What is SEO and How Do You Optimize Your Website?
Rachel Schardt, Website Designer shares her SEO secrets to drive traffic to your website. And more traffic = more leads!
I don’t know about you, but when I hear “SEO,” I kind of want to run. The whole idea always seems so puzzling and confusing. But what if you understood what the purpose of SEO is, how it works, and how to make your website easy to find?! Thanks to Rachel Schardt, one of our Upleveler Show guests, we’re getting a chance to solve some of the mysteries of SEO. We go live inside the Upleveler Society Facebook Group most Friday afternoons with guest experts and chat about skills needed for small business owners, so make sure you don’t miss our upcoming episodes!
Rachel is a graduate of my Group Coaching Program. She’s a web designer, brand designer and SEO expert. And she’s also an actor (fun fact!). Her whole journey started with her high school drama department’s website years ago and after going through my program, she took her business full-time! She’s an amazing designer and helps bring brands a fresh new look. Today, Rachel is really going to hone in on SEO and share some secrets with us… because we can have the prettiest site in the world, but if no one can find it, what good is it, right?
T: Can you break down some of the terms of SEO and what they mean?
R: Sure! If you don’t know, SEO stands for “Search engine optimization.” There’s a second term “search engine marketing,” - that is NOT the same thing. That’s more like paying to run an ad, so we’re not talking about that. Honestly, people searching are less likely to click on the ad than the organic search results, so it’s a much better investment to work on SEO instead of paying for ads!
Some other terms that are useful:
Onsite SEO - how you optimize your own site for SEO.
Offsite SEO refers to things like Google My Business page, Yelp pages, or things that give your URL “street cred with Google,” as I like to say!
Backlinks is when another website is linking to your website. You don’t need hundreds of these - you just need some really high quality ones.
Search engines want to give the searcher the most reliable and best results. When you have these other sites, like Google My Business or the backlinks, it helps Google understand who is legit.
T: Like little clues!
R: Exactly! And onsite SEO is how we communicate with Google. Google uses what they call crawlers to find information on your site to help with searches, too. I like to imagine little guys actually crawling around my site to grab the information, and there’s lots of little things you can do to help provide strong onsite SEO clues to Google. The biggest one is keywords - and those are what people are searching for. I think people feel very overwhelmed by this. But really, there’s a ton of tools you can use. Always start with: What is my user searching?
T: So if I was a photographer, rather than saying “photographs” for my keywords, I’d want to say “wedding photographer.”
R: Yes, exactly! Get more specific. Instead of “dress” say “little black dress.” Even in our own searches, we don’t search with just one word! So, that’s what keywords are. We also have “Title tags,” which is simply the title of your page. No matter what platform you use, you can add and edit all these things - it may just live somewhere differently. Title tags are what you see when you have a tab open on your browser. Instead of just saying “Home - Tiffany Napper” think about how you can include some keywords, maybe “Holistic Business Coach.”
And don’t forget about meta description for every page. That’s what you see on Google under the page title. This is written for Google, but it’s also the final chance to grab your user, too. This trend towards long tail keywords is helpful for us because we don’t want a bunch of random words on our page because we needed it for Google. It should feel natural, which brings me to another topic: keyword stuffing.
Each page should focus on one keyword — we don’t want pages to compete with each other. We don’t want to overuse a keyword beyond what’s natural. Google knows what you're trying to do. Write naturally with your keyword in mind. We do this a lot with heading text. You only want one of each type of header on each page.
T: Yes! For those who aren’t familiar with that, it’s your header 1, header 2, etc. Header 1 should be your biggest font, then they go down the line in size. I remember one of my designers told me that: to have these headers organized correctly on the back end of your site. Your biggest header should be header 1 and used appropriately.
R: You also want to make sure that your header 1 is above the fold, which is what you can see before you start scrolling. Google isn’t going to be tricked. So if your H1 tag is all the way on the bottom, it’s a red flag. Make sure all of your heading tags are set correctly on the page. At the end of the day, this sounds complicated: but it’s not. If you know your ideal client, you just need to get into their mindset to focus on what they’re looking for.
T: I think we make this assumption that they know who we’re talking to. But we have to be mindful enough to incorporate who you’re talking about within your copy to help. I always ask myself: Can I get my keywords above the fold twice and make it feel natural?
R: Yes! A quick reminder is that you can have those taglines at the top, but make sure your H1 is right below it and able to help you.
T:
That’s a great tip. Do you have any free resources you can share for keywords?
Google has one! There’s also Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush, and Neil Patel has UberSuggest. You can always do a free trial to get your keywords and save them somewhere without having to sign up for the full program. You also need to think about keyword difficulty. On a scale of 0 to 100, how hard is it to rank for that keyword? Ideally, we want to focus on the lower numbers so we’re not competing with bigger businesses.
By the way, if someone tells you that they know everything about SEO, they're lying. It’s always changing because Google and search engines want to keep the integrity of their searches. Also, make sure to remember that newer sites take longer to rank because you're building that street cred, but keep doing the hard work. The longer you’re around, the better you’ll rank as long as your site is healthy.
T: What are some easy things we can do to improve our website with SEO in mind?
Start with your home page.
Go through and add those title tags and meta description.
Use your keyword in your URL slug, it’s an easy way to get it in as well! And if you’re changing an existing URL, set up a 301 redirect so anytime you change the site’s slug, make sure you set up a redirect page.
Optimize your mobile site speed. Google uses the load speed for the mobile site over the desktop these days, so take a look at that.
Get reviews on Google, too! This helps with that street cred!
Be active on social media. If your website is linked to your platforms, make sure you’re using it - every presence you have on the web impacts your SEO.
If you have no backlinks at all, think about reaching out to other business owners with blogs and guest blog on their site.
T: I wanted to ask this actually! I get a ton of emails about people who want to be added to my blog or posts. And I always think, I know what they’re doing - trying to get those links. How do we go about asking for backlinks in a way that’s not spammy?
R: I think it’s just about being genuine and connecting with people and businesses that make sense for you. Do your research and create organic options for you both, like interviews that could be shared on both sites or something similar. Don’t just let a site copy and paste your blog content - then you’ll be competing with that post in rankings. Instead, have them create a post with your blog’s link or write something new for them.
Don’t forget about internal linking as well. That’s linking to other pages on your site! This helps with your credibility because you’re taking people on a journey to other parts of your site.
T: I think as a reader it’s really nice too, because I can get a lot of value right away from your site without having to search. Like if I found a site with a pumpkin pie recipe and in that page, they link to three other pumpkin recipes, that’s super helpful.
R: Another great tip is connecting your site to Google analytics. This is so helpful for you to review breakdowns of your website - see where people are going, what they’re looking at, and so much more. I just want to mention if you’re using Google analytics and you have a contact form, you need to put a privacy policy on your site. They have a right to know that you’re tracking and using their data. Same with an email list sign up - have that policy and a way to delete information if they want.
I would love to share some tips about ways to write titles for blogs! Titles should be 30-40 characters long. There’s a 40% higher click through rate when the query is in the URL and here’s some ideas for the blog titles that do well!
Titles as questions
Titles with power words
Titles that play on emotions
Titles with years - this is kind of a double edged sword because the search engine and searcher want the most recent year, so I recommend updating those blogs every year.
Titles that evoke curiosity for example, “7 Benefits of Green Tea: You won’t believe #6!”
Educational titles
T: I know so many of these title types work! I also take the time to look at my analytics to make note of the popular blog posts for the year, and so much more. This can be helpful in creating new content based on what people are coming to your site for already! I think it goes hand in hand with creating good titles.
R: Google search console is imperative if you want to know how your keywords are doing. It’s important to note that seeing traffic here can take time if you’re a newer site - don’t be alarmed. Remember, SEO is a long game - so be patient and hopefully your research will have proved you right! When you’re starting to rank, you may also see a dip - and that’s normal, so don’t be concerned, as long as you continue to keep going up!
So many clients say they don’t get all of this, and I get that. It’s a LOT of information and it’s always changing, but it is attainable.
T: I think you’re right. This isn’t something you’re conquering in one day or going to fix overnight. You have to decide how much effort you want to put into learning this on your own or decide if it’s something you want to outsource. And if you decide you’re going to do it on your own, give yourself bite-size goals.
R: I think that SEO is a long game, but don’t stress out that you need to go do this tonight. You can still drive traffic in SO many other ways. And the long-term goal is to have someone reach your site without having to do a ton of other work, but the person viewing your site doesn’t know. Their perception is the same either way.
And I think it’s important to remember that you need to make your programs, free downloads, and connection points super accessible on your pages. All of this is great - getting traffic to your site is great BUT only if you’re getting leads from it. I see it all the time where freebies are hard to get to which means they’re not getting on your email list and you won’t sell to them. SEO helps drive people to your site, but then you have to make sure you sell to them. There's no harm in it - you're running a business!
T: YES! I think as female creatives we give, give, give but we also have to sell. That’s why we’re in business in the first place and there’s no shame in doing something that will help make you money.
You can devour Rachel’s incredible content here and find more tips to uplevel your SEO game today!
Want more small business tips to help you grow and scale? Tune in to The Upleveler Show live most Friday afternoons inside the Upleveler Society on Facebook.
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