“SEO is all about finding the right words and putting them in the right places.”
I didn't have a coach to walk me through the SEO process, or the budget to hire an SEO agency. I was left with good ol' trial and error—which is really scary when your business & livelihood are on the line.
In this episode, I'm walking you through my SEO journey, from the accidental win that got me curious to the scattered years of piecing it all together, and how every bit of it influences the way I teach SEO today.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
The one tiny tweak that saved my business and my bank account
How I pieced SEO together with no coach & no clue what to prioritize
The embarrassing number of H1s I found on my own homepage
The SEO mistakes I made and how it impacted my rankings
What I did to revamp my website, podcast, blog, & social SEO
How the SEO & Grow Method 🌱 came to be
What I got right from day one that NO other coach was talking about
How my clients are getting found in Google, Instagram, Spotify, & AI searches
The SEO challenge you’re not going to want to miss!
SEO doesn't have to be a guessing game you play alone. With the right guide, your next best step gets a whole lot clearer & more doable.
Ready to get found online by your dream clients?! Join the November SEO Challenge (regular admission + 10 VIP tickets available).
Mentioned Resources:
→ Join the November SEO Challenge (regular admission + 10 VIP tickets available)
Related Episodes:
5 Mistakes I Made as an SEO Coach
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Adrienne Cruz! 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 B podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach, Brittany Herzberg. Okay, we already have established this. that there are so many SEO mistakes that are just so common and yet so avoidable. But guess what? I made many of them too. Just like you heard about in my recent mistakes episode. I didn't have a coach to work with who could walk me through the SEO process. I didn't have the budget to be able to afford to completely hire out SEO to some agency, but knowing what I know now, I wouldn't actually want to do that. So I was left with good old
Brittany Herzberg (00:33) trial and error way of doing things, which is really scary when your business and your livelihood are on the line. So today I'm walking you through my SEO journey, not only to help you better navigate the world of SEO, but also so you can hear the trial and error that I've already done for you. This is exactly why I created my November SEO challenge. I want to guide you through the four key areas of your SEO presence to help you see how this is supposed to work, how your business is stacking up right now, and what you can do to improve things in a simple
Brittany Herzberg (01:02) not taking over your life kind of way. I'm excited to also feature my clients' SEO success stories along the way. I've got at least one journey to talk you through for each platform. We're going to be looking at website SEO, SEO for Instagram and threads, SEO for blog posts and podcasts, and also how to optimize products and services. You get a workbook that I'm adding to each week so you can see how SEO works for these different platforms, audit how you're doing, and make a simple plan for what to do next.
Brittany Herzberg (01:31) You also get a telegram group for community and for more context around SEO for each platform, including case studies. This is where I'll be sharing how different business owners saw success with SEO. And if you go VIP, you get weekly homework reviews and 24 hours with me one-to-one in Telegram to debrief. Translation, you get my eyes on your business. All of this for $97 for general admission or $197 for VIP spot. And just a heads up, there are only 10 of those.
Brittany Herzberg (01:59) Party starts on November first and runs through the entire month. Okay, I think I have stalled enough, but it is time to share the different parts of my journey. So this has been my journey with SEO so far. What I had, but also what felt like was missing and how I'm actually changing that with my own offer suite and the work I'm doing in this industry. First up, way back when. My gosh, I think it was twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen. I think it was twenty sixteen. Squarespace is nice and they actually tell you when you signed up. I'm pretty sure it's twenty sixteen. So whopping 10 years ago.
Brittany Herzberg (02:29) A friend helped me create my website and suggested Squarespace. I know that at some point he mentioned SEO, but I don't know what happened. I don't know what words are used. I don't know where they were plugged in. Could not tell you. And my website has changed so much since then. I was a massage therapist at the time and now I'm doing SEO. So like very different lives, right? But I do remember being
Brittany Herzberg (02:52) so so intentional with what pages I wanted on my website and what information I actually wanted to share on each page. But I didn't have a clue about SEO. So I launched my website and pretty much just let it sit there. I had it there, kind of did some blog posts, but I really just let it be what it was going to be. I it was clear that I had a home page, you had to know about me on the about page and I shared my services on the services page and my contact page was how you contacted me. But I really didn't do very much.
Brittany Herzberg (03:22) Fast forward a little bit. And that's when SEO accidentally started working for me. The only thing I did, literally the only thing I did, was update my address. I told people on the internet that I was moving my massage practice from North Carolina to Vermont. And that is how people found me. I a couple of people, I remember this, like it was yesterday. There were two people, a couple found me through a Google search and inquired from that Google search and booked sessions from that. And I was like, wait, what is this?
Brittany Herzberg (03:51) How, how did that happen? And how do I make this happen again? I also remember that at that time Clubhouse was a thing. And I was learning about SEO with my boyfriend and a few friends. So it was cool. Like I I love school. I miss school. And that felt like school, SEO school, I guess. But I was very much patching things together still on my own at that point. I was going in different groups. I was hearing different people speak. There were a couple of people that I actually really connected with and then went and had, you know.
Brittany Herzberg (04:20) Coaching calls, almost coaching calls. We were just really like shooting the breeze. And I was like, what is this SEO thing? Do you think I can do it? Because remember, this was before I was doing copywriting. This was just me being a massage therapist and being curious about this stuff. And it was during COVID. So I was just learning and I was just trying to figure out what to do. I didn't twiddle my thumbs. The next step for me was that I watched SEO trainings on YouTube and gathered what freebies I could and I started piecing it together in a bigger way. But
Brittany Herzberg (04:49) There was no one person I could go to to ask questions. I didn't know of any SEO coaches. I don't think there were any at the time. Or if they were, they were doing a bad job of like marketing themselves because I didn't know that they existed. I didn't know what to prioritize or what really didn't matter at that point. So I was guessing. And that is always very dangerous with things, but I did know that my website was important. I did know that content was important. So I was kind of doing some of the right things in hindsight, looking and just looking back and knowing what I know now.
Brittany Herzberg (05:18) But it was very much a scattered approach, which I would not recommend. And that's why I really like being that person for business owners now. I get to be the one to say, no, don't worry about that yet. You need to be over here on your website. And then you can go and worry about podcast SEO and blog posts. That is where I thrive. And it is really because I didn't have that, but I get to be that person now. The next step of the journey is that I saw a major improvement after doing several simple things like updating my address, like I mentioned.
Brittany Herzberg (05:48) Creating SEO titles and meta descriptions where really there were none, and making sure that there was only one H1 per page. I think I've shared about this before, but just for the sake of refreshing all of our memories, my homepage had nine H1s at some point before I knew anything about SEO. But as soon as I learned about SEO and saw that, I was like, okay, we have to change that. So a lot of those got either deleted or changed into H2 headings.
Brittany Herzberg (06:14) if you're listening here, my gosh, me too. Don't worry, there is a simple fix for it. But that was a that was a big change, simple solution, but it had a big impact on my website and my discoverability. I also shared a few blog posts and started weing SEO into my podcast from the very beginning. But I dropped the ball because I didn't stay on top of blogging each month, just having normal regular blog posts. I was great with the podcast, but for regular blog posts, no, I had a ton.
Brittany Herzberg (06:42) guests on my own podcast, which I mentioned in that mistakes episode, versus doing solo shows. So my website actually started ranking for services that I don't provide, services that my guests provide, titles that they have, like human design strategist, that is not helping me at all. That is not bringing the right people into my world. I definitely made some mistakes in there. So I made changes on my website, did some things, but once I saw it working, instead of saying focused on my own stuff, I just wanted to start telling people how easy it could be.
Brittany Herzberg (07:11) 'Cause I heard so many people thinking that SEO was gonna be really techie and that it involved coding or it was gonna be super costly because you have to hire an agency and if it's, little old me just as a solopreneur, it's not worth it for me to go hire an agency. They didn't realize that there could be other avenues. They didn't realize it could be something that they could learn and really that it's all about the words and putting the right words in the right places and being very clear about who you help and how you help them.
Brittany Herzberg (07:39) So immediately I wanted to start talking about SEO everywhere. Social media, Instagram lives, definitely, Clubhouse when it was a thing, podcast interviews, workshops, we even get into my copywriting projects because by this point I was a copywriter. But I really did put my own stuff on the back burner and really took it off the burner altogether. So I was helping clients, I was talking about it, but I wasn't quite doing the right stuff for my own website. So I started to get curious.
Brittany Herzberg (08:04) And I started homing in on the most effective and efficient approach to SEO. And that is how my SEO and grow method came to be. Originally, you may have heard me talk about this on the podcast actually. I had this initial version of it that was, it was still three phases, but it was understand SEO, implement SEO, maintain SEO, which that's still relevant, but I refined it even more to the point where it's phase one is website SEO, phase two is off site and content SEO.
Brittany Herzberg (08:34) And then phase three is visibility and metrics tracking. That is much more in line with how I guide people through things. And that's how I even have my offer suite set up. So you come in to the SEO sprint or do done for you SEO. We're working on your website. Then you can move into something like SEO and grow, where we're looking at off-site SEO. So things like your Instagram profile, directory listings, stuff like that, and SEO for your content. And then the maintain membership is stop number three. And that's where we're really digging into the metrics.
Brittany Herzberg (09:02) tracking them, using the information to make aligned marketing decisions for you and your business. But I didn't start out like that. So if you're hearing this and you're like, my gosh, this is such a seamless way to go through SEO. Yes, it is. And I did not have this from the very beginning. It has taken me playing with my own website, messing things up for myself, doing stuff with clients, seeing what worked, seeing what didn't. And we were all able to have success, but people came in at different parts of the process. And so some things are more effective than other things. One thing.
Brittany Herzberg (09:32) However, that stayed true throughout my SEO journey is that I never was looking at SEO in isolation to just websites. I was always on the lookout for where I could weave in some keywords or be more clear about things like my services or who I was helping. It didn't matter if it was a headshot I was sending to a podcast that I was a guest on, or if it was my profile name on Instagram or anything else. I was curious. I was looking for those opportunities. And that, I think, is why I have so many of these.
Brittany Herzberg (10:00) Aha moments happening in workshops or in my coaching programs or even on discovery calls because I took the time and I was looking around and I noticed what was working and I can actually see, okay, if you title an image, it can actually show up in an image search. Wow, that's amazing. It's pretty funny now though, because that's what most people are just now starting to talk about. Only since the rise of AI, people are starting to talk about how it's like search everywhere optimization. But I was always looking at it from that vantage point, which is really cool because that part.
Brittany Herzberg (10:28) I did get right. That part has been consistent from the very beginning. Because I had this experience of SEO where it was disjointed, but I learned a lot and kept iterating, especially on things like the SEO approach, I've been able to go on and have SEO successes. I've had clients coming to me directly and booking right from a podcast episode that they found in Spotify search. I've had Summit and Bundle and podcast hosts find me through an Instagram search and book me to come talk to their audience.
Brittany Herzberg (10:56) And yes, I have sold digital products straight from a Google search. And I've been able to help business owners like you see success with SEO. Elli is selling digital products from blog posts, which she told me she was never gonna write. She told me she hated blogging. She doesn't even do anything to promote the products. The pages are optimized and she's linking to them in blogs. and it's working. She's getting sales. It also worked for a professional home organizer.
Brittany Herzberg (11:20) They're showing up in Google and AI searches and having more and more inquiries for projects that are super aligned. Not to mention people are staying on their blog posts for seven, eight, 10 minutes on average, which is really great. If you have people staying on your website for a very long time, that is a wonderful indicator for SEO. So here's what I want you to take away from this. There are so many opportunities to SEO if I something, but this marketing strategy works best when you have a guide who gets you and your business.
Brittany Herzberg (11:47) Who speaks your language and who can direct you to your next best SEO step rather than you guessing and throwing spaghetti at a wall. It is so much nicer to just be able to say, okay, this is where I need to go. Thank you. I can join this program. Thank you. you have this DIY resource? Amazing. So don't forget to save your seat for the November SEO challenge. We start on the first, it's going the entire month. You can join us for $97 and get the general admission ticket. Or remember, there's 10 spots for the VIP where you get my eyes on your business.
Brittany Herzberg (12:15) You've got this. I've learned all of this stuff. I've gone through these things so that I can help direct you and make your journey a much more efficient and easy one. Okay. Go on with your day. You've totally got this. And remember, I'm cheering you on on your SEO journey.
