SEO Isn't as Hard as You Think It Is

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Host: Rich Mackey 
Producer: Zac Hazen

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Think of us as your very own offsite, highly effective team of local marketing growth experts, from digital marketing to traditional (who you’d also happily grab a beer with). Antidote 71 is equal parts skill and personality. We’re super fun to hang out with (in our opinion) and exceptionally good at what we do. We love our work and care about the people we work with. 

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Transcript

Banter And Lego Tangent

Rich 0:00

Is SEO really complicated or are you just overthinking it?

Zac 0:10

Hey Zach, welcome back. Welcome back.

Rich 0:15

Because my Lego city is over here and used to be in the background, I've had people complaining. So there is, let me see if you can see it. There is a little Lego guy up at the very top with the book. Like I thought that was awesome when I had both of those things because they didn't come together. And then back here, I have the fringe bistro. It'll move over to the shelf, but what I'm doing as I build the rest of mine, because I have all of them, I'm going to set it here for like a week or two so people can see it, and then it'll move in with the rest of the city. So that one will go next to the Natural History Museum when I get it done on the uh second shelf from the bottom. So a little tangent for you there, but that's not what we're talking about today. We are talking about SEO. And is it really super hard, or can you break it down and make it simple or simpler to understand?

Zac 1:00

I mean, for a lot of people from the outside looking in who don't do SEO tactics or master of SEO at all, it seems super complex.

Rich 1:09

Yeah, and I think we might want to step back for anybody who isn't, you know, an SEO person and SEO is search engine optimization. So it's really how you show up in Google search organically without paying for it. Um there's also now an emerging practice called AEO, which is AI engine optimization. So how do you show up in AI engines? And yes, they are different. Uh we could probably have Riley on to talk about that in a future episode.

Zac 1:34

Oh, yeah, 100%.

Earl Grey Martini Origins

Rich 1:36

Stick a little note on that one. All right, so we're gonna get into that in a little bit, but we're gonna um first start with the Earl Gray Martini, and that's spelled M-A-R-Capital T-E-A-N-I. So I'm guessing it's an Earl Gray T and a Martini.

Zac 1:52

Basically, yeah. So this was created by Aubrey Sanders at the Pegu Club. And I have a little quote here from Dale deGroff. With the opening of Pegu, Audrey's singular mission was to get people used to drinking gin again. So this is her kind of way of make letting people enjoy gin again, because I guess people aren't drinking enough gin.

Rich 2:15

I mean, I feel like gin's made a comeback. So I don't know when Pegu opened, um, but I think that, you know, obviously Caitlin loves gin. I used to hate gin. I never drank gin. We never had gin in the house. And then I got into like the botanicals and some of the Hendrix, like really interesting flavors. Um, and then I realized that gin doesn't have to taste like you're chewing on pine needles, like it can actually have other flavors.

Zac 2:38

I think I prefer gin to vodka and cocktails just because vodka's there's some good-tasting vodkas, but I think the flavor of gin is more pronounced. And uh I think it does a little more for me personally.

Rich 2:50

Yeah, I mean, and a really good vodka is supposed to be odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Like you're actually not supposed to taste it, um, which is really wild to me. But yeah, it's just I think vodka just tastes like like alcohol, right?

Zac 3:03

Like it's like a lighter everclear or something, or it just tastes whatever flavors you're trying to give it. So okay.

Rich 3:11

So I'm uh I did look through the notes and I want to get on to this uh breakfast martini she has as well, like really doing some interesting things, this uh Audrey Sanders Saunders.

Zac 3:22

Yeah. And also, so apparently, like uh the breakfast martini uses orange marmalade, and then there's another drink that uses pomegranate syrup called a juniper otivo.

Rich 3:33

Juniper Otivo?

Zac 3:35

Yeah, there you go. Okay.

Gin, Flavor, And Infusions

Rich 3:37

Um yeah, interesting. So that one I'm guessing is more pine forward because it's got juniper in the name, but probably balanced a little bit with that pomegranate syrup. So that's interesting.

Zac 3:48

They consider this to be kind of a classic sour, too. There's an egg white in it and uh a three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, which I'll let you get into the actual recipe, but sure.

Recipe: Earl Grey Martini

Rich 4:00

So first thing you gotta do is you've got to infuse some gin with Earl Grey tea. Um, there aren't I have not seen an Earl Grey flavored or infused gin. Um I've also learned the difference. So I was looking at spicy tequilas, and there's one brand that actually infuses habaneros or jalapenos, I think are the two that they have. All of the other ones are using flavor, like the flavor of it, and then they're putting the heat in differently. They're not actually infusing them. Um, it's more of a manufactured process. So that was interesting to me. So yeah, so infusing is super easy. Um, I've done some infusions. You just take a 750 milliliter bottle of gin. Um, tankere has a really great flavor and high proof. I really like Plymouth, but I don't think I'd use it for this. Um, just because Plymouth is a much lighter, milder gin, and I think you want this one to be uh gin forward. And then just four tablespoons of loose Earl Grey tea. And you can absolutely, if you have tea bags, open up those tea bags and um measure out four tablespoons of that. That's it. So you put that in the bottle, you cap it and shake it, let it sit at room temperature for two hours, and then strain it through a sieve or coffee filter into a bowl. Um, rinse out the bottle to remove loose tea and pour it back in. Uh, you're gonna want to have, of course, a funnel for that. Um, and it should store indefinitely refrigerated because tea doesn't really go bad. Like it doesn't mold or get rotten, you know, as long as you keep it dry. Um and alcohol kind of kills everything. So, yeah, you can make one of these and just hold on to it. So once you've done that, which just takes a little bit, um, you were gonna take your three-quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, freshly squeezed, of course, an ounce of simple syrup, um, and one and a half ounces of your Earl Grey Tea infused gin and an egg white. You're gonna put all of them into a mixing glass and I add ice and shake it hard for about 10 seconds. So sometimes we say, you know, shake until your hand is freezing. This one is about a 10-second count. You're doing some things with that egg white and you don't want to like overdo it. Um, so strain it into a chilled martini glass. Uh, you can rim half of it with sugar if you would like. Uh, you could rim half of it with sugar and lemon zest. You could rim the whole thing with sugar if you want to. It doesn't really matter. Uh, and then garnish with your lemon zest, and you are good to go. This is easy.

Zac 6:20

I've been I've been trying to find the easier ones that are a little more interesting. And this one I've been excited about for a couple weeks. So I'm glad that finally we're finally recording it. But yeah, it's pretty easy, minus the uh Urgray infused gin, but even then, but even that's super simple.

Pepper-Infused Spirits Tips

Rich 6:36

Like as long as you have her grey tea, it's easy. Um, so I will tell you, Zach, on the infusion side of things, um, when you infuse like fruits or vegetables into an alcohol, generally you'd want to check it about every 12 hours, especially if it's something spicy. Um, so I have a friend who every time I go somewhere to get a margarita, I think I think I brought this up. He complains about it not being spicy enough. I think I've said that before. Um, and then his other complaint is margarita mix, but that's neither here nor there. So it's never spicy enough, never spicy enough, never spicy enough. And so his birthday was actually yesterday, but we went out to dinner last week. And so I went to just get a bottle of his favorite tequila, which is Altos, uh, the Blanco, and I bought a serrano pepper, a habanero pepper, and a jalapeno. And as I was doing that, I checked out in the alcohol kind of section of high V, because you know, here in Nebraska we've got different sections for where you sell booze and where you sell groceries. Um, but you can check out vegetables in there as well and peppers and things. So I was checking out, and the guy's like, hey, have you tried this brand? And I'm like, no, I never heard of it. And so we went, he went over and he's like, he showed me the two that were actually infused. So I got him the habanero, one of those, but then with the altos that I got, um, I had to pour out probably about four ounces of the tequila because I'm shoving peppers in there and it's gonna just its displacement. It's like physics, I think, is what that is. Um, so anyway, I sliced the jalapeno, habanero, and uh serrano thin and tucked them in there, seeds and all, because he can't have it hot enough. And then I had to read up. Um, they do say every 12 hours you should check the the temperature of it because it will heat up. And if you take the peppers and seeds out and strain them, it'll stop heating. Um, otherwise, it will continue to get hotter and hotter for about three days. So um it's been over three days. He said it is fantastic and he's dying to make a margarita with it, but he's in New York for work. Um so yeah, so if you're infusing with like um a fruit, you can just leave it in there. It's fine. If you're doing something that adds spice or heat or a unique flavor that could get overpowering, about three days is your max, but you definitely want to do your little taste test.

Zac 8:47

So, what's my little tip on infusing? Nice little infusion tangent.

Rich 8:51

Yeah, I was interesting to me that so you don't want an overpowering Earl Grey tea. Like they have you take it out after a couple of hours on this one. Um, if you leave it in there, it's much like if you leave your tea bag in your tea, right? Like when you're making hot tea, it's gonna get stronger and stronger and stronger. So um I would say definitely, you know, take that out. It's also just four tablespoons and 750 milliliters, so it's not like it's you know, shove 10 tea bags in here or anything like that. So I like it.

Zac 9:20

Yeah, it's a good one. We should probably get into the main part of the episode.

Intent And Relevance Over Keywords

Rich 9:26

Yeah, I mean, we're still under 10 minutes. We're good, but yeah, let's uh let's get on with the uh SEO conversation. All right, so welcome back. Hope you enjoyed the dance break. I think we're still using the same music we've been using for like two years, two years, however long it is. Um it works, it's very cocktail-y um and fun. So we're gonna talk about SEO. Um, SEO, it's not like you know, anyone could do it necessarily, but it is very learnable, it is very teachable. Um, I've actually taught classes on it. Um and it's something that I think everyone can do if you kind of know some of the main um, I don't know, main underlying reasons you would do SEO or kind of how it works. Um so um I think with that, the first thing you really need to know is that intent really matters. This is the same with AI. AI context also matters. Um, but what people are looking for in general is more important than trying to nail an individual keyword. It used to be that you just jam keywords in there and you're gonna be the number one result, and it's not the way it is anymore.

Zac 10:43

And that's what Google has stated too. They prioritize relevance and intent over the density of keywords that you use, which it's still important to use keywords naturally throughout the content that you create. But um actually making a good piece of content that really directly answers what you're trying to rank for and the term that people are searching is way more valuable than anything vague.

Rich 11:08

Yep. Yeah, and I think the example that I've always seen, um I don't know if this came from Google or somewhere else, or if I just made it up, is like if you're doing SEO for a website for a dog park, um, it used to just be you'd have dog park on the page 150 times, um, and it was really annoying to read. By the way, AI will hate that as well because it's just too stilted. Um, so it's really more about talking about the dog park and talking about like secure fencing, trees, grass, you know, lush grass, um, balls if you've got them, dogs, different dog breeds, people, leashes and not leashes. It's about the whole ecosystem around going to a dog park versus just saying dog park a whole lot. And I think you see that with restaurants especially, um, they're really trying to be more broad about what they are and the type of food they have because that relevance piece and intent is so, so, so important.

Zac 12:09

Um I think I think the reason people chase like high volume keywords instead of like focusing on intent is because one of the biggest, I mean, one of the biggest things that people think of when they think of SEO are keywords and how you're using keywords. So it's easy to fall into the trap of I need to use as many keywords for the keyword I'm trying to rank for, like on this blog, on my website, et cetera. And it ends up doing more harm than good because you're probably creating worse content.

Topic Clusters And Pillars

Rich 12:42

And it's important, right? The keyword is important, of course. It's kind of the central thing you want to look for, and you want to do some research on that and find one that's attainable and not super difficult, but has a decent size search volume. Um, but I think the way that I always look at it, and I know HubSpot used to have a tool, I think they still have a tool that does this. Their SEO sort of hit and miss, but um, your keyword is kind of at the center, like that's your sun. And then if you've got nine or ten planets revolving around the sun that are related to it. So if my keyword was solar system, I would have like sun and stars and Pluto and planet and earth and moon and Saturn. Like those would be the things around solar system at the middle. So it's just kind of a good metaphor for how you look at it. And if you've got nine or ten things that don't use that keyword but directly relate to it, you're pretty good. Now you've got a good base to start working on your content, I think.

Zac 13:38

And that's why pillar pages do pretty well too, right? It's like you're answering, you're being as comprehensive as possible and linking off to those planets on like your solar system.

unknown 13:48

Yep.

Rich 13:49

Yeah, you're drawing a line from the sun to the earth to Saturn or to Mars or whatever, so that people know like um that those are all related, even though they're independent pieces. So that's the other piece of this is one piece of content won't always do it. Multiple pieces of content that connect with each other and relate to one another clearly is going to be um much, much, much better for your general SEO. So it's kind of like the basics, right?

Zac 14:18

Another thing I think um that people get wrong about SEO and that makes it more confusing is that they expect the things that they're doing to work towards like better like search engine optimization to come into effect right away, right? They think that just because they fixed a redirect or they fixed a 404 error or they changed a meta description or updated headlines, that they're gonna see traffic go up instantaneously. And that's just not the case.

SEO Is Slow By Design

Rich 14:49

Nope. I mean, Google's robots come back to your pages as often as they're updated. So if you're only posting one blog post a month, the robots are gonna come back to your blog once a month because they get used to that timing. Um, and if you start speeding that up, it's gonna take them a little bit to come back. And you actually have to tell them, which you can do through the Google Search Console, hey, I've updated a bunch of content. You can re-upload your sitemap or whatever and be good to go. You can also pop in the URL and just tell it something's new. But same thing with like your homepage, you know, it's not gonna come back to your homepage if it's just a static page. So having some sort of dynamic content on that page is going to be important as well. But still, in spite of the length of time it takes to come back, it also takes a lot of time for you to be uh seen as quality, seen as higher more relevant than something else, and start to climb. Now, have we done some optimization for a client and seen them jump from like 60 into the top 10 before? Yes. It can happen in a week, it can happen in two weeks. But that shouldn't be your expectation. Exactly. Those are like your quick wins. So three to six months is really what you're looking at in a program. Um, and honestly, the client we have who's doing such amazing stuff in SEO that Riley's working on, um, it was about two years before they really started, it really started to take off, and then it just kind of got a life of its own.

Zac 16:16

Oh, yeah. They have web pages that have been taking off from their initial uh release and blogs, especially. I've seen that with their blogs and our blogs. Some of our blogs won't see we'll see a lot of direct traffic and obviously traffic from organic social, and then we'll get consistent organic search traffic after the fact because we're starting to rank for the keywords and answering those questions that we're trying to answer for our target audience.

Rich 16:44

And I think that's the other thing is everybody's like, oh, I need to get all these websites to mention me. No, you don't. You've got your site with multiple pages, you've got all of your social media platforms that you can actually link back to yourself on, which is great. Um, and yeah, if you can get other sites to link to you relevantly, that's fantastic. Um, but look at your own properties first. It can really, really work well.

Zac 17:05

Mm-hmm. And don't fall for black hat SEO tactics like buying backlinks.

Rich 17:10

That was like one of our first that might have been our first episode, might have been about black hat SEO. Yeah. Way back in the day with Christian.

Zac 17:16

It's interesting because this is our fifth SEO episode ever. And it feels like we've done more than that, but it's only been five. And the last one was a year ago. So we're definitely due for a good SEO episode.

Rich 17:27

But definitely time.

Zac 17:29

I think something that like to keep in mind with SEO too is once you learn one thing, it kind of snowballs into others too. Once you learn how to optimize like on-page stuff, then you might understand the technical stuff too. Like, I don't know, like when it was like you were saying earlier, once you understand the core concepts, it becomes very simple.

On-Page Basics That Matter

Rich 17:50

Well, and the technical stuff is really stupid things, like name your images what they are. Like, you know, green gaming headphones is what you would name the image of your headphones. Like when you do that and you put in the alt text that is clear, like, you know, green and black headphones with a microphone designed specifically for gaming, but can be used for other uses is your meta description or your description or whatever, your alt text. Like it helps you with ADA compliance, but it also then helps you with SEO and having something that's plain English and gives context for what it's used for, that helps with the AI, the AEO. Um, so just stuff like that is like super, super simple versus your image should not be named like image underscore 3250 underscore new underscore final. Like that makes no sense at all to anybody.

Zac 18:43

And well, I mean, that's a good starting point too. I think the easiest thing you could probably do is making sure all your images on your website, your blogs have alt text. Also making sure that your meta descriptions are optimized and that you have meta descriptions, um, making sure that you have H2s properly like throughout the page and H1s. We've run into like blogs before that have no H1s or H2s, and that's obviously gonna make it really hard for you to rank.

Rich 19:08

Yeah. And it's an outline, right? So your H1 is like your, it's but right below your title. So you've got your title tag, and then you've got your H1, which is your number one key point about your page. And then your H2s are like the next indent, and they're sections of the page that are all different, and then you can have H3s under those, it would be like paragraphs in that section. Um, but if you think about it as an outline with like, you know, the one and the a and the little i or whatever, like that's how that works. Um it's just in that instance you've only got one uh H1 and then everything else is indebted, embedded in your H2s.

Zac 19:47

Um Yeah, and I think that's a really good starting point. And then maybe you'll start learning about different like redirect errors and how to fix those. And but I think if you're looking for somewhere to start, that could be good.

Rich 19:59

Um I think the other thing that you've got in here that I know is really popular and it's getting bigger with AI is questions.

Zac 20:07

Yep.

Rich 20:07

Like actually writing out your own. If you don't have FAQs, start there. Write the question and write the answer. Um, and do a little bit of digging. You can research the whole question. Um because back in my day, like so, first of all, I know I'm from before Google existed, so there's that piece of everything. Um we had search engines, you know, Ask Jews was back then, Yahoo was back then, Alta Vista Alta Vista, I think was the search project in the search engine. But anyway, um we used to, when Google first came up, it was mechanical. It was pop in the words you want. So, like um Thai food Omaha is what we would put in because I want Thai food in Omaha. And now though, um, behavior has changed, generations have changed, search engines have changed, and people will put in what's the best Thai food in Omaha, or what's the best Thai food near me? They will ask a whole sentence and a whole, a whole like sometimes a paragraph.

Zac 21:09

Or like even more specific, who has the best, where can I get the best pad Thai in Omaha? Where can I find this specific dish? Or it's like location based too. What's the best restaurant in this neighborhood? So it's interesting. Yeah.

Rich 21:24

I did one the other day. I was looking for mango chicken because I know there's a place here who that does it, and I can't, it was by my old house. I don't remember which place it was, but it did not come up. And I'm like, these people need better SEO because I know they're still open and they have mango chicken. Like, why is it not coming up?

Zac 21:37

That always sucks when you're like, you know, a restaurant exists and you know they have something on their menu, and you search it and you can't find it. So you're like unsure if they actually have in your menu if you're imagining it or oh my gosh, so funny.

Site Structure And Nested URLs

Rich 21:49

Yeah, and I just was really craving that. So then I started looking for recipes to make my own mango chicken because I'm like, it's just mango puree reduced in a sauce and like probably some soy in it or something, and then toss in some chicken. Chicken. And I'd rather have it like with a grilled chicken or something not fried, ideally. So anyway, that's uh one of my big things. But yeah, so ask questions and setting up FAQs on every page that relate to that page, um, little accordion or whatever and whatnot is there. Now we could get into schema as well, but I think that's a whole other thing. If you just have the FAQs. Well, most platforms now, so WordPress and HubSpot now will auto-mark up that's with FAQ schema. If it looks like an FAQ and it says it's an FAQ and it's a question and an answer, um, a lot of that backend stuff will happen for you depending on your platform. I'm sure that like Wix and Squarespace and all those do it as well. Um, but just having those there, it's also helpful because like when I come to a website, I have questions. Like I've always got questions. Um the other thing you can do is you can take your lead form and you can have a, you know, you know, have a question we haven't answered, you know, send it here. And you can use those to make new FAQs. Um, you can also, depending on tools you're using, you could use an AI agent to create an FAQ or a knowledge base article for you off questions you don't have answers to. So I think that's uh you know, it's a good point. Good point on questions, yeah.

Zac 23:21

Pillar pages and FAQ content do really well for search search engine rankings.

Rich 23:27

Yeah, but it's really just your relevance and context. Yeah. Like, you know, do you have good quality and does it make sense and is it in the right context and not completely stilted? Um, because then you won't get penalized easy either.

Zac 23:43

Yeah. So uh our final point, which we don't really have time for, but we do have a little bit of time for, is structure and authority are really important. So how your site is internally linked significantly improves callability and ranking.

unknown 23:59

Yep.

Zac 24:00

And so top pages tend to exist within well-structured topic clusters.

Rich 24:05

So yeah, whatever your top level pages are, the pages under them need to be like related to them. Like they all need to be clearly related. And then your um your URL structure should be nested, is what it's called. You can Google nested URL structure, but essentially it would be like website.com slash services slash service one and then slash services slash service two. Uh, keeping that stuff like all organized. You'll see it on retail with products. You want it to be it's usually slash products and then slash whatever the category is, and then slash if there's a subcategory and then slash the actual physical product. And um Google looks at those almost like they're folders on your computer, and each one of those like subcategories or directories, whatever's below it, should relate up to it as it goes in. I don't know if this hand gesture makes any sense.

Zac 25:00

Well, and if it's not, if your pages aren't nested correctly or if you have a page just kind of astray, it's gonna be really hard for Google to find it and crawl it. So it's probably not gonna rank at all. Especially if it can't if they if Google can't find it. So making sure that it's like on your uh sitemap and actually has inbound links that you're able to navigate through is important.

Rich 25:27

Yeah, I think um and sitemaps look like family trees, right? Like it's the oldest living relative or whatever, and then it's you know their children and then their children's children and people who come in, you know, the married married into and everything. And that's what a sitemap always looks like. And so what you want that to be is that everything in a group is related as you go down through that tree. Um, and if you've got that set up and that's how you set your URL structure, you're gonna be light years ahead of a lot of your competition, especially if you're a small business. Um so many people like completely screw that up.

Zac 26:06

Yeah, 100%. Well, I think we uh covered everything pretty well there. Um I think kind of like what we can take away from this is search intent really matters more than keyword density and volume. So if you're overstuffing keywords, that's not nearly as important as trying to answer or context and intent. Yep. Um consistency is really important. Don't give up just because you're not seeing results right away. SEO is slow on purpose. And then structure and authority are really integral to how your site ranks.

CTA And Closing

Rich 26:39

So all right. So I think um that kind of hits everything. You know, the technical health issues, another thing that we we just touched on briefly: site speed, indexing, duplicate content, all that. Be careful with it. But I think the number one thing that we hit on is your intent, and the intent of the searcher matters and how you relate to that intent, your relevance, your context, those types of things are really important. Um getting the basics down can get you light years ahead of everybody. Um just having your images tagged and having some of that technical stuff, your nested URLs in there uh can be really great. And then um think like the searcher. You know, people ask questions today. So have questions and answers on your page. And don't try to do everything. Just um, you know, do one thing. Put an FAQ on your product pages to just do that this week. And then I think the last piece is no, it doesn't work like paid. Um, it works, uh it's a slow burn. Give yourself three to six months uh to be able to see what you've got going on. So that's um, I mean, that's really like the basics of SP SEO, breaking it down. And then just keep checking on it. You know, use some sort of a tool. There's free tools out there uh where you can see how you're ranking, see what you want to rank for and what's possible, and go from there.

Zac 27:56

Yeah. As always, you can find our agency at antidote71.com and all of our socials are there as well. If you have a question you'd like to send our way, hit the CTA Podcast. Your question will make it into a future episode. And with that, we will see you next week. All right.