How to Find the Keywords Your Dream Clients Are Googling
"SEO is one big educated guess. One that—when done correctly—brings in leads and makes you money!"
"How do I know the keywords my dream clients are actually Googling?" If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question... 😂
I've never taught keyword research as a standalone workshop because there's so much more to it than just handing you a list of words.
There’s a deeper exploration—one that starts with you. And that’s exactly what I’m walking you through in this episode, so jump in already!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why you need more than just a keyword research workshop
Places you can look to find the best keywords for you to use on your website
The cost of outsourcing your business vision (to coaches, trends, etc.)
The 3 North Star questions I ask every SEO client
How hurtful is it actually to leave SEO elements blank
Client successes: how Jenna and Elli are using their North Star–driven keywords to attract right-n-ready leads
Set a timer for 10 minutes right now, answer those 3 North Star questions, then use that to guide your keyword research.
Answer the questions, try your hand at keyword research, & come tell me about it on Instagram!
Mentioned Resources:
SEO Sprint (October 5th + December 7th)
The Guide to Getting Found on Google (with Elli's full case study)
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Hello and welcome to the Basic Bee Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Britney Hersberg. And of course, the million dollar, maybe just a hundred thousand dollar question is: how can I find keywords that my dream clients are actually Googling? Like if I had a dollar for every time I got that question, truly. This is one of the biggest things that we work through in my SEO sprint. I've never ever taught a standalone here's how to find keywords workshop because there's just so much more to it than here's your keywords by.
Instead, what I do in the SEO sprint is help you learn how to find the best keywords for your business and then build an SEO strategy around that, all the way through to plugging the SEO strategies into your core website pages. I run this every other month. There's one starting October 5th and another on December 7th, but you can always keep your eyes open for whenever I'm running the next one. Let's get into it. This is how you can begin to find keywords those dream clients are actually Googling.
Thing number one is to get clear on your vision. I'm gonna say that again. Get clear on your vision. Okay, here's why I'm emphasizing your. The number of times that I have had conversations with friends or conversations with clients or talked to people in general, just like humans running businesses on the usually the internet streets on threads. The amount of times people have outsourced and just said, I defaulted to whatever my coach said, or I defaulted to be just because I saw this thing on whatever or heard it on a podcast.
We don't want that. We want this vision coming from you. It is why we always and forever will be starting with your North Star in any kind of SEO thing that I do, whether it's the SEO sprint, whether it's done for you SEO. Heck, even if you're like taking a workshop with me, like I don't know what you might be doing, but I'm always gonna start you with the North Star, with identifying who is it that you help, how are you helping them, and how are you different from your others in your industry? Why you?
Those are really critical core questions that I continue to ask on this podcast and I will continue to ask because I want this vision coming from you. I don't want someone else's thought of like, Jenna should be doing this, Leah should be doing that. No. What do you want to do? Who are the clients that you're excited to work with? What are the types of offers that you actually want to have? Not
Brittany Herzberg (02:26.528) I've heard this type of thing is great. I've heard I should have this. I should be doing that. This is dying. That's dying. Like, come on, guys. Like really, truly. We also said blogs were dead. And they're not. They really never were. Okay, let me get off my tangent. Start with your vision. Get really clear about who you want to work with. Get really clear about the offers that you want to have and call them what they are. That's another really key thing here. If you have a webinar, call it a webinar. If you have a mastermind, call it a mastermind. If you have a digital product, call it that.
If it's a Google Sheet, if it's a keyword research training, let's just throw that out because it's top of mind. Call it what it is. Be a little bit more literal than you're probably being, especially with those SEO titles, especially when it comes to products. You can of course do SEO for sales pages and things like that too. So whatever it is that you're talking about, call it what it is. Thing number two that you want to be doing, talk to them. Talk to those dream clients. Go back and look at your emails, your DMs.
Reflect on coaching calls. I mean, AI tools are abundant these days. You can pull transcripts from anything. So coaching calls, sales calls, onboarding forms, even offboarding forms. What are these people? What are they saying to you? Again, what are those actual words that they're using? And here you may not be looking for things like workshop or mastermind or group coaching program. You're probably going to be looking more for I want to get leads into my business. I don't want to rely on Instagram.
I want to actually be visible. I want my website to work for me. Gee, do we have any thoughts on where I might be pulling these phrases from? There is a reason you have started to hear me say these things. There is a reason that these are on my sales pages. There's a reason that it's in my content and that it should be for you as well. The stuff that's relevant for you, of course, you probably are not going to be posting about SEO, but I digress. So talk to your people. Go and look.
at those communication things between you and existing clients, between you and potential clients. And then also go look on things like threads or Reddit, that kind of thing. So that you can see even what potential clients are looking for, what potential just other business owners, other humans out there on the internet are saying. Those words carry weight and the things that they're saying are also going to be the things that they're typing. Next up, the third and final trial and error. I want you to remember
Brittany Herzberg (04:51.434) SEO is one big educated guess. It's a hypothesis and having something plugged into your website. And by the way, having something plugged in is so much better than having a non-existent SEO strategy. 10 times out of 10. You want there to be something because if there's nothing in, let's say your SEO title or your meta description, the robots are gonna have to guess. And it makes some pretty atrocious guesses by actually filling out those key places on your website.
Especially on your website, but also in other areas like your Instagram profile or even your content, your podcast episodes, let's say, you're telling the robots what it is that you have and where it should be showing this to someone. When you're leaving it blank, it's guessing. And it's going to guess maybe the right thing, but it's definitely going to have the right information if it's filled in. That's one of those things I always say that SEO is like extra credit for business owners, and this is why.
You have these spaces, you have these opportunities, you have these spots. Why not fill it in? Especially when you're clear on what your business is all about, especially when you're clear going back to that vision on who you help and how you help them, on who you're trying to call into your world, on the offers that you have. It's so easy to just take that stuff and plug it into the right place once you know what that right place is. And it's even better when you know the best practices to follow, like how many characters long your SEO title needs to be.
That's the kind of thing that it helps to have a guide to be able to say, I have this, but is it good enough? Yes, no, maybe. Like we're able to give you that feedback. So get clear on your vision, talk to the people, and remember that it's trial and error. And by the way, this isn't just something that I'm like spouting off, like, here's a great idea, here's a cool process you could try, here's a neat thing to think about. No, Jenna actually got found. She's a branding and Squarespace website designer. She optimized her main website pages.
And is blogging at least once a month. She is getting aligned inquiries rolling in monthly because she has her main website pages set up. So home services, all that kind of stuff. And she's continuing to pump out content and say, hey robots, this is what I do. Hey robots, this is who I help. Hey robots, throw these pages in front of people. It's actually working. The same thing is working for Ellie. Ellie is a virtual bookkeeper. She optimized her main website pages, including some digital products that she has.
Brittany Herzberg (07:11.8) She has had them, she has had the pages, but they didn't have an SEO strategy. Now she has digital products that are being sold straight from her blog posts. It is so fun to get these messages from Jenna and Ellie, like, my gosh, I had another client. my gosh, I made another sale. This stuff can happen and it doesn't have to break your brain in order to make it happen. So the biggest takeaway for you is that in order to find the most effective, the best keywords for you and your business and your offers, start by getting clear on your vision.
Find your North Star. Take 10 or 15 minutes right now, pause this or do this after the episode, literally set a timer and answer those three questions. Another thing you can do, use words that your actual clients are using. And lastly, remove the pressure, which I know, I know, it is so much easier said than done. But 100% of the time, it is going to be better to have something plugged in than to leave it blank and leave the robots guessing. And if you are
Done letting the robots guess and you're like, no, I know exactly what my business is about. I know exactly what offers I have and who I'm wanting to help. And I want to make sure that's on my website. My SEO sprint starts on Monday. This one's actually going to be three weeks, which is a blessing in disguise. I'm going to be gone in the middle of it. So we're going to have three weeks together as opposed to two weeks together. Join us. If you'd rather have the more condensed, super speedy version, we're going to be doing the five-day version in December.
And if you have questions, of course, come find me. I'm on Instagram, Britney underscore Herzberg, the link will be below. You can always text the show. Come find me, ask the things. And remember, I'm over here cheering you on on your SEO journey.
