Simple SEO for Small Biz Owners: Monthly Tips That Actually Work with Jodie Mitchell

Let’s talk about the three little letters that give a lot of business owners the ick: SEO.

This episode is NOT another jargon-packed, algorithm-fueled stress spiral. Instead, I sat down with Jodie Mitchell from Nowhere to No 1 to break SEO down in a way that actually makes sense and feels doable.

In this episode, we cover:

• What SEO really is (and how to stop making it scarier than it is)
• The three types of SEO—and why “on-page” is your BFF
• Why keywords are less mystical than you think
• Page titles, meta descriptions, and how to make them NOT suck
• Tools you can actually use (yes, they’re free!)
• Jodie’s exact monthly SEO workflow (it’s one hour a week and very doable)
• Why tricking Google with hidden text is very 2001—and please don’t do it
• How blogging and small tweaks help keep your site alive (without burning you out)

If SEO has felt like a confusing cloud of nonsense, this episode will bring the sunshine. You’ve got this. Let’s make Google your new low-key business partner.

About Jodie:

Jodie has spent the last eight years learning SEO and also learning how to explain it to business owners and stakeholders, as a part of her career both at an agency and in-house at one of the UK’s biggest brands.

Now, as a self-employed business owner, she’s putting all of her skills from her old life into action on her own website and helping other business owners demystify the world of SEO and realise that it’s not as scary as it seems. Jodie is a firm believer that anyone can do SEO—because if she can, with no qualifications and a lack of understanding of anything technical, anybody can.

That’s why she’s started teaching SEO to other small business owners and self-employed people. With a bit of time, effort and trial and error, they can get the same results for their business that Jodie has been getting other businesses during her 8-year SEO career.

Links & Resources:

instagram.com/nowheretono1

Super Quick and Easy SEO Tasks Guide: https://nowheretono1.co.uk/lazy-girls-guide-to-seo

Learn more about BizMagic or the BizMagic Podcast.

Transcript

Patti: Welcome back to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast, your place for all things tech in your online business with solids. So General Biz Chat two. My name is Patty Meyer and I am the CEO and founder of Biz Magic, where my team and I support entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed by the backend tech of their business.

We create, implement, and teach the tweaks that help our clients make a bigger impact with less stress. Today we are diving into the three letter word that many business owners with websites kind of dread. SEO, but I am not going to have this be one of those kind of heavy jargon filled. Algorithm obsessed episodes that leave you more confused than when you started listening.

I am chatting today with somebody who knows her SEO stuff, Jody Mitchell, of nowhere to number one, to break it down in a way that actually makes sense and more importantly feels doable for you. Jody's been doing this SEO thing for. Eight plus years, both in big time corporate land, and now in her own business.

She is helping self-employed folks and small business owners take the mystery out of getting found on Google. She's got an no BS approach and a mission to prove that you do not need to be a tech wizard to make SEO work for you. And today she is going to share with us some simple tips to have your monthly SEO moving forward.

But first, here's a little bit more about Jody. Jody has spent the last eight years learning SEO and learning how to. Explain it to business owners and stakeholders as a part of her career, both at an agency and in-house at one of the UK's biggest brands. Now as self-employed business owner, she's putting all of her skills from her old life into action on her own website and helping other business owners demystify the world of SEO and realize that it's not as scary as it seems.

Jodi is a firm believer that anyone can do SEO. Because if she can with no qualification and lack of understanding of anything technical. Anybody can. That's why she started teaching SEO to other small business owners and self-employed people with a bit of time, effort, and trial and error. They can get the same results for their business that Jodi has been getting other businesses during her eight year SEO career.

So whether you're an SEO newbie or if you've got. Some content on your website that is floating out there in the void that could use some dusting up. This episode is full of tips that you can start using right away, like this month to start showing up, uh, where your people are searching. So let's get into it.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Jody. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to chat. Yeah, me too. So, um, why don't you start by just telling me, um, and the audience a little bit more about yourself, uh, in your own words.

Jodie: Oh, always. The, the worst of questions. Uh, so I'm Jody. I am an SEO expert and educator.

I've been working in SEO. Since I tripped and fell into it when I was probably about 20 ish. So that's getting on for a decade now. Um, but I've become, I'm a self-employed wedding photographer primarily, but I. Having my real job, air, air quotes in SEO meant I could really apply that and help build my own business on the side before it let me go full time.

And yeah, I'm fully aware that SEO is something that scares people, freaks people out. So yeah, since then I've been sort of spreading the good word, letting people know it's not actually that scary. And if I can do it, anyone can do

Patti: it. Yeah, I love that. Um, so. Talk to me a little. Well, so, so how did you kind of get into SEO?

So if you're sort of photography and that was sort of where you were headed, what kind of led you to getting really dialed into SEO?

Jodie: It was, it was a total accident. I'm not gonna lie. I used to work in a bar. Um, and then I got offered my first grownup office job, which I obviously leapt at. Um, it meant I could, you know, go to bed at a reasonable time.

Um, from there I sort of, I. Tried a couple of different things. So I started in recruitment and then ended up in online content writing. Mm. And obviously when you're writing copy online, huge, huge factor of that is SEO. Right? So that was something I very much learned on the job. And from there I sort of moved into purely SEO.

So out of like the copywriting into SEO, this is actually my job. It's optimizing everything, not just the words. Right. Right. And

Patti: so for. Anybody who might not yet know what SEO is, you kind of explain what search engine optimization actually is and what what it means really.

Jodie: So yeah, as you say, it's search engine optimization, which for like people at my grandparents, I tend to just say it's Google stuff.

So it is the algorithms that sort of decide where you're gonna be ranking in Google because everyone knows. You don't go to page two, no one goes past page one. So obviously we wanna be higher. And yeah, there's a set of algorithms and practices that sort of control that and, you know, let you compete for those positions.

So that's what an SEO does. And so

Patti: where, where do people start when they want SEO? And like, can you maybe let's start with. Going a little bit further now, right? So now we're not talking to your grandparents, we're talking to business owners that are like, okay, cool, I get it. So what should I be paying attention to on my website if I'm trying to do this myself?

What does that, what does SEO entail in that case specifically?

Jodie: So there are a few different areas. There is on page, which is all the words, the images, everything you can see actually working on the webpage itself. Then you've got off page or technical, which can be a little bit more complicated. So if you really are like dipping a toe, I tend to sort of suggest don't start there.

Mm-hmm. And then you've also got local SEO, which if you know about it or not, you've seen it happening whether you are just like searching up like local Starbucks. Address or like supermarket opening hours, all of that information that you see coming up that is local, SEO. Anytime you've searched near me, that is local, SEO.

Um, so tend to suggest if you are a newbie, you just want to give it a go. Start with on page, it's the most controllable. It's the stuff that you've got the most sort of access to and control over because yeah, it's the copy on the page, it's the images you're putting up there. It's just being very sort of intentional and mindful about the content that you're actually putting online to make sure that you are speaking to the right people, you are appealing to what they need, and basically just being useful and informative and helpful.

Patti: Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of people, when they hear SEO, they tend to really only think about, you know, meta descriptions and things like that, which a lot of people don't fully understand and, and not everybody understands that literally the copy that you're writing and putting on your website. Is a part of SEO and then you have keywords that are speaking specifically to your people that counts as SEO.

And so it, when you start to break it down like that, I think it starts to feel a little bit less overwhelming, right? Because. You're like not trying to, like you said, do the tech and break some like world into some world. You're like, oh, I just have to make sure I'm writing content that people understand and Right.

That they, in their words, that they're going to be typing into Google. Ideally.

Jodie: Yeah, a hundred percent. It is so much simpler than people think it is. Mm-hmm. It's people that don't understand marketing necessarily, that are doing the searches in the first place. They're not gonna be typing in the world's most complicated keywords.

They just wanna know what they wanna know.

Patti: Right. Exactly. And that's one of the things that I've always, I always work on with my clients is when we're working on creating copy for sales pages or just your general website is really going that route of saying Stop and think about. What it is they're saying, right?

We want their words, not your words, in the way that you are going to define your product or your service because they're not necessarily speaking the same language as you. Especially if it's something specialized in like medicine or something along those lines. They're not gonna use the exact same terminology.

So you need to, and I don't mean dumb it down, but in that way of like you're thinking about what is it that they're using when they speak, and that's what you really want to capture, right?

Jodie: A hundred percent. There is a huge discrepancy in like, again, if it's like a specialist thing, like I even find it in the wedding industry, right?

Like to give like a wedding related example, we have this huge divide between where micro weddings were basically invented out of covid. People still use that term for just smaller weddings, but photographers and wedding industry people, they all call them intimate weddings or other nice fluffy language like that, but no one knows what that means.

They think micro weddings are like micro, small, small weddings. That's what I want. And like people won't like cross that divide. They're like, no, it's a covid wedding. Like, no, no, no. Yeah. It's what the people, the people will, that's what the people are searching.

Patti: Yeah. Yeah. For a while I was doing things 'cause I do a lot of tech support, right.

And tech, tech stack work and stuff. But a lot of business owners that aren't in online communities and things like that aren't going. My tech stack is not working properly. They're going, what the hell is happening? This, this isn't working. Like I just, I'm losing customers or I don't understand how to make this flow into that.

Like, and so it's that sort of stopping and saying, I can't really say, I can say it once, but I need to say, what is tech stack? And I need to be talking about it in a term that somebody else understands.

Jodie: Yeah, a hundred percent. It is very literally sort of. Serving up what they need. What they want. Yeah.

Patti: Yeah. So, so what are the other things on page that people should be considering when they're starting? So, uh, outside of keywords and speaking, sort of the language of their audience. What are the other things that, that we need to be thinking about?

Jodie: So you've already touched on one. Um. My I, every time I optimize a page, I do it in exactly the same order because it has been ingrained into me.

But I always start with a page title and a meta description. And those are the two that you see on Google. So you've got your page title, the blue shorter one, and then your meta description, which is the gray, longer one. Underneath, they are your shop window. Nobody has seen your website by this point.

You're in competition with like 10 other websites at this stage. So it is so, so important to make sure you are hitting them right. Your page title is a lot more key word focused, I will say that. So the key words that you put into that 60 character sentence, you don't have much room that will have a direct impact on how well you rank your description sat underneath.

That is traditional, proper marketing. You wanna lure people in. You wanna tell people like you have the answer they're looking for. It's proper. Like, here, come click here. Make it really like markety, sexy. Really get people to want to click and they work together as like the perfect team to actually get people to click through onto your website.

Patti: Yeah, I love that. And I think that's important to say. 'cause sometimes I've, I've seen people who in their meta description will just list keywords and it's like, well, you actually want something that's a coherent. Sentence. Mm. Yeah. Couple of sentences versus just listing your keywords. 'cause like you said, this is the point where you're being a little more salesy and you're kind of saying, here come, I have everything it is that you need, and here's how, in a very short period of time, I'm telling you what that looks like.

Jodie: Yeah. That is the real challenge is getting that into like 150 characters,

Patti: right? Yeah. But it can,

Jodie: it can be done. And I've. Seen so many really good ones that have been like, yeah, no, I'm, I'm clicking on that.

Patti: That's real good. Yeah. Yeah. And I think people don't realize too that it is small. That yeah. That the title is 60 characters and that there, there is that, so that's important.

And so what happens if somebody goes over these limits, right? Ooh. Does you get

Jodie: the, the dreaded ellipsis at the end? No one wants the dot, dot dot because your click through rate for some reason will just like. Dive off a cliff.

Patti: Mm-hmm.

Jodie: People hate seeing a.dot. And I dunno

Patti: why. Probably because we have short attention spans and we're like, I don't, I'm moving on.

Jodie: I guess I'll never know what the end of that sentence is. I'm moving on with my life. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Patti: That's so funny.

Jodie: So yeah, you gotta stick within it. Otherwise the people, they'll leave, they'll move on.

Patti: Yeah. Do you, what kind of advice do you have? So what if somebody. Is not a writer and they don't quite know how their people speak.

Is there some sort of, uh, method that you use to start building some of the SEO uh, copy and that sort of thing?

Jodie: So my stage one is always do some keyword research. Um, and there are tools that I know which I can send over to you. Um. My favorite one is the Google Keyword Planner. It comes directly from the source.

I'll always trust Google Tools about SEO. Yeah. Over any third party. 'cause you know it, it's them. Yeah. And they don't do the stuff. Um, so I always start there and just see, people tend to think a lot more science to keyword research than there necessarily is. It's very much sort of try one thing, see what it gives you back, and just have a play around.

Put some keywords in, see if. Off search, see what else it comes up with. Um, and that, that's where you're gonna know where you're gonna be plug, like what keywords to be plugging into those page titles, your meta description into your copy, into your image, alt text, into everything that makes up the rest of your content.

So yeah, see what the people are actually searching. 'cause a lot of the time, as you say, it'll be simpler than you think. And. With SEO, you're in a really interesting position where they are already aware of their issue. They're already sort of moving down that like customer journey. They're already searching for what you're offering, so there's less having to try and inform them of their issue to warm them up because they're already there.

You just need to sort of. Capture them really.

Patti: Right. Let them know that you are, you are the right, you are the one. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I love that. So, so one of the things that you, uh, talk about is sort of some monthly SEO tips that you share. So. What should people be doing monthly to maintain? Right.

Because sometimes we also think, okay, once we do SEO, one time when we first set up our website, we're to go. Right? But that's not necessarily true. So what are the best practices when it comes to keeping SEO functioning and keeping you moving up kind of the ladder, so to speak? So.

Jodie: Again, this has been ingrained into me for nearly a decade at this point.

Um, is to check your analytics at least once a month. This is something I always do at the start of the month, so. Back in my day, it would take a few days for Google, like search console, which is my favorite analytics tool to catch up these days, it's done in like a few hours, so there is no excuse.

Patti: Mm-hmm.

So

Jodie: at the start of every month, just have a poke through in your Google search console. I tend to find it a lot easier to find organic data. Than analytics. That is just 'cause personally I find it quite overwhelming. There are so much data in there. Yeah. But with search console, it's purely SEO stuff, so you're sort of limited to what can overwhelm you.

Right. Um, but what you wanna be looking for is comparing the whole of last month to the month before and then maybe the year before, just to check to see if there's any like seasonal issues or wobbles going on.

Patti: Mm-hmm.

Jodie: Um. Just see what pages have seen a little dip or have gone up because it's always nice to see what is working rather than just like what isn't right.

Um, and see what pages are maybe dropping down slightly. And then you can also then dig down to see what keywords are causing that so you can get really nicely specific. And then once you've got those keywords. That are struggling for that page, you know exactly what to be optimizing your page for. So you just go in and say, okay, those two keywords there, they've dropped down in a couple of positions last month.

So I'll just go and reoptimize my page, stick 'em in my page title, my meta description into the copy, and just sort of work it back in and it, doing it monthly makes it so much less overwhelming. And it also means you're not gonna be suddenly like surprised when your homepage drops off of like the first five pages.

'cause you haven't been checking. Right?

Patti: Right. You're

Jodie: not gonna get any nasty surprises because. Again, even with SEO, nothing happens particularly quickly, as we all know. Mm-hmm. There's never any emergencies, so people I think, forget to actually keep an eye on it, and then suddenly they're like, oh, wait, I've not had any organic traffic for two years because I haven't bothered checking.

Patti: Yeah. Yeah, and that actually is a great point, which leads me kind of into one of the other questions I was thinking about, which is a lot of people also, I think it's important to remember that SEO is a long game, right? You're not going mm-hmm. To put keywords into your website, and then tomorrow you're gonna be number one.

Um, that's just that only, only, right? It's just not how it works. So when you're, when you are doing that kind of analysis and you're keeping up with your SEO. Is there a period of time in which you should just sort of like, all right, just chill for a minute. Let it do its thing before you go, no, it's all wrong, and then redo it all.

Jodie: So if you're making like big changes, so for example, you've created a whole new like services page, so it's like a big beefy, big little work page. Tend to say three to six months for these. Big brand new pages, or you've completely wiped a page and started from the ground up, give it a good few months because it might suddenly like drop down where Google's been like, oh my God, what's happened?

What's going on here? Mm-hmm. Just give it a few months to settle out. If you are making just these little tweaks, I would say one to two months, because hopefully in an ideal world, this page is already sort of ranking is fairly steady, and from then that's when you're gonna really see. Like what happens when you tweak things rather than, as I say, changing everything all at once and then being like, who knows what's gonna happen out of that?

Patti: Yeah. So yeah,

Jodie: big changes. Three to six months. Little tweaks for an existing page, one to two.

Patti: And so when you're doing your monthly SEO, are you looking at just sort of changing some of the keywords throughout the copy on page? Looking at the metas description, what kind of changes are you making? Um, on what level?

On a monthly basis.

Jodie: So on a monthly basis, if it's one of those pages that I've seen has had a bit of a wobble. Write down those keywords that are causing the issues. And then I'll go through and check in my page title, my meta description again, throughout the copy, just dotted in in a like a nice, natural way.

So as a general rule of thumb, if you read out loud and you sound like a weird robot, you've gone too far. Just read out loud as my biggest tip for like optimized copy. Just see how it sounds when spoken by a person. And then we've also got things like your H tag. So that is your H ones, your H twos, threes, if you've got 'em on the page, um, your image al text.

There's lots of different little opportunities that all sort of like build up. So it is not gonna necessarily be, you change one thing, you're gonna have this massive overhaul. It's those little bits that all sort of work together.

Patti: Yeah. Yeah. And for anybody who doesn't know what H one, H two, so that's talking about like, when you're, uh, the headings.

Um, and each page should have usually one. I like to do one h, one heading one, and then it kind of is almost like a folder, you know? Then you do H two is a sub, and then subsection is H three. And so you wanna look at it. It's the headings that you're using. On your copy, on your actual page.

Jodie: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. That's why I, subcultures is literally how I explain it to, or umbrellas I like to go with as well. Right? Yeah. So not numerical necessarily. They all sit within each other mm-hmm. In nice little bubbles. Yeah. Um, but yes, with h ones, with SEO always limited to one H one, otherwise Google's basically be like.

Well, what's this page about, right? Yeah, yeah.

Patti: One per page.

Jodie: Yeah. Essentially a newspaper headline and if you've got two, then girls can be like, well, I, I dunno if you don't know. I dunno. Why will I know?

Patti: Yeah. Yeah. So I've heard a lot about, I. Over time, and this is something that I do regularly with the podcast, with blog posts.

So having new content on your website, um, is that still a thing that's really good for your SEOI, I always understood it as if you have blog posts once a month or regularly, it's telling Google that, hey, this website is still active, things are happening in it. Is that still the case in a, in a good practice?

Jodie: Yeah, absolutely. As you say, like. Blogging is a good way to tell Google, because otherwise, like normals still have to update their, like, main pages like every couple of months because they don't, they don't really change that much. Yeah. Um, so yeah, blogging is a fantastic way to keep this sort of updated regularly, but it doesn't necessarily wanna say regularly.

It doesn't mean like you need one a week, you need one a month. Right. It's just whatever is regular for you that you can keep on top of, it's. A hundred percent consistency over quantity. It's whatever is doable for you, whether that is one a quarter, but make sure you are absolutely nailing that one a quarter blog post rather than.

Like a hundred less than ideal. Right. You know? Yeah. Potentially low quality blog posts. Yeah. Um, 'cause then you're just sending Google the wrong signals and we don't want that.

Patti: Right. Yeah. We want the right signals, the right people. So what kind of tools do you use to help you with SEO? Do you use any tools or is it just your, your lovely brain?

Jodie: So part of, part of it is my lovely brain. Uh, it's all in there these days. But yeah, there are loads of tools that I do still use. So I also only use free tools mainly as a testament it, but like anyone can do this.

Patti: Yeah,

Jodie: like. Sure. There, there are, there's like paid versions that do more and bigger and you know, more availability.

But for business, like small businesses, it's fine. So all the Google tools I use all of the Google tools. So as I've mentioned, we've got Keyword planner, um, we've got search consult, we've got analytics just for all that information because we love information.

Patti: Mm-hmm.

Jodie: There's also Google Page speed in test insights, which is a really good, um, page speed test because really, really important these days 'cause people and their shockingly short attention spans mm-hmm.

You've got three seconds, otherwise they're gone. If your page is not loaded within that time, it's game over. Um, I've also got a few others like, ah, refs, backlink checker I always love. Um, they've also got a really nice. Plugin, um, for like Google Chrome extension, that just shows you everything. So it will show you all of your, like PayPal met description headings, all of that in one place, just so you can have a quick overview, which I think is fantastic.

Um, yeah, I've got many, but again, they're all free. I

Patti: love that. I love that. What, so is there anything that people do right now that they're putting work into on their website that is not helping their SEO? Like they, they, that they think, like, do you hear maybe either myths about SEO or anything that you people come to and they're like, oh, I'm doing all these things, and you're like, what?

That doesn't actually do anything? Do you? Have you had any of that? Experience.

Jodie: I've had a few, um, but it was one of those things I didn't think people still did it, so I. I spoke at a conference and I jokingly said something like, ha, and just make sure you're not putting like a load of white text on a white background like they did in like 2001.

Right. Because I thought no one still did that. Right? Yeah. And I saw this poor girl like shuffle awkwardly down in her seat. I was, I was like, I found her afterwards. I was like, please, please tell me no. She was like, I'm so sorry. She was like, please don't come on my website and just like start highlighting the background because like it's all just wedding photographer all over the place, so please do not do that.

Yeah, do not hide text, please.

Patti: Yeah. Then in

Jodie: 2001.

Patti: Yeah, so that's a great point, right? That's not something I've, yeah, I hadn't even think about that. That is a thing. That was a thing at some point. Hmm. Yeah,

Jodie: yeah,

Patti: yeah. So you wanna make sure all your copy is visible and you're like, there's no, you're not.

Trying to trick something. You're actually being skillful and intentional and in your SEO. Yeah. Whereas sort of a trickery, right, is like, well if I just white, then I could just put a bunch of keywords and it'll work. But that's not actually how that works.

Jodie: Google is way too intelligent for that these days.

It does not appreciate trickery it. It had an update probably about 10 years ago now, to be fair. That was, we want. Informative, helpful, useful content, right? That's actually serving people and not machines, which before that everyone was just like, yeah, for the, for the Google Bots. We love the Google Bots, but no, it's all about the actual customer these days, which is, yeah.

Lovely. Fancy that. I know. Who'd have thought

Patti: so, so. Looking at sort of these, you know, looking at analytics in the search console once a month, making some tweaks. How much time would you recommend people kind of schedule? Because I, I think that for people who, um, especially small business owners, entrepreneurs who are overwhelmed, there's so much already happening, especially if you're doing it all on your own.

Mm. And sometimes it's, it's easiest to schedule time right into your calendar that says, this is my CEO time, or this is my. Um, admin time, right? So similarly, I would say schedule in time to do your SEO once a month. And so if somebody is doing that, what, how much time should they schedule

Jodie: in? So I personally do this, I have one hour every Tuesday morning, and that is my SEO time because yeah.

Where I teach a lot of SEO, I don't necessarily get that much time to do my own anymore. Right. So I had to make an active effort to put that in. So I do one hour a week and I get that. That is probably because I am naturally, it's a bit faster after doing it every day for nearly 10 years. Right. But yes, just start there and if you need a little bit more time, then you can take a little bit more time.

But. The first week of the month, my one hour is checking my analytics, noting down those keywords, making those tweaks. That is week one of the month. That one hour on that Tuesday goes to my analytics, and then the other three, maybe four weeks hours of. Month they go to writing a new blog post. Because despite being a content writer, I'm still not the most efficient writer of all.

So it does still take me a little bit of time. So every, every week I'm like, okay. So one hour goes towards writing out the structure and planning out the blog post. I always start by marking out my H ones and my H twos just so I can follow a structure. Yeah. Then the next week is the copy, and then the week after is the images, and it still makes sure that I get out one blog post a month, but I'm just doing it in a very sort of broken down, but intentional way.

So it makes it seem a whole lot less overwhelming than sitting, staring at a blank WordPress page. Yes.

Patti: Yeah, absolutely. I always start with outlines too when I do blog writing because it, it feels less overwhelming for me, otherwise I don't do it. I will not do it if I'm just like, yeah, absolutely. Read a blog post.

And I'm like, Ugh. Just if

Jodie: you just write a blog post. Yeah, no, no,

Patti: no. Not that easy. It's not, it doesn't happen. Um, so I love that and I love that that clarification. 'cause at first when you said four hours, I could just hear people be like, four hours. But I love that you're like, but. The majority of it is creating new content, right?

Yeah. So if you are doing blogs every other month or you're doing shorter blogs, that's okay too, right? It might not take as long, but best practice is having new content going out somewhat regularly, so, so that's great.

Jodie: Yeah, absolutely. And you don't need to do it all in one sitting 'cause I don't, so yeah, break it down one hour a week is all I take.

Yeah. And like it still works. Yeah. And it's doable. An hour a week is doable. Yeah. You just actually have to put it in your calendar. Otherwise that's not happening then.

Patti: And not push it down and be like, well this is, because I used to do that too, when I would have like my CEO time as I'd be like, well it's just my CEO time.

No, it's my CEO Time. Yeah, time. You gotta keep those space. I have to do that. Yeah, you have to hold that. And if you do that, you're improving long term. So much more pleasure creating new habits and, and all of that, which is always a great thing.

Jodie: Yeah. And as I say, like you'll, you will get faster at it, uh, the more you do it.

Yeah. Like especially with the analytics checking like that used to take me so long 'cause I don't, I dunno what I'm looking at. I dunno why I am looking for it. But yeah, the more you do it, you get so much faster, it becomes a habit.

Patti: Yeah. Do you have any, uh, recommendations for people on how to learn how to read some of their analytics when they get in there and they're overwhelmed?

Or do you have any, you know, YouTube creators or do you have anything that people can go to go, okay, now I'm gonna go on and I'm gonna look in the search console. I'm gonna look in this, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so how do I start? Do you have any advice for, for people doing that?

Jodie: I would be wary with looking up on YouTube, um, just because it can be so again, even that's overwhelming.

There's so much out there and so everybody does it in a different way. Yeah, that's the thing. There are no two same ways of checking your analytics. So for me it's just a habit of knowing sort of roughly what I wanna find and then just finding my way there. But I do have. An analytics masterclass. Um, it goes through Google Analytics and Google Search Console, but with Google Analytics, it's specifically what you can ignore and what is actually useful.

Oh, I love that. Yeah, because there's so much in there that you just don't need and it scares people. Um, and that again, does take you through my monthly step by step, how I do it and how I check. But I also did this. In an Instagram reel a little while ago as well, when I found that my own homepage had fallen off of page one for certain keywords.

So it happens to the best of us. You just gotta go in and check and. Fix it basically. Yeah. So yeah, I can send you all of the links to those.

Patti: I love it. Are there any other tips that you have that we haven't touched on yet?

Jodie: I don't have any other specific tips other than please just give it a go. Yeah.

Chances are you will never make it worse. So just, just do it like, yeah.

Patti: I love that. You can't, and that's a good point, right? Unless you're deleting all of your content,

Jodie: you can't make it work. Yeah. Unless, unless you just delete your entire website by accident. Right. It's gonna be really hard to make it work.

Right. So just have a play around, don't be scared of your website. Yeah. This is a huge thing that I find people are scared to make changes on their own website and that that bothers me. I don't like that. Yeah. Is you have ultimate control over your website and it's like the only thing outside of like your email list that you do have.

Yeah.

Patti: Yeah. So since uh, I'm really into tech here, is there any tool that you use, whether it's SEO or just tech in your business that's your favorite to use?

Jodie: Ooh, I am for an SEO Highly untechnical. I am not the most technical of people, so it's anything that makes things really like simple and easy for me to use, essentially.

So I am a mailer, light girly. Um, I find it so easy to use, especially like half of my website is like embedded mailer light. Mm.

Patti: Okay.

Jodie: Stuff. So I'll just embed it straight on my website. Find that so much easier because I. Yeah, I need it to be very easy.

Patti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good.

Jodie: But I also use, I'm a show it girl, so mm-hmm.

My website platform is built on, show it, because it is just so ultra customizable and I absolutely love that. Beautiful.

Patti: Yeah. You can use so much with. With design on.

Jodie: Yeah, and it can be, again, a little bit overwhelming at first, but if like you can handle Canva, you can handle show, it is how I tend to sell it to people.

Yeah, totally. It's just drag and drop shapes and colors. Yeah.

Patti: The most annoying bit for me with show it is the mobile responsiveness. That you kind of have to do things second time and allow. Forget

Jodie: so many times. Yeah. Like this is stunning, this desktop web. I know, I know. And then you're like, oh, oh God, what have I done?

Patti: Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but outside of that, like the, the. The sites that you can create in show it are just gorgeous. Really? Yeah. I love that.

Jodie: Yeah. Especially like in the photography community, they just so many beautiful things.

Patti: Mm-hmm.

Jodie: Which I think is

Patti: kind of how it started in a lot of ways, right?

Yeah. I think it was built

Jodie: for photographers in show.

Patti: Yeah. I love it. So if somebody wants to work with you and find you, how do they do that?

Jodie: So you can probably find me on Google ideally, but you can also find me on Instagram at no number one. Um, and yeah, I'll always, always be happy to have a chat in the dms about what I can help you with or what, just what you need or what you're struggling with.

Just like come and let me know, like what you are confused about. I might just be able to just give you a point in the right direction.

Patti: Yeah. I love it. Thank you so much for chatting with me about all this.

Jodie: My absolute pleasure. Lovely to chat.

Patti: Thank you for listening to another episode of the Biz Magic Podcast.

Like most small businesses and podcasts, we rely heavily on word of mouth. So if you like what you heard today or in any episode, please share with your friends and colleagues. And rate, subscribe and comment on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, cheers to your magical biz success.