Episode Transcript
Rachel Lindteigen 0:08
Number one is your content. Everything that Google wants these days is really good, high quality, helpful content. Their latest algorithm update was literally called the helpful content algorithm update. Like, seriously, if your content, like, you know how we've all searched, we've all Googled, and we found something and we've read it and been like that told me nothing. Well, that's what they're trying to get rid of, and eliminate, because again, they have to hold their market share, especially now with some of the changes that are coming, you know, is Bing suddenly going to become irrelevant for the first time in a decade, because of their integration with ChatGPT. Maybe that's what the industry is abuzz about right now. But for right now, Google is who we focus on, but Google has to maintain their market share. So that helpful content, that's it number one.
Monica Pitts 1:01
You're on mission, and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. Hello again, and welcome back to marketing with purpose. My name is Monica Pitts. I'm your host. And I have a special guest with me today. Someone who is as big of a geek as I am. Yes, huge smile. I'm saying that. And we had a lot of fun geeking out together and talking about SEO. Now the guest that I want to introduce you to is the owner and founder of etched marketing and etched Marketing Academy. Rachel Lindteigen. She's a journalist, turned SEO expert, and she's been marketing for 20 years and focused on SEO and content marketing for the past 15. She teaches small business owners how to work with Google to get more organic. Yeah, that means free my friends, traffic to their websites, and blogs, and she works with clients one on one, but she also teaches SEO and content marketing as well. So she's here with me today to teach you about SEO, because I wanted to know, what can you do to do SEO on your own, like to not have to pay someone to do it? Now you might already know, but maybe you don't know. That part of the SEO pie is having a great website. Right. So that's the part that I do build a modern, fast loading website that looks great on mobile phones, because Google cares about that stuff. Okay, it really does. But then there's another piece to it. And that is what Rachel does. Okay, so she's gonna let you know what makes sites rank really well in Google. How to select keywords to successfully rank in Google. Some common SEO mistakes that people make tools to find your keywords and her process for creating SEO worthy content, all while hanging out on her back patio. Looking at all of the cactuses. Yes, cactus is in her backyard and the beautiful mountain range because she's going to hang out with us from Tucson, Arizona. Isn't technology cool? I can hang out and talk to Rachel while I'm hanging out in Columbia, Missouri, in my office, while she hangs out on our back porch where it's actually warm. And looks at cactuses and a mountain range. Yeah. Yeah, I know, living in the Midwest has its drawbacks, but either way. Okay. Without further ado, let's get Rachel on here and talk about SEO. Let's get to business. Hello, again. And welcome back to marketing with purpose today, I found an SEO expert. Yes, I did. And I didn't even have to comb that hard across the internet. Because as an SEO expert, she's relatively easy to get imagine. So with me today, I have Rachel Lindteigen. And she is, I mean, the owner of edge marketing. And we are also in a member's group together, where we continually learn and develop our services and marketing, really. So I brought her on today to talk about SEO. So I'm going to stop talking and let her talk instead. So first, tell us about you. Who are you and tell us about your business to?
Rachel Lindteigen 4:47
Absolutely. First of all, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. And to help everybody nerd out a little bit on SEO. I realize sometimes you hear the word SEO and you think, oh, there's Laundry that I should fold. So please don't feel that way right now I'm gonna make it more fun easier to understand my whole point here is to make SEO so it feels easy, so that you're excited to try it or maybe not excited, but at least willing to try it. I'm Rachel Lindteigen, president and founder of edge marketing and etched Marketing Academy. I've been in marketing for goodness, about 20 years, started out in regular marketing, started learning about digital marketing, moved into content marketing, and SEO about 15 years ago, where suddenly my journalism degree was like, super exciting, and everybody wanted it in it. That degree that would pay me nothing when I graduated 20 years ago was suddenly worth a fortune, thanks to Google and content marketing and search engine optimization. And I was in demand. Never thought that would happen. But it was awesome that that's how the world went. I have worked for nonprofits, I've worked for franchise organizations as the national marketing manager. For franchisees. I've worked as the SEO and content marketing director, Senior Director for a very large New York ad agency, I oversaw the Arizona office based in Scottsdale, it was amazing got to live that dream of like flying in and out of Manhattan on a monthly basis, got to have my favorite restaurants, my favorite treat places, got to like check out all the locals places, then I had a family and it really kind of sucked because what was amazing, and awesome and fun when I was single, really, really stunk. When I had a little one at home, when he was about a year old, my company sold to an investment firm. And my job along with a bunch of others was eliminated. They took my position and just split it among three other directors and just had everybody absorb it. And I was looking for something else. And I was trying. And I just couldn't find what I wanted. And this is pre COVID. This was 2016. This was a long time ago, and the work from home and the flexibility and all of that didn't exist. And I was asking for like, can I work seven to four. So I see my kid. So I have more than 20 minutes with my baby. And they're like, yeah, no, that doesn't really work. For us. We're, we're a company that works in office eight to five every day. And so with my husband's blessing, I started my business because I wanted more flexibility. And now I get to help small business owners, I get to teach. And I get to drop my son off at school, and I get to do things like take off on Friday, because Friday is his eighth birthday. And he wants nothing more than mom to come have lunch with him at school and bring McDonald's and you know what this mom can do that because this business supports my lifestyle, my goals, my career, and my family. So
Monica Pitts 8:01
that's a powerful sentiment and I get it like I started my business when I was 25. My mom was like, there's no time like the present to be hungry Monica, and she was right. And she said I would thank myself for it later. And when I was you know, at the beginning of my my business and motherhood and like 2010 getting to spend that extra day a week with my my infant was amazing. And then moving into getting to allow myself to have the freedom now like starting two years ago, I just took the school calendar, and every day my kids were out of school, I just marked it off. I'm like, we're not doing it anymore. Because they were like 18 years and now I'm gonna give it to myself, because they're gonna grow up. And then they will they will, they will want to hang out with me anymore. They won't want to have their day off school with me. So well consider when I can be that gal.
Rachel Lindteigen 8:59
Exactly. I was just literally doing that before we started before I left my office to come do this because the housekeeper's making noise. I was sitting there with the calendar for next year blocking out every half day, every vacation day because I'm the same way. He does go to camp in the summer. We do do a split with some camp weeks and some weeks at home with mom because it's better for both of us. Yeah, but every other day I take off and it's awesome. And is i because and I tell him the same thing. I'm like because he's going to start third grade in the fall. He's not going to want to hang out with mom. I am not going to be awesome for much longer. So I want to soak it all in while I am because I have a stepdaughter who's in college and I was awesome to her until she was about 10 or 11. And then she was like, Okay, I'm gonna go do my thing. Can I have money to go to the mall with friends? Well, if you'll buy lunch for us, we'll still hang out. So I know my days are limited.
Monica Pitts 9:58
I have a 12 year old and she likes me when I like do her hair, yes. And when I do her nails, but most of the time, she just kind of wants to hang out upstairs. And she's kind of an introvert though. And I get that, and I want to give her her space too. But sometimes I'm like, Hey, you want to go for a walk? Girlfriend? Like, what if we stopped, figured out what you're up to up there?
Rachel Lindteigen 10:18
And that she's that's exactly what she's supposed to be doing at that age. I will say now that she's because minus 20. And she's coming back and doing more with the family and 1617 She started to want to be around us a little more.
Monica Pitts 10:32
All right, well, I can welcome her back with open arms, it's going to be amazing. I just tell my husband, I'm like this, this is the time that I just I don't want to fight with her all the time. I just, I want to like teach her how to handle conflict in a positive way. And make sure that I'm I'm here for her so that way, when the time comes when she needs me more, yes, he can still come and open the door and have that conversation.
Rachel Lindteigen 10:55
The most important thing we can do as moms is make sure they feel seen and heard and safe talking to us. Because it you never know what they're going to need help with as they get older.
Monica Pitts 11:05
Yes. Okay, so SEO. Alright, so the first thing I think we need to do, because sometimes I say an SEO when people give me like this blank stare is just, what is it?
Rachel Lindteigen 11:19
Yeah, so let's talk about what it is. And more than that, why it matters, because I think that really helps. So SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a process that we go through on a website to help Google better understand what that site is about. So I want you to reframe how you think about Google, because this is going to help make all of this be kind of like an aha moment. Google. Yes, it's a search engine. And it's an incredibly important one, 97% of all traffic goes through Google, almost all searches all internet traffic, most of it goes through a search engine 97% goes through Google Google Maps or Google Images, like you've got to be on Google. But Google is business. And I want you to think about that for a minute. The only way that Google is going to maintain that gigantic market share that they have is by being a great search engine and providing fantastic results to their customers. And so you need to help Google understand what your website is about. So Google knows they can trust you, because Google doesn't want to trust their customer, to someone that they don't know, and they don't understand. So Google looks for very specific things on your website, there were certain elements that we optimized for SEO, and each of those elements is like another checkmark for Google as to what that content is about. So until you've done that, they don't really understand your website. And if they don't understand it, and they don't know you, they don't trust you, they don't know that you're an authority, they're not going to show you to anybody, they're not going to trust their customer to you, because they make their money based on people coming to their search engine. Because they sell ads. Google's business model is ads, they need the traffic to sell the ads. They need you to provide amazing content to keep people coming back. So you have to partner with Google. And we can talk more about that. But that's really the most important thing I want you to understand is you have to kind of reframe how you think about Google and you need SEO is you partnering with Google, because Google wants to send people to you. But until you do your part, it's not going to happen. And if you don't do your part, and you don't optimize, you're not going to show up on page one. And you know what that means? Nobody's ever going to find you. Because 99% of people only ever look at page one. They tease within the industry that the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google because nobody's ever gonna find it because nobody's ever gonna look. So if you want website traffic for free, you have to understand and use and do SEO the right way. And that's my whole thing is I teach you how to do it the right way.
Monica Pitts 14:09
I love how you're bringing up that Google uses this user first mentality. And as a web developer, sometimes it is frustrating, right? But not frustrating all at the same time. Because I really do want people to have the best user experience on a website. I mean, first they, they do have to find it. But then there's all this back end stuff on your website, it has to be done correctly, so that way, Google will prefer it. And they will always put the user first even if you don't so salutely Like oh, yeah, why don't really care about that. Well, I was already well, then Google won't really care about you, because it's not going to invite people to your party, unless it thinks that you're cool. And you're only cool when you put the user first and it's like a weird little analogy there. I don't know
Rachel Lindteigen 14:55
it's an excellent one, because it's very true.
Monica Pitts 14:59
So do There's lots of different parts of SEO. And I think that's a common misconception is that people are like, Okay, so my favorite story is my dad, who He is head of his department at the airbag systems management, North Dakota State University. Okay, so why would he know anything about SEO? Well, because he also owns a very small internet service provider. And so he told me the other day, like, why don't you search engine optimize my site, you know, just hide some keywords in it. And I was like, Oh, dad, dad, dad. This is not how it works anymore, that it worked in like 98, like 1998. But it doesn't work the same way anymore. And then there's link building and directories and all kinds of stuff. So. So tell me what you feel like the most important part of SEO that businesses should focus on, like what's the most important part you think businesses should be focusing on?
Rachel Lindteigen 15:52
So SEO and your success with it comes down to two things, it's going to come down to your content. Number one is your content. Everything that Google wants these days, is really good, high quality, helpful content. Their latest algorithm update was literally called the helpful content algorithm update. Like, seriously, if your content, like you know how we've all searched, we've all Googled, and we've found something and we've read it and been like that told me nothing. Well, that's what they're trying to get rid of, and eliminate, because again, they have to hold their market share, especially now with some of the changes that are coming, you know, is being suddenly going to become irrelevant for the first time in a decade, because of their integration with ChatGPT. Maybe that's what the industry is abuzz about right now. But for right now, Google's who we focus on, but Google has to maintain their market share. So that helpful content, that's it number one quality content, they also want unique content, their whole thing is about your experience, eat, it's your experience, your expertise, your authorship, how well you, I can't remember what the T is off the off the top of my head, but it's all about your experience, your expertise, your authorship, your trustworthiness, like, how good is this website? Who are you to be talking about this? Like, do you really know what you're talking about? And that's really what they're looking for. So that's first and foremost, it is about your content. Second, it's about the authority of your website and the links that you're building to it and how you're building them. And making sure that you're doing it in a way that makes sense. That's not breaking rules. So Google's had several really big algorithm updates in the last decade or so we had two Panda and Penguin, they attack us with black and white animals. One was about your content. One was about your links. So if you were buying links, you had spammy links, your old school directories, none of that works anymore. That stuff, maybe it did work. 10-15 years ago, it doesn't work today. Same with content, if you had really thin content, like very minimal, or you were stuffing keywords, or like your dad was like, just hide them. Dude, back in the day, white text on white background, because they didn't want the keywords on the actual page, it would draw away from the aesthetic. Those things don't work anymore, you have to actually have copy on your page. And it needs to make sense. And it needs to help someone. So really, it's your content. And it's your links your authority for your site, and how, how much experience you have in your niche. If you've been doing this for a while. I mean, they can tell if you know what you're talking about or not.
Monica Pitts 18:39
I think too, this is a good lesson for folks that are like thinking about writing their website content. Because, yes, you could have super abbreviated content, but you're saying that thin content, Google doesn't pick it up. And you could also have really general content, like just you could go to ChatGPT literally, at this point, we're like, hey, write, write me, blah, blah, blah, and it's going to read it for you. But that's not going to get your rewarded because it's not unique. It's not trustworthy. It's not really telling your story. And so what you're saying is that we really just need to make sure that we humanize our content, and we make it helpful. We put that user first. Yes, like Google's doing. And, and I mean, why do we have to use words that people would search for, right? I mean, like, Can because they Google can draw conclusions, but it's not going all the way from like, x means x if they're not interrelated, and it can't, it does draw some conclusions between x means Y, right? But not always.
Rachel Lindteigen 19:39
Right? You have to make sure you understand your customer well enough to know what words they're using. Because when we optimize, we choose a keyword we choose a unique keyword for each page. We use that in all of our optimization elements. Well, if we're optimizing for the keyword that we want to use, versus the keyword that our customer uses, we could potentially rank if we've chosen a keyword we can rank for and we have done everything right. But nobody's using it. So nobody's gonna find you because nobody cares. That's not the word they use. I had. I have several examples of this from the corporate world. But I had one that popped up in a podcast interview like this recently. That was amazing. It was somebody else who's in our our group, who teaches doulas. And so I did an interview with her group. And we were talking about this very situation, and she brought up the best word. So when you think about a doula, do you think of a birth worker? Yes. But have you? I'm not familiar with the term birth worker?
Monica Pitts 20:39
No, I've never heard it. When you describe it that way. That is, that is what I think that they're going to do. They're going to help me give birth, right. But I would look for a doula or a midwife, maybe Exactly.
Rachel Lindteigen 20:49
And she said, part of what she was having to teach people within her group in her field was that no consumer on the outside has heard the term birth worker, it's not something they use. They use doula. And that's what we have to remember is, our terminology does not matter as much as our customers terminology, and the only way that we're going to so we want to rank and there's a couple things that are going to come into play here, are we using the word that the customer is using, because if we do everything, right, but we use birth worker, and they're not searching birth worker, nobody's gonna find us because they're looking for doulas. And Google is not going to likely pull you up for doula when you're targeting birth worker. So you get no results. The same kind of the flip side, same issue, but the other side of it is, are you choosing a keyword that's too big for your website. So I teach a free class that leads into my paid class. And one of the very first things I have people do when they come in for that free class, is to give me three to five words that they think would be their key words for their business, because this is the number one mistake I see people make. And I want to help them understand and have their aha moments as we go through the week. And I do it every time. It's beautiful. It's perfect. It's exactly what I expect. Because it's things like handmade crafts, or farmhouse decor, or like these great word shoes, pool floaties, like these amazing words that you and I and them are never going to rank for, because they're just way too big. And they're way too competitive. And so again, they've been doing this, they've been doing SEO, but they've been targeting the wrong word. And so they're getting no results. They're not showing up, you know, they're down on page five with the dead body on Google. They're nowhere because they've chosen the wrong word. So those are a couple of the biggest problems I see. And that's what we really work on right sizing with students and with clients is targeting keywords that our website can rank for, that our customer uses. And then using those keywords in the right places. That's the magic behind it. In all honesty, that's all it takes is finding a keyword your customer uses that your website can rank for and then doing the things Google wants you to do. And you'll get traffic.
Monica Pitts 23:16
I once back in the day, like way back in the news, probably like 2003, I was working on the website for the family internet service provider. And we had this product line and it was velocity internet accelerator. And I was like, This is so great. I look at this time ranking for this. I'm up on the first page, like all the time, and it turns out that the reason that I was ranking is because I misspelled the words velocity and accelerator. So I ranked for it. And I felt so proud. And I'm like, but it turned out it was like they were spelled wrong. And I was like the only human being felt them that way. So that was kind of funny. And then another story that I can like into what you were just talking about. So are we've been blogging since 2008. And our website has been around since 2005. So when we take a new business's website live and we add them to our portfolio, that portfolio page is going to rank above the new business's website every time Oh, yeah, for a while. So sometimes our clients are like, Why would you break above my line? And I'm like, Okay, do you want to explain to people why that happens so that I can literally send them this recording and be like, Here, listen.
Rachel Lindteigen 24:39
That's so your site, and I remember looking at it me like Wow, you've got a really good domain authority. You've been around for a while. So your Domain Authority is a score that Moz gives us it's not from Google, but Moz is one of our most trusted SEO resources and tools. So that brand new site is going to come out with it. Domain Authority have one, it's on a score of one to 100, 1 is low 100 is high, your cause your clients brand new site is probably one, your site, I can't remember exactly where yours was, but I feel like it was in the 40s, like it was, it was quite a bit higher, it's going to naturally rank higher for that term or that client name than the client in the beginning. It's the same reason that sometimes your LinkedIn profile or your Facebook page or things like that rank higher than you do in the early stages. And that's where you really have to look at what can I rank for? And how do I get my name, and you have to make sure you've got your search engine optimization done, right, even if it's just making sure your name is in there in the right places, but it's going to take time to build up the authority in Google's eyes to get you to rank higher, it's pretty common to see something like that happen. It's frustrating as the new website owner, but it's really common.
Monica Pitts 25:58
It is, and I know that it's frustrating for them. And, and it's frustrating for me because I have to say, I mean, Google will get around to it, when it gets around to it. Like it's going to eventually know that this is your business. And so you deserve to be placed higher than me, it'll get around to it eventually. But like it's not automatic. And it's something that just takes time. And unfortunately, Google gets to decide how long it takes, then I don't I don't get it, I don't get to rush it, I we have to rush it. But there's
Rachel Lindteigen 26:30
here's the thing, we have no control over what Google does. We have control over what we do, and how we optimize and what keywords we choose and what we do on our sites, we have zero control over Google. And so you just have to know that you're doing what you're supposed to. And in time, it will work. SEO is not like an overnight you can't turn it on and turn it off and have it happen immediately. A good SEO program is going to take 12 to 24 months to really take hold it is a long term investment. However, when you do it, and you do it, right, and you use SEO and content together, because you need both of them. You can write blog posts or have website content that sends traffic to you for five years, 10 years, like you can have old some of my best posts are from the very first year I was in business back when I I barely had any clients, I had lots and lots of time to write blog posts. So I did some of those posts from 2016 and 2017. Do they still drive more traffic than something brand new, and they drive traffic every month?
Monica Pitts 27:35
Sometimes I think it's harder to get the brand new stuff ranking because there's so much more that it's competing with out there and it takes it takes quite a while for it to like work its way up and be found and optimize out there. Because I experienced the same thing. And you know, that just tells me that I needed to go back out and read those articles and make sure that they're up to date and keep them fresh. But sometimes I do and sometimes I don't.
Rachel Lindteigen 28:01
We all do I teach my students to prioritize when they come to me. And they've been blogging for years. I teach them to prioritize, and I teach them a couple different ways they can prioritize what they're going to refresh versus what they're going to create new because you do need. If you've been blogging for a while, you should refresh and you should update because Google does want your content to be refreshed and updated. So I make a list of mine and I go through and I make sure things like make sure they reference the right class, make sure they have today's opt in like stuff like that to just from a standard marketing standpoint. I want to make sure I'm driving relevant traffic and I'm capturing them when they come to my website.
Monica Pitts 28:41
How do you How does Google know if you've updated a blog post? Is it just like you update it? And then it sees it there's different content out there? Or is there something that people can do to like signal Google, hey, come back and check this out, do your crawl.
Rachel Lindteigen 28:55
So you can I think you can still request like crawl through search console, I don't generally keep that. I don't do that unless it's been a long time since I've done it. If it's a major change or something like that, you can generally they're going to crawl your site on a fairly regular basis, depending on how big it is how much content, they're going to notice the changes, if there's something that you've changed, and you really want to make sure they do it requested they crawl it otherwise, they usually get it within usually a week or two. It's not too long before they find it and they update it and when they come the way it works. Google crawls so they refer to it as Googlebot, it's the spider and it crawls the content. It reads the content on your website, it reads some of the elements that are in your code. It clicks from link to link to link on your site to really understand everything that's there. If somebody links to your page for the first time, they may find it from their website and crawl on over and read it there.
Monica Pitts 29:53
But we're content like because we've said content a lot. Why don't we define what you define content for folks is I think there's two different parts. Through content that I am anticipating you're going to tell us. Yeah.
Rachel Lindteigen 30:09
So there's different types of content content can be written word like a blog, it can be something like this podcast, it can be a video, it can be infographics, it, there's so many different things. It can be your social media content, it can be your email, like, there's a ton. When I'm talking about SEO content, I'm generally talking about the words on your page, the words on your website, the words on your blog, the reason we want the two together, is that SEO drives targeted, relevant traffic content helps you nurture that traffic when they get to your website. So you can do things like pair together a blog post and a video. I do that a lot, because I do a video podcast now. And I tend to have a video that goes with most of my blog posts, that increases your time on site, because they're more likely to watch the video read the blog post. That's, that is an engagement metric that Google looks at. And that does impact your ranking. So having multiple ways for people to consume your content. But the bottom line is, when it comes to search, they need to have words, they really need to have the blog post or the website page, that's going to be the most important from an SEO standpoint, you can repurpose, and you should use the content that you craft with your SEO content strategy in place, you should use that content to fuel your email, your videos, your audio, your social, all of it should be related. So they have the footprint of your business across all channels. And it makes it easier because the way I teach my students to create content is to brainstorm and to look for keywords ahead of time and to really make sure they found something where they can rank because there's no point in blogging and spending time on it. If it's going to go into that black hole of nothingness on the internet, like, let's make sure that we're being strategic about it, because it takes time to create content. So let's make sure that we're creating content that people actually care about, and they want to read. And then let's optimize it for Google so that Google shows it to people, and it gets out there. And by doing that, you get better results. So spend your time creating content that's going to rank that's going to help your customer that's going to get you results.
Monica Pitts 32:24
So you're saying that when we start reading our our cert planning our blog content, or when we are beginning the writing process for the pages of our site, one of the first steps that we need to do is go out and figure out what keywords people are searching for. So that way, we can make sure that we're including them on the proper spots and our website, so that way people can find it. So it's like kind of the first step in the journey.
Rachel Lindteigen 32:47
100% I describe it kind of as a sandwich, like your SEO, your keyword research, your brainstorm all of that, that's your foundation, I want you to do that before you write. So you start with SEO, meaning you start with keyword research, you start looking for an idea that relates to one of your content pillars, or that relates to something that you write about regularly on your blog. So you choose that, then you write a really great piece of content for your customer. Don't ever write for the search engine, right for your customer. Then the top layer is the optimization that you do for the search engine so that it gets found, but you sandwich it together with your keyword, your content, and then your optimization.
Monica Pitts 33:35
Brainstorm, write for the customer, optimization. Yes. 100 person. So I didn't plan on asking you this, but I hope Dallas we're what products or services do you like to use to find keywords? Because people always ask, like, where do I find this information? And I mean, the only one that I use with regularity is the the ad Google ads like keyword search finder tool, what is that thing called?
Rachel Lindteigen 34:07
keyword research tool.
Monica Pitts 34:08
There you go, Isn't that free?
Rachel Lindteigen 34:10
Yep.
Monica Pitts 34:12
I mean, is there a better one that maybe has a little bit more straightforward user interface? Because that one can feel like
Rachel Lindteigen 34:17
Yeah, so I love that one. That's the one I've used for forever. My students hate it. It's scary, overwhelming. They like Uber Suggest. Uber suggests not a big fan of Neil Patel. There's a lot like within the professional SEO industry, people don't like him. However, within the entrepreneur community, Uber suggests I think people don't like him because the tools and things are not created for SEOs. They're created for real people, regular people who are learning this and doing it. It is a very user friendly, easy interface. The price point you pay for it. It was my students who told me about it. I had never are tested it out. It gives you a red, yellow or green as to how this keyword is how competitive it is it gives you other suggestions the same as Google keyword research tool does like, but I think Google, it's harder since they pulled it into AdWords, you remember years ago when it was separate, and it was so much easier. Now I have to tell people, you have to start, you have to create an account, you have to create an ad, you have to put your credit card information in, you never have to run an ad, you never have to pay money. But they've made it harder to get to it was much better when it was on its own. So I think that's part of it. And it just feels kind of overwhelming. So Uber Suggest and Uber Suggest if you have the paid account, you have like they have a Chrome plugin. And so you can browse with your plugin. And it'll show you anything that you go in there and you start to search, it'll show you what the search volume is, and other related words. And with their free account, I think you're limited to like two or three searches a day. But when you have the paid account, and the paid account is cheap, you can get all sorts of queries each day. The other tool I love is Moz. Moz hasn't fantastic SEO tool. But again, it's over 100 a month, which I don't recommend that for small business owners stick with something cheap, or stick with something free small SEO Tools is a free one that you can use, you can track like 10 keywords. I know some of some of my friends within the industry really like SEMrush and things like that. But again, like I have a friend who's paying 300 a month for her SEMrush account for her agency. It's just not a good use of funds. As a small business owner who's not doing this as a professional career like, Dude, I run an agency and I'm not spending that kind of money on a tool. And she was actually messaging me asking about alternatives because she wants to cut the cost there. So I would recommend Uber Suggest the Google keyword research tool, even though it's kind of a pain in the booty to get to at this point. It's free, small SEO tools, anything like that, and then I do the keyword research. I like to teach people to go back then and verify with Google, don't ever trust the data out of the keyword research tool that's telling you this is easy, I want you to actually go back and look at the keyword and what shows up in the search results. When you search a specific keyword. I want you to look for a couple things. One is how competitive is this keyword? Are these and be super honest, you guys know being in denial, okay? Let's look at the results and see how similar Am I to the websites that are showing up. Because if Amazon and Nordstrom and Zappos are showing up, you're on the wrong track, you're never gonna You're never gonna beat them. You're never going to rank and you've got to be able to rank to get the traffic. So, go verify the other thing you want to look at is the consumer intent behind that word, like, Go search that term and see what shows up? Is this really what you're trying to target for? Like, are you on the right track? Or do you need to refine and so if you go there, and you're like, wow, these people are using the wrong term? No, my friend, you're using the wrong term. So you need to look for something else. Or if you go, and it's all these really big brands. And if they had stores, they'd be at the mall, you're on the wrong track. But if you go and you see others that are similar to you, and you click on those websites, and you're like, oh, okay, this is cool. Or maybe you've listened to this, you've heard me talk a little about domain authority. There's a Chrome plugin called Moz bar, it's from Moz, to freebie, you can download that it'll give you the domain authority of your website, it'll give you the domain authority of any website. If you're searching Google and you have Moz bar open and you're using it, it'll show you the domain authority of every site in the results. If they're similar to you, like you have a domain authority of five, let's just pretend you have a fairly new site, you have a domain authority of five, you're not an expert on anything, you're not an authority on anything, you're a new website, and you're looking at a keyword and everybody you're seeing has like 60 70 80 Start over. Don't waste your time, you're not gonna get results. And that's, I think the biggest, there's a couple of really big mistakes that I see. But that's the biggest keyword related one is just trusting the tool and just grabbing a word based on how much volume there is and not looking to see is it the right word? Can I rank for it? Like all of that you got to do a little bit more to really find the right word,
Monica Pitts 39:30
I have a really dorky question for you. So because I you know, was raised without the internet, and then I was an like early Internet user. When I search for things I search for things with service, city state, or service city, right. But I noticed that when I search for stuff just without the city and state, it doesn't necessarily provide different results all the time. So we use think that people need to have city and state with their service? Or is it? You know, people search that way. New but new people, new people that way. So maybe it depends on your audience. I don't know. I'd love to hear your input on it because localization is a big deal. And Google Now
Rachel Lindteigen 40:22
I relate. And because I remember doing website content when you had what was it six Google fonts or eight Google fonts you could choose from? And that was it. Like that? Was it like, 2003 timeframe that websites were? Well, were they were interesting, weren't they?
Monica Pitts 40:39
Oh, my gosh, my designer, one of my designers was like, Oh, look at this cool font, I found I'm gonna use it in my design, and I love her so much. She's so creative. And I'm like, Mikki, that's Georgia.
Rachel Lindteigen 40:54
That's been around for a heartbeat, baby.
Monica Pitts 40:57
Yep, I was using it in like 2000. And it is a fun one, especially if you don't want your numbers to all match up and be on the same baseline. But yep, it's a new one.
Rachel Lindteigen 41:09
Let's go. Joker man and some Comic Sans while we're at it.
Monica Pitts 41:13
Comic Sans people, new Comic Sans. I have a whole episode where I freaked out about fonts. So it's all about decisions you need to make to plan your logo. Yep. Yep. We had a complete font meltdown in that and anybody who wants to hear it six decisions you need to make about your logo.
Rachel Lindteigen 41:37
It's important and choosing the right font is critical. And people don't realize that but yeah, okay. Back to localization, the way I look at it, and what I teach localization, I think, if you are a local service provider, you only help people in your area, then yes, 100% optimize for your local area. If you are someone who serves anyone, anywhere, any like geographic region, then I don't so me personally, I've contemplated targeting SEO agency Tucson, because I looked at it and I could 100% rank for that. But I want to cast a wider audience. I don't just want to work with people in Tucson like I like it. I have a couple of local clients, but I don't just want to work with them. And I don't want somebody I have clients in like, five different states. And I have some in Canada, like I want them to feel comfortable working with me wherever they are. So I target other terms. I target SEO expert, I target SEO Services, I talk I target small business, SEO, I target SEO courses, SEO for entrepreneurs, I target a broader net, so that people feel like they've reached the right place. I I can't imagine if somebody's from Toronto, and I have a client in Toronto. If she landed on my website, and it just said SEO Tucson, she would think that I couldn't help her because she's in Toronto, and I'm in Tucson. So you really want to think about who you're trying to reach and what message they need.
Monica Pitts 43:19
Because they are going to read it even if Google could pick up SEO expert separate from SEO expert Tucson. Yep. The person who sees that title on your page, when it pops up in the search results page. It'll they SEO who's on and they probably won't click on. Right. That's what you're saying? Because Exactly. It's like an ad. And if the title of the ad doesn't apply to you, then it's probably not a good title.
Rachel Lindteigen 43:43
Exactly. Yeah. So you just want to think about who are you trying to reach and make sure that your messaging reaches the right person? I mean, this is back to marketing more than even SEO is just who is your audience? What is the message they need and make sure it lines up?
Monica Pitts 43:59
So any final advice you want to offer for people about their SEO game?
Rachel Lindteigen 44:06
Yeah, learn it. So SEO is critical. If you want to get results, you want to get traffic from Google, you have to do it. There are super common mistakes that people make that keep you from getting results. So the biggest thing I can say is learn how to do it and find somebody you can trust to learn from because there's a lot of people out there. There's a lot of grow marketers out there. There's a lot of people who will take your money and do nothing. I don't want that for you. I want you to be able to protect yourself. I want you to understand why you're doing things the way you are. So even if you're going to outsource it, I want you to understand enough to be able to ask smart questions. And to know whether or not the person you're hiring is doing what they say they're doing so that you're getting results. And if you want to learn how to do it, take a class learn how to do it. but learn from somebody who really knows what they're talking about. Because I, the whole reason I started, my business was I was tired of part of it obviously was I wanted the flexibility, all of that. But as far as why I focused here and then built the training side of it, I kept getting questions from friends and family who were small business owners, who were asking about advice they were getting, and it was so wrong, and it was going to hurt them, and they were not going to get the results. And I got really tired of that, because they were getting taken advantage of and stupid stuff. Like, you get those phones, you probably get them the phone calls about your Google map listing, and it's not listed, it's not verified. And if you do this, and like they've got you on the phone, and they want $400, to do something that's free and takes five minutes. I mean, that's one of my super rants, it makes me so mad. And they try to take advantage of small business owners and small business owners work their behinds off to make their businesses successful. No, my goal, is just to teach them and protect them. That's it.
Monica Pitts 46:07
Yeah, and I do have to say like, if you're interested in something that it can be as much of a rabbit hole as SEO, having someone guide you through the process is paramount. Like it will just save your brain so much energy of running around in circles and chasing pennies that maybe didn't even need to be chased. So I love the idea of of having the training. And yeah, that's why we do the the WordPress training course because we're like, Hey, what are the things that you shouldn't even have to worry about, which is having a good base for a website that loads quickly, that you can optimize that has all the framework for you to do it, you need to never have to figure that out. We'll do that for you. And then, and then I'll teach you how to put your junk into the website the right way, right. So if they want to take it to the next level, then they need someone like you who can help them with that keyword research and, and get it all put together. So that is totally awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. And oh, where can people meet you? Hey, meet us figure out where to find you.
Rachel Lindteigen 47:17
Yeah, absolutely. So my website is etchedmarketing.com I have all sorts of free resources for you just go to the freebies tab, and you'll be able to find all sorts of fun stuff. I'm most active on Instagram at Etched Marketing Academy. I've got a couple of freebies there. If you want like my SEO content quickstart guide, I got tech savvy, and you can DM me the word SEO, and it'll actually send it to you because I figured out how to do a chat funnel. It's awesome. So you can check that out. I'm also on Facebook and YouTube. But DM me, let me know you heard me on this podcast and let me know if you have any questions. I would love to have you in my world have you? You know, I'd love to work with you. Or have you take the class or just ask questions just I'm here to help you learn
Monica Pitts 48:02
etchedmarketing.com Or @ Etched Marketing Academy? Yep. On Instagram. Right. Okay, I got it. Right. Yeah, I'm gonna get the links in the show notes, too. So thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us. And until next time, go forth and mark it with purpose, to get a copy of the shownotes. And all those links that we just heard from our guests, head on over to Mayecreate.com, and mayecreate.com. And of course, I have to tell you the things that all podcasters are supposed to tell you at the end of your episodes, like, if you thought this was awesome, you could subscribe. And then I would like get to tell you when I have new stuff for you to learn and new episodes and new people to meet new stories to tell. And of course, I would really love it if you left your review. So head on over to Mayecreate.com for those show notes, mayecreate.com. Or maybe even contact my team about building that next website. We can do it for you. And we even have our better than DIY website program that teaches you to plan and build your own website. So head on over to May create.com ma yecreat.com I'll meet you over there.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
