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.

Well, hello, my friend. 

Today, it's just me here on the Simple and Smart SEO show. 

I figured as we were winding down for the Christmas season and the holidays, it would be a good time to just have a conversation about some questions in the air regarding SEO. 

And no, I'm not talking about content goblins or alligators.

I want to talk from the perspective of a small business owner with a limited budget and an eye on the bank account balance. 

It reminds me of the time that I called a Charleston wedding planner. 

Here's a little backstory. I was never the little girl that dreamed of my wedding.

I never wanted to get married. 

But things changed and I wanted to get married after all and I wanted to get married in Charleston. 
 
So we thought between the two of us we could swing ten grand. 

We wanted in, out, no debt. When I called the first and only wedding planner in Charleston, she laughed me off the phone.

It was humiliating and that's the feeling I get sometimes when I hear people talking about their SEO budgets. 

When they say things like if you're not paying at least 5, 000 a month for SEO, then you're not getting anything worth paying for. 

I have to respectfully disagree, and I hope one day that I can drop 60, 000 a year and not be totally obsessed with what's happening with that investment.

But today is not that day. 

So rather than cry about it, which I'm pretty sure I did after the convo with that Charleston wedding planner, I thought maybe we could just talk it out. 

Ask some questions, like number one, does a business even need SEO? 

Number two, where should you optimize for your business online?

Number three, can the business handle it on their own? 

And number four, if they could, what would that look like? 

So let's explore. 

I've consulted with several Shopify store owners and a variety of small business owners over the last year. 

Some were trying to get started selling online.

Others are trying to grow their business and their audience. 

And even if they didn't say it, they were all trying to build a brand. 

And through the conversations with those business owners, I learned that the cost of SEO can be a barrier to entry. 

Plus, the learning curve of the technology it takes to build and maintain a website is also not as easy as just opening a Shopify store.

What are businesses in a similar situation supposed to do? 

If you're bootstrapping it, side hustling, or simply trying to get profitable. 

And you can't afford to pay for an agency to optimize your website.

 You could ignore your SEO, that's one option. But like we used to say, an SEO strategy will be formed on your behalf. For example, I spoke with a business owner today that has a dog training service.

He wondered, why is my site not showing up for dog training services in my area? 

looking at his sight for a few moments, there were a few things that confused me as a human.

And I thought it might be a little zigzaggy for Google to understand too. 

One of the industry jargon phrases on his homepage included boarding.

As a dog owner, that makes me think that he boards dogs. 

Like, when people go out of town for the weekend. It doesn't make me think dog trainer. 

The website metadata is set up for an in person human fitness center with keywords in the URL like fitness center. So Google's trying to figure out this website that boards dogs, trains them, and does it all at a planet fitness.

So this isn't the first time that I've seen a website sold to someone for one industry and then optimized for something completely different. 

So let's revisit the first question. 

Does your business with a website need SEO? 

And if you have a website, I can confidently say yes. 

SEO, optimizing your website is time well spent.

And I'd like to also say it from a different perspective. 

If you don't get that click, somebody else is getting it. 

Somebody's not. 

And so that's how you could figure out how much SEO is worth to you. If you converted 1 to 20 percent of the clicks that you received on your website, what does that mean in dollar bills?

 If you know the variables of how you convert people on your site or on the phone.

And the average revenue of each sale. 

That gives you a pretty good idea of the value of SEO for the keywords you want to win.

So let's talk about question two. Where should you optimize for your business online? 

One thing I want to point out is that you are not just optimizing for your own website. 

Earning sales as an unknown brand means that you have to optimize your website plus every other place you are likely to be found online. 

This is called on site or on page SEO for your website. 

And off site or off page SEO anywhere else. I like to say you hire these off page opportunities. 

That includes social media channels, YouTube, TikTok, Google Business, and Bing Places.

All of those types of websites where you could be found by a potential client. 

There's lots of fancy words for this, but my favorite is omnipresence.

The art of optimizing your presence everywhere your customers could be looking for you. 

So why is this important? I'm so glad you asked. 

Let's talk through a customer journey example. In the business that I have, as a seller of wooden letters and senior night gifts, a lot of discovery of my products happens on Pinterest. 

Sometimes it happens on Google. People are clicking on a product listing I have through Google Merchant Center.

Or they're clicking on a picture that shows up in the image section of Google search. 

Sometimes clicking on that image takes them to my website. Sometimes it takes them to Pinterest. 

And sometimes they're finding me through one of the blogs that I've written. 

So those are the ways that people typically come into my ecosystem.

And then there's also times where people come in through TikTok. 

Or they message through Facebook. A few times a month, I'll get an email, text, or a phone call directly from someone searching my website. So my point is, there's multiple possibilities, multiple touch points for a customer to come into your world.

How we show up for them is important. If we don't show up where they are, it might send the wrong message about our company. 

And that's the value of SEO, optimizing your brand to show up in as many online searches as possible.

I believe it's important to have a presence on every platform. 

Now, some people get overwhelmed just by the thought of that, and they shut down. 

You might have heard that you shouldn't post the same thing on multiple platforms, but why not? 

When you are selling a product, especially as an unknown brand online, The importance of consistency across platforms is the most important thing.

The most important thing isn't that you have unique content on every social media platform. 

What's most important is that you show up as this same business anywhere people will look for you. 

That your offers stay consistent and they reinforce the solution that you sell. 

So again, let's consider the unknown brand that's found through a Pinterest or Google search.

Initially, they're found through a generic search, like wooden letters for prom ideas. 

Then they find the idea that they're looking for, and they see that it's sold by Collage and Wood. 

If someone searches for that brand name online, They are searching for signals that look familiar. 

At minimum, they're looking for something that reinforces whatever image they liked before, right?

They need to see some letters. 

Some prom event decor examples. It's not the time to start promoting nursery decor, even though we do that too. 

I think when we try to be so original all the time in our content creation. 

We might actually be undercutting our own marketing efforts. And I'm not encouraging laziness or discouraging creativity.

I'm advocating for consistency.

A person who's found you via search needs to know: 

number one, that you have experience doing the thing they need. 

Because nobody wants to be the guinea pig, right? 

Number two, other people publicly recognize your ability to do the thing. 

That's also known as social proof.

And number three, that they see that your product or service will in fact fulfill the need that they have. 

That you solve their problem. 

That's why I say that it's best to have a digital footprint across a variety of platforms that reinforces the core of what you do. 

That means Google Business Listing, Bing Places, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, social media.

And it's not that you have to create a new video for every platform every week. Okay? 

You identify your perfect product. 

You create one digital asset at a time to promote. 

Starting on your website. 

 Then you spread it out amongst all the other platforms. 

And then you repeat. 

As many times as necessary to earn topical authority for that product or service.

Once you've accomplished that, move on to perfect product number two. 

So we've established that SEO is the art of being visible online to the people who need what you sell. 

Let's talk about some answers to question number three. Can a business handle optimization without hiring an SEO agency?

I think that every small business out there can do a certain level of optimization on their own. 

I believe that with the right support, you can optimize your website. 

I believe that you could empower someone who already works for you. To optimize your online presence.

And two to three hours per week? Spent on revenue generating SEO tasks? 

They will have your future self calling you to say, thank you.

So how would this work? What would it look like?

Your online optimizer might be a virtual assistant. 

Or it could be someone who works in your brick and mortar store. 

And stands around for any part of the day. Waiting for someone to come in. There's many ways to accomplish this.

But what you need first is a strategy, right? You need a plan to execute. 

You need a process in place. So that you can clearly state your expectations. 

And also document what's been accomplished. 

Many small businesses, especially solopreneurs, we don't have processes in place.

We don't have standard operating procedures. 

 We don't have a checklist for someone to follow in order to help propel our business forward. 

So that means we're not prepared when we finally do get some help. 

What we end up doing most of the time is basically following our new hire around. 

Cleaning up after that person. 

Possibly retraining. And then remembering that, Oh, I forgot to tell you this.

I forgot to show you that. And it really feels like there's no growth. 

There's no movement forward, right? 

We need to establish a strategy first. And we need to establish a workflow. 

Those are the two biggest things. Strategies and workflows. You have to be able to write it down and say, First, I do this.

Then I do this. Then this. 

Because when you want to hand it off to somebody, they can say, I know how to do the first thing. Not so sure about the second thing. 

Or maybe I don't know how to do any of it. 

So then you have to train them on each specific piece of the process. 

And I think we take it for granted sometimes that people think like we do. 

Or can execute like we do, and they might be able to.

They probably have that capacity, but they're not going to do that in a way that we feel is beneficial to our business. 

Until we train them up like they should go, right? 

So SEO is definitely important for small businesses who want to build an online presence. 

Who want to build a brand. 

And yes, I feel businesses can do many elements of SEO on their own.

So here's my Christmas gift slash end of the year challenge to you. 

If this sounds appealing to you, I'd love to have you join my founding members launch of the simple and smart SEO squad.

My vision for this community is that we work through structured activities to create a tailored SEO strategy for your business.

Then we will have weekly Q& A and SEO co working office hours. 

You'll be able to get feedback and find accountability that you want and need with me and a like minded community. 

Plus, all founding members will get a free content plan built with Surfer SEO to jumpstart your strategy. 

And all founding members can join for just $20 a month.

And that price is good through 11. 59. P. m. Eastern Standard Time on December 31st. 

So sign up now at the link in the show notes. 

And if you have any questions, you can find me on any platform at Simple and Smart SEO. 

Thanks so much for joining me today and I will see you next time.

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