How to Get Started With SEO (The Right Way)
“If I complain one more time about social media, I'm going to be sick of myself. It’s time for SEO!”
My brain has been in overdrive lately—website copy is shifting, my positioning is getting sharper, & my offer suite just got a full revamp. So it felt like the right time to walk you through every single way you can work with me to improve your SEO in 2026!
Whether you're a DIY-er, you want someone in the trenches with you, or you're ready to hand it off entirely—there's something here for you. And it all leads back to my SEO & Grow Method.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why jumping straight to keyword research is a mistake
How to get clear on your audience & offers in 15 minutes or less
Why niching down doesn't box you in (it actually frees you up)
The differentiator question that anchors your whole SEO strategy
The 3 questions to answer before any keyword research
How to use KeySearch to find aligned keywords
What search volume range to aim for
How to map keywords for each of your core website pages
Which pages to prioritize when building out your SEO strategy
What happens when ALL your pages are optimized for SEO
Your SEO journey starts with clarity—answer those 3 questions, grab your keywords, and let's get you found! 🙌
Still not sure where to start? Just ask!
I basically live in my Instagram DMs & am always happy to help you find the right fit!
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, Brittany Herzberg. I've been having lots of conversations recently about how to do SEO, where to start, what's the best order of operations. So today I want to go deep into that. Even if you've worked with an SEO pro before, or if you've tried to do SEO in the past, I'd still encourage you to listen to this episode. Because we're not all the same. The different SEOs will tell you different things. And just like with any industry, any service provider, you've got to find the one you jive with, who speaks your language and who actually gets you motivated to do the thing. And it doesn't hurt to have a proven process that others have had success with. You and I both know I've shared successes that business owners have had after going through my SEO programs like the SEO Sprint, which by the by, my next SEO sprint starts very, very soon. You can save your seat now. Go to the link below. This is the new entry point into SEO. In my world, it's a short sprint for a reason. We get you in, get your SEO done, and get you clear on your next steps. Because you've spent enough time beating yourself up mentally about not wanting to be on social media, about not doing SEO sooner, and all that mental chatter is doing is keeping you stuck in the stupid loop. The Sprint fixes that you've got short and sweet video tutorials, one workbook, live calls each week, replays from Zed calls. If you can't be there live and you've got me again, link is below. Check it out and find me if you've got questions. Now for our episode, how to get started with SEO. Most people want to jump right into keywords, but that is a huge mistake if you haven't done a little prep work before. I mean, how are you even supposed to know what to look for? You want to know how you know what to look for. You spend time and it can literally be 15 minutes getting clear on your audience and offers. And I'm not even talking about what clients or offers you have now or who or what you want to be done with. I mean, what clients do you wish you were working with? What do you want more of? What do you want to have in your offer suite? What offer or offers do you want to fill right now? And keep it simple. Okay? You don't need a paragraph, although you can start with a paragraph. Long brain dump at first, if that's what you need but what you ultimately want to have is something that's like I work with these clients, moms, therapists, photographers, small business owners, female creatives. And I want to fill these offers one to one coaching, newborn photography sessions, squarespace website design. See how specific and clear those are. Notice how you could, I don't know, pop those phrases into a keyword research tool one at a time. Yeah, that's the entire point. We're going to come back to that though. Before we scoot to that next part, I want you to know that these are not the only people who will come to you. People really freak out when they're told to niche down or get more clear or get more specific. And what I've noticed that that really gets at is a couple things. They don't want to feel boxed in or restricted and they don't want other people to feel excluded. I've been there. I was a massage therapist and I wanted to help everyone. But that saying that if you help everyone, you help no one is so very true. This is one of those just trust me moments. I know, I hate it too. But really, truly, the one thing that got me to understand that this actually works was just going for it in my massage practice. That was me niching down to working with desk jockeys and migraine sufferers. Before I closed my practice, I saw 50 people each month, a varying amount of times per person. Some people were weekly, some were monthly and some were somewhere in between. I was making good money, I was helping people and I was getting found and booked online with my SEO based business. That's looked like me getting really specific that I work with established entrepreneurs and I offer group coaching, digital products and done for you website optimization. But I've always had people coming to me for things I don't currently have or offer. I have people who aren't established entrepreneurs but who are super clear on who they help, how and all of that coming to me for SEO help. You're not excluding people or restricting yourself. You're helping people find you so they can work with you. Once you're clear on your audience and offers, you need to identify your differentiator. If I say that another way, you need to get clear on why you. Why are you the best person to help them? What do you bring to the table that nobody else does? And don't you dare tell me you don't know why. Or give me some client testimonial quote that says she is the best. Pretend I'm a 3 year old who keeps asking you why Go a layer deeper. And another and another. Give me something concrete. This isn't necessarily something you'll use to find keywords, but it's always something that I use to anchor clients back into what they're saying with their SEO strategies. Here's an example. I am the best choice as an SEO coach for someone in the healthcare space because I was a massage therapist. Between that and my time working with a pediatric hematologist, I spent 18 years in healthcare. I'm well versed in that space. I'm also the best choice as an SEO coach for someone who's brand new to SEO. I'm self taught, I don't use fancy jargon and I keep you focused on creating a solid foundation first. We're not getting technical from the jump in my world. See, I've come back to ask for clarity from clients about their differentiator because I need to understand why you are the ultimate resource for co parents. I need to understand why you are the spot for all natural migraine relief products. I need to understand that you are the go to for all things client experience for photographers. I have to know that so I can help position you as the answer that these people are looking for. It's the same thing the bots are doing for traditional Google search and AI searches. You may think you're being clear with that, but nine times out of ten it's not actually clear from your copy or your SEO strategy. And if it's not clear there, you're not going to get leads from Google or from AI searches. So that's how important this is. The very first thing I have people do in the SEO sprint is getting clear on these things. You answer these three questions. Who do you help? How do you help them? Why are you their best option? Because without these answers you will not get good keywords. Let me rephrase. You could still get good keywords, but they may not be aligned keywords. They may not be what you actually want to get found for when you sit back and really think about it. So instead of realizing this after we get clear on this before doing any SEO things. Got it. Great. At this point then you go find keywords. We all know KeySearch is my favorite SEO tool. I swear by it and I even have an affiliate link for it because I love it so much. I'll have that link below. Of course. It's so stinking easy to use, which is really important for anyone in my world because they tend to be newer to SEO. But even for SEO pros, this is a gem of a resource. And yes, there's even a YouTube keyword research tool. I digress what keyword research looks like high level overview here. Okay, is this. You look at your succinct answers to those three questions and you take the phrases one at a time and you plug them in keysearch to identify the best ones. You want them to have a good search volume result. I teach you to look for a search volume of zero to a thousand. Bigger is not better here. Now that does not mean I don't ever use keywords that are above a thousand, because sometimes the word is the word and that's got a volume of like 3,600. It's okay. There's obviously more nuance to all of this, but do your best to keep your keywords in that 0 to 1000 range and you'll be golden. And it's actually really a good thing if you find some that are in the 0 to 100 range, because that's where I find those warm to hot leads live. I'm happy to nerd out on this with you. It's a huge point of discussion in the SEO sprint for those first few days, but once you've got those keywords, you get to put together SEO strategies for your core website pages. Pro tip, it's actually really helpful to have your list of web pages before, as in before doing any keyword research. Doing this helps you be more efficient with finding the best keywords for those different pages. It can feel a little overwhelming to fill an entire SEO strategy for one page all at once. So I actually have people start with selecting a target keyword and generating a draft of their SEO title first, just to dip your toe in, you know. And then once they see how the flow of all the SEO strategies for all the core website pages are going to go, then they go on to creating meta descriptions, double checking the URL slugs, and so on for the individual pages. And when I say core website pages, I'm talking about the ones in your navigation bar and in your footer. Things like home services, blog, podcasts, and yes, even contact about. And your free resources. Your free resources may or may not live in the navigation bar or the footer, but they are still really good pages to optimize. And you've got the ability to provide information that will make these pages and your business more findable. So like, why not? I've had clients increase the amount of people taking their quizzes or reading their blog posts or or subscribing to their email newsletters or even filling out inquiry forms because they had all of their pages optimized for SEO. If you are ready to have leads coming to you versus you chasing them all around Instagram, it's time for you to meet SEO. More specifically, it's time for you to do something about your SEO and the SEO Sprint is the perfect place. What I walked you through is everything we do in the Sprint. Find the keywords using the answers to those three questions, map out the website pages, create the SEO strategies for each of them, and get everything plugged into your website the right way. The next sprint starts June 22 and there's still time to join. Save your seat using the link in the show notes. When we hit 10 people, I'm closing the doors. And yes, there will be another Sprint in the future. I'll be running this every other month. You can save your seat in advance if that's something that works better for you. If you have any questions, message me. All of the links are below. Happy seoing, friend. I'll be over here cheering you on on your SEO journey.
