Marketing + Margaritas Episode 4 - SEO
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Here’s an episode you won’t want to miss - we’re giving you the ins and outs on how you can improve your Google ranking. While SEO may sound like a daunting concept, we’ve broken it down into tried and tested, bite-sized bits of info that you can implement yourself. Have a listen and thank us later!
EPISODE 4 SHOW NOTES
Topics we cover in this session >>
What is SEO and SEM?
Ways to improve your SEO through blogging.
How long a blog post should be
The best time to post your blogs
Leveraging your content to the fullest
Today we're talking about how to improve your Google ranking. So, SEO and SEM? Firstly, Jade, what the hell are they?
A pain in the ass.
So are a lot of acronyms, but SEO stands for?
SEO is search engine optimisation. Basically, what that means is that you're doing activities both on your website and off your website to improve where your website ranks on search engines, such as Google.
Right. And SEM is?
Search engine marketing. That's the paid side of things. Think of stuff like Google Ads, and Ads Manager, etc. That's getting your website to the audience that you want to reach, but you're actually paying for it, as opposed to SEO, which is...
Organic.
Exactly.
Awesome. Okay.
So today, we're focusing on something you can actually do organically yourself to improve that ranking. But first, we have a little bit of a website disclaimer. This is a little bit of a bugbear of ours. We just wanted to give you all of the insight about what you can actually achieve. So, McAuley?
What we're basically going to go through today will definitely improve your website ranking, if your website is actually already optimised. If you've got a really old website - you know, there's plugins and platforms and things that haven't been updated. If it's been set up badly, either on the front end or the back end - if it's not actually set up properly, then nothing's really going to help until you get those issues sorted first.
That's really hard for someone who doesn't know anything about IT or building websites to actually understand. I know myself that I will go, "Oh, yeah! No, that looks okay!" But it's the coding, it's metadata, if your website has been submitted to Google and properly indexed - like that's just words to me, that’s never going to mean anything me. I don't do this side of things, but they all play a big role in how your website works already.
Exactly. One thing that Alanna and I were talking about the other day, is how a website does have a lifespan. Just like how cars need to be serviced regularly, and eventually will shit themselves and you do need to buy a new one. A website for your business is not just like, "Cool, we built a website. That's ticked off. Never need to look or buy a new one ever, ever.”
No need to update, it's good for 20 years. No, no, that's not going to work. If you're coming to us, or you're having problems going, "My page isn't coming up in Google ranking." Well, these things all contribute to how it actually works.
Before you try it, especially before you spend money on SEO packages or anything like that. Because that seems to be the thing that people are saying like, "Oh, my website's not performing. Oh, I'll buy an SEO package." Before you do that, please, please, please actually look at the site itself. Sorry, Alanna's laughing because I'm freaking out a bit. Because I just hate people getting taken advantage of, and it happens so often. It's not just big metro areas, it's not just online scams - there's all kinds of organisations and people that will take advantage of you because some of the stuff is a little bit complicated and technical. They'll use that to sell you on stuff that is not going to help unless you actually have the foundations right. Okay, let's move on.
Okay, so that's our disclosure. If you need to stop and go back and have a look at your website, make sure it's up to date, to make sure everything there is what needs to be there. We do, we schedule in our marketing budget and our timeline every year to review the content that is on our website, to make sure everything is being updated, making sure our platform is working accurately for our website. Your platform is the site that was built on.
We use Squarespace and it auto-updates and we love it, it takes the stress out of it but you still need to check in on those things. So, if you need to stop - pause this podcast right now. Go and check, go and have a look, even if you leave it for later. Go for it. We are not judging you. If you're confident that your website is pretty A-OK, then keep listening because we're going to talk about how to get it even more A-OK.
Yeah, cool. One of the easiest things that you can actually do yourself to improve your SEO on a regular basis, is updating your website with new fresh content consistently.
Yay.
First thing that comes to mind probably for most people is blogging, and then the second thing that comes to mind is, "Hell no, I don't want to be blogging."
"I don't have time for that."
Yeah, exactly.
"What am I going to blog?"
We wanted to break it down and make it as simple as possible for you to actually be able to action this advice. So yes, blogging is one way of consistently putting fresh content onto your website. That can be something that you do weekly or whatever - you write a blog, and you upload it to your blog section. However, putting fresh content onto your website regularly is not just about blogging.
Yes, you can do it in different sections and it depends on your business and what you are doing, so you can make it work easily for you. Even if you do have a blog page, you can also do other sections, update other sections of your website with things like a project page. "We've been working on this project for this awesome client, and we're so proud of it" - that's showing off your stuff, that's another tick for your SEO, and it's a different section - so you're not doing the same thing every time. It can be "our work", so bit of a portfolio of what you're doing. It can be "news", whether it's specifically about you, or it's industry-related...
Client news...
Client news - that's all great stuff to go up on your website. "Case studies", it's kind of a tie into your project page. If you have a large employee base for your business, you can be doing staff profiles - that is going to be helping your website. If you did one of those a month, that's four different things that you're creating organic, new content for, and your SEO is going to love you for it. You're not sitting down doing the same, repetitive thing or going, "What am I going to blog about?" The word blog has become a scary word.
It has! I mean, we've got some ideas about formatting and everything to make it a bit easier for you. But honestly, blogs aren't necessarily what you think - it's not the three-hour article and stuff like that.
Yeah, I think of it as just a long-form social media post.
Yes, correct.
If you’re like, "This is too long to put on my Facebook page", just write that extra paragraph or two and put it on your website. It's a blog. So, the question is why are we doing this? Why does Google like new content?
Basically, Google works by little bots that crawl through... [inaudible giggling]
A spider robot is what I'm imagining.
Basically, the Google bots will crawl your website looking for new content to index. Google is pretty much just like a massive filing cabinet, and the way that you find stuff in that filing cabinet is keywords. Keywords are just search terms. So, if you're looking for "hairdresser Mackay" for example, it will try and find all of the files that are relevant to "hairdresser Mackay".
And here's some new ones that we're going to put up nice and early, because they're new and relevant.
Well, it sort of works like...
Wishful thinking.
Yeah, not exactly. It works on popularity as well. For example, if your website has been clicked on, if you've got "hairdresser Mackay" as a search term, and then your website shows up and you've gotten clicked on because someone went through that search term and they stay on your website for a bit, then that shows Google, "Oh, you're relevant to that keyword." The more that happens, the stronger that your website is tied to that keyword, but you're not the only website in existence.
No, you're not the only hairdresser.
New content gets added to the web, obviously, all of the time, which is why that new, fresh content is really important, because it strengthens those connections to those keywords for you. As an example, if you were a dentist, you might have a page about braces. Then you might do a blog about braces. So, the term braces, etc - it's on your website a few times. However, if you were then to do blog about "braces for teenagers", "braces for adults", "do you need braces?", "how to eat with braces", "how to clean and maintain your braces", "different types of braces", "here's some new braces", so on and so forth. Each time that you're blogging about it and putting those keywords in prime spots within your blog, it is strengthening your website to appear for that search term. Then if you think of the search terms - you might have five, you might have fifty, that are ones that you really want to show up for - just start with one. Start with one search term and build up some fresh content, and scheduling it out regularly means that there’s always reasons to go back and crawl through your website.
Absolutely.
Then do that with your other ones over time, to build up and strengthen. It is a process, but the more you do it - even just getting started with one today, you need to start for it to actually make a difference.
Absolutely, awesome. So obviously, as a dentist, you potentially would do more than braces. So you don't have to do just...
Dentists do more than braces?
Possibly.
Actually, that's an orthodontist that does braces. I don't think dentists do... anyway, that's beside the point.
Clearly, neither of us have had braces.
So yeah, you'd obviously mix that list in your blog, it wouldn't just be bombarded with braces. But this is where your blog and your website differ from social media. If you post about braces every time on your website, people aren't going to go there and go, "All the talk about is braces", they go in there because they're looking for this information. It's not like Facebook, where you've gone, "I've written the same post all week, they're going to shut off, they're going to change." That's not how this works.
Our behaviour on social is a lot different to our behaviour when we're looking for a search term. When we are searching for information about braces, we really do want to read the information about braces, that's exactly what we’re specifically looking for. So, seeing five posts in a row that are about braces, especially if they're all different takes and topics, etc. It's like, "Oh, I am an adult and I need braces, so I'll read about the process. Oh, here's one about eating with braces. Well, if I'm gonna get braces, I probably want to know beforehand what issues I might have with eating" and so on and so forth.
Exactly. It's like no more taffy?
Taffy?
I don't know, I was trying to think of something sticky.
I know apples is a really tricky one.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, neither of us have had braces. Clearly, this is probably not our best example.
I think that was an excellent example.
It wasn't about gardening or slugs, so winning! Alright, so Jade, what is the 'how' of doing blogs?
Right. So, I said before blogging is not necessarily just sitting there and writing a magazine article. There's definitely for some people, for some businesses that long-form posts can suit, and it suits their audiences, and that might be something that you want to play with. It's not like it's a "don't do that", it's just, you don't have to do that. One thing I get asked quite a lot by people is, when we're building websites, I’m like, "Cool, let's put some blogs on there," and they're like, "Okay, so what's the word count? How long does it need to be?" And it's like, "Well, there is no magic number." Honestly, I have read a lot about SEO and blogging, etc, and I've got a couple of different people that I follow. It's really interesting, because two of the main ones have actually both got scientific, you know, their own personal evidence, very different theories about how long a post should be. In my mind, when I go through and research it, knowing there is no one answer here.
It's personal preference.
It's kind of like, if you could write a blog that was one paragraph long with a heading, and you can do that consistently once a week, that's going to get you so much further ahead than sitting and trying to do one big ass article once a month. I really think it's less about thinking about what standards or guidelines there are, what you're supposed to do, and actually doing what suits you.
Get out of your head a little bit on that one.
Yeah.
Using our dentist examples or orthodontics... using our braces as examples, you could do like, "Okay, braces for teenagers - we're going to write a few paragraphs about this. Eating with braces - we're going write a paragraph, and then you're going to have a list of foods to potentially avoid," I would imagine. You can do it in different ways. It's not just sitting down and doing those paragraphs - lists are great, photo albums and some captions with a paragraph going, "Hey, this is what we did!" Especially if it's a case study or a project, plan a "project" page, so you can use different ways to represent it.
Going back to that - the food for braces thing. For example, you could write four paragraphs about how different foods affect it, different textures and all that sort of thing, and why it's an issue. Another way of doing that exact same post is like Lani said, you could write an intro paragraph, and then have a list of foods to avoid.
Like do's and don'ts.
Yeah, exactly. Well, sorry - that's another one.
That's a whole other blog.
You could have that same person have a couple of paragraphs, then have a gallery of images of the food with the caption of them - these are the foods to avoid. On one side, for your website, SEO works not just from the keywords and the terms that you're putting on there, but it's also like I said before, it's how long people are staying there. If someone goes to your blog, and they go there and it's four paragraphs and they jump straight off, that actually doesn't help your SEO because they're just leaving straightaway. Whereas, if they would be there, and they would just sit and click through a few photos, that extra time helps show that you are relevant for that keyword. Even better, is that if you have a blog, say about foods to avoid when you've got braces, is to then have a call to action button at the bottom. That could be "contact us for a no-obligation consult". Or it could be, "Considering getting braces? Read up about the different types of braces that you can get." You then point them to read another article that is relevant to the information they read, so they actually click further into your site.
Which is awesome.
Again, if you think of it like, yes, we want good SEO because we want to be visible. But why do we want to be visible? We don't just want to stand up in front of people and wave our arms and shout. We actually want them to become a customer. The end game is not to be visible. All these people that go on and on about being visible - that's great - but you actually need to put a little bit of thought behind what you're going to do once you grab someone's attention. So it's really conversion.
That's your goal.
So even if you have a keyword that doesn't get searched a lot, it might only have 50 people searching for it a month. But if you have a high conversion rate, then that's better than if there's 10,000 people searching for it a month, and none of them buy from me. That's not very well worded, but basically, it's about the conversion. It's not just about visibility.
Yeah, absolutely. So linking those three together - anything that's relevant to keep that conversation going.
Yeah, and so it improves your SEO, because they're going deeper into your website. That shows Google that you're relevant to that keyword. Then, on the actual business side, where you want to make money, someone who is engaging with you further, going further into your website, reading your information, getting to know they can trust you - they're more likely to actually get in contact with you as well. So, win-win on all faces. Faces? On all fronts. It's not just about getting onto Google, it is actually about engaging with your potential customer and turning them into a customer.
Keep that consumer hat in mind. You still want to attract people - Google's not your end goal.
Yeah, exactly. That frustrates me. It's like, "How do I get on the first page of Google?" And it's like, "Do you mean how do you get more customers in a particular market? How do you launch a new product? What's the actual end goal? Let's work from there backwards, shall we?"
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, sorry. I'm going to get off my high horse again. What's that, the third time for this one?
Yeah, this is a hard one to play because Jade’s very passionate about this. Okay, so we're going to talk about when. What is our timing? When should we be posting blogs?
Much like the "How long should a blog post be", the timing is also really dependent on you and your time, and also your industry. For example, in our region, we've got heaps of lawyers, a lot of solicitors etc, who are actually using their blogs, and so they're posting content regularly. So, search terms around "lawyers Mackay", "solicitor Mackay" etc - they're competitive search terms. That's something where you want to be putting something out probably weekly, and really being very strategic about how to use keywords, etc, using those prime keyword spots. For a blog, it's always your heading, your subheading, putting it into the first paragraph, making sure that you actually use the keyword in those spots that Google put more weighting on. If you're in a competitive industry online, then make sure that you're doing it fairly regularly. You might be in a competitive industry, like electricians, but online...
No one's really talking about it. They're too busy in roofs and sorting lights and doing stuff.
Yeah, and so they tend to do a lot of SEM, so they'll do paid stuff, but not necessarily the organic stuff. That might be that if you just put up something every few weeks, you're actually staying really quite prime in Google rankings. Whereas, if you do something like steel fabrication, well depends what area you're in. Sorry, so we were talking to a client recently who does it and it's only just become competitive across Queensland.
If there's only two businesses in Mackay, and neither of them are blogging, then if you start - you're gonna win that race.
Yeah, exactly. That might just be that you are doing something every few weeks, or you might do a news post or something once a month. Then every couple of weeks you just freshen up a bit of content - add a new photo. The timing really is dependent on how competitive your industry is online in the area that you service.
Awesome.
I guess no matter what sort of timing that you want to go for, I really recommend scheduling it in. If you're going to do an update, whether that's a portfolio, a case study, a blog, a photo gallery, whatever. If you want to do one once a fortnight, then whether that's something that you actually put in your diary as a recurring appointment. So every second Tuesday, I'm going to spend an hour and a half reviewing our recent cases, reviewing our recent work, and choosing one and writing up a little bit of a spiel about and chucking a photo on.
And this is a great one, that if you've got a team of employees, throw it out during a team meeting and go, "Hey, look, we're gonna start putting some fresh content on our website, what has been happening?" If they're out boots on the ground, doing the work, get them snapping some photos, get them giving you some feedback.
Everyone's got a camera in their back pocket. Honestly, the photos that you can get with phones these days, are actually really good. Secondly, it's for web. So it doesn't need to be mega high-resolution.
It's not getting printed.
You still want something to look nice and have good lighting - which is a big thing. You still want it to look good, and not have fingers and stuff in front of it, which I still do sometimes - I swear to God, I'm so bad.
I was just about to say, most people should be capable of doing that.
Not me. But for people who aren't me, it's not hard to just get some photos and get them to send them through to you. Then all it needs to be done is writing up. Even if you just start with writing up, say there was a project, you write who the client was, where it was, what you did - just a few specs, until you get comfortable with that pattern. Then as you get comfortable with it, you might actually write a bit of a spiel to go with it. You know what I mean? It's not like you need to do everything straight out the gate. Make it easy on yourself. If you get started, you're going to be so much further ahead, even if you're only doing half of what you could do. You'll get so much further ahead in three months time than if you've done nothing at all, or you just been waiting for that perfect blog or you get perfect photos and that sort of shit. Life's not perfect - that's not how it rolls.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm gonna calm down again now.
And the more practice you get, the better it'll look. If you really hate the first ones, go back and delete them, it's okay, but it's gonna improve your SEO organically.
It's like us with this podcast, you know, no offence Lani and I...
I can't listen to out first ones.
I think we're hilarious. But to be fair, in a year's time, we're going to be looking back at this going, "Oh my God", whereas if you don't start practising, if you don't start somewhere, you're never gonna get good at it - just like anything else in life.
Absolutely, cut yourself a break.
I feel like that's how we end all our podcasts - just have a crack, just get started.
Are they becoming inspirational? Is that what we're saying on here?
Inspirational slash just pushing.
Personal justification?
No, just telling people what to do and being bossy.
Alright guys, so to wrap it up, make sure you leverage your content on your social media platform - that's my little like bugbear there. If you're going through all that effort to write a blog or publish on your website, the same stuff can go across to your social media - It's good content.
It's original content, and it drives traffic back to your website content.
Especially if you link it!
Which you don't always need to do. If you think, "Okay, I've written a blog, or I've updated a project" or whatever - yes, will post that onto your social channels - that doesn't mean that it's dead. It's not like you can never use content from that again. Make sure you repurpose it as much as possible. If you go to the effort of creating something, get every single thing out of it that you can. If there's a statement in there, that's really interesting - a fact or figure, a quote, or just a little tidbit of information. You might do "the five steps to maintaining your braces", then you can do a series of posts. "Here's step one", "Here's step two", it could be a Facebook story, it could be a reel, it could be anything. When you write one blog, or you put up one piece of content, there could be 20 social posts that you can derive from that for all your different platforms. Just make sure if you're going to put time and effort into something...
Get bang for your buck.
Yes, leverage it as much as possible.
Another tip is if you're already sending out a weekly or regular enewsletter for your business, that content can be going on your website as well. As long as it's relevant, obviously, but if it's news and information that you're putting out there, you can either be writing a blog about it or using your blog in your email newsletter. So again, leveraging your content on to all your platforms is going to make the most of your marketing time.
Absolutely! Man, I love content marketing. So good!
All right. Well, good luck. I hope that everything goes well with your SEO. Just one little tidbit for today, make sure if you've got a few things you need to tweak or revise on your website, you go back and do that, because if your website's not working properly to start with, you're gonna struggle.
Yeah, it can be just such a waste of time and money if you don't actually have an optimised site to start with. So that is 100% step one.
Fantastic.
Thank you so much for joining us and we hope you tune in next time.
Cheers.