The Pareto Principle and How to Use it for SEO with Kevin Roy

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and my guest today is Kevin Roy, the co-founder of Green Banana SEO, a pay-for-performance SEO and digital marketing agency. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about SEO and the Pareto Principle.

Hey guys, we’ve got Kevin Roy on the podcast today. I’m super excited to have him. We’ve been trying to pull him in for the last few months, and finally, we were able to schedule some time. So Kevin, thanks for being on the podcast today.

I wanted to start by getting to know a little bit about you. Can you give us some background? Where are you currently located? Where did you grow up? Give us a little background story.

Yeah, back to your hometown. Sometimes it’s more familiar. I was in Boston and went through the Beverly area—it’s absolutely beautiful. Do you have a larger property out there? I know you have chickens and two cats, so you must have a pretty good-sized property.

Yeah, for sure. That’s the only guarantee. It’s kind of funny—you’re talking about your wife, and obviously, you guys have a farm. You got pulled into it, maybe in a good way. My wife has been trying to pull me into getting a farm too. I love animals, but sometimes I worry they’ll get in the way of traveling or doing other things. So what has your experience been? I know you have chickens, gerbils, and all kinds of fun stuff.

I can understand that the kids probably love it. The funny part is, my son—who’s off in college now—once said he’d take care of a dog, but two days later, he said, “I love the dog, but I’m not going to pick up the poop.” So do your kids help out with the chickens?

And with animals and kids, you realize it’s usually a short-lived agreement. Just know that if your child comes up to you crying, wanting a dog, it will be your dog—you will take responsibility for it. That’s the only guarantee.

They are until they’re not cute, and then they start pooping, and then they turn into responsibilities. We all know how that turns out. So, tell us, how big is your family? You’ve got, obviously, a wife, a boy, and a girl—what do you have?

Okay, there we go. So you’re in the later half of parenting. My son’s 21, so he’s out at college and almost off my payroll. Once he finishes college, good things will happen. We’re excited about that. Now, tell us about your hometown. You grew up in Beverly—give us some interesting facts or fun stories about the place.

Do you think there’s still that witch vibe there? It seems to attract an interesting crowd because of its history.

There we go. I mean, why wouldn’t we have that in Salem? Everyone’s free to practice whatever they want. Come to our black church and check it out.

I love those quirky towns. I’m in California, so we have these little hippie towns every once in a while. I love that quirkiness—it’s fun to see other cultures and opinions. And you said you went to UMass for undergrad and Bentley for your MBA, right? That’s awesome. What did you graduate with?

It’s funny—I always ask people what they graduated in because 70% of the time, it has nothing to do with what they’re doing today. I’ve met people who majored in political science, writing, theater—and now they’re CEOs. Theater might even tie in a little, but it’s not a direct connection. So what was your first job out of college? What did you do when you got out?

I was gonna say, at age 20, that sounds terrible—traveling all over the world with someone else paying the bills. I mean, who wouldn’t want that? Not that you don’t want to be with your wife and kids, but it sounds like it was a pretty fun time. Last time I checked, it was really good.

It’s awesome. When I was younger, I went to Costa Rica and studied Spanish there for about six months. My family has always traveled a lot, so I’ve always been really into learning about other cultures and what they do. That’s always been embedded in me, and even today I’m always looking for my next place to go—to show people that we’re not just a bunch of ugly Americans, but really awesome and cool.

Well, the other thing is, I’m a big fan of energy. You seem like an upbeat guy, and I think if you have that kind of fun atmosphere, people naturally gravitate towards you and good times happen. If you’re always saying everything’s against you, then it just continues that way—it’s hard to get out of that mindset. Wouldn’t agree more.

So what I wanted to talk to you about today is that you’ve had your agency for a long time now and have done some big things. You specialize in a lot of areas, but I wanted to discuss the Pareto Principle in SEO. I know what it is, but maybe for the audience, you can give us a definition of it and explain how you apply it.

And it’s so funny because when you explain it, it’s so basic and understandable. I think people get all tangled up in Google’s changes and worry about whether it will hurt them—not because of relevance, but because they miss that the whole point is just to check off the boxes to look good for Google. You need to be relevant, and Google wants to show the best results within 2.2 seconds, searching through a billion websites, and rank you number one if you meet those criteria.

Yeah, that’s it. I think most of the people who come to us for SEO have been with another agency and had no idea what was going on. They think it’s magic and get reports that don’t include the keywords they care about. They’ll say, “But we’re number one for blue widgets in Miami,” and I’m like, “Do you even sell blue widgets in Miami?” Then I ask, “Do you want to start selling them?” It all comes back to relevance and core SEO fundamentals. Some things in Google’s algorithm will never change, and focusing on relevance and user experience is what matters.

Thanks, Kevin, for simplifying the entire concept of SEO and explaining how the Pareto Principle works with it. It was a fun discussion. But as all good things must come to an end, we’ll have to wrap up our conversation for today.

On our next episode, I’ll be back with Kevin to discuss exciting concepts like quantum theory and his experience growing a digital marketing agency. Have you ever worked with an SEO company and had no idea what they were doing for your business? Many of our clients come to us with that issue—they’re looking for an agency that will not only help you rank on Google but will also focus on the right keywords.

You can reach out to our team at shanebarker.com. Apart from our SEO skills, we take pride in our transparency and keeping you in the loop throughout the entire process.

Stay tuned to Shane Barker’s Marketing Growth Podcast.