Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

SEO and Social: Honing the Skills Needed for a Modern Marketer [Cyrus Shepard Interview]

May 20, 2020 Neal Schaffer Episode 160
SEO and Social: Honing the Skills Needed for a Modern Marketer [Cyrus Shepard Interview]
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
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Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
SEO and Social: Honing the Skills Needed for a Modern Marketer [Cyrus Shepard Interview]
May 20, 2020 Episode 160
Neal Schaffer

What is the connection, and even the similarities, that marketers who want to improve at both SEO as well as social media need to have? Join me in this interview with one of the world's leading experts, Cyrus Shepard, SEO Advisor for MOZ, as we discuss:

  • Why SEOs and Social Marketers both need to have a wide breadth of skills for writing across social pages, metadata and more
  • The way in which aligning SEO and Social skills can lead to more backlinks, improved engagement signals, and more owned SERP real estate for branded queries
  • How enhanced social media efforts can lead to higher search demand

Digital influence isn't just about influence on social networks. It includes influence you hold in the search engines! That's why this conversation was so exciting and stimulating for me, so I'm sure it will be worth your time.

In case you are new to the podcast, my new book The Age of Influence can be bought at any major bookseller worldwide. Here's a link to the Amazon USA page for it: https://nealschaffer.com/ageofinfluence

Key Highlights

[01:41] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Cyprus Shepard

[06:29] Skills We Should Focus On In This Age of Coronavirus

[08:26]  Advice On Social Signals

[11:07] Recommendation On Repurposing Content

[12:28] How to Find and to Write With Keywords

[15:33] Aligning SEO To Enhance Social Media Efforts and Higher Search Demand

[20:31] External Linking Out Strategy

[23:31] How To Balance Putting External Links And Keeping Readers On The Page Longer

[25:30] Moz Beginners Guide To SEO

[27:51] Connect With Cyprus

[28:07] Final Advice

Notable Quotes

  • My advice to people is that you find the keywords that people are searching for. My recommendation is that you include those in your title tag for your content. But when you're when you're writing your social media posts, the headlines, there can be your call to actions can be something different, something exciting, something to get people to share the content, as long as it's in the title of your actual page.
  • I encourage people to really look at their internal linking strategy first, and heavily interlink with varying anchor text, and advanced IP, when you're when you do your keyword research that I mentioned earlier, look at all the keyword variations that people are using to search and vary your anchor text a lot, because if you're a small medium site, if you just link with the same anchor text over and over again to yourself, Google is going to see that as over optimization, and you can kill your ranking.
  • The links that are higher in your page, count more than links that are lower on your page. So when you do, I would highly prioritize the links higher in your content to yourself, because you're going to pass more link equity.
  • You can try try out the tools and laws but mostly show up post those things. Look and see see how you're showing up in Google search results when you search for your brand. And always think about how can I through social media?

Learn More:

Show Notes Transcript

What is the connection, and even the similarities, that marketers who want to improve at both SEO as well as social media need to have? Join me in this interview with one of the world's leading experts, Cyrus Shepard, SEO Advisor for MOZ, as we discuss:

  • Why SEOs and Social Marketers both need to have a wide breadth of skills for writing across social pages, metadata and more
  • The way in which aligning SEO and Social skills can lead to more backlinks, improved engagement signals, and more owned SERP real estate for branded queries
  • How enhanced social media efforts can lead to higher search demand

Digital influence isn't just about influence on social networks. It includes influence you hold in the search engines! That's why this conversation was so exciting and stimulating for me, so I'm sure it will be worth your time.

In case you are new to the podcast, my new book The Age of Influence can be bought at any major bookseller worldwide. Here's a link to the Amazon USA page for it: https://nealschaffer.com/ageofinfluence

Key Highlights

[01:41] Introduction of Podcast Guest, Cyprus Shepard

[06:29] Skills We Should Focus On In This Age of Coronavirus

[08:26]  Advice On Social Signals

[11:07] Recommendation On Repurposing Content

[12:28] How to Find and to Write With Keywords

[15:33] Aligning SEO To Enhance Social Media Efforts and Higher Search Demand

[20:31] External Linking Out Strategy

[23:31] How To Balance Putting External Links And Keeping Readers On The Page Longer

[25:30] Moz Beginners Guide To SEO

[27:51] Connect With Cyprus

[28:07] Final Advice

Notable Quotes

  • My advice to people is that you find the keywords that people are searching for. My recommendation is that you include those in your title tag for your content. But when you're when you're writing your social media posts, the headlines, there can be your call to actions can be something different, something exciting, something to get people to share the content, as long as it's in the title of your actual page.
  • I encourage people to really look at their internal linking strategy first, and heavily interlink with varying anchor text, and advanced IP, when you're when you do your keyword research that I mentioned earlier, look at all the keyword variations that people are using to search and vary your anchor text a lot, because if you're a small medium site, if you just link with the same anchor text over and over again to yourself, Google is going to see that as over optimization, and you can kill your ranking.
  • The links that are higher in your page, count more than links that are lower on your page. So when you do, I would highly prioritize the links higher in your content to yourself, because you're going to pass more link equity.
  • You can try try out the tools and laws but mostly show up post those things. Look and see see how you're showing up in Google search results when you search for your brand. And always think about how can I through social media?

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

This is the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help sales and marketing professionals, entrepreneurs and small business owners, build, leverage and monetize their influence in digital and social media. Hey, everybody, this is Neal Schaffer. Welcome to episode number 160. Of the maximize your social influence podcast. I know a lot of you are regular listeners. But for all those new listeners, welcome aboard. This podcast is really focused on marketing as you can imagine, but really looking at digital and social media marketing through the lens of influence, and the many ways in which we can help you as a marketer for your own company or agency. Or if you're an entrepreneur, or if you're a small business owner, provide you tactical advice, to help you grow your business or meet whatever business objective you might have. So this episode is being sponsored by the age of influence my book has now been, it's almost going to be well, it will be the two month anniversary by the time you hear this. So excited. It launched at a weird time. But I believe and I just did a webinar today, as I record this with the Social Media Club, of how I believe that the trends that are making influencer marketing, so powerful, are only going to continue regardless of COVID-19. And COVID-19 really does give you a chance to develop the relationships with people in your community, which include influencers that you should be pursuing today. So make sure you check out the book, it's available on Amazon, or wherever you buy books, the age of influence by Neal Schaffer itself. Let's get into today's podcast episode, which is a interview with Cyrus Shepard, who is a thought leader in SEO, and also an SEO advisor at Moz. One of the leading tools that marketers use for search engine optimization, we talk about SEO and social honing the skills needed for a modern marketer. You know, SEO is one of those industries that have been around for a while. And the way I look at it in terms of Digital Influence Are you need to meet people where they're at, they're either on search, on email, or on social, a lot of influencer marketing just focuses on that social, I think we need to be equally focused on email and on search. And that's why if you want to yield more digital influence with Google, you need to be practicing search engine optimization. And that's why Cyrus's interview is so compelling and powerful, because you need search engine optimization, but you also need content, for social and for your email as well. So a few of the things we're going to talk about how both SEO ORs and social marketers both need to have a wide breadth of skills for writing. And this is similar to episode number 157, when you heard me talk in another interview about the importance of writing, but writing across social pages across metadata when it comes to SEO and more how aligning your SEO and your social skills can lead to more backlinks, ie more Digital Influence, improved engagement signals, and more owned search engine result page real estate for branded queries. We're also going to look at how enhanced social media efforts can lead to higher search demand. And well, he's going to answer some very, very specific questions I have about my own Digital Influence about my own websites that I think is going to be really, really relevant for you. So without further ado, here's my interview with Sarah Shepard. Alright, everybody, welcome to another episode of the maximize your social influence podcast today, I have a very special guest that I will be interviewing. We don't talk a lot about SEO on this podcast. But as you know, if you've read the age of influencer, you understand how I define digital influence that SEO piece of yielding Digital Influence on the web, with Google and with other search engines is really a critical piece that is often missing in a lot of companies, marketing strategies, or they don't place enough emphasis on SEO. So today, we are going to be talking with Cyrus Shepard. If you are in the world of SEO, you probably already know who he is. But if you're not in that world, he's really one of the premier experts. He's been doing this for, I want to say decades and I'll have Cyrus correct me. He is SEO strategist at Moz the handful of leading SEO tools and I'm sure he'd say it's the best SEO tool but without further ado, I'm gonna let Cyrus introduce himself and we'll get into the interview Cyrus welcome.

Cyprus Shepard:

Hey, Neil, thanks for having me on the show. It's an honor to be here. And of course you are your legend in social media. So I'm happy to step into your living room virtually and join you at this time. I've been doing SEO for one decade just over 10 years. It's been a heck of a ride I, I love SEO, I use my one of my first jobs was sales. And I was telemarketing. I was like 18 years old. And I would call people up and try to sell them coupon books that they didn't want or need. And I felt horrible about it. So when I found SEO, I was trying to market websites, and I fell in love with it instantly, because instead of pushing people towards something, you get to wait until they are searching for it. People are literally asking you for something that you might have. And so it was pull marketing instead of pushing. And I I've never done anything this long in my life. But I it's it's a career, and I love it. So and I'm happy to teach other people about it. Yeah, fun

Neal Schaffer:

fact, when I was in high school, I did some part time work in a mobile home, calling numbers in the phone book asking people if they have time for a remodel of their home. So

Cyprus Shepard:

those are the worst. Unless it credits anybody who's actually doing it. It's a hard job. And you deserve respect.

Neal Schaffer:

Absolutely absolute respect. So we talk about, you know, SEO, and social and obviously, the listeners being you know, marketers, entrepreneurs and small business owners. Let's first talk about the skills. And I think what we're going to talk about today is as relevant for SEO, as it is for social media. So when we talk about skills, what are the skills that you think, and in this age of Coronavirus? We have a lot of time where we should be working on our skill without a doubt. Where do you think my listeners should be focusing on in these areas in terms of skill development,

Cyprus Shepard:

it's interesting social media and SEO are very different. But they intersect in a few key areas in SEO. And I don't know how familiar your audiences with this concepts. But when when Google ranks something in search, one of the major signals that they use is popularity, making your content more popular is a skill that every SEO has to master. Google primarily looks at links when one website links to another. And the best way to get those links is just to get as many eyeballs on on your content as possible. And for SEOs, social media is a channel to get those eyeballs free distribution of your content. And for many marketers, it's the number one channel, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, Twitter is my network that I use religiously. So content distribution and how it leads to Link building is one of those Marriage Marriage of skills that I first emphasize, people take a hard look at, it's not it's not just the social traffic that you get. But if you can get your content in front of 1000 people and one of them gets gives you a link on their website. That's huge. And if you can do that through social media you want. So Cyrus

Neal Schaffer:

let me being I am not an SEO expert by any means. But I do love to learn about it. Right. So based on that, and I've seen whenever there's a new Instagram algorithm, people freak out, and you can do it dealing with this on Google for like 10 years, right? We had Google Plus. Yep. I haven't said that word in a long time. Yeah. And there was a lot of talk about, quote unquote, social signals. Yes. Right. Yes. What is your thought today? So obviously, social media gives your content exposure. And that includes exposure to content creators, and a lot of them are on Twitter. I agree with you. So it is it is it is a fantastic place to expose your content. But do you also think there's something else in the algorithm that looks at that social signals? Are you think that it's really just about content distribution, and hoping that you generate links from that exposure? What what is your professional advice?

Cyprus Shepard:

No, that's the million dollar question. And SEO geeks will debate this forever. Google using social signals to rank content. And Google Google's official line is we do not do it directly. But we can tell when we study and I we've run a number of correlation studies over the years looking at the relationship between social signals and ranking. And I can tell you that social signals are one of the highest correlated signals that we see with high ranking content. So we don't know if it's we don't know if it's a direct factor. But what I can tell you is there is a relationship. If your content is getting has a high number of social shares, we can tell you mathematically, it's likely to be ranking well, too. And so we don't know. But many, many SEOs, many people I respect leave that Google uses social signals as kind of a proof that if even if you have the backlinks and all the other signals, having that social presence is a good indication that the content deserves to rank and should be popular. So I think it's a good idea. And a lot of SEOs I know would not even think about launching a campaign without those social signals to back it up. So I will leave it there. The official answer is, it's probably a damn good idea. translate

Neal Schaffer:

that in a layman speak social signals is probably one of several million factors that Google looks at.

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah. Well, several million but it also it might be 100 Of those million factor. Yeah, it may not. It may not be a hard ranking factor, but it sure is a darn big hint. A very big hint. So

Neal Schaffer:

great. Well, there you go, everybody, that's some great advice there. Based on that, I want to take it one step further, where I'm sure you get asked this a lot. And I get asked this a lot. So I want to with an expert on the line, this notion of distributing your content in socials, one thing, yeah, notion of syndicating your content or republishing that content? And I'm talking specifically here about LinkedIn and medium which are the two sites for that. I've heard different things. A last podcast to her with Andy Crestodina. Was that syndication is something that's mainstream that everybody does it, it's not going to hurt you on Google. But that alone, those links in that syndicated content are not going to help you? What is would you similar to social signals? Would you and Andy may correct me if he was here? So I don't want to speak on his behalf. That was my memory of the podcast. But what would be your recommendation on? You know, would you recommend that every piece of content we publish on our blog or website we should be republishing on LinkedIn and medium? Or what's your visor?

Cyprus Shepard:

I'm a big fan of repurposing content in as many different distribution channels as you can. I am not a fan of publishing content exactly. I like to, you know, change the intros use pull out graphics and turn that into its own separate piece. And those those separate pieces, those chunks are really valuable for in places like LinkedIn and medium you don't have to, and then put the full content on your blog on your website. And, you know, create Instagram Stories, all that stuff. So I do I do like, syndication, I don't like doing it. Copy and Paste style.

Neal Schaffer:

Okay, so becomes then we talked about the art of repurposing, and that's a whole other in science. So okay, that's a great answer. Thank you very, very much. We want to post more on social or do more blogging, and these are the things we need to do. But it involves sort of writing. And if you're not that experienced in SEO, you may not understand the aspects and I have to teach even bloggers that contribute to my own site that you know, you know, what is the targeted keyword? Right? Are people even searching for that? Right? And it probably comes down into you know, you would call it meta title? Headlines, sprinkling keywords. This is a subject we could talk for an hour about, I'm sure, but any just really, really brief advice for to keep people honed in when they do post on social media, or write a blog post on those writing skills they should have and be thinking about at all times.

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah, no, this is a really good question. Because the way people search in Google is obviously different than what they share on social. And so it's, it's two different skill sets. And because when people are searching for something, they use very specific words. And it's not necessarily what excites them when they are sharing something. So you really have to write in two different ways. My advice to people is that you find the keywords that people are searching for i i am, obviously by us at Moz has one of the best keyword research tools out there. It's called Keyword Explorer, you can have a free account and get up to 10 searches a month, it's a it's a pretty good deal without paying a penny to everybody. Yeah. And it will show you the keywords that people are searching for and the volume and how competitive they are. We have some various keyword research guides that Moz you can check out. My recommendation is that you include those in your title tag for your content. But when you're when you're writing your social media posts, the headlines, there can be your call to actions can be something different, something exciting, something to get people to share the content, as long as it's in the title of your actual page, it I do not recommend sharing things on social that have the exact same title as your content. Because you can share more, you know, Twitter is 240 character, you can have longer titles, more exciting titles. I think it's a big mistake, when you see corporate accounts, just post their content with no context whatsoever. That's a huge mistake. You these platforms give you room to sell. Use that room and use it creatively.

Neal Schaffer:

Great. That's awesome advice. And I'm assuming when we talk about the meta description, yep. You now you're trying to sell to those people that are that are you know, searching on Google trying to get click on that result. So it's the same thing, right? Be a little bit more creative there. Use the keyword obviously. But be cognizant that you're trying to get people to click

Cyprus Shepard:

right exactly. That's that's your that's your marketing message. The Meta description is your emotional marketing message. This is what if you click our results, this is what we're going to deliver to you. And it's it's exciting.

Neal Schaffer:

I think that's a great reminder for everyone listening that you need to become emotional through text. Yeah, that's an art right? And it's not something that marketers are used to. But the more emotional you become, hopefully the higher clicks or conversions or what have you, you're going to see different results if you haven't been doing that. So that's right there.

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah, yeah. The other the other point I want to talk about with social media that is kind of important. It's all about just showing up sometimes if if you look if you Google any company in The world, you'll often see, you know, hopefully their website comes up first in Google, but five times out of 10, their social media profiles will come up after their website, whether it's Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter, and having robust profiles lets you own your own Google search result, instead of, you know, letting your competitors own it, or Yelp or something like that. So the more you can build out those robust platforms, just by showing up and getting followers and doing the work, you can own more that serve real estate. And you know, it's good for branding. It's good for everything.

Neal Schaffer:

That's great advice there. So we talked about how sort of aligning SEO and social can lead to more backlinks can improve those engagement signals that go out to the search engines. And you said that branded channels are going to give you more search real estate for branded queries. Yes. How can enhance social media efforts above and beyond that? How can that lead to higher search demand? So, you know, very common, and I work with clients? Yesterday, the client I was working with is has basically a Slack chat bot, right? Okay. You know, traditional, hey, let's start with Google ads. It's like, well, let's look at inbound marketing and blogging. And so they start to get some shock from blogging, it's like, well, how do we now get blogging from social, it's like we sort of have to be, you can't expect to get traffic from social if you're not on social, so you may get it right. But by you sharing it, you're gonna, you know, incite that that word of mouth there. So how does that lead over time to higher search demand from what you've seen?

Cyprus Shepard:

This is really interesting. And this is kind of an advanced tactic. In SEO, I talked about correlation studies earlier that we see a high correlation between social signals and rankings, one of the highest correlated signal that we see across the board is branded search terms. And let me let me explain that really quick. So the company I work with is Moz, the number of people searching for Moz, our brand name seems, is very highly correlated with our rankings overall. And we believe Google uses a lot of these signals. So if you can increase your brand awareness through social if, and if you run a a video conferencing company, if you get people, if you can get people to search for something, they see something, they see something on LinkedIn, and then they go to Google, and they search for it. That is huge. That is a huge signal to Google that you deserve to rank for a number of things, finding ways to encourage people to search. And some people do even do it directly. They say in their in their posting, go search for blank, I don't think you need to do that. But brand, it works. But simply generating more brand awareness is an indirect way of increasing your rankings overall.

Neal Schaffer:

That's really, really interesting. So I often and like I said, I'm not an SEO expert by any means. But I really do love that the eat, you know, he can you sort of, you know, describe what that is and how that relates to everything we've been talking about.

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah, he at his expertise, authority trust, Google, in the last few years, they've been concerned about non authoritative websites ranking for terms, they really shouldn't shoddy medical advice, shoddy financial advice. And so they really want to promote websites that are trusted, that that don't rip you off are only telling you scientifically valid facts. So they've turned up their signals of trust. And we don't know exactly how they do this, but we believe they're looking at sentiment analysis across the entire web. So what other websites say about you is really important. And they could be looking at reviews, things like, well, this isn't a great example. But you know, better Better Business Bureau, they specifically don't use that, but across millions of websites that they have, they can access, they can get a pretty good idea of your reputation. So having a good reputation seems to be an important signal.

Neal Schaffer:

Gotcha. So, you know, one of the things that in terms of getting that reputation, and building brand awareness is something that we mentioned beforehand, when we were going back and forth. And emails, obviously, publish content, share the content in social. One thing that we also talked about was hyperlinking, as much as possible, and this thing where now I may be wrong. But if I am writing a blog post on influencer marketing tools, for instance, and I use that anchor text to and I want to rank for that keyword for that post. And I use that anchor text and link to someone else's post about that, that I am now telling Google that that site is more authoritative than my own site for those keywords. So let me let me continue further. So bloggers and when they so there's the thing about you want to link to high authority sites, right? And you want to be part of this whole ecosystem of linking. And you want to tell Google that these are sites that you think are authority on these subjects. But what I have a problem is when bloggers link to using anchor text linking out to Not not necessarily direct competitors, but media competitors, search engine result competitors. And so I just And so I'm like make my whole theory is to make every link out counts, because when you're linking out to someone that you are giving them incredible Digital Influence with every link. So really think strategically, yes, you want to have high authority, but you also don't want to, you don't want it to hurt your own rankings. But like I said, I'm looking at this very holistically. I'm not an SEO expert, I'd love to hear your feedback on that. And and what you suggest for an external linking out strategy.

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah, so this is a really great topic. And it's always those correlation studies, again, we show that sites that do link out tend to rank a little higher. So which is great. And Google, Google says they don't, that's not a hard wired part of their algorithm that linking out. But it does seem that linking to something authority, whether it's an external site, or your own site can play a factor. So I encourage people to really look at their internal linking strategy first, and heavily interlink with varying anchor text, and advanced IP, when you're when you do your keyword research that I mentioned earlier, look at all the keyword variations that people are using to search and vary your anchor text a lot, because if you're a small medium site, if you just link with the same anchor text over and over again to yourself, Google is going to see that as over optimization, and you can kill your ranking. So you want to you want to vary your own anchor text as much as possible. When linking out to a potentially competitor or search competitor. I think it's great to link because I think it's great to link out because you want to be the authority. The worst thing that can happen is someone visits your website from a search result, and they don't find what they're looking for. And then they go back to Google and click another result that because that's going to tell Google that you didn't provide the answer. And maybe next time, they should rank you a little lower. So if that means linking out to all the other sites where they can find the answer, do it because Google seeing that people are not coming back, they're not clicking another result. And that can help you that said, In your example, where you're giving really good, a really good anchor text link to a potential search competitor, I do encourage people to link out but be maybe be cautious of the anchor text that you're you're using, instead of saying the absolute best thing in the world that I exactly sell, just say, Hey, look over here at this sort of thing. Here's something helpful. So just be cautious of the anchor text. One other tip, the links that are higher in your page, count more than links that are lower on your page. So when you do, I would highly prioritize the links higher in your content to yourself, because you're going to pass more link equity PageRank when choose whatever you want to call it, and then link to your competitors further down. So

Neal Schaffer:

Gotcha. Very good. Okay, this is all really great advice. And always, we've got a little bit off script. But these are sort of, I just want to hone in one more on that. So like I said, I'm not I look at this very holistically, but time on page is something that I religiously look at, and I continue to try to find ways of keeping readers on the page longer. Yeah, how much does that play in this nuts where I worry about? Yeah, I understand the value of having External links and showing authority. And if you're quoting data, or you're quoting someone else, you have to like that's, you know, copyright laws, right? Or, you know, it gives more trust in what you're saying. So you want to do that. But on the other hand, I want to keep people on there longer. So how do you sort of balance that?

Cyprus Shepard:

Yeah, so I'll give you an example. We have a page, if you Google domain authority Domain Authority is a metric that our company developed and the pages the page ranks really well. But what we found was people were coming to the page looking how to check their domain authority, find their domain authority score, that's not what the page did. So I put a huge banner near the top of the page, right? Like underneath the second paragraph, they said, hey, check your domain authority now using using one of our tools. And here's what happened, the time on page went down, because everybody was clicking, but our time on site went up, and bounce rate went down. And but within two weeks, the traffic to that page was up 20 or 30%. And we think because Google could see that they were people were using this result, they weren't going back to the SERPs. They're getting much more value out of it. So that was the best thing we did we actually we actually decrease the time on page but we increased our, our, the number of pages that people are looking at. So if you can find ways to do that within your own content and keep linking to your most valuable content, your most valuable tools, and then also linking out to others where appropriate. I think that's a smart way to go. Gotcha. Okay,

Neal Schaffer:

obviously, like everything else in marketing, there's no there's no one direct answer. There's no one got the cookie cutter template, but that's really good advice. So I want to you know, now that we get to the end of the podcast, you know, whenever people asked me about SEO tools, obviously Moz Ahrefs SEMrush seem to be when I talk to other marketers, those are the three leaders by so but I also find, as a small business owner myself, that's not an SEO specialist SEO tools are quite complex. Yes. So if you were to do a trial with Moz, you know, if you're listening to this, you probably want to check it out. If you're not a subscriber, you go into Moz, what are the first few things that you recommend people do that aren't SEO experts to make it a very, very easy experience for them so that after the 30 day trial, they'll see the value and they want to keep subscribing

Cyprus Shepard:

to things, I don't want to turn this into promoting Moz. There's, there's a number of good tools out there, Google Search Console is my favorite free tool. But it is also kind of complex, but I recommend to re use it Moz has the beginner's guide to SEO, which is really easy, invaluable. And just this week, because of the situation with Coronavirus, we opened up all of our premium training modules that you normally have to pay for, they are now free to everybody through the end of month, the end of next month. And we might even go longer than that. And those are specific courses that you can take to level up on very specific skills, they show you how to use the tools and everything else like that. So it's actually a really good deal. And you can go through it for a month and not pay a dime, kind of get an EQ, you can get an expert level education.

Neal Schaffer:

So I'm assuming you know, the first thing that you would do is obviously, you know, you talked about Google Search Console, but maybe go in there for you know, that keyword research part, guess where to find the keywords that you're already ranking for using Moz. So to put that in, like a ranking tool, yes. And begin to use it for new keyword research and really just go from there, right would be I'm sure you all have some sort of site on it, or Yep, yeah, I'm assuming, like the first thing to get started with, yeah, and you can, you can,

Cyprus Shepard:

you can also do that with a with a free trial, just just enter your site, the Moz crawlers go out and crawl your site and identify errors. And within a few days, you get a list of recommendations of critical things to fix. But for me, one of the most valuable things are those keyword research tools, you can also take your site into link Explorer, and you can see all the backlinks and all the anchor text. And it's fun just to start playing around with this stuff it does take there is a bit of a learning curve, we have something called the Moz bar that you install with Chrome if you use Google Chrome as your browser, and it will give you every web page that you visit, you can see Link metrics and some other details. And you when you constantly keep that on you, you start to get an SEO mindset and you start to get a feel for why this page ranks and this page doesn't. But it's just a better always keeping you know always keeping your mind on it connected somehow. Yeah, I

Neal Schaffer:

use the the alexa rank as my in my Chrome but it makes sense to I'm always looking up domain authority. So that modifies that's really great advice there. Great. So Cyrus, how can people find you and any other last words of advice you want to give?

Cyprus Shepard:

I am on Twitter, that's where you can usually find me haven't been tweeting much the last few weeks. I'm getting back on the horse, the best advice I can give everybody is make sure you have a Google Search Console account. It's free. It's a it's a no brainer. You can try try out the tools and laws but mostly show up post those things. Look and see see how you're showing up in Google search results when you search for your brand. And always think about how can I through social media? How can I create more brand searches because that's that's a defense against that that builds a moat around if people are searching for you, Google has to show you it's it's it's a defense that is the best money candy money can't buy it

Neal Schaffer:

that's sort of syncs up with when I do reports for my clients. And I showed them hey, this is the website traffic you got from your blog, right from search queries from social. When people do direct, I literally say that's brand awareness that they're directly accessing. So and knowing that that that brand awareness also feeds into better search engine rankings. That's a really one of the great takeaways from the day. So thank you so much for selflessly sharing all your expertise and your time I'm going to put the in the show notes, the link to Cyrus on Twitter, as well as to that free trial link and masa, Osiris once again, thank you very much for your time. Stay safe in these very unprecedented times we live in, and I hope to, you know, be back in touch with you in the future.

Cyprus Shepard:

All right. Thank you, Neil. I appreciate it. All right. Well, I

Neal Schaffer:

hope you enjoyed that interview. We'll put a link to follow Cyrus on Twitter, as well as at his website in the show notes. Make sure you check them out. Ask him any other SEO related questions that you may have. If you enjoyed this podcast, I know I asked almost every episode, but I'm gonna ask again, especially for those new listeners. It would mean the world to me if you could drop a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. It's just a few seconds, but it really can make a world of difference in terms of the discoverability the search engine optimization of this podcast in those various podcast networks. So thank you, once again, a lot of great content still to come. I am just getting revved up. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and be on the lookout for future episodes. If there's anything you'd like me to cover, or hey, if you have a story to tell Now that you think we relevant and you want to be interviewed, feel free to reach out to me. I'll put my email address in the show notes, but you can always reach out to me on social media. Neal Schaffer, go to my website, Neal schaffer.com. Fill in the Contact page, or just email me. Neal at Neal Schaffer comm. That's n e AR ch FF er.com. That concludes another episode. Until next time, wherever you are in the world, make it a great virtual social Day. Bye Bye, everybody.