Tom Malesic founded EZMarketing in 1997 — when websites were a novelty and “digital marketing” wasn’t a phrase anyone used yet. Twenty-eight years later, he’s still running the agency, still serving small businesses, and his core principle hasn’t changed: the website is the center of everything, and if it fails, everything else fails with it.
He laid out the full playbook on the Unscripted SEO Podcast with Jeremy Rivera. Whether you’ve been in business for twenty years or are just building your first website, the principles here apply directly.
The Dating Analogy That Changes How You Think About Your Website
Tom’s framework for understanding why websites fail is one of the most useful we’ve heard. Imagine showing up to meet someone in the jeans and t-shirt you mowed the lawn in — nobody gives you a chance. That’s a bad website design. OK, you look fine — but you open your mouth and say something completely off — that’s bad copy. And if you look great and say the right things but never actually ask for a next step — that’s a website with no call to action.
All three have to work for any of it to matter. Most small business websites fail on at least one. Some fail on all three.
The Digital Christian Collaborative’s consulting process starts with exactly this kind of honest assessment — looking at your website as a stranger would in the first few seconds, and identifying what it’s actually communicating to someone who’s never heard of you.
Write for Four Readers at Once
Tom’s content framework: every page serves multiple audiences simultaneously, and you have to write for all of them.
- The scanner — reads only the H2s and H3s, decides in seconds whether the page is relevant to them
- The reader — reads every word, wants all the context and detail
- Google — reads everything, rewards depth, proper structure, and genuine coverage of the topic
- AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) — same as Google, but increasingly favoring question-formatted headings they can pull directly into answers
The practical implication: convert your H2s and H3s from sales copy into questions. Instead of “Our Services,” write “What Does a Roofing Contractor Actually Do?” Every section on your page is technically answering a question — make that explicit and you improve how both human readers and AI engines engage with your content.
SEO Arcade applies this same content architecture across podcast-powered authority building — turning interview conversations into structured pages that serve all four reader types at once and keep compounding in search over time.
The Local SEO Strategy That Still Works
Tom’s local SEO approach for service businesses: build individual pages for each town in your service area, paired with each of your core service types. A plumber covering 15 towns with 4 service types has 60 pages of local, relevant content — each one speaking directly to a search a specific person in a specific town might make.
This sounds like a lot of pages, but it’s one of the most reliable ways for small businesses to win against larger national competitors who rarely build this kind of granular geographic coverage. Google’s own guidelines on helpful content favor depth and genuine local relevance over generic category pages — and this strategy is built directly on that principle.
The Compound Marketing Effect Most Business Owners Miss
Tom’s most important insight for entrepreneurs who feel like their marketing isn’t working: they’re usually doing one thing in isolation. One thing done well produces linear results. Two things done well produces more than double the results. Three things compounds exponentially.
A business with a solid website, consistent content, and an active Google Business Profile outperforms the sum of those individual parts — because each channel amplifies the others. Most small business owners try one channel, don’t see breakthrough results, and conclude that marketing doesn’t work. The real issue is that they stopped one step short of where compounding begins.
This connects directly to the focus framework from Kate Hendrickson that we cover in the free entrepreneur resource hub on our Training page: pick two or three things, do them well, and let them build on each other. Don’t scatter effort across twenty channels hoping one breaks through.
“Business owners don’t understand the compound effect of marketing. If you’re doing one thing great — well, if you did two things, it’s going to make that one thing even better. If you did three things, it becomes exponential. They try to Mickey Mouse it and make it cheaper.” — Tom Malesic
The Takeaway
Twenty-eight years of serving small businesses taught Tom one thing above all else: the fundamentals compound. A good website written for real people and structured for search, combined with consistent local presence and two or three channels that reinforce each other — that’s the playbook. It was true in 1997 and it’s more true now than ever.
Hear the full conversation with Tom on the Unscripted SEO Podcast. And if you want to audit your own website and marketing against these principles, the entrepreneur blog and training resources here are a good starting point — or book a direct session below.
Get an Honest Read on Your Digital Presence
Jeremy Rivera works directly with entrepreneurs through the Digital Christian Collaborative — starting with a plain-language audit of what your website and marketing are actually doing, and where your highest-leverage opportunities are. $100/hr consulting rate — 30-minute foundational session.