(Summer SEO 2026 Replay Series!)

Crystal Waddell: Welcome to the third season of the Simple and Smart SEO Show, the podcast dedicated to empathy driven brand building SEO. I'm your host, Crystal Waddell. I leverage my obsession with user experience to help business owners just like you optimize your website with confidence. Thank you so much for being here.

Let's jump into another great episode. Hey, my friends, this is the final episode of the 2023 year for the Simple and Smart SEO show. 

Recap of the Most Listened Episodes

Crystal Waddell: As a gift to you, I just wanted to share the top three most listened to episodes from season two. 

Episode 55: Angie Coley on SEO

Crystal Waddell: So first up, we have episode 55. With Angie Coley, where she flipped the script on me and B and asked us questions about SEO.

If you didn't catch it the first time, here's a clip. And if you love it, you can go back to episode 55 and catch the whole deal. 

Angie Colee: Enjoy! 

Insights on Business Problems and Solutions

Angie Colee: I'm able to help people see where they've got holes in the leaky bucket, right? I think most problems with business has come down to one of three things. They don't have a process, they don't have the right people, or they don't know how to talk to their people, or they have a profit problem.

And so I often joke that I am a C3PO that can help you figure out the people, the profits, and the process. And so I've come up with a lot of strategies to help you genuinely build a connection with someone. To have a hard conversation when you're disappointed with someone. To get clarity. From clients or from colleagues and coworkers, when you're struggling to get something done and you need somebody else to move before you can, and what do you do if they don't move strategies like that?

So I really like to help people figure out those three aspects of their business. How can I communicate better? How can I introduce more revenue streams? How can I systematize this to where it's heaven forbid. Fun to run this business. When I first entered marketing, it was, I met a group of some less than shady operators who were like, yes, this is the latest black hat strategy and gaming.

The system never felt good to me. Plus there seemed to be a lot of technical mumbo jumbo and back in headers and stuff involved. And because I'm tech phobic, if I can't figure out this technology within five to 10 seconds, I'm frustrated and going to burn it down. So it's just always been something I've avoided because I took the tack of, I don't write for spiders, for search engine crawlers.

I write for people. And if it's not good enough for the search engines to find me, then I'm just going to cross my arms and go screw you Google. 

Discussion on SEO Interpretation

Angie Colee: Is that interpretation of SEO actually correct? Is there another way that I should be looking at this and a reason that I should not be like going, no, I'm scared to look at the back end of my stuff.

Brittany Herzberg: You want to take it first or you want me to take it first? 

Crystal Waddell: Sure. I can take a stab at this one. And again, we said everybody's interpretation of what it means is it's just that based on your experience, right? People would go on the yellow pages and look for different businesses. I love that. My dad brought that one up.

And now SEO just functions as that yellow page listing. And if you're not listed, if you don't have a strategy to make yourself available to people, they're not going to be able to find you. I like to say that you can be your own SEO superhero. This is not something that you have to have a lot of money or a huge business or just insider information that is really tough to get to be able to be successful with SEO.

You just simply have to understand what keyword you want to win, what you want people to search for and find you so that you can sell them or help them or whatever it is you're trying to do. 

Brittany Herzberg: I have a slightly different take on it because I feel like something that comes up a lot is being intentional.

It's a value I have with, it's come up in other guest interviews. And if you're being intentional with who you help, how you help them and sharing that information, one, you're going to have an SEO strategy because you're gifted one, whether or not you intentionally create one. And that SEO strategy is probably going to be at least like 80 percent of the way there because you're talking to your people in at least in a way it may have jargon in there.

And if it has jargon in there, that could be a bad, could be a good thing. Just depends, but you're going to have an SEO strategy and it'll be most of the way there. So you've got something working for you, but having an understanding of SEO and what's going on and how you can up level is just going to make it be much, that much more better.

Angie Colee: It's interesting. It sounds related to something I've said, cause you know, my skills and kind of communications and team management and process development and stuff like that. It's just naturally how I think, and I usually tell people you have a process or a system, you just may not have it written down.

And so to me, that sounds similar. Like you have SEO on your site already. You just probably don't have a strategy. They're already crawling. They're already trying to find you, but you haven't figured out the right keywords, maybe yet. Something like that. 

Crystal Waddell: And SEO is so interesting. 

SEO as a Game

Crystal Waddell: One of my friends, Whitney, who listens to the podcast, she talks about how it's like a game, like SEO really is like a game.

Once you start playing, you're like, Hey, there's different ways that you can win. Because first you find out about keywords and you're like, Oh crap, I could align words on the page and remove words like it. And put the name of the thing instead of it. And then when somebody's searching for that particular word, my page is gonna pop up.

Oh, that's crazy. That's just like, brain blowing stuff, right? And so you start there and then you realize, Oh crap, this page is getting, getting indexed in Google and people are visiting it. And I can actually put a link from this page to another page and get people to go see that other page, which is actually maybe a money page.

And somebody might buy something from there. It's like, I should be mind blown again. So it's like, you start discovering all of these ways that make winning easier. I think it's at that point that it becomes fun and less overwhelming. Because you're like, Oh, there is a method to this madness. That is SEO.

And I can do it, I can do it for myself. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Or even if I pay somebody else to do it, I can understand what they're doing. I can have an expect of what they should do so that our business can be more successful. Yeah. 

Angie Colee: I do love that. I do a lot of business coaching and that kind of drives me nuts about some folks.

I admit that I'm tech phobic, but I also want a basic understanding of it so that I know how to do things or what should be happening and I'm not snowed over. Yeah. It's interesting because you mentioned that it was like a game and I thought that was fascinating and I wrote down set it and forget it because I'm one of those that like it popped into my head that optimization is a one time thing.

It's an ongoing thing that kind of makes me feel overwhelmed. So that's fascinating to me how. Interrelated like the SEO strategy and the content strategy are. 

Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And just real quick on Instagram. I had this happen when I very first started my Instagram account, when I wanted to start teaching people about SEO, even though I didn't know it was SEO that I wanted to teach people about.

But as I started talking about content again, who am I attracting? Social media managers and all sorts of other people in that world. The benefit of that, if you are an entrepreneur feeling a little lonely and you're trying to make friends and build your network and that type of thing, that's a great way to build your network.

Yeah. Yes. Not the best way to find customers, but it's a great way to build your network. I definitely wanted to throw that caveat in there. 

Angie Colee: I love that too. And I'm a big proponent of your network is a great place to find potential clients and customers. 

Episode 60: Nicole Lewis on Etsy SEO

Angie Colee: Next up, we have 

Crystal Waddell: our second most listened to episode from season two, and that was with Nicole Lewis, who is an Etsy OG and the founder of Art to the Extreme and the original Rainbow Crayon.

She came on the show to talk to us about Etsy SEO and how to be successful on Etsy. So. Again, if you like the clip and you want to hear the rest of the episode, you can catch Nicole in episode 60. 

Nicole Lewis: And when I think of SEO, I'm not only thinking about my buyer, but also thinking about members of the press who might be Googling or searching.

Etsy or Google for those top holiday gifts, stocking stuffers, the best birthday gifts for kids. And I want to be sure that I'm using those right keywords, not only to result purchases because we all want sales, but also those features and magazines and online gift guides that are going to continue that traffic and bring sales my way consistently over time, over the life of that article.

And I always talk about this is crucial backlink to help my ranking on Google go up because we all need that magic. I love that. Okay. So 

Crystal Waddell: my question, because you were talking about like actually having insider knowledge with Etsy and SEO, what are like, I don't know if you have to whittle it down, what are like three places or three things that an Etsy seller should maybe know about using the platform.

And then people like me who are service 

Nicole Lewis: providers could also maybe apply elsewhere. 

Importance of Effective SEO and Branding

Nicole Lewis: You need to make sure that you're using effective SEO. You also need to make sure, and this is my big thing is your photography and your branding is on point. And I know that scares a lot of people you need to have at the same age.

You need to have good photography because say you happen to get, make it to page one or page two of Google or of Etsy, and now in a sea of products, people are trying to decide, okay, my, what I typed in the search engine has gotten me here to these results that should apply to me, but how do I choose which?

Item. If I type in rainbow crayons, now rainbow crayon makers are a game a dozen. Now I personally bake them off of a photo to start with, because when I'm seeing so many different choices. I'm going to go to that photo first. That looks the best. So getting your photography, getting your branding, because a lot of people think that people will just go to your page and learn more about you and look at everything you have to offer.

No, people are clicking on one listing from typing in that search and that's what they're basing it off of. And half the time they're don't even go to your shop. And I don't think a lot of Etsy sellers realize that. 

Understanding Etsy as a Search Engine

Nicole Lewis: One thing that I think 

Crystal Waddell: is interesting is that you described Etsy as a search engine and you said Etsy search engine dot, dot, dot.

And I just want to take a pause there because I think Just having that mindset shift as different platforms as search engines is so important. So whether you're thinking about Instagram or Pinterest or TikTok or Google or Etsy or Amazon, which Amazon is the largest e commerce search engine on the internet, I think it's just so important to just have that perspective that we're approaching Etsy now as a search engine.

So how does this Etsy search engine work? 

Nicole Lewis: So let's do search engine. Actually, it's gonna work in two different phases. It's gonna work in something called query matching and ranking. And query matching ranking. What's the difference between the both of them? So let's give an example. When someone types in rainbow crayons in the search bar, I'm a rainbow crayon maker, and I don't know if they're even typing in rainbow crayons.

They probably don't even know that that's the gift that they want, but let's just say somebody types in rainbow crayons in the search bar and you need to make sure that your rainbow crayons are going to be within that shopper search and that query matching Etsy SEO is matching your product with the shopper search.

But you also need to make sure that you have a good ranking. Let's take that example. So the rainbow crayon search, if you're on page 48, when someone types in rainbow crayon, that's not going to help get buyers to your shop, they're not going to see your products. No one's searching through 40 pages just to find you.

So you want to make sure that your product is not only matching the query that someone's typing in, in that search bar, but you also want to make sure that your items. Are ranking and that's the SEO works in a nutshell. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay. So my question would be then, okay, how do I rank? How do I rank better? 

Nicole Lewis: That's exactly what people want to know.

And when a customer uses that search bar, Etsy is going to look into the SEO of items to match that actual search. So for that ranking, there's four main places that Etsy systems are going to kind of like look at and draw from for that best match possible, they're going to look at the listing titles.

They're going to look at the tabs. They're going to look up the category that your product, that you think that your product belongs in. So that's really important in the list, the actual listing attributes and keywords is a whole topic within itself. So use listings to A, B test. If you have two of the same product, put them up there, but I wouldn't test multiple things on one listing.

So if you want to know which photo is going to get the most clicks. test out the photo and keep the titles and stuff the same. If you want to know which title is going to perform better, keep the same photos for that first photo and test out different titles and see what works over time. 

Crystal Waddell: As a fellow Etsy seller, that is so helpful.

Understanding what variable is the control variable is really important. You know what I mean? So I'm just thinking, I'm like, this would be an excellent freebie because it's like how to test your listings against each other to really find. What the variable is that is making it work, making it sell so much of it is just not sure why it's working.

I just know it is. And so then when something changes or multiple things changed, it's harder to adapt when you don't know what's working. So thank you for that idea. 

Nicole Lewis: For actual ranking within Etsy too, there's a few things that go into those higher ranking scores, and one of the A B tests is actually going to give you a benefit to that.

Etsy's looking at relevancy, they're looking at translation and language, they're looking at listing quality score, they're looking at rating, they're looking at customer experience score. Shipping price and shopper habits. And I think all of these could be a mini like TED talk within themselves. 

Crystal Waddell: All right.

Episode 69: Matt Diamante on Local SEO

Crystal Waddell: And last but not least, we have our very own SEO celebrity, Matt Diamante, and he's on to talk about local SEO and give us all the little tips and tricks that he shares on his TikTok and Instagram. This is episode 69 with Matt Diamante. 

Understanding SEO and Website Traffic

Crystal Waddell: I know personally, I didn't realize this. When you start your website, essentially you're just putting an address out there.

SEO is not built in and a lot of people associate having a website with having a searchability. And so I just wondered, like, how do you explain that to your clients? Or how would you explain that to someone who wants to get a website up and going? Like, what are the elements that they need to think about rather than thinking, oh.

All of a sudden I'm going to put a website up and I'm going to get traffic. So 

Matt Diamante: think of your website as like a physical building, a physical storefront, big, small, whatever, whatever size you want to imagine it. And now we're going to just say. That building is in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere.

That's your website, right? There's no roads going to it. Nobody knows it's there. You do have a poll with your address on it, but there's no roads going there. So essentially what SEO does is you're building all these roads and you're building the infrastructure so that people can actually find it. So instead of that one business, you make it more of a destination where you have all this information that people can consume, the questions that they're looking for, the answers, all that stuff.

And then people start coming to you and like, like I said, it's more of a destination instead of just, you know, a storefront in the middle of the field. 

Crystal Waddell: I think that's such a good explanation. I have a segue question into the bigger topic for today. Why do you think small business owners really need to understand and do their own SEO and build those roads and get all of the information out there?

Matt Diamante: So one of the things that I hate the most is when somebody comes to me and they're like SEO sucks I've done it and I haven't gotten any results and the last company wouldn't even tell me what they're doing They're sending me like these reports. I didn't understand and all that kind of stuff and I'm like Okay, so the first thing we're going to do, we're going to sit down and I'm going to tell you what goes into SEO and why things are important.

So what is a title tag, meta description, what are the different heading tags, why are those important, what is good content, should you be using bullets, should you be using lists, like how to break out your content, images, like all that kind of stuff. So I really want them to understand. What goes into SEO?

What is SEO? And that way, whether they hire me or not, they're going to be better informed moving forward. And a lot of business owners want to write their own content on their website and they want to write their own blog posts, but you can't just write content in blog posts and be like, yeah, I'm doing SEO.

It's going to rank. They need to be informed. Like your blog post should be like a thousand words at minimum 750 at the very, very, very bare minimum. I want them to be able to have the tools to know how to do it themselves. 

Crystal Waddell: Okay, I love your, what do you call those? I want to say analogy. Yes, analogy. I'm totally stealing it.

Okay. That's going to be my new. I'm going 

Matt Diamante: to totally. I literally just came up with that. I've never said that before. 

Crystal Waddell: I see. Yeah. I'll totally give you credit, but I'm totally stealing it. Yeah. SEO is the internet roads that lead to your business. I love that. Such a great. Explanation and visual of the fact that, yeah, you can have a website, but it's in the middle of nowhere and nobody knows how to get there until you build the roads to get there.

And that's why you need SEO. I feel like some of the e commerce sellers I've worked with have given me some pushback on adding more words to the page, but like, With Shopify is, Hey, we don't have to add it to the top of the page. We can let your products shine. 

Matt Diamante: I think that people just really need to put their egos aside and like shop owners, because if you're hiring me or you're hiring somebody to do your SEO, and I'm saying you need a thousand words on your product page, talking more about your product or whatever it is.

Then let me do my job. And at the end of the day, are people actually going to read that? Probably not. And the people who are reading it are probably going to enjoy it. Cause that's the type of person who reads, you know, all the terms and conditions, like all that kind of stuff. And yeah, it's just, let us do our job.

If we want to change the name of your product to something that people are actually searching, then that's something that we need to do. And if they don't want us to do it, then I'm like, cool, we'll do everything else. But. Just so you know, you are blocking us from actually doing the full job. 

Managing Client Expectations in SEO

Matt Diamante: How do you 

Crystal Waddell: manage the expectations of your clients?

Matt Diamante: That's a good question. I don't do benchmarking. I'm not like you're starting here and we're going to get to 10, 000 clicks a month. I don't do that because that's unrealistic. And why 10, 000? Why, why 5, 000? We are going to grow your traffic organically and it's going to get as big as it needs to and as it can.

And we're going to do our jobs to attract the right people to your website. So in terms of managing expectations, like what we do, here's what my proposal looks like, what we promise. We will do X number of articles per month. So whether that's five or 10 or whatever it is, we'll say five. So we do five articles a month.

You got four backlinks a month from high. Domain authority sites, so high ranking sites. And then you also get like the technical SEO set. We'll go through every page of your website. Make sure all that stuff's good. And then we'll also like fix any technical things if we can. So if it's WordPress, we'll fix like the page speed stuff or the JavaScript or the CSS, all that kind of stuff.

They're seeing that work is being done. I used to do SEO campaigns where the client's paying, let's say 1, 000 a month. And they're like, okay, what did you do? I'm like, we did keyword research and we did this and we did this. And we added two paragraphs to these three pages on your site this month. And that's all we did.

And they're like, why am I paying a thousand dollars for that? And I'm like, it's all the stuff that you don't see. That now your website is like ranking higher. So I make sure to say like, you get X amount of words per month. So maybe it's 5, 000 or 10, 000 words written on your website per month. And you get X amount of backlinks per month.

And then we can show them all the work that's being done. And it's a lot more expensive now than 1, 000, but we're doing a lot of work. And I guarantee you will get results, but it might not be number one. 

Conclusion and Farewell

Crystal Waddell: All right, guys, that closes us out here for 2023 on the Simple and Smart SEO Show. If you enjoy the podcast, would you do me a favor and hit that subscribe button or share the podcast with a friend?

It really makes a big difference. difference when people subscribe, share, or rate our podcast. So if you're listening on Spotify or Apple podcasts, just give us a rating. And if you have a little extra time, leave a review, I'll be right back here with you first Wednesday of 2024. It's a very special guest.

You won't want to miss it. So have a great holiday, Merry Christmas and happy new 

Angie Colee: year.