SEO Basics Every Entrepreneur Should Know

SEO can feel like an overwhelming maze of keywords, algorithms, and technical jargon—especially for solopreneurs who don’t yet have the budget to hire an expert. But what if optimizing your website didn’t have to be so complicated?

In this episode, I sit down with SEO strategist Jeff Wilson to break down simple, actionable steps that any business owner can take to improve their website’s visibility. From creating content that attracts the right audience to structuring your pages for search engine success, Jeff shares practical insights that won’t require expensive software or hours of technical training.

We also discuss the mindset of SEO, why consistency is key, and how to make the process feel less like a chore and more like a powerful long-term strategy for growing your business.

Plus, we’re hosting a live SEO workshop later this month! Stay tuned to learn how to join us and get hands-on guidance to take your website to the next level.

📩 Join my email list for workshop details

About Jeff 

Jeff Wilson is your go-to SEO strategist and digital marketing expert, with a knack for helping small to medium-sized businesses and solopreneurs really shine online. He has a plethora of experience across various industries and excels at breaking down SEO into understandable audits and actionable plans. Jeff’s all about creating tailored strategies that boost your online presence and drive real growth. If you're looking for clear, effective guidance to navigate the digital world, Jeff makes SEO straightforward and successful for businesses ready to make a big impact.

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Transcript

Natasha (00:00.934)
Hello Jeff and welcome to the show!

Jeff Wilson (00:04.546)
Hi, Natasha, thanks for having me.

Natasha (00:06.824)
So excited to have you today and just to kick it off, I'd love to hear a little bit about what led you to the work of SEO and what do love most about it?

Jeff Wilson (00:15.64)
So I got started in SEO kind of through a really organic means. ended up, my grandfather died, and I ended up through just like my grieving process, writing a number of articles about death, resources to deal with death. And then I sent it over to one of my friends who happened to be an editor for a website, and he's like, hey, I'll give you money to publish this. I was like, okay, sounds great. And then it kind of just took off from there.

Natasha (00:45.374)
Wow, that's actually really interesting way to get into work. I never would have guessed that. Kind of a beautiful thing too, and a tribute to that, that work could come out of that kind of thing. So I love that. So today we're gonna be chatting a little bit about website content and how it plays a key role in SEO. And for many solopreneurs, SEO really feels overwhelming, especially when they're just starting out. Maybe they can't invest in an expert yet.

So we wanted to focus on some simple, actionable steps that anyone could take right now without diving too deep into the technical end of SEO. So to start, how can business owners approach the content on their website to attract more visibility and search results?

Jeff Wilson (01:28.706)
So that's a really good question.

The biggest impediment to SEO is experience and software. So starting with content so that you can get the experience and build up your revenue and build up your experience to be able to use the software is definitely a winning strategy. It's also a sustainable strategy. Typically when I'm looking at a website especially for like new businesses or solopreneurs, the biggest red flag I see is everything is so to the point. Everything is very core top-of-the-line.

related to their subject. Meanwhile, they're not really answering questions about who you are, who this product is for, why this product is important. Even things like the history of the product or obstacles to a certain service, all of those can be really helpful. So the importance of that is to...

be able to give Google or Bing or any search algorithm the ability to understand how well-rounded you are. But you have to give that information up in a very clear way.

Natasha (02:41.896)
Yeah, and what kind of areas should they focus on on their website, like whether that's a blog or certain pages? Do you have any advice on that?

Jeff Wilson (02:48.366)
Well for a business always kind of like your core pages about us any Funnel entries for like buying a service buying a product your home page is incredibly important the number one thing I can say for any of your core pages your foundational pages is Really work on that call to action. It is a big clear call to action

above the fold so they don't have to scroll anywhere to see it. That usually is one of the biggest, like you'll see a 60 % change in conversions. And then if you don't have a blog, I would highly recommend that you start one. It doesn't have to be prominently featured anywhere, but it just does need to be connected to your website so that at the very least someone who's very curious or a search algorithm can kind of piece together what's going on behind the scenes.

Natasha (03:47.155)
Yeah, and I know this is really important to the user journey, their buying journey. A lot of times we expect people to land on our website and just want to work with us, but there's a whole process of learning about us. Like you said, is it for us? Are we even the right customer? And some of the pages can help determine that. And I know you have an example of a local bike company that you worked with. Do you want to talk about how you helped them change their search engine traffic?

Jeff Wilson (04:14.188)
Yeah, so it was a local nonprofit that does free bike rides. Well, like bike, biking group expeditions throughout Colorado, but they were not getting a lot of traffic.

and there were other technical issues with it. So one of the first things we did is we cut away all of the confusing extraneous pages. made, we boiled everything down really simply to the homepage, anything directly having to do with their services, who they are, the About Us, and the blog. And then we took all the other information, decided what was important, and then funneled that into there.

And then from there, just because of the...

specifics of the local keyword research that was available. I created a bunch of blogs for them that was, know, for bike tuning in the spring, ways to store your bike, resources basically that their current community was already asking for and then put that there. Because if they're asking it, other people are probably asking that. So, you know, someone clicks something that's localized to them. They're learning about bike shops and

the area that are great to work with, they're learning about trails in the area and then you know very subtly it's like hey if you want if you're interested in this come ride with us and they saw their traffic multiply by three and they saw the amount of people riding with them it just explode.

Natasha (05:52.681)
Yeah, so it sounds like someone who's looking to model what you just said would look at some of the most commonly asked questions of someone before they would work with someone like that. So they could almost make a mind map. But how would you find some of those questions? How would you go about identifying some of those questions to answer?

Jeff Wilson (06:10.702)
So yeah, there's a couple of different ways. The best way is if you're already kind of establishing yourself or established. So you already kind of have a community, finding some way to kind of ask them your community questions of like, you know, what are you looking for? What drew you to us?

How can we improve or like what is impeding on your experience in dealing with us? For those people who are not quite established yet, chat GPT is great.

don't use it as an authority, but online groups like Facebook groups, Reddit, any of the hundreds of personal communities that are popping up, those are great to browse through and just write down on a notepad what common things are coming up.

Natasha (07:02.772)
Yeah, I think all of those are great resources. And to your point about asking on social media, that's a great way to drive engagement on your social too and get to know your customers better. So I think that strategy is really great. And chat GPT is obviously just wonderful for getting it kind of going, making some assumptions out the gate, and then you can refine that as you get more data. Another way too would be to offer like paid surveys. You don't have to invest a lot, but you you could do a few $10 gift cards and get some detailed surveys back. So.

I like that. And I've even chatted directly with my customers. If you have a shop, if they're coming in or as you have calls, that's another way too. So I know that we've talked about the content and we'll just talk really simply about this, but what are some of the ways that they can best optimize their page or blog post?

Jeff Wilson (07:52.438)
Hmm. So like I was saying earlier, there is no getting around it. You need to have software at a certain level to make clear and actionable decisions on keywords and to be able to do that keyword research. So in lieu of that, you know, I always recommend Google Keyword Planner.

Those keywords are not specific to SEO. They are specifically for paid advertisements, but for the most part, I mean, you're getting within ballpark distance and that's good enough.

Natasha (08:34.738)
Yeah, so what I'm hearing is that a lot of SEO, like the software that's going to give you detailed information costs like probably around $200 a month to start with. So if you're not investing in that software or working with an SEO expert, then starting with a free tool like Google, it's Google keywords, right? Is that what it's called?

Jeff Wilson (08:52.024)
Google Keyword Planner, yeah. But I don't want to put myself in a corner. I know that AI and startups are really working the mills. There's very likely to be someone that figures out a way to...

Natasha (08:54.11)
Google Keyword Planner.

Jeff Wilson (09:10.008)
kind of export this kind of information a little bit easier with AI and stuff like that. So when you're looking, doing keyword research and you're looking at something and you're not quite sure whether or not you should trust what it's saying, you need these following metrics. You need to know what the keyword difficulty is. So what that does is that tells you.

basically your chances of ranking in the top one, the top three for this. So the higher it is and the newer your website is or the smaller your website is, you have a significantly less chance of getting that. You need to know what the search volume is per month and you need to know specifically if that's in the country that you are operating in.

Jeff Wilson (09:57.42)
And that's pretty much it. You can get by with those three.

Natasha (10:01.042)
Yeah, and do you have any favorite online resources for someone who's wanting to learn more about SEO can get started on that journey?

Jeff Wilson (10:08.878)
HREF, so that's A-H-R-E-F-S. HREF has some really simple short videos that get very much to the point. Some of their videos as they start getting into the application of what those numbers mean, they do obviously refer to their own software, but you can kind of distill that information and just look at it from an abstract point of view of like...

you know, this is what I'm looking for, these are the kind of backlinks I want to that kind of jazz.

Natasha (10:41.81)
Awesome. And I know another way that they can help with their blog posts and things is actually all of the header tags and the kind of structure of their blog posts. That's something that anyone can do on their website.

Jeff Wilson (10:52.63)
Yeah, and to be honest, it's typically, so it's either that they don't, the problems I often see with client websites is they either don't have anything, which is fine.

or they have lots of content, everything's really well organized to the human eye. But when the Google search bots come and hit their website, they cannot make heads or tails of what is going on. yes, headers are so important. So headers, one, two, three, and text, all that really means is there's a specific tag that shows up when a computer is looking at

that text and it just sends off a little flair to whatever algorithmic robot is searching that website.

Natasha (11:45.566)
Go ahead.

Jeff Wilson (11:46.952)
yeah, so like the one of the biggest things that really I feel help entrepreneurs understand how to look at their website a little bit more clearly is to break up the way that the information is presenting itself. So look at it and just forget about human eyes. Forget about the human UIX for just a moment and really look at are my headers in place? Are my titles in place? Am I clearly talking about like, you know, to a robot?

Am I clearly explaining to an out of touch robot what I'm doing, where I'm operating, who I am, who I want to talk to? And then from there, optimize it for human eyes.

Often it's the other way around. So especially if you're starting out with creating a website, my number one piece of advice is just go crazy. So even if you don't publish it, put everything on your homepage, every dream, where you're operating. mean, put down what your favorite color is for goodness sake. And then give yourself a couple of days, come back, strip stuff away, try to think if the

Natasha (12:40.764)
You

Jeff Wilson (12:59.76)
there's anything else that you had forgotten, add that, step away for a little bit and then come back. And then once you have all that information, not optimized, but you have all that information on the website, then you start like designing and stuff like that. And typically with my clients, I see, or even my friends, see their websites go up faster and the need for like serious revisions go down like a lot.

Natasha (13:25.096)
Yeah, I like giving yourself creative space because sometimes that first draft is really just that, a first draft. So giving yourself a couple of days to come back to that is wonderful. If header tags and all of this sound a little bit confusing to anyone and they're wanting some information on, you know, basic SEO, we are going to be doing a joint workshop. That's going to be in April. So stay tuned for that. I'm learning some DIY skills on how you can improve your SEO basics. So the other thing we wanted to chat about today is SEO.

like the mindset about approaching it because a lot of people can get stuck in kind of analysis paralysis because SEO at its core can be a lot of data. So we wanted to just give some mindset tips to kind of get started with this. And I know the first one is just having fun. So why do you think having fun is important to enjoy the process of SEO?

Jeff Wilson (14:16.59)
Well, as a solopreneur or a former solopreneur and as someone that's worked with a lot of solopreneurs, I've watched so many entrepreneurs grind themselves into dust trying to attain a new skill.

When in reality, it's not as though their business was going to fade to dust within the next 24 hours if they did not master SEO. So that passion, that fun is really important. And that's where I was saying like, you know, even if you can't, you're struggling with keyword research, creating those blogs, making sure that the headers make sense, making sure that the text is robust. That's kind of a way that at least you can like have fun with it. You can express yourself. You can talk about kind of some of those

more nitty gritty things about your business, service or product that bring you a lot of joy or you think that would bring other people joy and

not stressing about it so much. Because again, I mean like if you're a solopreneur or a small business, there's a high chance that you had to learn how to make social media work. There's a high chance you had to learn your CRM. There's a high chance you had to learn all this stuff. I have really, really good news for anybody listening to this. If you were able to sort out social media, email marketing, designing a website, you can do SEO.

impediments are that dollar line for the software and the time and experience necessary to know what to do with the software.

Natasha (15:54.152)
Yeah, so it just sounds like spending some time and what I'm also hearing is that this is a process of refinement and getting something out in its form with the knowledge you have is great for right now and you can always come back and improve that as you go.

Jeff Wilson (16:08.398)
Yeah, 10,000%. I mean, I've worked on and with companies, I mean, that were making millions of dollars per year. And I have yet come across someone that is 1,000 % satisfied with their SEO strategy, or even 100%, or even, I would even maybe say 95 % happy with every single thing on their website. So I know that that's something that drives, including myself,

drives people up the wall is like, I just need to get the website perfect. I kind of don't know if that exists.

Natasha (16:46.238)
Yeah, they're all kind of a living process. So I like that. We're just going to accept that it's an evolution. So the second mindset piece that we want to talk about was just being consistent. So how does consistency impact your SEO success?

Jeff Wilson (16:51.871)
Yes.

Jeff Wilson (17:03.4)
so...

Consistency is really important mainly in its data. A lot of it is data like SEO is 20 to 30 percent content. The rest is data.

But you still have to create that content. You still have to look at that data. So, you know, and don't go crazy. Again, I've watched so many very capable entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, marketers try to learn this and grind themselves into dust. Set up something very something that works for your schedule. So like, if you know that if the house caught on fire and the cat exploded and you didn't eat for two days, you could at least write

one blog per week. Cool. So write out that stuff and then try to build up a little backlog of it and then just stay on top of it. And if you happen to miss it, you have that backlog. Tell yourself when you're writing that article, take...

20 minutes or so to kind of look at your SEO skills, look at the traffic to your website, look at the pages where traffic is just dropping off. What pages are bringing you tons of traffic? Where are you getting most of your traffic? Are you happy with where that traffic is coming from? How out of the visitors, and this is especially important for e-commerce, out of the that have the traffic that have come to your website,

Jeff Wilson (18:35.492)
many are converting into customers.

So if you were getting all this traffic and no conversions, that's not an SEO problem. Well, it could be, you could be attracting really low quality traffic. But without SEO software, I would be a major shot in the dark to elevate that traffic. But what you can do is try to look at other pieces of information. So other search queries with intention and kind of get into that. But yeah, just consistency. like even if you see

something that you don't like, even if something's not working quite yet, keep doing it. SEO is always kind of put on the back burner because it is, I mean, you're looking at anywhere from three to six months. I've heard of it taking longer, typically not. So I mean, this isn't like social media where you click something, you immediately kind of get that gratification and it moves quickly. This is a long term strategy.

Natasha (19:35.272)
Yeah, but it's something that can pay dividends over time because you're building up something that will continue to drive that traffic that just doesn't shut off, you know, if you just stop doing it. So that's great.

Jeff Wilson (19:47.084)
Yeah, I mean the real power of SEO is exactly that. You do an hour's worth of work. That hour's worth of work can pay dividends for months. But the other thing is unlike with organic social media, organic SEO can bring you 70 %

more like you know the out of your traffic who's seeing your content who's seeing your products or service it can make it so 70 % it's not just like a of the people that are seeing or people who want to do business with you or have a high chance of doing business with you with social media you're always kind of just trying to dial in how tight that shotgun blast is but it's always a shotgun blast

Natasha (20:29.778)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I definitely love the advice of banking content. That's a great way to stay ahead. When you have four things already scheduled, you've got another month to figure out the rest. So you can schedule that in. The third mindset piece that we're going to talk about is just staying accountable. that's one of the things that we want people to do. So what does that mean? How do they stay accountable in their SEO journey?

Jeff Wilson (20:58.866)
You have to keep at it. You have to keep at it. And again, you get to decide the pace. don't use learning this new skill as something to spend two days on and then beat yourself up over because you didn't see any results within two weeks. But on top of that, it's

It's a numbers game, especially if you don't have the experience, you don't have that software. Even SEO experts, we deal with like, we fire off like 20 to 30 plus.

you know, highly targeted content, some of it doesn't always stick to the wall. And what we do is we focus on what did stick and we optimize that. So a lot of people, you know, will put in a lot of really good work for an article and then be super bummed out that it didn't work. You have to move on.

Natasha (22:00.562)
Yeah, right, not getting too attached to something that's not working because I think part of staying accountable is looking at that data regularly to actually see where your efforts are paying off.

Jeff Wilson (22:12.716)
Yes, it's important too, mean, I would highly, highly recommend what will really help you right now and really help your future self is if you do not have a Google Analytics account, if you are using some sort of built-in analytics for whatever CRM you are using,

Stop that. You can still use that, but basically once you set up the Google account, Google Analytics account, it starts keeping track of so much data, but it will not keep track until you create it. So even if you don't need all the bells and whistles yet, I guarantee you are going to hit a position where you want to know more information and a lot of those built-in CRMs are just like very, very watered down, watered down versions.

Natasha (23:01.778)
Yeah. Well, it's been great chatting. So I want to invite everyone who's listening to join us for the workshop that we're going to be hosting in April. So get on my mailing list. If you want more details about that or connect with me on LinkedIn. for those who are wanting a little bit more and to work on a personal level, I know that Jeff offers services to help you. You can help them establish their keywords and kind of give them some coaching and strategy. So this, you know, what could be tons of hours of education could be shortened and they could get their website cleaned up.

in a way that's effective in a much shorter period of time, where can people find you to work with you?

Jeff Wilson (23:39.32)
Yeah, so for right now, LinkedIn is best. So that's just Jeff Wilson on LinkedIn.

But yeah, no matter where you're at, one of the kind of things I was really proud of is through my last company, we were able to get kind of like a DIY SEO situation. So basically, one to two hours with me where I kind of answer questions, break down myths, and then explain and give templates for what content should look like. And then I just give you keywords in the package.

Natasha (24:14.056)
Yeah, and that's great because they don't have to invest the $200 a month for the, you know, keyword software that they don't understand. You've just hand selected these for them and they're ready to go.

Jeff Wilson (24:22.796)
Yeah, absolutely.

Natasha (24:24.948)
Perfect, so as we wrap up our episode today, my favorite question at the end is to just ask you, what is one piece of advice that you would have for your younger self?

Jeff Wilson (24:34.72)
it would have to be be nice to myself. Like, looking back, I mean, especially, you know, when I first started out, I was working 50, 70 hours a week, and like, just refused to take breaks and constantly beating myself that I could have done better. But that's the thing is, you once I started taking breaks and kind of showing myself that love, I did get better. But sitting in kind of like that stress mode didn't slow my progress quite a bit.

Natasha (25:05.242)
that advice and yes I think many entrepreneurs listening right now can relate to the 50 to 70 hours with no breaks and once we start getting those breaks we realize that those breaks maybe make those hours a little bit shorter in the long run.

Jeff Wilson (25:18.838)
Yeah, absolutely.

Natasha (25:20.84)
Well, it has been a pleasure talking to today and we look forward to hosting everyone at the workshop who wants to join us. So definitely stay tuned for that. Thank you so much, Jeff.

Jeff Wilson (25:29.592)
Thank you for having me.