Show notes

Episode 123 - SEO Part 1

Melanie

Hello and welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. My name is Melanie

Esther

and I'm Esther.

Melanie

And today we're going to be talking about SEO, also known as search engine optimisation. And I just happen to have somebody who knows what they're talking about when it comes to it.

Esther

Do you?

Melanie

Yes, you. That's a bit worrying, isn't it?

Esther

Oh, yeah, that's me. Okay. No, it is, it's me. It is me. Okay. So what do you want to know?

Melanie

Well, for a start, it's part of what IPA Group does, isn't it?

Esther

It is. It's one of the many things that we do here at IPA Group. But it is one of the best things for your website. It would basically be like if you went to a car garage, car dealership, wherever you're in and bought a car but put no petrol in it, how would you get it home? Petrol, gasoline. How would you get it home? How do you get your website moving and get it seen by people? With SEO

Melanie

SEO, when I think websites, they're very complicated or they can be very complicated.

Esther

Yeah.

Melanie

I mean, there's ranges, isn't there? There's template websites and then there's purposely built websites and that sort of thing.

Esther

Not just that there's brochure websites all the way up to your e-commerce selling thousands and thousands of products.

Melanie

So does SEO matter to every type of website?

Esther

SEO matters to every type of website, yes. Because especially to the websites that are more static. So static websites are ones that do not have blogs or do not have video embeds and things like that, things that are pulling in fresh information every month or every couple of weeks to your website. So if your website is a static one, so that would be just a landing page or a brochure website, which is just talking about your business and what you do and who you are, where you are, then it's important that it be fully optimized for SEO so that it has the best chance of getting to the top of searches. So because Google trolls the websites, it sends its little bots out looking at every website and there are billions of websites. And if a website hasn't been updated or optimised, then it gets pushed further back and further down the queue. So that's why there's some that it'll never be on page one. If you haven't updated it in the last ten years, it probably doesn't have all the things that Google looks for. So getting onto page one of Google, which is everyone's main aim, isn't just about SEO, but it is a major part of it.

Melanie

For example, you've created a static website and you've put your SEO on there. Would you actually recommend just doing a static website or would you prefer or do you only do websites that have an updateable section like latest news, white papers, calendar events, blogs, whatever.

Esther

We build all different types of websites here, but our SEO section is separate because it's not like when you hire us to do your website, you're not also hiring us to do your SEO.

Melanie

Oh, you're not? It's not part and parcel?

Esther

No, it's two separate services. Okay. So it'd be like hiring a builder and expecting him to do the electrician stuff as well. He might know how to do it, but he won't do it unless you ask him to and pay him to do it. So he's not just going to build you the house and include all the plumbing and the electricity as well.

Melanie

But you would recommend the SEO as part of the website.

Esther

Well, do you want a house without electricity and plumbing?

Melanie

Exactly.

Esther

It's one of those things that we offer as an extra. And because obviously when we're building it, it's easier to build it into the website from the very start. Because if the website launches and then you go to do SEO, Google will have a harder time, like realising that it's still the same website. So SEO is to optimise it for the search engine. That's what we said, search engine optimisation. And it improves the visibility of your site on the search engines. So it's all about your keywords and your keyword density and what you want to be found for. And long tail keywords as well as short tail keywords. Because you have to think, what are people going to be Googling? People no longer just Google your business name. People will Google stuff looking for answers. Does your site have those answers? So you sort of have to think about from the end user all the way back. And it's all of that information that would be put in the SEO. So it also includes your meta tags for your images and your videos and lots of complicated jargon that gets thrown in there. It is not easy to do SEO, especially because it changes every few days. Sometimes it's like a new thing to be added in. So it's a lot of stuff going on in the background of your site. So like I said, the meta tags, the meta descriptions, it's not just putting up an image on your website and calling it img.123, you have to describe the image because Google can nowadays find the image and make it searchable as well. So if somebody you put up an image, for example, of bracelet that you're selling with an Irish design on it. If you just put up bracelet in the description, it'll get lost in the billions and billions of bracelets. But if someone is specifically looking for Irish design bracelet, yours has more chance of showing up if you put those words into the meta tag in the description.

Melanie

I guess that's why it's so important that when you do put up images of yourself and the people you're working with and you do change the name from the long numbers and letters and not just actually putting the name of it, but the meta tag, the tag behind it, the alt.

Esther

The alt tag. Yeah.

Melanie

Not everybody can afford to do the website and the SEO at the same time, though. Is it disastrous? Can they help themselves? Can they help themselves in any way at all for a while at least?

Esther

They can definitely help themselves with the content that they provide. Right. So the content that they provide, if they're providing, especially with blog posts, it's much easier if they provide blog posts that contain the keywords. So for example, your website, you're talking about marketing. So obviously marketing is a major one of your keywords, because that's what you talk about a lot. But people would be looking for your training. So you have to talk a lot about what training you provide. And using the word social media training together throughout the text. It doesn't have to be like, I provide social media training. And the social media training that I provide is to provide you with social media training that you will... Not talk about that it has to be spaced out correctly throughout. Okay, so we're talking mentioning social media training once in each paragraph. Once or twice. Exactly. You're writing for the human because even though it's the bot and it's the AI that's searching for it, they are very keyed in that if there's too many of those words in the same sentence, that makes no sense. They've been programmed that way now. And like I said, what I'm telling you today could change tomorrow. We never know how it's going to change or when it's going to change. But yes, you can always start off your site well by the images that you send to your designer having the correct description. If you just send them here's a bunch of images and the designers going, okay, what do I use them? Where am I using them? What am I doing with them? But if you put the bottom because even if you're sending a Word document, you can add a description to the image that says image of the mountains in Montana with blah, blah, blah. So if people are looking for Montana mountains, then it's going to show up there.

Melanie

Yeah. Actually, you made a very interesting point now about how much prep work needs to be involved in order to help your website designer also do this. You're going to need to not just provide the images, but the background understanding of the images, the copy or the wording on the website. And if your website designer is going to be putting up all the posts, you've got to give them time to put it up and do all the SEO on the page as well. Especially if you've got like a brochure website or an e-commerce website, because that takes time doesn't it, like take days? E-commerce, depending on how much they're putting up.

Esther

Loads. Yeah, it could take forever. Like we did an e-commerce website one time and it took us two months to get all the products into it. There were thousands and thousands of products.

Melanie

Oh, goodness.

Esther

But yeah, but one of the things, even with Brochure website or a static website that you're not updating when you share out, if you ever notice whenever you share out your URL. So your www, dot, your website here.com, there's an image that comes up when you share it on Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. And there's a description there, that's a meta tag description. So when you share it out, if it doesn't say what you do, if it doesn't have a favicon, which is an image.

Melanie

Oh, is that what a favicon is?

Esther

Yeah. So when you put in, if you look at the top of your tabs.

Melanie

Yeah, there's all those little icon in there.

Esther

Those are the favicons. But those also come across whenever you're sharing it out on social media. Those all need to be adjusted as well. And again, that's something if you ask your web designer for a website, that is not something they automatically have to include.

Melanie

Interesting, though, a lot of website designers also create a Google business profile as well, don't they, for the map?

Esther

They can.

Melanie

And that's another SEO tool, isn't it?

Esther

It is, definitely. And obviously you want your website connected to your Google Analytics from the very start.

Melanie

Yeah. So that SEO as well, isn't it? That's helping you understand what's working on your website.

Esther

It's more helping you rather than being actual SEO. But it does help it be registered with Google because you have to have a Gmail account, which is Google to be able to get your Google Analytics.

Melanie

And sitemap as well.

Esther

Yeah, but all of those things like, you want to make it as easy for a bot to crawl through your website. So if you've only got ten words on your home page, what's the bot going to crawl? Nothing. I mean, you could have loads of images, but if they're all img234 the bot isn't going to know even where to put you in the search engine.

Melanie

You just led me on to another thing there. So what exactly is the right amount of text or copy to have on the page?

Esther

It depends what day of the week it is really with Google.

Melanie

Oh, okay. With no help at all then, was it?

Esther

No. But basically if you try to stick to at least 500 words on a page, which really isn't much. But if you think that within those 500 words you have to have, I think at the minute it's 3% keyword density, between three and 5% keyword density, it's not a lot of times to mention your social media training in 500 words and not sound spammy. So you also have to remember, like, people will be wanting to go into the site and look at the site and if there's too many words on it, they might get turned off so that's where your images and your videos with their meta descriptions can help you with your keyword density.

Melanie

Right. So there is a lot to this SEO.

Esther

We went way over ten minutes there. We only just scratched the surface basically but I mean there are loads of tools online. Like if you really want to get into the nitty gritty and try to do your own SEO, Google has Google Digital Garage. It used to be called that anyway. Google it, you'll find out. But it really can be very time not. That can be. It really is very time consuming and it can be very draining on you personally because like we were talking in a previous episode, you're the best person to describe your business but you might not always be the one who describes it the way other people see it.

Melanie

Exactly.

Esther

So do get a fresh set of eyes on it. SEO ranges in price like it can be really expensive or it can just be hey, get me at least the home page optimized and we'll go from there. You can take it in steps. It doesn't all have to be done in one go. Contact us if you do need to get even a breakdown of where you're at at the minute, we can do that for you free of charge. See, you should have listened to the end. Go listen to our previous episode if you're wondering why we said that. And we will get you started on the right track with your SEO, who is us? Oh sorry. Yes, us. IPA Group or contact me through Monday Morning Marketing. You know my voice by now guys. It's been 120 something episodes.

Melanie

Yeah, something like that. Well I thought it was about time we did a bit of talking about us and about our knowledge or more to the point, your knowledge today. We do know what we're talking about. I know we rarely sound like we do, but we do and we're going to wind up now because we could literally just waffle for the next ten minutes, probably.

Esther

We could but you're bored by now, it's SEO.

Melanie

So that's all the time we have for for now but we will be back very soon with another podcast. Have a great week. Bye for now.

Esther

Bye bye.

Melanie

I always wave don't I?

Esther

Every single time I know but it's nice I like to see you wave.

Melanie

I can't seem to stop myself

Esther

It's reassuring to me that you haven't changed.