Hi, welcome back to the simple SEO content podcast, where we talk about all things. Search engine optimization, content marketing, blogging, all the ways that we can work with Google to drive more traffic to our websites, to grow our businesses, to sell more products, book more services, et cetera. I am your host. Rachel Lindteigen I am so glad to have you back here with me today. Where we're going to dig into, why is SEO or search engine optimization? So important to your business. Why do I keep saying, learn SEO, learn SEO, learn SEO. Do SEO, SEO, SEO, SEO. It feels like I'm saying it on repeat right. I am because it's critical to the success of your business in today's world. Every business out there needs to have a website. We almost all do. They're very seldom. Will you meet somebody who is a business owner who does not yet have a website every once in a while, but not often. And think about it for yourself for a moment when you do come across that person who doesn't have a website. Do you look at them the same as a business owner as say yourself, who has a website? Or do you feel like, oh, Is that old hobby or maybe they just don't have it yet. Maybe you give them the benefit of the doubt, but the reality is as business owners in today's world, we need to have websites. We all do. So you have a website, it is your front page of your business. It's how people learn about you. It's help people find you and find information. Now. You need to have search engine optimization or SEO done on your website for people to find you. A website without SEO might as well not exist. Because until you do SEO on your website. Google doesn't really understand what it's about. They're not going to go dig through it all to figure out there were certain elements on a website in the backend on the. On the code side. That Google looks for to understand what the website is about. And Google looks for keywords in all these different areas. And I have a list of them in the SEO content quick-start guide. So if you don't have that yet, Go ahead and get it from the website. My website@etchedmarketing.com forward slash freebies. Download the SEO content quick start guide. It's going to tell you exactly what these elements are and the best practices for them. So Google's going to look for. A keyword in all these different areas to help it understand what this particular website is about. So it's gonna look at your title, tag, your meta description, your URL, your image file name. It's going to look at your copy, your header tags on your copy. Um, all sorts of things to really understand. And each time Google sees a specific key word on that page or in that element all on the same page. All the same keyword. It's like a check mark to Google. Oh, this page is about this. Cool. Oh, look. Okay. There's like six different things that are telling me this page is about. This particular keyword, this page must be about this keyword. That's how Google works. They take all that information. They crawl through the web. They look at the different sites. They pull the information out of the optimization elements and they put it in their index. And then the next time somebody is searching for information related to that keyword. Google goes back through the index and goes, oh, Hey, yeah, we've seen this, this website over here, had it in all these places that we checked. So it must be about this content. So Google is more likely to show it. If you don't do that, you don't put the optimization on your website. Google's not going to know what it's about. They're not going to be as likely to show it to people. You're not going to get as much traffic. Did you know that people actually trust the organic search results more than they trust the paid ads and the click-through rate on the organic search results is amazing. Comparatively it's like 10 X. So the number one position, the very first search. Result at the top of the page on Google that gets on average like 34% of all the clicks that come to that page. About 34% of them will go to that. When you're doing ads like on Google ads. The 3% is an excellent click-through rate. That means 97 out of a hundred people who see your ad don't click on it and that's considered good. So it's a 10 X increase. And it's free traffic rather than paying for an ad. So this is why you want to do search engine optimization because you're not going to just haphazardly end up at the top of Google for a search result. You have to work with Google and partner with them. So that you can help yourself. Help Google help you. Google wants to show you to more people. But they need you to help them to understand what it's about. Now as far as, how do you do SEO? I've got podcasts on that. I've got episodes on that. What you're going to want to do. It start by choosing a keyword. That you can rank for, this is the huge caveat, one keyword per page. You only use that keyword on a map. Some of them have two pages on your entire website and blog, because Google's only going to show you a maximum of two times, which means if you use that same keyword. Spoiler alert here. Another huge mistake that we see on a pretty regular basis. You use that same keyword on 10 pages across your entire blog or your entire website, you're actually limiting your opportunities because Google's only going to show you a maximum two times for any search query. So. Use a new keyword on each page. Keep track of the keywords that you're using, that's going to be helpful. And most importantly, do a little bit of research to make sure that your website or blog can rank for the keyword that you want to use. So, Take the keyword that you're thinking about that you've researched go to Google, open an incognito browser window. Super important because of our own personalized search results that we get from Google. Incognito windows can take away the personalization. Okay. It's going to make it better for you. Go to Google incognito window, put that keyword that you're considering using into the browser. Now I want you to take a look at the search results and see. Who shows up, who shows up on page one? Who shows up in positions? One, two, and three. That's super important. And I want you to look at it. Uh, really, really honestly, how similar are they to you? Are these sites that are just like you, they're your competitors you're familiar with them or are they really big? Like, are we suddenly seeing realtor and Zillow and Amazon and Zappos and target and Nordstrom? And Etsy OMI, because if we are, we are on the wrong track, my friend. The problem here is you're never going to outrank one of those websites because in Google's eyes, they're way more authoritative than you or I are. So you need to look for a different keyword because even if you do everything in the Quickstart guide, perfectly. Even if you take simple SEO content with me. And you do everything perfectly. You're not going to get the results because you can't rank for that word. Now I promise you that's not going to happen. If you take simple SEO content with me, because I'm going to review your keywords with you. And I'm an answer your questions and I'm going to help you make sure. That that doesn't happen because that's how you end up doing SEO and feeling like it's never working or you're not getting an ROI. You're not getting traffic from it. It's because you've made a mistake. So anyway. You're going to make sure that you choose a keyword that you can rank for. And then you're going to use that keyword, the same one. In all of the optimization elements on that page, that means your title tag, your meta description, your copy, your header, tags, your URL. If you're customizing a URL, all the different pages, all the different places that Google is going to look for it because that's going to help each one of those is a signal to Google that this is what that page is about. All right. If you have any questions about why you need to do SEO on your website or blog, I hope you don't, but if you have any questions, Go ahead and DM me on Instagram at etched marketing academy. If you're not following me over there already, why not come? Follow me over there. Shoot me a note. DME, let me know how things are going, what questions you have, um, and then do yourself a favor. And go to the website, etched marketing.com forward slash freebies and grab the SEO content quick start guide. It's free. It's there for you to help you to make this easier. And then take the class, sign up for the five day. SEO traffic class. It's the website, traffic booster class, or take the free SEO class. Whichever one is available right now. Get signed up, learn more about how to use SEO to grow your business, because it is a critical marketing strategy. It is going to help you. And the thing with SEO is it's yours. You own the website, the work you do today can help you with your business for the next 3, 4, 5, 10 years. And you don't have to worry about the social media channels, changing their algorithms and not giving you visibility and whatever else happens because you own it. And if you heard the message by now that you need an email list. You can be building your email list. The Ru the SEO work that you're doing. So. Super critical that you start doing SEO on your website. Don't let it scare. You don't feel like it's too technical. None of that. I'm here to help you figure it out. All right. Thanks so much for joining. I'll see you right back here next week. Have a great day.