What's the Best Way to Improve SEO for a Website?
"SEO is a front-loaded process—meaning most of the work happens early on, and because of that, your SEO is able to work faster, better, & last longer."
One of my monthly SEO support clients shared something that I have got to share with you! Especially if you are convinced that SEO gets more difficult over time…
Because SEO does not in fact get more difficult. It gets easier.
But you need to move through things thoughtfully, strategically, and they simply work out better if you go in a specific order. So that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today.
Thing 1: is what my SEO client realized. Thing 2: the fastest way to improve SEO for your website.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
What my monthly SEO client realized about the maintenance phase
Why SEO is front-loaded & what that timeline looks like
What results really look like 4-6 weeks after implementing SEO
The exact order of operations for improving SEO
Why you need blogs on your site even if you have a podcast or YouTube channel
How to track your metrics monthly & use that data to make aligned marketing moves
The 3 questions that anchor your entire SEO strategy
What 1 blog post a month can do for your SEO strategy
Your 2 options for getting started with SEO right now
Your website can be working for you around the clock, but it needs the right foundation first. Start there, then let everything else build on top of it.
That's how SEO gets easier over time—NOT harder.
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!
→ DM me "SEO SNEAK PEEK" to get a free SEO audit
Mentioned Resources:
→ Join the next SEO Sprint (next live round starts Aug 10th)
→ Book an async SEO Sprint (with BONUS SEO Day)
→ SEO Data Dashboard (20% off w/ code BRITT20)
→ Keysearch (20% off w/ code KSDISC)
Related Episodes:
🎧 How to Get Started With SEO
🎧 What Results Can You Expect From SEO?
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 B Podcast. I'm your host and favorite SEO coach Brittany Herzberg, and I just got off a call with one of my monthly SEO support clients and our conversation unearthed something that I have got to share with you. Especially if you are super convinced that SEO gets more difficult over time. Because SEO does not in fact get more difficult. It's. It gets easier. But you've got to move through things thoughtfully, strategically, and they simply work out better if you go in a specific order. So that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today. Thing one is what my SEO client realized. Thing two the fastest way to improve SEO for your website. Sound good? Great. Every month I meet with this client, we review her SEO report, we look at the metrics, and we decide what marketing moves we're going to be making for the month. So with this call, we were looking at this and she was saying how it's much more quiet working with me in the maintenance phase of SEO. She started out in SEO and Grow when that was the front door to my world of Done with youh SEO. It's now the SEO Sprint. But in that program she heard from me weekly, if not sometimes daily because of the group telegram chat. Now she and I have moved into one to one monthly support and where she hears from me at the beginning of the month with her SEO report on our calls and then again with any pages or blog posts she sends me for review and optimization. And in her pointing that out, it hit me all over again just how SEO is a front loaded process, meaning most of the work happens early on and because of that your SEO is able to work faster and better. This client is seeing blog posts ranking and drawing in readers, AKA traffic. She's booking clients from AI and Google searches and is having brand new pages that we're creating ranking and driving traffic really quickly. With that in mind, let's move into this next part because I also saw a question floating around threads today. The question was what's the fastest way to improve SEO for a website? My favorite part is that every SEO under the sun will comment and tell you SEO doesn't work fast. And in my experience this is a yes and situation because following my approach to SEO, clients have seen results in as little as two weeks, with most clients seeing results starting to roll in just four to six weeks after implementing an effective SEO strategy for their website. And when I say results, I'm talking traffic to their website. I'm talking time spent on the page going up. I'M talking better ranking for pages. So, you know, ranking on page one. I'm talking ranking for better, more aligned keywords, that type of thing. Even selling digital products, getting inquiries from aligned clients, booking clients, all that kind of thing. So all of this starts with your website, optimizing that for SEO. But also that is not the end. You need to continue to take action. So let's talk about what that looks like. The best approach to SEO for small business owners, solopreneurs and service providers is starts with your website, then moves to off site things, then goes into content, and then you start tracking metrics monthly. So that's what the process needs to be, starting with your website, doing things like optimizing those core website pages for whatever keyword that it is that you feel is aligned. I'm going to get into the nitty gritty stuff, the off site. When I say off site, that's talking about like social media profiles, directory listings, any kind of guesting materials for like if you're a podcast guest or if you're a guest blogger, then moving into content. Ultimately, I want to see blogs on your website. Even if you have a podcast, even if you have a YouTube channel, because you can embed the video, you can embed the audio. And by having that hosted on your website as a secondary spot, mind you, like, the podcast is still going to go out, the YouTube channel's still going to have YouTube videos out there. But by having things on your website in blog posts with the audio and or the video embedded, you're going to have people spending more time on your website. And that's a really critical indicator for these bots that you have things that people actually want to consume and are interested in. So content and then metrics and tracking those metrics. You know, I have my SEO data dashboard that I love. I tell you about it almost every podcast episode the link is below. But that pulls in information from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. And even if you just look at that and use the companion Google Doc to like look at the different information that you need to know to find where traffic is coming from, what pages people are going to, what keywords you're ranking for, how things are changing on a monthly basis, all of this information helps you make those aligned marketing moves every single month. So all of this, the website to offsite to content metrics. This is really, really important, especially as we have bots for traditional Google searches and AI bots crawling the entire Internet like really fast. So you need to not only be clear on your Website, but also anywhere that you're doing stuff elsewhere online, anywhere that you're a guest, anywhere you have a profile, because they're looking, like I said, around the entire Internet. And you need that message to be the same. You need it to be cohesive, consistent. You need all of that working for you so that you can show up when and where people are looking for you and the type of stuff that you provide. The most efficient way to approach SEO for your website specifically, is to get clear on who you help. Translation, your ideal client, how you help them, also known as your offer suite, and why you are the best option for them, also known as your differentiator, your uvp, whatever you want to say. But like why you? Because people are going to be asking that they see other SEO pros, they're going to look at me and three different other people, why do I want to work with this person or that person or Britney? That's the question that they're going to be asking not only about me, but also about you and your services. So you need to get clear on what that answer is because that helps you filter everything else. Filter the type of content you need to be sharing, filter the words that you need to have on your website pages, all of the things. But once you get clear on your ica, your offer suite and your differentiator, then you use those answers to help you find aligned keywords. And once again, you know I love using KeySearch. The link is below, there's a discount code, there's an affiliate link, all this stuff. You find those keywords and then you use them to create unique SEO titles, unique meta descriptions for each core website page. And when I say core web page, I'm talking about your homepage, your services pages, that kind of thing. The last thing you're going to do before you plug it in, of course, is ensure that there's one and only one H1 heading for each page and that it ideally includes the target keyword for that page. So that's how you're going to be optimizing your website. Just your core website pages. Start there with all those steps for your website and then look for off site opportunities, social media profiles, directory listings, like I said, materials for any kind of podcast, guest interview or guest blog post anywhere that you're guesting or speaking. This will most likely be a one time optimization unless any of your answers to those questions change. So if you start wanting to work with a different ideal client, if you start shifting your offer suite, if you start noticing that you have something different. That's your differentiator. Then you may want to come back and revisit these. But this isn't something that you're going to be doing like on a weekly or monthly basis. From there, you're going to start publishing optimized blog posts each month on your website. You want to aim for one blog post at least. That's 500 words at least every single month. Everyone can do that, even the moms who have multiple toddlers and a business, even the people who are launching things or rewriting your website copy. Like, I've seen people do this and be able to hold steady with the one blog post that's 500 words minimum with other life things happening. And if you have a more free month, you can obviously publish more blog posts. If you're having a thin month and you're like, I'm really struggling even with the 500 word blog post. If you have been blogging, then you could go back and optimize another existing blog post if you haven't been doing SEO from the beginning. But the point here is that blogging can grow with you. It can match you, meet you where you are in the season of life. But you want to do website off site content. That's where we are so far. So these steps are important so the bots find you easily and they can make sense of again who your ideal client is and when they should be showing your site. Is the person looking for a certain photography session service? Are they looking for a certain, you know, SEO copywriting service? We want that to be clear on your website and not just in your brain and not just on conversations with you when people are on zoom with you, but on your website. So that can go work for you. Following these steps in this order, optimizing these different things in this order is critical because your website is where you want to send people to ultimately. So it needs the most time. So you want to start there. But your website alone isn't enough. I need you to not sleep on the off site opportunities or the content optimization. And certainly once you've got your website SEO in place, you can, you've got those off site profiles and things optimized and you're creating and publishing content on a regular basis. You can start tracking those metrics. You'll have information enough from what you've already put out there on the Internet on your website to come back and take a look and say, okay, I've done these things, I've participated in these different marketing activities, I've Optimized this, I've done this, I've done that. Like, you have taken the action steps and now you're coming to the data and saying, all right, what's the data telling me? How are people getting to my website? What pages are they coming to once they're on my website? What blogs do they like? What blogs do they not like as much? Which keywords, which searches, which blog posts, which pages are actually leading to inquiries, which things are bringing me? Digital product sales or product sales. That's where you get to look at that information and then say, okay, I want to create more blogs like this. I need to have a page that specifically speaks to this. A lot of my clients even end up having new offer ideas, new and more aligned offer ideas, I should say, because they're like, oh, I was speaking to this person, but I actually want to be speaking to this person and I want to be doing this service with them. So again, remember, the most ideal order of operations is going to be your website, then off site, then content, and then metrics. Which means the place for you to get started is going to be the SEO Sprint. Because that is where we are, right? Really digging in. We are so laser focused on your website SEO, it's not even funny. You have two options. The next live round starts August 10th, and when you join early, you get not only access to all of the video trainings and the workbook, so you can start early if you want to. You also get a 30 minute kickoff call with me. So you make contact with me. I help you, talk you through exactly what you're going to be doing. Like, you know that you've got a partner in this, you know that someone's going to be there with you in August, actually reviewing all of the things with you. If, however, you'd rather not wait and or you're looking for a more personalized version of the Sprint, I'm playing around with an asynchronous version this month. You also in this version get instant access to the video trainings and the workbook, but you also also get a bonus SEO day with me. So instead of you having homework reviews throughout a two week live sprint, you get all your SEO strategies drafted, which you're able to do because you have all those video trainings and you have the workbook right there. Then on your asynchronous SEO day in Telegram or Inboxer, I'm reviewing those strategies, everything. You're approving, any changes you're making, any modifications, and most importantly, you're getting these new refined SEO strategies plugged into your website all on the same day, all with my help. So again, the big focus of the SEO sprint is to get your website SEO in place, created and in place. And we start with those three questions of who do you help, how do you help them, and why? You find keywords based on those answers, create SEO strategies based on those keywords, and then get everything plugged in. So I'm simplifying it, but I'm also simplifying it because it can be that simple. A lot of us just need a little bit of a light under our tush to get us moving. And that is what just about everyone has said who's gone through the SEO sprint. I even had some people who were in how I was running SEO and grow and they joined an SEO sprint and they took action when they had been stalling for two, three months. So I invite you to at least consider the idea that it's possible to do SEO and it's possible to do it quickly and it's possible to follow this process and to have a really effective SEO strategy plugged in on your website in as little as two weeks. Okay? You will find the links for the August and the asynchronous version of the Sprint below. We're going to be taking action on our website SEO because I have drilled that into you today. And as always, please reach out with any questions. There's nothing too dumb or simple or silly. We all have to start somewhere, right? I love hearing from you. Come find me in the DMs, send a message to the show. You've got the link below. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, you can. If you're on the blog and you happen to be listening, of course you can leave a comment below. I love hearing from you. You totally have got this. And until next time, I want you to remember that I'm over here cheering you on on your SEO Jo.
