
The Simple and Smart SEO Show
The best SEO podcast for entrepreneurs and creative small business owners who want to build a better website to grow their business!
✨This SEO-focused podcast combines brand strategies mixed with fresh ideas for websites, digital marketing, and customer experience.
✨WHY SEO?
✨SEO is important because it can help a business be found by people searching for what they sell. In 2025, SEO for LLMs and AI-powered search engines will grow in importance. But don't feel overwhelmed: SEO can be simple and elevate your websites visibility with small changes over time.
✨Listen to this podcast every week to learn how you can make your website rank higher without spending thousands of dollars per month!
The Simple and Smart SEO Show
The SEO Mindset Shift Every Shopify Owner Needs Before Diving In
In this kickoff episode of my Shopify SEO from Strategy to Action summer series, we start with the most important piece: your mindset.
If you've ever thought:
- "SEO is just for techies!"
- "Shopify isn't good for SEO."
- "I don't even know where to start."
This episode is for you!
🎯 What you'll learn:
- Why your mindset is the #1 SEO success factor
- The top myths keeping shop owners stuck (and how to bust them)
- A fun visibility readiness quiz to check if you're truly ready to be found
💡 Key takeaway:
SEO is like your most loyal employee — working for you even when you're on vacation.
👉 Grab the $7 SEO Mindset for Shop Owners Guide:
https://simpleandsmartseo.com/mindset
🎧 Listen on your favorite app:
🙌 Ready to take action?
1️⃣ Download the mindset guide.
2️⃣ Take the quiz and shift your beliefs.
3️⃣ DM me your biggest SEO mindset block on Instagram → @simpleandsmartseo2.
💬 About Crystal:
I'm an SEO educator, Shopify seller, and visibility strategist helping creative entrepreneurs grow sustainably and show up confidently — without resenting the work!
Learn about my SEO Squad!
Does SEO feel confusing, overwhelming, or just plain impossible to figure out? You’re not alone. That’s why I created the AI SEO Foundations course, powered by Crystal GPT: your personal AI SEO coach designed for busy, creative business owners like you.
Ditch the overwhelm and discover what SEO can do for your business! Head to SEOin7days.com (with the number 7!) and get started today—let’s make your brand easy to find and impossible to ignore.
Want to follow up on what you've heard? Search the podcast!
Join the SEO Squad
Apply to be my podcast guest! 🎙️ Don't forget to Put your pitch topic in the subject line!
AFFILIATE LINKS:
Start your Shopify Store!
Get SurferSEO!
Metricool (to be everywhere online, you NEED a social media scheduler!)
Note:
If you make a purchase using some of my links, I make a little money.
But I only ever share products, people, & offers I trust & use myself!
SEO Mindset For Shop Owners
[00:00:00] Crystal Waddell: Hey there. Welcome to my special summer of Shopify series where we are gonna talk about how to bus common Shopify SEO myths.
Discuss the SEO slow burn, and walk through a mindset and readiness checklist.
If you have a Shopify store, this series, episode one is for you.
Make sure you grab my SEO mindset for shop owners guide. All the details are in the show notes and thanks for being here today.
Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO show podcast, where we talk all things brand building SEO.
Helping you connect with your audience, elevate your visibility and grow your business.
I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success.
Whether you're an entrepreneur, marketer, or SEO enthusiast, this is your place to learn, share, and build a brand that stands out.
So grab a coffee or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter
[00:00:55]
[00:00:55] Crystal Waddell: SEO for your business.
Welcome to the Shopify SEO
[00:00:59] Crystal Waddell: from [00:01:00] Strategy to Action series.
We are kicking things off with the most overlooked but absolutely essential part of SEO: your mindset.
Because the truth is, if you don't believe that SEO is for you, you won't stick with it long enough to see results.
And let me tell you a quick story. It's so timely right now because I just got back from vacation.
When I teach either Etsy shop owners or Shopify store owners about SEO, I try to illustrate the fact that SEO works for you even when you're gone. And so first I just wanna apply the SEO concepts to my Etsy shop.
So for my Etsy sellers who are listening right now, I went on vacation for two weeks. And in the past when I would go on vacation for two weeks, I would do what?
Put my shop on vacation mode. Right? It's come to my attention that putting your shop on vacation mode actually limits your reach in the Etsy search algorithm.
So rather than put my shop on vacation mode, I just extended the ship times out. So [00:02:00] typically my products would ship three to five days, maybe one to two weeks.
I extended that ship time to three to five weeks.
And what happened was incredible. So rather than getting zero sales because my shop was on vacation, I think that
pushing my ship date out actually created a sense of urgency.
Over the period of like 14 days, I got 12 sales!
And I was super excited about that because not only did I get to 12 sales and the money coming in while I was gone, I also didn't have to rush back to fulfill orders because I'd given myself enough time to get back home, unpack, relax.
Take a vacation from my vacation before I got started at work again.
That's the power of SEO and planning: when your work is working for you on your behalf.
As I like to say, an employee.
All in all, not a bad vacation. 12 orders in Etsy,
two [00:03:00] orders on my Shopify store.
The moral of the story is I was still showing up in search results.
Number one, because my Etsy shop wasn't on vacation.
Number two, because my Shopify site is optimized for search.
So let's talk a little bit about any creative business owner who's ever said, I'm just not techy.
SEO is for bloggers, not shop owners.
Or, I don't even know where to start. I've got you. I've been there. So let's bust the myths, shift our beliefs.
And get clear on what mindset it really takes to show up in search.
Alright, so talking about busting the biggest SEO myths, let's break down a few of those myths that might be holding you back.
First of all. That SEO is only for techies. The truth is actually that SEO is about helping people find what they're already searching for.
If you can describe your product to a friend, you can do SEO.
Second myth, you need to post every day to rank.
The truth: One well optimized product page or collection page [00:04:00] is better than a hundred random posts.
And when I talk to my group, the SEO squad, I talk to them about finding that perfect product.
Everybody's a little bit afraid to niche down, but when you find that perfect product or service, it's the thing that you love doing.
It's the thing that takes the least amount of your time. And it's also the thing that you make the most money and profit doing.
That's your sweet spot, that's your perfect product. That is what I have found to be the most powerful product to create an SEO strategy around.
Let's sell more of the thing that we love to make or we'd love to do. That costs us the least in amount of time, money, and effort.
And brings us the biggest return on our investment of time and effort.
Okay, the third myth. Shopify isn't good for SEO. I don't know who came up with this stuff. Maybe it's because, you know, back in the day, Shopify wasn't as strong in terms of search engine optimization.
But Shopify could be really [00:05:00] powerful when you know how to set it up right.
And that's what I hope this series shows you.
All right, so let's just do a visibility readiness quiz. Okay. It's just a quick self check for you. So mentally check yes or no. I want to be found on Google and Pinterest. I check yes or no. I'm tired of relying only on Etsy or Instagram. I get overwhelmed by SEO talk, but I'm still curious. And finally, I could spend one to two hours a week learning something new.
If you are nodding your head, you are so ready for this.
Now. If you're ready to go deeper into this mindset shift, I've created a super simple actionable guide that you can grab today. It's in the show notes, and it's called the SEO Mindset for Shop Owners Guide, and it's only $7.
It includes, number one, a printable visibility quiz. Two, my full mindset shift table.
Three: an SEO readiness checklist. And four: three action [00:06:00] steps to take this week.
You can grab it at simple and smart seo.com/mindset. It's a great way to set the tone for this series and your Shopify SEO journey.
Okay, so here's what I want you to walk away with today. You don't need to be an expert to get found on Google. Or in Chat GPT.
Or perplexity or whatever, fill in the blank search engine.
SEO is a skill that you can grow. Just like you grew your creative business. This journey starts with your mindset.
Believing that this is for you.
Believing that SEO can work for your business. Next ,week I'm gonna dive into tools and texts and share with you the apps and integrations that make SEO on Shopify way less overwhelming.
And I can't wait to share one of the new tools that I've been using that recently got an upgrade!
And it's always awesome when the apps that you're already using and paying for get an upgrade.
That makes them even more effective. [00:07:00] Until then, keep showing up and remember, visibility is a skill. It's not a personality trait. You've got this. I'll see you next week.