My First In-Person SEO Workshop—Mastermind Retreat Recap
“They have clarity on their offers, ideal client, & differentiator—and that is SO helpful when it comes to SEO!”
I just got back from the most incredible mastermind retreat in Piermont, New York—and I have SO much to share with you! Between the tears 🥹, the breakthroughs, & my very first in-person SEO workshop, this week was everything.
In this episode, I'm giving you a full BTS look at what we covered in that 90-minute workshop—because honestly? The stuff that came up is stuff YOU need to hear, too!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
What my mastermind besties reflected back to me that had me in actual tears
How I structured the in-person SEO workshop (& why it worked so well)
The #1 thing most people get wrong when answering "who do you help?"
How to use the 3 BIG questions to find your next 3 blog post topics
Free tools you can use right now to see what keywords your site is ranking for
How to check your own SEO title & meta description in 60 seconds
Real client wins rolling in while I was away
Ready to get your own bat signal up? 🦇
Mentioned Resources:
→ Grab the updated SEO Basics Checklist—now includes keyword types for each core website page!
→ SEO & Grow—my 4-month evergreen group coaching program for entrepreneurs!
→ 5-Day SEO Sprint (link coming soon!)—early bird pricing & limited spots!Megan Yelaney
SEO Tools Mentioned:
Ubersuggest (free Chrome extension—great in a pinch!)
Detailed SEO (free Chrome extension—my personal fave for snooping)
Semrush (select the free account option)
Keysearch (my fave keyword research tool—affordable & easy to use)
Related Episodes:
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 back to the Basic B Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Brittany Herzberg. And you may not know this, but I've been away on an adventure of a lifetime in good old Piermont, New York, with my 10 new best friends. If I can do the math right, there were all of us that are in the mastermind, Megan Yelaney, who hosted it, and we had one super incredible guest that was with us for most of the time, too. We got super duper vulnerable at this retreat. Like, I think I cried more than I maybe ever have and certainly more than I ever have in front of people that I don't live with.
But-and because we opened up so much, we also got to have so much poured back into us. There was this one exercise that I want to share with you that Meg had us all do, where we went around the room to share what we saw in one person at a time that they maybe didn't see in themselves. And omg, the waterworks. I was really, really present in that moment because I just don't take the time to celebrate myself. Actually, correction, I used to not take the time to celebrate myself. Some of what I remember them saying is that I care deeply about people succeeding, especially my clients, but even people who aren't clients yet or who may never be clients that I really want to get to know people, understand them, their businesses, their life, their needs, and guide them from that place of understanding. They said that I'm smart, which you wouldn't imagine would bring someone to tears, but it did. And that I connect the dots really well, that I have this seemingly random insight that I pull together and make sense of for others.
And another reflection I was handed on a silver platter is that SEO is my jam. I get so passionate about it. And there was so much redness, so many tears, so many emotions during the retreat. But when it came time for the SEO workshop that I hosted, I was just ON. I was ready to answer any question about SEO, to share my experience, to talk them through similar client stories. It was really magical, honestly.
So Meg, yes, also invited me to teach an SEO workshop. And I'm not even sure if she knew this, but it was my first ever official in person SEO workshop. And oh my gosh, I want to do more. It was so much fun. I kind of wove it in throughout the entire workshop, but I definitely started off sharing about my own SEO journey. I was talking about how SEO worked for me in the beginning when I was in a brand new place, had no Clients. Two people found me on Google and I absolutely just fell down the SEO rabbit hole and how I dove in to learn more and, and actually shifted to showing others how they could improve their SEO, which meant that I ended up totally neglecting mine in the meantime.
But I'm actively on a journey to fix my SEO because I want to celebrate SEO wins for myself like I get to do with my clients every week. I used to meet clients where they're at in whatever part of the process that they're in as well. But now I actually have a very clear framework that I take them through because it makes SEO so much easier to understand and it's what works to get my clients the most success, AKA more inquiries, more opportunities, more clients, more sales, all that jazz.
So I shared my story, shared my framework, shared client success stories and just brought SEO to life for them in real life. Which again was just so fun. I wasn't sure how I was going to be because it's. I do turn red when I talk, but it's more just because the spotlight is on me and I love putting the spotlight on other people. But I'm finding that the more I give myself these opportunities to talk, to have these workshops to share what I know and especially to do it on the fly and also especially to do it in big groups, it's making me more and more comfortable with it. But yeah, having this in person experience, this workshop was just next level and it was so fun.
So let me tell you a little bit about it. So what I did pre workshop is I asked them, of course, of course I asked them the three questions. If you're new here, the three questions are who do you help? How do you help them? And I'm playing around with the phrasing of the last one, but really what it gets at is—why you? Why should they choose you as opposed to anybody else in your similar industry who offers a similar type of thing? So ask them those three questions. They gave me answers. Using those answers, I looked up keywords for them and created a two part SEO strategy for their home page. So I gave them a new SEO title and I gave them a new meta description.
I really just wanted this to be so easy. Plug and play so that they could find the SEO spots on the back end of their website and go in and pop it in there. So they had some familiarity with like, okay, what keywords would I even try to plug into my SEO strategy? What should I even try to write stuff about? And I think that was so helpful for them because they had the stuff and it was easier at that point for them to ask questions, all kinds of things. I'm going to get to that in a little bit. It really made it more actionable, more hands on, more practical, which I loved.
Something I noticed about all of the answers for those three questions that everybody was giving me. One thing in particular stood out that when it came time for them to answer, who do you help? A lot of them gave me these large client profile breakdowns and I love that they have that. And I realized that what I'm looking for is so simple. It's not a two page, you know, in depth dive into your ideal client. It really is like who are the groups of people? So I'll give you some examples. A lot of them work with moms. So mothers, moms, married women was another group, women trying to lose weight, corporate women, female entrepreneurs, that type of thing. So it's “I have these groups of people that I help.” That's really what I'm looking for. So I'm going to share that just in case you maybe have done the same thing. When you've been answering these questions, it's not so much about the client profile breakdown. It really is. Who are these groups of people that you're helping? Could be men and women, could be families, could be entrepreneurs, could be podcasters, it could be any number of things. But just really it's like the groups of people.
And then when it comes to how do you help them, it's the transformation that is really helpful to highlight, which could be one or two sentences. It's also the type of offers that you have. So with this group specifically, it was a lot of coaching, one to one coaching, group coaching on the go coaching. Maybe they have like asynchronous kind of coaching. So think about that too. What is if you go like high, high, high level, what are the types of offers that you have? So for me, I have a group coaching program. So group coaching is definitely in there. I have monthly support for some clients. It's actually like capped out at this point, but I have that. I also have digital products, so that could be another phrase that I could add into my answer when I'm looking at how do I help people.
And then why you, what is that differentiator? One of the ones that stood out to me was just Kim who works with corporate women and she was in corporate, so she really understands that lifestyle, that mindset, what your pockets of time actually look like, what your obligations look like. So I highlighted that as this is definitely something that you need to be speaking to is like, I have been in the corporate world, I get it. I've been where you are, literally. So think of things like that that you can highlight. For me, one of the things that I find myself talking about is that I make SEO fun. I talk about the SEO basics. If someone wants to go really, really deep and learn all of like the techie kind of things, I'm not their best person. They're going to be better served going to someone else. Let's say their website SEO strategy is plugged in, but they don't have a really good workflow or understanding of podcast SEO or blog SEO. Any kind of like SEO that they can apply to content creation, that would be a good person to come in my world as well. So just some things for you to think about that I spotted and wanted to share with you.
At the actual workshop, I showed them how to find keywords that their websites are actually ranking for. You could go into Google Search Console. Not everyone had that set up, so I made it a little bit easier. I wanted just something that we could all quickly look at, participate in, go find. So I had them use ubersuggest. It's a free Chrome extension and it's not my favorite, but in a pinch it's something that you can go look to. You could also try Semrush. You could sign up for a free account and you can do the very same thing where you go in and see what keywords you're ranking for, if any. If you open up any kind of tool that is supposed to be telling you what keywords your website is ranking for, and you see nothing. You see zeros or dashes or there's just like absolutely no information. That's okay. That's where you're at right now. So that is a valid answer. It's not a wonderful answer. It's not something that we want to see, but a lot of times that is the answer because there is no SEO plugged in on the website. And/or if you're blogging, the keywords aren't in there. They don't make sense. The titles aren't really obvious about who you help, how you help them, what do you want to be known for, that type of thing. Why should the robots be sending people your way? So just bear that in mind if you find that it's okay. And I found myself repeating this a lot at the workshop too. It's just your baseline. So what is happening right now? We're taking emotion out of it, just looking at it to get an understanding.
The next thing that we did was look at their current SEO title and meta description. Because remember I said that I gave them brand new SEO titles and meta descriptions, but what I wanted to first do was have them see what it is that was currently on their website, if anything. So, so some people had nothing plugged in as per usual. Some people had things that were getting auto filled so it would say like home and then their name and then their business name or something like that. So we use detailed SEO, it's another free Chrome extension. It's easy, it's how I snoop on my own website, it's how I snoop on everyone else's website. But it's really easy to just download the Chrome extension. To go type in the website, you have to be on the Chrome browser. It's a purple D and you click it and it'll show you title, which is your SEO title, and description, which is your meta description. So we were able to see are they too long, are they too short, are they there at all? If stuff is plugged in, is it even accurate for who they help, how they help them, that kind of thing.
Once they got an understanding of keywords that they were ranking for what their SEO title and meta descriptions already look like at this moment, then we were able to go into the back end of their website and and plug in those new SEO titles and meta descriptions. And I think about half of the women were in Squarespace, which made it easy because that's where I host my website. So it's always nice when people have some familiarity with what the interface looks like. What does the back end look like, where do I go, how do I navigate things? And so most of the people in the group were able to just follow along easily. There was one, one or two that were on GoDaddy, I think someone was on Wix, someone had a squarespace domain and like website. But it's not live, it's just kind of something that they're playing with on the backend right now. So it was really helpful to be able to just walk through all of that. And it was really cool because we were able to take the computer screen and cast it to the TV screen. It was kind of funny though, because my laptop didn't want to play along so I was actually using someone else's laptop. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize how used to my own laptop I am until you stick me on another laptop and I'm like Oh my gosh, what do I do? Where do I go? What do I do with my hands?
It was great though, because I could show them where I was going, what I was doing, how to plug stuff in. And if you've ever done this before, it's so simple. When I give you, or when anyone gives you an SEO title and meta description, you just copy it, paste it into the back end of your website, and then you save it. And then they were able to again go and use that detailed SEO extension and quote, unquote, like check their work. So it was really fun to be able to do. And no one, I don't think anyone had anything that they wanted to me to change because I did all of that keyword research, creating the SEO title, creating the meta description. I did that all on my own, just with their answers to their questions. And everyone seemed to be pretty happy with it.
Like I said, I don't think a single person I'm rolling through my brain right now, I'm like, was there anyone who wanted to change? And I don't think they did. So that's actually really amazing. And that goes to show that they do have clarity on their offers, on their ideal client, on their differentiator. And that is so wonderful. And that is the best kind of person to come into my world, because then I can help you take that, find the right keywords, create the best SEO strategies, and get them plugged into the web pages. And that is when magic happens.
The very last thing that we did was to look at the keywords I gave them. The intention behind it was just to use those to create the SEO title and the meta description for the homepage. And yet I helped them understand how they could take those keywords and their answers to identify their next three blog posts. So the answers to those three questions, how they could find and source their next three blog post topics. So most of them post on Instagram the most, some of them had podcasts, a lot of them do email newsletters. So we were able to think through, okay, you create this kind of content and then it can come and become a blog post, or you could start with the blog post and then that could turn into an Instagram post or a podcast episode, that kind of thing. But the biggest point with all of the blog post topics was, and this is why I was referencing back to the short keyword list that I had given them, is once you get an SEO strategy plugged in on your website, once you have that solid foundation, you then need to create content that essentially allows you to double down on what those keywords are. Because that helps the robots go, oh, you really do understand this topic. Oh, you do really want to get found for this thing. So that's what we had in mind.
They were able to leave this, I think it was roughly a 90 minute workshop, this SEO and grow method intensive if you will, with a better understanding of keywords that they're ranking for and that they want to rank for. A freshly implemented SEO strategy for their homepage and a head start on what to do to maintain their SEO, AKA monthly optimized blog posts.
And they asked some really good questions. I'm going to throw these out. I'm not going to answer them right now. I don't think we'll see what comes out of my mouth. But the intention of me sharing this is I would love to know if you also have the same questions. So questions they were asking were things like how do I even start a blog? if the one SEO strategy that I gave them could go on all website pages? I will answer this one right now. No, they need to be unique. You do not want any of your SEO titles and meta descriptions to be duplicates. They also asked what should they do if they hated their current website host or if they were approaching a pivot that they didn't quite have clarity on yet? So maybe they were doing some type of coaching and maybe they don't want to do that type of coaching with the same person anymore, but they aren't really clear on who that new person is. So we talked through that a couple times. This came up where they had two domain names. So like I have brittanyherzberg.com, i also have copybyb.com and they were wondering if they have two names like that if they have to have two websites. Again, quick answer, the answer is no. There's a longer answer, but no. And lastly, they were wondering if they could optimize their Instagram profiles for SEO as well? And again, short answer, yes. But if any of those questions are of interest to you, let me know. You can send me a message on Instagram or text the show below and let me know if you would like me to go deeper on any of those.
Before I let you go. I also want to share some wins that I got throughout the week even while I was away. Because I need you to see that SEO working isn't just a cute tagline or something that I say over here, it is what actually happens. So I came back to a Ton of tags on threads because I'm known for something and that is powerful. I love this because you'll see. So brittany_herzberg is the SEO queen. I mean, we have a crown in the logo now, but like, this is great. Uh, another fun thing that I heard at the retreat is that Threads Brittany is my favorite, so you can expect to see more of her around. I also got this really incredible screenshot from a client where it said SEO discovery was the strongest driver of traffic and revenue. And I believe it was an SEO report where they were just looking back at the last month and they could see that SEO driven discovery was the strongest driver of traffic and and revenue people coming to the website and making some money. So we love that. That is amazing. Another client sent me an email where they said they were like, P.S. did you see the phase one blog has an average read time of over 8 minutes. And you could think of time spent on a page as one way that the bots score engagement. You can think of it similar to watch time for a reel. Good is 52 seconds. Eight minutes is flipping incredible. Like, absolutely incredible. Another one of my clients sent me this screenshot and one quote that was in it. I just, I love it. She said, got another inquiry from Google. It feels like actual magic. I mean, this is why I am forever obsessed with the fact that it works. Like, yes, I know that it works, but when I get these screenshots or testimonials or voice memos of people celebrating, it just makes me so happy because it really does actually work! And then another client who's in SEO and grow right now. Chelsea is an intuitive business strategy and operations consultant, and she just implemented her SEO on her site about a week or two ago, and she already has an inquiry from Google. Now, it's not like the most perfectly aligned client, but it could be a good referral partner for her. And she said that he said he found me by searching for business operations consultants. So pretty darn cool.
All right, the best places for you to go to get started with your own SEO are going to be the recently updated SEO Basics Checklist. You'll see each core website page listed and the types of keywords that work best for each page. I'm so proud of that update and I'm really excited to start getting feedback on that. So if you haven't done anything for your website as far as SEO goes, go grab the checklist. There's a video tutorial, there's a Google Doc. I make it super simple for you to just walk through and at least get something plugged into your website. So that is one thing for you.
If you want to start doing some keyword research and you maybe haven't played around with it yet. KeySearch is my favorite research tool. Keyword research tool. It's affordable, it is very easy to use and let's say you are on a budget or you just don't want to spend money on another subscription, which I totally understand. You could always just sign up for one month, batch your keyword research and cancel after that because you're not like me where you need it, like on the daily for yourself and clients. So bear that in mind. The link will be below for that.
And if you are ready to take SEO seriously, you're going to be best served by either SEO and Grow, which is evergreen. As soon as you sign up, you're in for 4 months from whatever date it is that you sign up. Or—I've got that fun five day intensive coming up. There's an early bird pricing situation and limited spots for this first round, so please, please hop in if you're interested. It's basically a condensed version of SEO and Grow. Like I said, that's a 4-month program and that is the biggest difference. As of right now, we're just taking everything in SEO and Grow and I'm giving it to you and walking you through it much faster so you can get in, get it done, start seeing those incredible results rolling in.
All right, it is time for you to take action and of course I would LOVE to hear what changes you make based on any of what you heard today. You can always DM me on Instagram. I'm Brittany_Herzberg or text the show using the link in the show notes. Alrighty. Until next time. Remember I'm over here cheering you on on your SEO journey!
