SEOblog Interview: New York City SEO Expert Seth Kaufman from Vine Concepts

We’re excited to have interviewed New York City SEO expert Seth Kaufman from Vine Concepts for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

Vine Concepts is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in New York City.

Kaufman is a business owner at heart and has a passion for helping other people’s dreams come true. In his company, Vine Concepts, the way he helps clients is via SEO, a skill which he’s become a world-class expert at with his 10 years of experience in the industry.

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the New York City SEO industry?

“At first breaking into this industry I didn’t pay too much attention to how many competitors there were in the New York area – I don’t think there were nearly as many back in 2014 as there are today. However, now, I see there are a lot of professionals offering SEO, but I don’t consider them true competitors. I consider my offering extremely unique and a true signature offering, because we are helping clients achieve more than just rankings. My clients get more from Vine Concepts (and me) than just rankings.”

How does your SEO agency stand out in a crowded market like New York City?

“I kind of touched on this in the previous question, but what separates us is not one but a few things. Our primary objective is to help our clients’ dreams come true, to help them achieve what it is they want. We view SEO as a medium for our clients to achieve their goals which is possible through our expertise. This is what separates us from 99 percent of everybody else.

“Additionally, no other SEO company in the area has ME. I truly believe my clients’ lives benefit from knowing me and getting into business with me. They only get the opportunity to work with me and my team, if we truly believe we can help them achieve their dreams through our services. If we don’t believe we can assist a potential client, then we will refer them off to someone else who might be a better fit to help them.

“Other things that separate us from others:

1. “We actually get results … you’d be surprised how many agencies have absolutely zero idea how to get results for their clients.
2. “We treat your site like our own. Many agencies are concerned with ranking as quickly as possible, for as cheap as possible by exploiting the Google algorithm with little regard for the safety of the clients’ site. But that’s not us. Everything we do to your site is something we’ve done to one of our own website too.
3. “We focus exclusively on SEO. Many agencies these days offer a ‘jack of all trades’ full service, but are often the master of none. I am the master of SEO. My team specializes in being the best we can possibly be at our one service offering.
4. “We treat customers as people, not as money. Like I have said before, we don’t want to work with you if we can’t help you achieve your dreams. Digging that deep into what you want to accomplish by working with us, allows us to connect on a personal level, which I value. I only want to work with people who I connect with, and as such, you will be way more than just a paying client to us and to me personally.”

Can you share a success story from a local SEO campaign centered around the New York City area?

“Yes, we built a new brand for a garage door company, called Two Garage Door Guys and they had absolutely zero traction. The owner of the existing brand decided to work with me because I took three of his keywords from page two and three, to page one in under 14 days. He told me if I could do that, then he would work with me and I did it. Anyway, Two Garage Door Guys was an entirely new brand, zero presence on Google. We built the site up and within six months, when I had an in-person meeting with him one day, he explained to me that he was able to hire some new technicians to put on call in his business because of the leads he was getting from my services.

“Hearing that the work we did made a real, tangible impact on peoples’ lives, both the garage door company owner and the people he hired, hit me and I really felt great about it. It was a nice reminder that the power of Vine Concepts can truly help our clients’ dreams come true. We provided a business owner an opportunity to increase his revenue, while also freeing up his time to spend with his wife.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“The absolute best advice I’ve ever received in business is what I’ve been reiterating in the above questions. My job is to help other people’s dreams come true. As a business owner, it is absolutely my mission and my purpose. It is what Vine Concepts tries to do every day. When they feel like I’m doing everything possible for their success and achievement, it makes the relationship between clients and me extremely enjoyable and they truly love working with me when that focus is front and center.”

What do you think is the most important quality that makes an agency truly great?

“I truly think that what I wrote above is the most important quality of an agency, or any business – having a true customer centric mindset. If you just want the customer for their money, they sense that, it turns them off quickly and they go elsewhere. However, making your focus to achieve their dreams, it changes everything. It allows you to be great at what you do. More specifically for an SEO agency owner, I’d say that it’s imperative of you to properly prospect and qualify potential clients.

“Imagine going into a doctor’s office and before explaining your symptoms, the doctor is prescribing you some medicine. You’d ask yourself “what’s wrong with this guy?” It’s the same thing with SEO, most owners try and prescribe before diagnosing and I feel like to be truly great, you must diagnose first and prescribe later. Only if you have a prescription that will be a solution to his diagnosis. This helps keep your customers more content and excited to work with you if they are getting what you need. Also it is better for you dealing with satisfied customers more often, in addition to the referrals you’ll get by offering them something that truly addresses their wants and desires.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“I probably have an unpopular take on this … I am pretty even keeled when it comes to SEO and I never subscribe to the “is SEO dead” annual narrative that pops up. Additionally, I don’t even pay attention to Core algorithm updates. Why? Because I have found that SEO truly has not changed much in the past 10 years. Google is very clear on what they’re looking for from your site. Most SEO’s try and hide from that, do what they do behind Google’s back and succeed. I have a different approach. I say, give Google exactly what it wants to see and let’s showcase it. Google is looking for you to tell it exactly what your page is about in a natural way on your site, in addition to judging the authority of what your page is about by whether or not many other important websites feel it’s a valuable page. That is the crux of SEO, that’s it. Everything else is just noise. So as for the future of SEO, I feel as long as organic search is a thing, it should remain relatively evergreen.”

 What is your reaction when you hear that “SEO is dying”?

“I laugh. As I mentioned above, the importance of SEO is growing. Obviously, Google is an ads based business. So they continue to innovate ways to showcase their paying clients on the SERPs, but if organic results cease to exist, Google will cease to exist. Ads are both more expensive per lead and more unsustainable, due to their short term nature. It’s like a water faucet. Once you turn the faucet off, the water stops running. Same deal with ads. Once the money per lead stops, so do the leads. This is why we are exclusively about SEO. I truly believe SEO is the way to go. The costs to acquire visitors is significantly less and much more scalable, in addition to having the potential for exponential growth with sustainable success over time. Google ads can never offer that kind of benefit.”

What do you think is the most important contributor of keeping clients happy?

“Three things:

1. “I mentioned this many times above but it’s all about helping them achieve their dreams. If our campaigns are built on the premise of achieving exactly what they want the SEO to assist with then they go into the campaign excited.
2. “Keeping the excitement rolling right off the bat. True SEO, like the SEO we do here at Vine Concepts, is an investment, for sure. So after they click the button and make that first investment to begin a campaign with us, we do everything we can to keep that excitement rolling to make them feel like they made a good decision to work with us.
3. “Delivering freaking elite results that helps them reflect to the world the kind of company they are–THE BEST. #1 rankings, top reviewed, etc.”

Interested in being considered as an SEOblog “Featured SEO Expert”? Reach out to our team at [email protected]! We’d love to hear from you and give you a high-traffic platform to share your SEO agency’s story and insights.