SEO Q+A :: Get Good Leads and What to Optimize on Websites
“If you either have a blank SEO strategy or a lackluster one… search engines are GUESSING what you do, who you help, how you help people—and we do NOT want that!”
I’m back with another very popular Q+A episode. This is where I pull Q’s I’ve been answering in Voxer/DMs/coaching calls/emails & answer them for the whole class!
If you like this type of question-answer situation & you want to do this in a 1:1 or even a group capacity, take a look at my SEO Strategy Session for 1:1 or explore SEO & Grow 🌱 (enrolling for Nov) for the group vibes.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
How to ensure you get good leads from Google
Why your name isn’t what needs to be in the SEO title
The types of SEO available & what I focus on
What you really need to have in your website Footer
Ask your own question!
👉 Send a DM on Instagram
Mentioned Resources:
SEO & Grow 🌱 (enrolling for Nov)
Contract Templates (*affiliate link, use code BASICB for $50 off)
Privacy Policy + Terms & Conditions Templates (*affiliate link)
Related Episodes:
SEO Q+A :: Podcasts, Images, Authors, & More!
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
Brittany Herzberg:
Hello and welcome to the Basic Bee Podcast. I'm your host Brittany Herzberg, your favorite SEO strategist and coach. I'm back with another very popular Q and A episode. If you're not familiar, this is where I pull questions I've been answering in Voxer, Telegram, DMs, coaching calls, emails, and I answer them for you too. If you like this type of question answer situation and you want to do this either in a one to one or even a group setting, take a look at my SEO strategy sessions. That's going to be for your one to one or explore SEO and grow for the group vibes. All right, let's get into it. Why would I want to invest time, money or effort into SEO when the leads I get from Google never convert? They're not good leads? This question, and specifically the outcome mentioned, tells me that there isn't a great strategy plugged in. And that's exactly why you would want to invest time, money or effort into SEO. So you actually have something in there that does work for you and for your business. And it works to attract those high quality leads. Because right now search engines are guessing what you do, guessing who you help, and they're guessing how you help people. And we do not want that. We don't. The only information that they really have to work with if the SEO title and meta description are blank and there's let's say 10 H1 headlines or or no heading hierarchy of the headlines on the page and the image titles are IMG 7384. The only information they have to work with is your domain name and then the copy on the page. Yes, but definitely that domain name is what they're scanning first. So that might be like mine where it's brittneyherzwerk.com, or maybe it's your business name. If mine were to be my business name it would be copybyb.com and those honestly tell me nothing, or at least not nearly enough about who you help, how you help them, or what you're known for, as you can tell in those examples. And that is what leads you to getting those inquiries from unaligned or not serious leads. You don't have to have zero SEO strategy to experience the difference of an aligned SEO strategy either. Case in point, my client Leah, she actually did have SEO strategy in place. She had SEO titles, meta descriptions, H1 headlines all filled in. She even had a blog she published content to each month. But she wasn't getting quality leads. Fast forward to her working with me and implementing a brand new, more aligned SEO strategy. We updated those SEO titles, the meta descriptions, the age one headlines, and in the six weeks after plugging that in, she had 10 new leads straight from Google. Yep, 10 people filled out her inquiry form, like actually filled it out in full and were legit leads who booked discovery calls kind of thing. And that's exactly what happens when you take the time to answer those three questions. So remember, who do you help, how do you help them and what do you want to be known for? Because those answers enable you to find those solid keywords and then create a strong SEO strategy, one that attracts those high quality, warm to hot leads. All right, next up, why do you keep saying I don't need to put my name in the SEO strategy? I've been getting this a lot in SEO and grow. And I say this with so much, much love. Most people are not looking for you by name or your business name. They're searching based on a problem or a need or a desire. There's something they want or want to fix and they're looking for help. Sometimes they just want free help, sometimes they are happy to pay for help. And that is the real money pun totally intended of having a strong SEO strategy implemented, one that's based on that solid keyword research and that follows best practices. Because when we're doing keyword research, after, I don't know, learning from Britney or maybe just even having keywords that Britney has focused on and found for us, we are confident that these keywords are good keywords. Words that will attract those warm to hot leads, AKA the paying type, or at least the serious type. The ones who might be on your email list for a couple years, but they will work with you in some capacity at some point. And you know those people. I know you know those people. This has happened so many times over the years where I've worked with clients, they come in and they just want to pop their name in every single SEO title or meta description. And I get it. It's what they're seeing done either by website designers or copywriters or just other people online, maybe in their space, maybe not. But you gotta remember, many of those people either don't understand SEO or they're just replicating something they're seeing someone else do. It's just what we do. It's what you do when you don't know something. You just look to other people. When we stop relying on what we see others doing and we actually start following best practices and using keywords that are good for us. We start seeing things like what's happening in SEO and grow. They're getting email subscribers opportunity from social profiles like LinkedIn and even leads straight from Google searches. All right, question number three. I think, I don't know, I've lost count. What kind of SEO do you do? I am most interested in being your initial guide into the world of SEO. I'm totally happy living in that on page SEO, SEO basics, SEO for beginners space. So if you're looking for different types of SEO, you've got the on page SEO, off site SEO, Technical SEO, Local SEO, Social SEO. There's more too. Okay, but the ones I really don't focus on too much are technical SEO and E commerce SEO. I focus most heavily on on page SEO, social SEO and podcast SEO which sometimes slash often include local and off site SEO. The Let me break these down a little bit. On page SEO is where you are really looking at how you can optimize a page, a main website page, a blog post, stuff like that. Social SEO. I mean that one's a little bit more self explanatory but that is where you are optimizing. For example social profiles content you're putting on social media for SEO. Podcast SEO. We know we are here. We are listening to the podcast. We have heard me talk ad nauseam about podcast SEO. Local SEO is where you're really focusing on getting found in a certain area, whether that's a country, state, city and then off site SEO kind of touches on some of those other things I was talking about like social media profiles, directory listings. It's stuff that is again self explanatory with the title off of your website. I work mostly with service providers though I have worked with some E commerce businesses. I work mostly with service providers and entrepreneurs who've been in business at least five years and they typically have been through a pivot or two. No matter if you're under construction AKA a rebrand or pivot yet again or you've been wanting to just tighten up any gaps in your marketing strategies. I want your digital footprint to paint an easy to understand, easy to navigate picture for your dreamiest leads so they have a smooth experience from the get go and it makes for an easy yes because you are clearly the answer they've been searching for. I'm going to let you in on a secret. I don't say yes to every single SEO inquiry I get. Shocker. I know if I'm not the best person for the job, I'll let you know and I'll even give you recommendations. But when things are aligned, if you're a service provider, you've been in business for a few years, you're wanting to get more leads, and maybe you've tried SEO before, either on your own or with some other expert. I can work with that. Whether that looks like you learning SEO and doing some of the tasks, or it looks like you saying no thank you, I want to hand this entire thing off to you. Ready? I can help. And if you're not sure if you want to do the doing or if you want to hand it off, make sure we can certainly talk about that on a call. Just fill out the inquiry form on my contact page and we'll get that booked and I'll make sure that that link is below. That happened with one of the women in my SEO and grow group. She reached out, thought she wanted done for you website SEO, but as we were talking I could tell she really wanted to understand and actually learn about SEO. So I suggested she explore the program. She read the sales page, asked a couple questions and secured her spot. Now we're wrapping up the program and just this morning she told me how happy she is that I suggested the program because, and I quote, I think it has helped me become a more savvy business owner and buyer when it comes to knowing what I need for my business. I mean, mission freaking accomplished over here. That just makes me so happy. You and I both know it is time to get SEO off your Someday list. You're following the strategies and you're darn good at what you do, but it keeps feeling like you're the best kept secret on the Internet. You know you need another way for people to see your site. Social media is just not cutting it. This SEO thing seems to be the ticket, but you're going to need someone to speak your language if this is going to work. In this free three day series, you'll learn the SEO system that magnetizes those warm to hot leads, giving you more time and money. Because Google isn't your enemy, it can be your fairy godmother if you know how to talk to it. After these three days, you'll have clarity on why you're not getting found on Google yet, an understanding of where the SEO things are on your site, and a game plan to get started and maintain your SEO strategy. No need to rebrand or panic post just to stay top of mind while you lose yours. Just a solid SEO strategy that markets for you 247 and brings in good leads. If you're so done coming up with content for social media, you need to get SEO working for you once and for all. Don't put it off another year because it could have already been bringing in leads if you started it the last time you said I should get your booty in here, baby. The link is below. Okay, we have one more final question. What should I have in my footer? Do I really need to say anything there at all? Yes, yes, your footer needs to function for you. And I say that having become a footer convert. That sounds so weird. So let me just share what you need to do. You're going to want to get a notepad for this part. You want to have in your footer the following things the year. I wish this was something that automatically changed, but it doesn't. And if you never change it, I or anyone coming to your site and see, I don't know, 2016, that sends a subtle signal to our brains that you let details slide. And I know that isn't actually how you roll. I'm just telling you what it gets interpreted as subliminally. So please go check that one. Like right now you can pause the episode and go check that one. You also want to have your location if you're a brick and mortar business or someone who's licensed only in certain states. For example, please for the love of everything, have the state or city in town or surrounding areas listed in the footer. I'm looking at you specifically my amazing therapists and photographers. You've also want to have your privacy policy and terms and conditions. This one needs to be for sure in your footer if you don't have this. I've got links to contract templates that I love that are created by trustworthy attorneys. So look in the show notes for those links. But basically you buy it, you download it, you copy and paste it to your site and boom, you're done. I think I remember taking maybe like 30 minutes or so to create and publish those pages and links because you do have to add a little bit of wording. But the contract templates are great. They have these highlighted spaces where it's like you put this thing here, modify this thing, add this thing here, and it's just so easy to follow. You also want to have links to your main website pages. I do not understand this, but some people scroll straight to the bottom of your site. They look to the footer for the links as opposed to the navigation bar at the top of the website. So I would strongly advise you have the same Links in your navigation bar, in your footer. If it's in your navbar, put it in your footer and any other links that don't quite fit or make sense in the navigation bar that can live in your footer too. So it could be something like a freebie or testimonials page or something like that. But this is really key. Next thing you want to make sure you have are social media profile links. I need you to hear this. Like if you've tuned me out, please come back for this little note. Please test these and make sure that they're going to your profile and not the website host profile. I've had that happen where I will go to a website. I will click the Instagram icon and it will take me to Squarespace's Instagram page or Kajabi's Instagram page. I didn't want to go there. It's confusing and frustrating as crap. If those social links go somewhere other than your profile, people are clicking on them because they want to connect with you. I don't want to connect with Kajrabi or with Squarespace. I want to find you. It takes less than five minutes to go check this, so pause the episode. Go do that. Like right now. Okay, I'll hop off my soapbox. Next thing you want to look for or add to your footer site design credit. If you have worked with a website designer or even a photographer or a copywriter, it's common practice to link to their website, especially in that footer section if the relationship has soured or something. Obviously you wouldn't want to link to them. Or if you've changed the copy or design or even photos since working with them, you wouldn't want to have those links in there either. But for anyone you've worked with to create the actual current website the way it looks and reads right now, consider linking to them because backlinks help the world go around. Okay, Final thing that you might want to have in your footer. A mini bio. I added a little mini bio after seeing my friend Coley's website footer. I love her whole website. I love her whole vibe. And yeah, I'll have the link for that. You can go admire it for a bit. The link is obviously going to be below, but I love having this little picture and short bio for anyone who scrolls to the bottom of my website. And pro tip, make sure your image has an optimized keyword rich title. We know we talked about this recently. I will have the link below, but you can also scroll back. I think it's just one or two episodes. And listen to the image optimization episode. And there you have it. Those are some core components of a really solid website footer that probably could have been its own podcast episode. We've had several conversations in SEO and Grow specifically about the footer. It's also come up quite a bit in SEO strategy sessions recently. I too am a website footer convert, like I mentioned, which sounds very weird, but what I mean by that is I used to not pay attention to it at all. I made sure the necessary things were there. But beyond that, like I was thinking, who scrolls to the footer? And then I installed a heat map on my website and I discovered that everyone and their grandma clicks to the footer. It's quite possibly one of my favorite things to optimize now. So save this episode, come back to it and take action on improving your footer. Alrighty. That is all for this Q and A episode. Please let me know if you like this. And if you want more episodes like this one, you can either say hi on Instagram or text me using the link in the show notes and know that if you text me using that link, I do not have a clue who you are or how to connect with you and contact you unless you tell me. And I don't need to know. I'm just sharing that in case you do want me to say something back. If you are expecting a response or if you do ask a question where that just kind of makes it seem like there's a response wanted. I'm going to need some kind of information like an Instagram handle or an email address or a Voxer handle, something like that. I would not recommend putting your personal phone number in there, but some kind of information where it's like. Like I said, Instagram handle, Voxer, email, something. If you are expecting a response or wanting a response, okay, until next time, know that I'm over here cheering you on on your SEO journey.
