it was phenomenal Yeah
Sean Jordan (08:44)
That’s awesome. Well,
let’s talk a little bit about what you get to do now in your day job, and that is SEO. And I can see you’re getting ready. So before I take this any further, because this is kind of a buzzy word, right? I want to have you start off by giving us a quick overview of what SEO actually is and how it’s used in marketing, because it’s one of those buzzwords that salespeople just love to throw around. But I don’t think a lot of people actually understand what it’s really used for. So here you go. Educate us.
Zane Creek (08:52)
See you!
You
Right.
Yeah, happy to. Yeah, especially there’s every guru in the world and they’ll just hop online and say, here’s how you can make a thousand gazillion dollars doing SEO for yourself. But SEO is simply, so SEO search engine optimization, and it’s most commonly refers to the big search engines of Google and Bing used to be Yahoo and other things, right? It applies to much more than that where you are simply optimizing content.
to be found in search engines, which can be Amazon, which can be YouTube, which can be any social media. All of that falls under optimizing content to be found for search engines. And my specialty, my focus is on traditional search engines, quote unquote, of primarily Google and then also Bing. And yeah, to the point of simply optimizing technical things and the content that is created in a digital online form.
to be found in search engines, very plain and simple. No fluff, nothing magical, nothing crazy about it.
Sean Jordan (10:14)
Well, it’s so important because I do focus groups all the time and interviews all the time with people. you ask them, where do you go for information? In 80%, 90 % of the time, depending on the study, they’ll say Google. Or if they’re looking for reviews, they’ll say Amazon. So they have to be able to find that content because that’s where they’re looking for it. And if you have it and it’s buried on the third or fourth page of the results, they’re never going to see it. So yeah, so the optimization is important, even just
Zane Creek (10:26)
Yeah, sure.
Just doesn’t exist, yeah, exactly.
Sean Jordan (10:43)
from a point of view of trying to get information in people’s hands because that’s where they’re looking for it, right?
Zane Creek (10:48)
Absolutely. And it’s interesting too, because I’m sure you know better than anyone, you’ll see studies where more and more each year, especially with younger demographics, people use social media and YouTube to literally search for things and find answers. So it’s interesting to see the digital landscape of tools and these social platforms begin to evolve where before, you might try to focus on posting the YouTube video that
is clear to the point and has all the information people need and surely if you build it they will come but you really need to make sure you’re optimizing on every platform as much as possible.
Sean Jordan (11:24)
I was stunned years ago when someone told me YouTube was actually the number two search engine. And it made sense when I thought about it, but I was thinking Yahoo or Bing or something like that. They’re like, no, no, no, no, YouTube, way more important than either of those.
Zane Creek (11:29)
Yeah.
Hello?
Mm-hmm. Very true, yep.
Sean Jordan (11:39)
Well, elephant in the room time is SEO dead because we’ve had all these advances in AI and SEO is suddenly sounding a lot less sexy than it did a couple of years ago, right? So is it a promotional channel of the past?
Zane Creek (11:52)
Mm-hmm.
I hate to break it to you, it is dead. Is what I would say, it was not absolutely completely alive. You know, that is what everybody has said for pretty much every major Google update, every major technological change. And it’s, you know, it’s very interesting because I stepped into SEO about a year ago now. And so I’ve known like seriously into it. I’ve known about it and I’ve done small things with it, but I’ve been working professionally in SEO for one year.
Sean Jordan (12:01)
Hmm.
Zane Creek (12:24)
and have been just consuming everything there is about it. And it can be argued that I came into it at the worst time possible with AI tools becoming so prevalent. And I took a calculated risk and decided if it would be worth it to pursue SEO from my situation in life because before I seriously stepped into this, I even thought the same thing. You know, you hear it everywhere that…
things change so much and there’s so much spam and there’s so much competition that it’s certainly impossible to even be successful with SEO anymore. Like focus your dollars on where you have the retribution, like paid ads, for example. But that’s just not true. There really is a lot of value between search and behind search engine optimization, even just in traditional search engines. Because if you just look at the numbers of traffic that exists, like we’re saying with how people go to Google to search for things,
Search behavior is changing a lot, especially looking at longer tail keywords with people having very specific questions. And then also AI tools stealing traffic or quote unquote stealing traffic because of zero click searches. There’s a lot of things changing, but it doesn’t make it less valuable to be honest.
Sean Jordan (13:39)
You know, I was at a museum not too long ago and there was a dinosaur exhibit and one of the guides there basically said, you know, dinosaurs aren’t really dead. They just evolved into birds. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re still around. They’re just different. And I thought that was a cool analogy because, I get told all the time. I’m a, full service marketing research agency, right? I get told all the time, Oh, you’re a dinosaur. You guys are done. AI is going to replace you if nothing else already has. And I just keep thinking, well, I’m still getting paid. I’m still here. People are still hiring me.
Zane Creek (13:50)
Right.
Bye.
Ha
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (14:08)
Obviously I’m not dead yet. And I kind of feel the same way about a lot of technology that, ⁓ you know, it comes in and it threatens to replace everything that we do. And yet it really doesn’t because we still need a lot of these activities and we still need a lot of these skills. We just need to maybe think about them a little bit differently. And I kind of wonder if SEO is kind of heading into that ⁓ space now where it was the sexy buzzword and now it’s not, but it still is really valuable and necessary. So we still have to think about it in terms of
Zane Creek (14:10)
You
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (14:37)
What are we going to do with it now that AI can do some of what it does, but it still can’t do all of what it does?
Zane Creek (14:43)
Absolutely. And I’m, I feel that I’ve had a pretty accurate perspective of it from the get go where my goal is to focus on the strategic aspect of it, because especially like we’ve all seen with any ⁓ technology jobs, especially with software development and programming, coding, anything, executive functions can be done a lot by AI. And like, I don’t really even know how to code very much, but I code quite a bit using AI tools.
And so those elements of jobs like that have been gobbled up by AI and will continue to be less valuable, quote unquote. So the value of SEO, for example, won’t change, but from an employee aspect, the low hanging fruit of just tactical daily things does become less valuable because tools can’t do them.
Sean Jordan (15:37)
Absolutely. Well, you mentioned this phrase, zero click searches, and I’d like to talk about those a little bit. I did a video on these backer over the holidays, I don’t think anybody saw because it was the holidays, but I cited them as one of the emerging ⁓ trends of this year because I really, everything I’ve been reading, they really are. So tell me a little bit about them and how they’re affecting you.
Zane Creek (15:47)
Thanks
Yeah, it, so luckily, so actually I didn’t even show, I worked with Timmerman group, the way, shouts out to them. And we work with service. We work with a variety of businesses, but a lot of our clients are service businesses. And so they’re focused on getting leads in the door. And I say this as context because zero click searches have to do with a search that simply results in no click through to a website because.
content is being summarized and shared in mostly Google’s AI overview, or if you’re using a tool like chatgbt or Claude, you’re simply getting the information in that tool that is being summarized from content that’s being pulled from the internet, and then people don’t need to be guided anywhere. And so it is interesting how it affects our clients because traditionally you want to focus on transactional keywords. You want to focus on bottom of the funnel,
keywords that you want to rank for. So people are landing right at the end of their customer journey and you’re right there like, come on in, be a lead for us, right? And we have been turning our sites more, not more too, but it is equally as important to pay mind to top of funnel informational searches and varieties of content. you are in multiple different sources of information that
AI tools are pulling from because it seems that the way to be found is evolving more from just ranking first in the search engine result page and being the first link on Google. That’s incredibly valuable, but if those clicks just aren’t going to the first link anymore and people are just looking and using their eyes, it becomes much more about brand awareness and then also putting your information out everywhere so that when answers are being summarized in AI tools,
that the sources of information they’re pulling from are always pulling bits and pieces of your information.
Sean Jordan (17:58)
Yeah, and I mean, I’ve seen it. ⁓ earlier last year heard that somebody had actually found us through chat GPT, which was amazing to me because I didn’t realize that my firm placed in there at all. We never placed in Google very high. And so I went in there to look to see what it was recommending. And it was recommending my firm is one of the top five choices in St. Louis, which was great. But even weirder were three of the other choices weren’t even in business anymore. So ⁓ yeah.
Zane Creek (18:07)
Yes.
Sure.
Nice, nice.
Yeah, and that’s the thing, it’s not perfect at all, yeah.
Sean Jordan (18:27)
And I realized that it was relying a lot on its training data and its historical data. And I thought, this is going to really benefit brands that have been around and content that’s been around because it’s going to be in the training data for all these models a lot longer than any of the more recent information. And so it’ll probably show up a lot more. So I do see that as a game changer in a lot of ways for people that have been around and that have things up. But I also see that as a strategy and an opportunity to try to find ways to get yourself
Zane Creek (18:30)
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (18:54)
embedded in the models in a way that you might not have tried with SEO.
Zane Creek (18:56)
Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. No, I remember us touching on that a bit. And I agree too, because the big thing now is, you know, it’s still experimentation phase. Like even tools that are tracking AI search visibility are like, there is no definitive answer about what, how to even quantify and qualify visibility. And so it’ll be interesting going forward to see exactly how you can maximize your visibility in any tool. agree.
Sean Jordan (19:23)
Yeah, think so too. And just trying to anticipate if people are going to use zero-click, what are the things that they’re most commonly going to look for? And am I positioning myself for that? Or am I getting left out because I’m just not saying the right words to get the ⁓ chat bot to think that I’m that kind of ⁓ provider for whatever it is they’re looking for.
Zane Creek (19:45)
Right, absolutely, yeah.
Sean Jordan (19:46)
Well, know, SEO, when I think of SEO, I think about it very old fashioned way of just like putting a lot of different information in the metadata and, a lot of words that you want the search engine to pick up. And I know, I know it’s way more than that. So if I wanted to actually get started in SEO and learn how to do it properly and not just, you know, try to gamify the system with, you know, a few keywords, how would I get started? What would I do to really learn this skill?
Zane Creek (20:10)
Yeah, so you’ll be sharing some resources that I shared with you that in my own learning journey are exactly how I’ve learned and they’re the best resources because I’ve dug through so many things and at the end of the day, I recommend two resources that I find to be very cohesive and foundational. And that is a Foundations of SEO course by an SEO like legitimately expert named Mark Williams Cook and then a website called
I think it’s learningseo.io. You have it and so they all have access to it. But these two things are the best because in my opinion, the best way to learn SEO is to one, understand what websites are made of and what they actually are. If I ask somebody what a website is, they might often think like, is, I don’t know, code.
If you can understand what a website is made out of, where it lives, how it is served to users, and then why users are accessing them. I feel like that is an overlooked portion that is very essential because of how technical SEO is. And then once you understand that, that was like my bedrock of understanding, demystifying how the stuff actually works. And then once that actually makes sense and the ones and zeros are actually tangible things to me, then it is a matter.
of going through just really every resource you can, in my opinion, and then getting your hands on a website and just doing it. Because I also feel that I spent far too long just trying to learn without doing it. And you can get a domain for $10, set something up free on like literally free using WordPress infrastructure, and then just learn it, you know, just by figuring out by doing it and seeing how you rank by using free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics and just getting your hands dirty.
Sean Jordan (21:52)
Mm-hmm.
Zane Creek (22:04)
So I feel that the best way a person can learn is by accessing those two resources I recommended because they’re to the point and exactly what you need and then getting your hands on a website and just practicing.
Sean Jordan (22:18)
It’s so interesting because ⁓ many interviews ago we had Hannah fresh on from our local AMA community and Hannah said the same thing about TikTok. She said, you know, spend some time in your free time learning how to do TikTok. And then, you know, it doesn’t cost you anything and you can try it out and you can learn and just by trying you’ll get better at it. And I love that it applies to SEO as well. And by the way, those resources that Zane was mentioning are going to be in the show notes. So be sure to check those out. And that’s great advice.
Zane Creek (22:26)
Yeah, yeah.
yeah.
Sean Jordan (22:46)
Try it out, just learn how to do it by picking something that you’re interested in and seeing how far you can rank. I love that idea.
Zane Creek (22:51)
The
Absolutely. And of course, I think that applies to just everything in life. I think it’s great here too, because it is so low risk. You can break a website and I’ve broken so many websites and it’s very aggravating, but worst case scenario, I’ve had to completely just nuke one or two websites before and like, okay, that’s how I learned. now going forward, I don’t have to nuke any more websites. to me actually, that’s a good…
allegory with learning TikTok from Hannah Frisch because I find it harder to do things like that because that is me in front of a camera or something. And that can be a lot more risky feeling. yeah, just if you want to learn SEO, just practice, especially if you have a real web property. If you have a website for your company that you’re trying to learn with, you can do it in lower squares, you know, making new page. That’s not your homepage. And it’s just sitting somewhere and try to rank it, you know, and see what happens.
Sean Jordan (23:47)
I love it. I love it. Well, here in St. Louis, we’ve got a lot of businesses that are either trying to serve our region or which are hoping to break out of the Midwest in that broader market, know, nationally or, you know, in terms of our hemisphere or just in terms of the global markets, right? So how can they use SEO to help them achieve that goal? And what do you think they really need to think about in terms of strategy?
Zane Creek (23:58)
Mm-hmm.
So great question too. really like that because I’ve talked with a couple of different small businesses here that are small businesses on paper, but they do business with people in very wide geography, right? And I feel that the most important thing is to have a very good strategy about the regions or location that you’re trying to break into because with SEO there, it like,
Traditional SEO just normal keywords like if I were to try to rank for a roofing company that is quote-unquote national and all that means is that it doesn’t have a geo modifier So anywhere in the US could technically be finding you as a roofer, right? But the thing is nobody’s going to because there’s like it’s way too competitive and you realistically won’t rank at all So how you could use SEO to actually expand your reach?
Sean Jordan (24:48)
Mm-hmm.
Zane Creek (25:10)
is by clearly identifying where you’re trying to expand to. So then you can strategically expand to those regions because you’re not going to rank for just national keywords. So you have to be able to define, let’s expand to Chicago and then build a, a specific Chicago website even, or at least sub pages and then have sub sub pages that are each bureau of Chicago to build your local signals. And so I would say the key is to have
You can have your website maintain its targeting as it is, or you could choose to modify it. But the key idea is defining where you’re going to go so you can plan an effective strategy utilizing SEO around it. Because I’ve seen people just try to rank for everything, right? Or try to just be, try to rank their, actually blow up their current rankings because they’re a St. Louis XYZ company, and then they get rid of the St. Louis so they can rank everywhere and then they rank nowhere.
So you just have to be careful.
Sean Jordan (26:08)
Is it, when you’re trying to appeal to markets that don’t speak English, is it important to be savvy about the language that they might use in search terms or are there any good guidelines for that?
Zane Creek (26:20)
Yeah, absolutely. number one, so actually in Germany, I worked at a German e-commerce firm that had online stores in nine different countries. And they hired me because they didn’t have any native English speakers. So they hired me to be the e-commerce manager for their UK store. And it was very valuable because they would translate things to English, but they would miss the meaning, right? Or use the wrong term that was just like slightly off.
And so as far as SEO goes, yes, it’s very important to use the native language as much as possible. It’s possible to rank without it, but if there’s any sort of competition, it’s probably not going to go very well. And then when using the native language, it’s very valuable to use somebody that knows what they’re talking about. So you’re actually translating things and targeting things effectively.
Sean Jordan (27:13)
I think that’s really interesting. that’s an area too where I know a lot of folks are like, I can just use AI to do that. Well, you could, but it’s probably not going to be anywhere near as good as using a native speaker because AI has a particular choice of words and cadence and things that aren’t natural. They’re pseudo natural. And ⁓ it may not be able to do searching or replicate search terms the way that an actual person would search in a way you could really use it and actually rank in anything that was
Zane Creek (27:19)
Nuff.
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (27:42)
going to get you people to click through and actually find you. So I grow concerned about over-reliance on AI for things like that when native speakers are so easy to find.
Zane Creek (27:49)
Right.
Yeah, no, I totally agree. And especially then on the other, on like the further downstream area of that, like if you can identify keywords and then there’s issues with people using AI to then generate the content to hopefully rank for those keywords. And then they’re just missing the, they’re not hitting the search antenna by people who are actually searching those terms because AI is just doing its best, you know? So yeah, definitely it’s important to actually.
Sean Jordan (28:06)
Okay.
Zane Creek (28:19)
strategically approach it rather than just relying on AI too much. And don’t get me wrong, I use AI tools a lot. They’re incredibly valuable, but they just, you need a very good QA process as well.
Sean Jordan (28:24)
Mm-hmm.
Well, and I’m to the point where if I get to something and it looks like AI wrote it, I just go back and try to find another, ⁓ you know, result because ⁓ the phrasings and the cadence, know, like AI loves to repeat things three times in three different ways, or it likes to put, you know, word period, word period, word period, or things like that. And it becomes clear. And it’s just, you realize I’m not getting any real information here. I’m just getting, you know, somebody prompted a AI script to kind of…
Zane Creek (28:35)
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s not this, it’s that.
Sean Jordan (28:58)
capture my click, well they got it, but I’m not gonna stay here for information. Well, I have told you, like I said at the beginning, that you really impressed me with your willingness to step up and be a resource, not just on SEO, and that’s what you do of course, but on marketing itself. So I appreciate that because what we do in marketing is always changing. And I think I’ve told you, like when I went to school back in 2008,
Zane Creek (29:02)
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, sir.
Sean Jordan (29:24)
⁓ Most of the skills I learned in marketing, they’re fundamental, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t really use them anymore. Things have changed a lot. So I think that’s the constant rule of marketing and pretty much everybody that I talk to on this show or in networking events or anything like that, we’re all doing marketing in really, really different ways. So what are some ways that we can all work on keeping our skills sharp and our understanding current when it comes to marketing and related topics like SEO?
Zane Creek (29:29)
Right, yeah.
All right.
I feel that first and foremost, what has benefited me the most and I would like to do a lot more. not, I would like to do better to be honest is talking to people and having conversations like this because you can only realistically do so much. And there’s a reason that we all specialize, you know, at least somewhat because there’s not enough time or effort in the world to understand everything. And even marketing itself is such a fragmented industry that I even are.
Timmerman group, have, you know, PPC people, have design people, have SEO people. in, or like the flip side of the same coin as being willing to talk to people, I would say be just consistently curious. You know, I think that’s genuine, generally a great tip in life because that’s how you just grow and understand anything you want to do. But if you can bring value by understanding your niche.
and then leverage that to help to have other people support you by supporting them. Like it’s pretty hard to fail, I would say in any area of life.
Sean Jordan (30:58)
And I think it’s important. ⁓ One of the reasons that we like to talk about what we do in our jobs is so we can share the knowledge of how things are changing and what we’re doing. But I think it’s also so that we can affirm that if there’s a better way to do it, that we hear about it and that we know about it. And if you talk about what you do and somebody comes up to you afterwards and says, hey, I know something way different you could do that that’s actually more efficient and that’s going to help you.
Zane Creek (31:16)
Totally, totally.
Sean Jordan (31:25)
that helps us to all sharpen each other and to become better at what we’re doing. And that’s part of the practice, right? mean, gosh, know, 10, 20 years ago, if you were talking to people about social media, for example, they were thinking, you know, Facebook or MySpace, and now it means so many different things. If you’re talking about influencers, I mean, that was a meaningless term, you know, 10 or 20 years ago to a lot of people. And now it’s a key part of a lot of marketing. And of course, you know, AI, that really didn’t mean much to anybody before, you know, the last few years. And now it is
Zane Creek (31:31)
Hmm?
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Sean Jordan (31:54)
probably the number one topic at every conference that you go to. So we definitely have to be thinking ahead and kind of finding ways to refine our understanding and knowledge, but also not getting too attached to one thing that we do at any given time, because it may change and we may have to try something else.
Zane Creek (31:58)
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, that’s an especially good point. that is, ⁓ I feel like something I feel I do naturally know, and you might feel this too, because coming from a military family, I don’t know if you moved around a lot, but I just got used to like change being the primary constant. And I think that fits very well with everything that marketing is because especially digital marketing, things just evolve so fast and you have to be ready to get. I would say comfortable. I was going to say good button.
Not even good, but just become comfortable with new technology and new methods and then maintain the foundation of marketing fundamentals and just continue forward because otherwise it is easy to get left behind without even realizing it, I suppose.
Sean Jordan (32:53)
Well, and at the end of the day, it’s all about strategy, right? mean, using these marketing tools as tactics to help us to achieve our goals and not to get so hung up on the tactics themselves.
Zane Creek (33:01)
Right.
Exactly. Yes, exactly. And I feel like that’s that is the only not the only way, like a primary way to get left behind for lack of a better term. Right. If you think of something as the thing you need to be doing rather than it means to an end, then life will move on nonetheless.
Sean Jordan (33:20)
We were watching ⁓ Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the show on Disney Plus. And I was laughing because the kids are training using like Spartan shields and swords. And I was like, we live in 2026. Don’t they have like a Greek mythology equivalent of a gun somewhere? Because those shields and swords aren’t going to get you too far in this day and age. You have to change and evolve. It looks cool and it’s useless. Well, Jane, it’s been great talking with you. And I, I,
Zane Creek (33:23)
Yes.
Yeah, but it looks cool. It looks cool, right?
Yeah, you too.
Sean Jordan (33:48)
Again, I always appreciate any chance we get to converse, but I like to end every show with asking our guests if they have anything they want to plug. We are marketers. We have to plug things as part of our job. So here’s your chance. What would you like to plug?
Zane Creek (33:52)
soon.
Yeah, I would say two things that are one, beneficial to, I guess really everything beneficial to everyone, I should say. So like I said, I work for Timmerman Group. I’m an SEO specialist there. We do full service marketing, primarily SEO, PPC, web design, and social media. So if you want help and, or even just want some free advice about any marketing problems you have, feel free to reach out to me, Rob Timmerman, or anyone. And then also something that’ll send you for the ⁓ show notes, the resources, Sean.
is something I forgot to mention a website I have called basics of marketing dot com to the point and it’s from my own journey into marketing, I guess now probably four years ago, I’d say, where I could not find one definitive resource that answered the question, what is marketing? And so I made a website to answer that and help other people at the very beginning of their journey just to find what is it? What are the rough parts of it? And where can you go from there?
So yeah, basicsofmarketing.com. It’s pretty, it’s not perfect, but it’ll help you get somewhere for sure.
Sean Jordan (35:07)
Not perfect is quite all right. A lot of times good enough is all we really need, right? And I’m sure it’s better than good enough. thanks for sharing and we’ll put that in the show notes. And of course we’ll put your contact information as well. If anyone would like to reach out to you to learn more about SEO or any of the other topics we discussed, I’m sure that you’d be happy to help them out. And I just want to say thanks so much for being on Marketing Gateways and we’ve really enjoyed having you. And ⁓ I hope that we can have you on again sometime to talk about some other topics.
Zane Creek (35:10)
Mm-hmm. Exactly, Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, please.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
No, thank you for the time. It’s been a pleasure being here and talking about all this and it helps me as much as it helps you and the viewers. So thank you.
Sean Jordan (35:45)
Wow. man, I love doing these interviews. They are so much fun. And I hope you had a great time listening to Zane as well, because I just feel like I got a class in SEO. And I am excited to go check out those resources now and take a look and see if I can learn more about how to do this. So thank you, Zane. We really appreciate you being on. And I told him I hope that we can have him back on, because I know he knows a lot about many other topics and love to have him come on and talk about those as well. But.
On that note, we are always looking for more guests. if, especially if you’re here in the St. Louis area or in the Midwest, we would love to have you on the show. So please, if you’re interested, let us know and we’ll see about having you on. And if you know anybody too, please send them our way because I’d love to do more interviews like these. I learned so much. hope you’re learning a lot and we look forward to it. So thank you so much for listening. I am Sean in St. Louis. This has been the Marketing Gateway. We’ll see you next time.
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