{EP44}: How to Get Your Business Found Online with Melissa McGraw

In this episode, I'm joined by the lovely Melissa McGraw from The Creative Potential to talk about getting your business found online. Don't panic though - we're not diving into super-duper tech-talk - but we are going to talk about SEO.

Melissa knows a TON about SEO and getting found online (just check out her blog if you need proof!) and she's breaking it down into easy-to-follow steps... which are my fave kind of steps!

SHORT & SWEET EPISODE DEETS

Simple (and free) tools you can use to figure out what's working - and what isn't - on your website
Why keywords are still ultra-important to help you get found online
Quick tweaks you can make to your site to make the google bots happy!

USEFUL LINKS

THE AH-HA MOMENT

Getting found online is STILL really relevant - so while we spend a LOT of time focusing on our social media game, we need to be careful to not neglect our google-ability! You definitely want to the on the first page of google, so that when perspective clients are looking for someone to hire, you're at the top of the list!

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Speaker 1: 0:02

YThis is your host Mary SUA field, and welcome to the web preneur podcast. Join me and my guests each week as I take a deep dive into wedding business. Best practices, examine challenges facing our industry and interview wedding industry experts and thought leaders who will share their strategies for taking your wedding business to the next level. Whether you're new in the industry or a seasoned pro, each episode is filled with valuable information aimed to help you build and grow the wedding business that you are dreaming about. I'm ready if you are, so let's get started.

Speaker 2: 0:36

[inaudible]

Speaker 3: 0:39

Hey everyone. Welcome to the wed preneur podcast. I'm your host Mary SUA field and today we're going to talk about being found online. Now I know this might not sound like the sexiest of topics, but stay with me here because even though we focus a lot of our time on social media strategy, the fact is that a good portion of your potential clients are still using Google and still looking at websites to determine who they want to work with, and it is really, really easy for your website to get lost in the shuffle. These days. So today I invited Melissa McGraw to come on the show and share some of her tips and tools for getting found online. There's a lot of information in this episode, so I encourage you to pop by the show notes. If you want to test out any of the free tools she mentioned or if you want to book yourself a free call with Melissa, you can find all of this information online at the web, preneur.com forward slash 44 that's the web preneur.com/four four I also wanted to let all of the wedding planners out there know that the current session of the wedding planner intensive is in its final weeks right now and it has been incredible. It has been the most amazing experience to work with all of these wedding planners and help them get their systems and processes up to par and ready to rock their business. So this also means that registration for the next session will be opening up shortly. I'm going to be offering a 24 hour flash sale this time around to the course for anyone that is on my email list. So if you're not on it yet, this is the perfect time to get signed up. Just head over to the web printer.com forward slash subscribe so that you can get access to the 24 hour flash sale. Now it is my pleasure to introduce you to our guest today. Melissa McGraw, founder of the creative potential has helped brands grow their organic search and audience by triple digits in a matter of months. Melissa fell into the world of SEO in 2009 after her successful career in the NYC fashion industry when she started writing copy for Amazon. Her fascination with the psychology of online search led her to create over a hundred thousand SEO friendly product listings that are bringing in the dollars on Amazon. Today you've created amazing life improving product or service and now you need to bring in the eyeballs and the credit card digits to actually buy it. Well, Melissa McGraw is the SEO wizard who's going to do the hard work for you no matter if you have a product or service based business and get you more customers, clients, web traffic and sales. All right, my friends, let's get to the interview. Melissa, welcome to the smart business for wedding pros podcast.

Speaker 4: 3:27

Thank you so much for having me today.

Speaker 3: 3:29

Well I'm excited that you're here today. I love your business. I have to tell you that I went and I stocked your website yesterday and I spent no joke like two and a half hours reading your blogs. Yeah, I love it. Well you know what? Yeah, sometimes I find it's hard to find, um, updated information on our topic today. So I was like, Oh goodness, I better take notes and I better pay attention. Cause obviously you know your stuff. So before we get into today's topic, can you, um, tell us about your background and about the creative potential?

Speaker 4: 4:09

Well, I started in the fashion industry in New York city. I was in that industry for probably over 15 years. And then I got into the world of eCommerce in 2009. Right during, after the recession, the fashion industry took a very big hit. Um, and I wound up being out of a job as well as my clients, my friends. We were all vying for the same job in um, in the fashion industry. So I had to really quickly reinvent myself and I wanted to know more about the eCommerce world. So I was very fortunate to get an opportunity working with Amazon, creating Amazon product listings. I went back to school, to NYU, got my masters in digital marketing. So I was all set to go and learn more about SEO in 2009. And that opportunity just fell in my lap and it really took off. I've created over a hundred thousand product listings for products that are sold on Amazon today that have been SEO fied or optimized for SEO. And then I started working with private clients and that's why I formed the creative potential working with product-based entrepreneurs and service-based entrepreneurs, getting their businesses found on line. Well,

Speaker 3: 5:51

today we are going to be talking about how to get your business found online and I think this is such an incredibly important topic. You know, the number one question that I get asked by the members of my, what preneur community and my coaching clients is always like, how do I just, how do I get more business period. And I mean there's a lot of answers to that. It's a multifaceted approach. I think that involves, you know, a lot of networking, a lot of building relationships. But at the end of the day, if people, people are still Googling for the services that they need and if you're not showing up, then I think you probably have a, a struggle on your hands, right?

Speaker 4: 6:28

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's over 1.9 million websites out there, so there's so much competition, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just you have to do everything on your end to get your business found online.

Speaker 3: 6:43

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's just really a matter of being really smart about your strategy and I think everybody should have an SEO strategy. Now, having said that, I'm pretty guilty of not paying enough attention to this in my own business as well, so I'm excited to hear what your tips and tricks are today. I know I think for many creatives, SEO can feel really overwhelming and it's, it sounds technical, it feels technical. Um, do you find that this is the case?

Speaker 4: 7:13

Oh, absolutely. I find that SEO is lumped into these three categories that most entrepreneurs tend to avoid. The accounting, legal and then SEO because it's just, it's a little bit beyond our scope. It's in the case of SEO, it is very technical. It is ever changing. It's analytical. It's usually put at the bottom of everyone's to do list. They know they need to do it, they know they've been told, they reading it, they're seeing it, but Oh, just wait till next year. I'll do that later. And unfortunately you're giving up valuable internet real estate to your competition when you kind of push that to your bottom of your to do list.

Speaker 3: 8:03

Yeah, I would agree with that. You mentioned a lot of changes. So I think in a way it's frustrating because just when you think you know what you're doing when it comes to SEO, everything changes again and then you're like, Oh no. So what are some of the bigger changes that you've seen when it comes to SEO as we head into 2020 here?

Speaker 4: 8:23

Well especially for those that have wedding businesses, service based businesses, and you want to be found locally, the most important thing to do is to have your website optimized for those areas that you want to be found in or do business in or have your services. And and most of the time, most entrepreneurs forget this step near me searches, whether it's on your phone or whether it's on your desktop, is up over 900% wow. Compared to last year. So you want to have those variation, what we call keywords in your site, wedding planners near me because that's what people were searching for. They're not maybe even searching a specific city, they're just wherever, whatever location they happen to be in wedding planners near me. And that's how they're searching. So you want to make sure that your site has that

Speaker 3: 9:26

interesting. You know, I find it so fascinating. I think sometimes we as business owners, and I think this happens in many industries, we forget that what's obvious to us isn't always obvious to everybody else because I, you know what I went in, I looked at a few websites of um, uh, new coaching clients that I'm working with and no where on two of these sites, no where did it even say where they were located. So when they first inquired to work with me, I couldn't tell where they were from. And if I can't tell, certainly, you know, potential clients can't tell if they're searching. So yeah, I think that that's really, really important.

Speaker 4: 10:08

Absolutely. Local search is key, especially for service based businesses that want to be found local or low have local clients. And the first step really is a Google my business listing or Google business listing if they haven't signed up for that. I'm very, very important because that creates the first step in being found on Google maps.

Speaker 3: 10:33

[inaudible] so important. I also, so I also recently read a stat that said that video content is going to exceed all other content being consumed online, um, by 85%. So do you think that video, I know this is kind of like out in left field a little bit, but do you think video's really important when it comes to SEO?

Speaker 4: 10:54

Yes, absolutely. Because Google owns YouTube, so your content can be found 50 times faster with the use of video than just text alone. For example, in a blog post, if you embed a video into your blog posts, that will help INSEARCH because not everyone is using it right now. So the more that you incorporate video into your website, the better you will rank in search results. Let's

Speaker 3: 11:23

see, that's fascinating. And I asked that kind of selfless, selfish look, to be honest, because I know that my video game is not that great. So I know, I know it's something I'm planning on focusing on 2020 and I find in the wedding industry we are a little bit behind when it comes to embracing video. I know that I know a few people who are doing an exceptional job on it. They have amazing YouTube channels and they're doing lives and they're doing all this great video work. Um, and I think that if we're not careful, those of us who are a little slow on the uptake might be left behind a little bit by Google.

Speaker 4: 11:58

I agree. I, the more that you can incorporate video and get used to it, I know I'm at fault as well and I should practice what I preach to my clients, but I'm getting there. I'm doing some Facebook lives. I'm even IgG stories. Um, because even it shows you're a little bit more relatable. Uh, the reader is like, okay, I can resonate what they're talking about. For example, if you're doing behind the scenes at a wedding, whether you're a photographer or a planner, and just opening up your world to the reader, that is how consumers are digesting content in bite size chunks.

Speaker 3: 12:43

[inaudible] absolutely. Okay, so we're going to dive right into these five tactics. We may have covered one or two already, but that's okay. Um, what do you, what are you hoping that our listeners walk away with at the end of today's episode? What, how do you want them to be feeling about their, their online strategy?

Speaker 4: 12:59

Well, SEO doesn't have to be scary. It can be your best friend. And once you start to see the results, if you start to take some of these steps on going to be telling you on your website, you can start to be found for what you want to be known for.

Speaker 3: 13:16

Mm, fantastic. Okay. I love that. So remember guys, it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be hard. I'm with you on this listeners. So whatever we talk about today, I'm going to make a promise to myself to implement these into my business too. I know, you know, like I said, SEO has been on my list for forever. And, um, I'm also, um, many of my listeners know I'm, I'm on the cusp of a rebrand here. So I think it's a good opportunity, you know, to start implementing these things and start fresh in a way, um, by having some good SEO habits. So let's dive right into it today. So what is the first tactic that SEO or that wedding professionals can implement?

Speaker 4: 14:02

I want them to take a look at their website, first of all, and we fail to do this. Take a look at your website via your phone, whether it's Android, iPhone, whatever it may be. How does it look on your phone? Because for example, if you are using WordPress, perhaps you have an older website, the theme hasn't been updated or you haven't even updated your WordPress site. So it might not be looking too great on mobile. But we know that mobile search is going to surpass 70% of search next year. So that is how people are looking at your website. So if it doesn't look correct, most likely people will leave the website. So that's the first step. I call it light housekeeping first. And then you can go to a free tool. It's called Pingdom, P I, N G, D, O, M or it. The URL is tools.pingdom.com and you can put your URL or domain right into there and do a test. What is the site speed. Now, most people come to a website and they don't want to wait two seconds or more for that site to load. So what they'll do is leave and over 75% of these people might tell others, Hey, I don't like that website. It's loading really slow. They'll tell others how slow the site is. So that's a problem. Is your site slow and Google doesn't like it either. So it won't refer sites with slow time to load because it's not creating a great user experience in search engine results. So that is a huge factor when it comes to being ranked on Google. This site speed and the biggest culprit of site speed is usually our images, especially with wedding photographers. I know they're huge files. We're uploading them into the website. There are 10 million kilobytes and they realize they're like, Oh, okay. So you see the culprits with this free tool Pingdom. It will show you this image sizes of those files that you upload it. So maybe you can just use some free tools to, not to ruin the integrity of the images, but to get the file sizes down a bit.

Speaker 3: 16:43

Right. And I think that that's really important because our industry is so image heavy. And I know that this is a problem on my website. So while you were talking, I went to Pingdom and I got a failing grade so,

Speaker 5: 16:58

and I know

Speaker 3: 16:59

because of my images and as you were mentioning that I was like, ah, that has also been on my list because I know originally when I was uploading all my images, it just never crossed my mind in so many of them are so large. So it has also been on my to do list to go back through and um, minimize some of the sizes of all of those images. So you guys, I really encourage you to go test this out. It's a little bit depressing.

Speaker 5: 17:27

You'd get a feeling I never get a fail at, great at anything, but um,

Speaker 4: 17:32

it's important. Yeah. Sometimes it has to do with the images. Sometimes it is the host provider. If the site is running a little slow, for example, those of you that are using Squarespace, it runs a little slower sometimes. I don't always see an a score on Squarespace. It's just that's just the way it is. I, but I know the biggest culprit is primarily the images, but this tool will show you if there's anything wrong. Maybe you can give some information to your web developer and there's any changes that they can do to help with that score.

Speaker 3: 18:08

Yeah, it does give, I'm not going to go through it, but it gives a lot of information on the page performance. So a lot of which I don't exactly understand, but that's okay. Um, awesome. Okay. What's your next tip?

Speaker 4: 18:21

Now that you've gotten your score, you're like, okay, I'm going to definitely go to some, there's some free tools where you can reduce the image sizes. For example, J P mini, um, WP smush is a plugin for WordPress. There's a lot. If you, there's a lot of tools out there that can help you reduce the file sizes. So now that you've done that, the second step, and most entrepreneurs forget this, when creating their website, they're obsessed with making it look pretty and the aesthetic of the website, but forgot on the backend what they want to be known for. What would I need to site search Google? What would I need to type into Google to find your business? And that is the biggest pain point for some entrepreneurs because they're like, I don't, I don't know Melissa. I don't know what people would type. So if you don't know what people would need to search for your business, chances are it's on your website and you're not going to be found for what you wanted to be known for. So it's, it's creating those, what we call keyword list or keyword research strategy around your business. How would people search for you? What would they, what pain points are you solving? What is your business all about? And it's also due to location two wedding planners, upstate New York, et cetera. Um, having all of those variations of keywords and you can find some of those keywords. It can just be via Google typing in. I'm going to just use wedding planners, upstate New York wedding planners, upstate New York. You don't hit the enter or return key on your laptop or desktop. You'll see some keywords that will pop up different variations of what people might be searching for. Those could be some of your keywords. If you were to hit enter and go to the scroll to the bottom of the search results. That's called related searches to other searches. You'll find some keywords there. You could go to Pinterest. There's keywords there. Pinterest is not just social media. It is a search engine. You can find some great keywords there. What people might be for based on your topic. You can also go to a free tool. It's called answer the public.com these are questions that people are typing into Google related to your topic, how to hire a wedding planner and just all of the questions people might have pertaining to that topic. Those are also keywords as well, so you just want to compile a huge list of these keywords or key phrases.

Speaker 3: 21:23

That's so interesting. I've never heard of that website. And now I'm going to be obsessed with it. Yeah.

Speaker 4: 21:26

Because it's a little scary. The homepage is a little scary. You'll see once you go to it, it's a, you know, a guy's face. It's, it's really, it's, it's not, it kinda throws you off at first, but it's a great tool.

Speaker 3: 21:41

Interesting. And I, you know what, when it comes to keywords, I often find, and let me know if this, if you find this as well, that what we think people are searching isn't always what people are actually searching. And I'm sometimes surprised we do ask in our, so I have a wedding planning business as well. We ask our clients how they found us and if they say they found us on Google, we'll sometimes joke with them and say, well, what did you search? And it's never what I thought it would be. Like. I mean, there's the obvious, you know, wedding planner, upstate New York makes total sense, but it's always interesting to me. Um, and I think in a way, partially it's because, I mean a wedding planner is kind of obvious, but the terminology that we use is not always the same terminology that our couples use. So for example, I find that they often are searching for wedding coordinator instead of wedding planner because they don't understand what the difference is

Speaker 4: 22:35

exactly. They might not know the technical term or the titles that people are using today. Uh, so yes, they just put in, for example, wedding coordinator or even in the case of myself, SEO, they don't really know what that is, but help me get my site found online. That's very specific. So it's the variations of those keywords you want to use throughout your website.

Speaker 3: 23:01

Fantastic. Okay, that's great. And I know, you know, keywords is one of those topics that we talk about quite often as we talk about Pinterest strategy and, um, of course hashtags on Instagram and everything else. So I think by now, my hope is, you know, in this day and age that most of our listeners have an idea of what their keywords are. And I think it's just about, you know, getting creative with it and really understanding what people are searching, especially in your local market.

Speaker 4: 23:28

Exactly. It's, it's really thinking outside the box of what problems that you are solving for people. For example, when I talked to my wedding photographer clients, it's not just about this specific venue. It could be how do pose for wedding photos in a certain location or the top outdoor wedding photo locations in a location. This helps you get found in search.

Speaker 3: 23:59

Interesting. Awesome. Okay. What is our next tip?

Speaker 4: 24:04

The next tip is to take these keywords, whether if you have 10 50 a hundred and put them into a free tool. It's one I like as a keyword tool. It's called Uber suggest you, B, E, R, S, U, G, G, E, S, T, and you can put each keyword into this free tool and I'll show you variations of this keyword. So what you're taking a look at in this tool is the search volume as well as the keyword difficulty or the it might show SEO difficulty. And what keyword or SEO difficulty means is how easy it or, or how hard is it to rank on Google. So if the keyword difficulty shows 50 or more, like 50 or higher, closer to a hundred, that means it's going to be a little bit more difficult to rank for on Google. So you're looking for keywords that have a higher search volume, say maybe a thousand searches or more per month, and then a keyword difficulty score of ideally under 50 and under. Now this can be difficult because it, depending on your industry, there might be high competition and just it's harder to rank for. For example, if I want to rank for Amazon, I probably wouldn't rank for that because Amazon is right. So I can't, I can't do it. It's harder to rank for. But you want to have these variations of keywords throughout your website that might have higher search volume, they could be a little bit more difficult to rank for or easier. Uh, then something with, you can also put lower search volume keywords and then they might, it might be really easy to rank for. Again, it's just all these different types of variation keywords you want to sprinkle throughout your website.

Speaker 3: 26:08

So while you were explaining that, I again went on my phone to test this out. I'm so fascinated by all of this right now. I love that you are giving us so many tools and I just for fun, wet and put in wedding planner and wedding planner has a high volume but also a high difficulties so that if you scroll down though, there's like wedding planner near me,

Speaker 4: 26:31

me[inaudible]

Speaker 3: 26:33

is, has a very low difficulty and wedding planner timeline is good. Interesting. What implant? Salary. Huh?

Speaker 4: 26:43

Everybody wants to be a wedding planner, right? So wedding planners is a little bit too vague. That's where you would put the location. Wedding planners, Los Angeles or wedding planners, Sonoma, California. Uh, so it's, it's just very,

Speaker 3: 27:04

very specific. Okay. So as a test I did that. I'm all about real time testing these days. So I put wedding planner Los Angeles and then so some of the suggestions that came up, wedding coordinator, Los Angeles, just like we thought, wedding planner, Los Angeles cost of course. Um, let's see, wedding planner, best wedding planner, Los Angeles. Interesting. So yeah, there's lots of different suggestions on here and all of these have a difficulty of less than 50, so that's good.

Speaker 4: 27:35

That's great. That's great. Yeah. Any of those? Um, the best wedding planners, top wedding planners, uh, anything with near me, you can have different variations. For example, you can have best wedding planners and then best wedding planners near me. You can have all those different variations throughout your website. How do you incorporate the near me into your

Speaker 3: 27:59

website? Like what, what are some examples of that?

Speaker 4: 28:03

You can put that into an image. For example, uh, if it were you had a wedding planning business, a picture of your reception, et cetera, and just put wedding planner near me. You name the image, also wedding planner near me. That will come up in search because we are often uploading our images into our website and naming it ABC. Dot. JPEG or whatever the client's name is. Dot. JPEG. And I doubt you want to be known for ABC dot JPEG. So here's a chance to, even when you're uploading your images, you want to rename them with those keywords that you just went through and that will help be found in search because Google needs to see what that image is. It doesn't know that's an image of a cute puppy at all. Um, you have to tell Google what that image is about. So that's why it's very important even incorporating those keywords into your image file names.

Speaker 3: 29:11

Oh, okay. Interesting. Awesome. Okay, I've lost track. How many tips are we at here? Yeah.

Speaker 4: 29:18

Wait, where are we at? Three or four. I know, I am just, I'm just spilling out a lot of tips here.

Speaker 3: 29:24

Well you just keep going cause these are fantastic. Okay, what's the next one?

Speaker 4: 29:29

Well, when we're putting the keywords for example or image file names, also there's a field, especially if you are using WordPress, it's called all texts. It's alternative. Here's another field where you can tell Google what that image is and you can utilize your keywords in this alt text field in Squarespace. The, you can directly change the image name in Squarespace that's seen as the all text. It's just different platforms work different ways. When it comes to all texts. Shopify, you can put all texts in there, show it. Um, it's just the file name that you want to make sure it's correct. So we put the keywords in our images. You also want to put it in your content and creating, for example, blog posts, blog writing blogs is very important. I know how it is and time consuming and Oh and I should practice what I preach to you. I tell my clients at the blog more, et cetera. I don't do it. I'm trying to do it. But it creates fresh content and it gives Google a reason to come back to your site. When we create our websites, the about page, et cetera, it just lives there. We don't really change it. So we need Google to come back to our website. So blogs create fresh content for Google. Testimonials do the same thing. But with blogs, we can put our keywords in our blog posts. For example, if you use that tool, answer the public.com you see the questions, for example, where is the best wedding location in Louisiana? And you write a post and you answer the question, chances are that is going to come up and search because you are answering those questions that people are asking. So it's a win win. So creating that content is extremely important. So that's where you want to put the keywords throughout your content, your images, your titles, your, your ELLs, if they're not in the titles, if you can change the manually, et cetera. Really, really important to have those keywords throughout your website.

Speaker 3: 31:51

Okay. I have a question about this because I feel like I have had many answers to this differently in the past. So while you were, while you were talking, I pulled up my website on the back end and I have a WordPress website. So when I upload my images, I have the option for title, caption, alt text description. Okay. So which are the most important to fill out and what is the difference?

Speaker 4: 32:16

The title, the image will upload. For example, if you need to correctly with the file name didn't do that. You don't have to re upload your images into WordPress. You can change the title of the image with your keywords. You can add all text into the alt, the field. Um, and then there is a free plugin. It's called media file Renamer. And what it will do is that you can manually rename each image, for example, it will change the current image file name to the title.

Speaker 3: 33:03

Okay. Okay.

Speaker 4: 33:05

So it's, it's a great tool. Easy. So you don't have to re upload all of your images again.

Speaker 3: 33:12

Oh that's great. That's awesome. So when it comes to the description field, is that important to fill out

Speaker 4: 33:19

the description or caption field? It provides more information, not necessarily for SEO purposes, but it helps the reader. If they don't know what that picture is right off the bat, you're telling the reader what that image is. So that reduces what we call the bounce rate because they're not leaving the site cause they're like, I don't know what that image is. I don't know what I'm reading here, so I'm just going to leave this site. You're telling someone what that image is.

Speaker 3: 33:54

Okay. So you had also mentioned, um, blogging, which I'm not going to harp on my listeners about because I feel like I do it all the time. We all know we should be blogging. I am guilty. I think we're all guilty. You know, if there, if anybody ever wanted to start a really great business and I know there are some people that do this, but go blog for wedding professionals, we need all the help we can get. But I think, you know, I think what I try to remind people is it doesn't have to be, you know, a really complicated blog post. And, and one of the, some of the feedback that I've gotten from people, I was like, well I don't want to blog about, you know, something as simple as 10 things you need to think about when you're planning a reception or anything. Cause everybody's blogged about that. But the reason I find that everybody's blogging about that is because that's the question that's getting asked by people. And I love that tool you mentioned, um, ask the question because then you know exactly what people are searching for. It's so brilliant to understand how to answer those questions when they're the exact questions that people are looking for. Right.

Speaker 4: 35:01

Exactly. And you know, people are searching for it. It's a win win. You're answering the question and you, you're the expert. So the more questions that you answer, the more you're going to come up in search because that's what people are looking for.

Speaker 3: 35:17

And I think sometimes we get wrapped up in our own heads thinking that we have to blog sort of more complicated or original or creative things. And of course we blog the weddings that we do. Um, but I think this is a great reminder that don't forget that your potential client, your potential couple doesn't know everything that you know, and they don't know, they're not aware of your level of knowledge or, or all of the industry things that were just, you know, are second nature to us. So blogging the basics I think can be really, really valuable, not just for SEO but in terms of marketing yourself as that expert.

Speaker 4: 35:55

Absolutely. And people love blog posts that have more bullet list. They like images, but just very easy to read, easy to skim. You don't have to write a book. Um, you can just give them bite-size information. Uh, people really love it.

Speaker 3: 36:16

Fantastic. And if you want to take it a step further, you can always add, you know, a followup video into your post or something similar so that you're going to get that added points for having video. All right, what is our next tip? I think this might be our last one.

Speaker 4: 36:32

Well, now that you have incorporated all of the keywords into your site, now it's time. There is a free tool to sign up for. It's called Google search console and Google search console. What that does, it helps you get found on Google. Google doesn't know that you launched your SA site last week, that you had a launch party for it. It doesn't know that all of your pages and all of your posts exists. It might just do the traffic you might be getting, people might be sharing the content, et cetera. But you want to tell Google that these pages and posts exist and Google search console is completely free. You just have to verify your site. You follow the instructions and let's go to tell you to do, how to verify your site. And once you verify your site, you want to submit each page and post that you've added these keywords to etc to Google. So Google can come back and what we call index or site. Take a snapshot of your site, file it away in Google database land so it can match the keywords on your site when someone's searching for it on Google. So it's like free tool. Most people don't utilize it, but it's very, very important to sign up and use it.

Speaker 3: 38:00

Oh that's so great. I am so excited by all of these free tools and for everyone listening, I will make sure that I link to all of these in the show notes so that you don't have to try to jot them down while you're driving or on the treadmill or anything. So I will link to all of these amazing free tools. Um, you know what's interesting is I think just coincidentally, I ended up, um, on Google search console last week. Like I can't even remember how I got there. I was down the rabbit hole of the internet searching for something and, and I remember looking at it and going like, Oh, I feel like this is something I should know about. So

Speaker 4: 38:37

for the most right, most entrepreneurs did not sign up for it. It is a free tool. It is, it is a little techie. It might scare some for sure. Just like Google analytics, you need to have Google analytics on your site so you can understand who's coming to your site, the traffic, et cetera. Um, what sources are they coming from, whether it's organic search, direct search, social or referral traffic, and won't get too much into that. Um, but those are two free tools that you need to sign up for.

Speaker 3: 39:11

So if our listeners are feeling overwhelmed by all of this, um, what do you recommend for them? Like, I know that you help entrepreneurs with this sort of thing. Is that, is it, is it a good idea to hire an SEO consultant or what are the options out there?

Speaker 4: 39:29

I do feel it's one of these areas that you might want to outsource because of this business changing quite a bit. It might not be your wheel house. You don't have time to learn all of the SEO strategies and you want to focus on other parts of your business. As I mentioned before, it's kind of like legal and accounting. You're just like, Oh, I have to have someone else do this. So that's what I do. I take the done for you optimization right off of your hands so you don't have to do it. I have a lot of clients that tell me, Melissa SEO makes me ill. I don't want to learn anything about it. I just need you to do it. We don't need to discuss it. And then I have other clients that tell me I want to learn this in the future so I can do this in my, for myself. So that's what I do. I do all the back end nitty-gritty optimization so you can get me found online and then if you're interested I can review everything that I've done and teach you how to do it in the future. So that's one of the services that I provide for entrepreneurs and I work with many in the wedding industry.

Speaker 3: 40:44

That's awesome. I feel like that might be my future cause to be honest, as much as I like to think that I can do everything sometimes just because you can doesn't mean you should do. Exactly. Exactly. Now you had also mentioned that you have a free 30 minute session that you have available. Can you tell us about that?

Speaker 4: 41:03

I do. Yeah. Anyone that wants to talk to me about their website, what's going on, what maybe they've experienced a drop in traffic, they don't know what's going on. They move their site from different platforms and they need to be found locally. Let's talk about it. I do have a free 30 minute SEO session. You can book that directly from my website, their creative potential.com and less chat about your SEO.

Speaker 3: 41:31

You mentioned that you have program called optimize my site now. Can you tell us about that as well?

Speaker 4: 41:37

Amazing resources. I love it. Yeah, it's SEO my site now, and you can sign up and this is just the done for you optimization package. And again, I take it off your hands. We discuss your keyword research strategy in detail. I come up with the keyword research strategy, but what we do, we take a look first at three of your competitors, or at least three of your competitors, what they're ranking for organically as well, if they're paying for any search, and also the backlinks, which is an important piece of the SEO puzzle. We didn't really get into it today, but it's backlinks are sites linking to your site because the more backlinks that you have, the more Google sees credibility in your site because people really dig in your content, they're sharing your content or Lincoln back to you, et cetera. So developing a backlink strategy is also very, very important. And that's what I go over with my clients. So we take a look at all of that data because sometimes you think your competitors are really killing it and they're not, you're doing better than they are organically anyway. And so it really depends on that data and maybe we'll extract some keywords from out of there and come up with this keyword strategy and then I go on the back end and infuse it in the website and submit all of those pages and post to Google and then we talk about it. What I've done, show you what I've done, how you can correct this in the future, perhaps what posts are right. I have data, more data. Um, in addition to answer the public.com, my database will give me some other questions people are typing into Google as well as the influencers in your space, in your world, for example, wedding industry, what they're talking about and maybe who you can connect with and build, start building those backlinks.

Speaker 3: 43:46

Fantastic. I will link to all of that in the show notes. That sounds amazing. Um, before I let you go today, is there one parting piece of advice you'd like to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 4: 43:58

Don't let SEO fall to next year. Uh, I hear this, I'll do it next year. I'll do it in two years. Oh, I'll, I'm pushing that out. I've got to uh, create images first in Canva or Photoshop and then yeah, it just never gets done. Don't let it fall to the bottom of your to do list. Really start optimizing your site, whether you hire someone like myself or you start to learn how to do it on your own. Awesome. And you guys, if you want

Speaker 3: 44:32

a lot of free tips on how to do this on your own and the little actions that you can take, I do recommend that you go read her blog because I, like I said, I spent a few hours doing that. I came up with some really good strategies that I didn't even know I needed. So, and I will link to that in the show notes as well. Melissa, thank you so much for being here today. If people want to find you online, where can they find you?

Speaker 4: 44:55

They can head over to the creative potential.com they'll see all of my services, the SEO session and the blog.

Speaker 3: 45:03

Amazing. Thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me, Mary. Have a great day. Thanks. It's me again. If you're anything like me, you know you need to pay more attention to your SEO, but it's just one of those things that never quite makes the priority list. Hopefully after today's episode, you're motivated to take the steps that Melissa shared and get making found online. One of your goals for 2020 quick reminder for everyone. If you're enjoying this podcast, I would love it if you could take two minutes and leave a review on iTunes. This helps us get found by more wedding pros and that my friend will help us elevate the industry as a whole. It only takes a few moments and it means the world to me. I would also of course, encourage you to subscribe to the show so that you never miss an episode. That is all for today. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Until next time,

Speaker 1: 46:01

thank you so much for joining me for this week's episode of the web preneur podcast. I'm so incredibly grateful to all of my listeners and would like to take a moment to invite you to keep the conversation going. Head on over to my free online community@thewetpreneur.com forward slash join if you enjoyed this episode, help us spread the word by leaving us an honest review on iTunes. I appreciate each and every one of you and welcome your feedback. Until next time,

Speaker 2: 46:36

[inaudible].

The Wedpreneur Podcast

{EP44}: How to Get Your Business Found Online with Melissa McGraw

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