013: SEO Basics - Your Essential Guide to Getting Found Online

In this episode of The Website Success Show, host Jules White demystifies the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), providing essential insights for business owners who want their website found online.

Jules explains how SEO can help you break through the noise, attract more visitors to your website, and ultimately convert them into paying customers. She outlines the fundamentals of how search engines like Google work and shares actionable tips on optimising your content for better visibility in search results.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding SEO: Learn what SEO is and how it can benefit your business.
• How Search Engines Work: A simplified explanation of how Google's search works and what factors influence rankings.
• Keyword Research Essentials: Discover the difference between seed keywords and long-tail keywords, and how to choose the right ones for your business.
• Optimising Your Website Content: Learn where and how to use keywords strategically on your website to improve your SEO.
• Getting Started with SEO Tools: Use free tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to gain insights into your website's performance.
• Final Thoughts & Encouragement: Jules offers words of encouragement and reminds listeners that SEO doesn't have to be complicated.

Bonus Resource: Get your free Simple SEO website report from The Website Success Hub and learn how to improve your website's visibility and attract more organic traffic.

Get your free website SEO report here at The Website Success Hub and start making changes for a more sustainable marketing strategy!

Transcript

Introduction to SEO Basics

Hi, so I have delivered this talk. many times in other groups, but I've never delivered a talk on the basics of SEO here in my own group. So I thought I would do that this morning. So I hope this is helpful.

The Importance of SEO for Business

It's just about sort of the foundations of what you need to understand about SEO as a business owner really. So so many business owners are creating valuable content that's just gathering dust or simply feeding the algorithms with very little to show for it. I'm just going to make sure I'm not muted.

But it doesn't have to be this way. Imagine your content, reaching someone out there on the online world, delivering a small nugget that really connects with them and compelling them to engage with your business today.

I'm going to talk about a way to break through the noise and get more visitors to our websites who then turn into paying customers. And this is the power of SEO. So for those who don't know me, I'm Jules White. I'm a website and SEO consultant with a focus on traffic and conversions. And I love working with course creators, podcasters, as well as local businesses, helping them to make their website better.

So they earn more money, whether they're working on, walking on the beach, working in their business, Sitting on the beach, or working, walking the dog. So the reason that they, they, um, are having that freedom to be able to go and do the things that they want to do aside from working in their business is because their ideal clients are finding their website or podcast right at the moment. They're searching for what they sell. So my background is as a beauty and holistic therapist, but I've always been a geek as well.

And I've been building websites since 2007. And when I'm not working. In my business, I love to walk in nature with my husband, Aaron and our dog, Poppy. And I'm also one of those strange people who loves cold water swimming. So I'm going to start today with some SEO basics.

Understanding Search Engines

So SEO stands for search engine optimization. And essentially it means that the information on your website is set up in a way that it shows up in search engines like Google and Bing and Yahoo.

And the reason that we tend to focus on Google is because the majority of searches that go through a search engine still do go through Google. So it has dropped a little bit recently. But it's still 80 plus percent of searches that go through a search engine happen through Google.

So that's why we focus on that one. There's a reason that we say I need to Google it. We don't say I need to Yahoo it or I need to Bing it. And if you optimize Your content for Google, then you will show up in the other searches as well, wherever people are searching and 92 percent of global internet traffic comes from Google search, Google images, and Google maps. So that's why we sort of focus on Google really.

So how will SEO help your business?

How SEO Can Benefit Your Business

Essentially what it does is it helps you to stop relying on short term tactics and instead embrace a long term and more sustainable marketing strategy that can bring you a steady stream of clients into your business from content that you already own. It's a great alternative to paid ads and social media where once you stop doing those things then the traffic stops and rather than relying on. Interrupting people's scroll as they're using social media.

If the algorithms even decide to show your content, people are actually out there searching for your solution to their problem, and you can connect with them right at the moment they're actually making that search, so creating your. Content with an SEO plan in mind allows you to become the go to expert in your niche, and it helps to build trust with your audience. And you're also borrowing a little bit of Google's trust as well. .

And we trust Google to deliver good results in the search results pages because their algorithm is so complicated and they take on so many factors that we actually, when we, when we type something into Google, we trust that what appears at the top of the search is going to be pretty much what it is. And we don't always get exactly what we're looking for, but we always get, you know, a good idea really.

There's usually a few sites there that are helpful. So when our sites show up in those top positions, we borrow a little bit of that trust from Google as well. So that's really helpful for our business. And something to know is that SEO is not a quick fix. However, if you get it right, you can get results within a few months and what you're doing with your website, SEO can also boost if you've got a podcast, it can boost that or your YouTube channel, your, even your social media accounts. Having that robust plan in place can help you throughout all of your work. for all parts of your business.

So when, wherever you're creating content, whether that is blogs or service pages or product pages on your website, it can be a roadmap to help you understand what content to create, to stop wasting time creating stuff that does nothing for your business or disappears straight away.

And even down to things like what emails you're going to send out that, that week, if you're creating your content with a plan, it can be your roadmap for everything. Really. I actually released a podcast episode on this episode 12 about why focusing on your own content on your own domain first is really important. So recommend having a, having a listen to that as well. And that's just reinforcing why it's important to focus on our own content first.

Google Search Results Explained
So how does search work? Google and the other search engines want to deliver the best results for its customers, who are the people that are actually making the search. They want the most useful and the most appropriate content, um, for the search that somebody's making.

So their little robots go out and crawl through the whole internet. They crawl through every webpage and essentially put them into a big catalog. And this catalog is Google's index, and the bots are clever and they're getting cleverer all the time, but the information still needs to be organized in the right way, and AI is changing things. But with the explosion of content that's coming out there, it's probably even more important than ever that your information is readable by the bots and that. people and as well as Google understand what, how your content relates to what people are actually searching for.

One thing to note is that Google rank, ranks web pages rather than whole websites. So if you think about Google search results, they don't necessarily, they are showing a link to your website there. But it's one particular page that they're showing that that will take people through to. And I think that's a big thing to understand about SEO.

We try, we can end up trying to rank our whole site for the same thing. But actually it's each individual page that you need to give a job and try and get to rank for one particular search term in the beginning. Really just have one focus for each page so that Google understands which of your pages is the most relevant to that particular search that somebody's doing.

And One thing to mention is whether you are talking about landing pages or websites or web pages, they are all essentially just web pages. They're all just one particular page on the, on the internet that Google or whichever search engine is going to point people towards.

And understanding that does make things a little bit easier. It just, it just makes you have a little bit of a focus with each page on your website. What do you, what's the job of this page? What do you want this page to? Appear for and what action do you want people to take from that page? So I'm just going to show you a little bit about the search results pages.

And it's really good to understand this because I think it, the big thing that this shows is the difference between showing up in position one and showing up in position 10. So when we start, when you look at a search results page, and these are all changing, and literally in the last week this has changed. Google is now showing more. AI generated search results.

So things will look different and that is changing things in AI and in SEO, it, it's still. The things that are happening in the background to determine whether your site is showing or not is still pretty much the same, so , the first thing we see in a search page is usually ads.

Again, this is changing with the generative search from AI, but there's still going to be ads involved in that because Google relies on those ad revenue to To run its business. That's where it gets its money. The majority of people don't click on ads. They reckon about 25 percent of people click on the ads. Then the next thing down from the ads is organic search position one.

And this is the goal. This is where we want to get to. This is the thing that gets the lion's share of the clicks. The majority of people once, if they get past the ads, then they're going to click on position one.

So this is what we're, we're aiming for when we, when we try and rank our pages. Then below that we have a section that people also ask and this can be really helpful if you're trying to do some keyword research and you're trying to understand what people are actually searching for on Google around your business.

This can be really helpful to look at this section here. So, You can use it for keyword research. So you could just go to a Google page and type something related to your business in that key in the search term and see what comes up in this people also ask section. This is where there are common questions that people are searching for in relation to that on Google. And this, um, a good example of this is

This website is actually, when you look at where they are in the real results, they're in position 20, but they're showing up just below position one because they've got, got a question of What is a wellness coach? They've answered that question well. And so they're now showing up that's showing in organic position, essentially below position one, in this position here.

So if you've got the right content, you're answering questions well. So it's not just about the whole webpage showing up. It's about if you've got questions on frequent last questions on other pages, then you, this can be a great way to actually jump up the rankings as well.

So knowing what people are searching for can be really powerful. It can be, you know, Make a massive difference when you're planning your content on your pages, and you can just weave those kind of things throughout your pages and that can get you a good result where you can literally leap up.


This is, this is, this website has leapt up 18 positions to almost in, you know, this isn't position two, but essentially that's where it is, is below position one. So it certainly can get clicked on very, um, very often. Below that, we then have find results on. So this is where you can optimize your content elsewhere on the internet. So if you've got your, if you're using your social media pages, actually making sure that you've got your keywords in your descriptions and the things that you're putting on social media can be really helpful.

And this can also show up things like LinkedIn, other listings can show here as well. So if you're well optimized throughout your web presence, it's Then that is where you can show up here to coming down. Next we have Google maps and Google maps are. Really helpful, especially if you are a local business, if you've got a pin in the map in particular, or you service a local area, then this is one of the best things you can do to get quick wins with your SEO. I'm very passionate about Google business profiles and utilizing them as much as we can.

46 percent of all searches on Google are linked to something local. So if you can use keywords in your Google business profile, you can get some really quick wins showing up here in the map. There you, you firstly see these three positions here. So this is what we call the local map pack and we try and get, that's what we're aiming for our Google profile showing up as.

But when you click on more places, then that will also give you all of the other places locally to you on the maps as well. And it looks different when you're looking on mobile, then the map results are going to look very different here as well. And it's also worth noting that Different people will have different search results. So based on your search history, based on whether you've got cookies turned on, based on what websites you've visited before.

So this just gives you a general idea of where you're actually sort of showing up in Google for different search terms. Then, below that, we then come down to Organic Search Position 2. And this is the search results. I think a really good way to show how much of a difference it makes being in position one versus position two, because we've seen position one, we've seen all of that noise in between those two pages before we then get down to position two.

The top three organic search results get 54 percent of the clicks and Especially now Google got rid of their pages for a while. We didn't have that for a while, but they've gone back to now having actual pages. So you actually, you don't keep scrolling to get to the, the results below page one. You now have to click back over onto page two. And most people won't, most people won't take into page two, which is why we want to try and get into these top results. So below position two is when we would then see positions.

Three or positions four through to 10, essentially. But what I've actually popped in here is an example of some of the generative search results that we see now in Google. So this was a search I did for podcast SEO, and it came up with essentially within these dropdowns here, it's showing lots of different websites there as well. So things are changing. As I say, we're with AI, but it's still really important to do what we can to optimize our sites to have the information in the right places.

Keyword Research Essentials
So we're going to come on to talking about keywords before you start thinking about doing anything around your SEO and trying to optimize your website. It's really important to get clear on who we help, what problem we solve for them and what language they use around that. So what are the kind of what are the core topics that we cover in our business and how are our customers. talking about that as well.

So once you've established your ideal clients, what problems you solve for them, then you need to work out what they are actually looking for in Google or in any search really. So a keyword is essentially the thing that people type into a search bar when they're looking for something. So for example, So we've got two types of keywords. We've got seed keywords and we've got long tail keywords. So seed keywords are kind of like, well, what we've got here is SEO services. That's a very broad term.

There's lots and lots of people searching for that each month, but there's also a ton of content out there around that. So that's not a term that I would be expecting to rank for, for my small, small business website. However, I still want Google to associate that term with my website. So it's not something where that's going to bring me lots of traffic, but Google understanding that.

My business is around SEO services is really important for then the, the chances where there are less competitive keywords that we can go after. It helps me with those as well. So keywords can be a little bit misleading. I want to really think of it as key phrases, really, because those are the ones that we really want to try and find some opportunities for. Essentially, the ones that have three words or more, and they're more like a sentence, really, because there's going to be less competition out there about them.

So the sort of longer keywords here, SEO services, for course creators UK is a bit more of a, um. A specific term and the people who are looking for something along those lines are there's a lot of intent there for them actually looking for someone to help them with something. How to promote business locally online is another one that I've got as an example there. This one is quite an interesting one because with the AI. search results.

One of the things that businesses need to consider now is the type of content that they're creating, and can what they're creating, does it answer a question that Google can answer in one search generative result? So can AI give that answer to that question quite quickly and easily? And if they can, it might be worth thinking about different type of content to create. Once you've already created sort of the content that you're looking for.

The basics that helps Google understand you're an authority on this topic, then sometimes switching to creating content that has more of a commercial intent behind it could help your business more. So the one, the other example I've got there is dog friendly cafe near me.

And this is one that is, People are looking for a specific type of business. They're looking to find a dog friendly cafe right near them. So I'm going to come on to search intent, um, in a moment, but this is something that is worth thinking about. And especially now because things are changing with the searches. So one thing to bear in mind is that 15 percent of Google searches every day on Google have never been searched for before.

So I think that the, it's quite encouraging to know that fact. And it's what something that if you feel like there's something emerging in your industry, then I would say create some content around it, even if, even if the search tools aren't showing that there's anybody searching for it that month, then if you have that feeling of actually, you know, I think, I think this is going to be something that I need to create content around, especially if there's not a lot of content around it already, then it can, that can be really helpful. useful for your business, for you to be that initial person that starts talking about a topic that then does actually become a trending topic.

And you can use tools as tools that you can use to see what are trending topics and what is coming up. But if you've got a hunch about your industry that you think this is going to be the next big thing, creating some content around it can be a really good idea. So. We're not diving in fully into sort of keyword research today, but keyword research is where everything should start when you're starting to think about your content plan and starting to think about your putting an SEO plan in place. Or if you're even thinking about developing a new product or launching a new service. Starting with some keyword research can, can be a great place to start because it helps you to understand the demand for it.

So I'm, I work with clients and we do keyword research and often this is where they have big light bulb moments and it can indicate to them what the demand is and the kind of language that people are using around that. So I recently did some keyword research around SEO because I haven't done any for a while. And one of the things that I've seen a lot this year is around SEO being dead because of AI and SEO and AI is going to kill off SEO and websites are going to get killed off and actually. Just doing this keyword research has reinforced the fact that SEO is very much alive. So July last year, there were 33, 100 searches for SEO. SEO services was this one, this search that I did.

And then in October, that went up to 60, 500 searches. And that has pretty much stayed there since then. So that is a massive, massive difference. And a good reinforcer of the fact that actually this is, this is not a dying thing. SEO is still very much relevant. And this is just SEO services. When I actually looked for SEO as a term itself, the, the, the figures were incredible that it was just always on the up and that's really good for me, for my business. I'm like, yes, that's amazing. I'm still on the right track. It's still a good thing and that's something that can help with my clients as well. So when we do that keyword research, you can understand which parts are powerful, which parts are valuable to go after, which kind of content you should be creating around on your website around those terms. And. you end up not going down rabbit holes in the wrong direction, essentially.

So not all keywords are created equal. There are good keywords and there are bad keywords. It's good to make sure that when you are trying to target a particular page that you want to rank, that make sure that you're going after a long tail keyword. So we associate one keyword or key phrase with one page. Okay. So the reason that we do that is we don't want our pages competing against each other. So if you've got two articles about the same topic, then you need to approach it slightly differently so that Google understands which of those articles is the best, is the best, is the most important and the best result to deliver around that. And if you have got that kind of situation, sometimes it's worth consolidating those into two, into one article so that you can make one really good article that fully covers the topic and then you can, then Google understands that that's the, that's the page that's the best one to deliver that result really.

One of the things to consider is search intent. So we need to think about what is somebody trying to achieve when they're actually making that search. How can we then help them to understand that you're the expert on that? On that particular topic. So informational queries are where people are asking questions or they want to learn something, things like, you know, what is normal body temperature could be an informational query. Commercial.

Search intent is where people are looking to do a little bit of research before making a purchase. So that might be something like hair salon Near me, a transactional search is a search that's performed when someone's actually ready to buy something, so they want to compete a specific action, usually to make a purchase if the, the kind of searches that would have things like best or buy or discount or those kind of, words within the search that really indicate people are ready to buy.

So like best moisturizer for dry skin. Somebody's looking for something specific. They want to make a purchase and they want to know which is the best one. And then you've got navigational keywords.

This is where people are looking to locate a specific website. They already know what they're trying to find. They're just trying to find a particular website. . And then locals is the last type of search intent. And that's where people have a very specific local.

Business that they're looking for. And this is where your Google business profile can really help with that local search intent. So when you're looking at keywords, ideally make sure that some people are searching for it every month, if you can, but bear in mind that those 15 percent of searches that are done each day.

So if you feel like actually, no, this is an emerging trend, then you could, you could trust your instincts on whether you think it's something to create content around. Ideally you want not too much competition. So you can use keyword research tools to help you with this.

There's Google's keyword planner is one that you can use for free. Um, it's not the easiest to use and not the most fun to use. I like KW finder, which is a actually a paid tool, but you can get, I think, three searches a day for free. And that one seems to work well.

It gives you a competition score as well. So it will tell you how likely, as well as telling you how many people are searching for a term each month. It will also tell you how hard it's going to be to actually try and rank for that.

And it's something that. It's worth not taking that as gospel because there's so many different things that it can depend on, on, on how your, how competitive a keyword is. And that's why sometimes getting some professional help with your keyword research can make all the difference, really. I, so then if you've made some decisions on what keywords to go after, it's then worth looking at Google search results pages and just seeing what is there.

So if you're trying to rank for a keyword. where all Google is showing is blog pages and you want to try and rank your sales page there, it's probably unlikely to happen. Or if you're trying to rank for something where Google is showing up all local results or showing up all videos and you're trying to rank a short blog post, that's again, it's probably not likely to happen really. So it's worth comparing what's already there on page one, and how can you then create content that's better or. more optimized or give the the searcher a faster answer to what they the question is really.

Optimizing Your Website Content
So once you've determined your keywords there are some places on your website that you can use them and this is the bit that people often find really confusing but once you get your head around this it doesn't have to be that difficult and if you're creating content for your website anyway just naturally using these can make all the difference.

So we I would always say to focus on one keyword per page. So make sure that your content isn't competing against itself. And, the places in the page that you need to use your keywords are ideally within the page title.

And when you look at a Google search result, the page title is the part that shows up in that little tab in the browser at the top, your page URL, which is obviously the bit about behind the slash on your web address. The page URL can be a really powerful place to use your keywords. I see it time and time again, where when I'm looking at my keyword or my SEO tools, pages are ranking and the only thing that seems to be causing them to rank is that they've got the keyword in the URL. It's not particularly great content. It's not Particularly optimized, but they are using it in that URL. And you can't always do that.

If it's something like your homepage or your about page, then that you may not be able to use it there. But if it's a blog page or if you were doing a case study of a client and you're a local business using those, you know, URLs strategically can make a difference, but you do need to make sure that it does align with the content on the page as well. So many years ago, SEOs used to just be able to stuff keywords into a page and Google would rank that.

That doesn't happen so much now. You need to make sure that it does actually deliver on what it says it does in that URL. And then the next place is your H1 heading. Ideally, we just want to have one H1 heading on each page. And then that should contain the keyword there if you naturally can. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes that H1 heading, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work for a human. And that's why I would always say to focus on its focus, focus on the humans that are doing the search first, who are going to be reading it. If you read it out loud and it doesn't sound like it's natural, then don't.

Don't use that, that keyword there. But ideally, you'd have a little thought about that before you create the content on your page, so that you can naturally weave it through there. And then you do naturally need to weave it throughout the content as well. So ideally, within the first 250 words of the page, and the last 250 words of the page, you want to bring it back to that topic that you're talking about. Then the other places are,, Your image file names, and we don't always have control over our image file names.

Some website builders, I know I use with FEA Create, it changes the names when you upload it. I know Kajabi does the same, but if you can do it, then it's, it's a good habit to get into, to name your image, file name in SEO friendly ways. And I think this also encourages us to think about the images that we're using on our website and think about whether it aligns to the, to the content that you're actually talking about there. Because if that doesn't naturally correspond, then maybe that's not the best image to use at that point in your website. For example, if you were a salon and you had a little paragraph talking about. back massages And then you had a picture of pedicure next door to it.

That is a little bit of a disconnect and it just, it doesn't. doesn't help that page to immediately convey what you're talking about within the copy there. And then the image alt text as well. And you should be able to find this in your website builder in the place where you add your images. There should be a box that says image alt text or alternative text.

And then putting that in there can really help as well. So making sure you've got at least one image on the page that has the keyword in the alt text. And then you can also use your keywords. In other places online as well, such as your social media, bios, your posts online, your Google business profile, your Pinterest pins, using those keywords throughout those places can, can really help you to make sure that your content is, is aligning with what people are actually searching for. And then the last thing I wanted to talk about was in links.

So links are really important for SEO. And If you have internal links on your website, so linking your own pages to each other, but also if you're getting, hopefully you're getting backlinks from other places outside of your website, so other sites are linking back to yours, if those links also contain the keyword of the page that you're linking to that can be really helpful as well.

So say it was your about page and you were trying to rank for your name and your business on that about page is your keyword. It's not just a link that says. Check this out or click here or something like that. It actually says click here to find out more about your business name.

And that whole sentence then becomes the link that links back to your own website. So that's a lot of places to use. I do have a checklist of these that you can get from my website if that makes it easier. So you can literally just check off where you should be using your keywords on your pages.

So let's talk about where to start. The most important pages as a general rule on your website, the most important pages are the ones that have the highest likelihood of attracting new traffic. They form the strongest impression with your users. And they have the highest chance of leading to a sale. So it's the money pages that you would want to be thinking about optimizing first.

And Google looks for certain pages on your website as a signal that you are trustworthy, that your website is trustworthy, that you are a legitimate business and that you are trustworthy. And that is your homepage, your about page and your contact page. So if you have those on your website, then that's good. You don't necessarily have to optimize all of those for SEO first, but just having them there, as well as some legal pages like privacy policy, accessibility, terms and conditions that can go a long way to helping Google understand that you are a legitimate business.

And this is where sometimes it's a problem. People who are teaching people to build online businesses are teaching them that they don't need a website. They just need landing pages. And they're all just web pages. So actually making sure that you've got those initial pages on your domain, that then also has your landing pages there can help the authority of those actual landing pages as well.

So it helps Google understand those landing pages are part of a bigger. ecosystem of your website and are part of a legitimate business as well. So if you've got existing content, I would be thinking about The core topics that you need to be talking about in your business and thinking about what are your most relevant blog posts, or if it's podcast shows, or what are your most relevant pages on your website that, that actually is most appropriate for those particular search terms.

And you can use AI to help you with this. You can ask, you can run your content through chat GPT and say, this is my webpage content. This is my ideal client. This is my offer, or this is my call to action, or this is my freebie. Let me know what keywords you think I should try and rank this page for and why. And that can give you a little bit of a, a sort of place to start.

And I wouldn't worry about search volumes at that point. I would think of this as a sort of cataloging process. So you can catalog and organize your existing content, and then you can kind of worry about tying that in with search volumes So once you've actually got, okay, I know a rough plan of what content I have, then you can start organizing it.

And I would definitely recommend using something like a planner or a spreadsheet. I have a keyword map and planner that I, sell, which helps people to keep this all organized, but you could just do that with a Google, Google sheet or an Excel spreadsheet and keep track of the pages of your website and what things you're starting to try to rank for.

And then what you can do is then run that spreadsheet through ChatGPT. Once you've started to make some progress on your SEO and ask about what, what gaps you have in your content and what else you can do. it thinks you should be creating around that. And then you can do some sort of more specific keyword research to find out what search terms you've actually, got, people looking for them each month, basically.

Getting Started with SEO Tools
So the tools that I use in my own business, I've got a few tools that I use, which are paid sort of SEO tools that I use. I mentioned KW Finder. I don't use that as much, but that's a really good one to get started with. Google Keyword Planner. A Google search page is probably the best place to start.

And I also really love Google Gemini. I think that there's, there's definitely potential with that making SEO tasks easier, even just coming up with ideas. I would say to start with your own brain first. So think about those core topics that you need to talk about. Get that all down and then start thinking about using AI to sort of expand on that really, but everything you do in relation to SEO should be done from a user point of view.

So everything should be thinking, thinking about things from a human point of view, first and foremost, think of how people are going to use your content and what do they want from it. Start off with looking for some low hanging fruit. So there are a few tools, free tools from Google that you can use.

There's Google search console and Google analytics. Google search console is really good if you're starting to think about SEO, because it essentially helps you understand what Google sees about your website. And it helps you understand what you're already showing up for what people are already clicking through to your website for from Google. So that can be really, really a great place to start. You can also see which pages are. then doing the best in terms of actually getting clicks through to them as well. So I would definitely say start there.

If you've got Google Search Console and Google Analytics set up already, you can have a little look through there. Google Analytics helps you understand what people do once they actually come through to your website.

If you haven't got those set up, I would definitely say to start with that and get those set up because even if you're not planning to do anything with your SEO right now, they, they gather the data in the background. So the sooner you do it, the better your future self will definitely thank you for setting those up. And they don't, they're not difficult to set up as well.

Final Thoughts and Encouragement 
So some words of encouragement is that. SEO can be difficult and can be very technical, but it doesn't have to be. And there are a lot of advanced strategies, but the majority of businesses aren't actually doing the foundations and doing the basics. So the stats are that around 91 percent of websites receive no organic traffic from Google, 91%. 

And what that essentially means is that most people aren't doing the basics to help search engines understand about their website and understand what their content's all around. So if you're simply doing slightly more than your competitors. then you can get some good results with SEO. 

And the results do snowball and they get better over time. So it's something that is a sustainable marketing strategy that if you're still planning on being in business a year from now, then SEO is something that you should definitely be considering. So the key takeaways are it's, it's sustainable. It provides a great strategy that helps you with content creation across your business, not just on. on Google. And even if everything changes with how people search, so even if you optimize for Google and Google goes away tomorrow, which realistically that's not going to happen, the work you've done will still pay dividends in the future. 

Anyway, it's really important to get clarity on what you're selling, who it's for and what the core topics are. In your business. And that's really important before you start thinking about SEO and use the tools that are available to get some quick wins, look for low hanging fruits. And if you do need some professional help with this, then that can help you to get SEO success. And just help you understand what to do moving forward as well. 

My key takeaways as well would be to make a decision not to be overwhelmed. It's very easy to just ignore SEO. And that's one thing I do see a lot of people doing, just ignoring it really, even though they may be , there may be some things that they could make quick changes that would make all the difference. 

But if you're going to start thinking about it, just take it one step at a time, one page at a time, or even just one section of your website at a time and think about what you can do to make it easier for Google to understand The content of your website and to make it easier for users to use it as well. If you'd like to get started on using SEO to grow your business, and you'd like to see how your website's doing right now from an SEO point of view, you can get a free. Simple SEO website report. 

And even if you're embarrassed and you think, Oh, my website is terrible. I don't know where to start. I look at all the reports that I run. And if I see something that you can easily fix yourself and it'll give you a quick win, then I'll send you a little message and let you know, because we all want quick wins, right? 

And even if you don't want the report, if you. Join the list, then we're connected via email. So if you think of any questions then you can just hit reply to any email that I send you and ask me a question and I'll answer it for you. So my final words of encouragement is that showing up in searches, whether that's for your website, your podcast, your blog or your YouTube channel and sustainably getting clients off the back of that doesn't have to be difficult. 

So please , don't be afraid to give it a try.