How to get started with SEO when you're brand new. SEO tips for beginners. Ep. 174

Are you brand new to SEO and not sure what to do first, or even how to get started with SEO? If so, this episode is just for you. It's designed to help you understand how to start with SEO as a beginner and find the easiest way to learn about SEO basics and best practices. 

Transcript

0:32

If you've heard that SEO works and is important, but if you're being completely honest, you have no idea where to start, what it is or what to do first, then this episode is going to help you. Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. I am Rachel Lindteigen, and I'm so glad that you're here with me today. Today we're going to start about, talk about starting with SEO Learning it. How do you figure out who to trust? How do you learn what to do? What do you even do? What is it? All of these are questions that come up pretty regularly in my free SEO classes. So I've had over 10,000 people sign up for those classes in the last couple of years. And I ask a couple of questions in there via polls to be able to really get an understanding of where you are at. I also recently sent out an audience survey to get even more information because it helps me do things like see that, oh, we need to have an episode on the podcast on like. How do you get started when you're brand new and you don't know what it is? How do you start to learn? How do you figure out who to trust? All of these things? So I've been looking at the data and what I see is a lot of the people who come through the free class are brand new. They don't know what to do, and they're a little bit intimidated, if I'm gonna be really honest. Based on their conversations, based on the questions that they ask. They don't know what to do. They're afraid that it's going to be too involved or too technical. I get that a whole lot. It's just too technical. There's no way I can do it, and I want you to know it's nowhere near as technical as you fear that it is. And it is something that you can do and it is something that is incredibly important to your business. If you, my friend, have a website, you want it to show up in chat, GPT, you want it to show up in Google, you wanna get traffic, you wanna be able to generate leads and sales and grow your business. All of that you need to learn and understand and. Implement SEO or search engine optimization on your website. So let's talk a little bit today about like how do you get started with it When you're brand new, how do you find the right person to teach you? Hi, I'm here. I'd like to teach you, I've been doing this for a long time. Okay, so what is SEO or search engine optimization? If you're brand new, you may not know and you may be afraid to ask, because you may feel like everybody else already knows the answer, and so you're embarrassed. You don't wanna admit it, you don't wanna raise your hand publicly, no big deal. SEO means search engine optimization. It is a process that we go through to make it easier for our content to be found by the right people because we make it easier for the search engines, Google Bing Chat, GPT, perplexity, et cetera, to understand our content now. I have a background in SEO or search engine optimization that comes from the corporate world, comes specifically from the ad agency world. Now, in that world, we tie SEO and content strategy incredibly closely together to the point that the content that we create. Is based on an SEO foundation, so we look at it different than most people do. In the entrepreneurial world. I look at it as content. Content plus SEO equals visibility. And it's visibility for the right people. Because when I craft a content strategy for myself or for a client, it is based on search engine optimization. Research it is based on what questions are people asking, what information are people actively searching for, and then from that list, I compile a list of keywords that my website has a good chance of ranking for. Then I create content using those to put it out into the world to make sure that the right people are able to find it. So I take a little bit different approach to SEO. It's more strategic than most people who teach it, but it's because that's what I saw work in the corporate world. And you know what? If brands that are big, huge brands that are in every mall across America are using that type strategy, then I'm going to use the same strategy for my business. And I can tell you right now, I've been in business almost 10 years now. We're coming up on nine years that I've been doing this full time. And that strategy still works. So what I want you to understand is like, this is really important. You can learn how to do it. You can have the right person teach you and show you and guide you. In fact, next week, so this should be coming out, it should be March 18th right now. I should actually be on spring break with my son this week. Um, next week we should be having the. A training class. I've got the chat, GPT and Google Leads training class next week. We've also got the lead generation popup Facebook group, so if you get signed up for next week's webinars, you can go to etched marketing.com/freebies. Get signed up there, uh, go on the free SEO class, get signed up, join that, and then you'll get the invitation into the popup group for the week. You're gonna have a chance to learn a lot more about SEO next week because we're going to be talking about what it is, how it works, what to do, all of that each morning in a quick Facebook Live. And then we're also going to have the two more in-depth webinars over the course of the week as well. You can choose either time, you don't have to attend both. Sorry guys. I, you know, I batched my content. I've been putting this off because I had been sick and I can't put it off any longer, so I'm trying to get through without coughing. All right, so that's what SEO is. It is this core strategy that we use. I use it to really determine. What content I'm going to create, how I'm going to title pieces, how I'm going to optimize them, all of that. So SEO itself has been around for probably close to 20 years. It's not a new strategy, though. It is becoming more popular now. I found it very interesting when I first came into the entrepreneurial world back in like 20 16, 20 17. The focus was completely on Facebook ads and Facebook and social media marketing, and very, very few people were talking about SEO. And I was coming outta the corporate world and the agency world where everything was about SEO and social media marketing was just starting to take off. But it was interesting to me because there was this, this determination or this. Impression that it was so incredibly technical and it was not something that would work for small businesses and entrepreneurs wouldn't be able to do it, and they needed to focus on other strategies, and it's like, oh my gosh, no, my friend, like SEO is actually the best strategy that you can use, especially as a small business owner if you're doing it the way that I teach it, which is to really use it to craft your overall. Content strategy. Everything that you create for your business should be created through this SEO first lens, the way that we do it in the corporate world. So that was really surprising to me. I am glad that now, almost 10 years later, people are talking about it more. They're a little less intimidated by it. They're a little more excited to learn about it and kind of dig in and start to understand how it all works. Learning SEO. With that said, learning it on your own is tough. I do not recommend trying to DIY this because having worked with entrepreneurs now for the past nine years and teaching SEO, I've looked at a lot of websites that people have worked on SEO on their own. And I can tell you they don't get it right, and I don't say that to be mean. I say that. To help save you the time, effort, and frustration of trying to learn how to do something on your own, getting overwhelmed, spending a lot of time on it, and then having it not pay off. So in the free class, I always ask who's new and who has tried SEO before? And generally it's about 50 50. There's usually a pretty good mix between who's tried it and who's brand new of those who've tried it. I always ask them how is it working? Like is it working? Do you see results? Do you know? And I will tell you right now, 97% of them say it's not working, or I'm not able to tell if it's working. 3% of the people who have. Who come through that class say, yeah, my SEO is actually working pretty good. Even with them, when I look at their sites, there are more opportunities for them. They may be getting a little bit of traffic, but like there's a lot more opportunity that they're missing, but they are getting some results. 97% of the people though, are not getting results. They're doing the work. They're trying, they're, you know, they're working on it. They're trying, they're doing all of that, but they're not getting results. It's because they're making mistakes, but they don't know what the mistakes are because they're trying to learn it on their own. They don't have someone to ask questions. All of that, and like, don't do that to yourself. It can feel very overwhelming when you try to learn it on your own. Especially if you're trying to Google and YouTube your way through it. Or you're here, you know, you've landed on my podcast and you're like, oh, this is great. She teaches about SEO. I'm just gonna do this. I'm gonna tell you right now, you're much better off to come join me in the course and learn how to do this and have me guide you. It's a six month group program where you get the guided instruction and the implementation support so that you know you're gonna be able to get through this. There's a reason that I've structured it the way that I have, because that's what's going to work the best for you as a student based on what I've seen over the last almost decade. The other thing I'm seeing now is people are trying to learn how to do it, and I see this come up more and more on the, in the chat, um, in the free class is like, yeah, I've been using chat GPT to teach me SEO grading concept. However, there are limitations there because chat, GPT is trained on the information that is available. As is perplexity, Claude, et cetera. They're all trained on the information available on the web. The problem is they don't know what if the information is good and what if the information is bad or outdated or could get you in trouble. So I've been in SEO specifically since about, I think the first time I tried to learn about optimizing a website and doing SEO was in 2008, so almost 20 years now. Long, long time. What we did back in oh eight. Versus what we even did in 2010 or 2012 versus today. There are some similarities. Absolutely. However, there are some differences. Some things that worked back in oh eight that were standard practice would get you in huge trouble today. Today they've been deemed black hat, SEO, which is basically the tricks and the cheating and all of that. Some of the things that we did, you would get in so much trouble. And what we're seeing is that chat, GPT is recommending some of those black hat SEO tactics now, not calling them out as black hat, not saying, Hey, these can get you in trouble. They just are saying, here are some things you can do to make your website get more traffic or make it rank higher, or learn how to do SEO and then it'll give you this list. And if you are brand new and you don't know that, these are things that'll get you in trouble. You can actually cause yourself more harm than good by doing some of the stuff that it's teaching you to do. So be very careful where you learn from. I'm not saying this to say You must learn from me, okay? I'm saying this because I don't want you to get in trouble. I want you to be able to do this and have it work and succeed. The other thing I want you to realize, the best way to learn this, honestly. Is to invest. Invest in yourself. Invest in a program, join a group. Join something like Simple SEO content. Honestly, join simple SEO content. Let me teach you how to do this. I've been doing it for a long time. I can help you cut through the confusion and make sure that it works for you. But what you wanna do is really learn how to do it the right way. Step by step following the right guidance. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed and confused. There are a ton of questions that will come up when you're trying to learn to do something like this. SEO in particular, there are so many questions that come up and I always tell my students it's okay. Like, that's what you're here for. You are here. You paid to be able to ask me questions and get help. That's the whole point of it. So if you are ready. To learn how to do this, you're ready to get started. You want to start to understand like what is the most important thing? How do I do this? How do I choose keywords? What do I do? You know, I keep hearing about keywords. Most people, that's the first place that they start. When I ask the people who've been doing it on their own, like. What is, what is it that you've been doing? Most people say, I've been choosing keywords, and then when I ask them, how is it working? They say, I don't know if it's working. I can't tell. I'm creating content and I'm choosing keywords, but I'm not getting traffic from Google, my friend. If you're creating content and you're choosing keywords and you're writing content and you're not getting traffic from Google. Something's broken because if you were choosing keywords you have a good chance of ranking for, and you're creating content on a regular basis, that content would be getting traffic. See how that works? Like it all comes together full circle. So. What I want you to understand, keywords are very important. That's usually the first place people start, and I'm gonna tell you right now, it's also the place that people make the most mistakes because they don't understand how Google chooses which websites rank for specific keywords. So you really wanna think about which website. Are Google going to think deserve to rank for this keyword, and is my site one of them? Just because you and I want our sites to rank for something, doesn't mean that Google does. So you need to understand that. Do yourself a favor if you're brand new. Join me in next week's webinars. Join me in the pop-up group. Get a chance to come in, ask some questions, learn about it. Find out what's going on and then join me in simple SEO content and let me walk you through this step by step by step. It's gonna be so much easier for you than trying to do it on your own. I don't want you to be overwhelmed. I want you to be able to do this and succeed and be able to start getting traffic to the content that you're creating and start getting leads from that traffic. And leads from chat, GPT, and I want chat GPT to know what your business is, not just your business name, all of that. So join me in the program and let me help you with it, and I will see you back here next week. You can get signed up by going to the freebies tab on the website et marketing.com/freebies. That very first option right there at the top of the page is the free SEO class. Sign up for that. Choose your option of the two available next week, and then I will send you the email with the information on how to join our pop-up group. And I'll see you in there each morning next week for a quick lesson. All right. Bye for now.