My Weekly Marketing

Small Business SEO Secrets with Nadin Thomson

• Janice Hostager • Season 1 • Episode 71

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Unlock the secrets to building your small business's online presence with our latest episode featuring SEO expert Nadin Thomson. 

Nadin breaks down SEO and compares it to following a recipe!  She explains how focusing on quality content and customer questions can set you apart from the competition. She also brings in the wisdom of Marcus Sheridan's "They Ask You Answer" and highlight the pivotal roles of metadata and image tagging in boosting your search rankings.

Our conversation is rich with practical advice, from incorporating multimedia elements like screen-recorded videos and voice recordings into your blog, to transcribing podcasts for SEO benefits. We also explore why openly discussing pricing on your website can be a game-changer in establishing customer trust.

Listen to learn some common SEO pitfalls and local SEO strategies, emphasizing the importance of unique keywords and the separation of Google ads from organic SEO. Learn how to optimize your Google profile effectively and decide whether SEO is a DIY project or one best left to the experts. 

This episode brings all of Nadin's insights right to you, and will guide you toward long-term SEO success.

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Janice Hostager:

I'm Janice Hostager. After three decades in the marketing business and many years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned a thing or two about marketing. Join me as we talk about marketing, small business and life in between. Welcome to my Weekly Marketing.

Janice Hostager:

Seo, or search engine optimization, is one of those things that seems complicated and, don't get me wrong, it can be a little bit complicated, but I found with clients is something that people like to put off or they think they need a professional to do it. In reality, you shouldn't put it off and you don't need a professional to do it. You might have a pretty new website, but that doesn't mean it's optimized for search. Google can't see how pretty your site is, but they do care about how informative it is and how well organized it is and, more importantly, how easy you make it for customers and visitors to use. If you're a larger business, you can pay someone to update your on-page SEO of your site, but in reality, as my guest points out today, seo isn't a one and done thing, nor is it something that you can completely accomplish in just a few hours. Seo is a journey and there's several things that you can do to improve it, so I wanted to bring on SEO expert Nadin Thomson.

Janice Hostager:

Nadin started as a website designer and she still does that today, but SEO goes hand in hand with website design and as she began working with small business and local businesses, she started to discover that there was a real need for many of her small business clients to understand SEO better. After all, good SEO can mean more traffic, more inquiries and, ultimately, more sales. That was the beginning of Nadin's SEO club, where she demystifies SEO for entrepreneurs and she's a straight talker. She likes to tell you exactly what you need to be doing. So here's my conversation with Nadin. Welcome, Nadin. I appreciate you joining us all the way from Scotland. Hello, hello. So SEO I said as we were chatting right before I started recording is that people tend to hate SEO at least people that I've dealt with, I think just because it takes a lot of time and energy. It's sort of under the hood, so to speak, where we can't really see it. We can't really understand it very well. So for someone just getting started with SEO, what are the absolute must-knows?

Nadin Thomson:

So SEO is? Imagine you're making a wedding cake, and if you wanted to make a wedding cake that is 40 years tall, you're not starting with the berries on the top, you're starting with the eggs, the flour and the sugar. So and you tend to follow a recipe. And SEO is a recipe that you need to follow, and the majority of people who are scared of SEO, they just don't know the recipe. Now, I know I'm scared of baking and I can't make good cakes because I just don't have the patience for that kind of thing.

Nadin Thomson:

But SEO is like a recipe and for anybody wanting to begin with SEO without getting any geek overload, don't even think about SEO, but start blogging. But blogging I don't mean talk about what you did last week in your business. No one cares what you did last week, and I am German. I live in Scotland, I have a very Scottish accent, but I'm German and I'm very direct when I teach my students the SEO, and so no one cares what you did last week.

Nadin Thomson:

So if you are, for example, in the wedding industry, you might want to blog about last week's wedding, while this is okay to do, but that should be two out of 10 blog posts, the majority of your blog posts that you can blog about is your customers' questions, and the best book to buy is one by Marcus Sheridan. It's called they Ask you Answer, and this will be a mind-blowing book for you. And Janice can put a link to that book or the author into the comments and he explains how he turned his business around. And I doubt that Marcus at this time actually cared about SEO, because if you put content on your website that your customers are looking for, then you will be found in Google. Seo is not about the geek. Seo is about caring and being found for the content that your target customer is looking for. So, even if you didn't put any alt tags or things like that in place, if you focus on really good content and you don't hold back, you are making the biggest positive improvement on your website.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, so you're saying that people shouldn't stress out that they don't have their metadata aligned with the right keywords or that sort of thing, or is that just part of it? The content, of course, is important. So if we're talking a recipe here, do we need like three cups of content to one cup of metadata? Do we need like three cups of content to one cup?

Nadin Thomson:

of metadata.

Nadin Thomson:

The metadata is important and meta title, the meta description, meta keywords don't no longer exist or they're no longer used, so you can ignore them and the meta description is just a short summary of what is on a page and that Google might use your meta description, but in over 60% of cases, google creates its own meta description.

Nadin Thomson:

So even if you didn't have the meta description, with good content, you still have a chance to rank. But if you wanted to be improving, if you wanted to improve your content, so you want to use images, for example, that are not called image one dot JPEG, but the image would be called yellow wedding cake three tier, for example, dot JPEG, and then you put an alt tag in. The alt tag was actually meant not for SEO, but it was meant for screen readers, for people who didn't couldn't see the screen, and then it would read out what's in the image. But many years ago, seo started abusing this alt tag and stuffing it with keywords. Now the alt tag is a description of what's in the image, which can include keywords, but it must not be abused for keywords okay, so I've maybe been doing this wrong.

Janice Hostager:

So I'll put a description in, but I'll also throw the a title into or the keyword for the for the article. Are you saying I should just stick with the description?

Nadin Thomson:

well, if, if my article has 10 images, then you would use the same title 10 times for 10 images. So that's not required in the old tag um so that's the alt tag for images.

Nadin Thomson:

And another really cool trick that you can do so is to use your headlines. So if you write a blog article, never write the blog article where you have one headline and two miles of text. Make sure you structure it so you use headline one only once and then headline two, and you never use headlines to make your text look fancy, but to structure it. Google is looking at the structure of your headline, so headline three must be a sub headline of headline two, and when you remove so basically when you've finished your blog post, copy it and put it into a google doc, for example, and take all the text away. So only so you're only left with your headlines. And these headlines need to summarize what's in your blog post. So never have a headline that says introduction or let's start, or to summarize dot, dot, dot. That's not a headline. So a headline needs to contain content and a short summary of what the reader is about to read in the next paragraph.

Janice Hostager:

I love that trick. I'm going to try that for some of my clients for sure, because sometimes it's easy, especially for people who are sort of stream of consciousness writers to just go through and write the entire blog post writers, to just go through and write the entire blog post and then afterwards I, or whoever's editing it, will have to go through and put in subheads that sort of summarize it, which could probably also work if that's your format. But I love the idea of putting it into a Google Dot and stripping away all the content because you're right, that really should tell the story. I love that.

Nadin Thomson:

I actually have a tool developed, which I asked the development company, so I send you a link after that. It's called the SEO headline checker and all you need to do is put your URL of your blog post in there and it strips your text out and leaves you with the headlines, and it will show you if you have used the headlines correctly.

Janice Hostager:

Very cool. I will definitely put that in the show notes too. So you mentioned we're talking about blogging, of course. So how much does video creation, or even podcasts or social media, how much of that to carry your analogy goes into the recipe? Can can strengthen the recipe, fortify it some way? Or is it really primarily blogging that we should be looking at? Or what, how, what kind of content should people be creating?

Nadin Thomson:

so the video creation and podcasts, or they are really for basically to, to give your audience a different way to show the same content, and so what we had discussed earlier and I ask you, is this podcast also going to be available on YouTube, so?

Nadin Thomson:

And then you might transcribe it to be a blog post? So now we have got three pieces of content that are all from one source, from our chat today, and when you have a, you can create additional video content. So I use a lot of how to's on my website for example, how to use a headline or how to use a certain plug in on WordPress and I just quickly record a screen screen video which I then add into my blog post. So I basically have text and then have a video that explains something and then have some more text. But what I also do is I record my blog posts, not as a podcast, but I record them by voice, and then, because my blog posts tend to be very long, so that people can choose to listen to the whole blog post instead of having to read it.

Nadin Thomson:

Okay, that's really interesting, and the podcast thing, you can transcribe it and then make it available on your website as a blog post, which will then also be great for SEO.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, so what I've been typically doing is I will include a PDF with the transcript in it, and PDFs are also scanned by Google, right.

Nadin Thomson:

I think so yeah.

Janice Hostager:

I believe so I double-checked that one. So is something that's on a PDF like an addendum, like you have to click to download it, kind of thing. Is that kind of weighed the same way as something that would be right on the on the page, directly on the page?

Nadin Thomson:

well, I have done a lot of research. Um, like not research. If you're looking for something in google and you enter the word pdf, google will show you pdfs. So google will definitely read them. And um, there's actually a good PDF that you can download if you enter Marcus Sheridan, the big five, and enter the word PDF, and you will then see the five big questions people ask about in Google.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, I'll include a link to that too.

Nadin Thomson:

And the first link that I click on is from the company PixelSync, and the five big things that people look for in Google is I'm just looking at my second screen here is cost and price. So how much does a product or service cost? So, for example, I used to do wedding photography and I had a massive, big blog post. How much is wedding photography in Scotland, for example?

Nadin Thomson:

The next thing is problems. So that is usually for products. So, for example, if you wanted to buy a certain washing machine, and then you can search for the washing machine type, and then common problems. Next thing is comparisons. They tend to do quite well, so you compare one thing to another. So, for example, if you were a wedding cake designer, you can see a supermarket wedding cake versus bespoke wedding cake, so you can have a comparison blog post. What people also look for is reviews, and that tends to be products as well, but it can be software and services as well. So I'm not talking a Google review, but a proper, long review of a certain type of product or service. And then the other thing that people search for is best of or top of, and so, for example, best cake designers in Newcastle.

Janice Hostager:

Hmm, I love that. I think that list is going to be really helpful too when you're trying to make decisions about what to offer various customers at various stages of the what I call the trail to the sale, or their buyer's journey. Yes, so that's something really to take note of, because if somebody is looking for the cost of something, that means that they're probably halfway to the point of being ready to buy it, or at least they're curious about what would it cost if I did this. So that's really a good tip.

Nadin Thomson:

And Marcus Sheridan. I'm not going to swear on this podcast, but Marcus Sheridan, basically he says if you don't talk about costs on your website, it's called the middle finger of the internet Because everybody the customers know that you know your price. Yeah, so they know that. You know, so you're hiding it and so why not talk about it? And if like, for example, if I contact you for marketing services, then you say but I can't give you a price until I know what you want.

Nadin Thomson:

But you can put three or four use cases on your website saying somebody that wants to have a logo and a website copywriting and a brochure design, that's going to cost me what? Five thousand dollars. If somebody is gonna want this, that and that, then you're probably talking about that. So you're giving people an idea um to so that they might fall in love with what you show on your website. But if you don't show any prices, they have no chance to know if they can actually afford you. So right, yeah, by showing a starting price or minimum spend or a typical product or typical customer spend, you're actually helping your customers a lot.

Janice Hostager:

Oh, that's great advice, because I do get that question from people. I have my prices on my website for some things, and some of it starting at price, because it is difficult sometimes if you have very customized products or services for sure. So what are some other common SEO mistakes that you see that people tend to make?

Nadin Thomson:

Well, the biggest one is that I see so I call keywords, for example, I call them like seasoning and like salt and pepper, when, for example, I'm working on a upholstery website here and the lady wants to rank for upholstery in a certain area in the UK. So the worst thing that people do is they use the word upholstery plus their location. So let's say upholstery texas or wherever you are just now, upholstery texas, and they use the same keyword on all the pages on their website and every page on your website.

Nadin Thomson:

So this is a good, good sentence to understand and it's not media kind. It's a digital marketeer called andy christodina. He's from Chicago. He said Google does not index websites. Google indexes web pages. So that's a huge thing to understand. They don't index websites, they index web pages.

Nadin Thomson:

So every single page on your website, regardless if that's a blog or a page, all of these entities are pages and every single page needs to have its own keyword that you want to rank for, and then the keywords all around that one keyword that are supportive of that. And yes, you can have additionally the keyword that you want to rank for. But if, for example, the, the sofa website I'm looking at here on my second screen, there is an upholstery one, but then we talk about modern sofa reupholstery and this is all about modern sofas. This is not about vintage or older ones. Um, so the vintage one, it will all talk about vintage, but it will never mention the word modern, if that makes sense. So the, the keywords need to be sprinkled as seasoning, and if you put the same keyword on every single page, that is like pouring your salt jar all over your website with the same keyword it.

Nadin Thomson:

Essentially they cannibalize each other yeah, the google doesn't know what you want to rank for on a certain page, so Google won't rank you at all, or?

Janice Hostager:

rank the page you don't want to be ranked.

Nadin Thomson:

Exactly which I've seen happen too.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, so what about running paid ads? They don't call them AdWords anymore, but Google search ads. So you want to rank for some certain ads, and so you do some Google search ads. So you want to rank for some certain ads, and so you do some Google search ads. Does that help your SEO in the long run, or is it sort of separate from SEO?

Nadin Thomson:

So it helps your reach, so that you get in front of more people, obviously, but Google actually keeps the Google ads and the SEO completely separate and you can switch them on and you rank and you switch them off and your domain rating is still very, very low. Now I have spoken to a client recently and he said oh, one of my competitors, they are everywhere. Whatever I enter, they are everywhere. And I looked at their domain authority and they were zeros across the board. They had no keywords on the website. Um, so my, my professional SEO software couldn't find anything. Um, and even though the website's been there for maybe a year or two, and uh, but they are running Google ads and that's why he sees them everywhere. If they switch the ads off, that website wouldn't exist in Google. So it might have a small boost, but it's not really fair because Google says it's not fair for the Google ads to then boost your organic SEO, because these are two different things.

Janice Hostager:

Gotcha. So even though you may get a lot of traffic from a paid ad or paid keyword, it's not going to be something that Google takes into consideration when they're ranking your page.

Nadin Thomson:

So this is similar If you go to Instagram, for example and I know there are different opinions on that, but I always think that if a platform gives you a native boost option, then we can use that boost option. So boost post, for example. So if I don't boost my posts, I get one or two followers per week, but if I boost my posts for only as little as $5 a day, I get on average, 50 to 100 followers per week because I'm simply putting myself in front of the customers. So that's just, and if I switch the boosted ad back off, I'm going down to one or two new followers per week. That's the same thing, just more exposure.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, Although I will say I just have to interject this here I do not ever recommend boosting posts. I'd recommend that you use the ad manager, but I'm just going to put my two cents in.

Nadin Thomson:

It worked really well for me in the past, so yeah.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, I guess it really depends on your objective. If it's just to grow an audience. If it's working for you, then more power to you. So what about local SEO? What are some tips that people who have a local business say a brick and mortar like a bakery, for example can do to attract customers in their area?

Nadin Thomson:

So, first of all, this is basically my specialty is to help local businesses put themselves on the map. And the first thing that when people open your website, it needs to show the location big in your face. So the first headline you see on a website shouldn't be a marketing headline. The first headline should be a keyword. For example, reupholstery in new york. That's so you need to. So need to say what it is you do and where is you're doing it and possibly who you're doing it for. So, for example, you could see a wedding photographer in New York for luxury venues. So that includes the three things. So when I see a website that says let's transform your most romantic day in your life, that's going to bomb because this is marketing but nobody knows what you're selling. So sometimes we need to put on the tin what's in the tin, and your very first headline needs to be the keyword, and that's super important. So, and the keyword and the location, and then the location. I see this so often, especially the local businesses, that they don't mention their business address. And I can see why because they work from home, they don't want to show their home address on their website. But you can go around that you simply mention the town where you are, your postcode, possibly, and the area, and you mention that in a footer of every single page and in your headlines, so that Google has got no doubt where your business is and where it operates.

Nadin Thomson:

And the next thing is you need to really work on your Google profile Now, if your profile has been suspended by Google, please, please, please, make an effort and contact Google and you may need to contact them 20 times until you get it right. But you can also look up on YouTube how to unsuspend a google profile or how to get a google profile unsuspended. There are really good videos of that. Help you find out what, uh, what needs to be done. And google, for example, needs to have proof that you know video proof and you just need to record it. And you just need to put in the legwork, read the terms and conditions on the Google website and follow it to the T, and I've helped quite a few people who had the Google profile suspended and just reestablish it and get it back up. So that's super important.

Nadin Thomson:

Put photos up there, upload your logo, upload pictures of your location. If you don't want to show your location, show your products and then make sure that you add google updates. Now, google updates updates self-destruct every six months. So if you um, so it's not another social media. That's the beauty of it, because if you upload one a month, then you will always have six showing. And this could be and again, it's not for a blog post. A Google update is simply an image, and I always say put words on the image so that people can see it in back and there, because the text underneath could be quite small. And then you say did you know the five top mistakes for SEOs? And then click here to learn more and then people might see this and then they click and go to your website.

Janice Hostager:

That's interesting. So it's not just for promotions. No, okay, okay, because it kind of looks that way, because I've thought about blog posts in there. But you're right, you can't put up a blog post but you can't put up an image that clicks to a blog post. I love that idea. So, yeah, so you're talking about.

Nadin Thomson:

The other really cool thing that you can do with Google Profile is the questions. So there's a section in there that says questions. Now you, as the business owner, can ask the questions yourself and answer them yourself. So this is a good one. If you have got like the top 10 most frequently asked questions that your customer asks you all the time, you pop them in there as yourself and you answer them yourself. So people get an overview of the type of things that you do if you answer people's questions. So that's something that you can add to your Google profile.

Janice Hostager:

I love that.

Janice Hostager:

I love that, and because people Google questions too, so it may pop up in the search results as well.

Janice Hostager:

Right, hopefully, maybe, yeah, so you're talking about the Google it used to be called Google my Business the little blocks that are next to the search results, that if you're doing a local search. So now I have clients that have multiple locations throughout a state, for example, multiple locations in Texas, for example, it's still important to have bakeries throughout central Texas or something like that, in the upper part of the headline as well, as I would imagine to have a separate location page for each of those. So if you're looking for bakeries in Dallas, you might want a page that says this is the bakery in Dallas, because they would go directly to that landing page rather than to your homepage in the search results. Right, yeah, and those are so easy to put together and they do really work in the search results, right, yeah, so, and that's those are so easy to put together and they do really work in the search results, or if you're searching for those terms, it really does make a difference.

Janice Hostager:

Yeah, but I love that about the q and a's it's a great idea. Um, okay, so is seo something that you feel like people should leave to the experts, or do you feel like it can be accomplished through a DIY or a small business owner, just by getting behind the scenes, getting a little comfortable with their website platform If it's WordPress or Squarespace or some of the other ones and doing it themselves?

Nadin Thomson:

It really depends where you are in your business. There are, like I work, like my main business is building websites and doing SEO for big companies, but my SEO club is for micro businesses, so single business owners who really don't have the funds to outsource SEO, and I've got an online course that tells people step by step. Because with SEO it's so big, where do you start? But most people start with the keywords, which I then call the cherries on the cake. But if your website is wrong, if your website is not set up to actually convert visitors and the customers, then there's no point in starting to think about keywords. So a lot of times people want traffic, traffic, traffic to their website. But if the website isn't set up right to actually turn visitors into customers, then there's no point in driving traffic. So my first step is start with the eggs, with the flour and the sugar. Fix the website, put lead magnets in place, put contact forms in place, put reviews in place where they need to be, and then basically, from then on, we start working on SEO and basically explain every single step on a weekly basis. So a new week, a new concept. You then add this to your website and you don't want to spend. So I see this quite a lot of people who want to do seo themselves like they think, oh, I'm going to do seo on sunday and that'll be that. Now, seo is never finished. Seo is better for you to spend two or three hours a week, then eight hours and then not touch it for a month or two.

Nadin Thomson:

So regularity of content updates on your website is super important and, yes, you can learn it yourself. Um, there, there's not um, and the thing is people are really scared of the geeky stuff. There are just a few terms that you need to understand and and get to grips with. And um, and then just good content creation. And if you have got an instagram account and you scroll to the bottom of your account, your first 10 posts if you kept them there, they will not be exciting, but if you started following that, you learn so much more about your audience the more you post, and so I have kept my Instagram posts there from the very start and they look completely different to what they look now, and this will be the same with your blogging and your website. So digital ink is never dry, so you just always work on it and your website is, and website, and SEO is about caring when your customer searches for the information they're looking for, so you want to show up when they need you.

Janice Hostager:

Love that. I love that term. Digital ink is never dry.

Nadin Thomson:

I have to Andy Crestodina. Said that one again.

Janice Hostager:

So you're talking about on-page SEO, but you're I love that you're also starting with the website itself, because if your website doesn't make sense to a visitor so let's say, you have that bakery um, you need, uh, maybe a page that has cookies, one that has cakes, one that has muffins, I don't know, um. So the URLs also have to reflect. So if you have one that says I don't know, I'm drawing a blank here Cakes, let's do cakes. And then you may have a subdomain to that one or sub level, a different level, that is, wedding cakes versus birthday cakes, and so on and so forth. So if you don't have that structure laid out in a logical format for your customers, google's not going to like it either, right?

Janice Hostager:

So so that's, true yeah, so that's what you're saying, is that you need to start with your website so that people know exactly how. In google, you knows exactly how your site is laid out, so it makes logical sense and the same.

Nadin Thomson:

yeah, I get this question quite a lot when people go to google and they see that a website is linked and then it's got five additional links below the website and they say, oh, I want that, want that, how do I do that? It's like, well, you structure your website well and Google might consider that displaying that. So it's not something that you can do and request from Google. It's something that happens if you have got a good website set up.

Janice Hostager:

And probably traffic too. I would imagine If one of those subpages gets a lot more traffic than the others. I don't know that's always been my theory.

Nadin Thomson:

Well, that's true. And the most frequented pages? They are then also listed there.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, okay. So what about backlinks? How important are backlinks?

Nadin Thomson:

I get this all the time and I think backlinks in my membership that's something that people struggle with the most, because they basically have to reach out to total strangers and ask them for a favor. But there are many different ways to get backlinks and one of the ones that is a bit bone of contention is citations. So citations is you use a service like Bright Local or Moz Local and you pay them so that your website is submitted to other business directories. But I have found in many years the last few years that it didn't make a huge difference. So if you're listed on the Yelp or whatever business directory, you're not suddenly go from a domain authority of two to 20. It doesn't happen. So you might go from two to 2.1. So these things are useful but they're not crucial.

Nadin Thomson:

So the ones backl links to do? I'm going to tell you a quick trick. So here's if you go to your accountancy software or bookkeeping software and you look at all your suppliers, you take a note of all the suppliers and then you look at their websites. Now a few of those people might show testimonials on their website with a little photo and a link to the company. If you like working with that supplier, send them a testimonial with a little photo and a link and they might include that on their website. So it's legwork that you have to do. Good idea, it's legwork that you have to do, and there are a lot of companies out there that do guest blogging and where you can buy backlinks.

Nadin Thomson:

I would say, be really careful employing them, because your website might end up on hundreds of spammy websites that can be more damaging than is actually good. That can be more damaging than is actually good. So local businesses should reach out to other local businesses that are related to your industry. So if you're a bridal store and your best friend runs a garden center, there might be a link with the flowers. But if your best friend sells shovels, then there might not be a link with the flowers. But if your best friend sells shovels, then there might not be a link. But the thing is I would still maybe put a link in place if somehow they can spin a reason for that link, either through local networking or something like that, because any local link is a boost. So local links really help.

Janice Hostager:

But local relevant links are really really good so do you think that that is, they have more um weight, weight than like an article that you wrote that was picked up by the new york times or the.

Nadin Thomson:

Well, if that was picked up. I mean, if, if this happens, this is fantastic and, uh, google will know that you do digital pr, it depends on the article. If the article is going well, if the article is related to you, this will give you a boost, but it's still not going to jump your domain authority from 2 to 20.

Janice Hostager:

It might come from 2 to yeah, so someone told me once that the numbers as they go up really depends. They like multiply. It's like tornadoes or a hurricane. The only thing I can think of as an analogy is that they become exponentially stronger, right, so it's easier to get from two to three than it is to get from 20 to 21, for example. Yeah, so even small increments are a win. And you're talking about domain authority, which you can measure on, like mozcom or several other websites. That will kind of give you an idea of where you land. And really, on that one, you really just need to an idea of where you land. And really, on that one, you really just need to outrank your competitors, right?

Nadin Thomson:

You're not going to get to 100. So the whole domain authority thing is quite heavily debated and I think Google still looks at links and links are still important, but I think, because there is so much abuse going on in the SEO community, Google will also now give a chance to tiny websites if their content is top-notch. So if you produce good content and for me good content is something where you feel satisfied after having consumed it. So how often do we read content and you're like, yeah, so what If content leaves you with so what, then that's not good content. Content should leave you with satisfaction that you've learned something and that you've spent your time wisely consuming it.

Janice Hostager:

Okay, okay. So how can I tell, or how can I measure, if my seo efforts are really paying off? So let's say, I went and did a whole bunch of changes over the weekend and got some backlinks. Um, is it? Is it really just domain authority that I need to keep an eye on, or how would you measure it?

Nadin Thomson:

so when I do seo projects for clients, obviously we're looking at higher visitor numbers and more inquiries. So these things are not necessarily don't need to go from 10,000 to 20,000 visitors a month. If you have 10,000 visitors and we improved the website and we go from 50 inquiries to 100 and we don't need 20,000 visitors and that would make 20,000 visitors, we could get 200 inquiries, if that makes sense. So I work with small businesses, but there are, like small businesses considered, up to 250 staff, so micro businesses, anything under 10. So, yeah, how to measure it is how often it's displayed.

Nadin Thomson:

There's different KPIs that you can look at your impressions, your clicks, that your number of visitors are going up per month, that your engagement rate is consistently way above 60. That means that people actually read your content and they don't come to your website and look for five seconds and just jump back out. Just jump back out. Um, so if your um engagement time, also your your session time, is quite long way over a minute, then that means your your content is good or better than average, because the the average or a bad engagement time is anything under 45 seconds. So, um, I've looked into these numbers and they are.

Nadin Thomson:

They vary from industry to industry as well. But yeah, that should be one of the things to monitor. So the thing is, when you look into these things, when you do something at the weekend, you're not going to have a massive impact within two weeks, so these things take time. So I did an SEO project recently for a fitness business and even within two weeks we had a jump of impressions in Google of 10, 15%, and then within a month the jump was 40%. So there was quite a huge jump, but that was impressions and in the clicks there were maybe 20% more clicks.

Janice Hostager:

That's good. I know that there are software out there. I subscribe to Ubersuggest that will send you an alert to like oh, your keyword, this keyword just dropped to page two, you know, on Google, so that there are things you can purchase. That will let you know, too, how effective your SEO efforts are, because it's a horse race yeah, you can get that in the Google search console.

Nadin Thomson:

Google search console will tell you where which keyword is ranking. So Uber suggests just another SEO tool, but the Google search console tells you everything about your keywords that you need to know, and it is from the source in Google, so you don't need to use any other tool that uses their algorithms, but the Google Search Console uses their own, obviously internal Right right.

Janice Hostager:

Is there a way to get reports from them? Yeah, you just download them. Oh, there's an export.

Nadin Thomson:

Button.

Janice Hostager:

I need someone that puts something right in front of my face. All right, Now we go and see it, unfortunately.

Nadin Thomson:

So tell us how people can work with you so I run the seo club, and people can just look at my instagram page it's called theseoclub, um, and there you will find a link to my website, which is also the hyphen seo, hyphen clubcom. And. Or you search for the seo club in google and um. So I run an online uh course which explains every single aspect of seo in a small lesson and it tells you exactly what to do on your website, and I found so. It's based on wordpress, but I also provided links for other platforms like Squarespace, for example, and Wix, and so, and then, for example, we might talk about backlinks.

Nadin Thomson:

I've got nine lessons just on backlinks and I give you nine different options on how to generate backlinks for your website, and every single lesson has then got a task that tells you exactly how to do it. A task that tells you exactly how to do it. So there's a video, and then there's a private membership private Facebook group where you can ask the questions, and then we do live Q&As every two weeks as well.

Janice Hostager:

Wow, that sounds great. All right, well, thank you so much, Nadin. You have been super helpful. I appreciate your straight answers to all these questions, because there's so much misinformation, too, about SEO out there, and it's, of course, changing all the time because Google is constantly updating their algorithms, so it is kind of a sticky wicket for everybody.

Nadin Thomson:

So all right. The one thing to say is keep your SEO ethical, yes, and anything you write, write it for your customer and if you see anything about an seo hack, swipe left and move on seo hacks. Google does not like that, so keep it ethical and follow the seo guidelines.

Janice Hostager:

Great advice, Alrighty. Thank you so much.

Janice Hostager:

Thank you. Nadin has so much good stuff to share and I love that she makes SEO so easy. For more information about anything we talked about today, visit the show notes page at myweeklymarketingcom. Forward slash 71. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you found this helpful, I would always appreciate a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app that helps me get found by more people so they, too, can learn how to better market their business. After all, a rising tide lifts all boats. Thanks again, see you next time. Bye for now.

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