The Best Way to Approach SEO as a Small Business Owner
“Once you've gotten clear on your North Star and those initial SEO strategies, the rest is SO much easier.”
I’ve been talking about my Summer SEO Challenge & my August SEO Sprint, which means I’ve been in my DMs. A LOT!
Getting a LOT of questions. Lots of: Where should I start? What do I do first? Which option is best for me?
The short of it is: get in the SEO Sprint & I’ll guide you from there! But this podcast episode is the longer answer.
Because I want you to have a clear idea of where to start, where to go next, & roughly the amount of time it takes to do all these things—and do them WELL. Plus what you can expect after doing all of said things!
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Why your website is always the starting point I recommend for SEO
The 5 tasks business owners tackle inside the SEO Sprint
Why I run the sprint over 2 weeks & what all is included
Results recent Sprint students are seeing already
What happens when people stop at website SEO
What it takes to “keep up” with SEO once the foundation is set
What you’re able to optimize for SEO off your website
Elli's story: from "I hate blogging" to making sales straight from Google
How often you should be checking your SEO metrics
What the Maintain membership looks like & what clients work on in there
The SEO roadmap isn't complicated. It's 3 simple phases that—when done in the right order—help make you more findable.
No coding, no complex jargon, no confusion.
If you missed the Summer SEO Challenge, but you want me to take a look at your website to see what I’d recommend as the first step, DM me ‘LOOM’ on Instagram. (Be to give me your website link as well.) And I’ll get back to you with a personalized video!
Mentioned Resources:
SEO Sprint (live, group round starts Aug 10th)
Asynchronous version of the SEO Sprint (same resources & support, with a 1:1 feel)
Done-For-You Website SEO Optimization (September & October spots open as of now)
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 talking a lot about my summer SEO challenge and my SEO sprint, which means I've been in my DMs a lot, which we know that I love this. And P.S. if you're not friends with me over on Instagram andor threads, I'm Brittany underscore Herzberg. Okay, back to the point. I've been getting a lot of questions, like a lot, a lot of questions. A lot of where should I start? What do I do first? Which one is the best option for me?
And the short of it is get in the SEO sprint and I will guide you from there. But this podcast episode is the longer answer to that because I want you to have a clear idea of where to start, where to go next, and roughly the amount of time it takes to do all of the things and do them well, plus what you can expect after doing all of the things. So I found myself talking about it in this way, and I don't think I've done an actual podcast episode about this again in this way.
Especially with like what are the steps that I need to do in this part of the project and how much time is it going to take for me to actually do this stuff. And like I said, what can I expect after that? So with the way I've been speaking about it recently, we start with website SEO. And that won't be a surprise because you've heard me talk about that, like ad nauseum over here. But we start with your website SEO. Because your website is your home base. That is where we ultimately want to be sending people to anyway. And SEO works best when there's
time behind it. So we do want to start with your website. That's going to need the most time. It's also you need to just do some of the things that are going to take a bit more time, a bit more effort. You need to do them here. Once you get that flushed out, it's much easier to take that and do the next two steps with it. So what does it actually look like to do website SEO? In the sprint, for example, this is why I laid everything out the way that I did, we walk through five tasks.
The first one is to identify your North Star. That's where you answer the questions of who do you help, how do you help them, why you. Then you go in and you map out the core website pages that you're working on. In the sprint, I really have people cap it at seven to ten pages. Those are things like services page, blog page, home page, of course, contact, things like that. Then, knowing what pages you have, knowing the answers to your North Star questions, you do keyword research for each page. From there.
Brittany Herzberg (02:31.336) you can then create an SEO strategy for each page. Those are things like your SEO title, your meta description, looking at what that one H1 headline is going to be. Once you fill out all those pieces, then you're going to plug that into your website and you submit it to Google Search Console. And then like you're done and you do a happy dance. So when I boil it down to something like that, it takes it from being this big scary like, I have to start with SEO and I have to do SEO. And it breaks it down into like these are the five things that we're working on for your website.
And you can do this in two weeks. You can actually do this. Actually, actually, if we're being real, you can do this in five days. And I tested the sprint with five days. I actually really like doing it in five days, but I found that life happens and we can't predict when life is gonna happen. So that's why I have the sprint at two weeks long. And we have four live calls, and you've got me in Telegram for if you're doing like on the go kind of stuff, and I'm looking at every single element that's in your workbook.
so that you get this like hand holding while you're going through and doing this stuff. You're an intelligent person. I am not here to tell you that you're not. What I am saying is this is a brand new challenge for you and it helps to have a guide because I can get you there a lot faster. So that is why I have the sprint the way that I have it. That is why we're starting with your website SEO. And to give you a glimpse of what can happen after you do all this stuff, I just heard this week from a couple of my Sprint students
One person said that they're ranking higher for more aligned keywords. And another one wrote to me and said that she got a dream client inquiry straight from Google. And we're about six to seven weeks out from them getting everything plugged into their websites. Another person who was in this most recent round of the sprint, we're about four weeks out from when she did everything for hers. And she's seeing traffic increasing and impressions increasing. And that's giving her a lot of it makes you excited, you know, it makes you feel like what you did was good. It makes you feel like there's some payoff.
the effort that you put into all of that. And yes, like I said, you can get all of this stuff done really technically in five days, but we do it in the sprint in two weeks. And that's not the end of the story. A lot of people want to stop right there with website SEO. And some do. But when they do, the success and the good feelings stop typically with the keyword rankings and the increased traffic. Some people do have inquiries finding them and then they start to dwindle after a little bit if they're not doing this next step.
Brittany Herzberg (04:56.226) And this is always where I'm like, have you done these things? When the people come back to me and they're like, yeah, no, I didn't do that. So the next thing, once you wrap up with your website SEO, then you want to go look at anything off site and you want to be doing SEO for your content. Because once you have your website set up as the ultimate magnet for all those aligned leads, you've got to make sure that the rest of what you're saying online is sharing a cohesive message.
So for this part of the project, the off-site and the content, I usually assign about three months to it. That's exactly how I've got my SEO and group group coaching program mapped out. And that gives you time to go and do really three-quarter things. Optimize all your social profiles and directory listings. Get any guesting assets, whether that's podcast or blog or even like speaking gigs, guest teaching, anything like that, optimized for search as well. And then find a workflow and a rhythm for blogging that works for you.
These are the core things that you need to be doing next. It's like you put the foundation out and then you have to tell people about what you're doing over in your business and what's going on over on your website. And when I say content, of course I want you to be blogging. And if you have a YouTube channel and or a podcast, it's very easy to embed the audio, embed the video in a blog post. And that can be really great because if you have those things there,
People can just stay on your blog, stay on your website, listen to those things, watch those things. And that counts as like an increased time on your website. And that is a really positive indicator for SEO. So if you already have those things, don't let that deter you from not doing blogs on your website because you definitely do want to still have blogs on your website. If you're someone who is on Instagram or TikTok or something like that and you plan to stay there, but you're like, I want to add in blogging, that's what you can do. You can say maybe the shortened version.
Over on Instagram or TikTok and then bring the longer version and like expound on what you're saying over in your blog post. If you are someone who's been looking to get off of social media and have content that works longer, harder, better for you, blogging. Need I say more? No. And my favorite story actually to share about blogging is Ellie. You may have heard me talk about her before, but there's a reason, okay? Ellie is a virtual bookkeeper.
Brittany Herzberg (07:13.824) She came to me wanting to not be posting on Instagram. So we got her website SEO locked in. But then she decided to tell me that she hates blogging and can't see herself creating any posts. Okay, cool. I continue to talk about it as one does. And one day, Ellie messages me that she drafted something like 1500 words for a blog post and just like blew both of us out of the water, frankly. And then a few weeks after that, she started messaging me that people were finding her digital product on Google and buying them.
She started to see how the whole thing worked. How you start on your website, you share content that actually ties to your business and your offers, and you make sales. And I actually give people coming from the sprint into SEO and Girl, I give them a list of blog topics so they don't even have to think about that part of it. Most recently, Ellie has been able to look at the data and make sense of it, which helped her realize that she wanted to speak to a slightly different group of people. So that's a change that we're in the process of making now, because part three.
This third project that you really want to look at is each month tracking your metrics. Once you have your website, your profiles, your assets, and your content optimized with the bestest bat signal, then it's time to dig into the data. By this point, you have about three and a half months of effort behind you. And yes, I know that sounds like a lot right now. Like a lot, a lot. But really it's what it takes. And the lift isn't crazy heavy. I mean, compare everything I just talked about.
With you spiraling every day by noon because you don't know what to post on Instagram, you're just being a tiny bit more strategic here, which sounds like a lot of brain power, which you probably feel like you don't have available to you. But once you've gotten clear on your North Star and those initial SEO strategies, the rest feels much, much easier. And you can start to see the light ahead at the end of the tunnel. You've got your website SEO plugged in. You've got your social profiles and directory listings.
in line saying the same thing, if not the same thing, like something very, very, very similar to what you're saying on your website. You've got that in your profiles. And you're sharing content, which allows you to go deeper. That is also something that people comment on when we're working on website SEO, they're like, what about this? What about that? I want to talk about this. I can't include this here. You made me cut this out because it was too long. It doesn't mean that it goes away. It means that it gets to become a blog post or even like a regular part of your blogging series if you want, where you get to go deeper in things.
Brittany Herzberg (09:39.01) So for me, that could look like going deep with SEO for website designers, going deep on SEO for copywriters, for therapists, for photographers. Like I can have these individual series where I'm going really deep on the one thing, SEO, for different types of people. And that can look different for all sorts of different businesses. I would be here until the end of time if I was giving you examples, which I couldn't do. But that's not what we're gonna do here in the podcast episode.
So you have to allow yourself to have that time to actually go and do the things, put all that stuff out there and let it work or not work, frankly, and then go and see what the data is telling you because we can make up all these stories, all this drama in our head. But we need to look at the data. That's gonna give us numbers, that's gonna give us facts, and that's going to give us the information that we can then make those aligned marketing moves each month from. But we need to have that effort out there, then go and look at stuff. So many of the people in
The sprint, especially, or even like some of my done-for you website clients, we will get done plugging in the website and they're like, okay, so let's go look at things. And it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, don't look at it too closely. And certainly, I beg of you, please don't look at the data weekly. You really need it to be on a monthly basis so that things can happen. I mean, Google changes things, the internet changes, AI stuff changes. So work the plan and check in once a month. And I promise you, you have plenty of information.
And actually clearer information when you're checking on a monthly basis and not on a weekly basis. All right. So this metrics tracking part is what I guide my clients through in the maintained membership. We meet twice a month. Our first call is always looking at our SEO reports and filling them out for the prior month. So like I'm recording this in July. We looked at the very beginning to the very end of June. What was going on with traffic? Like what pages were people coming to?
What were some of the big drivers of traffic? Was it Instagram? Was it organic search? Was it ads? What was going on? And really that's helpful to see if what they're spending money, time, effort on is actually literally paying off with driving people to the website, making digital product sales or sales, period, because I do have some clients who are product based, or, you know, inquiries even. So that's our first call. We fill out this entire report. We look at, like I said, traffic.
Brittany Herzberg (11:54.126) content, the pages, and that's where they come up with their game plan. So that's where it's like, okay, I'm noticing these things. I have an opportunity to go and improve the SEO title and the meta description for these three pages. And then I want to create these new pieces of content, these new blog posts. And it just it gives them a very clear roadmap and we're basing it on data. Then for the second call, that's a coaching call and people come in and ask me questions. A lot of it is around like, how did I do it, this blog post optimization?
I'm kind of blanking on blog topics at this point. What can I do for the next round of blog topics? And then we'll brainstorm those. There are so many other things that they come in with too. And it's been fun to watch business owners. They have been able to optimize summits and bundles for SEO because, like, why not? Again, SEO is kind of like extra credit for business owners. So, like, why not? They've improved their blog optimization and podcast optimization skills. I would say about 80% of people that I work with have
both a blog and a podcast, which is really cool. So we're able to optimize both. And they've even been able to improve their SEO skills, which they now use with clients. I end up working with a lot of copywriters, a lot of social media managers, a lot of website designers. So they're again doing this for themselves and they're able to help their clients with those skills too. But because it's so important to me to make sure everyone is on the same page, people aren't coming into SEO and grow.
or maintain unless they've gone through the sprint or they've done done for you SEO with me. So if you're like, this sounds cool, that sounds cool. The doors that you're walking through are either going to be the SEO sprint or done for you website optimization. And if you have questions about which one you think would be better for you, definitely come find me, reach out, send a message. Again, I'm on Instagram, Brittany underscore Hersberg. If you're ready after everything that I've just said, you're like,
Let's get in there. I'm gonna get my SEO done. I'm gonna get it done in two weeks. Let's do it. That's gonna be the sprint. So I have at the time that you're hearing this, I have the August 10th sprint, which if you sign up by August 1st, you get a 30-minute one-to-one kickoff call with me as a bonus. So I would highly recommend that you check that out, take advantage of it. Again, if you have any questions, just message me. But the August 10th sprint is the live sprint that's coming up. There is also an asynchronous version of the sprint. So if you're like
Brittany Herzberg (14:14.274) For whatever reason. If you don't want to do a group, if you just want to do one to one, if you can't make the dates of the August sprint for some reason, whatever the case may be, the live sprint and the asynchronous sprint are both the same price. The asynchronous sprint works a little differently. So during the live sprint, I have people submitting each of those five homework tasks to me for review along the way during those two weeks. For an asynchronous sprint,
It's asynchronous because you're going through and it's kind of like a self-paced thing. So you're going through, you're still doing all of the tasks, but at task four, you have your SEO day with me. We are in Telegram or Voxer and in your Google Doc, I'm reviewing everything. You're asking me any kind of questions. We get your entire SEO strategy nailed down and plugged into your website same day. And I'm right there. I'm helping you along the way. Again, like I said, you can ask me any questions.
And it's nice because you have just like so much dedicated attention to you in one day. So again, you have the live group sprint option, you have the asynchronous sprint option, you have also the done for you website SEO optimization option. If you're like just do this for me, I do have a September and an October spot open as of the time of this recording. And you know what? If you missed the summer SEO challenge, but you want me to take a look at your website to see what I'd recommend as a first step for you, DM me Loom.
on Instagram and be sure to give me your website link too and I'll get back to you with a personalized video. So in conclusion, start on your website, then go over to things like content creation, blog posts, podcasts, optimizing those for SEO, as well as your social media profiles, directory listings, any kind of guesting materials. And the final step is going to be where you're going to track your metrics, where you're going to see how things are performing and make decisions from there. It's
Really nice to be able to take the feelings out of it and just study the facts. Okay. Thank you for joining me. This has been a blast. And remember, I'm over here cheering you on on your SEO journey.
