If there were a truly easy, fast way to rank high in Google, you can bet your bottom dollar that every business owner would be doing it. And if that were the case, Google would quickly adjust its algorithm to make it more challenging. There’s no guaranteed shortcut to the top of the search engine results pages, but there are some strategies that yield faster results than others. This episode talks about them.
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Hello, and welcome back to the small business. Sweet spot. I’m Barb. Davids, your trusted resource for fluff-free and actionable information around SEO and content marketing so you can increase your website traffic and sales. And what you’re about to hear this week is an episode that I did with Josh hall on his podcast called web design business. We went over the SEO quick wins, but sort of relabeled it too quickest since there’s no real quick way to do SEO, generally speaking, So, this is what you are going to hear as a replay of that episode.
Enjoy.
All right. Well, Barb. It’s so good to have you on this side of the podcast. I was just on your podcast recently. I don’t know when both of ours are going to go out, but, um, I’m excited to, to chat with you specifically about SEO because you have your, like I told you when I was on your show, you have.
A unique perspective, I think on web design, because you, from, from what I can tell you have a focus on the SEO side of things, I actually want to start with this question, which is, I’ve seen a lot of people put so much stock in social media and other avenues now, where I feel like there’s less of an emphasis on SEO to that end, do you think there’s more opportunity for people to, to get better rankings and get more from SEO?
I think so. I, it has changed a lot. I don’t think there are as many websites out there, but I also think that there’s a lot of people pushing up websites and not even considering the SEO at all. And with AI coming out and the AI overviews, I feel like people are freaking out about how to do their websites.
Like, how do you get into the AI overviews? But it still stands at the core of it. Trying to get your website found still stands. There’s a core foundation of creating content that’s going to show up for the people who are searching for your solution. So is it easier? Probably actually not. It’s probably only easier in that if you start thinking about it now, as opposed to people who are only using and thinking about social media, you’ll be ahead of them.
So that would maybe be the
So it’s just a little more. Complex. Would you say with just the different, the different ways that Google in particular is displaying SEO results now?
Yeah. I think the, the, the results are definitely different and depending on the query that’s happening. So depending on your industry, well, web design, depending on if it’s, um, informational or transactional or whatnot, then it might come up differently or look differently, but the. I lost my train of
Well, it’s interesting because I, as much as I feel like SEO is getting complex, I feel like, honestly, I just, I feel like there’s almost less competition now in a weird way. You would think with AI that there may be more competition, but I almost feel like there’s less good organic. Content aren’t strictly for SEO because so many people are focused on social media.
Well, that and also it’s hard to be unique. I feel like that might be why it feels like that too, because when you go searching for stuff, it feels like there’s. All the same stuff out there. Like there’s not a lot of uniqueness in the content, but it’s because what’s showing is that’s all that’s showing.
There’s probably still some unique stuff out there, but the idea of creating content that has a unique perspective or shows your personality, I think is what will stand out more because everybody’s trying to get in the top 10 and then everybody tries to copy the top 10 to think that they can get them to the top 10 that way, but it’s not.
But that’s not really the right approach. I mean, it’s, you look at the top 10 to see what’s happening or the, the first page to see kind of maybe what Google likes, but still you want to create something different and something unique and something that, um, fits your brand. So I think that’s maybe why it might feel like
So speaking of ripoffs, you talk about looking at the top 10 and looking what’s working. I recently did a, uh, a video for circle, which is the community platform I use. And it is a YouTube video and a blog post, and it’s 10 awesome features of circle. I did that in February of this year, 2024. And just recently, I just Googled to see where that was coming up.
And it’s ranking really well. Now, if you, if you happen to search, search circle SEO or circle SO or a circle community platform, it’s starting to pull up usually in the number one spot. But what’s interesting is because of that, now there is a copycatter who has the exact same title. As I did on YouTube, very similar thumbnail.
And coincidentally, out of the 10 tips that I recommend eight out of 10 are the exact ones that I did. So they are literally looking, there are these scammer channels and bloggers that are, you know, I see you’re shaking your head. I’m sure you’ve seen this game. They look at the top 10, like you mentioned, and then they try to.
I don’t even understand why they would copycat it because of course, mine’s going to show up. Mine’s the OG, but I don’t
Mm hmm.
all that to say, like, that’s what I’ve seen is these copycatters try to look at what’s working and I don’t know if there’s any successful, you know. So slimy SEOers who get success out of that.
It doesn’t make sense to me why someone would take that approach.
well, definitely. I think that it’s a short term thought process. I think it’s a short term mentality or mindset to that as well. I think that if somebody is looking to do it that way, they’re not in it for the long haul. They’re just in it to hopefully get likes. They’re in it to get a page views or whatever clicks to their website, but it’s not going to be a long term solution.
So, and yeah, I just think that’s one of those things you have to think about with the The long term in mind and not worry so much about if they’re copying you, but it’s Google sees that too. You know, they see that there’s somebody copying and they’re not going to just allow everybody to copy or bring up the same things over and over and over again.
Although I would say there was a lot of hoopla in the SEO industry about like Reddit showing up and that’s not really helpful because it, I mean, it is in certain terms, but. It was showing up excessively. And I think that Google sees these things over time and they try to make adjustments when they see them.
Now they are getting a lot of bad rap right now, but they do try. I mean, that’s their whole purpose is they want people to come to their website. They want people to come to Google as the ads, of course. Right. But I think the, the copycatters are something that we just have to ignore.
It’s funny. It’s kind of coincidental because we’re talking about quick SEO wins here. And that is exactly, that makes me feel better to hear your perspective on that. Cause I agree. It does seem like, like in the case of that video that ripped mine off, they were just pushing their affiliate link. But I agree, like maybe they’ll get a little bump when it’s a new piece of content, but very quickly, thank goodness.
I actually have a lot of respect for the team at Google with what they’re doing with their algorithms, because they do seem to be cutting down on that stuff. And I think they probably knew they had to with AI because you’re getting so much duplicated and similar content, as you just mentioned on the outset of this.
The original stuff, the personal stuff, the like goofy, quirky, real content. That’s actually human is, is what I think is going to continue to last so much longer than these, these janky things that pop up. Um, so with this idea of quick wins, you talked about the top 10 spots. I don’t know if you saw recently, uh, that I’m sure you did it being in the SEO land, Google did have continuous scroll for a while.
What was it like a year or two? And then they just suddenly actually more recently, I was like, Oh my gosh, Pages are back. I love Google search pages. I love SERPs. We had a, um, we had a bit of a poll in web designer pro this week about who likes the scroll and who likes the pages. So let me ask you, Barb, as we get into some quick wins for SEO, are you team pages or team scroll for the Google
I am team pages, a hundred percent, and here’s why one as a consumer, I would sit there and scroll and I was like, well, when can I stop? I can’t ever stop because it just kept going. Like I want to see all the results. And then as an SEO, I get more and maybe they didn’t really change it. I think they still did it in Google search console, where you can see where you rank, but it’s a much easier way to track.
So if you had continuous scroll, I don’t know if they Google search console is really weird because it doesn’t tell you either when you’re in ranking zero, like above the organic. But I didn’t know if the actual numbers were true when it came to continuous
It’s CEF. And what I saw, and we had a lot of discussions about this in pro is we, it was a lot of like, you would look at your rank total. So I might say like you’re in spot 40. Uh, whereas the thing, when that happened, when, when the scroll feature came out, the big thing was that clients could not say, I want to be on the first page of Google anymore because their pages were gone.
Uh, but I, I agree. I’m team pages as well, especially with this idea of quick wins, because if you can show your clients there, there’s something about telling your clients that, Hey, you’ve gone from page five to page two versus you’ve gone from spot a hundred to spot 50. Like that’s not really a big deal for a client, but, uh, that’s.
I agree. That’s kind of why I’m excited that pages are back.
Yeah. I’m all for it. I don’t, yeah. I’d rather not have something that continually makes me stay there. Although maybe it was good for them with ads, because they threw the ads in every once in a
Hmm. That’s true. Uh, if a client were to ask you, how long would it take? To see SEO results. What would you say? I want to set the foundation here for quick wins. Uh, what would you say to
Mm hmm.
Or what do you say to that?
I tell them that they should be prepared for maybe six months to a year, generally speaking. However, there are things that sometimes can happen where we can see results in maybe two weeks, even a week. It will vary based off of where they’re sitting now and what needs to be done with their website.
And that’s basically the. That thing. I mean, there are no quick wins. There are, uh, I would like to call them quick. What are the quickest wins? Maybe not quick wins, but what are the quickest out of SEO wins to go
What are some of the common, the commonalities that you’ve seen for those who have got fairly quick results? Let’s say even if it’s in less than three months, what, what were some of those things that were common between those quickest wins?
I think the biggest ones were blog refreshes, frankly, there are, there’s a lot of outdated content on a lot of websites. And if we can refresh them at the time, when you set them up, you put them out there and you think you’re never going to touch them again, but in reality, you actually do need to touch them again because they get outdated and they get stale and Google can see that.
And they like fresh content. And if it’s. When it’s sitting out there, there are other people creating new stuff all the time. So Google’s going to favor probably the newer content because it it’s newer. So if you refresh your content, then you might be able to rank faster. And there’s a lot of things that you can, it’s not just like changing a page title or putting on one image.
It’s actually doing it intentionally and going through and seeing if you can add more content to it. Is there a different angle that you might have or a different perspective? Um, yeah. It’s definitely the copy and the images, of course, but is there a way to even change the layout or maybe mix things around with the idea of how you’re talking about it a long time ago, or like it’s changing a little bit, even like in podcasting, when we start out, we don’t start with the introduction.
People are creating blog posts or have created them in the past with this whole freaking backstory of like, why need something needs to be done when in actuality, the answer was like halfway down or at the end. And so people would have to scroll through. And I think now it’s changing a little bit to say, okay, I’m not going to give you the backstory.
People are thinking more about who’s going to read the blog post and being more intentional with what they’re putting in the blog post. So refreshing it in that perspective, some of the older ones, those have done well.
I noticed that too. I was a blogger for elegant themes for a couple of years. And one thing in their author handbook, I think I can share this publicly. They said in the first paragraph, you want to share exactly what you’re going to talk about and the result that you’re, that you’re going to get with this blog post without having to find that lower in the page.
And Google is like, if you can answer a question pretty quickly in that first paragraph, Google is both AI overviews and just the featured snippets. Those are what’s popular. Pulling up often. I found that one of my tutorials is the difference between the divi builder and the divi theme. And that started getting featured on Google searches just because I had said, Hey, the difference is this in the first paragraph, a question on these refreshes.
I love that you brought this up because I have a lot of, okay. I have a lot of questions on this. So let’s just. We’ll have a little Barb coaching time. Would I, if I changed the title, would that not have some SEO implications, either good or bad? I would think like, if I’m going to change the title and I’m going to change content and do new images, should I just post a new blog post and have these be similar?
Are they going to conflict with each other? I guess I’m wondering where the line is between. Revamping or refreshing a blog post and then just doing a new one.
Great question. So I’m going to use the, it depends again, because it will vary based off of the content or the topic that you’re talking about. I always say refresh versus creating a new one, unless you have a completely different angle, because when you create a new one, you have to start from scratch.
Basically, you have to retell Google to come look at this page and figure out if it likes it and figure out if it wants to rank it. Whereas. Your existing one already has some like credibility with Google. So if you just refresh it, it has a better chance at. And then it does a new one in the general sense, not everything I ever say, I just put a splat with it, like a, um, asterisk disclaimer, because there’s always like exceptions to the rule, but the idea is to refresh it and the, if you just change the headline or the title, there’s two different ones.
So you have the headline when you land on the page, which you can change, but you also have the page title, which is the technical backend piece of it. Okay. Typically, it’s the same as the headline when you don’t do anything or change it, but that page title that you put behind it is what shows up in search results.
And so if you can just refresh that, that’s actually a tactic. So you can just change your page title and see if it will garner more clicks from Google. Because like, for example, if you’re sitting on. One tactic is, this kind of goes with that, if you’re sitting on second page, so position 11 through 20, if you change just your page title, you can just sit and wait on that for a couple weeks, or probably don’t even have to wait a couple weeks, but I like to use two weeks as a general rule, then just wait and see if that makes any difference in how many people click through, because that page title and that description is kind of like, um, I relate it to like a window display or shopping display when you’re like walking down the street and you see the stores, like you use that page title and description to want to encourage people to step into your website, take a look around, that kind of thing.
So that would be one tactic to refreshing, but I’m going to quick put another splat on this one. Don’t change your URL because again, it’s kind of like that new piece. If you change your URL, it’s basically a new page, even though you changed it. Think it’s the same thing and you’re just changing it on the backend.
It’s a new page to Google and it, it makes it work a little bit harder to try and get to
Great, great advice. I’m so glad you really went into the difference between a page title and the heading like the H one. Um, for years, I kind of thought those were basically the same thing, but when I started using WordPress and then I use Yoast, any SEO platform, that’s where you would adjust the page title.
So. Is that right? Or can you, can you adjust the page title natively with WordPress without a plugin?
I have, I have not seen it. You know what? I haven’t looked that hard at it. I’ve always used a plugin for some reason.
as of now.
I think it have to have a
Yeah. As of now, I think you would need to use rank math or SEO Yoast or something or Yoast SEO to be able to adjust the page title. But for everyone’s reference, that is a gold strategy that is low risk and low pressure. Because as you just mentioned, you’re not actually changing the page.
Google’s just going to see a different version of that. But you’re right. The URL, I mean, that’s the biggie. So those are the big three then, right? There’s the heading, the H1, like what this article is. There’s the page title that you can adjust with Yoast or an SEO plugin. And then there’s the URL. All of those things work really nicely together, but the URL is like, that’s, that’s the one you want to retain without blowing things up.
Absolutely.
What about metadata? Like the little description inside there? I feel like that’s kind of the fourth. That’s like the. The other important piece that can be overlooked, obviously Google will find something in the content. But from my understanding is you can almost force the issue by having a really good.
Description in Yoast under the page title. Is that how you view that as well? Or I guess what’s the, what’s the value and how much stock do you put in the meta description?
I tend to put a lot of stock into it, even though Google tends to overwrite it. And I still don’t understand why they decide that they want to do that. But if you don’t put in a description, it will pull like the first pieces of content. And depending on your platform or various things, it could pull in like the navigation.
And that just looks gross on the search results page. So you always want to put something there. Um, the other thing to keep in mind is the call to action. So like when you’re looking at the first page of search results, I always take a look at like what everybody’s doing because most of the time people don’t put something there.
And when you’re reading it, You want to encourage people to want to click through, so you want to give them a reason and like compel them to want to click through. And you can’t put emojis, you can’t put exclamations, you can’t do all tech, all capital letters. It has to be actually good copy and like a call to action.
It can’t be like click here or read more, even though that’s kind of our default. I think the idea is to be Thinking about what they’re going to get from the page and then use that. So see the list now, or I’m not even good. This is why I’m not a copywriter, but you put, you put, you put some good copy there for
Where, where would that copy actually go? Would that go in the metadata, like an SEO Yoast, for example, or would that be in the first paragraph of the page and then you get to the blog post? Where would that go? That call to action.
That one, um, would go into the, uh, for the meta description for the search results page would go into the plugin piece. I mean, you’re still going to probably use that call to action in some form or fashion in the first, Paragraph or like as they’re reading and writing because you’re introducing what they’re going to get from the content But that would go into the meta
Okay. So quick wins in sound advice for more like low risk revamping of a blog post to keep it fresh, the heading. The page title. I would imagine you’d probably start with the page title, right? The page title and metadata and then heading as kind of the plan B or, or would you do both potentially?
I, I usually do both at the same time because I’m in that mind frame and that frame set, like I’m thinking about it. And so they kind of go hand in hand when you’re sitting there looking at the page results, because you want to think about the keyword that you’re targeting, right? The topic that you’re targeting and the keyword should be in the page title and the headline.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be in the description. Here’s the funny thing. Even though Google doesn’t necessarily use that. As a way to match up the query with the page, like behaviorally people are reading it and so you’re going to want that thing that they searched for in there so that it resonates with them when they’re reading it.
So when you’re talking about a title, the description could just piggyback off piggyback off the title.
makes sense. You had mentioned the, the display of, of Google and how frustrating it is that we can’t exactly control that. I get the question all the time. How can I. Tell Google what pages to display when somebody Googles me, is there an answer for that? Or is it just based off of hierarchy in the menu prominence of pages?
Like for a while, my login page was what you would see when you search Josh hall. com. I’m like, I don’t want my login page to show up under those, you know, the little five pages. So any tips on quick wins for that on how your website displays and what pages display?
Um, you’re talking about the site links. So when you have your main page, then you have the little
Yeah. You’d see like four or five pages under that. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely not. I have no answer for you on that one. You’re just stuck with it.
God, there’s gotta be a way.
well, so you can de index them, right? But. Google still there’s no way they used to be able to say, like, don’t use this page in there, but I still haven’t found a way unless it’s new, and I just haven’t seen it, but I haven’t found a way to be able to tell Google to use a page or not use a page.
They’re doing it based off of, yeah, what’s already in your website, and maybe what people are clicking. So if you have the word login at the top, maybe just leave it at the bottom. I mean, you can try different things, but I think it’s a popularity contest, and Google just pulls what they
Great point. Good reminder to, to just de index pages. Uh, in that case, I don’t think I do have that one de index. So that’s on my to do list
Oh, that might
might be why. Yep. So I will do, that’s a quick win. Just de index the pages you don’t want to show up. Now, are you, do you use other platforms than WordPress?
Barb, or are you WordPress specific?
I Know yeah, I’m pretty much just WordPress if anybody comes to me with another one I will work with them, but It is with the catch that hey, we might not be able to do some things like we like we might not be able to Well, sometimes I guess everybody has a back end like even Squarespace. They have like a whole SEO section, but There isn’t like
Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. That was, uh, that was what I was wondering is like Squarespace, Webflow, if they had a built in, basically SEO plugin, uh, that way you could adjust the page title D index versus, you know, the, uh, the heading and, and what we would normally see in WordPress.
Yeah, so Shopify actually does not have a way to de index that is user friendly that I found the last time I was in there. That’s the catch is sometimes what happens is usually you have an option to put in a page title and a page description for most platforms. But then what happens is like Shopify, it will show it no matter what.
So if you don’t want it to show in Google search results, you actually have to just decommission the page altogether. Unless you want to go into the backend code, which nobody wants to go into that. So. Mm
Yes, absolutely. Um, any other common quick wins that you talked about the blog refresh, some great insight and tips on that. What are some other common quick wins that somebody might get? For whether it’s a blog or we know that podcast and YouTube are very intricate with SEO now. Yeah. Any other quick wins?
I think the other one to take a look at is the internal links. Those are often forgotten. So a lot of the time when we write a blog post, at the bottom we’ll say contact us. And then we’ll link to the contact us page. What that essentially does is say to Google, the contact us page is very important, please make sure to do something with this page.
Like this is the most important page when in actuality, our service pages or our packages pages are the most important or even the homepage really, frankly. So when you do your linking throughout your website. Try to think about how that works with your most important pages, where you want people to go.
So if you’re writing a blog post and you want somebody to contact you at the end, like that’s the most logical choice, then just put the form down there. Don’t put them, don’t send them over to the contact page. Just put the form down there, make it super easy. No having to click somewhere else. And then, um, that’s probably like one of the biggest things I think I’ve seen lately.
So it’s almost like, um, I always view SEO and websites as like a tree where you want to continue to have your. Prominent branches be the ones that Google knows about. So in the case of a contact form or, or a contact page, that’s, that’s interesting because I would think that you’d actually want to continue to go to the contact page if it is in fact the one, but that’s a good solid point that if there is a resource or something where the contact page isn’t as important, that should probably have the focus, especially on blog posts and services pages and something where you can kind of keep people redirecting and looping.
And your website, is that kind of the, the idea?
yeah, because most of the time when people are coming to your website, most of the time, it’s really top of funnel. People are just getting to know about you. You’re bringing them in to learn about your services, your packages, that kind of thing. So they may not want to contact you right away. It might be that you want to send them to another blog post that gives some more information.
Or, um, Maybe it goes to your packages page or your services page or whatever the download might be. So that I think is something that people tend to do a little bit blindly. They’re just like, contact me, contact me, contact me. Yes,
to when you’re creating a blog post or any piece of content or a sales page to think about, to actually think about like, well, this is a great piece of content, but now what? That, that question right there. Now, what is, is always a good place to go back to when you think about the customer journey and what they should do after this block, but it’s so easy to overlook though.
I mean, I, I get that fully. I think as creators and designers, we’re often focused on a piece of content or a sales page. That we often forget about a nice footer called action section or a bottom blog post called action or, or the now what, um, I tactically, do you know how AI overviews is pulling some of this stuff?
Is it just kind of regurgitating the top? Featured snippets and stuff like that. Do you, cause I don’t know too much about how AI overviews is, is working. I really just haven’t looked into it too deeply currently.
that’s all it is. I think people want to make it a lot more than it really is right now, but AI has to pull from somewhere. Like it doesn’t just come up with stuff. And so it’s looking at existing websites and what better existing websites than the ones that rank on first and second page. Right? So they’re just picking those.
And I think that it still goes back to that core foundation. If you’re building your website with the idea of what is somebody typing in and searching for, and are you creating content to match that search, that’s what is being looked at. So is it using algorithms? Yes, in a different way, but still with the core foundation of it’s looking for what’s currently ranking because it has to pull from somewhere.
So that is just really all it is. I’m trying to make this a longer solution than it is, but it really isn’t that different than what’s happening right
that’s good to know. I was curious where the, that was pulling from with this idea of, of quickest wins. I’m trying to not say quick wins. Cause I agree quick is relative. It’s the quicker wins I’ve always, and I teach this in my SEO course. I have a foundational SEO course for web designers. And what I teach is that there’s basically two ways to get.
quicker results, which is focused on more like long tail keywords, long phrases that have less competition. Or if you’re a service provider, local SEO, and I have a member in my community, Sam, who is like the SEO local SEO King, because in less than a year, he has like, Completely taken over his region and he got a lot of quicker SEO wins because he focused on location pages and location specific web design services.
Um, any tips, advice on that? If somebody wants to either, or do you agree, do you, do you, do you agree that there’s like the long tail route of it’s national or just online focused or, or local SEO of its service space? What, what are your, what’s your, uh, take on that and your thoughts on that?
I have two things for you. So one, I would say with the local one could even work with national because the local one, you can still build out some things like where you’re based. And so that would help, but also from the local side, like you have Google business profile, which is a free marketing tool and you don’t have to put your address on there.
But even if you use that, some of my clients do get a lot of, I don’t remember the exact number, but there was a significant amount of traffic coming from that. Particular listing and they are they aren’t showing their address. They don’t have a brick and mortar or anything like that. So I think that’s 1 of the quick wins to that.
People forget about that’s out there. Um, the Google listing and the location pages is definitely a good 1. I think that. Is probably a good quickest win because if you haven’t been using it, all of a sudden you do, Google loves Google. You might see some, some really great stuff from that. And that was super easy to set up.
You just put in the biggest thing is putting your description, your name, and then publishing like once a week to it. That’s the only thing you have to do really for that one, because there’s not much else that you have control over when it comes to, if you’re going to show up from the Google business profile.
So that’s an easy quickest win. And then the other one, the long tail, just to, um, kind of talk about that a little bit too. I think a lot of times people think long tail is like so many words or a bunch of words in a phrase, but really just, it means that there is lower search volume, but it’s more specific phrases.
So I’ll use just shoes. Like shoes is just a regular one. If you use women’s red tennis shoes, that’s considered a long tail phrase. There’s going to be a lot less searches than shoes. And it’s going to be more specific. And I had a client once where we just started up a website and we were concerned about how long it takes to get SEO to go, and it was a very competitive industry.
So we focused on things that had lower search volume and that were less competitive and wrote to those topics. And there were a couple that really took off really fast. So I think it, you’re not going to know which one’s necessarily, but I think those could be an option for a quickest win
That’s a really good distinction, or at least a better way to phrase it, especially for clients, instead of saying long tail, because they’re going to be like, what does that mean? Like the average business owner is going to be like, what? Uh, but if you say specific, that is, that’s goal. Great, great, great tip.
Um, especially, uh, any product service, like if I, if I do web design, Columbus, Ohio, where I’m from, very competitive, but if I do WordPress web designer. Columbus or WordPress web designer, the, the surrounding areas, that’s where I’m going to get the quickest wins as a web designers, what I teach. It’s a great, great reminder.
I like the term specific because that’s what it is. And as you probably know, like Google is looking for specificity and originality. I feel like more than anything now, especially.
Yeah, and you could even do, go so far as, um, for the other, for the web designers in the group, it’s like WordPress web designer for cake businesses in Columbus, Ohio, because you’re still going to be able to find enough difference from WordPress designer. To WordPress designer for cake businesses in Columbus, Ohio.
You’re going to be able to speak directly to that business and it will still be different. So it won’t be like duplicated content or like regurgitated from another blog
How long is too long for long tail? Cause I feel like what you just said is, is awesome, but I think anything after that Google, I’d probably be like, all right, that’s like a paragraph. So how, how far is, uh, yeah. How, how much is too much for like a long phrase or a long tail keyword?
I would say if you can’t speak to it to somebody or you can’t have it in a conversation, probably stay away from it. I don’t think that there’s any hard fast rule, it just is, if it makes sense and just go from that. I, I don’t think that there’s a hard rule at all for that.
Isn’t it funny how SEO strategies in particular, as much as we overthink them, it’s like, what would you say in real life? That’s what’s going to translate online.
Yeah. Exactly.
love that rule that way. It’s not like web designer, Josh Hall, WordPress, web designer in Columbus, Ohio, focusing on small to medium sized businesses, speed and optimization focused on conversion based design.
Like too much. Uh,
I say try it, Josh. Just try it. Let’s see what
Hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s like the, maybe that’s the real goal. Uh,
You’re right.
Great tips though. All right. Like these, yeah, these are the cool thing about, I think what we’re covering so far and I hope what everyone’s seeing is that these, these quicker tips are actually, it’s not rocket science.
It’s not actually a hard stuff to do. It’s just a little intentionality, little strategy and a little research and, and competition research on, on what you’re looking at doing. Like I mentioned, Sam, um, who’s going to be on the podcast. Soon after this, one thing that he’ll talk about is how he did look at competition and did the exact strategy that you just talked about Barb, which is he looked at the, the areas in his region that were not really that competitive, not big towns, but if you can get on the top of a bunch of smaller towns, just with a location page or a Google map, pap, uh, Mac.
Map pack, excuse me, and optimize your Google listing. You can really show some authority and prominence on Google. And I just want to harp back to the opportunity there is now, because while other people are focused on social media and other places, which is fine. I do feel like there is this gap and this resurgence of opportunity for, for SEOers.
I feel like too that people are seeing it that years ago it was kind of like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know how it works. It’s a black hole. Like, I’m so confused. Why would I do it? But it really is a longterm solution to a business marketing plan. It, when you do SEO and you do content marketing, it sits out there for a long time, you might have to refresh it and like distribute it and redistribute it.
And, but it’s so much easier. I feel like if you’re creating blog posts, for example, or even long service pages, sales pages to create your social posts from that. So the repurposing, uh, value of it is so high.
Great point. It’s like the, uh, it’s like the one on one of blogs, blogging too, and keeping everything on your website. That’s the hub, that’s your home. And then you repurpose and take the little bits from there. Good reminder too, with the location pages that for anyone who has location pages right now to consider.
Adjusting that revamping it, not the URL, like we talked about, but the page title and, and the heading to see if that can help freshen those up a little bit too. Um, what are your thoughts real quick on bullet lists and numbers? Because I’ve seen Google, at least in the past, has appreciated like steps. If you can give somebody five steps to do this in the first paragraph and then expand on that, Google seemed to like that.
Is that still the case? Do you know, do you have any pulse on that?
I think so. Again, it’s going to go back to the query. If it answers the question, it’s definitely much easier. And especially if you format it in a certain way. So if you’re just using like a dash and some words, then that doesn’t necessarily signal to signal to Google as Um, as formal as a bullet list or a numbered list as you use it, like when you’re inside of WordPress, for example, they have that, um, toolbar at the top and you can actually format it.
Like in a Word doc, you hit the bullet point or you hit the numbered list and that will format it with tags around the content in a more, uh, Google friendly way, basically. Right.
for, for Google searches, I’ve really, really started to think more recently about how, and particularly like chat GPT is going to play a role in this moving forward because I’ve seen a lot of people starting to use chat GPT, myself included as almost like the first step now, instead of a Google search, like I’d rather just search on chat GPT with like.
10, whether it’s tips or advice or whether it’s resources, like what are the 10 top WordPress blogs or WordPress, YouTube channels or whatever it is, the important thing about that from an SEO perspective is. These AI tools are, to my knowledge, are not scraping social media as much. They’re scraping Google.
So if you can get better rankings on Google, the, over the next five to 10 years, as AI tools start filtering down through service providers, because right now it’s mostly us who know how to use chat GPT, the average like salon owner, isn’t probably going to use chat GPT, but in five years. That might change dramatically.
So if you can capitalize on it now, I feel like, and then in five years, if somebody uses chat GPT to say, what are the top five, you know, hair salons and in Columbus, that’s going to make a pretty, pretty big impact. And I’ve already seen this play out with people finding me who have mentioned they looked at chat GPT for like WordPress resources or business resources for web design.
Any thoughts on that? Do you agree with that?
Yeah, I think so because, well, and essentially the Google search results is chat GPT almost. It’s just formatted in a different way. Like it’s still picking up from the top ranking usually, or just things that are already indexed and ranked in Google. But the thing that you could probably use it for just this, just, um, threw into my head what I did for a client one time, because I wanted to see.
The top providers of that industry in the city. So I typed it into chat, GBT, and I also did it over on a being, which is now Gemini, just to see what the difference was. And I wanted to know, um, who came up for this particular phrase and my client did not come up and I thought, well, what the crap. Like, why is my client not coming up?
So then I use that to my advantage. And I said, well, why do you think this particular website is not coming up? And it brought to light some very interesting things based off of the actual phrase that I typed in and what was showing on the website, that it was very copy related and it was interesting to see.
What I thought was, uh, relevant on the page, the, the AI tool interpreted it, it interpreted it differently. So I think that’s where we can use it to our advantage is to find out like, what, why would my website not
So did you actually prompt and ask it? Why is that what you do? You actually, did you actually ask it? Why is it not showing up? Which that’s like a free SEO coach in a way.
It is. Yeah. And I’ve, I’ve tried different things like that because like when I type in certain things and I’m looking to just for different, like I go all over, I do rabbit holes just so I can get more information. And if I type in like a list of something or give me 10 reasons, I don’t like how chat GPT provides it for me and I don’t have the time to sit and like, Placate it and tell me longer.
And it gives me like two short answers. And I would like to know these, these reasons. Why did somebody pick these reasons? Like, so I always like to still go over to Google to figure it out. Cause I get the perspective and the mindset of the person writing it. But when you do like SEO stuff and thinking like, okay, well, what’s mine different.
It gives it to you. I feel like more logically and a little bit more subjectively, like my feelings aren’t there. When I’m asking it to, to evaluate the website and it’s not always going to be correct because there are hard think times when I’ve gotten answers that I know it’s not correct. And there are times when it like, it did phantom produce words.
It’s like, Oh, this website contains these words. And I went searching for it forever and I could not find it for the life of me. So you have to kind of
Yeah. I do love your approach though, of like, if you see something that’s not ranking and you think it should just. Simply prompting it and asking, yeah, what can we do better? Or why wouldn’t this, why didn’t this do that? I didn’t really think about using it as a, uh, an SEO coach. Uh, that’s pretty cool. Any other glaring commonalities between quickest wins that we haven’t covered yet?
Uh, we haven’t even talked about video. Um, I don’t know what you’re, you know, with you, I mean, gosh, YouTube and YouTube and Google, if you’re not utilizing it together, think about it because I know that’s a biggie, any others? Are
Yeah. And I would, I would say test that one too, still. I had, um, someone put on a website, uh, excuse me, a YouTube and embedded it on their website and that it tanked. It just tanked. Yes. And it was the strangest thing because it was like a very high ranking, very high volume term. It was in the flower industry and then they took off the YouTube and it was fine.
So why that happened, I still have not been able to pinpoint, but I definitely would say
fascinating. I wonder if there’s a difference between linking to a video that’s on YouTube versus embedding. Wonder of that
That’s a great experiment.
here. Let’s do it live. Hold on a sec here. We’ll get chat GPT coaching here. Cool. Hold on a sec. I’m going to say for best for best SEO results. Uh, should I link,
I bet it’s gonna come back with it
Oh, here we go. Let’s see, should I link or embed a YouTube video on a blog? Let’s see. So basically I want to get at is it, we’re getting really specific here.
Do we want to link to a video that is a video piece of a blog or do, and gosh, this is huge for somebody like me who is doing often a blog post along with a video, uh, or should we embed the video? Um, yeah, it’s kind of crap. This is,
Although I would say for usability it’s better to embed because it’s right there They don’t have to click off the page.
ah, I’m shocked that that would not work well for you.
Well, it was just that one case
So for best chat, GPT says for best SRO results, embedding a YouTube video on your blog is generally more beneficial than linking to it because of engagement. They, uh, videos embedded can increase user engagement on your site, user experience that way.
They don’t need to go off rich snippets. So embedded videos can sometimes be recognized by search engines for rich snippets. That’s interesting if it’s associated with a post, I guess that would also potentially help. The scammers and the copy counter is like we talked earlier, because if you have your original blog post with your original video and it’s on your site, the author Google would know like, okay, this is legit.
This isn’t somebody who stole, you know, Barb’s video and put it on their site. Um,
well like with your testimonials that you do with the video testimonials that’s huge because that’s so original and so unique and you can’t copycat that in terms of like AI or Reproduce it. I mean technically you can right but it it looks real and it’s something that most businesses don’t do
back links and shares and keyword relevance or the other benefits of embedding it. So there we go. Overall, I’d been through to say, embed the video and less, like you said, you just have an odd. Situation where it tanks one detailed question on that. How do you feel about a YouTube video being titled the exact same thing as the blog or should a blog post be a little bit different than the YouTube video?
Inside of the blog
Yeah. So like, for example, I mentioned my, my circle video that I did, that’s ranking pretty well. It’s currently 10 awesome features of circle, the best online community platform. I have a blog post that is the exact same title as the video. Good or bad. I
If, yeah, if you’re going to use the title inside of the blog post above your video, I would, I would take the opportunity to use the copy in a different way, um, because you have that extra space. You don’t necessarily need to duplicate it again. I think you could say, um, again, I’m not a copywriter, so I’m not going to be able to come up with something off, off cuff, but you could utilize that space to introduce the video, but maybe use a variation of a keyword.
That you’re trying to target with that
Gotcha. And again, going back to your great recommendation earlier, which is just to play around with the page title and the heading, like that is something that can always be. And change same thing with YouTube. Like this is why a lot of YouTubers will switch out thumbnails and switch out titles. The URL of the video doesn’t change because you can’t replace a video in YouTube, but, um, those are things that can be tweaked and manipulated.
Um, but I am always a little hesitant when something’s ranking well to make any changes. So. This is almost something I probably should have asked earlier on, but I wonder like, when is it time to change a URL or change a, a title or is your motto of it’s working? Don’t mess it. Don’t mess with it. Don’t don’t fix it.
If it’s not broken.
absolutely. I think that is it. And it’s hard because you always want to make sure that you’re trying to stay on top. So what do you do to make sure to stay on top? And I think this is another one of those comfortability factors. So if you see something that goes from a position one to position two, that’s not necessarily cause for alarm unless it sticks around there for three months or something, that’s a relative number.
It depends on what you’re going to be comfortable with. And then even then number two is not bad because there are some theories out there, like, why would I want to be number one? Cause everybody’s going to skip over number one and click number two. So it’s going to be a little bit about like what you can stomach as a business owner and for your business.
Of what feels good to be like, okay, this is just too long now. I need to do something
We’ve talked a lot about organic. How, how do you feel about ads? I mean, technically the quickest SEO win would be an ad because you’re going to get up in the sponsored spot, depending on how Uh, competitive it is, but as I’ve seen a lot, when you stop an ad, it doesn’t mean it’s going to do anything organically for you.
Those your organic rankings could tank after that. Um, yeah. How far are you into the ad side of SEO?
like ads. I don’t think that there’s a correlate. I think there’s a A ghostly correlation out there that people have that they say if you do ads, then your organic does better I have not been able to find that happening what I do like about doing paid ads whether it be google ads social ads anything or even direct to You know these direct magazines in your industry type of ads.
I think the Diversification is what’s key. So if you’re just starting out and you just can’t wait, I think ads are a good way to go. And sometimes I even have a client that that is their only method, because it happens to be that their side business is not something that they can spend a lot of time on.
So this is their only method of marketing that they choose to do. But I like to think about it as a diversifying your marketing portfolio, basically. Taking that and if you decide to try it out, great, but always be able to track everything so that you can make informed decisions because if you’re getting and you’re spending 50 percent of your marketing budget on Google ads and they come back and you’re not converting as high, then you’re spending too much on it.
So it’s just about trying different things and then seeing what works and then making adjustments.
So what we’ve covered so far, just to kind of look at this as like a bullet list, like I don’t like recap. Um, quickest wins, refreshing blog posts in the way of the page title, the heading, maybe even the metadata, not affecting the URL, especially if it’s, if it’s ranking. Uh, we talked and content in there is obviously a biggie as well.
Layout call to action that, that specific call to action or kind of what now after the blog post huge. Overlooking easily overlooked piece video, obviously with Google or with YouTube and Google being married together, that can be a huge component. I’ve always found YouTube ranks a lot faster than, than, uh, than blog posts, typically specific blog, uh, long tail type key phrases and keywords, location based SEO, both pages and Google listings and the map pack.
And, um, what was, was there one that we missed? Oh, oh, well, just ads as well. Ads could be a, a quick piece that could be a quick win. Obviously it’s not gonna last, but could be a nice addition to the, like you said, the marketing suite that you’re doing. Is there anything else that after this call you’re gonna be like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe we didn’t talk about that.
Is there anything else we’ve glanced
Well, of course there is going to be.
what would be the top one that we gotta make sure before we head off here that we don’t overlook?
I’ll tell you as soon as you hit stop record.
Send me a, send me a loom. We’ll add it in the edited version.
Right, right. No, I think that pretty much covers it.
cool. Well, this has been great, Barb. This is awesome too, because I do get this question a lot. Cause a lot of people, I think what keeps people back from SEO or what holds them back is they’re like, I just don’t want to do something for six months to a year that’s going to pay off.
Then I want to do something now. I need clients now, but as we’ve talked about, all of these strategies are something that could be. They can actually work out pretty dang fast, depending on, on what it is. Yeah. I would recommend personally having like in person networking and marketing strategies that are a little quicker ROI.
But if you can back that up with these strategies, it can compound pretty quickly. I’ve coached a lot of people who have done a blog and done things like this. That may not pay off. Immediately or within a few weeks or a couple of months, but by golly, all of a sudden, three to six months down the road, they’re like, I’m swamped.
I literally went from like hurting for work to now. I can’t keep up with it because all of these marketing efforts compounded. So, um, Yeah, I don’t know if you have anything to add to that, but that’s certainly my push to be like, don’t overlook SEO, especially nowadays
Yes. I would agree very much.
you have a resource for us, Barb, tell us about that.
And yeah, tell us about where everyone should go after this to connect with you and to get some SEO help if they’re interested
All right. Yay. I do have some help. I, I feel like a lot of, uh, web designers and other small business owners. They’re just not sure where to start. So I did create a PDF that people can download. It’s totally free and it helps you get. 1, 000 more website visits. So I even have, um, a little principle book that I’m hoping to get to send out to people at some point, sometime, but you can download for free.
Just go to compassdigitalstrategies. com. There’s a bunch of resources on there and happy to help if anybody has any
in that PDF, we’ll link this in the show notes, but as of now that’s compass digital strategies. com slash PDF. Is that right?
Mm hmm.
Got it. Cool. Cool. Cool. I’m actually signing up for it now. So excited to take a look at this. And then you’ve got a podcast I just recorded before this. We recorded my chat with you on your podcast, which is called the sweet spot.
Is that right? The sweet spot,
Small business sweet
business, sweet spot, sweet, ton of other resources. So awesome. And I have to say, Barb, I love your brand name. I’ve always thought that was cool, especially as a, an SEO or, and somebody who’s kind of a. A strategist in a way like compass digital strategy is very cool.
Cause it’s in the name. Like you’re kind of helping people get found, literally, literally get found.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I appreciate
need any, you know, creative copy. You can just say like, it’s in the name. We can help you get you found. There you go. You can use,
We are your
yeah, we are your compass. There, I want to see that on your website.
We’re going to have
Yeah.
good title. All right, Barb. Thank you so much for your time. Gold strategies, actionable stuff. Every one of us can implement. This has given me some things to think about tweaking and especially revamping some high performing blog posts that I think could be better. So I really appreciate it.
And, uh, everyone go check out compass digital strategies. com slash PDF free guide, Barb’s brain in a book. There it is.
Thanks, Josh, for having me. Appreciate it.
