SEO For Creative Business Owners.
Listen to this episode or read the blog post below!
Hey Mavericks! Today I am nerding out with Lorraine Ball as we talk about SEO for creative businesses. Lorraine is a marketing strategist, hosts a very informative podcast (that you should definitely go check out) More Than A Few Words, and specifically works with business owners on their content-based SEO.
What is content-based SEO?
Content-based SEO is written for your customers in mind - not bots and algorithms. It places the focus on creating content that makes sense to your customers; it answers their questions and points them in the next best direction. In response to this, your customer’s activity on your site is what is going to signal to the search engine that you are producing quality content that people want to engage with.
It’s a win-win because it improves both your SEO ranking and your customer conversion rate.
Want to learn more about how you can utilize content-based SEO on your website? Listen or read on!
This episode is brought to you by 30 Day Done:
A frustration-free guide to getting things done no matter how busy you are.
Gain free access, available now inside the Maverick HQ resource library.
“At the end of the day, you're not selling products and services to robots, you're selling products and services to people” - Lorraine Ball
Key Takeaways:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method of writing content for your website that works with the search engines to get you more traffic to your website.
Pack your seo content at the bottom of your page.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for great content SEO.
It is not enough that your page is pretty and nice to read, it needs to give something in return to your reader that helps them along their journey.
Episode Links:
Get energized and organized with free resources inside The Maverick HQ vault.
Follow me @linsibrownson on Instagram for more business and mindset tips.
Connect with Be Brilliant Podcast @bebrilliantpodcast on Instagram.
Follow @lorrainefball on Instagram.
Visit Lorraine’s website.
Download the free Digital Toolbox from Lorraine Ball.
Want to work with me? View coaching options you might love.
Love this show? I would really appreciate your review in iTunes, Audible, or Spotify!
Credits: Sound production by hearnoevilmedia.com
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method of writing content for your website that works with the search engines to get you more traffic to your website. By designing and organizing all of your website content in a way that reflects what your potential customers are searching online by using the same keywords on your website that they are typing into the search bar, the search engine will be able to recommend your site to those customers based on the fact that it thinks that it will be the best resource to solve their problems.
This concept has been around for a while now and because of the sophistication of our software now, not only can search engines respond to questions being asked in search bars, but they can return results for misspelled words, analyze pictures, provide facial recognition, and more. This means that SEO now doesn’t have to be a muddle of keywords designed for Google, it can have much deeper meaning and can be written for humans - not bots.
Where should I put my SEO content?
SEO content can be very text-heavy and therefore it is no wonder people often ask where is the best place to pack all my SEO content. Lorraine’s expert advice?
“Pack your SEO content at the bottom of your page. People are not turned off by long pages if there are natural breaks, if there are headers if there's a good picture, and quite honestly, if you do a good job with your page, the person coming is going to leave long before they get down into the meat.”
When you think of a great website page, how often do you really get to the bottom and read the whole thing? I’m willing to bet that it is not very often. Most of us will skim headings and look for only the topics that are directly related to what it is we are searching for. Once we find it, we are clicking on the link to the next page, downloading the content, making the purchase, etc.
But by our customers taking actions earlier on in the page, the search engines are going to go “Oh, there's there's some good information here!” And it will raise the value of your page without destroying the aesthetics.
Want more content like this?
Get inspiration delivered straight to your inbox, when you sign up to receive new episode notifications. (Zero fluff, just the good stuff.) Sign up below!
How do I create meaningful SEO content for my creative business?
Fighting for placement on the first page of a Google search for your industry is something we all want. So, how do you get your page to the top of the results when people are not searching for your business directly?
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What stage of the buying journey are they at? What kind of questions are they likely to ask at this stage? How specific is their search? What language do they use?
If you know your customers and can answer these questions thoroughly, then you are well on your way to creating excellent content SEO.
How does the search engine determine if my page is good?
This is where your content SEO can really shine! To rank your page and website, search engines will look for metrics such as how long people stay on your page, how many other pages do they visit, and are they buying or downloading anything on your page.
The point here is that each page needs to have value and a purpose. It is not enough that your page is pretty and nice to read, it needs to give something in return to your reader that helps them along their journey. Remember, you led them here for a reason and they are expecting to get something from this visit. Now is not the time to lead them to a dead end. Now you show them what comes next in their journey.
Share This!
Episode 104 Transcript
Linsi Brownson 0:08
You are listening to Be Brilliant in Your Business, the podcast that helps you create a rich business and meaningful life. I'm your host, Linsi Brownson, and I'm here to deliver a creative cocktail of pep talks and practical tools to break the habit of being busy so you can have what you really want in life. If you are new to the podcast, welcome, I am so glad you're here and look forward to being part of your brilliant business. Before we dive into today's episode, I'd like to remind you that if you're a fan of the show, the best way to show it is to share it. Take a screenshot of this episode and tag me @linsibrownson, or leave us a review in your favorite podcast app. It means so much and I love being able to connect with you a little bit more personally. So are you ready? Let's go!
Hey, hey Mavericks, How are you all doing? I am doing well, I have been in what I'm calling an operational phase for the last few months, it's really interesting to me, in the course of my career, I have definitely noticed these patterns of time where my personal interests and things that I want to work on as - as in personal growth, line up with my business interests, which line up with my client interests, or the types of clients who are coming to me or the types of support that they're looking for. And I just, it's, it's so interesting to see how all of these things are connected, and how my work is very cyclical in - in an interesting way. And what I mean by that is, I sometimes have these very spiritual phases, where it's really about the higher levels of thinking and higher powers and connectedness and relatedness. And it seems like in those times, I'm really attracting clients who are very much looking for that connection in their own lives and with their work as well.
Other times, I'm in a very artistic creative phase, where I'm personally doing a lot of painting and decorating and music and just lots of just like immersion into a very creative, artistic place. And no surprise, that is when writers and artists and creators really seem to like gravitate toward me to, you know, to help them identify how they can have more ease and flow in their creativity with their business. And then I also have these very operational phases where my personal interests are all about data and building systems and processes and, you know, in lining things out in a very strategic way. And then, of course, I noticed that my clients are looking for that, you know, they're doing the same thing, and their businesses or new clients that come to me, are really looking for that operational and systems type of support. And so I'm always very fascinated, it doesn't surprise me at all.
But I enjoy kind of seeing these parallels with, you know, just energetically what's going on for me, and then how that translates into my business. And it happens generally in like three month periods, it's, it's so fascinating. So of course, my work is always in some way embodying all of these things. But it seems like we're - we're generally leaning toward whatever my personal interest is at the moment. That is where the - the clients and the people who want to work with me seem to be learning as well. So that's been super fascinating. All of that is to say that I have been very much nerding out on systems and processes lately, I have enjoyed so much.
I recently made a couple of great new hires this summer that I'm super excited about. And that launched me into kind of a redesign of some of my systems and processes and getting things updated for how we do them today versus the last time I hired people. So in my own business, I've been like really in touch with that Lately, I've been doing the - been acting as the - the CFO and the CEO and my husband's business, as that has taken off so rapidly this year. So that's been really exciting. And then a lot of my clients are in this place to where they're really looking at scaling their business. And so the systems and processes are the moment that they're really needing to sit down and play with that and look at that. So all very fun for me, this is a part of me that you may or may not know, but I am a total systems nerd. And, and I don't want to do it all the time because I also like to be free-flowing and creative and artistic.
But when I'm in these phases, I'm like let's go let's do this. I just want to nerd out on strategy and processes. So that's what's going on for me which is perfect because if Have you listened to the episode before this episode where I interviewed Jana, and we talked about Pinterest and the strategy, and essentially creating a customer journey or client journey, and a little bit of a marketing funnel, if that's a term that you are, that sounds scary to you, if you've never heard of it before, if you've heard of it a million times, and you're like, Oh, I think we - we did a great job of kind of simplifying that breaking that down in the previous episode. And then also talking about how to make keyword research and the strategy behind the words that you're using, with the content you create, to really engage the right clients for to help bring people to you, but also for you to be very clear in what you're talking about as you're creating content.
So that was an amazing episode, I had so much fun talking with Jana about this, and it came from me, the interview came at a perfect time, because I'm definitely in the zone with that right now. And part of it isn't thanks to her, she really helped me kind of see Pinterest in that way and made it so much easier for me to understand. So that brings me to today's guest. And today's episode, we're taking this even a little bit further, because my guest her name is Lorraine ball. And she is a marketing strategist who specifically works with business owners on SEO.
And I intentionally did the Pinterest episode first, because I thought that was a great sort of lead into a really like juicy and kind of deep topic of SEO, which can be very overwhelming, especially for creative business owners, especially if you're not in the phase where you're nerding out on systems and processes and strategies. So if that is you, I hope you listen to that episode on Pinterest. And that kind of got your feet wet a little bit for what we're going to talk about today. So Lorraine ball, as I said, she helps business owners with their SEO, and she's very much also focused on content-based SEO.
So creating your amazing ideas and sharing them with the world, but with a few specific tweaks and strategies behind it so that you're really getting the biggest bang for your buck. And Lorina has a couple of really great resources that we will talk about in the show. But she created something called the digital toolbox. And this is essentially - there's a - there's a free option that is all about search intent, which is something that Jana introduced to us as well.
But you know, what is it that people are really wanting when they go out looking for either new content or new people to hire all of that. So she has a free offer. That's called a search intent workbook. So that is going to kind of on a broader scale for Google search words and you know, blog posts and stuff that will help you kind of narrow in on your search intent, your - your customers search intent. And then she also has a very affordable product that you can buy into that is called it's I think it's called answer the questions. But it's a self-paced SEO process. If you spend a couple minutes a day for 10 days, you can essentially master all of - all of what you would need to know as a small business owner for your SEO.
So it sounds very bite-sized to takes you through that process. And I just wanted to throw that out here at the top. So that as we are talking about some of these terms, if this if these are new terms to you, or if they're terms, again, that you've heard a million times, and you're just like, I don't want anything to do with that. I'm hoping to just sort of like lead into this idea that these will all be broken down really simply really specifically in a helpful way for you with some of the resources that she's got to share in our conversation. And then of course, if you want to go and sign up for the search intent workbook, or by her answer the questions digital product. So with that, I am excited to jump in and talk about content-based SEO with Lorraine ball.
Linsi Brownson 9:06
This episode is brought to you by 30-Day Done, my simple framework to take your best ideas off the backburner and get them done in - you guessed it - 30 days or less. And you're gonna do it without overwhelm or overworking because burnout is lame. I'll show you how 30-Day Done is free for you inside the maverick HQ a resource vault that is chock full of helpful tools for your business. Visit Linsi brownson.com forward slash Maverick to join now.
Linsi Brownson 9:41
Hello Lorraine Welcome to the show.
Lorraine Ball 9:44
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Linsi Brownson 9:47
I am really happy to have you here and most people will be surprised that I'm so excited about this topic, but we're talking about SEO and it's a really juicy topic so I'm - I'm just so happy that you're here.
Lorraine Ball 10:02
You know, I'm, I'm pretty passionate about it and maybe even a little geeky, but in a - in a normal way.
Linsi Brownson 10:10
Yes, good? Well, I don't think you actually have a normal approach to SEO, which is exactly why I wanted to have you here. So really, most of our listeners that, we're small business owners, many of us are in creative businesses. And we're kind of on one of two sides with SEO either don't have any idea what it is. And it's like, yeah, I can't be bothered with that, or we have some idea of what it is. And it sounds totally technical and robotic and overwhelming. So I am excited to have you here. Because I know that that is not your approach. And you're going to take us through a whole different way of thinking about this, so that it's not so intimidating, and people can actually dig in and play with it.
Lorraine Ball 10:53
Absolutely. You know - this all started - my approach is called content-based SEO. And it really starts with the assumption that, while it's nice to keep the robots happy, at the end of the day, you're not selling products and services to robots, you're selling products and services to people. And so if you put them first and foremost in everything you put on your website, and you answer their questions, you will create content that human beings will love, and search engines will come to love as well. And I've done this long enough, and I've seen the results. And I believe that pretty much this is an approach anyone can take to improve the SEO of their website.
Linsi Brownson 11:40
Yes. And I know that most people understand what content is to give us some context for this. But if we can go just all the way down to the basics, tell us about, you know, what is SEO? Why are we even talking about this?
Lorraine Ball 11:56
So SEO is short for search engine optimization. The way the internet works is people go to Google occasionally to Yahoo, or Bing. But mostly, people go to Google, and they go with questions. Now, going back 10 or 15 years ago, those questions looked more like furnace repair or heating plus contractor or heating Indianapolis and they were little word phrases because that's all the robots could deal with. And what - what SEO was designed to do was to organize all the information on your website in a way that would match up with the things that people were putting into the search engines. So when the robots would get an inquiry, they would look at all the information they had stored in their records, and your website would be more likely to show up. Well, fast forward 15 years, the google - google robots are incredibly sophisticated. Not only can they respond to questions, but they can also respond when you misspell words in the questions, they know what you're intending. They can analyze pictures on your website, they can do facial recognition, they can do all sorts of things. So because they've gotten more sophisticated, you can be more sophisticated in the way that you put words and pictures, and information on your website.
Linsi Brownson 13:27
Yeah
Lorraine Ball 13:29
Because they'll be able to kind of match them up.
Linsi Brownson 13:31
Yeah, so I remember way back in 2008, I think I was when I was working on my website, and I had an e-commerce company. And then even a few years later, when I was working with business owners, and this topic of SEO and - and they were wanting to hire SEO people or hire me to do SEO on their website, and it was so disconnected from human beings. Like if you had an SEO-optimized website, then you basically had to have what would be the equivalent of like four paragraphs worth of text on the homepage of your website that was completely illegible, you couldn't read it because it was just a bunch of strung together words. And it was so aesthetically disappointing that I just straight up refused to do it. And I was like, this is not going to work for me. And so I love that we've come so far and of course naturally we've - we've evolved from that state. But I think that's one of the big reasons why people still don't really consider or put a lot of attention into SEO because that's the concept that we have of it that it's just disconnected from humans.
Lorraine Ball 14:40
You know, I'm going to sort of add - add on a little bit to what you're saying there, you know, you have to have all that meat. You don't have to have it on your homepage. You do want to have it on the interior pages. And I have some interesting back and forth with some of my designers because they're like Laureen, but really we only need this on the page. It's Perfect, and I'm like, Yes. But search engines are going to want more. And the way that we compromise is, we really consider the human experience. The top of the page is for the people, there's a natural break, there's a call to action, there's a button, there's a picture. And we know that most people won't scroll down below that. And so we do some interesting things with more heavy text. In the second and third sections of the page. People are not turned off by long pages - if there are natural breaks - if there are headers if there's a good picture, and quite honestly, if you do a good job with your page, the person coming is going to leave long before they get down into the meat. But the search engines are going to go, oh, there's - there's some good information here. And it will raise the value of your page without destroying the aesthetics.
Linsi Brownson 15:54
Yes. Okay. I love the word compromise. Figuring out how to use these tools taury, to your advantage not to feel like you are owned by them. So let's talk about content-based SEO. So how does that work?
Lorraine Ball 16:10
So content-based SEO really starts with exactly what I said before the questions, what you need to do for your business, is think about the buyer journey. When somebody wakes up in the morning, they don't wake up in the morning going, Oh, you know what I need, I need a purple widget that's shaped like this and shaped like this, and it's gonna cost this. Now they wake up in the morning, and they're like, I'm not happy about X, Y, or Z. How can I fix this problem? And then they go to Google, and they search, and they begin to refine their search as they learn more. They're really kind of four stages. There's that first informational where I don't even know what I don't know. I don't even know exactly how to describe my problem. The second step is really more the, where people start looking at some of the navigational stuff, you know, are you near me? Is this a business in my neighborhood? Then they get into some of the commercialization which they start doing some comparisons, they want to know, is x better than y? As they learn a little more? And then finally, they get to a transaction? And so at each step, you need to think about what are the questions people are going to have? When they first discover that their furnace, you're going to notice I use a lot of home service companies because that's the kind of businesses my agency worked with a lot. But this works in any industry. My furnace isn't working, what do I do? Or it may even be something obscure? Like, why does my furnace smell funny? What do I do with navy beans? Should Can I cook x with y? If this happened to me, should I call a lawyer, whatever that first level of question? And so make a list of all the questions that your customers are likely to ask and start kind of writing out some of those answers.
Linsi Brownson 18:11
Oh, I love that.
Lorraine Ball 18:13
And then what I want you to do is I want you to go to Google, and I want you to ask that question. Because Google will do two things. Number one, it'll show you how other people answer it. So you can begin to go, huh? Okay, that's what they're saying. Is that how you want to answer it? But secondly, they have this section where people who asked this question often also ask this question. And as you go down that rabbit hole, you start to see all of these other questions that are kind of related, that maybe you never thought of as just go ahead and list them all. You can even go to Google Analytics if you're really want to geek out and search some of those questions. And you can kind of see how often those different questions get asked. And then go to your website. Does your website answer that specific question? Not kind of something sort of related to that question, because the - the more exactly you answer the question, and completely, the greater the chance that you're going to show up higher on a search engine. So that's where all those extra questions really come in. Because now you can start doing some real niche topics. And you can't just copy someone else's answer. You have to write it from your point of view and your voice. Because if you're looking sound like everybody else, why should google pick you first? The better you do at answering those questions. More completely, the greater the chances that Google will value what your page is, is actually saying, search for your industry go to Google and ask a question and look at how many different pieces of data Google comes up with. And typically, it's somewhere between eight or 900,000 to several million different responses to each question.
Linsi Brownson 20:27
Wow.
Lorraine Ball 20:27
So if there are a million responses, why should you be first. And that's where thinking about your customers, and about how you interact and engage with your customers, and how you want them to think about you. will give you a competitive advantage. And I'll give you an example. One of the questions we got a lot and we still get often is, well, now why do I have to pay for my website and hosting and my domain name? And I answered that question. So many times, I finally wrote a blog post about it. But because everybody else writes blog posts about it, I, I wrote it the way I explained it, which is that your website's a lot like a mobile home. And you can park that mobile home anywhere you like, it can be beautiful, or it can be dumpy, but it won't be any fun to live in if you don't have running water and electricity. And the hosting company provides the running water and electricity. And your domain name is just like a forwarding address so that your mail shows up wherever you are. that blog post 10 years later, still gets traffic. Why is your website like a mobile home? Nobody else answered that question exactly that way. So my answer gets searched priority.
Linsi Brownson 21:54
I love that example. I'm a huge fan of anything that is visual. And I love metaphors. That really - it speaks to me and it's so clearly illustrated, I totally get it. So I Okay, let me just reiterate. So there's the buyer journey, which is this process where people are starting to go and, and search out the answers to the question or problem that they wake up within the morning that's in their mind. So there's the information part where they just don't know what they don't know. So it's probably very rudimentary searches. And then that leads them a little further in to, to navigation, which I wrote down the word connection, it's the - the point where they say, like, Why you? And-
Lorraine Ball 22:44
Well, the navigation is - is a lot of the geographic stuff, Are you someone near me kind of thing? It's that - it's that next step, where they're really trying to figure out where are you? It's, it's Who are you? And where are you? And how are we, you know, how are we going to do business? Commercialization is really the comparison. Should I do hardwood? Or engineered wood? And - and some of those kinds of next-level questions?
Linsi Brownson 23:15
Okay. And then the transaction? What would an example of that be?
Lorraine Ball 23:20
Transaction might be pricing comparisons, that's where you really get into you versus somebody else? Or why your solution? So for example, in case studies are great in the commercialization face, because it really answers that question of, you know, what, again, why you and it's because you have a unique, you have a unique approach to solving their problem. So when you, when you get into like the commercialization phase, it might be a buyer's guide, it might be a preparation checklist, it's - it's the things they need to know, to get ready to do business with you. Hmm, okay. And then, and the transaction is okay, I'm really ready to buy and I think it's gonna be you. And I know what I want. And that that last phase is in the transaction is really I know what - I know what I want.
Linsi Brownson 24:22
So would that be like, it wouldn't be a call to action? In the search, what would it be?
Lorraine Ball 24:30
Well, so if at every phase of the search, you want to bring people to replace on your website, and when they get there, you have to answer their question, and you should always have a call to action. In other words, you should never have any page on your website. That's just "Oh, that was nice, I read that, now I leave." Uh-uh. No, you - you focused all your energy and getting somebody to come. They want to know what to do next, remember, they're on a journey, you don't want to take them down the dead end. So if they're on their buyer’s journey, and they come to you, and they come to you at that first place where they're just general information, offer them something that they can download or use, watch a video do something that maybe answers the next question that shows that you can anticipate their needs. Every page on your website should take somewhere, someone somewhere else. Ideally, okay, can give you another one my metaphors, think of your website like a late-night TV commercial, or those infomercials, where you know, they're selling you the knives and you're like, Okay, yeah, not - "Wait, there's more!" And then and they're gonna throw in a pot scrubber. And then you're like, yeah, yeah, that sounds like - "Wait, there's more!" Okay, I'm gonna buy - "Wait a minute, there's more!" Every page on your website should take people to the next page and the next page and the next page. If you can move people through your website, the signal that you're sending to Google is that you are providing just really great information. And if the longer people stay, the more you're proving that you've got great content. So the more pages people look at, the higher Google will value your website. Now, you can't cheat it by putting like the, the newspapers used to do this, they would take one story and spread it out over like five pages, you had to click, click, click and click - no, that that's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about a came for information, you give me everything I need on that page. But then the "wait, there's more" is an offer that I can go deeper to find kind of that next piece of information.
Linsi Brownson 27:02
Got it. So I am wondering about like, we have this concept that people have limited attention. And we've heard the numbers like, you know, you have three seconds to capture someone's attention. And, and so I think a lot of people are worried about, you know, I'm going to lose people if I don't get them right in this moment. So how does that relate to is it I actually - now that I'm saying that I'm kind of processing this myself, I can see then how kind of leading people through this journey. And almost these like bite-size increments, like you said earlier, people aren't scrolling that far down on your page, because you're giving them the call to action to take them into the next step. And people will follow that journey, they won't get tired on page two, and just leave if it's something that is compelling and engaging.
Lorraine Ball 27:55
Well, and if your call to action is to download a checklist. Remember if somebody's in that commercialization mode, and they're comparing x and y, and you offer them an opportunity, you know, an evaluation tool that they can use to compare or to get ready for the next step. And they download it now you get their email address. It's okay if they go away, because you've got their email address, and you can continue the conversation and pick up really right where they left off. Did they - did - did they download information from a resource from your information page? Well, then they get emails, one, two, and three, did they download from the commercialization page? Well, then they get four or five and six. Now the person who did one, two, and three, if they open one, two, and three, now you can roll them into four or five and six. If they don't, you know, it's okay. Lots of people will come to your website, and only a small percentage of them will buy. And quite honestly, that's all you really need. If you're running an agency, and you're getting 3 or 4000 visitors a month, you don't need 3 or 4000. Well, I mean, maybe, you do, God loves that you're running something like that. But you don't really need three to 4000 customers, you need 5, 10, 15 to really get excited about what you're telling them and what you're saying. And so you put the information out there, you find ways to get their contact info so you can stay engaged. And just keep putting out that information and Google will find it. Now you can do things. If you have a WordPress website, we really like Rankmath or Yoast. And that allows you to go in and just create page titles and meta descriptions while you're designing your web page and it's not really technical and it kind of walks us through that, and I would certainly recommend it if you're using I think Squarespace or Shopify, they've got tools built-in. Again, you don't need a degree in SEO to write a page title that is approximately 70 characters long and includes the words you think people are looking for, and a meta description in English 160 characters, and all the tools will tell you too wordy, not worthy enough. And if the page is about answering the question, it's really easy to write a page title and description that alludes to that question as well.
Linsi Brownson 30:39
Yeah. So, if someone has not done any of this - if this is a brand new thing that they want to put some energy behind? Do you recommend starting by going and optimizing those pages? Or do you recommend starting with the content with the blog posts on the site,
Lorraine Ball 30:57
If you already have - if you already have the pages? I - if all you have on your website is 10 pages, I would still make your list of questions. And then ask yourself, "Did the 10 pages I have answer the questions?" Because if you identify, and you do it, honestly, and you identify 10 questions that you have to answer, and you look at your website, and you discover that all it's doing is talking about you and how good you are, and how smart you are, and how talented you are, and look at these great designs and you never answer those questions, you're going to have a really hard time getting noticed. So create the list of questions, be critical of the pages that are already on your website, and then start creating additional content. And I want to say really quickly that pictures and video are content as well. And we're all guilty of this, you have pictures, you, you have them named and numbered in a way that makes sense for you to find them when you're uploading them to the website and you end up with a bunch of images that are titled things like JPEG one, JPEG two. Here's the thing. Google indexes, images, as well as text. And there is a huge collection. If you search Google for JPEG one, you're gonna find a bunch of images, the problem is that none of your customers are looking for JPEG one. They're looking for logo design example heating and air conditioning company. "Recipe for black beans", we do a lot of work with a company called "Random Beans", they, they sell beans in glass jars. And we have a lot of photographs of beans. We have a lot of really creative names for those photos so that each one shows up in search.
Linsi Brownson 33:06
Yeah, that's such a good thing to think about. Certainly going back and auditing your website and looking at some of these pieces. But just to be in that mindset of anything that you're creating in terms of content, which everything on your website is to be in that headspace of what problem Am I trying to solve? What is my client or customer looking for? What are they going to be searching for and really consider that it's all going to end up somewhere in the Google bank. And thinking about it that way? I think I'm a big fan of making everything just a game or making fun or being curious about it. So getting into this place where you're like, what's the craziest thing that I could say that someone might search for that might pop up this image in their life? Like, how am I going to get somebody's attention with this?
Lorraine Ball 33:59
I have an image of a marketing org chart that is tied to a blog post that I wrote in 2008 - 2008. And that blog post and that image still get traffic. Now I did some creative things to extend the life of that. And that's a whole different lesson, but everything - everything you should - should be named. Think about Google as if it was a visually impaired human being. And if somebody is visually impaired and coming to your website, and they're using a reader, and they can read all the words on the page, imagine how frustrating the experience is for them. When they're reading along and they scroll over an image and they know there's a picture there and instead of getting a description of what that picture is, they get JPEG one. So it's also an accessibility - beyond just an SEO tool, it really becomes an accessibility improvement for your website.
Linsi Brownson 35:07
Yeah. So the question, How can I help? How can I best help this visitor? Experience my website?
Lorraine Ball 35:15
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Linsi Brownson 35:19
That's so great. So you have a tool to help people kind of Gather, Gather this information. Tell us a little bit about that.
Lorraine Ball 35:30
So we - we have a ton of different resources in the digital toolbox. But I think we're going to link to the search intent workbook, which is a nice little download tool that answers the question, How do I start thinking about my customer’s journey, and there's a description of each of the types of questions and places for you to fill in and start researching it. And the search intent tool is part of our longer content-based SEO class. That is a self-paced program because one of the things that I have learned about SEO is that you cannot do it, you can't do it in a 30-minute webinar, you can't learn it in a two or three-hour lesson. It's something that you have to do in small steps. Do a little bit, learn a little bit, apply it, go back and take the next step. So we - we put together a self-paced course on content-based SEO. And I think you're gonna have a link, and they'll all it'll also be available, you can find it among all the resources that digital toolbox club.
Linsi Brownson 36:42
Awesome. Yes, I will link to both the search intent workbook, and the answer the questions for the club, in our show notes, for sure. And that, that's so great, thank you for taking us through this kind of three, three-part process to get people started thinking in a new way, approaching their content in a new way. And just knowing that, you know, the robots are only part of the equation, keeping humans in the forefront, is really going to help you get those better conversions have better engagement, and really just make it a whole lot more fun, which is what I'm all about.
Lorraine Ball 37:20
Me too. Me too. It's, I really, I enjoy doing this. And it's fun when you - when you get it right, and you do a search and you're like, wait, that's my content at the top of that page.
Linsi Brownson 37:33
Oh, I - that was an amazing experience, right? I've had a few clients who have sent me things over the years, just little screenshots of their page, making it to the front of Google. And yeah, it's really exciting. It feels so validating.
Lorraine Ball 37:48
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.
Linsi Brownson 37:50
I do have a quick question because this is a common one. But how long does it take them for these things to be indexed once you're making those changes,
Lorraine Ball 37:59
So it will vary. And there is a way to kind of accelerate it a little bit. Now this is going to be a little more techie. So my apologies. Google has a tool called the Google Search Console. And whether you create your Google Search Console account, or you have your web developer do it, it is a companion to Google Analytics. And what you can do is you can take any page that you have optimized anytime you write a new blog post, anytime you update an existing page, you can submit it to be re-indexed. And Google will tell you the last time they looked at it, so you can see "oh, they just indexed it a week or so go, they're not going to go back." The other thing that you can do to accelerate the process is anytime you create new content, start sharing it on social media. And share it, share it on LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever you do with links back to that page, because Google and the spiders will follow those links. The other thing that you can do is cross-promote with some of your friends, deliberately share links to their sites and have them share links on your to yours. Typically, if you've been creating content regularly, Google will come back on a regular basis. When we were creating a new blog post every day, it was pretty obvious that Google was - was indexing it every day or every other day. When we drop back, we're now probably releasing updates once a week. So Google doesn't come quite as often. So we sometimes have to kind of force it a little bit. But usually, Google should be able to index your site. Any new content in a week or two. I mean, it's gonna be on page one in a week or two. Yeah, it means it's at least gonna notice that.
Linsi Brownson 39:56
Yes. Okay. That's a great - I'm glad I asked that question. Because certainly, people are going to be wondering, and there's a lot of the - the pressure to create constantly new content and to be putting stuff out all the time that you know, I'm really like one of my missions is to help get people off that hamster wheel. So we do still want to look at, like what needs to be done, and what are the ways we can help this along. And like you said, accelerate it along without being in this place where you're just constantly trying to churn out new stuff.
Lorraine Ball 40:30
And I would recommend that anybody who's been blogging for any length of time, one of the other things that I really think, and we - we definitely do a lot of this in the course is go back and look at all of your old content, and figure out what used to get traffic that doesn't anymore, what was a really good post, but never got the visibility and be fit up at 100 words, add an extra picture, add a link, make that content that already exists better. Some of the leading SEO people will tell you forever, like especially if you have a library of content for every new one that you write, go back and update two or three old ones, and re-authenticate that content. It's easier. It's faster, and Google loves it.
Linsi Brownson 41:24
Yeah, that is such a good tip. Thank you for that. Awesome Lorraine. Thank you so much for being here. So the digital toolbox dot club is going to be the - the main place that I'll send people to with those specific links to the free resource and to the program. Where else can people find you online?
Lorraine Ball 41:44
You can find Lorraine Ball pretty much wherever you hang out. I'm Lorraine Ball on Twitter. I'm Lorraine Ball on LinkedIn. On Instagram, it's @lorrainefball. And you can look for my podcast More Than a Few Words wherever you listen to podcasts.
Linsi Brownson 42:01
Fabulous. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you.
Linsi Brownson 42:08
Thanks for listening to the Be Brilliant in Your Business podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you heard something particularly insightful or inspiring, I would really love to know what it was. And I'd love to get your review. So I have a fun way to do this. come and find me on Instagram @linsibrownson and send me a private message with a voice memo or a quick note, something that I can share here on the show. As a thank you for sharing your thoughts about the show, I've made a special gift to get you energized and inspired when you open your laptop. I created some beautifully designed desktop wallpaper with some of my favorite mantras and motivational ideas that I think you will love to see. It's a win-win and a fun way for us to connect. So come find me on Instagram at Linsi Brownson and let me know what you think.